NEWS

The first recorded use of smoke as a weapon of asphyxiation against civilians in the MENA region dates back to the mid-19th century, when French general Bugeaud adopted this “new method” against thousand of people in Algeria: “If they [Algerians] take refuge in their caves”, Bugeaud argued, “then smoke them out like foxes [renards]”.

Seventy years later, the Middle East witnessed its first recorded use of chemical weapons. This occurred during the 1917’s Third Battle of Gaza, when the troops led by General Edmund Allenby fired about 10,000 cans of asphyxiating gas. Their limited impact did not meet Allenby’s expectations. However, the use of gas attracted much attention to the point that – right after the 1920 Iraqi Revolt against the proposed British Mandate of Mesopotamia – Secretary of State for the colonies Winston Churchill noted of being “strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes […] it would spread a lively terror”.

One century and many wars later, the UK, France and the US (whose support for Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons during the Iraq-Iran War has now been ascertained), launched a “US-led humanitarian intervention to protect [Syrian] civilians” against a chemical attack allegedly carried out by the Syrian regime in East Ghouta. Yet, their humanitarian intentions raise serious questions yet to be answered.

The cost of ‘non-intervention’?

The suspected chemical attack of 7 April has been denied by a number of sources, including the doctors serving at the field hospital were the victims have been treated. Nothwithstanding the recurrent war crimes perpetrated by the Syrian regime, the latter’s interest in using chemical weapons in a phase in which Bashar Al-Assad’s forces are advancing and winning the war appears unclear.

It should also be added that conventional weapons (not chemical weapons) are responsible for over 90 per cent of the mass killing of Syrian civilians by the regime and its allies (including Iran and Russia). If anything, the “US-led humanitarian intervention” confirmed that external powers are not so much troubled by the fact that dozens of Syrians die every day. It is mainly how they do so that seems to deserve a special attention, or “reaction”.

Read: Air strikes send a message to the Russians not to Assad

And it is indeed in the alleged lack of an earlier “reaction” – the so called “non-interventionist policy” in Syria – that many observers see as a key-component to assess what Syria is currently experiencing. If there was an opportunity for Western powers to make a difference for the better, pointed out British author Andrew Rawnsley, “chance was missed many, many deaths ago”.

London and its allies had indeed plans already before 2011 to use the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to curb a regime that has been considered by them as a thorn in their sides for decades. In 2011 strategy shifted to West’s allies funding proxies. If anything, the US, Britain and their allies intervened too much and too early, largely to the benefit of Bashar Al-Assad, but also Hezbollah and Iran.

A regional order in the making

It has been noted that in our age of “politics as reality show”, even geopolitics and military raids are often done for show. There is much truth in these words. In this sense it should be noted that a  possible chemical attack occurred already in April 2017. Then as today, the US-led strike was preceeded by an announcement made by US President Donald Trump regarding his will to withdraw from Syria and followed by the bombing of an empty Syrian airfield.

A Syrian man receives medical treatment after the Assad regime conducted a poisonous gas attack in Eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria on 7 March, 2018 [Dia Al Din Samout/Anadolu Agency]

And yet, the ongoing “geopolitical show” is underpinned by two very practical aims. The first one might be linked to the 2017–18 Qatar diplomatic crisis. Both the outbreak of the Qatar crisis and the recent US-led strike are in fact meant to provide a clear sign to regional actors to show the consequences that will be faced by those unwilling to align themselves with the anti-Iran front and the tacit agreement that binds Israel to Saudi Arabia and its allies.

#WarInSyria

In recent months also a number of Saudi sources have come forward contending that Saudi-Israeli relations are “the main gateway” to understanding the “transformations in the region and the backstage deliberations over the Palestinian cause”, including the recent and upcoming developments concerning Jerusalem.

Fostering fragmentation

The second aim is rooted in the will to weaken the link between Iran, Turkey and Russia; the three guarantors of the Astana peace process. The latter, in which Russia has played a key role, is perceived by many as a key tool to overcome the fragmentation of Syria and, more generally, the division of large Arab states into small and mostly homogeneous entities incapable of posing any threat.

This political goal is actively supported, directly andor indirectly, by a number of key-figures within the Trump administration, and has been advocated by several influential think tanks in Washington, including Project for the New American Century (PNAC), since the early 2000s.

Read: US admitted only 44 Syria refugees in the last 6 months

Among the 25 political figures who signed PNAC’s founding statement of principles in 1997, ten went on to serve in the administration of former US President George W. Bush. Some of them – including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz – were charged with highly influential positions that had direct repercussions on key-aspects pertaining to the region. The then president expressed his support for the remodeling of the “greater Middle East” also in his State of the Union speech on 20 January 2004.

Whose humanitarism?

The image of a “civilised world” that was witnessing yet another clash in the context of an inherently fanatic “Islamic Orient” was very much present in the articles published in England and France in the early 1860s. Western observers were then describing the massacres which occurred between Christians and Muslims during the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war.

Then, as today, external (and particularly Western) powers felt the necessity to intervene in the region justifying this through “humanitarian considerations”, and by adopting a self-imposed mission civilisatrice. They were, however, much less ready to acknowledge their own roles and responsabilities, or to ease the humanitarian burden faced by local actors.

Not much has changed in this respect. It is enough to mention that, according to the US State Department, Washington has admitted a total of 11 Syrian refugees in the all 2018. Despite playing a leading role in Syria and the broader region, Russia has granted refugee status to “only one Syrian national since 2011”. These examples represent the rule rather than the exception. Orwell’s celebrated prophecy – “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength” – could not have found a better manifesto.

Caricature of Syrian President sending air strikes in Syria – Cartoon

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Israeli forces kill three high-ranking Lebanese soldiers as Arab nations condemn Iran’s attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait.

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

This week’s caption reads:

First Lt. Pamela Blanco-Coca, 319th Missile Squadron missile combat crew commander, and her deputy commander, 2nd Lt. John Anderson, simulate key turns of the Minuteman III Weapon System Feb. 9, 2016, in the E-01 Launch Control Center in the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., Missile Complex. A properly conducted key turn sends a “launch vote” to any of a number of Minuteman III ICBMs in a missileer’s flight area, and two launch votes from two separate LCCs will enable a real-world launch when directed by the U.S. president. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jason Wiese) 

Prime Directives:

• If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you. 
• If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can’t handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else.
• No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don’t interact with folks you don’t like. 
• Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That’s as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don’t like what you see.  
• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.

In response, the MoD spokesman said that, since coming to power in July 2024, the government had signed more than 1,400 major defence contracts, adding it was providing “a generational increase in defence spending… ensuring no return to the hollowed out armed forces of the past”.

Like the other Silicon Valley monopolies, Google habitually takes the side of Israeli occupation and war crimes in Palestine – the very term Palestine is not used by their highly influential maps app.

A new report by a Palestinian human rights group last month exposed the depths of Google’s dedication to the Israeli occupation.

With a known history documented back more than 3,200 years, the name “Palestine” is the only term continuously used for the entire territory of the country lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Palestine is the most historically accurate term. But since 1948, when Zionist militias expelled the majority of the Palestinian population from the country by force, a new state, “Israel”, was established.

That state has never declared its borders.

Consequentially, when speaking about “Israel” it is unclear exactly what territory is being referred to. But Zionists of both the right and the “left” commonly claim the entire historic territory of Palestine as the “Land of Israel.”

The new report, by 7amleh (Hamleh), a Palestinian organisation advocating online rights, details how Google seems to almost go out of its way to eradicate the reality of Palestinian life.

In 2016, Google came under fire from Palestinians on social media when the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” disappeared from Google Maps. Google said that the removal of these terms was down to a glitch and that they had never used the word Palestine in the first place.

(The West Bank and Gaza Strip are regions of Palestine that are important, since they represent the remaining Palestinian territories which Israel failed to occupy in 1948. In 1967, however, Israel took over those too.)

“Through its mapping and labelling,” the 7amleh report explains, “one can deduce that Google Maps recognises the existence of Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, but not Palestine.”

There are further aspects of the way Google has wiped Palestinian life off the map though. As the 7amleh report maps in some detail, Palestinian villages in the Naqab (Negev desert) deemed “unrecognised” by Israel (inside of what is sometimes termed “Israel proper” – the territories of Palestine occupied in 1948) are not properly mapped by Google.

These villages are only visible in Google Maps “when zooming in very closely,” the report explains, “but otherwise appear to be non-existent. This means that when looking at Google Maps, these villages appear to be not there.”

The report details how small Israeli villages are “displayed even when zoomed-out, while unrecognised Palestinian Bedouin villages, regardless of their size are only visible when zooming in very closely.”

Israel demolishes Al-Araqeeb for 135th time, arrests residents

This is despite the fact that there “are in total 46 Bedouin villages in the Naqab, the majority of which existed before Israel’s creation in 1948. Some claim to have existed since the 7th century.”

Israel has repeatedly attempted to physically remove these villages, but has repeatedly failed, thanks to the resistance of the Palestinians who live there, and thanks also to national and international solidarity shown to those villages.

Their Israeli (lack of) status as “unrecognised” also means that the state refuses to connect the villages to basic services like water and electricity – despite the fact that nearby Israeli-Jewish settlements are given all the support possible.

As Basma Abu-Qwaider, one Palestinian Naqab villager, explains in the report:

Google Maps acts in a discriminatory manner towards the unrecognised village the same [way] as the Israeli government does. Google ignores the existence of these villages just like Israel and for me if you do not exist on the map it means that you are invisible and that’s exactly what Israel wants us to be.

This solidarity with Israeli racism expressed by Google’s helpful attitude towards Israel’s wiping of Palestinians quite literally off the map extends across the 1967 “Green Line” ceasefire boundary.

Palestinian villages even within the “West Bank” area of the Jordan Valley are not properly mapped by Google either. The report documents that while Israeli settlements “can be seen when looking at the larger area of the map” some Palestinian villages are only visible when zoomed in – and even that only as a result of pressure being put on by a human rights organisation.

Google also refuses to recognise or map the reality of Israel’s apartheid roads system for Palestinians.

Khan Al-Ahmar resident: ‘We are imprisoned here’

As part of Israel’s ongoing settler-colonisation of Palestine, large parts of the West Bank – which is ruled by Israeli military decree – are prohibited access for Palestinians. Many roads are reserved for the use of Jews only.

Despite the illegality of these practices under international law, Google’s route-planning apps do not designate Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal.

