Opinions

Somalia is entering one of the most dangerous moments in its recent history without an agreed path towards elections or a political transition. United States and United Kingdom-led talks between the government and the opposition collapsed on May 15, the date on which President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s original four-year term was due to expire, leaving the legitimacy of key federal institutions under serious strain.

Justin Davis, the US chargé d’affaires to Somalia, and the UK’s ambassador, Charles King, had been trying to persuade political leaders from both sides to reach an agreement on a political transition roadmap. Their failure leaves the country without an agreed way forward at the worst possible time.

Since 2008, Somalia has frequently been ranked as one of the world’s most fragile states. Under President Mohamud’s leadership, the country is now facing a political deadlock that threatens its survival. This crisis is unfolding amid insecurity, humanitarian distress, economic fragility, widespread corruption and shifting geopolitical rivalries.

At the heart of the crisis is the contested nature of the Somali state itself. Somaliland seeks independence, while Puntland and Jubbaland have broken ties with the Federal Government. Al-Shabab controls significant parts of the country and key roads. The Federal Government and at least three Federal Member States are also operating beyond their mandates. The scheduled electoral calendar has lapsed without a vote: parliament’s four-year mandate expired in April 2026, and the president’s term ran out a month later, yet no agreed roadmap for elections or political transition exists to replace them.

In a controversial process, the government unilaterally changed the constitution, passed an electoral law viewed by its opponents as self-serving, and established an election commission they reject as one-sided. Over the past four years, executive, legislative and judicial powers have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of President Mohamud.

Somalia’s national opposition, along with Puntland and Jubbaland, has characterised the government’s actions as a power grab and rejected them. They argue that the 2012 constitution, which reflects Somalia’s political settlement, remains the law of the land. As a result, Somalia is now caught between two competing claims to constitutional legitimacy. For its part, the government maintains that it is advancing a democratic goal long sought for Somalia, a move from indirect, clan-mediated selection to one-person, one-vote elections, and that the constitutional amendments extending the presidential term from four to five years were lawfully approved by parliament.

Universal suffrage and party-based politics remain a distant aspiration for Somalis. Acknowledging this reality, both the government and the opposition continue to accept the clan-based power-sharing system. However, they disagree on how members of parliament representing clans should be selected at the state and federal levels. The government seeks a one-year term extension and proposes an electoral system for clan representatives that critics say would help it maintain its hold on power. The opposition, by contrast, advocates an improved indirect election process through which clans would choose their representatives.

This political rupture is unfolding in a country already facing severe security and governance challenges. Although security in the capital has improved, widespread violence persists, particularly in south-central Somalia. According to the ACLED database, national fatalities reached a record high in 2025, and al-Shabab is responsible for the large majority of conflict deaths recorded over the past two decades. During the current administration’s four years in office, the same data points to tens of thousands of deaths nationwide, primarily concentrated in Banadir, Lower Shabelle, Lower Jubba and Hiran.

The crisis is also taking place against a worsening humanitarian and economic backdrop. Despite the arrival of rains across the country, humanitarian agencies warn that millions of Somalis are food insecure. International humanitarian efforts are struggling to raise funds to assist those affected by poverty, displacement and conflict. Foreign aid has been declining since the Trump administration dismantled USAID in 2025, while Somalia’s domestic revenue-to-GDP ratio remains in the low single digits. Concerns over the viability and affordability of the state have led many to look towards a resource-based economy, particularly as Turkiye expands its involvement in Somalia’s oil and fisheries sectors.

Corruption has further weakened public trust in state institutions. According to the Corruption Perceptions Index, Somalia has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world over the past decade. Widespread corruption has undermined almost every aspect of governance. The government’s approach to land management has deepened these concerns, with critics accusing it of forcibly evicting people who occupied public lands during the war and selling some of these lands to merchants without due process. Many citizens with legal documents from previous governments have also lost their homes.

These domestic pressures are being sharpened by regional and global rivalries. Somalia is struggling to navigate intensifying competition in the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean. Its divided political class is managing these challenges not as a cohesive state, but through regions, clans and rival political blocs. Different groups have aligned themselves with various regional powers and neighbouring countries.

Regional players, including Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Egypt, are increasingly active in the Horn of Africa. Israel became the first country to officially recognise Somaliland late last year, intensifying competition among rival regional powers and drawing further attention to Somalia and Somaliland amid the region’s shifting geopolitics.

The political, security, economic and humanitarian pressures have also had serious implications for civic space. The government has been accused of silencing dissent by jailing journalists and civic activists. The opposition is now calling for demonstrations, while the government is openly discouraging public participation.

What should happen now

Somalia stands at a critical juncture. Timely intervention by the international community could help redirect the country away from violence and political fragmentation. In the past, traditional donors, mainly the US, the European Union and the UK, helped facilitate Somalia’s last five political transitions, in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2022.

The American and British diplomats in Mogadishu made important efforts to bring the parties together and facilitate dialogue, although these efforts came late. A final push may now require more direct involvement from Washington and London, as well as engagement with non-traditional Gulf donors. Turkiye has also expressed interest in contributing to mediation efforts. This should be welcomed, as Ankara has influence with political actors in both the government and the opposition.

The international community should first pressure the government to negotiate a political roadmap in good faith, with a focus on a workable and timely election process. Villa Somalia should also stop using state institutions, including security forces, the aviation agency and international assistance, as tools in the political dispute.

At the same time, the opposition should be encouraged to engage constructively with the government and avoid initiating a parallel process that could lead to the formation of an alternative government. Most importantly, the international community should impose targeted sanctions on political spoilers who use extrajudicial means to destabilise the country.

Beyond the immediate political impasse, there is also a pressing need for genuine national dialogue and reconciliation. Previous peace processes in Djibouti and Kenya involved a wider range of actors in peacebuilding and helped establish the Third Republic. One lesson from those processes is that institutions built by people who have not fully reconciled cannot last. Somalis have never had the opportunity to engage in a serious and inclusive national dialogue. They need an open forum, genuine reconciliation and state institutions they collectively own.

Somalia is on the brink of political disintegration, but it remains at the prevention stage. That is precisely why the broader international community must act now, as it has in the past. There is still time to guide Somalia away from a self-destructive path and safeguard decades of investment in state-building and peacebuilding.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

It has been more than four years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, expanding its occupation of Ukrainian lands, which started in 2014. In the chaos and violence of the first months of the invasion, families were separated, and childcare institutions were cut off from the control of the central authorities in Kyiv. As a result, the occupation forces forcibly transferred more than 20,000 Ukrainian children to Russia.

Russian officials claimed that they did not abduct Ukrainian children, but “saved” them through humanitarian evacuations. However, international investigations have since found that many such transfers were unlawful under international humanitarian law. In many documented cases, transfers were carried out without the consent of the living parent or legal guardians of the child.

International humanitarian law prohibits all forcible transfers and deportations of protected people from occupied territory, except for evacuations strictly required to ensure the population’s safety. Even then, evacuation must happen within occupied territory, be temporary, preserve family unity and return evacuees home as soon as hostilities cease.

Today, the lives of thousands of Ukrainian children are devastated by this forcible transfer. Instead of abiding by international legal obligations and returning them to their homeland, Russia has transformed the issue into yet another bargaining chip against the Ukrainian people.

But Ukraine refuses to abandon its children. For the past four years, there have been intense efforts from families, NGOs and the Ukrainian government to bring them back.

Take the case of Lesya (the name has been changed to protect her identity), whose testimony was recorded by The Reckoning Project— a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting and publicising atrocities committed in the war. Lesya was 15 years old when Russian forces occupied her village in the Kherson region in 2022. When the occupation authorities imposed a mandatory evacuation, she was put on a truck with more than 30 other children and was sent to a rehabilitation centre in Feodosia, Crimea. A woman accompanying the children told her that her mother would join her shortly.

At the facility, Lesya and other Ukrainian children were subjected to a strict routine, forced to do chores and study in Russian, using Russian textbooks. They were kept under surveillance indoors most of the time in a building with windows that could not be opened. Two days a week, the children underwent military training.

Eventually, a relative located her, and with the help of Save Ukraine, a Ukrainian NGO facilitating children’s return, her mother managed to bring her back.

But Lesya’s case is the exception rather than the rule. More than 2,000 Ukrainian children have been brought back thanks to efforts by NGOs, the government and foreign mediators.

Pressure through international institutions has also been pursued, but that has not accelerated the process of return.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued warrants of arrest for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.

In July 2025, the European Court of Human Rights, in Ukraine and the Netherlands v Russia, found Russia responsible for a number of human rights violations, including the organised removal of children. The court also required Russia to cooperate in establishing a mechanism to find and safely return children.

In March this year, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that Russia’s deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children amount to crimes against humanity. The report identifies the removal of Ukrainian children as a part of a well-planned and systematically executed policy, conceived at the highest level.

On May 11, the European Union sanctioned 16 individuals and seven entities, while the United Kingdom sanctioned 29 individuals and entities responsible for the deportation, forced transfer, forced assimilation, indoctrination, militarisation and unlawful adoption of Ukrainian children. Overall, the EU has sanctioned more than 130 people and organisations for these actions. The United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland and several other countries have introduced similar measures.

The lack of progress on this issue has driven families to desperation. Some have tried to bring their children back on their own or through often-daring missions by Save Ukraine and five other Ukrainian NGOs.

There should be no need for these risky missions. Under international humanitarian law, Russia is obligated to identify and register Ukrainian children in their care, facilitate family reunification, and permit access to neutral actors assisting Ukrainian children.

As negotiations for the end of the war have stalled and other global events have displaced Ukraine from global headlines, we urgently need to put the issue of the abducted Ukrainian children back in the spotlight.

There are several areas in which existing efforts can expand.

First, a comprehensive tracing mechanism needs to be established and financed to track abducted Ukrainian children and prevent their disappearance into dispersed care and adoption systems.

Second, ongoing legal efforts to hold to account Russian officials involved in the abduction should be intensified. This means coordinated prosecutions in states where the universal jurisdiction principle can be applied, as well as joint investigation strategies supported by Eurojust, the EU’s judicial hub. Ukraine’s partners should support its judicial processes launched against Russian officials and cooperate where needed, including through extraditions where legally applicable and other lawful transfer mechanisms. While justice may be slow, the prospect of accountability can have a deterrent effect.

Third, states can and should fully implement sanctions, trade restrictions and other obligations they assumed but did not consistently observe in practice. The sanctions regime on Russia has severely hurt its economy, but it has also seen continuous evasion. A strict implementation can help put more pressure on the regime in Moscow.

While stories of family reunions are heartening, they are just a drop in a bucket compared with the number of children who continue to be separated from their families and absorbed into a system of indoctrination and militarisation.

We must not allow the issue of returning Ukrainian children to be yet another negotiating chip for Moscow. It cannot be put on hold because negotiations have stalled or because other priorities have captured the world’s attention.

Four years is a long time in a child’s life. Each passing day further erodes their national identity and deepens the pain of separation, as they grow up in a hostile environment. There is no principle more universal than the belief that children belong with their parents and loved ones, and Ukrainian children deserve this basic human right today, not at some point in the future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

On May 7, Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka announced in parliament that the government would return 67 farms seized during the country’s land reform programme to European nationals from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The farms, he said, were protected under bilateral investment protection agreements signed between Zimbabwe and the four European states before the land seizures.

The measure forms part of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s effort to restore relations with Western governments and international financial institutions after more than two decades of crisis, sanctions, isolation and debt default linked in part to the fast-track land reform programme of the early 2000s.

Zimbabwe is trying to restructure about $11.7bn in external debt, including $7.7bn owed to multilateral and bilateral creditors. On May 20, the International Monetary Fund approved a staff-monitored programme to support reforms and debt restructuring.

