The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are facing fresh accusations of employing chemical weapons in the ongoing conflict against the Rapid Support Forces(RSF), with the latest reports coming from US media outlets, writes Mohsin Osman.

On Saturday (5 September), The New York Times and The Washington Post published dual investigative reports based on leaked intelligence materials. The files include approximately 150 documents, photographs, video clips, and intercepted communications, alongside thousands of text messages retrieved from the phones of Sudanese officers.

The evidence points to an alleged program established in 2024 to manufacture chlorine-based munitions. It details bomb design blueprints, testing operations, and a coordinated cover-up strategy initiated after the plot was uncovered by the United States. The records also outline plans to siphon chlorine gas from a civilian water treatment facility that had originally received the chemical from international aid agencies.

These revelations reignite long-standing allegations of chemical weapons usage that have shadowed SAF leadership since last year, significantly heightening international pressure on the military command.

The United States previously imposed sanctions on Sudan in May 2025 over allegations that the military deployed chemical weapons during the conflict in 2024. The sanctions took effect on July 20, 2025. Authorities in Port Sudan have consistently rejected these accusations, maintaining that they do not produce, stockpile, or use chemical weapons, and emphasizing their adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

A covert programme amid escalating pressure

According to The New York Times, the SAF turned to chemical weapons early in 2024 to break a strategic stalemate, as RSF fighters held firm control over most of the capital, Khartoum.

Leaked records show that Brigadier General Tariq Hussein emerged as a central figure in July 2024, orchestrating the design, planning, and execution of the program. Intercepted messages reveal that Hussein proposed using chlorine to give army forces a tactical edge in the battle for Khartoum. He distributed prototype schematics for an explosive warhead integrated with roughly 33 pounds of chlorine gas, with production commencing that same month.

In messages published by the Times, Hussein noted that the hybrid munitions were designed to maximize lethality—either by shrapnel fragmentation or chlorine gas poisoning—asserting that the explosion would destroy all chemical traces of the attack.

On July 22, an Antonov cargo plane took off from Merowe Airport, roughly 200 miles north of Khartoum, to conduct a test launch. Following the trial, Hussein reported that the experiment was a "100 percent success," attaching a video of a desert explosion and confirming that the munition "hit the target and released the gas."

Brigadier General Amir Idris, identified in records as the supervisor of military drone operations, responded with a single directive: "Top Secret."

Technical hazards and signs of lethality

The communications reveal that the program faced severe technical flaws. Chemical leaks were a recurring issue; on one occasion, workers found dead insects and scorpions on the floor of a hangar after overnight exposure to leaking gas.

The incident underscored the volatile nature of the agent being handled long before it reached the battlefield. Concurrently, the program faced a critical challenge in securing a steady supply of chlorine.

Diverting humanitarian chlorine supplies

According to The New York Times, 20 cylinders of chlorine gas were smuggled across the border from a neighboring country in late August 2024. Hussein calculated that this batch would yield roughly 1,100 bombs.

Hussein subsequently sought internal sources, turning to local civilian infrastructure in violation of international norms. He admitted to sourcing additional chlorine from the Al-Manara water treatment plant in Omdurman—one of the few remaining operational facilities amid the war.

"Al-Manara has some of those cylinders, and we took them from there," Hussein stated in an August 26 voice message to Idris.

The diversion of these supplies carries significant gravity, as the chlorine at the plant was intended for emergency water purification during cholera outbreaks rather than military application.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed to the Times that it had donated 30 chlorine cylinders to the plant in 2023, while CARE reported delivering 35 cylinders across 2024 and 2025. A UNICEF spokesperson added that the organization supplied chlorine to six treatment plants in Khartoum, including Al-Manara, between 2023 and 2025.

By October 2024, Hussein reported manufacturing approximately 300 chemical munitions, most of which were stored at Merowe Airport.

Earlier in September, Hussein sent a notable message to a colleague stating, "They drank the gas," describing an attack on RSF fighters at the Al-Jaili oil refinery north of Khartoum. This account aligns with claims made by the RSF on September 13, when the paramilitary group issued a statement accusing the army of firing "toxic" missiles at the refinery. Footage circulated online at the time showed men in civilian clothing inside the facility wearing oxygen masks.

Command responsibility and cover-up efforts

The New York Times indicates that the program was likely shuttered once U.S. officials detected its existence and moved to apply targeted sanctions.

Intercepted communications reveal that the head of Sudan’s Armed Forces, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, instructed Hussein to "erase all traces" of the operation. The response back was: "The operation was completed a month ago."

During a subsequent round of measures in June, the U.S. sanctioned Hussein for importing explosives for bomb production, though that specific designation did not explicitly cite chemical weapons.

By that time, Burhan had established an internal committee to investigate the U.S. allegations. According to documents in the file, Hussein himself—the architect of the program—was appointed as an advisor to the panel.

The intelligence indicates that General Burhan was not merely informed after the fact, but was directly involved in overseeing the chemical weapons program. His direct knowledge was a primary factor in the U.S. decision to impose sanctions on him in January 2025.

While proving chemical weapons usage in conflict zones remains complex, arms experts consulted by The New York Times concurred that available evidence strongly points to their deployment in the Sudanese conflict. However, they stressed the necessity of an independent field investigation.

Addressing the findings, the Emergency Lawyers group, a Sudanese legal advocacy organization, issued a statement calling for a transparent international probe. The group urged that "international experts be granted safe, unconditional access to targeted sites, enable the physical examination of munitions fragments and delivery systems, and be permitted to interview witnesses and victims independently and securely."

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called on nuclear-armed states to engage in negotiations and accelerate efforts to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) into force, reaffirming Kazakhstan’s commitment to the global anti-nuclear movement, Qazinform News Agency cites Akorda. 

Tokayev made the remarks in a statement marking the International Day against Nuclear Tests, established by the UN General Assembly at Kazakhstan’s initiative.

The president noted that exactly 35 years ago, amid a difficult international situation, Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. For decades, the testing ground caused irreversible damage to people’s health and the environment, leaving a painful legacy for the Kazakh people, he said.

“Thirty-five years later, this date will serve as a reminder to all humanity of the tragic consequences of nuclear tests and as a call to prevent them from ever happening again,” Tokayev said.

He also highlighted Kazakhstan’s decision to voluntarily give up the world’s fourth-largest nuclear arsenal following the country’s independence.

“By voluntarily renouncing the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, Kazakhstan made a historic choice in favor of peace, security and sustainable development. This decision fulfilled the aspirations of the people of Kazakhstan and demonstrated our state’s responsibility for the fate of future generations,” Tokayev said.

According to the president, Kazakhstan’s commitment to peace and friendship with all states, enshrined in the preamble of the country’s new Constitution, remains an unwavering principle of its foreign policy.

“Our country’s position as one of the leaders of the global anti-nuclear movement remains unchanged. We call for negotiations among nuclear powers, the earliest possible entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and decisive multilateral action to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons use,” Tokayev said.

The president also stressed that nuclear energy should be used exclusively for peaceful and constructive purposes.

He noted that the Kazakhstani people had firmly supported the country’s course toward developing nuclear energy in a nationwide referendum, laying a solid foundation for Kazakhstan’s economic, scientific and technological progress for decades to come.

Tokayev said this strategic choice forms an important part of the country’s transformation and opens a new stage in its sustainable development. He added that large-scale reforms across all areas of public life are aimed at building a Just, Progressive and Clean Kazakhstan.

“I am confident that together we will achieve this ambitious goal,” the president concluded.

Earlier, Qazinform reported President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had offered condolences over passing Norway’s King Harald V. 

The European Commission calls it the Affordable Housing Act and says it can “truly bring a change in people’s lives”. But how much will it actually do to make housing more affordable, asks Catherine Feore? 

The tension at the heart of the proposal is that Brussels is making ambitious claims about tackling the housing crisis while simultaneously making clear that it is not imposing new housing policies on governments or cities.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the measure fulfils a promise to tackle housing affordability, describing it as “one step in this direction” and declaring: “Today, we are delivering for all Europeans.” Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen went further, saying the Act gives governments and cities tools to “make more affordable homes available”.

Yet the proposed legislation itself is considerably more cautious.
The Commission acknowledges that insufficient housing supply is the structural cause of the affordability crisis. Short-term rentals, second homes and other non-primary uses are not the root problem, although they can exacerbate shortages and push up prices in already constrained markets.

Housing stress test

The Act principally delivers a common legal framework for authorities that choose to intervene.

Central to this is a new EU test for housing stress. An area would normally qualify where an average home costs at least eight years of disposable per-capita income, that ratio has increased over the previous decade, and pressures are unlikely to ease over the next three years. At a ratio of ten or more, the historical deterioration test is dropped. Population dynamics, housing supply and demand must also be assessed.

Authorities could then restrict short-term rentals outside a host’s primary residence or tackle second homes, prolonged vacancy and certain other non-primary uses. But there is no obligation. They must also demonstrate that the activity has significantly harmed housing affordability or availability for at least three years, and any restriction must be targeted, necessary and proportionate. This seems to set a high bar of evidence for most local authorities.

Currently, local authorities must notify the Commission of short-term rental restrictions under the Services Directive. That notification requirement will no longer be required. Cities can use the new framework without seeking prior Commission approval, although measures must be published and remain open to legal challenge. Officials argue this will remove a burdensome procedure and make intervention easier.

But the Commission is equally explicit about what it is not doing. The Act does not regulate rents, harmonise housing policy, give Brussels new housing competences, dictate taxation, inheritance or planning, or require, recommend or encourage authorities to impose restrictions. Housing policy choices “remain national, regional and local”.

Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera says that when markets fail to provide affordable homes, “public authorities have a responsibility to act”. But the Act does not compel that action; it provides a stronger legal framework if authorities choose to act independently.

Its impact could be real in tourist hotspots where non-primary housing use is demonstrably worsening shortages. But it cannot itself build a home or lower a rent. The question is whether a clearer legal toolbox matches the expectations created by the Commission’s promise to tackle Europe’s housing crisis. When asked to quantify how much of a difference the new provisions could make, the Commission couldn’t give precise figures, saying that it would depend on the measures adopted.

PHOTO CREDIT: Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, and Dan Jørgensen, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, give a press conference on the affordable housing Photographer: Jennifer Jacquemart © European Union

Israel’s embassy  in Belgium stated that the Israeli team ”is an example of coexistence in Israeli football. The team includes three Arab-Israeli players: Muhammad Abu Rumi, Mohammed Kna’an and Zahi Ahmed. Politics should never be allowed to interfere with sports,” writes Yossi Lempkowicz.

The ban, imposed by the mayor of the Belgian city of Leuven on the soccer match  between a Brussels-based team and an Israeli one ”is an expression of antisemitism” said the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB).

The match between Union Saint Gilloise and Hapoel Be’er Sheva is scheduled to take place on 22 October as part of the Europa League. Since Union’s stadium in Brussels does not meet UEFA standards, the club cannot play there. For the European competition, it  had to turn to the Leuven stadium for all its home games.

However, last Tuesday (1 September), the mayor of Leuven, Mohamed Ridouani, ordered the cancellation of the match for ‘’security reasons’ due to the risk of unrest linked to the visit of an Israeli club, against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The mayor is a member of the Flemish Socialist party Vooruit.

The CCOJB condemned the reasons cited by the mayor of Leuven for prohibiting the match, particularly those related to security. “It is the mayor’s responsibility to ensure public safety and it is irresponsible to shirk that responsibility,” states the organization. adding that the decision was driven more by “hatred of Israel.”

A spokesperson for the embassy of Israel in Belgium stated that the Israeli team ”is an example of coexistence in Israeli football. The team includes three Arab-Israeli players: Muhammad Abu Rumi, Mohammed Kna’an and Zahi Ahmed. Politics should never be allowed to interfere with sports.”

Israeli players “should be judged by their professional abilities, not by politics or political views. Sport should remain sport, free from political agendas”, the embassy said on X.

The spokesperson offered that Israel’s Ambassador-designate to Belgium David Saranga meet with the Leuven mayor.

An Antwerp-based group, JID vzw – Stop Antisemitism,  has formally filed a complaint against the mayor  decision of the mayor of Leuven.

”We request that the decision and the complete accompanying administrative and security file be obtained without delay and that the decision be reviewed in light of the law and the public interest. If the required legal, factual, and proportional basis is lacking, we request that the supervisory authority annul the decision,” it said.

On 30 August, the world marked the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, a date intended to rescue the missing from oblivion and remind states that no human being should simply vanish into the machinery of power. In Balochistan, however, remembrance carries the cruelty of the present tense. On July 24, 2026, Jiand Baloch, a student leader and chairman of the Baloch Students Organization, disappeared after being taken away under circumstances that, according to Amnesty International, amounted to an enforced disappearance. For eleven days, his family did not know where he was. He returned home on 3 August. It was not the first time. Amnesty says Jiand had previously been forcibly disappeared for nine months in 2018 and again for about a month in 2024, linking the repeated targeting to his peaceful activism. As the international community prepares to commemorate the disappeared, one man in Balochistan has already had to return from disappearance three times. Therein lies the cruel paradox of 30 August: elsewhere, it is a day for remembering an atrocity; in Balochistan, families continue to experience it in the present tense, writes Dimitra Staikou.

Jiand Baloch is one name in a much larger ledger of absence. According to the Human Rights Council of Balochistan, 105 cases of enforced disappearance were documented in July 2026 alone, alongside 59 killings; 47 of those reported missing later returned, while the fate of others remained unresolved. The figures come from a Baloch human-rights organisation and must be attributed as such, but the phenomenon itself has long drawn scrutiny from United Nations experts and international rights groups. Behind every number lies the peculiar violence of enforced disappearance: no grave at which to mourn, no prison to visit, often no official account to challenge — only a photograph carried from protest to protest and a question repeated until it becomes part of a family’s daily life: Where are they? The United Nations has described enforced disappearance not merely as a violation against the person who vanishes, but as a practice capable of spreading terror throughout society. That definition exposes the bitter contradiction at the heart of Balochistan: while the language of counterterrorism grants the state extraordinary powers in the name of protecting society from fear, families of the disappeared describe living inside another kind of terror — the terror of not knowing whether the person they love is imprisoned, tortured, alive or dead.

The tragedy of Balochistan is not that the world does not know. It is that it has known for years. Pakistan itself established a Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in 2010, while UN mechanisms have repeatedly raised concerns over disappearances, impunity and the treatment of those who demand answers. In April 2026, the UN Committee against Torture went further, expressing concern over reports that human rights defenders, journalists, political opponents, civil society activists and protesters — as well as members of their families — had faced reprisals ranging from intimidation and arbitrary detention to enforced disappearance and extrajudicial execution. UN experts have also examined allegations arising from counterterrorism operations in Balochistan, including arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, as well as alleged reprisals against peaceful protesters seeking information about the missing. The contradiction is difficult to escape: a state cannot treat disappearance as serious enough to warrant its own commission of inquiry while allowing families to spend years asking the most elementary question a state should be able to answer — where are they?

For those families, enforced disappearance creates a form of punishment with no defined sentence and no identifiable end. A prisoner has a place of detention; a person confirmed dead can be mourned. The disappeared inhabit the space between the two, leaving their relatives trapped there with them. The United Nations recognises this explicitly: the victims of enforced disappearance are not only those who vanish, but also those who suffer as a direct consequence, while families can face economic hardship, intimidation and reprisals simply for searching for the truth. A mother does not know whether to wait or mourn. A wife may not know whether she is a wife or a widow. A child can grow up without knowing whether a father is imprisoned, hidden somewhere beyond the reach of the law, or dead. Enforced disappearance does not take one person hostage; it holds an entire family hostage to uncertainty. And when information itself is withheld, absence becomes more than the consequence of repression — it becomes an instrument of power.

But enforced disappearance requires something else to endure: silence. And in Balochistan, some of the most persistent challenges to that silence have come from those who refuse to let the missing become merely numbers. Mahrang Baloch, one of the most prominent voices of the Baloch protest movement, knows that absence intimately: her father, Abdul Ghaffar Langove, was forcibly disappeared and later found dead. On 22 March 2025, she was herself arrested following protests in Quetta, alongside other activists demanding accountability over disappearances and alleged extrajudicial killings; UN experts later called for the release of Baloch human-rights defenders and warned against the criminalisation of peaceful protest. But the pressure does not end with the families and activists who demand answers. It reaches those whose profession is to record their testimony. On August 18, 2026, journalist Danish Irshad learned through social media that he had been placed on the Fourth Schedule, an anti-terrorism watchlist in Pakistan-administered Azad Jammu and Kashmir, under an order issued on July 29. No criminal conviction preceded the listing, and the publicly available order did not identify a specific terrorist act attributed to him. Irshad had spent nearly a decade reporting on Kashmir and had recently interviewed families who said their children had been killed by Pakistani forces. Three days later, he asked the question that connects the fate of the witness to that of those whose stories he records: “How did a journalist’s speaking and writing become an act of terrorism?” Enforced disappearance removes a person from public view; intimidating those who search for them, speak for them or document state violence threatens to remove the story as well.

Pakistan has every right to fight terrorism — and, after years of bombings, militant attacks and thousands of lives lost, a duty to protect its citizens from it. As recently as August 2, 2026, a suspected suicide bombing in Swat killed civilians and police officers alike, another reminder that the threat confronting the country is neither rhetorical nor imagined. But precisely because terrorism is real, the word cannot be allowed to mean everything. An armed militant is not a peaceful activist; an activist is not a journalist; and a reporter who interviews the families of victims does not become a terrorist by recording what they have to say. This is where the language of counterterrorism collides with the reality of enforced disappearance. The United Nations warns that enforced disappearance has itself frequently been used as a strategy to “spread terror within society,” while identifying as a particular concern the use of counterterrorism activities by states as an excuse for breaching their human-rights obligations. The contradiction is difficult to escape. When a journalist such as Danish Irshad can be placed on an anti-terrorism watchlist without a publicly identified terrorist act attributed to him, while families elsewhere in Pakistan describe years spent searching for relatives who vanished without answers, the language of security begins to turn against itself. Counterterrorism is supposed to protect society from fear. But when its boundaries become elastic enough to encompass the journalist asking questions, the activist demanding answers and the family searching for the missing, we must ask a far more uncomfortable question: what happens when the instruments invoked to protect a society from terror begin themselves to produce fear?

Kazakhstan is preparing to take part in the 2027 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where it will showcase the country’s traditions, music, crafts and other elements of its cultural heritage, Qazinform News Agency reports, citing the Kazakh Ministry of Culture and Information.

The preparations were discussed at a meeting between Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and Information, Aida Balayeva, Smithsonian Institution Festival Curator, Rebecca Fenton, and Southwest Folklife Alliance Co-Founder, Bryan Rafael Falcon.

The sides also discussed the participation of Kazakhstan’s ethno-folk group HasSak in a festival in Tucson, as well as plans for the group to hold a concert in Washington.

