Barrick warns of “significant increases” to budget, timeline for Pakistan copper project

Staff Writer | April 2, 2026 | 

Barrick’s 50% Reko Diq copper-gold project in Pakistan. (Image: Barrick’s presentation.)

Barrick Mining (NYSE:B)(TSX:ABX) said on Thursday that it anticipates that there could be “significant increases” to the previously disclosed total estimated capital budget and timeline for its Reko Diq copper project in Pakistan.  

On March 26, Barrick said it will slow its development of the Reko Diq deposit and extend the project’s review period, citing security concerns in the Middle East. 

Reko Diq, one of the world’s largest undeveloped deposits of the metal, is in the remote, insurgency-hit western province of Balochistan and held in an equal partnership between the company and the Pakistani authorities. 

The previously disclosed total estimated capital cost of Phase 1 was between $5.6 billion and $6.0 billion (100% basis, exclusive of capitalization of financing costs) and of Phase 2 was between $3.3 billion and $3.6 billion (100% basis, exclusive of capitalization of financing costs), with first production targeted by the end of 2028. 

“Barrick continues to believe in the long-term value of Reko Diq. Following the preliminary findings of the review and the further escalation of security issues in Pakistan and the region, the company considers it necessary to slow the development activity and continue the project review until mid-2027,” the Canadian miner said in a statement released just after market close in Toronto.  

Barrick has viewed Reko Diq — with an estimated 15 million tonnes of copper reserves — as a key pillar of its strategy to become a Tier 1 producer of the metal. 

The continued review will allow the company to assess in a comprehensive manner the evolving security situation, capital requirements, project financing, project scope and timeline, it said.  

“While development activity will be slowed, the project will remain under active management with a reduced capital spend,” Barrick said.  “Development of Phase 1 of the Reko Diq project was approved on this basis. Barrick recognizes its important role in the local community and intends to continue to invest in and honor its existing in-country community and social programs.” 

Barrick, which has been developing the project in partnership with the governments of Pakistan and Balochistan for years, initially planned for the project to come online in 2028, subject to financing.   

Once operational, the mine is forecast to generate over $70 billion in free cash flow and $90 billion in operating cash flow over a 37-year lifespan. 

Modeling Mangroves’ Capacity To Protect Coastal Communities


Example of a mangrove forest CREDIT: KyotoU / Nobuhito Mori


April 4, 2026 

By Eurasia Review


Mangrove forests are natural wonders that protect coastal areas, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions. They are able to dissipate wave energy and limit flooding, which can even mitigate tsunamis and coastal inundations during tropical cyclones. For this reason, mangroves are attracting attention as Nature-based Solutions, or NbS: natural infrastructure with the potential to enhance coastal resilience in an environmentally friendly way.

As climate change is altering ocean conditions and intensifying storms, many coastal communities face growing risks from flooding and extreme wave events; hence mangroves can serve to both mitigate disasters and help communities adapt to climate change. However, these forests remain underutilized in engineering applications due to a limited understanding of how they interact with hydrodynamic forces. Accurately modeling their complex root structures, known as prop-roots, while quantifying their wave attenuation effects has posed a particular challenge.

A collaborative team of researchers from Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute resolved to address this knowledge gap. “Japan has a long history of using pine trees for coastal defense, and we want to apply this knowledge to mangroves to develop smart, cost-effective disaster risk reduction,” says first author Yu-Lin Tsai.

Drawing on their previous tree morphology surveys in the field and wave flume experiments, the team set out to develop a numerical model capable of evaluating mangrove wave attenuation. Focusing on the species Rhizophora apiculata, found throughout Southeast Asia and the western Pacific, the team gathered detailed measurements of 3D root shapes, creating a vegetation model accounting for wave attenuation as a function of water depth and wave height. They then evaluated this process using a numerical Boussinesq wave model, incorporating drag and inertia forces to estimate the attenuation of water momentum by mangroves.

The results revealed that wave attenuation varies significantly with vertical root morphology and water depth, and that estimates of wave attenuation levels can differ by 20–50%. This shows that the level of root submersion must be accounted for in assessing the effectiveness of coastal protection.

The team’s numerical model and resulting formulas are expected to be valuable tools for integrating mangroves into future coastal disaster risk reduction planning. This study also highlights the critical importance of moving beyond previous knowledge based on simplified mangrove shapes to considering realistic root morphology and submergence conditions.

“We enjoy the full spectrum of our research, but the best part of all is definitely getting to work amidst the beautiful scenery of mangrove forests,” says team leader Nobuhito Mori.

