After US President Donald Trump reiterated that his party lost the midterm elections because of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi asked him to respect the wishes of the American people and end the war now.

“They did not like the war. They did not like the fact that gasoline went up, ‘because I had it down at a low; there’s a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel,’ Trump said during a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, while underlining reasons why Republicans lost the 3 November midterm elections.

Though Trump did not directly blame Israel for the war, Araghchi pointed out that people’s disgust with Israel is rooted in the fact that it has been largely seen as the reason behind the war.

Trump “clearly recognises that the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with Israel,” which has bamboozled successive “US administrations into forever wars,” Araghchi said in a post on X on Monday, 9 November.

Earlier, US Vice President JD Vance had also blamed relations with Israel for the war on Iran, claiming it caused unpopularity for the Republican Party in the elections and called for changes to those relations.

Araghchi affirmed there should be no further delays and the war should end, as both the people in the US and the people of West Asia have seen and suffered enough.

Replying to a related question about the possibility of restarting the war, Trump contradicted his own statements made earlier on Wednesday and Thursday, claiming he is not looking to escalate the war, as there is no reason for it now.

He further said that Iran’s nuclear programme is practically over, as they do not have any nuclear material left, and he “has stopped them from having a nuclear weapon.”

Trump claimed that though there is no need to strike Iran now, if such a need arises in the future, for example, to attack Pickaxe Mountain (an alleged Iranian nuclear site): “We would have that done in one hour.”

Strait of Hormuz

When asked about the cost of the war and the deployment of US assets to protect navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump claimed that the Strait was open.

He also claimed that all its allies in the region, including Israel, would not have survived without the US support, and therefore they are going to pay for all the costs the US has incurred in the war and managing the traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has repeatedly denied US claims about the Strait being open. It has targeted dozens of ships trying to cross the Strait with the US help and claimed only ships coordinating with Iran are allowed to cross it.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced additional measures to control what it called the “smuggling” of oil through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, claiming to have destroyed the “enemy’s” navigation aid systems.

In an earlier post on Sunday, Araghchi had reiterated the Iranian proposal to open the Strait. He has said that if the US agrees to its demands, the waterway will open in two days, asking the White House to learn from the American people and make its choice.

Araghchi had proposed last month that if the US agrees to its seven demands, including the end of the war on all fronts in the region, the lifting of all sanctions imposed since the collapse of the 17 June Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), and the release of its frozen assets, Iran will move to open the Strait of Hormuz within days.

The US has rejected the Iranian demands to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them “outrageous and ridiculous.”

Responding to Rubio’s rejection, Esmail Baghaei, official spokesperson of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, questioned his reasoning on Monday, claiming if anything was really outrageous and ridiculous, it was the US-Israeli war on Iran.

US aggressive posture against Iran continues.

The US has repeatedly quoted data to prove the “normalisation” of the energy trade through the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump making claims that the US is in full control of the waterways.

The US Central Command has continued to make aggressive postures. On Friday, it launched fresh airstrikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island. Though Iran claimed the strike failed to cause any substantial damage.

On Sunday the US also announced the formation of a 20-member so-called “Iron Gate” task force in an effort to prevent the transportation of weapons and other goods through Iranian borders as an extension of its naval blockade.

One of the objectives of the task force is to also prevent trade by land and the Caspian Sea routes as a part of the US attempts to “economically isolate” Iran.

Over the weekend, the US Department of State also launched a so-called Rewards for Justice campaign, announcing a $20 million reward and “possible relocation” for “information about Iran’s nuclear programme, including its facilities, equipment, and associated personnel, such as those in the scientific community.”

Iran reacted sharply to the move, calling it a “bid to recruit accomplices for assassinations, criminal acts and further offensive.”

Adding to the confusion on Sunday, Trump also claimed that he is going to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China next week, where they will be discussing the future of denuclearisation and the “end of the war” on Iran.

Both Russia and China have been demanding the end of the US-Israeli war on Iran, with Russia even offering mediation.

Presumptions of friendship and guarantees in international relations are never secure and rarely lasting. Even when they are given the stamp of firm endurance, a closer look will find greater benefits accruing to one party over the other. When one needs to persuade a weaker power into surrendering real estate and valuable terrain for the more powerful counterpart to use, always employ the terminology of “joint-facility,” “joint-operations” or some such. That will go a long way into validating the mendacity of an arrangement.

The Gulf Arab states are the latest to learn this lesson from the United States, whose guardianship credentials have been looking particularly shabby of late. Having not sought the conflict with Iran that the US, in collusion with Israel, started at the end of February, they now face the prospect of a diminished American presence once hostilities with Tehran end.

For decades, the Gulf Cooperation Council states sought to create a defence order based on gluttonous arms purchases and extensive offerings to US military personnel in terms of bases and facilities, the assumption being that this would guarantee them against attack. While the presumptive attacker in that case was Iran, the GCC states did not spare diplomacy in attempting to mollify Tehran, adopting a conscious policy of distancing from US-Israeli policy. The presence of US forces, in offering that insurance of security, also encouraged those in the Gulf region to advertise grandly as destinations for stable investment, capital and labour (however shoddy the conditions), sheltered by the comforts of the US imperial shield.

The American promissory note guaranteeing Gulf security was spectacularly invalidated in the opening days of March. Shortly after the first US-Israeli strikes hit Iranian soil, retaliation from Tehran came in an expansive spray of attacks on GCC states. These caused fires in the vicinity of luxury accommodation in Dubai. Kuwait’s international airport was disrupted. The Aramco facility in Ras Tanura, responsible for the production of more than half-a-million barrels of oil per day, was targeted and damaged. As the strikes continued, it also became clear that the exorbitantly priced defences long marshalled by the states came to very little. Sophisticated anti-missile technology, for instance, could barely account for swift, stealthy drones of cheaper make yet devastating effect. By mid-July, the US itself had used up over 1,700 Patriot interceptors and over 200 THAAD missiles in the Middle East.

The debate among the policy wonks and wags is that American influence in the region has not only received a bruising, but a bruising with consequence. “For the first time since the great powers dismembered the Ottoman empire a century ago,” declares The Economist with haughty certitude, “the Middle East’s overarching order will no longer be imposed from afar.” American attempts to shape the region had “run their course.” As with previous powers—Britain, France, Russia—the US would still be involved insofar as its interests demanded it. Force and interventions were not to be permanently shelved. “But it will abandon its role as architect.”

The pages of Foreign Affairs are also filled with the symptoms of imminent troop withdrawal. Dana Stroul, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East in the Biden administration, suggests moving US forces (the stock weasel word is always “redeployment”) away from the Persian Gulf. Michael Fuchs, former Special Assistant to President Joe Biden and former Deputy Chief of Staff to Vice President Kamala Harris, is even more blunt in light of the “failed Iran War,” suggesting it to be a “spur for a long-overdue withdrawal.”

The debate favouring withdrawal from the Gulf has gathered such momentum as to worry the coterie of jodhpur imperialists who still insist on the sacrosanct role of US power. F. Gregory Gause III of Texas A&M University is almost panicked by this outbreak of Middle East retreatism, proposing that “a better option would be a prudent reconsideration of the US basing structure in the Gulf, engaged in jointly with the Gulf states that continue to want to host and support the American presence.”

To add formidable insult to smarting injury, President Donald Trump is also of the view that the costs of the catastrophe he was instrumental in unleashing should be covered by regional allies. Making the absurd claim that Washington protected these states in the first place, having demonstrably shown the opposite to be the case, Trump told CBS News that they “are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war.” Without the US, “they would not exist.” Just to add some fiery topping to the commentary, the president also bracketed Israel in their company. “Without us, Israel would not exist.”

The focus on the part of the Gulf states will invariably be one of introspection followed by arrangements for an intra-defence system sharpened by the lessons of the Iran War. Collaborative associations with other states—Turkey and Pakistan, for instance—are bound to become even more attractive (witness Riyadh’s move in that direction with the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement), though any military component will be hampered by a continuing addiction to American weapons systems that require continuous technical support and maintenance from Washington. Then there is the GCC Unified Military Command, formerly known as the Peninsula Shield Force. Its effectiveness, always subsidiary given the heavy reliance on American brawn, may be revisited. To do that, however, the Gulf states will have to set aside their own grumbling differences—indeed, a tall order. US power, in the meantime, will continue to be eclipsed.

Nationwide mobilisations against austerity have continued in France following the massive strike on 5 November, with additional protests announced for 10 November, 14, 17, and 19.

Hundreds of thousands persist in resisting the cuts-based policies envisioned by President Emmanuel Macron and the government of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. They are demanding that authorities finally table concrete proposals to address the concerns that ignited the protests in October.

Until now, the Lecornu administration has only offered measures amounting to “crumbs,” according to student organisations and trade unions involved. The latest in this series was a pledge to increase the minimum wage by 1.6%, announced at a meeting with unions and employers on Monday, 9 November.

“This small increase is not the government’s generosity,” the student union Union Étudiante wrote. “It’s a first step forward made possible by the mobilisation of workers, students, trade unions, and everyone who has taken to the streets.”

A minimum wage increase worth three metro tickets

While government officials claim the increase would help alleviate the cost-of-living crisis plaguing the working class, most trade unions and progressive groups in France have voiced strong disagreement.

After factoring in the inflation adjustment already set to kick in from January, the net amount of the government’s promised increase could amount to as little as €7 to €8 net monthly. Trade unions had demanded at least a €100 increase.

The government’s offer represents “nothing in the face of precarity,” Union Étudiante emphasised, considering it is just enough to purchase three public transport tickets in Paris or a sandwich in a bakery. “It’s an insult to everyone forced to choose between eating, seeking care, paying rent, and financing their studies,” the student group stated.

“Given the level of the measures announced, the social conference held today at Matignon [the prime minister’s residence] obviously does not put an end to the mobilisation,” wrote the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). “On the contrary, it opens a new stage in the balance of power needed to win real progress.”

The trade union organisation Solidaires similarly criticised the government for failing to offer concrete solutions to the mounting anger, including on student demands for more investment in public education. “The number of additional teachers is insufficient, the funding needed to ensure decent study conditions is nowhere to be seen, and promises on the Parcoursup system remain vague,” they wrote.

The left pledges an “emergency social decree” to address the cost-of-living crisis.

Student unions that met prime minister Lecornu on Monday shared similar impressions. In addition to noting no significant breakthroughs, students walked out of a discussion on reforming the higher education recruitment platform Parcoursup over the participation of the far right—which has repeatedly dismissed the protesters’ grievances.

Most recently, Rassemblement National leader Marine Le Pen opposed imposing a minimum wage increase, arguing it would lead to job losses and echo workplace measures from the USSR. She had previously admitted she would not break with the neoliberalism championed by Macron if elected president in 2027.

In contrast, the programme of left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon—who is increasingly shaping up to be the only true electoral alternative to Le Pen—pledges to increase the net minimum wage by approximately €200 to €1,700 immediately upon being elected.

The move would benefit over 2 million workers in France—approximately 60% of whom are women—who were pushed into ultra-precarious working conditions by Macronist policies, wrote media outlet L’Insoumission.

“How can we not raise the minimum wage to €1,700 when the wealth of the country’s 500 richest families has doubled since 2017? Billionaires have never made such enormous profits. Macron has turned France into a tax haven for billionaires.”

The minimum wage increase promised by the left is among a host of other measures included under the umbrella of an “emergency social decree” intended to address the cost-of-living crisis. Other measures include freezing prices and profit margins, as well as other moves to ensure salaries keep pace with prices.

