violence

The Colombian leader opened a new embassy in Haiti, while talks have been focused on security and the fight against drug trafficking.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has travelled to Haiti for the second time this year in a significant show of support, as spiralling gang violence continues to plague the Caribbean country.

Petro’s visit, which began Friday, has focused on talks on security, commerce, education, agriculture and the fight against drug trafficking, the Colombian government said.

Petro announced the opening of a Colombian embassy in the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince.

He has also pledged to help Haiti strengthen its security, offering to train Haitian officers. Haitian delegations have visited a state-owned arms manufacturing company in Colombia to learn about its defence capabilities.

The Colombian government shared a brief clip of Petro speaking at the new embassy: “The time has come to truly unite.”

Por fin, tenemos embajada en Haití.

¿Qué fuerzas impedían en la cancillería que hubiera una embajada en el país desde donde salió nuestra independencia?

¿Sería porque nuestra libertad salió fue de los esclavos negros que se liberaron a sí mismos? pic.twitter.com/tpdpmBptCz

— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) July 19, 2025

Translation: Finally, we have an embassy in Haiti. What forces in the Foreign Ministry were preventing the establishment of an embassy in the country from which our independence originated? Could it be because our freedom came from the Black slaves who liberated themselves?

Petro landed in Port-au-Prince, where 90 percent of the capital is under gang control. He was accompanied by officials, including Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez.

During his visit, Petro met with Haiti’s Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime and its transitional presidential council, which is under pressure to hold general elections before February 2026.

The officials arrived less than a week after Haitian authorities killed four suspected drug traffickers and confiscated more than 1,000kg (2,300lb) of cocaine off the country’s north coast.

The seizure was unexpectedly large for Haiti’s National Police, which remains understaffed and underfunded as it works with Kenyan police leading a United Nations-backed mission to help quell gang violence.

While most of the violence is centred in Port-au-Prince, gangs have razed and seized control of a growing number of towns in Haiti’s central region.

At least 4,864 people have been killed from October to the end of June across Haiti, with hundreds of others kidnapped, raped and trafficked, according to a recent UN report.

Gang violence has also displaced 1.3 million people in recent years.

Petro previously visited Haiti in late January. Before his visit, Haitian officials invested some $3.8m to more than double the runway at the airport in the city of Jacmel, renovate the town and restore electricity to a population living in the dark for at least three years.

The two countries are additionally strengthening their ties as judges in Haiti continue to interrogate 17 former Colombian soldiers accused in the July 2021 killing of President Jovenel Moise.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last month that temporary protected status for about 5,000 Haitians would end Sept. 2, five months earlier than planned. The Trump administration has cited flawed and contradictory assessments of conditions in Haiti — which, make no mistake, remains unsafe.

Although a U.S. district court halted the action — at least temporarily — and reinstated the original termination date of Feb. 3, the administration is likely to challenge the ruling. The outcome of such a challenge could hinge on whether the courts receive and believe an accurate representation of current events in Haiti.

The administration asserts that “overall, country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety.” Nothing could be further from the truth. But few outsiders are entering and leaving the country lately, so the truth can be hard to ascertain.

In late April and early May, as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I traveled to the northern city of Cap-Haïtien. For the first time in the several years I have been working in Haiti, violence kept me from reaching the capital, Port-au-Prince, where the airport remains under a Federal Aviation Administration ban since November when gangs shot Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines passenger jets in flight.

In Cap-Haïtien, I spoke with dozens of people who fled the capital and other towns in recent months. Many shared accounts of killings, injuries from stray bullets and gang rapes by criminal group members.

“We were walking toward school when we saw the bandits shooting at houses, at people, at everything that moved,” a 27-year-old woman, a student from Port-au-Prince, told me. “We started to run back, but that’s when [my sister] Guerline fell face down. She was shot in the back of the head, then I saw [my cousin] Alice shot in the chest.” The student crawled under a car, where she hid for hours. She fled the capital in early January.

This rampant violence is precisely the sort of conditions Congress had in mind when it passed the temporary protected status law in 1990. It recognized a gap in protection for situations in which a person might not be able to establish that they have been targeted for persecution on the basis of their beliefs or identity — the standard for permanent asylum claims — but rather when a person’s life is at real risk because of high levels of generalized violence that make it too dangerous for anyone to be returned to the place.

When an administration grants this designation, it does so for a defined period, which can be extended based on conditions in the recipients’ home country. For instance, protected status for people from Somalia was first designated in 1991 and has been extended repeatedly, most recently through March 17, 2026.

Almost 1.3 million people are internally displaced in Haiti. They flee increasing violence by criminal groups that killed more than 5,600 people in 2024 — 23% more than in 2023. Some analysts say the country has the highest homicide rate in the world. Criminal groups control nearly 90% of the capital and have expanded into other places.

Perversely, the Department of Homeland Security publicly concedes this reality, citing in a Federal Register notification “widespread gang violence” as a reason for terminating temporary protected status. The government argues that a “breakdown in governance” makes Haiti unable to control migration, and so a continued designation to protect people from there would not be in the “national interests” of the United States.

Even judging on that criterion alone, revoking the legal status of Haitians in the U.S. is a bad idea. Sending half a million people into Haiti would be highly destabilizing and counter to U.S. interests — not to mention that their lives would be at risk.

The Trump administration has taken no meaningful action to improve Haiti’s situation. The Kenya-led multinational security support mission, authorized by the U.N. Security Council and initially backed by the United States, has been on the ground for a year. Yet because of severe shortages of personnel, resources and funding, it has failed to provide the support the Haitian police desperately need. In late February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recommended steps to strengthen the mission, but the Security Council has yet to act.

The humanitarian situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate. An estimated 6 million people need humanitarian assistance. Nearly 5.7 million face acute hunger.

On June 26, just one day before Homeland Security’s attempt to end Haitians’ protected status prematurely, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau described the ongoing crisis in Haiti as “disheartening.” He said that “public order has all but collapsed” as “Haiti descends into chaos.” Two days earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a security alert urging U.S. citizens in the country to “depart as soon as possible.” These are not indications that “country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety,” as Homeland Security claimed on June 27.

The decision to prematurely end temporary protected status is utterly disconnected from reality. The Trump administration itself has warned that Haiti remains dangerous — and if anything has become more so in recent months. The U.S. government should continue to protect Haitians now living in the United States from being thrown into the brutal violence unfolding in their home country.

Nathalye Cotrino is a senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Fans of System of a Down desperately hoping the Armenian American alt-metal band will one day release a full-length follow-up to their chart-topping 2005 companion albums “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” can at least seek some solace in the latest offering from band co-founder Daron Malakian. “Addicted to the Violence,” the third album from his solo project Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, may lack System frontman Serj Tankian’s mellifluous singing, iconoclastic rants and feral screams, but its eclectic structure, melodic earworms, fetching vocal harmonies and poignant themes are sonically and structurally similar to System of a Down — and with good reason.

“All of my songs can work for either Scars or System because they come from my style and have my signature,” Malakian says from his home in Glendale. “When I wrote for System, I didn’t bring guitar riffs to the band. Like with [System’s 2002 breakthrough single] ‘Aerials.’ That was a complete song. I wrote it from beginning to end before I showed it to them.”

Malakian — who tackled vocals, guitar and bass — assembled “Addicted to the Violence” (out Friday) during the last five years, using songs he’d written over roughly two decades. The oldest track, “Satan Hussein,” which starts with a rapid-fire guitar line and features a serrated verse and a storming chorus, dates to the early 2000s, when System’s second album, “Toxicity,” was rocketing toward six-times platinum status (which it achieved nine months after release).

With Scars, Malakian isn’t chasing ghosts and he’s not tied to a schedule. He’s more interested in spontaneity than continuity, and artistry takes precedence over cohesion. None of the tracks on the band’s sporadically released three albums — 2008’s self-titled debut, 2018’s “Dictator,” and “Addicted to the Violence”— follow a linear or chronological path. Instead, each includes an eclectic variety of songs chosen almost at random.

“It’s almost like I spin the wheel and wherever the arrow lands, that’s where I start,” he explains. “I end up with a bunch of songs from different periods in my life that come from different moods. It’s totally selfish. Everything starts as something I write for myself and play for myself. I never listen to something I’ve done and say, ‘Oh, everybody’s gonna love this.’ For me, a song is more like my new toy. At some point, I finish playing with it and I go, ‘OK, I’m ready to share this with other kids now.’”

Whether by happenstance or subconscious inspiration, “Addicted to the Violence” is a turbulent, inadvertently prescient album for unstable times — a barbed, off-kilter amalgam of metal, alt-rock, pop, Cali-punk, prog, Mediterranean folk, alt-country and psychedelia — sometimes within the same song. Lyrically, Malakian addresses school shootings, authoritarianism, media manipulation, infidelity, addiction and stream-of-consciousness ramblings as dizzying as an hour of random, rapid-fire channel surfing.

Is writing music your way of making sense out of a nonsensical world?

I like to think of it as bringing worlds together that, in other cases, may not belong together. But when they come out through me, they mutate and turn into this thing that makes sense. In that way, music is like my therapist. Even if I write a song and nobody ever hears it, it’s healthy for me to make and it helps me work stuff out. When I write a song, sometimes it affects me deeply and I’ll cry or I’ll get hyped up and excited. It’s almost like I’m communicating with somebody, but I’m not talking to anyone. It’s just me in this intimate moment.

Is it strange to take these personal, intimate and therapeutic moments and turn them into songs that go out for the masses to interpret and absorb?

I want people to make up their own meanings for the songs, even if they’re completely different than mine. I don’t even like to talk about what inspired the songs because it doesn’t matter. No one needs to know what I was thinking because they don’t know my life. They don’t know me. They know the guy on stage, but they don’t know the personal struggles I’ve been through and they don’t need to.

Was there anything about “Addicted to the Violence” that you wanted to do differently than “Dictator”?

Different songs on the album have synthesizer and that’s a color I’ve never used before in System or Scars. Every painting you make shouldn’t have the same colors. Sometimes I’m like, “Will that work with the rest of the songs? That color is really different.” But I’m not afraid to use it.

[Warning: Video includes profanity.]

“Shame Game” has a psychedelic vibe that’s kinda like a hybrid of Strawberry Alarm Clock and Blue Oyster Cult, while the title track has a prog rock vibe redolent of Styx, Rush and Mars Volta.

I love all that stuff. I spend more time listening to music than playing guitar. It’s how I practice music. I take in these inspirations and it all comes out later when I write without me realizing it.

In 2020, System released the songs “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz,” which you originally planned to use for Scars on Broadway.

At that time, I hadn’t recorded “Genocidal Humanoidz” yet, but I had finished “Protect the Land,” and my vocals on the song are the tracks I was going to use for my album. Serj just came in and sang his parts over it.

Why did you offer those songs to System when every time you tried to work on an album with them after 2010, you hit a creative impasse?

Because [the second Nagorno-Karabakh War] was going on in Artsakh at that time between [the Armenian breakaway state Artsakh and Azerbaijan], and we decided we needed to say something. We all got on the phone and I said, “Hey, I got this song ‘Protect the Land,’ and it’s about this exact topic.” So, I pulled it off the Scars record and shared it with System.

You released the eponymous Scars on Broadway album in 2008, almost exactly two years after System went on a four-year hiatus. Did you form Scars out of a need to stay creative?

At the time, I knew that if I wanted to keep releasing music, I needed a new outlet, so Scars was something that had to happen or I would have just been sitting around all these years and nobody would have heard from me.

You played a few shows with Scars before your first album came out in 2008, but you abruptly canceled the supporting tour and only released one more Scars song before 2018.

That was a really strange time. I wanted to move forward with my music, but we had worked so hard to get to the point we got to in System, and not everyone was in the same boat when it came to how we wanted to move forward. I just wasn’t ready to do a tour with Scars.

Was it like trying to start a new relationship after a bad breakup?

I might have rushed into that second marriage too quick. I had [System drummer] John [Dolmayan] playing with me, and I think that was [a sign that] I was still holding onto System of a Down. That created a lot of anxiety.

A few years later, you announced that you were working on a new Scars album and planned to release it in 2013. Why did it take until 2018 for you to put out “Dictator”?

I was writing songs and thinking they were amazing, but in my head I was conflicted about where the songs were going to go. “Should I take them to Scars? Is that premature? Would System want to do something with them?” I underwent this constant struggle because Serj and I always had this creative disagreement. I finally moved past that and did the second album, but it took a while.

“Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present,” Malakian said.

(Travis Shinn)

System of a Down played nine concerts in South America this spring, and you have six stadium gigs scheduled in North America for August and September. Is there any chance a new System album will follow?

I’m not so sure I even want to make another System of a Down record at this point in my life. I’m getting along with the guys really well right now. Serj and I love each other and we enjoy being onstage together. So, maybe it’s best for us to keep playing concerts as System and doing our own things outside of that.

The cover art for “Addicted to the Violence” — a silhouette of a woman against a blood-red background holding an oversize bullet over her head, and standing in front of a row of opium poppies — is the work of your father, Iraqi-born artist Vartan Malakian. Was he a major inspiration for you?

My approach to art and everything I know about it comes from my dad, and the way we approach what we do is very similar. We both do it for ourselves. He has never promoted himself or done an art exhibition. The only things most people have seen from him are the album covers. But ever since I was born, he was doing art in the house, and he’s never cared if anyone was looking at it.

