WarFronts Weekly 9.11.2026: Friday Blitz.

11.09.2026

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Algeria Breaks Ties with United Arab Emirates:

For most of the 21 st century, the North African nation of Algeria has abided by a policy of near-complete non-alignment and non-interference on the global stage. On Thursday, however, Algeria made waves in a way it hadn’t done since the 1960s, against any nation other than its neighbor Morocco. Thursday saw Algeria suddenly sever all diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, citing unspecified “provocative or hostile actions” by Abu Dhabi.

Algeria didn’t name the specific grievance that prompted it to sever ties, instead alleging that in a much broader pattern of interaction with Algeria and the world, the Emirates had “persisted in its excesses” and “reached limits that can no longer be considered acceptable or tolerable”. Citing its own efforts to preserve Emirati relations, the Algerian government essentially expressed that it had run out of patience, giving the Emirati ambassador forty-eight hours to leave the country.

In a broad sense, Algeria’s characterization of Emirati conduct is accurate. From its decision to back Sudan’s genocidal Rapid Support Forces, and separatist or rival governments in Somalia, Libya, and Yemen, to its growing alignment with Israel and proxy conflict with Saudi Arabia, to its departure from OPEC earlier this year, the Emirates are a consistently disruptive force on the world stage.

Instead of being motivated by a specific Emirati affront, Algeria’s decision appeared to be a response to the Emirates’ broader global posture. On Wednesday, the Algerian Press Service called out the Emirates’ support for destabilizing African and Middle Eastern actors, and alleged that it is the “conductor” of regional crises. The Emirates reacted tepidly to the news, with its foreign ministry expressing hope that the rupture would be “temporary”.

The stark departure from Algeria’s usual, sedate geopolitical posture would already be strange enough, if the nation had voiced concerns about specific Emirati conduct, or been threatened directly by an Emirati initiative. For Algeria to sever ties, essentially as a preventative measure, is stunning—even despite the Emirates’ close relationship with Morocco, Algeria’s longtime rival.

Scholar Andreas Krieg noted that Algiers likely fears “Emirati contact with the , which Algiers treats as a terrorist organization and as a red line running straight through national unity”. Due to its Moroccan ties, the Emirates are also on the opposite side of the frozen Western Sahara conflict, in which Algeria hosts roughly 170,000 displaced Sahrawi refugees.

Algiers’ decision is the latest instance of surprisingly overt, recent geopolitical engagement, but not the only one. Weeks ago, Algeria dispatched several fighter jets and other aircraft to support the ruling military government in Niger, after a mutiny among front-line troops nearly evolved into a coup d’etat.

If the twin decisions herald a period of greater international engagement for Algeria—Africa’s fourth-largest economy and its tenth-most-populous nation—then Algeria’s next moves could meaningfully change the complexion of conflicts from Sudan, to the Sahel, to Western Sahara or the African Horn.

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Around the World:

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have captured Yemen’s western Red Sea coast after a lightning offensive this week, seizing the port city of Mokha, the key island of Perim, and the narrow Yemeni peninsula that juts out into the Bab al-Mandeb, a key chokepoint for global trade. The Houthi advance came at the expense of a Saudi-backed coalition including Yemen’s internationally recognized government, tribal militias, and Saudi air support. WarFronts will discuss the situation at length, in today’s video episode on YouTube.

Western and pro-Russian analysts are increasingly acknowledging a secretive Ukrainian counteroffensive that has played out around the ruined city of Lyman over the last several months, with Ukraine estimated to have taken back between 150 and over 200 square kilometers of territory. The operation is expected to pose major problems for Russia as it attempts to push toward Slovyansk, the key city that anchors Ukraine’s Donbas fortress belt and guards against a full Russian capture of Donetsk Oblast. Also in the Ukraine conflict, Russia resumed attacks on Ukrainian territory this week after a brief pause to accommodate visits by US envoys. Recent Russian strikes killed five people across several locations in Kyiv on Tuesday night, two at a shopping center in the northern city of Sumy on Wednesday, and two at a Moldova-Ukraine border crossing in the Odesa region, also on Wednesday. Ukrainian strikes, meanwhile, damaged at least one frigate and multiple missile-carrier vessels in the Russian port of Novorossiysk, along with an Su-33 fighter aircraft and an oil terminal.

Iran and the United States continued to exchange strikes this week, with the US sinking five Iranian oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz overnight on Wednesday. Although the US had avoided attacking Iranian state-owned tankers until now, Washington claims to have hit ten across the past week. Iran claimed to have targeted eight civilian tankers and two warships in return, with several ships reporting strikes around that time. Also this week, Iranian strikes on Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base damaged several US aircraft based there, per unnamed US officials, including an A-10 attack aircraft that lost a wing.

At least thirteen people, most of them elite Russian National Guard troops, were killed in an avalanche on southern Russia’s Mount Mizirghi while carrying out alpine training exercises. The troops killed in the avalanche were purportedly from Russia’s “Vityaz” Special Forces Center; the cause of the avalanche is unknown, but Russian authorities opened an investigation on charges of negligence.

A massive explosion at a temporary munitions storage site in the Syrian province of Idlib left at least fourteen people killed on Wednesday, and another eleven wounded. While the cause of the blast was unknown, it was the second fatal munitions explosion in Idlib province, just this September. Ammunitions stockpiles are often located in civilian neighborhoods, in post-war Syria.

Days before the explosion in Idlib, another detonation of stored explosives—this time in Bolivia—killed at least nine people at a barracks roughly thirty kilometers outside La Paz. The Commander of the Bolivian Army noted that the death toll from the blast could have been much higher, if not for an incidental bicycle ride that took many base personnel away from the barracks at the time of the explosion. Dozens of people were hospitalized after the blast, and an unknown number are still missing.

Four members of Russia’s paramilitary Africa Corps were among at least thirteen soldiers killed in Mali this week, in an ambush near the village of Kaka in the country’s Mopti region. The attack was carried out by members of the al-Qaeda-linked insurgency JNIM, who also captured at least fourteen motorcycles, two machine guns, and a range of other weapons. The Africa Corps were reportedly operating alongside local traditional hunters in the area.

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed at least four people, including two children, according to hospital officials who spoke to international media on Thursday. The Israeli military claimed that the strike, which hit the northern Gaza community of Beit Lahiya, killed a militant who had participated in attacks against Israel. Per hospital staff, the strike killed a husband and wife along with their two daughters, age 12 and 8 years old, respectively.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s aircraft was “almost hit” by a drone while taking off from an airport in Moldova, according to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere. Zelenskyy flew out of Moldova on Tuesday to attend the funeral of Norwegian King Harald V, and has since returned safely to Ukraine. The incident was the second time in the last year that aircraft carrying Zelenskyy have been threatened by drones, after a similar encounter in Ireland in December 2025.

A Sunni cleric in Iranian Kurdistan was killed by alleged “Zionist-American Kurdish separatist groups”, according to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, in an attack in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province. The cleric was described by Iranian state media as a member of the Basij internal paramilitary group; he was the second Sunni local religious leader killed by gunmen in Iran since July.

Myanmar’s Tada-U International Airport in Mandalay was shut down on Thursday, in a closure expected to run through Saturday, after the nation’s pro-democracy People’s Defense Force rebels fired six kamikaze drones at the airport. According to local media, the rebels were trying to hit military fighter jets stationed at the airport. While Myanmar’s rebels have become increasingly proficient in the use of drones, the attack on Mandalay is a demonstration of their drones’ growing reach, and the rebels’ new ability to directly pressure the capital.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced the closure of Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem and drew down ties with London, after Britain announced sanctions on goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The British sanctions came alongside accusations that Jerusalem has ignored the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian West Bank residents by Jewish settlers, as reports of settler sieges and attacks have increased sharply over the last several weeks.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic moved to dissolve parliament and call a snap election, in a move that is likely to clear the way for Vucic’s personal transition from the role of President—where he is term-limited—to the role of Prime Minister. Serbia will hold elections on the twenty-fifth of October. Also this week, Vucic drew condemnation from across Europe for the decision to hold a large, ostentatious funeral ceremony for Ratko Mladic, the Yugoslav Wars-era “Butcher of Bosnia”; Vucic did not personally attend.

Germany’s far-right AfD political party won a landslide victory in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany, in the biggest win for a German far-right party in a state-level election since the Nazi era. While the win did not grant the AfD a governing majority, and was relatively unsurprising given Saxony-Anhalt’s historic support for right-wing movements, it is a serious blow to the government of Germany’s historically unpopular leader, Friedrich Merz.

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir appointed his son, the newly promoted Major General Atem Salva Kiir, to serve as commander of the elder Kiir’s Presidential Guard this week. Africa experts have interpreted the move as a potential attempt to signal Kiir’s preferred line of succession, as the elderly, ailing leader tries to maintain control over a fractured and unstable nation.

