Groups

A months-long siege on the Malian capital, Bamako, by the armed al-Qaeda affiliate group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), has brought the city to breaking point, causing desperation among residents and, according to analysts, placing increasing pressure on the military government to negotiate with the group – something it has refused to do before now.

JNIM’s members have created an effective economic and fuel blockade by sealing off major highways used by tankers to transport fuel from neighbouring Senegal and the Ivory Coast to the landlocked Sahel country since September.

While JNIM has long laid siege to towns in other parts of the country, this is the first time it has used the tactic on the capital city.

The scale of the blockade, and the immense effect it has had on the city, is a sign of JNIM’s growing hold over Mali and a step towards the group’s stated aim of government change in Mali, Beverly Ochieng, Sahel analyst with intelligence firm Control Risks, told Al Jazeera.

For weeks, most of Bamako’s residents have been unable to buy any fuel for cars or motorcycles as supplies have dried up, bringing the normally bustling capital to a standstill. Many have had to wait in long fuel queues. Last week, the United States and the United Kingdom both advised their citizens to leave Mali and evacuated non-essential diplomatic staff.

Other Western nations have also advised their citizens to leave the country. Schools across Mali have closed and will remain shut until November 9 as staff struggle to commute. Power cuts have intensified.

Here’s what we know about the armed group responsible and why it appears to have Mali in a chokehold:

What is JNIM?

JNIM is the Sahel affiliate of al-Qaeda and the most active armed group in the region, according to conflict monitor ACLED. The group was formed in 2017 as a merger between groups that were formerly active against French and Malian forces that were first deployed during an armed rebellion in northern Mali in 2012. They include Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) and three Malian armed groups – Ansar Dine, Al-Murabitun and Katiba Macina.

JNIM’s main aim is to capture and control territory and to expel Western influences in its region of control. Some analysts suggest that JNIM may be seeking to control major capitals and, ultimately, to govern the country as a whole.

It is unclear how many fighters the group has. The Washington Post has reported estimates of about 6,000, citing regional and western officials.

However, Ulf Laessing, Sahel analyst at the German think tank, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), said JNIM most likely does not yet have the military capacity to capture large, urban territories that are well protected by soldiers. He also said the group would struggle to appeal to urban populations who may not hold the same grievances against the government as some rural communities.

While JNIM’s primary base is Mali, KAS revealed in a report that the group has Algerian roots via its members of the Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM).

The group is led by Iyad Ag-Ghali, a Malian and ethnic Tuareg from Mali’s northern Kidal region who founded Ansar Dine in 2012. That group’s stated aim was to impose its interpretation of Islamic law across Mali.

Ghali had previously led Tuareg uprisings against the Malian government, which is traditionally dominated by the majority Bambara ethnic group, in the early 1990s, demanding the creation of a sovereign country called Azawad.

However, he reformed his image by acting as a negotiator between the government and the rebels. In 2008, he was posted as a Malian diplomat to Saudi Arabia under the government of Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure. When another rebellion began in 2012, however, Ghali sought a leadership role with the rebels but was rebuffed, leading him to create Ansar Dine.

According to the US Department of National Intelligence (DNI), Ghali has stated that JNIM’s strategy is to expand its presence across West Africa and to put down government forces and rival armed groups, such as the Mali-based Islamic State Sahel, through guerrilla-style attacks and the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Simultaneously, it attempts to engage with local communities by providing them with material resources. Strict dress codes and bans on music are common in JNIM-controlled areas.

JNIM also destroys infrastructure, such as schools, communication towers and bridges, to weaken the government off the battlefield.

An overall death toll is unclear, but the group has killed thousands of people since 2017. Human rights groups accuse it of attacking civilians, especially people perceived to be assisting government forces. JNIM activity in Mali caused 207 deaths between January and April this year, according to ACLED data.

How has JNIM laid siege to Bamako?

JNIM began blocking oil tankers carrying fuel to Bamako in September.

That came after the military government in Bamako banned small-scale fuel sales in all rural areas – except at official service stations – from July 1. Usually, in these areas, traders can buy fuel in jerry cans, which they often resell later.

The move to ban this was aimed at crippling JNIM’s operations in its areas of control by limiting its supply lines and, thus, its ability to move around.

At the few places where fuel is still available in Bamako, prices soared last week by more than 400 percent, from $25 to $130 per litre ($6.25-$32.50 per gallon). Prices of transportation, food and other commodities have risen due to the crisis, and power cuts have been frequent.

Some car owners have simply abandoned their vehicles in front of petrol stations, with the military government threatening on Wednesday to impound them to ease traffic and reduce security risks.

A convoy of 300 fuel tankers reached Bamako on October 7, and another one with “dozens” of vehicles arrived on October 30, according to a government statement. Other attempts to truck in more fuel have met obstacles, however, as JNIM members ambush military-escorted convoys on highways and shoot at or kidnap soldiers and civilians.

Even as supplies in Bamako dry up, there are reports of JNIM setting fire to about 200 fuel tankers in southern and western Mali. Videos circulating on Malian social media channels show rows of oil tankers burning on a highway.

What is JNIM trying to achieve with this blockade?

Laessing of KAS said the group is probably hoping to leverage discontent with the government in the already troubled West African nation to put pressure on the military government to negotiate a power-sharing deal of sorts.

“They want to basically make people as angry as possible,” he said. “They could [be trying] to provoke protests which could bring down the current government and bring in a new one that’s more favourable towards them.”

Ochieng of Control Risks noted that, in its recent statements, JNIM has explicitly called for government change. While the previous civilian government of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (2013-2020) had negotiated with JNIM, the present government of Colonel Assimi Goita will likely keep up its military response, Ochieng said.

Frustration at the situation is growing in Bamako, with residents calling for the government to act.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, driver Omar Sidibe said the military leaders ought to find out the reasons for the shortage and act on them. “It’s up to the government to play a full role and take action [and] uncover the real reason for this shortage.”

Which parts of Mali is the JNIM active in?

In Mali, the group operates in rural areas of northern, central and western Mali, where there is a reduced government presence and high discontent with the authorities among local communities.

In the areas it controls, JNIM presents itself as an alternative to the government, which it calls “puppets of the West”, in order to recruit fighters from several ethnic minorities which have long held grievances over their perceived marginalisation by the government, including the Tuareg, Arab, Fulani, and Songhai groups. Researchers note the group also has some members from the majority Bambara group.

In central Mali, the group seized Lere town last November and captured the town of Farabougou in August this year. Both are small towns, but Farabougou is close to Wagadou Forest, a known hiding place of JNIM.

JNIM’s hold on major towns is weaker because of the stronger government presence in larger areas. It therefore more commonly blockades major towns or cities by destroying roads and bridges leading to them. Currently, the western cities of Nioro and gold-rich Kayes are cut off. The group is also besieging the major cities of Timbuktu and Gao, as well as Menaka and Boni towns, located in the north and northeast.

How is JNIM funded?

For revenue, the group oversees artisanal gold mines, forcefully taxes community members, smuggles weapons and kidnaps foreigners for ransom, according to the US DNI. Kayes region, whose capital, Kayes, is under siege, is a major gold hub, accounting for 80 percent of Mali’s gold production, according to conflict monitoring group Critical Threats.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (Gi-Toc) also reports cattle rustling schemes, estimating that JNIM made 91,400 euros ($104,000) in livestock sales of cattle between 2017 and 2019. Cattle looted in Mali are sold cheaply in communities on the border with Ghana and the Ivory Coast, through a complex chain of intermediaries.

In which other countries is JNIM active?

JNIM expanded into Burkina Faso in 2017 by linking up with Burkina-Faso-based armed group Ansarul-Islam, which pledged allegiance to the Malian group. Ansarul-Islam was formed in 2016 by Ibrahim Dicko, who had close ties with Amadou Koufa, JNIM’s deputy head since 2017.

In Burkina Faso, JNIM uses similar tactics of recruiting from marginalised ethnic groups. The country has rapidly become a JNIM hotspot, with the group operating – or holding territory – in 11 of 13 Burkina Faso regions outside of capital Ouagadougou. There were 512 reported casualties as a result of JNIM violence in the country between January and April this year. It is not known how many have died as a result of violence by the armed group in total.

Since 2022, JNIM has laid siege to the major northern Burkinabe city of Djibo, with authorities forced to airlift in supplies. In a notable attack in May 2025, JNIM fighters overran a military base in the town, killing approximately 200 soldiers. It killed a further 60 in Solle, about 48km (30 miles) west of Djibo.

In October 2025, the group temporarily took control of Sabce town, also located in the north of Burkina Faso, killing 11 police officers in the process, according to the International Crisis Group.

In a September report, Human Rights Watch said JNIM and a second armed group – Islamic State Sahel, which is linked to ISIL (ISIS) – massacred civilians in Burkina Faso between May and September, including a civilian convoy trying to transport humanitarian aid into the besieged northern town of Gorom Gorom.

Meanwhile, JNIM is also moving southwards, towards other West African nations with access to the sea. It launched an offensive on Kafolo town, in northern Ivory Coast, in 2020.

JNIM members embedded in national parks on the border regions with Burkina Faso have been launching sporadic attacks in northern Togo and the Benin Republic since 2022.

