ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

May 15, 2015 - Yousaf al Salafi, the professed Pakistani commander of ISIS was captured during a joint raid by law enforcement in December of last year, though Pakistani officials did not make the arrest public until January 22, 2015. The Express Tribune first reported that al Salafi, who was arrested with two companions in Lahore, confessed that ISIS, also known as ISIL and IS, are receiving funds via the United States. It was not disclosed where in the US the funding is originating from. Al-Salafi, along with an associate – who is reportedly an imam of a mosque – were receiving $600 for each new member of ISIS they were able to recruit. The recruits would then be sent to train at an undisclosed location in Syria. An anonymous source speaking with the Tribune said that US Secretary of State John Kerry was made aware of the Pakistani commander’s admission during a recent visit to Islamabad. “The matter was also taken up with CENTCOM chief General Lloyd Austin  during his visit to

BAGHDAD: The leader of the Islamic State group Abu Bakr al Baghdadi on Thursday urged Muslims to emigrate to his self-proclaimed “caliphate”, in the jihadist supremo’s first audio recording in six months. “And we call upon every Muslim in every place to perform hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State or fight in his land wherever that may be,” he said. The voice reading the half-hour speech appeared to match previous audio recordings of Baghdadi, the latest of which was released in mid-November. As did his previous speech, the audio tape recording released on Thursday comes a few days after media reports that he might have been seriously wounded in a strike by the US-led coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria. There was no way to immediately authenticate the latest recording nor date it but Baghdadi speaks of developments in Yemen, where Saudi-led forces launched an air campaign against Shia rebels in late March, that suggest it is recent. Echoing his previous exhortations, Baghd

On August 6, 1945, the world (unfortunately) entered the atomic age. Without warning, a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima killed about 90,000 people instantly and injured many others – who then died from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians. “The Library of Congress adds roughly 60 million pages to its holdings each year, a huge cache of information for the public. However, also each year, the U.S. Government classifies nearly ten times that amount – an estimated 560 million pages of documents. For scholars engaged in political, historical, scientific, or any other archival work, the grim reality is that most of their government’s activities are secret.” – Richard Dolan, historian, author. (source) A very important point made above, how can we really know anything about America

Reuters/Stringer Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar residing in İstanbul, with a wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and the Greater Middle East. The Islamic State has become part and parcel of global news cycles, but its goals remain little discussed. Instead, Westerners focus on determining whether or not IS should be understood as representing Islam or rather as an aberration of the faith. Ever since the terror group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, conquered the city of Mosul and wide swathes of territory straddling both Syria and Iraq in the summer of last year , the West and its mainstream media have been near-obsessed with this clear and imminent danger to various countries and populations in the Middle East - all the way from Turkey down to Saudi Arabia. In spite of this really rather localized threat, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (aka Caliph Ibrahim) now even seems able to exert a certain influence on the 2016 US presidential elections, arguably as a r

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Reuters / Hannibal Hanschke) German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her staff’s conduct amid the BND/NSA spying scandal, following reports that her administration had purposely misled the public about Washington’s willingness to negotiate a “no-spy agreement” with Berlin. “I can only say that everyone worked according to their best knowledge and conscience – that goes for today's chief of staff but also his predecessor,” Merkel said defending her chief of staff Peter Altmaier as well as predecessors Ronald Pofalla and Thomas de Maiziere. The chancellor's statement follows allegations in the German media last week that just ahead of 2013 German general elections, her then-chief of staff Pofalla lied that Berlin and Washington would start negotiating an agreement not to spy on each other. In reality, as Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported based on email exchange between the governments, there was no firm commitment at the time in Washing

A group of hackers affiliated with ISIS are threatening to carry out a cyber attack—dubbed “Message to America”—against a number of targets 2 p.m. EST today. The targets were not identified on ISIS forums and social channels but the hackers are promising something “surprising” that “will frighten America”. ISIS supporters calling themselves the Cyber Caliphate hacked into the Twitter account of the United States Central Command in January. Twitter suspended the account detailing the planned attack about 9 a.m. EST.

Smoke billows from a Saudi-led airstrike, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 8, 2015. | Hani Mohammed AP By John Zarocostas The United Nations and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are locked in a bitter dispute over Riyadh’s insistence that humanitarian aid for Yemen be coordinated through Saudi authorities. Senior diplomats in Geneva say that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was taken aback when Saudi King Salman scheduled a May 17 conference in Riyadh to discuss aid to Yemen. Ban had planned to hold such a conference in Geneva on Monday, at which he hoped to restart the failed U.N. peace process. The scheduled Saudi conference and a proposal that the Saudi capital be the coordinating point for aid also violate the U.N.’s principle that aid delivered to a war zone should not be controlled by one of the belligerents in the conflict. “The active engagement of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is appreciated,” Johannes Van Der Klaauw, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen , said Friday. “However, in

. FILE - In this May 1, 2015 file photo, state police stand next to a charred passenger bus, that was extinguished by firefighters in Guadalajara, Mexico. Authorities in western Mexico asked residents to stay at home as they scrambled to extinguish burning vehicles that blocked roads in various parts of Guadalajara. Such blockades are a common cartel response to the arrest of important members or are used to foil police and military operations. (AP Photo, File) MEXICO CITY (AP) — It has the drugs and distribution system of a traditional cartel — and it has the modern weapons and audacity of an army. After attacking federal forces, downing a military helicopter and shutting down streets in Mexico's second-largest city last week, the New Generation Jalisco cartel is now the main enemy in the country's fight with drug cartels. In just a few years, New Generation has grown from being an offshoot of the powerful Sinaloa cartel to one of Mexico's strongest criminal groups in its