7amleh’s report concludes: “Google Maps, as the largest global mapping and route planning service, has the power to influence global public opinion and therefore bears the responsibility to abide by international human rights standards and to offer a service that reflects the Palestinian reality.”

Google should be compelled to end its complicity with Israeli racism and apartheid.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

For decades, the massive MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter has served as the Navy’s primary airborne mine countermeasure platform, dragging massive mine hunting sleds through waters all around the globe. However, the Sea Dragon’s days are now numbered, with the last 11 aircraft scheduled to sunset sometime next year. With the MH-53E’s demise on the horizon, we reached out to one of its former pilots, Steve Jones — a man who came to know this monster intimately during the Global War On Terror. He had plenty of stories to tell and provided us with a new understanding of the often misunderstood counter-mine mission.

The MH-53E’s mission is also, of course, extremely topical right now thanks to ongoing tensions with Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently told senators that the Islamic Republic mined “large segments” of the Strait of Hormuz, endangering shipping in the region.

As it currently stands, the mighty Sea Dragons, which are considered one of the military’s most dangerous to fly due to numerous fatal mishaps, are being phased out in favor of the smaller MH-60S Seahawk paired with a suite of new aerial mine countermeasures systems, as well as other new technologies, like uncrewed underwater and surface vessels. The Navy’s overall mine hunting force is going through a transition that is controversial, to say the least, with many questioning if the Pentagon is investing enough resources in this critical missions set.

With all these issues in play, in an exclusive, wide-ranging, two-hour interview, Steve Jones offered in-depth insights about the Navy’s airborne counter-mine mission, the Sea Dragon’s capabilities and dangers, current mine sweeping operations, as well as everything from what it was like to narrowly avoid getting entangled with a surfacing sub to his experiences ferrying celebrities like Robin Williams and Tom Jones around a war zone.

So, with the stage being set, let’s get into this incredible exchange.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: How did you end up becoming an MH-53 Sea Dragon pilot?

A: During the time that I selected, you could choose SH-60 Seahawks, you could choose CH-46E Sea Knights and the MH-53 Echo. You could choose SH-3 Sea Kings, but they were kind of winding down the H-3s, which is the same as the presidential helicopter Marine One that they fly now, but they were flying out of Norfolk and Puerto Rico, primarily for VIP transport. 

So, I looked at the 53 for a lot of reasons. One, I liked the instructors that came from that community in the advanced helicopter training. And two, I just thought the helicopter just really looked awesome, and it was big, and so that’s why I chose it, and I just thought it would be a good personality fit, work fit for me, and it ended up being that way.

Q: What are the main differences between the Navy’s MH-53E and the Marines’ CH-53E Super Stallion?

A: It’s primarily the same aircraft. Except our aircraft has larger fuel sponsons, so we could carry more gas. The reason for that is ideally we’d want to be able to fly an hour to where the mission objective was, be able to stay on station for about an hour, and be able to fly back. That requires at least three and a half, four hours of gas and extra fuel in those side sponsors. And that allowed us to do that. So instead of a small sponson with two tanks, we had one big sponson with four fuel tanks that were inside each of the sponsons on either side of the aircraft.

Q: So how much gas would that larger sponson hold?

A: About 22,000 pounds of gas.

Q: Talk about the training and some of the biggest challenges of flying that huge aircraft. 

A: Typical Navy training is two years of flight school, and then after flight school, we went to our Replacement Air Group, which we call the RAG, that was in Norfolk, Virginia. You spend about a year, or up to 10 months, in Norfolk, Virginia, learning primarily how to fly the helicopter, how to land the helicopter, and we do that in the combination with the Airborne Mine Countermeasure Squadron. We used aircraft from Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron (HM) 14 to learn how to fly the different mission sets and learn aircraft familiarization. And then from there you either get assigned to HM-14, which was in Norfolk, Virginia, or HM-15, which was in Corpus Christi, Texas. HM-15 has now moved to Norfolk, Virginia. [Editor’s note: HM-14 sunsetted in 2022.]

The training takes about 10 months. Mine was a little bit longer because when I actually joined that community, the aircraft were down because of a crash off the coast of Corpus Christi, Texas. There was a problem called ‘thermal runaway,’ where the bearings in the main rotor head would fail, and they would seize together and get hot, and we lost a few sailors from HM-15. And until they figured out why and how to prevent it, it took about a year for those aircraft to come back up, so I was in Norfolk for maybe about a year and a half, almost two years, before I got to Corpus because of that bearing issue.

Q: What was it like when you finally got out there and learned how to fly while pulling a mine countermeasure sled?

A: There’s different types of equipment that you use and it takes a special kind of person to be able to maintain the situational awareness – both flying the aircraft and what’s happening in the back – because there’s dangers in the back. You have a very confined area, lots of equipment, and under lots of tension, and so the very first couple of times, the instructor is kind of handling everything, and you’re just kind of riding along.

Then eventually you start to do more tasks, physical tasks, in terms of flying and maintaining a stable platform for the men and women that are working in the back, and then over time those skills translate into a larger situational awareness, where you’re now a mission commander – where you’re flying the aircraft, but also, conducting the mission in the back is your primary responsibility. The positions are second pilot or co-pilot, and then you become a Helicopter Aircraft Commander (HAC), which is like the captain, and then you become an Airborne Mine Countermeasures Mission Commander (AMCM MC), meaning you’re flying the aircraft, you’re the commander of the aircraft, but you’re also commanding the mission.

Q: Did you become a mission commander?

A: I did. So I was fully qualified in the MH-53 Echo in my squadron, so I was a mission commander. I worked the maintenance side, so I was the maintenance check pilot and functional check pilot. It takes a lot of maintenance, and then post maintenance, and you have to do post maintenance flights to be able to make sure the aircraft is safe for anyone else to fly. So I spend most of my time in those areas in that squadron.

Q: What are the MH-53’s unique quirks and advantages?

A: One of the advantages was pure brute strength. You had three GE engines, so you could handle lots of torque, and the way that we hunted and swept for mines was pulling sleds in the water, which causes thousands and thousands of pounds of stress, so it’s really like a forceful instrument in the water. The operation requires the coordination of not only meteorologists and Operations Specialists, which are like intel specialists in mine warfare, but then you have the maintainer, you had two pilots and a crew chief, plus it could be up to four people in the back, depending on the type of gear you’re stowing in the back, so it really takes coordination from the front.

The disadvantage is that it’s a very expensive aircraft to operate. Every hour of flight, required 24 hours of maintenance, and if a squadron had 10 helicopters, which we did at one point in time, you’re looking at the largest deployable squadrons in the Navy, like 600-plus people to operate these aircraft.

With everybody working together, we advertise that we could be anywhere in the world in 72 hours, where there’s a mine threat. We could break down the helicopters, put them in a C-5 and then reassemble them anywhere in the world in 72 hours. After 9/11, for Operation Iraqi Freedom, we did deploy by C-5. We took half the helicopters to Sicily and the other half went to Bahrain and took 11 C-5s in order to move a squadron that size into those two locations, so big footprints, lots of money, lots of parts.

Q: How fast could the Sea Dragons fly?

A: The 53 is a fast helicopter. One of the fastest out there. We were limited to 150 knots for airframe preservation. Under towing conditions, we typically flew between 18 and 25 knots, depending on the device in the water.  Each vehicle had different performance parameters to properly deploy the device. Under rapidly changing conditions we always had to maintain proper speed and altitude control. 

Q: The Sea Dragon has experienced a notoriously high rate of mishaps. Did that ever concern you? What do you think contributed to this record?

A: It did. If you’ve ever seen one or been on one, been close to one, or heard one, you’ve got 100-foot long machine with millions of moving parts, right? 

Our maintenance crews were very good, I always felt safe flying. I think you have to if you choose to fly that particular weapon system, but there were a lot of accidents. And I knew folks that were killed in MH-53 accidents who I went to flight school with, and buddies.

Maintaining MH-53E’s

It’s a very complicated machine that did a very important mission, and accidents do happen, both mechanically, but also because of pilot error. In combination, you end up losing a lot of airframes. Besides the United States, there is only one other nation that flew that airframe, and that was the Japanese for their mine sweeping operation. It’s a very complicated, expensive machine, and that’s why not very many people flew it.

Q: Did the danger concern you?

A: You know, you’re in your 20s, right? So you feel a little bit invincible. I’ll tell you a story. When I switched from 53s and started flying C-130s, after the Haitian earthquake, I flew into Guantanamo Bay, and my old squadron was there on the same ramp as we were. So I walked over to see who I still knew there, and they had a 53 turning on the deck there, and I was just going, ‘wow, I couldn’t believe I used to do that,’ and not thinking about how many things have to go right in order to have a good day. And I just kind of said to myself, ‘it’s really a young person’s game,’ because you gotta kind of hit the ‘I believe’ button on a lot of things, because there’s just a lot of opportunity for negativity to come in. Weather, environment, and then the mechanics of things.

Q: What were the biggest factors contributing to the Sea Dragon mishaps?

A: With any aircraft system, the largest factor that contributes to any accident is the human factor. Yes, engines will fail, components will fail, but a lot of times it was human error that caused the ultimate catastrophe because when an emergency happens, you have three criteria in order to gauge when you should land.

The two critical ones are ‘land immediately,’ meaning if you do not ditch in the water or put the aircraft down, it is going to come apart in flight. The other critical criteria is ‘land as soon as possible,’ meaning as soon as you have a safe place to land, then you land as soon as possible. Then you have another condition where you can continue to fly, but flying is not recommended. And so that decision factor between land immediately and land as soon as possible, it’s a bit of a gray area, right? You have a set of skills you can fly, but you can never time when the aircraft is going to come apart.

Navy ‘Sea Dragon’ Helicopter Unsafe For Flight | NBC Nightly News

For example, in the Corpus Christi crash, they knew that they had a problem. I’m not second-guessing the pilot, but it was in that gray area between land immediately and land as soon as possible.

The aircraft commander chose to try to bring the aircraft closer to the beach, so you could survive a ditch, because putting a helicopter in the water – nothing is guaranteed, right? Then you have no control. However, bring it closer to the beach means you’re flying that much longer. So land immediately, there could have been more survivors.

Not to ‘Monday morning quarterback’ anything. I probably would have made the same call. And then with the new equipment that was put on the aircraft, there are lights now placed in a monitoring system that kind of took the gray area out of those decisions when it came to thermal runaway with the main rotor head. So now the decision is clear. Land immediately if certain indications happen, and land as soon as possible if certain indications happen. Prior to 2000, we didn’t have that.

