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As a pariah child in search of Islamic knowledge, Goni Abubakar has no clue what it means to hold a gun and pull the trigger. He is just an almajiri who runs errands for his cleric master in Bama, a town in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. He learns to recite Quran verses by heart; he is one of the brightest pupils under the cleric’s tutelage. In the beginning, the messages are clear: have faith in Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, and the Day of Judgement. Every pupil carries these heavy words around and keenly believes in them. They say the Quranic verses that match those words by heart: “O you who have believed, fear Allah and believe in His Messenger; He will [then] give you a double portion of His mercy and make for you a light by which you will walk and forgive you; and Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.”

The preaching is pious until peril pierces the heart of the preacher. 

The teacher sells groceries, and Goni doubles as his shop assistant. Detached from his parents as a child, he was now a teen, tending only to the bidding of his mentor. Dozens of children are on this path to seek knowledge, but Goni is the teacher’s delight: fierce, smart, and completely loyal. Their earliest form of education is the Tsangaya, a traditional Quranic education in northern Nigeria, and most of them have not attended any formal secular school before they are thrown under the control of a man they all call “mallam”. The morning and evening classes are held in the shade of a tree and are led by the teacher, who preaches to them the ways of Islam.

Kids like Goni know what it means to grow up in a local community. A child can sing through the neighbourhood, begging anyone there for food and water. Local farmers prosper in peace after months of tilling and cultivating the land. People sleep at night without fear of being raided by assailants or militants. Fear and terror consumed the town when Boko Haram’s strange ideologies spread like wildfire into the communities. Goni’s teacher is among the first to embrace the ideologies propagated by Boko Haram’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf. As his preaching changed, his way of life changed too, beaming terror and extremism infused into the hearts of children under his mentorship.

In 2009, when Boko Haram went underground before re-emerging in 2010, Goni was already a 12-year-old. Too young and naive to ask questions, he and dozens of children followed their tutor to join the insurgent group that would later destabilise Nigeria. Now, in the northeastern region, the Boko Haram insurgency has uprooted over three million people and killed over 350,000, with government authorities failing to rein in the deadly scourge. Armed violence has spread beyond the region’s borders into parts of the northwestern and north-central regions.

Goni would become a grown man, swallowing the rulings of terrorists until he could no longer bear them. He now seeks redemption and reintegration through the state-backed deradicalisation programme. While it appears he has left a life of violence and attacks for good, it’s not that simple. For him and many other men in his shoes, post-Boko Haram life presents some puzzles that test the true efficacy of the deradicalisation scheme.

Are the terrorist deserters genuinely seeking redemption or only trying to survive? For months – between November 2025 and May 2026 – HumAngle probed the complexities of the former insurgents’ lives, documenting their journeys from the past to the present, their struggles to become civilians again, their secret frontline deals with the military, and the fragile peace their reintegration poses to the civilian population.

Snaring the cat

When Goni joined Boko Haram as a teen, his master’s preachings had switched from admonishing children under his watch to have strong faith in their religion to brainwashing them into a life of violence. They embraced it, truly believing that spilling the blood of people who don’t believe in their ideology was the clearest pathway to paradise. Elsewhere in Borno, in the Malam Fatori area, Ali Bukhar also listened to the sermons of Boko Haram’s jihadists. Those sermons summoned the beast in him and took away the best of his humanity. He joined them convinced that true salvation was immersed in the ideology of killing and maiming.

“In the preachings, they’d emphasise that if you died in the cause, you are a martyr. That you are going to paradise straight,” Ali recalls. He joined as an adult in 2014 during the peak of the Boko Haram emergence. About five months after joining the group, he was asked to attend training. His handlers took him to a riverine area and gave him a gun. “They have a specific instructor whose job is solely to train new intakes. You’d train for about four to five months. After the training, they’d return you to the Markaz [Arabic word for headquarters or centre]. And when it is time to go out for a fight, they’d give you guns.”

Suleiman Mohammad tells a slightly different story. He joined Boko Haram in 2013, during the first Baga attack. The militants and the military had been locked in a fierce battle that cost hundreds of civilians their lives and thousands their homes. A retaliatory raid after a military base was attacked in Baga took a bloody turn for mostly civilians, brewing a trust deficit in the operational methods of Nigerian forces in their fight against terrorism. The insurgent group took advantage of the situation to recruit young people into its unholy ways. Suleiman was among hundreds of people brought into the system after the Baga bloody saga and the uprising that followed. He was a herder in Malam Fatori and had grown up through the local Tsangaya education system.

“So after the Baga attack, I was contacted by the fighters who turned out to be from my village,” Suleiman reminisces. “We studied together when we attended Tsangaya and Islamiyya a long time ago. They told me how the other brothers were with them. They told me stories of how they recite the Quran collectively and also wage ‘holy war’ together. Then they invited me to join them. So, we made an appointment to meet at Mairari.”

A week later, the terrorists came as agreed and met with Suleiman’s father in his home. 

“Your son is joining us in the cause of Allah. He’d work for Allah,” the terrorists say. 

“Allah’s cause?” the father wonders. “Jihad is mandatory for all muslims. And since he has agreed to go with you, I have no objections.” 

The terrorists had come with guns and machetes, Suleiman notes, suggesting that his father was made to agree under duress. “That was how I joined them. We had carried out several attacks ever since. From Mairari, Tungushe, and others. In fact, we held Mairari – under Magumeri – captive for quite some time before it was recaptured by the military.”

People joined the Boko Haram insurgency for different reasons. For Goni and his cohorts, it was a case of misguided faith rooted in brainwashing and psychological manipulation. The story is different for many others. The fire of the burning insurgency started from the charismatic oratory and radical sermons by the founder of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, between 2002 and 2009. Since at least 2021, HumAngle has interviewed dozens of defectors who revealed why they joined the deadly group before surrendering to a deradicalisation scheme organised by the government. Mohammed took advantage of the dysfunctions within the Nigerian state to campaign against a secular system of governance and, by extension, democracy.

Testimonies from defectors and custodians of Boko Haram’s history reveal that the post-2009 state repression, especially the actual brutality of the Nigerian military and police against civilians, and the uprising that trailed it, were among the factors that drove young people into insurgency. At the time, “Tura Takai Bango” was the mantra for the agitation, literally meaning “they had been pushed to the wall”. The era and the ugly events that unfolded encapsulate the desperation that leads civilians to affiliate with insurgents. When the state’s counter-insurgency tactics involve collective punishment, the civilian population often finds itself caught in a “double jeopardy” where both the state and the insurgents are viewed as existential threats. 

Isa Alamndiri, one of the victims of the state repression, told HumAngle how he witnessed the summary execution of young people in 2016, in the Marte Local Government Area (LGA), on the grounds that they were shielding terrorists. “They came and gathered all of us in the village. They then separated the elderly and killed all the youths. They shot over 30 youths that day. Their reason was that we were harbouring Boko Haram in our midst,” Isa says. 

Another witness of what many believe pushed youths in the state to the wall, Musa Kurama, recalls that the Nigerian military invaded his village in Meleri, also in Marte, to burn his house, among many others, to the ground, saying that the entire community was a hideout for terrorists. The cycle of violence forced young adults and naive teenagers to take the insurgents’ offer of “protection”, which was a predatory alternative to state-sponsored destruction.

Boko Haram also targeted schools for attacks, deliberately conducting mass kidnappings such as in Chibok and Dapchi to enforce their radical ideology by making secular educational institutions unsafe. This insurgent tactic strategically provides a supply of young captives who were groomed as fighters or forced into “marriages” that facilitate the group’s long-term sustainability. The state’s failure to secure these environments has led to the closure of over 600 schools in the region, creating a lost generation of children who are more susceptible to recruitment because of the absence of alternative futures.

Jihad: ‘Pathway to paradise’

Goni has grown up knowing nothing but violence and bloodshed, and now claims he’s out of the messy circle. He smiles as he speaks, but when he remembers how he joined other terrorists to pillage villages, uproot people from their homes, farmlands, and abduct scores, he furrows his brow. 

“Before we go out, we would prepare. They’d mobilise 100 to 200 fighters, give them arms, and say, ‘We are going out to wage a holy war’.  Then we would charge into military barracks,” he tells HumAngle curtly. “I believe we were deceived by our masters because they don’t practice what they preach and twist religious verses to suit their evil acts and intentions.”

Regardless of how and why they joined, newly recruited insurgents are made to believe that killing and spilling the blood of anyone not following their templates of violence has only one name: jihad. Most defectors we spoke to corroborated this during separate interviews in 2025 and later in 2026.

Experts and scholars in political science, human rights, and peace and conflict studies argue that Boko Haram weaponised the concept of jihad to manipulate its followers into believing keenly in killing and destroying those who disagree with their ideology. In the 2021 issue of the Al-Hikmah Journal on Social Sciences and Education, for example, Issa Muhammad-Jamiu, a researcher at Kogi State University in North Central Nigeria, notes that Boko Haram’s ideology contradicts Islamic injunctions. The most disturbing aspect, he states, is the condemnation of any scholarly verdict that falls short of their view. 

“How could they attribute Islam to the prohibition of Western education, which has become a necessity, if not compulsory, to Muslims in the contemporary world? Do they mean that they are more knowledgeable and more committed to Islam than those Companions and Tabi’un who studied foreign cultures and sciences for the interest of Muslim communities?” Issa ponders.

Two sides of the coin

As Goni speaks, his lips look pale and peeling. He’s been battling typhoid and malaria and is still receiving treatment. He carries a gentle demeanour that betrays the terror he had perpetrated, and wears a blank face wrinkled with emotionlessness. For him, peace is a no-brainer when violence is pervasive.

He quips, throwing on a long, tedious smile when asked what he thinks of the concept of peace. “Peace tastes good,” he says. “Living peacefully among loved ones is greater than any other thing. I was in Njimia before leaving. I had worked in several places, including Gazuwa, my birthplace. What made me leave was recent developments. The conflict between the factions and the injustice. So, I took my weapon and left. I arrived at Konduga, where I was received. They then brought us to Bama and then to Hajj Camp.”

Goni believes that embracing peace simply means walking away from a life of pain, violence, and gnashing of teeth. Dwelling in the forest with terrorists means dining with the devil, he says. His moral postulation and spiritual freedom were destroyed in the terrorist camp. He had access to the Quran and understood its teachings, but every verse he read had to be interpreted in accordance with the sect’s teachings. He had no freedom of thought or understanding of whatever he read from the scripture. He had no meaningful life in the forest, he says, apart from destroying people’s lives.

He and many of the terrorist deserters we spoke to said they experienced pain in its most extreme form. Whenever they sustained gunshot wounds during field battles with the military, they returned to the forest almost dead. They were being treated by their locally-trained doctors, whom many of the ex-combatants described as quacks. Most times, they gave them dangerous, addictive opioids such as Tramadol and Refinol. They became addicted to these drugs to escape their daily ordeals, even after healing from the wounds. 

“They punished us for taking hard drugs they introduced to us in the first place,” Goni complains. “Sometimes a fighter could be killed just because he takes hard drugs. When they knew it was bad, why did they use it to treat us?”

Many terrorists decided to surrender to the military for different reasons. One major cause of mass defections from the terrorist camps was the sudden demise of Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram gang leader who took over the mantle of terror from Mohammed Yusuf. There had been cracks within the insurgent group, leading to the rise of the Islamic State for West African Province (ISWAP), which was formed as a rebel group against Shekau’s camp. Another thing that followed the death of Shekau in 2021 was disease and hunger outbreaks. 

The Nigerian military took advantage of Shekau’s death to launch several offensive attacks on the terrorist dens in northeastern Nigeria, destroying their logistics bases. That year, the military said it recorded thousands of defections from terrorists who surrendered to embrace peace. Once they submit themselves to the military after years of committing criminal atrocities, they are subjected to deradicalisation through the Borno Model.

HumAngle interviewed several Boko Haram deserters to examine their understanding of peace after committing grave crimes against the human population in the region. Many of them curiously oversimplified the concept, reducing it to simply switching sides and moving from deadly armed violence to living an average civilian life.

“From my understanding, peace is us leaving the group,” Ali simply says and goes ahead to recount how he joined other fighters to enslave girls for sex after kidnapping them from their homes, schools, and farms. He had been through hell as a former Boko Haram member, and now seeks solace in embracing peace by surrendering to the military. He had been imprisoned by his superiors in the terror camp and asked to surrender his arms, but he refused. “I buried it where they could not see it. I was locked up for three months. When they released me, I went and dug up my gun and left them,” he recalls.