In the future, the team plans to develop manuals based on these findings to support mangrove-based disaster mitigation strategies in Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and other regions. They also hope these findings can be applied to additional efforts including mangrove reforestation.

Prediction Markets And Insider Trading Law – Analysis

April 4, 2026 
By Jay B. Sykes

Congressional Research Service (CRS).


The past two years have witnessed the dramatic growth of prediction markets—i.e., online platforms that allow users to buy or sell contracts with payoffs tied to the occurrence or nonoccurrence of specific events, such as sporting event outcomes, political election results, and macroeconomic or geopolitical developments. Highly publicized instances of large, well-timed bets on prediction markets have generated interest in whether and how insider trading law applies to such markets. This Legal Sidebar provides an overview of these issues. It is divided into three parts. First, the Sidebar offers background on prediction markets and insider trading law. Next, it discusses a February 2026 advisory from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) addressing insider trading on prediction markets. The Sidebar concludes by discussing considerations for Congress.
Background: Prediction Markets

Prediction markets are online platforms that specialize in offering “event contracts“—i.e., contracts that allow traders to bet on the occurrence or nonoccurrence of a specific event. Typically, event contracts have a binary payoff structure and are presented as “Yes/No” questions. For example, a trader who buys a “Yes” contract may receive a payout of $1 if the underlying event occurs before the contract’s expiration date, but nothing if the event does not occur before that date. Conversely, a trader who purchases a “No” contract may receive a payout of $1 if the underlying event does not occur before the contract’s expiration date, but nothing if the event does occur before that date. In liquid markets, the price of an event contract is generally regarded as reflecting the market’s assessment of an event’s probability at a given point in time. For example, a “Yes” contract that pays $1 if an event occurs and trades at $0.60 is commonly viewed as suggesting that the market believes there is a 60% chance that the event will occur.

Several prediction markets have registered with the CFTC as “designated contract markets” (DCMs)—a type of derivatives exchange. The Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) gives the CFTC “exclusive jurisdiction” over futures, options, and swaps traded on registered exchanges. (The implications of this language for state regulation of event contracts are being litigated.) The CEA defines the term “swap” to include contracts that provide for payment that is “dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of an event or contingency associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.” The CFTC has taken the position that certain event contracts—including event contracts based on the outcomes of sporting events (“sports event contracts”)—fall within this component of the CEA’s “swap” definition. The CFTC has also argued that event contracts qualify as “options,” which likewise fall within the CEA’s definition of “swap.”

While CFTC-registered exchanges have listed event contracts since 1992, the number and variety of event contracts listed by registered exchanges increased sharply beginning in 2021. The CFTC has explained that, since 2021, DCMs have listed “a substantial number of event contracts not associated with traditional commodities, financial indices, or economic indicators.” These novel event contracts include contracts based on the release dates for video games and musical albums, Oscar award winners, sporting events, and the outcomes of political elections. Sports event contracts have proved particularly popular, accounting for more than 85% of trading volume on Kalshi—a leading prediction market registered with the CFTC.


Several large, well-timed trades involving event contracts have recently generated concerns about the extent to which prediction-market users are profiting based on material nonpublic information (MNPI). For example, in late December 2025 and early January 2026, a user of an offshore exchange operated by Polymarket purchaseda high volume of contracts predicting the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. After the U.S. military captured Maduro on January 3, 2026, the user reportedly secured a payout of more than $400,000. Polymarket’s offshore exchange also experienced a sharp uptick in large purchases of contracts predicting U.S. military strikes on Iran shortly before such strikes occurred in February 2026. Some Members of Congress have voiced concerns that these trades may have been basedon MNPI.
Insider Trading Law
SEC Rule 10b-5

The law of insider trading has developed primarily in the context of securities markets. Courts have held that trading securities based on MNPI in breach of a duty constitutes a violation of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 10b-5, which prohibits certain types of fraudulent and deceptive conduct in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.


Persons can be liable for insider trading under Rule 10b-5 based on either of two theories. If a company’s insiders (e.g., officers, directors, or “temporary insiders” such as outside counsel) trade the company’s securities based on MNPI, they violate Rule 10b-5 by breaching duties owed to their trading counterparties—i.e., the company’s shareholders or would-be shareholders. The Supreme Court has reasoned that there is a “relationship of trust and confidence” between a corporation’s insiders and its shareholders, which gives rise to a duty on the part of insiders to disclose MNPI before trading the corporation’s securities. Violations of this duty give rise to liability under the “classical” theory of insider trading.

