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

• 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 haspostponed 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.

• 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 defectfrom 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 byholding 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 journalistsreporting 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.

• 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 campaigncaused 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.

• A suicide bomber detonated in a market in Maiduguri in Nigeria this morning (Friday).
• Suicide bombers in Nigeria and Cameroon over the weekend killed 34 and wounded many others.
• A new general has been named by Nigeria to head the multinational effort to fight Boko Haram.
• Political divisions are hampering agreements regarding that multinational effort.
• Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza has won the third term that sparked so much protest and election violence.
• Amnesty International reports that Muslims returning to their homes in the Central African Republic are being forced to abandon their religious beliefs by Christian militias.
• Chadian MPs have voted to reinstate the death penalty for terror offenses.
• Tunisian parliament adopted a new anti-terror law.
• Ancient mausoleums in Timbuktu have been restored and reconstructed after their destruction by Al Qaeda-linked militants three years ago.
• A Libyan court sentenced Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, to death for war crimes committed during the 2011 revolution.
• 27 aid workers have died since the conflict began in South Sudan.
• A large Al-Shabaab truck bomb detonated at a hotel in Mogadishu, killing 15.
• The UN continued its contracts with Russian aviation company UTair after one of the company’s helicopter crews raped a teenage girl in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010. The contracts amount to half a billion dollars.
• Several US-backed Syrian fighters and their leader have been abducted by the Nusra Front in northern Syria.
• The US and Turkey have outlined a “safe zone” along the Turkey-Syria border, a demarcated area from which they plan to oust the Islamic State in an escalation of the war. Some analysis says this plan is really less about fighting the terror group and more about Turkey preventing Kurdish regional power.
• The Turkish air force hit Kurdish insurgent camps in Iraq over the weekend andcontinued to this week. The country is now in a two-front war against the Kurds and against the Islamic State –– unraveling the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
• The Turkish military says three of its soldiers have been killed in a convoy attack by the PKK.
• The Syrian Jaysh al-Fateh coalition is launching a new anti-Assad offensive based in Idlib and pushing south.
• Staffan de Mistura might have the toughest job in the world –– he’s the UN special envoy to Syria.
• BuzzFeed goes inside the trade of stolen antiquities from Syria –– a black market business funding the country’s fractured civil war.
• Syrian children in Lebanon live a life of hard work, skipping their educations and entering into often abusive farm and warehouse labor.
• A suspected arson attack carried out by Jewish extremists in the West Bank left an 18-month-old dead and the rest of his family harmed.
• Israel gave approval this week to plans to expand a West Bank settlement by 300 homes.
• Israeli legislators also approved the force-feeding of hunger strikers.
• Jonathan Pollard, serving a sentence for spying for Israel, has been grantedparole and will be released in November after 30 years in prison.
• Saudi Arabia’s coalition has gained significant advantage in Yemen, planning an expansion of ground operations.
• A bombing outside a girls’ school in Sitra, Bahrain killed two policemen. Several arrests have been made.
• Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar seems to really be dead this time. Reports from Afghan intelligence say that he died in a hospital in Karachi in spring of 2013. US intelligence suspected back in 2011 that Omar was being treated in a Pakistani hospital.
• Der Spiegel interviews Dutch journalist Bette Dam, who is currently working on a biography of Omar.
• The group has named as his successor Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
• The Taliban offensive in the north continues. They also seized a district in Helmand.
• 21 were killed at a gun battle during a wedding party in northern Afghanistan on Monday.
• Pakistani detainees disappear into the dozens of internment centers that have sprung up in the tribal areas.
• India executed an accountant convicted of involvement in the 1993 Mumbai bombings.
• Gunmen in Indian Army uniforms attacked a bus and a police station in Punjab on Monday, killing five.
• Some volunteer fighters have become a problem for Ukraine. Ukraine also struggles against lack of funds to retrieve its dead soldiers.
• Ukraine has charged a captured Russian army major with terrorism.
• The rift between Ukraine and Russia is evident in celebrations of a sainted medieval prince.
• Longread from Harpers: Ukraine struggles to find national identity amid war and crisis.
• The trial for captured Ukrainian soldier Nadia Savchenko over the deaths of two Russian journalists has begun.
• France settled with Russia over compensation for the non-delivery of two Mistral warships.
• Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have established a tribunal to prosecute those thought responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.
• A British man was acquitted of terror charges in Britain, but no one who knows the details of the case is allowed to discuss why.
• A list of the British militants killed in Iraq and Syria over the past three years.
• Germany has opened a treason investigation into news website Netzpolitik.org over its reporting on state surveillance.
• The head of Brazil’s nuclear energy utility has been arrested on charges of corruption, potentially stalling the country’s nuclear plans.
• Colombia has halted air strikes on FARC rebels.
• Five former Chilean soldiers have been charged in the burning deaths of two teenagers during a 1986 protest against Pinochet.
• Wikileaks has published documents it says reveal US surveillance of Japanese officials and corporations.
• In an April letter to lawyers, Guantánamo inmate Mohamedou Ould Slahi indicates that mail from his family has been confiscated in order to pressure him into further interrogation.
• The Pentagon prepares for climate change.
• The US has a growing corporate industry around intelligence analysis for drone operations.
• Newly-released photos show the reaction of VP Cheney along with Bush, Rice and other officials as 9/11 unfolded.
• The TSA will address screening and security procedures as part of an overhaul.

