It remains one of the most secretive weapons of war – one that is swept under the carpet like offending dust because so few will address it. Yet, from time to time, someone dares to confront that hidden dirt. “My...
Qara Chokh mountain, Iraq – Lieutenant colonel Zaid Rekani, from Duhok, serves in the Peshmerga’s 14th Brigade on the Qara Chokh mountain near the town of Makhmour, where ISIS still maintains a presence a year after Iraq declared victory over...
CAIRO – Egypts decided to pull out from discussions for the US’s proposed NATO-like ‘Arab force’, which had been proposed with the purpose of reducing Iran’s influence in the Middle East region. The decision serves to undermine the initiative and...
The five countries who shelled out the most money on their militaries in 2018 were the United States (surprise surprise), China, Saudi Arabia, India, and France. Combined, the military spending of these five countries makes up over 60 percent of...
On 30 September 2018 the USS Destroyer Decatur conducted freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese holding in the South China Sea (SCS). A People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy destroyer Lanzhou arrived to shadow the...
From smouldering bomb-sites in the pockmarked cities of Sanaa and Hodeidah to children lying on stained mattresses on hospital floors, waiting — perhaps in vain — for the anti-cholera drugs they need to fight a killer infection. Starker still are...
Damascus – The rising numbers of child marriage among most vulnerable Syrian refugees over the past 7 years has sent alarm bells amongst humanitarian and civil rights organisations worldwide. Refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have been fertile grounds...
(Tripoli) The hiss of bullets buzzes in your ears moments before in the middle of a wall already crumbling as result of the fighting, collapses in a puff of dust just a few steps away from us. A damned sniper...
At around nine in the evening, we put on our helmets and bullet proof vests to go out on patrol towards the remaining trenches. The route is very short. We walk in pitch black, tripping over the rubble, taking the dug-out path in single file. We hear the bullets whistling past our heads while the militiamen next to us repeatedly recite their litany. “No lights, sniper, no lights”. We reach a sort of observatory, on the first floor of a rundown building. The scene we are faced with is both wonderful and terrifying: the entire horizon before us is lit up to daylight by endless bursts of lightning. They look like fireworks but obviously they are something else: a blazing shower of bombs falling ceaselessly on the tragically torn area of Donbass .When at war, the black of night is a strange travelling companion. Soldiers love darkness because it protects them from enemy eyes. But at the same time they fear it: anything can surface from obscurity, and in general it is nothing good. The blackness was unexpectedly slashed open at fourteen minutes past ten at night, as we sat at the garrison desk, interviewing one of the militiamen. All of a sudden the air was pierced by an extremely powerful hiss. We saw the face of the boy opposite us distorted into an indescribable grimace of terror. We jumped to our feet and lunged over the bunker threshold. As we toppled down the concrete stairs, an unimaginable blast pounded our ears. The air moved bringing with it a powerful shower of incandescent shrapnel.
Reporting from Mogadishu, from fear of the Al Shabaab terrorists and what remains of a country ravaged by an endless war.
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