Because the classical theory is based on the breach of duties owed to trading counterparties, it does not apply to corporate outsiders who lack a fiduciary relationship with the issuing corporation and its shareholders. Corporate outsiders can still be liable for insider trading, however, if they trade securities based on MNPI in breach of a duty to the source of the information. For example, an attorney representing the bidder in a takeover would violate Rule 10b-5 by purchasing shares of the target corporation if such trading violated a duty of confidentiality owed to the bidder. This type of liability is called the “misappropriation” theory of insider trading because it is predicated on a trader’s misappropriation of property rights in confidential information. Trading based on misappropriated information, the Supreme Court has said, “involves feigning fidelity to the source of the information,” making it “deceptive” within the meaning of Rule 10b-5.

With the classical and misappropriation theories as foundations, federal courts have adopted additional tests for assessing “tipper” and “tippee” liability for insider trading—i.e., whether individuals violate Rule 10b-5 by disclosing MNPI to other traders or by trading securities based on MNPI obtained from others.


Under Rule 10b-5, breach of a duty is a necessary element for insider trading liability under both the classical and misappropriation theories. The Supreme Court has rejected the argument that Rule 10b-5 creates a parity-of-information regime barring all trading based on MNPI.

Violations of Rule 10b-5 may trigger civil and/or criminal liability.
The CEA and CFTC Rule 180.1

Historically, insider trading prohibitions in derivatives law were far narrower than SEC Rule 10b-5, applying only to employees of the CFTC and CFTC-registered entities. In 2010, however, Section 753 of the Dodd-Frank Act amended the CEA to prohibit fraud and manipulation “in connection with any swap, or a contract of sale of any commodity in interstate commerce, or for future delivery on or subject to the rules of any registered entity” in contravention of rules adopted by the CFTC. The following year, the CFTC finalized Rule 180.1, which prohibits fraud or deception in connection with swaps, interstate commodity sales, and futures traded on or subject to the rules of registered entities. In doing so, the CFTC explained that Rule 180.1 was “modeled on” SEC Rule 10b-5 and that the agency would be “guided, but not controlled, by the substantial body of judicial precedent applying the comparable language of” Rule 10b-5.

The CFTC has relied upon Rule 180.1 to bring enforcement actions under the misappropriation theory, several of which have involved employees of trading firms accused of using MNPI derived from their employers to trade for their personal accounts. The classical theory of insider trading is unlikely to apply in derivatives markets because, unlike corporate insiders who trade their company’s shares, derivatives traders typically lack fiduciary relationships with their counterparties.

Consistent with judicial interpretations of SEC Rule 10b-5, the CFTC has clarified that Rule 180.1 does not create a parity-of-information regime forbidding all trading based on MNPI. Specifically, the CFTC has said that “derivatives markets have long operated in a way that allows for market participants to trade on the basis of lawfully obtained [MNPI],” and that the failure to disclose such information prior to trading will not, by itself, constitute a violation of Rule 180.1.

Violations of Rule 180.1 may trigger civil and/or criminal liability.

The CEA also contains separate insider-trading provisions directed at federal government officials and employees. Section 4c(a)(3) of the CEA, as amended by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, prohibits federal agency employees, Members of Congress, congressional employees, and judicial officers and employees from using nonpublic information derived from their positions to trade commodity futures, options, or swaps. Section 4c(a)(4) of the statute prohibits (1) individuals in the specified categories from imparting such information to others with the intent to assist such trades, and (2) any person from knowingly using such imparted information to enter such trades.

Title 18 of the U.S. Code

Insider trading may violate several criminal prohibitions in Title 18 of the U.S. Code. The federal mail fraud statute (18 U.S.C. § 1341) prohibits use of the mails to further a fraudulent scheme. The wire fraud statute (18 U.S.C. § 1343) contains a similar prohibition that applies to the use of wire communications, including the internet. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 also created the separate criminal offenses of securities and commodities fraud, which are codified in 18 U.S.C. § 1348. The Department of Justice has used all three statutes to prosecute individuals alleged to have traded securities or derivatives based on MNPI in breach of a duty.

In many respects, judicial interpretations of these statutes have tended to track the interpretation of SEC Rule 10b-5. Some decisions, however, have recognized possible differences between the elements of Rule 10b-5 insider trading and Title 18 insider trading. In United States v. Blaszczak, for example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Second Circuit) concluded that information regarding the substance and timing of federal agency decisions does not qualify as federal “property” for purposes of the wire fraud statute and 18 U.S.C. § 1348. As a result, the court held, government employees and their tippees do not violate those statutes by trading securities based on such information. It is unclear whether this principle applies to misappropriation claims brought under SEC Rule 10b-5 or the CEA.