Preparations for the 2027 Smithsonian Folklife Festival are part of broader efforts to expand cultural cooperation between Kazakhstan and the Smithsonian Institution. The sides expressed confidence that their cooperation would gain new momentum and move beyond individual cultural initiatives toward long-term projects.

Qazinform News Agency previously reported that Kazakhstan proposed expanding bilateral cultural exchanges and hosting US Culture Days in the country.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott has published her opinion calling on the EU’s top court to invalidate provisions in the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive requiring pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies to fund at least 80% of the cost of removing micropollutants from urban wastewater.

“Today’s opinion strengthens the case for stopping the clock on this Directive to avoid consequences for the availability of medicines for patients,” said Director General of Medicines for Europe, Adrian van den Hoven. “The Commission should use this opportunity to properly review the EPR scheme before companies are forced to make decisions that could affect medicine supply or health security.”

The opinion, issued in response to a Polish challenge to the Directive, is not binding on the Court of Justice of the European Union, but it appears to support criticisms that industry has long made about the evidence and proportionality underpinning the extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme.

Generic and biosimilar companies say those concerns are already affecting investment decisions. Manufacturers must plan production years ahead.

MEPs are pushing for an EU solidarity mechanism to help patients pay for treatment abroad, arguing that financial barriers are preventing Europeans from exercising rights they have had on paper for more than a decade.

The calls came as Parliament discussed a report commissioned to inform its own-initiative report on modernising patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare. The study found that cross-border care accounts for just 0.004% of EU public health expenditure, despite patients continuing to face upfront costs, complex reimbursement procedures and prior-authorisation requirements.

Tomislav Sokol (EPP, Croatia) called the proposed solidarity mechanism a potential “game changer” for vulnerable patients, but challenged Parliament to spell out how it would work.

“How would it work in practice? How would it be financed? Would this be part of the EU budget?” Sokol asked. “We need to know it now, so that we can also use this in negotiations on the future EU budget, in the next MFF.”

A long-running institutional struggle over who controls European Union foreign policy has broken into the open, with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas publicly acknowledging that the role of the High Representative has not worked as intended when decisions are effectively taken above her inside the European Commission, writes Catherine Feore.

Speaking after an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers, Kallas delivered an unusually candid assessment of the relationship between the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Commission and the member states.

At the centre of the dispute is a fundamental question: whether the EU's foreign policy is ultimately directed through the High Representative, who is supposed to bridge the Commission and national governments, or through Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Kallas argued that the problem does not lie primarily in the EU treaties or the institutional architecture they created. Instead, she said, it lies in how that architecture has been implemented in practice.

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"The problem is not the treaties, not the institutional setup. The problem is the implementation of that setup that it would work in practice, and there was a broad support by the member states to make it work. But of course, it doesn't entirely depend on the member states," Kallas said.

The final sentence was significant. Kallas' comments point towards criticism of von der Leyen.

Under the EU's institutional structure, Kallas holds two positions simultaneously: High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission. The dual role was designed precisely to connect foreign-policy decisions made by the member states with the powerful economic and regulatory instruments controlled by the Commission.

Those instruments include trade, development assistance, enlargement, migration and visa policy. Kallas argued that Europe cannot operate effectively as a geopolitical actor unless it brings those tools together with the foreign policy agreed by national governments.

"If we want to act as a geopolitical player, we should really put these things together," she said, arguing that this was precisely why the treaties created the vice-presidential component of the High Representative's job.

A role that works "on paper"

Asked about proposals to shift parts of the EEAS, its staff or competences towards the Commission, she described a system in which her coordinating authority exists more clearly in theory than in practice.

"The high representative/vice president is the link between the member states and the Commission, on paper, in theory,” she added pointedly that “we have had issues where there is somebody above me that is actually deciding; then you know it doesn't work that way. Let's be very frank.”

The reference to "somebody above me" was the sharpest indication of the institutional problem Kallas was describing. Within the Commission hierarchy, the person “above” Kallas is Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Commission versus EEAS

The question arose because foreign affairs ministers were discussing the future of the EEAS and how Europe's external-policy machinery should be organised.

According to Kallas, governments broadly supported retaining the existing institutional structure rather than rewriting it. But they also want that structure to operate as originally intended.

She warned in particular against duplication between the EEAS and the Commission. If a function is already being performed effectively by the diplomatic service, she argued, there is little justification for recreating the same capacity inside the Commission.

The discussion also touched on proposals to concentrate more external-action functions inside the Commission. Kallas said such a transfer could not be separated from the High Representative's authority.

If external-action services are concentrated in the Commission, she argued, the other side of the bargain must be that the High Representative genuinely oversees those services. "One side of the equation cannot happen without the other," she said.

Kallas said a majority of governments supported maintaining the current institutional setup and opposed concentrating everything in the Commission without the High Representative's coordinating role being implemented in practice. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Roundtable Informal meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministers (Gymnich) - September 2026 - Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee and EU High Representative Kaja Kallas © European Union

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte Photographer: Dati Bendo © European Union
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday (2 September) that Europe and NATO would increase pressure on Russia after Germany attributed an attempted attack on cargo planes at Leipzig/Halle Airport to Moscow, calling the incident a “new escalation” on European Union soil, writes Catherine Feore.

“This was an attack using military-grade material, carried out by Russian operatives on European Union soil. We will not tolerate it,” von der Leyen said alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels.

The German government said on Tuesday (1 September) that its investigation and intelligence findings established Russian responsibility for the attempted attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport last month. Russia has denied responsibility.

The meeting took place as foreign ministers and the EU's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy were meeting to discuss Russia and Ukraine among other issues.

“Had this attack succeeded, this would have resulted in enormous damage and possibly even loss of life,” von der Leyen said. “We stand in full solidarity with Germany.”

“If the intention was to make us think twice about supporting Ukraine, I can tell you it has only strengthened my resolve. Intimidation will not work.”

Von der Leyen said the Leipzig incident was part of a wider pattern of Russian activity confronting Europe, including airspace incursions, drones disrupting airports and interference with critical infrastructure.

“Leipzig marks a new escalation on European Union soil, directly attributed to Russia,” she said. 

Von der Leyen outlined three areas for a stepped-up European response: stronger protection of European infrastructure backed by additional sanctions on Russia, increased air-defence support for Ukraine, and an acceleration of Europe’s own defence build-up in close cooperation with NATO.

Infrastructure and sanctions

First, von der Leyen said Europe must strengthen the protection of infrastructure that could be targeted by Russian hybrid operations and be prepared to respond more quickly when attacks occur.

“We must treat our everyday infrastructure as frontline targets, and protect them accordingly,” she said.

The EU already has rapid response teams that can assist member states faced with such attacks, she said, arguing that Europe’s ability to prepare and respond would itself act as a deterrent.

Von der Leyen also said the EU was ready to intensify economic pressure on Moscow through sanctions. “Our sanctions have weakened Russia’s economy. We can use more sanctions and have them ready to impose as soon as such dangerous, life-threatening acts are attributed,” she said. “Every loophole Russia exploits is one we must close.”

European foreign ministers were discussing new listings in Ireland on Wednesday, she said, while the Commission was examining further ways to “cut deeper into Russia’s war chest”.

More air defence for Ukraine

Von der Leyen said her second priority was strengthening support for Ukraine, announcing that the EU had received a new request worth several billion euros for air-defence capabilities.

“Today, I can confirm that we have received a new payment request,” she said. “It is worth several billion euro, and would cover Ukraine’s air defenses, including the highly advanced PAC-3 Patriot air defense systems.”

Member states were considering the request, she said.

“I can say that it’s going in the right direction.”

Von der Leyen also pointed to European work with Ukraine on the FRIO project to develop anti-ballistic missile defences, as well as the EU’s €90 billion support loan.

“Since June, we have issued €8.5 billion for drones and missiles for Ukraine from this loan,” she said, adding that the funding could also be used to buy fighter aircraft from European industry.

Faster European defence build-up

Von der Leyen’s third priority was to accelerate Europe’s defence build-up alongside NATO, with air defence at the centre of the effort.

“Air defenses are critical,” she said. “We need a faster, more integrated alert system across Europe, and then we must intercept the threats faster.”

She pointed to the EU’s €800 billion defence investment plan, including €150 billion through the SAFE instrument, as a way for European countries to increase defence investment jointly.

“We are in a new era of European security,” von der Leyen said. “European investment in defense strengthens NATO and re-energizes our industrial base.”

Rutte backed von der Leyen’s assessment of the threat, saying Russia had become “increasingly reckless” as its war against Ukraine continued.

“We have seen more drones and missiles crossing into our airspace along our eastern flank, creating increased risk,” Rutte said.

“And we have also seen an increase in malign activities targeting our territory directly, whether it is fires set in factories producing defense equipment for Ukraine, or indeed the Russian hybrid attack in Leipzig.”

“The examples are many. The dangers Russia poses are clear,” he added.

Rutte said NATO was working “around the clock” to ensure it could protect its population and said Moscow would fail if it hoped attacks such as Leipzig would undermine Western backing for Kyiv.

“If Russia thinks we will be divided by the threat, or if they think we will be deterred from supporting Ukraine, they are mistaken,” he said. “Our unity is unshaken. Our support to Ukraine is clear.”

Rutte said NATO allies had agreed to provide at least €70 billion to support Ukraine this year and the same amount next year, with the EU loan forming a “crucial element” of that support.

The NATO chief also backed the push for additional air defence and increased defence production, saying higher spending had to translate into additional military capabilities and greater industrial capacity.

