Global Pulse

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  • A Yazidi tells an Australian court she was enslaved and raped in an IS home in Syria

    A Yazidi tells an Australian court she was enslaved and raped in an IS home in Syria

    MELBOURNE, Australia — A disturbing case of alleged wartime enslavement tied to the Islamic State group has opened in an Australian court, with prosecutors laying out graphic accusations of systematic abuse against a 15-year-old Yazidi girl who was held captive in Syria more than six years ago.

    Thirty-one-year-old Zeinab Ahmad appeared at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court this week, filing an application for bail while facing two counts of slavery-related crimes against humanity. Her bail hearing will resume Friday, after police laid out the full scope of the allegations before the court.

    Zeinab and her 53-year-old mother Kawsar Ahmad — also known as Kawsar Abbas — have been held in Australian custody since last month. The pair returned to Australia from a Syrian refugee camp alongside a larger group of Australian women and children with confirmed ties to the Islamic State, after years spent living in territory controlled by the extremist group.

    Detective Senior Constable Mark Clendenning, leading the case for police, told the court that the anonymous Iraqi-born Yazidi complainant, who was a minor when the abuse occurred, laid out years of mistreatment in a formal police statement. According to the statement, Zeinab’s father and Kawsar’s husband, Mohammed Ahmad, purchased the then-teen for $10,000 in 2017 in Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate at the time.

    Clendenning told the court that Kawsar actively participated in purchasing the teen for enslavement — an unusual role for a woman within the extremist group’s hierarchical structure. He added that the entire Ahmad family held elevated status and privileges within the Islamic State that most other supporters did not access, granting them exceptions to the group’s standard internal practices.

    Per the allegations laid out by Clendenning, the victim was brought into the family’s Raqqa home, where the couple lived with their five children, including Zeinab. The victim was assigned to share a bedroom with Zeinab, the court heard. Mohammed explicitly told the victim upon bringing her to the home that he had purchased her for two purposes: repeated sexual assault and unpaid domestic labor, even introducing her to the entire family with that explicit explanation.

    Court documents further detail that Zeinab’s first husband, an Islamic State fighter, was killed in a 2016 drone strike, after which she remarried an Egyptian IS fighter who had lost a limb in combat.

    Police have alleged that Zeinab was present on multiple occasions when her father abused the victim, including one incident where Mohammed beat the captive and dragged her by her hair down two flights of stairs inside the family home. Mohammed beat the victim two to three times every month for the entire duration of her captivity with the Ahmad family, Clendenning said, with all members of the family present during the assaults.

    While Zeinab never physically harmed the victim, the complainant told police that Zeinab repeatedly issued violent threats against her and ordered her to complete endless domestic housework. The victim also stated that Mohammed sexually assaulted her “many times” despite consistent resistance from the captive.

    After 16 months of captivity, Mohammed sold the victim to another IS member for the same $10,000 he had paid to acquire her, justifying the sale by claiming the teen was “bad” and refused to follow his orders. Mohammed is currently incarcerated in an Iraqi prison for his role in Islamic State-linked crimes.

    The case unfolds against the long-documented historical context of the Islamic State’s systematic persecution of the Yazidi people, a small Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority primarily concentrated in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The victim told investigators she was just 15 years old when she was captured as part of the IS’s mass enslavement campaign that trapped more than 6,800 Yazidi women and children. Over five years of captivity, she was traded between 17 different IS members before Kurdish forces liberated her from extremist control in 2019.

    Court records show that three generations of the Ahmad family originally relocated from Melbourne to Syria via Turkey between 2013 and 2014, with Zeinab flying to the conflict zone to join the group with her first husband in 2014.

    In opposing Zeinab’s bail application, Clendenning argued that releasing her from custody would create an unacceptable public safety risk. He noted that Zeinab has married multiple men with ties to the Islamic State, and her current husband, an Egyptian IS fighter, has an unknown current whereabouts. Critically, Clendenning added that Zeinab has never explicitly renounced the Islamic State or stated that she no longer supports the extremist group’s ideology following her surrender to Kurdish forces earlier this year.

    If convicted on both charges of enslavement and the use of an enslaved person, Zeinab faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for each count.

