On September 29 the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Belarusian counterpart Alyaksandr Lukashenka attended the end of joint military exercises at the Obuz-Lesnovsky firing range in Belarus. The two stage "Zapad 2009" (West 2009) began on September 8, involving a total of 12,500 servicemen,... MORE

The test flights of Turkey's national attack helicopters, which will be produced jointly with Italy, were concluded on September 28, producing satisfactory results for Turkish defense officials.Following a decade of discussions on developing a combat helicopter program, Turkey awarded the bid to produce combat and... MORE

President Barack Obama's recent decision to scrap plans to deploy elements of ballistic missile defense (BMD) in Poland and the Czech Republic has renewed speculation in Baku over the future of the Gabala Radio Location Station in Azerbaijan. This powerful Soviet-era radar station is currently... MORE

The head of the administration of Dagestan's Khasavyurt district, Alimsultan Alkhamatov, was shot to death on Moscow on September 27. His driver-bodyguard, Nadzhmutdin Mitikov, was wounded in the attack, which took place in the southwestern part of the Russian capital. The head of the investigations... MORE

On September 26 the official publication of the Russian ministry of defense Krasnaya Zvezda announced the beginning of the second phase of Zapad 2009 (West 2009), a large-scale combined arms exercise conducted in Belarus. This phase of the exercise lasted from September 26-29 and involved... MORE

In the spring of 2004 the CIA began its most extensive targeted assassination campaign since the Vietnam War by launching dozens of unmanned aerial drones into the inaccessible tribal regions of Pakistan to hunt and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. Since then, more than six... MORE

Murat Karayilan is the acting commander of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan - PKK) and chairman of the executive council of the Kurdish Democratic Confederation  (Koma Civaken Kurdistan - KCK). Karayilan, whose surname means “black snake,” joined the PKK in 1979, just a... MORE

Few nations in the world are as strategically important but as little known as Djibouti, a small desert nation of half a million people in the heart of the Horn of Africa. A lingering insurgency by the ethnic-Afar Front pour la Restauration de l’Unité et... MORE

The latest move by the insurgency in the North Caucasus was not entirely unexpected. It has finally dawned on the rebel leadership of the Caucasus Emirate that waging a war against everyone is a hopeless proposition. Their perpetual hostility toward Sufi Islam resulted in pushing... MORE

In an extensive interview with the Russian ultra-nationalist newspaper Zavtra published on September 23, the Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said that he has picked Adam Delimkhanov, the State Duma deputy representing Chechnya, to be his successor. The choice is particularly noteworthy given that Delimkhanov has... MORE