ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The Yemeni army, backed by the Popular committees, expelled Qaeda militants from a post on main highway in Shabwa, southern the country, killing 10 terrorists and arresting a number of others. On the other hand, the Saudi-led aggression on Yemen continued as airstrikes targeted various cities, destroying the country's main facilities, including Sanaa airport. The Yemeni's air defense system encountered the hostile air raids, according to Al-Manar reporter. Politically, the Algeria FM Ramatan al-Amamera submitted to his Egyptian and Saudi counterparts an initiative to end the crisis. Well-informed sources mentioned that all the concerned parties were informed about the initiative and that Saudi Arabia is complicating the political procedure, setting the deployment of "Arab" troops in Sanaa as a precondition to reach a solution.

Military sources disclosed that Saudi Arabia has dispatched thousands of Takfiri terrorists to Yemen to fight against the revolutionary forces in the Arab country. "Saudi Arabia has sent around 5,000 Takfiri mercenaries to fight against the Yemeni army and revolutionary committees,' Yemeni Army Commander Colonel Abdel Sattar al-Boushali told FNA on Saturday night. The Yemeni commander, meantime, disclosed that the Saudi defense minister has asked Turkish officials to pave the grounds for the transfer of more terrorists from Turkish airports to Riyadh. He noted that heavy clashes broke out between the terrorist groups and forces loyal to Yemen's revolutionary committees. Colonel al-Boushali reiterated that Saudi Arabia is plotting to hire mercenaries to assassinate supporters of Ansarullah movement. Saudi Arabia started airstrikes against Yemen early Thursday, one day after the US-backed Yemeni president fled the country. Riyadh claimed that it has bombed the positions ...

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis. The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he h...

By Ron Paul Rapid changes are occurring in Yemen. Ever since United States had to leave its military base there, other powers have been lining up to benefit from the chaos. It has been revealed that Saudi Arabia has commenced bombing targets in Yemen. Egypt has announced its support for the Saudi effort. I am quite confident that this support is in compliance with our instructions to our puppet leader now in charge in Egypt. The current president of Yemen, Hadi, a leader who took over after the Arab Spring revolution, has been removed from power. He is said to have escaped to Saudi Arabia, and those who are now in charge in Yemen will most likely kill him if he returns. Yemen has been instrumental in the US effort to fight al-Qaeda in the region. Unsuccessfully, I might add. The Houthis who have deposed Hadi are said to get their support from Iran and are now likely the strongest political force in the country. But they will not have an easy time of it. Too much is at stake for the Uni...

It would appear that the United States did in fact strong arm at least one country to keep them from offering asylum to Edward Snowden or assisting him in procuring travel arrangements via their country, according to Snowden’s associate, Glenn Greenwald. The German Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said this week that if they helped the NSA whistleblower in any way the United States would stop relaying all intelligence information to Berlin. “They told us they’d cease notifying us of schemes and other intelligence issues,” Gabriel said. Gabriel commended the work of other reporters and Greenwald as he presented a speech about the journalistic attempts made concerning the Snowden leaks. The Vice Chancellor expressed sorrow that the former Booz Allen employee was made to seek political refuge in “Putin’s autocratic Russia.” Greenwald questioned Gabriel as to why Germany did not offer Snowden asylum — because under international law, after asylum has been given, the subje...

Reuters / Christian Hartmann More than 70 German women, nine of whom are schoolgirls, have left their home country for Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State, the president of the German Domestic Intelligence Service (BFV) said. According to Hans-Georg Maassen, 40 percent of those women are under the age of 25, Zeit Online reported . While the recruitment of young girls and women by the Islamic State is not a rare phenomenon, Maassen warned that jihadists have lately focused on luring females to join the 'caliphate' via social networks. Jihadists blog on the internet and are active on forums, where they look for women showing an interest in jihad, BFV’s president said. Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants then contact the girls and women to inspire them to marry jihadists. Maassen says they write blogs with “romantic descriptions” of life in extremist camps, and the females have no idea about the future they are actually agreeing to. Most often, those who travel t...

Sixty thousand copies of propaganda pamphlets dropped over Raqqa but experts question efficacy and tenor of the leaflet. The US military is dropping some gruesome propaganda on Syria. On March 16 an F-15E fighter jet dropped 60,000 copies of the above leaflet on Raqqa, the base of operations for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. The image shows a "Daesh Employment Office" (Daesh is a pejorative nickname for ISIL in the Arab world). Two ISIL recruiters, one of whom appears more monster than man, feed young men into a meat grinder with "Daesh" written in blood on its side. A sign in the upper-right corner reads "Now Serving Number 6,001". When asked about the intended message of the leaflet, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren, said "If you allow yourself to be recruited by Daesh, you will find yourself in a meat grinder." Warren said the leaflet was created by the Army’s Military Information Support Operations, or MISO. ...