  • Ukraine accused of killing four in occupied Crimea

    Ukraine accused of killing four in occupied Crimea

    Escalating cross-border strikes have sent fatalities climbing across Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories and mainland Russia, marking a sharp intensification of hostilities three months into the fifth year of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The latest outbreak of violence began with a series of Ukrainian strikes on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, where Russian-installed local authorities confirmed at least four civilian and personnel deaths across two separate attack sites.

    In the regional capital of Simferopol, one strike targeting what local officials described as non-residential infrastructure left three people dead and seven others injured. This incident marks the first recorded fatal Ukrainian attack on Simferopol since Russia illegally occupied and annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, a move ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A second attack targeted a commuter train en route to Kerch, killing one additional passenger and wounding three more, according to the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea.

    As of publication, Ukrainian officials have not issued any official comment on the Crimean strikes. This wave of attacks marks the third consecutive day that Ukrainian forces have been accused of targeting transport and infrastructure in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. In addition to its strikes on occupied Crimea, Kyiv has steadily expanded the scope and frequency of its long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory over recent weeks.

    The most high-profile of these recent strikes came on Wednesday, just hours before the official opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia’s flagship annual economic event designed to draw foreign investment into the country. Once known as the “Russian Davos,” the forum drew high-profile Western political and business delegations before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian drones struck multiple targets near St. Petersburg, including an oil terminal and a naval facility in Kronstadt, the primary outpost of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. A separate Russian-installed official in occupied Donetsk reported that a drone strike on a passenger bus in the region killed seven civilians the same day.

    Over the four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine has rapidly expanded and developed its domestic defense industry, allowing it to produce enough long-range drones and other precision weapons to regularly strike targets deep inside Russian and Russian-occupied territory. Ukrainian military strategy prioritizes strikes on energy and oil infrastructure, which Kyiv views as critical to sustaining Russia’s war effort. This escalation in Ukrainian long-range strikes has been matched by continued heavy Russian strikes across Ukrainian population centers, which have resulted in consistent civilian casualties. On Monday alone, combined Russian missile and drone strikes across multiple Ukrainian cities killed at least 22 civilian people.

    Moscow has continued to frame its illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea as a permanent territorial acquisition, a claim rejected by the vast majority of the international community and UN member states. Ukraine has repeatedly stated it aims to fully liberate all occupied territories, including Crimea, as a core condition of any lasting peace deal.

  • Missing guide found on Mount Everest after ‘miracle’ self-rescue

    Missing guide found on Mount Everest after ‘miracle’ self-rescue

    In an extraordinary story of survival that has stunned the global mountaineering community, a Nepali climbing guide declared missing and presumed dead on Mount Everest has emerged from six days stranded at lethal altitude, crawling back to base camp in a remarkable self-rescue.

    Dawa Sherpa, an experienced veteran climber also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa in honor of pioneering mountaineer Edmund Hillary, vanished on May 29 while assisting a Polish climber above Camp 3, at roughly 7,500 meters (24,600 feet) above sea level. At that extreme elevation, atmospheric oxygen levels drop to just a fraction of what is available at sea level, making multi-day survival nearly impossible. By all accounts, the climbing community had prepared for the worst, with most assuming Dawa had become the season’s latest climbing fatality.

    That grim expectation shifted on Thursday, when a crew from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, tasked with cleaning waste from the mountain’s upper slopes, spotted Dawa moving slowly through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall, steadily descending toward Base Camp. When rescuers reached him, they confirmed he was in overall stable good condition despite his week-long ordeal at high altitude.

    Pemba Sherpa, executive director of 8K Expeditions, the organizing company that led initial search operations, called the survival nothing short of extraordinary. “This is a true self-rescue,” Pemba explained in remarks to reporters. “Dawa managed to survive against all odds for days. It is nothing short of a miracle.”

    The ordeal unfolded as Dawa accompanied a group of climbers descending from Camp 4, the highest campsite positioned just below Everest’s summit. Former British Royal Marine and climber Chris Thrall, who was part of the descending party, recalled that Dawa stopped to rest with his backpack as the group moved lower. When Thrall checked in on him, Dawa insisted he was fine and told the party to continue ahead. “This is nothing new, you know, I’d go ahead, he’d go ahead,” Thrall said in an Instagram tribute he posted Wednesday, when he still believed Dawa had died on the mountain. As Thrall continued down, he stopped to assist a struggling Polish climber, and the two continued their descent together. Dawa never caught up to the group.