Resolving disputes linked to land reform has become central to that re-engagement process. In July 2020, Zimbabwe signed a $3.5bn compensation agreement with former white commercial farmers for infrastructure and improvements on acquired land. Last year, it began compensating treaty-protected foreign farmers, including claimants from Germany, Switzerland and Belgium.

But this development also exposes a deeper contradiction embedded in the global order governing land and property rights in former settler colonies: European claims arising from postcolonial redistribution are treated as urgent, enforceable and respectable, while African claims arising from colonial dispossession remain largely outside the same legal and moral framework.

The colonial dispossession that created white land ownership in Rhodesia never received the same urgency as the one now directed at restoring European claims after postcolonial redistribution. At independence in April 1980, no comparable mechanism forced Britain, Rhodesia or settler beneficiaries to compensate Africans dispossessed through conquest, racial legislation and forced removal. Yet once postcolonial Zimbabwe attempted to redistribute that land, its protection suddenly became tied to legality, investor confidence and international respectability.

In October 1889, Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company (BSAC) received a royal charter from the British Crown, accelerating white settler expansion across the territory that became Southern Rhodesia. The 1893 war against King Lobengula’s Ndebele kingdom opened vast areas of land to settler occupation, while the crushing of the 1896-97 First Chimurenga, led by resistance figures such as Mbuya Nehanda, consolidated British control across the colony.

Early dispossession was not only territorial. After 1893, BSAC forces seized cattle on a large scale in Matabeleland, weakening the economic foundations of local communities. By 1958, Southern Rhodesia’s European population of roughly 207,000 controlled almost 48 million acres of prime agricultural land, while about 2.55 million Africans had 41.95 million acres of poorer, overcrowded and less arable land.

From the 1890s onwards, colonial land seizures in Rhodesia were enforced and legitimised through the selective application of British imperial law and BSAC decrees. African ownership of land was never recognised with the same standing granted to settler occupation.

That legal order survived the expansion of settler rule through the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and continued to shape later legal frameworks.

That lopsided inheritance still shapes the global response to Zimbabwe’s land question decades after independence.

Bilateral investment treaties signed between Zimbabwe and foreign states gave protected investors the right to seek compensation when property covered by those agreements was expropriated. In practice, certain foreign-owned farms seized during fast-track land reform entered an international system backed by arbitration mechanisms, treaty enforcement and diplomatic pressure, even though the land itself had been acquired through conquest and war. The 67 farms covered by Masuka fall into that category.

Africans dispossessed under colonial rule were never granted comparable access to international reparations or protected claims against empire.

Part of this asymmetry is structural: European farmers can invoke treaties their governments signed and a compensation deal Zimbabwe itself agreed, while the dispossessed have no counterparty to sue, no instrument to enforce and, in Rhodesia, no surviving state to hold to account. But that is precisely the point. The legal architecture was built to recognise one kind of loss and not the other.

In April 2009, Dutch farmers protected under a bilateral investment treaty brought Funnekotter and others v Zimbabwe before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), and the tribunal ordered Zimbabwe to compensate them for expropriated farms. In 2015, another ICSID tribunal ruled in favour of European claimants linked to Swiss and German property interests in von Pezold and others v Zimbabwe after land seizures under fast-track reform.

The contrast is stark for everyday Zimbabweans.

My maternal grandparents lived in what was the Seke Reserve in Mashonaland, a place where most people were settled on small plots of land with “rather poor sand veldt with a lot of bush”. The reserve was created in 1899 along a boundary that ran roughly along the Hunyani River to the north and northeast, separating African-occupied land from areas soon to be claimed by white settlers.

On the other side of that line, colonial authorities allocated fertile, riverfront and midslope land to white commercial farmers, while families who had once farmed across that broader landscape were confined to a narrow, overcrowded reserve with low-grade soils and limited water.

This was part of a wider colonial regime that, from 1894, also pushed many Ndebele communities into the dry, low-rainfall and tsetse-fly-infested Gwaai and Shangani reserves in Matabeleland North.

Their subsequent, imposed impoverishment and losses, of land, cattle, livelihoods, political authority and economic autonomy, were absorbed into colonial history rather than treated as enforceable claims demanding compensation from the imperial system that created them.

They all died landless and economically broken, largely invisible to the global legal order and without meaningful redress, much like countless Indigenous communities around the country.

Yet Zimbabwe’s compensation framework, shaped largely by external pressure and Western imperatives, recognises losses arising from fast-track land reform and treaty-protected commercial farms. It does not recognise losses like those experienced by my grandparents, or by countless families whose land, cattle and livelihoods were taken under colonial rule.

For years, Zimbabwe’s debt re-engagement process has been tied to arrears clearance, economic reforms and the settlement of land-related disputes. The restoration of treaty-protected European claims has therefore become intertwined with Zimbabwe’s attempts to regain access to international finance and repair relations with Western creditors, chiefly the IMF and World Bank.

Compensation agreements and investor protections are presented as proof that Zimbabwe is becoming governable, predictable and safe again for international capital. In effect, Zimbabwe is being asked to rehabilitate confidence in settler-derived property rights as part of its return to global financial legitimacy.

Launched in 2000, Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme was characterised by widespread economic disruption and violence against Black farmworkers, white farmers and opposition MDC supporters. Those failures do not erase the history of land theft that made redistribution a central political question in the first place.

The unresolved collision between colonial property systems and African restitution claims extends far beyond Zimbabwe. In former settler colonies such as Zimbabwe and Namibia, it is overwhelmingly Black Africans who are expected to absorb mass land dispossession without compensation.

Colonial seizure is treated as inconvenient background history, while postcolonial attempts to restructure ownership are framed as threats to “markets” and “investor confidence”.

African efforts to recover land face more obstacles than the colonial systems that stole it.

Land reform should be lawful, accountable and economically productive. Nonetheless, international law cannot treat property rights created through settler colonialism as morally untouchable while dismissing African compensation as dangerous or illegitimate.

The 67 farms are standing remnants of an old and unresolved colonial atrocity.

My grandmother’s people also have rights.

Zimbabweans are still waiting for justice.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Tehran, Iran – “The fundamental principle is distrust towards America” – this is how senior lawmaker Abbas Moghtadaei described the situation to state television on Tuesday afternoon.

It came after an Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, returned to Tehran from Qatar amid efforts to reach an understanding with the United States on ending the nearly three-month-long war on the country.

Hours earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Washington of committing a “blatant violation” of the shaky ceasefire reached on April 8 by attacking the southern province of Hormozgan on Monday night. It added that the strikes validated the “deep suspicion” Iran harboured towards the US.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Iranian armed forces fired back and shot down a US-made RQ-4 drone, using a domestically-made air defence system called Arash-e Kamangir – named after a hero in Persian mythology. State television aired footage of the remains of a downed drone.

The US military said it was hitting missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to lay sea mines in a “defensive” move, but IRGC commanders said they have the right to retaliate.

On Tuesday afternoon, a tanker reported an external explosion and fuel leak some 60 nautical miles (about 111 kilometres) east of Oman’s capital city Muscat, according to British maritime intelligence. Iranian officials did not comment on the incident.

The escalation comes as the two sides try to hammer out the final details of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoM) that could potentially facilitate increased transit through the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely frozen since the US and Israel launched a wave of strikes on Iran on February 28.

The deal would also grant Iran access to some of its own overseas funds that have been frozen due to US sanctions and offer a pathway for a future agreement over the country’s nuclear programme.

Nicole Grajewski, an assistant professor at Sciences Po’s Center for International Research, said many in the Iranian leadership appear concerned that an agreement could simply provide operational pause, intelligence access or political cover before the US and Israel launch another round of large-scale attacks on the country.

“For the deal to be politically sellable internally, Tehran likely needs to frame it not as capitulation under military pressure but as a managed stabilisation that preserved core sovereign red lines,” she told Al Jazeera.

“That probably means maintaining some form of enrichment capability for now, avoiding immediate surrender of the stockpile, securing meaningful sanctions or asset relief, and preserving regional deterrence structures, at least formally outside the agreement.”

‘Negotiating with the enemy is pure loss’

From relatively moderate Iranian politicians in the government to the most hardline military-security factions, all have pledged that the Islamic Republic will not accede to a deal that amounts to “surrender”.

President Masoud Pezeshkian told state television earlier this week that he wants to assure the international community “we are not after nuclear weapons, we are not after insecurity in the region”.

But Majid Mousavi, the influential aerospace commander of the IRGC, wrote in a post on X, in reference to former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “As our martyred imam said, negotiating with the enemy is pure loss.”

Mousavi said he would follow the orders of the country’s new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, who said in a message to mark the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha on Tuesday, that “nations and territories of the region will no longer be the shield of American bases”. He also predicted that Israel would no longer exist in 15 years’ time, as foreshadowed by his slain father.

Ali Abdollahi, the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters and a leading figure in the war, made a first public appearance on Monday to urge the Iranian armed forces to make the “defeat” of the enemy a priority.

“The Americans talk too much and keep changing their story in a moment. We’ve said many times that we will show on the battlefield what we are capable of,” he told state television on the sidelines of a ceremony in Tehran to commemorate Iranian leaders killed during the war.

In his first public message as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, released on Monday, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a top IRGC general, pledged, “there will be no retreat”.

IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi has also expressed readiness to resume military confrontations with the US if necessary.

Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said decision-makers in Tehran are not just concerned about a ‘bad deal’ but also one that could force Iran to give up key leverage in the event of future disputes.

“Hardliners are especially alarmed by any discussion involving Hormuz, sanctions sequencing or nuclear concessions because they increasingly view coercive leverage, especially maritime pressure, as Iran’s main post-war bargaining asset,” he told Al Jazeera. That is why the debate inside Tehran has shifted from ‘should we negotiate?’ to ‘what exactly are we giving up?” he told Al Jazeera.

For a deal to succeed, the Iranian leadership will need to believe that some sanctions relief will be tangible and fast, he added.

Iran will also seek to preserve enough of a deterrence mechanism and symbolic dignity to avoid looking defeated, and ensure that the agreement prevents another war from breaking out in the future.

But as it stands – and there is scant information on it – Vatanka said the emerging memorandum “looks less like a historic peace settlement and more like a ceasefire-management mechanism designed to buy time, reduce immediate war risks, reopen parts of Hormuz, and defer the hardest nuclear questions into later rounds”. This would mean lingering suspicion and uncertainty would persist.

Concern for assassination

Iranian state media pundits have also claimed that senior Iranian figures would be vulnerable to assassination if military operations resume.

“If the US, at any point during the current agreement talks, gains access to our supreme leader, it will strike without any consideration for its other interests or consideration for intermediaries like Pakistan and Qatar,” Nima Akbarkhani, an IRGC-linked pundit, said on state television on Tuesday.

Ali Samadzadeh, another state-linked analyst, claimed the emerging US-Iranian agreement could even be a “honeypot” scheme to draw out leaders.

According to US media outlets, Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard from in public since the start of the war, except for written messages attributed to him, is hiding in an undisclosed secure location where even many government officials have no access to him. US officials have said this has slowed the process of talks.

Sciences Po’s Grajewski said over the next few days, the key issue for the Islamic Republic will be securing internal approval. Hardline factions will also scrutinise any concessions made to the US, even those made as part of a crisis-management memorandum that leaves more difficult issues to be faced at a later date.

“So, the realistic outcome in the near term is probably an unstable interim arrangement rather than a comprehensive settlement,” she said.

“Whether it evolves into something more durable depends almost entirely on whether the follow-on nuclear negotiations produce concrete mechanisms both sides can live with.”

It has been almost nine months since rebel groups imposed a fuel blockade on Mali’s capital Bamako. In late April, the conflict escalated further. The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), along with members of Tuareg separatist movements, launched a coordinated attack on the Malian army and its Russian allies, the African Corps (formerly Wagner), which killed the Malian Defence Minister Sadio Camara.

