VICE News - The War and Conflict Issue #02

THE ISLAMIC STATE At the beginning of April, the Islamic State released more than 200 Yazidis from among the thousands the group is believed to have captured last summer during its expansion from Syria into northern Iraq.

ON THE BANKS OF DESPAIR

Hunted by a coalition of armies after brutally killing thousands of people in 2014, members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram are now hiding on hundreds of small, inaccessible islands scattered across Lake Chad

With the dry season winding down in South Sudan, government forces have gone on the offensive in the country’s oil-rich Unity state in an apparent attempt to capture territory from rebels.

PRAY IT RAINS LIKE HELL

THE WAR & CONFLICT ISSUE / 02

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CONTENTS

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ON THE BANKS OF DESPAIR WITH LAKE CHAD’S BOKO HARAM REFUGEES

Hunted by a coalition of armies after brutally killing thousands of people in 2014, members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram are now hiding on hundreds of small, inaccessible islands scattered across Lake Chad.

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THE ISLAMIC STATE ARE SELLING ENSLAVED YAZIDIS BACK TO THEIR FAMILIES

At the beginning of April, the Islamic State released more than 200 Yazidis from among the thousands the group is believed to have captured last summer during it’s expansion from Syria into northern Iraq.

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OLD ALLIES ABSENT: RUSSIA PARADES TROOPS AND TANKS AT WWII VICTORY CELEBRATION

Thousands of troops and tanks paraded through Moscow’s Red Square today to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II in an extravagant display that seemingly spared no expense, but also showed signs of Russia’s increasing isolation from the West.

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ISREALI TROOPS ‘BREAKING THE SILENCE’ ON GAZA IGNITING THE DEBATE OVER ALLEDGED MISCONDUCT

Newly published testimony from members of the Israeli military who took part in last summer’s assault on Gaza has painted a picture of an intervention that encouraged soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later, leading to the abuse of civilians caught in the crossfire.

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LITHUANIA THINKS THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING AND IS PREPARING WITH WARGAMES

The building was once an abattoir and it smells that way. Inside the grey, peeling structure, men in dark tracksuits pull down their facemasks to smoke cigarettes. Upstairs, someone has taped old bed sheets over the broken windows.

6 – 11

THE ISLAMIC STATE An in-depth feature looking at the latest news about the claimed Middle-Eastern Caliphate and the Western ‘The Islamic State’ in a feature section of this month’s Vice News.

20 – 21 ‘PRAY IT RAINS LIKE HELL’ FIGHTING HEATS UP AS SOUTH SUDAN’S DRY SEASON WINDS DOWN

With the dry season winding down in South Sudan, government forces have gone on the offensive in the country’s oil-rich Unity state in an apparent attempt to capture territory from rebels before heavy rains make troop movements impossible in the coming months.

18 – 19

TENTATIVE PEACE REACHED IN THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC AFTER TWO YEARS OF FIGHTING More than two years after rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) captured the country’s capital Bangui and set off a cycle of retribution and ethnic cleansing, 10 groups in the war-torn nation have agreed to lay down their arms.

24 – 25 BURUNDI PROTESTERS BURN BODY AS VIOLENCE

ESCALATES OVER PRESIDENT’S BID FOR THIRD TERM

At least four people including a 15-year-old boy died in clashes Thursday, according to the Burundi Red Cross. Nine serious injuries were also reported. Supporters of President Pierre Nkurunziza whose controversial decision to seek a third term in office sparked the protests and allegedly threw grenades at the demonstrators.

30 – 31 SYRIA MIGHT BE HIDING CHEMICAL WEAPONS FROM INTERNATIONAL INSPECTORS

Inspectors from an international watchdog reportedly discovered traces of deadly nerve agents at a military research site in Syria, potentially bolstering evidence that contradicts President Bashar al-Assad’s denials that the country still possesses and is using chemical weapons during its ongoing civil war.

32 – 33 UKRAINE RELEASES VIDEO TO PROVE IT’S CLAIMED CAPTURE OF TWO RUSSIAN ‘SPECIAL FORCES’

Ukrainian officials declared on Sunday that a pro-government volunteer battalion had captured two wounded Russian soldiers in the country’s restive eastern Donbas region. Authorities interrogated the two men and have moved them to a hospital in Kiev.

ISSUE 02 Editor Luke Turton

Designer and Creator

Writers Samuel Oakford & Arijeta Lajka

The Islamic State is Selling Enslaved Yazidis Back to their Families

Liz Fields

Islamic States Second-in-Command Reportedly Killed by Air-strike in Iraq Ukraine Releases Video to Prove it’s Claimed Capture of Two Russian ‘Special Forces’

Gillian Mohney Colleen Curry Tomaso Clavarino Olivier Becker

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Violent Iraqi Prison Break that Freed Dozens

Welcome once more to Issue Two of Vice News covers the world of War and Conflict, some of you will be sat at home barely affected or even unbeknown that there are a multitude of ongoing conflicts across the globe affecting millions of people.

Issue Two covers War and conflict from around the globe, happening as we speak, covering pressing issues such as the spread of Islamic State throughout the Middle-East or the ongoing conflict in the Central African Republic.

We also take a look at other conflicts such as the Ukraine Conflict and how Russia has caused tension throughout Europe with it’s show of military aggression where as within Russia a Victory Parade spans the length of Red Square in Moscow celebrating the 70th anniversary since the end of World War II.

On the Banks of Despair with Lake Chad’s Boko Haram Refugee’s

Tensions within the Middle-East remain at high with the spread of ISIS and a past conflict between Israel and Gaza comes back into the limelight as claims of misconduct targeted at the Israeli military take their course.

Old Allies Absent: Russia Parades Troops and Tanks at WWII Victory Celebration

This issue covers the war and conflicts that are not recognised by the conventional media.

US Troops Killed a Top Islamic State Leader and Captured His Wife in a Raid in Syria

Syria Might be Hiding Chemical Weapons from International Inspectors Jason Patankin Samuel Oakford

‘Pray it Rain’s Like Hell’ Fighting Heats up as Dry Season in South Sudan Winds Down Tentative Peace Reached in Central African Republic After Two Years of Brutal Fighting Israeli Troops ‘Breaking the Silence’ on Gaza Ignite Debate over Alleged Misconduct

Dieudonné Hakizimana Kayla Ruble Katie Engelhart

Burundi Protesters Burn Body as Violence Escalates Over President’s Bid for Third Term Lithuania Think the Russians are Coming and it’s Preparing with War-games

Photography via AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon Flickr - Domenico Wiki Commons - Bestoun94 Tomaso Clavarino Kremlin.ru

Mideast Libya Islamic State (pg.7, 11) Yazidi Old Women Carried by Two Women (pg.9) Two Yazidi Men (pg.9) On the Banks of Despair With Lake Chad’s Boko Haram Refugees (pg.12-15) 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade (pg.16-17) Strategic bomber Tu-160 with Refueling Il-78 during the parade (pg.18) RS-24s escorted by GAZ Tigrs and Bumerang APCs behind them (pg.19)

Twitter, Emma Wells Wikipedia - Cokonpyc

Chinese Soldiers Marching in Russian Victory Parade, 2015 (pg. 18) T-14 Armarta Tank (pg. 19) RS-24 Yars (pg.19)

Adam Bailes

South Sudanese Soldier holding Machine Gun (pg.21) Squatting in Fields (pg. 21)

Robert Young Pelton Flickr - hdptcar Dieudonné Hakizimana and Kayla Ruble Wikipedia - Boris Niehaus

Central African Republic Soldier (pg. 22) Burundi Protesters Burn Body as Violence Escalates over Presidents Bid for Third Term (pg.25) Destroyed ambulance in the City of Shijaiyah in the Gaza Strip (pg. 26)

Flickr - IDF Spokesperson Unit Flickr - Azaz, Syria Flickr, UNHCR Photo Unit All written articles within written work of Vice News and the journalists and writers associated, part of the Vice Media Group.

The writers of the editorial are referenced above. All images used and referenced under a creative commons licence and sourced with no copyright infringement intended. This publication is a noncommercial, editorial piece intended as a final year project at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Artillery Corps in Gaza (pg.29) Destroyed Tank (pg. 31) Za’atari Refugee Camp (pg. 31)

Luke Turton, Editor

VICE NEWS

ISSUE TWO

THE ISLAMIC STATE

The Islamic State Is Selling Enslaved Yazidis Back to Their Families At the beginning of April, the Islamic State released more than 200 Yazidis from among the thousands the group is believed to have captured last summer during it’s expansion from Syria into northern Iraq.