Von der Leyen said the EU and NATO would not be intimidated into reducing their support for Ukraine. “Europe and NATO will not just maintain our pressure on Russia; we will increase it,” she said. “We will not stop — not until Russia stops bombing and killing innocent children, men and women in Ukraine. We will continue, we will prevail, and we will deter anyone who attacks our freedom and our security.”

In Judaism, circumcision, known as Brit Milah, is a religious ritual where a male infant's foreskin is removed on the eighth day after birth. ''Circumcision has been shown throughout decades of medical research to not be harmful to baby boys. In fact it has medical benefits - which is why so many people choose to circumcise their children outside of religion. ''Attacking circumcision in this manner - only when it relates to Jewish babies, is an attack on Jewish life in Europe,'' the Jewish leaders said in their open letter, writes European Jewish Press.

First program of its kind outside Israel will provide qualified Mohalim with advanced medical and safety training, practical assessment and certification under the supervision of an international network of urologists, paediatricians, physicians and medical scientists.

Against the backdrop of growing legal and political challenges to Jewish religious circumcision in Belgium and other European countries, the European Jewish Association (EJA) and the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) announced Tuesday the establishment of the Centre of Excellence for Religious Male Circumcision (CERM) and the launch of what is believed to be the first comprehensive medical and professional certification program of its kind for qualified Mohalim outside Israel.

Health and Animal Welfare Commissioner Oliver Várhelyi commended EJA for their efforts and stated: “Jewish life and Jewish religious practice belong in Europe. Our responsibility is to ensure that longstanding traditions can continue in a framework that meets the highest standards of child welfare, medical safety and professional responsibility, in line with European standards. The Centre of Excellence for Religious Male Circumcision offers a constructive and credible model for doing exactly that.”

Based in Brussels, CERM will provide already-qualified Mohalim – trained Jewish religious practitioners who perform Brit Milah – with structured supplementary medical and safety training, practical assessment and certification. The program will operate under the supervision of an international network of urologists, paediatricians, physicians and medical scientists, with a Medical and Scientific Council responsible for reviewing and approving its clinical protocols, certification assessments and professional standards. The program aims to work with health authorities across Europe to build confidence in qualified Mohalim as the practitioners best placed to perform religious circumcision, ensuring their competence is recognized through rigorous medical standards and independent supervision – rather than becoming a matter of political debate.

The curriculum covers the medical and safety framework surrounding the procedure, including newborn assessment, hygiene and infection prevention, infant welfare, bleeding and wound care, recognition of complications, emergency response and infant basic life support, medical referral and aftercare. Certification will include practical assessment, realistic clinical scenarios and emergency simulations, with particular emphasis on recognising warning signs, understanding the limits of competence and knowing when to postpone a procedure or seek medical assistance.

Brit Milah, traditionally performed on the eighth day after birth, is one of Judaism’s oldest and most fundamental religious practices.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Chairman of the European Jewish Association and the Rabbinical Centre of Europe, said: “Brit Milah has been at the heart of Jewish life for thousands of years. Faced with growing challenges to the practice and, in particular, to the ability of trained Mohalim to perform it in parts of Europe, we decided that our response must go beyond defending our religious freedom.”

”We are creating the highest possible professional framework to support it. For the first time outside Israel on this scale, our trained Mohalim will have access to a comprehensive program combining medical and safety training with practical assessment, certification and clear professional standards.” We deliberately called this a Centre of Excellence. When it comes to the welfare and safety of a child, our ambition should never simply be to meet a minimum standard. We want excellence – and we want that excellence to be transparent, documented and capable of being independently demonstrated,” he added. 

CERM’s launch follows a period of repeated legal and political challenges to religious circumcision in Europe. Belgium has become a particular focal point, with the status of non-physician Mohalim subject to significant legal and political uncertainty, while debates and attempts to impose restrictions have also arisen in other European countries.

The Centre has been established as a practical response: to strengthen medical safeguards, professional standards and oversight surrounding Brit Milah, while helping safeguard the ability of Jewish communities to continue practising an essential element of Jewish life in Europe.

“Our members were asking us for a serious and sustainable answer,” Rabbi Margolin added. “We listened. For the first time outside Israel on this scale, qualified Mohalim will have access to a comprehensive program combining medical and safety training with practical assessment, certification and clear professional standards.”

CERM builds on the existing training and experience of qualified Mohalim by adding a documented, standardised and independently assessed medical and professional layer. Its “Recognise, Prevent, Stop, Refer” safety model is designed to ensure practitioners can identify warning signs, prevent avoidable risks, act within clearly defined limits and promptly refer an infant to medical professionals when required.

The program draws on established medical and scientific guidance and will be subject to continuing medical review. Its Medical Officers and Advisory Board bring together expertise from Belgium, the United Kingdom, Israel, Italy and Germany, including specialists with direct experience of Israel’s formal system for the certification and supervision of Mohalim. Among them are Brussels-based urologist Dr. Sas Bar-Moshe; British physician and veteran Mohel Dr. Joseph Spitzer, Medical Officer of the UK’s Initiation Society since 2003; and Dr. Michael Ben Akon, Director of the Children’s Division at Laniado Hospital in Israel, a certified Mohel and a Ministry of Health representative on Israel’s inter-ministerial committee responsible for the certification and supervision of Mohalim.

The medical and scientific framework is intended not only to establish standards at the point of certification, but to provide ongoing professional oversight, with protocols and assessment standards reviewed as medical guidance and professional practice evolve. CERM ultimately aims to become a European reference centre for religious male circumcision, promoting evidence-based medical and professional standards and facilitating ongoing cooperation between Mohalim, medical professionals, Jewish communities, policymakers and public authorities.

Rabbi Margolin said: “The debate in Europe is too often presented as a choice between religious freedom and the welfare of the child. We reject that premise. The two are not in conflict. The stronger and more transparent the professional standards surrounding Brit Milah, the stronger the case for protecting the freedom of Jewish families to practise it. Europe cannot claim to protect Jewish life while repeatedly placing one of its most fundamental practices in doubt. CERM offers a constructive European answer: preserve religious freedom, demand excellence and make that excellence transparent.”

CERM official Website: www.britmilah.eu

The Durban Conference in South Africa in September 2001 was not just an event; it was a turning point. It was the modern-day Wannsee that planned the contemporary destruction of the Jewish people. I was there for the Italian newspaper, La Stampa. The stench of something rotten was already emanating from the preparations for the great gathering “against racism” convened by the United Nations, with the participation of an enormous number of NGOs—some 3,000—all of them with knives between their teeth, determined to demonstrate that, under the banner of human rights, the real enemy was Israel, writes Fiamma Nirenstein.

It was there, even more than with the U.N.'s “Zionism is racism” resolution of 1975, that Stalin’s path was resumed. In 1952-53, he had initiated and theorized a new great hunt against the Jews, inventing the blood libel of the “Jewish doctors’ plot” and staging the Slánský trial. The systematic murder and deportation of Jews were interrupted by the dictator’s death in 1953. But with theorists such as Maxime Rodinson and Francis Crémieux, the premises were laid for declaring Israel the new enemy of humanity.

The positions that ultimately led to Durban maintained that “the Israeli government has long been simply an agent of American imperialism.” The supposed proof lay in the malign role of Jews in the world. The doctors accused in the so-called conspiracy—all innocent, their confessions extracted under torture—became “identical to the Nazi doctors of Dachau,” in the pay of the Americans. The inversion begins This was the beginning of the inversion that, on Oct. 7, 2023, led to Israel and the Jews being accused of genocide instead of the evident intentions of Hamas and its barbaric determination being condemned. At Durban, the death sentence against Israel went hand in hand, for the first time, with the preemptive legitimization of terrorism, now carried out by “freedom fighters” rather than the terrorists of Munich or Fiumicino.

At a demonstration along the battered streets on the outskirts of Durban, just days before Sept. 11, the crowd marched behind portraits of its mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Along the dusty road, young NGO activists called—as their documents did—on “all of civil society,” from the Maya to the Tibetans, everyone oppressed by racism, to embrace the struggle against Israel and transform it into the fundamental human-rights struggle. When I told the editors at my newspaper, La Stampa, they replied that I had an obsession with that poor Saudi shepherd. The conference was organized by a United Nations that had by then been captured by the great Third World and Islamic blocs that had reliably provided the Soviet Union with a majority. “Zionism is racism,” the 1975 resolution, was an addendum to the death sentence against Judaism following Hitler’s attempt to eliminate it from the planet.

Israel was the new target of antisemitism, invariably linked to anti-Americanism and viewed as the spearhead of the colonial and imperialist West. Every truth was erased. Israel’s almost desperate attempts to share the territory and make territorial concessions to the Arab world were rejected time and again. In 2000, after Arafat had been brought back despite his appalling embrace of terrorism, the Second Intifada erupted. By the time Durban took place, we were in the midst of the Intifada—a preliminary 7 October.

Its preparatory documents had been written and discussed in Strasbourg, Santiago and, astonishingly, Tehran, where since 1979 an Islamist regime had ruled whose foundational principle was the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel as absolute evil In Durban, Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat and Robert Mugabe converged, and the Jewish question was inserted into the heart of demands for billions in reparations for slavery. Israel obviously had nothing to do with this history, but it was portrayed as absolute evil. The Palestinianism of Durban held that Israel was racist, imperialist, colonialist and genocidal—and therefore even a slave-owning power. All these adjectives are meaningless when applied to a country that represents the miraculous return home, disarmed and hungry, of the people indigenous to that land, armed only with hoes and books.

