Russia-Egypt ties on the rise - Al Arabiya News. Maria Dubovikova ن sur Twitter : "Nice caricature by @sabirnazar1 on strategies against #terrorism. Russie.NEI.Visions - Les mutations du terrorisme au Caucase du Nord. Depuis l'été 2009, l'instabilité s'accroît dans l'est du Caucase du Nord. Alors que cette dégradation menace la sécurité de la Russie, le Kremlin ne parvient pas à lutter efficacement contre ce phénomène. Malgré une campagne anti-terroriste vigoureuse, les rebelles ont élargi leur base de soutien et commis des attentats à Moscou, dont le plus récent à l'aéroport de Domodedovo en janvier 2011. Le président Medvedev a tenté une nouvelle approche mêlant actions classiques de répression et mesures de développement économique. Cette démarche, cependant, se révèle peu convaincante : l'augmentation de la part du budget fédéral consacré à la région a totalement corrompu le système administratif, ce qui dissuade davantage les investisseurs que le risque terroriste.
La corruption endémique est devenue le principal facteur d'instabilité, car la colère de la population, ne trouvant pas de canaux d'expression politique, nourrit la croissance de réseaux islamiques clandestins. The Latest in Tracking Global Terrorism Data. A sniper in a control tower checks surrounding areas for al-Shabaab militants (Handout/Courtesy Reuters). I was fortunate to attend a presentation of recent terrorism research led by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), which is based at the University of Maryland.
START produces the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), an open-source database based on publicly-available information about terrorist events from 1970 through 2011 (with plans for annual updates) that includes more than 104,000 cases. (For their data collection and coding methodology, see here.) The GTD attempts to collect information on 120 attributes for each incident with 75 coded variables.
It is easy to use, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in having a data-driven understanding of trends in global terrorism over the past five decades. Top ten perpetrators of terrorist attacks in 2011: CFR seeks to foster civil and informed discussion of foreign policy issues. Country Reports on Terrorism 2011 Middle East and North Africa Overview. The Near East region remained one of the most active in terms of terrorist activity in 2011.
Many countries across the region experienced increased instability as a result of the events of the Arab Awakening, and some terrorists attempted to exploit this situation. This was of particular concern as it related to loose munitions from Libyan stocks and the threat of terrorists obtaining Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS), which could pose significant risks to regional security and civil aviation. Multiple terrorist organizations displayed the capability and intent to strike at targets across the region and to garner influence in states undergoing political transitions. Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula gained more physical territory in Yemen as the result of the political turmoil. Iran (see Chapter 3, State Sponsors of Terrorism ), continued to be the world's leading sponsor of terrorist activity. War crime? Syrian rebels execute POWs (GRAPHIC VIDEO)
A Set of Docs on Information Warfare | GLOBAL GAMES. Declarations of Cyberwar. Mouths went agape when New York Times reporter David Sanger wrote in June that anonymous sources within the United States government admitted that the United States and Israel were indeed the authors of the Stuxnet worm and related malware. Those two countries had long been suspected of creating the code that wrecked centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility. But never before had a government come so close to claiming responsibility for a cyberattack. The origins of the most sophisticated cyberattacks ever undertaken may now be clear, but exactly where such attacks fit in the universe of war and foreign policy—and what the international community would consider a proper response to them—is still the subject of debate.
A particularly important question is what sort of cyberattack is the equivalent of a traditional armed attack. The Tallinn Manual is a nonbinding yet authoritative restatement of the law of armed conflict as it relates to cyberwar. Yes, Sometimes Drones Are Actually Effective - Joshua Foust. In Yemen, drones can work if they're part of a larger strategy, but not if they are the strategy.
U.S. military handout image of a predator drone. (Reuters) The public debate about the American use of drones continues unabated, focused mostly on the morality of drone warfare. Sunday, for example, the New York Times ran one stories on the moral case for drones and one on the moral hazard they represent. These two angles to the debate -- whether drones impose an intolerable moral hazard, or whether they allow policymakers to counter terrorism while minimizing harm -- are important.
The morality of decisions that our leaders make is important, especially when there is a question of whether those decisions clash with our values. Apart from morality, the other side of the debate about drones is their effectiveness. If innocent people are being killed, then the drones program needs to be effective at reducing the terror threat.
The current U.S. policy in Yemen is not very strongly articulated. The Persistent Threat to Soft Targets. By Scott Stewart In the early hours of July 20, a gunman entered a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and opened fire on the audience that had gathered to watch the premiere of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. The gunman killed 12 people and injured 58 others. Though police are looking for potential accomplices, the attack appears to have been conducted by James Holmes, a lone gunman who, according to some police reports, may have had a delusional fixation on the Joker, a violent villain from an earlier Batman movie. On July 18, just two days before the Colorado attack, a man reportedly disguised in a wig and posing as an American tourist in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas, Bulgaria, detonated an improvised explosive device hidden in his backpack as a group of Israeli tourists boarded a bus bound for their hotel.
The blast killed five Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver and wounded dozens more. The Burgas attacker has not yet been identified. Other Targets. Militancy in Central Asia: More Than Religious Extremism. By Eugene Chausovsky Since 2010, Central Asia has become increasingly volatile, a trend many have attributed to a rise in militant Islamism. Militancy has indeed risen since 2010, but the notion that militant Islamists primarily are responsible for Central Asia's volatility is shortsighted because it ignores other political and economic dynamics at play in the region.
But if these dynamics, not jihadist designs, inspired much of the region's recent militant activity, the impending U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 could put Central Asia at greater risk for militant Islamism in the future. Combined with upcoming leadership changes in several Central Asian states, the withdrawal could complicate an already complex militant landscape in the region. Regional Militancy: Late 1990s and Early 2000s Central Asia was an important region for Islamist militancy in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Militancy Since 2010 In reality, these sweeps most likely were directed at ethnic Uzbeks. Blogs Foreign policies & defense. » Global Blitzkrieg: West’s Terror Battalions Eye Russia Next Alex Jones. Infowars.com August 31, 2012 – With the US openly supporting, arming , and literally “ cheering” for Al Qaeda in Syria, it should be no surprise that their support for Al Qaeda’s other operations is now slowly revealing itself. For decades, brutal terrorist campaigns have been carried out in Russia by Al Qaeda’s Caucasus Mountains faction, constituting the backbone of the so-called “Chechen rebels.” While there was a time the US feigned solidarity with the Russian government as it fought listed Al Qaeda affiliates carrying out attacks across the Caucasus Mountains in Russia’s southern region, as well as attacks across the country including in Moscow itself, research reveals that the United States has been covertly backing these terrorists all along.
Just as the US created, funded, armed, and directed Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan during the 1980′s, they are to this day are funding, arming, and directing Al Qaeda from Libya, to Syria, and in Russia. A d v e r t i s e m e n t. German intelligence: al-Qaeda all over Syria « Tiger Asia. German intelligence estimates that “around 90” terror attacks that “can be attributed to organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups” were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).
This was revealed by the German government in a response to a parliamentary question. In response to the same question, the German government admitted that it had received several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, on the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that the content of these reports was to remain classified “by reason of national interest”, Like many other Western governments, Germany expelled Syria’s ambassador in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, holding the Syrian government responsible for the violence. While traveling in the region of Homs, Hackensberger heard similar stories about the conduct of the rebels.
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