Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

...he said "f@ck it", & came out in the open.

[TesfaNews]

...he said "f@ck it", & came out in the open.

[Zmeselo]

Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, says company exacerbating ‘ethnic tensions in Ethiopia’ by promoting content that goes viral because it contains anger and is riddled with violence.

[Zmeselo]

The UN Literally Looks the Other Way When It Comes to TPLF Human Rights Abuses

Jeff Pearce

https://jeffpearce.medium.com/the-un-li ... b140aa5515

6 hours ago

Tigrayans forced to fight, weapons being fired and risking locals’ safety, and staff told not to video TPLF “recruitment events” — UN officials don’t talk publicly about THESE conditions in the region.



According to a leaked UN internal communication from last Saturday, October 2, its humanitarian staff in Shire know of or at least have heard reports of human rights abuses within the areas they serve in Tigray and seem to be indifferent to responding and acting on them.

What’s being told to a group of UN workers and cluster partners is starkly different at times to how the OCHA is publicly reporting https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/ethiopia the situation.

Among the revelations in an internal email sent to the Shire Group, one official tells recipients,

The situation across Shire AoR feels a bit tense as TF military recruitment campaign continues (and intensifies) for over a week now. Unconfirmed reports indicate that mandatory recruitment (at least one person per family) have been ongoing in the past few days, coinciding with the increasing tensions and challenges in/around TF-controlled areas in Amhara region.

There is a lot to unpack here, but what stands out most of all is how there is no indication in the email that the UN manager wants to investigate further to confirm or that officials will ask TPLF leaders to cease and desist forcing Tigrayans to fight for a terrorist group.

The “one person per family” reference is also interesting in that the official shows no interest in determining whether these forced recruits include children.

The UN is still protesting the Ethiopia government’s move to kick out seven UN senior officials it declared persona non grata and which it accuses of undermining security operations, spreading disinformation, and collaborating with the TPLF. Sources confirmed months ago and in August that senior UN officials have harassed Ethiopian workers, helped the TPLF to sabotage national exams in Mekelle, https://jeffpearce.medium.com/a-morally ... 72ae8241b0 and worked to misrepresent the UN’s own discussion of how to respond to sexual assault cases during the conflict. https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia- ... 94fbebfaae

It’s reasonable to ask, as the U.S. and its public advocates go on complaining over the expelled “Seven Saints,” how does the UN keep working in Tigray, knowing that Tigrayan residents, including children, are being forced to go to war?

Here is a UN official openly suggesting in an email to colleagues that ordinary Tigrayans are being forced to fight over “challenges” in TPLF controlled regions of Amhara — a hell of a euphemistic way of saying the locals are fighting back. And giving us a window on how desperate TPLF forces are, needing to drag their own people to the battle lines.

Firearm shooting to celebrate the recruitment is frequently heard and may pose danger to local population and aid workers,

reports the email.

And what action is the UN taking, to persuade TPLF soldiers and their officers to stop doing this dangerous practice? None is given.

All partners, please, refrain from attending (and taking pictures/videos of) any recruitment-related events.

This is quite revealing.

Why must partners and UN staff even need to be told to steer clear and not capture any photo/video evidence of recruitment-related events?

Why would they attend and be fraternizing with new recruits at all?

Instructing staff not to take any photos or videos of recruiting events is a damage-control effort that speaks more to protecting the TPLF’s image, than the physical safety of UN workers. What is the concern here? That staff will be seen socializing with TPLF recruits? That the recruits may include children, and the video and shots will provide more evidence? It’s a practice already confirmed by the New York Times’ own glorifying of child soldiers and in other media reports. https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia- ... b069747fdc

And as the campaign continues to try to keep senior UN officials like Kwesi Sansculotte in their jobs, despite his lack of social media professionalism which now proliferates the airwaves, the UN doesn’t seem very interested in talking about this:

In the last couple of weeks, a few people were reportedly arrested (suspected of spying for ErDF) and many mobile phones of local people were temporarily confiscated on the suspicion of possibly conveying intelligence info using humanitarian Internet…

[The ellipse is in the original]

Would the UN like to weigh in on what happened to these arrested individuals? Did staff bother to find out their names and how and where they’re being detained? How about if they’re still alive? Given that during the Meles Zenawi era of TPLF rule, torture conducted right in downtown buildings in Addis was commonplace, what are UN staff doing to further investigate and ensure that these arrested individuals are having their rights protected?

The email doesn’t address any of this. And this, too, is glaringly omitted from the Situation Report.

A few checkpoints along the Shire-Mekelle road remain open for humanitarians, though sporadically crowded with new recruits undergoing military training.

This seems to indicate that any interference with aid getting into the region, cannot simply be blamed on Ethiopian military and militia. In fact, the official contradicts herself in her own email:

Items such as generators, ITC, teff, high-energy biscuits, and office furniture are still not allowed to transit to Tigray (despite approval by NDRMC these items are denied at checkpoints).

NDRMC means, the National Disaster and Risk Management Commission of the Ethiopian government. In other words, the Ethiopian government approved these items, but they were denied at checkpoints. Who then, would deny them? Well, the federal army is no longer in control of the region after it left during the unilateral ceasefire and it certainly wasn’t around at the time this email was written (October 2). So the only force that could prevent transit is the TPLF.

Keep in mind, the email tells us:

A few checkpoints along the Shire-Mekelle road remain open for humanitarians, though sporadically crowded with new recruits undergoing military training.

Shouldn’t these be the likely candidates for interfering with shipments?