In October this year, it recorded its first attack on the Benin-Nigeria border, where one Nigerian policeman was killed. The area is not well-policed because the two countries have no established military cooperation, analyst Ochieng said.

“This area is also quite a commercially viable region; there are mining and other developments taking place there … it is likely to be one that [JNIM] will try to establish a foothold,” she added.

Why are countries struggling to fend off JNIM?

When Mali leader General Assimi Goita led soldiers to seize power in a 2020 coup, military leaders promised to defeat the armed group, as well as a host of others that had been on the rise in the country. Military leaders subsequently seizing power from civilian governments in Burkina Faso (2022) and in Niger (2023) have made the same promises.

However, Mali and its neighbours have struggled to hold JNIM at bay, with ACLED data noting the number of JNIM attacks increasing notably since 2020.

In 2022, Mali’s military government ended cooperation with 4,000-strong French forces deployed in 2013 to battle armed groups which had emerged at the time, as well as separatist Tuaregs in the north. The last group of French forces exited the country in August 2022.

Mali also terminated contracts with a 10,000-man UN peacekeeping force stationed in the country in 2023.

Bamako is now working with Russian fighters – initially 1,500 from the Wagner Mercenary Group, but since June, from the Kremlin-controlled Africa Corps – estimated to be about 1,000 in number.

Russian officials are, to a lesser extent, also present in Burkina Faso and Niger, which have formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with Mali.

Results in Mali have been mixed. Wagner supported the Malian military in seizing swaths of land in the northern Kidal region from Tuareg rebels.

But the Russians also suffered ambushes. In July 2024, a contingent of Wagner and Malian troops was ambushed by rebels in Tinzaouaten, close to the Algerian border. Between 20 and 80 Russians and 25 to 40 Malians were killed, according to varying reports. Researchers noted it was Wagner’s worst defeat since it had deployed to West Africa.

In all, Wagner did not record much success in targeting armed groups like JNIM, analyst Laessing told Al Jazeera.

Alongside Malian forces, the Russians have also been accused by rights groups of committing gross human rights violations against rural communities in northern Mali perceived to be supportive of armed groups.

Could the Russian Africa Corps fighters end the siege on Bamako?

Laessing said the fuel crisis is pressuring Mali to divert military resources and personnel to protect fuel tankers, keeping them from consolidating territory won back from armed groups and further endangering the country.

He added that the crisis will be a test for Russian Africa Corp fighters, who have not proven as ready as Wagner fighters to take battle risks. A video circulating on Russian social media purports to show Africa Corps members providing air support to fuel tanker convoys. It has not been verified by Al Jazeera.

“If they can come in and allow the fuel to flow into Bamako, then the Russians will be seen as heroes,” Laessing said – at least by locals.

Laessing added that the governments of Mali and Burkina Faso, in the medium to long term, might eventually have to negotiate with JNIM to find a way to end the crisis.

While Goita’s government has not attempted to hold talks with the group in the past, in early October, it greenlit talks led by local leaders, according to conflict monitoring group Critical Threats – although it is unclear exactly how the government gave its approval.

Agreements between the group and local leaders have reportedly already been signed in several towns across Segou, Mopti and Timbuktu regions, in which the group agrees to end its siege in return for the communities agreeing to JNIM rules, taxes, and noncooperation with the military.

Catatumbo, Colombia – The Catatumbo region, which stretches along the border with Venezuela in the department of Norte de Santander, is Colombia’s most volatile frontier.

Endowed with oil reserves and coca crops but impoverished and neglected, this border area has historically been a site of violent competition between armed groups fighting for territorial control.

The National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s largest remaining guerrilla force, maintains a strong and organised presence, operating across the porous border with Venezuela.

It is there that some of their fighters pick up an Al Jazeera reporting team and drive us to meet their commanders.

Tensions remain high in this region. In January, thousands of people were displaced because of the fighting between the ELN and a dissident faction from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that continues to operate in some parts of the country in spite of peace agreements brokered in 2016.

The fight is over control of the territory and access to the border with Venezuela, which is a crucial way to move drugs out of the country.

Entering the area, it’s immediately apparent that the ELN is in total control here. There is no evidence of the country’s military. ELN flags decorate the sideroads, and the signs give a clear message of the way the group’s members see Colombia right now.

“Total peace is a failure,” they say.

There is also no mobile phone signal. People tell the Al Jazeera team that telephone companies do not want to pay a tax to the armed groups controlling the territory.

When President Gustavo Petro took office, he promised to implement a total peace plan with Colombia’s armed groups. But the negotiations have not been easy, especially with the ELN.

Government offcials suspended the peace talks because of the fighting in Catatumbo, but now say they are ready to reinitiate talks.

Al Jazeera meets with Commander Ricardo and Commander Silvana in a small house in the middle of the mountains. The interview has to be fast, they say, as they are concerned about a potential attack and reconnaissance drones that have been circulating in the area.

The commanders are accompanied by some of their fighters. Asked how many they have in the area, they respond, “We are thousands, and not everyone is wearing their uniforms. Some are urban guerrillas.”

The government estimates the ELN has around 3,000 fighters. But the figure could be much higher.

Commander Ricardo, who is in charge of the region, says he believes there could be a chance for peace.

“The ELN has been battling for a political solution for 30 years with various difficulties,” he says. “We believed that with Petro, we would advance in the process. But that did not happen. There’s never been peace in Colombia. What we have is the peace of the graves.”

The group and the government had been meeting in Mexico prior to the suspension of the talks. “If the accords we had in Mexico are still there, I believe our central command would agree [it] could open up the way for a political solution to this conflict”, Commander Ricardo tells Al Jazeera.

US drugs threat

But it’s not just the fight with the Colombian state that has armed groups here on alert. The United States military campaign against alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific – and the US’s aggressive posture towards the government of neighbouring Venezuela – have brought an international dimension to what was once an internal Colombian conflict.

The administration of US President Donald Trump refers to these people not as guerrillas but “narco-terrorists”, and has not ruled out the possibility of attacking them on Colombian soil.

The US operation, which began in early September, has killed more than 62 people, including nationals from Venezuela and Colombia, and destroyed 14 boats and a semi-submersible.

Some of the commanders have an extradition request from the US, and the government says they are wanted criminals.

The US strikes against boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and the military build-up in the region to ramp up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro are seen by the ELN as another act of US imperialism.

The US government claims one of those boats belonged to the ELN. “Why don’t they capture them and show the world what they captured and what they are they trafficking?” Commander Ricardo asks. “But no, they erase them with a bomb.”

He also warns about the possibility of the ELN joining in the fight against the US. “In the hypothesis that Trump attacks Venezuela, we will have to see how we respond, but it’s not just us,” he says. “[It’s] all of Latin America because I am sure there are going to be many, many people who will grab a weapon and fight because it’s too much. The fact that the United States can step over people without respecting their self-determination has to end.”

The ELN was inspired by the Cuban revolution. But over the years, it has been involved in kidnappings, killings, extortion, and drug trafficking.

Commander Silvana, who joined the group when she was a teen, says the ELN is not like other armed groups in the country.

“Our principles indicate that we are not involved in drug trafficking,” she says. “We have told this to the international community. What we have is taxes in the territories we have been controlling for over 60 years. And if there is coca, of course, we tax it, too.”

Colombia has been a crucial US ally in the region over the decades in the fight against drug trafficking. But Petro has increasingly questioned the US policy in the Caribbean, arguing that Washington’s approach to security and migration reflects out-of-date Cold War logic rather than the region’s current realities.

He has criticised the US military presence and naval operations near Venezuela, warning that such tactics risk increasing tensions instead of promoting cooperation.

Trump has accused Petro, who is a former guerrilla, of being a drug trafficker himself.

Petro responded angrily, writing on X, “Colombia has never been rude to the United States. To the contrary, it has loved its culture very much. But you are rude and ignorant about Colombia.”

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry also condemned Trump’s remarks as offensive and a direct threat to the country’s sovereignty, and vowed to seek international support in defence of Petro and Colombian autonomy.

The belligerent US approach to Venezuela and Colombia, both led by leftist presidents – and the heightened possibility of a US military intervention – risk turning a local Colombia conflict into a broader regional one.

Everyone on the ground is now assessing how they will respond if the US government gives its military the green light to attack Venezuela.

Advocates say new rules let Education Department to politically punish groups working on immigration, transgender care.

The United States Department of Education has finalised new rules that could bar nonprofits deemed to have undertaken work with a “substantial illegal purpose” from a special student loan forgiveness programme.

Those rules, finalised on Thursday, appear to single out certain organisations that do work in areas that President Donald Trump politically opposes, including immigration advocacy and transgender rights.

Under the new rules, set to take effect in July 2026, the education secretary has the power to exclude groups if they engage in activities like the “chemical castration” of children, using a politically charged term for gender-affirming healthcare, including puberty-delaying medication.

It also allows the education secretary to bar groups accused of supporting undocumented immigration or “terrorist” organisations.

The Trump administration has said its decisions “will not be made based on the political views or policy preferences of the organization”.

But advocates fear the move is the administration’s latest effort to target left-leaning and liberal organisations.