The rebels seized control of military camps, recaptured the largest northern city of Kidal, and tightened the blockade on Bamako. This latest offensive is part of a long series of rebellions in what the Tuareg call Azawad, an area comprising the regions of Timbuktu, Taoudenit, Kidal, and Gao, which is predominantly populated by Tuareg communities.

The present crisis is compounded by the weakening of the Malian state following the 2021 coup and foreign intervention. In the absence of any serious effort to address it, instability could spill over across the whole Sahel region.

Ever since the country announced independence from France in 1960, Mali’s north has seen repeated upheaval as local Tuareg communities have demanded self-determination. Fourteen years ago, Tuareg groups allied with groups affiliated with al-Qaeda launched yet another rebellion. They managed to seize several cities in northern Mali, and had it not been for a French military intervention in 2013, they could have marched on Bamako.

Two French operations resulted in the weakening of the Tuareg movements and groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. This helped persuade them to participate in negotiations with the government, which ultimately ended with the signing of the Algiers Accords in 2015.

One of the most prominent clauses of this agreement was decentralisation in the Azawad region, which gave local leaders more power. Through this agreement, the Malian government secured the country’s territorial integrity in return for promises like the enhancement of development in the Azawad region, the integration of separatist fighters into the army, and the appointment of their leaders to political positions.

These accords helped maintain relative stability in Mali and the Sahel region by containing the sources of tension and secessionist calls. However, peace did not last long. Several challenges emerged, the most important of which was the failure of the government to honour its commitments to implement development projects in the north.

The situation got worse after the 2021 military coup led by General Assimi Goita. France, Algeria, and members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) refused to recognise the new authorities in Bamako. As a result, in 2022, the military government expelled French troops, and in 2024, abolished the Algiers Agreement. Thereafter, instead of diplomacy and dialogue, it adopted a militarised approach to controlling the restive north.

These steps strained Mali’s relations with Mauritania, Algeria, and France, with Bamako accusing them of providing logistical support to the rebels and interfering in its internal affairs. Consequently, the Malian state was weakened militarily and economically, as military coordination and trade with neighbours declined.

JNIM and the separatist movements exploited the situation. They sought to choke the capital by attacking key transport arteries where most imports and exports are routed. They disrupted supplies of gasoline and diesel coming from Senegal and the Ivory Coast, and began attacking Moroccan trucks carrying food supplies via Mauritania.

Like in 2012, the alliance between the Tuareg movements and al-Qaeda affiliates has proven successful. It has routed the Malian military, capturing more territory and operating freely close to Bamako.

This time, foreign forces have not been able to help the Malian army, as its Russian allies were forced to withdraw following the attack in late April. Meanwhile, Turkiye has seen its involvement in Mali grow amid growing instability. In early May, following the attacks on the Malian military, Ankara signed several defence agreements with the Malian military government.

The danger here is that the Malian crisis may not be contained only within the political crisis between the government and the separatist movements. It could also invite more foreign intervention as regional and global rivalries transfer onto Malian territory.

There is also the issue of the alliance between Azawadi movements and al-Qaeda affiliates, which could prove to be a ticking time bomb. There are clear contradictions within this relationship, as the two sides have no common ground except the agreement to overthrow the military regime in Bamako. This is why a future war in the north between the Azawadi movements and the Islamist groups is quite likely.

The Malian crisis inevitably has regional repercussions. The ongoing humanitarian crisis could trigger a major migration wave towards Europe and North America. Continuing instability in the north could open more space for the growth of extremist movements, which can expand their attacks across the region. Consequently, the Malian crisis can become a direct security threat to neighbouring countries, the region, and the world.

As the situation stands now, no warring side is able to achieve a decisive military victory. Therefore, a resolution of the conflict can only be achieved through dialogue and negotiation. Bamako needs to seriously consider the grievances of Tuareg communities in the north and their demands.

It is in the collective interest of neighbouring countries and regional powers to bring the parties to the negotiating table and seek peaceful solutions to this crisis. Under the threat of a regional spillover, there is no time to waste.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Harlan Ullman of the Killowen Group argues that US President Donald Trump is chasing any deal to relieve mounting pressures at home, even as key nuclear and Hormuz issues remain unresolved.

The crisis caused by the US-Israel war on Iran has affected the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at different levels.

Oman has barely felt any shock as its ports and terminals continue operating as usual. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been able to reroute some oil exports through terminals in Yanbu and Fujairah, respectively, to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, on the other hand, have been practically cut off from the global market and are facing the prospect of economic contraction.

Under these circumstances, the GCC states more than ever need to demonstrate unity and address the crisis through collective action. The issue of solidarity is not about showing benevolence to neighbours. It is about setting up mechanisms now that can diminish the consequences and value of any future threat of closure. It is about the survival of the whole idea of GCC unity and the leverage it has on the global scene.

Collective action, common interest

Even if some sort of agreement is reached between the warring sides today, the GCC will continue to suffer under the shadow of the nearly three-month closure. States face the risk of losing clients due to the risk of not fulfilling their obligations or being perceived as a risky supplier. Only a joint effort can stop a free fall.

So far, self-interested approaches are winning over collective action. For instance, the UAE’s exit from OPEC was largely driven by the perception of the Emirati leadership that the Strait of Hormuz crisis was an opportunity to grab greater oil market share.

If this trend of unilateral crisis response continues, it would have grave economic consequences for the whole GCC and threaten its existence. With no burden-sharing mechanism, Gulf countries would end up competing against each other in a zero-sum game. This would reduce the influence the GCC has as a regional bloc and diminish its ability to sway energy markets.

Up until now, there have been some demonstrations of solidarity in rhetoric. During the GCC consultative meeting in Jeddah on April 28, Gulf leaders attempted to show unity and discuss possible ways out of the crisis. The meeting led to discussions about what the GCC states could do in practical terms, yet there are still no signs that these discussions have moved beyond the expert level.

Nevertheless, there are practical steps the GCC can take now that could help address the present crisis and ensure stability in the face of future risks. One of them could be the introduction of swap arrangements.

Swap as an instrument of solidarity

There are three relevant swap mechanisms that the GCC could consider: physical, contractual and quality swap deals. Physical and contractual swap deals allow one party to deliver an equivalent commodity to fulfil a contract on behalf of another.

A quality swap, on the other hand, exchanges one grade or product for another to align the feedstock needs of refineries or optimise transport costs.

Thus, instead of Kuwaiti, Qatari or Bahraini cargo physically passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a buyer can receive an acceptable substitute at Yanbu, Fujairah, Duqm, Ras Markaz, Sohar, Qalhat, Singapore, India, Korea, Japan or Europe, while the parties involved settle the accounts through future delivery, cash compensation, product exchange, or a retained-volume fee.

The swap does not require the trapped commodity to move immediately. It requires a transparent title, valuation and reconciliation, so that a substitute commodity can be delivered to the end user.

The strongest swap deals, therefore, resemble clearing systems. They are most reliable when they are established before the crisis, but they can also be assembled during a crisis if the parties already have pre-existing experience of trading, a trusted customer base or alternative physical infrastructure to be utilised.

In fact, the swap deals are not something completely unfamiliar to the GCC member states. In 2013, when Egypt failed to fulfil its contractual gas obligations, Qatar agreed to export its own liquefied natural gas (LNG) directly to the customers that Egypt otherwise could not serve while it channelled its gas for domestic needs.

In 2021, the UAE’s Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) won a tender to swap 84,000 tonnes of Iraqi fuel oil for 30,000 tonnes of Grade B fuel oil and 33,000 tonnes of gas oil to supply to Lebanon. In 2024, the state-owned Oman LNG conducted about two swap tenders per month, with Atlantic cargoes originating from the United States delivered to Spain, while the company delivered its LNG to clients in Asia.

All of these examples show that Gulf countries and their national energy companies have the required expertise to carry out intra-GCC swaps.

The most practical way to implement such deals now would be to establish an energy swap facility through a coordinated clearing mechanism among national oil companies, major regional refiners, selected traders, insurers, banks and key Asian and European buyers.

Its function would be to match blocked obligations with delivery alternatives and to reconcile the value later.

Insurance for the future

The implementation of any swap arrangement would require substantive effort to operationalise, not to mention a high level of political will, trust and mutual determination. Moreover, at present, there are physical limitations before any arrangement, as the GCC infrastructure does not have the capacity to reroute export volumes that pass through the Strait of Hormuz completely.

In the immediate term, swap arrangements imply that one group of countries – Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE – would sacrifice a bit of income and market share to the advantage of the others, namely Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, by allocating part of their current export, storage or transport capacities. But in the longer term, all would benefit.

The critical call is on Saudi Arabia, which has the largest options to bypass Hormuz and provide the largest pool of deliverable crude. Its command of customer credibility, global familiarity with Saudi oil grades, Red Sea export infrastructure and Aramco’s trading capacity make it the main pillar of any future swap system.

Complementing its role as market regulator within OPEC/OPEC+ with the leadership within the GCC, Riyadh can help stabilise the market by covering priority cargoes for strategic buyers.

The UAE can also play a major role by utilising its export capacity through Fujairah, and so can Oman, which has crude storage capacity at Ras Markaz, refining capacity at Duqm, LNG experience and ports that can receive and dispatch cargoes without having to cross the Strait of Hormuz.

If such swap deals are implemented, they can strengthen the GCC unity and help the members avoid internal economic rivalry in the future. More importantly, they can encourage the launch of a larger regional infrastructure drive that would lessen dependence on the Strait of Hormuz and diminish its value as a geopolitical tool to be used against the Gulf.

If there are a well-functioning swap mechanism and infrastructure in place that can be used whenever a threat of closure is made, then clients would feel more confident in continuing their relationships with all Gulf suppliers. In the longer term, this could serve as the GCC’s insurance against any new turbulence in the region.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar called Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin ‘monsters’ during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, where he wore a Palestine solidarity pin.

In too many parts of the world, giving birth still comes with more fear than hope: a clinic without electricity, a nurse without supplies, a mother who knows that giving life may cost her own. These fears are not merely emotional, they are borne out by the facts. Every two minutes worldwide, a woman dies while giving life. Every year, nearly five million children do not live to see their fifth birthday. A toll that will rise if aid cuts continue. The Lancet medical journal estimates that by 2030, more than 14 million additional people could die, including 4.5 million children under five – the equivalent of erasing a city the size of Abuja, Brasilia or Rome.

The true measure of global progress is not found in financial markets or summit declarations. It is found in whether a woman survives pregnancy and childbirth, whether a child is vaccinated and nourished, and whether an adolescent can grow up healthy, safe and hopeful. When women, children and adolescents thrive, societies are stronger, economies are more resilient, and nations are better prepared for the future. When they are failed, the costs are measured not only in preventable deaths and suffering, but in lost human potential on a massive scale.

This is why investing in women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health is one of the most important investments any government can make. The evidence is overwhelming. Closing the gap in women’s health alone could add at least $1 trillion to the global economy every year by 2040. Every dollar invested in childhood vaccination or adolescent mental health returns about $20 over a lifetime – in healthcare savings, in productivity, in lives that go on to build something. Healthy women anchor families and economies. Healthy children grow into workers and citizens. Healthy children and adolescents are better equipped to participate in society, build livelihoods and shape more stable, prosperous futures.

Yet health systems around the world are being pushed to breaking point by aid cuts, debt, conflict and shrinking fiscal space. In 2025, official development assistance fell by 23 percent – the largest annual drop in history. In more than 50 countries, health workers are losing their jobs and training pipelines are breaking down. In some places, maternal care, vaccination and emergency response have been cut by 70 percent. At the same time, sexual and reproductive health rights are under intensifying political attack, putting hard-won progress at risk.

