ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

North says nuclear armed forces 'should be expanded' and reiterated its atomic weapons are not a bargaining chip. North Korea has pledged to strengthen its nuclear weapons programme, a day after announcing it is in a "state of war" with South Korea, as the region remains tense amid a military build-up by both North and South Korea. A meeting on Sunday of the central committee of the ruling Workers' Party, headed by leader Kim Jong-Un, decided that the country's possession of nuclear weapons "should be fixed by law", the official KCNA news agency reported without elaborating. The nuclear armed forces "should be expanded and beefed up qualitatively and quantitatively until the denuclearisation of the world is realised", it added. Tensions have risen sharply on the peninsula since the UN tightened sanctions in response to the North's nuclear and missile tests, and the US and South Korea carried out military drills near the border with th...

Reopening of major facility north of Pyongyang follows weeks of warlike rhetoric towards South Korea and the US. North Korea will restart all nuclear facilities at its main Yongbyon complex, in the latest move which is likely to escalate tensions further with South Korea and the United States. North Korea plans to rebuild and restart of its nuclear facilities including its uranium enrichment facility and the 5 MW Yongbyon reactor which it closed in 2007, the state news agency KCNA quoted a spokesman at North Korea's atomic energy agency as saying. The report said the "readjusting and restarting" of nuclear facilities, including a reactor shut down in 2007, would be used for electricity shortages and military development. The move was being made in line with a policy of "bolstering the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity" as well as solving "acute" electricity shortages, the spokesman said. The facilities were closed in 2007 as part of a...

AFP, Kabul - The U.S. military pulled out of a strategic district in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday as part of a deal with President Hamid Karzai, who alleged that soldiers had mistreated locals. Karzai had at first accused Afghan militia working with elite U.S. units of torturing and murdering civilians, but later changed his allegations to focus on unproven claims of “harassment” by American troops. The president issued an ultimatum that U.S. commandos leave the province of Wardak, a key region close to the capital Kabul, raising concern that the pullout would create a major security opening for Taliban insurgents. A compromise deal was reached in which U.S. troops would leave Nerkh, one of Wardak’s eight districts, as the U.S. and Karzai tried to smooth over a series of damaging public rows. “Our forces have transitioned Nerkh district to Afghan National Security Forces and they have now assumed full responsibility for security in this key district,” General Joseph Dunford, command...

US soliders on patrol in Afghanistan. (File, AFP) Kabul - The US operation to remove military hardware and vehicles from Afghanistan as troops withdraw after 12 years of war, will cost $5- to $6bn, officials said on Sunday. Among statistics released by the military about the process known as a "retrograde" was that 25 000 vehicles have been shipped out of Afghanistan in the last year and another 25 000 remain in the country. About 100 000 containers are also still in Afghanistan, and will be used to remove mountains of equipment ranging from fighting gear to fitness machines, furniture and computers. "The retrograde from Afghanistan is one of the most challenging military transportation operations in history in terms of scale and complexity," Brigadier General Steven Shapiro said in an email. "Our number of vehicles in Afghanistan has dropped by nearly half in the past year." Shapiro said decisions were being made on what equi...

Baghdad - Iraqi officials said seven people were killed in attacks in the capital and in the western city of Fallujah on Sunday, including a mosque preacher who was gunned down outside a sweets shop. A police officer said assailants shot dead the preacher, Sheik Talib Zuwayid of the al-Baraa mosque in Fallujah, along with his nephew and another man. A health official confirmed the deaths and said another man was injured. Residents said Zuwayid was one of the organisers of weekly Sunni demonstrations against the Shi'ite-led government that have been taking place for the past three months. The police officer however said it was unclear if the killings were related to the protests. Immediately after he was killed, residents hung up posters announcing the man's death on Fallujah's main road. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release information. In the Iraqi capital, two separate explosions killed four people and woun...

Al Arabiya - Syrian rebels, who defeated President Bashar al-Assad’s regime forces in the northern city of Raqqa early March, vowed not to “mistreat” captured Assad loyalists. Al Arabiya’s correspondent Jomaa Akkash met with the prisoners, who were once loyal to Assad forces. The prisoners said they were not “ill-treated” by opposition fighters. “We were policemen at [Raqqa] governor’s palace, we were armed but we didn’t fight. When they [opposition fighters] asked us to surrender we did, and we gave up our arms as well. The fighters allowed us to contact our families and we didn’t face any ill-treatment,” said a prisoner, former policeman. The prison has 50 detainees and is separated into three different cells. Some of the captives were part of the Raqqa Police force while others received orders from the ruling Al-Baath party to carry out specific assignments. While opposition fighters say the prisoners will appear in front of a religious court, negotiations are still underway with th...

By Jay Janson March 31, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - While staring at the New York Times front page photo of the bat-winged nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth Bombers up in the blue sky on their first non-stop long-range mission from the US on their way to a practice sortie to end in a mock bombing drop of inert munitions on a range off South Korea’s coast, I ponder. The thought that ‘enough is enough’ will apparently never arise in the mind-set of those commanding the first planet-encompassing space-age military, blown up now to an uncontrollable magnitude and fueled by an uninterrupted flow of trillions of dollars by ledger line pre-occupied elite of the speculative investment banking community; a community possibly still being led by multi-war promoting confidants of ninety-eight year old David Rockefeller.1 Former president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak dutifully bought loads of new US weapons of mass destruction. Does he ever remember watching his two tiny siblings begin to sl...

WASHINGTON – North Korea's massive but poorly trained and equipped military could cause significant damage in the early stages of an attack on its southern neighbor. But any attack would ultimately be repulsed by superior U.S. and South Korean forces, military analysts say. It's unclear how serious North Korea is on following through on its threats, but North Korea has increased its bellicose rhetoric recently, renewing worries that its unpredictable leader, Kim Jong Un, could take actions that might trigger a wider conflict. The North Korean leader said his rockets were ready "to settle accounts with the U.S." The United States has responded to the heated rhetoric by announcing it flew two B-2 bombers on a training mission over South Korea. It was part of an annual joint-training operation that continues until the end of April. Analysts say the recent rhetoric is particularly worrisome when coupled with recent provocative actions taken by the North. In 2010, the Nort...