ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Terrorist attacks continued as ethnic clashes increased. Al-Shabaab recaptured several villages previously liberated by AMISOM and Somali National Army (SNA) offensive; besieged several towns in south-central Somalia, displaced thousands of civilians. Mogadishu court judge killed 17 June by suspected Al-Shabaab gunmen; 3 security forces killed 29 June in capital; at least 2 killed, 7 wounded 30 June in attack on market. 74 killed 1 June in clash between Al-Shabaab and Somali and Ethiopian forces near Ato town, SW; 2 AMISOM peacekeepers killed 26 June in Bula Burde, central Somalia; 80 Al-Shabaab reported killed 23 June in Kenyan airstrikes in Lower Juba region. Al-Shabaab threatened increased attacks during Ramadan; Somali police 23 June announced establishment of special force to maintain security in capital during Ramadan. Clan tensions remained high in Lower Shabelle, Bay, Bakool, and Middle Shabelle: SFG, UNSOM, and IGAD 23 June recognised new federal South West State (SW3) compris

OVERVIEW Despite the recent military surge against Somalia’s armed Islamist extremist and self-declared al-Qaeda affiliate, Al-Shabaab, its conclusive “defeat” remains elusive. The most likely scenario – already in evidence – is that its armed units will retreat to smaller, remote and rural enclaves, exploiting entrenched and ever-changing clan-based competition; at the same time, other groups of radicalised and well-trained individuals will continue to carry out assassinations and terrorist attacks in urban areas, including increasingly in neighbouring countries, especially Kenya. The long connection between Al-Shabaab’s current leadership and al-Qaeda is likely to strengthen. A critical breakthrough in the fight against the group cannot, therefore, be achieved by force of arms, even less so when it is foreign militaries, not the Somalia National Army (SNA), that are in the lead. A more politically-focused approach is required. Even as its territory is squeezed in the medium term, Al-

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s Parliament on Wednesday approved sweeping new powers for the country’s security forces, with an antiterrorism measure that the government says is needed to combat the Taliban, but that rights activists warned could result in state-sponsored human rights violations. The Protection of Pakistan Bill 2014 allows the security forces to shoot suspects on sight, arrest suspects without a warrant and withhold information about where detainees are being held or what they are being charged with. It comes at a time of great public trepidation in Pakistan. The military is engaged in a large-scale offensive against the Pakistan Taliban and allied jihadist groups in the North Waziristan tribal district. Many Pakistanis fear violent militant reprisals in the country’s main cities. In presenting the measure, one cabinet minister, Zahid Hamid, said it would “send a message that the government stands with the military in the operation against terrorists. The bill offers

By JANE PERLEZ President Xi Jinping of China with President Park Geun-hye of South Korea on Thursday in Seoul.CreditPool photo by Ahn Young-joon SEOUL, South Korea — The leaders of China and South Korea sent a strong message to North Korea on Thursday saying they were united in their opposition to the development of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, but they fell short of announcing how they would pursue that goal. After a three-hour meeting, China’s president, Xi Jinping, and South Korea’s leader, Park Geun-hye, issued a joint statement that smoothed over the differences in approach that have stalled a more aggressive stance toward the unabated development of nuclear weapons by North Korea, and its leader, Kim Jong-un, China’s ally. Their joint communiqué said the “two countries reaffirm their firm opposition to the development of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula,” phraseology that the Chinese have always preferred because it does not specifically cite North Korea. With

Fighting has intensified in eastern Ukraine after the president, Petro Poroshenko , announced an end to a ceasefire and said he was ordering his forces to attack pro-Russian separatists. In a televised address on Monday night, Poroshenko said the 10-day ceasefire had ended, and vowed that Ukrainian government forces would "attack and liberate our land". Clashes were reported around both the Donetsk and Lugansk regions on Tuesday morning. Four people were killed and five wounded when a small bus came under fire in Kramatorsk, local news outlets reported. Photographs from the scene showed a woman's body lying in the aisle amid broken glass and blood. Other images published by InfoResist, an analytical group with close ties to the Kiev government, showed gaping holes and destroyed balconies in several residential buildings in Kramatorsk. Local resident Alexei Sergeyev said he heard periodic shooting and explosions throughout the night, including near the airfield that Ukra

An ACLU report released this week looking at 818 Swat team raids found 62% for drug searches, 79% on private homes and only 7% for the hostage and barricade situations Swat teams were made for. Photograph: Marcus Donner / Reuters A few years ago, the police chief in Keene, New Hampshire (population: 23,000) announced plans to patrol the hamlet's "Pumpkin Festival and other dangerous situations" with a 19,000-pound armored vehicle called the BearCat (price tag: $285,933, courtesy of a federal Homeland Security grant ). The cops in nearby Nashua had already purchased one of the so-called "rescue vehicles" – typically reserved for Swat missions and, you know, IEDs – with hundreds of thousands in drug forfeiture money , but given that the town of Keene has had just three homicides in the last 11 years , some locals thought the gun ports, rotating hatch, battering ram and tear-gas deployment nozzle all might just be a little much. "The police are already pretty

In Mosul, a perfect storm gathered last week, produced by decades of American adventurism in the ‘greater Middle East’. The American wars, including the ‘War on Terror’, were cat-and-mouse games that did not produce a final confrontation with Takfiri groups, but rather multiple confrontations, which have deferred or delayed both the domestic goals of these groups and their destructive power abroad, while ratcheting up their number and the resentment they carry against the West and its regional allies. What happened in Mosul, after what happened in Syria, threatens the pluralistic essence of Iraq and the Levant, and promises us another decade of unrest and terror in the region and abroad, if not addressed cooperatively on the international level, and in a responsible manner. There is a story in the Babylonian Talmud, retold by Somerset Maugham in 1933, which my father liked to tell me when I was a child, about a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to the market to buy provisions

By Moon Of Alabama - There is no longer an Jihadist ISIS or ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The people leading that entity declared (pdf) today, at the highly symbolic beginning of Ramadan, themselves to be a new caliphate: Therefore, the shūrā (consultation) council of the Islamic State studied this matter after the Islamic State – by Allah’s grace – gained the essentials necessary for khilāfah, which the Muslims are sinful for if they do not try to establish. In light of the fact that the Islamic State has no shar’ī(legal) constraint or excuse that can justify delaying or neglecting the establishment of the khilāfah such that it would not be sinful, the Islamic State – represented by ahlul-halli-al-‘aqd (its people of authority), consisting of its senior figures, leaders, and the shūrā council – resolved to announce the establishment of the Islamic khilāfah, the appointment of a khalīfah for the Muslims, and the pledge of allegiance to the shaykh (sheikh), the mujāhid, the scholar who pract