Women and girls bear the heaviest burden. In 2023, six in 10 maternal deaths worldwide were in countries in conflict or fragility. In fact, a woman living in a conflict-affected country is five times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than her counterpart in a stable country. Too many women still lack access to quality maternal healthcare, contraception and essential reproductive services. Too many girls face violence, discrimination and barriers to healthcare that limit not only their well-being, but their freedom and future. When budgets tighten, women and children are too often the first to feel the cuts and the last to be protected.

This is not inevitable. It is a matter of political choice.

In South Africa, we are working to strengthen primary healthcare, expanding equitable access to quality services, investing in the health workforce and building a more inclusive health system that reaches those most in need. We understand that progress in health is inseparable from progress in equality and development. A society cannot prosper if women are denied care, if children are left unprotected, or if adolescents are excluded from the services and opportunities they need to thrive.

In Spain, a public national health service has delivered universal coverage and one of the world’s lowest maternal and infant mortality rates. We believe – with vision, determination and solidarity – that what we have achieved at home can be achieved globally. This is why Spain’s Global Health Strategy 2025–2030 places equity, resilient health systems and sexual and reproductive health rights at the centre of our international action, and why we are working to raise the global ambition on sustainable development financing and to defend gender equality as a democratic and development imperative.

At the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla last year, through the Sevilla Commitment and the Sevilla Platform for Action, we helped focus international attention on debt distress, sustainable investment and reform of the global financing architecture.

These issues may appear technical, but their consequences are deeply human. They determine whether health systems can recruit and retain workers, whether medicines reach clinics, whether women can access care safely, and whether children and adolescents are given a fair chance at life.

We must also be unequivocal in defending sexual and reproductive health and rights. These rights are not secondary, and they are not negotiable. They are central to dignity, equality and public health. No woman or girl should be denied access to life-saving care because of politics, poverty or discrimination. No society can claim to value justice while tolerating persistent gender-based violence or the systematic erosion of women’s autonomy and rights.

The question before the international community is therefore not whether we can afford to invest in women, children and adolescents. It is whether we can afford not to. The answer is clear. The long-term costs of inaction – greater instability, deeper inequality, weaker economies and millions of preventable deaths – are far higher than the cost of acting now. Higher than the cost of keeping the lights on in that clinic.

This is the spirit in which Spain is joining the Global Leaders Network, which brings together 12 heads of state and government committed to advancing the health and rights of women, children and adolescents. But this effort must not stop with us. The challenges are too large, and the stakes are too high, for leadership to remain limited to a few countries.

We need more governments to step forward, to protect essential health services, invest in frontline health workers, defend sexual and reproductive health and rights, and ensure that financing reforms deliver for the people who need them most. We need more leaders to recognise that women, children and adolescents are not a peripheral concern of global policy. They are its clearest test.

This is a moment for political courage. A moment to choose investment over retreat, solidarity over indifference, and action over complacency. Above all, it is a moment to recognise a simple truth: if women, children and adolescents are not at the centre of our decisions, then the future will not be fair, stable or sustainable. But if they are, then a better future remains within reach.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Former UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting has announced he will run against Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour leader if an election is to take place. Streeting voiced strong support for rebuilding ties with Europe, saying the UK should pursue “a new special relationship” with the EU and potentially rejoin the bloc in the future.

When European Jewish settlers embarked on brutal ethnic cleansing to establish Israel in 1948, they thought the Palestinian population would be the least of their problems. In fact, Zionist leaders like David Ben-Gurion believed that “the refugee problem would resolve itself”.

There was deep-seated conviction among Zionists that the Palestinians lacked an identity, and they would just flee to neighbouring Arab countries and assimilate. They would not come back to claim their stolen land.

But what happened was the exact opposite.

Decade after decade, the Palestinian national cause grew stronger. Today, few survivors of the Nakba of 1948 remain, but the national commitment to Palestinian rights and historical justice is as strong as ever. That is because the older generations did not teach the younger ones to forget the trauma and move on; they taught them to remember and to keep the keys to their ancestral homes in their minds.

The “refugee problem” did not “resolve itself” not just because of Palestinian determination and resilience, but also because the Israeli policies of violence and dispossession backfired.

Israel’s theft of land and resources and violent displacement of Palestinians was the starting point for every Palestinian generation to reject and resist occupation.

As Israel succeeded in usurping more and more Palestinian land, it failed miserably in controlling the Palestinian consciousness.

Despite continuous Israeli efforts to turn refugee camps into isolated enclaves, recruit agents and collaborators to undermine unity, and introduce international bodies to redefine the refugee issue as a purely humanitarian one, it failed to dismantle the Palestinian national cause.

Those who were dispossessed and violated – the Palestinian refugees – became the most ardent carriers of the idea of resistance. Refugee camps became the centres of peaceful and armed struggle. These camps gave birth to prominent Palestinian thinkers, doctors, educators and leaders, who spread one message: the rejection of the Israeli occupation and the insistence on Palestinian rights.

Palestinian refugees were the drivers of the first Intifada of 1987 and the second Intifada of 2000. They were at the centre of any subsequent mobilisation to resist the Israeli occupation.

The colonial project saw no option but to ratchet up its brutality. Repeated massacres, mass imprisonment and relentless efforts to uproot communities did not achieve subjugation. This approach failed and the Gaza Strip – where 80 percent of the population are refugees – stands as the clearest evidence of that failure.

After the launch of its genocidal assault on Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli government repeatedly described the war as “existential”. If Israel itself acknowledges today that the fourth generation of Palestinians, the descendants of the survivors of the Nakba, represent a threat to its existence, then this is in itself an admission of the collapse of Ben-Gurion’s prediction and the strategic failure of the Israeli project to eliminate the Palestinian people.

But Israel has not just failed, it has also become trapped. It is stuck in the paradox of the futility of its own brutal power. The more violence, mass killings and displacement it carries out and the more it reproduces the Nakba, the more determined the Palestinian people become to resist. Repression is not uprooting Palestine, it is helping it take deeper root.

The Gaza genocide is perhaps the best illustration of this deadly paradox. More than 72,000 Palestinians have been massacred, more than 170,000 injured, and 1.9 million displaced. Most homes have been damaged or destroyed.

What is the result of all this? When a Palestinian child is born today in a tent and grows up without most of his family, without a school, a playground, proper healthcare, or a home, he or she won’t need a complex historical narrative to understand who is responsible for this and what needs to be done to achieve justice.

But the self-defeating impact of Israeli brutality is not limited to Palestine alone. Israel’s genocide has backfired on a global scale. It has allowed the Palestinian cause to grow beyond the confines of a marginal, left-wing issue into one that increasingly attracts attention across the political spectrum in the West but also elsewhere in the world.

Activists and ordinary citizens of different political convictions now stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Many do so, despite facing retribution, arrest and prosecution for their support of Palestinian rights.

The Palestinian cause has also become an influential factor in local elections in many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, where support for the Israeli occupation and genocide can cost candidates an electoral win.

As a result, the Palestinian issue has grown beyond a regional struggle to become a defining moral question for people across the world.

This has left the occupation locked in a permanent confrontation with what cannot be defeated: memory. The more it tries to erase the Palestinian cause, the more it is etched in the Palestinian and global consciousness.

If he had been alive today, Ben-Gurion would have been dismayed to learn that Zionism secured its own defeat the moment it embarked on the Nakba.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

In the past few months, the geopolitical chessboard has tilted dramatically, setting the stage for a highly anticipated yet asymmetrical summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, now officially confirmed for May 13-15 following statements from both the White House and China’s Foreign Ministry. Washington has repeatedly signalled the importance it attaches to the meeting, while Beijing has approached it in its characteristically measured fashion, framing the summit less as a breakthrough than as part of the broader need for “communication” and “strategic guidance” between major powers.

This subtle diplomatic choreography speaks volumes about the shifting global balance of power. For the first time in decades, it is the United States that finds itself in a position of profound vulnerability, increasingly dependent on China’s cooperation to extricate itself from a self-inflicted disaster.

The source of this American predicament is the failure of its recent military adventurism in the Middle East. Having launched an illegal, unprovoked war against Iran alongside Israel, the US military has found itself trapped in a costly and protracted deadlock. In retaliation, Tehran has effectively choked off the Strait of Hormuz, with over a dozen US warships now enforcing a blockade that has rerouted dozens of vessels, sending shockwaves through global energy markets and raising fears of a worldwide economic meltdown. Washington now finds itself scrambling for an exit.

In a striking reversal of their usual hawkish rhetoric, top US officials — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—have been making increasingly desperate public appeals for China to intervene. They are urging Beijing to use its considerable influence to convince Iran to reopen the vital waterway.

What makes this dynamic particularly striking is the contradiction at the heart of US policy. Even as Trump and Rubio appeal for China’s help on the Hormuz crisis, the broader US posture remains confrontational, with ongoing disputes over technology restrictions and other issues continuing to shadow the relationship. The contradiction exposes an administration increasingly driven by desperation.

Washington’s narrative conveniently frames China as the party most desperate for a resolution, citing Beijing’s heavy reliance on Middle Eastern energy imports. However, this assessment drastically miscalculates China’s strategic preparedness. Far from being paralysed by the disruption, Beijing has already demonstrated remarkable resilience. Through meticulous stockpiling, diversified supply chains, and robust domestic production, China has coped with the closure exceptionally well, avoiding the kind of immediate economic shock Washington appeared to expect.

Consequently, Beijing views the Hormuz standoff as a pivotal stress test it has already passed. Knowing the stakes, China is in no rush to bail out a belligerent Washington. Recent diplomatic engagements have made this increasingly clear. China has maintained close communication with Iran throughout the crisis, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosting his Iranian counterpart for talks on the situation. Rather than simply pressuring Iran to reopen Hormuz, Beijing is positioning itself to demand a comprehensive “grand bargain.” Why settle for a minor concession when you can force the US to cease its hostilities against Iran, lift its crippling sanctions, and accept a new multipolar security architecture in the Middle East?

Iran has submitted a response to a US proposal to end the war, focused on ceasing hostilities and addressing Strait security, which Trump promptly rejected as “completely unacceptable,” highlighting the continued deadlock Washington hopes Beijing can break.

China did not start this fire, but it is now the indispensable power capable of extinguishing it, and strictly on its own terms. Beyond the immediate crisis, Beijing’s ultimate strategic focus remains unwavering: the core issue of Taiwan. This broader assertiveness will undoubtedly carry over into the Trump-Xi summit. While Trump is desperate for tangible deliverables and a successful photo-op to distract from domestic turmoil, Xi can afford to play the long game.

Unlike previous administrations that settled for vague diplomatic pleasantries, Beijing is expected to intensify the pressure significantly. China will likely demand that the US explicitly oppose Taiwan independence, moving decisively beyond the current, tepid commitment to merely “not support” secessionist forces.

Recognising Trump’s eagerness for a win, the US president may attempt to use Taiwan as a bargaining chip. He could offer concessions on the issue in exchange for Chinese cooperation on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, massive purchases of American agricultural and energy products, or even help brokering peace in other conflicts.

However, Beijing is far too disciplined to fall for such short-term traps. Taiwan is a non-negotiable core interest, and any temporary trade-off would be strategically foolish.

While Trump may lavish praise on his personal relationship with Xi Jinping and project an image of amicable deal-making, Beijing harbours no illusions about the man across the table. China’s leadership understands that Trump cannot be trusted; any agreement reached today could be discarded tomorrow based on his whims or domestic political calculations. Even as Beijing entertains the prospect of a “grand bargain” and maintains a cordial facade, it refuses to structurally rely on Trump’s commitments.

By stabilising its bilateral relationship with the US over the coming months — especially with several high-level meetings scheduled between the two leaders throughout the year — China aims to secure a predictable external environment conducive to its long-term rise.

