A May 21 suicide attack on bus serving an army-run school in Khuzdar district of Pakistan's Balochistan province killed five people, three of them children. Islamabad, which faces accusations it was involved in last month's attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, quickly pointed the finger at neighboring India and Afghanistan. Both New Delhi and Kabul have denied the allegations. Balochistan has been the subject of a decades-long armed struggle for autonomy. Ethnic Baloch communities have accused Pakistani authorities of disenfranchisement, neglect and forced disappearances.

Amnesty International on May 14 condemned the life sentence handed down by a military court in Cameroon against activist Abdu Karim Ali, calling it an "affront to justice" and demanding his immediate and unconditional release. According to Amnesty, Ali was arrested without a warrant in 2022 and arbitrarily detained after he produced a video exposing torture carried out by the leader of a pro-government militia in Cameroon's conflicted Southwest Region. Last month, a military court in Yaoundé, the national capital, sentenced him to life imprisonment for "hostility against the homeland" and "secession."

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) held its 12th Congress between May 5 and 7, where delegates voted to dissolve the group's organizational structure and end the armed struggle against the Turkish state that it has waged since 1984. The congress was convened in response to the "Call for Peace and a Democratic Society" issued in February by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan ("Apo"), who has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999. The statement called for his followers to lay down arms and pursue a civil struggle for Kurdish rights. The 232 delegates at the 12th Congress held a collective oath-taking ceremony in which they pledged to "intensify the struggle for the freedom of the Kurdish people," and to "fight against the male-dominated civilization and the statist system" and for "a democratic society based on the Apoist line."

In Episode 273 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg happily notes how the entire political spectrum in Greenland has united against Trump's design to annex the country—and breaks down how the MAGA agenda for the Arctic interlocks with Putin's agenda for Europe, and the world. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

The Andaman & Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India some 750 miles offshore in the Indian Ocean, recently drew brief international media attention—but for bad reasons. The group of 572 islands, of which 38 are inhabited, were the scene of two disturbing incidents. In the last week of March, a foreigner was arrested for visiting a restricted island, and a local journalist was found dead.

The international Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) called upon UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on March 25 to urgently intervene in the repression of peaceful protests in Pakistan's conflicted Balochistan province. The group urged Guterres to secure the immediate release of Dr. Mahrang Baloch and other members of the Baloch Yekjehti Committee, a local rights group. Dr. Baloch and several of her comrades were detained at a protest in provincial capital Quetta against enforced disappearances.

The Supreme Court of Canada on Feb. 28 allowed an application by the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MNS) for judicial review of the Saskatchewan government's approval of mining permits to proceed. The court ruled that the application, launched in 2021, was not an abuse of process because previous proceedings between the parties had not addressed the dispute in the present case. At issue are three uranium exploration permits within territory over which the MNS asserts Aboriginal title and rights.

France 24 reports that negotiations are underway between the Qaeda-affiliated JNIM group (the main jihadist coalition in Mali) and the Tuareg-led secessionist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) over a possible alliance against the Malian army and its Russian mercenary allies. Mali's military government terminated a peace deal with the separatists last year after driving them out of their northern strongholds. The junta has consistently labelled secessionist groups as "terrorists'" and accused them of collusion with jihadists. Separatists deny this, though combatants from both groups share family and community ties, have allied opportunistically at times in the past, and operate in the same areas. According to France 24, current points of negotiation include JNIM softening its demands (perhaps mirroring the strategy of HTS in Syria), especially regarding the application of sharia law, and breaking ties to al-Qaeda. A sticking point may be the FLA's goal of an independent Azawad—the name they give to northern Mali. Intensified fighting in the north over the past year has had severe humanitarian consequences, driving tens of thousands of people to neighboring Mauritania.