Students and education trade unions are once again taking action on Tuesday, 10 November. On Saturday, 14 November, a new round of general mobilisations was announced, while trade unions are circulating a new call to “generalise strike actions” on 17 November. Two days later, more protests are expected, boosted by the participation of retirees’ organisations.

Since April 2023, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have engaged in a zero-sum war for control of the nation, fuelled by support from powerful business interests. Twenty-two years ago, during a war in Darfur that US Secretary of State Colin Powell and the International Criminal Court characterised as a genocide, I began studying the phenomenon of a nation constantly at war with itself.

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan concluded in September 2025 that both combatants have committed extensive war crimes. In their wake lies a humanitarian crisis that António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, has repeatedly referred to as the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis. The conflict draws periodic, even lavish media coverage (Vanity Fair, Summer 2026). Still, the alliances that perpetuate the destruction operate efficiently and without substantive interference by the global community. Sudan’s misery rises from war crimes for profit.

Background

The majority of Sudan’s population is Arab. Non-Arab minorities include the Fur, Beja, Nuba, Zaghawa, Masalit and Fallata ethnic groups. Despite intermarriage that blurs tribal affiliations, the political marginalisation of non-Arab groups repeatedly kindles conflict.

The RSF is a paramilitary force of primarily Baggara Arabs. The European Union Agency for Asylum documented their forced recruitment campaigns of young men and boys, particularly in displaced persons camps. The UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons reported in October 2023 that RSF targeted unaccompanied and impoverished children from the outskirts of Khartoum, as well as those from Arab tribes in Darfur and West Kordofan. She received information that children as young as ten have been armed with loaded automatic rifles.

The Sudan Tribune reported in January 2026 that a network of fake female social media accounts is being used to conduct a large-scale propaganda campaign in support of the Rapid Support Forces. This tactic employs emotional discourse to bypass direct resistance, preventing message tracing and evading legal accountability. According to ReliefWeb in April 2017, the RSF also patrols the border with Libya, rounding up Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees to satisfy an initiative between European and African states, including Sudan, to reduce the flow of migrants to Europe. This activity suggests other nations don’t mind RSF’s methods if they help fix migration headaches.

The SAF and their allied militia, including radical Islamist elements, have likewise targeted civilians. SAF warplanes and artillery have carried out wide-area bombardments on densely populated residential neighbourhoods, public markets, hospitals, and medical facilities. Their activities have been documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and USAID.

More than three years of chaos has induced powerful patrons to continue exploiting profitable business opportunities for the deployment of advanced weapons.

Business Interests

The economic linchpins of the war: RSF forces took control of gold mines in the Darfur region in November 2017. Their leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, became one of the richest men in Sudan by 2019. Hemedti’s brother Abdul Rahim, deputy head of RSF, controls Al Junaid, the corporation involved in gold mining and trading in Sudan.

A December 2019 investigation by Global Witness found that the RSF controls a large part of the country’s gold industry. Leaked bank data and corporate documents show they run two front companies: GSK, a Sudanese technology company, and Tradive General Trading LLC, a United Arab Emirates-based company, both controlled by Hemedti’s younger brother Algoney Hamdan Dagalo. The RSF’s relations with other neighbouring and allied states are complicated arrangements where political expediency and economic needs are leveraged for movement of weapons and mercenaries.

The RSF’s most powerful patron is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE government has consistently denied supplying weapons, funding, or facilitating foreign fighters for the RSF, insisting their involvement is humanitarian in nature.

The President of the United Arab Emirates is also the Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. The UAE Minister of Defence is the Crown Prince of Dubai and Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE. Together with H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Chairman of the Board of Directors for EDGE Group, they are overseeing an aggressive transition from a major global arms importer into an industrial competitor.

The UAE-backed EDGE Group, through various international joint ventures, manufactures and exports drones, missiles, armoured vehicles, and small arms to diversify its economy away from oil and to build sovereign military capabilities. According to the Center for International Policy, UN investigators and flight-tracking analysts traced a supply line running through Bosaso in Puntland, al-Kufra in eastern Libya, and Ethiopian military airfields. The UN Panel of Experts found that Ethiopian territory served as a supply conduit for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). A UN fact-finding mission counts at least 350 and as many as 2,000 Colombian military contractors operating alongside RSF units, recruited through private security firms and trained at Emirati bases, according to Human Rights Watch.

However, the types of weapons, notably Chinese manufactured, lead investigators to make qualified statements: “The weapons were almost certainly re-exported to Sudan by the UAE.” Deniability has been fastidiously maintained by the UAE government.

American firms increasingly are meeting the demand for drones by producing or co-producing them in the Gulf rather than exporting finished systems. While the US maintains a formal arms embargo on Sudan, it circumvents regulatory scrutiny and domestic oversight through a “proxy pipeline,” utilising third-party state sponsors—primarily the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This arrangement places the end products closer to their deployment areas for quick resupply and, according to a US House Foreign Affairs Committee statement, circumvents weapons transfer oversight in the US.

The SAF is led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, acting head of state, and commander-in-chief of the military. Supporters are major powerbrokers in the region. Saudi Arabia provides high-level political legitimacy that escalates tensions with the UAE. Iran provides drone technology. According to Reuters, 10 April 2024, the introduction of these drones helped the Sudanese Army prevent advances by the RSF and retake territory in Omdurman and Khartoum early in the war.

The conflict has notably increased gold exports from northern Sudan into Egypt through military-linked arrangements with the informal mining sector. Egypt also provides weapons, ammunition, armoured vehicles, and combat drones according to Middle East Eye as well as intelligence sharing networks in cooperation with Turkey.

Sudan’s war has galvanised alliances of convenience among key military organisations and weapons manufacturers primarily in the Middle East. Wealthy powerful men and companies enjoy freedom from restrictions on activities that help destabilise the “neighbourhood” and allow the Sudanese, theoretically, to fight to the last man standing.

Losses

Agriculture: Al Jazeera (4 May 2026) used satellite imagery to show central farming zones turned into barren ground. World Vision reported in its study, The Hollowed Earth (July 2026), that the conflict has degraded or lost at least 38,918 square kilometres of farmable land and that irrigation systems, storage facilities, and trade routes are ruined. Dry spells and low water levels along the Nile worsened the collapse of staple crops like sorghum and sesame.

The Gezira Scheme, once the largest irrigated farm under single management in the world, collapsed with the destruction of the canal network, leaving fields, farmers and institutions without water. Transport costs inflated by 300%—500% in several states—erasing the profit from produce that reached markets. Al Jazeera (12 October 2026) reported that El Niño-induced drought in Sudan is compounding the effects of war and displacement by inducing famine.

Education: Sources diverge on statistics. In February 2026, the Geneva Global Hub for Education reported that 10,400 schools were closed in October 2023, but approximately 65% were reopened in January 2026. Approximately 7.9 million children remain out of school and have missed over three years of learning. Where schools have gradually reopened after months of closure, ReliefWeb reports (October 2025), they lack basic infrastructure and learning materials.

Health System: The WHO reported that as of 14 April 2026, 37% of health facilities across Sudan were non-functional, with hospitals only partially functioning or closed in conflict-affected areas. There are widespread power outages, looting, and critical shortages of essential medicines and diagnostic tools. The destruction of water, sanitation, and waste collection systems has triggered outbreaks of preventable diseases, including cholera, dengue fever, malaria, and measles. The WHO also documented 217 separate attacks on healthcare infrastructure and personnel, resulting in 2,052 deaths.

Human Cost: The Council on Foreign Relations estimates over 33 million Sudanese, nearly two-thirds of the population, require urgent assistance to continue surviving. A UNDP analysis (28 April 2026) found that Sudan’s war has shrunk the economy by 29.4%, with revenue losses exceeding 50% in high-conflict areas. Some 19 million face acute food insecurity. Over 13 million are displaced.

Statistics of the dead and injured are so alarming as to defy adequate collection efforts. The scale of civilian losses—people, land, food, water, and public services—is catastrophic. All in service to profiteers.

Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War

International bodies, including the UN, humanitarian agencies, and foreign governments, have responded to the epidemic of sexual violence in Sudan with formal investigations, diplomatic pressure, humanitarian aid, and targeted sanctions rather than physical or military intervention.

The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) and a UN Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan have documented hundreds of atrocities and formally declared that the widespread use of rape, gang rape, and sexual slavery in Sudan constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, the United Nations and other bodies lack a physical civilian protection force on the ground; thus, the epidemic of sexual violence—perpetrated by RSF and SAF forces—continues to escalate, as the UN Security Council reported on 15 October 2026.

The UN Office on Sexual Violence in Conflict has signed a Framework of Cooperation with the Sudanese government to legally prioritise survivor services and build local capacity to investigate and prosecute commanders. This is the same government, in the form of the SAF, that stands accused of these war crimes.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides urgent gynaecological and psychological treatment. However, aid groups frequently state that their access is heavily restricted in active conflict zones; they are targets for RSF looting and administrative aid blocking by the SAF.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) operates roughly 90 mobile health teams, 120 facilities, and 51 specialised safe spaces across Sudan, even as humanitarian operations suffer from severe funding shortages and direct attacks on healthcare workers.

UN Women reported in April 2026 the number of people, mostly women and girls, needing support for sexual and gender-based violence has quadrupled since the start of the war. Official estimates are usually just the “tip of the iceberg.” Anna Mutavati, UN Women Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, stated, ”Women and girls are being raped and killed in their homes, and as they flee, seeking food, water and medical care. The use of sexual violence has been embedded in the blueprint of Sudan’s war.”

Gang rape is almost a quarter of verified incidents, according to UN News (23 June 2026). Other violations include sexual slavery, forced marriage, human trafficking, and sexual torture.

Survivors face grievous physical injuries, unwanted pregnancies, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and profound psychological trauma, exacerbated by a collapsed national healthcare system.

To its credit, UN Women partners with over 45 local, Sudanese women-led organisations to deliver emergency kits, psychological first aid, and safe extraction for women fleeing targeted ethnic violence. The UN verified just 546 cases of sexual violence in 2025. Underreporting of rape is pervasive worldwide, with estimates suggesting that fewer than 10% of sexual assault victims in many regions ever seek law enforcement intervention.

The unverified violations of possibly thousands of women and girls over the course of this violence in Sudan have resulted in vanishingly few options for continuing treatment of survivors or accountability of the perpetrators.

The women of Sudan, the ones best able to step up for peacemaking and rebuilding, may be sidelined for some time by the underwhelming response to their profound traumas.

Humanitarian Aid: The Resource Gaps

The United Nations 2026 humanitarian response appeal for approximately $2.9 billion remains only 14% funded (as of 23 September), threatening basic pipelines for food, clean water, medical care, and shelter. Moving aid through active combat corridors remains dangerous for UN and other aid personnel. Arbitrary delays, financial extortion, sovereign posturing, and seasonal flooding severely restrict humanitarian corridors into regions like Darfur, Kordofan, and Khartoum. International NGOs must heavily leverage locally based community partners to access volatile areas.

This “leveraging” is a significant and relatively new reality of humanitarian aid. Local Sudanese mutual aid networks, those able to operate well in familiar territory, have increasingly stepped up critical services and supplies. This bodes well for post-war restoration of local governance mechanisms. However, the killing of humanitarian workers in Sudan, reported by the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) to be fewer than 12 in 2006, the peak of the Darfur conflict, escalated to 71 in 2025, with the war total of at least 139 workers. Local staff are especially at risk from aerial bombing, shootings, and detentions and arrests. Humanitarian personnel are considered civilians under International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Wilful killing of protected persons is prohibited under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols I and II (1977). This is another of many examples of the continuing erosion of accountability for war crimes in Sudan.

