Hiba's curmudgeonly musings about books, politics & other trifles.

• After the liberation of Sirte from the Islamic State, Libyans recount the horrors of imprisonment.
• The US is reportedly using Tunisia to launch drone operations in Libya.
• An Egyptian court upheld life sentences for the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and 36 others.
• Political violence increased dramatically in Zimbabwe this year.
• A regional summit on security issues in the Democratic Republic of Congo ended without major progress.
• After South Africa and Burundi began the withdrawal process from the International Criminal Court last week, Gambia has announced its intentions to do the same.
• Boko Haram proves itself far from defeated.
• A few months ago, the tiny Ugandan town of Bidi Bidi was mostly grassland. Now it is the world’s fourth largest refugee camp.
• As Kenya shuts down Dadaab refugee camp, authorities are repatriating (read: dumping) 400 people a day, forcing them back into war-torn Somalia without appropriate shelter.
• The surviving members of the Naham 3 crew, who endured years of captivity by Somali pirates, have finally been freed.
• The Islamic State raised its flag over Qandala, a Somali port town on the Gulf of Aden.
• There have been 31 US airstrikes against Al Qaeda in Yemen in 2016––already exceeding the number from previous years.
• Turkey’s military purge continues.
• Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired a ballistic missile toward Mecca.
• Leaked documents show that the UN has hired many friends, relatives and political allies of Bashar al-Assad for the Syrian relief effort. Leaks also show that 2/3 of aid goes to people in government-held areas of the country.
• Rebels have begun an offensive to break the government siege of opposition-held areas of Aleppo.
• The US believes either Russia or Syria is responsible for an attack on a school in Idlib that left nearly 40 people dead.
• Responsibility for a third chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held area––chlorine gas in Idlib province in March 2015––has been laid at the feet of the Syrian government.
• Dispatch from Mosul: As opposing forces advance, the Islamic State resorts to scorched earth tactics: setting oil wells on fire, using civilians as human shields, and executing those who try to flee.
• As part of the campaign to retake the city, Iraqi Shi’ite militias are preparing to move on Islamic State positions west of Mosul.
• The Islamic State killed 23 civilian hostages in Ghor province in western Afghanistan.
• A Taliban offensive has blocked a major highway between Kabul and Kandahar.
• The Taliban took over a base in southern Uruzgan province.
• Afghan forces struggle under the pressure of Taliban gains, mounting casualties and increasing desertions, surrenders, and defections.
• American airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan last Sunday targeted two senior Al Qaeda commanders. The US has ramped up airstrikes in the country in 2016.
• Afghanistan suffers a migration crisis as Pakistan and Iran force refugees back, splitting up families and sending people back into conflict zones.
• In Pakistan, authorities have banned public rallies and arrested dozens of supporters of opposition leader Imran Khan.
• An attack on a police training college in Quetta left 61 dead.
• India and Pakistan have expelled one another’s diplomats.
• In Kashmir, ad hoc schools are popping up as refuges for children amid strikes and curfews.
• In the weeks following an attack on a guard post, Myanmar’s army and border police have looted shops, and raped and killed members of the Rohingya population in Rakhine state, which remains inaccessible to aid organizations.
• Activists decry the lack of attention to southern Thailand’s long-running separatist conflict.
• Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he wants the US military out of the country in two years.
• Did North Korea just try to launch two long-range missiles?
• Analysis: Close defense cooperation among European militaries is a “pipe dream.”
• Russia is upgrading the firepower of its Baltic fleet.
• In Berlin, a museum replica of Hitler’s bunker is causing a stir.
• France declared the Calais migrant camp empty.
• Eastern Europe’s defense industry is on the rise.
• Ukrainian hackers released emails reportedly showing a top Kremlin official’s links to the 2014 uprising in eastern Ukraine.
• A Russian cultural center in Lviv has been evicted.
• Interactive: Budapest 60 years after the uprising.
• Two Yazidi activists and survivors of Islamic State sexual enslavement received the prestigious Sakharov prize.
• Meet one of the six Syrian refugees taken in by Japan.
• Most UN members voted to hold talks on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
• Colombia suspended talks with the ELN, the country’s second-largest rebel group over a politician who remains their hostage.

• Burundi began the process of withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, as did South Africa. Prior to this week, no nations had ever done so.
• Opinion: South Africa’s attempt to leave the ICC is unconstitutional.
• Explainer: Why are African nations leaving the ICC?
• The number of South Sudanese refugees in Congo doubledin September.
• South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar says he could return to the country next month.
• Ethiopia has arrested 1645 people since declaring a state of emergency over protests two weeks ago.
• The Chibok girls return home to face rejection from their communities.
• Interview: Libya analyst Mattia Toaldo talks about the state of the country five years after the death of Muammar Gaddhafi.
• A 72-hour ceasefire has gone into effect in Yemen.
• A report to the UN Security Council from a panel of experts deems Saudi Arabia’s “double tap” on a Yemeni funeral to be a violation of humanitarian law.
• Analysis: If the US and UK are now more involved in the war in Yemen, what’s their obligation to investigate Saudi war crimes?
• The wife of an American man, Wallead Yusuf Pitts Luqman, secretly detained in Yemen for over a year, went public with a Facebook plea for his release.
• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas calls for Fatah and PLO elections before the end of the year.
• Israel suspended ties with UNESCO after the agency passed a resolution criticizing their policies regarding holy sites in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
• Palestine is seeking a UN resolution compelling Israel to halt its settlement activity.
• Turkey and the Syrian rebels don’t share all the same goals.
• Turkey killed 18 Kurdish militants in Iraq and southeastern Turkey.
• Russia agreed to extend a “humanitarian pause” in Aleppo until Saturday and the Syrian government openedan evacuation corridor.
• Despite the temporary ceasefire and the promises from Moscow, many Syrians are staying put out of distrust for the Russian government.
• Iran lobbied hard for Egypt to have place at the Syria talks in Lausanne last week. Egypt’s foreign policy is realigning: its anti-terrorism stance bringing it in line with Russia and Assad’s Syria and turning it away from Saudi Arabia, despite Riyadh’s deep pockets.
• As the Mosul offensive gets underway, it should be remembered that the civilians in its path are at risk of terrible consequences. Aid agencies are preparing for the worst.
• The offensive tests the relationship between the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga, rivals bound together by a shared adversary.
• Dispatch: Kurdish fighters open up a new front.
• The Mosul offensive is putting the Islamic State’s spin machines to the test.
• An American troop killed by an IED in northern Iraq is the first US combat death in the Mosul offensive.
• Put on its heels, the Islamic State is pivoting from caliphate to insurgency. And what is the Islamic State without a state?
• The five cities that matter the most in the fight against the Islamic State? Dabiq, Raqqa, Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul.
• As the Mosul offensive is underway, Islamic State militants attacked Kirkuk.
• Iran sentenced an Iranian-American businessman and his father, a former UNICEF representative and provincial governor under the Shah, to ten years each for “cooperating with the hostile American government.”
• The decades of conflict have taken an extraordinary mental toll on Afghan citizens, a third of whom now contend with mental health problems.
• Two Americans were killed in an attack at an ammunition depot at Camp Morehead, six miles south of Kabul.
• An Indonesian court found a young man guilty of terrorism charges for his role in constructing the bomb in this year’s deadly Jakarta attack by the Islamic State.
• Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, has again started controversy after he vocally rejected the US and embraced China.
• Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany agreed on a roadmap for peace in Ukraine, and Putin has backed the deployment of OSCE armed observers.
• In photos: A mural goes up in Avidiyivka, between eastern and western Ukraine.
• Germany passed a new espionage law allowing their foreign intelligence agency to spy on European Union institutions and member states.
• The evictions of refugees from the Calais refugee camp means chaos for children.
• Analysis: “Gender really matters in national security policy.”
• A filing by federal prosecutors details the vastness of the breach allegedly committed by NSA contractor Harold Martin, who is accused of essentially hoarding a digital archive of 500 million thieved pages.
• Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the author of the memoir Guantánamo Diary, has finally been released and repatriated to Mauritania. He spent 14 years in captivity without charge and was severely tortured.
• In a surprising turn of events, a witness who did not appear during pretrial proceedings in the USS Cole case was taken into custody after the judge ordered the enforcement of the subpoena to testify.

• Algerian soldiers killed two Islamic militants.
• Forces loyal to the UN-backed government in Libya are moving in on the last Islamic State holdouts in Sirte.
• Expanding Russian influence is putting Egypt in a tricky political situation.
• A prominent opposition leader was killed in Mozambique.
• Boko Haram released 20 Chibok girls.
• At least 30 people are dead in the northern Central African Republic after fighters from a former militia group attacked civilians.
• Sudan’s use of chemical weapons isn’t limited to Darfur.
• Briefing: What’s next for South Sudan and its endless war?
• South Sudan’s food crisis remains debilitating.
• If Burundi does leave the ICC, can it still be investigated?
• French investigators reopened a investigation into the 1994 assassination of the Rwandan president, which was a trigger for genocide. Paul Kagame isn’t pleased.
• As unrest continues in Ethiopia, the country has declareda state of emergency.
• Japan plans to expand its base in Djibouti in order to counter growing Chinese influence.
• Violence continues during South Africa’s student protests.
• An airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on a funeral ceremony in Yemen killed 100 and wounded more than 500.
• The US fired on Houthi targets in Yemen for the first time in this conflict, firing cruise missiles at radar installations used by rebels to target an American warship. (Yemen’s rebels deny they did this.)
• Iran sent two warships to the Gulf of Aden.
• A child’s life in Yemen.
• Russia approved an indefinite deployment in Syria.
• Russia announced that peace talks over Syria will resume this weekend, after being ended by the US on October 3.
• Dispatch: “From Sarajevo to Aleppo: Lessons on Surviving a Siege.”
• 75,000 refugees have been stranded for months between Jordan and Syria. Jordan, insisting Islamic State fighters may be in their midst, has suggested delivering food aid to them by crane.
• Syrians pursuing university degrees struggle to patch their educations back together in Turkey.
• At least 20 Syrian rebels were killed in a checkpoint car bomb on the Turkey-Syria border.
• Under increased military pressure, the Islamic State’s propaganda machine has slowed.
• A secret network in southeast Turkey comes to the aid of Islamic State fighters wishing to defect.
• Meanwhile, Jaish al-Tahrir, a Syrian opposition group, is reportedly jailing Islamic State fighters who defect or are captured, and meting out their own justice.
• Rebel infighting is slowing progress in Hama, where opposition forces are hoping to cut a government supply line to Aleppo.
• In a deal with the government, Syrian rebels evacuated a Damascus suburb.
• Analysis: How Syria became the new global war.
• In photos: Syrian muralist Abu Malik al-Shami has earned comparisons to Banksy.
• Turkey’s Kurds are in the crosshairs of a government crackdown.
• Contention grows between Ankara and Baghdad over Turkish troop presence inside Iraq.
• Since 2014, Kurds have increased their region of control in Iraq by roughly 40 percent, often by forcing Arab occupants out of their homes.
• The mix of forces fighting to retake Mosul may complicatethe operation.
• As the offensive on Mosul gets closer, the Islamic State is rigging the city with explosives, recruiting children as spies, and digging networks of underground tunnels.
• Two deadly attacks targeted Shi’ite worshippers in Kabul.
• Afghan troops experienced one of their worst massacres––outgunned in Lashkar Gah, at least 100 were killed by Taliban fighters
• Afghan forces return to Kunduz, but the Taliban is still expanding its influence in the north.
• India is carrying out its harshest crackdown in decades against civilian protesters in Kashmir.
• Thousands in Burma’s northern Kachin state protestedongoing Burmese military offensives.
• The ICC’s chief prosecutor has warned the Philippines over extrajudicial drug war killings.
• China’s last Tiananmen prisoner will be releasedSaturday.
• In photos: A week with Ukraine’s volunteer fighters.
• A report by a private US research group detailed Russia’s covert campaign to politically manipulate  Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Serbia, and Slovakia.
• A Syrian man in German custody, suspected of planning to carry out an attack on a German airport, committed suicide in his cell in Leipzig.
• Lawyers for Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam have resigned his case, saying Abdeslam is uncooperative and no longer wants legal representation. They also raised concerns again that his solitary confinement and 24-hour surveillance may be damaging him.
• The Colombian president extended the ceasefire with FARC until the end of the year, in hopes of salvaging the peace process. The Colombian opposition published their own suggested changes to the deal.
• Antonio Guterres was elected the next UN chief.
• Long read: “How US torture left a legacy of damaged minds.”
• The 9/11 trial judge ruled it permissible to retroactively seal public war court testimony.

• The Islamic State and Al Qaeda battle each other as they each carry on conflicts on other fronts in northern Africa.
• Ansar Dine, a Tuareg group associated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has claimed a series of attacks in Mali.
• Gunmen killed about 20 soldiers guarding Malian refugees at a camp in Niger.
• In photos: Refugee rescue missions of the coast of Libya.
• UN peacekeepers stayed in their bases and did nothing to protect civilians from murder and mass rape in South Sudan in July.
• Burundi is leaving the International Criminal Court.
• The political unrest in Burundi is having economic consequences in neighboring Rwanda.
• Analysis: Is Ethiopia unraveling?
• Eleven are dead and fourteen missing after clashes in the Central African Republic.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, poverty rates are at such an extreme that 385 million children survive on less than $1.90 a day.
• Student protests continue, with violence, in South Africa.
• Turkey extended its state of emergency.
• Famine looms over Yemen and starving, skeletal babies are filling hospital wards.
• Interview: Five years ago, Tawakkol Karman won the Nobel Peace Prize for her revolutionary work in Yemen. Now her country is devastated by war.
• The Palestinian Supreme Court announced Monday municipal elections will be held in the West Bank but not in Gaza.
• The White House reiterated its condemnation of new Israeli plans for new settlements in the occupied West Bank.
• Satellite footage shows the stark difference in the fate of western Aleppo versus the fate of the eastern half of the city, which could be destroyed by Christmas.
• A World Bank study found that two-thirds of foreign recruits to the Islamic State are well-educated.
• Long read: Former Islamic State prisoner Masoud Aqil is now in Germany and dedicatedly helping law enforcement track down returning extremists.
• Mosul’s Radio Hope keeps broadcasting from just beyond the besieged city’s borders, providing a lifeline of information for civilians trapped inside.
• A trove of newly available documents renews the debate over American use of depleted uranium in the invasion of Iraq.
• Afghan forces are struggling to battle back the Taliban in Kunduz, while medics hold the line.
• More than 250,000 Afghan refugees have been forced and coerced out of Pakistan this year, creating a serious situation.
• Analysis: Does more aid mean more corruption in Afghanistan?
• 44 Afghan troops have gone missing in the United States, likely to live here without documentation, since January 2015 after arriving for military training.
• Germany’s Federal Court of Justice ruled that the state is not liable for overseas military operations after a claim filed by relatives of victims of a 2009 airstrike in Afghanistan.
• Excerpt: A piece of A Long Watch: War, Captivity and Return in Sri Lanka, a memoir of violence and civil war in Sri Lanka by Commodore Ajith Boyagoda.
• The Philippines has cancelled its plans with the US for joint military drills in the South China Sea.
• A trial has started for the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.
• It has been ten years since the murder of outspoken journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya.
• A dispute between Ukraine and Russia over pieces of art housed in Amsterdam is going to Dutch court.
• Finland suspects a Russian aircraft violated its airspace.
• The Security Council officially backed Antonio Guterres, former Portuguese Prime Minister, to be the next UN chief.
• Colombian voters rejected the hard-won peace deal with FARC by a narrow margin – 50.2% to 49.8%. Now, as President Santos scrambles to save peace, he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Deadly armed conflict in remote Nicaragua between the Miskito tribe and settlers has gone largely unnoticed.
• Yahoo secretly monitored user emails on behalf of the US government.
• Eight people, six of whom are US soldiers, have been charged after allegedly thieving military equipment like sniper scopes and machine gun parts and selling them on eBay to customers around the world.
• Three people, an American and two Russians, have been arrested for allegedly exporting sensitive military technology to Russia.
• An NSA contractor was reportedly arrested in August for stealing classified information.

• Hundreds of people, some of them foreigners, have been trapped for months in the Ganfouda neighborhood of Benghazi.
• A Canadian and two Italians have been taken hostage in Libya.
• Long read: How Goldman Sachs lost $1.2 billion of Libya’s money.
• Why doesn’t Algeria have a bigger extremism problem?
• A Malian extremist was given nine years by the ICC for destroying Timbuktu’s mausoleums.
• A senior Egyptian prosecutor survived a car bomb assassination attempt.
• 50 people have been killed in violent clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo after President Joseph Kabila delayed elections. The US has imposed sanctions on top DRC officials and ordered the families of US government personnel to leave the country.
• A prosecutor at the ICC will conduct a preliminary investigation into electoral disputes and violence in Gabon.
• The Sudanese government repeatedly used chemical weapons on civilians in Darfur, says Amnesty International.
• According to UNICEF, 75,000 children could die in Nigeria’s hunger crisis.
• Tuition protests turn violent in South Africa.
• Israel’s former President Shimon Peres died at 93.
• Turkey closed 12 TV stations over alleged threats to national security.
• Despite President Obama’s veto, a bill allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia passedCongress. Saudi Arabia isn’t pleased.
• A compromise on the inquiry into Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen means that UN investigators will be attached to a Yemeni national investigation, disappointing those who have been calling for an independent probe.
• Analysis: Yemen as the “graveyard of the Obama doctrine.”
• Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar was shot dead as he arrived at an Amman court for his blasphemy trial.
• Activists in Aleppo say 96 children were killed over the course of five brutal days of bombing. Two hospitals have been bombed out of service. 1.75 million citizens of Aleppo have been left without running water.
• Analysis: Russia is playing by Grozny rules in Aleppo.
• In photos: The devastation of Aleppo
• Russia’s brutal bombardment of Aleppo, in which it has reportedly begun using bunker-buster bombs, may push the US to suspend ceasefire talks.
• The UN is still waiting for the Assad government toapprove a new Syria chief.
• Long read: The deadly business of war zone medical care.
• The US will send 600 more troops to Iraq to assist in the operation to retake Mosul. France is also boosting its military presence toward the same end. The lives of more than a million civilians are at stake in the operation.
• Former hard-line Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was stymied in his attempts to make a political comeback in time for the May elections.
• A suspected American drone strike against the Islamic State in Afghanistan killed civilians.
• Analysis: The only way to prevent civilian casualties is toavoid war in the first place.
• Afghanistan’s president signed an accord with notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
• European Union plans to pressure Afghanistan into taking in deported asylum seekers have leaked ahead of a meeting in Brussels.
• Afghanistan’s Hazara minority are organizing a grassroots movement called the Enlightening, using mass demonstrations to call for an end to systematic discrimination.
• Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group from the Pakistani Taliban, is raising its national profile with especially deadly and increasingly frequent attacks.
• Indian commandos conducted cross-border raids inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
• Two Pakistani soldiers died in cross-border firing with India over Kashmir.
• Long read: Kashmir’s high price for demanding independence.
• Indian forces continue to use dangerous pellet guns for crowd dispersal in Kashmir as Kashmiris warn that the harshness of the crackdown could spur further radicalization.
• Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, likening himself to Hitler, expressed a desire to kill millions of the country’s drug addicts.
• Dutch prosecutors say they have “no doubt” that the missile system that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine came from Russia.
• Long read: How MH17 gave birth to the modern Russian spin machine.
• The Intercept nabbed an FBI Directorate of Intelligence PowerPoint that suggests infiltrating and targeting mosques and Muslim student associations for potential informants.
• Bosnian Serbs are (controversially) reconstructing two separate, deadly market bombings in Sarajevo in 1994 as part of an investigation.
• Former Guantánamo inmate Lutfi bin Ali struggles with the loneliness of his remote life on the Kazakh steppe.
• Photographer Jesus Abad Colorado Lopez documentedthe Colombian civil war for the past 25 years.
• In Mexico, priests fall victim to the drug cartels.
• The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog found that Snowden’s revelations have been in part responsible for a decrease in the use of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows law enforcement agencies to get telecommunications records from service providers.
• Long read: Inside the Chicago Police Department’s secret budget
• A new study published in Nature examines the science of human propensity for violence.