Do you seek his approval?

No, I don’t. He usually is very supportive of what I do, but my dad’s a complicated guy. I admire him a lot and wish I could even be half of the artist that he is. And if he and my mom didn’t move to this country, I would not have been in System of a Down. I would have ended up as a soldier during Desert Storm and the Second Gulf War. That’s my alternative life. It’s crazy.

Have you been to Iraq?

When I was 14 years old, I went there for two months to visit relatives and it was a complete culture shock. I’m a kid that grew up in Hollywood, and I went to Baghdad wearing a Metallica shirt and I was a total smart aleck. Everywhere we went, I saw pictures and statues of Saddam Hussein. I turned to my cousin and said, “What if I walked up to one of the statues and said, ‘Hey Saddam, go f— yourself?’” Just me saying that made him nervous and scared. Talking like that was seriously dangerous and I had no idea. That was a definite learning experience of what I could have been. And it inspired me later to write “Satan Hussein.”

You had a glimpse of life under an authoritarian regime. Do you have strong feelings about the Trump administration and the way the president has, at times, acted like a dictator?

I don’t hate the guy and I don’t love the guy. I’m not on the right, I’m not on the left. There are some things both sides do that I agree with, but I don’t talk about that stuff in interviews because when it comes to politics, I’m not on a team. I don’t like the division in this country, and I think if you’re too far right or you’re too far left, you end up in the same place.

Is “Addicted to the Violence,” and especially the song “Killing Spree,” a commentary on political violence in our country?

Not just political violence, it’s all violence. “Killing Spree” is ridiculous. It’s heavy. It’s dark. But if you listen to the way I sing, there is an absolutely absurd delivery, almost like I’m having fun with it. I’m not celebrating the violence, but the delivery is done the way a crazy person would celebrate it. So, it’s from the viewpoint of a killer, the viewpoint of a victim, and my own viewpoint. I saw a video on social media of these kids standing around in the street, and one of them gets wiped out by the back end of a car and flies into the air. These kids are recording it and some of them are laughing like’s it’s funny. I don’t want to say that’s right or wrong, but from what I’m seeing, a lot of people have become desensitized to violence.

You’re releasing “Addicted to the Violence” about six weeks before the final six System of a Down dates of 2025. Have you figured out how to compartmentalize what you do with System of a Down and Scars on Broadway?

There was a time that I couldn’t juggle the two very well, but now I feel more confident and very comfortable with where System and Scars are. I love playing with System, and I want to do more shows with Scars. I couldn’t tell you how either band will evolve. Only time will tell what happens and I’m fine with that as long as it happens in a natural way. Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present.

What started as a local conflict in southern Syria between local Druze and Bedouin communities over the weekend escalated on Wednesday into Israel bombing Syria’s Ministry of Defence and other targets in the capital Damascus.

At least three people were killed in the Damascus attacks, the Syrian Ministry of Health said. Other Israeli air attacks on Wednesday hit the southwestern provinces of Suwayda and Deraa.

Suwayda – where the majority of the population are members of the Druze religious group – had been the epicentre of the violence in recent days. Israel had already struck Syrian government forces there earlier this week.

Israeli officials claim their attacks on Syria aim to protect the Druze community in Suwayda, where scores of people have been killed in clashes involving local armed groups, as well as government forces.

However, local activists and analysts say Israel is fueling internal strife in Suwayda by continuing to bomb Syria – as it has done repeatedly since former President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December. And Israel has continued to attack Syrian government forces, despite ceasefire agreements between some Druze leaders and the Syrian authorities.

“Not only is Israel now painting the entire [Druze] community as pro-Israel, but they are painting them as supporting Israel’s bombardment of Damascus,” said Dareen Khalifa, an expert on Syria and a senior adviser with International Crisis Group.

Exploiting strife

The recent violence in Suwayda began after Bedouin armed groups kidnapped a Druze trader on the road to Damascus on July 11, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based monitor.

The abduction quickly turned into more widespread violence between the two communities – which have a longstanding rivalry due to land disputes – eventually dragging in Syrian government forces.

Syria’s new government has been attempting to impose its authority after a 14-year civil war and the end of half a century of al-Assad family rule. However, it has found it difficult to do so in Suwayda, partly because of Israel’s repeated threats against the presence of any government forces in the province, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Suwayda’s Druze initially welcomed the deployment of government forces following the weekend’s violence, but clashes soon began between some Druze fighters and those forces, with reports of the latter carrying out human rights abuses, according to civilians, local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria in an attempt to keep the country weak and divided, as well as to pander to its own Druze citizens who serve in the Israeli army, experts say.

“From the Israeli perspective – and how they view Syria and how Syria should be – they prefer a weak central government and for the country to be governed and divided into sectarian self-governing enclaves,” said Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an expert on Syria who has extensively researched local dynamics in Suwayda.

Al-Tamimi added that reactions in Suwayda have been mixed regarding Israel’s conduct, which speaks to the lack of trust many in the province have in the new government in Damascus – which is led by members of Syria’s Sunni majority, many of whom, including President Ahmed al-Sharaa, were members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former affiliate of al-Qaeda.

Civilians in Suwayda said that part of the distrust stems from the government’s failure to hold fighters accountable for either allowing or partaking in the killing of hundreds of Alawites on Syria’s coast in March.

Alawites belong to an offshoot of Shia Islam, a sect that al-Assad and his family hailed from. The government has launched an investigation into the fighting, in which more than 200 Syrian government security personnel were also killed after attacks by pro-Assad forces, with the findings expected in October.

Abuses and fear

Government forces have been accused of carrying out human rights abuses in Suwayda, including carrying out “field executions,” according to SOHR and other local monitors.

“I personally wanted the government forces to restore order, but not like this,” said Fareed*, a young man from the Druze community.

The local outlet Suwayda24 reported that fighters believed to be linked to the government executed nine unarmed civilians after raiding a family compound on July 15.

Al Jazeera’s verification unit, Sanad, confirmed the reports.

Written questions were sent to Uday al-Abdullah, an official at Syria’s Ministry of Defence, asking him to respond to accusations that government forces carried out execution-style killings.

He did not respond before publication.

However, on Wednesday, the Syrian Health Ministry said that dozens of bodies had been found in Suwayda’s National Hospital, including security forces and civilians.

Ceasefires have been repeatedly agreed between Druze factions and the Syrian government. The most recent, on Wednesday, included an agreement that Suwayda be fully integrated into the Syrian state, according to Youssef Jarbou, a Druze leader.

However, as in the case of a ceasefire agreed on Tuesday, Israel has continued to attack.

What’s more, several Druze religious and armed factions retreated from the Tuesday ceasefire primarily because government forces continued to carry out violations in Suwayda, according to al-Tamimi.

During the civil war, clerics and armed Druze factions were able to negotiate de facto autonomy while repelling attacks by groups such as ISIL (ISIS).

After al-Assad fell in December 2024, one notable Druze religious leader, Hikmat al-Hijri, demanded that the new authorities in Damascus change the constitution to ensure greater regional autonomy for Suwayda and secularisation.

His position had significant backing, but not the majority, said al-Tamimi.

“His specific position – that the government needed to rewrite the constitution – was not the majority position in Suwayda,” he told Al Jazeera, saying there were pragmatists willing to engage with the government to safeguard a degree of autonomy and integrate with the new authorities.

“[But after these government violations], al-Hijir’s positions will likely enjoy more sympathy and support,” al-Tamimi warned.

Calls for intervention

As fighting continues in al-Suwayda, al-Hijri has controversially called on the international community to protect the Druze in Syria.

Critics fear that his call is a veiled request for Israeli intervention, a position that many people in Suwayda disagree with.

Samya,* a local activist who is living in a village several kilometres away from where the clashes are unfolding, said Israel’s attacks make her “uncomfortable” and that she doesn’t support intervention.

At the same time, she said she is increasingly worried that government forces will raid homes, endangering civilians.

“We don’t know what to expect,” she told Al Jazeera.

“We don’t know who may come to our house and who that person will be, and what he might ask us once he enters. We don’t know how that person or soldier might treat us, you know? So, there is fear. Honestly, we are all really terrified,” she added.

Al-Tamimi warned that Israel’s discourse of “protecting” the Druze of Syria could exacerbate internal strife, leading to collective punishment.

“[What Israel is doing] is inflaming sectarian tension, because it gives fuel to the suggestions that Druze are secretly working with Israel to divide the country,” he said.

Some names have been changed to protect sources from reprisal

Israel has carried out powerful air strikes near Syria’s presidential palace and on the military headquarters in the heart of Damascus, a major escalation in its bombardment of the neighbouring country.

At least three people were killed and 34 others were wounded in the attacks on Damascus on Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, citing the Ministry of Health.

While targeting Damascus, the Israeli military continued to pound areas in southern Syria, including Suwayda, where a new ceasefire deal has been struck after four days of clashes between Druze armed groups, Bedouin tribes and government forces, which left hundreds dead.

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Israeli attacks on Damascus and Suwayda were “part of a systematic Israeli policy to ignite tension and chaos and undermine security in Syria”, calling on the international community to take “urgent action” against Israeli aggression.

Israel said its bombing campaign is aimed at protecting the Druze minority, and it has called on the Syrian government to withdraw its troops from the city of Suwayda, where much of the violence has taken place.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said on X that the Israeli military would “continue to operate vigorously in Suwayda to destroy the forces that attacked the Druze until they withdraw completely”.

Later on Wednesday, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the parties to the fighting in southern Syria had agreed on “specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end tonight”.

“This will require all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made and this is what we fully expect them to do,” Rubio said on X of the ceasefire deal, reached one day after an earlier iteration had collapsed.

More than 300 people had been killed in fighting as of Wednesday morning, including four children, eight women and 165 soldiers and security forces, according to the UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Army withdrawal from Suwayda

The Syrian Ministry of Interior and Druze leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou confirmed on Wednesday that they had reached a ceasefire. But the new deal was rejected by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari, another Druze leader, who promised to continue fighting until Suwayda was “entirely liberated”.

According to the ministry, the deal declares a “total and immediate halt to all military operations”, as well as the formation of a committee comprising government officials and Druze spiritual leaders to supervise its implementation.

That evening, the Syrian Ministry of Defence said it had begun withdrawing the army from Suwayda “in implementation of the terms of the adopted agreement after the end of the sweep of the city for outlaw groups”.

Speaking shortly before Rubio’s announcement of a deal, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce had said that the US wanted Syrian government forces to “withdraw their military in order to enable all sides to de-escalate and find a path forward”.

But while Syrian troops are withdrawing, the government will be maintaining a presence in the city,

Reporting from Syria’s capital Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said the deal included the “deployment of government forces”.

“They will set up checkpoints, and this area will be fully integrated into the Syrian state,” she said.

A complete withdrawal by the government would, she said, “mean a failure in efforts by the new authorities to unite a fractured nation and extend its authority across Syria”.

“But staying could open a much bigger conflict with Israel that has promised more strikes if, in the words of Katz, the message wasn’t received.”

Pretext to bomb

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between Druze armed factions and local Sunni Bedouin tribes in the southern province of Suwayda.

Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze, with reports of the former carrying out human rights abuses, according to local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria as it builds military bases in the demilitarised buffer zone with Syria seized by its forces.

Haid Haid, consulting fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that Israel had been clear since the ouster of Bashar al-Assad last year that they did not want Syrian forces “to be deployed to the deconfliction line in southern Syria”.

“One way Israel is trying to advance that plan is to present itself as the ‘protectors’ of the Druze community,” Haid said.

Ammar Kahf, the Damascus-based executive director of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, said: “It’s a clear message to the Syrian government that the Israelis are not going to be silent.

“The Israelis are not going to allow the Syrian government to spread its authority all over the territory.”

Israel has launched a series of intense strikes on Damascus, Syria’s capital, intensifying a campaign it says is in support of an Arab minority group.

Syria, on Wednesday, strongly condemned Israeli attacks, denouncing the strikes as a “dangerous escalation.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Israel of pursuing a “deliberate policy” to  “inflame tensions, spread chaos and undermine security and stability in Syria”.

The strikes killed three people and injured 34, according to Syrian officials.

Here is what we know:

What happened in Syria on Wednesday?

Israel carried out a series of air strikes on central Damascus, hitting a compound that houses the Ministry of Defence and areas near the presidential palace.

The Israeli military also struck targets in southern Syria, where fighting between Druze groups, Bedouin tribes, and Syrian security forces has continued for more than four days. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 250 people have been killed in Suwayda province during the clashes.

Israel, which already occupies the Syrian Golan Heights, says its operations aim to protect the Druze minority – whom it considers potential allies – and to strike pro-government forces accused of attacking them. Syria rejected this and called the attack a “flagrant assault”.

Where did the attacks happen?

The main attacks focused on central Damascus: the Defence Ministry, military headquarters and areas surrounding the presidential palace. Additional strikes were carried out further south.

Syria’s Defence Ministry headquarters: The compound was struck several times, with two large strikes about 3pm (12:00pmGMT), including its entrance, causing structural damage and smoke rising visibly over the city.

“Israeli warplanes [were] circling the skies over the Syrian capital,” Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said, reporting from Damascus. “There was panic in the city,” she added.

Near the presidential palace (Umayyad Square): Strikes also hit areas immediately around the presidential palace in central Damascus. Another air strike landed near the presidential palace in Damascus.

