Hello Reader,
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A rock star who jammed with Shakira now commands al-Qaeda forces strangling a capital as Western sanctimony meets reality. Blood visible from space marks genocide's latest chapter. Darkness and chaos descend on an entire continent, but even 36 bullets could not silence one rebel’s call for freedom.

The Global Fight for Freedom

1. Al-Qaeda May Soon Rule a Nation—or Two
2. Where Blood Is Visible from Space
3. Tanzanians "Want Their Country Back"
4. Myanmar's Last Hope Stands Alone
5. Chinese Aggression Provokes American Alliance

Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking. Note: I'm limiting source links this week to measure impact on deliverability.

“I think someone forgot to say thank you,” Emmanuel Macron said in January, insisting African nations owe France gratitude for its intervention. “None would be sovereign if the French army had not deployed.”
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The leftist France Unbowed party was apoplectic, condemning Macron’s “neo-colonial paternalism” as “simply intolerable.”
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There’s nothing I detest more than sanctimony divorced from reality.
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Today, al-Qaeda-linked JNIM fighters are suffocating Mali’s capital, Bamako—led by rock-star-turned-jihadist Iyad Ag Ghaly (see story below). Since September, they’ve ambushed fuel convoys, torched tankers, and kidnapped truck drivers hauling critical supplies. Four million residents now face blackouts, empty gas stations, and shuttered schools as the city descends into humanitarian crisis.
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In 2013, jihadists overran northern Mali, prompting France’s Operation Serval, which repelled them. Over the next decade, France spent billions deploying Reaper drones, intelligence expertise, and 4,500 troops to stabilize the country. 59 soldiers never came home. Then Col. Assimi Goïta, railing against French “occupation,” seized power in 2021 and forced Macron’s withdrawal. A year later, he expelled UN peacekeepers, depriving Mali of 11,600 additional soldiers.
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The intelligence networks vanished, and the Wagner Group arrived—only to terrorize civilians. Goïta’s coup inspired copycats across the Sahel, including Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, who called Macron’s remark a “humiliation to all Africans” and vowed victory over “imperialism at all costs”—while destroying the remnants of Burkina Faso’s democratic institutions.
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Russia has proved an impotent partner. In 2024, jihadists killed 84 Russians and 47 Malians; last year, JNIM stormed Bamako’s airport, killing more than 70. If Bamako falls, it will be Moscow’s humiliation too.
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Now al-Qaeda now stands on the verge of ruling its first nation, and Burkina Faso may follow.
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Perhaps al-Qaeda will give France Unbowed the gratitude Macron once hoped for.

For 18 months, a quarter million Sudanese have lived a daily nightmare. Besieged by the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the citizens of El-Fasher have faced an incomprehensible choice: flee and risk rape or death—or stay and face artillery bombardment and starvation.
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Now their nightmare is coming to a gruesome end.
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​Blood is flowing so freely in El-Fasher's streets that satellites can see it from space—clusters of discoloration surrounding hundreds of motionless bodies appeared in under 72 hours after the RSF seized Darfur's last free city on October 27th.
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Two decades ago, Sudan's rulers armed Arab militias to wipe out non-Arab villages in Darfur, killing hundreds of thousands. Today, those same forces have returned under the RSF, with backing from the UAE and quiet support from Rwanda—part of a wider continental pattern: generals and militias seizing power, driven by foreign interests and hunger for Africa’s natural riches.
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The RSF, led by warlord Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, grew directly from the Janjaweed militia that terrorized Darfur's black tribes in the early 2000s. Since civil war erupted in 2023, the conflict has displaced more than 14 million people, provoked famine, and claimed over 150,000 lives. A global hunger monitoring network now classifies Darfur in the most catastrophic stage of hunger—even the animal feed keeping citizens alive has run out.
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Satellite imagery shows bodies scattered near RSF vehicles "in tactical formations consistent with house-to-house clearance operations." Footage allegedly posted by RSF reveals dozens of men bound and lying in rows along the ground, denigrated and then executed.
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Sudan's generals have written the oldest story in Africa's book: strongmen crushing democracy, while civilians pay n blood.

In the parking lot of his apartment in 2017, gunmen sprayed Tundu Lissu's car with bullets, shattering his legs, arms, and stomach. After 23 surgeries and three years recovering abroad, the opposition lawyer boldly returned to Tanzania. In April, security forces dragged him from a rally, drove him 1,150 kilometers to Dar es Salaam, and charged him with treason---punishable by death.
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His crime? Demanding electoral reforms before Saturday’s election, from which his Chadema party was barred.
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On election day, thousands of protesters flooded streets across the country singing "We want our country back," torching police stations and government buildings. The government deployed troops, shut down the internet, and imposed lockdowns. Hospitals overflowed—morgues filled. Chadema claims 1,000 were killed.
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When Samia Suluhu Hassan became Tanzania's first female president in 2021, hope abounded. She ended bans on political rallies, repealed repressive media laws, and released Lissu’s predecessor from prison.
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But the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party—which has ruled since 1977—tolerates no genuine threat to its dominance. Authorities have documented 83 politically motivated abductions since Hassan took power. Rights groups documented torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings in the election's run-up. A former ambassador vanished—his family found the door broken and blood pooled inside.
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Monday, Hassan was sworn in after capturing 98% of the vote. The opposition called it a "total sham".
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From prison, Lissu declared: "I am prepared to endure any hardship for the sake of my belief in justice and the freedom of our people." The protesters' songs of defiance may yet bring his dream fruition.