• 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 supportfor 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.

• 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 offensiveagainst 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.

• The terrorist attack on an Ivory Coast beach resort, which left at least 16 dead,shows Al Qaeda’s growing focus on West Africa.
• A new documentary chronicles the first time rape was prosecuted as a war crime, in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
• Video: On patrol with those fighting Boko Haram in Cameroon
• Cameroon sentences 89 Boko Haram fighters to death.
• Cattle herders suffer the consequences of the Boko Haram fight after Nigeria shut down the cattle trade in Maiduguri for financing the terror group.
• Benin will deploy troops to the regional task force fighting Boko Haram.
• Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo arrested 18 pro-democracy activists.
• Long read: Young Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
• The Syrian civil war has been raging for five years, killing more than a quarter of a million people.
• Long read: “No one won or will ever win this revolution turned civil war”
• Abu Omar al-Shishani, a top Islamic State commander and former Chechen militant, reportedly died of injuries sustained in an airstrike.
• Hassan Aboud, another Islamic State commander, has also died of battlefield wounds.
• Secretary of State John Kerry says the Islamic State (or Daesh, as he refers to them) is responsible for genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shi’ite Muslims.
• Syrian Kurds declared a de facto federal region in the country’s north. 
• Long read: in search of Syria’s pigeon smugglers.
• The Islamic State killed Syrian poet Mohammed Bashir al-Aani and his son.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial force withdrawal/drawdown in Syria, declaring many of the Kremlin’s goals accomplished. The move has “solidified Moscow’s influence not only on the battlefield but also at the negotiating table.”
• Long read: The Islamic State forces captive women to use birth control in order to pursue their brutal practices of sexual slavery.
• A car bomb in Ankara killed 37 people. A Kurdish group claimed responsibility.
• A delegation of Iraqi Kurds are set to visit Moscow in April to discuss weapons supplies.
• Turkey is working to end reliance on foreign drone systems, seeking to cultivate indigenous drone production.
• An American man fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq surrendered to Kurdish soldiers.
• Saudi Arabia says it will scale down its Yemen campaign.
• The death toll from a recent Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni outdoor market rose to 100.
• Hizb-i-Islami agreed to join the Afghan peace process.
• The Pentagon is punishing at least 12 US service members for their roles in the deadly attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz.
• North Korea defiantly launched another missile into the sea.
• At least 7 Abu Sayyaf militants were killed in a battle with Philippine troops.
• Prosecutions for state security and terrorism charges doubled in China in 2015.
• A police raid in Brussels killed a gunman with reported Islamic State links. Belgium is promising further sweeps.
• One of the Paris suicide bombers was buried in Brussels.
• In the past two years, land mines have killed hundreds of Ukrainian civilians.
• Human Rights Watch says that rights have deteriorated in Crimea since the annexation two years ago, and that Russia has created “a pervasive climate of fear and repression.”
• Britain will sign a 15-year defense pact with Ukraine, increasing joint exercises, military training and intelligence assistance.
• President Obama will declassify military, intelligence and law enforcement records related to Argentina’s dirty war in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Colombia may miss the peace deal deadline.
• These days there is only one woman on the UN Security Council (US Ambassador Samantha Power).

