A collision between a Hellenic Navy minesweeper and a Portuguese-flagged container ship outside the Port of Piraeus on 27 October resulted in two of the warship’s complement being hospitalised and the badly damaged vessel evacuated of all 27 crew before being towed back to base.  The Greek Navy’s minesweeper HS   Kallisto  being towed back to the naval base after colliding with the Portuguese-flagged cargo ship   Maersk Launceston  outside the Port of Piraeus in Athens on 27 October.   (Sotiris Dimitropoul...

The use of 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, has added a new element to firearms technology. For manufacturers it has opened up new development and production processes, while for hobbyists, activists and criminals more affordable ‘desktop’ 3D printers offer potentially unregulated access to firearms.  Craft-produced weapons have a long history of use for nefarious purposes and have characteristics that make them well suited to criminal activities. These types of firearms are unregistered on state weapon databases, are relatively easy t...

November 2020 is the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Agreement (known formally as the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina). Although the peace accord ended the 1992–95 Bosnian War, political and socioeconomic challenges in Bosnia remain and are the legacy of the Dayton Agreement’s establishment of a federal system that produced reform and enabled a nationalist discourse to dominate.  Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Šefik Džaferović (2nd from left) and members of the Presidency of...

Malian soldiers, led by a group of five colonels, forced President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta to step down in a bloodless coup on 18 August. His removal followed weeks of mass street protests involving tens of thousands of Malians calling for his resignation. A turning point in the protests occurred on 10 July when protesters ransacked and set fire to government buildings and the security forces responded with live fire, killing at least 11 people.  The protests were led by a new opposition coalition composed of civil society organisations, reli...

The UN arms embargo on Iran has expired as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement covering Iran’s nuclear programme that was signed in 2015.  The agreement set an expiry for the arms embargo of 18 October 2020, five years after the adoption of the agreement. Other controls, such as travel and financial transaction restrictions, have also been automatically lifted as part of the agreement.  A UN arms embargo on Iran has been lifted following the expiration of a time limit within the JCPOA agreement. (Mohsen Shandiz/Co...

A 4 September White House agreement between Kosovo and Serbia may improve political dialogue and economic co-operation, but has also attracted criticism for perceived concessions and an overly broad focus that includes Middle East affairs and Chinese 5G technology. The road to the agreement began in October 2019, when US President Donald Trump assigned then-Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations.  Diplomatic progress on a new agreement was made in January and February 2020 and a s...

NATO has begun its latest round of policing of Bulgarian airspace, with six Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon combat aircraft of the US Air Force (USAF) flying out of Graf Ignatievo Air Base in the country.  A US Air Force F-16 from the 555th Fighter Squadron seen departing Graf Ignatievo Air Base during recent exercises in Bulgaria, ahead of the relaunch of NATO’s air policing mission in the country. (NATO Allied Air Command/Ericka Woolever)  The recommencement of air patrols on 28 September is part of NATO’s wider enhanced presence in Eu...

Mass protests began in cities across Belarus after the opposition rejected the allegedly rigged results of the presidential election on 9 August. According to the Belarusian Central Election Commission’s final count on 14 August, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenka, in power since 1994, received 80.1% of the vote, while the alternative candidate, the political novice Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, received 10.1%.  Tsikhanouskaya refused to accept the result, citing the results of independent exit polls allegedly giving her between 60% and 70...

Reports of the death of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been greatly exaggerated. Two high-profile tours of Europe by China’s top diplomats in a few days highlighted Beijing’s continued desire to build influence through investment, and in particular the BRI. Politburo member Yang Jiechi visited Greece and Spain on 3–5 September and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi spent a week visiting France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway from 25 August.  In Greece, Yang pledged alongside Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis t...

The long-standing military confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has been a cause of conflict between the two countries since the breakup of the Soviet Union, and has become one of the former Soviet Union’s longest-running ‘frozen conflicts’. A major escalation between the two sides took place in April 2016 in Nagorno-Karabakh, and resulted in the deaths of between 100 and 200 combatants. Known as the Four-Day War, the battle ended in a stalemate. Clashes in 2018 between Armenia and Azerb...

