International

By Sabiu Abdullahi

At least three journalists and nine paramedics have lost their lives following a series of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, as tensions continue to rise in the broader regional conflict linked to the ongoing U.S.-Israel-Iran war.

The deceased journalists were identified as Fatima Ftouni and her brother, Mohammed Ftouni, who both worked with Al Mayadeen, as well as Ali Shuaib of Al-Manar.

Reports indicate that the journalists were travelling in a clearly marked press vehicle along Jezzine Road when it was struck by multiple precision missiles. The vehicle was reportedly hit four times within a short span, leaving no survivors. Other journalists sustained injuries in the attack.

Emergency responders who arrived at the scene were also targeted. In separate incidents across southern Lebanon, ambulances and medical teams came under fire, raising concerns among humanitarian organisations and health authorities.

The World Health Organisation confirmed that several healthcare workers were affected in five different attacks on medical operations. According to the agency, eight paramedics were killed while seven others were injured.

Although the Israeli military acknowledged carrying out the strike that killed the journalists, it alleged that Ali Shuaib had been working alongside a Hezbollah intelligence unit and was monitoring troop movements. It also accused him of spreading propaganda.

Al-Manar dismissed the claim. The organisation described Shuaib as a seasoned war correspondent with decades of experience covering Israeli military activities in Lebanon. Both Al-Manar and Al Mayadeen rejected Israel’s explanation. They insisted that those killed were civilians carrying out their professional duties.

Israel has faced repeated criticism over strikes involving journalists, especially in Gaza, where hundreds of media workers have reportedly died. In many cases, authorities have alleged links between victims and armed groups but have not presented clear public evidence.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the attack. He described it as “a blatant crime that violates all norms and treaties under which journalists are granted international protection during armed conflicts.”

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam also criticised the incident. He called it “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”

A journalist reporting from the southern city of Tyre said media workers in the area remain determined despite the dangers. “All the journalists that I’m speaking to here today say that they were just doing their job, and that the journalists that are still here are going to continue to carry out their work despite the obvious dangers,” he said.

The WHO Director-General confirmed the scale of the attacks on healthcare workers and facilities. He detailed multiple incidents across different المناطق, saying:

“In Zoutar al-Sharqiya, five health workers were killed in a strike, and two were injured, one critically.

“Two more health workers were killed and three wounded in Kfar Tibnit; one paramedic died in an attack at a health facility in Ghandouriyeh, while another was killed in a strike in Jezzine. Two were wounded in an attack on Kfar Dajjal,” Ghebreyesus said.

He warned that repeated attacks on medical personnel and infrastructure have severely disrupted healthcare delivery in the region. Several hospitals and dozens of primary healthcare centres have been forced to shut down, while others struggle to operate.

Fatima Ftouni had earlier reported on an Israeli strike that killed her uncle and his entire family earlier in the month. Her death brings the number of Al Mayadeen journalists killed since the conflict began to six.

Figures from Lebanon’s Ministry of Health show that more than 1,100 people have been killed and over 3,300 injured since early March as the conflict intensifies.

Meanwhile, Israeli ground troops are said to have advanced further into southern Lebanon, approaching the Litani River. Hezbollah claims it has carried out multiple retaliatory attacks against Israeli forces within the past day.

In a separate incident, an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Zahrani reportedly killed a Lebanese soldier, according to official sources.

Describing conditions in the region, a correspondent noted that explosions could still be heard across the الجنوب as bombardments continued. He referred to areas south of the Litani River as effectively a “no-go zone,” adding that while many residents have fled, about 20 per cent remain.

He said those who stayed were taking what he described as a “very deadly gamble.”

Press freedom organisations have expressed concern over the rising number of journalist deaths worldwide. A recent report recorded 129 journalist fatalities in 2025, the highest in more than three decades, with Israel accounting for a significant portion of the cases.

Earlier in the month, another Israeli strike in central Beirut killed Mohammad Sherri, a senior official at Al-Manar, highlighting the increasing risks faced by media professionals in the region.