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Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Violent Iraqi Prison Break That Freed Dozens Islamic State militants reportedly orchestrated a prison break in Iraq on Saturday that freed at least 40 inmates and left multiple Iraqi soldiers and guards killed or injured.

Islamic State’s Second-in-Command Reportedly Killed by Airstrike in Iraq An airstrike has reportedly killed the Islamic State’s second-in-command, Abu Alaa al-Afri, in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

US Troops Killed a Top Islamic State Leader and Captured His Wife in a Raid in Syria US special operations forces based in Iraq set out to capture a senior Islamic State leader during a raid in eastern Syria but ended up killing him and taking his wife into custody instead, the White House and Department of Defense announced earlier today.

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ISSUE TWO

The Islamic State Is Selling Enslaved Yazidis Back to Their Families At the beginning of April, the Islamic State released more than 200 Yazidis from among the thousands the group is believed to have captured last summer during its expansion from Syria into northern Iraq.

At the time, the details of the transfer were murky, with some media reports characterizing the move as a “rare act of goodwill” on the part of the terrorist group. But VICE News has learned that the release of 217 Yazidis on April 4 was far from a benevolent act. According to United Nations human rights officials, the Yazidis — an ethno-religious minority group whose members are considered infidels by the Islamic State who were sold back to their families as slaves in exchange for cash.

According to UN officials in Iraq, the Islamic State (IS) which is also known as ISIS, ISIL, and by its Arabic acronym Daesh — regularly requests as much as $30,000 for prisoners. Faced with a relentless assault from US-led coalition aircraft and Iraqi security forces buttressed by powerful, often Iranian-backed, Shiite militias, IS has by some accounts lost a quarter of the self-proclaimed “caliphate” it captured in Iraq and Syria last year. That pressure, and a pinch on their economic activities, may have played a role in approving the April 4 transfer. But whatever their motives, up until the last moment IS insisted that the Yazidis were slaves and would not be ransomed. Instead, they were sold.

“As ISIL regards those who have not converted as malak yamiin [slaves], in ISIL’s eyes the money paid was the purchase price,” UN human rights chief in Iraq Francesco Motta told VICE News.

“All were taken before a so-called Sharia court for the ‘bill of sale’ to be approved prior to their release.” Motta said the selling of the Yazidis is conducted through intermediaries in areas under Islamic State control.

Prices vary, but are reportedly lower if the buyer is not known to be someone acting on behalf of the Yazidi community or Kurdish Regional Government. Some local Iraqis have taken advantage of this disparity and secretly purchased the freedom of Yazidis before they are ushered to Iraqi Kurdistan. Getting caught has a heavy price, last week a Sunni Arab man was reportedly killed for trying to do so.

The UN says the Islamic State’s atrocities against the Yazidis likely amount to genocide. Last summer, the group summarily executed hundreds of Yazidi men and captured several thousand others, including as many as 2,500 women and girls. Those who escaped have largely fled to refugee camps in Kurdish-controlled areas.

Many of the captured women were turned into sex slaves who were sold or simply offered to fighters. Reports soon emerged of openair markets where girls were treated as merchandise. In October, IS attempted to justify the treatment of Yazidi females by dubiously citing Islamic doctrine, a move that was ridiculed by prominent Sunni religious figures across the world.

Numerous reports have since recounted the treatment of women and girls under IS control. In March, the UN found the group had taken girls as young as six as sex slaves. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch released interviews with a number of escaped women and girls who recounted being raped and “owned” by

multiple fighters. Through all of it, IS used the morbid veneer of the girls’ status as slaves to justify these atrocities. For a community torn apart and split between captivity, refugee status, or death, it can be a heart wrenching decision to pay or having someone else pay their tormentors. “One old man in a camp in Dohuk told me that intermediaries had informed him that ISIL were demanding $60,000 to purchase his two daughters,” said Motta. “He was crying as he said that he would never be able to obtain that sort of money to get his daughters released.”

Most of the 217 freed Yazidis were elderly or women, and it’s unclear how much was paid for their release. The source of the funds is also unknown. In other cases, Yazidis have been spirited to safety without going before religious courts. On Thursday, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News reported that the Kurdish government had purchased the freedom of some Yazidis for amounts ranging between $1,000 and $10,000.

Even if the release of the Yazidis was a result of the Islamic State’s depleted coffers, any sense among its militants that their position is weakening could put remaining captives, which the UN estimates to be as many as 3,000, at greater risk. “There are also fears that as government forces make advances ISIL may resort to killing these captives [rather] than risk them being freed,” said Motta, who added the UN had recently confirmed 500 Yazidi men had been separated from other prisoners in Tal Afar, raising fears that they would be executed.

‘One old man in a camp in Dohuk told me that intermediaries had informed him that ISIL were demanding $60,000 to purchase his two daughters.’

Prior to the April 4 release, local authorities reported that 974 Yazidis, including 513 women and 304 children, had escaped IS captivity and made it to Kurdistan. They joined more than 637,000 refugees who fled in 2014 from Iraq’s Nineveh province, where most Yazidis lived previously.

As female captives began trickling out of IS-controlled territory, some human rights officials expressed concern that they would be ostracised or rejected by the conservative Yazidi community, or even subject to honour killings. In large part due to intervention

by Yazidi religious leaders, who urged relatives to accept the traumatized women and girls back into the community, the worst of those fears have been averted. Still, there is heavy stigma associated with the assaults the women and girls suffered. While in captivity, some of the women reportedly tried to disfigure themselves, evidently to lessen their chances of being raped.

“They would rub themselves with a corrosive substance on their

faces and bodies to make themselves look ugly,” Amber Khan, a gender and human rights advocate at Women for Women International, told VICE News. “They cut their eyelashes, shaved eyebrows, cut their eyebrows in ways that were again intended to make themselves look unappealing.”

Khan said women and girls are hesitant to report what happened to them. “One of the biggest challenges, and this is not unique to this conflict, is the tremendous stigma and shame that women feel,” she said. The Kurdish Regional Government, along with aid groups, has offered support where it can. But local authorities have also employed questionable practices including so-called “virginity tests” in their attempts to document crimes. Such examinations, which determine if a female’s hymen is intact, are considered inaccurate, unscientific, and usually an invasion of a person’s privacy.

Rothna Begum, Human Rights Watch’s women’s rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa, told VICE News that the tests, which are carried out by a local committee established to document IS atrocities, require a court order and consent from victims. Women and girls often agree to the examinations because of the importance attached to their virginity — so much so that some have requested so-called “restoration” surgeries to reconstruct their hymens.

Human Rights Watch has learned from Kurdish authorities of at least 12 cases where traumatized girls who were raped asked for reconstruction surgeries. Begum described it as a fairly minor procedure, and local authorities explained to her that the many girls improved psychologically after it was completed. She said that while those mental effects shouldn’t be downplayed, the procedure only cemented an unempirical physiological conception of trauma, and did not address long-term psychological distress.

Begum also confirmed that some girls and women raped by IS militants are undergoing abortions. Kurdish authorities insist that they abide by Iraqi law, which bans abortions except when the life of the mother is in danger. Local health officials have said that policy does not extend to women at risk of suicide or honourbased violence. Begun said she knows of at least six clandestine abortions among Yazidi women.

“We are concerned that if the official policy is maintained, women will be less likely to come forward for medical treatment,” said Begum. “It also means they will not be getting legal and safe abortions.” For the time being, Yazidis and their Kurdish hosts will try to buy back their lost women and girls any way they can — even if it in some way endorses the Islamic State’s conception of them as slaves.

The UN’s Motta said the continued purchases risk inflating the price IS will demand, but he added that if “there is no other way to free these people from the horrors that are being inflicted on them on a daily basis, and if this is the way to do it, then so be it.”

Displaced by the conflict caused by ISIS, the Yazidi community have had to flee the spreading violence and oppression.

VICE NEWS

ISSUE TWO

THE ISLAMIC STATE Islamic State’s Second-in-Command Reportedly Killed by Air-strike in Iraq An airstrike has reportedly killed the Islamic State’s second-in-command, Abu Alaa al-Afri, in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

The senior militant had allegedly taken over operations after the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was taken out of action after being seriously wounded himself by an air-strike in March.

