The Taliban’s revival of public punishments in Afghanistan has erased whatever ambiguity remained about the regime’s intentions toward women. The case of Hira, a 23-year-old embroiderer sentenced to 39 lashes for visiting a shop without a male guardian, encapsulates the cruelty now normalized as public spectacle. Her ordeal, one faced stoically despite jeering crowds of men, soldiers acting as morality police, and the public humiliation of her family, illustrates how violence is not only inflicted on the body but also weaponized to enforce communal shame and silence. Since Kabul’s fall in 2021, more than a thousand public floggings have been recorded, many targeting women accused of minor infractions or invented offenses. The Taliban have suspended the civil codes of the previous republic and replaced them with their own hardline interpretation of sharia, reintroducing punishments like stoning and flogging with theatrical zeal. UN figures confirm that at least 234 public floggings took place between April and June this year alone, with women and even children among the victims. The punishments are deliberately staged as civic events: loudspeakers announce verdicts, and crowds are encouraged to cheer and count lashes, an institutionalization of mob complicity. The impact is multilayered. Families, terrified of accusations, increasingly force daughters into early marriages to preempt Taliban harassment. Suicides among Afghan women and girls are reportedly rising, a silent measure of the psychological violence inflicted. Accusations of adultery or “improper conduct” are also easily manipulated by male officials to punish women who resist their authority, an abuse of power thinly veiled in the language of religion. The Taliban’s promise of “respecting women’s rights” has become hollow propaganda. Schools and courtrooms remain closed to women, and professional avenues have been systematically dismantled. Flogging and stoning thus serve not only as punishments but also as ritual markers of the Taliban’s dominance: they are warnings against female autonomy itself. What makes the practice more chilling is the regime’s growing confidence in broadcasting these spectacles despite international condemnation. Public violence is no longer hidden but flaunted as policy, a clear signal that Afghanistan has entered a phase of rule where brutality is the governing principle. The degradation of women is inseparable from the Taliban’s concept of governance, creating a system where silence and submission are enforced by terror, and where the world’s outrage has proven powerless to alter its course.

A report from inside the heart of the Sinaloa Cartel offers a rare glimpse into a criminal empire that has long shaped the security and politics of both Mexico and the United States. The New York Times’s Paulina Villegas, after a year of carefully cultivated access, describes an organization that functions less like a band of outlaws and more like a multinational corporation. Drivers, packers, logisticians, and traffickers form a shadow workforce that underpins the fentanyl pipeline, while cartel bosses adapt swiftly to government crackdowns, rivalries, and international scrutiny. The trade may be illicit, but its structure mirrors the globalized supply chains of legitimate business, an uncomfortable truth for governments struggling to dismantle it. What emerges most starkly is the duality of the cartel’s identity: brutal violence coexists with sophisticated organization, paranoia with discipline. Inside Culiacán, Sinaloa’s stronghold, Villegas observed the mixture of adrenaline and fear that defines life in a war zone controlled by rival factions of the same syndicate. Even hardened operatives revealed nerves as they packaged fentanyl for U.S. markets under constant threat of betrayal, raids, or assassination. That she gained their trust enough to witness these operations underscores not only the dangers journalists face but also the cartel’s willingness to flaunt its capacity, suggesting confidence in its ability to outlast government pressure. The broader implications are troubling. While Washington demands Mexico “crack down,” both governments face the reality of a cartel so deeply enmeshed in the economic and political landscape that it has become resilient to traditional countermeasures. Arrests and raids may disrupt operations, but the cartel’s corporate-like agility ensures continuity. Meanwhile, the steady demand for fentanyl in the U.S. guarantees its profitability, reinforcing a transnational loop of dependency that no border wall or military deployment has meaningfully severed. For Mexico, this report highlights a deeper failure of governance. Decades of militarized drug policy have neither reduced cartel influence nor curbed the violence tearing through local communities. Instead, they have normalized an endless cycle in which the state alternates between confrontation and tacit accommodation. The Sinaloa Cartel thrives because it has adapted where governments have not, embedding itself within the very fabric of global commerce, exploiting weakness on both sides of the border.