• UN experts say that the US has failed to confront its own legacy of “colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality” and that the government owes reparations for slavery.

Rebel-held Douma area of Damascus, Syria. Children stand in front of a bullet-riddled building. Bassam Khabieh/Reuters.

 

• Two Libyan oil ports held by forces loyal to the UN-backed government were taken by the rival Libyan National Army.
• Long read: A two-year investigation by The Sentry found that the “top officials ultimately responsible for mass atrocities in South Sudan have at the same time managed to accumulate fortunes, despite modest government salaries.”
• Meanwhile, the rest of South Sudan struggles with shortages and inflation.
• US sanctions on the Ivory Coast, in place for a decade, have been lifted.
• Kenya is using intimidation tactics in its repatriation program for Somali refugees.
• Long read: It takes a village to kill a child.
• Zimbabwe banned opposition protests for a month.
• Gabon, in the midst of an election crisis, has beenconducting systematic internet blackouts since September 5.
• Leader Abubekar Shekau was noticeably absent from Boko Haram’s Eid video
• The US signed a major deal to provide Israel with $38 billion in military aid over the coming decade.
• Turkey is planning to build new prisons to accommodate the post-coup rise in the incarcerated population.
• Analysis: How should militaries factor in the possibility of International Criminal Court scrutiny into their strategic choices?
• In the Yemeni coastal city of Hodeidah, already the poorest city in an impoverished country before the outbreak of war, a malnutrition crisis threatens children.
• Two oil tankers have been seized at a Houthi-controlled port in Hodeidah, risking an even greater import crisis for Yemen.
• 75,000 refugees are trapped along the Syria-Jordan border.
• A Syrian ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia beganon Tuesday. Russia is alleging that the US is covering upopposition breaches of the deal.
• Despite the ceasefire, the Syrian government is stillpreventing aid from reaching Aleppo.
• Human Rights Watch says that Turkish strike on US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in late August in northern Syria killed 24 civilians.
• Analysis: Chlorine’s dark history.
• The Islamic State says it has conducted more than 700 suicide attacks since the beginning of the year.
• The Pentagon says it had no part in the death of Syrian rebel leader Abu Omar Saraqeb.
• The US will pay €1m to the family of Giovanni Lo Porto, a hostage killed in a US air strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2015.
• A watchdog report says that the US invasion and involvement in Afghanistan caused corruption to become “pervasive and entrenched.”
• Pakistan’s coercive and abusive behavior toward Afghan refugees is forcing them to return home.
• Police arrested rights activist Khurram Parvez in Indian-controlled Kashmir, as months of violent protests and crackdown continue.
• The US will lift sanctions on Myanmar, and watchdog organizations are nervous, especially about the derestriction of the jade industry.
• China and Russia are in the midst of war games in the South China Sea and Japan is promising to increase its activity there.
• A week-long ceasefire was agreed upon in eastern Ukraine, and is proving unsurprisingly fragile.
• The IMF finally released the $1 billion dollar loan to Ukraine.
• The White House is considering legal action against Russian hackers.
• Long read: How Russia often benefits from Julian Assange’s leaks.
• A Swedish appeals court has upheld the detention order for Assange.
• Tanks debuted on the battlefield 100 years ago this week––first put to use by the British in an attack on German positions at Flers-Courcelette during the Somme offensive.
• Britain’s inquiry into the highly suspicious death of a Russian whistleblower in 2012 is being hamstrung by political calculations.
• France is set to open the first of 12 de-radicalization centers.
• Eight refugees are seeking legal redress over their expulsion from Macedonia earlier this year.
• The US will take in an extra 25,000 refugees in 2017.
• Long read: A report on war algorithm accountability by Harvard Law School’s Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.
• Controversy has arisen at UC Berkeley after a class titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” was suspended after protest from Israel advocates.
• Edward Snowden and advocacy organizations like the ACLU, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watchhave made a public case for his pardon.
• At the same time, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence unanimously approved a report saying that Snowden did serious damage to national security and released its executive summary.

  
  Photo: Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir. An Indian paramilitary fighter walks past graffiti. Dar Yasin/AP.

• Violence erupted in Gabon, where people are vigorously protesting the re-election of President Ali Bongo.
• The crisis of child malnutrition in northeastern Nigeria deepens.
• Exhausted by massacres and vulnerability, people in the Democratic Republic of Congo are forming their own militias––a risky move.
• UN Security Council diplomats will visit South Sudan this week.
• Messy implementation of Kenya’s Al-Shabaab amnesty plan is leading to trouble.
• Libya handed over its last stockpile of chemical weapons ingredients.
• An Algerian appeals court upheld a two-year sentence for a journalist jailed for posting a poem offensive to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Facebook.
• Tunisia’s local branch of the regional Al Qaeda affiliate AQIM claimed an ambush of Tunisian soldiers in the Kasserine Governorate.
• Smugglers bringing refugees across the Mediterranean are using increasingly dangerous strategies to boost their profits, with deadly consequence.
• Israel retroactively legalizes unauthorized “pirate” settlements in the occupied West Bank.
• Human Rights Watch criticizes Palestinian authorities for cracking down on dissent and abusing local activists and journalists.
• Long read: The scars of civil war fade slowly in the Lebanese village of Brih.