For Beijing, however, the stakes extend far beyond Taiwan alone. A key priority for China will also be securing firm guarantees regarding the trajectory of Japan’s remilitarisation. As Tokyo rapidly expands its military capabilities and grows increasingly vocal about its willingness to intervene in a Taiwan contingency, China will demand that Washington strictly curtail its ally’s ambitions.

On a broader geopolitical scale, Beijing is positioning itself as a responsible and stabilising great power, repeatedly calling on the international community to de-escalate the Hormuz crisis and prevent wider economic disruption. In doing so, China is drawing a stark contrast with a United States that is openly launching illegal wars, engaging in what critics describe as state terrorism, including the extrajudicial kidnapping and killing of foreign leaders and their family members.

Ultimately, the coming days are critical not only for the future of US-China relations, but for the resolution of the US-Israel war on Iran and the broader structure of the international order. The era of US unilateralism is gasping for air in the Gulf. Armed with strategic patience and increasingly strong leverage over the crisis, China enters the Trump-Xi summit in a commanding position.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The annual ritual that is the Victory Day Parade in Moscow serves a dual purpose. It reminds Russia’s citizenry and the Kremlin’s audience across the former Soviet Union of the glorious past. The muscle flexing on May 9 each year benchmarks Russia’s geopolitical fortunes.

Last year on the 80th anniversary of the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin was flanked by foreign dignitaries from far and wide: Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority.

This year, the lineup was much less impressive. Leaders from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia and Uzbekistan attended – with Republika Srpska, Abkhazia and South Ossetia for some added flavour – but no heavy hitters like India or China.

The talk of Russia as a linchpin of a new multipolar world order rings a tad hollow today, not least because no heavy equipment was marched through during the parade out of fear of Ukrainian drone strikes. On top of it, United States President Donald Trump claimed credit for a three-day ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv.

The relatively dull affair that was this year’s parade speaks volumes about Russia’s current state. On paper, everything is going just fine. Trump has not wholly abandoned the idea of a deal to freeze the war in Ukraine, even at the cost of major concessions by Kyiv. The current US National Security Strategy calls for “strategic stability” with Russia while blasting Europe’s “woke” policies.

The inconclusive war against Iran, meanwhile, has exposed the limits of US military might. Oil prices have jumped, filling Russia’s coffers and improving its fiscal balance. On top of it, Trump has removed sanctions on some Russian oil to increase the global supply. Meanwhile, the Europeans are signalling they want to talk to Moscow.

In reality, the mood is gloomy. The Russian war effort in Ukraine continues to be stalled no matter how much money, materiel and human lives the Kremlin throws into the meat grinder that is the so-called special military operation (SVO). Ukrainian drones have hit deep inside the Russian homeland with even Red Square apparently not being immune to aerial attack.

Trump has lost interest in wooing Putin. With Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban gone, the European Union has consolidated ranks. In Russia itself, economic growth has plummeted from 4 percent in 2024 to a projection of just over 1 percent this year.

The prospects for long-term development, productivity growth and technological innovation are lacklustre. There are modest signs of discontent within the Russian elite. Even Putin’s sky-high popularity ratings are slightly down, according to pollsters.

The stifling of the mobile internet in Moscow and other big cities has been met with dismay. Russians could be excused for puzzling over how the SVO, sold as a glorious repeat of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, has gone on longer than the latter with no end in sight. It is no wonder Putin felt compelled to say on Saturday that “the matter” is coming to an end.

While its resources are focused on Ukraine, Russia is on the back foot in what it still calls its “near abroad” too. The past week showed that Europe is gaining momentum there.

On Monday, Armenia hosted the annual summit of the European Political Community (EPC), where European leaders gathered. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in attendance too. Once Moscow’s loyal client and member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation and Eurasian Economic Union, Yerevan is now strengthening ties with the West.

Even if the EPC is dismissed as a pan-European talking shop – or maybe a transatlantic one, given that Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, came as well – observers cannot ignore the fact that it was followed by the first EU-Armenia summit.  The high-profile meeting signalled in no ambiguous terms that Yerevan sees its future in the EU. Strategically, it is looking at joining the trio of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

The EU is reciprocating: The summit discussed up to 2.5 billion euros ($2.95bn) in investment in Armenia; cooperation on energy, transport and digital infrastructure; and visa liberalisation.

In parallel, both Armenia and Azerbaijan are courting the Trump administration. The two countries have welcomed the US as a peacebroker as they move closer to normalising ties. In August at the White House, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a joint declaration pledging to seek peace.

In February, JD Vance became the first sitting US vice president to visit Yerevan and then hopped over to Baku. Armenians and Azeris are negotiating the opening of the Zangezur corridor running between Azerbaijan proper and its exclave Nakhchivan (from where the Aliyev family hails). The project has a name – Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.

In short, the US has scored a couple of points in Russia’s back yard with the help of Pashinyan and Aliyev. Moscow is watching from the sidelines as a former satellite drifts away from its embrace. And the EU but also Turkiye are to benefit because Armenia’s opening and interconnection with its neighbours favours their pro-integration agenda.

Of course, this does not mean that Armenia could simply jump ship from Russia to the West. Moscow retains stakes in the Armenian economy and, therefore, political leverage.

This will be put on display in the June general election, which will pit Pashinyan’s Civil Contract against the Armenia Alliance of former President Robert Kocharyan and Strong Armenia associated with the Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan. Both Kocharyan and Karapetyan have strong connections to Moscow.

Public opinion is in favour of diversifying relations but not a complete break-up. That is a pragmatic position shared by Pashinyan too despite his focus on deepening ties with the West.

Russia failed to – or was reluctant to – support Armenia against Azerbaijan and prevent the loss of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and Armenians are right to look for alliances elsewhere. But without a peace treaty with Azerbaijan and without full normalisation with Turkiye, one has to tread carefully and not burn bridges.

The Armenian leadership has to also factor in neighbouring Iran, with whom it enjoys positive ties. An escalation of the US-Israel war on Iran could threaten cross-border energy trade.

Putin would have loved to see Armenia and Azerbaijan attending Saturday’s parade. Ditto for Moldova, where pro-EU forces prevailed in the 2025 parliamentary elections. Or Georgia, which still has no diplomatic relations with Russia despite the rule of the authoritarian-minded Georgian Dream, a party viewed positively in the Kremlin.

The chances of those countries turning up next year are slim too. Even Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will probably not confirm until the last minute, as they have been doing for years.

These days, Russia’s near abroad is much more abroad than near.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Southern Russia is facing one of the largest environmental disasters in its modern history. In April, repeated Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure in Tuapse triggered massive refinery fires and oil spills along the Black Sea coast, including near Sochi. Residents described “black rain” falling from the sky as smoke and petroleum residue spread across the region. Weeks later, wildlife is still dying, beaches remain polluted and volunteers trying to respond say their efforts have often been obstructed. The authorities, meanwhile, have focused less on confronting the scale of the catastrophe than on silencing those speaking out about it. Despite the ongoing environmental damage, officials are already discussing reopening the beaches and launching the tourist season.

The catastrophe raises difficult questions about environmental destruction during wartime. Ukraine, which has experienced countless environmental catastrophes related to Russia’s all-out war, has been among the leading actors advocating for the recognition of ecocide as an international crime, even though the concept has yet to be formally codified in international law. Following the April strikes, however, some environmental activists in Russia and beyond are now also accusing Ukraine of hypocrisy and causing long-term environmental harm through strikes on oil infrastructure. There is a real debate over whether such actions can be justified, even when targeting an aggressor, if their environmental consequences may last for decades.

But focusing exclusively on Ukrainian strikes risks obscuring the deeper structural causes of the disaster. Russia’s oil infrastructure is deeply embedded in its war economy, and environmental damage of this magnitude does not occur in a vacuum. It is shaped by years of deregulation, lack of oversight and the systematic dismantling of environmental protections. These trends have only intensified during the full-scale invasion, as environmental safeguards have increasingly been cancelled in order to sustain the war economy. This includes recent legislative changes affecting the protection of Lake Baikal — a unique ecosystem that contains around 23 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater — raising concerns among experts about long-term environmental risks.

For years, environmental organisations in Russia have been labelled “foreign agents” or declared “undesirable”, independent environmental movements have been dismantled and activists forced into exile. The current catastrophe is unfolding in a country where ecological disasters are often silenced rather than addressed.

What is striking in the current situation is not only the scale of the damage but the response of the authorities. Rather than responding with transparency and accountability, Russian officials have largely attempted to silence discussion around the disaster. This recalls earlier patterns, including the initial response to the Chornobyl disaster, where secrecy and delayed disclosure significantly worsened the human and environmental consequences.

In this sense, responsibility does not lie only in the immediate cause of the disaster, but also in the absence of preparedness, regulation and accountability.

This disaster has also triggered an unusual wave of discussion within Russia itself, much of it unfolding online, despite increasing censorship. Volunteers on the ground have reported being obstructed and, in some cases, harassed while trying to rescue wildlife. Journalists attempting to document the situation have faced detention. Even as the catastrophe unfolds, the space to speak about it remains tightly controlled.

Yet the public reaction is telling. Much of it is happening on Instagram, which is banned in Russia, and on other social media platforms, with people still using VPNs to speak out and read real news. Rather than turning primarily into accusations against Ukraine, much of this discussion has been directed at the Russian authorities. The disaster is being used, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, to question the lack of coordination, the absence of transparency and the broader political system that allows such crises to happen.

This is significant. In a country where even calling the war a war is effectively prohibited, environmental catastrophe has become one of the few channels through which criticism can still surface.

The situation also exposes a deeper problem that goes beyond Russia. It highlights a fundamental gap in international law: the lack of effective mechanisms to address large-scale environmental destruction in the context of war.

Recent events illustrate the consequences of this gap. The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam caused massive ecological damage, yet failed to generate sustained legal or political accountability at the international level. Since then, environmental destruction has continued to accompany the war, without clear mechanisms to address it.

More broadly, the issue is being sidelined. The war in Ukraine has become so heavily politicised globally that discussions of its environmental consequences are often reduced, avoided or absorbed into larger geopolitical narratives. From the perspective of an environmental activist from Russia, this creates a deep sense of helplessness. These issues are becoming harder to raise, not because they are less important, but because they are competing with an overwhelming number of global crises.

This frustration is also visible within parts of the Russian antiwar movement, where there is a growing perception that international actors are more focused on the economic consequences of the conflict than on addressing its deeper causes and risks that go beyond military threats.

Meanwhile, environmental destruction across Russia, a country that spans one-10th of the Earth’s land surface, continues with little international attention. This includes not only wartime damage, but also longstanding patterns tied to extractivism, colonial governance in national republics, and the systematic marginalisation of Indigenous communities. These are not separate issues. They are part of the same underlying problem, one that remains largely unaddressed.

Environmental exploitation in Russia’s regions has long been tied to older imperial patterns of control and dispossession. These same southern regions are also the regions where the Russian Empire committed genocide against the Indigenous Circassian people, exterminating and expelling more than 95 percent of the local population in the late 19th century. And now, what the Russian authorities seem to care about is not the environmental devastation itself, but reopening the beaches so the region can continue generating income.

While Europe is preparing to spend hundreds of billions of euros responding to what it sees as a growing Russian military threat, far less attention is being paid to the political and economic structures sustaining environmental destruction inside Russia itself. From the perspective of an environmental activist and someone finishing a master’s degree in international affairs, there is a striking gap in how the root causes of this crisis are being addressed.

Too little attention is paid to the deeper structures that sustain it: Russia’s colonial governance and extractivist economic model in the regions of Russia. These issues remain underexplored not only in political decision-making but also in academia and media coverage. This gap is particularly visible in the missed opportunities to engage with emerging Russian decolonial movements and Indigenous activists from national republics, who have long been raising precisely these concerns. Their perspectives remain marginal, even though they are essential for understanding both environmental destruction and political instability in the region.

