The technical prowess of jihadi groups in West Africa is well documented—from the use of surveillance and attack drones to Elon Musk's Starlink and cryptocurrencies. The adoption of generative AI, then, should come as no surprise. New research details how the jihadist movement in Nigeria has become adept at using AI operationally in attack planning, weapons calibration, and the design of explosives. Initial training was delivered through transnational jihadist networks, but Nigerian groups now have dedicated AI teams staffed by trusted personnel drawn from senior operational and technical roles, including bomb-makers, gun specialists, and engineers. "Trial and error can kill you. AI gives you accuracy," a recently demobilized ex-combatant explained to researchers at the Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy (CASP).

Operatives from Israel's spy agency Mossad, including its chief, met several times with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since 2023 in an effort to install the former Iranian president as a new leader for the country, according to a New York Times investigation. Staunchly anti-Zionist during his 2005-2013 presidency, Ahmadinejad distanced himself from Iran's Islamist government in recent years after being blocked from running for additional terms, and came to see the economic sanctions punishing Iran over its nuclear program as an unacceptable burden, according to Haaretz. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quashed disagreements within his administration in order for the recruitment of Ahmadinejad to proceed. However, after being brought to a Mossad safehouse in Tehran amid US and Israeli strikes in February, Ahmadinejad balked at the regime-change plan and absconded, and is now being held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His public appearance in early July at the funeral of slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was his first in several months.

The blocking by the US of UN funding to African Union (AU) forces in Somalia starting next year is a body blow to a mission that has long been on financial life-support. The UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS) provides the logistical backing critical to the functioning of the AU mission. Without that underpinning, it's hard to see how the AU's 11,800-strong force can continue. That became evident when Washington vetoed the application to Somalia of UN Resolution 2719 on peacekeeping cost-sharing. The AU's near two-decade mission has done significant work. Despite heavy casualties, it succeeded in ousting al-Shabab from Mogadishu—a daunting task the UN and the rest of the international system was unwilling to take on—and continued to protect Somalia's fractious political elite from the jihadist insurgency. But the inability of Somalia to grow and deploy its own security forces to consolidate territorial gains secured by the AU resulted in deadly mission creep and effectively tore up any putative exit plan. Instead, the AU has soldiered on in the absence of a workable political strategy, and with ever-shrinking sources of financing.

The UN fact-finding mission for Sudan has produced a follow-up to its February investigation into atrocities by the Rapid Defense Forces (RSF) in El Fasher, finding at least three of the "material crimes" of genocide* "overwhelmingly present." After a prolonged siege, the UAE-backed paramilitary army launched an October 2025 assault on El Fasher, which was the last major Darfur city where the Sudanese army and allied forces were in control. Since the February publication, the mission said it has received new information, especially on the abduction and mass rape of women and girls. It says survivors were raped by RSF forces in the presence of corpses, including of family members, and were targeted along ethnic lines. The mission also received new information on the high number of people—up to tens of thousands—who remain missing or unaccounted for, and describes the involvement of senior RSF members, including deputy commander Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo (brother of overall commander "Hemedti"), during the takeover. With the RSF planning a new assault on the North Kordofan capital, El Obeid, the mission said the same patterns are repeating, and called for the lessons of El Fasher not to be ignored.

A new Lighthouse Reports investigation has brought to light new evidence of the United Arab Emirates' role in sustaining Sudan's civil war by backing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) through a covert logistics and training network based in eastern Libya. The report draws on social media analysis, geolocation data, satellite imagery, and witness interviews to trace alleged RSF-linked camps, convoy routes, and transfers of weapons and fuel between Libya and Sudan. The investigation identified four previously unknown RSF staging areas in Libya, including one near Benghazi. RSF defectors described training alongside Libyan National Army soldiers and UAE-contracted Colombian mercenaries before being sent back to Sudan.

Warnings are mounting that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) could carry out new mass atrocities as the paramilitary army prepares an assault on the government-held city of El Obeid in North Kordofan state. After the UN secretary-general and human rights chief sounded the alarm earlier this month, the African Union and several governments this week also warned of the extreme danger facing civilians if the UAE-backed rebels capture the city. The warnings have drawn comparisons with El Fasher and the nearby Zam Zam displacement camp in Darfur, which saw general massacres after they fell to the RSF last year. Reports suggest the RSF has moved substantial reinforcements to its siege of El Obeid, while stepping up drone strikes on the city. A crossroads linking RSF-controlled Darfur with government-held Sudan, El Obeid was under RSF siege until the Sudanese Armed Forces broke the blockade last year, but it is now being encircled once again.

The United States and Iran have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that aims to end the war the US and Israel launched on Iran on Feb. 28. The 14-point agreement, signed by Donald Trump at a June 17 gathering hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in the Palace of Versailles—where the treaty to end World War I was signed in 1919—opens up the Strait of Hormuz for a 60-day ceasefire window, during which the two sides have vowed to negotiate a long-term resolution to the Iranian nuclear standoff. The US will also terminate all sanctions against Iran, provide $300 billion for post-war reconstruction, and unlock all frozen Iranian funds and assets.

A cyber-attack targeting the World Food Program has exposed sensitive personal information belonging to some 600,000 households in Gaza, the UN's food agency has confirmed, in what may be the largest-known breach of humanitarian beneficiary data to date. WFP is investigating a "security-related incident" in which "unauthorized actors" accessed personal information submitted by Palestinians in Gaza, the agency said in a statement sent to aid recipients via Telegram on May 31. The exposed information included names, ID and mobile numbers, and location data, the statement said.