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.

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• Protests erupted in the Congolese capital Kinshasa after a court allowed President Joseph Kabila to stay in power beyond his term limit. 
• Sudan has detained dozens of students during campus protests since April. Many remain in custody without charge.
• Interview: South Sudanese VP-turned-rebel-leader-turned-VP-again Riek Machar talks war crimes, power-sharing and Donald Trump.
• Uganda convicted seven men of carrying out Al-Shabab’s twin 2010 attacks on people gathered in Kampala to watch the World Cup.
• The UN Security Council ended an arms embargo and sanctions on Liberia that have lasted over a decade.
• Nigerian militants attacked state-run gas and oil pipelines.
• This month, Egyptian courts sentenced 152 people on protest-related charges. 
• Tunisia has to deal with fighters returning from Libya.
• The US has increased anti-terrorism training exercises with African countries.
• Interview: Osama Abo El Ezz is one of Aleppo’s last doctors. 
• Long read: Doctors in Aleppo grieve their colleagues and then return to work.
• The scale of destruction Syria has endured will take decades to repair and recover.
  
• Seven IS-coordinated explosions targeting civilians in Assad’s coastal stronghold killed nearly 150 people.
• Images have emerged of US Special Operations Forces alongside Syrian Defense Forces in the fight to retake Raqqa, though the Pentagon flatly denies that SOF are on the front lines.
• Long read: People return home to the ruined city of Homs as Assad directs his attentions elsewhere.
• The UN says it is unable to deliver aid to more than a small portion of the Syrians who need it.
• Long read: Inside the hunt for Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• As the Fallujah offensive gets underway, an estimated 50,000 civilians remain trapped in the city.
• At the Venice Biennale, 3-D printing replicates the former glory of cities like Palmyra, destroyed by the Islamic State.
• Yemen’s peace talks are back on.
• The Afghan Taliban acknowledged the death of their leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, and named his replacement, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.
• The Islamic State unites Iran with the Afghan Taliban.
• Pakistan is now being included in the White House’s accounting of those killed in counterterrorism operations outside of war zones.
• The Vietnam War is still killing people.
• President Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, which we are all pronouncing wrong. 
  
• The hibakusha, or survivors of the atomic bombings, share their stories.
• China plans to send nuclear-armed submarines to the Pacific for the first time.
• Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova is free; her sentence reduced and suspended. 
• Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko, held by Russia, is also free. She suggests that a run for president might be in the cards. 
• From Monday to Tuesday of this week, the Ukrainian military suffered its bloodiest 24 hours in the last year.
• Journalists covering Ukraine were doxed, their contact information and travel dates posted online, twice –– first by Ukrainian nationalists and then again by Ukrainian separatists. 
• Long read: How Kosovo was turned into fertile ground for the Islamic State. 
• If you left your blue Dodge Coronet behind in the 1974 Cyprus War, this is your last chance to retrieve it. 
• Three journalists disappeared in Colombia, and the government is pointing the finger at the country’s second largest rebel group.
• Republican senators introduced an amendment to the NDAA that would send captured Islamic State fighters to Guantánamo, keeping the prison open. 

Photo: Kabul, Afghanistan. Young boys survey the damage from a suicide bomb as they look through the broken glass of a shop window. Mohammed Ismail/Reuters.

