Briefing Room 21.02.26

Welcome back to The Briefing Room, the weekly show that rolls its eyes to the headlines before diving into the back page as an obscure specialist journal to find out what's really happening in the world.

I'm Simon, and what's happening this week is drama in South America, where Colombian President Gustavo Petro has claimed he was the target of an assassination attempt. Over in the Middle East, there's also been a significant shift in the makeup of the new Syria, where Turkey has apparently given its blessing to the SDF being integrated into state structures.

But first, we're going to be zooming in on the Sahel's most dangerous jihadist movement, where some recent sharp defections have thrown everything into doubt. As always, thank you so much for subscribing.

It's your membership that allows us to make cool videos on obscure sh** like this, covering stuff most YouTube channels simply don't have the time for or capacity to report.

And now, let's get straight into our main story. The Jihadida Faction For our lead story, we turn our attention to West Africa, where a mage defection within the ranks of the jihadist group Jamal-at-Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslinim, which I always struggle with but is shortened to Janim, fortunately, has gone virtually unreported.

According to Brandt Phillip, a Sahel-focused terrorism tracker, a former Janim leader known as Saad recently pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State Sahel province and defected from Janim.

Saad was responsible for eastern Burkina Faso, near neighboring Mali, and he defected to the Islamic State alongside several of his men. Saad would later release several audio messages where he accused Janim leaders of not applying Sharia in its totality and going against the tenets of Jihad by negotiating peace deals with Benin and Ivory Coast.

He also clarified that he hasn't joined the Islamic State for monetary gain, rather because their actions matched their words.

Now, this isn't the first defection from Janim to IS. Several leaders and their men have switched sides since early 2020. However, this one is significant because of the timing.

Several days after Saad's defection, Phillips reported that a deal between the residents of Boni, a village in northern Mali, and Janim had collapsed, allowing the Russia-Africa Corps to resume operations in the area. Crucially, a number of Janim fighters had chosen to defect and join the Russia Corps.

Taken together, this paints a picture of an insurgency group that is incapable of holding onto its troops.

So why has Janim so many high-profile defections recently, and what impact will it have on the group's operations? Let's start with the first question. The most common justification Jihadists give for switching groups is religious.

In the Jihadist worldview, the oath of allegiance a fighter swears to his commander is a serious religious commitment, but it comes with an implicit condition, that the leader is actually pursuing the goals of Jihad.

When a group is seen as deviating from religious principles, whether by tolerating practices deemed un-Islamic or failing to apply Sharia in its entirety, members can often view defection not as a betrayal, but as a religious obligation. And then there's money.

Research into defectors from Islamic State in the Middle East has found that material conditions, conditions, salaries, food, equipment, and the prospect- of captured spoils are consistently cited alongside ideology as reasons for joining and leaving groups for sales no difference armed groups in the region operate as economic enterprises as much as

Ideological movements taxing trade routes levying payments on local populations and controlling access to farmland and markets when one organization is visibly wealthier than another fighters take note of that even taking religion into account loyalty in conflict zones rarely outlasts the paycheck fighters can also leave over politics janim's peace ivertures

To benin and ivory coast struck sard and others as a betrayal of the broader jihadist project for fighters who willingly risk their lives to wage an insurgency watching their leadership broker arrangements with the very governments that they're meant to fight can feel like watching the movement sell itself out and then there's the simpler calculation of

Momentum jihadists like everyone else want to be on the winning side when is sahal appears to be gaining ground absorbing fighters and holding territory it becomes harder for janim commanders to keep their men from looking over the fence most affections between rival groups are driven by a mix of all four reasons the defection in benin is harder to explain

Through any of these lenses however since those fighters joined a secular paramilitary force rather than a rival jihadist group but the underlying logic is the same they looked at their situation weighed their options and chose the side that seemed stronger and that leads us to our second question how much of an impact is this having on janim for the moment

The honest answers not very much janim recently launched a wave of coordinated attacks across northern and eastern burkina faso hitting several towns including belanga titao and tanjari nearly simultaneously the jihadists overran military detachments set markets on fire and killed civilians including eight ghanian tomato traders into tau internal reports

From two diplomatic missions reviewed by reuters described the scale of the attack and the level of coordination is unprecedented quoting one of the reports these attacks which were almost simultaneous and spread across several provinces demonstrate unprecedented coordination between jihadists and the hunters inability to contain the assaults the timing of

The eastern burkina faso attacks is worth noting that this is territory that saad was responsible for before his defection if there was ever a moment for janim to demonstrate that one man's departure hasn't left a hole in its ranks this would be it striking hard in his former operation area could show wavering fighters that janim was still the dominant force

In the region we also have to point out here that according to brad phillip aya sahel had attacked janim positions south of arbinda in northeastern burkina faso killing and capturing several janim fighters and seizing their positions with that in mind the attacks could serve two additional purposes first to remind the islamic state the janim is capable of

Unleashing violence on an unimaginable scale second as a recruitment pitch to islamic state fighters who might be questioning their loyalty zooming out while you affections may be symptoms of real internal strife, Janim looks to be as strong as it has ever been.

According to Rita Katz of the Sight Intelligence Group in 2025, Janim claimed responsibility for nearly 500 attacks in Burkina Faso and nearly 300 in Mali, which included a siege on the capital that nearly brought the entire country to its knees.

Governments in the Sahel need to take this threat seriously, because if they don't, Janim could be at their doorstep, ready to plunge the entire region into chaos.

Turkey signs off on SDF integration When international headlines emerge from post-war Syria, it's still relatively rare that they include any good news. So when good news does occasionally break through, it brings our front team a certain level of relief that we're able to actually talk about that instead of something that has gone horribly wrong.

That's precisely what we got this week, when President Erdogan, leader of Syria's northern neighbor, Turkey, delivered a set of remarks to the national press while aboard a flight home from Ethiopia.

Aboard that flight, Erdogan was asked about the ongoing integration process in Syria between the country's transitional government in Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

According to a readout from the flight, Erdogan expressed that he was quite happy with what's happening in Syria today, as the SDF is progressively integrated into Syrian state structures and ceases to operate as an independent entity.

According to Erdogan, Turkey is monitoring the situation very closely and weighs in on it frequently, but for now, it seems that all is well in Ankara.

Now, in most cases, if the leader of a regionally relevant government happened to pay a few kind words to his next-door neighbors, it would hardly be the sort of revelation that we or any other outlet focused on world conflicts would make time for.

But in this particular case, what Erdogan thinks of the integration process between Damascus and the SDF really matters, because across the last decade, and especially since 2019, Erdogan's positive or negative feelings toward the SDF tend to have deadly consequences.

Although it's technically a separate entity, the SDF has long had links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, an insurgent group on Turkish soil that Erdogan has been fighting against for decades.

In 2025, Erdogan offered the PKK an amnesty and disarmament deal, which has turned out to be a surprising success after multiple generations of continuous conflict. But once that amnesty deal went through, Erdogan turned his eye toward the SDF in northern Syria, where it protected and lived under an autonomous Kurdish-led regional government.

As Erdogan told it, the SDF were hosting PKK remnants, they still intended to pose security threats to Turkey, and they were an intolerable armed paramilitary threat on Turkey's borders.

Considering that Turkey has not been hesitant in taking military action against the SDF in the past, and has held a large buffer zone on Syrian territory since a direct intervention in 2019, the SDF and the rest of the region treated Erdogan's position with deadly seriousness. As it turned out, They were right to do so.

Turkey wields tremendous influence in the new government in Damascus, and while Ankara has pressured Damascus to integrate the SDF, incorporate the Kurdish-led government, and otherwise bring them under the authority of a unified Syrian state, that process has been going very well.

The SDF has insisted that even if they did agree to integrate to the Syrian military, they'd need to remain a united force within the Syrian military, and Kurdish civil leaders had been pushing for a range of other accommodations and protections.

Really, those requests seemed fair enough, given the multiple massacres of civilians in other parts of Syria by government-aligned forces within just the last year, and while the new Syrian government had its own demands for the SDF and the Kurdish-led autonomous government, both sides seemed content to let the process play out.

Each of them respected the other's military power, each of them seemed to agree that the other was ultimately acting in good faith, and according to insider reports from Damascus, Syrian leaders had no real appetite for confrontation.

Of course, if you've been following Syrian affairs across the last couple of months, that assertion might be a surprise.

That's because over the first few weeks of 2026, the Syrian government did take action against the SDF, first by a sustained campaign in multiple Kurdish-majority neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo, and then out around the central and northeastern regions, where the SDF had maintained autonomous rule for over a decade.

During the fighting, Damascus recaptured most of Syria's lucrative oil fields and a large share of its agricultural breadbasket, pushing the SDF back to just a few well-defended strongholds.

But the difference-maker at that time, and the reason that the Syrian government engaged in an offensive when it didn't seem to want to do so, was Turkey. Ankara had been exerting heavy pressure on Damascus to deal with the SDF problem Turkey's way. Turkish troops and heavy armor had streamed into the nation just prior to the Syrian government's offensive.

Closely Turkish-aligned militias traveled into the combat zone, making it clear that they'd be fighting whether or not Damascus endorsed their operations.

And while there was heavy fighting in some areas during the Syrian government's offensive, with roughly 1,000 combatants and 152 civilians reported killed before a comprehensive peace agreement could be agreed on the 13th of January, 1,000 fatalities for an offensive on that scale was actually quite low.

Possibly to avoid drawing in the Turkish military directly, possibly due to effective encirclements and concentrations of force by Syrian troops, or possibly in recognition that at this point, the fight really just wasn't worth having.

Both the SDF and the Syrian government appeared to hold back relative to the harm that they could have inflicted on each other. In fact, the heaviest fighting consistently took place between the SDF and Arab tribal militias, generally fighting to achieve the same objectives as the Syrian government, but often loyal to Ankara.

After the comprehensive agreement was signed between Damascus and the SDF, the two sides have started the integration. process, but that in itself doesn't guarantee that the trouble is over.