For him and several defectors, returning to the civilian community is an exciting prospect. Despite the horror they inflicted on civilian communities as terrorists, they consider living with ordinary locals again, especially close to their families, as a peaceful reconciliation of their horrible past. “We were ignorant when we did those things in the past. But now we know better,” one of them, Abubakar Saleh, says. He was a Boko Haram commander who led dozens of fighters to dislodge communities, rape women and girls and subjugate civilian communities under terrorist control.

He has now returned to Maiduguri with his family. His wife had just given birth when we spoke to him, and he has settled well into the civilian community. To him, peace is relief from the pain that comes with being a terrorist leader. Although he enjoyed authority as a commanding fighter, his life in the forest was miserable, as he was always on the move to evade military operations and surveillance.

“Life here is better,” he affirms. “It is more comfortable and peaceful. In the forest, there is no rest. You’d hunt daily like a lion. Always changing locations. But here, no attacks.”

For civilian casualties of the terror perpetrated by many of these terrorist deserters, however, peace doesn’t come easily. For years, victims of insurgency in the northeastern region have longed for peace and reparations. Thousands of displaced people not only lost their homes, but also lost hope in ever rebuilding their lives or returning to their settlements. In parts of Borno, especially at the Shuwari displacement site, displaced people feed on the leftovers from former terrorists undergoing the government’s deradicalisation programme, a situation that has created an atmosphere of distrust and inequalities. When the Borno State government began a resettlement scheme for displaced people, they were promised protection and stipends to rebuild their lives. Many of them ended up being re-displaced by terrorists and would not get the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

Ensuring peace and justice in the North East is far more complicated than many terrorist deserters have assumed, says Ndubuisi Ani, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Security Studies. The transitional justice expert told HumAngle that the defectors’ curious understanding of peace undermines the pains and level of destruction civilians have witnessed at the hands of terrorists. He argues that peace and justice cannot be achieved in tackling violent extremism unless there’s inclusivity, good governance, and stability.

“The state must understand that there are basic needs to be responded to (on the side of victims),” Ndubuisi explains. “A lot of communities need a lot of social contracts on the ground.”

The security expert further explains that any transitional justice scheme by the government must be victim-centred. He advised that the state must go back to its original duty of protecting citizens and ensuring peace and tranquillity in society.

“You’ve not psychologically prepared actors. How do you let the victims understand?” he asked, stating that the government can’t successfully reintegrate terrorist deserters back into society without proper public engagement. “The intent is good, but the approach is the problem.”

Seeking peace and redemption

Like many terrorist deserters, Goni accepts that he has lived a complicated life of violence and horror. This is not the time for regret, he says. It’s a moment to seek forgiveness, to retrace his steps, and perhaps to wash the blood from his own hands. When he arrived at the Hajj Camp in Maiduguri after surrendering to the military and going through the process of deradicalisation, he struggled with the guilt of the atrocities he had committed, and, to prove to the military that he had backed off from a life of bloodshed, he agreed to work in the field with soldiers fighting terrorists. He’s not alone in this. Several former combatants we spoke to said they decided to work as auxiliary operatives to fight alongside the military against Boko Haram, the same sect they once belonged to. Several other defectors noted that when they chose to work with the military – as a way to seek redemption – they were handed rifles, loaded onto the backs of patrol trucks, and sent directly into the marshes and forests they had recently fled.

Asked whether they were coerced into joining the military, Goni laughed before saying the escapade was never mandatory. 

“It is a choice,” he replies. “I may decide not to work with them again.”

It is a hard nut to crack, but the terrorist deserters say the military operatives have learned to work and walk with them.

“They arm us and take us with them. If, for instance, a Commanding Officer is going out for an operation, he’d request a certain amount of “repentants” from the Hajj Camp officials. And the officials would assign like 50 or 100 persons to him, depending on the scale of the operation,” Goni says.

By fighting the same people who recruited him into the monolithic Boko Haram camp as a teen, Goni says, he has freed himself from a lifetime of guilt. During his time with the killers, he recalls asking many of the fighters if they loved what they were doing. Those fighters feel trapped, he says; they’re homesick, but even their families have rejected them. Now that he has freed himself from the shackles of terrorism, he says he begs God for forgiveness. But while he seeks forgiveness for the atrocities he has committed, he would use every knowledge he has about the group to fight them back. That’s his way of seeking redemption.

“They give us food and allowances, and we give them intelligence. We show them the hideouts. Because we know the terrain better than they do. We know their fighting styles,” Goni brags, smiling and looking directly at the reporter. “We know their escape routes. Isn’t this helpful enough? Also, we lead the way. They’d follow behind. We charge in.”

Redemption through revenge

Ali’s life after Boko Haram is even more thrilling: he seeks redemption through revenge. He had fallen for peer pressure to join one of the most brutal terrorist organisations in existence, and his life had since remained terrifying. For years, he was a cog in the Boko Haram machine, serving with vim and vigour. He learned to repair military vehicles in the forest and became renowned as the sect’s mechanic. He would repair heavy military patrol vehicles seized by the insurgents or those stuck in the mud within the forest during ambushes.

Despite his servitude for Boko Haram’s cause, he says, his entire life with the terror group was a lie. He grew to realise that behind the Boko Haram ideology was a hail of deceit and human manipulation. Bamboozled with distorted interpretations of verses from the Quran, Ali recounts how he had joined hundreds of other fighters to trigger plague, tears, and horror in civilian communities in the name of holy war.

“The practice violates the preachings. My biggest reason was that the practice was not what the Prophet truly teaches,” he claims. “The commanders would usually stay behind, leaving a comfortable life, while the foot soldiers are left starving and fighting day and night.”

For Ali, the deal breaker with Boko Haram was during a chaotic raid in the Tungushe town of Borno. He had come under a heavy burst of military gunfire, which tore through his arm, shattering the bone. He had expected that the sect’s medical team would give him some extra care due to his critical condition, but they treated him like disposable property. 

“I was so humiliated by the sect’s medical team, as treatments were handled haphazardly,” he laments. “If it were the commanders, they would treat them swiftly with maximum care. But for fighters, there is usually no medical attention.”

For two straight years, he nursed the pain alone and grew bitter resentment for the sect and its ideologies. He realised he was nothing but a tool for achieving the commanders’ personal hunches and interests. One night, he slipped away, through the scrublands, trudging northward until he found himself around the military garrison in Monguno, where he fell flat on the ground and surrendered.

“After surrendering in Monguno, they took us to Hajj Camp in Maiduguri,” Ali tells HumAngle. “Days later, they brought forward an opportunity where you could help in the fight. You may decide to follow the military during attacks or provide them with intelligence. Whatever you think you can do. So, I said I want to fight. I have a friend who also fights alongside the soldiers. I chose to fight because I have realised that we were deceived by the group.”

Repentance or survival?

Unlike Ali and Goni, repentance has an entirely different meaning for Suleiman: it is an illusion or a political statement made by people in government. Calling him a “repentant Boko Haram” is an insult, he says. To him, that word is a subtle qualifier for a coward. With a cold voice and a sour look, he describes how he worked with ground troops to attack Timbuktu, Sambisa, and other terrorist hideouts.

His case is more of just switching sides than actual repentance. He dreads the term “repentant Boko Haram” and doesn’t hide it. As a terrorist, he lived for violence, pillaging villages and destroying people’s lives and properties. Following the rise of Abu Mushab al-Barnawi, a factional leader of the Boko Haram sect, Suleiman came under his command, joining over 100 fighters under his control. He had fought fiercely against the Nigerian military on many occasions, and he was feared for his precise brutality amid battles.

His cruelty had no bounds, as he had fought against top Nigerian military leaders, as he states, like Captain Bala, Manga, and Abu Ali, leaving scars on the town that are still visible today. He had also raided beyond Nigeria, maiming locals in the Niger Republic, especially in Diffa, Maine-Soroa, and Chabbal.

When factional infighting turned truly brutal, Suleiman chose to be on the safer side. Exhausted by the tireless internal slaughter, he left and surrendered to the military. Now, he does almost the same thing on the other side. The activity is the same, he notes, only the targets are different. 

“I am not comfortable with that name [repentant]. I don’t like it,” Suleiman says. He would frown and then laugh during the interview to convey the complexity of the terror drowning him. “In the forest, I followed someone’s commands. Here too, I am commanded and still branded repentant?”

He wears a worn Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) uniform during the interview with HumAngle, bragging about following soldiers to the battlefield against terrorists in Geidam, Marte, Kala-Bridge and Malam Fatori. Despite his defiance, however, he seems to have taken bullets for the military during counterterrorism raids in northeastern Nigeria. His four fingers are chopped off, and there are scars all over his body. It was during a joint offensive with Chadian forces in northern Monguno. An artillery explosion had torn through the military ranks and killed several soldiers and terrorist deserters fighting by their side. He would follow the forces into the fortified hideouts of Timbuktu and Sambisa, giving on-the-ground intel to navigate the terrain.

“I got this arm scar, and my fingers were chopped off while digging out a planted landmine about five months ago,” he says of another military raid he participated in. “The explosion killed two other ex-combatants and nine soldiers. When the engineer scouted and identified a planted bomb, he refused to dig it out. None of the soldiers did. So they asked me to do it. One of the wires sparked. Then it exploded. It also affected my leg.”

The deradicalisation scheme

The term “repentance”, which Suleiman and several other defectors loathe, is one of the modus operandi of the Operation Safe Corridor, a military-led deradicalisation and reintegration programme across northeastern states. Established in 2016, the programme has witnessed both criticism and appraisal from experts and affected citizens. The quest for transitional justice, following the mass atrocities committed by Boko Haram against the people and the government of Nigeria, pushed authorities to come up with peacebuilding efforts.

The federal government had introduced the judicial approach of mass trials of Boko Haram figures captured on the battlefield, but systemic failures of the legal system derailed the processes. With a conviction rate of less than 10 per cent after conducting mass trials of thousands of fighters between 2017 and 2020, public distrust in the judicial system grew rapidly. These efforts also faced hurdles due to limited resources and circumstantial evidence, as well as a massive backlog of approximately 10,000 suspected fighters awaiting trial. 

Following deficiencies in the judicial and military mechanisms, the government provided non-judicial options, such as the Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC) and, later, the Borno Model, a scheme designed to handle the mass defections of thousands of insurgents.

HumAngle reviewed at least two research studies that confirm our on-the-ground reporting on the deficiencies and the public misgivings against the counterinsurgency initiative. The independent studies, one led by Idayat Hassan, then of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), and the other by Hassan-Taiwo Adebayo of the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), noted a systemic imbalance that seemed to favour the rehabilitation of perpetrators over the survival and justice of their victims. The disparity in the attention given to terrorist deserters also fueled widespread community resentment and birthed a narrative that terrorists are being pampered at the expense of their targets. The security and transitional justice experts also assert that a flawed public appeal and information management have sparked outrage and a trust deficit on the government’s side.

One concern Taiwo’s research raised is the persistent challenges in providing sufficient economic support to Boko Haram deserters once they leave the camps. Several defectors HumAngle interviewed raised the same concern. Although they vowed to live civilian lives again, they claimed their lives in the forest were more prosperous, and they’re now facing economic hurdles after defecting. The former insurgents, now working as assets to the military, also complained of constant failed promises. When they’re called upon for operations against the terrorists, the military would pledge mouth-watering financial gains only to offer them an amount far less than what they had promised.

“Then they’d say they’ll pay us each ₦1 million or ₦1.5 million for every crucial piece of information and operation. But after a successful mission, they’d go back on their words and pay ₦100,000 or below. Whereas we have families to cater for. Wives, children, and parents,” Suleiman recounts, a claim substantiated by other former combatants we interviewed.

Wayward ways

As many defectors struggle to settle into communities, civilians also struggle to embrace them. The reason is not far-fetched: the villagers have grown resentful of former Boko Haram members who have raided their settlements, stripping them of their homes and stable lives, only to come and live next door. The moment they leave the rehabilitation camps, they escape the military’s watchful eyes. Many times, this escape means defectors choose what they do with their lives, including displaying violent tendencies against civilians. The villagers call them “repentants”, but insist their ways are wayward.