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• Egypt Flight MS804, en route from Paris to Cairo, disappeared over the Mediterranean. Though the crash points to terrorism in the estimation of many, very little is known yet and news is still rolling in. 
• An ambush left five Chadian UN peacekeepers dead in northern Mali.
• US military advisers could soon be deployed to Libya. 
• Burundi agreed to talks in Tanzania to end a year of deadly violence.
• Gunmen killed a Doctors Without Borders/MSF worker in the Central African Republic.
• Two of the missing Chibok schoolgirls have been found. The first girl indicated that a number of the other girls are still alive.
• Boko Haram’s former captives, however, are shunned and treated with suspicion in their communities.
• Boko Haram may be sending its fighters to Libya.
• Sudan’s Janjaweed militia, notorious for their actions on behalf of Khartoum in Darfur, is back and fighting in the Nuba Mountains. 
• 25 years after Sierra Leone’s bloody civil war, researchers look to the country for answers about how to rebuild after conflict.
• Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, resigned over tensions with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Netanyahu offered the post to ultranationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman.
• Restrictions on Gazans ability to leave the Strip tighten even further.
• A Syrian government air strike, directed at a town under rebel control, killed 12 members of the same family.
• Syrian women who have survived rape and government detention face shame and stigma after their release from prison.
• Trauma and deprivation are the primary forces pushing young Syrians toward extremism.
• Khan Eshieh, a Palestinian refugee camp inside Syria that is home to 12,000 people, is under siege.
• According to satellite imagery, Russia may be building a military base on a designated World Heritage site.
• How Russia allowed homegrown radicals to go and fight in Syria.
• Why does the Islamic State care so much about Sykes-Picot?
• A weekend suicide bombing killed 25 in Yemen.
• The Islamic State, losing ground in its territorial battles in Syria and Iraq, is taking the counteroffensive to the streets of Baghdad.
• Iraqi forces retook Rutba.
• Afghanistan signed a draft peace agreement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. 
• Long read: Did Afghan forces target the MSF hospital?
• India’s recent anti-ballistic missile tests have Pakistan “seriously concerned.”
• Pakistani police killed 14 alleged al-Qaeda militants.
• Vietnam’s crackdown on dissidents is throwing a wrench in its aims of a stronger defense relationship with the United States. 
• Abu Sayyaf, an extremist group in the Philippines, is threatening the lives of a Canadian and a Norwegian hostage in a new ransom video. Three weeks ago, they beheaded another Canadian hostage after similar demands. 
• Long read: 12 newsrooms in 5 years –– a chronicle of the casualties of government pressure on the news media.
• A Crimean Tatar won Eurovision for Ukraine, singing a song about the 1944 Soviet-led ethnic cleansing and mass deportation of her people. Ukraine commemorated this event on its anniversary this week.
• Video: The Struggle to Find Ukraine’s Missing Soldiers.
• Colombia and FARC reached a deal to release child soldiers.
• People with disabilities face added risk in war and conflict zones.
• Somali-Americans face the terror dragnet.
• Video: The recently retired CBS correspondent Morley Safer died yesterday. View his famous 1965 report from the torching of Cam Ne in Vietnam.

Photo: Maaret al-Numan, Idlib, Syria. A business in rebel-held territory keeps going amid the ruins. Khalil Ashawi/Reuters.

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• Somalia’s US-funded intelligence agency used children as spies.
• Kenya will close all its refugee camps, displacing about 600,000 people. 
• Rwanda is aiding Burundi’s rebels and North Korea is arming Congolese troops, according to an independent panel reporting the Security Council.
• Two former Rwandan mayors went on trial in Paris for their part in the 1994 genocide.
• How to rebuild Nigeria after Boko Haram.
• Babies and children are dying in Nigerian military detention.
• In photos: Adriane Ohanesian journeys into Darfur’s rebel-held mountains.
• Senegal and the US signed a defense cooperation agreement.
• Libya faces further fragmentation.
• Africa confronts its worst drought in half a century.
• Violence grows in Turkey’s southeast.
• Top Hezbollah commander Mustafa Amine Bedreddine, a key target for Israel nicknamed the “untraceable ghost,” was killed in a large explosion near the Damascus airport. 
• From some vantage points, the US seems to have abandoned the idea of going after Assad in Syria. 
• A Red Cross aid convoy was denied access to the Syrian city of Darayya. 
• Three Spanish journalists kidnapped in Syria were freed
• A power struggle between the Kurdish peshmerga and the Iraqi forces is impeding efforts to retake Mosul.
  
• Long read: Everything you ever wanted to know about how the Islamic State uses the internet. (Like an alphabet app for kids!)
• Islamic State car bombings killed at least 90 people in Baghdad.
• The Chilcot report, a long-awaited British inquiry into the Iraq war, will be published July 6. 
• The US does not know what to do with captured Islamic State fighters.
• Saudi Arabia closed hajj to the Iranians after a year of deep tension.
• Yemenis are scarred by war and skeptical of talks of peace.
• Russia delivered its S-300 missile defense system to Iran.
• The Islamic State’s radio broadcasts in Afghanistan return to the airwaves.
• A car bomb in Nangarhar province killed at least 11 people.
• Long read: Mohammed Gulab saved former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell in Afghanistan in 2005. He and his family paid a steep price. Now, his version of events does not match up with Luttrell’s Lone Survivor retelling. 
• Pakistani clerics issued a fatwa against the Islamic State.
• Azerbaijan accused Armenia of using white phosphorus in Nagorno-Karabakh.
  
