ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

AFP Photo / Ahmad AL-Rubaye Dozens of vehicles carrying oil leave Syria’s petroleum capital, Raqqa, currently under IS control, every hour, earning the extremist group a million dollars daily, according to an oil refinery employee in the occupied city, who has spoken to RT. The man, Abu Al-Hakam, would not agree to a video call for fear of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), and said he himself was not part of the extremist group. Part of the Raqqa oil, according to Al-Hakam, stays in the region, which is currently cut off from governmental supplies. Another bigger portion finds its way to the black market. “It is being pushed through underground pipes towards Turkey and remote areas where no one can see them,” the whistleblower told RT’s Maria Finoshina. “Part of it is distributed by IS through brokers. Most of it is raw, but there’s diesel and benzene as well”. With an estimated net worth of $2 billion, the Islamic State is believed to be the world’s richest terrorist org...

Exclusive: Last April, much of the world was horrified when the Boko Haram rebels of northern Nigeria kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls and vowed to marry them off. But the violence in Africa’s richest country has a complex back story of religion, ignorance, corruption and injustice, as Don North explains. By Don North Nowhere in northern Nigeria is there a bolder symbol of Western values and education – concepts that the militant Boko Haram rebels have vowed to eradicate – than the American University of Nigeria in Yola of the northeast Adamawa State. With the U.S. and Nigerian flags flying side by side, AUN is a modern university for 1,500 mostly African students and a faculty from over 30 nations set amid desperate poverty and a population with an estimated 80 percent illiteracy rate. It is also a campus near the frontline of a worsening conflict that threatens this fragile foothold of advanced learning in Nigeria, an oil-rich western African nation of 174 million people divided b...

The previous post showed that the Fragile States Index did not capture the fragility of Syria and Libya on the eve of the so-called Arab Spring. The question is then raised about the performance of other indices of state weakness in this this regard. As it turns out, they did little better. Consider, for example, the World Bank’s 2010 map of political instability (which, unfortunately, simultaneously assesses “absence of violence/terrorism,” a somewhat different issue). On purely cartographic grounds, the map is a disaster: employing an inappropriate Mercator projection, it makes Greenland appear to be the global core of political stability, while its incomplete labeling system is misleading at best. But our concern here is with its categorization scheme, which is also problematic. Note that it placed Libya in the same category of stability as Spain and Brazil, while slotting Syria in the same group as Turkey, China, Russia, and India. What really seems odd, however, is the placemen...

Most National Institutions Respected, Especially Military Crime and corruption, common scourges of modern societies, top the list of problems cited by publics in emerging and developing nations.  A median of 83% of people across 34 emerging and developing economies say crime is a  very  big problem in their country, and 76% say the same about corrupt political leaders.  Many also worry about issues such as health care, poor quality schools, water and air pollution, and food safety. Generally, electricity shortages and traffic are seen as less pressing issues. People in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East all see crime and corruption as the greatest problems in their countries, according to the Pew Research Center survey. Moreover,  crime and corruption as well as poor quality schools are considered  growing problems in these emerging and developing countries.  Taking the median across the 20 countries surveyed in 2007/2008 and 2014...

The Pakistani army’s operations against militant hideouts in a northwestern tribal region near the border with Afghanistan have so far killed more than 1,200 militants, a senior Pakistani army officer says. Major General Zafarullah Khan, the officer in charge of North Waziristan, said on Sunday that nearly 1,200 militants have been killed since the military campaign started in the region. He further noted that 230 terrorists have been also arrested. Khan added that considerable amounts of weapons, munitions and many vehicles have been also confiscated in the region. The military official said pro-Taliban militants generally rely on bombs and ambushes to engage Pakistani government forces and to hamper their progress rather than battling them openly. “They have planted [bombs] in houses, they have planted [bombs] in the streets, they’ve planted [bombs] even in the trees,” he said. Pakistani military units have been conducting military operations to eliminate terrorists in Pakistan’s Nor...

The map shows the location of the three Iranian islands of the Greater Tunb, the Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has removed a fake name used by the United Arab Emirates for three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. The UN nuclear agency deleted a fake map of three Iranian islands of the Greater Tunb, the Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa published by the UAE that was used on the IAEA’s official website. On its page on the IAEA Country Nuclear Power Profile (CNPP), the UAE used a fake name for the Persian Gulf and the three Iranian islands of Abu Musa, the Greater Tunb and the Lesser Tunb. Following the UAE’s move, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran objected to the use of a forged name for the Persian Gulf and also the three Iranian islands. The three islands have historically been part of Iran, proof of which can be found and corroborated by countless historical, legal, and geographical documents in Iran and other parts of the wo...

Iran has inaugurated the Middle East’s biggest ever gold-processing plant that will double the country's annual production of gold bullion in the near future. The Zarshouran plant, located in West Azarbaijan Province in northwest of the country, was inaugurated by First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri in a ceremony on Saturday. With the completion of the first phase of the plant, Iran is expected to be producing an estimated three tons of pure gold, 1.25 tons of silver and 500 kilograms of mercury in the future. After undergoing development, the plant will bring the country’s annual production of pure gold to six million tons. The new processing facility will also produce an estimated 2.5 tons of silver and 1.5 tons of mercury a year in the near future. The plant is fed by a nearby gold mine, situated some 35 kilometers from the city of Takab, and is estimated to hold over 100 tons of gold. AR/KA/SS