Similarly, in United States v. Chastain, the Second Circuit held that, in wire fraud prosecutions predicated on the misappropriation of confidential information from a private company, the government must prove that the relevant information had commercial value to the company. In Chastain, the defendant was a former employee of OpenSea, an online marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The government alleged that the defendant used confidential information to purchase NFTs before they were featured on OpenSea’s website. The Second Circuit vacated the defendant’s wire fraud conviction, concluding that the information qualified as “property” under the wire fraud statute only if it had commercial value to OpenSea and that the district court’s jury instructions erroneously omitted that requirement. The Second Circuit reasoned that this error was not harmless based on evidence that OpenSea did not have important commercial interests in keeping the identify of featured NFTs confidential. As with Blaszczak‘s holding regarding federal agency decisions, it is unclear whether this principle would apply to misappropriation claims brought under SEC Rule 10b-5 or CFTC Rule 180.1.
The CFTC’s February 2026 Advisory

On February 25, 2026, the CFTC issued an advisory addressing insider trading on prediction markets. The advisory discusses two recent enforcement actions by Kalshi. One enforcement action involved a political candidate who traded event contracts regarding his own candidacy. Another involved an employee of a company affiliated with a YouTube channel who traded event contracts related to the channel’s videos. In both cases, Kalshi imposed financial penalties on the traders and suspended them from using its platform. While the CFTC has not, to date, pursued enforcement actions against either of the traders, the agency’s advisory said that both individuals “potentially” violated Rule 180.1. The CFTC also indicated that it has “full authority to police illegal trading practices” on registered exchanges and that exchanges have “an independent duty pursuant to the core principles of the [CEA] to maintain audit trails, conduct surveillance, and enforce rules against prohibited practices.”

Issues for Congress

The application of insider trading law to prediction markets raises several issues, including threshold questions regarding the status of event contracts under the CEA and CFTC rules. As discussed, CFTC Rule 180.1 applies to “swaps,” among other instruments, and the CFTC has taken the position that many event contracts qualify as “swaps” under the CEA. There is ongoing litigation over whether sports event contracts qualify as “swaps” under the CEA, along with the jurisdictional implications of that status. In adjudicating motions for preliminary injunctions, two federal district courts have concluded that sports event contracts qualify as “swaps,” while two other federal district courts have reached the opposite conclusion. Those decisions have been appealed. While the status of sports event contracts remains uncertain, it appears likely that some other categories of event contracts fall within the CEA’s definition of “swap,” which includes contracts that provide for payment that is “dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of an event or contingency associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.”

Another issue of interest involves the relationship between CFTC Rule 180.1 and rules adopted by prediction markets. The comparative scope of Rule 180.1 and certain exchange rules concerning “insider trading” remains unsettled. Kalshi, for example, has adopted rules governing insider trading that prohibit a broader range of conduct than the misappropriation theory. Under Kalshi’s rules, an individual cannot trade an event contract if he or sheis an “Insider that has access to [MNPI] that is the subject of an Underlying of [the] Contract” (the rules define “Insider” to mean “any person who has access to or is in a position to access [MNPI] before such information is made publicly available”);
has “the ability to exert any influence on the subject of an Underlying of [the] Contract”; or
is a “decision maker, either directly or indirectly, or has any influence, either directly or indirectly, no matter the scale and importance of the influence, on the outcome of the Underlying (event).”

Because breach of a duty is not an element of these prohibitions, Kalshi’s rules appear to extend beyond the misappropriation theory. Whether the additional categories of trading that Kalshi prohibits could trigger liability under Rule 180.1 is unclear. As discussed, the CFTC has said that Rule 180.1 does not create a parity-of-information regime, explaining that “derivatives markets have long operated in a way that allows for market participants to trade on the basis of lawfully obtained [MNPI].” The CFTC’s February 2026 advisory, however, appears to suggest that trading event contracts based on MNPI may violate Rule 180.1 even without misappropriation in certain circumstances. In the advisory, the CFTC said that a political candidate “potentially” violated Rule 180.1 by trading event contracts regarding his candidacy. Instead of invoking the misappropriation theory in connection with that case (as it did elsewhere in the advisory), the CFTC indicated that the candidate’s conduct may have involved a “manipulative scheme or artifice to defraud” or “an act, practice or course of business that operates as a fraud.” The agency did not, however, elaborate on the details of this theory. At least one commentator has questioned whether it would be viable as a matter of existing law. A federal prohibition of the full range of conduct barred by Kalshi’s rules may thus require legislative changes.


