A protest in front of the Chinese Consulate in Makati city, Philippines, July 12, 2021 (AP photo by Aaron Favila).

On April 21, a suicide bomber struck the four-star Serena Hotel in Quetta, Pakistan, killing five people and wounding 12 more. Initial reports indicated the target was Nong Rong, the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, who was staying at the Serena but was not present at the time. The Tehrik-i-Taliban, or TTP, a jihadi terrorist group active along the Pakistani-Afghan border, later claimed responsibility for the attack, vaguely saying it had targeted “locals and foreigners” staying at the hotel.  A few months later, in mid-July, another suicide attack targeted a convoy of Chinese workers headed to the construction site of a hydroelectric dam […]

A man holds a banner showing the eyes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a protest against the government’s alleged use of powerful spyware to spy on opponents, Budapest, Hungary, July 26, 2021 (AP photo by Anna Szilagyi).

Like picking up a rock in the garden, the NSO Pegasus spyware scandal exposes a repulsive world teaming with life in the muck and mire—so much so that it is tempting to put the stone back in place and pretend that world doesn’t exist. There are many layers to the story: the human cost, the murky ethics of selling powerful spy tools to states with poor human rights records, and the complexities of trying to regulate the global market for such software. They all point to a challenge that will be with us for some time, despite the popular outrage […]

Rwandan armed forces prepare to board a flight to Mozambique, at the airport in Kigali, Rwanda, July 10, 2021 (AP photo by Muhizi Olivier).

A violent insurgency in Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado is sparking fears that the area could become the next frontier for global jihadism in Africa. In recent years, young men, sometimes carrying the black flag of the Islamic State, have swept hundreds of thousands of people off their land in the natural gas-rich province. The militants’ attacks have often been marked by beheadings and mutilations, including of children.  All told, more than 3,000 people have been killed in the violence. Mozambican security forces have struggled to contain the insurgents, who in late March stormed the northern town of Palma, […]

Mounds of rubble, remnants of the battle to retake the city three years ago from the Islamic State group, remain in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq, Nov. 29, 2020 (AP photo by Samya Kullab).

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Middle East Memo, which takes a look at what’s happening, what’s being said and what’s on the horizon in the Middle East. Subscribe to receive it by email every Monday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it. MOSUL, Iraq—Last week, the inhabitants of Mosul observed the fourth anniversary of their city’s liberation from the Islamic State, in a cityscape scarred as much by the military operation to dislodge ISIS as by the rule of ISIS itself. The now-defunct caliphate, which governed Mosul from 2014 to 2017, still […]

Demonstrators light candles to mark the first anniversary of the anti-government protests in Basra, Iraq, Oct. 1, 2020 (AP photo by Nabil al-Jurani).

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Middle East Memo, which takes a look at what’s happening, what’s being said and what’s on the horizon in the Middle East. Subscribe to receive it by email every Monday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it. KARBALA, Iraq—Iraq’s weak democracy has fallen under direct threat from internal militias, and its economy and infrastructure have reached a breaking point. The country’s political system—a makeshift workaround to manage persistent ethno-sectarian divisions—seems unable to make even the slightest course correction. Is it about to unravel? And if it does, […]

A soldier stand guards outside the site of an attack in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Jan. 16, 2016 (AP photo by Sunday Alamba).

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—The images that circulated on social media following last month’s bloody attack on the village of Solhan, in northeastern Burkina Faso, weren’t as gory as those that are often shared online after towns have been hit by armed groups. But even in a country where such killings are a near-daily occurrence, there was something about the photographs—showing dozens of bodies wrapped in woven prayer mats and piled into a mass grave—that jolted many people to take to the streets.  “It was horrible, but it showed us the limits of our state and the current regime in finding solutions […]

Supporters of the Pakistani religious party Jamaat-e-Islami at a rally against the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas, in Peshawar, Pakistan, April 23, 2011 (AP photo by Mohammad Sajjad).

On June 30, a coalition of 100 NGOs delivered a concise letter to the office of President Joseph Biden demanding “an end to the unlawful program of lethal strikes outside any recognized battlefield, including through the use of drones.” The letter arrived at an important political and symbolic juncture, just as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, initially scheduled to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11, was nearing completion. The attacks of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan that followed kicked off the massive expansion of America’s military footprint abroad, from which the drone program emerged and grew. […]

Congolese soldiers patrol the streets of Beni, Congo, July 16, 2019 (AP photo by Jerome Delay).

In early May, in a televised address, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, declared martial law in North Kivu and Ituri, two provinces on the country’s eastern border with Uganda and Rwanda, and placed them under military rule. In justifying this draconian measure, Tshisekedi invoked the regular mass killings in the region, which have left more than 1,000 people dead since 2019 and have generally been ascribed to one local militant group: the Allied Democratic Forces. Days later, a delegation from the Ugandan army arrived in Beni to set up a coordination center for a joint offensive with […]