In a post on social media, Israel said “a military target was struck in the area of the Syrian regime’s Presidential Palace in the Damascus area”.

In the south: Israeli drones also targeted Syria’s city of Suwayda, a mainly Druze city close to the border with Jordan.

Why did Israel bomb Syria?

Israel’s air strikes followed days of deadly clashes in Suwayda between Syrian government forces and local Druze fighters. The violence began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes. When government troops intervened to restore order, they ended up clashing with Druze groups – and, in some cases, reportedly targeted civilians.

The Druze, a small but influential minority in both Syria and Israel, are seen in Israel as loyal allies, with many serving in the Israeli military. A ceasefire declared on Tuesday quickly collapsed, and fighting resumed the next day.

Suwayda’s Druze appear divided. One leader, Yasser Jarbou, declared that a ceasefire had been agreed with the Syrian government. Another, Hikmat al-Hijri, rejected any ceasefire. And many Druze in Syria do not want Israel to intervene on their behalf.

Israel has its own considerations and has been attempting to expand its control in southern Syria since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel has shunned any attempts to come to a security agreement with Syria and has instead repeatedly bombed the country this year. Many analysts believe that Israel would prefer a weak Syria over a country it believes could potentially threaten it should it grow strong.

Intensifying attacks

Israel, citing a commitment to protect the Druze and prevent hostile forces from gaining ground near its borders, warned Wednesday it would escalate its operations unless Syrian troops withdrew from Suwayda. The province sits near both the Israeli and Jordanian borders, making it a key strategic zone.

“This is a significant escalation,” Khodr, Al Jazeera’s correspondent, said. “This is the Israeli leadership giving a very, very direct message to Syria’s new authorities that they will intensify such strikes … if the government does not withdraw its troops from southern Syria.”

As part of its campaign, Israeli forces struck the General Staff compound in Damascus, which it said was being used by senior commanders to direct operations against Druze forces in Suwayda.

Israeli officials said the strikes were also aimed at blocking the buildup of hostile forces near Israel’s frontier.

Shortly after the Damascus attacks, Syria’s Ministry of Interior announced a new ceasefire in Suwayda. According to state media, government troops began withdrawing from the area.

Syrian response

Syria condemned the Israeli strikes as a violation of international law, a stance echoed by several Arab governments.

Syria’s new government has been trying to assert control, but it has struggled to do so in Suwayda, in part due to repeated Israeli threats against any government military presence in the province.

“The Israelis are not going to allow the Syrian government to spread its authority all over the territory,” said Ammar Kahf, executive director of Omran Center for Strategic Studies, who is based in Damascus.

With the fall of al-Assad’s government and the infancy of a new one, Israel is trying to impose its will on the new leadership, he said.

“We are still in the early stages, but this requires all Syrians to come together. For a foreign government to come in and destroy public property and destroy safety and security is something that’s unexplainable,” Kahf told Al Jazeera.

The Syrian government has now announced that army forces will begin withdrawing from the city of Suwayda as part of a ceasefire agreement. It did not mention any pullout of other government security forces.

Top church leaders and diplomats have called on Israeli settlers to be held accountable during a visit to the predominantly Christian town of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank, after settlers intensified attacks on the area in recent weeks.

Representatives from more than 20 countries including the United Kingdom, Russia, China, Japan, Jordan, and the European Union, were among the delegates who visited the village in the West Bank on Monday.

Speaking in Taybeh, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III and Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa denounced an incident last week when settlers set fires near the community’s church.

They said that Israeli authorities failed to respond to emergency calls for help from the Palestinian community.

In a separate statement, the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem demanded an investigation into the incident and called for the settlers to be held accountable by the Israeli authorities, “who facilitate and enable their presence around Taybeh”.

The church leaders also said that settlers had brought their cattle to graze on Palestinian lands in the area, set fire to several homes last month, and put up a sign reading “there is no future for you here”.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Doha, said church leaders have been calling this a “systemic and targeted attack” against Christians.

“About 50,000 of them live in the occupied West Bank, a small but very proud minority,” Ibrahim said. “They also consider themselves under attack, not just because they’re Christians but because they’re Palestinians.”

The church has been trying for years to “enhance the steadfastness of the Christian community in Palestine”, Ibrahim said.

“We’ve been seeing how Israeli settlers have been pushing them out of their lands, out of their homes.”

Settlers, who are often armed, are backed by Israeli army soldiers and regularly carry out attacks against Palestinians, their lands, and property. Several rights groups have documented repeated instances where Israeli settlers in the West Bank ransack Palestinian neighbourhoods and towns, burning homes and vehicles.

Assaults have grown in scale and intensity since Israel’s brutal war on Gaza began in October 2023. These assaults also include large-scale incursions by Israeli forces into Palestinian towns and cities across the West Bank that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands.

Pizzaballa, the top Catholic cleric in Jerusalem, said he believed the West Bank was becoming a lawless area.

“The only law [in the West Bank] is that of power, of those who have the force, not the law. We must work for the law to return to this part of the country, so anyone can appeal to the law to enforce their rights,” Pizzaballa told reporters.

He and Theophilos prayed together at the Church of St George, whose religious site dates back centuries, adjacent to the area where settlers ignited the fires.

The visit comes as Palestinians report a new surge of settler violence.

On Monday, Israeli settlers and soldiers launched several more attacks across the West Bank, including in Bethlehem, where settlers uprooted hundreds of olive trees in al-Maniya village, southeast of the city, and Israeli authorities demolished a four-storey residential building.

The head of the al-Maniya village council, Zayed Kawazba, told Wafa news agency that a group of settlers stormed al-Qarn in the centre of al-Maniya, set up four tents and uprooted approximately 1,500 olive saplings belonging to families from the al-Motawer and Jabarin clans.

A day earlier, hundreds descended on the village of Al-Mazraa ash-Sharqiya, south of Taybeh, for the funeral of two young men killed during a settler attack on Friday.

The occupied West Bank is home to more than three million Palestinians who live under harsh Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority governing in limited areas separated from each other by a myriad of Israeli checkpoints.

Israel has so far built more than 100 settlements across the West Bank, which are home to about 500,000 settlers who live illegally on private Palestinian land.

July 11 (UPI) — War crimes are likely being committed in Sudan, with rape and sexual violence being used as weapons, the International Criminal Court said in a report to the United Nations.

“There is an inescapable pattern of offending, targeting gender and ethnicity through rape and sexual violence,” ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told U.N. ambassadors this week.

Khan said the ICC has “reasonable grounds to believe” both war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in the northeast African country, which has been plagued by an active civil war for approximately two years.

A team of ICC prosecutors is currently attempting to collect evidence of reported crimes in the Darfur Region in the western part of Sudan.

In February, U.N. officials called for $6 billion to help combat starvation and sexual violence in Sudan. A report at the time said “civilians are paying the highest price” in the country with a population of more than 50 million people.

Sudan’s military has been at war since April of 2023 with the Rapid Support Forces, a breakaway militant group run by Gen. Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa. The conflict has seen millions of people displaced, with tens of thousands killed since the country’s then-President Omar al-Bashir was removed from office in a civilian coup.

The two sides have continued attacks against each other, with civilians often becoming collateral damage.

In March, Sudan’s military recaptured the presidential palace.

A month later, an RSF attack killed over 100 people in Darfur. Figures provided by U.N. officials at the time showed over 24,000 people had been killed in the conflict with more than 700,000 refugees from the Darfur region jammed into two camps.

In January, the United States sanctioned Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces of undermining peace efforts.

Khan, this week, said the ICC has so far collected more than 7,000 pieces of evidence from refugee camps in neighbouring Chad. The prosecutor also called on the international community to “ensure there is no gap in our efforts to hold perpetrators accountable.”

The ICC was first given a mandate in 2002 by the U.N. Security Council to pursue war crimes in Darfur, with several subsequent investigations.

The United Nations has appealed to the international community to bolster its support for Haiti after a report revealed that gang violence has claimed 4,864 lives from October to June.

More than 20 percent of those deaths unfolded in the departments of Centre and Artibonite, indicating that intense violence is spilling into the areas surrounding the capital, Port-au-Prince.

In a report released on Friday, the UN explained that the growing presence of gangs like Gran Grif in those areas appears to be part of a broader strategy to control key routes connecting the capital to Haiti’s north and its border with the Dominican Republic.

“This expansion of gang territorial control poses a major risk of spreading violence and increasing transnational trafficking in arms and people,” the report said.

Among its recommendations was for the international community to better police the sale of firearms to Haiti and to continue to offer support for a Kenya-led security mission aimed at strengthening Haiti’s local law enforcement.

In a statement, Ulrika Richardson, the UN’s resident coordinator in Haiti, explained that propping up the country’s beleaguered police force is key to restoring security.

“Human rights abuses outside Port-au-Prince are intensifying in areas of the country where the presence of the State is extremely limited,” she said.

“The international community must strengthen its support to the authorities, who bear the primary responsibility for protecting the Haitian population.”

The report indicates that the violence in the regions surrounding Port-au-Prince took a turn for the worse in October, when a massacre was carried out in the town of Pont Sonde in the Artibonite department.

The Gran Grif gang had set up a checkpoint at a crossroads there, but local vigilante groups were encouraging residents to bypass it, according to the UN.

In an apparent act of retaliation, the gang launched an attack on Pont Sonde. The UN describes gang members as firing “indiscriminately at houses” along the road to the checkpoint, killing at least 100 people and wounding 16. They also set 45 houses and 34 vehicles on fire.

The chaos forced more than 6,270 people to flee Pont Sonde for their safety, contributing to an already dire crisis of internal displacement.

The UN notes that, as of June, more than 92,300 people were displaced from the Artibonite department, and 147,000 from Centre — a 118-percent increase over that department’s statistics from December.

Overall, nearly 1.3 million people have been displaced throughout the country.

The massacre at Pont Sondé prompted a backlash, with security forces briefly surging to the area. But that presence was not sustained, and Gran Grif has begun to reassert its control in recent months.

Meanwhile, the report documents a wave of reprisal killings, as vigilante groups answered the gang’s actions with violence of their own.

Around December 11, for instance, the UN noted that the gangs killed more than 70 people near the town of Petite-Riviere de l’Artibonite, and vigilante groups killed 67 people, many of them assumed to be relatives or romantic partners of local gang members.

Police units are also accused of committing 17 extrajudicial killings in that wave of violence, as they targeted suspected gang collaborators. The UN reports that new massacres have unfolded in the months since.

In the Centre department, a border region where gangs operate trafficking networks, similar acts of retaliation have been reported as the gangs and vigilante groups clash for control of the roads.

One instance the UN chronicles from March involved the police interception of a minibus driving from the city of Gonaives to Port-au-Prince. Officers allegedly found three firearms and 10,488 cartridges inside the bus, a fact which sparked concern and uproar among residents nearby.

“Enraged, members of the local population who witnessed the scene lynched to death, using stones, sticks, and machetes, two individuals: the driver and another man present in the vehicle,” the report said.

Haiti has been grappling with an intense period of gang violence since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021. Criminal networks have used the resulting power vacuum to expand their presence and power, seizing control of as much as 90 percent of the capital.

A transitional government council, meanwhile, has struggled to re-establish order amid controversies, tensions and leadership turnover. The council, however, has said it plans to hold its first presidential election in nearly a decade in 2026.

Meanwhile, Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, warned that civilians will continue to suffer as the cycle of violence continues.

“Caught in the middle of this unending horror story are the Haitian people, who are at the mercy of horrific violence by gangs and exposed to human rights violations from the security forces and abuses by the so-called ‘self-defence’ groups,” he said.

Nairobi, Kenya – On June 7, Albert Ojwang was visiting his parents in his home village of Kakoth in Kenya’s Homa Bay County. His mother had just served him ugali (maize meal) and sukuma wiki (kale) for lunch when police officers on motorbikes arrived at the family’s compound.

Before Ojwang could take a first bite, they arrested him, taking him to the local Mawego police station before transporting him 350km (200 miles) to the Central Police Station in the capital, Nairobi.

The officers told his parents he had committed an abuse against a senior government official and was being arrested for publishing “false information” about the man on social media.

Ojwang, a blogger and teacher, had no criminal record and was just a month shy of his 31st birthday. But it was a celebration he would not live to see because less than a day later he was dead.

Police said he died by suicide after “hitting his head” against the wall of a cell where he was being held alone. But after an uproar from the public and rights groups and further investigation, the claim did not hold up. Eventually, two police officers were arrested.

Still, the public anger that erupted after Ojwang’s death did not abate.

Kenyans have been on tenterhooks since mass antigovernment protests erupted across the country a year ago – first against tax increases in a finance bill and later for the resignation of President William Ruto.

In the time since, police have been accused of human rights abuses, including allegations of government critics and activists being abducted and tortured.

Ojwang was seen by many as yet another victim of a system trying to silence those attempting to hold the government to account.

And in the month since his death, angry protests have soared; state violence – and deaths – against civilians have continued; and young people seem determined not to give in.

‘False and malicious information’

Ojwang was the only child of Eucabeth Ojwang and Meshack Opiyo, a retired quarry worker who had endured hard labour for 20 years in Kilifi County to send his son to school.

Opiyo left the back-breaking job after Albert Ojwang had secured a job as a teacher, hoping his son would help take care of the family after earning a degree in education.

