A sunny afternoon in December of 1990 I hiked down from Sarangkot Summit, near the base of Annapurna north of Pokhara, Nepal. I carefully chose my steps in the loose dirt on a narrow path, trying to keep balance enough to catch a glimpse of Phewa Lake.

Looking ahead I noticed a young man headed towards me. He nodded hello and I stopped to ask a question about the trail. His English was basic at best and my Nepalese was nothing to write home about. We nonetheless struck up a rudimentary discussion when I saw a book under his arm.

He said he was a Maoist. I asked him about Lenin. He was unfamiliar with the name. Marx? Never heard of him. Stalin…Mao only. He spoke of making a village strong by giving people power. No more king he said. The conversation lasted no more than ten minutes but it etched an unforgettable portrait of rural Nepalese life in my mind.

I soon realized I was witness to the growing disillusionment of rural people and birth of local propaganda by Maoists. This time was characterized by political confusion as Nepal started an experiment in democracy; King Birendra just had taken a “step away” from power in November 1990.

BBC reports today that this struggle continues. They describe anti-rebel steps taken in India, with the measure of security in a region linked to jobs and economic development.

In Lalgarh, for example, some 125 villagers were engaged in making a small dam worth three million rupees. Five days into the work, the rebels came and asked for a meeting in the jungle with villagers and government officials.

“We could not agree so we backed out,” one official said.

The jobs scheme created an average of 52 man-days of work per household in West Midnapore during 2009-2010. But in the Maoist-affected areas it created only 36 days of work, up from 21 days of work in 2008-2010.

“But it is the only way forward to take on the Maoists,” said one official.

“This is nothing about winning hearts and minds. It’s only about giving people work before the rebels come in and convince them that they are a better option than the state.”

A comment on Bruce’s blog today pointed me to a law in North Carolina that says a sawed-off shotgun is a weapon of mass destruction.

It looks like an afterthought in the text of the actual law, G.S. 14-288.8:

(c) The term “weapon of mass death and destruction” includes:
(1) Any explosive or incendiary:
a. Bomb; or
b. Grenade; or
c. Rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces; or
d. Missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than
one-quarter ounce; or
e. Mine; or
f. Device similar to any of the devices described above; or
(2) Any type of weapon (other than a shotgun or a shotgun shell of a type particularly suitable for sporting purposes) which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, and which has any barrel with a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter; or
(3) Any firearm capable of fully automatic fire, any shotgun with a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length or an overall length of less than 26 inches, any rifle with a barrel or barrels of less than 16 inches in length

One-quarter ounce charge? That seems amazingly low to me, given that the definition is for mass death and destruction. Is it really necessary to define a quantity for heavy or mass casualties, or do these terms reflect instead the intent of an attacker?

It reminds me of one particular controversy over casualty counts: the Nazi aerial bombing of a Spanish town in 1937 as immortalized in the Clash song Spanish Bombs.

This tragic attack is thought to be the origin of the term WMD due to the direct assault on civilians with three hours of bombing waves using newly developed “firebombs”.

…The only things left standing were a church, a sacred Tree, symbol of the Basque people, and, just outside the town, a small munitions factory. There hadn’t been a single anti-aircraft gun in the town. It had been mainly a fire raid.

…A sight that haunted me for weeks was the charred bodies of several women and children huddled together in what had been the cellar of a house. It had been a refugio.”

Eye witnesses estimated that aside from a series of bombs of 1,000 pounds a series of 3,000 two-pound aluminum incendiary projectiles were used.

In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history. Guernica was not a military objective. A factory producing war material lay outside the town and was untouched. So were two barracks some distance from the town. The town lay far behind the lines. The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race. Every fact bears out this appreciation, beginning with the day when the deed was done.

Monday was the customary market day in Guernica for the country round.

Wikipedia claims the ratio was likely to be forty tons of bombs dropped as many as 1,700 dead, or 43 dead per ton of explosives. The town only had about 7,000 inhabitants. It then compares this number to bombing raids in WWII that averaged a ratio of about 10 dead per bomb.