Q: The Sea Dragon community has been well-documented for being neglected by the Navy. What was your experience when you were flying it? Why do you think that was?

A: It’s a unique mission set. It kind of came online during the Vietnam War and Haiphong Harbor, and clearing those mines, and then again in Desert Storm, when the USS Tripoli was hit by a mine.

Mining sea straits is a very cheap way to stop a huge navy, such as the one that we have in the United States. However, the Navy, in my opinion, didn’t necessarily see the value in that mission. There are very limited resources. There’s only so much money to go around, and large strike groups and ships just took priority. We were always probably a little bit underfunded, in my opinion, for a mission that’s important, which you can see today with the Strait of Hormuz. But it was definitely a huge problem that many people did not talk about during the first two Gulf Wars.

Q: Why was it a huge problem?

A: Well, when you try to move a carrier strike group into a small area like the Persian Gulf, by putting mines in the water, you create doubt in a captain’s head. The captain is responsible for thousands and thousands of lives, and the battle group commander is responsible for thousands and thousands of more lives, plus the strategic reason of why they’re there. If a mine is discovered, then everything has to pause. You can’t land Marines on the beach, you can’t move the strike group closer to the shore. The ability for you to project power ashore, all that kind of comes to an end. 

Q: How does the MH-53E go about this unique mission set? Can you walk us through what a mission would look like from start to finish? 

A: Depending on the intel, you’ll have a threat and the threat could be you suspect that there’s mines in the water, or that you know that there’s mines in the water. So, typically it’s ‘you suspect,’ right? And we used the AN/AQS-14, or “Q-14.” There’s about three different versions of the Q-14. It’s a side-looking sonar, which you drag in the water – we call it the fish. We would fly the fish at certain depths based on the terrain and what was in the water. That was called mine hunting. 

So initially you would always kind of begin with a hunting mission, where we could, or the OS operator, or the console operator would mark what they view as a mine-like contact. You’re really kind of looking at the sonar and distinguishing between man-made objects and natural objects. If you believe it’s a man-made object, and then you would mark a tape. You could also, real time, send that image back to the ship, but that capability came a little bit later.

We also had devices that allow you to sweep. A mine can be triggered by different mechanisms. Sometimes they’re triggered by contact.

Some mines are acoustically triggered, meaning you can set that mine to blow up for a certain type of ship acoustics. For instance, a destroyer has a different set of acoustics from an amphibious ship, from an aircraft carrier. If you want to let 1,000 destroyers pass you or a submarine and then wait for the aircraft carrier, you can tune it to that way. So we had devices that could mimic the sound signatures of different ships, and you could tow that in the water, you could tow it really fast. One of the reasons why we were successful is that we could do large areas of the ocean relatively quickly. 

The last piece for sweeping is the magnetic variation. Each ship is a metal hull, and as a ship is moving through the water, it has a magnetic signature, and then we have gear, which you could tune to mimic certain types of ships in the water, in order to have them explode behind the gear that we’re towing in the water.

So you hunt, that means you’re searching, and then you sweep, and then that means you’re clearing. Sometimes you can clear using other technology, such as sometimes the Avenger class ships would go in and sweep, and not us. Sometimes you would use dolphins to work with EOD teams in order to sweep mines. It just depends upon the threat, on what the second tool is used after you hunt.

Navy Dolphins Practice In Key West How To Find Mines In The Ocean

The most time that I spent was in the hunting phase of the mission set. In Bahrain, every week, a couple days a week, we would hunt. We would do the Strait of Hormuz. We would do the approaches into Saudi Arabia for the tankers. We would do the approaches into the Suez Canal, just to be sure that there are still no mines in that area.

That is for what we call change detection, meaning you map the ocean floor, and then over time, because of consistency, you’ll be able to tell if something changed. If something changed, then you went in to investigate further. It’s constant because the ocean floor is constantly moving, and then somebody could easily place a very cheap object that could be devastating.

Q: Walk me through how a mission would take place.

A: The intel can be good sometimes, sometimes the intel is lacking. The weather has to be at a certain sea state in order for it to be successful, and you can’t do it at night, right? You have to do it during a daytime in littoral situation, so you’re pretty close to shore and you are susceptible to threats that are on the beach. That is the mission set and if you don’t know where the mines are, that’s why you begin with hunting. The Q-14 is a relatively quick device to deploy. You can pull it in the water relatively fast. Then you can real-time send images back, or you can collect tapes to study for that change detection.

When you’re going out for a mission, you’ll have your standard aircraft brief, where the crews get together and talk about the state of the aircraft, the conditions, the environmental conditions of today. And then you’ll get into the mission brief on where the ship is, or where the shore is, and where actually the square, or the box, or the rectangle is, where we’re going to conduct a mission. We talk about the distances from that point that we’re going to deploy the gear, because it takes time to be able to do that, and then we’ll enter what we suspect is a minefield or an area of interest from which we want to be able to tow in.

Minesweeper Exercise

Then we fly what we call tracks. It’s almost like rows on a field, like cornrows, and we go up, down, up, down, and you have to stay within track by feet, okay? If you, if you stray as little as 20 feet off track, then you have to redo that track, because you want to have a continuous picture of the ground. And so it may take two or three sorties to cover an entire minefield.

And then times where the device may have strayed off track. It takes time, but we can do it quicker than a ship doing it on its own, like the Avenger class ship, and so between the aircraft brief and the mission brief, and executing, it’s like a six, seven hour day in the heat or in the cold, depending on where you are.

This is the Navy’s Largest Helicopter | MH-53 Sea Dragon

There’s no air condition on that helicopter. So everybody’s working in those conditions based on the information that we bring back. Then the tactics folks that are supplied to us by COMINEWARCOM  (Commander, Mine Warfare Command), which was our bosses, those intel folks will say what needs to happen next, meaning there’s nothing that needs to happen now, or we need to investigate this further. And then they pick the next tool for us to be able to deploy, or they go with the EOD and dive teams to go take a closer look.

Q: How fast are you flying, and how high are you flying? How deep do the sleds go?

A: The helicopters are anywhere between 25 and 75 feet over the water, depending on the gear, because the speed in which we pull through the water is extremely important. You could go as fast as 25 knots in some cases, which is about the top speed, or you’d have to go as slow as 12 knots.

Mine Countermeasures Unit Drops a Slocum Glider from a MH-53E Sea Dragon

Q: How deep do the sleds go?

A: The depth of some of the gear is classified, or at least it was at my time. I’m not sure now, but you could go relatively deep. It’s under lots and lots and lots of tension, and the reason why you had to go very deep is that some gear has to be able to get to the sea floor at certain distances, because there’s also the subsurface fleet that is operating down there, and mines will affect them as well.

Q: What’s the tension like when you’re dragging a sled?

A: You’re looking at around 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of tension. The aircraft will kind of buckle. You look at the side of a 53, it has a crease from the tension that goes on it.

If there is a swell in the sea state, sometimes the Doppler radar – which would kind of track how fast you’re going forward, backwards, or sideways – it’ll go from forward to negative, meaning we’re actually getting pulled backwards by the sea state. And the engines would automatically just start – the torque would come in as the blade did a bigger bite out of the air. And the aircraft will kind of turn, because of the torque. It’ll kind of turn and whine, and you’re just flying an out of balance flight, nose down.

Q: Did you ever have the sled get tangled up behind you?

A: Yes. It can get caught on things in the water, and the tension will spike. If the tension spikes too high, or the gear gets fouled in something, you always have the option to guillotine or cut the gear.

Q: Did the aircraft have other devices that helped in the mine hunting mission?  

A: Yes. In addition to the Q-14, we had the Mk 104 acoustic device, mine chain cutting devices and the Mk 105, a huge gas generator, which produces electrical charges in the water for those magnetic-seeking mines that change the magnetic variation.

HM-15 Sailors Recover Mk 104

There’s at least six devices that I know of that are used for hunting mines, including something as simple as what we call a MOP, which is stands for Magnetic Orange Pipe, which is what they used in Vietnam.

Essentially you have this pipe, it looks like a telephone pole, which is about the size of a telephone pole or larger, and it’s orange. It has a positive charge on one end and negative on the other end. It’s just a magnetic pipe that we would tow in the water. It’s probably the easiest thing that you can tow, and the simplest, but it’s looking for those magnetic variations. The problem with the magnetic orange pipe is you can’t change it, so it’s set for a certain amount of tactics. You can see how that could become obsolete in today’s environment.

Q: How does the Sea Dragon integrate with other mine hunting capabilities, like the Avenger class ships or other assets?

A: We worked as a team, but obviously we’re a tool in that larger mine warfare strategy. We were the speed aspect of that, meaning we could have left holes, but if you’re trying to move at the speed of war, then sometimes we were the tool that was required. And if you have 72 hours to be somewhere, speed is required. We could do that to be sure that the fleet can continue to do what it needs to do, but if you’ve got time, then you could sail a ship or move one of those slower small boats into that environment, that makes sense.

Q: Did you ever work together with Avenger class ships?

A: Maybe in the same AOR, but other than an exercise where you would see an Avenger class ship working the tow area, and then we will be working our tow area. It was under controlled condition. When I was doing change detection, and during work conditions, we were operating concentrated on our mission set, they’re probably concentrating on their mission set, and between the two pictures, they came together in the operation center to have a very clear picture.

Q: When was the Sea Dragon actually used for this mission operationally? How did it perform?

A: It was used throughout Iraqi Freedom, from Shock and Awe to the pull-out to the drawdown. If not every day, every week there was change detection in mine operations, because it’s always a threat. It’s a very cheap weapon that non-state actors can get off the black market. One mistake or one mishap causes devastating consequences for the individuals on that ship, but also the mission, so it’s a constant threat, and still is a threat. 

During my time, actively hunting for mines to be sure that those straits and those approaches remain clear, dominated my entire career in the community. From the time I started  and then I towed to my last days in the squadron, which was in 2005.

Q: How did the Sea Dragon perform?

A: I would say, since there was not a mishap, it performed as designed. It doesn’t mean that the mines were not there. During Iraqi Freedom, mines were put in the water, but we didn’t have the mishaps like we had before that I can recall. So I would say it was a success.

Q: Any close calls during any of your sled-towing flights? 

A: I got disoriented one time with vertigo. Like I mentioned earlier, you’re on an out-of-balanced flight, so your ears are doing one thing, your eyes are doing another thing, and sometimes there’s low fog over the water early in the morning. Under tow there was a time where I got vertigo and put the aircraft in an undesired state, but there’s two pilots. I recognized it and told the aircraft commander ‘I’ve got vertigo.’ He took the control and saved it. Being that close to the ground, getting vertigo could have devastating effects, right? We just ended up releasing the gear that day.