    After Dawa failed to arrive at lower camps, 8K Expeditions launched a extensive aerial search of the upper mountain, but crews were unable to locate any trace of the missing guide. Before his discovery, Dawa’s wife told Agence France-Presse she had already conducted last rite prayers for his soul, a devastating step families take when climbers are confirmed lost on the world’s highest peak.

    This 2026 Everest spring climbing season has already made history for two stark reasons: it is the busiest season on record, with more than 1,000 climbers and guides successfully reaching the summit, but it has also recorded five fatalities so far. Three of those who died this season were Nepali workers involved in pre-season route preparation and logistics work on the mountain, according to AFP data. Dawa’s unlikely survival has brought a rare moment of joy and celebration to a climbing community already grappling with multiple losses this year.

  • Gunmen kidnap 7 students from school in northwestern Nigeria

    Gunmen kidnap 7 students from school in northwestern Nigeria

    In northwest Nigeria, a violent incursion by armed gunmen left seven students taken captive after assailants stormed an off-campus residential building, local law enforcement confirmed this week. The attack unfolded in the early hours of Wednesday in the Kaura Namoda district, a region located within Zamfara state — an area that has been torn apart by years of persistent violent conflict. Police spokesperson Yazid Abubakar released an official statement detailing the incident, noting that one of the seven taken managed to break free from the captors and is now under police protection with no reported serious injuries. As of the latest update, authorities have not yet confirmed the exact location where the remaining six kidnapped students were taken by the assailants. However, Abubakar emphasized that comprehensive search and rescue operations are already in motion to recover the hostages and apprehend those responsible for the attack. Zamfara state has long been recognized as a major hotbed for criminal armed gangs that target civilians for kidnapping-to-ransom schemes, a crisis that has spread across much of northern Nigeria in recent years. Most alarmingly, the frequency of student abductions has climbed sharply across the entire nation since 2014. A data compilation conducted by Nigeria’s leading local news organization Premium Times underscores the severity of this national crisis: according to their tally, no fewer than 1,900 students have been kidnapped from 20 separate educational institutions across the country. This wave of student abductions traces its origins back to the 2014 mass kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from a government secondary school in Chibok, Borno state, an event that drew global outrage and put the issue of mass kidnapping in Nigeria on the international agenda. Security analysts continue to warn that weak border security, widespread access to illegal weaponry, and slow progress on economic development in many northern Nigerian states have created conditions that allow these criminal gangs to operate with relative impunity, even as federal and state authorities continue to deploy additional security resources to curb the violence.

  • Sherpa guide missing for a week on Mount Everest rescued while crawling to base camp

    Sherpa guide missing for a week on Mount Everest rescued while crawling to base camp

    KATMANDU, Nepal — In an extraordinary survival story that has shocked the mountaineering community, a veteran Sherpa mountain guide has been recovered alive from the slopes of Mount Everest seven days after he went missing during the closing days of this year’s record-breaking climbing season, rescue officials confirmed Thursday. A rescue helicopter was transporting the guide to a Kathmandu hospital for urgent evaluation and care Thursday afternoon.

    The guide, 52-year-old Dawa Sherpa, was last spotted on May 29 as he descended the world’s highest peak alongside his Polish climbing client. While the client successfully made it to Everest’s base camp to conclude the expedition, Dawa never arrived. The pair was among the final groups of climbers on the mountain as the 2024 climbing season wrapped up, and the fixed safety routes that support summit attempts were already being taken down, leaving the mountain largely unoccupied for the coming off-season.

    Pemba Sherpa, a representative of 8K Expeditions, the adventure company that was in charge of coordinating the search operation for Dawa, shared that the missing guide was discovered by a mountain cleaning team early Thursday morning. At the time of his discovery, he was slowly crawling down a snow-covered slope in the Khumbu Icefall region, located just above base camp, in one of the most dangerous sections of the entire Everest climbing route.

    Shortly after being spotted, rescuers carried Dawa down to a secure lower elevation at base camp, where he was immediately given food, water, and initial first aid to address his week of exposure to extreme high-altitude conditions. A dedicated rescue helicopter was deployed to the site within hours to airlift him to a specialized hospital in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital.

