ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By ISABEL KERSHNER Published: January 6, 2013 JERUSALEM — Israel announced Sunday that it was constructing a border fence along the length of its armistice line with Syria in the Golan Heights and that it was coordinating its intelligence with the United States in light of the deteriorating security situation in Syria. Pool photo by Uriel Sinai Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday in Jerusalem, said his nation would defend the border against jihadist forces. In remarks at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Syrian Army had moved away from the frontier and that jihadist forces had moved in. “Therefore, we will defend this border against both infiltration and terrorism,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “I also submit to the cabinet the fact that the Syrian regime is very unstable, that the question of chemical weapons here worries us.” He said that Israel was coordinating with the United States and others “so that we might be pr

Christaan Felber for The New York Times John Kiriakou with his daughter Kate at home in Arlington, Va., last month. He has struggled with how to explain to his children that he will be going away. WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate. In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy. “Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied. Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation. Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s r

WASHINGTON — In a memoir, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal , the former American commander in Afghanistan , writes that tensions between the White House and the Pentagon were evident in the Obama administration from its opening months in office. The beginning of President Obama’s first term “saw the emergence of an unfortunate deficit of trust between the White House and the Department of Defense, largely arising from the decision-making process on Afghanistan,” General McChrystal writes. “The effects were costly.” The book by General McChrystal, who was fired from his post in 2010 after an article in Rolling Stone quoted him and his staff making dismissive comments about the White House, is likely to disappoint readers who are looking for a vivid blow-by-blow account of infighting within the administration. The book , titled “My Share of the Task: A Memoir,” does not provide an account of the White House meeting at which Mr. Obama accepted the general’s resignation. General McChry

Years of conflict have exacted a heavy toll on centuries of history in the Gaza Strip. While traces of its rich past remain, the race to preserve what is left beneath the surface of this battle-scarred land is fraught with problems, as Ruqaya Izzidien reports. Settled by civilisations spanning some five millennia, Gaza has been built layer-upon-layer since the Bronze Age. As each era ended, its people left behind remnants of their times - churches, monasteries, palaces and mosques, as well as thousands of precious artefacts. "Underneath Gaza there is a whole other Gaza, but every archaeological site here is found by accident," says Hayam Albetar, an archaeologist at the Hamas-run Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. "We found a Byzantine Church when workers were digging to build Salahedin Street and stumbled upon a mosaic." Very little has actually been discovered, when you compare it to what there must be hidden beneath our feet”SalimGaza historian The ministry

By Ivet González Reprint HAVANA, Jan 5 2013 (IPS) - The Cuban government’s economic reforms must consider the myriad opportunities offered by the Internet, a key platform of the dominant economic model on the planet, according to interviews with both experts and average people. “It is not an option for our future development, it’s an imperative of our time,” economist Ricardo Torres told IPS. “Without the mass application of the New Information and Communications Technologies (NICT), to production processes and social life, there are no contemporary possibilities of development.” Meanwhile, people who participated in the interactive section of Cafe 108, the website of the IPS office in Cuba, felt that mass access to the worldwide web would mean first of all, “Finally landing in the 21st century”, and more job opportunities together with the expansion of state enterprises and small private businesses. However, the NICT and especially the Internet issue, is a complicated one in C

Current status of the Gulf StreamRelative Gulf Stream velocity fields are derived from near-realtime data from the radar altimeters of the satellites Envisat , Jason-1 , and Jason-2 . This page presents four maps of current velocities of the Gulf Stream in the vicinity of the East coast of North-America. Velocities are represented in meters per second. To get the approximate velocity in knots you have to multiply by 2 (1.9438445 to be precise). The maps represent the situations on four different days, each separated by one week from the next. Figure 1. Gulf Stream velocities one week ago: Saturday 29 December 2012 Figure 2. Gulf Stream velocities two weeks ago: Saturday 22 December 2012 Figure 3. Gulf Stream velocities three weeks ago: Saturday 15 December 2012 Figure 4. Gulf Stream velocities four weeks ago: Saturday 8 December 2012

Nato has invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 10 years trying to raise a modern army for Afghanistan and to rebuild the country's infrastructure. But if a leaked classified report prepared by the alliance is to believed, all this will go to waste soon after foreign combat forces withdraw in 2014. The latest in a series of leaks suggests that Nato is much more worried about the course of the war than it lets on in public. Nato has tried to play down the importance of the report by calling it a "compilation of opinions expressed by Taliban detainees", but it highlights many failures in the decade-long war in Afghanistan. Senior Taliban representatives... maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters”Nato report   Nato report excerpts The harsh reality is that an increasing number of Afghans are turning to the Taliban, having grown mistrustful of Nato and Afghan forces. In remote parts of the country where the government rules only on

The Taliban are active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan The hardline Islamic Taliban movement has proved to be a formidable fighting force in Afghanistan and a major threat to its government. The Taliban also threatens to destabilise Pakistan, where they control areas in the north-west and have been blamed for a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks. Many observers now believe that future peace in Afghanistan can only come if the government in Kabul negotiates with the Taliban. The announcement of Taliban plans to open an office in Qatar is seen as a positive step in those negotiations, but mistrust on both sides remains high. There has also been speculation that some of the Taliban-linked groups in Pakistan have held talks with the government in Islamabad - although this is not confirmed.Austere rule The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. A predominantly Pashtun movement, the Taliban came to prominen