• The US switched on a missile shield in Romania, to Russia’s displeasure.
• Infographic: Laying out the planned European missile defense system. 
• Ukraine and Russia agreed to demilitarized zones and other security measures.
• A “quarter century of shrinking the Bundeswehr is over,” as Germany plans to expand its military in response to Russia.
  
• France plans to establish a series of de-radicalization centers. 
• A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission said he believes there was evidence of Saudi government involvement in a support network for the hijackers. 
• Khalid Sheikh Muhammad’s lawyers called for the judge and prosecutor in his trial to step down, alleging destruction of evidence favorable to the defense.
• A legal challenge may allow the UN special rapporteur on torture into Guantánamo’s highly restrictive Camp 7.
• The US is calling on countries to authorize their United Nations peacekeeping troops to use force to protect civilians.
• When Air Force General Lori J. Robinson assumes control of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command today, she will be the first woman to head a top-tier U.S. warfighting command. 

Photo: Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq. A woman mourns in the aftermath of a suicide bombing. Wissm al-Okili/Reuters. 

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• Across Africa, international election monitors are failing.
• Uganda has banned coverage of election protests. 
• The first British troops arrived in Somalia as part of their UN mission.
• The US is seeking to approve the sale of 12 light attack aircraft to Nigeria to help in the fight against Boko Haram.
• Militants carried out an attack on the Chevron platform in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region.
• Burundi’s police say 450 people have been killed in violence over the past year. 
• Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davotoglu announced his resignation Thursday amid reports of disagreements and differences with President Erdogan. With this resignation, America loses a friend in the Turkish government.
• Violence picked up between Israel and Gaza.
  
• Some disputes arose in negotiations over US defense aid to Israel.
• Human Rights Watch reports that the Saudi-led coalition has used American cluster munitions near civilian areas in Yemen.
• A new ceasefire is in place for Aleppo.
• “In Aleppo, we are running out of coffins.”
• Islamist rebel forces overtook Khan Touman, a village close to Aleppo, from government forces. 73 people died in the battle. 
  
• The Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front has big plans in Syria.
• Video: Syrian refugee children work long, hard days to avoid the desperation of returning to civil war. 
• Long read: A generation of Syrian children who don’t count. 
• 75 Syrian refugee women were forced into sexual slavery in Lebanon, the country’s largest uncovered human trafficking operation.
  
• An airstrike near the Turkish border in northern Syria killed 28 civilians in a refugee camp. 
• Video: Cellist and close friend of Putin Sergei Roldugin performed with the Mariinsky Orchestra in the same Roman amphitheatre in Palmyra where the Islamic State carried out executions. (Bonus: ancient ruins make great backdrops for propaganda.) 
• The Islamic State claimed control of the Shaer gas field in Homs.
• Special Warfare Operator First Class Charles Keating IV is the third American combat death in Iraq since the start of the campaign against the Islamic State.  
• An Australian fighting for the Islamic State was killed in an air strike in Iraq.
• A state of emergency was declared in Baghdad this week after protesters entered the protected Green Zone and took over parliament. The protesters, who support Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have since left.
• Long read: The Green Zone is emblematic of the “symbiotic relationship between terrorists and corrupt politicians.”
• Al Qaeda is reportedly working more closely with the Afghan Taliban.
• It has been a profitable year in the Helmand province poppy fields. 
• Shoddy footwear is a big problem for Afghan forces. 
• The Pentagon argues that the 2015 strikes on an MSF hospital in Kunduz are not a war crime because they were unintentional.
• Analysis: Is recklessness sufficient for war crimes?
  
• Two months after the bin Laden raid, the CIA station chief in Islamabad went home in failing health, with no clear cause. Both he and the agency grew to believe Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency had poisoned him. (There are skeptics.)
  
• North Korea is staging its first party congress since 1980.
• As NATO plans to boost its Eastern European presence, Russia plans to reinforce its western and southern flanks.
• Long read: The historian whitewashing Ukraine’s bloody past.
  