Federal prosecutors may also scrutinize prediction-market activity for unlawful insider trading. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has said that prosecutors in his office are reviewing the laws that might be used to pursue criminal charges involving insider trading on prediction markets. Those laws may include CFTC Rule 180.1 and the CEA provisions governing insider trading by federal government officials and employees. If certain types of event contracts are ultimately deemed to fall outside the scope of CFTC Rule 180.1, Title 18 may provide an alternative basis for prosecuting insider trading involving such contracts. The Second Circuit’s decisions in Blaszczak and Chastain, however, may stand as an obstacle to Title 18 prosecutions targeting insider trading in certain types of event contracts—specifically, contracts involving federal agency decisions and information that lacks commercial value to private companies.

Several pieces of legislation regarding insider trading on prediction markets have been introduced in the 119th Congress.

H.R. 7004, the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026, would make it unlawful for elected federal officials, House and Senate employees, political appointees, and employees of executive agencies to trade certain categories of prediction-market contracts (1) while in possession of MNPI relevant to those contracts, or (2) if they “may reasonably obtain” such MNPI in the course of their official duties. The bill would apply to prediction-market contracts related to government policy, government action, or political outcomes.

H.R. 8076, the Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading (PREDICT) Act, would prohibit the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, dependent children and spouses of Members of Congress, congressional employees, political appointees, employees and officers of executive or independent agencies who occupy positions above GS-15 of the General Schedule, certain high-ranking members of the military, and judicial officers and employees from trading event contracts tied to “specific political events.”

S. 4017, the End Prediction Market Corruption Act, would categorically prohibit the President, Vice President, and Members of Congress from trading event contracts. The legislation would bar senior executive branch officials from trading event contracts involving matters in which they “participate[] personally and substantially.” The bill also would direct the CFTC to issue a rule to “restrict the inappropriate use of [MNPI], in breach of an express or implied duty not to use or disclose such [MNPI], as a means of making a profit through” the trading of event contracts.

S. 4060, the Prediction Markets Security and Integrity Act of 2026, would prohibit the use of MNPI to trade on prediction markets. The bill also would make it unlawful to (1) participate in prediction-market contracts that “present a conflict of interest,” or (2) “engage in manipulation and deceptive practices that predetermine the outcome or otherwise materially interfere with the integrity and execution” of prediction-market contracts. In addition to these prohibitions, the legislation would impose various rules on prediction markets concerning permissible contracts, contract resolution, and the enforcement of market rules.

S. 4188, the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act, would prohibit the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, employees of the House of Representatives or Senate, political appointees, and employees of executive or independent agencies from using MNPI derived from their positions to profit from the purchase or sale of prediction market contracts.


Other bills, while not addressing insider trading directly, would prohibit certain categories of event contracts. Sponsors of these bills have cited concerns regarding insider trading as one basis for prohibiting the relevant types of contracts.

H.R. 7840, the Event Contract Enforcement Act, would prohibit CFTC-registered exchanges from listing certain categories of event contracts, including contracts involving “conduct by or in any level or branch of the Federal Government or of any State or local government, including by or in any instrumentality or by any personnel of any level or branch of any such government.”

The Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act (S. 4115 and H.R. 7955) would prohibit CFTC-registered entities from listing certain categories of event contracts, including contracts based on events whose “primary underlying characteristic” is not “financial, commercial, or economic,” if such events involve (1) “an action taken by any government, unit of government, intergovernmental organization, or government official,” (2) an outcome that is under the “complete control” of any person, or (3) an outcome that is known by any person in advance.

The Stop Trading on Predictions and Corrupt Bets (STOP Corrupt Bets) Act of 2026 (S. 4226 and H.R. 8123) would prohibit CFTC-registered entities from listing event contracts involving political elections or contests;
actions taken by the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the U.S. government (subject to an exception for contracts that the CFTC determines are used for hedging or mitigating commercial risk);
sporting events or contests; or any military action taken by the United States or a foreign country.

About the author: Jay B. Sykes, Legislative Attorney

Source: This article was published by Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) works exclusively for the United States Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS has been a valued and respected resource on Capitol Hill for nearly a century.

