🇲🇱🇧🇫🇳🇪AES launches Unified Military Force

The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has launched a joint military force aimed at combating Islamist insurgency and terrorism across the Sahel. The Unified Military Force was inaugurated on December 20, 2025, in Bamako, Mali’s capital.

More Palestine solidarity hunger strikers in Britain have been hospitalized over the past week, as half of those taking part in the protest pass more than 50 days without food. While Keir Starmer’s administration continues to refuse engagement with the activists’ demands, health workers and family members warn of serious risks of death. Testimonies from the strikers themselves describe harsh physical decline. “I don’t think people realize how serious this is, as on day 35 you risk brain damage, organ failure and heart attack,” Rahma Hoxha, sister of hunger striker Teuta Hoxha, said on December 18.

Meanwhile, institutional repression against the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain continues to grow. On December 23, Prisoners for Palestine and Defend Our Juries reported new arrests during a lock-in protest in London addressing Aspen Insurance’s complicity in genocide. One of those arrested was climate and solidarity activist Greta Thunberg, who sat on the ground holding a sign reading: “I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/23/hunger-strikers-lives-at-risk-as-starmer-government-refuses-engagement/

Scores of journalists, political and human rights activists attended a protest jointly organized by Bangladesh’s Editor’s Council and Newspaper Owners Association (NOAM) in Dhaka on Monday, December 22 to denounce last week’s attacks on leading newspapers and journalists in the country.

Claiming such attacks are attempts to silence critical voices, speakers appealed to the social forces in the country to raise their voices in protest in order to protect the (remaining) social and political freedoms in the country.

Bangladesh has seen repeated attacks on opposition parties such as the Awami League and Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB), religious minorities, and symbols of Bangladesh’s national liberation struggle, since the formation of the interim administration last year.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/23/interim-government-is-pushing-bangladesh-towards-a-civil-war-says-workers-party/

Repression against left-wing, anti-imperialist and Palestine-solidarity structures in Germany is increasingly aimed at undermining their economic means of existence.

📲 Read the full article by Leon Wystrychowski on our website.⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/23/in-germany-critics-of-the-government-are-losing-their-bank-accounts-and-more/

Few comprehensive studies have been conducted of the humanitarian toll that sanctions, especially those vastly strengthened through the US-imposed Caesar Act, have taken on the Syrian people amid an already devastating war.

📲 Read the full article by Al Akhbar on our website.⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/23/five-years-of-coercion-what-did-caesar-do-to-syrians/

Massive protests have forced the government to seek dialogue with unions and small and medium-sized mining companies. Protesters are demanding the complete repeal of the decree eliminating hydrocarbon subsidies.

Read more on our website ⬇️
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/24/bolivias-new-right-wing-government-eliminates-fuel-subsidies-and-thousands-of-workers-fight-back/

A historic turning point in Sahelian sovereignty, as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger bolstered their regional security through a unified military force and in the same week held its second AES summit.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/24/the-alliance-of-sahel-states-launches-unified-military-force-and-strengthens-regional-security/

Artist and researcher Tings Chak pays homage to the late Palestinian actor and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri who passed on December 24, 2025.

He told her in an interview the publication “Despite Everything: Cultural Resistance for a Free Palestine”:

“Culture is life. Culture is roots, and history. Culture is humanity. If we lose culture, we lose our identity. We lose our life. There is no meaning without culture. There is no meaning to life without love. Culture is love. I will not permit them to take my love away from myself. My culture. This is my heart. This is my people. These are my memories. This is my childhood, when I walked without electricity and without water. The songs that I heard. The food that I ate. The air that I smelled. The mountain that I climbed. The sea that I swam in. This is my culture, my existence. Nobody will take that from me. So I will continue making films. Despite everything.“

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/25/despite-everything-remembering-mohammad-bakri-1953-2025/

Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz, unveiled a plan to establish what he called “new military-agricultural outposts” in the northern Gaza Strip.

Katz added that these outposts will replace the 21 illegal Israeli settlements, which were evacuated when the IOF withdrew from the war-torn enclave in 2005.

“With God’s help, when the time comes, also in northern Gaza, we will establish pioneer groups in place of the settlements that were evacuated,” the Israeli minister said at a ceremony marking the establishment of 1,200 new settlement units in the West Bank settlement of Beit El.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/24/israel-reveals-settlement-plan-in-northern-gaza-after-committing-over-857-ceasefire-violations/

On December 27, 2024, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) set fire to Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and proceeded to abduct its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. The pediatrician has now spent a year in Israeli prisons, amid consistent reports of abuse, violence, and torture.

“His only ‘crime’ was taking care of patients in his hospital until the final moments before Israel abducted him,” CODEPINK wrote in an appeal. “He remains in Israeli detention – alongside hundreds of other medical workers abducted from Gaza – subjected to the kind of violence that should be condemned universally.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/26/dr-abu-safiya-abduction-anniversary-renewed-freedom-calls-for-palestinian-health-workers/

🇧🇫 “Either to unite forever against imperialism or be reduced to being slaves.”