By Sabiu Abdullahi

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken the unusual step of blocking the promotion of four Army officers to the rank of one-star general, a move that has drawn concern among senior military officials.

According to officials familiar with the development, two of the affected officers are Black, while the other two are women.

According to a report by The New York Times, the names were removed from a promotion list that includes about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men.

Sources said Hegseth had, for months, urged top Army leaders, including Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, to drop the officers from the list. Driscoll reportedly declined on several occasions, citing the officers’ long-standing records of distinguished service.

The situation changed earlier this month when Hegseth acted on his own to strike the names from the list. It remains unclear whether he has the legal authority to make such a decision.

The list is now under review at the White House and is expected to be forwarded to the Senate for final approval. Officials noted that some Black and female officers are still included.

The decision has attracted rare attention at this level, as promotion lists for one-star generals do not usually face this degree of intervention from a defense secretary. The development has also highlighted divisions within the military leadership.

Hegseth has defended his broader stance on military reforms. He has argued that he is working to overhaul a system he believes was shaped by “foolish,” “reckless” and “woke” leaders from previous administrations.

However, critics have raised concerns that his actions, particularly toward minority and female officers, could undermine trust in a promotion process that is expected to remain neutral and based on merit.

By Zayyad I. Muhammad

Low-budget drones are reshaping the architecture of modern warfare in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. They allow combatants to engage targets with minimal human contact, reduced battlefield exposure, and significantly fewer casualties. Unlike traditional air power that requires expensive fighter jets, trained pilots, and sophisticated logistics, drones can be produced at low cost, deployed quickly, and operated remotely with high precision. This shift is lowering the barrier to entry for military capability and redefining how wars are fought.

More importantly, this transformation is changing the balance of power between strong and less-powerful nations. Previously, military dominance depended heavily on air superiority, armoured divisions, and naval strength, all of which were controlled by a handful of major powers. Today, relatively smaller or less-equipped countries can use swarms of low-cost drones to challenge technologically advanced militaries. This has made conflicts more prolonged, unpredictable, and difficult to decisively win. Even well-funded armies now face persistent threats from inexpensive systems that are hard to detect and cheap to replace.

The Ukraine-Russia war is a clear example of this shift. A country with fewer conventional military resources has been able to slow down and at times stall a larger, more powerful opponent by using drones for surveillance, artillery guidance, and direct strikes. Commercial-style drones modified for military use have destroyed tanks, disrupted supply lines, and targeted command positions. This has contributed to battlefield stalemates and reduced the effectiveness of traditional heavy military advantage.

Similarly, the United States-Israel-Iran war has demonstrated how drone technology is changing deterrence dynamics. Iran, with its Shahed drones, was able to withstand the US and Israel at the same time, including being able to attack other countries. Iran was able to attack military bases, infrastructure, or naval assets across the Gulf and Israel using its relatively cheap drones; these have altered strategic calculations of the entire war. Furthermore, this suggests that even nations without overwhelming conventional strength can project power and create credible resistance.

However, while low-cost drones provide tactical advantages, they also introduce serious risks. The biggest concern is that non-state actors, militias, insurgent groups, and even criminal organisations can now access and deploy drone technology. Unlike fighter jets or missiles, drones are easier to acquire, modify, and operate. This increases the likelihood of asymmetric attacks against states, critical infrastructure, and civilian targets. What was once the exclusive domain of national militaries is now accessible to smaller groups with limited funding.

In essence, low-cost drones have ‘democratised’ air power. They have changed the face of war, reshaped military strategy, and reduced the dominance of traditional superpowers. But at the same time, they have introduced a new era of insecurity where conflicts may become more frequent, more decentralised, and harder to control. The same technology that reduces casualties on one side also increases the risk of widespread, unpredictable confrontations, especially when used by non-state actors beyond conventional rules of engagement.

This trend is no longer limited to state actors alone. Multiple credible reports and security analysts confirm that Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have increasingly deployed low-budget, commercially available (COTS) drones, often modified quadcopters, in attacks on Nigerian military positions in the Northeast. These drones are reportedly used for surveillance, reconnaissance, and in some cases, direct strikes against troop locations and defensive positions.