Arkeopolitics: Reframing Human History From Scratch – OpEd


Göbekli tepe. Photo Credit: Spica-Vega Photo Arts (Banu Nazikcan), Wikipedia Commons

April 4, 2026 
By Erdem Denk


In the heart of Ankara, less than a kilometer apart, stand two pillars of Turkish academia: the Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye) and the Faculty of Language and History-Geography (DTCF). Mülkiye was established in 1859 to navigate the Ottoman Empire’s diplomatic relations with the West, while DTCF was founded by the first president of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in 1935 to create the historical and linguistic identity of the new republic. Yet, despite falling under the umbrella of Ankara University since 1950, these neighbors have spent decades in a state of mutual ignorance about what the other does. One focuses on the “political present,” while the other is dedicated to the “historical horizon.”

This is not due to a lack of communication but is a result of structural invisibility. This paradigmatic ignorance is a byproduct of departmentalization; these disciplines were designed not to consider the other, mirroring a Western model that frames human history through the narrow lens of Eurocentric modernism.

As a student of Mülkiye, where I also later taught as a professor, I was the ward of this systemic silence. Standing behind the lectern, I often felt like the tormented pastor in Ingmar Bergman’s movie Winter Light—reciting the liturgy of 1648 and the “Westphalian Order” to a congregation that sensed that the god of modernity had long since departed the building.

My doctoral years at Cardiff Law School (2000–2005) were a revelation, but not in the way I expected. While I had arrived with an almost intimate knowledge of European legal history, I was struck by a jarring realization: the very system that claimed “universality” knew almost nothing about the history of the geography I came from, or indeed, any history outside its own curated timeline. It was later, upon returning to Mülkiye after my PhD to begin teaching and supervising the theses of my students, that I saw the extent of this omission in full view. Every lecture, every dissertation began with the mandatory nod to Ancient Greece or Rome, only to perform a dizzying leap into the modern era. There was something profoundly unsettling about this “jump”—as if thousands of years of human experience were merely a dark, irrelevant hallway leading to the brightly lit room of European modernity.

To understand what was truly lost in that gap, I began a retrospective journey. I started by asking a simple, heretical question: “What did the world actually look like in 1647, the year before modern history supposedly began?” This curiosity turned into a decade-long intellectual excavation. I moved backward from the Middle Ages to antiquity and then to Mesopotamian city-states, searching for the roots of order, until I finally reached the Stone Age.

This journey did not just challenge the “where” of history, but also the “how” of politics. As someone trained in international relations, I was indoctrinated by the Hobbesian trap: the idea of “homo homini lupus” (man is wolf to man) and the conviction that without a state—which was equated solely with the modern nation-state—there is only anarchy and chaos. This was an inescapable “reality” ingrained even in the most dissident among us: the belief that without a central authority, life was nasty, brutish, and short in every realm. Likewise, a more Lockean optimism—believing in a natural, rational order—remained a prisoner of the same 200-year-old modern script: the sovereign “umpire” was the only way to escape the uncertainty of the “state of nature.”

Even the founding fathers of the left, despite their critiques of the state, were anchored in a similar modernist progressivism. For them, the pre-state era was often merely viewed as a pre-political precursor to human development—a historical phase to be documented rather than a vital experience for navigating the present. Their teleological lens framed history as an inevitable march toward modernity, rendering the vast majority of human social organization theoretically invisible or irrelevant to contemporary governance.

However, as my study of Paleolithic and Neolithic datasets deepened, I realized that the core pillars of our social existence—from gender equality to the roots of redistribution—defied the “pre-data” paradigms I had been taught. These emerging findings, which I will explore in future articles, reveal a sophisticated laboratory of human resilience that modern political science has long chosen to ignore.


It would therefore be unfair to lay the blame on those 18th and 19th-century thinkers. They were children of their time, building theories without the benefit of the archaeological evidence we possess today. The real failure lies with us—with a modern academia that stubbornly clings to these outdated scripts despite a mountain of contradictory data accumulating over the last 20 years. Our refusal to rethink our foundations in the light of this vast human laboratory is not just a disciplinary myopia. It is a profound scientific inertia—a systemic byproduct of an obsession with hyper-specialization and the paralyzing safety of academic comfort zones.

In fact, when international relations was established as a formal discipline at Aberystwyth University in Wales in 1919, the Rosetta Stone had already been deciphered for nearly a century, the Amarna Letters had already been unearthed, transliterated, and translated, and the Hittite language was just being decoded. Archaeology was already revealing “deep time” and its profound relevance to modern law and order. Yet these two emerging fields were established in such a way that they would never coincide. They were designed to remain in parallel silence. I once asked professor Cahit Günbattı, a doyen of DTCF who dedicated his career to deciphering Akkadian cuneiform texts, if he had ever shared his findings with Mülkiye’s international law professors just a 10-minute walk away: “No,” he replied, “I don’t know why, but that’s just how it was in our time.”