• House Republicans are using the 2017 defense authorization bill to go after LGBTQ rights. 
• When Donald Trump officially becomes the Republican nominee, he’ll receive classified intelligence briefings and some people are a little worried about that.

Photo: Tel Asqof, northern Iraq. Kurdish Peshmerga fighter searches a house. Goran Tomasevic/Reuters. 

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• Egypt arrested nearly 400 people leading up to April 25th protests.
• In defiance of the UN-backed Tripoli government, Libya’s eastern rebel government shipped its first cargo of crude oil.
• Rights groups in Mali say the government is torturing and killing civilians.
• The Islamic State celebrated its first training camp and first attack in Somalia.
• Assassinations and defections are weakening Burundi’s security forces.
• The International Criminal Court announced a preliminary examination of human rights abuses in Burundi.
• The death toll in Burundi this month is 31.
• Do Rwanda’s museums commemorate the past or bolster Kagame’s power?
• South Sudan’s rebel leader Riek Machar finally returned to Juba to be sworn in as vice president and continue to move the peace process forward.
• The US promised $90 million in extra aid to South Sudan, but warned of sanctions if there’s a lack of commitment to the peace process.
• February clashes inside a UN protection of civilians site in South Sudan raise questions about the sustainability of such sites, which house 180,000 people across the country.
• Fear of Boko Haram is keeping displaced people in Chad from returning home.
• Profile: How Abubekar Shekau transformed Boko Haram
• Sierra Leone’s Independence Day turned violent with police firing guns and tear gas at the opposition party’s headquarters.
• The UN Security Council has lifted remaining sanctions on the Ivory Coast and will end the peacekeeping mission there. 
• Yemeni and Saudi-led coalition forces retook the port city of Mukalla, a longtime Al Qaeda stronghold.
• Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would like to debate the Islamic State.
• The White House will expand Special Forces presence in Syria by 250 troops (there are already 50 there).
• The US admitted to killing 20 civilians in strikes intended for Islamic State targets between September and February.
• Airstrikes destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, also destroying the eight-week-old ceasefire in the process. One of Aleppo’s last pediatricians is among the dead.
  
• “In the last 48 hours, we have had an average of one Syrian killed every 25 minutes, one Syrian wounded every 13 minutes.”
  
• US-Russia cooperation over Syria is unraveling.
• Long read: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on leaving Syria behind and life on the refugee trail, with beautiful drawings.
• The Iraqi army made advances south of Mosul.
• Fallujajh’s residents suffer under the siege.
• The Islamic State is turning to fishing, selling cars and running factories to supplement its income as oil revenues dwindle.
• The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq and Syria decreased by 90 percent, says the Pentagon.
• The Pentagon will declassify the results of its internal investigation into the airstrikes on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz. 16 US forces were disciplined as a result of the review. 
• An Australian aid worker was kidnapped in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan.
• The Bangladeshi branch of Al Qaeda claimed the brutal killing of LGBTQ activist and editor of the country’s only gay rights magazine, Xulhaz Mannan, along with theater actor Tanay Majumder.
• Here are some of the writings of Bangladeshi writers and bloggers murdered by extremists. 
• A third North Korean missile test failed.
• Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam has been extradited to France.
• In an interview, Abdeslam’s former Belgian attorney called him a “little jerk” and described him as having “the intelligence of an empty ashtray.”
• Former Islamic State hostages identified Brussels suicide bomber Najim Laachraoui as one of their Syrian captors.
• 9,333 killed since the Ukraine conflict began.
• Ukraine says a stronger ceasefire is needed.
• President Putin used executive orders to form a new internal security service, the National Guard, likely to be tasked with “suppression of unauthorized mass actions.”
• Video: A young Colombian girl kidnapped at 9 by FARC was one of thousands of children forced to fight.
• Capt. Kristen Griest, one of two women to be the first to earn a Ranger tab, will now be the Army’s first female infantry officer. 

Photo: Mukalla, southern Yemen. People gather to inspect the damage done after a Saudi-led airstrike. Stringer/Reuters.