Locals, including displaced people, say so-called repentant terrorists re-terrorise them, making them relive the terror they had inflicted on them. During separate interviews, civilian villagers accused security agents of shielding defectors when they commit offences against the people. They say this has triggered a climate of silence within the Maiduguri metropolis, where everyone is scared of speaking ill of a former Boko Haram fighter, even when they’re guilty of wrongdoing. When HumAngle visited the Bama displacement camp in 2025, for instance, we saw dozens of defectors moving around aimlessly with guns and other weapons. Camp officials claimed the armed defectors were protecting displaced persons, but when we requested to speak with them, they denied us access. Displaced persons also refrained from discussing their situation, fearing persecution.

In Shuwari, a peri-urban area just outside Maiduguri town in Borno, a few locals agreed to talk to HumAngle on the condition that their identities would be concealed. Villagers say these defectors incite violence, rob civilians, and harass women. When they complain or try to fight back, they brag about having ruled the forest for years and having the power to do whatever they want within the civilian communities. Displaced people also live side by side at the Shuwari IDP camp with men they believe are responsible for their displacement. Living with them at the camp comes with fear and mistrust, IDPs say.

When Salihu Garba briefly returned to Bama, following the Borno state resettlement programme, threats from former Boko Haram fighters forced him back to the Shuwari IDP camp, he says. While some defectors seem to be living without fighting their neighbours, others, especially those working as assets for the military, move around brandishing rifles, spurring terror, and instilling fear among locals. Simple communal disputes often degenerate into violence. Salihu tells HumAngle that, two months ago, a quarrel spiralled into stabbing a villager. A former insurgent had stepped on bricks laid by a villager to build part of his compound, and that escalated into an exchange of blows and domestic weapons. Both the civilian and the defector were arrested, but the latter returned the next day to stab the former, who was later rushed to the hospital to fight for his life.

Rural criminality also adds to the tension that comes with forcibly reintegrating terrorists into civilian communities, locals say. One repentant terrorist was recently arrested for theft after breaking into shops and stealing six bags of beans. Before being sent to the police cell and later prison, he threatened the shop owner: “I will return and kill you after serving my term.”

For Isah Kamsulum, another resident of Shuwari, the fear is deeply personal. In 2015, he witnessed a man named Ba’ana slaughter fifteen people in Bama. Years later, Ba’ana resurfaced as a repentant, working with soldiers in the community. Isah’s nephew confronted him, enraged that someone who had killed his sibling now lived comfortably among them. Ba’ana killed the nephew. He was arrested, held briefly, then released. Today, he fights alongside the military in Gamboru. Residents say they were never consulted before repentants were resettled among them. “We just saw them,” he complains. “The government brought them out of the forest and kept us here, too. We are all under their control.”

Ibrahim Adam of the Zajeri community in the state says he had an even more concerning experience. Over a year ago, about ten former insurgents got an apartment for themselves within the community. They were at first unarmed, but some of their friends, who worked as auxiliary fighters with the military and were armed, would frequently come visiting them daily. Their presence, especially in large numbers, unsettled the villagers. The former insurgents started asking young women to marry them. One divorcee selling food by the roadside was told she must marry one of them. Scared to the bone, the woman abandoned her trade and fled the area.

Villagers say they have grown alarmed living with the repentants, with Ibrahim recounting that they have witnessed about 30 of them crammed in an apartment, talking recklessly and loudly about their past and bragging about their atrocities before surrendering to the army. The community demanded their eviction, but the landlord refused because he’s afraid. While older repentants in the community maintain some decorum, the younger ones, accompanied by armed companions, remain a source of fear.

For Goni, Ali, and several terrorist deserters HumAngle interviewed, relapsing into terror is not an option. They also said they’re not among the young repentants instilling fears into the civilian community. They say they’ve chosen the path of peace and would never return to a life of violence.

Five goals, four water breaks, three red cards and a glittering opening ceremony.

The World Cup 2026 opening day delivered everything you could ask for.

From an early thunder strike to a late winning goal, Thursday was filled with drama, stretching from Mexico City to Zapopan.

Al Jazeera breaks down the key takeaways from the 2026 FIFA World Cup’s day 1:

Is this going to be the World Cup with the most red cards?

The three red cards brandished to Yaya Sithole, Themba Zwame and Cesar Montes during Mexico’s 2-0 win over South Africa were an unusual sight at a World Cup.

In the last two editions, Qatar 2022 and Russia 2018, only four red cards were handed out during the entire tournament. This year’s World Cup opening game nearly matched that singlehandedly.

With officiating at the start of the tournament usually setting the tone for the rest of the campaign, the sequence of sending offs at Estadio Azteca could be repeated several times during the 39-day, 104-match spectacle in North America.

Thursday’s three reds fell just one short of the record of four at a World Cup 2006 game, nicknamed the “Battle of Nuremberg”, between Portugal and the Netherlands.

The record for the most red cards – 28 – was also set at the same tournament in Germany.

Controversial VAR at the centre of debate again

The look of confusion and disbelief among South African players after Zwane was sent off for flinging an arm into Mexico’s Roberto Alvarado’s face prompted the debate: Is Video Assistant Referee (VAR) playing spoilsport again?

Referee Wilton Sampaio did not initially pull out the red card, but after being sent to the pitchside monitor by VAR, Sampaio decided to send Zwane off.

While the replays were unclear, it seemed Zwane was trying to move past Alvarado, but his hand caught the Mexican’s face in the process.

Zwane was ultimately booked for “violent conduct”, a controversial decision, which seemed harsh given it was not an obvious call. South Africa coach Hugo Broos was not convinced by it, either.

“The second red card, I think the Mexican player blocked my player,” Broos said in the post-match media conference.

“It’s the position of the referee, and we have to accept it also, but I don’t think [it was a red], it was too soft to give that as a red card.”

Hydration breaks or momentum killers?

The introduction of fixed hydration breaks – one in each half – came into effect for the first time at the World Cup on Thursday, and attracted early criticism from viewers and coaches alike.

While some broadcasters stuck with the live feed featuring players, others cut to commercials, disrupting the match-viewing experience for fans watching on TV.

Viewers in the United States were frustrated after broadcaster Fox cut away to full-screen commercials and they missed some live action during the second half of the Mexico vs South Africa opening match.

US head coach Mauricio Pochettino had a mixed opinion over the three-minute breaks, which are held regardless of weather conditions and introduced by FIFA to prioritise player welfare.

“I don’t like it. I only like it when the conditions are very extreme, but when the conditions are good, it is not necessary to have water breaks,” he said during a news conference on Thursday.

“For me, it’s 50-50. For coaches and staff, it’s a chance to make some changes or fix problems. But it’s part of the game, and we accept that.

“I don’t agree with it, but it’s not a big issue and won’t have a big effect on the games,” he said, adding that he did not watch the opening game.

Son Heung-min misfires, but South Korea prevail

Son Heung-min has often been the hero of the South Korea national team on the biggest stage, but on Thursday, even though the talisman got the lion’s share of the chances, he failed to score in their 2-1 win over Czechia.

Son worked seamlessly with the impressive Lee Kang-in and Lee Jae-sung to create a host of first-half chances, with the trio combining darting runs through the middle with a succession of dangerous pass-and-go moves that they just could not finish.

But Oh Hyeon-gyu and Hwang In-beom stepped up to the occasion, bagging a goal each to steer the Koreans to a dramatic late comeback win over Czechia.

South Korea vs Czechia: A clash of styles

Even though both teams opted for a 3-4-3 formation, there was a stark difference in their systems and approach.

South Korea played a fluid, possession-based style of football, while Czechia were heavily reliant on dead balls, opting for a rugged, route-one tactic.

Although the Czechs broke forward first with direct, physical play, the Koreans – buoyed by a largely Mexican crowd rooting for them – bounced back with their dominance of possession and stylish play, getting the better of their set-piece specialist opponents.

The U.S. Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, in Nevada, recently completed its final weapons instructor course for the A-10 Warthog. Despite an extension in service for three A-10 squadrons to 2030, and recent combat operations in the Middle East, the Weapons School has shuttered its elite training course in line with USAF divestment plans for the type, which were previously set for the end of 2026.

TWZ’s Jamie Hunter recently visited the 66th Weapons Squadron (WPS) and got a detailed cockpit and walk-around tour of an A-10C with “Trippin,” an experienced instructor pilot attached to the unit.

A full episode that goes in-depth with the A-10 Weapons School will kick-off TWZ’s first season of Special Access on YouTube soon, so stay tuned!

A-10 Cockpit And Walk-Around Tour With A Warthog Weapons Instructor

EXPLAINER

Trump cancels planned Iran attacks, saying talks are close as Tehran reviews a proposed US deal.

United States President Donald Trump said he had cancelled a third straight night of planned attacks on Iran, saying talks with Tehran were close to producing a deal.

The announcement marked a dramatic turnaround. Just hours earlier, Trump warned that Iran would be hit “very hard” and threatened to target Kharg Island and other oil facilities.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s correspondent said a senior Iranian official confirmed that a proposed memorandum of understanding with the US was being considered by Iran’s top leadership.

Here is what has happened:

In Iran

• Trump calls off planned Iran attacks: Hours after warning that Iran would be hit “very hard” and threatening attacks on Kharg Island and other oil facilities, Trump said he had cancelled the planned strikes, claiming negotiations had reached a breakthrough. In a Truth Social post, Trump said discussions had been elevated to Iran’s top leadership and that the “final points” of an agreement had been approved by all parties involved, including the US and several regional allies.
• Tehran says the sacrifices of war were worth it: Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall said many Iranians would be relieved to see the conflict end after months of hardship and loss. But the government is also trying to sell a potential deal as a victory, telling people that “it is worth the suffering” because Iran could come out of the war “in much stronger shape”, with the possibility of sanctions being lifted and assets being unfrozen.

In the US

• Expert says Trump used an ‘escalate to de-escalate’ strategy: Richard Weitz, an international security expert at the NATO Defense College, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s threats to intensify the conflict may have been aimed at forcing a diplomatic breakthrough. The strategy, he said, is to “threaten to escalate” a conflict “in order to force an end to it”. However, Weitz cautioned that “we still have a bit of uncertainty over what precisely was agreed and how it will be implemented.”
• Trump has tried to hold Netanyahu back in recent weeks: Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have long had “a shared desire to limit Iran’s nuclear programme” and ensure Tehran never obtains a nuclear weapon. But she said there was a “growing concern” within the White House that Netanyahu could “derail efforts in the diplomatic realm”, with Trump increasingly trying to restrain the Israeli leader and, in the US president’s words, “allow time for diplomacy”.

In Lebanon

• Hezbollah says it carried out 24 attacks on Israeli forces: The Lebanese armed group said it launched a series of drone, missile and rocket attacks on Israeli soldiers, armoured vehicles and military positions across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley between Wednesday and Thursday. Hezbollah said it repeatedly struck troop concentrations near Tayr Harfa, while also attacking Israeli forces in Naqoura, al-Qaouzah, Rashaf, Qantara, Zawtar al-Sharqiyah and Yohmor al-Shaqif.

In a significant development, Airbus has announced that its H145 twin-engine light helicopter is being developed in an uncrewed version, the U145. The move continues and expands the manufacturer’s work in the uncrewed helicopter space and reflects similar developments around the globe — most notably, an uncrewed version of the UH-72 Lakota, which is the U.S. Army’s variant of the H145.

The U145 was officially revealed today, ahead of the ILA Berlin airshow, starting this week, during which a full-scale mock-up will be displayed. Airbus says it is planning a first flight of the U145 — with a safety pilot onboard — before the end of this year, and is aiming for entry into service at the beginning of the next decade. 

“With the U145, we are offering our customers an autonomous, uncrewed version of our H145 helicopter — combining the proven airframe, power and useful load of the H145 with the autonomy of a UAS,” said Matthieu Louvot, CEO of Airbus Helicopters, in a company media release. “To develop the U145 and its capabilities as a multi-mission UAS, we will be teaming up with leading autonomous mission partners to further expand the UAS ecosystem in Europe,” he added. 

The U145 will have a maximum takeoff weight of around 8,400 pounds, and is described as a “mission-agnostic solution for civil and military applications, primarily high-volume cargo supply.” Airbus has announced the payload will be up to 2,600 pounds. In comparison, the uncrewed version of the Lakota, the MQ-72C Lakota Connector, will carry a maximum payload of around 4,000 pounds, although this includes slung loads. With that in mind, the U145 and MQ-72C will likely end up offering very similar payload capacities.

The MQ-72C is expected to be able to cruise at speeds of 135 knots out to ranges of at least 350 nautical miles, according to the Airbus website.