Trump has already threatened to crack down on several liberal nonprofits, which the White House has broadly accused of being part of “domestic terror networks”.

Thursday’s rules concern the Public Service Loan Forgiveness programme, created by an act of Congress in 2007.

In an effort to direct more graduates into public service jobs, the programme promises to cancel federal student loans for government employees and many nonprofit workers after they have made 10 years of payments.

Workers in the public sector, including teachers, medical professionals, firefighters, social service professionals and lawyers, are among those who can benefit.

In a statement, the Trump administration defended the updated rules, calling them a necessary bulwark to protect taxpayer funds.

The programme “was meant to support Americans who dedicate their careers to public service – not to subsidize organizations that violate the law, whether by harboring illegal immigrants or performing prohibited medical procedures that attempt to transition children away from their biological sex”, said Education Undersecretary Nicholas Kent.

Critics, however, have denounced the administration for using false claims of “terrorism” or criminal behaviour to silence opposing views and restrict civil liberties.

Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said the new rules weaponised loan forgiveness.

Lukens explained that many of the lawyers, social workers and paralegals who work at his organisation handle cases to stop deportations and other immigration litigation.

They count on public service loan forgiveness to take jobs that pay significantly less than the private sector, he said.

“All of a sudden, that’s going away,” Lukens told The Associated Press news agency. “The younger generation, I hope, will be able to wait this out for the next couple of years to see if it gets better, but if it doesn’t, we’re going to see a lot of people leave the field to go and work in a for-profit space.”

Organisations have raised concerns over the education secretary’s broad power to determine if a group should be barred. Short of a legal finding, the secretary can decide based on a “preponderance of the evidence” whether an employer is in violation.

The National Council of Nonprofits was among the associations criticising the change.

It said the rules would allow future administrations from any political party to change eligibility rules “based on their own priorities or ideology”.

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts to Indigenous communities in Canada as part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday.

The items, including an Inuit kayak, are part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader museum debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.

Negotiations on returning the Vatican items accelerated after Pope Francis in 2022 met with Indigenous leaders who had traveled to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s role in running Canada’s disastrous residential schools. During their visit, they were shown some objects in the collection, including wampum belts, war clubs and masks, and asked for them to be returned.

Francis later said he was in favor of returning the items and others in the Vatican collection on a case-by-case basis, saying: “In the case where you can return things, where it’s necessary to make a gesture, better to do it.”

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Wednesday it has been working with Indigenous groups on returning the items to their “originating communities.” It said it expected the Holy See to announce the return. Vatican and Canadian officials said they expected an announcement in the coming weeks, and that the items could arrive on Canadian soil before the end of the year.

The Globe and Mail newspaper first reported on the progress in the restitution negotiations.

Doubt cast on whether the items were freely given

Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens that was a highlight of that year’s Holy Year.

The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.

But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time. In those years, Catholic religious orders were helping to enforce the Canadian government’s forced assimilation policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”

Part of that policy included confiscating items used in Indigenous spiritual and traditional rituals, such as the 1885 potlatch ban that prohibited the integral First Nations ceremony. Those confiscated items ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as private collections.

The return of the items in the Vatican collection will follow the “church-to-church” model the Holy See used in 2023, when it gave its Parthenon Marbles to the Orthodox Christian Church in Greece. The three fragments were described by the Vatican as a “donation” to the Orthodox church, not a state-to-state repatriation to the Greek government.

In this case, the Vatican is expected to hand over the items to the Canadian bishops conference, with the explicit understanding that the ultimate keepers will be the Indigenous communities, a Canadian official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are not concluded.

What happens after the items are returned

The items, accompanied by whatever provenance information the Vatican has, will be taken first to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. There, experts and Indigenous groups will try to identify where the items originated, down to the specific community, and what should be done with them, the official said.

The official declined to say how many items were under negotiation or who decided what would be returned, but said the total numbered “a few dozen.” The aim is to get the items back this year, the official said, noting the 2025 Jubilee which celebrates hope but is also a time for repentance.

This year’s Jubilee comes on the centenary of the 1925 Holy Year and missionary exhibit, which is now so controversial that its 100th anniversary has been virtually ignored by the Vatican, which celebrates a lot of anniversaries.

The Assembly of First Nations said some logistical issues need to be finalized before the objects can be returned, including establishing protocols.

“For First Nations, these items are not artifacts. They are living, sacred pieces of our cultures and ceremonies and must be treated as the invaluable objects that they are,” National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Canadian Press.

Gloria Bell, associate professor of art history at McGill University who has conducted extensive research on the 1925 exhibit, said the items were acquired during an era of “Catholic Imperialism” by a pope who “praised missionaries and their genocidal labors in Indigenous communities as ‘heroes of the faith.’”

“This planned return marks a significant shift in the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and perhaps the beginning of healing,” said Bell, who is of Metis ancestry and wrote about the 1925 exhibit in “Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

A coordinated online doxxing campaign has emerged in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, targeting academics, teachers, government employees and others who have posted critical remarks about him.

At least 15 people have been fired or suspended from their jobs after discussing the killing online, according to a Reuters tally on Saturday based on interviews, public statements and local press reports. The total includes journalists, academic workers and teachers.

On Friday, a junior Nasdaq employee was fired over her posts related to Kirk.

Others have been subjected to torrents of online abuse or seen their offices flooded with calls demanding they be fired, part of a surge in right-wing rage that has followed the killing.

Chaya Raichik, who runs the right-wing “Libs of TikTok” account and is known for her anti-immigrant activism, is at the forefront of the campaign. She has shared names, photos and workplace details of individuals who expressed little sympathy for Kirk’s death.

In one case, Raichik targeted a lecturer at California State University, Monterey Bay, who reportedly wrote in an Instagram story: “I cannot muster much sympathy, truly. People are going to argue ‘He has a family, he has a wife and kids.’ What about all the kids, the many broken families from the over 258 school shootings 2020–present?”

Raichik reposted the lecturer’s photo, accusing him of mocking Kirk’s assassination.

The lecturer has not commented, but several teachers across the United States – including in California, Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas – have been suspended or dismissed over similar online remarks. Union leaders condemned Kirk’s killing, but also warned against punishing educators for free speech.

Raichik has also targeted members of the military. One Coast Guard employee is under investigation after posting a meme saying he did not care about Kirk’s death. A former Twitter worker was also singled out for criticising the New York Yankees for holding a moment of silence for Kirk.

A newly registered site, “Expose Charlie’s Murderers,” has 41 names of people it alleges were “supporting political violence online” and claims to be working on a backlog of more than 20,000 submissions.

A Reuters review of the screenshots and comments posted to the site shows that some of those featured joked about or celebrated Kirk’s death. One was quoted as saying, “He got what he deserved”, and others were quoted providing variations on “karma’s a bitch.” Others, however, were critical of the far-right figure while explicitly denouncing violence.

Some institutions have already taken disciplinary action. Middle Tennessee State University dismissed an assistant dean after she wrote: “Looks like ol’Charlie spoke his fate into existence. Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy.” The comment referred to Kirk’s 2023 defence of gun violence, in which he argued: “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment … That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

Even quoting that remark has been enough for some to be targeted.

Republican response

Some Republicans want to go further still and have proposed deporting Kirk’s critics from the US, suing them into penury or banning them from social media for life.

“Prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death,” said conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a prominent ally of Trump and one of several far-right figures who are organising digital campaigns on X to ferret out and publicly shame Kirk’s critics.

The wave of firings and suspensions has raised concerns over free expression, while far-right activists celebrate what they see as a campaign of accountability.

US lawmaker Clay Higgins said in a post on X that anyone who “ran their mouth with their smart**s hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man” needed to be “banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER.”

The US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on the same site that he had been disgusted to “see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action.”

Republicans’ anger at those disrespecting Kirk’s legacy contrasts with the mockery some of the same figures – including Kirk – directed at past victims of political violence.

For example, when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was clubbed over the head by a hammer-wielding conspiracy theorist during a break-in at their San Francisco home shortly before the 2022 midterm elections, Higgins posted a photo making fun of the attack. He later deleted the post.

Loomer falsely suggested that Paul Pelosi and his assailant were lovers, calling the brutal assault on the octogenarian a “booty call gone wrong.”

Speaking to a television audience a few days after the attack, a grinning Kirk called for the intruder to be sprung from jail.

“If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,” he said.

QUITO, Ecuador — The United States is designating two Ecuadorean gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, marking the Trump administration’s latest step to target criminal cartels in Latin America.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the announcement Thursday while in Ecuador as part of a trip to Latin America overshadowed by an American military strike against a similarly designated gang, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua. That attack has raised concerns in the region about what may follow as President Trump’s government pledges to step up military activity to combat drug trafficking and illegal migration.

“This time, we’re not just going to hunt for drug dealers in the little fast boats and say, ‘Let’s try to arrest them,’” Rubio told reporters in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. “No, the president has said he wants to wage war on these groups because they’ve been waging war on us for 30 years and no one has responded.”

Two more gangs designed as terrorist groups

Los Lobos and Los Choneros are Ecuadorean gangs blamed for much of the violence that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. The terrorist designation, Rubio said, brings “all sorts of options” for Washington to work in conjunction with the government of Ecuador to crack down on these groups.