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• The Nigerian milsitary reportedly killed 350 civilians, members of a Shi’a sect, and dumped their bodies in mass graves in December.
• Riek Machar was supposed to arrive in the South Sudanese capital of Juba to be reinstated as vice president and continue the peace process, but he has postponed twice.
• The Islamic State was forced out of the Libyan city of Derna.
• Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, was offered a position with FIFA in hopes it might avert political crisis, says disgraced FIFA head Sepp Blatter. He refused.
• Meanwhile, 2016 Burundi is bearing uncomfortable resemblance to 1994 Rwanda.
• The UN says Burundi is cracking down on dissent and torturing prisoners.
• Chad’s president won a fifth term.
• The Nigerian army killed 350 civilians, members of a Shi’a sect, and buried them in mass graves in December.
• Protests against French forces in Mali turned deadly.
• Tunisia is getting a lot of weapons, at the expense of its democracy.
• Human Rights Watch says Egypt has tortured and disappeared children.
• In an agreement with Egypt, Hamas deployed forces to the Egyptian border to counter accusations that it is providing safe haven for the Islamic State.
• A bus bombing in Jerusalem wounded 21.
• How to solve the Gazan water crisis.
• UN-sponsored Yemen peace talks began in Kuwait.
  Long read: The multi-billion dollar war in Yemen is testing Saudi Arabia. 
  
• Turkish academics go on trial today for “terrorist propaganda.”
  
• The Syrian peace talks and ceasefire are both breaking down.
• Russia deployed artillery in support of Syrian government forces preparing for an offensive in Aleppo.
  
• Kurdish forces clashed with Syrian army.
• The US is trying to design shoulder-launched missile systems for the Syrian rebels with technology limiting their use, aiming to prevent the weapons from being used by terrorists.
• The Islamic State’s monthly revenue has dropped by 30 percent.
• Long read: How four men survived as hostages of the Islamic State.
• UK firm Aegis Defence Services may have employed former child soldiers from Sierra Leone as mercenaries in Iraq.
• Interview: Anand Gopal on the Iraq war.
• The US Supreme Court ruled that Iran’s central bank owes $2 billion to victims of terrorism, a ruling Tehran is calling thievery.
• In Afghanistan, weapons deployed in drone strikes outnumber those deployed from warplanes for the first time.
• A suicide bombing in Kabul killed 64 and wounded hundreds.
• Long read: Six families speak about losing loved ones in the US drone war and the struggle to find answers afterward.  
• How US Special Operations Forces secretly help foreign forces target terrorists.
• Ukraine banned Russian films.
• Ukraine sentenced to Russian servicemen to 14 years over their involvement in the separatist fight.
• Long read:  What should the world do with its nuclear weapons?
• The Air Force is getting rid of the UH-1 Huey.
• The FBI spent a lot of money hacking the San Bernardino iPhone.
• Infographic: How much of your life has the US been at war?
• Three former CIA black site detainees have brought suit against two psychologists hired to assist the agency’s torture program.

Photo: Northern Gaza Strip. A Palestinian man on stilts watches a truckload of Hamas militants drive past. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters.

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• After two years’ absence, France, Britain and Spain have sent ambassadors to Libya to show solidarity with the UN-backed unity government
• Long read: Libya’s feared mukhabarat has reassembled to fight the Islamic State
• The US is reviewing its Sinai peacekeeping mission.
• Two French soldiers died in Mali after their vehicle struck a landmine.
• Boko Haram has increased its use of child suicide bombers elevenfold over the past year. One in five attacks are carried out by a child, many of them girls and many of them drugged.
• A video appears to show the missing Chibok girls.
• 2,000 Zimbabweans turned up to protest President Mugabe in the capital.
• “Blood flows everywhere in Burundi, that’s how things are.”
  
• Burundian activists work to highlight the increased rate of police and intelligence agencies disappearing citizens.
• Yemeni forces took Houta from al-Qaeda.
• Advocacy groups are challenging Britain on its assertion that Saudi Arabia’s coalition isn’t targeting civilians in Yemen.
  
• Long read: It is vastly easier to join up with the Islamic State than it is to defect from it.
  