Already at this stage, the company is pitching the U145 for specific military roles, including armed scouting and surveillance. Airbus is also planning to adapt the U145 as a “drone mothership” that will carry “launched effects,” on which the company is partnering with European missile house MBDA. A similar concept is currently being pitched by Sikorsky, with its uncrewed version of the Black Hawk helicopter, dubbed the U-Hawk, which is also intended to be able to fire dozens of launched effects such as surveillance and reconnaissance drones and loitering munitions.

Airbus also envisages the U145 operating in conjunction with conventional helicopters as part of crewed-uncrewed teaming. 

The U145 will offer full autonomy, Airbus says, being equipped with a specialized sensor suite and artificial intelligence. For an uncrewed logistics aircraft, the ability to autonomously navigate along a predetermined route using programmed waypoints would provide a practical foundation for autonomous operations. However, more advanced capabilities — such as dynamically adjusting flight paths and responding in real time to emerging threats or unexpected obstacles — would also be very valuable, especially when conducting resupply missions in contested or high-risk environments.

The U145 will have no physical cockpit, so it cannot be flown with human pilots onboard. Other significant changes include adaptations for cargo missions, including a clamshell nose door, a loading platform, and a dedicated cargo floor. The existing rear clamshell doors are retained, as are the cabin side doors. The same configuration has been adopted for the MQ-72C, and a pass-through cargo hold is a big advantage that other crewed helicopters in this class cannot match.

Other features of the new uncrewed helicopter will be carried directly over from the H145, more than 1,800 of which are currently in service.

These features include a powerplant of two Safran Arriel 2E engines equipped with a full-authority digital engine control (FADEC) and a fenestron tail rotor.

The U145 is the next step in the manufacturer’s development of uncrewed helicopters. As such, it follows on from the smaller VSR700, a rotary-wing uncrewed air system which was derived from the crewed Cabri G2 light helicopter.

It is unclear what elements might be ported across from the MQ-72C, also called the Unmanned Logistics Connector (ULC), which is being developed separately by Airbus U.S. Space and Defense, together with its partners Shield AI, L3 Harris, and Parry Lab. Based on the U.S.-made UH-72B Lakota, the MQ-72C is similarly autonomous and is primarily aimed at the U.S. Marine Corps. You can read more about the MQ-72C in our previous coverage of the aircraft, here and here.

Airbus’s UH-72 Unmanned Logistics Connector Sets Its Sights On The USMC’s Future Fleet Requirements

In the context of the MQ-72C, we have previously looked at how this platform fits with the U.S. Marine Corps’ vision for future fleets of cargo-carrying drones. The Marines see uncrewed logistics ‘connectors’ in the air and down below as essential for supporting future expeditionary and distributed operations, especially in the context of a possible future high-end fight with China in the Pacific.

Other U.S. efforts in this space include optionally crewed and uncrewed versions of the larger H-60 Black Hawk series. The U-Hawk demonstrator, a fully uncrewed version of the Black Hawk helicopter, is intended to carry cargo and deliver launched effects and similarly features clamshell doors in the nose. At the heavier end of the scale, Boeing has said its future plans for the H-47 Chinook include creating a path toward an uncrewed version of the aircraft.

Introducing the S-70UAS™ U-Hawk™

However, these kinds of capabilities are increasingly being eyed by other services around the world, too.

With this in mind, Airbus is hoping to leverage the existing customer base for the H145, which has footprints on six continents. The H145 is already in service, or on order, with a growing number of international military operators for utility and light-attack missions. The uncrewed version maintains significant commonality, which will bring down support and maintenance costs.

At the same time, the U145 has obvious commercial applications. Airbus highlights its suitability for roles like disaster management and firefighting, although it would also be ideal for cargo conveyance, especially remote resupply work and logistics support to offshore platforms and remote areas on land, for example.

An Airbus spokesperson told Breaking Defense that the U145 has not been developed for any specific national or European acquisition.

Undoubtedly, there is growing recognition in Europe, in particular, that changes in the geopolitical landscape mean that the continent cannot necessarily rely on the United States to meet its defense needs. Developing the U145 in addition to the MQ-72C aligns with Europe’s ambition to strengthen its sovereign capabilities.

With the U145, Airbus is betting that autonomous rotorcraft will become an increasingly important part of military operations. By leveraging a proven helicopter platform, it should accelerate the transition to uncrewed operations, but the drone helicopter will be entering an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Seoul court sentences former leader for sending military drones into North Korea.

South Korea’s ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending military drones into North Korea, a move prosecutors argued was aimed at creating a pretext for his disastrous martial law declaration in 2024.

The drone flights, which Pyongyang said included the dropping of propaganda leaflets, triggered a spike in military tensions between the nations in October 2024.

Special prosecutors, who had sought a 30-year prison term for Yoon, said in April that the ex-leader’s effort to “fabricate wartime conditions” with the drones had undermined state security.

Yoon was “given 30 years in jail” for the charges involving the drones, a spokesperson for the Seoul Central District Court told the AFP news agency on Friday, without giving further details.

Yoon had denied wrongdoing.

The ruling adds to a series of judgements against the ousted conservative leader, once South Korea’s top prosecutor, whose martial law order plunged Asia’s fourth-largest economy into its deepest political turmoil in decades.

In February, a South Korean court sentenced Yoon to life in prison after finding him guilty of leading an insurrection linked to the martial law attempt.

He was removed from office last year after the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment, triggering a snap election that was won by liberal President Lee Jae Myung.

Yoon’s lawyers said he neither ordered nor later approved the drone operation, which they said was unrelated to martial law and instead a response to months of North Korean launches across the border of balloons stuffed with rubbish.

Yoon, who is already in custody, can appeal Friday’s lower court ruling.

Drone flights remain a flashpoint in tensions between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.

Lee expressed regret earlier this year after an investigation found government officials had sent drones into the nuclear-armed North Korea in January.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister called Lee’s statement “wise behaviour”, but hopes for a rapprochement faded after the diplomatically isolated nation returned to calling South Korea its “most hostile” enemy.

Wall Street and Asian markets rally on hopes for an end to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Stock markets have surged following US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he called off planned strikes against Iran and a peace deal with Tehran is imminent.

Wall Street’s benchmark S&P500 index finished nearly 1.8 percent higher on Thursday, ending a three-day streak of losses for the biggest single-day gain since April.

The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.5 percent, while the older, blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 1.9 percent.

The rally continued in the Asia Pacific on Friday, with markets in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia racking up gains.

South Korea’s Kospi, the best-performing major index this year, surged more than 8 percent in morning trading, while Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose as much as 4 percent.

Taiwan’s TAIEX gained about 2.4 percent, and Australia’s ASX 200 rose about 1.8 percent.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index was up more than 1 percent.

Brent crude, the primary international benchmark for oil prices, fell about 1 percent to below $89.50 a barrel on hopes for a return to normality in the Strait of Hormuz, which in peacetime carries about one-fifth of global energy supplies.

The market rebound came after Trump on Thursday suggested that a deal to end the war on Iran could be signed as soon as this weekend.

“We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran… subject to finalisation of documents,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.

Iran has not publicly confirmed Trump’s claims, but a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman told reporters a memorandum of understanding with the US is “under consideration”.

“For the rally to be sustained, investors will want to not only see the actual deal being signed, but a complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Khoon Goh, head of Asia research for ANZ Bank, told Al Jazeera.

“Only then will we see the gains extend.”

Fabien Yip, a market analyst at the online broker IG Group in Sydney, Australia, said the rally reflected a “meaningful easing of geopolitical risk”, as well as anticipation over Friday’s market debut of SpaceX, set to be the largest of its kind in history.

“The broader read on today’s Asian follow-through is that dip-buying interest remains genuine,” Yip told Al Jazeera.

“That matters for how you characterise what’s happened over the past week.

“This looks less like a structural break in the bull market and more like a healthy reset after a rapid, near-straight-line advance, the kind of consolidation that can potentially extend a rally’s longevity.”

With President Donald Trump proclaiming his desire to take Iran’s Kharg Island — whether he actually means it or not – we reached out to some former military commanders to get a sense of what it would take to seize and hold it and how telegraphing such a move could impact operations. The island, as we have noted in the past, is Iran’s main center of oil exportation, and a U.S. seizure would have tremendous military and economic impacts. An attempt to take it by force and hold it, as we have highlighted in prior reporting, would be an extremely risky operation, by all accounts.

Trump’s latest statements about taking Kharg Island came in the wake of the most intense round of tit-for-tat attacks between the U.S. and Iran since the ceasefire went into effect April 8. The U.S. launched waves of strikes across Iran, including firing what Trump said was 49 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles at Iranian targets. In response, Iran launched missiles and drones at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.

Meanwhile, Iran claimed it shut the Strait of Hormuz completely after the new round of kinetic action while U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) insisted it remains “open for transit.”

However, in the wake of yesterday’s back-and-forth strikes, Trump proclaimed his desire to seize Iran’s vital oil infrastructure, including Kharg Island.

“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America,” Trump said on Truth Social.

A short while later, the president modified those remarks in an interview with Fox News.

“I don’t know that America has the stomach for it, to be honest with you,” Trump later told the network. “You’d make a fortune, but I don’t know that America has the stomach, I think they’d like to see us come home.”

Located about 20 miles from the Iranian coastline, Kharg Island presents a daunting challenge, leaving troops trying to take it under threat from Iran’s remaining arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles, drones, rocket artillery, and fast boats that can launch swarming attacks on ships, fire missiles, and lay mines. This is something we were among the first to point out, before the possibility of invading the island became a nation news story.

“It seems unusual that we would announce an intention to seize Kharg Island in advance,” retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel, former leader of U.S. Central Command, told us. “Military commanders always want to preserve the principle of surprise in any operation – it helps reduce risk and often times gives us the tactical edge.”

“In this case the president did not announce any specific details – which can preserve some operational flexibility,” Votel noted. “It may also be a part of a more elaborate communications strategy that is focused on getting the regime to understand they are running out of options and that we can and will do whatever we need to, militarily, to support diplomatic efforts and bring the conflict to a conclusion.”

“Seizing Kharg Island is a significant undertaking,” added Votel, now a Distinguished Military Fellow at the Middle East Institute. “Not only will it involve ground troops to actually control the terrain – but also tactical delivery means, air cover, a strike campaign to set the conditions and then all the resources to protect this force while they are on the Island. In addition – the force has to be sustained meaning we have to have a way to get them supplies, engineering capabilities, life support, evacuate casualties, and if necessary reinforce them with additional force.”

All these actions would be taken close enough to the Iranian coast to “potentially subject [assault forces] to missile and drone attacks,” the former CENTCOM commander noted. “Not impossible, but certainly not insignificant either.”

When we first spoke to Votel about this issue in March when stories first bubbled up about Trump threatening Kharg Island, he told us that “a battalion sized force of Marines or soldiers could probably do that. So you’re probably looking at 800 to 1,000 troops, kind of size, maybe a little bit smaller, probably not much larger than that.”

Plans for the US military to try and capture the island “have been drawn up for months but continuously shelved because the operation was considered too risky,” a senior Pentagon official and two administration officials told CNN.

Speaking to us on Thursday, Chris Miller, who served as acting Defense Secretary at the end of Trump’s first administration, said it would take considerably more troops for such an operation than Votel first suggested.

“I would expect it would take an infantry brigade at a minimum,” said Miller, referring to a unit of between 3,000 to 5,000 troops. “I’d prefer two brigades and a lot of mobile air defense to protect from Shaheds and plenty of barrier material to make bunkers when artillery starts dropping in. Plus, obviously, significant air power to hit time-sensitive Iranian targets like artillery and missile batteries.”

“It’s completely doable by our combat forces in the region, ” added Miller, now founder and CEO of FPF Defense, a startup building a low-cost Shahed drone interceptor. “This is exactly the type of operation they are designed and optimized for. It’s not that heavy of a lift for them.”

Holding the island, if taken, won’t be easy, however, Miller posited. 

“The logistics would be challenging for us because it will be difficult to get resupply ships in under the Iranian defensive shield,” he explained. “And aerial resupply will be contested as well.”

Miller said he was not concerned that Trump told the world he wants Kharg Island.

“My assessment is the Iranian regime continues to misunderstand President Trump,” Miller said of his former boss. “I suspect the Iranians have already prepared for such an eventuality.”