The murder of Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov in Spain in 2024 underscored a disturbing evolution in Moscow’s statecraft: the increasing reliance on organized crime as an arm of foreign policy. Once content to cloak assassinations and sabotage in diplomatic immunity, the Kremlin has turned to Russia-based organized criminal groups (RBOCs) to fill the gap left by the mass expulsion of its intelligence officers from Europe. The New Lines Institute’s findings depict a system where mobsters act as subcontractors for state violence. Their tasks range from sanctions-busting and smuggling to intelligence collection and targeted killings, all under the cover of “plausible deniability.” Outsourcing to RBOCs blurs the line between criminal enterprise and statecraft, creating a hybrid tool of coercion that spreads fear not just of Russia’s intelligence services, but of its ability to mobilize shadow networks with global reach. The assassination of Kuzminov was emblematic. A pilot who defected to Ukraine in 2023, he represented a propaganda defeat for the Kremlin; his elimination in Alicante was a message to defectors everywhere that there is no safety, even under NATO skies. The likely involvement of Russian mobsters not only added layers of concealment but also demonstrated the regime’s readiness to use criminal violence as an extension of policy. For Western governments, the challenge is twofold. First, to disrupt the logistics of these hybrid operations by tightening surveillance and intelligence-sharing across borders. Second, to strip Moscow of its deniability by publicizing evidence of state-criminal cooperation. Just as pre-invasion intelligence disclosures in 2022 weakened Russia’s propaganda campaigns, exposing these mafia-FSB linkages can puncture the aura of inevitability the Kremlin cultivates. Yet the larger danger is systemic. By integrating organized crime into the fabric of its statecraft, Moscow is ensuring that violence, corruption, and criminality are not accidental byproducts but central features of its foreign policy. This institutionalization of gangsterism blurs the Kremlin’s identity: Russia is no longer merely a state with criminal elements, but a state that increasingly behaves like a criminal syndicate itself.

Indonesia, once hailed as a democratic success story after breaking free from Suharto’s three decades of military-backed rule, is now drifting back toward familiar patterns of authoritarian governance. President Prabowo Subianto, himself a retired general and Suharto’s former son-in-law, has set in motion the largest peacetime military expansion in the country’s recent history. Within his first year in office, Prabowo has established 100 new battalions with ambitions for 500 more, weaving the armed forces into spheres far removed from their traditional mandate. Officially, these units will focus on agriculture, food security, and even pharmaceuticals, but critics note the striking parallels to the doctrine of dwifungsi, the military’s “dual function” of dominating both civilian and security affairs, abolished in 1998 to protect Indonesia’s democratic transition. Supporters argue that a sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands requires a robust military to defend sovereignty and aid in natural disasters. Yet the logic rings hollow. As analysts point out, dispersing under-trained troops to rural subdistricts neither strengthens national defense nor improves civilian livelihoods. Instead, it dilutes military effectiveness and entrenches a uniformed presence in the daily lives of ordinary citizens. The inefficiencies are already well documented: soldiers turned farmers, policymakers, and now pharmacists are unlikely to succeed in fields that demand civilian expertise and accountability. What this policy achieves most clearly is expanding the state’s coercive reach into every corner of public life. The timing and placement of new deployments further sharpen the authoritarian edge. Special forces are being reinforced in Papua, where Indonesia’s heavy-handed military operations have long been condemned by human rights groups. The symbolism is unmistakable: development rhetoric may mask a deeper intent to suppress dissent and maintain control over marginalized regions. Even the government’s austerity-driven protests have been met with riot police, illustrating how militarization is not only expanding in scope but also being weaponized against domestic grievances. Indonesia’s drift under Prabowo must be understood as part of a longer trajectory. His predecessor, Joko Widodo, had already loosened civilian-military boundaries, normalizing a creeping return of uniforms in governance. Prabowo, however, is accelerating that process at breakneck speed, drawing openly from the authoritarian playbook of the 1980s. His cabinet’s enthusiastic support, alongside a proposed 37% increase in defense spending, underscores how institutional checks on military expansion have weakened. In the world’s third-largest democracy, this matters beyond Indonesia’s borders. A hollowed-out civil service and emboldened military apparatus threaten not only domestic liberties but also regional security. Jakarta’s democratic backslide risks emboldening other leaders in Southeast Asia who lean toward militarized governance. For a nation once celebrated for its reformasi, Prabowo’s Indonesia increasingly looks less like a democracy and more like an echo of its own despotic past.

Authorities in Chad have reportedly arrested the son of Boko Haram’s founder, accusing him of leading a clandestine terrorist cell. The detention, if confirmed, is highly significant: Boko Haram’s leadership has fragmented over the past decade, yet its legacy persists through splinter groups that remain active across the Lake Chad Basin. The arrest suggests that familial ties to the group’s origins continue to carry operational weight, lending legitimacy to militant factions seeking to regroup. Chad, long a key military partner for regional counterterrorism operations, faces mounting strain as extremist networks exploit porous borders and weak governance. The presence of Boko Haram-linked cells on Chadian soil underscores how far the insurgency has metastasized beyond Nigeria, destabilizing fragile states from Niger to Cameroon. While the government in N’Djamena may present the arrest as proof of its vigilance, the persistence of new cells reveals the limitations of military crackdowns in a region where poverty, displacement, and authoritarian rule create fertile ground for radicalization. For regional security, the arrest could temporarily disrupt coordination among jihadist networks. Yet experience shows that Boko Haram and its offshoots are adept at regenerating leadership and dispersing their operations. The deeper danger lies in how these groups exploit state repression and public distrust to entrench themselves further. Without reforms that address corruption, human rights abuses, and economic despair, each high-profile arrest risks becoming more symbolic than transformative.