Iraqi ministry of defence spokesman Brig-Gen Tahsin Ibrahim said Afri, also known as Abdul Rahman Mustafa Mohammed and multiple other aliases, was killed along with dozens of other militants today when US-led coalition war-planes targeted a mosque in the north-western Iraqi city of Tal Afar, according to the BBC. US Central Command issued a statement Wednesday saying it could not confirm that Afri was killed, and denied claims that a coalition air-strike hit a mosque Wednesday, as reported.

Little is known about Afri, but Iraqi government advisor Hisham al-Hashimi previously told Newsweek that the Islamic State deputy, a former physics teacher, was well-known by militants in the selfproclaimed caliphate, and had assumed control of the group since

al-Baghdadi became incapacitated. “After Baghdadi’s wounding, he [Afri] has begun to head-up Daesh [arabic term for ISIS] with the help of officials responsible for other portfolios,” Hashimi said.

“He will be the leader of Daesh if Baghdadi dies.”

Hashimi said Afri was a “good public speaker” with “strong charisma,” and that he had joined al Qaeda after traveling to Afghanistan in 1989, eventually assuming a senior position within the group. The alleged air-strike that allegedly seriously wounded Baghdadi occurred when a missile hit an Islamic State convoy on March 18, in Nineveh province, near the Syrian border, according to the Guardian newspaper.

The newspaper reported that two separate sources, one an Iraqi official and the other an American diplomat, said Baghdadi was on the verge of death and no longer in full control of Islamic State’s day-to-day activities. Numerous reports of Baghdadi’s serious wounding or death have spread across social and traditional media in recent months, as Kurdish and moderate Syrian rebel militias continue to battle IS on the ground in Iraq and Syria, assisted

by US-led coalition war-planes that have been bombing militant targets since late last year.

In December, the US military said coalition air-strikes had killed Baghdadi’s previous second-in-command, Abu Muslim alTurkmani, near Mosul. The US State Department last week put a $7 million bounty on Abu Alaa al-Afri’s head.

The reward information identified Afri as Abdul Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, and said the Mosul-born militant joined al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) in 2004 and served as a deputy to the late AQI leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the AQI emir of Mosul.

The ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq have killed more than 200,000 and displaced millions, according to UN figures.

Liz Fields, Vice News, Baghdad, Iraq.

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Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Violent Iraqi Prison Break That Freed Dozens Islamic State militants reportedly orchestrated a prison break in Iraq on Saturday that freed at least 40 inmates and left multiple Iraqi soldiers and guards killed or injured.

The Diyala division of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq claimed responsibility for a coordinated attack with inmates on the alKhalis prison about 45 miles north of Baghdad, according to the SITE Intel Group, which tracks extremist activity online. Iraqi officials reportedly said 50 inmates and 12 guards were killed in a battle that erupted after prisoners disarmed guards responding to a riot or fight.

Reuters, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State. Col. Ahmed al-Timimi of the Diyala province security operations centre reportedly seconded the mayor’s account.

Some local officials and the pro-IS Amaq News Agency disputed that version of events, however, saying instead that militants used explosives to break into the prison and arm the inmates from the facility’s weapons cache.“ISIS was responsible for the killings and the release of ISIS prisoners,” Khalis Mayor Oudi Al-Khadran told

Bombings Sunday in and around Baghdad reportedly killed at least 14 people, including three Iraqi soldiers. According to the Associated Press, IS also claimed responsibility for another suicide bombing on Sunday that killed three Iraqi soldiers outside the city of Fallujah.

“Fifteen IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were detonated against army and police convoys and vehicles around the prison,” IS said in a statement posted online, according to the BBC. Security forces have reportedly implemented a curfew and are “The inmates started fighting among themselves, which drew the scouring the area surrounding the prison for escapees. Though attention of the police guards who went to break up the fight,” Iraqi forces aided by US-led air-strikes and Iranian-backed Shia an unnamed police source told Sky News. “Then the prisoners militias have pushed back against IS and recaptured some territory attacked them, stripped them of their weapons and started a riot in recent months, militant attacks have continued to wreak havoc while also managing to capture the armoury of the prison.” across the country.

Gillian Mohney, Vice News, Baghdad, Iraq.

US Troops Killed a Top Islamic State Leader and Captured His Wife in a Raid in Syria US special operations forces based in Iraq set out to capture a senior Islamic State leader during a raid in eastern Syria but ended up killing him and taking his wife into custody instead, the White House and Department of Defence announced earlier today.

President Barack Obama ordered the operation Friday night, which resulted in the death of Abu Sayyaf, described by the White House as having a senior role overseeing the oil and gas operations that are crucial to the militant group’s financing. Sayyaf’s wife, Umm Sayyaf, was reportedly captured in the raid, and the US said that she is being kept in military detention for questioning as a suspected member of the Islamic State. The US commandos also rescued a young Yazidi woman they said was possibly being kept as a slave by the couple. In a statement released by the White House, National Security spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the US intends to reunite the woman with her family. There were no injuries to US troops in the operation, the White House and DOD said in statements released this morning.

Colleen Curry, Vice News, Baghdad, Iraq.

“The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL, and it is a reminder that the United States will never waver in denying safe haven to terrorists who threaten our citizens, and those of our friends and allies,” Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said in his statement, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State.

Meehan noted that the Iraqi government consented to the raid, and that it was carried out according to international and domestic law. The Islamic State controls significant oil fields in eastern Syria, using the money it earns from selling the oil to fund its military operations.

The raid comes as Islamic State fighters advanced on the Syrian city of Palmyra on Friday and fought against Syrian troops there.

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ISSUE TWO

In Pictures:

On the Banks of Despair With Lake Chad’s Boko Haram Refugees

Hunted by a coalition of armies after brutally killing thousands of people in 2014, members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram are now hiding on hundreds of small, inaccessible islands scattered across Lake Chad, a large and shallow body of water bordered by Chad, Niger, Cameroon, and Nigeria.

The lake, which provides water to more than 68 million people, is already losing vegetation and wildlife due to desertification. Now, in Chad, one of the poorest areas in the region, Boko Haram has started attacking neighbouring villages, burning down houses, and jeopardizing communities already devastated by hunger, malnutrition, and a trade embargo with Nigeria.

In recent months, nearly 20,000 refugees and displaced people have fled northern Nigeria and Lake Chad islands occupied by Boko Haram, seeking shelter near the Chadian village of Bagasola on the banks of the lake. The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has opened a camp called Dar Es Salam to receive them, but the living conditions are extreme. In addition to food shortages and disease, the climate is often unbearable, with strong winds, sandstorms, and temperatures that can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius).

According to OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), the crisis is not receiving the necessary support from donors and the international community. Not even a third of the emergency funds sought by the agency have been collected VICE News journeyed into Chadian territory, finding a fragile and unstable region on the banks of despair.

Boko Haram militants, some of as young as 12 years old, surrendered to the Chadian army. They were kidnapped while studying in Nigeria.

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Chadian soldiers during a patrol near Bagasola, on the shores of Lake Chad. The government in N'Djamena, the capital, has reinforced the military presence in the region and started to fight Boko Haram on Chadian territory.

A military briefing on the outskirts of Tchoukou Telia, a small village on Lake Chad attacked several times by Boko Haram. The last attack, a couple of weeks ago, left seven civilians dead.

A group of Nigerian women that fled violence in northern Nigeria gathers around a tent in the Dar Es Salaam refugee camp, 20 miles from the village of Bagasola. There are nearly 5,000 people in the camp, and the living conditions are extreme, with stiflingly hot temperatures and strong winds.

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The banks of Lake Chad are strewn with garbage. Pollution is one cause of the environmental crisis currently facing Africa's fourth-largest water basin.

In the early morning at the market in Bagasola, there used to be lots of fishermen selling their catch. Now, their boats are stuck on the banks of Lake Chad due to the threat of attacks by Boko Haram.

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Boko Haram isn’t the only threat facing in the region. Desertification has reduced the surface area of Lake Chad from approximately 25,000 square kilometres (9,600 square miles) to nearly 1,350 square kilometres (520 square miles).

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In Pictures:

OLD ALLIES ABSENT: RUSSIA PARADES TROOPS AND TANKS AT WWII VICTORY CELEBRATION Thousands of troops and tanks paraded through Moscow’s Red Square today to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II in an extravagant display that seemingly spared no expense, but also showed signs of Russia’s increasing isolation from the West.

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China’s President Xi Jingping, India’s Pranab Mukherjee, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon were all in attendance, as well as leaders from Egypt, Cuba, Venezuela, Palestine, and South Africa.