Former Army Maj. Gen. Pat Donahoe, who retired in 2022 as commanding general of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning in Columbus, said asking how Kharg Island can be taken “is the wrong question.”

“It’s not taking it, it’s holding it over time and enduring the slow bleed of casualties that comes with holding it,” noted Donahoe, now chief operating officer at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.

“It’s Khe Sanh,” explained Donahoe, a reference to one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War, where about 6,000 Marines and their South Vietnamese counterparts held out at a base along the Laotian border against 20,000 North Vietnamese troops for nearly 80 days. 

“Sure we can grab it, but it puts us in range of all their stuff,” Donahoe said. “And we have to resupply it etc. It’s dumb.”

The U.S. struck military targets on the island during Epic Fury, but Trump has stated he ordered all the oil infrastructure to be left untouched. Since the ceasefire, Iran has been preparing for a possible U.S. operation to take control of Kharg Island, CNN noted today.

Boeing’s 757 Flying Test Bed was recently spotted carrying a stealthy underwing infrared sensor pod under its fuselage. This may be the first time this aircraft, better known as ‘The Catfish’ because of its unique and highly modified nose profile, has ever been seen lugging around a store on this station. The pod itself is part of a larger “Raptor 2.0″ upgrade package being developed for the F-22. Catfish has served as a key systems integration testbed for the Raptor since the 1990s.

Jerod Harris caught Catfish with the pod under its belly as it came in to land at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Monday. Edwards is the main hub for U.S. Air Force test and evaluation activities, and Catfish has been seen there many times over the years as part of its work. The aircraft, which carries the U.S. civil registration code N757A, also happens to be the first 757 ever built, and took to the skies for the first time back in 1982.

As already noted, Catfish has already played a central role in the story of F-22. The aircraft’s heavily modified nose is designed to directly replicate that of the Raptor, and contains the same AN/APG-77 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar as the fighter. The swept wings on top of the cockpit were also designed to support testing of the conformal antennas for the Raptor’s AN/ALR-94 electronic support measures system and other components of its ‘fused’ sensor suite. The aircraft has supported the development of a wide array of other systems for the F-22, and is packed inside with additional equipment to support those needs in particular, including a replica of the Raptor’s cockpit. You can read more about Catfish and its general history here.

So it is not surprising then that the heavily modified 757 would also be used now to help with continued testing of the new underwing infrared sensor pods for the Raptor. Carrying the pod under the forward end of the fuselage would offer the sensors inside a good open field of view to the front, as well as to the left, right, and down.

The stealthy pods have been test-flown on actual F-22s for years now. At the same time, there are only a limited number of Raptors available, in total, and they are notoriously fuel-hungry, maintenance-intensive, and otherwise expensive to operate. If the particular test plan calls just for level flight, and over extended periods of time, a platform like Catfish could be an attractive alternative. With space for dozens of engineers and technicians in its main cabin, and workstations for them, the aircraft would also offer very different options for testing and evaluating the pod while in-flight. A North American Sabreliner business jet has also been used to test these pods in the past.

The capability, in general, for Catfish to carry stores under its fuselage might open up additional possibilities for utilizing the aircraft in support of other testing efforts, if it hasn’t already.

Catfish would also be well suited to supporting testing of other elements of the Raptor 2.0 package. Under the current plan, the Air Force’s F-22s are also set to get a new integrated distributed infrared search and track (IRST) system called the Infrared Defensive System (IRDS).

IRST systems have seen a renaissance across the U.S. military in recent years, as well as elsewhere globally. IRSTs detect and track targets via their infrared emissions, making them particularly valuable for helping spot stealthy targets with features designed to reduce their radar cross-sections. The sensors are also immune to radio frequency electronic warfare jamming and operate passively, meaning they do not emit signals that could alert a target to the fact they are being tracked. IRSTs can also be used to cue or otherwise be linked to other sensors, including AESA radars. This data fusion can provide higher fidelity tracks of multiple targets, as well as improved situational awareness overall.

Increased demand for IRSTs has led to a commensurate increase in demand for testing using multiple platforms. This, in turn, has been a major component of a general uptick in U.S. military flight testing in recent years to support a variety of new, advanced programs.

Other elements of the Raptor 2.0 upgrade plan include new stealthy drop tanks, improvements to the jet’s stealthy features, radar capabilities, electronic warfare suite, and more, as you can read about in detail here.

At least a portion of the Raptor fleet is also set to receive modifications to enable them to act as airborne controllers for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones. The Air Force’s F-22s are set to be the service’s first tactical jets to be used in that role, though others will follow.

The F-22 upgrade work is reflective of current Air Force plans to keep the Raptors in service for decades to come. In 2024, the Air Force said it no longer had a firm retirement schedule for the fighters.

Raptors have been used in recent years as surrogates to support work on the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative, a component of which is Boeing’s F-47 sixth-generation fighter. As such, Catfish will have already been feeding into those developments, which are now firmly a top Air Force priority.

At the same time, Catfish is now 44 years old. Boeing 757s, in general, are increasingly disappearing from service globally as they become more complicated and cost-intensive to sustain. Especially with the work ongoing now on the F-47, it seems likely Boeing will start looking toward a new highly specialized testbed aircraft modified to reflect the particular physical geometry, unique avionics, and other features of the new fighter.

Similarly, the F-35 family also has a dedicated test jet, the Boeing 737-300-based Cooperative Avionics Testbed, nicknamed the CATbird. There are several other airliner and business jet-based testbeds flying globally today, though Catfish is certainly one of the largest and most visually distinctive. Improving digital simulation and modeling tools could allow for less reliance on surrogate testbed aircraft in the future, but they will in no way be eliminated.

China notably has something of a clone of Catfish based on a Russian-made Tupolev Tu-204C airliner, which itself was designed as an analog to the 757. The Chinese jet’s primary purpose has been supporting the development of the J-20 stealth fighter, the country’s closest answer to the F-22.

In the meantime, Boeing Catfish remains a very important part of continued work to improve and expand the capabilities of the F-22. This now extends to testing of specialized underwing pods for the Raptor.

Special thanks again to Jerod Harris for sharing his pictures of Catfish carrying the stealthy sensor pod with us.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Caracas, June 11, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Trump administration continues to dictate conditions on Venezuela’s energy industry for the benefit of US and Western corporations.

At an event organized by Politico, National Energy Dominance Council Director Jarrod Agen stated that he is in contact with Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and her team “multiple times a day” to discuss the legal framework for foreign conglomerates.

“I raised issues [on oil contracts] when I went down [to Venezuela] and she said ‘we’ll work with you to get through it,’”the Trump official added. 

Agen stated that the administration is currently working to turn “memoranda of understanding (MoU) into binding contracts” and insisted that Venezuela has “made a lot of progress” in overhauling the country’s hydrocarbon and mining laws. 

The legislation approved by the National Assembly slashes royalties and fiscal responsibilities for private companies, while also granting them expanded control over operations and sales. After the laws were approved, authorities were tasked with drafting regulations for their implementation and new contract templates.

Agen went on to announce that a Trump administration delegation will travel to Caracas in the coming days to further discuss conditions for multinational firms in petroleum and gas projects.

Venezuelan oil authorities have reportedly begun circulating drafts of regulations and contract models with industry partners, though the texts have not been made public. The final versions are required to be published in the country’s National Gazette. 

According to Bloomberg, Caracas has revised the proposals under pressure from investors, including the removal of a clause that would have allowed the Venezuelan government to terminate contracts, with compensation, for reasons of “public interest.” Venezuelan leaders have openly acknowledged incorporating private sector input into the recent oil and mining reforms.

Since launching military strikes and kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, the Trump administration has seized control of the South American country’s energy and mineral exports.

While keeping wide-reaching sanctions in place, the US Treasury Department has issued multiple sanctions waivers allowing select Western corporations to undertake oil and gas operations in Venezuela while barring participation from Chinese, Russian, and Iranian competitors. The general licenses mandate that all Venezuela-owed payments, including royalties and taxes, be deposited in a Treasury-run account.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration updated multiple licenses concerning energy, petrochemical, and mining activities, stipulating that contract disputes can now also be settled in the United Kingdom, France, and Singapore, rather than just the US. However, the licenses still demand that contract terms be “construed and interpreted” in accordance with US laws and jurisdiction.

The revised waivers likewise establish that contracts may recognize that “certain aspects” of the activity are subject to Venezuelan laws and regulations.

For its part, the acting Rodríguez administration has aggressively courted foreign investment in the oil and gas sectors.

On Wednesday, Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA signed a memorandum of understanding with SLB, formerly Schlumberger, one of the world’s largest oil services providers with a presence in the Caribbean nation since the 1920s. The Houston-based multinational stated that the agreement intends to “strengthen operational execution and promote sustainable development” of the Venezuelan energy sector.

During a televised ceremony, Rodríguez said she was “very pleased” with the deal and expressed confidence that SLB’s cutting-edge technology would have a “major impact on oil exploration and production.”

The acting leader has inked agreements with multiple Western energy giants in recent weeks, including Chevron, Shell, BP, and Repsol. Rodríguez has announced that more companies are set to arrive in the coming weeks. Business executives have made repeated trips to Venezuela to evaluate opportunities and meet with government officials.

Rodríguez recently visited India and touted oil project opportunities in meetings with Reliance Industries and Indian public sector energy firms.

Other government officials, including Economy Vice President Calixto Ortega and Oil Minister Paula Henao, have also held closed-door meetings with investors to promote recent reforms and incentives for foreign firms. At a Houston conference in May, Henao trumpeted the new oil law’s international arbitration clauses for offering more “legal certainty” to investors.

Venezuela’s oil output has continued its recent upward trend, with OPEC’s secondary sources registering a production of 1.072 million barrels per day (bpd) in May, up from 1.036 million in April.

For its part, PDVSA registered a 1.179 million bpd output last month, up from 1.136 million in April. Direct and secondary measurements have historically differed over disagreements on the inclusion of condensates and natural gas liquids.

According to Reuters, Venezuelan oil and byproduct exports rose for a third consecutive month, registering 1.25 million bpd, thanks to increased volumes shipped to the US and India.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Caracas.

Norwegian missile-maker Kongsberg has finalized its acquisition of a majority stake in Zone 5 Technologies, bringing under its umbrella the U.S. start-up’s Rusty Dagger low-cost cruise missile, among others. With both those weapons already moving into large-scale production, the two companies are making the case for combining Kongsberg’s stealthy Joint Strike Missile (JSM) cruise missiles in operational scenarios. Zone 5 has also now confirmed that the Rusty Dagger, which is already being supplied to Ukraine, is now cleared for use on four different types of fighter aircraft, including the F-16.

At the ILA Berlin airshow yesterday, where TWZ was in attendance, officials from the two companies announced that Kongsberg has now formally acquired a 90 percent stake in Zone 5. California-based Zone 5 will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary under the Norwegian contractor. As well as discussing the industrial acquisition, the officials provided details of how the Rusty Dagger fits into the new-look portfolio, and updates on how that program is progressing.

Zone 5 Technologies – Rusty Dagger

Founded in 2011, Zone 5 is one of an emerging class of defense companies gaining prominence for developing low-cost, rapidly deployable capabilities. In many ways, they represent the inverse of traditional defense contractors, favoring speed, scalability, and cost efficiency over highly customized, high-priced systems.

Kongsberg first announced the acquisition in December, with executives noting that buying a stake in Zone 5 offered the fastest path to offering lower-cost missiles that still deliver meaningful combat capability, especially in terms of bringing these to the European market.

“What we’re doing here is that we’re combining Kongsberg’s niche, exquisite technologies with a company very capable of designing for cost efficiency and mass production,” explained Thomas Akers, founder and CEO of Kongsberg.

As to why Kongsberg didn’t choose to develop its own equivalent to the Rusty Dagger, Harald Aarø, Kongsberg’s executive vice president for business development and strategy, provided the following answer:

“Technically, could we be capable of doing it? Yes, but we are not as capable, as we will probably spend a longer time, and perhaps not strike as smart solutions,” Aarø said. “That doesn’t mean that our engineers aren’t just as smart. Our engineers are just as smart, but on a different sports field, so to speak.”

Aarø also described how the specific combination of the Rusty Dagger and the JSM makes for “a very effective future strike solution.” Namely, the Rusty Dagger provides cost-effective but still highly capable standoff strike, while the more exquisite JSM comes with a heftier price tag but offers a greater chance of making it through to even heavily defended targets, on account of its sophisticated guidance and low-observable characteristics.

