Peru's central government is pouring troops into the rainforest region of Madre de Dios in an all-out effort against thousands of illegal gold-miners operating in remote areas. Under "Operation Mercury"—named for the mercury poisoning caused to local waters by the mining—three High-Mobility Temporary Mixed Bases, manned by military and National Police personnel, are to be established in the area of La Pampa, within the buffer zone of Tambopata National Reserve. Cabinet officials were flown into the remote area March 5 to inaugurate the first base, dubbed "Alpha." On hand were Defense Minister José Huerta, Interior Minister Carlos Morán and Environment Minister Fabiola Muñoz. Each base is to have 100 soldiers, 50 police agents and a public prosecutor. In the first phase of the operation, launched last month, authoritiies "rescued" 51 people from the mining camps, detained 80, and confiscated millions of dollars in prperty.

Direct talks between US officials and the Taliban are advancing in Qatar, aimed at ending the decades-long conflict in Afghanistan. Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar for the first time met the US special representative, Zalmay Khalilzad, on March 4. (Al Jazeera)  In a parallel process being brokered by Russia, Taliban representatives and Afghan politicians opposed to President Ashraf Ghani met in Moscow last month. The Taliban refuse to recognize Ghani's government, calling it a "puppet" of the US. (Al Jazeera) But advocates for Afghan women view both these sets of talks with increasing skepticism, voicing their concern that hard-won rights could be bargained away.

In Episode 28 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes with trepidation Google’s plans to develop a censored search engine for China, and thereby be allowed back through the Great Firewall to access the world's largest market. But the next and more sinister step is imposing China's draconian standards for control of information on all Internet users, worldwide. Harbingers of this are already seen in Facebook's censorship of the Tibetan struggle, and of the Kurdish struggle in Turkey, as well as initiatives to suppress footage of Israeli war crimes. While protesting these moves is imperative, the potential for such abuses in inherent to the technology—and this, ultimately, is a deeper and more complex problem that also urgently demands a critique. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon.

Tens of thousands of Algerians took to the streets March 1 to oppose plans by long-ruling President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to seek a fifth term in office. Police fired tear-gas at protesters in Algiers, and more than 50 officers were reported injured, with at least 45 people arrested. The mass demonstration—dubbed the Million Man March—followed week-long protests in more than 30 cities against incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's reelection bid for a fifth term in office. On Feb. 26, the University of Algiers camus was locked down by riot police as hundreds of students Around 500 students shouted "No to a fifth term!" and "Bouteflika get out!" (BBC News, Al Jazeera, AhramOnline)

As India and Pakistan exchange military strikes in the wake of last week's massive suicide blast in Kashmir, many cities across India report cases of targeted violence against Kashmiri students and businesses by right-wing groups. Members of Yuva Sena, youth wing of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena, reportedly attacked Kashmiri students in Maharashtra on Feb. 20. Two private colleges in Dehradun expelled Kashmiri students for posting objectionable content on social media about the suicide attack. Two nursing students from Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh were expelled by college authorities for comments on social media after the attack. A video surfaced on social media showing a Kashmiri man being beaten in Kolkata, West Bengal, by a mob which forced him to chant patriotic slogans like "Vande Mataram" and "Bharat Mata ki Jai" ("Mother, I praise thee" and "Victory to Mother India," two phrases appropriated by the Hindu-nationalist right).

Aymara indigenous leader and opposition lawmaker Rafael Quispe says he will file "abduction" charges against the Bolivian government after he was arrested in La Paz Feb. 21, and shortly released when a judge found there was no grounds for his detention. Quispe, of the left-opposition Unidad Demócrata party, was brought before the Second Anti-corruption Tribunal for having supposedly missed court appearances in a legal case against him for alleged "harassment" of Felipa Huanca, a militant of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and former candidate for governor of La Paz department. The case stems from Quispe's accusations that Huanca was involved in embezzlement of funds slated for development of indigenous communities when she was La Paz head of the Bartolina Sisa Federation of Campesina Women in 2014. (La Razón, La Paz, Correo del Sur, Sucre, Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, Feb. 21; La Razon, Jan. 11)

An indigenous environmental activist was killed in Mexico's south-central state of Morelos on Feb. 20—three days ahead of a planned referendum on an energy development project that he opposed. Samir Flores Soberanes was a leader of the local Peoples in Defense of Land and Water Front (FPDTA) and community radio station Amilzinko. He was slain by unknown gunmen in an attack at his home in the village of Amilcingo, Temoac municipality. He was a longtime figure in local opposition to the planned Huexca power plant and associated natural-gas pipeline, pushed by the government under the Morelos Integral Project (PIM).

The 10 Ambazonian leaders facing trial before a military tribunal in Cameroon's capital Yaounde are disputing the tribunal's authority to judge them, denying Cameroonian sovereignty over their homeland. They also deny their own Cameroonian nationality, asserting that they are citizens of Ambazonia, or the former British Southern Cameroons—a country the Yaounde tribunal says "does not yet exist." The defendants are known as the "Nera 10," for the hotel in Abuja, Nigeria, where they were detained by security agents in January 2018 and forcibly deported to Cameroon. They had been seeking asylum in Nigeria following Cameroon's violent crackdown on the Ambazonia independence movement.