But leaders from most Western countries, including the US and UK, were conspicuously absent, staying away in an apparent protest over Russia’s role in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also opted out of attending the parade, but plans to visit Russia tomorrow and lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with President Vladimir Putin.

Russia took the celebrations as an opportunity to show off some of their newest and most powerful weaponry, including the Armata T-14 tank. About 100 warplanes flew overhead, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are capable of carrying three nuclear warheads each, also rolled through the parade.

Approximately 16,000 troops participated in the celebrations, including battalions from China, Kazakhstan, and India. Smaller celebrations were also held in 26 other major Russian cities, including two cities in the annexed territory of Crimea.

Strategic bomber Tu-160 with refueling Il-78 during the victory parade

Chinese troops marching along Victory Square as part of this years 70th Victory Parade.

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A show of military and technological strength as Russia shows off it’s new T-14 Armata Tank.

Putin gave a speech that made reference to the growing rift between Russia and many of its former allies during WWII. “In recent decades the basic principles of international cooperation have been ignored ever more frequently,” Putin said. “We see how a military-bloc mentality is gaining momentum.”

Putin also criticized recent “attempts to create a unipolar world,” in an apparent swipe at the US. There was, however, at least some American presence at the festivities, with actor Steven Seagal, a friend of Putin’s, making an appearance.

The Soviet Red Army’s defeat Nazi Germany on May 9, 1945 remains a huge point of national pride in Russia. Victory Day is the most important non-religious holiday in the country, and this year’s parade was the biggest military demonstration yet. The Soviet Union lost more than 26 million people in WWII, which it refers to as the Great Patriotic War, more than any other country.

RS-24s escorted by GAZ Tigrs and Bumerang Armoured Personell Carriers behind them.

Alongside boasting new technology, old technology prevailed such as the RS-24 Yars, ICBM Launcher.

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ISSUE TWO

‘Pray It Rains Like Hell’ Fighting Heats Up as South Sudan’s Dry Season Winds Down With the dry season winding down in South Sudan, government forces have gone on the offensive in the country’s oil-rich Unity state in an apparent attempt to capture territory from rebels before heavy rains make troop movements impossible in the coming months.

The most intense fighting in nearly a year has led to reports of widespread atrocities, including the burning of nearly 30 villages, abductions of boys as young as 10, and rapes and abductions of girls and women.

“The SPLA is pursuing the rebels south,” SPLA spokesperson Col. Philip Aguer told VICE. “They will go to the last.”

On Friday, SPLA forces reached Koch, about 25 miles north of Leer, according to sources in the capital Juba. The next day, aid agencies — including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the International Rescue Committee — evacuated their international staff from Leer and shut down operations. Aguer would not comment on whether the SPLA had taken Koch.

“According to interviews with civilians who managed to flee, perpetrators of these atrocities are SPLA [government] soldiers and armed youth,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement. “Mobilized youth are reportedly clad in civilian clothes wielding AK-47s.”

The reports of atrocities are difficult to verify. Government forces have blocked UN staff from accessing areas affected by conflict, and the UN has refused to grant journalists access to its peacekeeping base in Bentiu, where more than 53,000 people have taken shelter from the fighting.

Still, the UN said it observed “increased incidents of assault, shooting, and killing” near its base. At least 2,200 people have sought refuge there since the latest offensive began, but many more may be unable to reach the safe zone because soldiers have blocked their path.

“People are telling us the wounded were left behind, women and children,” one aid worker from Bentiu told VICE News. “They just said they can’t carry all of those people.”

Another aid worker said there has been a worrying “absence of adolescent and young women and an absence of young males” among the new arrivals. “We’re hearing reports of mass abduction of women, forced marriage, and we’re hearing of rape and killing. Also reports of forced recruitment of young males,” the undisclosed aid worker said.

'People are telling us the wounded were left behind, women and children.

They just said they can't carry all of those people.'

Government troops and associated militia have been pushing south from Bentiu, the Unity state capital, for about two weeks, heading toward the rebel stronghold of Leer, where tens of thousands of civilians are living, including many that previously fled violence in the conflict.

The United States Embassy in Juba said it is “deeply concerned” by reports of heavy fighting following the government offensive, and demanded both sides “silence the guns.”

Civil war erupted in South Sudan in December 2013 when troops loyal to President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, began fighting forces aligned with Riek Machar, the former vice president and a member of the Neur ethnic group. Nearly 2 million people have fled their homes, and some 50,000 are dead.

Kiir’s forces have made steady gains against the opposition since peace talks collapsed in early March. The timing of the current offensive could have devastating consequences because it’s also the time farmers sow their crops. Around 2.5 million people already face crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity partly because of the fighting in the last years preventing farmers from reaching their fields.

“With the planting season at our doorsteps, people now displaced will not have the capacity to plant, nor will humanitarian organizations be able to provide them necessary seeds and tools in time,” said Franz Rauchenstein, head of the ICRC delegation in South Sudan. “This situation will most likely provoke higher dependence on food aid during a time of generalized increased food insecurity.”

The Bentiu base itself may not be fully safe. There is no fence around the perimeter, and an internal UN situation report viewed last week by VICE News noted incursions into the base by armed elements. A stray bullet has injured at least one child inside, and tensions are rising between groups perceived to be loyal to either the rebels or the government.

More than 100,000 people have been displaced so far this month in Unity, and international aid workers have been forced to evacuate, leaving some 300,000 people without life-saving assistance, according to the UN.

SPLA forces from the southern Lakes state have reportedly moved north toward Mayendit, which is on the way to Leer, potentially trapping civilians, according to sources in Juba.

Jason Patinkin, Vice News, Khartoum, Sudan.

There seems little chance of a ceasefire. Both sides have dug in their heels since the last round of peace talks fell apart, with rebel commanders saying there can be no peace with Kiir as president and Kiir saying he will never share power with Machar. With no serious international action regarding proposed sanctions or other measures to bring the warring parties under control, only Mother Nature might be able to stop the fighting.

As one senior aid official in Juba told VICE News, “Pray it rains like hell for the next few days.”

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Tentative Peace Reached in Central African Republic After Two Years of Brutal Fighting More than two years after rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) captured the country’s capital Bangui and set off a cycle of retribution and ethnic cleansing, 10 groups in the war-torn nation have agreed to lay down their arms.

The agreement, reached Sunday, is the culmination of a national peace forum that began last week in Bangui and included civil society, youth, women, and local representatives. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon welcomed the decision and called for “its swift and full implementation.”

Last week, the UN’s Children Fund (UNICEF) announced it had brokered the release of as many as 10,000 children being employed as combatants, cooks, and sex slaves by armed groups in the country.

The forum also heard calls from the CAR’s national election authorities to delay a vote that had been set for later this year.

The country is currently governed by the interim administration of President Catherine Samba-Panza. Elections set for February were already pushed back due to insecurity and lack of preparation.

In March 2013, predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels captured Bangui, deposing President Francoise Bozize and replacing him with their leader Michel Djotodia. The Seleka never effectively governed the country — or even Bangui — and instead took to looting and killing. Amid the anarchy, mostly Christian vigilante groups known as the anti-Balaka took up arms to fight the Seleka and committed their own share of atrocities.

In December, as reports emerged of bodies littering the streets of Bangui, the UN Security Council authorized a French intervention force, Operation Sangaris, to augment the African Union’s own fledgling and disorganized peacekeeping mission.

The French effectively targeted the Seleka, but were accused by Muslim residents of leaving them to fend for themselves. By mid2014, a de facto split had taken effect between areas controlled by the ex-Seleka, who had been disbanded in September by Djotodia, and an assortment of anti-Balaka groups.

When the official UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MINUSCA, finally deployed last September, the Muslim population of Bangui, which once stood at 100,000, had largely been driven out. At the time of MINUSCA’s deployment, the Associated Press calculated that more than 5,000 people had been already been killed in fighting. Some 900,000 — about a fifth of the country’s population — have been forced from their homes.

Samba-Panza’s government enjoys only tenuous control over Bangui, and relies on some 10,000 UN peacekeepers and the French troops to police the rest of the country — a territory slightly smaller than the state of Texas. Evan Cinq-Mars, a research analyst at the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, an organization that works to prevent crimes against humanity, told VICE News the peacekeepers are spread thin across the expanse.

“MINUSCA and the French don’t have full control of the country,” Cinq-Mars said. “There are still vast swaths of the country that are under the control of armed groups, whether it’s various factions of the ex-Seleka or others.”

