ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The US has tried to bolster the Afghan government in Helmand Province with air support in their fighting against the Taliban, but the support appears to have gone horribly wrong today, as a  US drone attacked and killed  at least  15 Afghan police . A US MQ-9 Reaper drone (file photo) The airstrike was targeting what the US thought was a Taliban compound in Helmand’s Gereshk District, but was actually a site used by Afghan security forces to meet and plan operations against the Taliban. A number were inside when the US attacked. Death tolls still aren’t totally finalized, but Helmand Governor Hayatullah Hayat  confirmed that two top police commanders were among the slain . The Afghan government suggested no soldiers were among the slain, and that it was only the local and provincially-provided police forces that sustained casualties. The Pentagon expressed condolences for “the unfortunate incident,” but provided no indication as to why they attacked the co...

LAHORE, Pakistan: A suicide bomber killed at least 25 people, many of them police, in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Monday, officials said, an attack which shattered a period of relative calm in Pakistan's second-largest city. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which wrought carnage near the Lahore Technology Park in the centre of the city. Police deployed to clear street vendors from the area had been targeted, a police official said. "We suspect that he (the suicide bomber) came on a motorcycle and he rammed it into a police checkpoint," Lahore police operations chief Haider Ashraf told Reuters. Rescue workers shifted the wounded to hospital and police officers cordoned off the bomb site as army troops also arrived at the scene. "The death toll we have now is 25 dead and 52 are wounded," said Jam Sajjad Hussain, a spokesman for the Rescue 1122 service. A wounded man sitting on the roadside was shown crying in pai...

What the demise of the CIA’s anti-Assad program means By David Ignatius What did the CIA’s covert assistance program for Syrian rebels accomplish? Bizarrely, the biggest consequence may be that it helped trigger the Russian military intervention in 2015 that rescued President Bashar al-Assad — achieving the opposite of what the program intended. Syria adds another chapter to the star-crossed history of CIA paramilitary action. These efforts begin with the worthy objective of giving presidents policy options short of all-out war. But they often end with an untidy mess, in which rebels feel they have been “seduced and abandoned” by the promise of U.S. support that disappears when the political winds change. One Syrian opposition leader highlighted for me the danger for his rebel comrades now: “The groups that decided to work with the U.S. already have a target on their back from the extremists, but now will not be able to defend themselves.” The  demise of the Syria prog...

By Chris Menahan   Wikileaks' Julian Assange is continuing his attempt to " take down America any way he can " by accurately reporting the truth. Saturday on Twitter, Assange highlighted  an article from Thursday  where the Financial Times noted how many Syrian rebels are getting salaries from the CIA. Assange said they "buried the lede": View image on Twitter  Follow Julian Assange   @JulianAssange Financial Times buries the lede. CIA not only armed Syria's insurgents--it paid their salaries. 6:40 PM - 22 Jul 2017     6,578 6,578 Retweets     6,424 6,424 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy 23 Jul Julian Assange   @JulianAssange Financial Times: CIA not only armed Syrian "rebels" it is paying their monthly salaries  pic.twitter.com/HX8ncle0mU  Follow Julian Assange   @JulianAssange URL for the above:  https://www. ft.com/content/a3...