Many international organisations and NGOs have also scaled down or abandoned work related to Russia’s internal environmental and human rights issues, as well as broader regional dynamics in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. As a result, entire areas of expertise are disappearing at the very moment they are most needed. Voices that could contribute to a deeper understanding, and potentially to long-term solutions, are increasingly sidelined or ignored.

And when catastrophe comes, people are left asking how it became possible for oil to fall from the sky.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

As governments gather in New York for the second International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) to assess progress on global migration commitments, a central question looms: is the Global Compact for Migration improving conditions for people on the move?

The answer is yes.

Adopted in 2018, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is the first international agreement aimed at making migration safer and more humane through cooperation. For the Middle East and North Africa, the International Organization for Migration’s Global Overview of Migration Routes (2025), which tracks migration patterns, risks and deaths along major routes worldwide, offers a mixed picture. Some routes are shifting, but the risks people face remain severe, and in some cases are worsening.

Across the Mediterranean, arrival numbers alone can be misleading. In 2025, just more than 66,500 people reached Italy and Malta via the Central Mediterranean Route, almost identical to the year before. Arrivals to Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria along the Eastern Mediterranean Route fell by about 30 percent, while the Western Mediterranean Route saw a modest rise. The Western African Atlantic Route to the Canary Islands recorded a dramatic 62 percent drop.

Taken in isolation, these figures might suggest reduced pressure on Europe’s borders. But lower arrivals do not automatically mean safer journeys. On the Eastern Mediterranean Route, deaths and disappearances nearly doubled in a single year. On the Western African Atlantic Route, deaths barely declined despite the steep drop in arrivals – meaning the probability of dying at sea increased. And on the Central Mediterranean Route, more than 1,300 people are known to have died in 2025, keeping it among the world’s deadliest migration corridors.

These trends reflect a broader reality: When border controls tighten or routes shift, journeys often become longer, more fragmented and more dangerous. People continue to move, but with fewer options, many are pushed towards irregular and high‑risk pathways.

Sudan illustrates how crises can reshape mobility across an entire region. Three years after the conflict erupted in April 2023, Sudan has become the world’s largest displacement crisis. At the peak, the number of internally displaced people more than tripled, reaching more than 11.5 million. Nearly 4 million people have returned home – often to damaged or partially destroyed housing – but almost 9 million remain displaced. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that more Sudanese nationals are appearing along both Eastern and Central Mediterranean routes. For many, these journeys are not a first choice but a last resort, when options in Sudan and neighbouring countries are constrained.

The MENA region is also deeply connected to global mobility patterns. Movements from Asia and the Pacific to Europe increased significantly in 2025, with nearly one in three irregular arrivals originating from that region. Many of these journeys intersect with North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. A visa policy change in one country, a conflict flare‑up in another, or a new enforcement measure along a corridor can reshape risks across thousands of kilometres.

Meanwhile, the underlying pressures driving mobility in and around MENA are not easing. The region has one of the world’s youngest populations, with youth unemployment often exceeding 20 percent. Climate‑related shocks – droughts, floods, heatwaves – are increasingly interacting with conflict and economic stress. These factors rarely operate in isolation; they compound one another, shaping both internal displacement and cross‑border movement.
What does this mean for policy? Several priorities stand out.

First, search and rescue capacities must adapt to evolving realities. Stabilising or declining arrival numbers should never be mistaken for reduced risk. The sharp rise in deaths on some routes underscores the need for stronger cooperation on distress response, better data on deaths and disappearances, and sustained support for front-line communities. Saving lives at sea and on land is a humanitarian, legal and moral imperative.

Second, safe and regular pathways must be expanded. When regular options are limited, people facing violence, economic hardship or family separation are more likely to turn to irregular routes. Well‑designed labour mobility schemes, family reunification channels and humanitarian pathways can reduce reliance on dangerous journeys while supporting development in both origin and destination countries.

Third, better and shared data are essential. The Global Overview and Sudan displacement figures show the value of combining arrival statistics, intention surveys and information on deaths and missing people. Continued investment in national data systems can help governments anticipate pressures and design more effective policies.

Finally, intensified cooperation is required. In New York this week 130 states from all over the world are engaging in driving forward implementation of the Global Compact, recognising that migration is a phenomenon best governed through principled and constructive partnership.

This IMRF is about collaboration, and clarity about what we will do next. Expand safe and regular pathways. Strengthen fair recruitment and worker protection. Invest in data and protection systems that save lives. And cooperate across borders to take down criminal networks. If we get this right, fewer people will suffer, fewer lives will be lost – and more people, and societies, will thrive. That is the opportunity before us – here, and now. Let us seize it – together.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The US president has accused some NATO countries of not doing enough to support the US-Israel war on Iran.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte says European leaders have “gotten the message” after United States President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw 5,000 soldiers from Germany.

Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with NATO allies, accusing them of not doing enough to support the US-Israel war on Iran. Speaking on Monday, Rutte acknowledged “disappointment from the US side”.

“European leaders have gotten the message. They heard the message loud and clear,” Rutte said before a European Political Community meeting in Armenia.

“Europeans are stepping up, a bigger role for Europe and a stronger NATO,” he added.

The Pentagon announced the troop withdrawal from Germany on Friday, days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Iran was humiliating the US during the negotiations aimed at ending the war.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called the announcement’s timing a “surprise”.

“I think it shows that we have to really strengthen the European pillar in NATO, and we have to really do more,” Kallas said while stressing that “American troops are not in Europe only for protecting European interests but also American interests.”

Over the weekend, NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said officials in the 32-nation military alliance “are working with the US to understand the details of their decision on force posture in Germany”.

‘Dangerous military intervention’

European criticism of the war on Iran has mounted in recent weeks as the conflict sends shockwaves through the global economy due to the continued disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Last week, Merz compared the war to previous military quagmires, such as the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It is, at the moment, a pretty tangled situation,” he said. “And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output.”

Spain has refused to let the US launch attacks on Iran from its airspace or military bases. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has condemned the war as “unjustified” and a “dangerous military intervention” outside the realm of international law.

In response, Trump called Spain “terrible” and threatened to end all trade ties.

Despite this, Rutte said “more and more” European nations were now pre-positioning assets such as minehunters and minesweepers close to the Gulf to be ready for the “next phase” in the war.

He provided no details, and European nations have previously insisted they would not help to police the Strait of Hormuz until the war is over.

Increased defence spending

Many European countries have committed to ramping up defence spending in the face of fears over Trump’s commitment to NATO and Russia’s assault on Ukraine – a push underscored by several leaders in the Armenian capital.

“Europeans are taking their destiny into their own hands, increasing their defence and security spending, and building their own common solutions,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.

“We have to step up our military capabilities to be able to defend and protect ourselves,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s artistic skills have earned him the reputation of a public relations genius acknowledged by both friends and foes. United States President Donald Trump, who has openly attacked him in public, famously called the Ukrainian leader “the greatest salesman on Earth”. A much more sympathetic voice, New York Times columnist David French, has recently portrayed Zelenskyy as “the new leader of free world”.

But Zelenskyy’s PR genius can do very little when it comes to changing the dynamics of the battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine war. In recent weeks, his administration and allies have tried hard to create the impression that the war might be approaching a turning point. But realities on the ground tell a different story.

For example, there were official claims that in February, Ukraine made more territorial gains than Russia did. Some pro-Ukrainian war monitoring platforms have supported these claims while others have not. It is important to note  these calculations can be tricky given that along the frontline there is an extensive grey zone in which control is unclear. The advances themselves are measured in 150-200 square kilometres per month. In other words, methodology can be manipulated in order to produce the desired conclusion: that Ukraine is gaining ground.

In reality, there is nothing at all that suggests a significant change in the battlefield dynamics that have been in place for at least two years now.

More importantly, Russian troops are currently besieging a number of industrial cities in the north of the Donetsk region. Their advances all along the northern border, in particular, are extending the active front line by hundreds of kilometres, which is making Ukraine’s personnel shortages even more acute.

Four years into the war, the Ukrainian army has had to resort to brutal campaigns to enforce mandatory conscription, pulling young men off the streets of towns and villages. Meanwhile, Russia is still able to lure volunteers by offering lavish compensation.

Ukrainian officials have also claimed that Russia is losing more troops than it is able to recruit based on dubious casualty data. Zelenskyy, in particular, has stated the Russians suffered the highest number of monthly casualties in March this year – 35,000. But his statement contradicted his own Ministry of Defence, which claimed that the highest Russian monthly losses crossed 48,000 in January 2025, with an average monthly rate of roughly 35,000 throughout 2025.

Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, former military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, also contradicted this narrative that Russia is having major difficulty with deploying personnel. He acknowledged in a recent interview that the collapse of the Russian mobilisation effort was not forthcoming.

It should be noted that Ukraine is waging a successful drone campaign to damage Russian oil facilities. But it is doubtful that it could change anything beyond providing dramatic footage of oil tanks on fire for TV networks to broadcast.

In April, Russian oil revenues surged to $9bn, thanks to the US-Israel war on Iran. The windfall Russia got in a month is equivalent to 10 percent of the loan Ukraine is to receive from the European Union over the next two years to help fund its war effort.

It cannot be denied that Russia has sustained major economic losses due to the war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged as much. But the Russian economy displays much the same downturn as other European economies, also affected by wars in Ukraine and Iran.

Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity (an indicator reflecting living standards) currently exceeds that of less affluent EU countries, such as Romania and Greece, according to the IMF charts. The same indicator for Ukraine is on par with Mongolia and Egypt, while the country’s critical infrastructure lies in ruins and millions of Ukrainians have fled the country, most of them for good.

With Ukraine’s prospects bleaker than ever, pro-Ukrainian audiences jump on every news from Russia, which they hope may signify “cracks in the regime”. Last month, an Instagram video by Russian influencer Victoria Bonya made Western headlines for its daring criticism of government policies. There may be frustration in Russia, but the regime is far from approaching a downfall.

This narrative, however, serves to distract Ukrainian and EU citizens from the painful truth that the war is heading towards a deadlock at best and Ukraine’s collapse at worst. Zelenskyy may have received a lifeline with the $90bn euro loan, but his and his allies’ lack of vision and winning strategy is staggering.

The reality has already begun to kick in. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently suggested that Ukraine would have to concede some of its territory to Russia to end the war but get a faster track to EU membership in exchange. The EU’s defence chief, Andrius Kubilius, has gone further by claiming that NATO membership for Ukraine was out of the question and EU membership was going to be a “complicated process”. Instead, he proposed a military union of Ukraine and other European countries – an idea that Moscow will reject, interpreting it as NATO through the back door.

What these contradictory statements manifest is that the main bargain over the contours of peace is currently going not so much between Zelenskyy and Putin, but between Zelenskyy and his Western, primarily European, allies.

As Budanov recently claimed, the positions of Kyiv and Moscow can be moved closer to what is realistically attainable in peace talks. But Zelenskyy needs to show at least some kind of gain for Ukraine when a very unpalatable version of a peace treaty is finally signed. Ideally, that gain would be EU membership or real security guarantees, but as Merz and Kubilius’s statements suggest, the chances of attaining either are slim.

The frustration among Ukrainians is already palpable. The head of the Ukrainian parliament’s fiscal committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, said European officials should stop seeing Ukrainians as “a tool for solving someone’s geopolitical tasks” or as a “human shield”. They have no right to define Ukraine’s destiny, he insisted.

But Zelenskyy, who is dogged by a large-scale investigation into corruption involving his immediate entourage, seems to hold no cards to play against Russia or his Western allies. The status quo in which he retains the position of a war leader serves him well, but it is increasingly becoming untenable.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Social media is full of posts showing off photos and videos of fancy-looking cafes and restaurants in Gaza. Pro-Israeli accounts often use these images to claim that life is back to normal in Gaza, that people are not suffering and that no genocide ever took place.