Poly WB-1 (Photo: Top 81) China has presented Poly WB-1, a non-lethal ray gun that can be used for crowd dispersal, by making its targets feel like their skin is on fire. The US version of the weapon was shelved due to practical difficulties and the potential public backlash. According to the authoritative Jane’s magazine, the WB-1, presented at the Airshow China 2014 in Zhuhai last month, has a current range of about 80 meters, though it can be expanded to 1 kilometer. Using a similar principle to a microwave oven it incites movement in the fat and water molecules located just below the skin surface, making the target feel like they are burning from the inside. As soon as the target steps away from the ray, the pain ceases, purportedly leaving no damage to nerve endings and blood vessels, which are located deeper below the epidermis. This makes it a viable weapon for crowd control, which was how the US intended to use its own Active Denial System (ADS) during its occupations of Iraq a...

Reuters / Stringer An alleged policy plan of the Islamic State outlines some chilling, if unrealistic, plots of the would-be terrorist state, including bribing Russia with access to oilfields in exchange for nuclear technology, and digging a canal across the UAE. The document reported by Britain’s Sunday Times is believed to have been written by Abdullah Ahmed Meshedani, a member of the highly secretive six-man war cabinet of the terrorist group, which wants to build an Islamist state, or caliphate, in parts of Iraq and Syria. It was captured by Iraqi special forces during a March raid on the home of a senior Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) member and confirmed as authentic by Western security officials. The 70-point plan provides an insight into the grandiose, if somewhat far-fetched, strategy aimed at undermining Shiites in the Arab world and Iran as that branch of Islam’s powerhouse nation. One of the goals listed in the documents is to offer Russia access to oilfields in Iraq’s ...

Reuters / Khaled Abdullah Houthi Shiite rebels obtained secret Yemeni intelligence documents with details about US-backed counter-terrorism operations, including the names and locations of informants, the Los Angeles Times reported citing American officials. The documents were stolen when Houthi fighters took over the office of Yemen’s National Security Bureau in the country's capital Sanaa, which was closely cooperating with the CIA on various anti-terror missions. US officials claim that some files were given to Iranian advisers. At the same time, the paper said there is no indication that Houthi rebels had direct control over the US intelligence files. The compromised files reportedly affected US President Barack Obama’s decision to evacuate remaining US personnel from Yemen last weekend, including 1,000 special operations forces. The decision to leave Yemen has crippled America’s counter-terrorism operations against Al-Qaeda militants in the area. The report emerged hours befor...

Saudi Arabian forces, joined by nine other countries, have launched a military operation in Yemen against Shiite Houthi rebels, the Saudi ambassador to the US said. The offensive, which started with airstrikes, will also involve “other military assets.” According to Ambassador Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, the military operation in Yemen started at 7 p.m. EST (11 p.m. GMT). Obama ordered support to Saudi-led op, UN still ‘checking details’ US President Obama has authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-led military operations in Yemen, the White House said in a statement, confirming that Washington had close communication with Hadi, the Saudis and other GCC states prior to the launch of the military operation. “While US forces are not taking direct military action in Yemen in support of this effort, we are establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate US military and intelligence support,” the statement said....

by Mark Stockley The Dark Web is reflecting a little more light these days. On Monday I wrote about Memex, DARPA's Deep Web search engine . Memex is a sophisticated tool set that has been in the hands of a few select law enforcement agencies for a year now, but it isn't available to regular users like you and me. There is another search engine that is though. Just a few days before I wrote that article, on 11 February, user Virgil Griffith went onto the Tor-talk mailing list and announced Onion City , a Dark Web search engine for the rest of us. The search engine delves into the anonymous Tor network, finds .onion sites and makes them available to regular users on the ordinary World Wide Web. Up to now the best way to search for .onion sites has been to get on the Tor network using something like the Tor browser , but Onion City effectively does that bit for you so you can search from the comfort of your favourite, insecure web browser. The site can do this because it's ...

by  Mark Stockley   Anyone who used the World Wide Web in the nineties will know that web search has come a long way. Sure, it was easy to get more search results than you knew what to do with in 1999 but it was really hard to get good ones. What Google did better than Alta Vista, HotBot, Yahoo and the others at the dawn of the millennium was to figure out which search results were the most relevant and respected. And so it's been ever since - search engines have become fast, simple interfaces that compete based on relevance and earn money from advertising. Meanwhile, the methods for finding things to put in the search results have remained largely the same - you either tell the search engines your site exists or they find it by following a link on somebody else's website. That business model has worked extremely well but there's one thing that it does not excel at - depth. If you don't declare your site's existence and nobody links to it, it doesn't exist - in ...