“I had only one child. There’s no daughter. There’s no other son after him,” he told Al Jazeera. “I have suffered … while [working] in a quarry in Timbo for 20 years so that my child could go through school and earn a degree,” he added, saying Ojwang left behind a three-year-old son.

Ojwang was a promising teacher at Kituma Boys’ Secondary School in the coastal Taita Taveta County, about 700km (435 miles) southeast of his childhood home, his family said.

Media reports said he was linked to an account on X that several people used to publish news about Kenya’s government and politics. That’s what drew the attention of the authorities who came to his father’s house that June afternoon.

That day, the arresting officers assured Opiyo his son would be safe when they took him into custody. Overnight, the father left for Nairobi – taking his land title deed with him to use as a surety to bail his son out because he had no other money. But the news he received was of his son’s death.

“I thought we would come and solve this issue. I even have a title deed here in my pocket that I had armed myself with, so that if there were going to be need for bail, we would talk with a lawyer to bail him,” Opiyo told journalists the Sunday morning after his son’s death, having just learned what had happened to him.

Despite police claims that Ojwang died from self-inflicted injuries, his family and the public were sceptical. Human rights advocates and social media users alleged foul play and an official cover-up by police.

As public pressure mounted on the police to offer clarity, Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja confirmed that his deputy, Eliud Lagat, was the senior official who had made a “formal complaint” that led to Ojwang’s arrest.

“The complaint alleged that false and malicious information had been published against him [Lagat] in the X – that is, formerly Twitter – social media platform. The post claimed that he was involved in corruption within the National Police Service,” Kanja said before Kenya’s Senate and the media on June 11.

At first, Kanja repeated to the media that Ojwang had hit his head on the wall, killing himself in the process. But when questioned by lawmakers in the Senate, he admitted that was incorrect.

“Going by the report that we have gotten from IPOA [Independent Policing Oversight Authority], it is not true; he did not hit his head against the wall,” Kanja said. “I tender my apology on behalf of the National Police Service because of that information.”

A team of five government pathologists also released a report that revealed severe head injuries, neck compression and multiple soft tissue traumas. The cause of Ojwang’s death, they determined, was a result of the injuries, not a self-inflicted incident.

Meanwhile, Ann Wanjiku, the IPOA vice chairperson, told senators that preliminary findings showed Ojwang was alone in the cell but two witnesses who were in the next cell said they heard loud screams from where Ojwang was held.

The IPOA report also suggested there was foul play at the Nairobi Police Station because CCTV cameras had been tampered with on Sunday morning after Ojwang’s death.

Subsequently, several people were arrested and investigated, including two police officers who have been charged.

Police Constable James Mukhwana, an officer arrested and arraigned in court over Ojwang’s death, told IPOA investigators that he had acted on orders of his boss.

“It is an order from the boss. You cannot decline an order from your superior. If you refuse, something may happen to you,” he said in a statement to the IPOA. He added that his superior told him: “I want you to go to the cell and look at those who have been in remand for long. Tell them there is work I want them to do. There is a prisoner being brought in. Take care of him.”

Mukhwana pleaded not guilty in court but said he was sorry about the death in his statement, adding: “Ojwang was not meant to be killed but to be disciplined as per instruction.”

Who is ‘sanctioning’ these killings?

Since Ojwang’s death, Kenyan rights organisations have condemned what they say is his “murder”, calling the failure by authorities to hold accountable those responsible for police brutality as disrespect for human rights.

“The savage beating to death of Albert Ojwang and the subsequent attempts to cover this up shatter once more the reputation of the leadership of the Kenyan Police Service,” Irungu Houghton, the executive director at Amnesty International Kenya, told Al Jazeera.

“Amnesty International Kenya believes the failure to hold officers and their commanders accountable for two successive years of police brutality has bred the current impunity and disrespect for human rights,” he said.

Houghton also called for all those implicated to step aside and allow for investigations to take place.

“To restore public confidence and trust, all officers implicated must be arrested. … Investigations must be fair, thorough and swift. This moment demands no less.”

Amnesty has previously called out police abuses, including “excessive force and violence during protests”, and reported abductions of civilians by security forces. Rights groups said more than 90 people have been forcibly disappeared since June 2024.

“Albert Ojwang’s killing in a police station comes after persistent repeated police denials that the normal chain of police command is not responsible for the 65 deaths and 90-plus enforced disappearances seen in 2024,” Houghton said.

“Who are the officers abducting and killing those who criticise the state? Who is sanctioning or instructing these officers? Why has the government found it so difficult to trigger deep reforms to protect rather than stifle Kenyans’ constitutional freedom of speech and assembly as well as act on public policy opinion?” he asked.

Speaking in an interview with Kenya’s TV47 on June 24, the National Police Service Spokesperson Michael Muchiri acknowledged police brutality within the service, saying it was wrong.

“We accept and we acknowledge that within our ranks, we’ve gotten it wrong multiple times,” he said. But he added: “An act by one of us, and there have been a couple of them many times over, should not in any way be a reflection of the whole organisation.”

Al Jazeera reached out to Deputy Inspector General of Police Lagat to comment on the allegations against him, but he did not respond.

Shot at protests

Many of the Kenyans reportedly targeted by police and other “state agents” were young, vocal participants in the antigovernment protests that engulfed the capital and other cities last year.

After Ojwang’s death, the Gen Z protesters once again erupted in anger.

On June 17, they staged a demonstration in Nairobi to demand justice for their fallen comrade. Things soon got out of hand as the police used force, resulting in fatalities among the young people.

Boniface Kariuki, a mask vendor in Nairobi, was caught between the police and protesters, and the police fired a rubber bullet at his head at close range, sending him to an intensive care unit at the Kenyatta National Hospital. He was declared brain dead after a few days and died on June 30.

An autopsy report released on Thursday said Kariuki “died from severe head injuries caused by a single close-range gunshot”. It further revealed that four bullet fragments remained lodged in his brain.

Two officers who had been caught on camera firing the deadly bullet have been charged.

This came about the time Kenyan youth also marked a year since the antigovernment protests began on June 25, 2024.

In line with the anniversary, many young people across the country took to the streets to express their anger against the government.

Those protests also became violent. Many businesses were destroyed in Nairobi, and some police stations in other places were set ablaze.

That same day, three 17-year-olds, among others, were shot dead in different parts of the country. While the police have not commented on the deaths, the victims’ families and rights groups say all three were killed in crossfire during the protests.

Dennis Njuguna, a student in his final year of secondary school, was shot in Molo, Nakuru County, as he headed home from school for his mid-term break.

In Nairobi’s Roysambu area on the Thika Superhighway, police reportedly also shot dead Elijah Muthoka, whose mother said he had gone to a tailor but did not come back. That evening, she would receive the news that he was hospitalised at the nearby Uhai Neema Hospital. He was then transferred to the Kenyatta National Hospital and pronounced dead the next morning.

Outside Nairobi in Olkalou, Nyandarua County, Brian Ndung’u was shot twice in the head, according to an autopsy report released by pathologists at the JM Kariuki County Referral Hospital. Margaret Gichuki, Ndung’u’s sister, said her brother had just completed his secondary school education and learned photography so he could help raise his college fees together with their mother, who is a daily wage labourer.

“He had gone out to do street photography, which was his passion, and that is where he got shot. I was home and learned about his shooting through Facebook images that were shared by friends,” Gichuki told Al Jazeera.

Gichuki described her brother as a hardworking young man who had a lot of dreams, but which were cut short by the bullet. “After the autopsy, we could not get further information about the identity of the bullet that was removed from his head, as the police took it,” she said, explaining that one bullet was fragmented in his brain while another was removed by doctors and handed to the police during autopsy.

Together with their cousin Margaret Wanjiku, Gichuki then called to inform their mother that Ndung’u was missing – not wanting to immediately shock her with the news that her son had died.

“Ndung’u had been pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, but this was news that carried weight for [our mother], and we wanted to have her come home before we could break it other than tell her over the phone,” Wanjiku said.

‘Surge’ in harassment

Less than two weeks after that, Kenyans again took to the streets in demonstrations that once again turned deadly.

On Monday, they rallied for “Saba Saba” meaning “Seven Seven” in Kiswahili to mark the date on July 7, 1990, when people demanded a return to multiparty democracy after years of rule by then-President Daniel arap Moi.

This year, the protest turned into a wider call for Ruto to resign and also a moment to remember Ojwang.

Four days earlier, Ojwang’s body had arrived at his home in Homa Bay for a nighttime vigil before his burial the next day.

When it arrived, angry youth took hold of the coffin and marched with it to the Mawego police station, where he was last seen alive before he was taken to Nairobi.

At the station, the youth set the station ablaze before making their way back to Ojwang’s home with his body.

The next day at the funeral, Anna Ngumi, a friend of Ojwang’s, told mourners: “We are not going to rest. We are not going to rest until justice is done. Remember we are still celebrating Seven Seven here. We will do Seven Seven for Albert Ojwang.”

But at the rallies, police were once again heavy-handed. In Nairobi, they fired live rounds and water cannon at the protesters. Eleven people were killed.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said people were also abducted and arrested, adding that it was “deeply concerned by the recent surge in harassment and persecution of Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) accused of organizing the ongoing protests”.

‘Why did you kill my child?’

Within his circles, Ojwang is said to have been a humble person who never quarrelled with anyone and instead sought peace whenever there was a conflict.

His university friend Daniel Mushwahili said Ojwang was modest and sociable.

“I knew this person as a very cool and outgoing person. He had many friends. … He was not an arrogant person, not a bully, and did not even participate in harassing anybody,” Mushwahili said. He was “a person who seeks peace”.

Ojwang’s mother Eucabeth, speaking at a reception by comedian Eric Omondi, lamented her son’s killing, saying she had lost her only child and did not know how the family would cope without him.

“I had hope this child would assist me in building a house. He even had a project to plant vegetables, so we could sell and make money. Now I don’t know where to start without him,” she said.

“I feel a lot of pain because there are people who came home and took my son. … I feel a lot of pain because he is dead.”

Meanwhile, as the investigation into Ojwang’s death continues, his father says he misses his “trustworthy” son, who he relied on to take care of the family’s most valuable things, even with the little they had.

Opiyo said that when the officers came to their house to arrest his son, they saw how little the family had and knew they would not fight back. In his grief, he said he now wants answers from the police and in particular Deputy Inspector General Lagat, who made the complaint against Ojwang.

“Today, my son is dead from injuries inflicted through beating. I need you to explain to me why you killed my child,” Opiyo said.

“My son did not die in an accident or in war. He died in silence in the hands of those who were supposed to protect him.”

On June 27, El Hidaya Mosque in Roussillon in Southern France was attacked and vandalised. Windows were smashed and furniture overturned; the walls were plastered with racist flyers. Earlier the same month, a burned Quran was placed at the entrance of a mosque in Villeurbanne of Lyon.

Unfortunately, virulent Islamophobia in France has not stopped at vandalism.

On May 31, Hichem Miraoui, a Tunisian national, was shot dead by his French neighbour in a village near the French Riviera; another Muslim man was also shot but survived. A month earlier, Aboubakar Cisse, a Malian national, was stabbed to death in a mosque in the town of La Grand-Combeby by a French citizen.

There has been a significant spike in Islamophobic acts in France – something the French authorities remain reluctant to publicly comment on. One report showed a 72 percent increase in such incidents between January and March 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.

There are various factors that have contributed to this, but central among them is the French state’s own Islamophobic rhetoric and anti-Muslim policies.

The most recent iteration of this was the release of a report titled “The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islamism in France” by the French government. The document claims that the Muslim Brotherhood and “political Islamism” are infiltrating French institutions and threatening social cohesion and names organisations and mosques as having links to the group.

The report came out just days before Miraoui was shot dead and two weeks after the French authorities raided the homes of several founding members of the Brussels-based Collective Against Islamophobia in Europe (CCIE) living in France.

With the rise of anti-Muslim attacks and discrimination in France, it is increasingly hard to believe that the obsession of the French state and government with what they call “Islamist separatism” is not, in fact, inciting violence against the French Muslim population.

The idea that French Muslims are somehow threatening the French state through their identity expression has been championed by the French far right for decades. But it was in the late 2010s that it entered the mainstream by being embraced by centrist politicians and the media.

In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron, who also embraced the term “separatism”, called for the creation of a “French Islam”, a euphemism for domesticating and controlling Muslim institutions to serve the interest of the French state. At the heart of this project stood the idea of preserving “social cohesion”, which effectively meant suppressing dissent.

In the following years, the French state started acting on its obsession with controlling Muslims with more and tougher policies. Between  2018 and 2020, it shut down 672 Muslim-run entities, including schools and mosques.

In November 2020, the French authorities forced the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), a nonprofit organisation documenting Islamophobia, to dissolve; the organisation then reconstituted in Brussels. In December of that year, they targeted 76 mosques, accusing them of “Islamist separatism” and threatening them with closure.

In 2021, the French Parliament passed the so-called anti-separatism law, which included a variety of measures to supposedly combat “Islamist separatism”. Among them was an extension of the ban on religious symbols in the public sector, restrictions on home schooling and sports associations, new rules for organisations receiving state subsidies, more policing of places of worship, etc.

By January 2022, the French government reported that it had inspected more than 24,000 Muslim organisations and businesses, shut down more than 700 and seized 46 million euros ($54m) in assets.

