ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The Syrian Army is unearthing a mass grave consisting of at least 40 corpses, many of them women and children. They were butchered by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in the recently liberated ancient city of Palmyra. The grave was discovered by engineers and “popular defense forces” in the Masakin al-Jahizia neighborhood of the city, which lies only 500 meters from the ancient ruins, SANA reports . كشف مقبرة جماعية في تدمر تضم جثث أطفال ونساء https://t.co/jfnNsOYlWO #سوريا pic.twitter.com/dh6JqibdMi — @alalam_news (@alalam_news) April 1, 2016 So far the army has recovered 25 corpses. Among those killed by IS were three children and five females. As the excavation proceeded, 15 more corpses were unearthed – all of them women and children.   Initial examination of the bodies revealed that some of the victims had been beheaded while other had been brutally tortured before their deaths. The army continues to excavate the mass grave, fearing that more bodies may be found. Engineerin

Adama Simila wears a knife tied to his belt by a piece of rope, his only protection against the Boko Haram group that has repeatedly targeted his home town in remote northern Cameroon. While the threat once came from heavily armed, battle-hardened fighters crossing from neighbouring Nigeria, today Simila knows he is more likely to die at the hands of a teenage girl strapped with explosives. "We're here to look out for suicide bombers," said the 31-year-old, a member of a local civilian defence force in the town of Kerawa. After watching its influence spread during a six-year campaign that has killed about 20,000 people, Nigeria has now united with its neighbours to stamp out Boko Haram. A regional offensive last year drove the fighters from most of their traditional strongholds, denying them their dream of an Islamic emirate in northeastern Nigeria. A 8,700-strong regional force of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria is seeking to finish the job. Now,

A single mother of four, the escaped wife of the supreme commander of Islamic State has shared her story, claiming her husband was “a normal family man. How he could become Emir of the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world is a mystery.” The world exclusive interview with Sweden’s Expressen comes after years of shunning all contact with the media. Saja al-Dulaimi spoke to the reporter from a secret location somewhere on the Syrian-Lebanese border, where she ended up after several stints in detention, along with her four children. Al-Dulaimi told Expressen Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was a far cry from the image of the world’s most feared terrorist. And that while their marriage was not full of tenderness, her husband loved her children as his own and was a hero to them. Coming from an upper-class family - her father having served in Saddam Hussein’s guard - Al-Baghdadi came into al-Dulaimi’s life by way of an arranged marriage, after she was widowed and left with three

Islamic State has urged its radical followers in Germany to carry out Brussels-like attacks on the Chancellor’s office and an airport in one of Germany’s main cities. Despite the threats, German authorities have no plans to step up security measures. Graphics from one of jihadists’ recent messages addressed to Germans have been circulation in the German media, a day after the SITE intelligence group reported about a new video surfacing online. According to the group, it contained five pictures, all of which bore the logo of Islamic State (Is, formerly ISIS/ISIL) affiliate, Furat Media. The footage incites radicalized Germans to take inspiration from the deadly March 22 attacks in Brussels and strike Germany, to which they referred as the enemy and a battlefield. Employing catchy slogans, jihadists have urged attacks on the chancellery in Berlin, showing the building on fire along with its fighter and a tank nearby. Another image instructs to strike Bonn airport, one of the country’s

This April, the U.N. General Assembly will meet for a Special Session on the World Drug Problem. After decades of conformity with a hardline “war on drugs” formerly promoted by the United States, there is increasing dissensus within the international community about how to best address the costs and harms posed by drugs. For years, some European countries have quietly diverged from policies based on aggressive suppression of drug production and the criminalization of users. More recently, some key Latin American states have openly challenged the global counternarcotics regime and called for reforms. Yet the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states still cling to hardline drug policies, an approach that is also supported by Russia and many Asian countries. On March 7 in Doha, we met with police and military officials, NGO representatives, and academics from across the Middle East to discuss the rising drug challenges in the region and the increasingly contested global regime. We found

When I read a recent post by two of my colleagues suggesting that “French political culture” may be to blame for Sunni militancy around the world, Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s paraphrase of Voltaire came to mind: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” But that doesn’t prevent me from disagreeing with some of the premises of the piece by Will McCants and Chris Meserole, which confuses correlation with causation. There is a long list of cities targeted by jihadis: Paris was attacked twice last year, in January (17 people killed) and November (130 killed, 400 injured); Brussels was targeted three times, once at the Jewish Museum in May 2014 (4 dead), and this month by the two suicide bombings that caused 35 deaths; Madrid was struck in March 2004 in an al-Qaida-related train bombing that killed 192 people and injured over 1,800; and the July 2005 series of suicide bombings in London killed 52 and injured over 700. It’s not just a European problem,

The military campaign is gathering steam The U.S.-led coalition’s military campaign to “defeat” Da’esh (the Arabic acronym for ISIS) appears to be going better than is widely realized. The media has begun to pick up on this , but so far, the accounts do not seem to do it justice. The coalition has trained (or retrained) six Iraqi brigades, typically called the “Mosul Counterattack Brigades” or just the “Counterattack Brigades.” It was these formations that did most of the work at Ramadi and several are being shifted north to begin the Mosul operation. They are performing considerably better than other Iraqi brigades, a fact that is increasingly understood throughout the Iraqi government, boosting their prestige and the influence of the United States. Coalition air power is hitting Da’esh much harder than in the past, not because any additional assets have been allocated, but because the American military leadership has been able to convince the Iraqis to forego copious on-call fire su

China’s estrangement from North Korea continues to fester and deepen. Following protracted negotiations in the aftermath of Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test and subsequent satellite launch, the U.N. Security Council has imposed far more severe restrictions on North Korean trade, finance, and maritime activities. The resolution—which passed on March 2 and for which China was a key drafter—portends a much edgier and uncertain relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang. Though there are ambiguities and loopholes in the criteria and enforcement provisions governing the resolution (UNSCR 2270), the new sanctions have much sharper teeth than previous resolutions—and China has unequivocally pledged to uphold the letter and spirit of the council’s decision. Even before the resolution passed, South Korean and Chinese media reported that financial transactions in the city of Dandong (where most border trade takes place between China and North Korea) had been sharply curtailed. By mid-March, Beiji