The President's Daily Brief - June 7th, 2022. Afghanistan is an Al-Qaeda Safe Haven. Wheat Wars Continue.

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

It’s June 7th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. I’m your host and former CIA Officer Bryan Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First up, Afghanistan has once again become a safe haven for al-Qa’ida. We’re going to talk about the latest from Kabul, including when you should expect that al-Qa’ida will be able to hit the American homeland once again. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, Wheat Wars. Our State Department sent out message to 14 nations around the world telling them to reject stolen Ukrainian wheat. But most of those 14 countries are desperate for food. We’ll discuss.  Finally, China’s building a secret new naval base near very important shipping lanes in the South China Sea. And that has major implications for our economy. I’ll explain the latest. All up next on the President’s Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's June 7th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA Officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. The brief you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the President each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, Afghanistan has once again become a safe haven for al-Qaeda. We're going to talk about the latest from Kabul to include when you should expect that al-Qaeda will be able to hit the American homeland once again.

As always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, wheat wars. Our State Department sent out a message to 14 nations around the world, telling them to reject stolen Ukrainian wheat. But most of those 14 countries are desperate for food. We'll discuss. Finally, China's building a new secret naval base near very important shipping lanes in the South China Sea. And that has major implications for our economy. I'll explain the latest. All up next on the president's daily brief and right after these messages.

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Ask your doctor about Ebbglis.com or call 1-800 lilyr-X or 1-800-545-9-9. First up this morning on the PDB, Al-Qaeda is once again calling Afghanistan home. They are enjoying what intel experts are describing as a safe haven. We have both human intelligence and satellite imagery that confirms that al-Qaeda's core leadership is now located in eastern Afghanistan. And that includes its leader, Amen al-Zawahiri. There's another Islamic extremist group, by the way. It's called the Hakani Network.

And it, too, is operating in Afghanistan, but it is not in the shadows. They have very firm control over the government in Kabul. They are, in fact, very close with the Taliban. The Hakani's control a bunch of different Afghan ministries to include intelligence and the interior. Now, there's some debate about how long America might have before, al-Qaeda is able to execute some of those international operations that we all painfully remember, like the 9-11 attacks, of course. Well, rough estimates give us one to two more years before they can likely strike the homeland. One final bit of Afghan news, there is a very small group of rebel

fighters, including groups of men that we trained, who are engaging in some degree of hit-and-run attacks on Taliban positions, and mostly in the north of the country. But unfortunately, you shouldn't get your hopes up on that because they're not expected to make much of a dent in Taliban rule. So let's now pivot to why you should care about this brief and what we ought to do about this very alarming development of one to two more years before al-Qaeda can strike. Well, first, if al-Qaeda has a safe haven, they're going to use it. That is exactly what the Taliban gave al-Qaeda the first time around through the 1990s when they protected Osama bin Laden and helped him launch attacks. The first ones were on two.

two of our embassies in Africa. And then there was a naval ship. It was the USS Cole. And then finally, Al-Qaeda attacked our military barracks in Saudi Arabia. All those happened before the 9-11 attacks. So that is what you're likely to see in the next year to two before they try to hit us again in the homeland. So if you're a smart person and indeed all PDB listeners are, you are thinking to yourself, we need to step up our efforts to thwart these terror operatives. You're right, but we have a problem. When Joe Biden ordered the retreat from Afghanistan last August, we threw away most of our informant networks. And by that, I mean that we either ended clandestine relationships in the most panicked of ways. We literally just didn't show up to meetings. Or we damaged our

reputation so terribly that no reasonable Afghan informant would ever trust us again, at least not the really good ones. And so now it's going to be mission impossible for us to rebuild all those informant networks to figure out what's going on inside of Afghanistan, specifically those plans to blow us up. Now, it is possible that we might be able to put pieces of those informant networks back together again. But I will tell you that whoever's going to those meetings better have very big briefcases full of a lot of cash. Because overcoming the anger or the reluctance of our former Afghan spies, well, that's not going to be easy. Again, not for the really good ones. For what it's worth, we'll also probably try to intercept emails and phone calls from the region.

In other words, turn our ears back on, a little bit sharper and brighter. But the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the Haqqqqqaeda, they all know that we're going to do that. And they'll almost certainly use disinformation, in other words, sharing fake news over fake phone calls, to throw us off the trail. So the bottom line here, folks, is I would love to tell you that we can forget about Afghanistan after spending 20 years and trillions of dollars, well, all to go to waste after our retreat. But the fact of the matter is that Islamic terror remains, and it is smoldering this morning in a country that's very happy to see us attacked again. Does that mean, by the way, that we need to

reinvade? Good Lord, no. Instead, if we are lucky, and I mean very lucky, we're going to find a handful of informants who are still willing to talk to us and get the band back together, as it were. Maybe that will be enough to prevent the next 9-11. I hope so. But as we all know, hope is not the best of strategies. Coming up, a closer look at what's on my radar. But first, a few messages. Olivia Rodriguez, the unraveled tour across North America with special guests.

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regained me the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. As always, I'm watching a few other stories this morning. Put these two on your radar. First, the wheat wars. I've got an important update for you, but you might want to grab those maps, either in your mind or on your computer screen, to see where we're focusing this morning.