Sunday’s agreement aims to integrate the fighters into the country’s armed forces — a formidable task that is anything but guaranteed. Cinq-Mars noted the text excludes anyone accused of “crime of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity” from the amnesty program.

Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a probe into abuses committed in the country since 2012.

“The information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that both the Seleka and the anti-Balaka groups have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder, rape, forced displacement, persecution, pillaging, attacks against humanitarian missions and the use of children under 15 in combat,” ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said upon opening the probe.

In April, the country’s National Transition Council established a separate special criminal tribunal aimed at trying those responsible for atrocities. The peace forum was held in the shadow of allegations, first published in the Guardian in late April, that French and African peacekeepers raped and sexually abused young children over the course of several months from December 2013 to June 2014. Staff from UNICEF and the UN’s human rights division collected testimony from displaced children who were among the thousands camped at Bangui’s airport at the time of Operation Sangaris.

Though the UN was not in control of the French force, it has come under fire for its handling of the report, which was leaked to French authorities last July by UN staff member Anders Kompass. The UN later suspended Kompass, who it said had broken protocol by divulging the unredacted document. A UN tribunal reinstated Kompass last week.

French investigators said they were stymied by UN personnel and only received a redacted version of the report on March 30. Kompass told the UN tribunal that the French head of UN peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous, had pushed for his resignation.

Ladsous denied those allegations last week at a hastily called press conference, after which he took no questions.

On Friday, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva that despite the UN’s shortcomings, the French should have acted a lot faster, asking, “How is that nobody knew about these abuses between December and May?”

Samuel Oakford, Vice News, Bangui, Central African Republic.

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Burundi Protesters Burn Body as Violence Escalates Over President’s Bid for Third Term At least four people including a 15-year-old boy died in clashes Thursday, according to the Burundi Red Cross. Nine serious injuries were also reported. Supporters of President Pierre Nkurunziza whose controversial decision to seek a third term in office sparked the protests and allegedly threw grenades at the demonstrators.

Children were kept out of school amid the unrest, missing national secondary school entrance exams that were scheduled for Thursday. By the end of the day, gunshots could still be heard ringing throughout the town.

to slavery. We have become the poorest country in the world because Nkurunziza is fostering militias. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Imbonerakure militia is Nkurunziza’s own personal militia. It’s paraded in front of him. Everyone knows. You have to stop this militia.” Authorities released Ndabitoreye late on Wednesday night.

Thursday marked 12 days since the April 25 announcement

by CNDD-FDD party that Nkurunziza would seek re-election.

Burundi’s constitution, shaped by the Arusha Peace Agreement that ended 12 years of ethnically charged civil war in the country, set a strict two-term limit for the office of president.

At least two of the people who died Thursday were reportedly killed due to their suspected allegiance to the Imbonerakure. One man in the northern suburb of Citiboke was beaten to death. An eyewitness told VICE News a mob destroyed the man’s house after he allegedly fired a grenade into the crowd, injuring several people.

Nkurunziza, a 51-year-old former rebel leader, was appointed to office by the country’s parliament as a transitional leader in 2005.

His supporters claim he is eligible to seek another term because he was not elected by a popular vote when he first took office.

The person burned by protesters was also a suspected militia member.”He had just been dropped off by a Burundian secret service agent called Kazungu and we suspected he was an Imbonerakure who had come here to help the police,” an eyewitness told VICE News.

Police have reportedly detained at least 600 people since the protests began, and dozens have reportedly been killed and injured.

According to the UN’s refugee agency, 40,000 Burundians have fled across the border into neighbouring Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The demonstrations calmed down slightly over the weekend, but erupted again Tuesday after the country’s constitutional court ruled that Nkurunziza is eligible to run in the June 26 elections.

Speaking Wednesday on national television, the leader tried to reassure citizens by saying this would be his last bid for president.

The opposition has accused Imbonerakure members — a group described by the UN as a militia — of backing the police in Bujumbura. Protesters have also accused local officials of arming the Imbonerakure with grenades and handguns.

“We are opposed to President Nkurunziza’s third term and to this police force that kills us instead of protecting us,” a protester in the suburb of Kanyosha told VICE News.

"We are opposed to President Nkurunziza's third term and to this police force that kills us instead of protecting us"

“If you want to arrest us, arrest us all, because we are all in favour of the protests,” Ndabitoreye yelled in French. “We must resist up until the last minute.

You have to resist. Not flee in the face of difficulty.”Ndabitoreye also said the police had kidnapped his wife, and criticized the government for backing the Imbonerakure.“We are free,” he said. “We were born free in this country. No one can reduce us

Belgian attorney Bernard Maingain leaked information to newspaper La Libre Belgique this week alleging that Nkurunziza and his right-hand man General Adolphe Nshimirimana are plotting to arm the militias to incite ethnic violence in other regions of the country.

Maingain confirmed the leak to VICE News on Thursday, claiming the aim of the plot was “to revive ethnic tensions to create a majority that is favourable to President Nkurunziza.” Maingain said he received information suggesting possible attacks on Tutsi neighbourhoods in Bujumbura.

The statements containing the information — allegedly made by “advisors of the general working in the intelligence services” — have been forwarded to the UN Security Council.

Opposition leader Audifax Ndabitoreye echoed these sentiments Wednesday in a heated speech as police officers arrested him at a popular hotel in Bujumbura. Plain clothes police officers took Ndabitoreye into custody after a meeting with foreign ministers from Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.

VICE News was present at the Panoramique Hotel in the capital when Ndabitoreye was detained, and captured footage of comments he made prior to being removed from the building. The countries opposition leader accused the countries police of killing his fellow Burundians.

The government has banned demonstrations, and seven people were arrested Thursday in the northern neighbourhood of Kinama.

A witness told VICE News the detainees were taken to government building in the town.

Presidential spokesman Jean-Claude Karerwa Ndenzako denied the allegations, telling VICE News that Maingain sides with the opposition, and calling the Belgian article one of many “libelous publications” about the situation in Burundi.

Dieudonné Hakizimana and Kayla Ruble, Vice News, Bujumbura, Burundi.

In the neighborhood of Kanyosha on Thursday, anti-government protesters broke the windows at the CNDD-FDD party headquarters, sparking further clashes with the Imbonerakure. One protester said he simply wanted life to return to normal.

“We want to break down all the barricades erected by the protesters because we just want to get on with our daily lives,” he said.

But a member of the Imbonerakure standing nearby seemed to suggest the conflict would not be resolved peacefully. Wielding a club, he threatened to “deal with these protesters that are paralysing the city.”

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Israeli Troops ‘Breaking the Silence’ on Gaza Ignite Debate Over Alleged Misconduct Newly published testimony from members of the Israeli military who took part in last summer’s assault on Gaza has painted a picture of an intervention that encouraged soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later, leading to the abuse of civilians caught in the crossfire.

If accurate, the testimony, released earlier this week by a group of former and current Israeli soldiers known as Breaking the Silence, could contain evidence of possible war crimes that might ultimately be reviewed by the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, the Israeli military and other critics of the report have countered that the interviews are unverifiable, misleading, and out of context. For now, it’s unclear what, if anything, will come of them.

Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip — a narrow piece of land less than half the size of New York City — on July 8, officially targeting Hamas militants who were launching rockets into Israel. By the time the operation ended on August 26, more than 2,100 Palestinians had been killed, according to UN statistics, including more than 1,400 civilians, while 66 Israeli soldiers and seven Israeli civilians had died. More than 9,000 homes in the area were completely destroyed during the assault.

Testimony from more than 60 soldiers who served in the operation, including some of high rank, include accounts of receiving orders to hit targets with as much fire-power as possible, and to shoot anyone in zones that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had already occupied or where they had dropped leaflets warning civilians to evacuate immediately. Breaking the Silence claims that safedistance guidelines for artillery bombardments differed for targets near Israeli troops and those that were near clearly identified Palestinian civilians.

“Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat, the area has to be ‘sterilized,’ empty of people — and if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming, ‘I give up’ or something — then he’s a threat and there’s authorization to open fire,” said an infantry first sergeant who, like all of the soldiers in the report, this one remained anonymous. “The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved.”

Another first sergeant in the armoured corps was asked whether his superiors had discussed how the troops should deal with uninvolved civilians. “No one spoke about that at all,” he answered.

“From their point of view, no one should be there at all.”

Avner Gvaryahu, a member of Breaking the Silence who served as a paratrooper in the West Bank between 2004 and 2007, told VICE News that the testimony was more disturbing than the accounts it collected after Israel’s previous invasion of Gaza in late 2008.

