ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

After the recent announcements by Germany and Sweden to retain limited military footprint in Afghanistan after 2014, an International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) Spokesman on Wednesday said that there are ten other nations to announce their post-2014 presence soon. The Isaf Spokesman Brigadier General Gunter Katz said that the Nato member countries and ten of its allies are interested to have military presence in Afghanistan after the ISAF mission comes to an end by the end of next year. "The 28 nation plus ten partner nations declared that they are willing to contribute. Germany and Sweden gave concrete numbers and we are quite confident that other nations will follow soon," said Gen Katz. Asked whether more foreign countries would announce their willingness after the Australian defence minister on Tuesday said that his country is willing to keep some troops post-2014, Gen Katz said that "there are ten other nations" to announce their post-2014 presence, but

Around 50 insurgents including three Taliban leaders were killed during the three-day clash at Sangin district in southern Helmand province, local officials said on Wednesday. 18 other insurgents were injured in the clash. The Governor of Southern Helmand province Mohammad Naeem at a press conference in the capital of the province Lashkargah, said that the clash started on Monday in Sangin district and is still continuing in certain parts of the district. "The insurgents form their forces by recruiting people from everywhere, many insurgents are from Sangin and some are even taken in from the adjoining provinces like Kandahar and Helmand. This is not all; good numbers of foreigners are also taken into the insurgent's force. The preliminary assessments showed that there were several insurgents involved in the clash," the Governor told reporters. Five security forces were killed and nine others injured in the clash, according to the Governor. The Governor added that foreign

By Radwan Mortada May 22, 2013 " Information Clearing House " -" Al-Akhbar " - After weeks of reinforcing their positions around Qusayr near the Lebanese border, Syrian government forces stormed the strategic town early on Sunday. Many opposition fighters fled, accusing their commanders of betrayal. Both opposition and army sources on the ground in Qusayr agree that the town – taken by opposition fighters early on in the Syrian crisis – will be in the hands of the regime in a matter of days. For weeks now, government forces have been conducting military operations around the strategic town, which is located to the southwest of Homs, a few kilometers from the northern tip of Lebanon. After securing nearly all the villages in the surrounding area, the Syrian army entered Qusayr Sunday morning under heavy fire power, killing 90 opposition fighters and injuring hundreds, according to opposition sources inside the besieged town. Many fighters managed to break the governm

Spokesman says that policemen and border guard abducted in Sinai peninsula last week have been released. Six Egyptian policemen and a border guard abducted on the Sinai peninsula last week have been released, the Egyptian army has said in a statement. “The seven kidnapped soldiers are now on their way to Cairo after they were released thanks to the work of military intelligence, and in cooperation with the noble tribal leaders of Sinai," said army spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali in a statement posted online on Wednesday. A report on state television said the hostages were released by their captors in the desert south of Rafah, near the border with Israel. The men were abducted last week while traveling between the North Sinai towns of El-Arish and Rafah. The army had deployed hundreds of soldiers to Sinai , along with dozens of armoured vehicles and helicopters, in the wake of the kidnapping. A military operation to free the hostages was widely expected in Egypt, but also risked tri

Summary The battle for the Syrian city of Al-Qusayr, which came under regime artillery fire May 19, is actually part of a larger battle for the highly coveted Homs governorate. As we noted in 2012 , the battle has wide-reaching ramifications for the Syrian rebels since Al-Qusayr sits along a major transit point for rebel supplies and reinforcements coming in from Lebanon . But it is equally important to loyalist forces. If the Syrian regime loses control of the Orontes River Valley and its major road junctions, Damascus will be largely cut off from Aleppo and the Alawite-dominated coast, which would limit the regime's access to supply lines from port cities. The regime's renewed offensive against Al-Qusayr was made possible by support from Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. However, geography will determine which side holds the advantage. In northern and eastern Syria, the regime remains on the defensive; in the core, the advantage clearly belongs to the loyalists. With the country sq

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS Nine years after the first U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2004, the U.S. refuses to officially acknowledge the CIA-run program, while Pakistan denies consenting to it. This secrecy undermines efforts to assess the program’s legality or its full impact on FATA’s population. It also diverts attention from a candid examination of the roots of militancy in the poorly governed tribal belt bordering southern and eastern Afghanistan and how best to address them. Drone strikes may disrupt FATA-based militant groups’ capacity to plan and execute cross-border attacks on NATO troops and to plot attacks against the U.S. homeland, but they cannot solve the fundamental problem. The ability of those groups to regroup, rearm and recruit will remain intact so long as they enjoy safe havens on Pakistani territory and efforts to incorporate FATA into the constitutional mainstream are stifled. Since 2004, there have been

WASHINGTON — Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials. The Obama administration had bet that “naming and shaming” the groups, first in industry reports and then in the Pentagon’s own detailed survey of Chinese military capabilities, might prompt China’s new leadership to crack down on the military’s highly organized team of hackers — or at least urge them to become more subtle. But Unit 61398, whose well-guarded 12-story white headquarters on the edges of Shanghai became the symbol of Chinese cyberpower, is back in business, according to American officials and security companies. It is not clear precisely who has been affected by the latest attacks. Mandiant , a private security company that

Chinese embassy in Pyongyang asks government to secure release of private Chinese fishing boat seized on May 5. China has called on North Korea to release a private Chinese fishing boat and its crew, after the boat's owner reported the detention 10 days ago, state media says. The owner of the boat took to a microblog this weekend to raise attention to the detention that happened on May 5. Yu Xuejun said unidentified gun-wielding North Koreans took his boat and 16 crew members in what he said were Chinese waters and that the North Koreans wanted a 600,000 yuan ($100,000) ransom. The diplomatic difficulty comes at a time of high Chinese frustrations with North Korea after it conducted a nuclear test and missile launches. Yu called the Chinese Embassy for help on May 10 after the boat was "grabbed" by North Korea, the official Xinhua News Agency said late on Sunday, citing an official at the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang, Jiang Yaxian. The embassy promptly contacted the N