    Despite Dawa going missing a full week before his discovery, search operations were delayed in launching, according to local expedition officials. An initial aerial search carried out by helicopter earlier this week had failed to locate the guide, leaving search teams holding out little hope of finding him alive.

    The team that made the life-saving discovery is part of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a Nepalese organization that manages Everest climbing infrastructure each season. At the start of every climbing window, the committee installs fixed ladders and safety ropes across the mountain’s icy routes to support climbers; when the season ends, it removes all equipment to minimize environmental impact and cleans up tons of waste left by expeditions each year.

    Dawa hails from Okhaldhunga, a mountain town located south of Everest, and works for Himalayan Traverse, a small adventure outfitter based in Kathmandu. This year’s climbing season on Everest made history as the busiest on record, with more than 1,000 climbers and their guides successfully reaching the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) summit throughout May.

    The 2024 season also got off to a late start: a massive unstable ice block formed on the route just above base camp, requiring two weeks of intensive work to clear before climbing could resume. The first successful recorded ascent of Everest was completed on the same date Dawa was last seen this year — May 29 — in 1953, by New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.

  • Nepali climber alive after six days missing on Everest

    Nepali climber alive after six days missing on Everest

    In a remarkable story of survival against the harshest conditions on Earth, an experienced Nepali climbing guide who went missing for six days on Mount Everest and was widely presumed dead has crawled back to Base Camp alive, expedition officials confirmed to AFP in an interview on Thursday.

    Hillary Dawa Sherpa, a seasoned high-altitude climber familiar with Everest’s most dangerous terrain, disappeared in the upper reaches of the 8,849-meter world’s highest peak in the early hours of May 30. His unexpected return ended days of fruitless search efforts, when teams had already begun to prepare for the worst outcome.

    Workers from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a local Nepali organization responsible for maintaining climbing routes and clearing accumulated waste from the mountain, made the surprise discovery of Sherpa on Thursday morning just a short distance from Base Camp. “He was crawling down when we found him,” explained Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, the firm that coordinated the official search and rescue operation for the missing guide. A rescue helicopter has already been deployed to airlift Sherpa to a specialized hospital in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu for urgent medical evaluation.

    British climber Chris Thrall, a former Royal Marine who summited Everest with Sherpa around 5 p.m. on May 29, had shared a heartfelt tribute to the guide on Instagram just one day before his rescue, writing in a post mourning what he believed was Sherpa’s passing. He described Sherpa as an “absolute gentle giant of a man and a true ‘tiger of the mountains’”, echoing the widespread high regard Sherpa holds among the global climbing community.

    Thrall recounted the sequence of events that led to Sherpa going missing as the two climbers began their descent from Camp Four, which sits at roughly 7,950 meters, just below the oxygen-starved zone known to climbers as the “death zone” where the human body cannot sustain itself for long periods. As the pair descended, Sherpa stopped to catch his breath. “He sat down for a rest with his backpack — these guides carry huge loads up and down the mountain,” Thrall recalled. “I turned and I said, ‘Hillary, are you okay, brother?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes, fine Chris, please go, go!’ This is nothing new on the mountain; sometimes climbers pull ahead at their own pace.”

    As Thrall continued downward, he encountered a Polish climber in critical condition: the mountaineer had exhausted his supply of supplementary oxygen, suffered severe frostbite, and was at immediate risk of hypothermia. Thrall faced an agonizing choice, one familiar to climbers who navigate life-or-death decisions high on Everest. The 11-day summit push had already stretched far longer than the typical five-day itinerary, a sign of just how brutal conditions were this season. “Do I go back for Sherpa, who’s probably going to rock up and be fine, as he has done hundreds of times before? Or do I help my fellow climber, who’s got no oxygen, frostbite in his fingers, and obviously you’re never far off hypothermia up there?” he said.

    Thrall chose to stay with the Polish climber, sharing his own oxygen supply as the pair descended slowly to Camp Three. What would normally take just two hours to cover took 11 exhausting hours, a testament to the severe conditions and the strain of the rescue. By the time they reached safety, Thrall knew they had escaped a catastrophic outcome.

    Despite multiple search teams launching missions to locate Sherpa in the days after he disappeared, no trace of him was found until Thursday morning, when he emerged after days of slow, solitary descent down the mountain. This climb was one of the final expeditions of the 2026 spring climbing season, which meant very few other climbers were still on the peak to offer assistance.