• The Islamic State continues to expand despite significant military setbacks.
• Long read: women who escape the Islamic State’s enslavement bring scars and trauma with them, but also children.
• Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad poked back at the ongoing peace talks by holding elections.
• Syrians are increasingly angry at Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al-Nusra for their heavy-handed tactics.
• In an apparent collapse of the ceasefire, fighting has escalated in Syria.
• Long read: Top secret documents link Assad to torture and murder.
• Interview: Filmmaker Zaina Erhaim on the female citizen journalists reporting the conflict in Syria.
• The Syrian government released photographer Kevin Patrick Dawes.
• Political crisis grows in Iraq.
• The Kurds are carving out online autonomy with a new .krd domain name.
• Russia delivered the first part of the S-300 defense system to Iran.
• Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is reportedly in Moscow for talks.
• The Afghan air force reportedly killed 40 Islamic State militants in eastern Nangarhar province. 
• Afghanistan struggles with the weight of its internal refugee crisis.
• A heavily redacted document shows a link between Pakistani intelligence and a 2009 suicide attack against CIA operatives in Afghanistan.
• It looks like North Korea tried and failed to launch a missile to mark the birth of its founding leader, Kim Il Sung.
• The US began joint patrols with the Philippines in the South China Sea and is increasing its presence in the region.
• In-depth: How the Islamic State plotted under Europe’s gaze. 
• Belgian authorities arrested Mohamed Abrini in connection with the November Paris attacks, later confirming he was the “man in the hat” from the Brussels attacks.
• Long read: One woman helped the mastermind of the Paris attacks evade capture; one woman turned him in.
• Two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes flew simulated attack passes aggressively close to US guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea.
  
• Britain has reportedly long aided the US and NATO in maintaining a “kill list” of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers, says Reprieve.
• Interactive: Who will be the next UN Secretary-General?
• The use of drugs to enhance soldiers’ performance in war has wide, long history.
• Long read: 28 years later, ProPublica connects a Houston suicide to a string of terror attacks targeting Vietnamese-American journalists in the 1980s.
  
• Interview: Vox interviews US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

Photo: Benghazi, Libya. Forces loyal to Libya’s eastern government crouch near the cement factory amid clashes with the Shura Council of Libyan Revolutionaries, an alliance of anti-Gaddhafi rebels and Ansar al-Sharia. Stringer/Reuters.

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• The National Salvation government, one of Libya’s self-established rival governing bodies, stepped down.
  
• The Islamic State has doubled the number of fighters in Libya over the last year and a half.
• Senegal resettled two Libyan detainees held at Guantánamo.
• Gun battles broke out early this week in the Republic of Congo after the re-election of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, leaving 17 dead.
• The more than 30,000 people displaced by fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been cut off from aid.
• A series of Nigerian military operations have rescued women and girls held captive by Boko Haram, but these survivors have lost their homes and remain under suspicious scrutiny.
• Boko Haram often turns female captives into terrorists.
• Long read: How jogging in Burundi became an act of war.
• Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir told the BBC he will step down in 2020.
• Armed South Sudanese rebels have taken up positions in the capital.
• Russia is blocking the release of a UN report on the multi-million dollar profits made off gold mining by pro-government militias in Darfur.
• Syrian state television reports that the Islamic State kidnapped 300 cement workers in a town northeast of Damascus.
  
• Interactive: Palmyra after the Islamic State.
• A mass grave was uncovered outside of Palmyra.
• Video: Channel 4 news surveys the consequences of the Islamic State’s long occupation of Palmyra.
• A sniper killed the last doctor in the Syrian town of Zabadani, besieged by government forces and by Hezbollah.
• Bashar al-Assad, buoyed by the army’s victories, is not interested in compromise.
• Video: a year-by-year look at the destruction of Homs.
• Despite Russia’s claims that it focused on Islamic State targets during its air campaign in Syria, a report by the Atlantic Council shows that the campaign caused little damage to the group but rather sought to support the Syrian government.
• Rebel fighters downed a Syrian jet near Aleppo with a surface-to-air missile. 
• Abu Firas, one of Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front’s leaders and founding members, was killed in a Syrian or Russian air strike.
• The Panama Papers leak shows that the Mossack Fonseca firm ignored sanctions and corruption allegations and maintained links to Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and financier.
• Long read: Investigative journalism persists in the Middle East.
• US bombs were used last month in a Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni market that killed 119 people.
• Palestine is seeking a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
• Turkey and Israel are expected to normalize ties soon.
• Fallujah is starving, besieged by the government, by Shi’a militias and trapped by the Islamic State.
• Iraqi women, lone women especially, are vulnerable inside displaced persons camps.
• Local Afghan officials say American airstrikes in Paktika province killed 17 civilians.
• The NATO training mission in Afghanistan is slowed by fighting.
• The killing of a student activist in Bangladesh is the latest in a long string of secular bloggers and writers fatally attacked there over the last few years.
• More than 50 were killed after violence broke out over the weekend in the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh. This was the worst violence between the Armenian and Azerbaijani forces since their war ended 1994. A ceasefire has been announced.
• Long read: Why everything about the way we report on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is wrong.
• Video: How does terrorism sway politics?
• Belgium released new footage of the Brussels airport bombing suspect.
• Explainer: What does nuclear terrorism mean?
• Fishermen operating in the midst of the South China Sea territorial dispute tell their stories.
• Cuba joined the global ban on cluster munitions.
• The world is re-arming –– looking at new global data on military expenditure from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
• Executions worldwide are at a 25-year high.

