thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• President Obama has said there is a possibility that a bomb brought down the Russian passenger jet in Egypt. Meanwhile, Britain has halted flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh as a precaution. 
  
• What does it mean for the war on terror if this was terrorism? What does it mean for Putin?
• A state of emergency has been declared in the Maldives after a reported assassination attempt on the president. The vice president, accused of orchestrating the attempt, has been impeached. 
• A wave of post-election killings continues in Burundi.
• Burundians have until the 7th to turn in their firearms, a strategy for ending the violence that experts cast doubt on.
• Retaliatory violence has kept its grip on the Central African Republic. 
• Deutsche Welle interviews Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari.
• The US readies an outpost in Cameroon for the mission to help in the fight against Boko Haram.
• Fear and violence still plague a northern Nigerian town from which Boko Haram was ousted a year ago.
• The UN casts doubt on a unity government in South Sudan, saying the factions are arming themselves and failing to keep to the ceasefire.
• 13 UN contractors kidnapped in South Sudan have been freed. 
• The White House says that a Middle East peace deal just cannot be accomplished in Obama’s remaining time in office. 
• Meet Mohammed Sabaneh, a 36-year-old Palestinian cartoonist whom Israelis are accusing of inciting violence.
• Turkey arrested 20 people with alleged ties to the Islamic State. 
• Sympathies with the Islamic State are on the rise in the Jordanian city of Maan.
• Saudi Arabia continues to search for victory in Yemen.
• Russian airstrikes are reportedly targeting hospitals in opposition-controlled areas. 
• Russia has sent anti-aircraft missile systems to Syria to support its air campaign.
• Senior officers with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have been killed in Syria.
• Amnesty International says the Syrian regime is profiting from forced disappearances, making money on a black market trade of information on missing people.
• New US efforts to equip ground forces in Syria exist in name only.
• A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has indicated that evidence exists that mustard gas was used during fighting between Syrian insurgent groups in the town of Marea in August.
• Two reporters with the Syrian activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently were murdered by the Islamic State.
• Iran’s tensions with Saudi Arabia prove a challenge in peace talks.
• Ahmad Chalabi has died at 71. Chalabi played an influential role in pushing the US to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein in 2003. Aram Roston details his efforts for BuzzFeed. Frontline correspondent Martin Smith chronicles his experiences interviewing Chalabi at various points since the invasion. And here is an older New Yorker piece profiling Chalabi by the excellent Jane Mayer. 
• The 36th anniversary of the siege of the American embassy in Iran highlights the tricky political game some Iranian leaders have to play between the hardliners and the new nuclear deal. 
• Bahrain has revoked the citizenship of five people convicted on terrorism charges and on charges of spying for Iran.
• Afghan refugees living in Iran are being sent to fight in Syria. 
• MSF has released its internal report into the targeting of its Kunduz hospital by US airstrikes, giving the events in graphic detail and reiterating their assertion that no Taliban fighters were using the facility as a base.  
• At the same time as the strikes that targeted the MSF hospital in Kunduz, US strikes also hit a warehouse and a mansion in the area. Though no one was killed in those strikes, the lack of militants nearby raises questions about the quality of intelligence provided by the Afghan security forces.
• The Taliban make gains in the northern provinces.
• The bustle of daily life is shutting down in Kabul as violence and worry grows. 
• A breakaway Taliban faction has appointed a new supreme leader. 
• Afghanistan is about to acquire four attack helicopters from India, a buy that Pakistan is unlikely to be happy about.
• The watchdog group overseeing Afghan reconstruction says the Pentagon spent $43 million on a gas station that cost $500,000 to build.
• Security is tight in Kashmir ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Modi.
• Fear grows as militants target intellectuals in Bangladesh.
• For those who’ve lived on Ukraine’s front lines, “conflict is still a fact of life.”
• The EU says Russia is not fully abiding by the Minsk deal. 
• Ukraine says it will halt the withdrawal of light weaponry from the front lines if rebels do not stop violating the ceasefire agreement.
• Russia sentenced a Daghestani man to 17 years in a penal colony for belonging to the Islamic State – but did he?
• NATO is putting on a huge show of military strength, sending a signal to Russia. 
• Refugees in Europe face a new crisis: winter.
• A tragic nightclub fire in Romania has become a turning point, triggering massive and ongoing anti-corruption protests that have led to the resignation of Prime Minister Victor Ponta and his cabinet.
• As Nazi sites crumble in Nuremberg, Germany is faced with a political and cultural dilemma. 
• A commission of historians says that over half of West Germany’s post-war Interior Ministry had been Nazi Party members. 
• The Bosnian war lives on in the courts.
• Chile acknowledges that famed poet Pablo Neruda may have been killed by Augusto Pinochet after the 1973 coup.
  
• Five Guantánamo Bay prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, have refused to be handled by female guards.
• The House of Representatives voted to approve the revised defense bill.

And don’t forget to sign the Committee to Protect Journalists’ petition to the Turkish government to release Iraqi journalist Mohammed Rasool, imprisoned since August without charge. 

Photo: Kobani, Syria. An explosion rises over the town following an airstrike. Yannis Behrakis/Reuters.