Islamic state

For the Pentagon, Nigeria is firmly on the list of countries where terror has run amok. In 2025 and again in January and May this year, the US Air Force bombed rebel camps in the north in an effort to halt a spree of murders and abductions that has left thousands dead or missing. US bombings earlier this week killed Islamic State’s second in command, Abu Bakr al-Mainuki, but the insurgency shows no sign of slowing; 17 trainees died recently in an attack on the army’s special forces academy and the conflict has spread to nearby Mali. In Nigeria, keeping the peace is a challenge. Since independence from Britain in 1960, there have been six coups and a civil war.

Bright eyes, burning like fire Bright eyes, how can you close and fail? How can the light that burned so brightly Suddenly burn so pale? Bright eyes. It seems poignant that this was the song playing on my Spotify playlist when I watched Donald Trump’s vulgar and insensitive speech announcing the tragic probable death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It’s so like Trump to find the death of a minority something to celebrate. ‘Something very big has just happened!’ he had tweeted an hour before, in the same way a child would announce to their parents they’d gone poopy in their potty for the first time. I dared to hope that perhaps he had accidentally impeached himself, but no such good fortune was to be forthcoming.