Spanish intelligence was aware of migrants’ plans to storm the North African enclave of Ceuta in late July, with a full day’s notice provided to Spanish and Moroccan authorities before over 70,000 people surged across Ceuta’s Spanish border. Spanish intelligence assessed a threat that could have been even larger, with “a total of 180,000 followers” discussing the plan on social media. The warning, described in newly released government documents, contradicts Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares’ claim that there was no information “pointing to the magnitude” of the coming migrant wave.

A news report by the Israeli outlet Haaretz alleged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received direct, advance warning from the President of the United Arab Emirates ten days before October 7, 2023, warning that Hamas was planning a major operation that could destabilize the Middle East. According to the report, Netanyahu dismissed the warning; his office claimed that the report was an “absolute lie”, according to Haaretz. The news comes as Netanyahu faces a difficult election cycle, in which his main rival, former general Gadi Eisenkot, alleges that Netanyahu ignored dozens of warnings prior to the October 7 attacks.

On Saturday, Vietnam became the latest Southeast Asian nation to deepen its ties with Myanmar’s ostensibly civilian government, under former military dictator Min Aung Hlaing. At a bilateral summit in Hanoi, Vietnam agreed to expand military training cooperation and officer-exchange programs, while escalating information-sharing and efforts to counter organized crime, and expanding economic collaboration. Vietnam joins Thailand and the Philippines in the Southeast Asian regional bloc ASEAN, as a nation likely to push for Myanmar’s reintegration to the bloc despite an ongoing, brutal civil war.

Nigeria struck a secret ceasefire deal with the jihadist organization Boko Haram three months ago, according to reporting by The New Humanitarian, and is expected to extend the deal with the jihadists for at least another forty days. The ceasefire is purportedly tied to negotiations that secured the release of 360 abducted civilians, and does not apply to the Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP). While civilians in Boko Haram-impacted areas have noted a decline in attacks, the ceasefire runs directly contrary to the Nigerian government’s public position on the group, seventeen years into a war that has left nearly 350,000 civilians confirmed dead.

An internal crisis among Brazil’s Supreme Court justices grew more intense this week, when a Supreme Court panel ordered the suspension of the nation’s federal police chief despite the opposition of the Lula da Silva administration. The justice behind the ruling, Andre Mendonca, has been embroiled in a growing power struggle against fellow justice Alexandre de Moraes, the man who led the trial of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro over a 2022 coup plot, but who has since been implicated in a sprawling fraud scandal tied to the failed bank Banco Master. The crisis is likely to impact the outcome of Brazil’s coming election, in which Lula and the son of Jair Bolsonaro, Flavio, are currently even in the polls. Also this week, an unsealed court document showed a previously hidden investigation into Flavio Bolsonaro, also opened by the Brazilian Supreme Court.

Iceland summoned its American ambassador in Reykjavik this week, demanding an explanation after US President Donald Trump posted a social media image showing Iceland—along with Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and most of Central America and the Caribbean—covered by the American flag. The image inflamed concerns in Iceland that the US could challenge Icelandic sovereignty, similar to its standoff with NATO over the Danish territory of Greenland earlier this year.

Hungary ejected ten Russian diplomats from the country this week, alleging that the Russians were involved in “activities in Hungary that are unacceptable for diplomats”—implying links with Russian intelligence and espionage operations on Hungarian soil. The decision is Hungary’s latest display of its changing posture toward Russia, after the ouster of long-time autocrat Viktor Orban earlier this year.

Ukrainian prosecutor-general Ruslan Kravchenko became the latest casualty of Ukraine’s sweeping anti-graft purge, by its independent watchdog agencies NABU and SAPO. Kravchenko was not charged with any crime or named as a suspect in any investigation, but resigned over accusations that one of his underlings was part of a network defrauding Ukrainians and foreigners through a call center before laundering the proceeds.

Tunisian journalists and their supporters took to the streets this week to protest the detention of Mohamed Yousfi, the editor-in-chief of a prominent investigative news outlet called Al-Qatiba, who was taken into state custody last Friday. Yousfi’s arrest is the latest in an ongoing crackdown against journalists by Tunisian autocrat Kais Saied; the journalist was charged with illicit enrichment and money laundering, but the charges are widely understood to be a pretext for his arrest.

The United States approved a sale worth approximately five billion US dollars to Saudi Arabia, to supply over 10,000 copies of the Joint Direct Attack Munition – Extended Range (JDAM-ER), a kit attachment that converts unguided bombs to precision weapons. Under the deal, the US will also supply Riyadh with unguided bombs corresponding to the JDAM-ER kits; Washington also approved weapons sales including tank engines for Saudi Arabia, F-16 sustainment services for Oman, and Bell-Textron helicopters for Iraq.