That includes the ability to conduct targeted killings as well as take action against the properties and banking accounts in the U.S. of the group’s members and those with ties to the criminal organizations, Rubio said. He said the label also would help with intelligence sharing.

Los Choneros, Los Lobos and other similar groups are involved in contract killings, extortion operations and the movement and sale of drugs. Authorities have blamed them for the increased violence in the country as they fight over drug-trafficking routes to the Pacific and control of territory, including within prisons, where hundreds of inmates have been killed since 2021.

U.S. strike in the Caribbean takes center stage

The strike in the southern Caribbean has commanded attention on Rubio’s trip, which included a stop in Mexico on Wednesday.

U.S. officials say that the vessel’s cargo was intended for the U.S. and that the strike killed 11 people, but they have yet to explain how the military determined that those aboard were Tren de Aragua members.

Rubio said U.S. actions targeting cartels were being directed more toward Venezuela, and not Mexico.

“There’s no need to do that in many cases with friendly governments, because the friendly governments are going to help us,” Rubio told reporters. “They may do it themselves, and we’ll help them do it.”

A day earlier, Rubio justified the strike by saying that the boat posed an “immediate threat” to the U.S. and that Trump opted to “blow it up” rather than follow what had been standard procedure: to stop and board, arrest the crew and seize any contraband.

The strike drew a mixed reaction from leaders around Latin America, where the U.S. history of military intervention and gunboat diplomacy is still fresh. Many, such as officials in Mexico, were careful to not outright condemn the attack. They stressed the importance of protecting national sovereignty and warned that expanded U.S. military involvement might backfire.

Ecuador has struggled with drug trafficking

Ecuador has its own issues with narcotics trafficking.

President Daniel Noboa thanked Rubio for the U.S. efforts to “actually eliminate any terrorist threat.” Before their meeting, Rubio said on social media that the U.S. and Ecuador are “aligned as key partners on ending illegal immigration and combatting transnational crime and terrorism.”

The latest United Nations World Drug Report says various countries in South America, including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, reported larger cocaine seizures in 2022 than in 2021. The report does not give Venezuela the outsize role that the White House has in recent months.

“I don’t care what the U.N. says. I don’t care,” Rubio said.

Violence has skyrocketed in Ecuador since the pandemic. Drug traffickers expanded operations and took advantage of the nation’s banana industry. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of the fruit, and traffickers find shipping containers filled with it to be the perfect vehicle to smuggle their contraband.

Cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans have settled in Ecuador because it uses the U.S. dollar and has weak laws and institutions, along with a network of long-established gangs, including Los Choneros and Los Lobos, that are eager for work.

Ecuador gained prominence in the global cocaine trade after political changes in Colombia last decade. Coca bush fields in Colombia have been moving closer to Ecuador’s border due to the breakup of criminal groups after the 2016 demobilization of the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Ecuador in July extradited to the U.S. the leader of Los Choneros, José Adolfo Macías Villamar. He escaped from an Ecuadorean prison last year and was recaptured in June, two months after being indicted in New York on charges he imported thousands of pounds of cocaine into the U.S.

Lee, Cano and Martin write for the Associated Press. Lee and Cano reported from Mexico City. AP writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed to this report.

Al-Haq, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al-Mezan targeted for engaging with ICC, state department says.

The United States has added three prominent Palestinian rights groups, Al-Haq, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights to its sanctions list.

The groups were added to the Department of the Treasury’s “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List” on Thursday.

In a subsequent statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the rights groups were targeted for having “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent”.

The Trump administration had previously sanctioned the ICC in response to its investigation and subsequent arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.

All three groups had provided evidence on Israeli abuses in the case.

“The United States will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC’s disregard for sovereignty, and to punish entities that are complicit in its overreach,” Rubio said.

We condemn in the strongest terms the draconian sanctions imposed by The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on our organisations: @alhaq_org , @AlMezanCenter & @pchrgaza/1

— Al-Haq الحق (@alhaq_org) September 4, 2025

The Ramallah-based Al-Haq has been a leading organisation both in the occupied Palestinian territory and internationally seeking accountability for Israeli abuses, while leading litigation in several countries.

The Gaza City-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights have been leading independent organisation that have documented Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

In a statement shared by all three organisations, they condemned “in the strongest terms the draconian sanctions” imposed by the Trump administration.

“These measures in times of live genocide against our People, is a coward[ly], immoral, illegal and undemocratic act,” the statement said.

“Only states with complete disregard to international law and our shared humanity can take such heinous measures against human rights orgs working to end a genocide,” the statement said.

The U.S. just sanctioned three of the most prominent Palestinian human rights groups: @alhaq_org, @pchrgaza, and @AlMezanCenter.

Shameful but not surprising.

This administration bends over backwards to put Israel First every time. pic.twitter.com/ocXBYJllki

— Mohsen Farshneshani (@mFarshneshani) September 4, 2025

In a post on the social media platform X, Mohsen Farshneshani, a sanctions lawyer and advisor at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), described the organisations as “three of the most prominent Palestinian human rights groups”.

“Shameful but not surprising,” Farshneshani wrote. “This administration bends over backwards to put Israel First every time.”

The US previously sanctioned the Ramallah-based Addameer, a human rights organisation focused on Palestinian prisoners and detainees, in June.

At the time, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which both work closely with the group, said the sanctions “would make day-to-day operations harder and harder, including for their employees, assisted communities and service suppliers. This will also negatively affect their engagement with their partner organizations, locally and internationally, including US-based groups”.

“The US is using its sanctions regime to do the bidding of the Israeli government, which has long systematically sought to muzzle human rights reporting and advocacy,” it added.

In July, the Trump administration also sanctioned the Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers the occupied West Bank, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which represents Palestinians internationally.

At the same time, the Trump administration has revoked sanctions imposed under former US President Joe Biden on Israelis from illegal settlements and organisations accused of violence.

Defence minister says soldiers taken while evacuating area after a military operation that killed 11 rebels.

At least 34 government soldiers have been kidnapped by armed civilians in a jungle in southeastern Colombia after clashes that killed 11 fighters, including a commander of a dissident faction of the former FARC rebel group, Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez says.

The fighting occurred on Sunday in a rural part of the El Retorno municipality in the province of Guaviare and involved members of the Central General Staff (EMC), a group of former fighters with the left-wing FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government.

Sanchez said on Tuesday that the soldiers were taken as they were evacuating the area after a military operation that killed an EMC commander and 10 other rebels.

“This is an illegal, criminal action by people in civilian clothing,” Sanchez told reporters. “This is a kidnapping.”

The jungle region is considered a strategic corridor for drug trafficking and is known for its extensive coca crops, the main ingredient used to produce cocaine.

It followed a similar abduction in June when the army said 57 soldiers were seized by civilians in a southwestern mountainous area, a key zone for cocaine production and one of the most tense in the country’s ongoing security crisis.

The Colombian army has maintained that the civilians in the region receive orders from the EMC, the main FARC dissident group.

Armed groups – which fund themselves through drug trafficking, illegal mining and other crimes – remain present in Colombia after a six-decade conflict that has killed more than 450,000 people despite the peace deal with the FARC nine years ago when it was Colombia’s largest rebel group.

Last week, at least 18 people were killed and dozens injured in two attacks attributed to dissident FARC factions.

In Cali, the country’s third most populous city, a vehicle packed with explosives detonated on Thursday near a military aviation school, killing six people and injuring 71, according to the mayor’s office.

Hours earlier, a National Police Black Hawk helicopter participating in a coca crop eradication operation was downed by a drone in the municipality of Amalfi in the department of Antioquia, killing 12 police officers.

President Gustavo Petro blamed the attacks on dissident factions of FARC.

Qatar’s foreign ministry said delegations were meeting in Doha to review the implementation of a truce signed in July.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the M23 armed group have resumed negotiations in Qatar as violence deepens in the country’s mineral-rich eastern provinces in spite of a recently signed an agreement to reach a full peace deal.

Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said delegations from Kinshasa and the M23 were meeting in Doha to review the implementation of a truce signed in July. “We’ve received the two parties here in Doha to discuss the earlier agreement,” Ansari said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The deal, brokered by Qatar, committed both sides to a ceasefire and a path to a final settlement. Under its terms, talks were supposed to begin on 8 August and conclude by 18 August. Both deadlines passed without progress, and the agreement has faltered amid accusations of violations from both sides.

Ansari said the current discussions include plans to create a mechanism for monitoring the truce, as well as an exchange of prisoners and detainees. He added that the United States and the International Committee of the Red Cross were closely involved in supporting the talks.

The Qatar-led initiative followed a separate ceasefire agreement signed in Washington between Rwanda, who back M23, and DRC in June. But the M23 rejected that deal, demanding direct negotiations with Kinshasa to address what it called unresolved political grievances.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he ended the conflict, and several others, describing DRC as the “darkest, deepest” part of Africa and asserting that he “saved lots of lives.” On Monday, Trump claimed that nine million people were “killed with machetes” during the decades-long war, insisting, “I stopped it.”