They armed themselves only when, awakening from the dream, they realized that their lives were once again at risk. And even then, Israel continued to surrender large pieces of territory in the search for peace. I was there In Durban, I rented a room inside a compound surrounded by high walls. I shared it with a journalist from the Italian left-leaning daily, La Repubblica, who was thrilled by the opportunity to encounter Castro and the other idols of the era in the corridors—and, with a little luck, perhaps Nelson Mandela as well. There was the official conference, the domain of Mary Robinson, who purported to moderate the international proceedings and restrain them from excessively harsh resolutions that had in fact been planned from the beginning.

Then there were the stadium and other NGO gathering places, where antisemitic hatred was expressed in every possible way: leaflets, speeches, songs and actual physical hunts for Jews. Several times I had to run away and seek refuge in a building belonging to the local Jewish community, where one could also find something to eat. Thousands of NGO members wore T-shirts bearing the image of Mohammed al-Dura alongside the conference logo. The production of leaflets about Palestinian suffering was endless. Jews were depicted with missiles and knives, blood dripping from their mouths and murdered children. The word “genocide” was already commonplace. From the podium, in a crowded, darkened hall, Fidel Castro, while demanding financial reparations for entire continents for slavery and colonialism, spoke of “the terrible genocide being perpetrated today against our Palestinian brothers” by Israel’s then-prime minister, Ariel Sharon, whom he described as a far-right leader acting in alliance with the “hegemonic superpowers.” Arafat celebrated the universal acceptance of his worldview, describing the situation as the “expression of the racist colonial conspiracy” to uproot the Palestinians and conquer their land. In short, the troops of that global war had finally assembled—a war that only days later would find its expression in the attack on the Twin Towers. That was the true meaning of Durban.

And the Palestinian cause, together with the destruction of Israel, was baptized as the indispensable prerequisite for every revolutionary struggle. The astonishment and disbelief in Israel and the United States were enormous. After everything the Jews had endured, and while they were suffering through the Intifada, finding themselves once again facing such a broad and senseless assault on their right to self-determination and self-defense, their right to return home and the very liberal-democratic nature of their country seemed like a nightmare. The two delegations under attack took days to decide to leave. Israel continued to insist, as Diaspora Affairs Minister Michael Melchior said, that racism—the supposed subject of the conference—was so important to Jews that the country wanted to participate in the discussion and the decisions. In the end, the United States and Israel had to walk out. Canada and Europe remained, but the European position sought an impossible compromise. It proposed restoring the Holocaust to the final documents as the worst expression of racism.

The interventions by Italy’s Renato Ruggiero, Germany’s Joschka Fischer and, in the corridors, the excellent Margherita Boniver—the only one who understood fully, to the point of tears—were hesitant and moderate. Fischer had the strength to say that the right of the Jews to their own state was indisputable. But he returned to the Palestinians’ right to a state and once again forgot that Israel had never called that right into question since 1948, despite its countless offers. ‘Did not happen in a vacuum’ By contrast, the denial of the Jews’ right to have their own state like every other people reached its paroxysm on Oct. 7. And once again the United Nations lined up against Israel, as it had at Durban. So it was with the words of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who, instead of expressing horror and condemnation, responded with his infamous statement that the 7 October attacks “did not happen in a vacuum”. It is true: They did not happen in a vacuum. Durban is a milestone in the antisemitic catastrophe that once again torments the world today, and the United Nations is its prophet.

Brussels is tightening its grip on some of the internet’s fastest-growing services, designating ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox for heightened scrutiny under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), writes Catherine Feore.

The European Commission said all three services meet the 45 million average monthly users threshold in the EU, triggering the DSA rules reserved for digital players considered large enough to pose systemic risks to European society.

“These new designations mean that ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox will now be held to a higher standard of scrutiny and accountability in the European Union,” said Henna Virkkunen (pictured), the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy.

The move puts the companies firmly in Brussels’ regulatory crosshairs. They must assess and mitigate risks ranging from illegal content and harm to minors to threats to fundamental rights, elections, public security, and users’ physical and mental well-being. Importantly, the designation also gives the Commission investigative powers to scrutinise relevant features and systems underpinning the services.

ChatGPT has been designated a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE), while Reddit and Roblox are now Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). They have until the end of January 2027 to comply with the DSA’s tougher obligations.

ChatGPT’s inclusion is particularly significant. The Commission considers the AI service a hybrid product that qualifies as an online search engine because it can search the web when answering users’ queries, bringing a major generative AI service into the DSA’s toughest tier of oversight for the first time.

The Commission will supervise compliance with the DSA, in cooperation with Coimisiún na Meán (Ireland’s media regulator) for ChatGPT and Reddit, and the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) for Roblox.

With the latest additions, 28 platforms and search engines have now received the EU’s “very large” designation.

Photo credit: Commissioner Virkkunnen Photographer: Lukasz Kobus © European Union

Adilet wins 110 seats in the 145-member Kurultai, while four smaller parties share the remaining 35, writes Georgi Gotev.

Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission announced final results on 25 August confirming a decisive victory for the Adilet party in the country’s first elections to the new unicameral Kurultai. Adilet won 71.17 percent of the vote and 110 of the 145 seats, establishing a dominant position in the legislature created under the constitution that took effect on 1 July.

Adilet is the recently formed pro-presidential party in Kazakhstan created months before the elections as the successor after the long-ruling Amanat party dissolved into it.

Final figures show 9,351,539 ballots cast from an electoral roll of 12,623,289, for a turnout of 74.08 percent. Five parties cleared the 5 percent threshold required for representation:

Adilet: 6,528,948 votes (71.17 percent) — 110 seats

Auyl People’s Democratic Patriotic Party: 574,621 votes (6.26 percent) — 10 seats

Respublica: 509,631 votes (5.56 percent) — 9 seats

Aq Zhol Democratic Party: 478,083 votes (5.21 percent) — 8 seats

Nationwide Social Democratic Party: 469,058 votes (5.11 percent) — 8 seats

The People’s Party of Kazakhstan (3.11 percent) and Baytaq Green Party (1.07 percent) fell short. A further 2.51 percent of voters chose the “against all” option.

The Kurultai replaces the former bicameral parliament and is elected entirely by proportional representation from party lists in a single nationwide constituency. The 23 August vote was the first parliamentary election held under the new constitutional framework approved in a March referendum.

First session convened

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed a decree convening the inaugural session of the Kurultai for 28 August at 11 a.m. The opening will formally launch the work of the new 145-member legislature and mark the next stage in implementing the institutional changes introduced by the constitution.

Once the Kurultai begins its work, the sitting government is required to resign. Under the new rules, the president will nominate a candidate for prime minister after consultations with the party factions represented in the chamber. The appointed prime minister then has ten days to propose the structure and composition of the cabinet; ministers are appointed by the president following further consultations with the Kurultai.

The constitution also creates the office of vice president. Tokayev has indicated that an appointment — “a well-known person you all know” — would be announced within days of the election and must receive Kurultai approval within two months of the first session. The vice president may not serve as a lawmaker or belong to a political party and would assume presidential powers if the head of state leaves office early.

Experts: Higher stakes for parties and foreign policy

At an expert discussion organised by the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies (KazISS) on 24 August, analysts said the vote raises the stakes for political parties, the functioning of the new parliament, and Kazakhstan’s positioning amid growing geopolitical interest in Central Asia.

KazISS Director Zhandos Shaimardanov highlighted the combination of high turnout and a dominant party alongside four smaller ones as features likely to shape the legislature. “The task now is to understand how this electoral choice will translate into the work of the new Kurultai, its legislative priorities and the parties’ day-to-day activities,” he said.

Italian Asia expert Domenico Palmieri stressed that the election itself is only the beginning. The real test of the institutional reform will come in the months ahead as deputies begin legislating. He noted the relatively high turnout compared with many European countries and described the voting process as technically smooth.

Political scientist Andrey Kazantsev cautioned against reading the strong participation solely as enthusiasm for party politics. In a period of international uncertainty, many voters appeared more concerned with the country’s overall direction and the future for their families. Because deputies are now elected exclusively from party lists, parties face greater responsibility for translating public expectations into concrete policy. “The demand is high. Now the parties have to provide the supply side,” he said.

Ken Moriyasu of the Hudson Institute placed the transition in a wider regional and global context. Interest in Central Asia has risen in both Washington and Beijing as the United States seeks to diversify critical mineral supplies away from China and Beijing looks to overland Eurasian routes less vulnerable to maritime disruption. “Both China and the U.S. are trying to escape each other, and they’re meeting each other in Central Asia,” Moriyasu observed. Greater clarity and stability in Kazakhstan’s domestic institutions, he argued, could strengthen Astana’s ability to maintain its multi-vector foreign policy and contribute to gradual regional consolidation.

What comes next

With final results certified and the first session scheduled for 28 August, attention turns to the practical launch of the new system: formation of the government, the appointment of a vice president, and the early legislative agenda of a chamber in which one party holds a commanding majority while four others retain a formal presence.

The high turnout and orderly conduct of the vote have been widely noted. Whether the new Kurultai delivers more responsive and effective governance – and how the dominant Adilet faction works with the smaller parties – will determine if the constitutional redesign of 2026 translates into lasting political change.

On 13 August, Zambia re-elected President Hakainde Hichilema for a second term in a historic landslide vote which was independently verified against public polling-station records. Yet since that day, a handful of so-called statistical critiques have circulated questioning the result. It is crucial to walk through what the underlying data actually show, writes Dr Namuunda Mutombo.

