One was wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on Syrian protesters Dec. 20 near the village of Maariyah, in southern Daraa province. Local residents gathered at a position the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had established in the area, chanting "Free, free Syria; Israel get out!" One protester was shot in the leg. The IDF said its soldiers had fired in response to "a threat." The incident came after villagers said that the troops, stationed in an abandoned Syrian army outpost, were preventing local farmers from accessing their fields. Maariya is near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, but outside the demilitarized "buffer zone" established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria. (MEE, ToI) The news appears to confirm reports that IDF troops have advanced beyond the "buffer zone."

The rebel Arakan Army announced its full control of Burma's border with Bangladesh after the seizure of the last junta base in Maungdaw township on Dec. 11. The rebel army said it had taken captive a general and dozens of other soldiers, including around 80 Rohingya fighters—raising fears of further reprisals against the Muslim minority. The Arakan Army seeks autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine people and is part of an alliance of armed groups that has also seized key towns in eastern Burma. (TNH)

Two attacks on "defenseless civilian populations" along Niger's border with Burkina Faso left some 40 dead between Dec. 12 and 14, authorities said. Niamey's defense ministry said 21 were killed in Libiri village and 18 in Kokorou, both in Tillabéri region. The statement blamed "criminals," but the borderlands are a stronghold of jihadist insurgents. An even worse attack was reported days earlier, but is being denied by Niger's ruling junta. Authorities suspended the operations of the BBC in Niger after it reported that jihadists had killed 90 soldiers and upwards of 40 civilians at Chatoumane, also in Tillabéri. According to the monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), at least 1,500 soldiers and civilians have been killed in jihadist attacks in Niger in the past year—more than double the 650 killed from July 2022 to July 2023. (AFP, France24, RFI, BBC News, TRT World)

Amid jubilation following the overthrow of long-ruling dictator Bashar Assad, the only fighting in Syria is now between Arabs and Kurds—as the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) expels the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the town of Manbij. Ankara's design is clearly to expunge the Kurdish autonomous zone in the northeast region of Rojava. Yet there are also positive signs of an accommodation between the Rojava Kurds and the new revolutionary administration in Damascus. In Episode 255 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the new political landscape in Syria and tries to identify a way forward—past the threat of ethnic war and toward a multicultural democracy.

On Dec. 8, the same day the Assad regime fell and rebel forces took Damascus, the US military carried out a series of air-strikes against Islamic State positions across central Syria. The Pentagon's Central Command announced that it "struck over 75 targets using multiple US Air Force assets, including B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s." The targets included "ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps." (A&SF, LWJ)

As Syrian rebels advanced on Damascus in a surprise lightning offensive, the Rojava Kurds seized territory from the Bashar Assad regime, and the Druze took up arms in their own region. After years of the lines in the conflict being frozen and the genocidal Assad dictatorship being "normalized," on Dec. 8 the unthinkable happened and the dictator fled. Suddenly the 13-year aim of the Syrian Revolution has been realized—the fall of the regime. But the lead rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has an ugly past, its partner the Syrian National Army (SNA) is in the political orbit of Turkish aspiring dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the threat of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria looms closer. Amid a conflict now dominated by armed actors, can the unarmed civil resistance that began the revolution 13 years ago re-assert itself, and revive the secular-democratic spirit of 2011? In Episode 254 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes a hard look.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry said Dec. 1 that the Israeli armed forces killed four Palestinians in an air-strike on the village of Siir, in Jenin district of the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that day that Israeli forces were "preventing our teams from reaching the bombing site," declaring it a "closed military zone." (TNA) Two days later, an Israel Defense Forces drone strike near the village of Aqaba in the Jordan Valley left two dead. The IDF again reportedly prevented ambulances from reaching the site. (JNS)

A ceasefire agreement was reached Dec. 2 between two warring tribes in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province following weeks of clashes that left 130 people dead in Kurram district, along the border with Afghanistan. A Grand Jirga of tribal leaders was called to mediate the truce. The violence exploded Nov. 21, when a convoy of Shi'ite pilgrims traveling to a shrine in Peshawar was ambushed by armed assailants, killing at least 42. The ensuing clashes pitted members of the mostly Shi'ite Bagan tribe against their Sunni neighbors, the Alizai, with shops and homes ransacked and whole villages displaced. A land dispute between the two tribes had also caused clashes that led to 50 fatalities in September.