As Asia's most powerful leaders gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the ASEAN Summit, Myanmar's genocidal junta was busy bombing civilian targets across Rakhine State. Eight died and 22 were wounded on October 30th alone. ASEAN’s only act was an expression of "deep concern."
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That same day, the Ta'ang National Liberation Army surrendered Kunming. Under relentless Chinese pressure, the TNLA signed a ceasefire with the regime, agreeing to return the liberated ruby town of Mogoke and Mongmit to junta control. This followed months of near-daily junta airstrikes killing dozens of civilians and destroying infrastructure in TNLA territory, making it impossible to govern freed towns. Beijing's pressure campaign added the final blow: closed border gates, arrested ethnic army members, seized assets in China, and detained allied commanders. China even prohibited contact with Western nations and the civilian National Unity Government.
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The TNLA becomes the second ethnic army of the “Three Brotherhood Alliance” to capitulate under Chinese coercion—in April, Beijing forced the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army to surrender Lashio, northern Shan's capital.
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Now only the Arakan Army fights on. Now controlling 14 of 17 townships in Rakhine, Operating further from China's border, it faces less pressure from Beijing—but these ceasefires now free the junta to focus its brutality on Rakhine. Expect Beijing to follow.
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Every power seeks regional stability and protects financial interests. But China invariably secures its trade routes and critical resources on the corpses of the oppressed.
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​Sourced entirely from top-notch reporting by The Irrawaddy, the only reliable English-language source for news on Myanmar since Trump forced Radio Free Asia's closure.

For 67 tense days in 2012, armed Filipino sailors faced down Chinese surveillance vessels at Scarborough Shoal—a coral atoll within internationally recognized Philippine waters, 120 miles from Manila's coast.
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When then-President Benigno Aquino personally attempted de-escalation, withdrawing his navy frigate and replacing it with a coast guard ship. Beijing refused to reciprocate, instead sending reinforcements. Then nature intervened: a typhoon forced both Philippine ships to withdraw, assuming China would do the same. Instead, China seized control of the shoal, transforming a diplomatic standoff into permanent occupation.
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That theft now defines the South China Sea's most volatile flashpoint. Last month, satellite imagery revealed China's latest provocation: a floating barrier blocking the shoal's entrance, restricting access to Filipino fishermen whose rights the 2016 international tribunal explicitly affirmed. Beijing laughably declared the shoal a nature reserve.
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"You don't put platforms on nature reserves," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared Saturday at the ASEAN defense ministers meeting in Kuala Lumpur, calling China's moves "yet another attempt to coerce new territorial claims at your expense."
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His words were backed with might. Just days earlier, American, Australian, and New Zealand warships conducted joint exercises with Philippine forces in Manila's exclusive economic zone—rehearsing for the next provocation. An American guided missile destroyer sailed alongside Australian and Filipino frigates through contested waters as Hegseth announced plans for expanding future drills.
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China will think twice before seizing even a single piece of coral.

Bloody Tyrant of the Week: Iyad Ag Ghaly

This week, the dark force gets the spotlight. Freedom Fighter of the Week returns next week.
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​Thirty years ago, Iyad Ag Ghaly jammed with a blues-rock band in Bamako nightclubs, pounding jerrycans to keep the beat while sipping whiskey and wearing a Rolex. He helped write lyrics for Tinariwen—the Saharan group that would tour globally, win a Grammy, and share stages with Shakira, Bono and Robert Plant.
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Today, the 70-year-old warlord commands 6,000 al-Qaeda fighters strangling Mali's capital in history's first jihadist siege of a national capital. Since September, Ag Ghaly's JNIM coalition has blockaded Bamako—attacking fuel tankers, kidnapping drivers, and torching trucks along routes from Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire. Gasoline prices have quintupled from $25 to $130 per liter. Schools are shuttered nationwide. Power has collapsed from 19 hours daily to six. A million trucks sit paralyzed at borders while three million Bamako residents queue overnight for fuel that never arrives.
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Ag Ghaly's journey began under Moammar Gadhafi's patronage in Libya during the 1980s, where he supervised Tuareg recruits—including Tinariwen's founder—while Gadhafi dispatched them to fight Israelis in Lebanon and French forces in Chad. After negotiating Tuareg autonomy in 1991, Mali's government rewarded him with a villa in Bamako, official trips to the UAE, and a Rolex.
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But when Pakistani preachers arrived in his hometown preaching strict Islam in 1999, his transformation to mass murderer began. He ditched the Rolex, grew a beard, and eventually founded Ansar Dine.
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In 2012, after seizing Timbuktu, he banned "Satan's music," whipped heretics, and oversaw systematic rape campaigns—crimes for which the ICC issued an arrest warrant in 2024. His fighters even ambushed his old musical friends—abducting Tinariwen's guitarist and holding him for weeks.
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Mali stands on the verge of becoming the world's first al-Qaeda state. The guitarist who once supplied electric guitars and amplifiers to desert rebels now uses blockades and brutality to bring a nation to its knees.

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