As well as being launched from a pylon on a fighter, the Rusty Dagger can be configured for palletized employment from a cargo aircraft, reflecting growing interest in this type of munition employment. It can also be surface-launched both on land and at sea.

According to Tom Kanewske, Zone 5’s chief strategy officer: “What’s interesting about our missile is that the same base, light cruise missile is field retrofittable for all employment modes, and that puts us in a very unique space, in that a country and their [armed] services are able to purchase the same munition and field retrofit for that to be surface launched, whether from land or the deck of a ship, or pylon launched from a fighter aircraft, or palletized.”

Since larger numbers of Rusty Daggers can be launched in any given scenario, they can overwhelm enemy air defenses and improve the chances of success.

According to Kanewske, Rusty Dagger and JSM “offer a weapon pairing that truly no other missiles in the world do.”

While the JSM can be carried internally in the F-35, the same is not currently the case for the Rusty Dagger, although Kanewske said that this is “something that is of keen interest to the [U.S. military] services and several of our international partners.”

When it comes to utilizing the Rusty Dagger and JSM together in a combat scenario, Kanewske noted the possibility of integrating capabilities that would allow the Rusty Dagger to offer “cooperative behaviors” with the JSM. This reflects a growing trend toward leveraging artificial intelligence to help make all munitions more effective and survivable, something that has been demonstrated via Golden Horde and follow-on programs.

Both missiles fly at high-subsonic speeds, the Rusty Dagger being able to strike targets at a range of 250 miles, according to Zone 5, while the JSM has a range of more than 215 miles.

In one highlighted scenario, F-35s could penetrate closer to the target, with their JSMs carried internally to preserve their low-observable features. Meanwhile, much larger numbers of Rusty Daggers could be pylon-launched from fighters, and dropped in palletized form out of the cargo holds of transports, from outside of the range of hostile air defenses.

Kanewske confirmed that, this year, its first year of production, “well above 1,000 units for Rusty Dagger” will be completed, including for the U.S. Air Force, as the AGM-188, under the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles (FAMM) program. The Air Force’s proposed budget for the 2027 Fiscal Year laid out plans to buy nearly 28,000 FAMM munitions over the next five years.

Last month, the Pentagon laid out plans to acquire at least 10,000 lower-cost cruise missiles over the next three years, as part of a broader strategy to dramatically bolster its stockpiles of standoff strike munitions and prepare the industrial base to sustain those inventories going forward. This is seen as especially critical for supporting the demands of future high-end fights, such as one in the Pacific against China, and doing so in a cost-effective manner.

The Rusty Dagger has so far been cleared for use from four different types of fighter aircraft, Kanewske said. One of these is the F-16, which used the weapon in end-to-end live-fire trials at the Eglin Test and Training Range in Florida earlier this year. Another platform may be the A-4, with a contractor-operated example of the attack jet having been used in company trials. Then there is the Ukrainian Air Force, which is using the Rusty Dagger, under the Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) program, although the specific platforms have not been disclosed. Any of the MiG-29 Fulcrum, Su-25 Frogfoot, and Su-27 Flanker are likely candidates — as well as its own F-16s.

A series of unverified photos, first published by Russian sources, showing purported parts of Rusty Dagger missiles retrieved after being used by Ukraine:

It appears that the AGM-188A “Rusty Dagger” cruise missile has undergone field testing in Ukraine.

Russian sources are publishing photos of an unknown 8-element CRPA antenna. On the back side of the unit there is a circuit board with a large heatsink, which carries the CAGE code… pic.twitter.com/phZeOJfHJ0

— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝕯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝕯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔱△ 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇺🇲🇬🇷 (@TheDeadDistrict) June 7, 2026

In the case of the F-16, Kanewske said that only 72 hours were required to integrate the Rusty Dagger on the jet during the trials at Eglin.

“We’re the only affordable mass munition that is currently on contract with an export international customer, and we are actively involved with them at this time,” Kanewske said, clearly referring to Ukraine.

Zone 5 is currently under U.S. Air Force contract for both FAMM and ERAM, and is also under contract with the U.S. Army for its Low-Cost Containerized Missile (LCCM) program, and for the U.S. Navy as part of its Coalition Heterogeneous Affordable Offensive Strike (CHAOS) program, which seeks a low-cost anti-ship cruise missile to provide to partner countries. Both LCCM and CHAOS involve surface-launched missiles.

As well as the ability to rapidly scale up production and a relatively low unit cost, the Rusty Dagger brings with it an open-architecture concept, applying to both software and hardware. This means new, sovereign features and capabilities can be introduced at short notice by customers. In the past, an operator might have to wait up to five years for unique subcomponents to be integrated in a similar weapon, Kanewske contended. With the Rusty Dagger, Zone 5 has demonstrated that this can be achieved in under 12 months.

Then, when it comes to producing the missile at mass, rather than having to “make that factory bigger and bigger,” Kanewske explained that the company offers a franchise model “that allows us to roughly parachute in the design, the equipment, the tooling, the fixtures, the quality control, so that countries can drop in their own subsystem capabilities, and we can achieve manufacturing at pace and at scale.”

Speaking in Berlin yesterday, Kongsberg’s Harald Aarø confirmed that Germany is a particular target for this franchise model, including for the Rusty Dagger. He identified Germany as having “probably the best manufacturing capabilities on this planet,” making it an obvious choice for a European manufacturing footprint.

Reflecting on the changing security situation on the continent since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Aarø said that now is “a natural time to start looking at a production site in Europe,” providing nations there with national sovereign capabilities based on the Kongsberg/Zone 5 joint portfolio.

Kongsberg’s acquisition of a majority stake in Zone 5 evidences a broader shift in Western defense planning toward affordable, mass-produced precision weapons that can be fielded at scale alongside more sophisticated strike systems.

The war in Ukraine has exposed the harsh reality that Europe needs far more standoff weapons than it currently possesses, and it needs them at a price point that allows stockpiles to be measured in the thousands rather than the dozens. Rusty Dagger is very much indicative of a new generation of systems designed around that requirement, prioritizing low-cost mass production over the exquisite but scarce munitions that have traditionally dominated Western arsenals.

As conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to highlight the operational value of low-cost, long-range munitions, demand for capabilities such as the Rusty Dagger is likely to grow. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, Kongsberg and Zone 5 will hope they can leverage their partnership, the Rusty Dagger’s combat use in Ukraine, and the potential to harness its capabilities in combination with the JSM, to build on the missile’s success.

At the same time, Kongsberg’s interest in establishing European production reflects a wider recognition across the continent that long-range strike capacity, industrial resilience, and the ability to sustain missile inventories are becoming increasingly important elements of national and collective defense.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Operators of the C-17 Globemaster III have been reaching out to Boeing about possibly restarting the product line, and the company has been “encouraged” by these engagements. Separately, Congress recently directed the U.S. Air Force to prepare a formal briefing on the feasibility of acquiring new Globemaster IIIs. The Air Force’s C-17 fleet is critical for U.S. power projection globally. At the same time, a succession of crises in recent years has put serious strain on these aircraft, and questions have already been raised about the viability of the current plan to keep them flying through 2075.

The House Committee on Armed Services added the requirement for the C-17 production restart briefing to a report accompanying the latest draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), last week. The Air Force took delivery of its last Globemaster III in 2013, and has some 222 of these airlifters in service today. The air arms of Australia, Canada, India, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom also have smaller fleets of these airlifters. Three more of these aircraft are operated under the Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) initiative, a multi-national arrangement with several European members, as well as the United States. Boeing shuttered the C-17 line entirely in 2015.

Boeing Pieces Together the Last C-17 on the Line

“The committee recognizes that the existing C-17 fleet continues to bear significant operational demands supporting combatant commander requirements, humanitarian assistance missions, and global mobility operations,” the provision in the House Committee on Armed Services’ report notes. “The committee is concerned that future operational demands may place additional strain on the existing C-17 fleet.”

“Therefore, the committee directs the Secretary of the Air Force to provide a briefing to the House Committee on Armed Services not later than March 1, 2027, assessing the feasibility of restarting the production line for the C-17 aircraft,” it adds.

The committee wants the Air Force’s briefing to at least include the following:

• “An assessment of the technical and industrial feasibility of restarting the C-17 production line, including the status of tooling, supplier base viability, workforce availability, and potential reconstitution costs.”
• “An estimate of the timeline required to reestablish production and deliver the first newly produced aircraft.”
• “A cost estimate for restarting the production line and procuring additional aircraft, including options for limited procurement and multi-year procurement.”
• “An evaluation of alternative approaches to increasing strategic airlift capacity, including service life extension programs, modernization of existing aircraft, procurement of commercial derivative cargo aircraft, and expansion of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet.”
• “An assessment of potential international partner interest in participating in or contributing to a restarted production line.”

TWZ subsequently reached out to Boeing to ask about the company’s current position on rebooting C-17 production.

“Our goal is to help our customers be successful, and we work with them to develop innovative solutions to meet their mission needs, including development and production partnerships,” a Boeing spokesperson told us this week. “We are proud of our continued support for the unique, mission-proven capabilities that the C-17 Globemaster III delivers to the U.S. Air Force and eight allied nation partners.”

At the Paris Air Show last year, Turbo Sjogren, Vice President and General Manager of Boeing Global Services-Government Services, had told Shephard Defense that talks with an unnamed country about a possible C-17 production restart were in their “early infancy.”

“It is a very extraordinary effort to do” and is “reflective of the utility of the aircraft,” he also said at the time, according to Shephard.

Boeing has also now said that it is always willing to work to better understand the requirements and needs of its customers. Any talk about the prospect of restarting C-17 production would also have to be viewed in the broader context of the Air Force’s still-evolving requirements for the Next Generation Air Lift (NGAL) program. The service’s current NGAL plans envision a single aircraft replacing the very different C-17 and C-5 Galaxy fleets, as you can read more about here.

TWZ also reached out to the US Air Force about the recently requested briefing.

It is unclear what it might cost to get the C-17 line restarted and what the unit price of these new-production aircraft would be in the end. There are various factors at play, including whether Boeing retains any relevant tooling, the knowledge base of its current workforce, the state of third-party supply chains, and the availability of physical space to build the airplanes. Back in 2019, the company sold off the facilities in Long Beach, California, where it built the original run of Globemaster IIIs.

More than a decade ago, the RAND Corporation did conduct a detailed, independent analysis that explored options for resuming production of the baseline C-17A, a new C-17B, and a significantly revised “fuel efficient” C-17FE derivative.

The C-17B was “a variant Boeing has proposed that adds centerline landing gear, a tire deflation/inflation system, higher-thrust engines, advanced flaps, and an advanced situational awareness and countermeasures system,” according to RAND’s report. The C-17FE derivative “would have a narrower fuselage, up-rated engines, a double-element flap system, winglets, a longer loading ramp, a shorter cargo door, and a modified horizontal tail.”

RAND said that it could cost between $2.1 and $2.7 billion in 2011 dollars to begin making C-17A models again after a pause, depending on how much tooling Boeing retained. Those costs would rise to $4.6 to $6.4 billion for new production of the improved C-17B version, and $6.2 billion to $7 billion to start building the C-17FE derivative. Billions more would be required to actually procure the aircraft, with unit prices being highly dependent on the total size of the production, as outlined in the table below. If nothing else has changed, these cost projections would still be significantly higher today just due to inflation.

As an aside here, RAND published a similar assessment of the options for restarting production of the F-22 Raptor in 2011. That report factored heavily into a study the Air Force subsequently delivered to Congress on that topic back in 2017, which you can read more about here.

Foreign participation in new production of C-17s could help defray costs, and is one of the points the House Armed Services Committee specifically wants the Air Force to address in its briefing. As TWZ noted last year after Turbo Sjogren made comments at the Paris Air Show, Boeing’s discussions at that point might not have been with the U.S. government. Earlier in 2025, then-Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba had expressed interest in buying Globemaster IIIs, raising immediate questions about where those aircraft might come from.

It should be noted here that the U.S. Air Force’s C-17s have received various upgrades over the years, and the service continues to move ahead with other plans to improve their performance and expand their capabilities. This includes the installation of 3D-printed microvanes on the fuselage, which offer a very minor reduction in drag (approximately one percent), but that translates into real reductions in fuel consumption. All Air Force C-17s are expected to have this feature by the end of next year. Communications and data-sharing upgrades have also been a major focus area across all of the Air Force’s airlift and tanker fleets.