AMMAN: Jordan says it will help train Syrian rebels as part of its fight against the extremist ISIS, which controls parts of neighboring Syria and Iraq. The training is part of a regional effort also involving Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as hosts of training sites. The U.S. Congress has passed legislation providing $500 million for training about 5,000 rebels over the next year. Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said Monday that Jordan will train Syrians to "defeat the terrorism that has been killing their sons and daughters." He would not say if training has already begun or where it would take place. Jordan is part of a U.S.-led military coalition against ISIS. It stepped up its involvement after the extremists burned a captured Jordanian fighter pilot.

Chinese-made advanced weapons systems flooding the international market over the next 10 years will cause instability, and make it a lot harder for the US to intervene in other countries, Foreign Policy magazine warned. FP analyzed the impact of Beijing’s rapidly increasing role in the global arms market in an article titled: ‘ China’s Weapons of Mass Consumption .’ China’s shift from small arms to advanced weapons systems is proven by the sale of drones to Africa and the Middle East in 2011, a contract to supply three frigates to Algeria in 2012 and Turkey’s surprise choice of a Chinese air and missile defense system over US, Russian, and EU offerings a year later. In recent years, Beijing has been trying to achieve self-sufficiency in defense supplies by investing heavily in mimicking foreign weapon technologies and domestic arms research and development programs. The approach turned out to be effective as, according to an independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’...

Hackers claiming affiliation with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Saturday published personal details of 100 U.S. military personnel and urged violence against them. The New York Daily News reported that a group called the “Islamic State Hacking Division” was behind the leak. It contains names, pictures, addresses and unit identification numbers for American service members allegedly involved in bombings against ISIS. “Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking they are safe,” the group urged ISIS supporters. “You crusaders that fight the Islamic State, we say to you: ‘Die in your rage!’ ” The hackers claimed they compiled the threatening roster, titled “Target: United States Military,” from cracked military records. It was then posted to JustPaste.it, a Polish-based social networking site ISIS has used for propaganda in the past. The New York Times said Saturday that both Defense Departme...

ANKARA: Turkish authorities have detained 16 Indonesians from three families who were trying to cross into Syria, a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday, a route frequently used by sympathizers of ISIS militants. "These 16 people - three families - are currently being held at a holding center ... and we have information that Indonesia's Ankaraembassy is in touch with the group," spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in a statement. The Indonesian embassy in Ankara had made no formal requests of the Turkish foreign ministry regarding the group, according to the statement, which gave no details on the reasons for their detention. Thousands of foreigners from more than 80 nations including Britain, other parts of Europe, China and the United States have joined the ranks of ISIS and other radical groups in Syria and Iraq, many crossing through Turkey. Turkey has said it needs more information from foreign intelligence agencies to intercept them, pointing to cases such as t...

KIEV: Around 30 British military personnel have arrived in Ukraineto provide medical and tactical training to the country’s troops, officials said Thursday. Britain’s Defense Ministry said it aims to boost Ukrainian forces’ defensive capability in their campaign against Russian-backed separatists in the east. The fragile cease-fire in place since mid-February has largely held, although small arms clashes continue to be reported daily. Separatist leaders have warned they could abandon the truce over what they say is Ukraine’s failure to live up to a guarantee of autonomy to eastern regions. British trainers will run a series of combat first aid courses at bases across the country, Ukrainian Defense Ministry SpokesmanOleksandr Motuzianik said. Assistance is being aimed at preventing further Ukrainian fatalities and casualties, Britain’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. It is unclear what tactical insight instructors will be providing but the British Defense Ministry said it would “h...

BEIRUT: ISIS has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks acrossSyria that left dead dozens of people, in an announcement on its radio station. In the message broadcast Saturday on Al-Bayan radio, ISIS said it was behind explosions targeting Kurdish new year festivities in northeast Syria and raids on government positions in the central province of Hama. Forty-five people, including at least 12 children, were killed in twin bombings in the northeastern city of Hassakeh Friday as they marked their new year's eve, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said people were too scared to celebrate on Saturday, fearing more attacks. The ISIS radio station said the group detonated a car and a bike rigged with explosives in Hassakeh city, which is controlled by Kurdish fighters and Syrian regime forces. The attacks, which took place on the bloodiest day in Syria so far this year, were widely condemned. "Committing these barbaric crimes on ...