Beyond Nigeria, other non-state actors in different parts of the world have also been reported to use low-budget, commercially available drones, typically inexpensive quadcopters or FPV models, modified with improvised explosives, grenades, mortar rounds, or IEDs. These systems are deployed for intelligence gathering, target acquisition, and direct attacks. The accessibility of these platforms makes them attractive tools for irregular forces seeking to offset conventional military disadvantages.

 Zayyad I. Muhammad writes from Abuja via zaymohd@yahoo.com.

By Anwar Usman

The President of the United States on Monday held “very good” talks with an unidentified Iranian official after abruptly shelving plans for fresh attacks, even as Washington’s ally Israel vowed to keep up strikes on the Islamic republic.

The surprise disclosure  denied by Tehran, which accused Trump of manipulating energy markets came ahead of a Monday night deadline imposed by Trump for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz shipping lane or see the US “obliterate” its power plants.

Ghalibaf said on X that “no negotiations” were underway, insisting Trump was seeking “to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”

Oil prices fell and stock markets jumped as observers scrambled to interpret Trump’s statements despite the Iranian denial.

AFP reports that, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said messages were received from “some friendly countries indicating a US request for negotiations aimed at ending the war”, but denied any such talks had taken place, Iran’s official IRNA agency reported.

In response, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had spoken to Trump and acknowledged the US thought a deal was possible, but vowed to continue striking Iran and Lebanon to protect Israel.

“Trump believes there is a chance to leverage the tremendous achievements of the IDF and the US military in order to realize the war’s objectives in an agreement — an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests,” he said.

“At the same time, we continue to strike both in Iran and in Lebanon.”

Although Oman mediated indirect US-Iran talks prior to the US and Israel launching the war, Egypt, Qatar and Pakistan have been suggested as alternative go-betweens.

On a day of whiplash developments, Iran’s neighbors breathed a sigh of relief after Trump stepped back from his threat to target Iranian power infrastructure.

Tehran had vowed to deploy naval mines and target power and water infrastructure across the region in retaliation, threatening to escalate an energy crisis of already historic proportions.

“Trump blinked first — out of a clear understanding that striking Iran’s energy infrastructure would trigger a direct and significant retaliation,” Danny Citrinowicz, a security analyst and former Israeli intelligence Iran expert, wrote on X.

Trump said his administration was holding talks with an unidentified “top person,” but not the country’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is believed to be injured.

“We’ve wiped out the leadership phase one, phase two, and largely phase three. But we’re dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader,” Trump said.

He described the individual as “very reasonable,” while warning if talks failed in the next five days, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.”

Thousands of US Marines are headed to the Middle East, reinforcing America’s presence amid weekend speculation Trump was mulling ground operations either to seize Iranian oil assets or to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

By Amir Abdulazeez

Several decades into the global modern era, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans continue to be held hostage by their colonially indoctrinated inferior mindsets engineered by the blackmail and mythology of Western moral supremacy. This error is not in observing Western virtues, many of which are real. The error is in the uncritical veneration that renders their vices invisible and their judgements unchallengeable. It is evident from the events of the last three decades alone that the so-called saner climes of Europe and North America are the primary architects of global chaos and instability of nations, all in the name of injecting sanity into ‘less sane’ societies.

The ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, launched in the midst of Ramadan, is a typical doctrine of the saner climes, exhibited in its most naked form. Iran’s Foreign Minister had said three days before the war was declared that a nuclear agreement was ‘within reach’ after a third round of indirect talks in Geneva. 

The IAEA itself confirmed there was no evidence of a structured Iranian nuclear weapons programme at the time of the attack. Yet, the surprise assault assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, killed his family members and damaged schools, hospitals and even UNESCO-recognised cultural heritage sites. This is a typical catalogue of barbaric war crimes for which the West has condemned others across generations. 