Start with how the count was verified from the more than 13,000 polling stations. Results in Zambia are recorded on Gen 20 forms, completed and displayed publicly at each polling station, in front of party agents and observers, before a single figure travels anywhere. That is the record of what happened, station by station, and it is available for anyone to check against the final declaration. Independent monitors did check it. Transparency International Zambia ran its own parallel count against those station-level forms and found it matched the electoral commission's figures to within roughly one percentage point. SADC observers, covering the near totality of the polling stations they visited, reported a calm and orderly process. None of this is the electoral commission grading its own homework. It is outside verification, against a public paper trail, converging on the same number.

The other claim making the rounds is more technical: that in some constituencies, more people voted for president than for their MP, and that this gap is suspicious. As a statistician, I would ask anyone making that argument to first rule out the far more mundane explanation, which is roll-off, the well-documented tendency, in any democracy holding simultaneous elections, for turnout to differ across the ballot depending on how satisfied voters are with each race. Survey work published earlier this year (ironically by those academics now making the negative claims), before a single vote was cast, already told us to expect exactly this pattern here: strong national approval for the president alongside real frustration with sitting MPs in specific provinces. When the geography of the "gap" lines up precisely with where that pre-election dissatisfaction was strongest, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. It is not manipulation. It is Zambians voting for a president and against an MP in the same afternoon, which is their right; and exactly what was predicted.

No election, anywhere, is without noise, complaint, or contested reading of the data. That is not a Zambian shortcoming; it is what elections are in democracies worldwide. The standard by which a result should be judged is not whether every number is uncontested, because by that standard no democracy on earth would ever pass. The standard is whether the process was open enough, and the paper trail public enough, that the disputes can actually be checked, and whether they change the outcome when you do. Here, they don't. Even the more skeptical readings of the data, taken at face value, leave the president's win comfortably intact.

That is, in the end, also the judgment the country's own political actors have reached. The National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Progress, the opposition party which fought a hard campaign and won roughly 60 parliamentary seats in the process, has formally accepted the result, congratulated President Hichilema, and said it will now focus on its role as a check on government from within Parliament. That is what functioning democratic competition looks like: parties that contest hard, then accept the count and get to work.

Zambia's constitution provides a clear, evidence-tested route for any candidate who still disputes the outcome: a petition to the courts, not a headline. That door remains open. What the data do not support is the idea that the result itself is in doubt. I would simply ask that the same rigor applied to the graphs be applied to the conclusions drawn from them.

Dr Namuunda Mutombo is a seasoned Demographer with over two decades of experience. He holds PhD, MA, and BA degrees in Demography, and serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Demography, Population Science, Monitoring & Evaluation at the University of Zambia.

Sudan's war has entered a more dangerous phase after fighting spilled across the country's borders, raising fresh concerns about the conflict's regional consequences, writes Mohsin Osman.

The Chadian army accused the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of carrying out an airstrike against a convoy inside Chadian territory. According to the Chadian General Staff, the attack occurred at about 8 p.m. on August 20 in the Mourdi department of Ennedi-Est province, near the Sudanese border. It said aircraft and drones believed to belong to the SAF or its allies pursued and struck the convoy more than 100 kilometres inside Chad. The convoy was reportedly carrying reinforcements for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the Sudanese army regards as a rebel group.

The US has since condemned the airstrikes, calling for an end to external forces supporting the conflict. Massad Boulos, the US president's senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, said the US government opposed the expansion of violence beyond Sudan's borders and stressed that there is no military solution to the conflict.

“The parties must immediately accept a humanitarian truce, protect civilians, and allow unhindered humanitarian access,” he said.

Bolous also called for the expansion of the UN arms embargo, currently focused on Darfur, to cover the whole of Sudan, while accusing foreign powers of escalating the war.

“The UN Security Council must also act with urgency to ensure that the arms embargo and sanctions regime reflect the realities of the conflict today and hold those fueling and expanding this war accountable. External financial and military support to the warring parties must stop,” he said.

The US has also warned that external support was escalating the war, just as that the growing use of armed drones was obstructing the peace process.

The war began on April 15, 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) amid a deepening power struggle over Sudan’s political transition and the proposed integration of the RSF into the regular army. It has continued despite repeated ceasefire efforts and international initiatives to end the conflict.

The recent strike in Chad has now brought into sharper focus how far the war is spreading and how much the SAF's expanding aerial capabilities depend on foreign support, especially with the presence and prominent use of Turkish drones.

French report highlights Turkey's involvement

French newspaper Le Monde reported that Turkey has emerged as the Sudanese army's principal military supporter since the war began. The report said the Turkish government supplied Bayraktar TB2 and Akıncı drones and deployed instructors alongside them. It also reported that Saudi Arabia financed purchases of Turkish drones and Pakistani weapons for the SAF.

The report comes on the heels of Turkey's deepening political relationship with Sudan's military leadership. On August 7, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement, which provides that an armed attack against any one of the three countries would be regarded as an attack against all three.

According to Le Monde, cooperation among the three countries over Sudan predates the agreement, with Riyadh financing Turkish drones and Pakistani weapons for the SAF. The newspaper also reported a $1.5 billion Pakistani arms contract involving fighter jets, armoured vehicles and drones.

Since late 2024, Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 and Akıncı drones have reportedly become part of the Sudanese army’s expanding aerial arsenal. The SAF has also used Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drones, while Chinese-made CH-95 and FH-95 systems have been deployed by the RSF, reflecting the growing role of foreign-supplied drone technology in Sudan’s war.

While there is no concrete evidence that a Bayraktar drone carried out the specific strike inside Chad, the presence of Turkish military technology in the Sudanese conflict is increasingly well documented.

In March 2025, The Washington Post reported that Turkish defence company Baykar had supplied the Sudanese army with at least $120 million worth of military equipment, including TB2 drones and hundreds of warheads. The investigation, based on contracts, correspondence, registries and visual material, also documented Baykar personnel providing technical support in Sudan.

In May 2026, Chatham House examined reports of Turkish drone supplies to the SAF while noting Ankara's denial of direct deliveries. The relationship took on a clearer political dimension in June, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Ankara. The Turkish presidency said the two countries were seeking to expand cooperation in trade, agriculture, energy and defence.

This places Turkey's role in Sudan beyond the question of individual drone deliveries. Turkey is deepening ties with the military leadership while presenting itself as a diplomatic actor in the conflict.

Beyond the current battlefield, Turkey's relationship with Sudan dates back decades. But Erdoğan's 2017 meeting with Omar al-Bashir and the agreement to redevelop Suakin underscored Ankara's strategic interest in Sudan's Red Sea coast.

The potential economic stakes here are also substantial. Sudan's eventual reconstruction will require major investment in infrastructure, energy, agriculture and other sectors, while its Red Sea coastline and mineral resources offer significant strategic and commercial opportunities.

Foreign powers are therefore increasingly shaping not only how the war is fought but also the interests that will surround Sudan after the fighting ends. Turkey's expanding relationship with the SAF is part of that wider contest, while the strike inside Chad shows how increasingly difficult it is to contain the war's consequences within Sudan.

Kazakhstan is moving rapidly to position artificial intelligence at the center of its economic modernization strategy, investing in computing infrastructure, skills, startups and Kazakh-language technologies as governments worldwide compete for a place in the emerging AI economy, writes Assel Satubaldina.

Kazakhstan has an increasingly ambitious AI agenda. The government has made AI part of its broader economic modernization strategy, betting that it can improve public services, attract investment and help the country generate more value beyond its traditional reliance on raw materials.  It has been investing heavily in computing infrastructure, training, startup ecosystems, and Kazakh-language models. At the 38th plenary session of the Foreign Investors’ Council in July, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev explicitly called the integration of AI into state investment policy a “critically important priority”. 

The government has adopted a Digital Code and a law on artificial intelligence, launched the Digital Qazaqstan strategy, established a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, and designated 2026 as the Year of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development. This push comes at a time as AI is becoming both a major global industry and an increasingly important source of economic and strategic power. UN Trade and Development estimates the global AI market will rise from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033. This is a 25-fold increase in just a decade. 

Globally, AI push is concentrated among a handful of countries. U.S. private AI investment alone reached nearly $286 billion in 2025, more than 23 times the level in China, according to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index.  Global corporate AI investment more than doubled in 2025, while private companies produced more than 90% of the year’s notable AI models. For emerging economies, the concentration of AI infrastructure in a small number of countries can make this race appear expensive, not to mention that training large language models requires massive quantities of computing power, electricity, connectivity and capital. Kazakhstan is unlikely to compete with the United States or China at the most capital-intensive layer of the AI industry nor does it need to. Experts say its opportunity lies in combining global AI technologies with domestic expertise, while building its own capabilities in areas where dependence creates economic or strategic vulnerabilities.

Strong foundation
The country’s AI push builds on years of its experience of deploying digital technologies at a scale. Advanced technologies are increasingly embedded in government services and banking. “Right now, especially in the artificial intelligence applications in fintech, Kazakhstan is one of the most progressive countries in the world,” Huseyin Atakan Varol, dean of the School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence and director of the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence at Nazarbayev University, told The Astana Times.  He pointed to technologies including palm-recognition authentication and AI-powered banking assistants as examples of how quickly digital tools have entered everyday life. International indicators tell a similar story but also expose an important weakness.

Kazakhstan ranks 10th globally for online government services, according to figures from the World Intellectual Property Organization. Yet it ranks 115th for university-industry collaboration and 112th for venture-capital deal activity relative to the size of its economy. Dr. Varol said Kazakhstan still allocates a relatively small share of its economy to research and development, with the government providing most of that funding. While spending on science has increased in recent years, spending on research and development does not reach 1%.  “Nearly all of this allocation comes from the state, very little from the private companies,” he said. “So basically, industry, academia, government interaction, the triple helix structure is not yet fully working in Kazakhstan.”