Peace Efforts

The US and Saudi Arabia mediated the first major initiative, the Jeddah Declaration, in May 2023. It temporarily facilitated limited humanitarian access to affected communities, but both factions repeatedly violated the terms. A 2024 effort to bring the warring parties to peace talks in Geneva was convened by the US and co-hosted by Switzerland and Saudi Arabia, with the UN, African Union, Egypt, and UAE as observers. The RSF attended, but the SAF did not. Regional efforts via the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the African Union similarly failed when short-term truces broke down.

The fall of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, in October 2025 marked a bloody triumph for the RSF and a critical point in the war. During the Darfur genocide, I made frequent visits to El Fasher and had many contacts there. To read accounts of the RSF’s assault made me weep. “The paramilitary, killing people faster than it can bury them, resorted to mass graves.” The brutality against the living amounted to a catalogue of war crimes.

Fighting continues on multiple fronts: the SAF repelled an attack by the RSF in Blue Nile state. On 18 September, the RSF claimed a major victory over the SAF and its allies in Abu Qaoud, west of El Obeid. Battlefield claims from both the RSF and the SAF in the Kordofan region are difficult to verify independently due to restricted access. Unlike past more localised conflict, this war has engulfed much of the southwest and eastern areas of the country.

In June, US bipartisan Congressional support emerged for the Preventing External Aggression and Conflict Escalation (PEACE) in the Sudan Act of 2026. On 23 September 2026, the African Union (AU) and the United States co-chaired an unprecedented joint meeting of the Quad and Quintet mechanisms on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. This marked the first time the two principal international mediation platforms formally converged to build a systematic, operational roadmap for peace.

The effort brings together nine major regional and global entities: The Quad includes US, Saudi Arabia (aligned with the SAF), Egypt (aligned with the SAF) and the United Arab Emirates (aligned with the RSF), focusing on ceasefires and humanitarian access. That some mediators are militarily aligned with the warring parties can only be a destructive conflict of interest.

The Quintet includes the African Union, IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development), the European Union, the United Nations, and the League of Arab States. Together they are to pursue consultations with stakeholders for a civilian-led government.

During the Darfur genocide in the mid-2000s, protests in the US and the engagement of celebrities like George Clooney informed public opinion and probably helped promote political détente. There is little such public engagement this time.

Possibly the new high-level African Union–US collaboration will deliver an end to the profound suffering of the Sudanese people. Three-and-a-half years into the latest iteration of Sudan’s descent into hell, peace negotiations cannot be simply about stopping the violence. They will have to create political and security mechanisms that render continuing the war less advantageous—less profitable—than rebuilding in peace.

The overarching questions: In the regional and internal chaos spawned by this conflict, how can the international community rein in the cabal of powerful men profiting from an environment rife with war crimes? Who in the international community can help the Sudanese create a new and better normal in the wake of such pervasive destruction and persistent trauma?

The carnage and chaos have been breathtaking, but there’s not much leverage in being a stupefied spectator. Political will to banish the profiteers must find serious new champions in the international community and especially in Sudan.

For multiple days, thousands of workers in Bangladesh, mostly from garment factories, protested for a raise in their minimum monthly wages and against the rising prices of essential commodities, defying the state’s oppressive measures.

On Tuesday, 3 November, news reports indicated fresh clashes between workers and security forces at various places in the capital, Dhaka, with the agitating workers trying to block highways and other roads.

The protests broke out despite the Home Minister of the country, Salahuddin Ahmed, warning the workers to return to work on Monday after claiming their demands had been addressed by the government through the formation of a “wage board.”

Meanwhile, the authorities unleashed violence and repression on workers, with police resorting to baton charges and firing tear gas at various places, injuring several of them. The police have also arrested protesters after accusing them of indulging in arson and violence.

Workers are demanding a revision in their minimum monthly wages to at least 30,000 Bangladeshi taka (around $240) from their present 12,500 (around $100), claiming the present wages are highly inadequate to live a decent life in the context of the rising prices of essential commodities, including food and fuel.

Several unions and progressive organisations, including the Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB), have demanded an even higher wage of Taka 37,125 (around $300) along with measures to curb the rising prices of essential commodities.

The protests began in Dhaka in the last week of October and continued throughout the weekend. After the government failed to respond to their demands, workers blocked several roads in the city, including some highways, on Saturday and Sunday.

Dozens of factories in Gazipur and other industrial areas of Dhaka declared holidays on Monday and Tuesday in an attempt to avoid gatherings. The government has also increased the deployment of security forces at all major points in the city to prevent agitating workers from blocking roads and taking out other militant actions.

Decent living wages

Workers in Bangladesh argue that the minimum wages in the country have not been revised for years now despite the rise in profits for the companies, higher revenues from garment exports, and rising prices of the essential commodities.

Bangladesh is the world’s second largest exporter of garments, after China, with around 80% of all its export value coming from the sector alone.

According to various studies, the wages of garment sector workers in Bangladesh remain the lowest among all the major exporting countries. Workers in the garment sector are also among the lowest paid workers in the country.

Bangladesh has seen a consistent increase in inflation in the last four years, which, in the absence of a corresponding rise in wages, has actually led to a drop in the real wages. Just for an example, the official inflation rate in September was over 8%. This has created a severe cost of living crisis for most of the workers in the country.

The recent high inflation in the prices of the essential commodities in the country is partially attributed to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran and continued disruptions in the transportation of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz.

Bangladesh imports nearly half of its oil and gas needs from the Gulf. The US-Israeli aggression and Iranian retaliation have disrupted these imports, leading to severe shortages of cooking gas and oil, also affecting the prices of other commodities, including food.

The WPB issued a press release on Monday in support of agitating workers and condemning the “brutal suppression by law enforcement agencies and hired thugs” on them.

Prothom Alo, a prominent local daily, reported on Tuesday that, along with the security forces, workers of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) were also involved in repressive activities.

The WPB also condemned the attempts by certain sections of the ruling establishment and the media to vilify protests by calling them a “conspiracy.” It expressed hope that the BNP-led right-wing government would understand the gravity of the situation and immediately address the demands raised by the workers.

The chief of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Mohsen Rezaei, visited Moscow on Thursday, 5 November, and met Russian President Vladimir Putin amidst fresh threats of escalation against his country issued by US President Donald Trump.

On the same day, Reuters reported that Iran presented a fresh proposal to the US related to its nuclear programme through Qatar.

Iran refuted those reports, claiming that no further discussion on its nuclear programme or the Strait of Hormuz would be held until the US agrees to its seven conditions submitted earlier.

Iran’s seven conditions include the end of war on all fronts, reparation for the damages caused by the illegitimate war, lifting of the naval blockade and illegal unilateral sanctions, and access to its frozen foreign assets, among others.

These conditions were formally proposed to the US last month, with the US repeatedly refusing to respond to them and putting the counterproposal to address the nuclear issue upfront.

Though Rezaei’s meeting with Putin was largely confined to bilateral relations between Russia and Iran, the reports in Iranian media also indicated both the leaders discussed the developments related to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Speaking to media after his meeting, Rezaei claimed Putin condemned the illegal war and threats of fresh escalation. Rezaei also claimed that Putin offered his support to end the war. Both the countries also discussed post-war reconstruction and agreed all forms of foreign interventions in regional security must end, Iranian media reported.

In order to minimise the effects of sanctions, the intensification of mutual cooperation through greater energy exchanges in the form of constructing a gas pipeline and a railway route between both the countries was also proposed.

The US is prepared to launch fresh attacks.

A day after his Republican Party lost the majority in both chambers of the US Congress in the midterm elections, Trump admitted that the war on Iran played a crucial role in the loss. However, he also refused to seek the war’s end and has continued to issue fresh threats of escalation.

Trump dismissed the significance of reports about Iran reviewing nuclear proposals in conversations with reporters in the White House on Thursday, claiming “it does not make a difference what they are looking at.”

He reiterated that the US will make sure that Iran is “never going to have nuclear weapons” and may launch fresh attacks to finish the job.

Responding to a question about whether the US will resume the strikes on Iran now that the midterm was over, Trump claimed that he is yet to make a final decision on the issue and people will know about it “soon enough.”

Talking about Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump said that the US has already destroyed most of it, but whether it will attack the remaining ones, such as the Pickaxe mountain (Kuh-e Kolang), is yet to be decided.

Trump also repeated his claims that the US has already destroyed most of Iran’s nuclear capabilities and will decide soon whether “we want to go further and certify it so that it never happens again.”

As far as the preparations for fresh attacks and destruction of the “rest of Iran” are concerned, “we are very much locked and loaded,” he claimed.

An US news channel also reported, citing unnamed sources on Thursday, that the country is all set to resume its strike on Iran next week. It claimed the decision for the same was made during a series of meetings between Trump and other officials in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday.

The sign of desperation

Iran has condemned the repeated threats of a new escalation, including the use of nuclear weapons, issued in various ways by the US and Israel in the last weeks, calling them attempts to “normalise nuclear warfare.”

Reacting to Trump’s threats against its nuclear installations, head of Atomic Energy Association of Iran (AEOI) Mohammad Eslami called it a reflection of desperation.

Noting that any attack or threats of an attack on nuclear facilities amount to a violation of international law and the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) conventions, Eslami questioned the silence of the IAEA on those threats.

He repeated the Iranian accusation that the silence of the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, on repeated threats is yet another example of him being an “obedient agent” of the US and Israel and claimed that he has passed secret and sensitive information about Iran’s nuclear programme to them.

Condemning what he called the “double standards” of Grossi, Eslami claimed that his actions “amount to an abuse of the authority entrusted to international institutions and called into question their credibility,” IRNA reported.

Several other Iranian officials also warned neighbouring countries to stay away. They said all those countries involved in US aggression against Iran would be a “legitimate target” of its retaliation.

US military bases and other targets in most of the Gulf countries were hit during various rounds of Iranian retaliation against US-Israeli aggressions between February and August this year.

“The number one thing we can do to reduce hunger in the world is to reduce the amount of conflict that is happening all around the world,” Luke Lindberg, the new executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), said in his first media address last week.

Conflict is the main driver of hunger today, driving two-thirds of the acute food insecurity affecting 266 million people worldwide. “Conflict is a man-made situation. It is something that we can solve,” added Lindberg, who assumed office on 26 October.

Earlier this year, the WFP said that the “conflict in the Middle East”—a catch-all phrase for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the US-Israeli war on Iran, and the Saudi war on Yemen—“is deepening this food crisis to an alarming degree,” warning of “record numbers of acute hunger if it continues.”

On the heels of this threat, El Niño will likely push another 49 million into acute food insecurity, warned Lindberg.

Identifying Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia—all in Africa—as the worst cases to prioritise, he said that his first visit as the head of WFP will be to Sudan, where the world’s hunger crisis is unfolding as the civil war, fuelled and funded by foreign powers, continues into its fourth year.

“A pat on the back” instead of the much-needed funding

The reason for his travel, he explained, will be to give the frontline humanitarian workers “a pat on the back” and say “thank you for your service.” However, humanitarian workers in Sudan need more than a pat on the back. They need funding, which has been reduced by half.

Following an eight-day visit to Sudan in September, Lindberg’s predecessor, Carl Skau, the then Acting Executive Director of the WFP, complained that the organisation was being forced to cut back on food assistance due to fund cuts. “We now have the capacity; we have the presence, but we are not fully using that space because of the lack of funding.” He warned of the risk that “we will have to scale back even further,” he said.