Rights groups have dismissed Trump’s claims as misleading. “It is far from the reality to say that he has ended the war,” said Christian Rumu of Amnesty International. “People on the ground continue to experience grave human rights violations, and some of these amount to crimes against humanity,” he added, calling on Washington to accelerate efforts to secure peace.

Despite multiple ceasefire attempts, fighting has intensified in North and South Kivu provinces, forcing more than two million people from their homes this year. Human Rights Watch last week accused the M23 of carrying out ethnically targeted “mass killings,” while United Nations experts have said Rwandan forces played a “critical” role in supporting the group’s offensive.

Rwanda denies involvement, but the M23’s capture of vast areas, including the regional capital Goma earlier this year, has fuelled fears of a wider regional conflict.

The DRC’s eastern region, home to some of the world’s richest deposits of gold, cobalt, and coltan, has been devastated by years of armed conflict, with civilians bearing the brunt of atrocities despite repeated international mediation efforts.

Aug. 22 (UPI) — Dissident factions of the FARC guerrilla movement involved in the drugs trade were being blamed for two separate attacks in Colombia that killed at least 18 people and injured dozens more.

Six people were killed and more than 60 were injured when a car bomb detonated Thursday outside a military flight academy in the western city of Cali, prompting mayor Alejandro Eder to declare martial law, temporarily ban large trucks from the city and offer a $10,000 reward for information about the attack.

Earlier, at least 12 police officers were killed when a police helicopter on an operation in the northwest of the country to destroy coca crops — the raw ingredient of cocaine — was brought down by a drone in a rural area near Medellin.

Calling the Cali bomb blast a “terrorist attack,” Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez laid responsibility at the feet of “the narco cartel, alias Mordisco,” referrring to Ivan Mordisco, head of the heavily armed Central General Staff (EMC), the largest of the “ex-FARC mafia” groups to emerge after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia laid down its arms in 2016 and a major player in narcotrafficking in the region.

“This cowardly attack against civilians is a desperate reaction to the loss of control over drug trafficking in Valle del Cauca, Cauca, and Narino, where the Public Force has neutralized much of this threat,” he said.

Sanchez also blamed EMC for the helicopter attack.

However, President Gustavo Petro initially blamed the Gulf Clan, a rival to the EMC and another former FARC splinter group, because the attack followed the seizure of 1.5 tons of cocaine in the heart of its home turf in the Uraba region of Antioquia, where the helicopter was downed.

Peto said the Cali bombing was carried out by the EMC’s Carlos Patino Front, saying it was in response to “an intense defeat” at the hands of government forces.

“More than 250,000 rounds of ammunition recovered by the State, five houses full of explosives, 200 rifle parts, etc. That was the center of this column’s activity in Honduras, El Tambo, down to Plateado. With that operation, we achieved a victory in the place where there is more coca leaf than anywhere else in the Cauca department, around 60% to 70% of the total,” he wrote in a post on X.

The MO of the attack allegedly was a match for the front, which frequently targets military and police bases as part of its war with the government. It has been blamed for a string of attacks across Cauca in March, using motorbike bombs, gunfire and drones armed with explosives.

Petro said that an extraordinary meeting of the security council in Cali had decided not to extend the state of emergency, opting instead for a decree to beef up measures “to further eliminate cocaine production and make it more difficult to export that cocaine from the Pacific coast.”

PM’s office says the weapons transfer to the Lebanese army marks the start of a wider disarmament campaign.

Lebanon has launched a plan to disarm Palestinian groups in its refugee camps, beginning with the handover of weapons from Burj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut.

The prime minister’s office announced on Thursday that the weapons transfer to the Lebanese army marks the start of a wider disarmament campaign. More handovers are expected in the coming weeks across Burj al-Barajneh and other camps nationwide.

A Fatah official told the Reuters news agency the arms handed over so far were only illegal weapons that had entered the camp within the previous day. Television footage showed military vehicles inside the camp, though Reuters could not verify what type of weapons were being surrendered.

The initiative follows Lebanon’s commitment under a US-backed truce between Israel and Hezbollah in November, which restricted weapons to six state security forces. Since the November 27, 2024, ceasefire agreement, Israel has continued attacking Lebanon, often on a weekly basis.

The government has tasked the army with producing a strategy by the end of the year to consolidate all arms under state authority.

According to the prime minister’s office, the decision to disarm Palestinian factions was reached in a May meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Both leaders affirmed Lebanon’s sovereignty and insisted that only the state should hold arms. Lebanese and Palestinian officials later agreed on a timeline and mechanism for the handovers.

For decades, Palestinian groups have maintained control inside Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, which largely operate outside state jurisdiction. The latest initiative is seen as the most serious effort in years to curb the presence of weapons inside the camps.

Palestinian resistance movements grew out of displacement and political exclusion after the creation of Israel in 1948, when some 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes.

Over the years, groups including Fatah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) established a presence in Lebanon’s camps to continue armed struggle against Israel.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon remain without key civil rights, such as access to certain jobs and property ownership. With limited opportunities, many have turned to armed factions for protection or representation.

The disarmament push also comes as Hezbollah faces what analysts describe as its greatest military challenge in decades, following Israeli strikes in 2024 that decimated much of its leadership.

Parakou, Benin – Until a few years ago, the sound of Iliyasu Yahuza’s matte black Qlink X-Ranger 200 motorbike would bring the neighbourhood children out into the street. They would abandon their games and rush to the roadside, waving excitedly and shouting his name.

Now, they scatter and hide.

And it is not just the children; across all walks of life in the remote villages of northern Benin, the rumble of a motorbike engine now stirs fear and terror as it’s become synonymous with armed fighters roaming the region.

For Yahuza, a 34-year-old trader who has spent years navigating the bumpy roads between remote farms and local markets, the switch “cuts deep”.

His motorbike was once a symbol of success in his community in rural Brignamaro, some 500km (310 miles) away from the capital city, Porto-Novo. Now, he feels it’s a liability that marks him as a potential threat.

“People have begun seeing me as a member of the armed group launching attacks in this region,” Yahuza told Al Jazeera.

“I no longer feel secure riding a motorbike.”

In recent years, motorcycles have become the preferred mode of transport for armed groups operating not only in Benin, but across the Sahel from Burkina Faso to Mali to Niger. Fighters on motorbikes have changed the face of conflict, experts say.

According to a 2023 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), motorbikes are “one of the most widely trafficked commodities in the Sahel”, deeply embedded in the region’s criminal economy, and “indispensable to the violent extremist armed groups” operating in West Africa’s borderlands.

In the process, public sentiment towards these vehicles, and those who drive them, has shifted, with a shadow now cast over daily riders like Yahuza.

Pride before the fall

Life in Brignamaro used to move to a different rhythm years ago, Yahuza remembers. Children’s laughter chased the echo of his Qlink X-Ranger – at that time a rarity in these parts – as his peers looked on in admiration and delight.

The shift began in 2023, when approximately 12 suspected armed fighters, all mounted on motorbikes, attacked his community.

They terrorised the village and kidnapped a known businessman. Throughout that year, similar incidents rippled across northern Benin’s provinces, from Alibori to Tanguita and Materi. The pattern was always the same. Armed men would arrive fast, strike hard, and disappear into the landscape on their versatile machines.

As a businessman dealing in soya beans, maize, and groundnuts, Yahuza had chosen his motorbike for purely practical reasons. The vehicle could navigate the rough terrain connecting scattered farming communities, and would last longer than ordinary motorcycles.

“That was the major reason I chose the motorbike. Also, it lasts longer than an ordinary motorcycle and for that, it takes about two years before I change one,” he explained.

But more recently, practicality has given way to paranoia.

Security forces regularly stop Yahuza, demanding documentation and explanations. Even minor disagreements with neighbours can take on sinister undertones.

“The locals in my community are raising eyebrows at me. I could remember having a minor misunderstanding with a colleague, and he was quick to profile me as a militant,” he recounted.

Weapon of choice

Much like the Toyota pick-up trucks that became synonymous with ISIL (ISIS) fighters in Syria and Iraq more than a decade ago, motorbikes have emerged as the tactical vehicle of choice for Sahelian fighters.

Groups like al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), with an estimated 6,000 fighters forming the region’s most heavily armed rebel force, have perfected the art of motorcycle warfare. Fast, nimble, and easy to conceal, these bikes enable hit-and-run tactics perfectly suited to the Sahel’s vast, sparsely populated terrain.

In early 2025 alone, JNIM fighters launched a coordinated campaign of attacks: 30 soldiers killed in Benin, more than 50 people near Kobe in Mali, 44 worshippers in Niger’s Fambita, and 200 troops at Burkina Faso’s Djibo military outpost. In each assault, motorbikes provided the speed and surprise that made these attacks possible.

“Motorbikes have become a critical mobility tool for terrorists, including bandits across the Sahel,” explained Timothy Avele, a counterterrorism expert and managing director of Agent-X Security Limited.

The appeal is multifaceted, according to the expert. “Concealment becomes easier” when fighters can scatter and hide their vehicles. The Sahel’s challenging terrain, with desert expanses, dense forests, and mountainous regions, “favours two-wheeled transport over larger vehicles”. Perhaps most importantly, the economics work in the fighters’ favour.