Boeing is now under contract for a more extensive upgrade of the flight decks on Air Force C-17s. The company says this will aid in “resolving avionics obsolescence” and integrate new open systems architectures to make it easier to add new and improved capabilities and functionality in the future.

The prospect of a re-engining effort for the Globemaster III fleet has also been raised in the past, but the Air Force downplayed the value of doing so earlier this year.

When it comes to discussions about restarting C-17 production, another key factor is the lack of immediate alternative options. There is really no other aircraft in this class in production now in the United States or anywhere else in the West. Airbus has long positioned its turboprop-powered A400M as sitting in a capability space between Lockheed Martin’s C-130 family and the C-17. Embraer’s KC-390 Millennium design, which is also offered as an aerial refueling tanker, has generally been pitched as a jet-powered competitor to the C-130. China’s Y-20 and Russia’s Il-76 are really the only in-production analogs on any level to the C-17 globally.

The House Armed Services Committee has now also asked the Air Force to speak to the possibility of buying “commercial derivative cargo aircraft” and/or an “expansion of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet,” or CRAF, to help bolster airlift capacity. The CRAF is an arrangement by which the U.S. military can call upon commercial airlines and charter companies to help move cargo and personnel, which you can learn more about here.

A key issue here is that the C-17 is specifically designed for tactical operations right at the tactical edge. This includes the ability to bring combat-ready forces to far-flung locations without the need for an established airfield. Additional commercial alternatives could still be utilized in rear areas to help free up C-17s for more demanding missions and otherwise relieve stress on the Globemaster III fleet.

Questions have been increasingly raised about the survivability of the C-17 itself, especially in the context of a future high-end fight, as the threat ecosystem continues to expand and evolve. The Air Force has made clear that it is working to find new ways to bolster the defensive capabilities of all of its existing airlifters, as well as its tanker fleets, and that this is a key consideration in the evolving NGAL requirements.

TWZ has long been sounding the alarm on the need for more survivable cargo planes and tankers. The Air Force already has decades’ worth of experimental work and studies on concepts for stealthy cargo aircraft and tankers, as well as non-stealthy ones with blended-wing-body (BWB) planforms, under its belt. Over the years, several companies have publicly put forward prospective designs that could be relevant for NGAL, as well.

When any new platform developed under NGAL actually enters service remains to be seen. The stated plan the Air Force has put forward to date would see those new aircraft replacing its C-5s first, with C-17s flying through 2075. By that point, the Globemaster III, as a type, will have been in service for 80 years.

“The C-17 is the most amazing airplane ever made. I have a lot of time in it, so I can say that. We have asked it to do a lot of things, and it’s done more than we ever planned for when we bought that airplane,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Rebecca Sonkiss told TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) annual Warfare Symposium in February. “It has performed flawlessly, but it’s getting old too.”

Sonkiss is Deputy Commander of Air Mobility Command (AMC). She has been serving as the interim head of the command since her predecessor, Gen. John Lamontagne, became Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force in January.

“I cannot have a gap in my strategic airlift forces, and we’re working forward on the NGAL to combine the view of the C-5 and the C-17 fleet and figure out what the next strategic airlifter needs to be. That conversation, in my book, can’t happen enough, or can’t happen fast enough,” she added at the roundtable in February. “We have to get after what next looks like, and we can’t wait until we’re shoveling it into the boneyard before we get to that discussion.”

Whether the Air Force’s future airlift plans also include buying new-production C-17s remains to be seen. For its part, Boeing does not appear to have ruled out the possibility just yet.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The last time Abdullahi Alabi heard from his friend, Oluwafemi Adeyemo, it was a voice note. “I dey Terminus… I sey make I update you,” his friend said in Nigerian Pidgin. He was restocking his foodstuffs at the market, but he never came back.

Abdullahi and Oluwafemi had been friends and coursemates since they came on campus. “We became brothers, I knew his family, he knew mine,” Abdullahi said.

Two days before that, on March 29, terrorists had opened fire on residents and passersby at Angwan Rukuba, a busy roadside community in Jos, Plateau State, North Central Nigeria, killing at least 30 people. The Plateau State government immediately clamped a 48-hour curfew on Jos North, the kind of precaution the city has learned, through painful experience, to take, given how quickly such attacks can tip into ethno-religious reprisal violence.

When the curfew lifted on April 1, Oluwafemi, a final-year Quantity Survey student at the University of Jos (UNIJOS), had just received his upkeep allowance from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND). He headed to Terminus Market that morning, a 15-minute tricycle ride from where he and Abdullahi lived, to buy foodstuffs.

What made Abdullahi check his phone that morning was hearing that something was happening around Terminus. He wanted to know if his friends were alright. That was when he saw the voice note.

“I actually did not take it that seriously,” he said. But as the updates on social media got worse, he started calling. Oluwafemi’s number was not going through. He and other friends kept trying.

By evening, Oluwafemi had not returned and was still unreachable. Abdullahi called the family, who said he had not been in touch with them either. “I took permission from the family to file a missing person report, and we also made a post on social media,” he said.

Then another of Oluwafemi’s friends reached out. She sent Abdullahi a screenshot of her last chat with him. He had told her there was a fight at Terminus, that he had escaped, and that he had made it to Bauchi Road, near the university’s Main Campus. After that, nothing.

The next day, Abdullahi and other friends went from one police station to another. On the third day, they started checking mortuaries. That afternoon, a call came asking them to come to the Jos University Teaching Hospital to identify a body.

“When we got there, it was his body,” Abdullahi said, with a sigh. “He was attacked at Bauchi Junction. According to the autopsy, he sustained a gunshot wound to his back and was macheted as well.” He added that they were told that the police officers who brought his corpse to the hospital had intervened. The identities of the perpetrators remain unknown.

Oluwafemi was one of at least eight people killed in reprisal attacks that swept through Jos on 1 April, after the night of terror at Angwan Rukuba took on an ethno-religious colouration.

“Femi was ready to make a change in the world,” Abdullahi said. “A few days before his death, he sent a voice note in a group lamenting about how Nigeria is bad and what he thinks needs to be done to fix the challenges.” He never got the chance.

In that same voice note, obtained by HumAngle, Oluwafemi turned his frustration toward the government’s response to the recurring violence. Precautions like curfews, he said, were not enough. “What has curfew done?” he asked. “Make we speak up, abi na until dem kill everybody finish.”

Oluwafemi is not the first UNIJOS student the city has claimed. With over 40,000 students – according to its website – living and studying in Jos’s most volatile neighbourhoods, the university community has, for more than two decades, been one of the most consistent casualties of the city’s recurring violence. And with no meaningful change in how students are protected, many fear it is only a matter of time before the next name is added to the list.

Caught in harm’s way

To understand why Oluwafemi’s death is not an isolated tragedy, it helps to know the city he was living in. To outsiders, the speed with which violence can spread across Jos often appears bewildering. Yet the city has endured recurring cycles of conflict for more than two decades, fuelled by a complex mix of ethno-religious tensions, disputes over indigene-settler identities, political representation, land ownership, and access to resources. While many incidents are framed as clashes between Christians and Muslims, residents and researchers have long argued that the roots of the conflict run deeper than religion alone.

“…as is often the case with identity conflicts in Africa, these are socially constructed stereotypes that are manipulated to trigger and drive violence in Jos,” said Prof. Chris Kwaja, a Researcher at the Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies at the University of Jos, Nigeria, who also serves as the Plateau State’s Special Envoy on Peace and Security. 

“The ethnic or religious dimensions of the conflict have subsequently been misconstrued as the primary driver of violence when, in fact, disenfranchisement, inequality, and other practical fears are the real root causes. Capitalising on such conditions, many political rivals have instrumentalised the ethnic and religious diversity of Jos to manipulate and mobilise support. Each outbreak of violence worsens suspicions and renders communal reconciliation more difficult, deepening the cycle and further incentivising polarisation,” he noted. 

Over the years, many neighbourhoods have become identified with particular ethnic and religious communities, creating a city that is deeply polarised along social and geographic lines. Areas such as Angwan Rukuba, Terminus, Bauchi Road, and other mixed communities often function as fault lines where residents from different backgrounds live, trade, commute, and study side by side. When violence breaks out, fear, rumours, and reprisals can quickly travel beyond the immediate scene of an attack, drawing in people who had no connection to the original incident.

For students of the UNIJOS whose campuses, hostels, and daily routines are woven into these communities, that vulnerability is particularly acute. A journey to class, the market, or a friend’s place can suddenly become dangerous when the city descends into unrest.

Jos North is where most of the university’s campuses sit, including the Township Campus, Bauchi Road Campus, Naraguta Campus, the Jos University Teaching Hospital, staff quarters, and other facilities. Student hostels, both university-owned and private, are scattered all across the area. Angwan Rukuba, where the March 29 attack happened, is one of the neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of students. Meanwhile, Terminus Market, which borders it, has long been an epicentre of violence in the city.

Several residents and students who spoke to HumAngle said the university community is always caught in the middle when violence breaks out, which is hardly surprising, given how deeply the campuses and student hostels are woven into those areas.

Although no comprehensive data exists on the total number of students killed across incidents, HumAngle’s research — drawing on interviews with students and staff, as well as archival news reports — indicates that at least five students have died in every major episode of violence, and often significantly more.

In 2018, Shedrach ‘Kums’ Fenan, a 300-level Law student, was shot and killed by a stray military bullet near the Students’ Village Hostel during a similar crisis. That same year, the bodies of several students were found floating in nearby rivers. 

Plangna’an Daor, who studied law at UNIJOS and now works as team lead of the post-conflict rehabilitation and recovery desk at the Plateau Peacebuilding Agency, knew Kums personally. 

“I still remember how we were all glued to social media, checking on friends in different parts of Jos, asking questions and trying to understand what was happening,” she told HumAngle. “Imagine finding out that the student was someone you knew personally, someone with immense potential.” As an executive leader of the National Association of Plateau State Students at the time, she travelled with other students for the burial. “It was a stark reminder that students are not merely observers of conflict; they can become direct victims of it,” she said.

Aondona Kwaghaondo, a medical student at the university, almost lost his life when a mob attacked him in August 2021, along the Bauchi Road near the Naraguta Hostels, which sits between major university communities. “It was a very traumatising experience; till this day I am a bit triggered by similar sights and sounds,” he said. Aondona survived, but he sustained several injuries from the attack. 

During one of the crises, while she was a student, Plangna’an lived off campus near Dariye Park, barely 100 metres away from the main gate of the Naraguta Campus. “I remember the tension of that period vividly,” she said. “We could hear gunshots at night and constantly monitored developments around us.” 

The fear was not abstract. During that same period, Plangna’an narrated that a young man attempting to reach Bauchi Road Junction was stabbed after ignoring a neighbour’s warning and was brought to her compound, where a medical student provided first aid before he could be taken to the hospital. “The atmosphere was one of constant fear and uncertainty,” Plangna’an recalled. Her roommates told her, “This is not the time to sleep in a nightie. Wear trousers. Wear something that, if we have to wake up and run, you can simply get up and leave.”

She also highlights a dimension of the crisis that is easy to overlook: the particular vulnerability of students like Adeyemo, who are from outside Plateau State. “Those of us from Plateau State at least had some understanding of the context,” she said. “But imagine students who came from other states and had no understanding of the local dynamics. They arrived expecting a safe learning environment and suddenly found themselves navigating fear, insecurity, displacement, and uncertainty.” Many students, she notes, are simply unfamiliar with which areas are considered high-risk during periods of tension, and which routes should be avoided. 

Prof. Lazarus Maigoro, former chairperson of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) UNIJOS chapter, said the pattern has left the university community exasperated. “We have suffered untold damages in relation to loss of lives and property… each time there is a security breach in Jos, and as a union, we have tried to understand how the university community is always at the receiving end of each crisis in Jos,” he said. 

“In spite of all the provocations, we have continued to offer community service to all, irrespective of religion, culture and tribe; the university administration has, over the years, made overtures to host communities in terms of undergraduate admissions and staff employment, yet our students and staff are killed at the slightest provocation, however far the epicentre of the crisis from the institution.” 

Plangna’an, who now works on post-conflict recovery, points to structural factors that compound the danger. The communities surrounding the university include areas with high concentrations of informal settlements, illegal structures, motor parks, and markets. “Some of these spaces have become hideouts for criminals, street gangs, drug users, and other vulnerable groups susceptible to recruitment into violence and extremism,” she said. Students living off-campus must pass through these environments daily.