Photo: Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria. Overturned buses provide a barricade for civilians against Syrian government snipers. Abdalrahman Ismail/Reuters.

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.

Subscribe here if you’d like this round-up to land in your inbox on Friday mornings.

• The UN announced 108 new allegations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers, most of the 108 are minors.  
• The trial began this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo of twenty soldiers accused of rape and sexual abuse during their time as peacekeepers in the CAR.
• France will end its military mission to the CAR this year.
• A former Rwandan official died in jail in Burundi four months after his arrest on espionage charges.
• A suicide bomber killed nine people at a cafe in central Somalia on Thursday.
• 10 Libyan cities formerly under control of a rival government pledged support for Libya’s new unity government. 
• If the UN-backed government can regain control of Libya, the UN says it will consider lifting sanctions on the country’s sovereign wealth fund. 
• The Syrian army drove the Islamic State out of Palmyra and are setting their sights on Raqqa and Deir Ezzor.
• In photos: This is what Palmyra looks like now.
• Despite the drawdown, Russia is now shipping more equipment and supplies into Syria than it is removing.
• Long read: The architectural cost of the Syrian war (with lots of great book recommendations).
• The UN says it has been able to deliver aid to 10 out of 18 besieged areas since the February 27 ceasefire.
  
• Over the past four months, Turkish border guards have shot and killed sixteen refugees as they attempted to cross. Three of those killed were children.
• Amnesty International reports that Turkey is also forcibly returning Syrian refugees to the war zone they tried to flee.
• An explosion targeting security forces in Diyarbakir, a city in Turkey’s primarily Kurdish southeast, killed six.
• Tens of thousands of Yemenis in Sana’a turned out to protest on the anniversary of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in Yemen’s civil war.
• Saudi Arabia and Yemen have swapped prisoners ahead of scheduled peace talks.
• Long read: Life for Yemen’s marginalized black citizens has always been difficult, and in this civil war they are the most vulnerable.
• The US is ramping up its air campaign against Al Qaeda targets inside Yemen.
• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas backed the resumption of peace talks, saying it could end ongoing violence. 
• Britain will provide the Lebanese army with $30 million to amp up border security.
• Long read: On the American front lines against the Islamic State.
• An Islamic State suicide bomber killed more than 40 people as they watched trophies being awarded after a football match in Iskanderiyah, Iraq. 
• Moqtada al-Sadr is back.
• An offensive against the Islamic State is stalled because of the presence of tens of thousands of trapped Iraqi civilians.
• The Afghan government faces mounting discontent and criticism and an accumulation of political defections. 
• A suicide bombing claimed by a Taliban splinter group targeted a public park in Lahore on Easter, killing over 70 people. Pakistan has since arrested over 200 people.
• Infographic: How often terror attacks strike Pakistan.
• In Laos, some people turn unexploded ordnance from the 1960s and 70s into spoons.
• China issued a warning to the US over the South China Sea.
• A senior State Dept official said Russia “no longer sees value in that architecture put in place at the end of the cold war,” and accused the Kremlin of “slowly but surely” undoing post-cold war arms control agreements.
• The US will increase its military presence in eastern Europe, to which Russia promises what it calls an “asymmetric” response.
• The White House promised Ukraine $335 million in security assistance.
• A UN war crimes tribunal acquitted Serb ultranationalist politician Vojislav Seselj of atrocities.
• A German historian shows how the Associated Press cooperated with the Nazis in the 1930s.
• Infographic: Who are the war criminals still on the run?
• Ireland marked 100 years since the Easter Rising.
• The White House has notified Congress of its plans to resettle nearly a dozen Guantánamo Bay detainees.
• Interview: I spoke to Michael Ware about his new Iraq war documentary Only the Dead See the End of War.