The WFP’s total budget dropped from nearly $9.76 billion in 2024 to $6.52 billion in 2025 to less than $5.89 billion in 2026, as of 3 November. Most of this decline is driven by the Trump administration’s fund cuts.

The US—whose population of just over 4% of the world owns almost 36% of global personal wealth—has historically been the WFP’s largest donor, funding nearly half of its budget.

The Trump administration slashed over half of its funding to the WFP in 2025, reducing it to $2.06 billion from almost $4.5 billion in 2024. This year, it has contributed just over $1.7 billion.​

Lindberg had served as Trump’s Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs from August 2025 to September 2026, when he resigned to head the WFP. ​

Several reporters asked Lindberg if he would use his close relation to the Trump administration to re-secure the funds the US has slashed.​

MAGA support for humanitarian work?​

“There is a concept out there that the Republican side is not as interested [in humanitarian work].” But, he claimed, a survey by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation earlier this year had shown that “79% of self-identified MAGA Republicans support US engagement overseas.”​

However, the survey had not asked about support for humanitarian work. The “ Reagan National Defence Survey” had found that 79% of MAGA Republicans said that the US “should be more engaged and take the lead in international affairs.”

As subsequent questions in the survey made clear, this greater engagement and taking the lead in international affairs translated into expanding its military power to be able to fight Russia and China and use force in Latin America and the Caribbean.

After misusing this survey to indicate that Trump’s core voters support US humanitarian funding, Lindberg went on to clarify that he indeed has “great relations with many members of the Trump administration.”

“President Trump personally called me and asked me to be the US nominee” for WFP’s executive director, he added. “I know that all the way up the chain to the president there are people within the US government that want to support humanitarian work around the world.”​

No commitment to reverse US fund cuts

Nonetheless, he wouldn’t commit to leveraging any of this to try to re-secure US funding. Instead, he went on to say, “I look forward to them continuing to play a critical role, but the reality is there are more countries around the world as well … We need to be building that deeper donor partnership.”

However, following in the footsteps of the US, other leading donors have also slashed their funding. Germany, which was the second-largest donor in 2024, providing $990.9 million in funds to the WFP, reduced it to just over $570 million in 2025. This year, it has provided under $331.4 million.

The UK, the third-largest donor in 2024 when it funded over $609.9 million, reduced its donation to $435.16 million in 2025 and to just over USD 220 million so far this year. France in the same period slashed its funding from $196.58 million to USD 113.61 million, to just over $32.5 million.

Nevertheless, Lindberg had found “a bright spot.” The WFP, he said, “has done a remarkable job of increasing private sector engagement. The private sector is now the fifth largest donor.”

However, private sector funding of the WFP has not shown any meaningful increase since 2024, when it was the fifth largest donor, funding $335.63 million. In 2025, its funding dropped to just over $310 million. It went up in 2026 to $326.07 million but remains below the 2024 level as of 3 November.

The rise in the share of the WFP budget coming from private sector donations—from 3.44% in 2024 to 4.75% in 2025 to 5.5% in 2026—has not been driven by an increase in their funding to the WFP. It is rather caused by the decline in the WFP’s total budget from almost $9.6 billion in 2024 to under $5.82 billion this year.

Nonetheless, “I think there is a lot more room to grow on that front,” Lindberg said, at a time when WFP’s funding to Sudan has been halved. In South Sudan, over a million people are at risk of losing assistance. Lack of funds is also forcing the WFP to scale down its reach in Somalia to just 5% of the people facing emergency hunger. It has also been forced to reduce its food assistance to Gaza by a third and to the West Bank by half.

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin recently announced plans to establish a government body to prepare for different scenarios for the country’s constitutional future, including the possibility of a united Ireland. A first round of updates about this plan are expected before the end of the year.

In addition to outlining the scenario of a unitary Irish state, the body would also be tasked to prepare for a possible continuation of the existing situation and “a future united Ireland in which Northern Ireland would remain a devolved entity, maintaining its own separate assembly and government, civil services, public services and police,” Martin said in an interview with The Irish Times in late October.

“Sinn Féin believes that a united Ireland is the best future for all our people,” party leader Mary Lou McDonald stated in response. “Ending partition and bringing our country together offers the biggest opportunity to build a stronger economy, deliver better public services and create a fairer, reconciled society across the whole island.”

Sinn Féin: unification would strengthen Ireland economically and politically.

Martin’s announcement came four months after parliamentarians voted on a Sinn Féin bill on reunification, which proposed deadlines for the government to develop a plan for the organisation of public services and other areas of life in a united Ireland.

Sinn Féin has argued for years that reunification would bring an opportunity to strengthen the island politically and economically, providing space for planning jobs and creating a unified healthcare system.

“Through Unity, we can build the best education and childcare systems for every child and young person,” McDonald said earlier this year. “We can strengthen public services, tackle poverty, and build a fair society in which disabled people and those who care are supported to live lives of equal citizens.”

The proposal, named the Planning for Constitutional Change Bill, also proposed a citizens’ assembly to ensure different perspectives are represented.

In July, Martin’s Fianna Fáil and government partner Fine Gael voted against the Sinn Féin proposal, citing concerns over the bill’s time limitations and participation models. At the time, McDonald defended the timeliness of initiating reunification from the Irish side as the Good Friday Agreement approaches its 30th anniversary.

“There has been nothing rushed, hasty or pre-emptive about this process,” McDonald said. “Over the last three decades, we had big challenges, disagreements, and political confrontations; we have had highs and lows – of that there is no doubt.”

“However, the peace is secure. It is robust, resilient and commands wide support. It is now time to write the next chapter. The chapter of reunification.”

A counter-reaction against unity momentum?

Part of the responsibility for building this process, however, also rests with the British government – which is tasked with organising a referendum if it becomes apparent that a majority of people in the north of Ireland would support leaving the United Kingdom.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham oscillated on this issue in recent appearances. In August, he described a border poll as “off the table.” His reaction was followed by an initiative launched by pro-independence parties from Wales, Scotland and Ireland, who signed a memorandum of understanding in September, pledging joint efforts toward self-determination.

Some critics have also emphasised attempts to derail growing talks about reunification, including in the context of recent events on Garvaghy Road. In late September, members of the Portadown community organised protests and resistance to attempts by the Orange Order’s Drumcree march to pass through the largely Catholic area.

“What happened at Garvaghy Road is a manufactured political crisis, which has been over two years in the making,” wrote Sinn Fein’s Declan Kearney. “The subtext to what is happening is the next year’s Assembly and council elections and the objective of removing Sinn Fein as the largest party in the north and Michelle O’Neill from the position of First Minister.”

“The current perfect storm of whipped-up sectarian polarisation and political instability is a pre-meditated counter-reaction to the growing momentum for Irish unity,” he added. “This is being driven by those sections of the British state, which are determined to prevent the right to national self-determination, and holding a unity referendum.”

No amount of rhetoric and threats of aggression will undermine its people’s will to protect its sovereignty and national integrity, Iran reiterated in the context of talks about the Donald Trump administration’s possible escalation in the war after being crushed in the US midterm elections.

Though Trump admitted that the US-Israeli war on Iran was the main factor in his Republican Party’s losses in the November 3 midterm elections, he attempted to justify his decision to go to the war and even said he will do it again if necessary.

In yet another TV interview after the results were announced on Wednesday, Trump even hinted that the US may have to do “something big” in order to make sure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons.

Iran has always maintained it never wanted to develop nuclear weapons, and its nuclear programme is legal and for peaceful purposes only, and it called the US-Israeli war, launched in February, illegal.

Reacting to US election results, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament and head of its negotiating team, asked the Trump administration to heed the will of the American people and stop the war.

“Conscience or cost of living, Americans said no to war, and we endorse this message. If the US government betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our no come with a nightmare,” Qalibaf said in a post on X.

The US is the greatest threat to NPT.

Calling the US “the greatest threat” to the nuclear non-proliferation regime, the official spokesperson of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Esmail Baghaei, had warned on Monday against any normalisation of nuclear military threats.

Baghaei’s reaction came hours after journalist Tucker Carlson, citing unknown sources, had claimed that the US is under Israeli pressure to use nuclear weapons against Iran any day after the midterm elections.

Iran claimed that such “explicit or implicit threats against a country’s nuclear facilities and alluding to the use of specific weapons effectively encourage actors to violate fundamental international treaties.”

Earlier in October, various US officials had also threatened the use of “the mother of all bombs” on Iran.

Reacting to fresh threats of escalation in the war, going on for eight months now, various Iranian officials have warned of strong and unprecedented retaliation.

Esmail Qaani, head of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Forces said on Wednesday that any new attack will lead to a multi-front war in the region and may even threaten navigation through the Bab al-Mandab in the Red Sea.

Repeating the Iranian claims that Trump “gambled on war with Iran after being misled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”, Qaani pointed out that the joint force of the Resistance in the region should not be undermined.

He claimed that all the resistance fronts in the region, in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq, are united like never before and have pleaded loyalty to the Supreme Leader.

“Those irresponsible US leaders should know that today the entire Resistance is one front with unity across different arenas. Therefore, do not calculate the depth of the front based on weapons range alone; you must also factor in the depth of the Resistance,” Ghani told Sepah News.

Not even the slightest submissive inclination

In a message to the nation on the occasion of the National Day for Fighting Global Arrogance (Aban 13) on Wednesday, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned against “even the slightest submissive inclination towards domineering enemy” and asked the government to make “Iran ever stronger.”

Aban 13 is celebrated in Iran on November 4 every year to mark the occasion of Iranian students occupying the US embassy in Tehran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The occupation, which lasted for over a year, was launched after it was claimed that the embassy was supporting pro-Shah elements and trying to sabotage the revolution.

Any concession to the Americans “will squander the great capital acquired through the blood of martyrs and the sacrifices of all sections of the nation and will embolden the arrogant enemy to make further excessive demands and commit further acts of aggression and war,” Khamenei said.

He underlined that the successive US administrations have consistently worked to undermine Iran and its Islamic Revolution since 1979 and repeatedly faced defeats.

Referring to the ongoing war against Iran as “the self-inflicted disgrace of the arrogant powers”, Khamenei claimed that it has led to the “declining power and domination, in both its military hard power dimension and its international soft-power dimension” and caused the US “an irreversible fall” and “accelerated the process of its collapse”.

More tankers hit in the Strait of Hormuz.

At least six oil tankers were damaged after they hit sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday and early morning Thursday, the IRGC claimed. It claimed that all the ships were trying to violate the Iranian restrictions and attempting to cross the Strait using the “unauthorised” route in the Omani waters.

Four ships were hit on Wednesday, while two more ships were hit in the early morning of Thursday. The IRGC also claimed two tug boats were also damaged because of the explosion of the sea mines.

A day after the reports claimed the US carried out fresh attacks on its Qesham Island, Iran claimed on Wednesday it drowned yet another US MQ-1 drone.

This was the 15th such drone destroyed by Iran since the beginning of the war in February.

Following weeks of major mobilisations led by high school and university students, hundreds of thousands of people responded to a general strike call by French trade unions. On Thursday, 5 November, over 200 events and at least 1,500 industrial action appeals brought the country to a standstill again.

According to the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), roughly 1.6 million people took to the streets. The organisation reported 350,000 people in Paris, 150,000 in Marseille, 120,000 in Bordeaux, and 100,000 in Lille, among others—despite authorities’ attempts to obstruct the day.

Participants at strikes and rallies demanded concrete measures to address the cost-of-living crisis and an end to the repressive measures increasingly adopted by the government and law enforcement since early October.