As Prof. Maigoro noted, the attacks not only threaten the security of life and property within the university community but also disrupt the academic calendar, causing students to spend more than the stipulated number of years to complete their programmes. “Some who were meant to spend four years will end up doing six, that is, if there are no labour union strikes,” said Liamhuan Akpenmo, a student of the university’s Faculty of Education. 

For instance, Adeyemo got admission in 2019, but by the time of his death, he had spent seven years on a five-year programme, his progress interrupted by the COVID-19 lockdown and the 2021 crisis that forced the university to close.

The evacuation

When the situation following the March 29 incident worsened, the university management rescheduled the semester examinations and placed academic and related activities on hold.  Prof. Ishaya Tanko, the vice-chancellor, also announced the evacuation of students from hostels, in collaboration with the Plateau State government.

In the days that followed, specifically from April 2, other state governments and private individuals began sending dozens of buses to evacuate students who were indigenes or residents of those states. More than 1600 students were reportedly evacuated by about seven state governments, including Benue, Delta, and Kaduna. Such arrangements are often collaborations with state student union groups and relevant state government ministries.

“It was all familiar,” said Liamhuan, a student who first experienced a similar evacuation in 2021. She and her younger sister, who is also a student, left for Benue; other students travelled as far as Lagos.

Then, even as the crisis was still unfolding, the university management announced that examinations would go ahead. “It was abrupt,” said Liamhuan. The city was not yet safe. A 6 p.m. curfew was still in effect. In one press statement issued around that time, the Student Union Government advised students to either split their journey into two legs or arrive early enough to beat the curfew. Social media was still full of missing-person posters.

“Let me state clearly that since the beginning of the crisis, no single breach of the peace was recorded on any of our campuses,” the Vice Chancellor said at a press briefing. But students like Oluwafemi, who died during the incident, were attacked in areas immediately surrounding the university, a distinction that offered little comfort to those who had lost someone.

For instance, in August 2021, at the peak of a similar crisis, a 100-level microbiology student of the university was murdered by a mob at a filling station, near Dariye Park – where Plangna’an lived – which is located adjacent to the university. 

HumAngle reached out to Emmanuel Madugu, the university’s Deputy Registrar for Information and Public Relations, for comment on how the university intends to prevent casualties among students and staff. Madugu acknowledged the request and indicated that he would respond after consulting the relevant units, but had not done so at the time of publication.

An alumnus of the university with knowledge of security matters, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there is only so much the institution can do. When students and staff are attacked outside the university environment, he noted, the university’s hands are largely tied. The responsibility, he argued, falls primarily on the state and federal governments to secure the city.

For Liamhuan, the management’s decision to continue with the session reflected a pattern she had seen before. “I prefer to leave because the school environment does not feel safe, and everywhere feels threatened. So, home is where I feel safe, and if anything happens to you, it is you and your family that will bear the burden.” She added that the situation is even more difficult for students like herself who live off campus, largely due to a lack of sufficient student hostels.

“Even those on campus are not protected,” Liamhuan added. She once lived in one of the student hostels at the Naraguta Campus before moving off campus. “Students are still attacked by mobs when they are close to the school facilities.” Aondona’s testimony confirms this. Additionally, a viral video during the recent incident showed a man who was attacked right at the entrance of the university’s Naraguta Campus, which houses the administrative building and most of the faculties and student residences.

Although armed security posts existed near university campuses around 2017 and 2018, HumAngle observed that most of those posts no longer exist, and security is now mostly provided by unarmed officers of the university’s Security Division. More recently, through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, a police station was constructed at the Naraguta Hostels Gate, along the Jos-Bauchi Road, but students say it is insufficient.

When HumAngle visited the campus in June, no police officers were seen on the grounds, but an unarmed Security Division security guard was at the gate.

For Abdullahi, authorities do not need to wait for violence to break out before they start mapping how to protect the students and the rest of the university community. “If there are checkpoints at flashpoints like Bauchi Road, when a crisis starts, there will be an immediate response, ensuring that killings are avoided,” he said, adding that surveillance cameras can also be installed.  

During a condolence visit to Plateau State after the March 29 attack, Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, disclosed that the Federal Government would deploy an artificial intelligence-enabled network of over 5,000 digital cameras to help law enforcement agencies combat insecurity in the state. At the time of this report, the project had yet to commence. 

The General Officer Commanding of the 3rd Division, Maxwell Khobe Cantonment, Major Gen. Eyitayo Oyinlola, visited the university during the recent incident “to assure the Vice Chancellor of the Division’s high priority of securing the University in the face of threats to the lives of its community”. But students who were on campus during the incident said little to no security was actually provided.

Younglan Taylong, the university’s Student Union Government president, did not respond to requests for comment. However, students who spoke to HumAngle, including Abdullahi, say the union was supportive during the crisis, providing information, aid, and evacuation support to students.

In the absence of protection, students have had to fend for themselves. Another student, a recent graduate who declined to give his name for fear, recalled that during tense periods, particularly in 2021, students would mobilise to act as a vigilante force around the hostels at night. 

“Sometimes, we will just carry kitchen knives, I do not even know what we were thinking,” he said.

What can be done?

For those who have spent years studying or working on the crisis, the frustrating reality is that the recommendations are not new. The Greater Jos Master Plan already includes provisions to relocate illegal motor parks, markets, and informal settlements away from critical public institutions, such as the university. Similar proposals have appeared repeatedly across various commissions of inquiry. “Many remain unimplemented,” Plangna’an said. “There is a need for greater political will to translate these recommendations into reality.”

Among the measures she and others who spoke to HumAngle advocated for are: the establishment of a Mobile Police barracks or dedicated security formation near the university; the construction of additional student hostels to reduce the number of students living off-campus; the strengthening and securing of perimeter fencing at the Permanent Site to control access and deter encroachment; and the provision of secure shuttle bus services for students living off-campus. “While no transport system is completely immune to attack, organised transportation would significantly reduce students’ exposure to risk,” she added. 

The post-conflict rehabilitation and recovery expert also calls for dualising major roads around the university and constructing an interchange at the Bauchi Road junction — a congested gateway into the state that regularly creates both mobility and security problems. Beyond infrastructure, she argues for sustained investment in peacebuilding programmes that directly involve students, university staff, and surrounding communities, including support for those living with the psychological aftermath of violence. “There are many students who continue to live with trauma from experiences they have had as victims or witnesses of violence,” she said. “These experiences can affect academic performance, mental health, and overall well-being.”

Plangna’an insists the approach must shift from reactive to preventive. “Every time violence occurs, similar recommendations are made, yet implementation remains weak,” she said. “Early warning without early response has limited value.” 

Until that changes, students and experts who spoke to HumAngle say that the university community will remain, as it has been for more than two decades, caught in the crossfire. 

Bahrain released video of damage in Manama after debris from intercepted Iranian drones fell in populated areas, damaging homes, burning vehicles and scattering wreckage. Officials said an 11-year-old girl sustained minor injuries in the incident.

Serena Williams’ doubles campaign at Queen’s has been curtailed as her playing partner Victoria Mboko has withdrawn with a left knee injury.

The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, 44, made her return to tennis on Tuesday after almost four years away from the sport.

The pair had been scheduled to play their quarter-final on Thursday but Mboko, 19, suffered a nasty fall in her singles match on Wednesday, which forced her to retire from the match.

Trailing 6-2 3-4 against Karolina Pliskova, the Canadian teenager cried out in pain as she went down clutching her knee and she limped off the court in tears.

It means her compatriot Leylah Fernandez and Germany’s Laura Siegemund, who they were scheduled to face in the doubles on Thursday, advance to the semi-finals.

“What a fun and memorable week at the HSBC Championships. Thank you to everyone who made it so special,” Williams posted on Instagram.

“Vicky Mboko, you’re an incredible talent and you’ll be back out there in no time.

“Wishing you a speedy recovery.”

Williams returned with a winning performance on Tuesday as she and Mboko won 7-6 (7-2) 6-2 to upset third seeds Erin Routliffe and Nicole Melichar-Martinez.

Playing 1,375 days after her last competitive match, Williams – one of the greatest players of all time – didn’t look a touch out of place as she rediscovered her powerful serve and groundstrokes.

The extent of Mboko’s injury has not yet been confirmed but there are concerns that the world number nine could miss Wimbledon, which starts on 29 June.

A massive 850-square-meter street mural of football star Neymar da Silva, created by six artists over two days in Brazil’s Novo Hamburgo, is turning heads ahead of the highly anticipated FIFA World Cup.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

PM Starmer is ‘unable to ⁠commit resources ⁠the nation needs’, John Healey ⁠says in letter.

⁠Britain’s defence ⁠minister ⁠says he has resigned over ‌a disagreement with the prime minister about defence spending.

In a letter addressed to Keir Starmer and posted on X on Thursday, Defence Secretary John Healey accused the prime minister of failing to commit the government resources that ⁠are needed to defend the country.

Britain’s’s defence and finance ministries have been locked in talks for months over ‌how to meet rising demands to expand military spending, delaying Britain’s Defence Investment Plan since last year.

“You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to ⁠commit the resources that ⁠the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats,” Healey ⁠said in his letter to Starmer.

The delay has ⁠infuriated Britain’s defence ⁠industry which says it cannot invest in long-term programmes for the country’s security at a time ‌of huge geopolitical volatility and as the United States pivots away ‌from ‌protecting Europe.

This is a breaking story. More to come…

A US strike on an oil tanker accused of transporting Iranian oil has killed three Indian sailors. It was the second attack in three days on a ship carrying crew members from India.

“Which? has repeatedly highlighted Ryanair’s harsh approach to separating families and making parents pay a fee to sit next to children as young as three,” said Rory Boland, travel editor at Which?, “so it’s good to see the regulator investigating the airline’s behaviour.”

Thousands of migrants shelter in a Durban park after being driven from their homes ahead of a June 30 expulsion ultimatum.

More than 3,000 Malawians, including hundreds of children, are staying in an open field in South Africa’s port city of Durban, after fleeing what they described as escalating anti-immigrant threats and attacks.

For weeks, groups armed with sticks, whips and shields have marched through parts of the country demanding that foreigners with no papers leave by June 30.

At the park, which transformed into a makeshift transit camp in Durban on Wednesday, many people said repatriation was their only safe option.

“It’s hard to stay here,” Falesi Chukuwumba, a Malawian national, told Al Jazeera. “You can see we are outside. How can we stay in this cold? Our children can get sick.”

Sayiba John, 33, a Malawian who fled Nazareth township with her husband and three children, told the AFP news agency her daughter, a Grade 2 pupil, was forced to abandon her exams.

“They said we must go. We have no choice in the matter,” John said. “It’s better our government take us away from here than to face the anger of the South Africans.”

Ellen Mwamulima, a 45-year-old widow, mother of three and former domestic worker in Mossel Bay in the Western Cape, fled a mob who nearly caught up with her and had to hide out in the bush for two weeks.

“It’s been very difficult because we lost everything, they burnt our houses and all our belongings,” the Malawian told Al Jazeera.

The anti-migrant marches have been backed by the MK Party, led by former President Jacob Zuma, which commands strong support across KwaZulu-Natal province.

When the party called on supporters to march against undocumented migrants, thousands responded. Demonstrators accuse foreign nationals of taking jobs and economic opportunities from South Africans.

“There are undocumented foreigners working everywhere in our business field,” Mythobisi Sabelo, one of the protesters, told Al Jazeera in Durban. “People here have been trying to find work for a long time and given up. It’s becoming an issue.”

Waves of xenophobic violence

But while demonstrators blame foreigners for South Africa’s economic and social issues, others argue that foreigners, particularly those from elsewhere in Africa, are being wrongly blamed.

The violence has spread well beyond KwaZulu-Natal. Five Mozambicans have been killed in Mossel Bay. More than 150 Malawians were bussed out of the Western Cape province over the weekend.

Ghana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have repatriated hundreds of nationals this month, and a flight carrying the first group of Nigerians is due to depart Johannesburg.

About 150 additional migrants from Burundi, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are sheltering at a government office not far from the Durban park.

South Africa has faced recurring waves of xenophobic violence since 2008, when dozens of migrants were killed and thousands displaced. Some three million foreigners – about 5 percent of the population, more than 63 percent of them from within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc – live in the country.

The latest flare-up comes as political parties campaign ahead of local government elections in November.