These cafes and restaurants do exist. I have seen them myself.

In late March, I went on my first visit to Gaza City since the war started. I was shocked to see the destruction wrought on the city. There were piles of rubble at every corner. Unable to recognise the streets, I felt as if I were strolling through a maze. I soon arrived at an area nearby that shocked me even more. It was full of new cafes that did not exist before the war.

These were not makeshift or temporary places as one might expect; they were built with expensive materials, carefully painted, furnished with tables, sofas, and elegant chairs, with glass facades and shining lights. A luxury feel emanated from them. They looked so out of place amid the rubble and the half-collapsed buildings that it felt almost surreal to see them.

These new establishments do not prove that normality is coming back to Gaza. They are a testament to its continuing genocidal abnormality.

The war made some people in Gaza rich, especially those who engaged in illicit activities like smuggling, looting, and hoarding during acute shortages. This wealth is now coming out in various forms, including luxury cafes and restaurants.

In parallel, the vast majority of Gaza’s population has been thrown into abject poverty. While before the war, the average person was able to afford to sit at a cafe and have a drink and a bite to eat, today this is no longer the case.

Most people cannot even look at these new places, let alone enter them and order something. The vast majority of Gaza’s population lives in tents, has no electricity or potable water, and suffers from the loss of livelihoods. They are surviving on what little aid Israel is allowing through.

I am one of them. My family and I live in a tent pitched near the rubble of our home in the Nuseirat camp. We have lost our family livelihood. The comfortable life we used to have is now just a distant memory.

The expensive new establishments reflect the deeply unjust social order that has emerged in Gaza – one where war profiteering has elevated a new privileged class and collapsed the vast majority into misery with no access to proper education, healthcare and even food. The genocide did not just kill and maim people and destroy homes and schools; it eliminated the prospect of a normal life for most people in Gaza.

I could not afford the fancy cafes, so I continued down the street till I reached a more modest restaurant, which used to go to with friends before the war. Entering it felt like stepping back in time to the days before the war; the place was the same, with the same chairs and tables, and the familiar smells that filled the space.

I sat and observed, dwelling on fond memories of spending time there after university lectures. I ordered what I used to order: a chicken wrap, a soda and a small salad plate. The bill was 60 shekels ($20) – more than three times what I would pay before the war, when my family actually had a normal income.

The restaurant bill, together with the fare I paid for a shared ride to get to Gaza City (15 shekels or $5 one way), cost me a fortune. I felt guilty spending all this money to enjoy a glimpse of normalcy.

The few who are fortunate enough to be able to afford going to cafes and restaurants in Gaza may enjoy short moments of relief, a temporary escape from the horrors of reality. Yet these moments are limited, often accompanied by anxiety about returning to the destroyed streets, the bombed-out landscape and the trauma.

As I sat at Al-Taboon, I thought of the friends with whom I used to spend time: Rama, who was martyred and Ranan, who escaped to Belgium. I sat there alone, holding on to these memories amid the greyness of Gaza’s rubble and the lights of the generator-powered cafés.

The genocide has devasted everyone – even those who have profiteered from it. No amount of time spent in shiny cafes and restaurants will ever erase this reality.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

In international politics, the platforms a country sits on often matter as much as what it says. For decades, Somalia was largely the subject of global security discussions, rarely a decisive participant in them. Today, that reality is changing in ways that carry symbolic weight and practical consequences.

Somalia’s recent election to the African Union Peace and Security Council (AU PSC), alongside its membership in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), marks a turning point in its diplomatic trajectory. For quite some time, Somalia was merely being discussed in the world’s most influential security forums. It is now shaping the agenda on the table.

This shift reflects more than a procedural achievement. It signals the maturity of Somalia’s diplomatic and security institutions, and the steady rebuilding of its international credibility after decades of conflict and state fragility.

For much of the past three decades, decisions affecting Somalia’s security were often made in rooms where Somali voices were either absent or marginal. External actors debated intervention strategies, sanctions regimes, peacekeeping mandates, and humanitarian responses, while Somalia struggled with internal instability.

This membership in the UNSC and AU PSC changes that dynamic fundamentally. These bodies are not symbolic; they make binding decisions, adopt resolutions, authorise peacekeeping operations, and shape international legal frameworks. For Somalia, this may seem something simple, but its impact is profound. Somalia is now part of the process that determines policies affecting its own security and development.

That participation strengthens state-building in several ways. It reinforces institutional capacity within Somalia’s foreign policy apparatus, promotes transparency and accountability through engagement with multilateral norms, and aligns Somalia more closely with international legal and diplomatic standards.

Somalia is transitioning from being a recipient of international decisions to becoming a contributor to them. Somalia’s role on these councils also carries representational significance beyond its own borders.

As a member of the UNSC and AU PSC, Somalia now occupies a rare diplomatic position. It simultaneously represents the interests of the African continent, the Arab and Muslim world, and the least developed countries (LDCs). The concerns of these categories of states have often been overshadowed by the priorities of more powerful nations. Somalia now stands for them.

Somalia’s own first experience in rebuilding institutions after conflict, managing complex security transitions, and balancing sovereignty with international cooperation enables it to advocate not only for itself, but also for broader principles: Inclusive peace processes, sustainable development approaches to security, and equitable participation in global decision-making.

Peace in the world, peace at home

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s 2022 political manifesto, “Somalia at peace with itself, and at peace with the world”, is increasingly reflected in these recent memberships. This vision is proving effective, as Somalia’s participation in global peace decision-making demonstrates a growing alignment between its external engagements and internal stabilisation efforts.

The seats at the UNSC and AU PSC will directly reinforce Somalia’s state-building process. Active involvement in shaping international peace also reflects and supports the way peace and security agendas are being handled domestically.

A defining moment in 2026

The year 2026 represents a rare convergence of opportunity. Somalia’s simultaneous presence at the AU PSC and UNSC provides a diplomatic platform unmatched in its recent history. This dual role should enable it to act as a bridge between regional and global security frameworks. It can ensure that Somalia’s security priorities are reflected in the AU decision, and forwardly, that African priorities are reflected in global resolutions. It can also translate international commitments into regional actions that qualify for alignment with local contexts.

This not only affects diplomacy and policy discussions but offers an opportunity to advocate for real change that directly affects the daily lives of Somalis. Such issues may include counterterrorism, stabilisation support, humanitarian access, development financing, climate security, and mechanisms for inclusive politics. By shaping the content and direction of relevant resolutions, Somalia can help align international commitments more closely with national priorities.

A future shaped by participation

With greater influence comes greater responsibility. Membership in these councils demands consistency and adherence to international norms. Somalia is now ready to navigate these complex diplomatic landscapes, balancing national interests with collective global security obligations. And it is now capable of maintaining credibility through constructive engagement, principled positions, and reliable partnerships.

With Somalia now seemingly committed to momentum on these fronts, its growing international stance will become self-reinforcing. Each diplomatic success will strengthen national institutions, which in turn will enhance future influence.

Somalia’s presence at the highest levels of global and regional security governance marks a significant milestone in its long journey towards recovery and stability. It reflects years of diplomatic effort, institutional rebuilding, and gradual restoration of international trust. It also signals a future in which Somalia is increasingly defined not by crisis, but by stability.

For a country that once stood on the margins of global decision-making, this transformation is both historic and hopeful. It signals a shift from isolation to engagement, from being acted upon to helping shape outcomes.

For young Somali generations who grew up hearing that Somalia could not advance, these diplomatic achievements offer a different narrative. They inspire pride, restore confidence, and help rebuild trust in the nation’s future.

That challenge lies ahead. But after a period of turmoil, Somalia is well positioned to meet it, not as a passive observer, but as an active shaper of its own destiny. This is also part of the broader Somalia policy on defence diplomacy, founded on global collaboration and mutual interdependency.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Arsenal and Manchester City are once again battling for the Premier League title in England and, with only weeks of the season remaining, the gap between them remains extremely small.

Whether Arsenal or City go on to win the league, one thing about Arsenal already feels clear: There has been growth, but not dominance.

Arsenal are more consistent than they were a few years ago. They are harder to beat, more confident and more composed during the “no-pressure” parts of the season.

They look so dominant when the pressure is off, but when the moments that matter arrive, they still fail to fully take control. As an Arsenal fan, that is what makes this team so frustrating to watch.

For the second time since the 2022/23 season – when they led the Premier League for much of the campaign before being pipped by Manchester City in the run-in – Arsenal have made the title race harder for themselves than it needed to be.

At the start of the campaign, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta made a number of significant and, for some, controversial changes. He dropped Myles Lewis-Skelly, who had been outstanding last season, and brought Riccardo Calafiori back into the starting lineup after injury.

Whatever people thought of those decisions, they appeared to immediately make Arsenal impossible to break down. That defensive strength was clear from the opening day, when Arsenal beat Manchester United 1-0 at Old Trafford thanks to an early Calafiori goal. In the following weeks, they conceded fewer than one goal per game.

But in their third game of the season, they lost to Liverpool 1-0 at Anfield, with a late Dominik Szoboszlai free-kick deciding the match.

The obvious question after that game was: Why did Arsenal not go for the kill?

Liverpool were not at their most dominant, yet Arsenal looked more concerned with defending a draw than winning the game. It felt like a missed opportunity and raised early questions about game management in decisive moments.

A similar feeling followed the home draw against Manchester City a month later, in September. That game once again highlighted Arsenal’s competitiveness and extensive growth, but also their reluctance to fully seize control when the game opened up. A late Gabriel Martinelli equaliser earned them a point, but doubts remained about whether they should have been more aggressive.

At that point, for me personally, and for most Arsenal fans, the signs were still overwhelmingly positive.

Martinelli’s equaliser came from an assist by Eberechi Eze, whose arrival added creativity and unpredictability in attack. We all enjoyed watching the team and were hopeful for its success.

When my cohost Stephen Howson taunted me on the Rio Ferdinand Presents podcast by saying, “Those dropped points against Liverpool and Man City will come back to haunt you come the end of the season,” I laughed at him. I was feeling extra confident, as Rio Ferdinand himself had said he believed Arsenal would win the Premier League. That’s what you need to keep believing, right? A six-time Premier League winner backing your club to get it over the line this season.

That belief only grew stronger on October 4, when Arsenal went top of the table after a 2-0 win over West Ham United. Goals from former West Ham midfielder Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka sent Arsenal to the summit.

For much of the season, Arsenal remained close to flawless, even if the sense around them was that they were never fully in control.

The first setback came in December, when Arsenal lost 2-1 away to Aston Villa after a late winner from Emiliano Buendia.

The defeat caused a wave of panic among Arsenal fans about a possible change of trajectory and a repeat of the 2022/23 season, particularly given that the team had looked dominant against stronger rivals such as Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea.

Thankfully, those fears were eased just a few weeks later, when Aston Villa visited Arsenal’s home stadium, the Emirates, on December 30 and Arsenal battered them 4-1.

That victory was a reminder that the panic around Arsenal after a defeat is often bigger than the reality.

League results remained strong until Arsenal were faced with another opportunity to make a statement, this time against a resurgent Manchester United under Michael Carrick.

United had already beaten Manchester City in the derby and then managed to beat Arsenal as well.

Despite that defeat, Arsenal remained top of the table. But for Arsenal fans, the memories of previous collapses once again started to return.

Then came the draws against Brentford and Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Confidence began to fade, and there was a growing sense that City, strengthened by the arrivals of Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo, were beginning to gather momentum. City’s victory against Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final on March 2 worked to cement this feeling.