“The whole methodology used in the operation was very troubling,” said Gvaryahu, speaking of the ground offensive from last summer.

“The citizens were given notice by pamphlets that were thrown down from the air, and hours after that entire areas were basically declared war zones, meaning anyone within that area was declared not innocent.”

Particularly alarming for Gvaryahu was the IDF’s deployment of some 35,000 artillery shells, including 19,000 explosive shells capable of killing anyone in a radius of 50 meters.

“The Gaza Strip at the end of the day is totally closed,” he noted, referring to the area’s confinement between Israel and Egypt.

“There wasn’t really anywhere people could go.”

When the premise of war is that anyone in this area is a legitimate target, then the shooting, even if it isn’t intentional, causes extreme damage.’

Among the testimony are accounts of instructions to enter houses only after expending a great deal of fire.

“During training, in that respect, [they told us] that we only enter houses ‘wet,’ with grenades, and the more of them the better,” said one soldier. “Aim, fire and only then go in. You don’t know if there is or isn’t someone in there.”

Other IDF members discussed using disproportionate amounts of fire.

“We were firing purposelessly all day long. Hamas was nowhere to be seen,” said one. “You have no idea what’s going on, and because you don’t, your human nature is to be scared and ‘over’ defensive, so you ‘overshoot.’”

Critics of the report question the authenticity of the soldiers’ testimony and argue that low-level soldiers were not in a position to evaluate specific military manoeuvres in Gaza. They also contend that the narrative presented by Breaking the Silence belies the danger posed by Hamas fighters during the incursion.

IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner said in a statement that the Israeli military does not deliberately target civilians, and stressed that it was fighting Hamas militants who had embedded themselves in civilian areas.

“Breaking the Silence repeatedly refused to provide the relevant IDF authorities with any proof of their claims,” he said. “The report and its contents remain unsubstantiated, unverified, and unnamed.

For obvious reasons such conduct makes any investigation by relevant IDF bodies impossible, and does not allow for the claims and incidents brought up to be deal with.”

Samuel Oakford, Vice News, Jerusalem, Israel.

Other groups, including the Israeli organization NGO Monitor, which claims to “publicize distortions of human rights issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict,” have accused Breaking the Silence of pandering to international critics of Israel.

“Breaking the Silence aims many of its activities at foreign (nonIsraeli) audiences, including journalists, who usually have little knowledge or independent capabilities to assess the allegations,” Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s president, told VICE News via email. Breaking the Silence insists that it seeks to properly inform the Israeli public and prompt the military to reconsider its internal laws of war. It also wants the testimony to ultimately lead

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to an independent Israeli investigation into the IDF’s strategy in Gaza. The report comes at a sensitive time. In April, Palestine officially joined the International Criminal Court (ICC). Though Palestinian officials have not officially lodged complaints against Israel at the Hague-based court, its prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has launched a preliminary inquiry into any crimes that were committed in Palestinian territory after June 13, 2014 — a month before Operation Protective Edge was launched and just as Israel began a severe crackdown in the West Bank.

Any future investigations and possible prosecution could target illegal Israeli settlement activity and abuses committed by Hamas in the past year, along with violations perpetrated by Israel during Operation Protective Edge — alleged crimes that are described by the Breaking the Silence report.

“Some of the allegations in the report are quite shocking,” Jens Ohlin, a professor of international law at Cornell Law School, told VICE News. “If true — and that’s a big if — they might constitute evidence of multiple war crimes.”

Ohlin said that the testimony could reflect the crime of disproportionate collateral damage to civilians, but cautioned that the soldiers’ testimony didn’t fully address the military value of targets within Gaza — a critical element in the weighing up of possible violations.

“Second, there is the war crime of intentionally targeting civilians,” he added. “For that crime, the real question is whether the alleged war crimes were the result of rogue soldiers or a top-down policy that can be traced to higher officials in the military hierarchy.”

Though the ICC would theoretically attempt to conduct similar interviews on its own, court judges are expected to be able to evaluate evidence that hasn’t been directly gathered.

Ohlin, like other observers, said a case implicating Israel’s military command structure will be hard to prove, but added that the report’s testimony might at least illustrate for the court negligence on the part of military leadership to avoid civilian casualties.

Among the various criticisms directed at Breaking the Silence is the point that the IDF is singled out among advanced militaries that also enjoy vastly superior fire-power and inflict so-called “collateral damage.” Former AP journalist Matti Friedman said as much in a Facebook post that was later picked up by elements of the Israeli and Jewish press.

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The Breaking the Silence report arrives in a context that is by now familiar to Palestinians: alleged Israeli mistreatment overshadowed by more demanding international issues and a disinclination among American officials to antagonize Israel.

“Civilian casualty rates are high — compared to what? Compared to the US in Fallujah? The British in Northern Ireland? The Canadians in Helmand Province?” Wrote Friedman, who has for years criticized what he believes are the unfavourable media portrayals of Israel.

If the debate over what crimes, if any, Israel might have committed in Gaza is contentious, it is also true that the ICC would be breaking new ground in tackling that very question.

Ohlin pointed out that the ICC and other global justice mechanisms have not focused on disproportionate force employed by advanced militaries instead preferring clearer-cut cases of atrocity crimes. In fact, the ICC has not prosecuted anyone outside of Africa.

“If you look at Nuremberg, at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, if you look at the ICC, the Special Court for Sierra Leone and Cambodia, none of those cases involve cases of violating the rule on proportionality,” said Ohlin.

George Bisharat, a Palestinian-American professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, told VICE News that in lieu of serving as direct proof, the soldiers’ testimony could give the court political cover to pursue what would be by far its most controversial case yet.

“These statements are not in themselves evidence at this point,” cautioned Bisharat. “But there is little question to me that some of these incidents described would be considered war crimes cognizable under the Rome Statute.”

The Rome Statue is the ICC’s founding text, which Palestine signed last December. The move came a day after a resolution setting a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory was shot down at the United Nations Security Council, one vote shy of forcing a likely US veto. Palestine officially joined the court in April.

Bisharat said that with Israel and Palestine peace talks all but dead, Palestine’s decision last year was as much political — intended for both domestic audiences and diplomatic leveraging purposes — as it was a statement of principal.

France has publicly pushed for a toned down Security Council resolution to set parameters for peace talks. In March, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters at the UN that his country would propose such a text “in the coming weeks.”

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No resolution has yet been introduced, and council diplomats say that none should be expected ahead of the resumption of talks over Iran’s nuclear program in June.

Despite the Obama administration’s cold relations with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it appears in no hurry to act on Palestine.

“There is only so much political capital that the administration believes it has to deal with Israel, Palestine, and Iran,” said Bisharat. “The administration is having to choose between the Iran deal and the Palestinians.”

The Breaking the Silence report arrives in a context that is by now familiar to Palestinians: alleged Israeli mistreatment overshadowed by more demanding international issues and a disinclination among American officials to antagonize Israel.

Israel has launched probes into several high-profile incidents during the 50-day war, including the shelling of a beach in Gaza City on July 16 that resulted in the deaths of four children.

Lerner said that 19 criminal investigations had been initiated and indictments filed against three soldiers accused of theft and obstruction of justice.

But Gvaryahu is discouraged that Israel’s military has shown no willingness to reconsider its conduct of an operation that killed more civilians than purported targets.

“The military is not questioning its rules of engagement,” said Gvaryahu. “That’s what we think should be investigated, and is something that cannot be investigated by the military because it is ultimately subordinate.”

The experts that VICE News consulted agreed that, for the time being, an ICC investigation into the Gaza conflict is a long way off.

If any cases on Palestine do come, the court will find it easier to consider Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, which even its closest allies have characterized as illegal.

In the meantime, Gvaryahu notes that Breaking the Silence’s testimony should not be taken as evidence that Israel troops intended to murder Palestinian civilians.

“I think there is a very big difference between indiscriminate fire and intentional killing,” he said. “But when the premise of war is that anyone in this area is a legitimate target, then the shooting, even if it isn’t intentional, causes extreme damage.”

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Syria Might Be Hiding Chemical Weapons From International Inspectors Inspectors from an international watchdog reportedly discovered traces of deadly nerve agents at a military research site in Syria, potentially bolstering evidence that contradicts President Bashar al-Assad’s denials that the country still possesses and is using chemical weapons during its ongoing civil war.

Olivia Becker, Vice News, Damascus, Syria.

Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found chemical precursors used to make the nerve agents sarin and VX in samples taken from Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre in December and January, anonymous diplomatic sources told Reuters on Friday.

Despite agreeing to a deal brokered by the US and Russia in 2013 to destroy his country’s chemical weapons program, Assad has repeatedly been accused of using chemical weapons.

The US almost intervened in Syria in 2013 after reports emerged that Assad dropped sarin gas on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, killing some 1,400 people. To avoid intervention, Assad turned over 1,300 tons of chemical weapons to the United Nations and OPCW for destruction.

Assad also agreed to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which forbids the use, manufacture, or stockpiling of chemical weapons as a tool of war. But the most recent findings by the OPCW seemingly indicate that former president Assad did not destroy all of his weapons.

“This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin,” an unknown diplomatic source told Reuters.

“They have so far been unable to give a satisfactory explanation about this finding.”

The OPCW, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, began carrying out an investigation into the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon by the regime in April 2014 after reports emerged that the gas was being used in attacks. The Syrian government has blocked the fact-finding mission from accessing the sites in northern Syria where there was suspected use of chlorine on villages. The commission said that chlorine has been used “systematically and repeatedly,” but is not authorized to specifically name those who use it.

On Friday, three American diplomats separately accused the Syrian regime of using chlorine as a chemical weapon.

The American ambassador to the OPCW, Robert Mikulak, said there is a “steady stream” of credible reports that the Assad government is using chlorine as a chemical weapon. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said he believes the reports.

Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, also agreed that Assad has been dropping chlorine-filled barrel bombs on neighbourhoods to kill his own citizens, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“As you know, only the regime has helicopters,” Ms. Power said.

“So we believe the factual record is quite straightforward and devastating in terms of Syrian regime use.”

The regime denies they used chemical weapons in 2013, and has said opposition groups were responsible for the attacks in Ghouta, although they offered no evidence to support those claims.

The chemical weapons that the Assad regime is accused of using are considered some of the deadliest by the OPCW. Chlorine is a choking agent, while sarin and VX are categorized as nerve agents.

All of them can cause death and severe suffering.

Chemical weapons were first used in World War I and caused massive devastation, leading many countries to ban them. The attacks in Ghouta were the first time a government has used chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein targeted Iraq’s Kurdish population in 1988, according to Human Rights Watch.

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A lot of the discoveries of Chemical Weapons in Syria were during the civil war, which displaced around 83,000 Syrians at Za’atari Refugee Camp

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Ukraine Releases Video to Prove It’s Claimed Capture of Two Russian ‘Special Forces’ Ukrainian officials declared on Sunday that a pro-government volunteer battalion had captured two wounded Russian soldiers in the country’s restive eastern Donbas region.

Authorities interrogated the two men and have moved them to a hospital in Kiev.

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Ukrainian officials declared on Sunday that a pro-government volunteer battalion had captured two wounded Russian soldiers in the country’s restive eastern Donbas region. Authorities interrogated the two men and have subsequently moved them to a hospital in Kiev.

Footage of some questioning was uploaded to YouTube and later posted to Facebook by Ukrainian MP Anton Gerashchenko. In the video, a purported sergeant of the elite Third Brigade of the Russian special forces gives his name as Alexandrov Alexander Anatolievich and claims to his captors that he is a “military servant of the Russian Federation.”

The captured fighter lies under an emergency thermal blanket throughout the nearly 9-minute video as he relays details to his captors about the 14-member unit that he had been fighting with in Ukraine’s Luhansk region since May 6, according to subtitles provided by the Ukrainian government. He appears to name some of his fellow soldiers and says that he was injured after being noticed while conducting a surveillance operation in the southern part of Shchastya city. He goes on to suggest that there are seven to eight groups of contracted Russian soldiers working in the Luhansk region.

The subtitles at the beginning of the video name the second prisoner of war as the unit’s captain, Yerofeyev Yevgeniy Vladimirovich.

“Both we and the Defense Ministry have repeatedly said that there are no Russian servicemen in Donbas.”

VICE News has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the video. When reports asked Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to comment on the footage and the Ukrainian governments announcements, he said, “Both we and the defence ministry have repeatedly said that there are no Russian servicemen in Donbas.”

Though Russian soldiers are widely believed to be operating in eastern Ukraine, Russia has continually denied that it has sent soldiers or arms to assist pro-separatist forces. The country’s government has so far conceded only that Russian volunteers might be operating in the region.

Meanwhile, a commander with the Luhansk People’s Republic militia acknowledged the troops’ capture and appeared to dispute their identification as Russian special forces, identifying them instead as Luhansk servicemen who had volunteered some months ago. He said that he has documentation that supports this.

Ukrainian authorities said that they would allow Ukrainian journalists to interview the detainees later on Monday. The chief of Ukraine’s Security Service suggested the men would not be used in any hostage exchange with Russia, and would instead be “facing criminal responsibility,” according to Interfax News Agency.

A pro-Ukrainian forces medic, Grigory Maksimets, told the Associated Press that he treated the wounded soldiers when they arrived at his intensive care unit at the hospital in Shchastya after their capture late Saturday. One man had apparently sustained a shoulder injury while the other had been wounded in the right leg, the medic said.

“They asked not to be sedated because they were afraid we would take their organs,” he added.

Kiev and the West maintain that Moscow has sent thousands of troops to assist with the separatist uprising in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions. A recently released 64-page report detailing Kremlin involvement in the conflict, undertaken by the assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov before he was gunned down near the Kremlin in February, has countered the government’s denials.

The report, completed and released by Nemtsov’s allies last week, alleged that at least 220 Russian soldiers died in two key battles in Ukrainian cities of Ilovaisk and Debaltseve.

More than 6,100 people have been killed since the conflict began.

Liz Fields, Vice News, Luhansk, Ukraine.

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ISSUE TWO

Lithuania Thinks the Russians Are Coming and It’s Preparing with Wargames

The building was once an abattoir and it smells that way. Inside the grey, peeling structure, men in dark tracksuits pull down their face masks to smoke cigarettes.

Upstairs, someone has taped old bed sheets over the broken windows.

Operation Lightning Bold Photo: Training operations take place to train a “Rapid Reaction Force” incase the Russian’s come.

Katie Engelhart, Vice News, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Outside, a helicopter flies low overhead. A purple, red, and yellow flag which rebel forces have tied to a pole and wedged into a rotting woodpile which twists around itself. The flag looks a lot like a tricolor of Spanish Republicans.

Approaching the complex on a woodchip-covered road in eastern Lithuania, I’m told that for the purposes of today, I should imagine the derelict building is a working radio station. Then, I should imagine the radio station has been seized by separatist insurgents, backed and armed by a fictional enemy state called Udija. The rebel commander of Udija is inside; it is from here that he has been orchestrating a string of hybrid insurgent attacks across central and eastern Lithuania.

In a few hours — around lunchtime, when the rebels’ spirit seems to be flagging, and some of the insurgents start checking their cellphones — a handful of armoured personnel vehicles will appear, letting out bands of camouflage-covered soldiers who will snake towards the radio station and lob gas grenades through the windows, so that the masked men inside cough and lose their footing. Fire will be exchanged for over an hour — and the sound of blanks firing will delight the cluster of little boys who have gathered along the road to watch the Udijan separatists be vanquished by Lithuanian soldiers. In the end, several dozen rebels will be left to play dead: on the ground, limbs akimbo, with wounds made of

plastic, glue, and fake crimson blood on prominent display. And so passed one morning of Operation Lightning Bolt: a four-day simulation exercise carried out last week by the small Baltic state of Lithuania — because Lithuanian leaders fear that the Russians are coming, just as they came before for Ukraine.

Throughout the drill, however, none of Lithuania’s army commanders would mention Russia by name. Instead, they spoke of the fictional land of Udija — or sometimes “the East.”

VICE News embedded with the Lithuanian Army for four days as it carried out its first ever nationwide test of the country’s 2,500-strong “Rapid Reaction Force” (RRF), set up in the wake of the Ukraine crisis to deal with the sort of plots that typify conflict in the region — armed protests, airfield and weapons stockpile seizures, the sudden appearance of “little green men” who seem to take orders from far away. “One thing is clear now,” Lithuanian Brig.

Gen. Vilmatas Tamosaitis, told the New York Times soon after plans to build an RRF were announced: “We have to be ready. We have the same neighbours that Ukraine does.” In March, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite told the BBC that her country was “already under attack.” In September, she called Russia a state with “terrorist elements”.Across the region, forces are being mobilized to pre-emptively thwart Russian military meddling. Last week, US tanks rolled through the Estonian countryside, a mere 65 miles

VICE NEWS

THE WAR AND CONFLICT ISSUE

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“We have to be ready.

