Image is of China’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Zhao Sheng, meeting Taliban Prime Minister Hasan Akhund in September 2023.

I know the Rambo title card is a hoax.

The COTW was chosen in the wake of the aborted sequel to the attempted assassination of Trump being performed by a guy who is VERY enthusiastic about Ukraine, to the point of trying to sneak Afghan soldiers into Ukraine by setting up a house in Pakistan to house them and then further transport them. He also apparently offered to send thousands of Afghan soldiers to Haiti to help them combat gang violence. Whomst among us doesn’t have the numbers of thousands of Afghan soldiers on speed-dial. Do you reckon there’s a group chat?

Anyway, while there is still no official recognition of the Taliban’s government by any country, China has taken a different course than the late USSR and the US - forming economic in-roads, rather than trying their own invasion. This has been a big boon for the struggling country, with various mines and oil and agriculture deals helping keep things barely afloat. A total disintegration of the social fabric of Afghanistan is not in the interest of any of the powers that border it - China, Pakistan, and Iran, with Russia not too far away - so an interesting dynamic of helping-without-official-recognition has been established. I wonder who will be the first country to fully recognize them?

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Afghanistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

  • smokeppb [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    52·
    2 months ago

    MEE - Houthi ‘hypersonic’ missile attack on Israel: What we know so far

    Yemen’s Houthis on Sunday claimed a ballistic missile attack that hit the centre of Israel.

    The attack by the long-range missile sparked a fire but did not cause any direct casualties, according to the Israeli army.

    The Houthis, who control most of Yemen and the capital Sanaa, said the missile was a hypersonic one. The Israeli military denied it was hypersonic.

    …

    It is not clear how the Houthis may have developed or acquired the missiles.

    Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday said his country had not sent hypersonic missiles to the Yemeni group.

    “We don’t have such missiles to provide to Yemen," Pezeshkian said in a televised speech. But Iran last year showcased what it described as the country’s first Iranian-made hypersonic ballistic missile named “Fattah”.

    …

    Hamas welcomed Sunday’s attack, and said it considered it a “natural response to the Zionist entity’s aggression against our Palestinian people”. It added that Israel “will not enjoy security” until it ends the war on Gaza.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      43·
      2 months ago

      It is not clear how the Houthis may have developed or acquired the missiles.

      Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday said his country had not sent hypersonic missiles to the Yemeni group.

      “We don’t have such missiles to provide to Yemen," Pezeshkian said in a televised speech. But Iran last year showcased what it described as the country’s first Iranian-made hypersonic ballistic missile named “Fattah”

      This is all to do with the terminology around hypersonic weapons. When Iran says that they don’t have “true” hypersonic weapons that can manoeuvre at hypersonic speeds, that is correct as Fattah 1 and 2 are still in development and have only been showcased at events. Russia is the only country that has used “true” hypersonic weapons on the battlefield with regards to the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile.

      However, quite a few ballistic missiles have a hypersonic velocity in the terminal phase, and are referred to as hypersonic weapons by some, even though they are not “true” hypersonic weapons. The Russian Kinzhal is one such a weapon, an air launched ballistic missile that travels at hypersonic speeds. Both Iran and Yemen have these weapons and have deployed and used them throughout this conflict.

      As for the development of these hypersonic ballistic weapons, many of Yemen’s missiles share visual similarities with their Iranian counterparts, suggesting technical collaboration.

      See my previous comments on this here and here

      A helpful graphic to try understand the differences between different missile types

      • smokeppb [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        24·
        2 months ago

        Good post, comrade. Sounds to me like the ability to maneuver the missile is desirable for getting around dome defenses anyways, and it’s hard to get capability to both maneuver and maintain hypersonic speeds. Not to say that a Zircon missile would be useless to the Houthis, I mean speed has to make up for that somehow, right?

      • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
        13·
        2 months ago

        I’m skeptical that ansarallah has truly hypersonic missiles (hypersonic maneuver). That is absolutely top of the line missile technology.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
      32·
      2 months ago

      The Houthis, who control most of Yemen and the capital Sanaa, said the missile was a hypersonic one. The Israeli military denied it was hypersonic.

      this is just the distinction between ballistic missiles being hypersonic in a period of their trajectory vs a cruise missile which can be supersonic or hypersonic depending on how good the missile tech of the country is, right?