“Another key factor is the lower fuel cost using motorbikes for their operations and mobility compared to, say, Hilux trucks,” Avele added.

Built to last

In the workshop of Abdulmajeed Yorusunonbi in Tchatchou, some 510km (317 miles) from Porto-Novo, the 31-year-old mechanic swears by the durability of these machines. As a local mechanic, he sees firsthand why armed groups favour these vehicles over ordinary motorcycles.

“The only simple fault motorbikes sometimes get is flat tires. It’s only on rare occasions that you will see the engine needing a repair. Their durability is second to none,” Yorusunonbi noted.

This reliability makes them perfect for rebel operations, where mechanical failure could mean capture or death. But it also means that once acquired, these vehicles remain in the hands of armed fighters for years, multiplying their tactical value.

Like many in his trade, Yorusunonbi has developed his own informal screening system to filter out unscrupulous clients. He watches for telltale signs – customers who pay in cash without haggling, those who avoid eye contact, or groups arriving together. But in a region where poverty is widespread and many legitimate customers share these same traits, certainty remains elusive.

The psychological impact on communities has been profound. Yaru Mako, 41, a farmer in Kerou, 482km (300 miles) from Porto-Novo, told Al Jazeera he now forces himself to believe that whoever drives a motorbike has affiliations with the armed groups. “Because in all the cases of attacks we have had and heard, the perpetrators always used motorbikes. Mostly, they are two persons per motorbike,” he explained.

This suspicion has real consequences. In early 2024, Yahuza found himself detained for hours by soldiers in Kerou who questioned his identity and motives. Only his local connections saved him from a worse fate.

“I was lucky that I know many people who properly identified me as an innocent person,” he said.

Junaidu Woru, a Tanguita resident, voices what many now believe: that non-fighters should abandon motorbikes entirely for their own safety.

“Innocent people should avoid using those bikes for their own safety. Because when an attack happens, and an innocent person drives around the area at that particular time, they can be mistaken for a militant,” he warned.

The underground economy

The flow of motorbikes into the hands of armed groups follows complex routes through West Africa’s porous borders. Benin, once a major importer of motorcycles, saw its official trade disrupted in 2022 when new taxes were imposed, including higher VAT rates and import levies.

Before that, motorcycles were exempt from import duties. The government later imposed customs levies to boost domestic revenue, a fiscally driven move. However, the policy spurred increased smuggling through border hotspots like Malanville and Hillacondji, raising security concerns about untracked vehicles potentially reaching criminal groups in the Sahel.

According to traders in northern Benin, these measures have pushed the trade underground, with buyers increasingly sourcing bikes from neighbouring countries and smuggling them across borders. The motorcycles enter through various routes; from Nigeria across the northern border into Niger, or through Beninese territory, where they are loaded onto pirogues and transported upstream on the River Niger.

In Parakou’s markets, Zubair Sabi sells motorbikes like Yahuza’s Qlink X-Ranger 200 for about 900,000 CFA francs ($1,590). Some models fetch more than one million CFA ($1,770), while others sell for as low as 750,000 CFA ($1,330), prices that put them within reach of well-funded armed groups.

“As a businessman, all I’m interested in is selling my goods,” Sabi said, before acknowledging the moral complexity of his position. “I don’t mind verifying the identity of the customer before selling to them. But I can’t really say who exactly is buying the bikes or what they are using them for.”

Like other traders, Sabi has implemented informal checks, asking for identification, noting suspicious bulk purchases, or refusing sales to unknown customers arriving in groups. Yet, he admits, these measures are far from foolproof.

Governments across the Sahel have responded with blunt instruments, with at least 43 motorcycle bans having been recorded since 2012, according to GI-TOC. Yet these sweeping restrictions often hurt civilians more than armed fighters, cutting off rural communities from markets, clinics and schools.

For traders like Yahuza, the situation presents an impossible dilemma. Without his motorbike, he cannot reach the remote farms where farmers sell their produce. With it, he risks being mistaken for the very criminals terrorising his community.

“It’s not just about riding any more,” he reflected. “It’s about what people think when they see you on it.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.

MONUSCO condemns the attacks by the ADF ‘in the strongest possible terms’, the mission’s spokesperson says.

Rebels backed by ISIL (ISIS) have killed at least 52 civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this month, according to the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) in the country, as both the DRC army and Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group accuse each other of violating a recently reached US-mediated ceasefire deal.

Attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) targeted the Beni and Lubero territories of the eastern North Kivu province between August 9 and 16, MONUSCO said on Monday, warning that the death toll could rise further.

The renewed violence comes as a separate conflict between the DRC army and the M23 group continues to simmer in the east of the country, despite a series of peace treaties signed in recent months. The government and M23 had agreed to sign a permanent peace deal by August 18, but no agreement was announced on Monday.

The latest ADF “violence was accompanied by kidnappings, looting, the burning of houses, vehicles, and motorcycles, as well as the destruction of property belonging to populations already facing a precarious humanitarian situation,” MONUSCO said. It condemned the attacks “in the strongest possible terms”, the mission’s spokesperson said.

The ADF is among several militias wrangling over land and resources in the DRC’s mineral-rich east.

Lieutenant Elongo Kyondwa Marc, a regional Congolese army spokesperson, said the ADF was taking revenge on civilians after suffering defeats by Congolese forces.

“When they arrived, they first woke the residents, gathered them in one place, tied them up with ropes, and then began to massacre them with machetes and hoes,” Macaire Sivikunula, chief of Lubero’s Bapere sector, told the Reuters news agency over the weekend.

After a relative lull in recent months, authorities said the group killed nearly 40 people in Komanda city, Ituri province, last month, when it stormed a Catholic church during a vigil and fired on worshippers, including many women and children.

The ADF, an armed group formed by former Ugandan rebels in the 1990s after discontent with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, has killed thousands of civilians and increased looting and killings in the northeastern DRC.

In 2002, following military assaults by Ugandan forces, the group moved its activities to neighbouring DRC. In 2019, it pledged allegiance to ISIL.

Among the 52 victims so far this month, at least nine were killed overnight from Saturday to Sunday in an attack on the town of Oicha, in North Kivu, the AFP news agency learned from security and local sources.

A few days earlier, the ADF had already killed at least 40 people in several towns in the Bapere sector, also in North Kivu province, according to local and security sources.

In response to the renewed attacks, MONUSCO said it had strengthened its military presence in several sectors and allowed several hundred civilians to take refuge in its base.

At the end of 2021, Kampala and Kinshasa launched a joint military operation against the ADF, dubbed “Shujaa”, so far without succeeding in putting an end to their attacks.

Maiduguri, Nigeria – Sometimes, it feels to Zara Ali as though her daughter was born already sick in the womb.

On a recent weekday, the 30-year-old mother clutched the ill toddler in her lap as she sat outside a government hospital in Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Nigeria’s Borno State. The two had just finished yet another doctor’s appointment in hopes of curing the child.

Although cranky as any other sick two-year-old, it is Amina’s hair – brownish and seemingly bald in several spots – that’s a visible sign of the malnourishment doctors had previously diagnosed. Yet, despite months of treatment with a protein-heavy, ready-to-eat paste, Ali says progress has been slow, and her daughter might require more hospital visits.

“She gets sick, gets a little better, and then falls ill again,” she said, frustrated. Already, Ali and her family have had to move homes several times because of the Boko Haram conflict. They were displaced from Damboa town, about 89km (55 miles) away, and now live in Maiduguri as displaced persons.

Adding to her woes is the reduced access to care in recent months as several aid clinics she visits for free treatment have begun to scale back operations, or in some cases, completely shut their services. “Honestly, their interventions were really helpful, and we need them to come back and help our children,” Ali said.

Amina is only one of some five million children across northeast and northwest Nigeria suffering from malnourishment in what experts have called the region’s most severe food crisis in years. The troubled northeast region has, for a decade and a half, been in the throes of a conflict waged by the armed group Boko Haram, and prolonged insecurity has disrupted food supplies. In the northwest, bandit groups are causing similar upheavals, resulting in a hunger crisis that state governments are struggling to contain.

Compounding the problem this year are the massive, brutal funding cuts roiling aid organisations, which have often stepped in to help by providing food assistance to the 2.3 million displaced northeast Nigerians. Many of those organisations were dependent on funds from the United States, which, since February, has reduced contributions to aid programmes globally by about 75 percent.

The World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations food aid agency and the world’s largest provider of food assistance, was forced to shut down more than half of all its nutrition clinics across the northeast in August, Emmanuel Bigenimana, who leads northeast Nigeria operations, told Al Jazeera from the agency’s site in Maiduguri. Some 300,000 children are cut off from needed nutrition supplements, he said.

Already, in July, WFP doled out its last reserves of grains for displaced adults and families, Bigenimana added, standing by a row of half-empty tent warehouses. A few men removed grain sacks from the tents and loaded them onto trucks bound for neighbouring Chad, a country also caught in complex crises. For Nigeria, he said, which is in the lean season before harvest, there was no more food.

Insecurity fuels food crisis

Northeast Nigeria should be a food basket for the country, due to its fertile, savannah vegetation suitable for cultivating nuts and grains. However, since the Boko Haram conflict broke out, the food supply has dwindled. Climate shocks in the increasingly arid region have added to the problems.

