ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Kurdish fighters fire shells towards what they said were ISIL strongholds in Tel Abyad of Raqqa governorate after they said they took control of the area in this June 15, 2015 photo. (Photo: Reuters) The Kurdish-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) took control of around 70 percent of the town of Tal Rifaat on Monday, seizing territory close to the Turkish border and pushing east towards Islamic State-held territory, conflict monitors said. The move means the SDF -- which include the Kurdish YPG militia -- has further consolidated recent gains around the rebel-held Syrian town of Azaz, the last before the border with Turkey. Turkey, which considers the YPG to be a terrorist group, has warned Kurdish fighters in northern Syria they would face the "harshest reaction" if they tried to capture Azaz and has been shelling SDF forces for the past few days. But YPG fighters appear now to be moving eastwards rather than north, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group

I have long nursed the suspicion that Taliban units, Isis and government militias are not fighting about religion or government at all, more about mafia power By Robert Fisk If anyone wants to understand the shame of Afghanistan - the yearly cull of civilians, the beheadings, the execution by single shots, the kidnapping of women - they have only to read the shocking UN report just published in Kabul. It is laced with fearful eyewitness descriptions of brutality. Isis features in its 87 pages with its usual depravity (in Afghanistan, of course, not in Iraq or Syria) and the report’s statistics show clearly that, last year, there were more civilians killed or wounded in the country than in any year since 2009. In 2015 alone, 3,545 civilians were killed and 7,457 injured. Since 2009, the total civilian dead – not soldiers, militiamen or Taliban – comes to 21,323 dead. And this, remember, is the graveyard of empires into which we blithely trod after 9/11 on the basis that we would not “fo

By Tyler Durden Update : The following video depicts the aftermath of the shelling, which has reportedly claimed the lives of at least two civilians. (as  RT reports , "a video released by the Syrian Kurdish news agency ANHA and obtained by Ruptly shows damaged buildings and people rushing to take care of the wounded in the village of Maryamayn near the town of Afrin") Update : Reports indicate the Turkish army has crossed the border into Syria. " The Syrian government says Turkish forces were believed to be among 100 gunmen it said entered Syria on Saturday accompanied by 12 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, in an ongoing supply operation to insurgents fighting Damascus ,"  Reuters reports . "The operation of supplying ammunition and weapons is continuing via the Bab al-Salama crossing to the Syrian area of Azaz," the Assad government says. Meanwhile, since all that would take to unleash a full-blown war is for some Russian

Week Eighteen of the Russian Intervention in Syria The Saker The situation in Syria has reached a watershed moment and a dramatic escalation of the war appears imminent. Let’s look again at how we reached this point. During the first phase of the operation, the Syrian armed forces were unable to achieve an immediate strategic success. This is rather unsurprising. It is important to remember here that during the first weeks of the operation the Russian did not provide close air support to the Syrians. Instead, they chose to systematically degrade the entire Daesh (Note: I refer to *all* terrorist in Syria as “Daesh”) infrastructure including command posts, communication nodes, oil dumps, ammo dumps, supply routes, etc. This was important work, but it did not have an immediate impact upon the Syrian military. Then the Russians turned to two important tasks: to push back Daesh in the Latakia province and to hit the illegal oil trade between Daesh and Turkey. The first goal was needed for

Deir Ezzor, SANA – A mass grave was uncovered in Mrat town in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor province containing tens of bodies of people who were killed by ISIS terrorists. The grave, which was found by the town’s locals, consists of a trench in the “7th kilometers” area near Mrat town. Local sources told SANA reporter that the remains of more than 100 people shot dead, including children, were buried in the mass grave. A similar grave was found by the locals of al-Kishkiyeh town in the eastern Deir Ezzor in December 2014 that contained the remains of tens of people from al-Shei’tat tribe who were shot dead by ISIS terrorists. M. al-Frieh/H. Said

Provinces, SANA – An increasing number of terrorists have been killed in precise and pinpoint operations carried out by the army units and the air force in various areas across the country. Lattakia Army units, in cooperation with the popular defense groups, restored security and stability to the villages of Barrouma, Mazyan and Rweiset Hmeiroush in the northern countryside of Lattakia province, a military source announced on Sunday. Meanwhile, units of the army also restored security and stability to villages of Majdal Kikhia, Sheikh Mustafa, Sheikh Ayoub and Ayn al-Ghazal in addition to the strategic points 679, 466 and 448 in Lattakia northern countryside. The source described the operations carried out in those areas as “intensive, precise and swift” in which special tactics for mountainous and wooded areas were used. Engineering units dismantled a number of explosive devices and mines which the terrorists had earlier planted among houses and at the villages’ entrances, the source

By Andrew KORYBKO (USA) Whether it’s Al Shabaab, Burundi, or Zanzibar, a handful of regional issues are lining up to undermine East Africa’s stability and offset the most ambitious series of integrational projects in the continent’s history. The five-nation East African Community (EAC) of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania plans to transition into a formal federation sometime in the near future, catapulting its significance from a regional to a global actor. The integrational bloc is betting that its East African Railway Master Plan , partially financed and constructed by China, will not only do wonders for its own economic cohesiveness, but will stimulate broader sub-Saharan cooperation. The vision is that this strategic blueprint will link the prospective East African Federation (EAF) together with Ethiopia, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with the ultimate goal being to bridge Africa’s transoceanic divide by connecting to the Atlantic Ocean v

By Moon Of Alabama  This is a look at the larger picture of forces developing around Syria. Several foreign armies are aggregating at the Syrian borders with the intent to invade Syria and to occupy its eastern part. But before we dive into that, a short look at the curious situation developing in the north-west. Near Azaz the U.S. ally Turkey is currently shelling ( video ) the U.S. ally YPG which is fighting the CIA supported FSA. The Syrian-Kurdish YPG troops were heavily supported by the U.S. in their fight against the Islamic State in north-eastern Syria. Under U.S. tutelage they united with Arab anti-IS fighters under the label Syrian Democratic Forces. In north-west Syria the SDF has used the recent success of the Syrian army against Jihadis in the area to take northern parts of the Azaz corridor which once connected Aleppo to Turkey. That corridor is held by a mixture of al-Qaeda Jihadist from Jabhat al-Nusra, "Turkmen" Islamists from various Turk speaking countries