IRBIL: ISIS has published a video purporting to show the beheading of three Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq by militants who threatened to kill "dozens" more of those being held captive. The six-minute clip, which appeared timed to coincide with celebrations for the Kurdish New Year, showed the peshmerga wearing orange jumpsuits being decapitated by three black-clad militants, all of whom spoke Kurdish. The footage could not be independently verified. The peshmerga have emerged as a key partner for the U.S.-led coalition in its campaign to "degrade and destroy" the extremist group, which they have driven back in northern Iraq with the help of airstrikes. "To the Muslim Kurdish people: know that our war is not with you, rather it is with those who ventured into an alliance with the Safavids and crusaders to wage war on the Muslims," said one of the militants, using derogatory terms to refer to Iran and the coalition respectively. Tehran has also...

Beirut (AFP) - More than 100 people were killed in Syria in 24 hours of violence after Islamic State fighters attacked regime troops and a suicide bomber caused carnage at Kurdish new year celebrations, a monitor said Friday. More than 70 members of government forces were killed when IS attacked checkpoints and other positions in the central Homs and Hama provinces, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP "most of the dead, around 50, fell in the Hama countryside." Several jihadists were also killed when clashes broke out, he added without giving a toll. The regime controls most of Homs and Hama. "IS has faced setbacks recently in the provinces of Aleppo and Raqa and in Hasakeh in confrontations with Kurds on the one hand and regime forces on the other, and are now trying to score military points, even limited ones, to offset their losses," said Abdel Rahman. The suicide bomber struck at Syria's...

Inside the 'Islamic State' - part one: Patrick Cockburn today begins a groundbreaking week-long series of dispatches which will explore the creation of this so-called Islamic State, what it’s like to live under the jihadis’ rule, and what if anything the West can do about it. Today, he talks to people living in the ‘caliphate’ to find out how they regard Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s merciless but powerful new state and how it treats them It is one of the strangest states ever created. The Islamic State wants to force all humanity to believe in its vision of a religious and social utopia existing in the first days of Islam. Women are to be treated as chattels, forbidden to leave the house unless they are accompanied by a male relative. People deemed to be pagans, like the Yazidis, can be bought and sold as slaves. Punishments such as beheadings, amputations and flogging become the norm. All those not pledging allegiance to the caliphate declared by its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on...

The Ukrainian armed coup was organized from Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in an interview for a new documentary aired Sunday. The Americans tried to hide behind the Europeans, but Moscow saw through the trick, he added. “The trick of the situation was that outwardly the [Ukrainian] opposition was supported mostly by the Europeans. But we knew for sure that the real masterminds were our American friends,”Putin said in a documentary, 'Crimea - The Way Home,' aired by Rossiya 1 news channel. “They helped training the nationalists, their armed groups, in Western Ukraine, in Poland and to some extent in Lithuania,” he added. “They facilitated the armed coup.” The West spared no effort to prevent Crimea’s reunification with Russia, “by any means, in any format and under any scheme," he noted. Putin said this approach was far from being the best dealing with any country, and a post-Soviet country like Ukraine specifically. Such countries have a short record ...

New evidence uncovered by security researchers suggests that a dangerous hacking collective is actually the National Security Agency. The so-called Equation Group, a set of hackers responsible for at least 500 malware infections in 42 countries, is considered one of history’s most effective cyber espionage rings. Now, the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab is pointing to new signs that the group is actually made up of NSA personnel. In a report published Wednesday, Kaspersky researchers revealed that the term “BACKSNARF” was found inside the code of the Equation Group’s online platform. The same term was used by the NSA as the name of a project by its cyber warfare unit. In addition to that coincidence, analysis of the Equation Group’s working hours suggests it operates as a regular software development team, likely located on the East Coast of the United States. Members of the group work overwhelmingly during regular business hours from Monday through Friday and almost never on Saturda...

Reuters / Kacper Pempel NATO says a plan by the European Union to create its own army would be ineffective. The military alliance’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, says the EU should make sure everything they do is complimentary to NATO and avoid duplication. Stoltenberg told a press briefing in Belgium that he would welcome an increased investment by European nations in defense, but this should be channeled towards NATO, adding that “duplication would be inefficient.” "It's important to avoid duplication and I urge Europe to make sure that everything they do is complementary to the NATO alliance," he said, Reuters reported. The idea of creating an EU army to counter the perceived threat from Russia was the brainchild of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who spoke of his ideas to a German newspaper on Sunday. “An army like this would help us to better coordinate our foreign and defense policies, and to collectively take on Europe's responsibiliti...