• The South Sudanese army suffocated more than five dozen men and boys in a shipping container before dumping their bodies, according to Amnesty International. In its own report, the UN is accusing the army of deliberately killing and raping civilians as part of a government “scorched earth policy.”
• A South Sudanese journalist, recovering from two months of detention, wasabducted and tortured.
• Nigeria shut down one of Africa’s biggest cattle markets for helping finance Boko Haram.
• US Special Forces killed a high-profile (but undisclosed) target in a raid in Somalia. A weekend airstrike also reportedly killed 150 militants at Al-Shabaab’s Raso training camp.
• Despite the US campaign against them, Al-Shabaab looks like it is experiencing aresurgence.
• Residents of North Sinai are trapped between the Islamic State and the Egyptian army.
• The African Union is considering a Mali counter-terrorism force.
• The Islamic State is making gains in Libya, positioning itself as a bulwark against future foreign intervention. They also most likely have Qaddafi’s missiles.
• Long read: “…Tripoli, a tense and listless city caught in the maw of Libya’s strange war.”
• German intelligence obtained 22,000 Islamic State documents that name group members (they are all questionnaires filled out by potential recruits), including some British and American names. While this isn’t useless information, it also isn’t key secrets.
• VIdeo: VICE travelled to Kilis, a Turkish town on the Syrian border, to getrefugees’ stories of living under airstrikes.
• In Jordan, the Azraq refugee camp sits partially empty while many thousands of refugees wait in limbo elsewhere in the country.
• Violence continues in Israel during Biden’s visit.
• Saudi Arabia concluded a three-week 20-nation anti-terror military drill.
• The Islamic State used “poisonous substances” while shelling a village in northern Iraq this week.
• In a two week period from late February to early this week, the Islamic Statekilled 200 Iraqis, mostly civilians, in bombings.
• Russia’s delivery of the S-300 anti-missile system to Iran will occur in August or September.
• Iran’s foreign ministry says the Revolutionary Guard’s missile tests this weekwere not in violation of the nuclear agreement.
• The US says Iran was responsible for a 2013 cyberattack on a NY dam.
• As many as 100 militants were killed in clashes between rival Taliban factions in the Shindand district of Herat.
• US and Afghan officials consider Afghanistan’s commando and special forces units to be the country’s best hope.
• Afghan forces withdrew from a district in Uruzgan.
• Shahbaz Taseer –– son of assassinated Pakistani politician Salman Taseer –– has been freed after being abducted five years ago.
• Three hostages (one Norwegian, two Canadians) plead for their lives in a new video posted by their captors, an extremist group in the Philippines.
• North Korea fired more missiles into the sea.
• Two Russian activists and two Western journalists were attacked entering Chechnya.
• Mikhail Lesin – former Putin press minister and founder of Russia Today – was found dead in his DC hotel room in November. The autopsy now shows he died of blunt force trauma.
• Russian intelligence may have tricked imprisoned Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko into easing her hunger strike.
• Long read: Before he became one of the Paris attackers, Sami Amimour drove a bus through the city’s banlieues.
• 204 former Guantánamo detainees are either confirmed or suspected recidivists, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
• Long read: The Atlantic conducted a wide-ranging interview with President Obama, some of his most detailed and candid discussions yet of his foreign policy.
• The White House will reveal the death toll from US drone strikes.
• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights weighed in on Apple v. the FBI, warning of potential global human rights implications stemming from creating a backdoor into the iPhone.
• Long read: Palantir, a Silicon Valley tech firm with deep ties to the CIA and the national security apparatus, is pursuing a greater relationship with humanitarian aid organizations.
• The murders of leftwing activists have unsettled peace talks in Colombia.
• Local crime reporters in Juárez recover from witnessing and chronicling the years of terrible violence that earned the city the reputation of the world’s murder capital.
• Long read: why it’s important to have women covering global affairs.