That may prove to be one of the important constraints on Kazakhstan’s AI ambitions. While the government can establish institutions, purchase computing infrastructure and train specialistics, building a durable innovation economy requires more. Alem.AI center in Astana is intended to help close that gap by connecting education, research, startups and companies.  “We have some real and simple goals. The first one is to build a community of professionals, who not just use but understand what AI actually is. It means that we train different categories,” Alyona Slavkina, head of the Alem.AI Development Office, told The Astana Times. 

The community is supposed to include schoolchildren, students, working professionals, researchers and entrepreneurs. The idea is to create a pathway from first exposure to AI to education, research and eventually the development of commercial products. The challenge, however, is that AI is evolving faster than conventional education systems. Olzhas Urazalin, head of Tomorrow School, said technologies and development tools can change within months, while formal academic programs often require years to adapt. “Many graduates have strong theoretical knowledge, but very limited experience working with modern AI tools, real data sets, and product development.

\This indeed creates a gap between learning and creation. Young specialists often learn how to use existing AI solutions, but they rarely get the opportunity to understand how these systems are built, or how to develop new ones,” Urazalin said.  Tomorrow School is built around an alternative model. Students learn primarily through projects rather than conventional lectures and work on real problems brought into the curriculum by businesses. The program is free, runs for 18 months and is open to applicants without traditional technology backgrounds. “In my opinion, Kazakhstan must focus on developing, first of all, creators, not only consumers of AI technology,” he said, highlighting talent, infrastructure, and international collaboration as priorities. 

Development pathways
Dr. Varol describes two broad pathways for technological development. One is indigenous development, which requires substantial investment, time and a long-term commitment. The other is what he calls “technological piggybacking,” adopting technologies already developed elsewhere. For Kazakhstan, Varol said that generative AI requires elements of both approaches.  “We have been also debating and discussing a lot about what is the best strategy for Kazakhstan, especially in the development of generative AI technologies. Our internal deliberations always pointed out that we must develop these technologies indigenously as well,” he said. 

Varol also stressed that developing domestic capabilities is not only about owning a model, but also about creating a pool of specialists with expertise who can later move into startups, established companies and new commercial products. Recent events also demonstrated that access to foreign technologies can become subject to government restrictions. In June, the US government temporarily imposed export controls barring foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, including foreign-national employees of Anthropic itself.  “Creators of these technologies can stop your access to these technologies and this creates a very big dependence risk,” said Dr. Varol. 

Technological sovereignty, however, should not be confused with technological self-sufficiency. Mohamed Eissa, chief investment officer at the International Finance Corporation, emphasized that this explains why emerging markets are unlikely to compete directly at that layer of the industry.  “You are not seeing LLMs [large language models] being developed in emerging markets because you need compute, connectivity, power,” Eissa said. “Those things are big infrastructure gaps in emerging markets.” But he draws an important distinction between building AI infrastructure and using AI.

He pointed to a rapidly growing AI company in content creation that originated from Kazakhstan as an example. “But using AI in emerging markets, you don’t need to build that to be able to use it. That is an opportunity in emerging markets: finding innovative people who have really good ICT skills, have focused on a business problem and now have the tools to compete with Silicon Valley,” he said during The Development Podcast on the World Bank Group YouTube channel. 

That may be one of the most important opportunities for Kazakhstan. According to him, in emerging markets, the much larger opportunity may be the application of AI to businesses that already exist. Likewise, in Kazakhstan, potential economic impact of AI should not be measured only by how many programmers, AI startups or research laboratories the nation generates, but rather by whether this technology raises productivity gains across the wider economy. 

Existing strengths
Dr. Varol said some of the applications of AI lie in sectors where the country already has an expertise. Mining, energy and logistics are among them.  “Kazakhstan is one of the richest countries with respect to mining and natural resources, but most of these natural resources are exported with a small amount of added value to other countries,” he said.  Using AI and digital technologies in those industries, he noted, could allow Kazakhstan to generate more value from resources before they leave the country. Where dependence matters  There are areas, however, where Kazakhstan has stronger reasons to maintain domestic capabilities. Dr. Varol said questions about where information is processed and stored become significantly more consequential when AI systems are used by companies or public institutions.

“In general, I believe this is also very important with respect to the sovereignty aspects of a country,” he added.  Language presents a different form of dependence. Global AI systems are trained on enormous quantities of data, but languages are represented very unevenly in those datasets.  Dr. Varol said approximately half of publicly accessible internet content is in English, compared with only around 0.03% in Kazakh. That means developing Kazakh-language AI starts long before a model is trained. ISSAI, which was founded in 2019, has developed the country’s first LLM in 2024. Drawing on the institute’s experience, Dr. Varol explained that researchers first need to collect texts and other data, remove poor-quality material, organize the information and convert it into formats suitable for machine learning. Researchers faced another problem once a model has been trained on how to determine whether it actually understands the language. “Because the internationally accepted method for doing this is called model benchmarking and all model benchmarks are in English language or Chinese language, but none were in Kazakh language. Basically, we also have created a suite of benchmarking data sets,” he said. 

The development of Kazakhstan’s LLM illustrates another benefit of indigenous AI development. The process itself creates capabilities. The team had to recruit and train specialists while learning to operate multi-node AI computing infrastructure, expertise that had not previously been used at that scale. The significance of the project therefore extends beyond the model it produced. It helped build a domestic pool of engineers with experience in the infrastructure and workflows required for advanced AI development. Kazakhstan’s AI strategy therefore does not require choosing between complete technological independence and reliance on global platforms. The more realistic task is to determine which capabilities the country needs to control, which technologies it can efficiently import and where AI can create the greatest economic value.

• Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev outlined key priorities for Kazakhstan's education system at the annual August Conference of Teachers. Qazinform News Agency summarized the main points of his speech.

Based on the objectives outlined by the head of state, schools must simultaneously deliver quality education, foster self-confident individuals, and prepare young people for the new opportunities of the digital economy.

More schools, less shortage

Among the top priorities, the President identified the continued building of high-quality schools in all regions, particularly in areas still facing a shortage of school places.

"This is a pressing task of national importance. From next year, it is necessary to begin this work without any delays. Next year, we must ensure rapid construction," he instructed.

Reform is not an experiment

President Tokayev also addressed the numerous changes taking place in the education system.

"We must stop empty, content-free reforms done for the sake of reforms. In other words, reforms and changes are certainly indispensable, but they should not drain all the strength and stress out of teachers. Before implementing each reform – and this applies especially to education – we must conduct a comprehensive analysis and thoroughly verify it is effective," Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said.

Cutting red tape for teachers

The President also called for relieving teachers of excessive paperwork, meddlesome certification procedures, and unrelated workloads.

"Reports keep coming in about teachers being pulled into repair work and various public events that have nothing to do with the learning process. We agreed long ago that this is unacceptable. The Ministry of Enlightenment and regional akimats must focus on improving the legal and regulatory framework, building an effective learning process, and carefully analyzing curricula," he noted.

Raising a "nation of winners"

A significant portion of the Head of State's speech was dedicated to educating children and youth. In his view, the education system must foster confident individuals capable of overcoming challenges.

"It is the duty of teachers to nurture new generations of optimists – not those consumed by sorrow, insecure, and spreading seeds of depression. We are a nation of winners, ready to overcome all difficulties and threats, looking confidently only forward, believing in a bright future – not searching for the causes of tragedies, defeats, failures, or psychological complexes in our historical past or in other states and peoples," President Tokayev emphasized.

Rethinking historical narratives

The President also pointed to the need to revise educational materials, which, he said, contain unreliable facts and mythologized heroes.

"Raising children in a spirit of patriotism by spreading false, fabricated information will inevitably undermine the moral backbone of our people. I have said many times that we must abandon the image and character of an eternally grieving nation.

Sorrow is a bad companion for our youth. I can tell you that for sure. Our young people must understand their people's history correctly and look to the future with hope and confidence," Kassym-Jomart Tokayev underscored.

Digital protection for children

The Government is entrusted with fast-tracking legislation banning under-16s from social media (a bill already submitted to Parliament in June) and to step up content filtering.

The President stressed that relying solely on parental responsibility is not enough, and called for scaling up mandatory children's SIM cards as a tool for "informational immunity."

AI as a tool for earning

Tokayev also announced that in his upcoming State of the Nation Address, he will set the goal of involving young people, including those in rural areas, in using digital tools and AI to generate income.

"We are to transition from a digital state to a digital people's economy. In other words, artificial intelligence and its tools are not fun toys – they are means of making a living. That is how it should be. In higher education, an inter-university standard already exists that addresses the ethical, legal, and organizational aspects of AI use. The Government must introduce a similar standard in secondary and vocational education," the President instructed.

Key message

The President's core message is that education is not just a sector — it is a tool for shaping a modern individual: confident, not dwelling on past grievances, capable of earning income through digital technology, and protected by the state.

And there we have it: yet another proposed date for parliamentary elections in Serbia. This time, according to President Aleksandar Vučić, they may take place on either 18 or 25 October, writes Helena Ivanov.

But, this is not the first date the President has suggested. Earlier this year, July was among the possibilities mentioned – which, obviously, did not happen. In June, Vučić went considerably further, announcing that he would remain President for only a few more weeks, after which he would resign and support the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, potentially as its candidate for Prime Minister. More than a few weeks have since passed, and he remains President.