The Donald Trump administration, whose seemingly rude, dishonest and arrogant officials, has offered a menu of rationalisations and a handful of conflicting justifications for the war. However, when Amnesty International confirmed that the United States was responsible for a strike that killed at least 160 primary school girls, the US officials chose arrogance through denials instead of remorse. 

In fact, the Head of the Federal Communications Commission simultaneously intimidated his own press, threatening the withdrawal of broadcast licenses of American news outlets whose war coverage he deemed unfavourable. Another trademark saner-climes mythology, muzzled in a way only a few non-saner climes can imagine. 

Meanwhile, in all these, it is the ‘lunatic’ Iran that is supposed to apologise and do nothing while it is attacked. The Iranian Regime, branded as autocratic on the premise that it compels women to cover their hair in public, is being lectured by leaders of societies whose women go out naked in the name of civilisation and whose governments topple, kill and abduct Heads of state of other countries for recklessly greedy reasons. 

Now imagine if the erratically behaving Donald Trump were the leader of any African Country, the West would have since declared him incoherent and unstable to deal with or labelled his citizens stupid for voting for him. Worse still, imagine if the Epstein scandal happened in Asia or Latin America. All these contradictions reveal with crystal clarity that Western principles are instruments of convenience. 

To understand the foundations of all these, let us revisit some history. Britain’s Industrial Revolution was fertilised by the profits of the transatlantic slave trade and the systematic plunder of India, a country whose share of global GDP fell from about 25% at the onset of colonial rule to barely 4% at independence. 

France financed much of its republican grandeur on the forced labour of West Africa and the Caribbean. Belgium’s King Leopold II transformed the Congo into a private abattoir, severing the hands of Africans who failed to meet rubber quotas, leaving behind a traumatised country that still bleeds today. 

To speak of the sanity of those climes without acknowledging that they were partly built from organised insanity inflicted elsewhere is to ignore the background to what we are witnessing today.

In the last fifty years alone, the so-called saner climes have unleashed a level of violence and destabilisation that would shame any regime they have ever deemed fit to condemn. The United States, the self-acclaimed sentinel of the free world, has engineered irrational regime changes in Chile (1973), Iran (1953 and subsequently), Guatemala (1954), Nicaragua, Panama, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, among others. The 1973 CIA-backed coup against a democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, installed Augusto Pinochet, under whose reign thousands were tortured, disappeared, or executed. Henry Kissinger, the American architect of that atrocity, received the Nobel Peace Prize from his fellow saner clime comrades. 

The French Government, through its notorious Françafrique policy, maintained a neocolonial empire across West and Central Africa long after the 1960s, propping up murderous dictators and conducting military interventions to protect economic interests, with a consistency that made a mockery of every democratic principle France professed to uphold.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 by Western Governments is perhaps the most consequential act of manufactured catastrophe of the modern era. The war resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200,000 to one million Iraqi civilians, the obliteration of the country’s infrastructure, the rise of ISIS from the ashes of a disbanded Iraqi army and the triggering of a refugee crisis that continues to destabilise the Middle East. No one was held accountable. George W. Bush and Tony Blair are living happy lives in their saner countries. The International Criminal Court, which has indicted multiple African heads of state on much lesser crimes with considerable alacrity, found no jurisdiction to examine any of them. Meanwhile, the people of Iraq, Syria and Libya who were dismantled in the name of liberation still live in the ruins and pains of what the saner climes call democracy.

While the West was busy bombing the Middle East, Africa, the so-called backward continent, was largely attending to its own affairs of conflict resolution with a remarkable degree of maturity. The African Union mediated crises in Burundi, the Gambia and Lesotho without firing a single bullet. ECOWAS brokered peace agreements in Sierra Leone and Liberia and deployed peacekeeping forces with genuine multilateral mandates, without the casual trigger-happiness of Western powers. 