    This year’s Everest season has already been marked by tragedy: at least five people — two Indian climbers and three Nepali climbing staff involved in pre-season preparations — have died on the mountain. At the same time, initial counts from Nepali tourism officials show that more than 1,000 climbers have successfully reached the summit this season, making 2026 the busiest climbing season in Everest’s recorded history.

  • Satellite pix said to show Israel’s overt Gaza territorial goals

    Satellite pix said to show Israel’s overt Gaza territorial goals

    Newly released satellite analysis from Al Jazeera has uncovered a significant violation of the 2025 Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement: Israel has been quietly constructing dozens of permanent, heavily fortified military outposts across Gaza’s internal perimeter, rather than withdrawing its forces as required by the U.S.-brokered truce.

    Al Jazeera’s Open Source Unit conducted a full review of satellite data collected through May 2026, confirming that 40 completed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bases have been erected since the October 2025 ceasefire took effect, with one additional outpost still under construction. Independent regional observers warn that this network of permanent infrastructure aligns directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s publicly stated goal of seizing at least 70% of the besieged Palestinian exclave.

    Unlike temporary forward observation posts, the infrastructure uncovered by satellite imagery forms a systematic, long-term military occupation grid. The outposts are linked by a connected network of earthen berms, deep trenches, and dedicated military access roads, forming a tight encirclement of major Palestinian population centers from multiple directions. This encirclement has already crippled civilian mobility, blocking ordinary Palestinians from accessing their agricultural lands and moving freely between communities, particularly in areas adjacent to Israeli deployment lines. The buildup also accompanies Israel’s ongoing expansion of its so-called “yellow line” security boundary, which has steadily pushed deeper into Gaza territory since the truce was signed.

    The construction directly contravenes the terms of the October 2025 ceasefire, a 21-point framework negotiated under then-U.S. President Donald Trump that required an immediate end to hostilities, unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid, the disarmament of Hamas, and a phased full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Palestinian political analyst Abdullah Aqrabawi notes that the buildup reflects a long-entrenched Israeli security doctrine centered on permanent occupation, territorial expansion, and ongoing control over Palestinian land and life.

    Netanyahu has repeatedly articulated his vision for permanent Israeli control over Gaza since the outbreak of conflict in October 2023. In early 2024, he publicly declared Israel would establish “full security control” over the entire strip. In April 2025, he announced the creation of the Morag Corridor, a new security buffer that cuts Gaza into fragmented sections, explicitly framing the move as a tactic to increase pressure on Hamas. Just last week, he told attendees at a youth military academy that Israeli forces currently control roughly 60% of Gaza. When the crowd chanted demands for full control of 100% of the territory, Netanyahu responded that the government would proceed in stages, with 70% as the immediate next target.

    Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz echoed these expansionist goals last year, stating that IDF forces were “expanding to crush and clean” Gaza while seizing large swaths of territory that would be incorporated into Israel’s national security zones to accommodate future settlements. This language references open plans from far-right members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and settler movement leaders to ethnically cleanse Gaza’s existing Palestinian population and reestablish Israeli civilian settlements in the enclave — a reversal of the 2005 disengagement under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, when Israel withdrew all settlers and military forces from Gaza after 38 years of occupation following the 1967 Six-Day War.

    Katz and other senior Israeli officials have framed their displacement plan as a U.S.-backed “voluntary migration” initiative for Gaza’s 2 million-plus Palestinians. Critics, however, universally dismiss the term as a deliberate euphemism for ethnic cleansing, noting that the vast majority of Gaza’s residents are descendants of Palestinians forcibly expelled from their lands during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and have no willingness to leave the only home their families have known for generations.

    Even under the formal ceasefire, IDF operations have continued to kill Palestinian civilians at rising rates. Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed Wednesday that at least 119 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in May 2026 — the highest monthly death toll recorded this year, including 19 children and 10 women. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 3,000 times since it took effect last October, leaving more than 900 Palestinians dead and nearly 2,800 injured. Since the start of the current conflict in October 2023, more than 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or wounded, with thousands more still missing and presumed buried under rubble destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.

