The Kremlin continues to struggle with balancing the needs of modernizing the conventional Armed Forces, renewing the strategic nuclear deterrent, and also forming and supporting the imprecisely defined high-technology demands of the Aerospace Defense Forces, while depending on a defense industry struggling to escape the... MORE

Continued wrangling between Dushanbe and Moscow over the renewal of basing rights for the 201st Military Base headquartered in Tajikistan’s capital has eclipsed Russia’s wider basing strategy in Central Asia and the extent to which Tajikistan’s security depends upon Moscow’s continued military and security presence... MORE

For over a year, India has been struggling to recuperate from the November 2008 terrorist attacks on the commercial capital Mumbai. In February 2010, the lull was interrupted by a bomb blast masterminded and executed by Ahmed Zarar Siddibaba, a top ranking Indian Mujahideen (IM)... MORE

After Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) leader Guillermo León Sáenz Vargas (a.k.a Alfonso Cano) was killed in a bombing raid in Cauca Department, southwest Colombia on November 4, 2011, the seven-member FARC secretariat needed only 11 days to... MORE

On July 24, Tajikistan's government launched an operation against an illegal armed group. The special operation was initiated in reaction to the incident on July 21 when regional security chief General Abdullo Nazarov was pulled from his car, allegedly by rebel fighters, and stabbed to... MORE

NEW AQ LEADER IN PAKISTAN TAKES COMMAND AS ATTACKS ON NATO CONVOYS CONTINUE On July 18, 2012, a bomb exploded in a fuel tanker after which insurgents opened fire on a convoy NATO supply trucks in Samangan, northern Afghanistan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEV-FMBBUPg). In total, 22 vehicles loaded... MORE

Having been tipped off about the whereabouts of several members of the armed resistance in Dagestan, the republican security services identified their location on July 21. Special units of the FSB (Federal Security Service) and the Interior Ministry blocked the suspected rebels in a four-story,... MORE

Twenty years ago, on July 21, 1992, the Russian 14th Army’s intervention in the Transnistria conflict forced Moldova to accept the deployment of Russian “peacekeeping” units. Six days later (July 28), the first of those units was air-lifted from Russia’s interior to Moldova, on both... MORE

On July 24, Tajikistan’s government launched a military operation against an illegal armed group led by border-police commander Tolib Ayombekov, a former Islamist rebel whom authorities have accused of drug smuggling and brutal crimes. Tajikistani helicopter gunships involved in the operation strafed Khorog, the capital... MORE

The performance of the Islamist parties was particularly poor in the recent Libyan elections. The National Forces Alliance (NFA), led by former interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, won the elections, securing 39 out of the 80 seats open for candidates representing political parties. The Hizb... MORE