Eurasia

The focus may be on the midterms and the Russia-Ukraine war, but the Pentagon is quietly starting to build infrastructure in Syria for a long-haul fight with the Islamic State. Roughly 900 special forces are still working overtime to help local forces hunt ISIS remnants to keep the terrorist group …

U.S. special operations forces flying over the Arctic on Wednesday rolled a long-range missile out the back of a C-130 aircraft, dropping it by parachute before it blasted toward its target in the distance. The operation marked the first-ever demonstration in Europe of Rapid Dragon, an experimental program that uses …

An air strike late on Tuesday hit fuel tankers in Syrian territory shortly after they entered from Iraq, killing about 15 people, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The strike hit two of the eight tankers that entered from Al Qaim border crossing in western Iraq to Albu …

The chief of staff of the Iranian military, Mohammad Bagheri, called on Monday for greater military cooperation with Iraq. In a phone call to Iraq’s recently appointed defense minister, Thabet Muhammad Saeed Al Abbasi, Bagheri said military relations between the two countries should be boosted, and called for the armed …

The Financial Action Task Force is planning to ramp up oversight of crypto providers, sources say. Countries that fail to implement anti-money laundering guidelines for cryptocurrencies could be added to a “grey list” that includes Syria and Haiti under a global watchdog’s plans to tighten scrutiny of virtual assets.

A leading commander in Mali’s army has called on ethnic Tuaregs to fight jihadists in the north of the country in a WhatsApp audio message authenticated Monday by AFP. General El Hadj Ag Gamou, himself a Tuareg and a major figure in the Malian army’s fight against the Islamic State …

Iran’s Intelligence Ministry says it has arrested 26 people — all foreigners — in connection with last month’s attack on a Shi’ite pilgrimage site in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz that has been claimed by the Islamic State (IS) militant group. In a statement published on November 7, the …

Repatriations of foreign woman and children affiliated to Islamic State from detention camps in northeast Syria hit a record high in 2022, Kurdish authorities said on Tuesday. Thousands of foreigners including women and children had gone to Syria to live in IS’s so-called “caliphate” until 2019, when U.S.-backed Kurdish forces …

Approval of PSOs will further initiate the process of prototype development for each project. The Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that the Army has approved the project sanction orders (PSOs) of five projects under the Make II procurement scheme. The five projects include high-frequency man packed software-defined radios …

The equipment is part of additional security aid worth over $400m under USAI. The US Department of Defense (Dod) has announced additional security aid worth more than $400m to meet both urgent and long-term needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), the …