The vast difference in ratios between Guernica and other bombing raids has led James Corum of the Army War College (mixed motives?) to argue that high casualty counts from bombs are propaganda:

From the 1930s to the present, the effect of airpower to produce casualties has been overestimated out of the ignorance of the press and the common perceptions of airpower. In some cases, the civilian casualties caused by air attack have been deliberately overstated in order to make a propaganda point. Recent conflicts such as the Gulf War demonstrate that the perceptions of heavy civilian casualties remain even if great care is taken to limit collateral damage in an air campaign. The recent wars show us that the deliberate falsification of civilian casualties from air bombardment is likely to remain as a major propaganda theme.

The propaganda theme?

Perhaps estimates are increased with the idea to show weapons with potential for mass destruction actually cause mass destruction.

It is not always so simple, however, as I have mentioned before. Looking at Guernica versus other bombing runs I am curious about the effect of defenses like balloons, better civilian preparedness, and other significant target differences. That takes me back to the core definition of WMD. Furthermore, propaganda seems to run both ways. Here is another angle, completely the opposite from the “propaganda point” argued above:

It is impossible to state yet the number of victims. In the Bilbao Press this morning they were reported as “fortunately small,” but it is feared that this was an understatement in order not to alarm the large refugee population of Bilbao.

Add that perspective to the fact that Nazis claimed the town was really damaged by retreating civilians and not the bombing raid.

In other words, history shows it is more revealing to investigate motives and means when trying to regulate WMDs. This is likely to be more on target than searching for an accepted measure of the causes for severe and mass destruction. The question then does become what is the intended use of an incendiary bomb, or a shotgun that has a barrel less than 18 inches?

July 11th marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Britain, which lasted until October 31st. This was undoubtedly the most important battle for Britain of the 20th Century.

German forces had quickly overwhelmed resistance in France and defeated the British in air battles over Europe. They next aimed to take air control of the English Channel to weaken Britain’s defenses and protect a sea assault.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared at that time:

What General Weygrand called the Battle of France is over, the Battle of Britain is about to begin

A day-by-day recount and calendar is available on the Royal Air Force site. Here are some statistics as they were recorded on July 11th, 1940.

Casualties:

* Enemy: Fighters – 10 confirmed, 2 unconfirmed; Bombers – 13 confirmed, 12 unconfirmed; Type unspecified – 1
o Of the above totals, AA at Portland claims 2 confirmed and 1 unconfirmed.
* Ours: 3 Hurricanes (1 pilot safe), 2 Spitfires.

Patrols:

* 119 patrols involving 447 aircraft were flown.

Balloons:

* Deployed 1077, casualties 24.

Balloons? The British really knew how to celebrate, even in 1940. But seriously, the British military industry was only just beginning to shake off the moth balls at a time when a highly trained and well-equipped German offensive was right outside their door.

Barrage balloons emerged at the end of World War I to prevent German bombers from flying close to targets such as cities and industrial centers. They were used until the end of WWII as they continued to prove effective. German efforts to destroy the balloons usually ended in heavy German casualties, or as British Air Marshal Gossage put it: “the enemy having realized that the game is not worth the candle.”

I continue to see interesting points raised by information technology security professionals getting dragged into traditional themes of power and politics, especially as they relate to war and cyberwar.

The BSides Denver conference, for example, led to a heated exchange between a military lawyer and his audience when he tried to differentiate between Cyber Attack and War. The Economist stoked things to a much wider audience with their latest issue. The Economist, for what it is worth as a conservative voice, has less concern than the Denver audience and essentially agrees with David Willson’s presentation.

It just occurred to me, however, to search my own blog for things I have written on war and cyberwar. Perhaps this is a good time to confess that I studied International History at the London School of Economics before I started working full time on information security. My research focused on post-WWII international relations, which to most people seems to mean war.

Thus it has been hard for me to avoid peppering this blog with the occasional thought on politics and wars. That is my excuse anyway.

Here is a fine example I posted in 2005 regarding a book by General Sir Rupert Smith called “The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World”:

Battles just don’t work any more. War is now waged not in the field but the street, so victory is possible only with the people’s consent

His book should have been titled The Art of Waging an Act Formerly Known as War. But seriously the term War has its own definition that is separate and distinct from modifiers. Civil War means something different from just War, in other words. Likewise Cyber War should be held to mean something different from War. In that sense, I can see how the case could be made that War alone may no longer exist.