    Wednesday’s satellite report is not the first to expose Israel’s post-ceasefire territorial changes in Gaza. Last week, Al Jazeera published separate satellite analysis showing Israel has systematically erased large sections of southern Gaza, including entire cities, agricultural lands, community infrastructure, and even historic cemeteries, in a campaign researchers described as an effort to “erase geography and memory” of Palestinian presence in the territory. “Satellites photograph the destroyed buildings, but they cannot document the feeling of a human searching for their home to no avail,” said Palestinian journalist Muhannad Qishta. “The hardest thing is not the destruction itself, but the stories buried beneath it.”

  • How Voodoo overcame suppression and became a democratic force in the West African nation of Benin

    How Voodoo overcame suppression and became a democratic force in the West African nation of Benin

    Nestled on West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, the coastal city of Ouidah holds a unique dual distinction: it is the global birthplace of the indigenous Vodún religion, and an unlikely cradle of the democratic stability that Benin has nurtured across three decades, even as neighboring nations have fallen into a pattern of military takeovers that earned the region the nickname the “coup belt.” That stability, scholars and Vodún devotees argue, is deeply intertwined with the religion’s quiet, unyielding resistance to authoritarian overreach, a story that begins with the rise and fall of former dictator Mathieu Kérékou.

    Kérékou seized power in the 1972 coup that renamed the former colony of Dahomey to Benin, establishing a rigid Marxist-Leninist dictatorship that nationalized nearly all major industries. As he consolidated his control, he targeted Vodún, labeling the centuries-old faith a subversive, backward force that threatened his grip on power. Under his rule, Vodún priests were detained, sacred shrines were demolished to make way for urban development, and the practice of the religion was effectively banned. What Kérékou did not anticipate, however, was that this crackdown would spark a resistance that would ultimately force him to abandon his authoritarian approach.

    Accounts from devotees and former Kérékou advisers confirm the dictator grew deeply paranoid of spiritual retaliation from Vodún leaders, convinced he faced a curse that could turn him into a zombie. Raised Catholic, he converted to Islam before later embracing born-again Christianity in a frantic search for stronger spiritual protection, even recruiting a notorious Malian marabout known as “the Devil” to counter the perceived threat. His fear grew so extreme that he could no longer safely travel to large swathes of the country, where support for Vodún ran deepest. “This is precisely what led him to reconsider his position regarding Indigenous religions,” explained Léon Bani Bigou, a former lawmaker who once served as one of Kérékou’s top advisers.

    By 1990, mounting economic collapse from Kérékou’s nationalization policies, combined with pressure from religious and civil society groups, forced the dictator to call for democratic reforms and a 1991 presidential election he fully expected to win. In a stunning upset, he was defeated by opposition candidate Nicéphore Soglo, who immediately moved to recognize Vodún as an official part of Benin’s national heritage and enshrine religious tolerance as a core national value. When Kérékou returned to power as a civilian democrat after winning the 1996 election, he kept that promise, officializing a national Voodoo Day celebrated every January 10 and establishing a state-led National Voodoo Board to govern the religion’s affairs. By his final campaign in 2001, Kérékou was actively courting the Vodún vote in Ouidah, a far cry from his days as an anti-Vodún dictator.

    Today, Benin stands as a rare beacon of democratic stability in West Africa, where eight successful military coups have occurred across the region since 2020. The most recent peaceful transfer of power took place in May 2024, when former finance minister Romuald Wadagni was inaugurated after incumbent Patrice Talon stepped down at the end of his two-term limit. For scholars and religious leaders, this resilience of democracy traces directly back to the resilience of Vodún itself.

    Roughly 14 million people call Benin home, with U.S. State Department data recording that half identify as Christian. But prominent Beninese politician Mahougnon Kakpo calls Vodún “the first religion of all Beninese,” noting that even many who identify with other faiths still engage with Vodún traditions privately. An animist faith centered on engagement with the spirit world, Vodún holds that divine power is present in all natural features, from rivers to rock formations. Its ceremonies include ritual incantation, traditional dance, and symbolic animal sacrifice, and it has spread across the Atlantic through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, evolving into the Vodou practiced in Haiti and other parts of the Caribbean.