The Muslim Brotherhood boogeyman

The report released in May, like many official statements and initiatives, was not aimed to clarify policy or ensure legal precision. It was supposed to politicise Muslim identity, delegitimise political dissent and facilitate a new wave of state attacks on the Muslim civil society.

The report names various Muslim organisations, accusing them of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood. It also argues that campaigning against Islamophobia is a tool of the organisation. According to the report, the Muslim Brotherhood uses anti-Islamophobia activism to discredit secular policies and portray the state as racist.

This framing is aimed to invalidate legitimate critiques of discriminatory laws and practices, and frames any public recognition of anti-Muslim racism as a covert Islamist agenda. The implication is clear: Muslim visibility and dissent are not just suspect — they are dangerous.

The report also dives into the Islamo-gauchisme or Islamo-leftism conspiracy theories – the idea that “Islamists” and leftists have a strategic alliance. It claims that decolonial movement is challenneling Islamism and references the March Against Islamophobia of November 10, 2019, a mass mobilisation that drew participants from across the political spectrum, including the left.

The report that was commissioned under the hardline former Interior Minister and now Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who back in 2021 accused far-right leader Marine Le Pen of being “too soft” on Islam.

All of this – the report, the legislation, the police raids and rhetorical attacks against the French Muslim community – follows the long French colonial tradition of seeking to rule over and control Muslim populations. The French political centre has had to embrace Islamophobia to contain its falling popularity. It may help with narrow electoral victories over the rising far right, but those will be short-lived. The more lasting impact will be a sigmatised, alienated Muslim community which will increasingly face state-incited violence and hatred.

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

At least 50 Palestinian families from a Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank have fled their homes, following repeated assaults and harassment from Israeli settlers under the protection of Israeli forces, according to media reports and a local rights group.

Thirty Palestinian families were forcibly displaced on Friday morning from the Arab Mleihat Bedouin community, northwest of Jericho, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, while 20 others were displaced on Thursday.

Before the forced displacement, the community was home to 85 families, numbering about 500 people.

A Palestinian rights group, the Al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights, said the families were forced to leave after years trying to defend themselves “without any support”. Attacks by Israeli forces and Israelis from illegal settlements have surged across the occupied West Bank since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

Alia Mleihat told Wafa that her family was forced to flee to the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp, south of Jericho, after armed settlers threatened her and other families at gunpoint.

Separately, Mahmoud Mleihat, a 50-year-old father of seven from the community, told the Reuters news agency that they could not take it any more, so they decided to leave.

“The settlers are armed and attack us, and the [Israeli] military protects them. We can’t do anything to stop them,” he said.

Hassan Mleihat, director of the Al-Baidar Organization, said families in the community began dismantling their tents, following sustained provocation and attacks by Israeli settlers and the army.

Footage posted on social media and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency showed trucks loaded with possessions driving away from the area at night.

Hassan told Wafa that the attacks also threatened to erase the community, and “open the way for illegal colonial expansion”.

‘We want to protect our children’

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented repeated acts of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Mu’arrajat, near Jericho, where the Mleihat tribe lives.

In 2024, settlers armed with clubs stormed a Palestinian school, while in 2023, armed settlers blocked the path of vehicles carrying Palestinians, with some firing into the air and others hurling stones at the vehicles.

“We want to protect our children, and we’ve decided to leave,” Mahmoud said, describing it as a great injustice.

He had lived in the community since he was 10, Mahmoud said.

Alia Mleihat told Reuters the Bedouin community, which had lived there for 40 years, would now be scattered across different parts of the Jordan Valley, including nearby Jericho.

“People are demolishing their own homes with their own hands, leaving this village they’ve lived in for decades, the place where their dreams were built,” she said, describing the forced displacement of 30 families as a “new Nakba”.

The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during 1948 at the birth of the state of Israel.

Israel’s military has not yet commented on the settler harassment faced by the Bedouin families or about the families leaving their community.

Asked about violence in the occupied West Bank, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told reporters on Monday that any acts of violence by civilians were unacceptable and that individuals should not take the law into their own hands.

Activists say Israeli settlement expansion has accelerated in recent years, displacing Palestinians, who have remained on their land under military occupation since Israel captured the occupied West Bank in the 1967 war.

Most countries consider Israeli settlements illegal and a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which ban settling civilians on occupied land.

Bello Ardo still remembers how they were sent away from Dapchi, a town in Yobe State, North East Nigeria.

It was 2015. He had just arrived with his family and herd, hoping to graze and rest after a long journey from Bauchi State. He approached the District Head, then the Divisional Police Officer, seeking permission to stay. But the community rejected them.

“They said, ‘We don’t want to see cattle here. We also don’t want to see strangers. Take your animals and leave our community,’” he recalled.

He moved southward to Ngamdu in Borno State, only to be met with hostility. “We went three days without water until the community leader intervened,” he said. 

Bello is a herder, an occupation he inherited 45 years ago. His parents were originally from Zamfara in the North West, but migrated to Kano, where he was born. He learnt to herd cattle in the once lush Falgore Game Reserve. 

By 2011, things had changed. The grass thinned, the rivers shrank, and he began migrating in search of pasture, following designated grazing routes, moving from Kano to Bauchi, then Yobe, Borno, and finally Adamawa. In each state, he made brief stops; sometimes staying just a day, and in some places up to three years. But the pattern remained the same: rejection, scarcity, and tension.

Bello is now the State Chairman of Sullubawa, a Fulbe clan known for cattle herding and spread across northwestern Nigeria. But titles mean little when the land offers no relief and the institutions once meant to support herders no longer function. The grazing routes Bello once followed stretched across the country’s northern region. They protected herders, shielded farmers, and helped maintain order. 

Those routes are gone, erased by urbanisation, farmland expansion, and state neglect. In their absence, herders searching for water and grass now stray into cultivated land, fuelling suspicion, resentment, and violence.

What happened to the routes?

There was a time when the routes had names.

Older herders, like Bello, still remember them, not as lines on a map, but as muscle memory. They could list the rivers they crossed, the forests they skirted, and the wells that dotted the way.

“The Falgore Forest was demarcated by the government,” Bello said. “Locally, we call this demarcation ‘centre.’ On the west of this demarcation were farmlands, on the east, wilderness with lush vegetation. To the north, a grazing route for cattle. This  leads to states like Bauchi and Benue.”

Leaving Kano, Bello arrived in Burra, Ningi, and then Tulu in Toro, all in Bauchi. Here, he spent three months in the Yuga Forest. Then he moved eastward, circling back to Gadar Maiwa in Ningi until he reached Darazo, still in Bauchi. From here, he spent the next 30 days migrating into Yobe.

He moved through Funai, under Ngelzarma town, and Dogon Kuka under Daura town, both in Fune LGA. He then travelled north of Damaturu to graze in Tarmuwa, south to Buni Yadi, east to Kukareta, and further on to Gashua and Nguru.

He said all these places have pastures but limited water, except during the rainy season.

Bello left Yobe in 2015 and arrived in Borno. After initial hostilities, he grazed Ngamdu, Benesheikh, Auno, and Jakana. Then, he entered villages like Dalori around the Alau Lake in Konduga. And then he entered the Komala Forest, still in Konduga. He left Borno in 2017 and migrated to Adamawa.

These were not random movements. They followed established corridors, called burtali, designed to support seasonal migration. Marked by the defunct Northern Regional Government during Nigeria’s First Republic, burtali were official grazing routes, some stretching hundreds of kilometres. They connected water points, grazing reserves, and veterinary posts, and were governed by traditional authorities and state institutions.

Herders knew where to move and when. Farmers knew which areas were off-limits during the season. Communities in between prepared for the passing of cattle and offered rest. There was friction, yes. But it was friction with the structure. Disputes could be mediated. Violations could be punished. Movement was predictable, and conflict was, for the most part, containable.

“The easiest way to identify the route is by cattle footprints,” Bello said. “It is always busy. There are also trees like dashi [hairy corkwood] and cini da zugu [jatropha], planted on both sides. The government planted some. Farmers also plant them to protect their fields.”

“Most of those routes have become farmlands, roads, or houses,” he said. “We now migrate through tarred roads and residential areas.” Even during his migration, Bello recalled that some routes were already blocked. “In some places, I followed the burtali and others tarred roads.”

In Sokoto State, Abdullahi Manuga, another nomadic herder, confirmed that most routes have been encroached upon. “When we reach a blockage, we have no choice but to go through towns or residential areas,” he said. 

This, experts say, is where tension begins. “When a route is blocked, the herder will try to find a way around it,” said Malik Samuel, a Senior Researcher at Good Governance Africa. “And in this process, animals stray into farmland or residential areas. This then leads to conflict.” 

Abdullahi explained the challenge: “With over 1,000 cattle, you cannot control all of them. One or two will stray into farmlands, often leading to clashes with farmers.”

The scale of the problem is vast. In 2018, desertification degraded more than 580,000 square kilometres of northern Nigeria, affecting about 62 million people. In Yobe, a HumAngle investigation uncovered how the shrinking ecosystem has intensified competition between farmers and herders. In Sokoto’s Goronyo and Gwadabawa, pastoralists have abandoned the Rima Dam, once a key watering point, due to drying reservoirs and farmland encroachment.

The disintegration did not happen overnight. It came in stages: farmlands slowly consumed designated routes. Grazing reserves fell into disuse. And eventually, the state disappeared from the equation altogether.

“Population has grown, while resources, land and water have not,” Malik said.

He stressed that the burtali were designed to prevent this tension. “These are the only routes known to herders. The reason behind the creation of these routes was to avoid tension between farmers and herders.”

Since 2020, more than 1,356 people have been killed in Nigeria due to farmer–herder violence, according to SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy. Amnesty International has identified the government’s failure to intervene or prosecute perpetrators as a major driver of the crisis.

Climate migration and desperation

Like Bello, Abdullahi is also on the move.

He is originally from Jangebe in Talata Mafara, Zamfara State, and has followed a path shaped by drought, conflict, and disappearance. His reason is the same.

“Scarcity of pasture, the expansion of farmlands, and continuous rustling of our cattle made us migrate,” he told HumAngle. “Most of our animals have been rustled. The bulls in our herd are barely up to five.”

Seven years ago, when pasture began to vanish in his village, Abdullahi left. He first moved into Niger State. Then, he went from Gezoji to Tudun Biri in Igabi town of Kaduna, then he returned to Kwana Maje in Anka, Zamfara State. He moved again, this time to Mallamawa in Katsina, and then re-entered Niger State. Here, he grazed the Ibbi and Wawa Forest until forest rangers challenged him. This made him move to Gidan Kare, a village in Sokoto State, before settling in nearby Dange Shuni town.

Both Bello and Abdullahi left Zamfara. While the former travelled east, through Kano, Bauchi, and Borno, the latter moved west. Their journeys trace a human map of collapse, one that cuts across nearly half of Nigeria’s landmass.

In both men’s stories, geography is memory. But it is also grief.

Bello said that across Bauchi, Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa, formerly lush plains have turned brittle, while rivers have grown unpredictable. Rain falls heavier, less often, and in bursts that flood lowland routes.

The consequences are not only ecological. They are generational. 

Some herders are giving up the trade. Others are sending their children to work in towns. Abdullahi said he now substitutes herding with subsistence farming and being a shop attendant. But even this is a struggle. “he land is already full,” he said. “I have lost interest in grazing. I want to settle in one location and raise cattle on a ranch.”

For Bello, too, something fundamental is shifting.

“The migratory culture is dying,” he said. “It is dying because of the crisis and rejection, limited resources, and sudden realisation of the importance of education.”

He now believes that pastoralists must adapt. 

“Many herders now prefer ranching. We want to combine our traditional knowledge and modern ways to raise cattle differently and educate our children.”

What was once passed down as tradition is now being considered for survival. The land is changing. The climate is changing. And slowly, the herders are changing too.

Farmers at the frontline

“There are several farms here that have encroached on grazing routes,” said Sanusi Salihu Goronyo, a 49-year-old farmer from Sokoto. “Owners of these farms have clashed several times with herders when their animals stray. Some farmers got these lands on lease from local government authorities.”

Sanusi has farmed in the Middle Rima Valley, near the Goronyo Dam, for over 15 years. He grows rice, onion, garlic, and wheat, alternating between rainfed and irrigation farming. He started with five hectares. But unpredictable weather has made farming harder.

“Sometimes the dam overflows and destroys our crops,” he said. “One year, we lost everything we planted; rice, onions. More recently, our onion seedlings died because the soil here could not support them.” Sanusi has since expanded his farm to 20 hectares, hoping to improve his harvests.

In Bauchi, the story is the same. “The burtali has existed for as long as I can remember,” said Kamalu Abubakar, a 32-year-old farmer from Nabordo in Toro LGA. “But many of the routes have been encroached on. Even here in Toro, people who were never farmers now farm, out of hardship.”

He said this desperation often leads people to cultivate land along migration routes. “When herders come through with their animals, it leads to clashes.”

There are no longer visible signs of the burtali. The routes have faded, not just physically, but from institutional memory. “Almost everywhere is farmland now,” Kamalu said. “A few spots are left for grazing; sometimes cattle stray into farms. But some herders intentionally drive animals into fields.”

To herders, the land is a path. To farmers, it is a livelihood. What was once shared in the vacuum left by failing institutions is now contested. What was seasonal has become criminalised.

