ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Russian woman Ekaterina Bikovtsova who has moved to Brussels with her husband and young daughter shared her experience of living in the heart of the European Union, Brussels. One of the most striking things that Bikovtsova has seen in Brussels is that the people are extremely tolerant. “People live a quiet peaceful life and are not used to shocks such as the terror attack that occurred in Brussels.” Before the attacks police were already on high alert and were rounding up illegal immigrants and those people who had expired visas. This was because Paris had been rocked by brutal terror attacks just a month earlier. © AFP 2016/ BENOIT DOPPAGNE / BELGA Brussels Airport to Partially Reopen on Sunday After Deadly Terror Attacks But despite the increased police presence in Brussels, the terror attacks were not stopped and the prime reason for that is that the attackers weren’t immigrants, but were born and raised in Brussels. Bikovtsova believes that this tolerance will be the downfall o...

The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department for Asian countries said that Daesh militant group is expanding in Afghanistan and wishes to use the country as a “springboard for a wider expansion”. Daesh militant group is expanding in Afghanistan and wishes to use the country as a “springboard for a wider expansion,” the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department for Asian countries said. “[Daesh] exists [in Afghanistan]. It flourishes and expands. It just acts quietly and gather strength for decisive actions,” Zamir Kabulov, who is also the Russian presidential envoy for Afghanistan, told the Izvestiya newspaper in an interview released Wednesday. According to the official, Daesh has less militants than Taliban, but it does not spend its resources on fighting Afghan and US servicemen in the country. “They have other aims. They need Afghanistan as a springboard for a wider expansion,” Kabulov explained. Afghanistan is experiencing political, social and security instabilit...

To many, the anecdote described below will sound far-fetched, and logical minds may suspect that the Vietnam vet in the story created the “incident” himself. But as those who lived through that period may remember, representatives of the covert side of government did far worse — and often. Infiltration, intimidation, framing, and more were all part of the arsenal against the “disloyal.” No method was deemed too severe. Today, we may find ourselves in a comparable period. Incidents covered by WhoWhatWhysuch as the fiery death of journalist Michael Hastings and the open statements that Edward Snowden should be assassinated remind us to take nothing for granted. (To see our stories on these threats, please go here here , here, here, here, and here.) The essay below is by the father of “Deep Politics” analysis, Peter Dale Scott . It reminds us that, too often, it is not the wild-sounding that is the fiction — but the constant assurances that everything is a-ok, that our soci...

The Paris and Brussels attacks are blowback from what Islamic State terrorists see as betrayal by Western benefactors who thought using jihadists could bring “regime change” in Syria, says Pakistani analyst Nauman Sadiq. By Nauman Sadiq France under President Nicolas Sarkozy played a lead role in fomenting the insurgency against the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011, and Sarkozy’s successor, Francois Hollande, has been on the forefront of supporting the Sunni militants in Syria against the Alawite-Shi’a regime of Bashar al-Assad. This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the Sunni jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a-Iranian axis worked well – at least for the Western powers and the Sunni jihadists – up to August 2014, when Obama Administration made an about-face on its previous “regime change” policy in Syria and started conducting air strikes against one group of Sunni jihadists battling against the Assad regime, the Islamic State. Journalist James ...

Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) militants have reportedly used poisonous gas in an attack on a Syrian military airbase located in Deir Ez-zor, the largest city in the eastern part of the country, RIA Novosti cited a military source as saying. “The Daesh [derogatory Arabic name for IS] militants attacked the military airfield in Deir Ez-zor with shells containing a poisonous chemical substance. The defenders of the airbase have reported that a number of soldiers were choking,” the source said. This latest report adds weight to previous evidence implicating IS in using various forms of poisonous gas to attack targets. Kurdish deputies in the Turkish parliament have previously accused Turkey of supplying Islamic State and other jihadist groups inside Syria with chemical weapons to fight the Syrian government. In an interview with RT, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia said that Turkey had provided a clear transit route for the chemical weapons that were deployed against th...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and capitalist corporations that support the loosening of foreign employment are at the bottom ladder of evolving into yet another cultural wipeout. Indeed, one only needs to visit major cities in Europe including Brussels and Paris to know that yesteryear seems like a distant dream. After all, issues related to crime, the breakdown of the social fabric in certain parts of these cities, the specter of terrorism, issues related to narcotics, and other important negative factors – all point to deterioration and increasingly divided areas. In other words, exclusive zones are in a short-distance of “no-go areas.” Therefore, it could well be that certain mega-capitalist corporations and sectors, along with the current leader of Japan, are on the crest of following an uncertain cultural and ethnic future based on the European disease that is dividing many nations. If Japan needs to follow the multi-ethnic reality of certain European nations like Belgium, ...

Like many conflicts, it shows the weakness of the current international system that obsesses over arbitrary borders that date back a hundred years. Over the weekend, fighting erupted in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. As many as 30 soldiers were killed on both sides and there were also civilian casualties. An Azerbaijani helicopter was reported to have been shot down and reports noted the involvement of heavy artillery and tanks in the battle over a contested region that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but functions as an autonomous Armenian-run self-declared republic. This is an incredibly complex situation that threatens to draw in Turkey and Russia, as well as other regional powers, such as Israel and Iran, all of whom have relations and interests in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and long and convoluted histories with both. For some, the conflict has echoes of a Muslim-Christian confrontation, but others will see echoe...