Modern Conflicts

For 53 years, the Assad family ruled Syria with an iron fist. In the civil war that erupted against them in 2011, the Assad regime responded by brutally killing at least 500,000 people, and imprisoning and torturing thousands alongside numerous other human rights violations. On November 27, 2024, to the surprise of the entire world, an offensive would begin that would bring the Assad regime to a stunning end in just eleven days. For the Islamist HTS and its anti-Assad allies, this was an opportunity like no other. The Syrian government was already weakened thanks to demoralized soldiers, and Assad’s allies were otherwise preccupied in their own conflicts: Hezbollah with Israel, Russia in Ukraine, and Iran, demonstrably incapable and unwilling to intervene on behalf of its proxies.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an invasion of Israel, killing 1,180 people, including 797 civilians, wounding around 3,400, and taking 251 other people hostage. The Israeli response, involving a total blockade, continuous airstrikes and a ground invasion, was fierce. As the death toll and destruction in Gaza mounted, international attention to the region grew. and with it, beyond calls for a ceasefire and an end to the war, came accusations of something greater. Many began to accuse Israel not just of excessive force and war crimes, but of perhaps the greatest crime in international law: genocide. On December 29, 2023, just under three months after Israel’s invasion of Gaza began, South Africa added its voice to these accusations, bringing an official case to the International Court of Justice.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war since has overwhelmingly been on their terms. But in August of 2024, something shifted. Ukraine began an incursion into Russia’s Kursk province, opposite their own Sumy province, engaging Russians on their own territory for the first time—and the first time in over 80 years that Russia had been occupied by a foreign power. Their goal was not to take over Russian territory to keep it, but to use it as leverage, in hopes of forcing Russia to divert resources from elsewhere on the front. But while the lightning incursion came as a shock to Russia, whose unpreparedness and slow response allowed the Ukrainians to gain significant territory in a short number of days, the Kursk offensive quickly stalled, as Russia began to regain territory in anticipation of their own counteroffensive.

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, is one of the most notorious and infamous drug lords in history. Comparable at his heigh to Pablo Escobar, through his control of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, Guzman oversaw an empire of marijuana, cocaine, meth, and heroin trade that earned him a billion-dollar net worth at his peak—along with the blood, of 34,000 deaths he was personally responsible for. Naturally, this also earned him the fierce pursuit of Mexican and American authorities alike—pursuit he famously and elaborately eluded for years, staging Houdini like escapes from maximum security prisons thanks to his tenacity, creativity, and the many law enforcement officials in his pockets.

On the ten year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the US suffered another attack, this time, abroad. On September 11, 2012, US diplomatic forces were in Benghazi, Libya, in the wake of the country’s destabilizing civil war, which had left several competing militant factions vying for power. In the previous months there were numerous warning signs of a deteriorating security situation for the Americans stationed in Benghazi, who were viewed with distrust and hostility, especially by those local militia. In one instance, US Ambassador to Libya J Christopher Stevens had his jogging route posted to a Facebook group, which called for his assassination. Attacks and threats against the US presence led to various consulate officials making requests for additional security. Most of these were either denied, or ignored.