“When this happens, people take action,” Kamalu said. This “action,” sometimes, means reporting to authorities. Other times, they confront the herders directly.

Kamalu farms on five hectares of land inherited from his father, who leased it from the government more than thirty years ago. These are not wealthy farmers. They survive on small plots. A single ruined field can mean food lost, income gone, or a child pulled out of school.

That shared precarity, between farmer and herder, is rarely acknowledged in how the conflict is portrayed. Most reports focus on violence: killings, raids, destruction. But the real story often begins earlier, with broken systems, shrinking trust, and a quiet dread that builds over time.

Nguru-Hadejia wetlands in Yobe, a once critical water source for herders, have become a point of contention as water access shrinks and farmlands expand. In Bauchi’s western agricultural belt, areas like Toro and the Yankari-Katagum corridor are now recognised zones of ecological tension, where water and land are in short supply.

Sanusi said there are no functioning mediation systems anymore. “In the past, we would call the village head. He would speak to both sides. Now, no one comes”

Some communities in Adamawa State have tried to fill that gap. Bello, a community elder, explained: “When animals stray into farmlands, we get reports from the police. First, we identify the culprit. Then, if he has been arrested, we ensure the farmer is compensated. We also discipline the herder to prevent a repeat.”

Experts note that local accountability matters. “In the North East, elders take action when community members rustle cattle. They report to the police. However, in places like the North Central, leaders often stay silent. That is what leads to retaliation,” Malik said.

In the absence of authority, vigilantes have emerged. Some protect farms. Others patrol bush paths. Most are poorly trained and loosely organised. Many are young men with long grievances and short tempers.

The result is tension that simmers without resolution.

Kamalu described his fear. “Maybe one cow enters. Then someone hurls an insult. Then they come back with weapons. Or maybe they don’t. But we don’t know.”

The fear is mutual. Herders move silently, hoping not to be seen, and farmers sleep lightly during the migration season. No one trusts the other or trusts the state to step in.

The deeper costs are not only in lost harvests or stolen cows, but in stalled futures. “Our children don’t get an education,” Bello said. “We don’t have healthcare. No water, no electricity. People stereotype us. It is all because of ignorance. If we were educated, we would have equal opportunities like others.”

Still, some herders are finding alternatives.

“We bought plots of land here in Jimeta,” Bello said. “That is our community now. Our children are in school. We created a ranch to keep our cattle during the dry season. After harvest, we buy stalks from farmers and feed them. Our cattle drink from the River Benue. We use boreholes from nearby communities for our water.”

They hope to buy more land. Build a dam. Dig a borehole. Secure a future.

For now, they adapt, one season at a time.

The security gap

What happens when movement is no longer managed, and survival turns into trespass? That question haunts the herders, who try to pass unseen, and the farmers, who try to protect what little they have. It also points to a more profound crisis that does not begin with herders and farmers but ends with them trapped in the middle of a larger security breakdown.

“The population will keep growing. People will need more land to farm and more space to live,” said Malik. “The government must evolve with these trends.”

The failure to adapt has opened the door for non-state actors. In some cases, herders say the attackers are not even Nigerians. Claims of foreign infiltration, fighters from Niger, Chad, or Mali crossing porous borders, are challenging to verify, but frequently repeated. The risk, Malik warns, is that armed groups now move across the region disguised as herders, exploiting migration routes that span West and Central Africa. Nigeria’s North East, the most significant entry point for cross-border pastoralists, is especially vulnerable.

Malik explained that even internal movement is no longer predictable. Routes once mediated by district heads and grazing committees are now insecure or unmarked. Communities that once welcomed herders have grown hostile. Vigilante groups have stepped in, blocking passage, collecting tolls, or enforcing rules with force.

“We encounter terrorists, especially in Borno,” said Bello. “They rustle our cattle or demand taxes. In 2017, over 100 of our cattle were stolen. Other herders lost more. Through our association, Pulako, we contributed to helping the affected herders, two or three cattle each. But it is part of why we left for Adamawa.”

In northeastern Nigeria, the Boko Haram factions of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’adati wal-Jihad (JAS) and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have embedded themselves in areas long abandoned by the state. Movement is no longer just a logistical challenge but a matter of territory and surveillance. Pastoralists must now navigate dry land, blocked paths, with armed groups asserting control.

“JAS rustles cattle and sells them in the south to fund their operations,” said Malik. “ISWAP taxes herders who graze in territories around Lake Chad. When JAS steals cattle from those herders, ISWAP intervenes to retrieve them. They even resolve herder-farmer conflicts, ensuring farmers are compensated when herds destroy crops.”

In the northwestern region, the dynamic is different. Terrorist groups have created informal taxation systems. “They extort herders, like JAS does,” Malik added. “When herders lose everything, they turn to kidnapping or robbery, or are hired by aggrieved herders to retaliate against farmers.”

We extensively documented this pattern across Nigeria’s conflict zones. In one report, Ahmad Salkida, Founder of HumAngle, who is an investigative journalist and one of the most authoritative voices on the Boko Haram insurgency, explained that herders under Boko Haram and ISWAP control are forced to pay taxes based on the size of their herd. 

“They must relinquish a portion of their livestock,” he noted. “And due to multiple factions,  they occasionally pay double, losing more than they can bargain for.”

In other parts of the region, herding communities are routinely forced to pay protection levies, coerced into supplying armed groups, or punished if they refuse, mirroring the same dynamics of extortion and control seen in the North East.

Mobility, once neutral and even protected, has become political. Herders, no longer shielded by the grazing route system, are exposed on every front. 

There seems to be no national framework for managing trans-regional movement. Until July 2024, when the Nigerian government created the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, no institution had the authority or tools to track who was moving, where, or why.

“Past governments tried to introduce ranching settlements,” Malik said. “The Buhari administration attempted, but the public saw it as a land-grab. The problem was poor communication. People have lost trust in the state, so they misinterpreted everything. However, the deeper issue is that each region has a different conflict. The North East is not the North West. So solutions must also be different.”

The state’s absence is not passive. It produces insecurity.

Farmers form vigilantes. Herders arm themselves. Encounters that once ended with negotiation now end in gunfire.

The National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), introduced to prevent this scenario, has stalled, sidelined by politics and inconsistent implementation.

“It is a good idea,” Malik said. “If implemented properly, it could resolve many of these issues.”

With each unresolved clash, local trust erodes. With each unmapped corridor, non-state actors tighten their grip. And as the climate continues to dry rivers and strip pasture from the earth, pressure builds slowly, steadily, dangerously.

What must be done

If there is one thing everyone agrees on, it is this: what exists now is not working.

“The solution must begin at the community level,” said Malik. “We need to bring back the conflict resolution systems that once worked, those local processes that helped farmers and herders find common ground.”

However, informal peacebuilding alone would not resolve a structural crisis. The scale of Nigeria’s environmental collapse and mobility breakdown requires coordinated, strategic, and adequately resourced reform.

Malik believes ranching is essential to ending uncontrolled migration and giving herders security, dignity, and economic opportunity.

“Ranching is the most effective alternative. Moving cattle across states will always spark conflict,” he said. “But if ranches are developed properly, with clinics, water, schools, and markets, those are capital incentives. They make settlement viable.”

He insists this will require more than government goodwill.

“The private sector must be involved. Let investors lease land. Let herders produce meat and milk, and let the state earn revenue. With proper management, we wouldn’t need to import beef or dairy.”

Yet trust is fragile. Malik noted how the RUGA initiative failed not because the idea was flawed, but because people were not consulted. The controversial RUGA programme, suspended in 2019, stood for Rural Grazing Area.

“There was no proper engagement. The public saw it as a land grab. The government must learn to communicate. There must be transparency. There must be accountability,” Malik said. 

He added that at the heart of the tension is something simple: survival.

“The farmer wants to plant in peace and feed his family,” he says. “The herder wants to graze and feed his cattle. When people are allowed to be heard, they often find solutions independently.”

Bello shares this vision, but with a local, seasonal approach.

“During the rainy season, the government should provide ranches for us to keep our cattle,” he said. “Farmers can let us graze on harvested fields in the dry season. Our cattle will help clear the land and leave dung for manure. Then, farmers can do irrigation farming on the ranches. If we rotate this way, both sides benefit, without conflict.”

Abdullahi agrees, but calls for sincerity: “If the government is honest about the RUGA settlement plan and implements it, this problem will go away. Also, forest rangers should treat us fairly. Don’t deny us access completely.”

From the farmers’ side, the expectations are equally modest.

“Herders should avoid people’s farms. Farmers should avoid blocking the grazing routes,” Sanusi said.

“The government should support us with fertilisers and pesticides, even if through subsidies,” Kamalu added.

The proposed NLTP is meant to address many of these issues. But it remains stalled, caught between politics and poor communication.

“If implemented well, it could solve most of the crisis,” Malik said.

The N’Djamena peace accord, signed on April 19, 2025, between the government of the Central African Republic, the rebels from the Return, Rehabilitation, and Reclamation (3R) and the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC), continues to face challenges due to repeated violations by parties involved.

The agreement aims to help reintegrate rebels into civilian life and to disband their movements, as outlined in the 2019 peace accord. However, the recent resurgence of violence in Nzakoundou caught the authorities off guard, highlighting their lack of preparedness for the disarmament process. 

On Saturday, June 28, heavily armed 3R rebels emerged in large numbers from the bush in Nzakoundou, Yeme council. Their overwhelming presence overshadowed the Central African Republic National Army (FACA) soldiers. Outnumbered, FACA soldiers had no choice but to retreat from Nzakoundou, fleeing to the bushes 15 kilometres away along the Paoua highway, leaving the village under the control of the 3R rebels. This retreat has instilled panic among the villagers, who are concerned that tensions may escalate if the rebels’ basic needs are unmet.

Meanwhile, in the Ouaka region, UPC rebels have initiated the disarmament process in Bokolobo, Maloum, Mbomou, and Nzacko. Motivated by promises of reintegration into the national army, UPC combatants voluntarily laid down their arms. However, their primary challenge is the lack of food and other essential supplies.

The situation is different in Yaloke, situated 225 kilometres from Bangui, the republic’s capital, where disarmed former Anti-Balaka militia led by General Jeudi have been complaining of the absence of food rations and access to water, a recurrent problem in the several sites earmarked for disarmament. At Moyo, the situation is particularly disquieting because the rebels who are still armed have been terrorising the population and taking whatever they need by force.

The Central African Republic is facing significant challenges with its disarmament and reintegration programme, which has been ongoing since 2017. According to President Touadera, this programme has successfully disarmed 5,000 combatants and dissolved nine armed groups. However, Moyo’s lack of cantonment zones and the necessary resources to support disarmed combatants hinders progress. 

This issue is further compounded by the ineffectiveness of the FACA soldiers, who cannot secure areas like Nzakoundou. The residents there are living in constant fear of violence, especially since 2023, when the 3R rebels set fire to multiple homes and killed civilians, prompting the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) to send troops to the village and its surrounding areas.

The departure of FACA soldiers has created a significant dilemma: If the rebels choose to lay down their arms, the state is expected to take responsibility for them. However, without access to food or opportunities for reintegration, these former combatants may resort to acts of banditry to survive, including nighttime robberies targeting local populations. This troubling trend is already evident in areas like Dawala, Thicka, and Sataigne and has the potential to escalate into a new source of violence. Such developments could undermine the progress achieved through the N’Djamena peace accord.

Kootenai County Sheriff says law enforcement officials are taking sniper fire as they hunt for the killer.

At least two people have been killed in the United States after a gunman shot at firefighters responding to a blaze in the state of Idaho, according to officials.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said that crews responded to a fire at Canfield Mountain, just north of the city of Coeur d’Alene, at about 1:30pm (19:30 GMT) on Sunday, and gunshots were reported about a half hour later.

Sheriff Bob Norris said officials believe the two people killed were fire personnel. He did not know if anyone else was shot.

The sheriff said it was not immediately clear if there was one gunman or more, and urged the public to stay clear of the area.

“We don’t know how many suspects are up there, and we don’t know how many casualties there are,” Norris told reporters. “We are actively taking sniper fire as we speak.”

The Canfield Mountain, an area popular with hikers, is located near Coeur d’Alene, a city of 57,000 people about 260 miles (420 km) east of Seattle in Washington state.

Norris said the shooter or shooters were using high-powered sporting rifles to fire rapidly at first responders, and that the perpetrators “are not, at this time, showing any evidence of wanting to surrender”.

The sheriff said it appeared the attacker was hiding in the rugged terrain and using a high-powered rifle. He said he has instructed deputies to fire back.

“If these individuals are not neutralised quickly, this is going to be likely a multi-day operation,” he added.

Idaho Governor Brad Little said “multiple” firefighters were attacked.

“This is a heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters,” he said on X. “I ask all Idahoans to pray for them and their families as we wait to learn more.”

Little did not give further details on any casualties or how the incident unfolded.

“As this situation is still developing, please stay clear from the area to allow law enforcement and firefighters to do their jobs,” Little added.

Law enforcement is investigating whether the fire could have been intentionally set to lure first responders to the scene, Kootenai County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Jeff Howard told ABC News.

The broadcaster reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been briefed on the shooting.

The FBI said it has sent technical teams and tactical support to the scene.

“It remains an active, and very dangerous scene,” the agency’s deputy director, Dan Bongino, wrote in a post on X.