Q: How do the big rearview mirrors help with towing?

A: Mirrors are super important for situational awareness when lowering the equipment into the water and for ensuring the tow cable is staying on track. The co-pilot is crucial while under tow because they are responsible for making sure the aircraft remains clear of obstacles and threats. The pilot flying will be head-down monitoring performance of the helicopter and the gear deployed. The pilot flying will maintain navigation in the minefield and overall safety. When flying, looking out of the windows was a brief luxury. 

Q: Tell me about the time you encountered a surfacing sub while dragging your sled.

A: It was sometime in 2003 or 2004. We were flying over the Strait of Hormuz, towing a side-looking sonar to do bottom mapping. I’ve got a very loud helicopter in the air and a sonar that’s pinging on the bottom, so it probably was not a surprise where we were to the submarine, but their location was a surprise to us.

It’s a bright sunny day. The water looked beautiful, and we’re just doing a random tow. And all of a sudden, this big black submarine surfaced right in front of us. Just popped out of the water, and right in line with our track.

I think I was maybe 50 feet over the water and the gear is behind me. Now I have to turn like a semi truck, having to turn myself and the gear all at the same time to maneuver around the submarine. I said something like ‘holy shit’ and I remember I banked to the right because I think it was the easiest thing to do. There’s more space.

We ended up able to clear the sub, but it had a startling effect. So either they were in the wrong spot or we were in the wrong spot, I couldn’t tell you. But no one came and knocked on the door, saying that I did something wrong. So I’m gonna leave it as if they were in the wrong spot.

Q: What was it like aerial refueling such a monstrous helicopter and did you use it operationally often?

A: Very intimidating at first. However, it is all about training. Yes, you are very close to the other airplane, but that is not your focus. Your focus is on check points. Align your check points and the aircraft will plug. Once you connect and position the aircraft above the wing and propeller wash, the ride is smooth. When I switched over the flying C-130s, it would have been nice to go full circle, but never got the chance to give fuel.

We almost did aerial refueling during a possible mission scenario, but the plan was scaled back and we ended ship hopping. I only used the boom in training. I’m sure it happened, but didn’t know anyone who did it. They were there for a reason, and we trained for it.

Q: What’s the operational situation regarding Iran at the time you were flying?

A: Annoying. They have a lot of islands that are in the Persian Gulf that are their territory, and sometimes during operations, when you’re either delivering cargo or going to field a tow, it puts you in close proximity with those islands. At the same time, if it’s necessary, you could have your own boat team in the water as well. It was post-Cole [a reference to the October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole just a few years earlier by explosive-laden suicide boats at the port of Aden in Yemen. The blast ripped a 40-foot-wide hole near the destroyer’s waterline, killing 17 U.S. sailors and injuring nearly 40 other crew members.]

A Suicide Boat Attack Leaves the USS Cole Reeling from the Damage | Combat Ships | Smithsonian

So you have fishing boats in the water, and you don’t know who’s on that boat that is getting close to your ship. But when you got close to Iranian territory, they will speak up on the radio, and tell you to turn around, that you’re approaching their territory,. Even though you know exactly where you are, and you know exactly where this island is, they’re still going tell you are in violation of their airspace. 

Then it’s always a constant threat, right? So, if I were to have to ditch a helicopter or airplane in the water, they’ve got boats in the water. You wouldn’t want to get captured by them, where they could say you are in violation of their sovereign territory by mistake, and then it becomes an issue.

We were flying helicopters without GPS, so you’re using visual navigation maps and whatnot.  I’m sure there’s a GPS on those birds now, but at the time, I had a handheld GPS from Academy Sport, where I marked the islands myself, so I knew exactly where I was, or at least the best that I could manage with the equipment, to be sure that was in the right position. 

Q: Did they ever directly threaten you while you were on those missions?

A: No. They talked about violating their airspace, but they never intercepted or anything like that. I think that would be a huge mistake. It would not be a good day for them.

Q: Tell us about other locales where Sea Dragons operated.

A: We had detachments in South Korea for the North Korean threat from underwater mines. We did exercises in the Pacific. We did exercises with Japan because there’s a threat of mine in those straits, like the Strait of Malacca. 

There’s obviously a threat in the Pacific theater. But because of the situation with Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, I spent most of my time in the Middle East.

Q: Were there any difference between operating in the Persian Gulf area and the Pacific, or Europe?

A: A lot of the effectiveness of what we do is dependent upon water. The salinity of the water, the sea state, the amount of garbage and trash that’s in the water. So those environmental threats change the tactics. That’s why you need to practice out there.

In terms of the purpose of the mission, that does not change, but how you go about it does change. If you’re closer to a near-peer actor, it’s going to require better intelligence, different types of equipment in order to counteract the threat. I would say the Iraqi Navy was not near-peer in terms of mine tactics, but the Chinese could probably be very different in terms of mine tactics. They would be a more sophisticated enemy in this case, which would heighten everything.

Q: Did the Iraqi Navy or the Iraqis present a threat to your aircraft? Did they harass you, fire at you?

A: No, not during my time. I think maybe possibly during the first Gulf War. The threat was that there, it was always a threat when you’re operating close. So yes, something could have happened. They’ve got boats, they’ve got men in the water.

Q: What are your thoughts about the current MCM missions taking place now in the Middle East? Just how hard is it to clear an area of mines like the Strait of Hormuz?

A: I would say that it is difficult. All mine clearing operations are difficult because you’re talking about the needle in the haystack. Like literally, and you know they’re deploying something that can be hoisted by one person and thrown overboard into the water or by a machine, and you can deploy a lot of mines in a very short time in a concentrated, tactical way, or randomly. It really doesn’t matter, it’s still a threat. 

I would say it is difficult because people talk about how narrow and small the Strait of Hormuz is, but you have to remember the earth is large, and there is just a sheer volume of water, and square miles or square kilometers on which something can happen.

It is a very daunting task, and so having more MH-53E helicopters probably wasn’t the solution for the future.

From reading, and then from hearing from my peers that are still in, the tactics are different, but also the equipment that they use to detect this threat is also different. It is faster. It is unmanned. You can deploy more assets quicker because you’re not relying upon one machine or two machines at one time being deployed.

What kind of sea mines is Iran using in Strait of Hormuz?

Q: What equipment are they using now? What are the differences?

A: I retired in 2017 and it has changed dramatically. For one, it is more integrated into the fleet, so you’ll have multi-mission capabilities, meaning an MH-60Ss can be used for different sets of missions, from delivering cargo, to deploying different sensor arrays. You have AI for detection assistance. You have side-looking sonar, which instead of being towed are now on underwater unmanned vehicles. So I think more of what you’re looking at now is a mission package of sensors that can be deployed.

When you have sensor sets, it’s integrated into the larger Navy strategic picture better. I think that that was lacking in the past in a way, because you have to cover such a large volume of area, you need more sensors and eyes to be able to do that, and I think that’s the strategy today.

Q: Do you talk to any of the current pilots/crews of the last squadron flying them? What do they say about the current status of the fleet? Are they involved in the mine clearing operation in the Strait?  

A: So I talked with folks, there’s still some folks that are still active duty. Some of them have transitioned out of the 53 pilot-wise and have transitioned into the MH-60S community and so they are deploying those tactics and new systems.

I would say it is probably still a neglected community in their opinion. Everybody’s fighting for resources, but I think when you’re talking about the current situation with Iran in the straight, there’s always a time where mine countermeasures become a very hot topic, because people do forget about it. 

Q: Are the MH-53Es still performing airborne counter-mine missions?

A: I’m not sure. 

Q: What other missions does the MH-53 community perform? Can you talk about your experience with those and what they entail?

A: When you have that much capability, you move a lot of things. And so we did a lot of moving cargo. I could move an F-14 Tomcat engine with the afterburner completely attached. I could move it at 150 knots from shore to ship internally, so I didn’t have to sling it underneath the aircraft in a pod. I can have the engine assembled together and be able to move it. So we moved things that the C-2 Greyhound couldn’t.

The primary mission was mines, the secondary cargo and people. We would do people movement, if a better ride wasn’t available to move an admiral or someone for an important meeting, then we would do so. Obviously, you know, it’s a very dirty ride.

Q: What admirals did you move?

A:  I can’t remember the admirals, because they kind of all blend together, but we did move fun people. We did Tiger Woods for all the USO engagements. Blink 182. We did Tom Jones, Robin Williams, a number of NASCAR folks and other celebrities. We did a lot of that.

Q: What was Robin Williams like?

A:  Funny. He was on from the time that we picked him up in Bahrain, and then giving him the brief. He liked talking with sailors and making jokes. Tom Jones was memorable because he’s got the hair right, and he didn’t want to wear a cranial or helmet on his head to mess up his hair before he did the show, and so that became a thing. But you know, the hair won out. The hair was not going to get covered by the helmet.

Q: What will the Navy miss when that last squadron is finally retired next year and there are no more Sea Dragons flying? Can the MH-60S handle the job?

A:  With the Greyhounds going away, I think even with the CMV-22, which is a very capable aircraft, a very fast aircraft, but in terms of lift capacity internally, there’s something to that. If it’s outsized or weirdly shaped or is on wheels, the MH-53E is your catch-all aircraft. The Navy will miss that and the large numbers of people that we can move.

During the start Operation Iraqi Freedom, when I was in Sigonella we spent four days offloading the Marine Corps battalion landing team from the Iwo Jima on to Souda Bay for them to be flown into the northern part of Iraq. With those two helicopters and in one helicopter with Helicopter Detachment 4, we moved hundreds and hundreds of Marines from a ship to the shore for them to be staged in order to be moved into Iraq in a matter of days. I don’t think that same amount of capability in terms of volume of moving at that speed can be done with what’s available today. So I think they’re going to miss the kind of the ad hoc nature of having a big aircraft to move odd things. It’s good to be a generalist sometimes.

Q: What about the mine countermeasures mission? Is there anything that the Navy will miss from the capabilities of the 53 from that standpoint?

A: I can’t speak on it with the new equipment, because I’ve never operated it, but I think what the Navy won’t miss is the price tag, and maybe the lack of full mission capability. We operated a lot of times in that partial mission capability, because of the complexity of the equipment and the machine, and then you have to get the equipment and the machine to work together, the machine being the helicopter. I don’t think the Navy will miss that part of it.

Q: Can the MH-60 do the job?

A: They can do the job, but they don’t conduct it the same way we did. They can’t pull big sleds like we did for underwater sonars because of power and tension. And you can’t send as many crew members in the back in order to make that mission successful. But the 60 is a very capable platform in order to conduct the mission the way they do it now.

Q: What’s the difference between what they do and what you did?

A: They’re deploying sensor arrays and underwater vehicles from the thing, so they have standoff distance. They’re capable of not putting the helicopter in the same proximity to danger. They can’t put a Mk 105 in the water, but they don’t need to, because they have other types of technology to do it. 

Q: What was your most fear-inducing flight in the Sea Dragon?

A: For me, I was on the sea wall in Corpus Christi, Texas, about to do a towing training mission off the coast of Texas. In the 53 you have three engines, and then you have an auxiliary power unit – another gas turbine that’s above the cockpit.

The purpose of the auxiliary power unit is to run the hydraulics and various components and accessories when the engines and the rotor head aren’t turning. The idea is, once you get the engines going and the main rotor is turning, there is a shaft that goes from the main gear box into that auxiliary power unit, where all your generators and hydraulic systems are run. So we had the engines running, we were on the sea wall – we had a hanger, and then we had an apron, and right there was the Corpus Christi Bay.

I was taxiing out to take off from the helipad, and you’re over the water as soon as you take off from the sea wall. Well, that shaft sheared while I was taxiing up. I have to push the cyclic (the stick) forward in order to tip the rotor head forward to pull me along the ground. If you lose hydraulics in a 53 there is no amount of strength that you or the other copilot has to help to change the path of that helicopter. 

When the shaft broke, it meant whatever condition that rotor head was in, it was not going to move, and that rotor head was in position for me to be able to take off, but I did not have enough power in order for me to lift off. Even if I lifted off, I probably would have just careened into the water. 

So we were going in a situation where I heard it pop, and then all of a sudden the controls froze, and I told the co-pilot, Ty Jurica, that I was so concentrated at that point because I could not control the aircraft. I said ‘I don’t have control, I cannot move the controls.’ But Ty’s quick thinking noted that he could get the hydraulic power unit started again, which it takes time to spool up, but he was able to hit the start on the APU, and we managed to spool up to get hydraulics back, and as soon as the pressure came on at 3000 psi, I was able to move the controls again.

We stopped the aircraft where we were, and we shut it down at that particular time, but in a few seconds, maybe, we probably just would have taxiied off over the sea wall, and into a very bad situation.

Q: What was your best memory of a mission you flew, or a moment during one of your missions in your time in the Sea Dragons? Put us in your shoes of what that was like.

A: Oh man, my best day there? There were a lot of good days. A lot of times, we would fly in formation – two ships going out to whether it was an aircraft carrier or whatever – and we would take off before sunrise. When you’re flying in formation low over the water, and the sun is coming up over the Persian Gulf, those are those are great days. Because everything is working. You have two planes actually going to conduct the mission and not training. I don’t care who you are, it’s always a lot of fun. 

You’re going relatively fast. I mean, we’re not Hornets or whatever, but we were low and fast at that time for us, and we thought we were pretty cool.

You couldn’t touch us on those days.

Author’s note: we added three additional sets of questions and answers to this story. We asked Jones about how fast the Sea Dragons could fly, how helpful the big rearview mirrors were when pulling a sled and what it was like conducting aerial refueling in the giant helicopter.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Saurara a: Apple Podcast | Spotify | RSS

Lokacin Ramadan ne, kuma Bintu Suleiman, wata uwa kuma ‘yar kasuwa mai shekaru 55 daga Ngoshe a Jihar Borno, Arewa maso Gabashin Najeriya, tana shirin buɗe baki tare da iyalanta.

Sai harbe-harbe ya fara, kuma cikin awa guda gidanta ya kama da wuta. Yayin da ‘yan ta’adda ke tattara mutane, ta samu damar tserewa tare da wasu daga cikin ‘ya’yanta da jikokinta zuwa cikin daji. Daga baya, ta gane cewa mutum huɗu daga cikinsu ba su tsere tare da ita ba. Suna wani wuri a cikin duwatsu.

A wannan shirin na #BIRBISHINRIKICI, mun ga yadda bayan harin, Bintu, wadda yanzu ta rasa matsuguninta, ke samun mafaka a wata makarantar firamare ta gwamnati a Pulka, yayin da har yanzu ba ta san halin da ‘ya’yanta da jikokinta suke ciki ba.

Mai Gabatarwa: Rukayya Saeed

Marubuciya: Sabiqah Bello

Muryoyin Shiri: Sabiqah Bello

Fassara: Rukayya Saeed

Edita: Aliyu Dahiru

Furodusa: Mu’azu Muhammad

Babban Furodusa: Anthony Asemota

Babban Mashiryi: Ahmad Salkida

Africa’s performance at World Cups peaked at Qatar 2022 when Morocco became the first side from the continent to reach the semifinal stage.

Even their quarterfinal appearance was noteworthy – the Atlas Lions were only the fourth African nation to get there.

Although Cameroon, Senegal and Ghana are the three other African teams to reach the quarterfinals, North Africa has dominated the continent’s success overall at the World Cup and at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Egypt are the record seven-time winners of AFCON, while three of the top five African qualifiers for World Cup finals are Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.

Al Jazeera breaks down the chances of the sub-Saharan nations looking to outshine their neighbours from the north at the tournament which kicks off on June 11:

SENEGAL

World Cup Appearances: Four – 2002, 2018, 2022 and 2026
Best finish: Quarterfinals
Overall record: P12 W5 D3 L4 F16 A17
FIFA ranking: 14
Prediction: Eliminated at quarterfinal stage

Senegal head to World Cup 2026 with a burning sense of injustice firing their campaign. The Lions of Teranga were stripped of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title by the Confederation of African Football (CAF), which decided the mid-game walk-off by the Senegalese players and staff voided January’s final – which was later awarded to Morocco, along with the trophy, as a 3-0 win.

In 2002, Senegal upset the odds and reached the ⁠quarter-finals in their World Cup debut at the tournament co-hosted by Japan and South Korea.

More than two decades later, expectations are running high – perhaps carrying the greatest expectation on all African teams, including Morocco.

The depth of the 26-man squad is seen as their greatest strength over continental neighbours, but their star power is also envied by rivals.

Sadio Mane remains the country’s greatest export. Although midfield kingpin Pape Gueye, goalkeeper Edouard Mendy and captain Kalidou Koulibaly would grace almost any side at the tournament.

All three are French-born and another shot at the two-time winners of the competition is in their sights.

A 1-0 win against then defending champions France at the 2002 edition announced Senegal as a rising footballing powerhouse. Their first Group ⁠I encounter this time around is against Didier Deschamps side in New York on June 16.

“It’s always a pleasure to play against France. It’s a country we know well,” said Senegal coach Pape Bouna Thiaw, who moved to France aged 17.

“If I lose even a second of my belief that I can win the World Cup with Senegal, I will step down,” he added.

Senegal’s group is completed by Iraq and Norway.

GHANA

World Cup Appearances: Five – 2006, 2010, 2014, 2022 and 2026
Best finish: Quarterfinals
Overall record: P15 W5 D3 L7 F18 A23
FIFA ranking: 74
Prediction: Eliminated at quarterfinal stage

Ghana have only missed one World Cup since their 2006 debut.

Four years after their global bow they became the third African side to reach the quarterfinal stage at Germany 2010.

Their run-up to this tournament has not been smooth, with a late change of coach as veteran Portuguese Carlos ⁠Queiroz replaced Otto Addo following a run of poor results.

The German-born former Ghana international led his nation at Qatar 2022, but the ⁠failure to qualify for the last AFCON and comprehensive losses in their four high-profile games in November and March saw him fired in early April.

It will be a fifth successive World Cup for the 73-year-old Queiroz, whose past African experience has been with South Africa and Egypt, and who managed Real Madrid, and was Alex Ferguson’s right-hand man at Manchester United.

Group L, against Panama, England and Croatia, appears to be the ‘group of death’ in the opening stage of the competition, but with Manchester City’s Antoine Semenyo leading a strong attack, Ghana will fully expect to progress.

“I think that this country has a huge, enormous potential. This is a country of footballers,” Queiroz said.

The Black Stars will, however, be without the injured Tottenham forward Mohammed Kudus, who has become the team’s talisman and key factor in their last two successful qualifying campaigns.

IVORY COAST

World Cup Appearances: Four – 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2026
Best finish: Group Stage
Overall record: P9 W3 D1 L5 F13 A14
FIFA ranking: 34
Prediction: Eliminated at quarterfinal stage

The Ivory Coast return to the global stage after a 12-year absence – one that was hard-felt following the retirement of some of their greatest players in Yaya Toure and Didier Drogba.

It has been a long rebuild for the Ivorians, but they have won two AFCON titles since their last World Cup appearance.

Their youthful attack led by teenager attacker Yan Diomande, alongside Simon Adingra and Amad Diallo of ⁠Manchester United, will be key to their chances.

When hosting AFCON two years ago, Ivory Coast were nearly eliminated in the group stage, but they promoted Emerse Fae from assistant manager for their final game of the opening phase and went on to win the title.

“I believe Ivory Coast has the potential to achieve something exceptional – why not aim for the final?” Fae said ahead of the tournament, that will begin with matches against Curacao, Ecuador and former world champions Germany.

CAPE VERDE

World Cup Appearances: One – 2026
Best finish: NA
Overall record: NA
FIFA ranking: 69
Prediction: Eliminated at group stage

One of the debutants, Cape Verde – with a population of about ⁠600,000 – is the third ⁠smallest nation to qualify in the tournament’s long history.

They only debuted at AFCON in 2013, but did go on to reach the quarterfinals – a feat repeated in 2023.

The task before them now – which will be led by their diaspora of players in the main – is daunting, with Uruguay, Saudi Arabia and European champions Spain, lying in wait in the group stage.

“We’ve always been aware of our talent but ‌we haven’t always believed that it could take us much further than we had achieved up to that point,” said manager Bubista, named African Coach of the Year in 2025.

“Therefore, it took courage to face any opponent. The first step in our success was truly believing in our potential. In other words, we changed the players’ mindset.”

SOUTH AFRICA

World Cup Appearances: Four – 1998, 2002, 2010 and 2026
Best finish: Group stage
Overall record: P9 W2 D4 L3 F11 A16
FIFA ranking: 60
Prediction: Eliminated at round of 32 stage

After a burgeoning beginning to their return to the international fold, with qualification for the 1998 World Cup, South Africa’s fortunes have taken a downtown in the last 16 years.