As my own readings about the Paleolithic deepened, I realized that this was a systemic disconnection rather than a requirement of specialization. This fragmentation protected our paradigms, not our expertise. We were not suffering from a lack of information but fulfilling the requirements of our established universe. The data was always there. We chose to preserve the linear worldview that protected our academic existence. This led to a second, more unsettling conclusion: Modern archaeology was just as deeply political as political science. Both fields weren’t just merely silent; they were also reading from the same biased script.

The work of Sally Mcbrearty and Alison S. Brooks (2000) provided an “aha!” moment. Their critique of the “human revolution” confirmed that even fundamental classifications—like the Stone Age—were tailored to fit a European record. By ignoring the older and gradual developments in Africa, this selective lens was masking a far more complex global story.


Yet, while the explosion of Neolithic finds in Turkey—such as Göbeklitepe—initially challenged these Eurocentric myths, I soon encountered a different trap: a reactive “Anatolia-centrism” that claims the “zero point of history” all over again, just for a different geography. This is the danger of deconstruction: the temptation to dismantle one center only to erect another in its place. The flaws in these center-based narratives—whether Eurocentric or their reactive counterparts—convinced me of what I sought: not a depoliticized science, but one that transcends the narrow instrumentalization of history for modern identity politics.

Hundreds of thousands of years of human experience make any single-center history not just biased, but scientifically impossible. This realization shattered the singular narrative of my education. We have ignored a vast “human laboratory” of alternative governance—not because it failed, but because it defied the 200-year-old modern script.

This paradigmatic trap manifested as a physical silence between institutions designed to study human order. Despite isolated academic efforts and specific scholarly interests now and then, the structural indifference within Mülkiye—a school whose entire existence is dedicated to understanding the (modern) state—toward the origins and, more importantly, the “pre-history” of human organization, became an intolerable intellectual void for me.

Organizing the 2018 annual department conference, I titled it, “The World of States in a Transforming International System.” The world stood on the precipice of what I now call a “pan-crisis,” and I knew the answers wouldn’t be found in modern political textbooks alone. To explain the daily life of stateless societies and the long, non-linear process that eventually led to the state, I invited professor Mehmet Özdoğan, the doyen of Neolithic studies. His work was my constant companion. Yet to our knowledge, it was the first time an archaeologist of such stature had addressed Mülkiye. Professor Özdoğan did more than just provide an archaeological perspective on the birth of the state. He offered the encouragement I needed to accelerate my effort to merge archaeology with modern political science.

Encouraged by Professor Özdoğan, I felt a growing urge to dig deeper into the history of my field. Invited to contribute to a Festschrift for my PhD supervisor, Robin Churchill—a global authority on the law of the sea—I explored the ancient roots of maritime law. I authored a chapter on the Amarna Letters, the diplomatic correspondence of the Late Bronze Age. I didn’t yet call it “the archaeology of the law of the sea,” but framed it as “An Amodernist Approach to International Law (AMAIL)” to show that the field’s core structures persisted far beyond the narrow boundaries of the modern era. By “amodern,” I did not mean anti-modern, pre-modern, or post-modern. I sought a perspective that decenters the modern era—treating it not as the ultimate pinnacle of human progress, but as just another epoch within the trajectory of hundreds of thousands of years. While it has its distinct features, it is a period that can be scrutinized with the same analytical tools as any other, revealing that its unique structures are often just variations of much older human patterns.

These ventures were merely the first cracks; the exhaustion of old paradigms was now too visible to ignore. The global “pan-crisis” proved that the way we were taught to perceive the world was reaching its limits. This deepening crisis demanded more than isolated studies—it required a new language and a fundamental paradigm shift.

In 2021, I finally fused “arkeo” with “politics.” The mission was clear: to unify the archaeology of the “order beneath” with the political science of the “order above.” I aim to bridge an academic abyss: political science ignores millennia, instead focusing on the last 200 years, while archaeology hesitates to link its findings to modern governance or law.

Arkeopolitics invites both disciplines to an “intellectual awakening,” urging them to intertwine and reforge their perspectives into a unified, transformative framework. By breaking from Eurocentric and linear-progressivist paradigms, it revaluates the human story—from the Paleolithic to the present—through an “amodernist” lens. In this era of global “pan-crisis,” we need to consider hundreds of thousands of years of social organization as a vital dataset.


