ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

On Feb. 28 armed groups from the Daesh terrorist organization made a swift raid on Abu Ghraib near Baghdad and for a day held their positions in the city. Abu Ghraib is actually a suburb of the Iraqi capital, located twenty kilometers from the center of Baghdad. Back during the American occupation it gained notoriety for its military prison, where those who took part in the patriotic resistance movement were sent. The sudden capture of Abu Ghraib by terrorists took place at a time when the insurgents were losing their positions. Last March Iraqi forces seized Tikrit (Saddam’s hometown) from Deash militants. In late December, the Iraqi army joined the Shiite al-Hashd al-Shaabi militias to finally liberate the strategically important center of Ramadi in Anbar province. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters managed to wrest away the Sinjar Mountains from the terrorists. Why is the specter of Daesh now reemerging? The answer can be found in Iraq’s recent history. The Americans who occupied Iraq in ...

By Finian Cunningham With a series of blatant measures, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies are evidently trying to destabilize Lebanon. The development is apiece with how Saudi Arabia and Turkey have both sought to undermine the ceasefire in Syria and to escalate that conflict to a region-wide level. A New York Times report this week poses a rather naive conundrum: «Diplomats and analysts have spent several weeks trying to understand why the Saudis would precipitously start penalizing Lebanon – and perhaps their own Lebanese allies – over the powerful influence of Hezbollah, which is nothing new». Well, here’s a quick answer: Russia’s very effective squelching of the covert war for regime-change in Syria. That has sent Saudi Arabia and Turkey into a paroxysm of rage. Russia’s military intervention in Syria to defend the Arab state from a foreign-backed covert war involving myriad terrorist proxy groups, has dealt a severe blow to the machinations of Washington, its NATO allies and r...

Daniel Larison recaps the War on Yemen: The Saudi-led intervention has been going on for over eleven months, and in that time it has failed in all of its stated objectives. The Houthis have not been driven from the capital, the former president has not be restored to power (not that most Yemenis would want him there now anyway), and the intervention certainly hasn’t produced the stability that the Saudis laughably claimed to be bringing. ... Yemenis have been sorely deprived of basic necessities for almost an entire year thanks to the Saudi-led blockade, and the majority of the population is starving or at great risk of doing so. At least four-fifths of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance. The country’s health care system has all but collapsed, medical facilities are coming under repeated attack (including repeated bombings by coalition aircraft), medicine and fuel are in short supply, and the lack of access to clean water has made the spread of disease much worse. E...

By Moon Of Alabama There seems to be some progress in the regional "games" around the conflict in Syria. The Turkish Prime minister Davutoglu currently visits Iran. The Iranians let some lucrative economic projects dangle in front of his eyes. But the main points were about Syria. According to this Turkish source Davutoglu said these issues were agreed upon: taylieli @taylieli #Turkish PM Davutoglu: We've reached on deal with #Iran for 5 matters: 1) A joint visit to #Jordan to discuss on #Syria, on coming days (1) 2) The continuity of ceasfire in #Syria 3) The unity of #Syria 4) The participitation of all -internal- actors in #Syria's future (2) 5) The joint act to defeat all kind of terrorism inc. #Isil in the geography of #ME. (3) This smells like an bit of change in the so far rigid Turkish position. Russian military transport traffic through the Bosporus has markedly increased. A lot of new trucks, tanks and artillery are coming to Syria. In the summer the Russi...