Today at 10AM a group of about forty Iraqi immigrants belonging to the Yezidi religious minority protested in front of the United Nations building in Manhattan.  Among them was my friend Dakheel who I worked with when he was my interpreter in Iraq back in 2009.  At the time, I remember hanging around the camp […]

There aren’t many books that you know are going to be extraordinary even before you open them. “Arc of the Gurkha” is one of those.

I am sending this message out to every contact I have in the media and in journalism to inform you that on Friday (August 22nd) a group of the Iraqi Yezidi minority group will be staging a protest in front of the United Nations building in New York City. The protest is in reaction to […]

US Special Forces has some fairly good Unconventional Warfare doctrine to work from as a base.  The concept of using a small 12-man team to infiltrate deep behind enemy lines, train guerrilla forces, and launch of unconventional campaign is a sound one, but one that is only now beginning to be updated, an endeavor which […]

A few years ago I had a New Jersey cop who was deployed as a Civil Affairs soldier tell me about how police officers approach counter-insurgency differently than guys who are career soldiers.  While soldiers have a propensity towards going straight towards an escalation of force, police officers are used to walking around bad neighborhoods […]

I knew something was up on July 9th when my sister texted me to let me know that a detective from Arizona called her looking for me. Why they would call her I have no idea, I’m not exactly hard to find as my email address is all over the internet. Next, SOFREP received an e-mail from […]

With the Islamic State (formerly ISIS or ISIL) sweeping across Northern Iraq, leaving a trail of destruction and murder in their path, they are now engaged in a pitched battle for the city of Sinjar.  The North Western city of Sinjar is the home of the Yezidi religious minority group which has suffered under various […]

In 2009 I was a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant deployed to Tal Afar, Iraq.  Being a Weapons Sergeant of course, I liked all the toys.  We got to play with all manner of pistols, sub-machine guns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, machine guns, mortar systems, and more.  Being overseas with 24/7 access to connex containers filled […]

One of the main suspects behind the assault on the US Temporary Mission Facility and CIA Annex in 2012, which left four Americans dead and several others seriously injured, was captured during a daylight raid on June 15th. Carried out by Delta Force operators and a contingent from the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, Ahmed Abu […]

The following are a series of seven reforms proposed to eliminate corruption in Indian’s intelligence services, harmonize operations, and establish a system that is self-correcting and self-learning. 1. Establish an Intelligence Fusion Cell that works under the Prime Minister’s Office. One of the major problems in India’s intelligence services is harmonizing internal and external intelligence […]

Currently at least one Intelligence Bureau officer is standing trial for extra-judicial killings. The charge is that he colluded with local police officers to stage a “terrorist encounter” as an excuse to execute four Muslim men in Gujarat in 2004. Between 2002 and 2006 it is alleged that the same group executed up to 20 […]

If the purpose of an intelligence service is to inform their nation’s leaders and prevent them from being surprised, then the Sino-Indian war of 1962 was perhaps India’s worst intelligence failure. While Indian military leaders had assumed that Chinese forces would come from the north if they decided to invade what is now Arunachal Pradesh, […]