The SDF still maintains practical control in two stronghold areas along the Turkish border, one anchored in Kobani and the other in al-Hasakar. Syria Interior Ministry troops are slowly moving into those areas, but Kurdish leadership still has broad authority.

There have been early delays in the integration process, nothing particularly catastrophic, but still delays, and obviously tensions in the area are still very high.

Turkish forces remain on the ground, and Turkish ambitions to rein in the region's Kurdish population still appear unchanged. So when Erdogan aboard his plane signaled that Turkey was quite happy with the situation in Syria, well, suffice it to say that the entire region and Syria watchers across the globe all got to breathe a deep sigh of relief.

An Attempted Assassination And for our final story today, we turn our attention to Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro recently claimed that he had survived an attempted assassination after months of warnings about an alleged plot by drug traffickers targeted.

On Monday, the 9th of February, President Petro's helicopter was unable to land at his destination on the Caribbean coast because of fears that unspecified people were going to shoot at it.

Describing the incident during a cabinet meeting that was broadcast live, President Petro said, and we'll quote him here, "...last night I couldn't land because I was informed that the helicopter I was traveling in with my daughters was going to be shot at.

We headed out to open sea for four hours and arrived somewhere we weren't supposed to go, escaping from being killed." End quote.

According to France 24, the alleged plot involves narco bosses and warlords such as Ivan Modisco, who commands the largest group of dissidents who broke with the far guerrilla army after it agreed to disarm under a 2016 peace agreement.

President Petro further claimed that there had been a plot to plant narcotics inside one of his official vehicles in an attempt to portray him as a drug trafficker, adding that he had fired a police general and other officials suspected of involvement. Now, Colombia is no stranger to high-profile political assassinations.

In June 2025, Senator Miguel Uribe, grandson of Colombia's 26th president and widely seen as a potential frontrunner in the upcoming presidential elections, was shot while at a rally in Bogotá. Nor was the attack on President Petro the only attack targeting politicians just this month.

On the 5th, gunmen opened fire on Senator Jairo Casanos's caravan in the Araka region.

Although the senator was not in the vehicle at the time, the attack killed two of his bodyguards and three members of his campaign staff were kidnapped but later released. The LN, a far-left insurgent group, put out a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, saying that the senator's vehicle had ignored their checkpoints, forcing them to act.

And on the 10th, Senator Ada Kilku, an award-winning indigenous activist, was kidnapped by several armed men before being rescued by a group of indigenous trackers.

While such attacks targeting lower-ranking politicians are common in Colombia, attacks targeting the sitting president, and if Petro is to be believed, Attempts to frame him for drug trafficking are exceedingly rare. And that raises an interesting question. Why would the armed groups want Petro dead?

And the short answer there is money. Petro came into office in 2022 promising a policy he called Total Peace, an ambitious attempt to negotiate simultaneously with every armed group operating in the country.

In practice, what that gave those groups was time, which they used to expand territory, consolidate control over drug trafficking routes, and grow rich while the government pursued an obviously flawed plan.

To illustrate just how poorly the plan went, the UN estimates that Colombia's cocaine exports now have surpassed 1,700 tons higher than at any point on record. Petro has since abandoned the approach and hardened his posture, comparing Ivan Mordisco to Pablo Escobar and launching military operations against dissident FARC factions.

That shift is almost certainly what has sharpened the threat against him.

Armed groups that once tolerated his presence now see him as a direct threat to their revenue. And in Colombia, that is historically, but a bit of a death sentence. There's also the not-so-small matter of the upcoming elections.

President Petro is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term, which means Colombia heads to the polls on May 31st with the presidency wide open. For the armed groups operating across the country, the election represents both a threat and an opportunity.

A threat because a hard-aligned successor could dismantle what remains of the ceasefire agreements and come after them with more military force than Petro.

An opportunity because the chaos of a campaign season, tinged with violence, gives them room to intimidate, coerce, and shape the political landscape in their favor before a new government takes office. At the local level, shootings and kidnappings are effective tools to remind politicians of just how little power they wield.

According to a recent report by the Electoral Observation Mission, an independent election watchdog, threats from illegal armed groups, violence against community leaders, restrictions on movement, and violations of press freedom are already threatening the electoral process.

The report found 170 municipalities with some level of electoral risk where indicators of fraud and violence coincided. Of those, 81 were at extreme risk, and 51 were at high risk. For many Colombians, this has the feel of a particularly dark era of their history.

In the late 80s and early 90s, five presidential candidates were assassinated. Drug lords effectively vetoed the country's democratic process through violence.

Elizabeth Dickinson, Deputy Programme Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Crisis Group, has warned that those sinister practices appeared to be resurfacing, with criminal networks once again preying on the vulnerabilities of young people in poor areas to carry out targeted political killings.

Whether Colombia can break this cycle depends largely on what comes next. The 2016 FARC peace deal showed that even a conflict spanning more than half a century could be resolved at the negotiating table.

But that deal also showed how fragile such agreements are when the underlying conditions that produce armed groups poverty poverty. state absence, and the extraordinary profitability of drugs got addressed.

Whoever wins in May will inherit a country where these armed groups are increasingly willing to use violence to remind the nation that a gun is mightier than the ballot box.