Gun ownership is widespread in the US, where the country’s Constitution protects the rights of Americans to “keep and bear arms”.

Deaths related to gun violence are common. At least 17,927 people were murdered by a gun in 2023 in the US, according to the most recent available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

PILTON, England — Irish-language rap group Kneecap gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans on Saturday at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terrorism charge against one of the trio.

Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August.

“Glastonbury, I’m a free man!” O hAnnaidh shouted as Kneecap took the stage at Glastonbury’s West Holts field, which holds about 30,000 people. Dozens of Palestinian flags flew in the capacity crowd as the show opened with an audio montage of news clips referring to the band’s critics and legal woes.

Between high-energy numbers that had fans forming a large mosh pit, the band members led the audience in chants of “Free Palestine” and “Free Mo Chara.” They also aimed an expletive-laden chant at U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has said he didn’t think it was “appropriate” for Kneecap to play Glastonbury.

The trio thanked festival organizers Michael and Emily Eavis for resisting pressure to cancel Kneecap’s gig and gave a shout-out to Palestine Action, a protest group that the British government plans to ban under terrorism laws after its members vandalized planes on a Royal Air Force base.

The Belfast trio is known for anarchic energy, satirical lyrics and use of symbolism associated with the Irish republican movement, which seeks to unite Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., with the Republic of Ireland.

More than 3,600 people were killed during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland involving Irish republican militants, pro-British Loyalist militias and the U.K. security forces. Kneecap takes its name from a brutal punishment — shooting in the leg — that was dealt out by paramilitary groups to informers and drug dealers.

The group has faced criticism for lyrics laden with expletives and drug references, and for political statements, especially since videos emerged allegedly showing the band shouting, “up Hamas, up Hezbollah,” and calling on people to kill lawmakers.

Members of the group say they don’t support Hezbollah or Hamas, nor condone violence, and O hAnnaidh says he picked up a flag that was thrown onto the stage without knowing what it represented. Kneecap has accused critics of trying to silence the band because of its support for the Palestinian cause throughout the war in the Gaza Strip.

A performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April — where the band accused Israel, with U.S. support, of committing genocide against the Palestinians — sparked calls for the group members’ U.S. visas to be revoked.

Several Kneecap gigs have since been canceled as a result of the controversy.

The BBC, which airs many hours of Glastonbury performances, didn’t show Kneecap’s set live, but said it would “look to make an on-demand version of Kneecap’s performance available on our digital platforms” afterward.

About 200,000 ticket holders have gathered at Worthy Farm in southwest England for Britain’s most prestigious summer music festival, which features almost 4,000 performers on 120 stages. Headline acts performing over three days ending Sunday include Neil Young, Charli XCX, Rod Stewart, Busta Rhymes, Olivia Rodrigo and Doechii.

Glastonbury highlights Friday included a performance from U.K. rockers the 1975, an unannounced set by New Zealand singer Lorde, a raucous reception for Alanis Morissette and an emotional return for Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, two years after he took a break from touring to adjust to the effect of the neurological condition Tourette syndrome.

Dixon writes for the Associated Press.

Violence begets violence, so many religions say. Americans should know. After all, the United States – a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, African enslavement and open rebellion against an imperial power to protect its wealthiest citizens – cannot help but be violent. What’s more, violence in the US is political, and the violence the country has carried out overseas over the generations has always been connected to its imperialist ambitions and racism. From the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on June 21 to the everyday violence in rhetoric and reality within the US, the likes of President Donald Trump continue to stoke the violent impulses of a violence‑prone nation.

The US news cycle serves as continual confirmation. In June alone, there have been several high‑profile shootings and murders. On June 14, Vance Boelter, a white male vigilante, shot and killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, after critically wounding State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. That same day, at a No Kings mass protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, peacekeepers with the 50501 Movement accidentally shot and killed Samoan fashion designer Arthur Folasa Ah Loo while attempting to take down Arturo Gamboa, who was allegedly armed with an AR‑15.

On June 1, the start of Pride Month, Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez allegedly shot and murdered gay Indigenous actor Jonathan Joss in San Antonio, Texas. On June 12, Secret Service agents forcibly detained and handcuffed US Senator Alex Padilla during Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles.

Mass shootings, white vigilante violence, police brutality, and domestic terrorism are all normal occurrences in the United States – and all are political. Yet US leaders still react with hollow platitudes that reveal an elitist and narcissistic detachment from the nation’s violent history. “Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God bless the great people of Minnesota…” said Governor Tim Walz after Boelter’s June 14 shootings. On X, Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden wrote: “Political violence has no place in America. I fully condemn this attack…”

Despite these weak condemnations, the US often tolerates – and sometimes celebrates – political violence. Van Orden also tweeted, “With one horrible governor that appoints political assassins to boards. Good job, stupid,” in response to Walz’s message. Senator Mike Lee referred to the incident as “Nightmare on Waltz Street” before deleting the post.

Political violence in the US is commonplace. President Trump has long fostered it – such as during a presidential debate in Philadelphia, when he falsely claimed Haitian immigrants “eat their neighbours’ pets”. This led to weeks of threats against the roughly 15,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. On June 9, Trump posted on Truth Social: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT… harder than they have ever been hit before.”

That led to a federally-sanctioned wave of violence against protesters in Los Angeles attempting to end Trump’s immigration crackdowns, including Trump’s takeover and deployment of California’s National Guard in the nation’s second-largest city.

But it’s not just that Trump may have a lust for political violence and is stoking such violence. The US has always been a powder keg for violence, a nation-state that cannot help itself.

Political violence against elected officials in the US is too extensive to list fully. Assassins murdered Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley, and John F Kennedy. In 1804, Vice‑President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Populist candidate Huey Long was assassinated in 1935; Robert F Kennedy in 1968; Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was wounded in 2011.

Many assassins and vigilantes have targeted those fighting for social justice: Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Marsha P. Johnson, and civil‑rights activists like Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Viola Liuzzo, and Fred Hampton. Jonathan Joss and Arthur Folasa Ah Loo are more recent examples of marginalised people struck down in a white‑supremacist society.

The most chilling truth of all is that, because of the violent nature of the US, there is no end in sight – domestically or overseas. The recent US bomb mission over Iran is merely the latest unprovoked preemptive attack the superpower has conducted on another nation. Trump’s unilateral use of military force was done, presumably, in support of Israel’s attacks on Iran, allegedly because of the threat Iran poses if it ever arms itself with nuclear weapons. But these are mere excuses that could also be violations of international law.

It wouldn’t be the first time the US has sought to start a war based on questionable intelligence or reasons, however. The most recent example, of course, is the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a part of George W Bush’s “preemptive war” doctrine, attacking Iraq because they supposedly had a stockpile of WMDs that they could use against the US in the future. There was never any evidence of any stockpile of chemical or biological weapons. As many as 2.4 million Iraqis have died from the resulting violence, statelessness, and civil war that the initial 2003 US invasion created. It has not gone unnoticed that the US mostly bombs and invades nation-states with majority people of colour and non-Christian populations.

Malcolm X said it best, a week after Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F Kennedy in 1963: “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” Given that Americans consume nine billion chickens a year, that is a huge amount of retribution to consider for the nation’s history of violence. Short of repealing the Second Amendment’s right-to-bear-guns clause in the US Constitution and a real commitment towards eliminating the threat of white male supremacist terrorism, this violence will continue unabated, with repercussions that will include terrorism and revenge, domestically and internationally. A country with a history of violence, elitism, and narcissism like the US – and an individual like Trump – cannot divorce themselves from their own violent DNA, a violence that could one day consume this nation-state.

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

In the wacky political world of Southeast Los Angeles County — where scandals seem to bloom every year with the regularity of jacarandas — there’s never been a mess as pendejo as the one stirred up this week by Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez.

How else would you describe an elected official telling gang leaders, in a video posted to social media, to “f— get your members in order” and take to the streets against Donald Trump’s immigration raids?

Gonzalez’s rant has set off a national storm at the worst possible time. Conservative media is depicting her as a politician — a Latino, of course — issuing a green light to gangs to go after la migra. On social media, the Department of Homeland Security shared her video, which it called “despicable,” and insisted that “this kind of garbage” has fueled “assaults” against its agents.

Gonzalez later asked her Facebook friends to help her find a lawyer, because “the FBI just came to my house.” To my colleague Ruben Vives, the agency didn’t confirm or deny Gonzalez’s assertion.

The first-term council member deserves all the reprimands being heaped on her — most of all because the video that set off this pathetic episode is so cringe.

“I want to know where all the cholos are at in Los Angeles — 18th Street, Florencia, where’s the leadership at?” Gonzalez said at the beginning of her video, which was quickly taken down. “You guys tag everything up claiming ‘hood,’ and now that your hood’s being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there ain’t a peep out of you!”

Gonzalez went on to claim that 18th Street and Florencia 13 — rivals that are among the largest and most notorious gangs in Southern California — shouldn’t be “trying to claim no block, no nothing, if you’re not showing up right now trying to, like, help out and organize. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you once they’re gone.”

The Cudahy council’s second-in-command seems to have recorded the clip at a party, judging by her black halter top, bright red lipstick, fresh hairstyle and fancy earrings, with club music thumping in the background. She looked and sounded like an older cousin who grew up in the barrio and now lives in Downey, trying to sound hard in front of her bemused cholo relatives.

The Trump administration is looking for any reason to send in even more National Guard troops and Marines to quell what it has characterized as an insurrection. If inviting a gang to help — let alone two gangs as notorious as 18th Street and Florencia — doesn’t sound like what Trump claims he’s trying to quash, I’m not sure what is.

Perhaps worst of all, Gonzalez brought political ignominy once again on Southeast L.A. County, better known as SELA. Its small, supermajority Latino cities have long been synonymous with political corruption and never seem to get a lucky break from their leaders, even as Gonzalez’s generation has vowed not to repeat the sins of the past.

Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez

(City of Cudahy)

“In her post, Dr. Gonzalez issued a challenge to the Latino community: join the thousands of Angelenos already peacefully organizing in response to ongoing enforcement actions,” her attorney, Damian J. Martinez, said in a written statement. “Importantly, Dr. Gonzalez in no way encouraged anyone to engage in violence. Any suggestion that she advocated for violence is categorically false and without merit.”

For their part, Cudahy officials said that Gonzalez’s thoughts “reflect her personal views and do not represent the views or official position of the City of Cudahy.”

Raised in Huntington Park and a graduate of Bell High, Gonzalez has spent 22 years as a teacher, principal and administrator in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In 2023, after Cudahy — a suburb of about 22,000 residents that’s 98% Latino — became the first city in Southern California to approve a Gaza ceasefire resolution, she told The Times’ De Los section that Latinos “understand what it means to be left behind.”

A few weeks ago, Gonzalez appeared alongside Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and elected leaders from Los Angeles and Ventura counties to decry the immigration raids that were just ramping up.

“I want to speak to Americans, especially those who have allowed our community to be the scapegoat of this administration that made you feel that your American dream hasn’t happened because of us,” Gonzalez said, adding that corporations “are using our brown bodies to avoid the conversation that this administration is a failure and they do not know how to legislate.”

Last week, she announced that she will be running for the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees for a third time, urging Facebook followers to forego donating to her campaign in favor of organizations helping immigrants. “Our priorities must reflect the urgency of the times,” she wrote.

In those settings, Gonzalez comes off as just another wokosa politician. But the feds now see her as a wannabe Big Homie.

Trying to enlist gangs to advocate for immigrants comes off as both laughable and offensive — and describing 18th Street and Florencia as “the Latino community” is like describing the Manson family as “fun-loving hippies.” Gang members have extorted immigrant entrepreneurs and terrorized immigrant communities going back to the days of “Gangs of New York.” Their modus operandi — expanding turf, profit and power via fear and bloodshed — will forever peg Latinos as prone to violence in the minds of too many Americans. Transnational gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13 are Trump’s ostensible reason for his deportation tsunami — and now a politician thinks it’s wise to ask cholos to draw closer?

And yet I sympathize — and even agree — with what Gonzalez was really getting at, as imperfect and bumbling as she was. Homeland Security’s claim that she was riling up gangs to “commit violence against our brave ICE law enforcement” doesn’t hold up in the context of history.

For decades, Latino activists have strained to inspire gang members to join el movimiento — not as stormtroopers but as wayward youngsters and veteranos who can leave la vida loca behind if only they become enlightened. El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, a manifesto published in 1969 at the height of the Chicano movement, envisioned a world where “there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.” Its sister document, El Plan de Santa Barbara, warned activists that they “must be able to relate to all segments of the Barrio, from the middle-class assimilationists to the vatos locos.”

From Homeboy Industries to colleges that allow prison inmates to earn a degree, people still believe in the power of forgiveness and strive to reincorporate gang members into society as productive people. They’re relatives and friends and community members, the thinking goes, not irredeemable monsters.

Gonzalez’s video comes from that do-gooder vein. A closer listen shows she isn’t lionizing 18th Street or Florencia 13. She’s pushing them to be truly tough by practicing civil — not criminal — disobedience.

“It’s everyone else who’s not about the gang life that’s out there protesting and speaking up,” the vice mayor said, her voice heavy with the Eastside accent. “We’re out there, like, fighting for our turf, protecting our turf, protecting our people, and like, where you at? Bien calladitos, bien calladitos li’l cholitos.”