    Ouidah, the historic center of Vodún, was once a major slave trading port, and it is home to the “Door of No Return” monument honoring the millions of enslaved Africans who were forcibly shipped to the Americas. Vodún supreme leader Daagbo Hounon Houna II, who is based in Ouidah, points to a little-remembered chapter of Vodún history to illustrate the religion’s long tradition of resistance: the 1791 Bois Caïman ceremony, where enslaved Africans in Haiti gathered for a Vodún ritual to plot their rebellion against French colonial rule. That uprising led to Haiti becoming the world’s first free Black republic in 1804, proving that even under the most brutal oppression, Vodún could not be suppressed. “The more you attack their religion, the more you raise their spirits,” Houna II said of Vodún adherents during an interview at his Ouidah temple.

    Unlike other postcolonial African authoritarian leaders who successfully consolidated personal power by co-opting or suppressing religious traditions, Kérékou ultimately failed to break Vodún because of its deep roots in daily Beninese life. “Kérékou failed to eradicate Vodún because he was attacking a centuries-old social practice deeply rooted in the daily lives of Beninese people, a resource to which he and officials in his regime had been able to turn in the exercise of power,” explained Narcisse Martial Yedji, a political sociologist at Université d’Abomey-Calavi. “Kérékou could not win over all the guardians of Voodoo traditions. Voodoo is not private property.”

    Today, the faith remains a central part of national life, with devotees across the country making regular pilgrimages to sacred shrines in Ouidah, leaving offerings of fruit and other gifts to honor ancestral spirits. For its followers, the story of Benin’s democracy and Vodún’s resistance is a clear lesson: no leader, however powerful, can successfully stamp out a faith that is woven into the very identity of the nation. “Voodoo is life,” said Dossavi Yovo, a priestess at Houna II’s temple. “If you want to practice Voodoo, you have got to dedicate yourself to it.”

  • Ukraine’s drone strikes set a gloomy tone for Putin’s economic showcase

    Ukraine’s drone strikes set a gloomy tone for Putin’s economic showcase

    In a striking development that overshadowed the kickoff of Russia’s high-profile annual economic gathering, two coordinated Ukrainian drone attacks targeted key infrastructure in St. Petersburg just hours before the opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a signature event where President Vladimir Putin planned to showcase Russia’s claimed economic resilience to global attendees.

    The strikes — one that ignited a large blaze at a city oil terminal and another that hit the historic Kronstadt naval base on a Gulf of Finland island just off St. Petersburg’s coast — delivered another public embarrassment for the Kremlin, which has spent months framing the two-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a distant conflict that does not disrupt ordinary Russian life or key national events. Located just 9 miles from the forum’s main venue, the oil terminal strike sent a thick black plume of smoke visible across the St. Petersburg skyline, setting a somber tone for the event that Putin, a St. Petersburg native, was set to address Thursday.

    The attacks underscore a worrying new reality for the Kremlin: Ukraine’s steadily improving drone capabilities now allow it to strike deep within Russian territory, even at heavily protected sites of enormous symbolic importance to the Russian state. Kronstadt, the historic home of Russia’s Baltic Fleet founded alongside St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, remains a landmark of Russian naval heritage despite most of the fleet’s relocation to the Kaliningrad exclave. This is not an isolated incident: in May, Putin ordered a scaled-back version of Moscow’s annual Victory Day military parade over drone strike fears, and just days later, a large drone assault on Moscow suburbs killed three people, confirming the capital’s vulnerability too. In response to the St. Petersburg strikes, local authorities disrupted cellular internet service in an effort to disrupt drone guidance systems, and dozens of flights arriving and departing from the city’s main airport were delayed or rerouted to other airports.

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov defended Moscow’s response, saying Russian forces were continuing offensive operations inside Ukraine specifically to prevent further such strikes on Russian territory. He confirmed that the “systematic” strikes on Kyiv that Russia threatened last week are currently ongoing. The escalation follows a massive Russian aerial assault across Ukraine Tuesday that used hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles to hit cities including Kyiv, leaving 23 dead and 151 wounded, according to Ukrainian officials.