“The demands are well known: price freezes, the repeal of the Parcoursup system, more university places, wage increases, and €10 billion in the budget to address the demands of high school and university students,” wrote left media outlet L’Insoumission.

Refusal of social injustice is driving the mobilisation.

There was little doubt the new day of mobilisation would be successful, given the outpouring of support student demands have gathered since the start of the academic year. “What we are witnessing is the summary of ten years of Macronism and anger against that policy,” said Sophie Binet, general secretary of the CGT, in an interview with Mediapart.

According to Binet, the convergence of different movements—students, workers, gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests)—is driven in part by a shared refusal of the social injustice that defines President Emmanuel Macron’s legacy. “For ten years, Macronist policy has varied in many respects, but with one constant: its economic choices, which serve the powerful, the business community, and the wealthiest.”

This neoliberal agenda is facing resistance not only from students and workers but also from progressive forces in parliament. On Wednesday, 4 November, an overwhelming majority—over 450—of representatives in the National Assembly rejected a budget proposal aiming to cut over €40 billion as concerns over the public deficit in the mainstream mount.

While both left- and right-wing representatives rejected the proposal, only the left has outlined a substantial alternative—and has brought that vision along while marching with students over the past weeks. The National Rally, by contrast, has promised no break with the status quo as the 2027 presidential election approaches.

Protests to continue on Saturday

Preparations for Thursday’s actions were once again marked by a high level of repression, with national authorities announcing the deployment of approximately 70,000 law enforcement agents. At the local level, several demonstrations were rerouted at the last minute, and police continued to use tear gas against demonstrators.

Administrative manoeuvres, arrests, and violence against students have only added to protesters’ frustration, Binet emphasised, shaping additional demands to uphold and protect the right to protest.

The persistent protests have also produced the first—albeit minimal—breakthroughs. “These past few weeks gave the government space to announce a series of initial measures aimed at young people, in the hope of calming our mobilisation,” wrote student unions Union Syndicale Lycéenne (USL) and Union Étudiante. “These announcements represent a first symbolic retreat by a power that had until now appeared unshakeable.”

“The balance of power we have built over more than a month is exposing a government—a government incapable of taking responsibility for 10 years of social and racist war policies against young people and incapable of imagining any response to our demands other than unbridled repression—trembling.”

On Thursday, as actions were coming to a close, the government announced it would organise a social dialogue session including trade unions and employers’ representatives next week.

Meanwhile, a new general demonstration has been announced for Saturday, 7 November.

One year after the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) massacred tens of thousands of civilians in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state in war-torn Sudan, the city remains largely depopulated.

Vegetation is claiming what used to be busy markets and roads. Hospitals are bombed out and empty, and the mass graves are quiet. This is the picture painted by the satellite imagery analysis by the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) in a report titled “El-Fasher, One Year Later.”​

Human activity is largely limited to just five of the city’s 24,307 square kilometres in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood, where RSF troops are based. Except for the market in this neighbourhood, none of the city’s other eight markets show signs of human activity.

Six of them have been bombed, and two others subsequently fell into dilapidation. “At least five markets have vegetation overgrowth indicating an absent pattern of life,” stated the report, published on 28 October, marking the anniversary of the fall of El Fasher, the last major city in the Darfur region to hold out against the RSF.

​The RSF had captured the rest of this vast region, consisting of five states, soon after starting the war in April 2023 against its former partner in the military junta, the national army, called the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

SAF’s only major base in this region was in El Fasher. Following a 20-month-long siege—starving the population with famine by cutting off food supplies—the RSF, which had been repeatedly bombing its hospitals and markets, finally launched a ground invasion on 26 October.​

The SAF did not send reinforcements or air support. Many of its troops surrendered or fled. The local youth, organised as the Popular Resistance, took to the trenches and held out for nearly three days until the evening of 28 October, when El Fasher’s Resistance Committee announced that “the last resisting soldier fired his last bullet” and “then fell as a martyr.” ​

RSF troops went on a killing spree, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, door to door, to depopulate the city. Daraja Oula, presently the only neighbourhood with signs of human activity centred around the RSF, was the last civilian refuge in El Fasher. “Yale HRL identified burning activity consistent with human remains at 19 locations [in this neighbourhood],” added the HRL report published on the first anniversary. ​

One of the locations is right outside the Al-Saudi Hospital. Attacking the hospital, the RSF “executed physicians, nurses, hospital staff, patients, and their families.”

​The bloodshed was so enormous that satellite photos showed reddish discolouration of the ground in many areas. Many of these red patches were strewn with “objects measuring ‘approximately 1.3 to 2.0 metres, which is the expected range of a human body of average height lying horizontally,’” HRL reported on 28 October 2025.​

As it continued to massacre civilians over the next days, satellite images as of 1 November 2025, showed at least 150 “clusters of objects consistent with human remains,” added a subsequent HRL update, which concluded that the “RSF has systematically killed and disposed of a number of objects consistent with human remains, likely in the tens of thousands.”​

The report on 28 October 2026, the anniversary of the fall of El Fasher, reiterates this estimation, pointing out that 70,000 people are missing. They are neither visible in satellite images nor in the records of humanitarian organisations in Tawila, where survivors who managed to flee have taken refuge in IDP camps.

A UN fact-finding mission concluded in February that RSF’s mass killings had the “hallmarks of genocide.” Now in November, the RSF continues the war in its fourth year, and the UAE continues to supply it with arms and vehicles, through Chad in Sudan’s west and Ethiopia in its east.​

US Vice President JD Vance’s famous statement within hours of the midterm results that “the reason we lost is the Iran war” may appear to be a calibrated distancing from President Donald Trump. Indeed, he alluded to Trump: “If you’d like to argue it [the Iran war] was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree. That’s at least honest.”

The western media was quick to interpret that Vance was speaking with an eye on the 2028 presidential election. But there is a contradiction. For, he must be a lousy politician not to know that for making a bid for the White House, he must first secure the Republican nomination, and annoying Trump wouldn’t be the smartest way to unify MAGA. The Trump brand failed to impress the voters, but his hold on the Republican Party is substantial.

Besides, Vance showed his statement to Trump before issuing it.

From Trump’s perspective too, there is nothing earthshakingly new in Vance’s statement. Vance is a long-time vocal critic of US foreign interventionism. The paradox is that it was one of his virtues that Trump spotted in the youthful senator from Ohio while inviting him to be his running mate in the race for the White House.

Vance was sceptical about the war against Iran and was the only figure in Trump’s circle who refused to endorse Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid for re-election as prime minister. He watched with profound disquiet the immense pressure that the Israel Lobby brought to bear on Trump to kickstart the war in February.

What happens next? There are three ways of looking at it. Would Trump dump Vance from his team? Would Vance recant? Would Trump be persuaded by Vance?

The answer to the first two questions is an emphatic “No.” The third question matters. Ideally, one would have waited for the US-Russia-China trilateral meeting to take place only ten days from now in Shenzhen, China, where Trump will dwell on his vision of a new world order.

Be that as it may, the big question is how Trump weighs in on the Iran question. According to leaks of a testy phone conversation with Netanyahu over the weekend, Trump reiterated his preference to negotiate a deal with Iran.

Trump’s stated position, as he told the media yesterday, is:

“In Iran, we are there for seven months, and we control everything that we’ve wanted to control. And now we’ll make a decision: do we want to go further and just certify it. By certifying it, meaning it’ll never happen again. I think it’ll take them 25 years to rebuild the country. I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I’ll have to. You’ll know soon enough.”

The odds are, increasingly, that Trump, a quintessential realist and pragmatist, realises Netanyahu is using him as a doormat to cling to power. But what’s there in it for Trump himself? There is no question that a war cannot help reach a settlement with Iran. On the contrary, a war will create a festering wound that could turn gangrene and might well come to define his presidency in history books—as happened to Lyndon Johnson, a truly tragic figure.

Furthermore, the new Congress dominated by the Democrats will most certainly turn into an albatross. The Iran war, Democrats saw, is a vote-catcher.

On 2 November, in anticipation of the temperature rising in the Persian Gulf, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson firmly advised Washington against the war option, saying:

“The tragic experience of recent months demonstrates that military adventures, sowing death and destruction in Iran, are powerless to break the will of the Iranian people to uphold the sovereignty and independence of their country. Those who today threaten new strikes would do well to reflect on this.”

Against such a backdrop, it is hugely significant that there has been no attempt whatsoever at the top levels of Iran’s leadership to resort to polemics to humiliate Trump or beat the war drum at this critical juncture. China Daily, with its antennae all out, spotted this. In a report on Thursday titled “Tehran says reignited conflict would benefit no one,” China Daily carefully sized up the shape of things to come: “Amid fears of fresh US strikes on Iran after the midterm elections, Tehran has warned that renewed all-out conflict would benefit no one, saying the onus is on Washington to avert such a scenario…”

Suffice it to say, today’s New York Times report arrives at the same conclusion as China Daily:

“Iran is reviewing a set of proposals presented by mediators that could shape the future of its nuclear programme, according to five officials briefed on the negotiations, representing a potential breakthrough in stalled diplomatic efforts to end its war with the United States.

“Iran’s willingness to re-engage in nuclear talks, after weeks of refusing to budge, suggests recent mediation efforts led by Qatar to prevent a return to full-blown war have had some success,” the officials said. They described the terms being reviewed as ‘concrete proposals’ and ‘success’ without elaborating.

The bottom line: Vance is very much in the vanguard of decision-making in Trump’s inner circle. Curiously, another Times report, a week ago, underscored Vance’s crucial role in moderating the “mood” in Tehran by addressing a letter to the powerful national security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council—on Trump’s instructions, of course—proposing to hold direct peace talks that would also cover Iran’s nuclear programme.

Rezaei, a veteran commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), having served as its Commander-in-Chief for 16 years from September 1981 to September 1997, reacted subsequently that Vance’s letter had shown that the US had changed its tone toward Iran. And it set the ball rolling.

Yesterday afternoon, Rezaei arrived in Moscow on an unannounced top-secret visit and was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. The Kremlin readout gave no details.

The picture, though, showed Putin flanked by foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov on the right and the powerful chief of GRU, Gen. Igor Kostyukov, who is in charge of Russia’s super-sensitive, high-tech satellite intelligence system, on the left.

Hundreds of thousands took to India’s capital, New Delhi, on Sunday, 1 November, to demand the sacking of the country’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) over allegations of manipulation and rigging of various elections in India.

The protesters marched in smaller groups from different corners of the city in the early morning, finally converging at the central Ramlila Maidan under the call to “save democracy” made by the main block of opposition parties called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA.

The protesters carried banners and posters displaying their demands and waving flags of their respective political affiliations, such as the Indian National Congress (INC), left parties, and several other regional political and civil society groups.

They shouted slogans against the CEC, calling him a “thief,” and the ultra-right-wing government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him “illegal.” The protesters alleged that the Modi government misused the country’s electoral body to deprive millions of people of their right to vote in order to manage electoral victories.

Calling it the “murder of democracy,” the protesters have been demanding the end of the so-called SIR process, the re-inclusion of all the names removed from the country’s electoral rolls, and the sacking of Gyanesh Kumar, the CEC.

SIR, the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls, launched last year, has led to the removal of over 130 million voters, around 14% of all electorates registered in the country. The opposition claims the exclusion was targeted at voters who generally do not vote for the ruling Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), namely the voters from religious minority communities and socially and economically deprived sections of society.

