This Week in War

An Kurdish elderly man walking in Afrin, Syria. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi.

3rd week, March 2018.

This Week in War:  A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week.  

It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts, and long-form journalism.

• A suicide bomb claimed by ISIL killed more than 30 people and wounded 52 others in a mid-day explosion in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

• Saudi crown prince boasted US Presidential advisor, Jared Kushner, was 'in his pocket’.

• Billionaires made so much money in 2017 that they could have ended extreme poverty 7 times.

• The terrorist serial bomber who terrorized Austin, Texas with a string of exploding packages died early Wednesday after detonating a suicide bomb in his vehicle as police closed in on him.

• Leaders from Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia are saying the continued presence of Russian troops in their countries is destabilizing.

• Catalonia unsuccessfully attempted to declare independence from Spain, leading to 13 senior Catalan leaders being charged with rebellion by the Supreme Court.

• The national security advisers to the president had advised Trump against congratulating his Russian counterpart — even handing him briefing materials that contained a message “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”—President Trump called Putin to congratulate him.

• A group of schoolgirls abducted by armed group Boko Haram in the northeastern town of Dapchi, Nigeria last month have been returned home.

• The murder by police (with video evidence) in the backyard of an unarmed black male, Stephon Clark, has ensued outrage in Sacramento, California promptly blocking major highways and NBA arena. Clark was shot 20 times.

• Maria Yefimova, a Russian whistle-blower linked to slain Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, has handed herself in to the police in Greece saying she feared for her life —Yefimova reportedly told Caruana Galizia that she had seen documents suggesting that 1 million euros ($1.2 million) from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's family had found its way into an account held by Michelle Muscat, the wife of Malta's prime minister.

• 39 Indian builders who were kidnapped by ISIS are confirmed dead after DNA tests on an mass grave in Iraq mass grave.

• More than 37 people, mostly women and children, have been burned alive while 80 others are injured after government forces bombed an underground shelter in Eastern Ghouta, Syria.

• Kurdish militants have vowed to wage a guerrilla war against the Turkish military and their Syrian rebel proxies after the rebels seized control from Kurdish forces in Afrin.

• 2 Reuters reporters appeared in a Myanmar court for the 11th time, which marked 100 days since they were arrested in December 2017 after investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men in a village in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state during a military crackdown in August.

• Chemical weapons inspectors have begun work at the scene of the nerve agent attack on former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury.

• An air raid on a rebel-held area of northwestern Syria killed 20 people including 16 children fleeing an earlier strike on a school. 15 of the dead were from one family.

• A former member of Moldovan parliment has been sentenced to 14 years for spying for Russia.

• Europe has reached the point of criminalizing rescue at sea, the Human Rights Watch has discovered.

• 13 Kyrgyz women have been "rescued from slavery" at a sweatshop in Russia.

• President Vladimir Putin may have received more than 10 million fraudulent votes nationwide in his landslide victory, which handed him a fresh 6-year term.

• Advisors to the UAE were pushing to fire the White House Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. President Trump laid off Tillerson last week. 

• Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is accused of receiving campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

• More than 40 African countries signed a free trade pact, The African Continental Free Trade Area, that would be one of the largest free trade zones in the world since the World Trade Organization was created in 1995.

• 17-year-old Palestinian Ahed Tamimi accepts a rare prison term plea deal from the Israeli government. 

• The Trump administration slapped trade sanctions on China, including restrictions on investment and tariffs on $50 billion worth of products. Fears of a trade war are heightened.

• A new political party, Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), dubbed the "millennials party", has risen in Indonesia and is set to take part in next years general election.

• Indigenous owners of Australia’s 9,000 year old most significant and largest rock art site have been “left out” of discussions around the management and potential world heritage listing of the site.

• An armed gunman and hostage situation is happening in southern France at a supermarket with 2 dead. The gunman has pledged allegiance to ISIS and is asking for the release of Salah Abdeslam, the most important surviving suspect in the November 13, 2015 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people.

• President Donald Trump is replacing US National Security Adviser HR McMaster with Bush-era war hawk and Neo-con John Bolton.

• Among the top 10 finalists for the 2018 International Women of Courage Award (IWOC) are  women from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and Kosovo—a distinction presented to women around the world who have shown leadership, courage, resourcefulness, and willingness to sacrifice for others, especially in promoting women's rights.

Photo: An Kurdish elderly man walking in Afrin, Syria. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi.