Frankrikes militär meddelar att den har dödat tiotals jihadister i flyganfall i centrala Mali under helgen. Samtidigt vittnar människor på marken om hur ett bröllopsfirande blivit bombat av en helikopter.

Det är oklart om det är skilda händelser eller skilda beskrivningar av samma händelse. Uppgifter om att något skett i byn Bounti började florera i sociala medier i söndags.

– Rapporter som har med ett bröllop att göra stämmer inte överens med observationer som gjordes, säger en talesperson för den franska militären till AFP.

Enligt den franska kungörelsen var det stridsflygplan som dödade jihadister någonstans i centrala Mali efter att gruppen i fråga följts i flera dagars tid. En militär källa säger till nyhetsbyrån att det inte råder några tvivel kring vilka som var måltavlor.

Invånare i Bounti beskriver hur en ensam, lågt flygande helikopter öppnade eld mot en folksamling mitt på dagen. Ahmadou Ghana berättar för AFP att folk fick springa för sina liv och att 19 personer dödades, varav två var hans bröder. Läs artikel

Italian Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini, UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace, and Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist signed a trilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 21 December on the development of the Tempest future fighter, the Italian Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced in a press release on 3 January.

Describing the Future Combat Air System Cooperation (FCASC) MoU as “crucial for the balance of military and industrial capabilities at the European and global level”, the ministry said the agreement defines “the general principles for co-operation on an equal basis between the three countries comprising all activities including research, development and joint concepting necessary for governments to acquire an advanced air system to replace Eurofighter”. The MoD added, “The agreement will be followed by the project arrangements and the full development phase, currently scheduled to begin in 2025.” Läs artikel

Across the political spectrum, there is widespread agreement that America must get serious about the threat posed by China. As the Trump administration comes to a close, the State Department has just released a document called ‘The Elements of the China Challenge’. A distillation of conventional wisdom among national security experts and government officials, it argues that the U.S. needs a concerted effort to push back against Beijing. On its first page, the document tells us that “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition.” If there was a major intellectual thread running through Trump’s foreign policy, or at least that of the people he appointed, it was that confronting China was the national security issue of our time. America during the Trump era was single-minded in its focus on turning up the pressure on Beijing, including unprecedented support for Taiwan, sending ships more often through the South China Sea, and attempting to stop the spread of the telecom giant Huawei. Läs artikel

Shortly after WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous US war crimes — including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral Murder video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to US checkpoints — the towering civil rights attorneys Michael Ratner and Len Weinglass, who had defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case, met Julian Assange in a studio apartment in Central London, according to Ratner’s newly released memoir “Moving the Bar”.

Assange had just returned to London from Sweden where he had attempted to create the legal framework to protect WikiLeaks’ servers in Sweden.  Shortly after his arrival in Stockholm, his personal bank cards were blocked.  He had no access to funds and was dependent on supporters.  Two of these supporters were women with whom he had consensual sex.  As he was preparing to leave, the Swedish media announced that he was wanted for questioning about allegations of rape. Läs artikel

Först ville USA ha Gotland. Och i november även skärgård utanför Karlskrona och Stockholm. Vad begär de härnäst? Eva Brita Järnefors skriver om Sveriges nya allierade som övar inför nästa krig. 

Gotland är som ett osänkbart hangarfartyg för flyg, och det är bra att vara vän med dess kapten, Sverige.

SadeDavid Perkins, fyrstjärnig general i USA, våren 2017, när han besökte ön. (Citat ur försvarsminister Peter Hultqvists tal vid John Hopkins University, USA. 2017-05-17)

2017 landsteg alltså denna fyrstjärniga general på Gotland. En ö som han numera kan använda för sina militära behov. Då landsteg också ett specialförband 330 US-marinsoldater med uppdrag att vid en konflikt i Östersjön inta Gotland. Läs artikel

France will reconsider its military strategy in the Sahel region and very likely reduce military deployment as part of Operation Barkhane after significant military successes in 2020, the defense minister said.

“We will most likely have to adjust this device: a reinforcement by definition is temporary,” Florence Parly told daily Le Parisien in an interview published on Monday, responding to a question of additional reinforcement of 600 soldiers which brought the strength of Barkhane forces to 5,100 troops last year.

A decision on this will be taken at the next joint summit of France and the G5 Sahel countries in February in N’djamena, the capital of Chad, by President Emmanuel Macron and the head of the armies, she said. […]

In the coming months, she said, the Takuba force, a special joint force of European and American troops, will be fully operational in the region to fight alongside the Malian armed forces, in particular in Menaka, an active sector for Al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups, where the recent attacks took place.

Since the launch of Operation Barkhane in 2013, 49 French soldiers have died. Last week, five French soldiers were killed and others injured in two separate incidents after their armored vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in Mali, according to the French minister of armed forces.

More than 5,000 French soldiers are deployed under Operation Barkhane which is led by France alongside the G5 Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad) to fight against terrorist groups in the region, particularly al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Daesh/ISIS in the Greater Sahara. Läs artikel

Urquhart sovnet stille inn lørdag i sitt hjem i Tyringham, Massachusetts i USA, ifølge familien.

Han tjenestegjorde i det britiske forsvaret under andre verdenskrig og ble like etterpå en sentral del av opprettelsen av FN i 1945. I mange år var han visegeneralsekretær i FN.