A first appearance in the finals since 2010 feels long overdue for a nation hoping to reap the rewards of strong domestic growth as they head to North America.

South African ‌club Mamelodi Sundowns are the newly crowned African Champions League winners and eight of their players are in Bafana Bafana’s squad. There are also ⁠eight players from Orlando Pirates – the domestic league champions, who pipped Sundowns to the title by a point.

“We can say that we have players of the best teams of the season. Those guys have much experience at a high level,” South Africa’s Belgian-born coach Hugo Broos said of his 26-man selection.

“I’m certainly happy that Sundowns won the Champions League, because I was afraid that if they should lose, I would get players who would be very ⁠disappointed. So now they all have that boost of confidence, and that ⁠helps a lot.”

South Africa are in the other so-called ‘group of death’ as they take on Czech Republic, South Korea and co-hosts Mexico, who they face in the opening game of the tournament

DR CONGO

World Cup Appearances: Two – 1974 and 2026
Best finish: Group stage
Overall record: P3 W0 D0 L3 F0 A14
FIFA ranking: 46
Prediction: Eliminated at quarterfinal stage

DRC’s only previous appearance was when it was still known as Zaire, competing at the 1974 finals in West ⁠Germany – the first African side from south of the Sahara to go to the World Cup.

As reigning continental champions, their 9-0 thumping by Yugoslavia did little to raise the flag for Africa at the time.

Much has changed since then for the continent and in its second-largest country. The Congolese players will arrive in North America with a FIFA ranking that outstrips three of the other five sub-Saharan qualifiers.

It did take two playoffs to reach this edition – the African legs saw the Congolese eliminate Cameroon and Nigeria, before edging Jamaica in extra time in their intercontinental playoff

Most of the squad are European-born, either in Belgium, France or Switzerland, plus the London-born Aaron Wan-Bissaka, previously called up by England but who missed out on a cap through injury.

“We ‌are ‌extremely proud because a whole generation hasn’t been able to see its national team in the World Cup but now they will see them there,” said their French coach, Sebastien Desabre.

Pro-Palestine activists interrupted an army recruitment event during German Armed Forces Day. They climbed onto a tank and unfurled a banner reading ‘Genocide with German weapons’ and named Rheinmetall, a key arms supplier to Israel’s military.

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Casualty toll is expected to increase, reports Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud.

At least five people have been killed while attending a wedding in Gaza City after Israeli forces bombed the wedding tent.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from the enclave on Saturday, said several projectiles exploded in or near tents that were part of the wedding, with shrapnel flying into surrounding areas.

A source at al-Shifa Hospital told Al Jazeera reporters on the ground that more than a dozen people were wounded in the attack.

Women and children are believed to be among the casualties, Mahmoud said, adding that the casualty toll is expected to rise.

This is a developing story. More to come…

In the latest flare-up of tension during a very shaky ‘ceasefire,’ “Iran has launched multiple drones towards the Strait of Hormuz,” a U.S. official told us. “U.S. forces have taken out at least four of them.”

The statement comes as unconfirmed reports are emerging online of explosions on Iran’s Kharg Island. The official, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity to discuss operational issues, declined comment about those claims.

Kharg Island, which has come under attack before during Epic Fury, is Iran’s main oil export facility. An attack on the oil infrastructure would represent a major escalation.

News of the U.S. takedown of the drones is the latest kinetic incident in the Strait and comes amid sputtering peace talks. As we wrote last week, the U.S. struck Iranian targets and Iran launched missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain in an exchange that severely damaged Kuwait International Airport, killed several people and injured scores more.

You can see video and images of damage from the June 3 attack below.

Other exchanges have occurred around the strait, where U.S. Navy ships says vessels, including their own, were fired upon, which resulted in reprisal attacks on shore targets.

UPDATE: 6:56 PM EDT –

CENTCOM confirmed U.S. forces attacked Iranian facilities and shot down Iranian drones..

“Moments ago, CENTCOM forces shot down four Iranian one-way attack drones that were launched toward the Strait of Hormuz,” the command stated on X. “The attack drones posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic. U.S. forces subsequently struck Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites in Goruk and on Qeshm Island to defend against further attacks. American forces remain vigilant and postured to respond to unjustified Iranian aggression in self-defense.”

UPDATE: 10:40 PM EDT –

In a post on X, CENTCOM claimed that “U.S. forces intercepted multiple Iranian ballistic missiles and drones launched by Iran toward the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf neighbors, June 5. “

“Iran fired seven ballistic missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain,” the command stated. “Initial assessments indicate six of the missiles launched by Iran were intercepted and a seventh did not reach its intended target. There are currently no reports of harm to U.S. personnel, and Iranian claims of damaging U.S. 5th fleet headquarters in Bahrain are false. CENTCOM forces remain vigilant and postured to continue responding to unwarranted Iranian aggression in self-defense.

The Iranian attack took place hours after the previously mentioned CENTCOM strikes on Iranian coastal targets.

The CENTCOM post included a video showing those strikes.

Hundreds of Bolivian residents are braving near-freezing temperatures to queue for affordable chicken in La Paz, due to more than a month of food shortages.

Spiked prices and protester blockades have affected access to food and medical supplies in the capital.

At New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, India’s most famous protest strip, hundreds of mostly young people in cockroach masks and with dog-eared exam guides in hand tried to turn an online joke into a real-world force.

They call themselves the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) – a satirical “people’s party” born barely three weeks ago after India’s chief justice reportedly likened government critics and unemployed youth to “cockroaches” and “parasites”.

What began as a parody account and meme factory has since exploded into a channel for anger over exams, jobs and a fraying sense of economic promise.

On Saturday, that digital discontent stepped off the screen. Waving India’s national flag and clutching schoolbooks, the protesters demanded the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan after a string of exam paper leaks, technical glitches and cancelled tests.

For many, the fiasco over the NEET medical entrance exam – and reports of student suicides – symbolises a system young Indians say has no credibility left.

The CJP’s founder, 30-year-old political strategist and Boston University graduate Abhijeet Dipke, flew in from the United States to lead the rally, telling supporters that “cockroaches don’t ever fear.”

Police in riot gear and steel barricades underscored the risks of dissent in an era when large protests have often been met with crackdowns and criminal cases.

With more than 20 million followers on Instagram, CJP has already outgrown many mainstream parties online.

Its first street protest now tests whether self-deprecating memes and satire can be converted into a lasting organisation – and whether India’s anxious, hyper-connected youth can find a new political language for their frustration.

Since the public launch of large-language models like ChatGPT and OpenAI in 2020, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining ground across a variety of private and public areas,  the prospect of not only facilitating mundane tasks but also revolutionising labor markets, research, medicine and militaries.  

The gilded age of AI

But as the presence of AI is becoming an increasingly normalized part of everyday life, from summarizing texts, fact-checking a statement or composing an email, it is easy to overlook the more nefarious purposes of surveillance, discrimination and persecution for which AI can be used at the state level. This is an increasingly pertinent issue, with the surge of state-based AI surveillance—such as ’safe cities,’ facial recognition, and smart policing—since 2018, extending to at least 75 of the 175 countries with available data. While this trend is present on all continents, there are regional disparities in application, with AI surveillance present in almost 70% of the surveyed African states, over 50% of South East Asian states, and just under 40% of European countries use AI for surveillance. Thus, AI surveillance is not limited to authoritarian states; according to one report, 51% of liberal democracies use AI for surveillance purposes. How, then, is AI being used for surveillance in China, the Middle East, US, and Europe? 

China—a spearhead for surveillance

China dominates the AI surveillance sector, with companies like ZTE and Huawei present in over 63 countries, vastly outnumbering the US. This presence is especially noticeable in Africa and Asia, where the use of Chinese surveillance technology correlates closely with  participation in the cross-continental Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. In particular, China has been exporting its ‘safe city’ model, which has already been domestically implemented in cities like Beijing as part of its social credit system, to Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and Thailand as well as European cities like Valenciennes, which in 2017 was gifted safe city technology by Huawei. This model connects an extensive network of facial recognition cameras and police body cameras into intelligent command centers using algorithms to predict crime.

Individual freedom versus national security

While states are justifying these measures by reference to crime reduction and national security, organisations are warning about the implications of AI surveillance for privacy, systemic discrimination civil rights and democratic freedoms as AI allows for cost efficient surveillance at an unprecedented spatial and temporal scale. For example, China has domestically implemented large scale AI surveillance encompassing over 600 million cameras, coupled with large language models for minority languages to sharpen its surveillance of the communication of its Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean, and Mongolian minorities. In the Xinjiang province, the Chinese state has created an Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which employs an extensive network of CCTV cameras, facial recognition devices, and or WiFi surveillance devices to suppress political dissent among the province’s Uyghur minority. Such Chinese technology has reportedly also been exported to Saudi Arabia and Iran for similar purposes of suppressing political dissent, and to enhance the precision of drone air strikes in Ukraine and the Middle East.

AI surveillance beyond autocracies

However, the West is not immune to these developments. The US government recently found itself in a legal dispute with AI company Anthropic after the company refused to allow the government to use its ground breaking AI model Claude for domestic surveillance without built-in restraints. The US government claimed that this jeopardised national security by preventing the state from identifying espionage. In addition, US President Trump has issued various executive orders to increase the adoption of AI by federal agencies over state regulations. Indeed, the US already uses surveillance technology deployed by Israel on the occupied West Bank, to stem migration on the Mexican border. Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) admitted in March 2026 that federal agencies are buying personal data from data brokers, including location data collected by private companies, in order to track citizens.

Europe: between security, migration and regulation

Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) is exploring Automated Border Crossing technologies. The intelligent system iBorderCtrl is currently being piloted in Greece, Hungary and Latvia  applies AI lie detectors to immigrants, with immigrants found lying being automatically detained for further questioning. This system has been criticised by human rights activists and academics as a scientifically weak and potentially discriminatory practice. Thus, even though AI is more regulated in Europe than elsewhere in the world, with the EU AI Act of 2024 restricting large scale usage from sensitive areas through, the risk of questionable AI use in the name of national security remains salient.

Indeed, several member states are stretching the AI Act’s limitations on large-scale surveillance. For example, Luxembourg has since 2025 pursued plans of expanding its use of Trojan spyware from state security and terrorist threats to encompass a broader range of crimes, such as child exploitation, currency counterfeiting and human trafficking. Similarly, the government of Ireland is seeking to expand the powers of the police and Defense Forces to intercept conversations on encrypted platforms like WhatsApp, and iMessage, and other social media platforms. Meanwhile, the Czech Republic was forced to end its use of facial recognition at Prague Airport after six months as it was found to violate the EU AI Act. Likewise, Hungary authorized the police to use real-time facial recognition to identify participants in LGBTQ+ parades in April last year, in violation of the AI Act.

Digital emancipation or authoritarianism?

Thus, it appears that national and international regulation has been lagging behind the rapid tech innovation of recent years. As with any innovation, AI is a neutral tool—but it can be used in ways good or bad depending on the decisions of power-holders. Thus, the application of AI calls for increased scrutiny, accountability and implementation to safeguard the benefits and prospects of improvement it holds out from being hijacked by nefarious purposes undermining democracy and human rights.

When the European Union issued its latest tranche of sanctions against Israeli settler groups and their leaders, Regavim, founded in part by the country’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, these groups welcomed the measures as a “badge of honour.”

Another sanctioned figure, Daniella Weiss, whose movement, Nachala, has held conferences on the Gaza border to discuss plans for settlement expansion into the occupied Palestinian territory, likewise dismissed the European penalties as “ridiculous” and “banal”.

In total, the EU sanctioned four entities and three individuals associated with the settler movement, which includes high-profile characters such as Weiss, Regavim and its director, Meir Deutsch, and the Amana cooperative association, which offers logistical and financial support to settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Even government figures have been targeted in recent Western actions. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a son of the settler movement, was sanctioned by the United Kingdom, Canada and several other countries for his alleged role in supporting or enabling violence in the West Bank, highlighting how the settlement project has the support of the highest echelons of the Israeli state.

Overall, the nonchalant response from the targeted figures and entities suggests that none of the EU measures will do anything to stop settlement expansion or make individuals accountable for the growing wave of violence against Palestinians.

Ironically, the largely toothless measures might instead become a source of domestic prestige for their leaders, analysts say, as few would expect these hardline settler figures to spend their summers in Paris or London and thus be affected by the sanctions. Instead, a wave of terror in the occupied West Bank will likely continue, with the tacit support of the government.

Endemic violence

In the eyes of many activists and observers who spoke to Al Jazeera, the EU’s focus on group and individual “violations” falls far short of articulating the scale of the highly coordinated settler attacks or the extent to which the state and society support them.

Following the Hamas-led attack of October 2023, United Nations and human rights monitors have documented systemic lethal settler attacks in places such as the South Hebron Hills, where residents of villages like Susiya and Umm al-Khair have been killed or seriously injured in collective incursions.

In the northern West Bank, Palestinian residents of villages around Nablus and Ramallah have seen their homes, vehicles and olive groves torched during nighttime settler raids. Entire Bedouin herding communities in the Jordan Valley have also been forcibly displaced following sustained campaigns of intimidation and violence.

All of this underscores the depth and breadth of settler activity, which, according to people on the ground, has the direct support of the Israeli government.

“It’s gotten much worse since October 2023. They now have the courage to attack into the heart of densely populated Palestinian villages. I see them, they came into the heart of my village outside Ramallah, they feel safe to do so,” Tahseen Alayan, deputy director of Al-Haq, told Al Jazeera.

“If you buy a sheep, they will steal it. If you build a house, they will destroy it. If you buy a car, they will burn it.”

Examples of Israeli government complicity in these settler raids are not hard to find, and the statistics indicate collective efforts to entrench Israeli control over the West Bank, which has been occupied since 1967.

Israeli forces and settlers are accused of killing an estimated 1,168 people in the occupied West Bank since October 2023 and injuring a further 12,666 Palestinians. Another 33,000 people have been displaced, while Israel has also detained nearly 23,000 Palestinians in the West Bank during this period, many without charge.

“The violence does not happen in a vacuum,” Alayan continued. “This is an extension of the Israeli government; settlement is at the core of their identity. They are protected by the government and by the occupying services, and they freely admit it.”

A tragic incident that comes to mind is settler Yinon Levi, who allegedly shot dead Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in Masafer Yatta last year. Despite the murder being captured on video, Levi nevertheless remains at large.

“Even if they are ever prosecuted, the sentences rarely reflect the severity of the crime,” Alayan said. “These people return to their homes and are seen as heroes.”

‘Entitlement and superiority’

This sense of impunity that settlers appear to be imbued with cannot be detached from the appointment to ministerial positions of leading figures or sympathisers of the settler movement – notably Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the latter born in an illegal settlement in the occupied Golan Heights.

In a sign of state-settler cooperation to achieve direct control of the West Bank, in contravention of the Oslo Accords, Israel last year announced plans for the establishment of the E1 settlement that would link occupied East Jerusalem with its growing Maale Adumim bloc.

According to plans outlined by Smotrich, when established, this settlement would kill any hopes of the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and fulfil a biblical prophecy that many in the movement have been working towards.

Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor of social-political psychology from the Department of Education at Tel Aviv University, interpreted the thinking behind the settlers leading this violence across the West Bank.

“It is divine order to settle West Bank. With divine order you do not argue but achieve it in the way Yehoshua carried it 3,000 years ago when he entered the promised land,” he explained. “He achieved it with sword, so we need to do the same.”

Shai Parnes of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem told Al Jazeera that the absence of international pressure has bolstered the alliance between the state and settler movement.

“The Israeli regime is an apartheid regime based on Jewish supremacy and institutionalised discrimination against Palestinians,” Parnes told Al Jazeera.

“Any Israeli, civilian or soldier, who harms a Palestinian receives full immunity and support from the Israeli systems, and Israel itself receives this from the international community. These facts explain the Israelis’ sense of entitlement and superiority.”

Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani, one of Israel’s leading sociologists, described the channelling of “Jewish supremacy” from the individual to the group, to the state, and back again, as a “closed loop”.

This, he said, fosters a sense of superiority among individuals, and when combined with a militarised society, makes violence against the native Palestinian population, who are in the way of realising this supposed biblical prophecy, almost inevitable.

“Some believe they’re in the West Bank because God said it was theirs. Others are there because they’re too poor to be anywhere else, and have been told they’re superior anyway,” he said.

“Two-thirds of the time, these same people are soldiers. They carry guns all the time. Looking on while they carry out this violence against Palestinians are other soldiers who believe almost exactly the same thing, and behind them politicians. Like I said, it’s a closed loop.”

The man was fishing when he was bitten by a shark, police say.

A man has died after he was bitten by a shark off the south coast of Michaelmas Island in Western Australia.

The 35-year-old was attacked while spearfishing with his family close to the town of Albany, police said.

The man was treated by paramedics but died of his wounds.

Police said a 4.5metre (15ft) shark of an unknown species was spotted by a witness near Michaelmas Island, which does not receive many visitors.

The state’s Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development urged people to take “additional caution” in the area and to stay abreast of shark sightings.

This is the fourth shark killing this year in Australia.

Last month, a man died after being attacked by a great white off Rottnest Island near the city of Perth, and another man died in a shark attack off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia.

In January, a 12-year-old boy was killed by a shark in Sydney Harbour.

Australian scientists believe increasingly crowded waters and rising ocean temperatures are shifting sharks’ migratory patterns, which may be contributing to a rise in attacks.

The majority of shark attacks occur along Australia’s east and southeast coasts, with an average of about 20 incidents recorded each year, according to the Institute of Health and Welfare.

Authors: Marin Mae Ekstrom and Wilder Alejandro Sánchez*

The Organization of Turkic States (OTS) recently held a summit focused on “Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development.” While the May 15 meeting itself did not offer any groundbreaking resolutions, all five heads of the OTS member states participated and reaffirmed their commitment to greater cooperation and integration. This summit was just one example in a series of events that demonstrate growing unity and collaboration among the Turkic states.

How far integration will go between Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye, and Uzbekistan is debatable. There are several regional initiatives that are bringing these countries, as well as other states across the Caucasus and Central Asia, together, including connectivity projects such as the Middle Corridor and the Uzbek-Kyrgyz-Chinese railway, as well as agencies such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union.

However, to secure the success of most multilateral initiatives, bilateral relations between participating members must be consolidated. When ties between two countries are stabilized and routinely strengthened, a bilateral friendship serves as a building block for expanding to additional actors and ensuring constant, reliable dialogue and collaboration among all involved players.

Türkiye, the leader of the Turkic world in terms of population, economic strength, and growing global geopolitical influence, is leveraging shared Turkic heritage to deepen and cement engagement with other OTS members. Uzbekistan is a natural and important partner: as the most populous Central Asian state, it is the second-largest majority-Turkic state in terms of both language and population. The landlocked nation has the third-largest economy in the Turkic world and is rapidly developing economically and expanding its membership in international initiatives.

This commentary will thus provide an analysis of Ankara-Tashkent relations. However, while statements by presidents & joint economic and investment projects are important parts of this geopolitical puzzle, the true sign of integration between two nations often occurs at the cultural level.

BILATERAL POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC RELATIONS

Bilateral relations between Türkiye and Uzbekistan are particularly dynamic. It is noteworthy that high-level meetings occur quite regularly: Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Türkiye and Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan met in Ankara on January 29, as part of the 4th meeting of the Joint Strategic Planning Group (JSPG). The two leaders signed several agreements, including the “Decision on Cooperation Mechanisms for Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Relations between the Republic of Türkiye and the Republic of Uzbekistan,” an agreement on health cooperation, a memorandum of understanding for the development of international transport corridors, and a memorandum of understanding for promoting cooperation in mining.

The two countries celebrated 34 years of diplomatic relations, and the Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu marked the occasion with a March op-ed; the essay described bilateral relations as evolving into a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” The Uzbek presidency has utilized the same wording to describe the current level of bilateral relations.

Trade between Türkiye and Uzbekistan has nearly tripled over the past decade, rising from USD$1.2 billion in 2016 to over USD$3 billion in 2025. Short and long-term trade targets amount to USD$5 billion and USD$10 billion, respectively. Türkiye is the fourth-largest trading partner of Uzbekistan, accounting for 3.7% of Uzbekistan’s foreign trade. Uzbekistan is not as high a trade priority for Turkiye: even in Central Asia, which is not Turkiye’s primary trade area, Kazakhstan is a larger overall partner. Although neither country is pursuing top trading status with the other, trade and engagement remain high priorities for both Ankara and Tashkent. The evidence clearly displayed that both nations have taken major strides to consolidate both political and economic engagement.

THE CULTURAL FACTOR

From a cultural standpoint, Türkiye has swiftly gained soft power traction in Uzbekistan. Turkish TV series and movies enjoy immense popularity in Uzbekistan: the appeal of Turkish media, coupled with expanded transit options between the two countries, has inspired a tourism boom to Türkiye. From January to October 2025, over 230 thousand Uzbek nationals traveled to Türkiye for various reasons, a 16.3% increase compared to the same period in 2024.

Conversely, Uzbek influence in Türkiye is also increasing. Turkish tourism to Uzbekistan is also rising: between January and April 2025, around 49,400 Turkish citizens visited Uzbekistan for tourism, a 57.4% increase compared to the same time period in 2024. Turkish businesses are also investing in Uzbekistan’s tourism sector: Turkish partners support 12 hotels and over 100 joint restaurants, and in 2025-2026, Turkish investors pledged to help finance 11 additional hotel projects.

Language is another area of soft power, as Turkish is one of the top five most popular foreign languages to learn in Uzbekistan. Factors, including the popularity of Turkish media, academic study, and career opportunities, have bolstered its appeal. Although the study of Uzbek in Türkiye is not as widespread, the linguistic overlap between the two makes it relatively easy for a native Turkish speaker to learn Uzbek and vice versa, making it a less daunting endeavor than the study of other languages.

Cultural relations and people-to-people diplomacy are sometimes overlooked in grand analyses of international relations, as analysts and scholars often focus on presidential summits, trade agreements, investment, or joint military initiatives. However, people-to-people relations, as well as cultural and public diplomacy, are important tools in a country’s toolkit for strengthening grassroots ties.

Generally speaking, the OTS and its member governments support initiatives to promote people-to-people relations and to continue developing a common Turkic identity. During the recent OTS summit, the five leaders reaffirmed their determination to deepen cooperation in digital transformation, innovation, artificial intelligence, connectivity, and sustainable economic development. More broadly, they highlighted their shared commitment to further deepening solidarity, mutual trust, and strategic cooperation within the Turkic World in line with the objectives of the “Turkic World Vision-2040.”

Specifically, the heads of state “laid a time capsule to officially launch the construction of the Center of the Turkic Civilization.” This Center has been described by regional officials as “a groundbreaking architectural complex that will utilize AI, VR, and holography to immerse visitors in the rich philosophy and history of the Turkic World.” Moreover, during the January meeting between Erdoğan and Mirziyoyev, the two heads of state signed a Cultural Cooperation Plan for 2026-2027. Thus, a key strategy for encouraging Turkish-Uzbek bilateral ties is to highlight their commonalities within the wider Turkic cultural and linguistic sphere.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS

Tashkent-Ankara relations are generally strong, but additional factors complicate their full level of engagement. Although Ankara is very much interested in increasing connectivity with Central Asia via the Middle Corridor and engaging with the Turkic world, those are not its primary objectives. Issues like the Russo-Ukrainian War & the Black Sea; the recent conflict between Iran against the United States and Israel, as well as the related spillover across neighboring Lebanon and Syria; and even the upcoming elections in Armenia, are all arguably higher priorities for Ankara. Domestically, Türkiye is facing its own obstacles, as Erdoğan maintains a tight grip on power while the Turkish economy remains plagued by rising inflation and currency depreciation.

Similarly, Tashkent wants to improve connectivity with Türkiye via the Middle Corridor, but it also wants to increase trade and investment with China and attract investment and partnerships from the Gulf States and India. A good example of this diversification of partnerships is Tashkent’s new airport, to be built via investments and partnerships with Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea. Meanwhile, Moscow remains committed to maintaining its historical influence across Eurasia (President Mirziyoyev visited Moscow for the May celebrations of the Great Patriotic War, one of the few leaders to do so), while the current US administration is focused on transactional diplomacy to secure access to critical minerals and rare earth elements that Uzbekistan has in abundance.

Ankara’s engagement in recent years with Central Asia via the OTS, the Middle Corridor, and bilateral interactions has attracted widespread academic and scholarly interest. However, there is a predictable focus on diplomatic, security, and trade & investment analyses; for example, a 2024 analysis on Tashkent-Ankara relations published by the Central Asia Caucasus Institute did not mention tourism, cultural diplomacy, or education (apart from military education).

That said, the frequently overlooked factors of cultural and public diplomacy will likely be critical to promoting long-term, successful cooperation between Türkiye and Uzbekistan: Turkish pop culture has had a strong influence in Uzbekistan, tourism is growing, and Turkish language study is increasingly popular there. population to learn Turkish. While Uzbekistan’s cultural and language appeal does not hold the same sway in Türkiye, the country is nonetheless growing in terms of global soft power appeal indicators. Uzbekistan’s rebranding as a globally-oriented and dynamic society steeped in rich Islamic and historical heritage -for example, by leveraging the legacy of legendary cities such as Bukhara, Samarqand, and Khiva- echoes the Kemalist model of a Türkiye embracing both modernity and its Ottoman historical legacy. Thus, framing the contemporary Uzbek national narrative as parallel to the Turkish one could help bolster its appeal in Türkiye and strengthen the sense of collective identity in the broader Turkic cultural space.

*Wilder Alejandro Sánchez is president of Second Floor Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. He is also a non-resident fellow at Cfive, a think tank headquartered in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views or policies of any organizations with which the authors are affiliated.

Jalen Brunson drilled the go-ahead free throw as the New York Knicks held off a furious San Antonio rally to beat the Spurs 105-104 and take a commanding 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals.

San Antonio player Victor Wembanyama had a crucial late turnover and missed a potential game-winner with two seconds remaining on Friday, leaving the Spurs in need of an unprecedented comeback when the best-of-seven series shifts to New York for games three and four.

No team has lifted the trophy after dropping the first two games of the Finals at home.

Michael Jordan’s 1993 Chicago Bulls and the 1995 Houston Rockets are the only other teams to win the first two games of the championship series on the road, and both went on to win titles.

The Knicks won their 13th straight game of the playoffs – the second-longest streak in postseason history – and will have a chance to close out their first title since 1973 in front of home fans at Madison Square Garden. United States President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend on Monday.

They had to withstand a scintillating fourth-quarter surge from the Spurs, who erased a 14-point deficit with a 14-0 scoring run.

Wembanyama shook off a slow start to score 22 of his 29 points in the second half, his three-point play with 57.3 seconds remaining giving the Spurs their first lead since the second quarter at 104-102.

It was tied at 104-104 with 9.5 seconds left when Wembanyama grabbed the rebound of a Brunson miss but turned it over with a bad pass into the back of teammate Stephon Castle.

Brunson scooped up the ball and was fouled, then made the first of two free throws to put the Knicks back in front.

San Antonio had one last chance, coming out of a time-out with 7.5 seconds left. They got the ball to their superstar, but his jump shot clanged off the rim.

“I threw that one away,” 22-year-old Wembanyama said. “I messed up. We didn’t play great as a team. We needed to win that game.”

Karl-Anthony Towns, who led the Knicks with 21 points and 13 rebounds, admitted he was praying when Wembanyama put the Spurs’ final attempt.

“A great player got a great shot, and it just didn’t go in,” Towns said.

‘What a ballgame’

For the second straight game, Towns delivered a stellar defensive performance that pushed Wembanyama out of his comfort zone.

“He’s a once-in-a-generation player,” Towns said. “You got to make it difficult on him. So, just utilising my experience, utilising my size, my skill, and just trying to make it difficult for him.”

Brunson and Mikal Bridges scored 20 points each, OG Anunoby added 17, and Landry Shamet scored 13 off the bench for the Knicks.

Wembanyama added nine rebounds, four blocked shots and two steals, and De’Aaron Fox scored 20 points for the Spurs.

Desperate not to head back to New York in a 2-0 hole, the Spurs attacked the paint early.

Wembanyama thrilled Spurs fans at the Frost Bank Center – where Knicks supporters were a vocal presence – with his first basket of the night, a left-handed dunk that gave the Spurs a 15-10 lead.

Fox’s alley-oop layup off a feed from Devin Vassell pushed the lead to 10 with less than two minutes to go in the first.

The Spurs pushed their lead to 12 before the Knicks responded in a tense second quarter, taking the lead for the first time, 49-48, on Landry Shamet’s layup with 3:39 left in the first half.

San Antonio regained the lead, but Towns’s three-pointer over Wembanyama gave the Knicks a 56-52 halftime advantage that they pushed to as many as 12 before taking an 84-75 lead into the fourth quarter.

“What a ballgame,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “It’s a fantastic ballgame. They made a run. We made a run. They made a run. We made a run.

“We could have folded a few times, but our guys just kept fighting … No matter what run they went on, no matter what time of the game, our guys just kept uplifting one another.”

Harry Kane’s final task of the finest season of a magnificent career is to attend to unfinished business as England’s World Cup captain.

Kane is England’s ‘Mr Irreplaceable’ – as proved when Thomas Tuchel’s side were ominously toothless when drawing with Uruguay then losing to Japan in March friendlies at Wembley.

The 32-year-old’s fitness will be Tuchel’s biggest concern as they prepare to start their World Cup campaign against Croatia in Dallas on 17 June, not simply because of his status as England’s all-time record scorer with 78 goals in 112 games, but also because they have no-one remotely in Kane’s class.

If Kane stays fit, and in the remarkable form that brought him 64 goals in 56 games for Bayern Munich this season, England’s hopes will soar.

If not, the reverse applies.

As former England striker Chris Sutton told BBC Sport: “Harry Kane is so important that if he announced his international retirement this afternoon, everyone would instantly view England’s World Cup chances in a different, more pessimistic light.”

Silverware has come late in Kane’s career after barren years at Tottenham Hotspur, when even his stunning goalscoring numbers could not bring glory.

He is now making up for lost time by winning a second successive Bundesliga with Bayern Munich, then scoring a hat-trick as they beat Stuttgart 3-0 in the German Cup final.

And Kane now has his sights set on delivering the biggest prize of all as he leads England on their latest quest to end the search for men’s success stretching back to the 1966 World Cup win.

England’s countdown to their opening World Cup game continues when they play New Zealand in a friendly at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, on Saturday (21:00 BST).

Kane has suffered the disappointment of losing successive European Championship finals with England to Italy and Spain, as well as a World Cup semi-final defeat by Croatia in 2018 and a quarter-final loss to France in Qatar.

Now Kane’s stellar form and fitness suggest the time might be right for England and their talisman to overcome the barrier that has brought 60 years of pain.