• Dozens were killed in an Islamic State suicide bombing in the Yemeni city of Aden.
• Analysis: Political rivals battle for control of Yemen while the population suffers.
• A UN aid program has awarded tens of millions of dollars to contractors with close ties to President Bashar al-Assad.
• Al Qaeda gains strength in Syria.
• The world was captivated by the image of injured young Omran, but here are pictures of injured Syrian children who went unnoticed.
• Following the evacuation of the Damascus suburb of Daraya, which some are calling a forced displacement, another neighborhood begins uprooting for government shelters.
• Does anyone in Syria fear international law?
• An airstrike killed Islamic State chief propagandist Abu Muhammad al-Adnani.
• A survey of mass graves in Iraq and Syria concluded that the Islamic State has buried as many as 15,000 victims of genocide in at least 72 sites.
• Report: Cluster Munition Monitor 2016.
• Iraqi militias fighting for/with the government haverecruited children out of at least one displaced persons camp.
• Suicide bombers killed at least 11 people in twin attacks in northern Pakistan.
• The condition of Uzbek president Islam Karimov remainsunclear: Reuters reports him dead, while the country’s cabinet contends he is in critical condition following a stroke.
• Iran and Russia agreed on a ten-year plan to build two new nuclear power plants in Bushehr.
• A funeral and re-interment for the long-dead King Habibullah Kalakani, a Tajik who ruled Afghanistan for nine months in 1929, turned violent after clashes with supporters of General Dostum over the burial site.
• Opinion: We ignore Kashmir at our own risk.
• China tightens its regulation of online maps amid territorial disputes.
• The Chinese air force says it is developing a new long-range bomber.
• Analysis: How Brexit affects EU defense policy.
• A secret report concludes that German intelligence broke the law and violated privacy rights with its systematic sweeps of personal telecommunications data.
• Long read: France begins an experimental de-radicalization program.
• In eastern Ukraine, “it is not full-blown war, but it is not much of a ceasefire, either.”
• Human Rights Watch gathers evidence of disappearances and secretive detention practices by the Ukrainian security services.
• Five women, the mothers of children killed in the Beslan school massacre, were arrested for wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Putin is the executioner of Beslan” at a commemoration ceremony. Two journalists were also arrested for trying to film.
• Long read: Human Rights Watch detailsChechnya’s “vicious crackdown on critics.”
• Peru sentenced former army officers and soldiers to prison for the 31-year-old massacre at the Andean village of Accomarca, where 71 civilians were killed.
• Proliferating gang violence in Central America––especially the Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras––is a humanitarian crisis.
• One million Venezuelans showed up in the streets of Caracas to call for the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro.

• Der Spiegel interviews Libya’s prime minister.
• Libyan parliament rejected the leadership of the UN-backed government on Monday.
• Marine helicopter gunships entered the fight against the Islamic State in Libya.
• The Nigerian military claims to have killed several Boko Haram commanders, with their leader perhapsfatally wounded.
• The vigilantes helping to defeat Boko Haram may be Nigeria’s next security threat.
• The UN says that 49,000 children suffering acute malnutrition in Nigeria’s Borno state will die this year if not helped.
• A militant appeared in the International Criminal Court to account for the destruction of Timbuktu’s mausoleums.
• An Al-Shabaab attack on a Somali beach restaurant kills 8.
• Rebuilding peace in the Central African Republic.
• Former South Sudanese VP and rebel leader Riek Machar is reportedly in Khartoum for medical attention.
• Attacks have intensified in Yemen and civilians arepaying the price. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an independent probe into war crimes there.
• Doctors Without Borders withdrew staff from six Yemeni hospitals after strikes.
• Long read: When it comes to extremism, Saudis are “both the arsonists and the firefighters.”
• Israel launched up to 50 strikes on Hamas positions after a rocket attack hit the city of Sderot, an especially harsh response that breaks the ongoing pattern of retaliation.
• The Israeli military cleared itself of wrongdoing during the 2014 Gaza War.
• Palestinian journalist Omar Nazzal was supposed to be released this week but his detention without charge or trial was extended.
• A truck bomb hit a police checkpoint in the Turkish town of Cizre this morning, with 11 fatalities reported so far.
• Turkish parliament approved a deal to normalize relations with Israel.
• “…[I]t is now impossible to deny that the Syrian regime has repeatedly used industrial chlorine as a weapon against its own people.”
• Turkish troops shelled U.S.-backed Kurdish militia fighters in northern Syria on Thursday.
• Syrian rebels retook the town of Jarablus with the assistance of US aircraft and Turkish tanks. The US and Turkey are currently in the midst of a joint operation in northern Syria.
• Turkey’s plans for a Syria offensive may have been significantly slowed by the coup.
• Life expectancy has fallen by six years in Syria since the start of the civil war.
• Long read: Why the war in Syria keeps getting worse.
• Little Omran is hardly alone––85,000 children live under siege in Aleppo.
• Kurdish forces are battling Assad’s army for the town of Hasakeh.
• A former detainee in Syria’s notorious Saydnaya Prisontells his story.
• The Daraya suburb of Damascus surrendered to government forces, striking an evacuation deal.
• Iraqi forces retook the town of Qayara from the Islamic State.