In the meantime, October, November, December and even January 2027 have all been suggested at various points in the never-ending discussion over when Serbia will actually go to the polls.

And then, a few days ago, speaking to the Radio Television of Serbia, the country’s public broadcaster, Vučić claimed that he had finally made his decision: parliamentary elections would take place on either 18 or 25 October. Even this supposedly final announcement, of course, still leaves us with two dates.

A foreign reader may reasonably wonder why there has been so much drama over when, exactly, Serbia will hold its next elections. But domestically, this constant pushing back of the date has raised eyebrows for another reason: Vučić has historically been anything but reluctant to call an election.

Since the Serbian Progressive Party came to power in 2012, Serbia has held four rounds of snap parliamentary elections: in 2014, 2016, 2022 and 2023. Snap elections have, in other words, become quite regular in Serbia’s political life.

Vučić repeatedly used them at times of political pressure. When the country entered a crisis, or when protests threatened to gain momentum, an election offered an opportunity to reset the political landscape. Most recently, after the two mass shootings in May 2023 triggered months of large anti-government protests, Serbia went to early parliamentary elections that December. Vučić’s coalition won, and the protest movement gradually lost momentum.

The political logic was relatively straightforward. Each electoral victory allowed Vučić to present the result as renewed democratic legitimacy and, in practice, helped kill the momentum from the streets.

This time, however, things have been different.

The student-led protests that began following the collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy in November 2024 grew into something far more durable than previous protest movements. More importantly, they eventually transformed from a protest movement into one that is openly demanding political change. Since May 2025, students have explicitly called for snap elections.

Unlike previous waves of protest, this one did not simply disappear after several weeks or months. It survived for well over a year, repeatedly bringing enormous numbers of people onto the streets across Serbia. For example, on 15^th March 2025, it is estimated that as many as 350,000 people attended the protest in Belgrade, making it the largest protest in Serbia’s contemporary political history.

The students have also stated that they intend to contest the election through a list of 250 MP candidates. Crucially, these candidates are not expected to be the students themselves. Rather, the movement has been selecting people it considers capable of representing its demands, while deliberately distancing itself from both the existing opposition and the ruling establishment. As of today, the names of those on the list remain unknown, with students stating that the list will only become public when the elections are officially called.

And yet, despite his previous willingness to resort to elections to end the protests, Vučić spent more than a year refusing to give the students precisely what they were asking for.

That reversal inevitably produced speculation that, unlike on previous occasions, the President was no longer quite as confident that an election would resolve the crisis in his favour. Vučić himself has never said anything to suggest that he fears losing, and he continues to project confidence in his party’s prospects. But he has also never offered a particularly convincing reason for why a political leader who once reached for snap elections so readily became so reluctant to call one all of a sudden.

This is ultimately why the endless discussion over dates matters. The question is not whether Serbia votes on 18^th October, 25^th October or some later date. It is why elections, once one of Vučić’s favourite tools for consolidating power, suddenly became something he appeared determined to postpone for as long as possible.

There is one potential, and relatively simple answer: he needed time to get his ducks in order, weaken the protests’ momentum, and try to win the public back before going to the polls. And indeed, while Vučić has been reluctant to formally call elections, he has certainly not been reluctant to campaign. Quite the opposite. For months, he has been campaigning in full gear.

He has toured Serbia, met citizens, announced new projects and attempted to address some of the voters’ grievances. He has promised another package of direct financial assistance, including the possibility of cash payments to all adult citizens. In July, Vučić also launched the Ko si bre ti? [Who The Hell Do You Think You Are?] portal, through which citizens can anonymously report public officials for corruption, abuse of office, or unlawful behaviour.

The political purpose is not particularly difficult to understand. The message is that Vučić has heard the public, that he understands why people are angry, and that he will fix the very problems that brought people onto the streets in the first place.

Moreover, by launching the portal, Vučić has reinforced the message that citizens’ grievances are not his fault, but that of other officials whom he intends to hold accountable.

Of course, Vučić’s campaign has also been accompanied by sustained media attacks against the students and virtually anyone associated with the movement, aimed at discrediting the protesters, their demands and, increasingly, their very ability to govern the country.

The same campaigning effort is visible in foreign policy. Vučić has continued doing what he has always done particularly well: maintaining relationships in virtually every direction and presenting himself domestically as the only figure capable of speaking to everyone.

In May, despite the EU’s pressure not to do so, he went to Moscow for the Victory Day parade. That same month, he travelled to China for a state visit with Xi Jinping. He has repeatedly courted the Trump administration and publicly invited President Donald Trump to Serbia on many occasions. In July, to the surprise of many, the European Commission recommended opening Cluster 3 in Serbia’s EU Accession talks, although the move was ultimately blocked by several member states. And, perhaps most strikingly, in August, Vučić hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Belgrade, despite Serbia refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow. All of this has reinforced one of Vučić’s key messages: that he is the only man capable of keeping Serbia on good terms with Beijing, Washington, Brussels, Moscow and now apparently Kyiv simultaneously and at a geopolitically very complex time.

Taken together, Vučić’s strategy becomes fairly obvious: delay the elections for as long as possible, use the extra time to get a head start on campaigning, and call them only once he believes the political tide has turned sufficiently in his favour. This also gives him a considerable advantage once the official campaign begins, as his opponents will only have a few weeks to catch up with what has effectively been his months-long campaign.

The real test will therefore begin when the elections are finally called. The students have demonstrated that they can mobilise hundreds of thousands of people on the streets. They now have to demonstrate that they can turn that mobilisation into votes and defeat a political veteran who has spent more than a decade perfecting the art of winning elections.

As for Vučić, he is set to find out whether the political instrument he once used so effectively to end protests can still save him from the most persistent protest movement of his rule.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the machinery of modern markets. Banks, hedge funds and trading firms are using increasingly sophisticated models to identify opportunities, manage risk and execute trades, writes Amir Naser Hojati.

Most discussion focuses on one question: What happens when an AI model gets something wrong?

I think there is another risk.

What happens when many good models reach the same conclusion at the same time?

After roughly 15 years of trading futures, I have learned that markets often become dangerous not because one participant is wrong, but because too many become convinced of the same thing.

As traders sometimes say: when everyone moves to the same side of the boat, start watching the waterline.

Different models, same trade

Financial institutions may believe they are diversified because they use different models, vendors and strategies.

But those systems may still be learning from similar information: price history, volatility, order flow, economic data and news sentiment. They may also be optimizing toward similar goals.

Different models do not need to be identical to produce the same trade.

Several independent systems can simultaneously decide to reduce the same exposure, buy the same asset or hedge the same risk.

That creates hidden dependence.

A market can appear diversified while many supposedly independent systems are reacting to the same information in similar ways.

The real vulnerability may therefore not be one bad model, but the connection between many good ones.

Markets have seen this before

Crowded trades are nothing new.

Portfolio managers react to the same data. Traders watch the same levels. Risk desks cut exposure when volatility rises.

Technology increases the speed of those reactions. AI may also increase their consistency.

Humans disagree, hesitate or sometimes simply choose to do nothing.

Machines are less likely to disagree unless that behaviour is deliberately built into them.

If many models detect the same deterioration in risk and begin reducing exposure simultaneously, individually rational decisions can produce an irrational market outcome.

Each model may be doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The market can still become unstable.

Historical success can be dangerous

A strategy can perform well for years because market conditions remain broadly familiar.

That history creates confidence.

But markets do not owe us tomorrow because something worked yesterday.

One of the most dangerous moments is not when a model is obviously failing, but when it has accumulated enough successful history that people stop questioning its assumptions.

A calm sea can make almost any captain look skilled.

For AI-driven markets, the important question should therefore not only be:

How accurate is this model?

It should also be:

What assumptions does this model share with everyone else's?

More intelligence is not always more resilience

The usual response to model risk is to add more: more data, more parameters, another model, another control.

But resilience does not always come from adding complexity.

Sometimes it comes from removing exposure.

A system may become safer not because it predicts markets more accurately, but because it knows when conditions are unsuitable for taking risk.

That is one of the hardest lessons to translate from discretionary trading into automation.

Finding a trading signal is relatively easy.

Teaching a machine when a valid signal should be ignored is much harder.

Experienced traders know that a setup can look perfectly good and still not deserve capital. The market may be too crowded, liquidity may be changing, or correlations may be breaking down.

Sometimes the best trade is no trade.

Diversity of behaviour matters

Using several different AI models does not necessarily provide diversification if all of them react to stress in the same way.

Real diversification may require different behaviour, not just different architecture.

When should a model refuse to trade?

When should it reduce confidence?

When should it respond more slowly?

And how should it behave when the actions of other models are themselves changing the market?

That matters because financial markets are not ordinary prediction problems.

Predicting the weather does not change the weather.

Predicting a market can change the market because participants act on the prediction.

As more intelligent systems enter that feedback loop, their collective behaviour may become as important as the quality of any individual model.

The next edge may be restraint

Financial institutions will continue building faster and more powerful models.

But I suspect the next competitive advantage will not come only from making machines better at finding trades.

It will also come from making them better at recognizing when everyone else has found the same trade.

Markets have always punished excessive certainty eventually.

AI does not remove that principle. It may simply allow certainty to spread faster.

The smartest trading systems of the next decade may therefore be distinguished not only by how quickly they act, but by something harder to program:

Kknowing when not to join the crowd.

Amir Naser Hojati is a futures trader and fintech entrepreneur with around 15 years of experience in financial markets. His work focuses on algorithmic trading, automated risk management, and AI-driven trading systems.