Fans had another moment of hope and relief on March 14 when 16-year-old Max Dowman scored a brilliant goal in a 2-0 win over Everton, while City could only manage a 1-1 draw away at West Ham. At that stage, it felt as if we had done it.

But then history repeated itself, and Arsenal found themselves in another losing streak – a defeat to Southampton in the FA Cup quarterfinal, and league losses against Bournemouth and, recently, City.

Arsenal are still currently top by three points. However, City have a game in hand and, if they beat Burnley by a couple of goals, they will go top on goal difference.

Is it happening again? Are we to lose it all at the last minute? I hope not, but somehow this shows us once more that Arsenal have shown growth throughout the season. However, the lack of dominance has allowed City to get back into the title race.

In the famous words of Declan Rice, “It’s not done yet,” but there is no denying we have made it very difficult for ourselves.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The global fallout of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz may create the impression that the world cannot function without fossil fuels. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every single industry can and must decarbonise.

For global shipping, this process would be relatively easy because technological solutions exist and a single United Nations agency can set legally binding rules for all ships. The first steps have already been made.

In 2025, member states of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed on a policy mechanism to cut shipping emissions: the Net-Zero Framework (NZF). But they opted to postpone a decision on formal adoption of this landmark agreement.

This delay is emblematic of obstructive tactics used by countries opposing climate action.

The IMO Framework – the world’s first global carbon price on any international polluter – took years of compromises and watering-down. As it stands, it is the lowest possible bar Pacific Island states like the one I represent can accept. We cannot give in another inch.

While I join the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, next week, delegates will gather again at the IMO in London to decide whether to uphold their unanimous commitment to phase out fossil fuels in a just and equitable way.

The delegates of Vanuatu who travel to London have a mandate to push for the adoption of the NZF this year.

Should anyone reopen the framework to water it down, our position is clear: We will revert to our original Pacific demand for a universal levy on emissions of $150 per tonne of carbon dioxide.

Last year my country abstained from the vote on the NZF agreement. We reached that decision because the mechanism is not nearly ambitious enough. Even so, it is a starting point we can work with.

But since then, the tide has shifted dramatically.

After the delay in adoption, a small group of countries is now suggesting further weakening the ambition in the framework to meet the demands of particularly influential states whose current policy positions are not aligned with climate ambition. This strategy is problematic as reducing our collective actions to align with those that want no climate action at all is incompatible with our people’s continued survival.

The world’s poorest countries, and the planet, simply cannot afford anything less than what is already on the table.

The framework, as it is, gives the world and the industry some chance of meeting the climate obligations that IMO countries committed to in 2023, namely reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 in a just and equitable way.

The NZF introduces penalty fees – eg emission pricing for noncompliance with the regulation. This provides the regulation with a “stick” to ensure ships comply or else they must pay.

The penalties also represent revenues, up to $10bn to $12bn a year, to both incentivise industry transition and enable a fair transition for all. This fund is a lifeline for developing – and especially least developed – states to be able to afford clean maritime energy upgrades and compensate for the rising trade costs because of this transition.

Some claim that revenues raised by the NZF will blow out transport costs. This is preposterous.

The penalties charged through this framework come down to less than $1.50 per year for every living human being – although the biggest polluters should pay this cost. If the richest 10 percent of the world’s population foots this bill, it adds up to less than $15 per person. That’s a few coffees a year, which the world’s richest can easily spare.

Losing both financial penalties for noncompliance and financial support for countries like mine in the name of a political compromise with rich oil-producing states is a bad deal. Not just for all climate-vulnerable states but also for the industry that demands and deserves clarity.

If anything, we need more action and more ambition in the framework.

For years, Pacific states have pushed for the IMO regulation to be in the form of a universal levy on emissions, by pricing all emissions. We managed to get the majority of IMO member states on board, including the European Union, South Korea and Japan, as well as important Global South states, such as Panama and Liberia. However, the US has been very effective in exerting its influence in this area, which is resulting in shifts to some positions to the detriment of us all.

Our position was always backed by the best available scientific evidence.

A levy on all shipping emissions is the best way to send an unambiguous signal to the industry: Invest in the future now! The revenues, up to 10 times more than those from the NZF, serve as both a bigger stick for polluters and a bigger carrot for first movers and cash-poor countries.

This is not a handout: Hitting net zero by 2050 is not possible if our countries cannot invest in clean ships.

The bridge we have built in the form of the NZF through years of compromise and evidence is still standing. Let us cross it together by adopting it as agreed without any further dilution.

Pacific states stand ready to fight for what science and justice demand, and we call on our partners to stand with us.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

In recent months, the frequency and intensity of attacks in northern Nigeria have shattered the comforting illusion that the region’s long insurgency has receded into the background of national life. As violent incidents have proliferated, many Nigerians have refused to confront this uncomfortable reality and have opted instead to embrace conspiracy theories suggesting that the resurgence is somehow tied to renewed American involvement in Nigeria’s  counterterrorism efforts.

It is not difficult to see why the theory of foreign collusion with terrorist groups resonates in Nigeria. In February 2025, United States Congressman Scott Perry claimed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had funded Boko Haram, but offered no evidence for the allegation. Richard Mills, then the US ambassador to Nigeria, rejected Perry’s statement, but by then the claim had already acquired a life of its own in the public space and on social media.

Then, American officials like Congressmen Ted Cruz and Chris Smith made statements that fuelled the “Christian genocide” narrative, which falsely claims that the killings in Nigeria exclusively target Christians.

Attacks on Christians have happened, including most recently on a church in Kaduna state on Easter Sunday, but Muslim communities have also been regularly targeted. The truth is that terrorist groups have long operated indiscriminately.

What this moment demands, therefore, is to go beyond the seduction of easy explanation, and embark on serious analysis of what is really happening in northern Nigeria.

That diagnosis must begin with clarity about what the attacks reveal. First, they reveal that the insurgency has adapted in both form and method. Second, northern Nigeria’s insecurity can no longer be understood in isolation from the rest of the region; it is part of the wider regional disorder across the Lake Chad basin and the Sahel. And third, the violence continues to feed on deeper domestic vulnerabilities that extend far beyond the battlefield: chronic poverty, educational exclusion, weak local governance, and the long erosion of the social contract in parts of the North.

Let us begin with the first point. Recent attacks demonstrate that the insurgent ecosystem has learned, adapted, and expanded beyond the old image of a crudely armed rebellion fighting in predictable ways. The ISIL affiliate in West Africa Province (ISWAP), in particular, has become more adaptive in structure and tactics, while its conflict with Boko Haram has weakened the latter and left ISWAP as the more organised and deeply entrenched threat in the Lake Chad region. It has consolidated its presence in parts of the Lake Chad basin and expanded into Sambisa Forest, widening the space from which it can threaten civilians and military formations alike.

This matters because insurgencies are sustained not by ideology alone, but by terrain, supply routes, local economies, and the ability to move men and materiel through spaces where the state is weak or absent. In that sense, the insurgency is no longer merely surviving in familiar hideouts; it is entrenching itself in a broader and more fluid battlespace, with ISWAP’s control of trade in and around Lake Chad now a major pillar of its resilience.

ISWAP has also refined the way it fights, demonstrating a growing capacity for coordinated assaults, night raids, ambushes, and operations designed not merely to inflict casualties, but to isolate military positions and slow the movement of reinforcements. This challenge is magnified by the sheer scale of the theatre itself.

Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states are each comparable in size to entire European countries: Borno is slightly larger than the Republic of Ireland; Yobe is roughly the size of Switzerland; and Adamawa is slightly larger than Belgium. Policing territories of that scale would test any state, all the more so when they border a fragile regional neighbourhood.

The terrain has also shaped the rhythm of the conflict, with the dry season, particularly the first quarter of the year, ushering in an intensification of attacks.

At the heart of this adaptation is the evolution of technology. What once seemed unthinkable in this theatre has now entered the insurgent repertoire. Drones, including commercially available models modified for combat, are now part of the operational environment. The significance of this shift is not merely technical; it is also psychological and strategic.

Beyond technology, the insurgency’s growing mobility has sharpened the threat further. Rapid assaults by motorcycle-mounted units demonstrate the extent to which insurgent violence now depends on speed, concentration, and dispersal. Fighters can assemble quickly, strike vulnerable locations, and disappear into difficult terrain before an effective response can take shape.

The advantage here lies not in holding territory in the conventional sense, but in imposing uncertainty, stretching the state’s defensive attentions, and proving that the insurgents can still choose where and when to shock the system.

Perhaps the most dangerous dimension of this adaptation is the infiltration of foreign fighters. Their significance lies not only in their numbers, but in what they bring with them: technical knowledge, battlefield experience, tactical imagination, and links to wider militant networks.

Their presence points to a deeper cross-fertilisation between local insurgency and global terrorist currents. More troubling still, they are now playing a more active role in the conflict, not only refining tactics and skills but also participating directly in combat.

That is why the regional dimension must be central to any serious analysis. The weakening of regional cooperation has come at the worst time, creating openings that insurgents are only too ready to exploit. A threat that has always been transnational becomes harder to confront when neighbouring states no longer act with sufficient cohesion.

Niger’s withdrawal from the Multinational Joint Task Force after the reaction of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to the military coup there has sharpened that challenge and weakened the perimeter defences of the north-east theatre. The force, comprising troops from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad, with a smaller Beninese contingent at its headquarters in N’Djamena, was instrumental in earlier gains and remains vital for reinforcing positions, conducting operations in difficult terrain, denying insurgents safe havens, and intercepting the movement of foreign fighters.

Yet even regional analysis, necessary as it is, does not fully explain the problem. Insurgencies endure not only because they move across borders, but because they can recruit, regroup, and exploit social weakness at home.

Violence in northern Nigeria is sustained by a combination of doctrinal extremism, chronic poverty, educational exclusion, and a state whose presence is often too limited to command confidence in the communities where armed groups seek recruits. The argument, therefore, cannot remain confined to the military sphere.

Poverty and lack of education do not directly produce terrorism, but they increase vulnerability, especially where alienation, weak institutions, and manipulative ideological narratives are already present. This is why the educational crisis in northern Nigeria should be seen not only as a developmental challenge, but as part of the wider security landscape. Education does more than impart literacy and numeracy; it provides structure, routine, and pathways to self-actualisation and social belonging.

It is important to note that the government is not without a response. In 2024, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the Student Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act into law, and the rollout of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund has since opened a wider path to post-secondary education and skills development. But the more decisive educational challenge lies earlier, at the basic level, where literacy begins, habits are formed, and attachment to institutions is either built or lost. By the time a young person reaches the threshold of higher education, the foundational work has already been done or neglected.

This is why local governance matters more to security than is often recognised. In Nigeria’s federal structure, primary education sits closest to the weakest and most politically distorted tier of government. If local government remains fiscally weak, administratively paralysed, or politically captured, one of the country’s most important long-term defences against radicalisation will remain fragile.

That is why local government autonomy, though often framed in dry constitutional terms, has direct implications for security. President Tinubu, an ardent champion of local autonomy, welcomed the Supreme Court’s July 2024 judgement affirming the constitutional and financial rights of local governments and has pressed governors to respect it. Resistance, however, is unsurprising: many governors have long treated local governments as subordinate extensions of their authority.

So what does the present moment demand from Nigeria? It demands, certainly, continued military pressure on insurgent sanctuaries. It demands stronger force protection, sharper intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, improved rural and urban security, and a more serious approach to trans-border diplomacy. It demands that regional diplomacy be treated not as a luxury of peacetime statecraft, but as part of the operational infrastructure of security.

But the crisis cannot be addressed by military action alone. It also calls for social, institutional, and educational measures across all tiers of government. The state must confront extremism not only through force, but through education and functioning local institutions. It must rebuild governance, restore trust, and close the social and institutional fractures through which violence renews itself.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.