Western attitude towards violence is shamelessly selective. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Saner Clime’s response was swift, comprehensive and morally unambiguous: sanctions, weapons, diplomatic isolation and a media chorus of civilizational solidarity. This response was appropriate anyway. But the problem is its stark contrast with the Western posture toward other invasions. When Saudi Arabia launched its war on Yemen in 2015, the United States and the United Kingdom did not merely decline to intervene; they allegedly supplied the bombs, refuelled the warplanes and provided intelligence for strikes that killed thousands of Yemeni civilians and engineered one of the worst humanitarian crises on earth. 

Many argue that the actions of Western governments do not accurately reflect what their citizens stand for. This is debatable, especially when one examines certain incidents. During the Obama presidency, Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency was conducting mass, warrantless surveillance of American citizens and foreign governments, including the personal telephone of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in flagrant violation of constitutional protections and international diplomatic norms. The response was not accountability but exile for Snowden and a classification of his revelations as treason. 

The United States has the largest prison population on earth, both in absolute numbers and per capita, administered under a system in which Black Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of their white counterparts, in conditions that the United Nations has described as cruel. Since 1968, gun violence has claimed more American lives than all of America’s foreign wars combined. One might be inclined to believe that these controversies are ones ordinary Western citizens may not approve of.

Climate change is another damning indictment of Western moral authority in the twenty-first century. The Industrial activities enriching Europe and North America still depend on burning carbon at a scale the planet has never experienced. The United States, historically the world’s largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement under Donald Trump. 

Australia, another clime reputed to be considerably saner than most, has built its prosperity on coal exports and resisted meaningful emissions reduction. Some Pacific Island nations face sea submersions within this century as a consequence of decisions made in saner capitals. When these nations’ leaders speak at the United Nations with tears in their voices, the saner climes offer symbolic but empty sympathy before later returning to preserving their industrial prerogatives. 

The Western Media’s tactical twisting of narratives regarding other climes is another issue. For example, CNN may not run primetime documentaries on the Swiss banking system’s complicity in laundering the proceeds of African kleptocracy, but will rather concentrate on the primary kleptocrats. The BBC does not lead with investigations into the role of British arms dealers in sustaining African conflicts. The New York Times does not dedicate its front page to the tax avoidance schemes through which Western corporations drain billions of dollars annually from African economies (more than the continent receives in foreign aid).

In addition to all this, there is something more worrisome. The bulk of support received by these saner climes comes from their victims in the third world. In Nigeria, for instance, the blind sympathy for religious affiliations drives people to support the brazen oppression and cruel injustices perpetrated by the West. Our solidarity should be among ourselves, not with those who see and treat us as worthless humans and more like animals because of their superior moral hypocrisy. 

Additionally, our bootlicking governments, which are considered close to valueless in the International arena or even insane just like us, must stop intimidating their own citizens who decide to speak up against Western double standards. Let’s remember, the phrase “saner climes” is a moral verdict and a devastating condemnation of everywhere else except Europe and North America. Africans and all peoples of the marginalised world are owed the intellectual inheritance of critical discernment.

The world does not need more or fewer saner climes; it needs a more honest accounting of what sanity actually requires. It requires consistency: the same rules applied to the powerful and the powerless alike. It requires humility: the acknowledgement that no civilisation holds a monopoly on wisdom. 

And it requires accountability: not the selective justice of indicting the weak and glorifying the mighty, but the universal application of standards that do not bend before a Security Council veto or the impulse of a self-serving superpower. Until that accounting arrives, the presumption of Western moral authority deserves not deference, but fearless interrogation; the kind that the so-called saner climes have always claimed to celebrate and so rarely been prepared to receive.

By Sabiu Abdullahi

Fresh security concerns have surfaced in Washington after unidentified drones were seen flying over a sensitive United States military installation.

The Washington Post reported that the drones were detected above Fort McNair, a facility where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth are accommodated. The report cited three individuals who were briefed on the development.

Officials have not determined where the drones came ⁠from, the report said, citing two of the people familiar with the matter, leaving questions over their origin unanswered.

The situation has led to internal discussions within government circles about whether Rubio and Hegseth should be relocated from the base due to safety worries. Despite those concerns, both officials are still at the facility. A senior administration official confirmed this, according to the report.

