al-Shabaab, or “the Youth,” is a militant group that adheres to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that was formed in the early 2000s and has carried out deadly attacks across much of East Africa, according to The Council on Foreign Relations
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Residents reported that the army had left the villages of Kibuma and Tongo and people are continuing to flee. This will lead to the worsening of an already existent humanitarian crisis in Eastern Congo where many people are living in tent cities with little access to food.
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The Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front came to an agreement to provide humanitarian access to the Tigray Region on November 12, after a two-year-long war, reports The Guardian.
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The death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman in Iran, has sparked massive, ongoing protests in Iran. Mahsa was killed in Iranian custody on September 16 after being detained by the Iranian morality police for “inappropriate attire,” according to Reuters.
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The Taliban’s quick rise to power sparked “joy” and celebration amongst a variety of militant groups that admired the Taliban’s commitment to their ideological goals. The international community’s concerns that Afghanistan will become a safe haven for terrorist activity, as in the 2000s, remains steadfast.
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On September 11, Ethiopia’s Tigray rebels announced that they are willing to participate in peace talks headed by the African Union (AU), reports Al Jazeera. This announcement comes after fighting resumed between the Ethiopian Federal Government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in August.
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On September 12, more than 100 people were killed when fighting erupted along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border surrounding the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, reports The Washington Post. In a series of attacks by “heavy artillery, drones, and large-caliber weapons,” Azerbaijan attacked Armenian troops along the border in response to what they claimed were military provocations from Armenia, according to the United Nations.
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Decades-old tensions are flaring in Bosnia and Herzegovina as the leader of one of the country’s three dominant groups moves toward secession. The Balkan nation is governed by an ethnicity-based system of government featuring three presidents: one Bosniak, one Croat, and one Serb.
Read moreRussia has the difficult tasks of attempting to retain sovereignty over people who do not view themselves as Russians, and reckoning with the cultural angst that has arisen from the economic failures and territorial disputes that resulted from the dissolution of the USSR.
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