The key benchmark is whether armed groups in Iraq, regardless of loyalties or ideology, operate under the authority of the state rather than alongside it In an apparent step forward in longstanding plans to bring Iraq’s militias under state control, Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr pledged on 27 May to disband …

Two immigrants from Brazil through social networks recruited citizens into the Russian army, and when they were at the front, they appropriated the payments due to them. The victims were forced to sign the powers of attorney to recruiters, using their ignorance of the Russian language. More than ten Brazilians …

A cache of leaked internal documents from “Battalion 7,” a paramilitary formation stationed at the strategic Prophet Younis summit on Syria’s coast, offers more than a window into a single militia. Taken together, the files amount to a rare schematic of the irregular warfare architecture the Syrian regime engineered after …