Operation Scimitar Set-up Study

January 7, 2008

[This is part of continuing blog kept on Club HQ net space on The Cepia Club LLC’s Project 6: Cepia Games and Theory. Project 6 has been ongoing since 1994. We do serious model simulation building and testing. We attempt, undermanned and with very little money, to do professional-results quality forecasting. We are not war-jolly gamers. The value of Model Simulation Games is proven by think tanks and agencies that use them. Our own modeling analyses have been a large basis of our accuracy in many of our predictions for the politics of war and peace since 1998. And we have become better with the MSGaming and our predictions as time has passed. If there are doubts, then you haven’t paid heed to our stuff. (In May 2007, I used an MSG format to predict to my nephew that the Packers would win at least 10 or 11 games this year and a playoff bye. I also used an MSG to tell my nephew in late September/first week of October that Barak Obama would win Iowa. This is among other things. However, MSG forecasting is not always 100% accurate, but 60-70 % likelihood has been Project 6's norm).If anyone is interested in learning more about Cepia Project 6, see the upcoming Cepiaglobal Futures Report (free until February 29, 2008). TJK].


I've been adjusting and studying the new “Operation Scimitar” game map I set up for a war against Iran and examining the options/ deployment logic all weekend. I imagine I will start play as soon as I learn all I can at this stage. With the Club strategy matrix (Informed/command, logistics/security, tactical/deception, and operational/surprise), the Al Qaeda command network has always been represented in the center quadrant, and was centered into Afghanistan since 1996 as the hq of Usama bin Ladin. AQ is a non-state, ethereal system of a political/ideological policy: In self-germinating"idea" growth.

Afghanistan/Pakistan, because of the nukes, the politics, and the geography, is more their security/logistics base. Afghanistan serves partly as a convenient tactical (not grand strategy) deception (a consumption of considerable effort on our part) to make us believe/waste/disperse a significant portion of our strength (material, political policy) there. It is a significant disproportion of effort on our part for rather small gain.

Iraq fits the paradigm in the larger context of deception, with the focus of oil ONLY as it relates to Iran and the entire Persian Gulf; the mashkrivoka--the grand strategic deception done by tactical means. The Islamists have used it conveniently, I believe at this point from the model simulations Club Project 6 has done since fall 2002, as the con-man “implement”-get us to fight for something we think we want, not what is important to them. In other words, it is blinding our policy toward that war.

Iraq was the bait and Iran is now the hook, and the entire gulf is a net trap.

As an indication of the operational surprise the Club forecasts, look at where most of the insurgency has been taking place for three years--Baghdad and points westerly of there in Anbar. Look at how we get there: The sea lines of communication in the gulf. As it goes, there is no oil in that part of Iraq, and a LOT of Sunnis tending toward or susceptible to the Salafist ideology. It is also the one-time caliphate. That has historical meaning for them, and why we find most of “them” there. But still, for the US and Europe, and our Asian friends, we engage them there to protect the access to oil.

The operational “surprise,” the Western geo-political/geo-strategic weak point in this whole war with the Islamists, I realized two days ago, (network manuever?) is in the Hejaz of the Arabian Peninsula/ the Horn of Africa / and the West Bank religious centers of Islam: With the focal point around Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem. Added to Islam’s traditional political capital of Baghdad, it forms a rough area where AQ and their grass roots allies could operate successfully while they try to close the net in the Gulf. They have lived in those deserts for millennia, began their religion, started the Prophet’s conquests. And Lawrence led their first revolution, successfully, in that exact place 90 years ago. The fact that very little is heard of the war in the Horn, or that we have gotten little if any mainstream news on Salafi/AQ activities in this general Mecca-Medina area for over a year since Ethiopia invaded Somalia with US military action, and until last week with the Kenya uprisings, is damned curious to me at this point.

It occurred to me that the Salafists terrorism BEGAN in Mecca with the "revolutionary" uprising around 1978/79 (?). Several thousand pilgrims–revolutionaries and those who joined up on the spot--were killed. The Saudi army dealt with it, brutally. Where poorly started and failed "revolutions" start might indicate where they eventually want to succeed, but failed at first, like many revolutions, to set proper conditions. So, perhaps the last 30 years that is what the Salafists have been attempting.

Finally, this particular area is where China has been most active politically, militarily (they have had at least 5000 troops in the Sudan for at least 4 or 5 years), and economically (oil deals with nations in East Africa for future development have been numerous but widely dispersed, reported in the mainstream US news, and widely ignored or underestimated). This is a grand strategic move on some level. It remains to be told to the American public. The results of however these connections play out will be fateful.

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