The newspaper also noted that the U.S. military has increased its surveillance of potential threats. This comes amid heightened alert levels linked to the ongoing conflict involving the United States and Israel against Iran.

Reuters reported it could not independently verify the development at the time.

Meanwhile, both the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department have not issued official statements on the matter. When approached by the Washington Post, Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell declined to provide details.

“The department cannot comment on the secretary’s (Hegseth’s) movements for security ⁠reasons, and reporting on such movements is grossly irresponsible,” he told the Post.

United States President Donald Trump has criticised Israel’s recent strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field, as tensions escalate across the Middle East with retaliatory attacks hitting key energy facilities in several countries.

In a message shared by the White House on X early Thursday, Mr Trump stated that the United States had no involvement in the Israeli operation. He said, “Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Pars Gas Field in Iran.”

He added that further attacks on the facility would not occur under certain conditions. According to him, “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field…” unless Iran continues its strikes on Qatar.

The US president also condemned Iran’s response, which targeted gas infrastructure in Qatar. He warned that any additional assault on Qatar’s facilities would trigger severe consequences, including the destruction of “the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field.”

The developments follow reports that Iran launched missiles at the Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar. QatarEnergy confirmed that the strike caused fires and “extensive damage.” The company later disclosed that multiple liquefied natural gas facilities were hit, leading to “sizeable fires and extensive further damage.”

Authorities had evacuated the site earlier after Iran announced plans to strike several locations in the region. The move was described as retaliation for earlier attacks on the South Pars gas field, which Iran attributes to Israel and the United States. Washington has since denied any role in that incident.

Beyond Qatar, Iran extended its response to other parts of the region. Two refineries in Saudi Arabia were struck, while the Habshan gas facility in Abu Dhabi was also targeted. The United Arab Emirates subsequently shut down the affected facility.

There has been no official response from Iran regarding Mr Trump’s warning as of the time of filing this report.

Analysts say the latest attacks on critical energy infrastructure could deepen the global gas supply crisis. Prices of gas and other petroleum products have already climbed sharply since late February, when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran.

The ongoing conflict has claimed more than 1,500 lives, with most of the casualties reported in Iran.

By Sabiu Abdullahi

United States intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran has not resumed efforts to rebuild its nuclear enrichment programme following the destruction of key facilities in a joint US-Israeli strike in June 2025. The finding contrasts with President Donald Trump’s justification for his ongoing military campaign.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard disclosed the assessment in a written submission presented during an annual threat review before the Senate intelligence committee. However, she did not repeat the position while addressing lawmakers in person.

“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” Gabbard said in the testimony to the Senate intelligence committee.

When questioned by a Democratic senator over the omission during the hearing, Gabbard explained that time constraints prevented her from reading the full statement. She did not dispute the conclusion.

President Trump has consistently defended the February 28 strike on Iran, which was carried out alongside Israel. He cited what he described as an “imminent threat.” After the 2025 bombing, Trump stated that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been completely destroyed. More recently, he has claimed that Tehran was close to producing a nuclear weapon. That position is not widely supported by analysts and comes amid ongoing negotiations over a possible nuclear agreement.

Meanwhile, a senior aide to Gabbard stepped down on Tuesday. The official said there was no “imminent threat” and argued that Trump had been misinformed by both Israel and sections of the media.

In her remarks to senators, Gabbard noted that Iran had suffered significant damage in recent weeks of attacks. The strikes included the killing of longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Despite this, she said the country’s governing system remains in place.

The US intelligence community “assesses the regime in Iran to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities,” Gabbard said.

She added that if the current leadership remains, it may attempt to rebuild over time.

“If a hostile regime survives, it will likely seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military, missiles, and UAV forces,” Gabbard said.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu 

On Saturday, March 14, 2026, Dr Muhsin Ibrahim shared a newspaper report with me announcing the passing of Jürgen Habermas. The German philosopher died at the age of ninety-six in Starnberg, an affluent town in Upper Bavaria. Muhsin was well aware of how deeply I had drawn on Habermas’s theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere in my research on Muslim Hausa media cultures. 