• Two Italian hostages held in Libya since last July were freed.
• French forces in Mali reportedly killed a Spanish al Qaeda commander.
• Boko Haram is suffering the effects of a food crisis it created.
• At least 50,000 people have been killed in South Sudan’s two year civil war.
• The African Union plans to deploy monitors to Burundi.
• The Democratic Republic of Congo agreed to extradite a Rwandan genocide suspect.
• Three Save the Children aid workers were kidnapped in eastern DRC.
• In the Central African Republic, rape victims and their “peacekeeper babies”struggle.
• A new report argues that the US, and other top arms suppliers to Saudi Arabia, are failing to meet “their legal obligations under the UN Arms Treaty” by continuing to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu called for the expulsion of the families of Palestinian attackers to Gaza.
• Israel’s minister of culture and sport introduced a “loyalty in culture” bill last month, triggering a major debate about freedom of expression.
• With US help, Israel is preparing to launch one of the world’s most advanced missile defense systems.
• Hamas executed one of their own commanders last month, after a strange twisting story that began with his admission that he diverted brigade funds to himself and then involved rumors of treachery and stories of his homosexuality.
• The Gulf Cooperation Council listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Increasing tension between the Iran-backed group and Saudi Arabia trapsLebanon.
• The US delivered 8 Black Hawk helicopters to Jordan to aid them in the fight against the Islamic State.
• Jordan is now the testing ground for a jobs program for Syrian refugees.
• A car bombing and rocket attack, blamed on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),killed 2 police officers and wounded 35 people in southeastern Turkey.
• “It wasn’t a war at first, it was a revolution against the system.” Five years into their fight against dictatorship, Syrian rebels are exhausted.
• A “cessation of hostilities,” began on February 27th in Syria. Violence damagedthe partial calm on the second day, and Israel alleges that Syria has used chemical weapons during the truce. One of the rebel groups says that Syrian forces aremobilizing to gain further ground during the ceasefire.
• The UN postponed Syria peace talks to March 9.
• The Syrian drought is the worst in 900 years.
• An American general said that Russia and Syria are “weaponizing” the refugee crisis to destabilize Europe.
• Long read: “As long as it’s under 10, we’re good to take the shot.” Inside how the Pentagon makes its calculations about acceptable levels of civilian casualties.
• US Special Forces captured an Islamic State operative in Iraq.
• In Ramadi, the Islamic State left behind a booby-trapped city.
• Engineers warn that the Mosul dam’s collapse could be imminent, with a huge death toll.
• Yazidi refugees return to Sinjar.
• An Australian reporter who “witnessed the birth of Isis” during his seven years living in Iraq, has made a film chronicling the carnage he saw.
• China plans to increase its defense spending by 7-8% in 2016.
• Following UN sanctions, North Korea fired projectiles into the sea and ramped up its propaganda battle against the US and South Korea.
• No breakthroughs were made in Paris talks over Ukraine, where death toll has hit 9,160.
• Ending US use of Russian rocket engines could cost $5 billion.
• The Obama administration tries to encourage tech companies to participate in the fight against the Islamic State.
• The encryption battle between Apple and the FBI goes on.
• The latest release of bin Laden documents shows the Al Qaeda leader warned against a caliphate.
• A judge ruled that Indiana unconstitutionally discriminated against Syrian refugees.
• Four Minneapolis men facing federal terrorism charges will undergo a court-ordered de-radicalization program.
• Long read: the ISIS hunt for dirty bomb components in Belgium.
• A team of refugees will compete at the Olympics.
• There were 99 allegations of sexual abuse against UN staff last year, 69 of which were against peacekeepers.