The President of Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, warned about imperialist efforts to destabilize the region. Captain Traore was speaking at the second summit of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Bamako, Mali, where he was confirmed as the next president of AES.

Traoré warned that only unity can prevent African countries from plunging into chaos, but assured that the AES is strong and will overcome terrorism, develop the region, and take its place on the world stage.

The Institute of Political Economy (IPE), Sri Lanka and the UK-based Debt Justice issued a joint statement demanding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspend Sri Lanka’s debt repayment to help it tackle its prolonged economic crisis compounded by Cyclone Ditwah.

The statement, signed by over 120 well-known economists from across the world including Jayati Ghosh and Utsa Patnaik from India, Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, and French economist Thomas Piketty, asks the IMF to prioritize the welfare of people and their development over financial obligations to external creditors.

Sri Lanka, which has been trying to overcome the prolonged effects of the 2019 economic crisis, still must dedicate 25% of its annual revenue for international debt servicing.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/26/economists-call-for-the-suspension-of-sri-lankas-debt-after-devastating-cyclone-ditwah/

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office reported that Palestinian women detainees in Damon prison are facing severe and escalating campaigns of systemic abuse by Israeli occupation forces.

According to confidential testimonies cited by the Media Office, IOF units have carried out violent raids on women’s units, forcibly removing detainees from their cells and dragging them into the prison yard. There, the women were made to sit on the ground, had their hijabs torn off, and were subjected to severe beatings, particularly targeting their legs.

The testimonies also confirmed that the IOF deployed attack dogs and stun grenades during the assaults, resulting in multiple injuries among the detainees.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/26/iof-escalates-abuse-against-palestinian-women-prisoners-in-damon/

The Global South can shape a different future through coordination, shared standards, and strategic investment. A “Digital Bandung” provides a pathway toward that goal.

📲 Read the full article by Kambale Musavuli on our website.⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/26/digital-bandung-why-the-global-south-must-seize-its-data-future/

US hostilities continue in the Caribbean. The US Coast Guard has gone after its third “prey” in international waters. According to information from US authorities, the ship “Bella 1” was headed to Venezuela to pick up oil when US forces attempted to apprehend it. “Bella 1” continued sailing, which led to a maritime chase, according to Kristi Noem, US Secretary of Homeland Security.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez stated: “Venezuela rejects the theft and hijacking of a new private vessel carrying Venezuelan oil … [We will take] all appropriate actions, including reporting this to the United Nations Security Council, other multilateral organizations, and the governments of the world.”

📲 Read the full article on our website.⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/27/us-continues-pursuit-and-seizure-of-venezuelan-oil-tankers-amid-condemnation-at-un-security-council/

As Western European elites scramble to maintain influence amid waning backing from the Trump administration and growing domestic opposition to pro-militarization, anti-people policies, countries in Eastern Europe are faced with a different set of dynamics.

Peoples Dispatch spoke with Oana Uiorean and Vlad Mureşan of the Elbit OUT! campaign in Romania about the specific challenges facing left movements in the region and efforts to build strong Palestine solidarity campaigns in Eastern Europe.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/28/in-eastern-europe-resistance-grows-to-militarism-and-israeli-arms-production/

The war in Sudan is not simply “between two generals, but between two wings of a comprador parasitic capitalist class,” fighting each other against the backdrop of a regional and global contest over Sudan’s land, resources, and geostrategic location on the Red Sea, argues Sidgi Kaballo of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP).

📲 Read the full article ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/28/the-war-in-sudan-is-between-two-wings-of-a-comprador-parasitic-capitalist-class/

A recent communiqué and continent-wide survey released by the Pan-African Progressive Front (PPF) signals a crucial shift in Africa’s reparations movement, moving it from symbolic demands to a coordinated political and institutional agenda.

According to PPF, the findings informed a communiqué that seeks to close what it describes as a long-standing historical and political gap: Africa’s fragmented engagement with global reparations debates.

“Everyone agrees the wound is real,” said Princess Yanney, head of the PPF Public Affairs Directorate, in an interview with Peoples Dispatch. “But Africa has too often entered global conversations about slavery, colonial extraction, debt, and stolen heritage as scattered voices, country by country, ministry by ministry, sometimes NGO by NGO. That fragmentation makes it easy for former colonial powers to reduce reparations to symbolic regret rather than enforceable justice.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/29/70-of-africans-back-reparations-says-pan-african-progressive-front/

At least three people were killed and dozens injured during protests on Sunday, December 28, over the rising sectarian violence in Syria.

Protests by the Alawite community (a religious minority in the country) erupted in the western governorate of Homs, the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, and other areas after at least eight people were killed and 18 others wounded in a deadly explosion in a mosque in an Alawite-majority neighborhood in Homs.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/29/three-killed-dozens-injured-in-protests-over-sectarian-violence-in-syria/

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, confirmed in a televised speech on Monday, December 29, that five of its military commanders were assassinated by Israel over the past several months in the Gaza Strip.

The movement has appointed a new spokesperson, who has inherited the nom de guerre of the late iconic resistance leader.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/30/hamas-confirms-the-assassination-of-abu-obaida-and-four-other-al-qassam-commanders/