Five Eyes nations’ electronic intelligence (ELINT) operators use a previously little-known system, called ELINT notations (ELNOTs), to identify the unique emissions from radar and other non-communications systems, according to a series of recent pu...

The United States web-based conspiracy theory network QAnon has come to the forefront of the US national conversation. At least 15 Republican Congressional candidates have embraced QAnon theories, according to US media watchdog Media Matters for America, and by 20 August President Donald Trump had amplified at least 216 tweets from accounts linked to QAnon, although he has not publicly declared his support for the group. Preliminary results from a Facebook investigation in early August showed that there were thousands of QAnon-linked groups a...

A zoonotic virus that emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 has now spread to almost every country in the world. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19) pandemic had, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), caused 23 million cases of infection at the time of writing, resulting in approximately 800,000 deaths by 24 August 2020. The virus has also caused substantial global economic disruption that could yet have a prolonged effect on global health and economic security.  In June and July 2020, co...

China now has the largest navy in the world, an expansion driven by Beijing’s aspirations to “return” the country to a position of strength and leadership on the world stage, the US Department of Defense (DoD) said in its 2020 report on military and security developments involving China.  Published on 1 September the report, often referred to as the ‘China Military Power Report’, states that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now has “a battle force of approximately 350 platforms, including major surface combatants, submarines, ocean-g...

The election of right-wing outsider Jair Bolsonaro as Brazilian president in October 2018 was explained by voters’ anger over economic recession, corruption, and deteriorating public security. Bolsonaro’s popularity rating remained at around 50% in his first year but declined sharply in early 2020 before rebounding to 37% in July. Currently not associated with any political party, Bolsonaro lacks a solid base in Congress, weakening his administration.  Governability was initially helped by leaders of Congress sharing common ground with the g...

The Turkish armed forces’ ‘Claw Eagle’ and ‘Claw Tiger’ operations began in June 2020 and are the culmination of a gradual intensification of Turkish air activity against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê: ‎PKK) targets in the area. This is the latest round in the long-running conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK, with approximately 40,000 people having died since the start of the PKK insurgency in 1984, according to a 20 July 2016 report by the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group (ICG). A 2...

In July 2020, a series of videos was released on social media in Mexico, depicting groups of heavily armed men claiming to belong to the so-called ‘Elite Group’ (Grupo Élite) of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación: CJNG). The first was released on 17 July, a day after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador visited the state of Jalisco, the home turf of the CJNG.  Founded in 2009, the CJNG is the most powerful and dangerous cartel in Mexico after the splintering of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel in 2008....

As he toured Central and Eastern Europe on a week-long trip in August 2020, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded a triumphant note. “The tide is turning, there is no doubt about that, against untrusted networks and toward the values of free nations,” he said in Prague on 12 August, touting the success of Washington’s years-long campaign against Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE.  During the Munich Security Conference in February 2020, Pompeo referred to the companies as “Trojan horses for Chinese intelligence”....

The 2nd Kommandokräfte (Commando Forces) Company of Germany’s Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) special forces command was disbanded on 1 August owing to increasing far-right sentiments among its personnel. In May 2020, the arrest of a sergeant major in the Germany Army (Bundeswehr) attached to the KSK underlined the risk of extremist employees serving in Germany’s military and its security and intelligence services. As of June 2020, the Bundeswehr had recorded approximately 600 cases of personnel harbouring links to far-right extremism and other...

Since its formation in 2009, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps - Intelligence Organisation (IRGC-IO) has gained increasing dominance over the domestic security sphere in Iran. Under the direct control of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it has targeted officials, journalists, lawyers, activists, and dual nationals, severely undermining the policies and status of successive elected governments. In doing so, it has encroached upon, and in many respects sidelined, the government’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).  The creation of the...