Sunday’s protests marked yet another surge in the months-long nationwide protests which began early in October. The initial protests, mostly led by youth under the banner of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) intensified after the publication of reports about the CEC violating basic procedures to implement arbitrary decisions about the SIR.

The anti-government protests have faced strong state repression, including the arrest of some of its leaders, blocking of all major entries to central Delhi, banning protests at designated sites, and mass detentions.

Even on Sunday, several protesters from faraway places complained that the government tried to prevent them from reaching Delhi. The government and pro-government media tried to blame the protesters for creating chaos in the country and harming businesses in Delhi.

Protesters have dismissed the allegations, calling them “fearmongering” tactics typical of BJP attempts to demonise the opposition.

Accountability for stealing votes

Several leaders of the opposition parties and members of the civil society groups addressed the protesters, pointing out the major demands and warning of more protests if the government fails to respond to them.

Reiterating his allegations against the CEC of “treason” against the country by “stealing the votes,” Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main centrist opposition party, the INC, demanded accountability. He promised that no matter how much time it takes, Gyanesh Kumar will pay for his crimes against Indian democracy.

Gandhi termed the movement against Gyanesh Kumar a “second freedom struggle” of India.

A day earlier, the opposition had staged a “public impeachment” of Gyanesh Kumar. He was pronounced guilty of stealing the votes and failing to discharge his duties impartially.

The CEC is a constitutional post and cannot be removed without an “impeachment motion” adopted by the parliament.

During Sunday’s rally, several other speakers repeated the point and spoke about the violence and repression unleashed on the protesters last month. They assured the people that all those responsible for such criminal activities will face the rule of law.

Speaking to the protesters, M. A. Baby, general secretary of the CPI (M), called the action of electoral fraud a “fascist tactic.” He alleged that the government, and particularly Prime Minister Modi, has been lying to people and misleading them on various issues, and for a democracy it is a must that they are held accountable for their crimes against the people.

Several leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, also questioned the 2024 national elections and other state legislative elections, calling them “stolen” by the ruling BJP. They claimed that the prime minister of the country was “illegal,” and it was necessary to dissolve the current parliament, and fresh elections were held.

Despite losing its majority in the 2024 national elections, the BJP came back to power with the support of allies for a third consecutive term. The elections were marred with allegations of manipulation and voter suppression.

The gathering in Ramlila Maidan ended with a warning of more protests in the coming days and intensification of the movement if the government fails to acknowledge its failings and sacks Gyanesh Kumar.

Sudan’s war is usually described as an African catastrophe, Yemen’s as an Arabian conflict, and the war around Iran as a Gulf crisis. Such divisions obscure the movement of weapons, money, soldiers, and commercial interests between them. Look from Africa’s Red Sea coast, and another picture emerges. These wars have distinct origins, but they increasingly sustain one another through military patronage, competition over ports, and the destruction of civilian livelihoods.

The starting point must be Sudan’s people. The World Food Programme currently estimates that 19.5 million face acute hunger, while around 8.6 million are internally displaced. It reports that sorghum prices are nearly three times higher than a year ago and wheat flour prices have almost doubled. Maritime disruption is raising fuel and fertiliser costs. Sudanese families therefore confront their own war and the economic consequences of wars across the water.

The fighting that began in April 2023 between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces grew out of Sudan’s militarised political economy. Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, built his power through a paramilitary apparatus rooted in Darfur’s violence. Both military centres accumulated economic power and obstructed civilian democracy. Foreign intervention enlarged their capacity to destroy a country whose popular movement had demanded a different future.

Yemen helped prepare this disaster. After Sudan joined the Saudi-led intervention in 2015, Sudanese soldiers, including large RSF contingents, crossed the Red Sea. The International Crisis Group’s 2019 investigation found that Hemedti supplied considerably more troops than the regular army and that his forces frequently occupied frontline positions. Poor families supplied recruits attracted by military earnings. An impoverished African population became a source of fighting labour for wealthy Gulf monarchies.

That deployment strengthened Hemedti’s standing and external relationships. His forces acquired battlefield experience while he cultivated patrons beyond Sudan’s borders. The significance exceeds any individual payment or deployment. Gulf intervention helped a Sudanese commander consolidate an armed organization with resources and relationships outside civilian control. A war fought in Yemen contributed to the growth of a military centre that would later wage war inside Sudan. The connection is direct and historical.

Gold supplied another foundation. The UN Panel of Experts’ January 2024 report described gold as a continuing revenue source for Sudan’s warring parties and documented smuggling networks. One consignment linked to an RSF-associated trader reached Dubai through Port Sudan in May 2023. The panel also found that routes shifted towards Egypt after fighting began. This is a regional war economy, capable of changing its commercial pathways when circumstances require.

Interventions in Sudan

The UAE’s role requires scrutiny. Amnesty International reported in May 2025 that guided bombs and howitzers used by the RSF had almost certainly been re-exported through the Emirates. Its analysis examined identifiable weapons and munition remnants. Abu Dhabi denies supplying the RSF, but that denial must be recorded alongside the visual evidence. International arms suppliers also bear responsibility for preventing diversion into Sudan.

An October 2026 European Union Agency for Asylum assessment describes reported RSF supply routes through eastern Chad, southeastern Libya, and northeastern Somalia. These routes connect Sudan’s interior to a much wider African geography. Airfields, border crossings, commercial intermediaries, and military patrons matter as much as formal alliances. Darfur cannot be protected while the networks replenishing armed groups remain intact. Nor can responsibility be confined to the men who pull the trigger.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt, meanwhile, favour the Sudanese army, although their interests and policies differ. Riyadh combines mediation with support for the continuity represented by Burhan’s authorities, while Cairo regards Sudan’s territorial integrity and the survival of a central state as strategic concerns. These preferences do not make either government an advocate of Sudanese popular democracy. The danger is that negotiations become a bargain among military patrons over the country’s future.

There is consequently no single Gulf policy towards Africa. Saudi and Emirati interests overlap, then collide. Sudan exposes these differences, as does Yemen. Nor does hostility towards Iran produce an uncomplicated regional division. Such relationships show how local military authorities seek assistance from different sources, while foreign governments calculate their interests separately in each theatre. Their alignments are practical, contingent, and dangerous.

The African coastline gives these relationships their strategic setting. Port Sudan connects a vast hinterland to the Red Sea. Further south, ports facing the Gulf of Aden offer access to shipping near Bab al-Mandab. Commercial investment can meet real development needs, but port contracts become politically combustible when combined with foreign security arrangements or agreements that bypass national institutions. Control of an entry point can shape an entire country’s economic options.

Somalia has challenged this pattern. In a January interview with Al Jazeera, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ali Mohamed Omar explained his government’s cancellation of agreements with the UAE. He accused Abu Dhabi of undermining Somali sovereignty through dealings with entities outside the federal government. He said military personnel and equipment should leave, while investments in Berbera and Bosaso required a legal settlement. These were Mogadishu’s stated demands, not proof that every arrangement immediately ended.

The dispute reveals the African stakes of competition across the water. Somaliland and Puntland have their own political histories and interests, but outside powers can exploit disputes over authority to secure ports and military access. African sovereignty then becomes negotiable between external capitals and competing local authorities. What appears from abroad as logistical efficiency may appear locally as the fragmentation of the state and the loss of democratic control.

Yemen provides a warning against assuming that such arrangements are permanent. One assessment records the collapse of much of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council’s territorial control in January 2026 after advances by Saudi-backed forces. Emirati troops withdrew, including from Socotra and Perim. Yet local allies retained influence. Withdrawal therefore changed the form and extent of Emirati power without demonstrating that Abu Dhabi had ceased to matter in Yemen.

Renewed fighting now threatens the southern Red Sea. On October 29, Ansar Allah claimed attacks on Saudi refineries, an Aramco facility, and airports. Saudi authorities reported interceptions and limited casualties and damage from debris. On October 30, the coalition announced another interception towards the Mecca region, which Ansar Allah denied targeting that day. These competing statements establish escalation, but they cannot establish that every claimed target was struck.

Saudi–Emirati rivalry nevertheless coexists with security cooperation. On October 7, the UAE Foreign Ministry condemned attacks on Saudi civilian and economic facilities and Saudi vessels in the southern Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab. The two governments can oppose each other’s local partners while supporting each other against another adversary. Treating them as either a unified bloc or irreconcilable enemies conceals how intervention actually operates.

The United States and Israel widened this system of insecurity through their war against Iran. The military escalation made countries already involved in African conflicts confront new threats at home. Yet their vulnerability has not dissolved their competing African ambitions. For Africa, the lesson is that dependence on outside military patrons imports their wider confrontations. A government seeking weapons for one battlefield may become entangled in struggles whose decisions are taken elsewhere, while its own population inherits the economic costs and the political dangers of those decisions for years afterwards.

The war around Iran magnifies these dangers through the maritime economy. Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab are separate straits, but disruption at both straits connected trading systems. UNCTAD estimated in March that about one-third of global seaborne fertiliser trade passes through Hormuz. Energy costs, insurance premiums, and freight charges transmit military escalation into agricultural costs. African countries experience this connection through import bills, shortages, and pressure on already restricted public finances.

For a Sudanese farmer, these pressures arrive on top of displacement and lost harvests, and for neighbouring countries sheltering refugees, they increase the cost of supporting people driven from their homes. The consequences extend far beyond the coastline. War damages production directly, then raises the price of restoring it. The same commercial system that facilitates the circulation of weapons becomes more expensive for those trying to move food and fertiliser.

Diplomacy must address these connections without denying each conflict’s political roots. On October 20, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah had not responded to Tehran’s mediation offer. An understanding involving Washington and Tehran could reduce regional pressure, but it would not automatically settle Yemen’s struggles over government, territory, and resources. Likewise, a Saudi–Emirati accommodation would leave Sudan’s demand for civilian democracy unresolved.

An African agenda for peace must therefore insist on halting external military supplies, protecting humanitarian routes, and defending sovereign control over ports and resources. Sudanese civilian organisations must have decisive political space in any settlement. The Red Sea should connect peoples through trade and cooperation, and its shores cannot be surrendered to arrangements in which African wealth pays for African destruction while outside powers negotiate their shares of the resulting ruin.

On Monday, 2 November, protesters gathered in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka in the Kyiv region, outside a building that was used as a detention site holding soldiers absent without leave and recruits. Facing army and police forces, alongside non-uniformed attackers, protesters were able to bring out the men held inside.

Many of the men who left the building displayed signs of physical violence. Four men—confirmed to be soldiers absent without leave—were hospitalised, while videos from the ground testimonies showed others as battered and bruised.

The detention site was associated with the Azov Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine. The formation described using the premises as a “temporary deployment” location for mobilised soldiers and men detained after going AWOL.

Ukraine’s Azov formations have been long associated with fascist ideology. Their supporters are believed to be among the non-uniformed attackers on Monday, based on the nationalist slogans chanted at the protest site.

“One important development in last night’s events around the illegal Azov prison for deserters and draft dodgers, which also served to extort ransoms and provoked a massive riot on Kyiv’s outskirts, is the use of Azov paramilitaries to suppress the protesters,” wrote Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, adding that researchers including Oleksiy Kuzmenko had predicted this outcome.

“This adds a new, characteristically fascist nuance to the events.”

“Otherwise, the events manifest the same escalating dynamics of post-Soviet disintegration in Ukraine’s state and society, to which the Maidan-deficient revolutions greatly contributed and which the war did not resolve but only escalated,” Ishchenko added.

Authorities turn against protesters.

After the detention site was discovered, Ukrainian officials alleged the protests were orchestrated from abroad—supposedly by Russia—and turned to punitive measures against participants.