About three weeks ago, the United States sent a message to 14 countries, mostly in Africa, saying that the Russians were trying to sell stolen Ukrainian wheat, all at very discounted prices. Now, that message came from our State Department, and it went to many foreign government. governments around the world, and it gently told them, look, you will should not buy the grain

and instead tell the Russians that they're just a bunch of thieves. Now, all of that is true, that is to say what was in those messages from our State Department. Russia is selling wheat, and Moscow is run by thieves. But here's the problem. These 14 nations are growing very desperate for food. All right, now let's look at those maps. Because in the Horn of Africa, which includes the countries of Somalia, Egypt, Kenya, and Djibouti. They are all facing one of the worst droughts that they've seen in over 40 years. Their grain crops are all but shredded. In the case of Somalia and Ethiopia, they also have the challenge of an active civil war. Now, Somalia is probably the worst of the lot. That country actually faces about 200,000 people at risk of dying

of starvation only in the next couple of months. So depending on how long these wheat wars last, We could be looking at over 7 million Somalis at risk of starvation. And that's all because they get about 50% of their wheat from Ukraine. All right, look at those maps again. So if we leave the Horn of Africa and we travel towards the central part of the continent, you're going to see the country of Chad. It's one of the poorest nations in the world. And their government just declared yesterday a food emergency,

all because of the war in Ukraine and a poor wheat harvest. The government there is warning that one third of the country, or about five and a half million people are growing very short of food this morning. All right, now let's look just west and you're going to see the country of Niger. The cost of fertilizer there has doubled or tripled in some cases. And because of that, the government is warning of food shortages and instability, all because crops weren't planted. There are some additional concerns that if things go badly in the country of Niger,

we're going to see citizens flee north trying to find their way to Europe, or to other African countries that are already struggling. Folks, I could keep going down a list of embattled countries in what's called the Sahel region of Africa, and perhaps another reef we will. But for now, you should know that this area, the Sahel, is between the Saharan Desert to the north and tropical regions to the south.

And it's a very tough stretch of land and even the best of times. It's prone to droughts and tribal warfare of all kinds. The bottom line is that this Sahel region and the Horn of Africa, all the way down to Tanzania on the east coast, all of those countries are facing food shortages and largely driven by the war in Ukraine.

And if we think that they're going to just reject Russia's stolen wheat from Ukraine because it's the right thing to do, well, we're bonkers. Because desperate people do very desperate things. And if millions of your people were going to starve, you would do the exact same thing. You would take that stolen wheat.

And Putin knows that. Of course he knows that. And that's why we call this brief and others like it, the wheat wars, because that's what it is. Putin is using food as a weapon of war. One final note on this, the Ukrainian government is saying that Russia has stolen 500,000 tons of wheat at this point, worth around $100 million, plus the Russians have taken another 20 million or so in stolen agricultural equipment. So this brief and related intel, I'm very sorry to say, are probably going to get very ugly over the next couple of months. and that's because I don't see much room for progress.

But as always, I will keep you posted on the latest, especially what, if anything, that we can do about this. Finally, China's March to Global Power continues this morning, this time through the country of Cambodia. But before we get into the particulars, we need to move those maps from Africa to Southeast Asia. Cambodia is squeezed between Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Now, if you served in Vietnam or you know your history,

you know exactly where Cambodia is, but if not, that's okay. You might remember the famous temples of Angkor Wat. You know, those are the ones that were made famous, in part by Angelina Jolie in that Tomb Raider movie. That was filmed in Cambodia. Well, it's also a well-known place to the communist Chinese government because it's got a very corrupt prime minister who's been in power since 1985,

and he is very happy to accommodate his Chinese friends. So let me explain what's going on. Cambodia has a port facility called the Ream Naval Base, and it's on the Gulf of Thailand, and that's just off of the South China Sea. And that body of water is massively important for international trade. From factory goods to agricultural products, that area is a pinch point for all the ships that are sailing from Asia into the Middle East and Africa, and it's also a major route for the ship sailing from Asia to the United States. So that naval base in Cambodia, just off of these routes, becomes a very nice place to park your Navy.

At one point, there were actually two U.S. funded buildings on that base. We had a pretty decent relationship with the government. But those buildings were torn down, despite our offer to refurbish them. Instead, the Cambodians chose the Chinese government to come in and build out a part of that base. Now, officially, the new buildings and the port rehab are to, quote, strengthen the Cambodian naval capacities to combat maritime crimes, including illegal fishing, end quote. But that is really hard to believe. You see, the two governments have been very careful to mask the presence of Chinese officials at the base. As an example, Chinese military personnel wear very similar uniforms to

their Cambodian counterparts, or they won't wear a uniform at all, just civilian clothes, all to avoid suspicion. And by the way, if you want to go visit this naval base, good luck. You won't be allowed into the northern area, which is where the Chinese military officials are stationed. So if you're wondering why all the secrecy, here's the reason. The Cambodian Constitution says that no foreign nation can establish a military base in the country. And despite the fact that Cambodia's prime minister is effectively a dictator, he knows that his citizens would likely draw a very fierce line at this base in their country if they knew about it. Well, regardless, there's a groundbreaking ceremony this week about the port rehab and Chinese communist officials will probably

be there, but you can expect that they're going to be minimizing their military footprint and instead talking about fish and maritime integrity. The upshot here is that this naval base is a part of Beijing's grand strategy to build out a series of military facilities around the world. I've briefed you on those efforts in the South Pacific. where they're using island nations like the Solomons as little lily pads to hop ever closer to Hawaii in case of a war. And now, as you know, they're doing the same thing in Cambodia, with an eye this time on controlling those very important shipping lanes and the economies that are tethered to them.

And that, I'm sorry to say, includes ours. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show reminding each other of why we are. are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth. And the truth shall make you free. Good day.