ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Jaysh al-Islam leader, Issam Buydani during a battle against the Syrian Arab Army, Illustrative image On March 23, Jaysh al-Islam agreed to release more than 3,500 captives from its prisons in the Duma district in the northern part of the Eastern Ghouta region following successful negotiations with the Damascus government, according to several Syrian pro-government sources. Under the same agreement, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) will evacuate more than 3,000 injured and sick civilians from the Duma district. Jaysh al-Islam has captured thousands of SAA soldiers and civilians, including entire families, since late 2011. The armed group imprisoned these soldiers and civilians in a large concentration camp in the Duma district, that’s known as the “al-Tuba prison”. Hundreds of families, mainly from minority groups, were captured by Jaysh al-Islam during a single attack on the civilian area of Adra southeast of Duma on December 11, 2013. This agreement will likely be followed by...

On March 22, the Yemeni Missile Forces, that’s loyal to the Houthis, announced in an official statement that it had tasted a new short range “ballistic missile” named Bader-1. According to the statement, a key oil facility of the Saudi Aramco oil company in the southern province of Najran was successfully targeted with the new “ballistic missile” during the test. The Yemeni Missile Forces said that Bader-1 is a solid fuel “ballistic missile” with a speed of up to 4,5 Mach and high accuracy. However, the projectile’s images suggest that it is a solid fuel artillery rocket, not a “ballistic” missile. The Badr-1 is likely a copy of the Iranian Fajr-3 artillery rocket, as both rockets appear to have similar diameter and length. Furthermore, the range of the Fajr-3 is over 43km. This is more than enough to hit Najran province form the Houthis-held areas in northern Yemen. Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco denied in an official statement that any of its facilities had been hit by the Houthis. It ...

Click to see the full-size image On March 21, the Iraqi Army received the last batch of Russian-made Pantsir-S1 short to medium range air defense systems, which consisted of fourteen systems, according to several Iraqi sources. The Iraqi Army now has 48 Pantsir-S1 systems in active service. Preliminary agreements to sell $4.2 US billion of Russian weapons to Iraq, including 48 Pantsir-S1 systems, were signed during then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s state visit to Moscow in October 2012. The Iraqi Army’s variety of the Pantsir-S1 system is equipped with the advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) target acquisition radar, which can detect and track targets from 40km (wider ranges is reported, probably under ideal conditions), with a higher jamming resistance. The Pantsir-S1 is armed with two dual 2A38M 30 mm autocannon guns along with up to twelve radio-command-guided 57E6 surface-to-air missiles with the operational range of 20 km and the flight altitude of ...

After welcoming Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House for a series of meetings earlier this week (which provoked a mini-scandal when the  New York Times  reported that there were no women in the room) the  Associated Press  and Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration has officially approved a $1 billion arms sale to the Kingdom – complete with 6,700 Raytheon anti-tank missiles worth $670 million. The approval came just hours after former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered his farewell remarks. Today’s deal should not come as a surprise: during his trip to the Kingdom last year, President Trump touted business deals that he claimed to help facilitate – including the largest US arms-sale agreement ever,  worth some $350 billion . Furthermore, over the past year Trump has repeatedly voiced his desire to consummate major arms deals with any willing buyer of US equipment, even Ukraine recently, a move which is sure to provoke esc...

By the Turkish Army, click to see the full-size image On March 21, the Turkish Army and its proxies from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) captured the historical Christian town of Barad and the village of Kimar south of the city of Afrin, according to sources linked to the FSA. The sources said that the Turkish Army artillery had backed the attack on the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Barad and had shelled several positions of the SAA and the YPG in the town and south of it. However, the Turkish Air Force (TAF) was not involved in the offensive. In a related development, local residents of the Afrin area handed over 21 fighters of the YPG to the Turkish Army, according to a report of the Turkish Anadolu Agency. Since  capturing Afrin city on March 18 , the Turkish Army and its proxies have been conducting security operations in the newly captured area in order to eliminate any remaining YPG fighters. By the Turkish Army, click to se...

Over the last week ISIS fighters had managed to capture the neighborhood of al-Asali and 90% of al-Madaniyah neighborhood in the al-Qadam district south of the Syrian capital of Damascu, according to an infographic released by the ISIS-linked news agency Amaq on March 21. Click to see the full-size image Amaq also claimed that ISIS fighters had killed 173 soldeirs of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and had destroyed 2 battle tanks, a rocket launcher, a bulldozer and a BMP-1 armored vehicle during their advance in al-Qadam district . Syrian pro-government sources have acknowledged that the SAA and the Syrian Military Intelligence lost around 100 fighters along with a battle tank and a BMP-1 armored vehicle in the al-Qadam district. The high casualties of the SAA in al-Qadam were a result of the bad timing and terms of the evacuation agreement with opposition fighters in the district, according to pro-government sources. Currently, the SAA is deploying more units to its positions...

On March 21, a suicide bomber blew himself up near Kabul University in the Afghan capital of Kabu, according to the Chinese Xinhua News Agency. The media outlet said that the bomber had been trying to target a celebration which had been held in a Shiite Shrine near the university. “A terrorist tied explosive device in his body obviously was going to target Sakhi Shrine where thousands of people were gathered to celebrate Nawroz or the solar new year of 1397,” a unnamed Afghan official told Xinhua News Agency. According to the Afghan TOLO TV, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health revealed that 29 people had been killed and 52 others were injured in a suicide attack in Kabul. The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq confirmed that the terrorist organization had been behind the suicide attack. Amaq claimed that over 100 Shiite civilians had been killed and injured in the attack. Click to see the full-size image This was the third and most brutal attack, which hit the Afghan capi...

Originally appeared at Zero Hedge In yet another sign of what Russia expert Stephen Cohen has described as the escalating  New Cold War , non-NATO aligned Sweden is initiating detailed plans to  ready itself for total societal mobilization in response to military attack from a major external power.  As Aaron Mehta points out in his exclusive for  Defense News  entitled  Fortress Sweden: Inside the plan to mobilize Swedish society against Russia , that major external power is none other than Russia,  whose heavily militarized port of Kaliningrad lies a little over 220 miles across the ocean from Sweden. During past Cold War decades, Sweden (along with other non-NATO Nordic country Finland) was known for keeping painstakingly detailed survival readiness plans in case of a great power invasion, down to “how parking garages were designed so you could use them as shelters” according to Magnus Nordenman of the Atlantic Council. But the program was left ...