At least one person, a medic who appears in a video from the scene, has reportedly been detained. National security officials announced roughly 100 people had been identified and that repercussions were being considered as well.

Ukrainian authorities denied the house had been used for physical abuse. However, officials’ statements confirmed the site had been used to hold soldiers, “including those who had returned after leaving their military units without authorisation.” According to Euronews, state investigators also launched enquiries into “possible abuse of authority by military officials” and “the conditions in which servicemen were accommodated.”

On the night of the protest, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said there are “many more” buildings of this kind across the country.

Forced street mobilisations in Ukraine persist.

Events in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka overlap with a continuous wave of civilian opposition to forced street mobilisation in Ukraine, known as busification, amid record-low numbers of volunteer recruits.

In the hours after the protest near Kyiv, more video reports circulated on social media documenting physical abuse and what could be described as state-sanctioned kidnapping of men into the armed forces.

In an interview with Breakthrough News earlier this year, Ishchenko described the extent and intensity of the practice, emphasising that people were resisting it with growing intensity. “This resistance is growing and becoming more frequent, perhaps showing qualitative advances too,” he said in July. “Until now, most resistance was spontaneous, passersby or relatives trying to help a guy escape from minibuses. There was no organisation or evidence of coordination between different initiatives. But recently, it has taken on a more massive scale, like riots.”

A day after joining the overwhelming majority of countries in the UN General Assembly to vote on a resolution demanding the lifting of the US blockade and sanctions on Cuba, China called on the US to immediately stop its threats of force against the country.

“The illegal economic embargo and unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the US against Cuba have lasted for 64 years, inflicting untold suffering on Cuban people,” Guo Jiakun, official spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said during a regular press conference on Thursday, 29 October.

Claiming that “the overwhelming majority of countries in the world are outraged by the US’s serious violation of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter,” China reiterated the “international community’s longstanding call for the US to immediately stop infringing on the Cuban people’s right to survive and thrive.”

On Wednesday, 130 countries voted in favour of a resolution in the UN General Assembly demanding the end of decades of unilateral US sanctions and blockade on Cuba. This was the 34th consecutive time since 1992 that the UNGA had adopted the resolution holding the US responsible for violating Cuba’s right to self-determination and other international laws.

Though the US embargo and unilateral sanctions against Cuba are decades old, they have intensified since Donald Trump came to power for the second term last year. The economic blockade has particularly created massive shortages of essential goods and services such as fuel, electricity, food, and medicine, affecting millions on the island nation.

The embargo has caused disruptions in medical services and impacted basic sectors of the Cuban economy, rendering thousands of people jobless, with the UN warning of “humanitarian collapse” if it continues.

Cuba has claimed that US sanctions and embargoes cause over eight billion in losses to the country’s economy every year.

Some countries, including China, have tried to assist Cuba by providing humanitarian food and energy supplies.

Stop threats of use of force.

Calling Cuba’s revolutionary government “authoritarian” and labelling the country as a “sponsor of terrorism,” successive US administrations have tried to stage “regime change” in the country through covert and overt means, completely disregarding the Cuban people’s right to self-determination and their own obligations under international law.

The Trump administration, after declaring Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” last year, tightened the blockade and has even threatened to launch military operations against the country. It has demanded the Cuban government make policy changes based on Washington’s wishes.

During the ongoing midterm campaign, Trump has reportedly claimed that the war against Cuba was imminent and can begin the moment the US armed forces were free from the war against Iran.

Cuba has rejected US allegations and refused to surrender its sovereignty despite threats of war.

Apart from providing humanitarian aid, China has also warned against such threats of military interventions, raising the issue on various international forums, including the UN.

Asking the Trump administration to “heed the call for justice from the international community,” Guo Jiakun reiterated on Thursday the Chinese demand that “the US stop all forms of coercion and pressure on Cuba, including through the threat of force.”

Guo also reiterated that “China will continue firmly supporting Cuba’s just effort for safeguarding national sovereignty and dignity and opposing external interference and embargo.”

The reiteration of Chinese support follows its earlier pronouncement of support to Cuba’s revolutionary government “no matter how the international landscape evolves.”

China, while observing 66 years of diplomatic relations with Cuba last month, had claimed that the “socialist development path” suited Cuba’s national conditions and helped in safeguarding its national sovereignty and opposing external interference.”

Recognising how Cuba was the first Latin American country to recognise the People’s Republic of China in 1960, Guo Jiakun claimed that, in recent years, the two countries have made “sustained and steady progress” in building a “community with a shared future.”

The 2026 midterm elections have been the most expensive in history, with more than $11 billion being spent on political ads. While Democratic candidates have outraised Republicans in individual donations by appealing directly to voters, Republicans have received the lion’s share of money from super PACs (political action committees) funded by a small number of the wealthiest elites in the United States.

The single biggest election-cycle donor is, unsurprisingly, the richest human on the planet. Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, has poured more money into influencing the 2026 midterm elections than anyone has ever done in any election. His unprecedented contribution totals nearly half a billion dollars, all of it going toward electing Republicans. Musk is one of 50 donors whose combined political spending amounts to nearly $3 billion. Sixty percent of those donations are for electing Republicans.

This perversion of democracy can be traced to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, which dismantled the last guardrails against political spending in elections. Since then, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “the composition of the top 40 donors in the midterms has shifted dramatically: more money, more support for Republicans, less transparency, and new industries like crypto surging while older sectors like labor disappear.”

There is no reason for such contributions other than an expectation of quid pro quo favors. Republicans (and to a lesser extent, Democrats) have long made it a central goal to reward wealthy elites and institutions. President Donald Trump’s 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill was designed to overwhelmingly favor tax cuts for the rich. The four top corporations that championed Trump’s bill—Musk’s Tesla, Amazon, Google, and Meta—enjoyed paying a paltry 4.9 percent tax rate on their massive $315 billion in profits in 2025 thanks to the new law.

In other words, Musk and his ilk see political spending as an investment that will yield windfall returns. For example, Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers is urging voters to elect him so he can “ protect Elon” and prevent an audit of the federal government.

There was a time when top policymakers, such as former President Ronald Reagan, justified enriching the wealthy by relying on the ludicrous claim that throwing money at the wealthy results in benefits trickling down to the rest of us.

With decades of documentation that the rich hoard their wealth, theories of “supply-side economics” have been thoroughly debunked. Even prestigious institutions, such as the London School of Economics, have published analyses concluding that tax cuts for the rich merely mean that “[t]he rich get richer, while unemployment and economic growth are unaffected.”

Today, instead of relying on junk economic theories, Republican politicians simply lie about the benefits of their tax cuts. Trump has repeatedly said that thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, people will pay no taxes on tips, Social Security benefits, or overtime pay—income that low-wage workers and retirees disproportionately rely on. He has even reframed the bill as the “Working Families Tax Cuts.”

What he doesn’t mention are the numerous caveats in the law that result in minuscule tax benefits. According to NBC News, on average, the refund for the 2026 tax season was only $350 more than 2025. But the president’s war on Iran has also led Americans to pay, on average, $471 more in gas prices since the end of February, while his failed tariffs cost households an average of $2,500. On balance, Trump has fleeced Americans in his second term while repeatedly claiming the opposite.

Sometimes, though, he can’t keep his lies straight. In a now-viral recording of a campaign speech in Texas, the president promoted his oft-touted bribe of gifting Americans $5,000 checks if his party wins the midterms. He then admitted that such an amount wouldn’t buy much more than “a hamburger and a small dessert” at the Florida resort he owns.

The fact is that wealthy people like Trump—who is now nearly $3 billion richer from gaming the presidency to benefit himself—are so cut off from the circumstances of ordinary Americans that their moral compass no longer works.

This is by design. Business schools are designed to train empathy out of humans and replace it with a self-serving ethos. University of Cambridge Judge Business School professor Chris Marquis argued in The New York Times that business schools ought to be abolished as they don’t follow curricula based on reality or include scientific inquiry into how businesses work. Rather, they train students to internalize what he calls “the ‘win-win’ story in which the conflict between private gain and public good simply evaporates.” Business school graduates walk away convinced that there are market solutions to all social problems and that when shareholders win, everyone wins.

This twisted logic is reflected in treating GDP growth as a measure of a country’s overall economic health. It explains why experts declare strong economies even when the majority of middle- and low-income people can barely make ends meet. The cognitive dissonance between people’s ability to thrive and the assertions that the US economy is strong shows the stark contrast between our hand-to-mouth existence and CEO compensation packages.

If we want to save democracy and ourselves, we need to stop unfettered capitalism in its tracks, and that means curbing the ability of wealthy people to influence our elections.

In Montana, voters will decide on 3 November whether their state can redefine corporations as entities that cannot influence politics. Hawaii already implemented this idea, called the “Corporate Power Reset” (CPR), through its legislative process in June 2026, and many other states are now considering similar legislation or ballot measures. Such laws render the Citizens United decision moot within any state that redefines corporations as politically neutral.

Tom Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who conceived of the idea, said in an email interview that CPR “only affects corporations,” not obscenely rich people. While it would not stop men like Musk from spending money in politics, “it would keep him and other wealthy individuals from laundering their political spending through dark money groups,” Moore said. And that’s because “CPR does knock dark-money groups out of the game.”

According to Moore, “Rich folks want to spend the money, fine. But they’ll have to have their names attached to it.” And while that’s not enough to reverse the flood of political spending, it is a good start.

New arrests of Palestine solidarity activists on 31 October brought the total number of arrests related to the Palestine Action ban in Britain to over 4,000, advocacy groups warned on Saturday.

The arrests were made during an action in front of the US embassy in London, as law enforcement agencies once again decided to charge protesters holding signs expressing their opposition to the genocide in Gaza. The action was mirrored in the proximity of the US consulate in Edinburgh, where no arrests were made on the day.

Since July 2025—when Keir Starmer’s government proscribed direct action group Palestine Action—police forces around the country have disrupted peaceful protests against the ban. This has led to legal consequences for thousands of people, many of them elderly people, public service workers, and healthcare professionals.

“Including the arrests so far today, there have been over 4,000 arrests of people under section 11, 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for expressing support for Palestine Action, whether for taking part in a vigil, recording an online video message or for encouraging others to support the banned group,” Defend Our Juries stated on Saturday.

“These arrests contributed to a 1,186% rise in the total number of terrorism-related arrests in the year ending March 2026, whilst almost half of all terrorism arrests since 9/11 in the United Kingdom have come in the year to September 2026.”

Activists have claimed former prime minister Starmer imposed the ban at least in part to appease US President Donald Trump, echoing the latter’s strategy of targeting progressives.

“The ban on Palestine Action was straight out of Trump’s playbook, so it’s fitting that this significant milestone has been reached on Halloween and outside the US Embassy, laying bare the terrifying attacks on free speech that this authoritarian ban has unleashed,” Defend Our Juries said.

Many also believe that Palestine Action’s proscription in Britain facilitated the terrorist designation imposed on the organisation by the Trump administration in August this year.

Authors and academics treated as terrorists

In Britain, the Palestine Action ban remains contested in court by the group’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, and has drawn pronounced criticism for the chilling effect it has had on freedom of expression and the right to protest.

Several examples over the past year have shown these are not trivial concerns. The latest is the barring of left author, academic, and outspoken Palestine solidarity proponent Andreas Malm from entering the UK, as he was scheduled to participate in a public event together with Ammori.

On Friday, Tribune reported that the scholar’s travel authorisation had been revoked, with the Home Office saying that his “presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good.”