    Originally modeled on Switzerland’s World Economic Forum in Davos, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has long been Putin’s flagship event to attract foreign investment and highlight Russian economic progress. Following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, all Western business and political leaders boycotted the gathering, so Moscow has pivoted to courting delegations from the Global South and other partners to advance its stated goal of building a “multipolar world” countering Western dominance. This year, the forum’s guest of honor is Saudi Arabia, which has sent a large official delegation, with other high-level attendees including the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania, China’s vice president, and for the first time in years, a U.S. official: Rodney Mims Cook Jr., head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

    Despite Moscow’s efforts to project economic stability, Russia’s economic outlook has darkened in recent months after an initial post-invasion boost from massive military spending faded. The Russian government has already been forced to raise domestic taxes and increase internal borrowing to keep widening budget deficits under control. While Putin is expected to downplay these ongoing economic challenges during his keynote address, the pre-forum drone strikes have thrown into sharp relief the cascading security and economic risks that the ongoing conflict continues to pose for Russia, even in its most politically and symbolically important cities.

  • Ukraine strike kills 3 in Russian-occupied Crimea

    Ukraine strike kills 3 in Russian-occupied Crimea

    A fresh wave of cross-border strikes has ratcheted up tensions in the 28-month-old Ukraine conflict, after a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea left three people dead and seven injured, just one day after Kyiv launched coordinated strikes on energy and military infrastructure in Saint Petersburg, coinciding with the opening of Russia’s flagship international economic forum.

    Sergey Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea’s occupied administration, confirmed the casualties in a Thursday Telegram post, noting that emergency response teams had been deployed to the site of the strike on non-residential structures in Simferopol, the region’s administrative capital.

    The Saint Petersburg strikes, which hit a local oil terminal and the Kronstadt military base, unfolded Wednesday as 20,000 delegates from more than 130 countries gathered for the start of the three-day Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), an event long referred to as “Russia’s Davos.” Thick plumes of black smoke from the burning terminal were clearly visible from the forum’s conference venue as opening sessions got underway. For many attendees, the attack did not come as a shock: 32-year-old Moscow-based businesswoman Valeria, who is attending the forum, told Agence France-Presse that residents across Russia have grown accustomed to persistent attack threats after years of war. “We have been living under such attacks for many years now,” she noted.

    Ukrainian officials have framed the coordinated strikes as legitimate retaliation for a recent surge in Russian bombardment across Ukrainian territory. Sergiy Sternenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s defense minister, said the attack was intentionally timed to disrupt the high-profile economic gathering, noting that “The Petersburg forum is opening with a nice plume of black smoke in the background after Ukrainian strikes.”

    In a press conference alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reaffirmed his country’s right to respond proportionally to Russian attacks, warning that Kyiv would continue to ramp up the intensity of its deep strikes into Russian territory. “It’s just a matter of time before we can scale up the intensity of our responses,” Zelenskyy said.

    The latest exchange of fire has already caused casualties across multiple frontline and rear areas. On Wednesday, Moscow-appointed officials reported that a drone strike on a passenger bus in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine killed seven people, with two additional fatalities recorded in the border region of Bryansk and Russian-occupied parts of Kharkiv Oblast. Separate statements from Ukrainian local officials confirmed that at least 10 civilians were killed in a wave of Russian retaliatory strikes across Ukraine on the same day.

    Top Western officials have warned that Ukraine’s growing success in launching long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory has created a tangible risk of the conflict spilling beyond existing borders and escalating into a wider confrontation. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a U.S. Senate appropriations panel Wednesday that the risk of escalation is now “more real than it was two years ago,” as Kyiv’s long-range strike capabilities have improved dramatically. “Ukraine has become increasingly effective at conducting long-range strikes deep into Russia,” Rubio said. “It’s one of the things that reminds us of why it’s important to try to bring this war to an end, if we can, because the risk of escalation is real.”

    Speaking earlier to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rubio noted that little progress has been made toward peace negotiations since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. “To this point, neither side has been willing to make concessions, particularly on the Russian side, necessary in order to bring peace about,” he said, adding that the U.S. has invested significant diplomatic time and resources into advancing peace talks over the past year.

    EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas said the recent Ukrainian strikes have sowed chaos within the Kremlin. She told AFP that increased Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure reflect panic on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is facing mounting losses on the battlefield. “It clearly shows also panic on the Russian side — why they are increasing the terrorist attacks that they are doing in Ukraine is because they don’t know what to do with these things,” Kallas said. “Putin is losing money, men, and momentum, and that’s why he’s increasing attacks on civilians.”

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has already promised a coordinated, systemic Russian response to the strikes on Saint Petersburg, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to deliver his keynote address to the SPIEF forum on Friday, where the conflict and its economic implications are expected to top the agenda.