• The Iraqi parliament voted to sack the defense minister ahead of an offensive to take Mosul.
• Years of war have resulted in considerable air pollutionin Iraq, with major health consequences for its children.
• Iraq hung 36 men convicted of involvement in the 2014 Speicher massacre of hundreds of Shi’a recruits near Tikrit.
• Detentions, torture and massacres of Sunni civilians by Shi’ite militias during the recapture of Fallujah show the lack of US control over the groups.
• Iran released the first photos of its newly minted Bavar 373 system––the country’s first domestically-built long-range missile defence system.
• The UAE bought expensive Israeli spyware to hack and monitor a dissident’s iPhone.
• Russia’s use of an Iranian airbase as a launch for attacks in Syria is halted “for now.”
• Iranian naval boats and American warships had four confrontations in the Persian Gulf in the past week.
• A militant attack on Kabul’s American University left 16 dead and 53 wounded. The Taliban also destroyed a school for the blind in the course of their assault.
• Afghan photographer Massoud Hossaini gives his firsthand account of the attack.
• The US lost track of hundreds of thousands of guns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• US military and economic aid to Pakistan has decreasedmeasurably in recent years as the relationship shifts.
• The South Korean army is allowing women into its Ranger school for the first time.
• Philippine troops killed 11 Abu Sayyaf militants following the group’s beheading of a captive.
• Bahrun Naim, acting as a regional coordinator for the Islamic State in Indonesia, is inspiring radicalization and building a network of extremism.
• Ukraine marked 25 years of independence.
• in pictures: Kiev’s revolutionary graffiti
• Ukrainian photojournalists are questioning the veracity of war photograph from the defense ministry that seems just too good to be true.
• Belgium asked the NSA for assistance with its four-month manhunt for Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam.
• Some in France, like Sarkozy, favor bans enacted on burkinis, ostensibly to make people feel safer. These recent “security” measures have resulted in some cringeworthy images of policemen forcing a woman to undress in the name of keeping the beach safe and unprovocative.
• Colombia and the FARC rebels reached a historic peace agreement. Huge as this news is, the accord will not be final until Colombians, who may balk at concessions made to the rebel group, vote to approve it in October.
• A human rights trial in Argentine federal court resulted in 38 convictions (and 5 acquittals) of former military officers for involvement in murders, torture and disappearances during the country’s dictatorship.
• Long reads: The city of Baltimore is employing an expansive, secret, military-grade system of aerial surveillance, a version of a system previously put to use in Iraq.
• The US released an unclassified profile of Guantánamo detainee Abu Zubaydah.

• Nigeria reincarnated a controversial institution –– a group known as the “war on indiscipline” task force, brought back not just to mete out justice for littering but to be involved in intelligence-gathering in the war on Boko Haram.
• Nigeria is saving civilians, including children, from Boko Haram, and then locking them up.
• Riek Machar, former vice president of South Sudan and military rival of President Salva Kiir, has fled the country.
• The UN warns that a spike in the recruitment of child soldiers in South Sudan could be imminent.
• The UN Security Council granted the South Sudan peacekeeping mission an expanded mandate and more troops.
• Several humanitarian aid workers were raped last month by South Sudanese soldiers, and the UN did nothing. Now, an independent investigation will review the reports that the UN failed to respond.
• 36 civilians were killed by suspected rebels in eastern Congo.
• Protests continue in Ethiopia.
• Refugees from Mali’s instability arrive in Mauritania.
• According to AFRICOM, the US has carried out 61 airstrikes in Libya since August 1st.
• Three Arab writers reflect on the legacy of the Arab Spring.
• Egypt sentenced 418 people for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
• At least fourteen people have been killed in bomb attacks in eastern Turkey.
• Turkey released 38,000 prisoners to make room for more post-coup detainees as its crackdown continues.
• An air strike by the Saudi-led coalition on Monday hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen, killing at least 11 people.
• Yemeni troops launched an offensive to take back Taiz from Houthi rebels.
• Long read: Inside the real ground war against the Islamic State.
• No aid convoys reached the over half a million Syrians living in besieged cities this month.
• The image and footage of a young, wounded Syrian boy named Omran sitting in ambulance in Aleppo has struck a chord globally.
• In photos: A jubilant and liberated Manbij.
• The Syrian-Russian military operation has been using incendiary weapons in civilian areas, violating international law.
• Russia used an Iranian airbase for the first time to launch strikes in Syria. The US is investigating whether this violates a UN Security Council resolution.
• More than 17,000 people have died in Syrian government custody in the last five years.
• Saydnaya jail is Syria’s most notorious and hidden prison – but former detainees have helped use forensic architecture to reconstruct it.
• A three-part long read: An Islamic State insider details the group’s creation, its stockpiling of chemical weapons, and its divorce from Al Qaeda.
• Assad may be losing control over his militias.
• Analysis: The world is failing to address the Islamic State’s genocide against Yazidi women and girls, and the gender dynamic of this atrocity.
• Crystal meth coming over the border from Iran is overwhelming the city of Basra’s police force and addicting its population.
• In photos: life on a US military base in Iraq.
• How the State Department plan to stabilize Iraq broke apart.
