ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Ankara has completed its military op against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels in Turkey’s southeastern town of Cizre, its Interior Minister has announced. Hundreds of Kurds were killed in the fighting, including some 60 people trapped in a basement. “The operations in Cizre were completed in a very successful fashion,” Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala told local media without going into details, Reuters reports. “The curfew will continue for a while longer. There are traps and mines in certain areas that could harm people. Closing the ditches and removing barricades will take a bit of time,” he added. Last week, Ala said the operation was “99.5 percent complete” and would not be expanded. Turkey launched its military operation in the southeastern part of the country in July of 2015, breaking a ceasefire signed in 2013. Turkish security forces entered a number of Kurdish settlements in armored vehicles to take on PKK fighters, but civilians were caught up in the conflict as well

MUNICH, Germany: Moscow warned Thursday that any move by Gulf nations to send in troops to support the rebels in Syria would risk a “new world war.” It also said that it had made a “quite specific” cease-fire proposal for Syria as foreign ministers gathered in Munich, hoping to revive a floundering peace process amid warnings of a “new world war.” Meanwhile, a Saudi source said a new Saudi-led coalition to fight “terrorism” in Islamic countries will gather in the kingdom next month for its first publicly announced meeting. This development came days after the kingdom, which backs some of the rebels that Moscow is helping to defeat, has floated the idea of sending ground troops to help the U.S. effort against Daesh (ISIS). This was criticized by Russian premier Dmitry Medvedev, who said, “The Americans and our [Arab] partners must think hard about this: Do they want a permanent war?” he told Germany’s Handelsblatt daily. “We made propositions for a cease-fire that are quite specific,” R

African Union says armed group is hoping to stage attacks disguised as AMISOM troops, using uniforms it took from them. The African Union (AU) says the al-Qaeda-linked armed group, al-Shabab, is planning attacks in Somalia using AU troop uniforms as disguises. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said the uniforms were stolen by al-Shabab fighters from military camps belonging to the 22,000-strong UN-mandated mission. "AMISOM has information that due to panic [al-Shabab] have plans to masquerade as AMISOM and dress in AMISOM troop's uniforms," AMISOM said in a statement on its Twitter account. "These uniforms were accessed from AMISOM camps in the past and disguised as such, AS [al-Shabab] are organising to carry out atrocities. Planned atrocities are in areas generally controlled by FGS & AMISOM in order to turn the people against AMISOM by depicting it as the enemy," AMISOM said. Several AMISOM bases have been recently overrun by the al-Qaeda-li

Japan bans North Korean ships from its ports, as South Korea announces closure of joint industrial park on border. Japan is to impose new sanctions on North Korea to protest against a rocket launch seen as a test of missile technology. The sanctions will include expanded restrictions on travel between the two countries and a complete ban on visits by North Korean ships to Japanese ports, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced at a news conference on Wednesday. "Despite our repeated requests to stop nuclear tests and missile development, (North Korea) pushed ahead with the launch. It has a direct impact on Japan and we need to show our strong determination," Suga said. He said, however, that Japan will keep a door open for dialogue to resolve the still-outstanding issue of Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korea decades ago. North Korea launched a long-range rocket into space on Sunday carrying what it said was an Earth observation satellite. T

By Finian Cunningham The Saudi plan to send ground troops into Syria appears to be just a ruse. But this is precisely the kind of reckless saber-rattling that could ignite an all-out war, one that could embroil the United States and Russia. Saudi rulers have reportedly amassed a 150,000-strong army to invade Syria on the alleged pretext “to fight against terrorism” and to defeat the so-called Islamic State (also known as ISIS/ISIL). Saudi officials told CNN that in addition to Saudi troops there are ground forces from Egypt, Turkey, Sudan, Morocco, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem gave a categorical response , saying the move would be seen as an act of aggression and that any invasion force regardless of its stated reasons for entering Syria will be sent back in “wooden coffins”. Nevertheless, US President Barack Obama has welcomed the Saudi plan to intervene in Syria. Obama’s Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is this week d

Week Seventeen of the Russian Intervention in Syria: And how will Russia react if he triggers it By The Saker The situation with Turkey is rapidly getting out of control: not only have the Turks conducted artillery strikes across the Syrian border , Turkey has refused to comply with its obligations under the Open Skies Treaty and refused to let a Russian surveillance aircraft overfly Turkey . The Russian military has now declared that it had detected signs of Turkish preparations for an invasion . The Turkish refusal to abide by the Open Skies Treaty is an extremely worrisome development, especially when combined with the Russian warnings about the preparation for an invasion of Syria, and the Russians are not mincing their words: There are plenty more indicators and warnings showing that an escalation is possible: the Geneva negotiations have been abruptly terminated, the Saudis are threatening to invade Syria and there are signs that the Syrian army is slowly but surely pr

After Saudi-backed Syrian rebels balked at peace talks and the Russian-backed Syrian army cut off Turkish supply lines to jihadists and other Syrian rebels, the U.S. and its Mideast Sunni “allies” appear poised to invade Syria and force “regime change” even at the risk of fighting Russia, a gamble with nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria. By Joe Lauria Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last October said in a little noticed comment that the United States was ready to take “direct action on the ground” in Syria. Vice President Joe Biden said in Istanbul last month that if peace talks in Geneva failed, the United States was prepared for a “military solution” in that country. The peace talks collapsed on Wednesday even before they began. A day later Saudi Arabia said it is ready to invade Syria while Turkey is building up forces at its Syrian border. The U.N. aims to restart the talks on Feb. 25 but there is little hope they can begin in earnest as the Saudi-run opposition has set numerous condit

By Catherine Shakdam, she´s a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. A regular pundit on RT and other networks her work has appeared in major publications: MintPress, the Foreign Policy Journal, Mehr News and many others.Director of Programs at the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine is also the co-founder of Veritas Consulting. She is the author of Arabia’s Rising - Under The Banner Of The First Imam A former beacon of human rights and civil liberties, Europe has become its own worst enemy, as governments exploit and engineer fears to expand their control and oversight. In this descent towards national paranoia France is leading the pack. Ever since terror rose its demonic face, world democracies have lived under a semi-permanent state of alert awaiting the proverbial clash of civilization, politicians, officials, and at times intellectuals, warned would inevitably take place should h