ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

On Feb. 28 armed groups from the Daesh terrorist organization made a swift raid on Abu Ghraib near Baghdad and for a day held their positions in the city. Abu Ghraib is actually a suburb of the Iraqi capital, located twenty kilometers from the center of Baghdad. Back during the American occupation it gained notoriety for its military prison, where those who took part in the patriotic resistance movement were sent. The sudden capture of Abu Ghraib by terrorists took place at a time when the insurgents were losing their positions. Last March Iraqi forces seized Tikrit (Saddam’s hometown) from Deash militants. In late December, the Iraqi army joined the Shiite al-Hashd al-Shaabi militias to finally liberate the strategically important center of Ramadi in Anbar province. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters managed to wrest away the Sinjar Mountains from the terrorists. Why is the specter of Daesh now reemerging? The answer can be found in Iraq’s recent history. The Americans who occupied Iraq in

By Finian Cunningham With a series of blatant measures, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies are evidently trying to destabilize Lebanon. The development is apiece with how Saudi Arabia and Turkey have both sought to undermine the ceasefire in Syria and to escalate that conflict to a region-wide level. A New York Times report this week poses a rather naive conundrum: «Diplomats and analysts have spent several weeks trying to understand why the Saudis would precipitously start penalizing Lebanon – and perhaps their own Lebanese allies – over the powerful influence of Hezbollah, which is nothing new». Well, here’s a quick answer: Russia’s very effective squelching of the covert war for regime-change in Syria. That has sent Saudi Arabia and Turkey into a paroxysm of rage. Russia’s military intervention in Syria to defend the Arab state from a foreign-backed covert war involving myriad terrorist proxy groups, has dealt a severe blow to the machinations of Washington, its NATO allies and r

Daniel Larison recaps the War on Yemen: The Saudi-led intervention has been going on for over eleven months, and in that time it has failed in all of its stated objectives. The Houthis have not been driven from the capital, the former president has not be restored to power (not that most Yemenis would want him there now anyway), and the intervention certainly hasn’t produced the stability that the Saudis laughably claimed to be bringing. ... Yemenis have been sorely deprived of basic necessities for almost an entire year thanks to the Saudi-led blockade, and the majority of the population is starving or at great risk of doing so. At least four-fifths of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance. The country’s health care system has all but collapsed, medical facilities are coming under repeated attack (including repeated bombings by coalition aircraft), medicine and fuel are in short supply, and the lack of access to clean water has made the spread of disease much worse. E

By Moon Of Alabama There seems to be some progress in the regional "games" around the conflict in Syria. The Turkish Prime minister Davutoglu currently visits Iran. The Iranians let some lucrative economic projects dangle in front of his eyes. But the main points were about Syria. According to this Turkish source Davutoglu said these issues were agreed upon: taylieli @taylieli #Turkish PM Davutoglu: We've reached on deal with #Iran for 5 matters: 1) A joint visit to #Jordan to discuss on #Syria, on coming days (1) 2) The continuity of ceasfire in #Syria 3) The unity of #Syria 4) The participitation of all -internal- actors in #Syria's future (2) 5) The joint act to defeat all kind of terrorism inc. #Isil in the geography of #ME. (3) This smells like an bit of change in the so far rigid Turkish position. Russian military transport traffic through the Bosporus has markedly increased. A lot of new trucks, tanks and artillery are coming to Syria. In the summer the Russi

As the US and South Korea start their largest ever military exercises, Pyongyang warns of an "all-out offensive". North Korea has pledged a "sacred war of justice for reunification" including a nuclear strike against the United States, saying joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington were being carried out to prepare for an invasion. South Korean and United States troops began large-scale military exercises on Monday in an annual test of their defences against North Korea, which called the drills "nuclear war moves" and threatened to respond with an "all-out offensive". South Korea said the exercises would be the largest ever following North Korea's fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch last month that triggered a United Nations Security Council resolution and tough new sanctions. Isolated North Korea has rejected criticism of is nuclear and rocket programmes, even from old ally China, and last week leader Ki

by Rick Sterling A 30 page investigative report on the “Caesar Torture Photos” has been released and is available online here . The following is a condensed version of the report. Readers who are especially interested are advised to get the full report which includes additional details, photographs, sources and recommendations. Introduction There is a pattern of sensational but untrue reports that lead to public acceptance of US and Western military intervention in countries around the world: * In Gulf War 1, there were reports of Iraqi troops stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. Relying on the testimony of a Red Crescent doctor, Amnesty Interenational ‘verified’ the false claims. * Ten years later, there were reports of yellow cake uranium going to Iraq for development of weapons of mass destruction. * One decade later, there were reports of Libyan soldiers drugged on viagra and raping women as they advanced. * In 2012, NBC broadcaster Richard Enge

Dr Zachery M. Heern, author of the new book 'The Emergence of Modern Shi‘ism: Islamic Reform in Iraq and Iran', has written a thought-provoking piece that helps us better grasp key developments in the Muslim Middle East. I often complain that media related to the Middle East and Islam frequently lacks context. Indeed, news reports, related to the Middle East or otherwise, often assume that events occur without precedent and are unconnected to the past. Analysis, therefore, can be wildly misleading. The antidote for this absence of context is the study of history, which is why I tell my students that historians make good journalists. Unfortunately, however, history is often only invoked by pundits when the assertion is made that the Middle East has a long history of problems - violence, inequality, injustice, sectarianism, etc. These assumptions are biased in the worst way since they wrongly assume that the current state of affairs in the Middle East is identical to its seemingl

Twenty-four civilians have been killed in the first five days of a landmark truce in parts of Syria, a sharp drop for a war where dozens die daily, a monitor said Thursday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that the number, gathered from areas where the ceasefire had come into effect, included five women and six children. "Compare that number to Friday, the day before the truce came into effect: 63 civilians, including 11 children, died that day alone," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. He called it a "huge drop", adding that the daily average during the month of February was 38 civilians killed. More than 270,000 people -- among them more than 79,000 civilians -- have died in Syria since its conflict erupted in March 2011. On Saturday, a ceasefire deal brokered by the United States and Russia came into effect in areas of Syria where the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group and Al-Qaeda's affiliate Al-Nusra Front are not deployed.