We have the same neighbors that Ukraine does.” from the Russian border, as part of the 13,000 troop Operation Steadfast Javelin. And the Nordic Sea played host to the curiously titled Operation Dynamic Mongoose.

But Lithuania, an EU and NATO member state, has been most hawkish in its stance against the East. The RRF — formed of two battalion-sized groups, with corresponding logistics, special operation troops, and air support — is the first of its kind along NATO’s eastern border.

On the evening that the drill began, I visited the General Adolfas Ramanauskas Warfare Training Center in Nemencine: a town outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius of scattered forests and architecturally ambitious, if rather unsightly, suburban-style homes. There, I met Major Arnas Mikaila, who led me into war games HQ: a desk-lined room with an enormous, floor-sized map of Lithuania. Under flickering yellow lights, a man in army fatigues was moving cardboard pyramids of various colours, representing various military and civilian units — from one side of the floor to the other.

The premise of Operation Lighting Bolt, Major Mikaila explained, was of an unconventional sort, from an army standpoint. The drill did not assume that a foreign nation had breached Lithuanian territory, in such a way that would trigger Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty — “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” — and so suck in allied forces from across the continent. Rather, the drill envisioned a peacetime scenario, in which shadowy rebels from inside the country were the primary antagonists — carrying out the kind of unrest that, were it not backed by a foreign enemy, would be dealt with by civilian police.

As the major spoke, the drill was beginning. Lithuanian troops were being deployed from their barracks, police were beginning to blockade cities, and borders were being placed on lock down Back in December, the Lithuanian government laid the ground for this exercise, when it adopted the Statute on the Use of the Armed Force, allowing for the deployment of armed national troops in “peacetime.” In an interview with local journalists in March, Major General Jonas Vytautas Zukas said the primary lesson he learned from Ukraine was that national forces must be capable of crushing aggression immediately, even before martial law was formally declared.

Walking atop the map, Mikaila points out strategic locations with a long, silver walking stick. He gestures towards the fictional land of Udija, which occupies the real-life territory of Kaliningrad Oblast: a Russian exclave wedged between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea — just a three-hour drive from Vilnius — which houses Russia’s Baltic fleet and which has, in the last year, been flooded with Russian arms and personnel.

In December, Russia carried out a snap military drill in Kaliningrad with some 9,000 soldiers, 642 military vehicles, 100 artillery units, and 55 warships. In April, Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevicius said Moscow was pouring “all sorts of weapons” into the region, including short-range Iskander ballistic missiles.

So what do these Udija-backed separatists want? “According to intelligence information,” said Mikaila, “criminal groups have become a resistance front to fight for the independence of East

Lithuania.” Back outside the abattoir building, I ask the soldierscome-rebels about Udija’s leader. Does he have a name? Yes. He is President Anton LaPat. And why do people support him?

“They say he will bring the order, re-establish some old values.”

And does LaPat happen to have a penchant for posing topless in photographs? The men snicker. That Lithuania is preparing for Russian encroachment is no great surprise, and not just because of Ukraine. Russian leaders argue that ethnic Russians are routinely suppressed by Baltic governments — and last September, Russia’s foreign minister warned that this “discrimination” may have “farreaching, unfortunate consequences.”

In April, at a closed-door meeting with an American official in Germany, a Kremlin delegation reportedly argued that “the same conditions that existed in Ukraine and caused Russia to take action there” were also present in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Earlier this month, the head of Lithuania’s National Security Committee announced that Russian spies had been attempting to make contact with their former, Soviet-era colleagues — old KGB agents living in Lithuania. Around the same time, Lithuanian authorities arrested a Russian citizen who allegedly sought to “penetrate” Lithuanian law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

In turn, Lithuania has announced plans to increase military spending by some 50 percent, to around $456 million, and to buy a cache of equipment from German armed forces, including 12 tanks. It is also providing lethal aid to Ukraine.

In February, the government announced it would reintroduce conscription across the country. Around the same time, the Lithuanian Defence Ministry published a 98-page guide, “How to Act in Extreme Situations or Instances of War,” which advises citizens on what to do in the event of blockade, or disinformation campaign, or cyber-attack, or the sudden appearance of armed soldiers who wear no insignia and who claim to be without government affiliation. “Keep a sound mind, don’t panic and don’t lose clear thinking,” explains the manual. “Gunshots just outside your window are not the end of the world.”

That Lithuania would be outright flattened if Russia’s military directly took on its 8,000 soldiers is beyond obvious. And indeed, parts of Operation Lighting Bolt drew attention to chronic military deficiencies. At one exercise on May 10, a pretend airfield was dotted with ageing armed personnel carriers and second-hand, castaway Land Rovers. But NATO has similarly been readying its members for trouble along its eastern edge.

This year, the Alliance agreed to expand its own rapid response force from 13,000 to 30,000 troops — and last year agreed to establish a “Very High Readiness Joint Task Force,” which will be capable of deploying in 48 hours. NATO will also open six new Eastern European commander centers, in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The United States is reportedly providing intelligence support to the force — heightening the sense that NATO is coalescing around its post-WWII raison d’etre: to stand guard against Moscow.

In this way, the specter of Russian aggression has, in part, altered the trajectory of Europe’s military development — as NATO member states rush to bulk up old-school ground forces that can skip quickly across large swaths of territory. Should Russia invade, the RRF is meant, in the words of one general, to “buy some

time until NATO can get here.” But for the most part, Lithuania’s RRF is turned inwards — readying for possible Moscow-backed insurgencies from within.

Some Lithuanian officials believe that this separatist lurch might begin on television. In April, Lithuania’s media regulator kicked the Russian-language station RTR Planeta off the air for allegedly pushing Kremlin propaganda: it was “inciting discord, warmongering, spreading biased information.” Lithuania’s military reportedly lobbied for the ban.

This — and the upcoming restart of national conscription — may explain why Lithuanian armed forces are bending over backwards to win the good will of ordinary Lithuanians. Indeed, civilian charm offensives were built into Operation Lightning Bolt. After one military exercise in the town of Kaisiadorys, soldiers set up a kind of town fair, in which civilians could get a taste of Lithuanian military rations (bowls of oily porridge with lumps of ground beef) and play around with military equipment. Women in teetering heels posed for photos with rocket launchers and children climbed through the interior of polished Armored Personnel Carriers.

Yet noticeably, throughout the drill, the troops demurred when I asked a fairly fundamental question: Would Russia really do it?

What would Moscow gain from invading Lithuania? With a Russian population of just 6 percent, Lithuania lacks the sizeable ethnic Russian populations that both Estonia and Latvia have (more than a quarter of the population in each case) — and thus plays less into Putin’s Russian-speaking pan-Slavic vision.

But Aleksandras Matonis, a defence analyst in Vilnius, said the lesson from Ukraine is that “either you feed your own soldiers or you need to feed foreign forces.” Also, fend for yourself. “Either you believe in NATO or you don’t,” he told VICE News. “I choose to believe. [But in] Afghanistan, we saw that some NATO allies do not fulfil their obligations… It’s difficult to rely only on allied unity.”

You don’t have to spend much time in Lithuania for the conversation to shift back in time — to earlier years spent in Russia’s shadow. In 1940, Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union — only to have Nazi German troops enter a year later, rout the Soviets, and begin the killing of nearly 200,000 Lithuanian Jews.

In 1944, the Germans retreated and the Red Army reoccupied the country, this time, deporting hundreds of thousands of people — and kicking off a years-long partisan guerrilla war, which saw tens of thousands killed and many more wind up in Siberian gulags. Only in 1990 did Lithuania become the first Soviet Republic to declare independence. The story of Lithuania’s double Soviet occupation is often used as a modern-day rallying cry.

In the middle of the forest near Kaisiadorys, during one Operation Lightning Bolt drill, Major Linas Pakutka told me that this history has made Lithuanians less susceptible to Russian propaganda.

“That’s why I think we are more loyal than Ukrainian forces are,” he said, over a salty lunch of shredded, boiled beetroot, and inky pork sausages.

But other soldiers at the table worried that Udijan President Anton LaPat and his fifth column Lithuanian associates might interpret history somewhat differently.

“They say [Udija] will bring order, re-establish old values,” said one officer. “They feel nostalgia for the old times.”

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