• The much-discussed $400 million given to Iran wasdelayed as leverage in the prisoner release negotiations.
• Afghanistan’s power-sharing agreement between by President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah is on the rocks.
• A Taliban splinter group has reconciled with the main group’s new leadership.
• The Taliban is sustaining offensives in provinces across Afghanistan.
• Medical care is cut off in Lashkar Gah and aid agencies in Helmand’s capital city are making contingency plans as the Taliban lays siege.
• Afghan ID cards were supposed to curb voter fraud, but instead they exacerbated ethnic divides.
• Pakistanis displaced by the government offensive arereturning home and struggling to rebuild what they have lost.
• India is ready for talks with Pakistan over protests and violence in Kashmir.
• Explainer: 69 years of strife in Kashmir.
• Japan is building a new land-to-sea missile to defend disputed islands in the East China Sea.
• China participated in US military drills in the Pacific.
• The Turkestan Islamic Party, a group fighting for Uyghur autonomy in China’s Xinjiang province, are globalizing.
• Southeast Asia risks becoming a haven for displaced Islamic State fighters.
• Infographic: The demographics of post-Soviet countries 25 years later.
• Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the worst violence there in a year.
• Long read: daily life continues amidst conflict and ambiguity in Luhansk and Donetsk.
• Russia held military exercises in Crimea and Ukraine is expressing fear of an invasion.
• An attack on a traffic police post outside of Moscow has been claimed by the Islamic State.
• Germany races to address radicalization.
• Twitter suspended 235,000 accounts for promoting terrorism.
• 15 Guantánamo inmates were transferred to the UAE –– the Obama administration’s largest transfer to date.

• The US began launching strikes on the Islamic State in Libya this week.
• West Africa’s Lake Chad basin is in a dire situation, with many millions needing aid as refugees from Boko Haram’s brutality strain impoverished host communities.
• Women in a displacement camp outside the South Sudanese capital Juba face a choice between rape and starvation.
• The UN says that government forces in South Sudan bear responsibility for the spate of rapes and killings since fighting between rivals Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir broke out yet again last month.
• Long read: How the AK-47 and then the AR-15 becamemass killers’ weapons of choice.
• A Nigerian judicial panel called for the prosecution of Nigerian soldiers over the killing of nearly 350 Shi’ite Muslims in the town of Zaria last year.
• Boko Haram’s Abubekar Shekau wants us all to knowhe’s still here.
• The head of the Islamic State in Egypt has been killed by security forces.
• Israel’s security agency accused the local head of the Christian aid group World Vision of funneling Gaza-bound funds to Hamas.
• Both sides in Yemen have committed atrocities, with new reports saying Houthi fighters used civilians as human shields and Saudi Arabia’s coalition intentionally bombed a house with four children inside.
• The fallout from the coup attempt has caused massive and rapid restructuring in Turkey’s military.
• In the Syrian war, everything rides on the battle for Aleppo.
• The UN struggles with whether or not to support a “deeply flawed” Russian plan for humanitarian corridors out of Aleppo.
• Syrians say toxic gas was dropped on a town hours after a Russian military helicopter had been shot down nearby.
• “Syria’s agony will go on…because so many rebel leaders had nothing — were nothing — before the war and now have everything. “
• Syria has become a post-factual conflict.
• Infographic: The Levant Conquest Front (fmrly Al Nusra Front) in Syria.
• A Saudi cleric has become an adept and influential salafist hype man, rallying insurgents in Syria through his media presence and fundraising for jihad.
• In photos: On the front lines in Fallujah.
• The Islamic State increasingly aims its recruitment efforts at children.
• The UNHCR has received reports that the Islamic State seized as many as 3,000 internally displaced people in Kirkuk.
• The UN says the Islamic State continues to carry out its genocide against the Yazidi.
• A Taliban convoy ambush in western Afghanistan wounded foreign tourists.
• Four people died in a Taliban hotel attack in Kabul.
• The late July suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 80 people has had serious consequences for the Hazaras’ nonviolent reform movement
• A Pakistani helicopter crash-landed in Taliban-held territory. Passengers and crew are feared captured.
• Tajikistan jailed 170 people for involvement in a coup attempt last year.
• New legislation in Kyrgyzstan allows authorities to stripterror convicts of their citizenship.
• 12 people were killed this morning in a rebel attack on a crowded market in India’s Assam state.
• “In just over a month in power, the tough-talking new president of the Philippines has started one war and made moves to end two others.”
• War may be returning to Ukraine; July was the deadliest month in the Donbass in over a year.
• Infographic: Civilian casualties in Ukraine.
• A Ukrainian nationalist website published more personal information about journalists.
• Ukraine rejected Russia’s proposed ambassador to Kiev.
• The closed-door fight over who will replace Ban Ki-Moon as UN Secretary General is preparing to get ugly between the US and Russia.
• The UN is opening a probe into whether or not former Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was assassinated.
• Long read: A jailhouse interview with a German Islamic State recruit reveals information about a special external operations unit responsible for realizing the group’s global jihad ambitions.
• How the Ansbach suicide bomber returned home from Syria.
• A former Guantánamo detainee tries to begin again in Estonia.
• The Pulitizer Prize-winning Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS is going to be an HBO miniseries. Bradley Cooper is involved.