“He is being censored for speaking out against censorship, in truly Orwellian fashion,” said Tribune editor Oliver Eagleton. “It is shameful that Andy Burnham’s government is continuing the authoritarian overreach we saw under Keir Starmer, and in this dystopian new reality it is now commonplace in Britain for authors and academics to be treated as terrorists because they support Palestinians facing genocide and the rights of people protesting that genocide.”

“This is not an isolated incident—and the government should know that it is gaining a bad reputation for censorship and repression,” Your Party MP Jeremy Corbyn wrote on social media. “We know why the government has taken this decision: because it wants to silence criticism of Israel, as well as its own complicity in genocide. It will not succeed.”

“What future governments might do with this power should frighten us all”authorisation

Earlier in October, Irish novelist Sally Rooney announced her books would no longer be available in Britain as a result of her expressed support for Palestine Action.

The announcement triggered mass support for Rooney among authors, poets, and editors, who said it is unconscionable that “a government can now effectively ban a single author for protesting that government’s own conflation of protest with terrorism.”

“What future governments might do with this power should frighten us all.”

“I can’t say that I am standing up for the children of Wales if I allow the children of Gaza to be murdered and mutilated without comment,” said Nicola Davies, the Children’s Laureate for Wales, announcing her decision to donate royalties from one of her books to Rooney.

“Gaza is smaller than the Welsh county of Flintshire,all.” and it’s as if all Wales children were concentrated there and being bombed.”

For more than half a century, the United States has imposed a devastating economic siege on the Cuban people because they dared to assert their inalienable right to independence. Bringing an end to six decades of neocolonial domination by Washington, the advent of the Revolution led by Fidel Castro on 1 January 1959, marked the end of an era of subordination and the conquest of dignity. From then on, Cuba would base its relations with other nations, beginning with its powerful neighbour, on sovereign equality, mutual respect, reciprocity, and noninterference in internal affairs.

Beginning in 1960, Washington opposed this legitimate aspiration for emancipation by imposing the first unilateral coercive measures, depriving the island of its principal market, with the acknowledged objective of overthrowing the revolutionary government. Since then, economic sanctions have been tightened by most successive administrations in the White House, which have multiplied the pretexts used to justify their hostility toward Cuban sovereignty: nationalisations, the alliance with the Soviet Union, support for revolutionary and independence movements around the world, democracy, and human rights.

The economic sanctions against the Cuban people constitute the main obstacle to the island’s development. Since 1960, they have cost Cuba nearly $180 billion, including more than $8 billion between March 2025 and February 2026, an average of more than $20 million per day and over $15,000 per minute. With such a sum, Cuba could meet every Cuban household’s basic needs for essential goods for more than a century. More than 80% of Cuba’s population was born under this siege.

The extraterritorial reach of sanctions deprives Cuba of numerous opportunities to develop normal trade relations with other countries. Foreign companies choose not to do business with the island, despite the undeniable opportunities, for fear of retaliation from the United States. Far from being a mere bilateral dispute, these coercive measures have a direct impact on Cuba’s trade with the rest of the world.

The hopes for more peaceful relations between the two countries, raised by Barack Obama’s constructive approach, were dashed beginning in 2017. Upon taking office, the Trump administration returned to an aggressive policy toward the Cuban people, imposing 243 new sanctions over four years, an average of one additional coercive measure every five days throughout his term. Washington targeted the country’s three main sources of revenue: international medical cooperation, family remittances, and tourism.

Since returning to power in 2025, Trump has imposed an unprecedented economic siege, characterised by unparalleled cruelty. Since December 2025, following Washington’s imposition of an energy blockade, the island has received only the equivalent of ten days’ worth of fuel, triggering a humanitarian crisis of extreme gravity with devastating consequences for the population. The national power grid suffers repeated collapses, severely disrupting the country’s hospitals. Nearly 100,000 patients, including 12,000 children, are currently awaiting surgery. The survival rate among children with cancer has fallen from 85% to 65%. Meanwhile, the infant mortality rate, which stood at 4.4 per 1,000 live births in 2017, before Trump first took office—the lowest rate in the Americas, including Canada and the United States—has now risen to 9.9 per 1,000.

Washington’s cruel policy is also responsible for a major food crisis. Due to fuel shortages, the irrigation system—which depends on electricity—has been significantly disrupted, leading to a 60% drop in agricultural production. In Cuban households, perishable food cannot withstand power outages that can last up to 30 hours in some provinces. The supply of drinking water, as well as household waste collection, is also affected by the mediaeval-style blockade, creating a public health crisis of exceptional magnitude. As for transportation, it has been brought to a near standstill, drastically restricting people’s mobility and preventing schoolchildren and university students from pursuing their education normally.

Generous and courageous Cuba has always stood on the side of solidarity, embracing every noble cause in the struggle for human emancipation and denouncing colonialism and injustice in all their forms. It has made a decisive contribution to people’s fighting for their freedom, from Algeria to South Africa, and from Palestine to Vietnam. It has sent hundreds of thousands of doctors to care for the most vulnerable and welcomed those fleeing persecution by U.S.-backed military dictatorships in Latin America.

Today, Cuba, which is paying a heavy price for its resistance and defiance, needs the world’s solidarity in turn, for our common humanity cannot accept the strangulation of an entire people.

On 30 October, the first convoy of Algerian troops arrived in its southern neighbour Niger as security ties continue to deepen between the two countries. It is Algeria’s first foreign deployment since it sent troops to Egypt during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The deployment was approved by both houses of the parliament on 25 October.

“Niger’s security is part of Algeria’s security,” said Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf, who tabled the proposal before legislators. Algeria shares a 951 km-long border with Niger in the Sahara Desert, which became a hotbed for terror groups after the destruction of Libya by NATO powers in 2011.

Groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have carried out multiple attacks in recent times in Niger, where Algeria has strategic energy projects.

Strategic infrastructure

In August, Algeria and Niger jointly laid the foundation stone for a project to explore four wells in the Kafra oil field in Niger’s northern Agadez region, about 85 km south of the Algerian border. ​

The Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, whose subsidiary ENAFOR is drilling, holds a 50% stake in the project. Its Nigerien counterpart, Sonidep, holds the other half. Niger’s petroleum ministry estimates the potential at 2.5 billion barrels.​

A subsidiary of Algeria’s state-owned electricity and gas utility group Sonelgaz built the 40-Megawatt Algerian–Nigerien Solidarity Power Plant in Niger’s capital, Niamey, earlier in June.​

That month Algeria also started constructing its section of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) to transport 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Nigeria to Algeria’s Hassi R’Mel hub, from where it is to be exported to Europe through the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline.​

At a total length of 4,128 km, the TSGP is to span three countries. 2,310 km of this pipeline will be laid in Algeria, which owns a 45% stake in the project through Sonatrach. 1,039 km will be in the origin country, Nigeria, whose state-owned petroleum company owns another 45%. The 841 km in the middle will run through Niger, which owns the remaining 10% through Sonidep.

It is to protect such critical infrastructure that the Algerian deployment is to be made, at the request of Niger, Attaf told the legislators. “We are not sending our soldiers to wage war in Niger, but for a mission to secure economic infrastructure,” added Senator Belkacem Boulghiti, addressing the media after the parliament voted to approve the deployment.

A deepening military cooperation

While the deployment itself may have this limited mission of guarding infrastructure, a much deeper military cooperation is developing between the two countries. Earlier, on 21 October, Niger’s Minister of National Defence, General Salifou Modi, visited Algeria.​

He met the Algerian army’s chief of staff, General Saïd Chanegriha, who expressed “Algeria’s readiness to consider any proposal from Niger that could strengthen military and security cooperation, serving the best interests of both brotherly countries.”​

In that meeting, they signed a memorandum of understanding for “cooperation and exchange of experiences in the field of the fight against terrorism, as well as responding to any project requested by the Nigerien authorities aimed at strengthening the operational capabilities of the Nigerien army.”​

Four days later, parliament approved troop deployment. The troops will be stationed at Madama, a military base strategically located in Niger’s north, near the Libyan border. “This site occupies a strategic position for monitoring the Sahel region and cross-border routes,” said former Algerian diplomat Amar Belani, recalling that it was “a former French support point developed as part of Operation Barkhane,” which started in 2014.

​However, this French operation, meant to suppress the terror groups it helped spawn across the Sahel by participating in the destruction of Libya in 2011, was a failure as armed violence only rose alongside increasing French troops.​

Barkhane unravelled eight years later amid a wave of anti-France protests leading to popularly supported coups that ousted the France-backed governments in its former colonies, bringing in military governments that went on to expel the French troops: Mali in 2022, Burkina Faso in early 2023, and Niger later that year.​

Diplomatic rift and revival

Algeria joined the chorus condemning the coups in all three countries, which went on to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in late 2023. This had already caused a strain on the diplomatic relations between Algeria and the AES countries when, in April 2025, Algeria shot down a Malian drone that was targeting terror groups in its border region of Kidal.​

Algeria claimed that the drone had crossed into its airspace. Mali refuted the claim. All three AES members, including Niger, withdrew their ambassadors from Algeria. Algeria reciprocated.​

Over the next months, attacks by Al-Qaeda and IS-affiliated groups intensified in all the AES states, which have long been accusing France of backing these groups to destabilise their countries for asserting sovereignty and breaking free from French neocolonial rule.​

Algeria had not only fought the French for its independence but also the Islamist extremist groups within a bitter civil war in the 90s. Al-Qaeda and IS growing in Mali and Niger is perceived as a threat to Algeria, which shares a total of over 2,310 km of land border with the two Sahelian neighbours. ​

In February 2026, Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune invited his Nigerien counterpart Abdourahamane Tchiani to Algeria for a meeting, where they agreed to restore diplomatic relations at the highest level.​

“In the face of ongoing terrorist threats and the ongoing organised border crime, the leaders of the two countries expressed their concern for each other’s security and said that the security of one is inseparable from the security of the other,” read a statement by the Algerian presidency.​

“With this spirit of effective solidarity, they agreed to immediately activate the Algerian-Nigerian mechanisms concerned to intensify coordination in border surveillance and coordinate strategies for combating terrorism.” They also agreed to develop closer cooperation in the field of agriculture, healthcare, and infrastructure.​

“We will protect Niger no matter what.”

In August, Algeria donated two Mi-24V helicopters, two Mi-171 helicopters, and associated military equipment. Later that month, following a failed mutiny on 29 August, Algeria deployed more aircraft, including four Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and an aerial refuelling aircraft to Air Base 101 in Niger’s capital, Niamey.​

“There are countries, which I will not name, that have conspired against (Niger). We stand by its side,” Tebboune said in a televised address on 3 October. Niger itself has named France and France-backed governments in the neighbourhood—including Chad, Benin, and Côte d’Ivoire—and Ukraine as assisting terror groups to destabilise the country after it expelled French troops.​

“Today, we have interests. We have reached agreements (with Niger) in the oil, mining and other sectors, and some are seeking to destroy all of this overnight,” added Tebboune, declaring, “We will protect Niger no matter what.”​

Algeria has the second-most powerful military in Africa. While AES countries had developed a security partnership with Russia to help combat terror groups after expelling French troops, the entry of Algeria as a security partner advances the principle of “African solutions to African problems,” adopted by the African Union (AU) as an official position in Agenda 2063.​

Meanwhile, Algeria and Mali also mutually reinstated their ambassadors in July. On the sidelines of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly in September, Algeria’s foreign minister Attaf also met his Burkinabe counterpart, Karamoko Traoré. The ministers not only discussed how to revive bilateral relations and strengthen ties but also “the main security and development challenges facing the region.”