Han er best kjent for sin deltakelse i å opprette FNs fredsbevarende styrke, som deltar i krigsområder verden over. Briten omtalte de fredsbevarende styrkene som en hær uten en fiende, og det var også han som bestemte at de skulle være iført blå hjelmer, for å skille de ut fra krigende soldater.

Urquhart var en selvskreven gjest i Oslo da FNs fredsbevarende styrker i 1988 mottok Nobels fredspris. Läs artikel

Det amerikanske hangarskipet USS Nimitz blir værende i Persiabukta på grunn av «nylige trusler» fra Iran, opplyser Pentagon.

Meldingen fra det amerikanske forsvarsdepartementet kom søndag, etter rapporter om at skipet skulle være på vei hjem, i det noen oppfattet som et tegn på nedtrapping.

Nimitz har patruljert Persiabukta siden slutten av november, men sist uke meldte amerikanske medier at fungerende forsvarsminister Christopher C. Miller hadde kalt skipet hjem. Søndag kom Miller med beskjed om det motsatte.

– Grunnet truslene som nylig er fremsatt av iranske ledere mot president Trump og andre offentlige tjenestemenn, har jeg beordret USS Nimitz til å avbryte sin rutinemessige omplassering. USS Nimitz vil nå forbli stasjonert i operasjonsområdet til den amerikanske sentralkommandoen. Ingen bør være i tvil om USAs besluttsomhet, sier ministeren i en uttalelse. Läs artikel

Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage and of hacking government computers, a British judge has decided.

Lawyers for US authorities are to appeal against the ruling, which rejected arguments that the WikiLeaks co-founder would not get a fair trial in the US but blocked extradition on the basis that procedures in prisons there would not prevent him from potentially taking his own life. […]

But turning to evidence by eminent medical experts about Assange’s precarious mental health, she said: “The overall impression is of a depressed and sometimes despairing man, who is genuinely fearful about his future.”

“I find that the mental condition of Mr Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” she concluded. […]

In her ruling, which triggered elation among Assange’s supporters that he was not being extradited, but dismay that it was solely based on health grounds, the judge said she had no reason to doubt that “the usual constitutional and procedural protections” would be applied to a trial he might face in the US.

Sending Assange across the Atlantic would not breach a bar on extradition for “political offences” she said, and she had no reason to doubt that “the usual constitutional and procedural protections” would be applied to a trial he might face in the US. She sided with the argument of lawyers for US authorities who had denied Assange was being prosecuted merely for publishing diplomatic cables and military files. Her ruling was that his actions, if proven, would “amount to offences in this jurisdiction that would not be protected by his right to freedom of speech”. Läs artikel

A London court today will announce its verdict on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be extradited to the United States. The proceedings have been described by critics as unfair. […]

For German Green party member of parliament Margit Stumpp, the court case is an ”acid test for the western community of values.” Together with lawmakers from the Social Democrats, the conservative Christian Democrats, the socialist Left party, and the Free Democrats, Stumpp established the cross-party working group ”Freedom for Julian Assange.”Stumpp told DW that she sees ”the rule of law being violated” in the extradition procedures. That started with the fact that she was unable to receive access to the court process as an observer. ”I’ve often been to Turkey, and there I had no problems getting into the courtroom,” Stumpp said, an unflattering comparison for the UK. […]

Nils Melzer is not only the UN special rapporteur on torture. He also teaches international law at the University of Glasgow and knows his way around British law. His verdict on how Julian Assange has been dealt with is damning. ”The legal proceeding in itself is not respecting the basic standards of human rights, of due process and the rule of law.” The motivation is obvious in the face of revelations of American ”corruption and war crimes and other criminal conduct,” said Melzer: ”The United States is trying to criminalize investigative journalism … And the British system, unfortunately, is in collusion with the United States.” On December 21, appealed to US President Donald Trump to pardon Assange in his final days at the White House. Läs artikel

After seven long years of negotiations, China and the European Union announced on December 30 that they have reached a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). It is a hugely consequential event for the world economy and international politics. […]

The agreement envisages that China will open up to provide an unprecedented market access for EU investors, giving them certainty and predictability for their operations and a level playing field with transparency and accountability, apart from committing on environment and climate and on labour standards. The agreement also provides for a robust enforcement and monitoring mechanism. 

The European Commission’s press release outlining the key elements of the agreement is here. The Chinese commentaries describe the agreement as “an extraordinary boost for pragmatic cooperation” between the EU and its largest trading partner China based on win-win approach, to mutual benefit, being “the basic logic in the era of globalisation”. (here and here) […]

In geopolitical terms, the CAI flags that Europe intends to be strategically independent. It shatters India’s foreign policy assumptions that Europe is preparing to join the US-led “Indo-Pacific” strategy to contain China. The heart of the matter is that Europe is backing out of the US project for a binary world.  Läs artikel

South Korea said it scrambled fighter jets in response to an intrusion into its air defence identification zone by 19 Russian and Chinese military aircraft on Tuesday.

Four Chinese warplanes entered the Korea Air Defence Identification Zone (KADIZ) followed by 15 Russian aircraft, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The South Korean military dispatched air force fighters to take tactical measures. The South Korean military said the Chinese military had informed South Korea that its planes were carrying out routine training before the Chinese aircraft entered the KADIZ. Läs artikel