List of Abbreviations
Chapter 5. Trend and Incident Analysis
5.3 Trends in Conflicts and the Impact on Information Warfare
5.3.1 Background to the Sample Conflicts
The conflict in Somalia is generally known for the Black Hawk Down incident in 1993, however the events preceding and immediately following that incident is what defined that conflict. The United Nations troops providing aid in Somalia were continuously having their convoys ambushed and raided by the warlords; the primary weapons used for this purpose were remotely detonated mines. United States forces entered Somalia to support the United Nations, and aimed to capture the most powerful warlord, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, and his aides. The Central Intelligence Agency supplied sophisticated electronic surveillance technology; however, this was defeated by the Somalis, who were using basic-handheld radios and drums to communicate (Adams, 1998). The action that ended involvement of the United States in Somalia was the defiling of the bodies of US
154
servicemen in front of CNN cameras; this resulted in the US public successfully pressuring the government to withdraw (Taylor, 2002). This incident was described in more detail in Section 4.2.7.3. Subsequently, handheld radios and mobile phones were captured along with Somali pirates;
therefore it is obvious that these devices are still being used to coordinated attacks (Shachtman, 2009b).
The Rwandan genocide of 1994 used a mix of low-technology and high-technology; radio broadcasts were used to incite the violence, yet machetes were the main weapon to conduct the slaughter (Hutchinson, Huhtinen, & Rantapelkonen, 2007). Ethnic tensions in the Congo region and Darfur in 2003 employed similar low-technology solutions. The border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, where two of the world‟s poorest nations managed to field advanced weapon systems, including fighter aircraft with electronic warfare systems, came as a surprise (Du Toit, 2003). These examples illustrate the use of improvisation with everyday items to conduct violent conflict, however technology can be bought and introduced almost overnight; this creates a degree of uncertainty in the battlefield.
Ignatieff (2001) has dubbed the NATO intervention in Kosovo as a "virtual war"; the actual fighting consisted of aerial bombardment, there were a number of cyber-based attacks from both sides, and a propaganda war through the media. The initial attacks concentrated on suppressing the Yugoslav
Figure 5.4: Timeline of Conflicts and Incidents, van Niekerk and Maharaj (2009c)
155
air-defence network, before migrating to military ground forces and dual-use targets. These latter targets could be used by both civilian and the military; such as bridges, broadcasting stations and power substations (Ignatieff, 2001). The conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003 was initiated in a similar fashion; with the suppression of adversary capabilities using bombardment and electronic warfare, which was followed by a ground offensive (conducted by the rebels in the Afghan case).
These conflicts also saw the introduction of embedded journalists who reported virtually real-time from the battlefield. After the overthrow of the regimes, the conflict turned into an insurgency, where ambushes were orchestrated through the use of suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs); which have been the most effective weapon deployed against coalition forces (Eshel, 2007). Many of the IEDs are remotely detonated using everyday devices, such as toy radio controls and mobile phones (Eshel, 2007); and are comparatively low-technology compared to the systems of the coalition forces. Similar devices were used in the urban terrorism in Cape Town during the late 1990‟s; again mobile phones were occasionally used as trigger devices (Sabasteanski, 2005).
Political confrontation has migrated to the communication networks; in April 2007 Estonia was subjected to cyber-based attacks that were a demonstration of dissatisfaction over the relocation of a war memorial. Estonia was left without some critical services as the websites of the government, financial institutions and media were attacked for a period of three weeks (Veerasamy N. , 2009b;
Germain, 2008); this was described in more detail in Section 4.2.7.1. In 2009 three waves of similar attacks targeted the websites of financial institutions, government and the media in the United States and South Korea (Sudworth, 2009). As discussed in Section 5.2.2.4, Georgia was also targeted with similar attacks; this case is unique in that the cyber-attack immediately preceded by the Russian incursion into South Ossetia. The Russian government denied involvement in the cyber- attacks, and it appears as they were orchestrated by hackers sympathetic to the Russian cause (Waterman, 2008). Myanmar also experienced a large scale DoS attack in 2010 due to internal political conflict (Labovitz, 2010). Modern equipment was fielded by both sides in the fighting itself (McDermott, 2009). Intelligence gathering of a confrontational nature has also migrated to cyber-space; in 2004 during the Titan Rain incident, military computers were penetrated in what appeared to be an intelligence gathering operation (Thornburgh, 2005a;2005b), and the GhostNet cyber-espionage network targeted political adversaries (Information Warfare Monitor, 2009). The Israeli conflict with Palestinian groups also migrated online through the "Electronic Intifada" (Yin, 2009). This conflict is largely asymmetric, and Israel is reported to be using unmanned aerial
156
vehicles for surveillance and electronic warfare activities (Kunkel, 2008a). There are also reports of Israeli IW units hacking into mobile phone and media systems to disseminate PSYOPs messages (StrategyPage.com, 2009a); for the purposes of this dissertation, the concept in penetrating the communications infrastructure to insert illegitimate messages is important.
Mobile phone SMS services and social networking applications have been used to orchestrate anti- government protests, and to provide information after government-initiated media blackouts; the Philippines government resigned in 2003 (Rigby, 2008). Three occurred in 2009: the Iran post- election protests (Faris & Heacock, 2009), Moldova‟s "Twitter Revolution" (Hodge, 2009a), and unrest in Urumqi, China (World Movement for Democracy, c. 2009). Subsequently there was political unrest in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, where social media and mobile devices played a role (Bay, 2011; Kessler, 2011). Mobile phone SMS services were also used to distribute hate messages in Kenya during the 2008 election period (Okeowo, 2008); and were used to aid the orchestration of the 2010 food riots in Mozambique (Jacobs & Duarte, 2010).
The incidents described in this section illustrate the increasing asymmetric nature of conflict, and the roles that civilian communications technologies are playing in these conflicts. The trends will be discussed in more detail in Section 5.3.2, and the impacts of these trends on IW will be discussed in Section 5.3.3.