Photo: Ramallah, West Bank. Palestinians demonstrate on Land Day near Ofer Prison. Mohamad Torokman/Reuters.

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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.

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• Sudanese women’s rights activists face considerable threat and abuse by security forces, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
• The UN has set up an inquiry into human rights abuses in South Sudan.
• More than 800 Boko Haram hostages were rescued by the Nigerian army.
  
• The International Criminal Court issued a guilty verdict on charges of war crimes for Jean-Pierre Bemba, former vice president of the Democratic Republic of Congo and former head of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo. This case marks the first time the ICC has convicted a warlord of rape as a war crime.
• The ICC also confirmed 70 charges against former LRA commander Dominic Ongwen.
  
• The death toll in Burundi is now 474.Al Shabaab overran a Somali military base southwest of Mogadishu.
  
• France will station a counterterrorism force in Burkina Faso.
  
• Malian extremist Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi will face the ICC over the 2012 destruction of ancient shrines in the Timbuktu world heritage site.
• Russia will supply Tunisia with helicopters and other gear for their fight against extremist groups.
• With assistance from Russian air support, Syrian troops entered the city of Palmyra.
• Al Nusra Front, Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, is now seeking to establish government in the territories it takes, vying to compete with the Islamic State.
• The Islamic State faces a number of setbacks and losses in Syria and Iraq.
• John Kerry met with Putin, agreeing on a target schedule for a Syria resolution, but not on the fate of President Bashar al-Assad.
• Two Turkish journalists are standing trial for revealing state secrets and helping a terror organization after they reported on government arms smuggling.
• Human rights group B’Tselem released a video showing an Israeli soldier shooting dead a wounded Palestinian attacker. 
• The warring parties have agreed to a ceasefire in Yemen to begin April 10, a week before peace talks begin in Kuwait.
• Dozens of Al Qaeda fighters were killed in a large US drone strike on a training camp in Yemen.
• The Iraqi army, with support from the US and the Kurds, launched an offensive against the Islamic State in Mosul.
• Afghanistan braces for the fighting season as Mullah Mansour calls on fighters to rally behind him and peace talks look less possible.
• The UN just hopes that Afghanistan makes it through 2016 in one piece – that alone will be success.
• The Islamic State’s twin terror attacks in Brussels on Tuesday – suicide bombings at Zaventem Airport and Maelbeek metro station – killed 31 people, though the death toll may rise. Experts believe the attacks were originally planned for Easter, but were accelerated after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam.
• In-depth: “A Blurry Photo Hints at ISIS Tradecraft” from Rukmini Callimachi at the New York Times and “The Path to Death: How EU Failures Helped Paris Terrorists Obtain Weapons” from Der Spiegel.
  
• An interview with Belgian terrorism researcher Didier Leroy.
• Six people were arrested in Brussels in a series of police raids on Thursday night.
• A French man was arrested for an “advanced” terror plot to attack the country.
• Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Bosnia, including in Srebrenica, and sentenced to 40 years.
• From the archives: “In Sarajevo, Terror in the Crosshairs” by Peter Maass. March 11, 1993.
  
• Long read: While the word carries a great deal of moral weight, designating something a “genocide” often accomplishes very little.
• Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko was sentenced to 22 years for her alleged role in the deaths of two journalists. Human Rights Watch calls her trial unfair.
• Why the ICC Is launching a war crimes probe into the 2008 Russia-Georgia War.
• President Obama admitted the US was too slow to condemn the atrocities of Argentina’s dirty war.
• Colombia’s peace talks will miss their deadline.
• Long read: The Pentagon is elbowing the State Dept aside in the race to see who gets to make decisions about military aid. 
  
• Seven Iranians were indicted for conducting a cyberattack on New York financial institutions.

Photo: Louvain, Belgium. A surgeon at Gasthuisberg Hospital shows a piece of shrapnel removed from a Brussels bombing victim. François Lenoir/Reuters.