Boko Haram aims to control the territory and has been active since 2011. The group’s operations are mainly in Borno, neighbouring states in the northeast, and across the border in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. It gained global notoriety in 2014 for the kidnapping of female students in Chibok. Internal fractures and Nigeria’s military response have reduced the group’s capacity in recent years, but it still controls some territory, and a breakaway faction is affiliated with ISIL (ISIS). More than 35,000 people have been killed in attacks by the group, and more than 2 million are displaced.

Before the insecurity, families in the region, particularly outside the urban metropolis of Maiduguri, survived on subsistence farming, tilling plots of land, and selling surplus harvest. These days, that is hardly an option. The military has hunkered down in garrisoned towns since 2019 to avoid troop losses. It is hard to find cultivating space amid the trenches and security barriers constructed in such places, security analyst Kabir Adamu of intelligence firm Beacon Consulting, told Al Jazeera. Those who venture outside the towns risk being targeted by armed fighters.

In rural areas not under army control, Boko Haram operates as a sort of government, exploiting villagers to generate money.

“The armed actors collect taxes from them to use land for farming,” Adamu said, adding that for rural farmers, those taxes often prove heavy on the pockets. In more unlucky scenarios, farmers have been killed if they were believed to be military informants. In January, 40 farmers were executed in the town of Baga. Fishermen have similarly been targeted.

The vicious cycle has repeated itself for years, and the compounding effect is the current food crisis, experts say.

Just 45 minutes from Maiduguri, in Konduga town, farmer Mustapha Modu, 55, tilled the earth in anticipation of rainfall on a cool weekday. He had just returned from a short journey to Maiduguri, braving the risky highways to buy seedlings in hopes of a good season.

Even as Modu planted, he worried that harvest might be impossible. There are widespread fears that Boko Haram fighters often lie in wait and then pounce on farmers to seize harvests. At one time, he said, his family of three wives and 17 children depended on handouts, but those hardly reached Konduga any more, so he had to do something.

“It’s been a long time since we saw them in our village,” Modu said of food aid distributors. “That’s why I managed to go and get some seedlings, even though the insurgents are still on our neck.”

Aid cuts risk more ‘violence’

The UN and its agencies were the focus of aid cuts from Washington in April, leading to the WFP receiving zero aid from the US this year, Bigenimana said. Like the US, other donors such as the European Union and the United Kingdom have also cut back on aid, instead diverting money to security as tensions remain high over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The agency catered to some 1.3 million displaced people and others in hard-to-reach areas, fringe locations accessible only by helicopter. For children, the agency ran several nutrition clinics and supported government hospitals with ready-to-use food, a protein mixture made mostly of groundnut, which can rapidly stabilise a malnourished child.

Funding cuts caused the WFP to begin rationing supplies in recent months. In July, resources in Nigeria were completely emptied. At least $130m is required for the agency to speedily get back on track with its operations here, Bigenimana said. Extended lack of support, he said, could push more people into danger.

“People are attempting to go and get firewood to sell outside the secure points,” the official said. “Even when we delay distribution on normal days, people protest. So we are expecting that, and it could get violent.”

Multiple other NGOs across the region were also hit by the Trump aid cuts. They not only provided food aid or nutrition treatment, but also medical services, and crucial vaccines children need in the first years of life to guard against infectious diseases like measles.

Analysts like Adamu, however, criticise aid groups for what he said is their failure to create a system where people don’t rely on food aid. In Borno, the state government has, since 2021, gradually shut down camps for internally displaced people and resettled some in their communities. The aim, the government argues, is to reduce dependency and restore dignity. However, the move faces widespread backlash as aid agencies and rights organisations point out that some areas are still unsafe, and that displaced people simply move to other camps.

“They should have supported the government on security reforms for the state,” Adamu argued. That, he said, would have been a more sustainable way of empowering people and would have eased the food crisis.

Rain time, sick time

For now, the food crisis looks set to continue, and children in particular appear to be bearing the brunt, especially as heavy rains arrive.

Muhammad Bashir Abdullahi, an officer with medical aid group Doctors without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera that more malnourished children are being admitted to the organisation’s nutrition facility in Maiduguri since early August. It is possible, he said, that the shuttered services in other organisations were contributing to the higher numbers.

“We used to admit 200 children weekly, but last week we admitted up to 400 children,” Abdullahi said. MSF, which is not dependent on US aid, has recorded more than 6,000 malnourished children in its Maiduguri nutrition centre since January. Typically, children receive the protein paste, or in acute cases, a special milk solution. Abdullahi said more children are likely to be admitted in the coming weeks.

Back at the government hospital where Ali was seeking treatment for her daughter, another woman stopped outside the clinic with her children, twin baby boys.

One of them was sick, the mother, 33-year-old Fatima Muhammad, complained, and is suffering from a swollen head. This is the third hospital she was visiting, as two other facilities managed by NGOs were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, her son had not been accepting the protein paste, a sign that medical experts say signals acute malnutrition.

“His brother is sitting and crawling already, but he still cannot sit,” Muhammad said, her face squeezed in a frown. She blamed herself for not eating enough during her pregnancy, although she hardly had a choice. “I think that’s what affected them. I just need help for my son, nothing more.”

Mass outcry from aid groups as Israel continues to block millions of dollars in aid supplies to starving Palestinians.

More than 100 aid groups have accused Israel of obstructing life-saving aid from entering Gaza, resulting in vast quantities of relief supplies remaining stranded in warehouses across Jordan and Egypt as more Palestinians starve.

Aid trucks have massed on Gaza’s borders amid Israel’s blockade of the famine-stricken territory, and new rules are being used by Israel to deny the entry of food, medicine, water and temporary shelters, the groups said in a joint statement released on Thursday.

“Despite claims by Israeli authorities that there is no limit on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, most major international NGOs [nongovernmental organisations] have been unable to deliver a single truck of life-saving supplies since 2 March,” the groups said.

“Instead of clearing the growing backlog of goods, Israeli authorities have rejected requests from dozens of NGOs to bring in life-saving goods, citing that these organisations are ‘not authorised to deliver aid’,” the groups, which include Doctors Without Borders (known by their French acronym, MSF) and Oxfam, said.

Relief organisations that have worked in Gaza for decades are now told by Israel that they are not “authorised” to deliver aid due to new “registration rules”, which include so-called “security” vetting.

Hospitals in Gaza are now without basic supplies as a result, and children, the elderly and those with disabilities are “dying from hunger and preventable illnesses”, the statement continued.

Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead, said her organisation has more than $2.5m worth of humanitarian aid supplies that “have been rejected from entering Gaza by Israel”.

MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, said the restrictions on aid are part of Israel’s militarised distribution of relief supplies, spearheaded by the notorious GHF.

“The militarised food distribution scheme has weaponised starvation and curated suffering. Distributions at GHF sites have resulted in extreme levels of violence and killings, primarily of young Palestinian men, but also of women and children, who have gone to the sites in the hope of receiving food,” Zabalgogeazkoa said.

At least 859 Palestinians have been killed attempting to access aid supplies around GHF distribution sites since May.

The more than 100 relief organisations that signed the statement have called for pressure to be exerted on Israel to end its “weaponisation of aid”, for Israel to end its “bureaucratic obstruction” and for unconditional delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israel’s Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, who had a role in the new rules imposed on aid groups, told the AFP news agency that registration of humanitarian groups could be rejected if Israeli authorities deem that its activities deny the democratic character of Israel or ” promote delegitimisation campaigns”, such as the movement to boycott Israel over its war on Gaza.

The joint outcry by aid groups comes as Israeli forces launch a new operation to take over Gaza City, which will displace more than a million people and force them to move south to concentration zones.

Israel’s operation to occupy Gaza City has triggered international outrage, with the United Nations and world leaders warning of devastating humanitarian consequences for the war-shattered territory.

The US is sanctioning the Pareco-FF armed group, as well as the Congolese mining company CDMC.

The United States has sanctioned an armed group accused of illicit mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as both the army and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group traded accusations of violating a recently reached US-mediated ceasefire deal by attacking each other’s positions.

The US Department of the Treasury said on Tuesday that it was blocking all interests and restricting transactions with Pareco-FF, an armed group that it said controlled the key coltan mining site of Rubaya from 2022 to 2024, and which has opposed the M23 group.

The administration of President Donald Trump has been pushing for US access to the region’s minerals, as it has done in other parts of the world, including Ukraine.

It also slapped sanctions on the Congolese mining company CDMC, saying it sold minerals that were sourced and smuggled from mines near Rubaya and two Hong Kong-based export companies, East Rise and Star Dragon, which have been accused of buying minerals from the armed group.

“The United States is sending a clear message that no armed group or commercial entity is immune from sanctions if they undermine peace, stability or security in the DRC,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

Rubaya is currently under the control of the M23 group, which is already targeted by US sanctions. The mine there produces 15 to 30 percent of the world’s supply of coltan, a mineral used in electronics such as laptops and mobile telephones.

Many Pareco rebels integrated into the DRC military in 2009, but Pareco-FF emerged in 2022 in response to the M23 gains.