Moreover, in keeping with the flood of photo/video evidence on social media, the email gives us a clear confirmation that the UN’s fleet of vehicles are being misused by the TPLF, contrary to UN aid chief Martin Griffiths https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/un ... 021-09-28/ trying to blame the more than 400 disappearing trucks on the Ethiopian government:

Some rental vehicles have reportedly abused UN stickers to easily pass though checkpoints, unrelated to any work done for UN,

admits the official in her email.

All partners using rental vehicles, please, make sure there is proper tracking of who and when uses the stickers so this practice of unauthorized use of stickers stops.

The email also blames bank closures and communications disruptions, for cashflow problems (neglecting to mention the number of comms technicians sent to do repairs by the Ethiopian government who have been murdered on the job by the TPLF). And then offers this startling insight into the situation:

Partners (continue to) report that some national staff working for NGOs in Tigray are not turning up to work, due to their inability to pay salaries. Some have tried (for a few months now) to get them paid in-kind/food, but the increasing food prices and depleting stocks affect the arrangement.

It’s only speculation, but how much then is the relentless cries for return of banking and communications services driven not by the needs of ordinary Tigrayans as by the NGOs facing desertion of their staff?

And there’s more. The email includes the attachment of a PowerPoint presentation on preliminary findings of another round of “Emergency Site Assessment”, by IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix. However, the methodology borders on bizarre: relying on questionnaires of 4,061 “key informants” — of whom only 35 percent were women and girls who contributed their “local knowledge.”

The data collection period spanned a few days, in late July and all of August. But even a casual look suggests, that someone is cooking the books on the numbers. The regional breakdown suggests only 151,040 Internally Displaced Persons, in the Amhara region.



Well, I’m not good at math, but I was there in Wollo during the very period that this “assessment” was being made and while the slide map somewhat reflects the truth of what the ArtsTV team and I found ourselves

— that there were about 100,000 IDPs in the Dessie area alone — why doesn’t the map also reflect IDPs across the North Wollo woredas? How about those fleeing the shelling of Debre Tabor or the capture of Lalibela, both of which occurred during this same assessment period?


Some of the IDPs at a camp in Dessie.

In fact, according to figures released by the Ethiopian Ministry of Peace, the number of IDPs in the Amhara region is about 550,000 as of September 15. Since more than 400,000 people didn’t suddenly cross into the region on the morning of September 1st, that means DTM had to be willfully blind in how it conducted its research through August, ignoring the great tides of victims of the TPLF looking desperately for safe haven.

The inescapable impression we’re all left with is that the UN has not only been lying to all of us, but even lying to itself. Ethiopia restricted itself, to kicking out only seven senior officials. It may need to reconsider expanding the list, of those who need to be shown the door.

[Zmeselo]

Captured, Killed or Compromised: CIA Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants

Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/us/p ... tured.html

Tue, October 5, 2021

Counterintelligence officials said in a top secret cable to all stations and bases around the world that too many of the people it recruits from other countries to spy for the U.S. are being lost.


Members of the Taliban at the former CIA Eagle Base in Kabul on Sept. 6, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.

The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/p ... tions.html China, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/worl ... onage.html Iran https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/worl ... ossad.html and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.

Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”

The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources.

While the CIA has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing.

Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the CIA’s case officers — its front-line spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country.

The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers both great and small is once again a centerpiece of the CIA’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia.

The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood.

The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front-line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded CIA case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services.

Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod CIA case officers to think about steps they can take on their own do a better job managing informants.

Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and front-line personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which CIA officers call agents.

No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,

said Douglas London, a former agency operative.

Sometimes there are things beyond our control, but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect, and people in senior positions are never held responsible.

London said he was unaware of the cable. But his new book, “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” https://www.hachettebooks.com/titles/do ... 306847325/ argues that the CIA’s shift toward covert action and paramilitary operations undermined traditional espionage that relies on securely recruiting and handling agents.

Worldwide messages to CIA stations and bases that note troubling trends or problems, or even warnings about counterintelligence problems, are not unheard-of, according to former officials. Still, the memo outlining a specific number of informants arrested or killed by adversarial powers is an unusual level of detail, one that signals the importance of the current problems. Former officials said that counterintelligence officials typically like to keep such details secret even from the broad CIA workforce.

Asked about the memo, a CIA spokesperson declined to comment.

Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the CIA’s https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/28/us/p ... kabul.html assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission center, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the CIA community of current and former officers.

In January, Patel sent a letter https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/p ... ments.html to retired CIA officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.)

Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing CIA officers to become more serious about counterintelligence.


A message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the U.S. are also skilled at hunting down informants.

Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks.

While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said.

The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/worl ... olicy.html

Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia has meant that building up spy networks and protecting those sources are more important than ever.

In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult.

A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the CIA helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency.

In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Iran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/p ... pying.html a former CIA officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government.

Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases a turned agent can have deadly consequences.

The 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the CIA thought it had persuaded to penetrate al-Qaida had in fact been turned against the United States.

We were in such a rush to make such a big score,

London said.

Those were tradecraft mistakes.

He added it is important to remind the CIA’s workforce of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses.

Do your job and don’t be lazy,

he said.

It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

[Fed_Up]

Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, says the company exacerbating ‘ethnic tensions in Ethiopia’ by promoting content that goes viral because it contains anger and is riddled with violence.

^^^

Is the useless US ambassador to Eritrea read this because he uses Facebook plate form to fanning haters and mistrust among two nations’ people out of his mission scope.