His passing marks the end of an era in critical social theory. Habermas’s work on communication, rationality, and society made him one of the most influential philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as a major intellectual figure in postwar Germany.

Many Africanists did not initially read Habermas directly. Rather, they encountered his ideas through mediated theoretical engagements in the writings of scholars such as Brian Larkin. I myself first became aware of the public–private sphere debate as part of the broader Frankfurt School theoretical repertoire in Larkin’s studies of media culture in northern Nigeria. His work contributed significantly to later “post-public sphere” discussions by demonstrating how Habermasian insights could be adapted to different social, cultural, and technological environments.

Of Habermas’s many publications, the one that proved most decisive for me was The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Originally published in German in 1962 and translated into English by Thomas Burger (with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence) in 1989, it is an extraordinarily dense text. One often needs the guidance of someone already conversant with its arguments to appreciate its analytical elegance. 

I was fortunate to own a copy—purchased for me in the pre-digital era by Gillian Belben, then Director of the British Council in Kano. I read it several times before fully grasping how powerfully it provided a framework for understanding public reactions to Hausa films and the emergence of censorship debates.

Habermas’s study retraces the historical emergence of the bourgeois public sphere as a communicative domain distinct from the state, in which private individuals could assemble to discuss matters of common concern. By analysing the transformations of this sphere, he recovered a concept of enduring importance for social and political theory. In simplified terms, the argument draws attention to differentiated social spaces—those of the home and those of the wider public—and to the ways in which each structures particular forms of discussion and social interaction.

I relied heavily on this analytical distinction when I presented my first international seminar at the Institut für Afrikanistik, University of Cologne, on November 15, 2004. Titled “Enter the Dragon: Shari’a, Popular Culture and Film Censorship in Northern Nigeria,” the seminar explored how Hausa films often rendered visible aspects of domestic life traditionally regarded as private, thereby provoking moral anxieties and regulatory responses. By destabilising the boundary between the two spheres, Hausa cinema helped produce new forms of mediated public debate. A dramatic illustration of this dynamic emerged in the widely discussed Hiyana scandal of 2007, in which a private act became publicly circulated, with far-reaching cultural consequences.

The communicative arena that Habermas conceptualised as the bourgeois public sphere appears today in a historically transformed guise within the networked environments of social media. In Muslim societies such as those of northern Nigeria, digital platforms have intensified the long-standing negotiation between domestic moral order and public cultural expression. 

Conversations once confined to living rooms, mosque courtyards, or informal viewing gatherings now unfold in algorithmically structured yet widely accessible communicative spaces. These interactions do not reproduce Habermas’s ideal of rational-critical debate in any straightforward manner. Rather, they reveal plural, affective, and technologically mediated publics in which questions of religious legitimacy, gendered visibility, and cultural authority are continually contested. Social media, therefore, represent not the revival of the bourgeois public sphere but a new phase in its structural transformation — what might tentatively be described as a “third space.”

The world of critical social theory will undoubtedly feel the loss of Jürgen Habermas. Yet his conceptualisation of the public–private divide will continue to shape scholarly reflections on media, communication, and cultural change for years to come.

Readers interested in further discussions of the public–private debate in Islamic contexts may consult:

Kadivar, Mohsen. 2003. An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islam. Social Research 70 (3): 659–680.

Iranian state media has announced the death of Ali Larijani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, following reported Israeli air attacks carried out overnight.

The confirmation came after Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, stated that Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani were killed during the strikes.

In a statement issued by his office, Katz alleged that both men lost their lives in the operation.

“I have just been updated by the Chief of Staff that Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and the head of the Basij — Iran’s central repression apparatus — (Soleimani), were eliminated last night,” Katz claimed in a statement released by his ministry.

Earlier reports from Israeli media indicated that Larijani was the intended target of the overnight assault.

The development marks a significant escalation in tensions between Iran and Israel, as both sides continue to exchange accusations over ongoing military actions.