The sanctions come as Congolese army spokesman Sylvain Ekenge said in a statement that the M23 group’s “almost daily” attacks constitute an “intentional and manifest violation” of the declaration of principles, which the two parties signed in mid-July in Doha, whose terms include a “permanent ceasefire”.

It followed a separate peace deal between the Congolese and Rwandan governments, signed in Washington, DC, the previous month, which also helped the US government and US companies gain control of critical minerals in the region.

The Congolese army said it was ready to respond “to all provocations from this [M23 group] coalition, accustomed to violating agreements”, the statement said.

M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said in a post on X on Monday that DRC’s government was continuing “its offensive military manoeuvres aimed at full-scale war”.

The eastern DRC, a region bordering Rwanda with abundant natural resources but plagued by non-state armed groups, has suffered extreme violence for more than three decades.

A new surge of unrest broke out early this year when the M23 group captured the key cities of Goma and Bukavu, setting up their own administrations, with thousands killed in the conflict.

Violence has continued on the ground despite the US and Qatar-brokered peace deal, with fighting becoming more intense since Friday around the town of Mulamba in South Kivu province, where the front line had been relatively stable since March.

The M23 attacked positions between Friday and Monday held by pro-Kinshasa militia and army forces, and pushed them back several kilometres, after clashes using light and heavy weapons, local and security sources said.

The DRC government and the M23 rebels have agreed to sign a permanent peace deal by August 18, but the renewed fighting has threatened this effort.

Tensions are high in Mali’s capital, Bamako, after the arrests of dozens of soldiers in recent days, including two high-ranking generals. Although shops and offices stayed open on Tuesday, residents, including one journalist, told Al Jazeera the atmosphere there is uneasy.

Mali’s military government has so far remained silent about the spate of arrests. However, unofficial reports said the soldiers are being detained for their alleged involvement in a coup plot that aimed to overthrow General Assimi Goita’s government.

The landlocked West African country, located in the semiarid Sahel region, is embroiled in a myriad of political and security crises. The recent arrests, analysts said, mark the first time the military is cracking down on soldiers within its ranks on suspicion of a coup.

Here’s what you need to know about the arrests:

Who was arrested and why?

Conflicting reports have emerged since the arrests over the weekend and on Monday.

Reports by the French news channel RFI put the number of arrested soldiers at at least 50 while the Reuters news agency reported 36 to 40 soldiers have been detained.

Two generals are reportedly among them.

Abass Dembele, a former military governor of the northern region of Mopti, was arrested on Sunday morning in his home in Kati, a garrison town just outside Bamako, according to RFI.

Dembele is popular among Malian soldiers and has a reputation as an officer who often leads from the front. He was active in the northern war of 2012, a civil war that broke out after Tuareg separatists parlayed with armed groups to seize more than 60 percent of the country. The failure of the Malian army to push the rebels back prompted France to deploy thousands of soldiers.

Air force General Nema Sagara is another top official believed to be detained. Sagara is one of the few high-ranking female military officials in Mali and throughout the region. She is also one of the few female Malian officers to have been drafted into battle when she fought in the civil war of 2013.

Al Jazeera, however, could not independently confirm the veracity of the reports.

What is happening in Mali?

Since 2012, Mali’s army has battled a swarm of armed groups in the north, including Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in the greater Sahara (ISGS).

The fighting has resulted in thousands of deaths while up to 350,000 people are currently displaced, according to Human Rights Watch. Several northern towns in rebel-held territory are under siege by the armed groups, limiting food, fuel and medical supplies. The groups operate in the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger border area.

Promising to end the violence, then-Colonel Goita, 41, took power in two successive coups in 2020 and 2021. He was sworn in as transitional president in June 2021. Under his control, the country severed ties with its former coloniser, France, and thousands of French soldiers involved in the fight against the armed groups exited the country.

The military rulers have since turned to Russian private mercenaries and military officials under the Wagner Group and Africa Corps. The army and the Russians have recorded wins but also heavy losses.

What has the military government said?

The military government has not put out an official statement stating the reasons for the arrests.

RFI quoted an unnamed Malian senior military officer close to the government as saying the soldiers were arrested because “they wanted to destabilise the transition,” referring to the military government, which calls itself a transitional government that is expected eventually to hand over power to a civilian administration.

Many of those arrested were confirmed by RFI to be members of the national guard. The special unit is headed by Defence Minister and General Sadio Camara. In elite military circles in Bamako, Camara is increasingly seen as a rival to Goita although they were both part of the team of coup leaders who seized power. The rifts inside the military come as some of Goita’s policies have begun to irk many, both in the military and among civilians.

This week’s arrests, some critics said, are the strongest sign yet that the military’s control is weakening from the inside. While Goita is the head of state, he appears not to have complete control over the armed forces, analysts said.

Due to the reported cracks, the military government will want to project a strong image, hence its silence, Beverly Ochieng, a Sahel analyst with the intelligence firm Control Risks, told Al Jazeera.

“[These arrests] indicate some pronounced divisions,” Ochieng said. “Quite a few red lines have been crossed in recent months, and people are bound to be tired. It is likely that the military leadership will maintain and project a united front to downplay vulnerabilities and internal rivalries.”

Is there a crackdown on dissent?

Critics said Goita’s recent policies appear to attack dissenters and aim to shrink the civic space in the troubled country.

Goita’s government, for example, approved a bill in July that would allow him to seek a five-year presidential mandate, renewable “as many times as necessary” and without requiring an election. Earlier, when it seized power, the military promised to hand over power to civilians in 2024.

In May, the military government dissolved political parties and organisations and banned political meetings, drawing condemnation from opposition politicians and rights groups.

In addition, the military government has targeted outspoken critics. This month, former Prime Minister Moussa Mara was arrested and charged with “undermining the credibility of the state” after he visited political prisoners and posted about seeking justice for them.

“As long as the night lasts, the sun will obviously appear!” Mara had written on July 4 in a social media post, adding: “We will fight by all means for this to happen as soon as possible!”

Choguel Maiga, who was the prime minister until his ouster in November, has also accused Goita’s government of targeting him. Although Maiga was once a champion of the government, he became critical of Goita this year. In July, the government accused him of fraud and embezzlement during his time in office and launched an investigation.

What else is fuelling anger in the country?

Alongside the political situation, a lack of security remains rife in the country, causing frustration among many Malians.

Several armed groups continue to operate in the north, including JNIM. Human Rights Watch (HRW) blames the military forces and their Russian counterparts for targeting civilians indiscriminately on the assumption that they work with armed groups. At least 12 men from the Fulani ethnic group appear to have been executed and 81 forcibly disappeared since January, HRW said in a report.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which are also military led, banded together to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) this year after they withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States.They also created a 5,000-strong force for joint military operations to try to drive out armed groups.

Separately, the Malian army is once again battling Tuareg separatists. Although there were peace agreements made after the 2012 war that allowed the northern region of Kidal to maintain a semiautonomous nature, the military government under Goita has torn up the peace deals and returned to fighting, forcing hundreds of people to flee across the border to Mauritania.

In late July, Malian forces said they killed 70 “terrorists” in a raid in the north without specifying if those killed were with an armed group or were separatists.

The California Supreme Court sided with environmental groups in a Thursday ruling, saying that state lawyers were wrong in their claim that the Public Utilities Commission’s decision to slash rooftop solar incentives could not be challenged.

The unanimous decision sends the case brought by the three groups back to the appeals court.

The groups argue the utilities commission violated state law in 2022 when it cut the value of the credits that panel owners receive for sending their unused power to the electric grid by as much as 80%. The rules apply to Californians installing the panels after April 14, 2023.

The Supreme Court justices said the appeals court erred in January 2024 when it ruled against the environmental groups. In that decision, the appeals court said that courts must defer to how the commission interpreted the law because it had more expertise in utility matters.

“This deferential standard of review leaves no basis for faulting the Commission’s work,” the appeals court had concluded then in its opinion.

The environmental groups argued the appeals court ignored a 1998 law that said the commission’s decisions should be held to the same standard of court review as those by other state agencies.

“The California Supreme Court has ruled in our favor that the CPUC is not above the law,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group, after Thursday’s decision was published. The other groups filing the case are the Center for Biological Diversity and The Protect Our Communities Foundation.

The utilities commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling.

More than 2 million solar systems sit on the roofs of homes, businesses and schools in California — more than any other state. Environmentalists say that number must increase if the state is to meet its goal, set by a 2018 law, of using only carbon-free energy by 2045.

The utilities commission has said that the credits given to the rooftop panel owners on their electric bill have become so valuable that they were resulting in “a cost shift” of billions of dollars to those who do not own the panels. This has raised electric bills, especially hurting low-income electric customers, the commission says.

The credits for energy sent by the rooftop systems to the grid had been valued at the retail rate for electricity, which has risen fast as the commission has voted in recent years to approve rate increases the utilities have requested.

The state’s three big for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — have sided with commission in the case.

The utilities have long complained that electric bills have been rising because owners of the rooftop solar panels are not paying their fair share of the fixed costs required to maintain the electric grid.

For decades, the utilities have worked to reduce the energy credits aimed at incentivizing Californians to invest in the solar panel systems. The rooftop systems have cut into the utilities’ sale of electricity.