ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

One person was killed and more than 80 wounded in clashes at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in central Cairo on Sunday after a funeral service for four Egyptian Christians killed in sectarian violence with Muslims, state media said. Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hard line Islamists repressed under his autocratic rule. The state news agency MENA said 84 people had been injured in several hours of fighting after a ceremony at the cathedral, headquarters of the Coptic church, which was showered with stones, petrol bombs and bird-shot. The man killed on Sunday was identified by MENA as 30-year-old Mahrous Hana Tadros, a Christian name. Police fired tear gas to try to disperse the crowds but clashes continued late into the evening. MENA said 11 policemen were among the wounded. Violence also broke out near a Coptic church in El Khusus north of Cairo, where four Christians and o...

The Kaesong Industrial Complex, about six miles inside North Korean territory, is the last major symbol of cooperation between Seoul and Pyongyang, and a key source of foreign currency for the latter. North Korea took the unprecedented step of closing the Kaesong joint industrial complex on Monday as the crisis on the peninsula escalated further amid claims that a fourth nuclear test was imminent. Kim Yang Gon, a senior North Korean official, blamed "military warmongers" for the decision to "temporarily suspend the operations in the zone and examine the issue of whether [to] allow its existence or close it". North Korea's enemies had transformed the complex into a "hotbed of confrontation", claimed Mr Kim, who is the secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. "How the situation will develop in the days ahead will entirely depend on the attitude of the South Korean authorities." Pyongyang's unprecedent...

By Alex Lantier April 08, 2013  Over the weekend, US officials continued to threaten North Korea with war, demanding that China cut off its support to the regime in Pyongyang. This comes after weeks of US threats aimed at Pyongyang’s nuclear program, during which Washington flew nuclear-capable bombers to Korea to demonstrate its capacity to wage nuclear war against the North. Last week, US officials revealed that these moves were part of a laid-out “playbook” of US escalations—aimed to terrorize North Korea’s government and population. General Walter Sharp, the former US military commander in South Korea, told America’s National Public Radio (NPR): “there’s been a lot of effort over the past two and a half years now to build this counter-provocation plan. Because that’s a hard balance of a strong response: don’t escalate, but be prepared to go to war.” Sharp said that US and South Korean forces would rapidly respond to any firing along the border by the North Korean and prepare fo...