ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

VIDEO: Syria Captures Turkish Aid Cargo Heading to Daesh in IraqSyrian intelligence forces say that they have captured a haul of medical supplies near Aleppo that came from Turkey and was destined for Daesh terrorists in the Iraqi city of Mosul. In a video released by Russia's RT television network on Friday, Hussein al-Omar, a colonel in Syria’s Military Intelligence Directorate, said that the lorry, loaded with some 25 tons of medicine and hospital supplies, including a number of dialysis machines, had entered Syria from Turkey’s Bab al-Hawa international border crossing, located on Syria's northwestern border with Turkey. He added that the lorry was planned to reach Mosul, Daesh's de facto capital in Iraq, through the towns of Afrin, A'zaz, and Manbij in Aleppo province. According to Omar, the lorry, loaded in Turkey, bore a Syrian number plate and was driven by two militants from al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front terrorist group, who had received the cargo in the Bab a

The Takfiri Daesh terrorist group is preventing civilians from leaving the embattled western Iraqi city of Fallujah, with its snipers targeting the humanitarian corridors established by Iraqi security forces. Colonel Steve Warren, A US spokesman for the so-called anti-Daesh forces said on Friday that shooters from the extremist network are stopping dwellers of Fallujah, located roughly 69 kilometers (43 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad, from escaping the city amid acute shortage of basic commodities and medicine. “We know that the Iraqis have attempted on several occasions to open up humanitarian corridors to allow some of those civilians to come out,” Warren said in a video call from Baghdad. “Those have met with generally not much success. ISIL (Daesh) has done things like set up snipers to cover down on those corridors, to kill people as they’re trying to get out. So that has really discouraged their use,” he added. The US-led alliance has been mounting air raids against so-call

More than 100 al-Nusra Front militants have crossed turkey border and arrived in the Northern Province of Aleppo to join their comrades in the fight against the Syrian people, local sources said on Thursday. According to the residents of Kafar Hamra village in Aleppo, the terrorists entered the region through the bordering areas with Turkey. Also, informed sources said yesterday that tens of other terrorists crossed the Turkish border with Syria's Northern province of Aleppo to join their al-Nusra Front comrades. "A 70-member-group of terrorists, trained and supplied in Turkey, have entered Anadan in the territories of Northern Aleppo in groups to join the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front," Syria's Peace Coordination Center in Hmeimim said, adding, "The fresh terrorists have brought with themselves three vehicles loaded with ammunition and weapons." "Al-Nusra Front's terrorists' artillery units continued to shell two neighborhoods of Sheikh Ma

Syrian Army Repels Terrorists’ Attacks in Northwestern of Hama City The Syrian forces have thwarted the terrorists’ attacks on the army military posts in the direction of Khirbet al-Naqous village, some 90 km northwest of Hama city, a military source told Syrian Arab News Agency. The source added that a number of the terrorists were killed and a car loaded with ammunition and weapons and 3 vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns belonging to them were destroyed during the clashes. On Wednesday, local sources confirmed that around 100 terrorists from Jabaht al-Nusra crossed the Turkish border into Kafar Hamra village in northern Aleppo, along with a number of trucks that were transporting handmade ammunition with chlorine gas-producing toxic substances. VIDEO

The Syrian army forces backed by their allies have managed to cut off the terrorists' route to al-Sha'er oil and gas field in the Central province of Homs. The Syrian army forces launched a surprise attack on ISIS terrorists in the Northeastern part of Homs province and cut off their path linking the strategic town of Aqirabat in the Eastern parts of Hama to al-Shae'r oil field. Also, the army troops and popular forces made further advances in the Southeastern parts of al-Sha'er paving the ground for retaking the oil field. Aqirabat is the strategic stronghold of terrorists in Eastern Hama and hosts a large number of ISIL leaders' families. In a relevant development in the region, the Syrian army forces and their allies seized back control over several strategic points, including a strategic hilltop, in Homs following heavy clashes with ISIS terrorists. The Syrian army troops and National Defense Forces (NDF) took full control over Tal Sawwan in Homs province which

Most conflicts in the world today are non-traditional. The technologically-driven forces of “creative destruction,” the nimbleness of the small, and the tendency of great powers to fight the next war with the mindset of the last one have radically changed the nature of modern warfare. So says Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, the founder of the New England Complex Systems Institute. He has been a pioneer in studying the dynamics of complex systems in international development, military conflict and ethnic violence. In this week’s podcast he talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman about how even the task of defining the objective of war has to be reevaluated today. He explains how complex human biological systems can serve as models for understanding the new paradigm of warfare. The old paradigm — opposing armies lined up across clearly defined boundaries — has largely been superseded in a world where complex interactions are often played out among asymmetric antagonists. As Bar-Yam puts it, “

The United States and the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda are sworn enemies. But along one battlefront in Yemen's civil war, they're fighting on the same side. The ancient city of Taiz is at the heart of Yemen's civil war, and despite efforts to maintain a ceasefire elsewhere in the country, fighting goes on in and around Taiz. The city is surrounded by an armed insurgent group known as the Houthis, who, with support from military strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, took control of much of Yemen in 2015. Defending Taiz from the Houthi fighters are forces of the US-supported, Saudi-led coalition that includes ground troops from the United Arab Emirates and fighters loyal to Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi (the Yemeni president who fled the country ahead of the Houthi tide). But there are also local militiamen and fighters from the Southern Movement — a secessionist group — and in recent months, fighters from Ansar al-Sharia, better known outside Yemen as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Each

The fighting had raged for three days. It wasn’t unusual for the city to come under attack, but it rarely lasted this long. This time, they were under siege. Rebel fighters on the city’s edge cut off water and surrounded most of the area. Still, Rana and her family never thought for a second the insurgents would break through. When the sound of gunfire outside finally quieted, the family expected things to go back to normal. It came as a shock when the crackling speakers of the mosque echoed in the streets outside. “We heard them declaring victory. It came out of nowhere,” Rana says. “At that point, we knew that the army had gone and that Nusra was here.” A little more than a year since Jabhat al-Nusra captured the Syrian city of Idlib, the group still retains control of the city and much of the surrounding area. An offshoot of al-Qaeda, its ideology is largely indistinguishable from that of the so-called Islamic State. And yet while ISIS has been significantly weakened by its enem