Good and quiet, little cholitos, which translates as “baby gangsters” but is far more dismissive in Spanish.

Her delivery was terrible, but the message stands, to gang members and really to anyone else who hasn’t yet shown up for immigrants: if not now, when? If not you, who?

It’ll be a miracle if Gonzalez’s political career recovers. But future chroniclers of L.A. should treat her kindly. Calling out cholos for being cholos is easy. Challenging them to make good of themselves at a key moment in history isn’t.

Taiwo Adebulu got a grip on the story he had always wanted to tell in Kebbi State, North West Nigeria. Based in Lagos, the journalist travelled miles away to chase it, hoping to gather dozens of anecdotes from school girls abducted by terrorists. News of the 112 abducted schoolgirls had spread like wildfire, with major radio and television stations discussing it for weeks. Then, suddenly, everyone moved on as usual, but the parents and relatives of the abductees continued to rage in pain and anguish. 

Passionate about rejuvenating the lost voices of the girls, Adebulu, the Investigations Editor at TheCable, a Nigerian digital newsroom, flew to Yauri in Kebbi to interview the relatives of the abductees, who he found had been forced to marry the terrorists holding them captive. Someone had introduced him to two local fixers who had contacts with the victims’ families in Yauri. They agreed to meet, showing concern for the girls, who seemed forgotten.

He would work with them for three days to track the girls’ relatives. The journalist said it was an exhaustive journey. The fixers had feigned concerns for the girls, claiming to seek ways to secure their freedom. The journalist, who believes the stories of the forgotten girls needed to be told, thought their interests aligned. The situation changed when he was done conducting interviews and visiting the scene of the abduction.

Adebulu had offered the fixers ₦50,000, based on his limited logistics budget as a journalist. They had agreed on that amount before he left Lagos. Now, the fixers felt they deserved more; they wanted to be compensated well for taking the reporter around the community and connecting him to sources. For the journalist, it was a symbiotic relationship: “Help me tell the story of your people so that I can help amplify their lost voices.” The fixers, however, saw it as a transactional relationship — a clear case of sources for money. Tensions escalated when their intentions conflicted, and arguments ensued.

The journalist was then held to ransom, not by terrorists this time, but by the same fixers who had assisted him in telling the stories of the kidnapped girls. They demanded ₦200,000 for his release. “It was a hellish experience that I do not want to have again,” Adebulu tells me. Though he seemed to have moved on from the incident, his jittery voice gave away his anxiety. He bargained with the fixers, reducing the amount to ₦100,000 and pleading with them not to harm him.

Only the fixers knew his whereabouts – no one else. They had discouraged him from lodging in a proper hotel, citing security concerns. Instead, they took him to a nearly empty five-bedroom service apartment for safety. They threatened not to release him if he refused to pay at least ₦100,000. They issued this threat at night when everything was dark. Adebulu felt vulnerable and scared for his life, knowing he had no one to call or anywhere to run.

“We finally negotiated and settled for ₦100,000 that night. I made a ₦50,000 transfer and told them I would pay the remaining ₦50,000 the following day because I had a network issue. They claimed they didn’t receive the ₦50,000 I had sent, but I had already received confirmation that the transaction was successful,” he recalls.

“They then seized my iPhone, saying they would keep it as collateral if anything happened. My iPhone was worth around ₦500,000, significantly more than the ₦100,000 they wanted. So, it was safer for them to keep my phone,” Adebulu explains.

Anxiety and a sense of danger left him unable to sleep that night after his so-called fixers took away his phone. By early morning, he decided to leave the state immediately. After taking a bath, he contacted the fixers to ask if they had received the ₦50,000 he transferred the previous day. They denied it. To expedite his release and departure, the journalist sent an additional ₦100,000 that same morning. Following the second transaction, the fixers returned his mobile phone. They transported him by motorcycle to a nearby motor park, where he boarded a vehicle heading to Kontagora, Niger State in North-central Nigeria.

“When I arrived in Abuja and visited my bank, I was informed that both transactions, the ₦50,000 sent the previous day and the ₦100,000 sent the next morning, had been successfully processed. I immediately contacted the recipients and demanded a refund of the extra ₦50,000. However, they told me it couldn’t be returned; the money was gone for good. At that point, I realised there was nothing I could do. I simply had to accept the loss and move on,” he adds.

Throughout Africa, the number of journalists willing to cover violent conflicts is decreasing, not due to their choice. In Nigeria, these courageous reporters confront harsh realities: threats of murder from terrorists, assaults by government agents, and the emotional toll of witnessing human suffering. From 1992 to 2020, 1,378 journalists lost their lives globally, with many killed while covering domestic strife rather than foreign wars. Nigeria’s history is marked by violence, from the assassination of Suleiman Bisalla in Kaduna to the 2020 assault on Daily Post’s Sikiru Obarayese while covering the #EndSARS protest in Osun State, South West Nigeria. For every incident that receives attention, several more remain unreported. Despite the dangers they face, Nigerian conflict journalists are often deployed without trauma support, insurance, or adequate protection from their institutions. Their challenges don’t conclude at the battlefield; many return home burdened with emotional distress that goes unnoticed beyond the headlines.

For Adebulu, the story was told, but the emotional distress still lives with him. Although the investigative piece was later shortlisted for the Fetisov journalism award, arguably the most prestigious journalism laurel globally, his interest in such adventurous stories diminished due to the potential danger lurking around and the emotional that trailing them. It was an incredibly traumatic experience that he sincerely hopes never to relive. It was his first time facing such a situation: being held to ransom by fixers who seized his phone and left him genuinely fearing for his life.

“I wasn’t there for personal gain; I was trying to help the community by covering the abduction of the girls, shedding light on their harrowing ordeal, and documenting their stories in the hope of drawing much-needed support. Instead, I found myself in a vulnerable position, pressured by individuals who demanded an exorbitant amount of money simply because they had driven me around and arranged access to sources for interviews,” he says. 

The cunning fixer

Adebulu’s experience with deceitful fixers resonated with me, as I had a similar encounter while covering a story. In Niger State, a local fixer, Bago Abdullahi, is notorious for milking journalists, and he does this effortlessly. Swindlers are not only present in Kebbi and Niger states; this problem has become widespread for those striving to tell the stories of ordinary people caught in violence, especially in northern Nigeria.

As a chief investigative reporter at Premium Times in 2022, I travelled to Niger to unravel what I believed would be one of the most important stories of the time. I was determined to document the tragic story of six young girls killed during a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) surveillance strike in the small village of Kurebe.

The NAF had claimed that the operation was successful, targeting terrorists and criminal masterminds thriving in the community. However, I uncovered a different reality when I spoke to on-the-ground sources. The victims were all civilians, and those six girls, aged between three and six, were lost in a moment of sanctioned violence. Their homes were reduced to rubble, and both bombs and denial scarred their village.

Determined to uncover the truth, I travelled to the state to speak with the victims’ families, local eyewitnesses, and anyone who could shed light on what had happened. I knew the story I wanted to tell intimately, but I needed a local fixer to help navigate the complexities of access and trust. I found a man who initially presented himself as a defender of his people, motivated by a desire to see rural terrorism become a thing of the past in the state. He spoke convincingly, expressing his wish to share Kurebe’s story with the world. I believed him; his enthusiasm matched mine, and I thought I had found a genuine ally in the fight against terrorism.

I was wrong, as that facade quickly faded.

He demanded ₦250,000 upfront to transport five sources from Kurebe and neighbouring villages to the relatively safe town of Kuta, where I could interview them without fear of retaliation. I later discovered that the transport cost per person was under ₦3,000. One source mentioned that she received no more than ₦3,000 for the round trip. The fixer had told me each person would receive ₦25, 000. What happened to the rest of the money?  He pocketed it.

He had promised hotel accommodations for the sources but only provided them with a single, cramped room. When I confronted him about this, hoping to restore some dignity for those whose stories I aimed to amplify, he responded with further demands: an additional ₦100,000 this time, without any clear explanation.

I refused.

That’s when his demeanour shifted. The man who once claimed to be my ally became venomous. Insults poured in through text messages. He accused me of being ungrateful and hoarding the money my organisation sent. “You’ll win awards with this story,” he raged. “And yet you don’t want to give us our due!”

What he didn’t know was that I had received only ₦220,000 in total from my media organisation at that time, and I had been using my savings to make the trip happen. I wasn’t seeking glory; I was striving to document the truth.

Despite the insults, I completed the story, and it was published. However, I walked away feeling sickened by how easily noble intentions can be twisted by those who view tragedy as their currency. In the following months, other journalists confided in me that they, too, had been scammed by the same man – colleagues like Yakubu Mohammed, who faced similar deception, and Isah Ismail, a journalist with HumAngle, who had also fallen victim to his manipulative escapade. He was made to cough up ₦80,000 to connect him to sources who he claimed would be travelling from far places to Kuta, only for the journalist to realise that the locals were based there, not coming from elsewhere.

The pain of the Kurebe girls’ story stayed with me, but so did the sense of betrayal. It served as a reminder that even in pursuing justice, not all allies are who they claim to be.

Branded a betrayer

Yaqubu Muhammad, a Premium Times reporter, had even a more horrible experience while trying to document the plight of locals uprooted by war in Niger state. His story is similar to Adebulu’s but more worrisome, as it was a near-death experience. In 2020,  Mohammed was mistaken for a terrorist informant by soldiers surveilling the tense town of the Shiroro area in the state, causing him a life-threatening encounter.

His mission was to visit the hotspot of rural terrorism in Shiroro. He wanted to be in Kokki, Magami, Sarkin Zuma, and Uguwan Magero to tell the stories of victims of armed violence whose livelihood had been stolen by a new front of terrorists. Alongside Bello Kokki, his fixer, the journalist rode on a motorcycle for hours before getting to the hard-to-reach communities. He was initially scared, but despite the risk, Muhammad pressed on, driven by a sense of duty.

It took three hours for the journalist to travel from Lapai to Kuta. His fixer had picked him from there, riding him through farm fields and ghost villages sacked by terrorists. They had travelled through the ungoverned spaces unhindered, documenting the losses and the lives lost to terrorists in the axis. Later, they explored the Kwatai riverbank, speaking to dozens of displaced villagers who had built makeshift shelters. The sight left Mohammed in awe, pondering how people survived in such conditions.

“[…] the storylines were dotted with bloody tales through the teary eyes of sedentary villagers,” he wrote in a reporter’s diary. He returned to the riverbank, staying behind to continue his interviews, but his fixer had to leave due to fear of impending attacks. That night, he slept in a makeshift hut with other displaced people, unaware of the danger lurking around the place.

When the cock crowed the following morning, some soldiers stormed the camp. His face was strange to them; it was the first time they saw someone carrying a camera, wanting to speak to displaced persons. It was a satellite community, and it was hard to reach. “Oga! Let’s shoot him; he’s a bandit’s informant,” one soldier yelled. The soldiers dragged him out, accusing him of espionage. Surrounded by armed men ready to fire, the journalist says he was already imagining his obituary. The more he tried explaining that he was just a journalist trying to tell the story of locals caught up in the armed violence, the more he was looked at with disdain, insults and harassment. “You are a spy. You came to take pictures and send to bandits,” one of them insisted, with his pleas falling on deaf ears.

After a few hours of grilling the journalists, letting out the sweat in him, a senior officer intervened to de-escalate the situation. The officer asked the reporter to present his ID card and phone for verification. “You are lucky,” the officer said after verifying his identity. If not, you would have been gone by now.”

Scared for his life, Mohammed left the camp immediately, with his heart pounding. He believes surviving that moment was a miracle, as scores of journalists had been killed in a similar situation. The experience left a deep scar, knowing that the story could have been told with a bullet-pierced skin. The trauma was compounded by the fact that he had been trying to help, not harm.

Two years later, he shared the behind-the-scenes account through WikkiTimes, hoping to shed light on journalists’ dangers in conflict zones. “It was indeed an examination,” he said, referencing the mental and emotional toll. “I am no longer naive,” he wrote. “But I will not stop telling the stories that matter.”

Damilola Ayeni is another Nigerian journalist who has faced a similar ordeal with security operatives. He travelled to a terrorist-affected zone in the Republic of Benin and ended up behind bars, despite identifying himself. He was tracking the movements of elephants from Nigeria to the conflict zone of the Benin Republic, only to be detained by local authorities. He spent days in detention before finally gaining his freedom following media pressure. 

Numerous cases of Nigerian journalists facing mistreatment by terrorists, military personnel, and civilian groups often remain unreported or receive minimal coverage. According to the Wilson Centre, it is estimated that for every reported incident of journalist assault in Nigeria, there are at least four cases that go unrecorded.

“Appropriate legislation should be adopted to compel media owners to prioritise the general welfare of journalists, particularly those working in dangerous zones. Media advocacy groups and civil society organisations should also consider bringing attention and support to journalists working in dangerous zones,” says Olusola Isola, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies at the University of Ibadan. “Media owners in Nigeria should consider providing personal protection equipment for journalists on dangerous assignments, as well as medical evacuation services and life insurance policies.”

More than six million people in the Lake Chad Basin are caught in a cycle of violence, displacement, and ecological disaster.

As Boko Haram exploits shrinking resources and fragile security, communities face impossible choices — return home under threat or stay in limbo.

In this episode of Pinch Point, explore how conflict, climate change, and geopolitics are shaping this crisis.