ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Exclusive: Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal remains a top global security threat, as Islamic jihadists penetrate many of the nation’s political, educational and military institutions, says Jonathan Marshall. By Jonathan Marshall Dozens of world leaders are arriving in Washington, D. C. for the fourth Nuclear Security Summit, a biennial event dedicated to minimizing the threat of loose nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations. The summit couldn’t be more timely in view of recent revelations that militants linked to the Islamic State recruited two employees at a Belgian nuclear plant where an insider in 2014 drained thousands of gallons of lubricating oil, severely damaging its turbines. A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953. The summit also comes just days after North Korea released a video threatening a nuclear first strike against Washington — an unrealistic but unsettling boast from one of the world’s most repressive and impenet...

Although Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) lacks the ability to create a nuclear weapon, it is set to seize ready-made nuclear material, and is capable of making a ‘dirty bomb’, Jack Rice, former CIA officer and international lawyer has told RT. The threat of nuclear terrorism topped the agenda of the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. In the wake of last week's bombings in Brussels, the alarm has been raised over Islamic State terrorists planning an attack on a nuclear facility. There are also concerns IS could attempt to steal nuclear materials to create a so-called 'dirty bomb'. However, there are reports that terrorists have already seized almost 40 kilos of uranium compounds from the University of Mosul - one of the biggest scientific hubs in Iraq, which fell into IS hands two years ago. In 2014, Iraq's ambassador to the UN warned the organization about the incident. RT: The warning from Iraq came back in 2014, yet it seems to have been ignored for so long....

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. Engine...

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, ...