• The UN reports horrible violence and lawlessness in Libya, where there are thousands of cases of beheadings, torture by electrocution, beatings, and arbitrary detention.
• Libya is also the site of major Islamic State expansion.
• French special forces have a presence inside Libya to combat the Islamic State, reportedly working out of Benina airport in Benghazi.
• No one can figure out why Giulio Regeni, an Italian student living in Cairo, was tortured and killed.
• Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni won a fifth term in office, in an election criticized by EU observers.
• The Central African Republic’s former prime minister, Faustin-Archange Touadera, won the run-off election for president.
• The US plans to send special forces to advise Nigeria in its fight against Boko Haram.
• Nigerians accused of being involved with Boko Haram are rounded up anddisappear.
• Human Rights Watch highlights deepening, worsening violence in Burundi.
• While 20,000 West Africans obtained identity documents last year, one million remain stateless.
• Somalia’s president said that last month’s Al Shabaab assault on a Kenyan army base killed 180 troops. Kenya disputes this, but doesn’t offer a competing casualty figure.
• Long read: how changing media is changing terrorism.
• War is Boring digs into the ideology held by Sudan’s most successful rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
• According to Action on Armed Violence, 6,119 civilians in Yemen were harmed by explosive weapons in 2015. The calls are growing for an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia.
• Canadian rifles may have wound up in use by Yemeni rebels.
• Iran’s offer to compensate the families of Palestinians who have been killed in a recent wave of violence is being held up by Israel as evidence of Iranian backing of terrorism.
• After spending three months in jail, two Turkish journalists charged with revealing state secrets are free following a constitutional court ruling.
• The US and Russia agreed to enforce a ceasefire in Syria (it does not include the Islamic State, Al Nusra Front, et al) that would start Saturday.
• Medical workers in Syria believe they are not just the victims of stray bombings, but overt targets.
• The Syrian town of al-Shadadi, a key Islamic State logistics hub, is seen by the USas key to plans to degrade the group’s power in Syria.
• An examination of IED components gathered from the battlefield sources the Islamic State’s bombmaking parts to 51 companies and 20 countries.
• Long read: a dispatch from a correspondent in Syria on the work of governance under the bombs.
• The UN carried out its first air drop of food aid for Syrians. The entire 21-ton drop was either lost or damaged. Some landed on mined areas. It could have fed 2,500 people for a month
• Two groups in Syria swore their allegiance to Al Nusra Front, which has been accumulating the loyalties of smaller jihadist operations since late 2015.
• Two suicide bombers killed nine people in an attack on a Shi’a mosque in Baghdad, claimed by the Islamic State.
• Kamal and Mohamed Eldarat, held without charge in the UAE for 505 days, aregoing on trial.
• It’s election day in Iran. Here are some of the parliamentary candidates.
• US payments to the survivors and the families of those killed in the attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz are seen as inadequate “sorry money.”
• Russia gifted Afghanistan 10,000 automatic rifles.
• The Afghan Army withdrew from bases in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province, and then from the Now Zad district.
• NATO is investigating the possible role of foreign troops in a fatal hospital raid near Kabul.
• Enforcing new sanctions on North Korea is going to be primarily China’s responsibility.
• The people-smuggling industry made over $6 billion last year, fueled by the refugee crisis.
• The closure of a French mosque because of alleged evidence of radicalism and terror recruitment was upheld by a high court.
• Canada aims to revoke a law that strips dual nationals convicted of terrorism of their citizenship.
• Special forces increasingly have to buy their own military gear, paying out of pocket for equipment the military doesn’t provide.
• Long read: an excerpt from Brian Castner’s All The Ways We Kill and Die.
• President Obama made his last pitch to close Guantánamo.
• The US test-fired ICBMs in a demonstration of nuclear capability.