This is not a retreat into the past, but a strategic expansion of our vocabulary to survive the future. Arkeopolitics is an urgent invitation to reclaim our species’ resilience. By integrating the order beneath with the order above, we can finally stop treating “the past as a foreign country” and recognize it as our most vital pool of experience for the road ahead.

Author Bio: Erdem Denk is a professor of international law and international relations at Ankara University and the founder of the transdisciplinary research initiative Arkeopolitics, which integrates archaeology, history, political theory, and legal history to reinterpret the long-term dynamics of human societies. His research focuses on the evolution of law and social order since the Paleolithic. He is the author of The 50,000-Year World Order: Societies and Their Laws (2021, in Turkish) and is currently working on three books, in Turkish and English, titled When There Was No State, The Invention of the State, and The Story of the State.

Credit Line: This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Queen Amina: Soldier On Horseback – Book Review

"Queen Amina: Soldier on Horseback," Kola King

 is published by Verity Publishers, South Africa is available in both paperback and e-book edition

April 4, 2026 
By Tunde Akande

Amina is a Muslim name. One ruled in Zazzau in Northern Nigeria about 400 years ago. But the Amina in this novel is fictional and tells the story of the possibility and desire of women in Africa to be liberated from the oppression of their menfolk. Africans think of women only as child bearers and nurturers.


The novel tells its story in five societal relevance.

Language relevance.

It hits you like a thunderbolt as you open the novel: “Amina is an oddball.” You know “odd,” which the dictionary defines as “being without a corresponding mate.” Good, but when does a ball become “odd”? Welcome, Queen Amina, Soldier on Horseback; welcome, your teacher in the English language. Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, has complained so painfully of the fallen standard of spoken and written English among Nigerian youths. Graduates of universities cannot put words together to form a coherent sentence. What English Soyinka reads on social media is very worrisome and must be corrected. The cause is a poor reading culture. That must change; teachers must read and influence pupils too. This is where Queen Amina, Soldier on Horseback, finds usefulness. How did Soyinka and Chinua Achebe attain their enviable heights in literature? They devoured books and were well educated. Let this generation also rise and read and read and read. Let the teachers read and recommend the books they read to their students; let the parents buy books for their wards and not aso-ebi. Let libraries spring up again in every corner. A reading nation is a great nation.

This is a smart generation. Your smartphone is good and useful, but it can distract you and make you lazy. Yet it is still a useful companion in your reading, especially as it can help you acquire vocabulary. AI is a good companion. The dictionary must be a good companion again; don’t let it go out of fashion. Gemini AI says this of oddball: an oddball is essentially a lovable misfit. It’s someone whose behavior, ideas, or appearance don’t quite fit the standard mold, but in a way, usually interesting or harmless rather than scary. Quite an overload, but you find that in the character of Amina. She was a change agent who wanted her society to change. She’s not old-fashioned; she’s new school, as Gen Z says. “Oddball” prepares you to see that the novel in your hand will help you to acquire new words and enrich your vocabulary. From page to page, you come across words, expressions, and metaphors you may be seeing for the first time. Let’s run through some pages. Page 6, oddball, puberty, agile, exotic, surfeit, suitors, tenets, old wives’ tales, and rough and tumble of the open field. Page 7, steely exterior, heart of gold, splendour of sunshine, outcast, pariah, ‘’Zamanda’‘ as the “personification of the supremacy, power, and glorious history of the Zaburshe.” Page 8: first among equals, pastoralists, enamoured, scatter into the winds, put down their roots, slink away and fortuitous. And on page 215, rogue king, keen and fierce, fate and circumstance throw her up; walked where men feared to tread and benevolent. The novel has thousands of these words, expressions, and phrases in its 217 pages spread across 31 chapters. It is a minefield for those who want to learn the English language and those who want to appreciate the beauty of the language. The AI in your phone will give the meaning of those words and many more.

Gender Parity Relevance.

Again the novel takes up the sad issue of gender inequality in Africa. The continent is arguably the only continent where women are still groveling under the yoke of oppression and inequality and where the desire for freedom is being fought by some women with very great zeal. Amina, the central character of the novel, typifies this fight. We are not told that it was her education that prepared Amina for the role, other than that she grew an inborn stubbornness against male superiority, and that probably guided her choice of that role. She is a character set among Muslims, where the suppression of the womenfolk is most severe. Women virtually have no voice in Africa and especially in Islam. They are to give birth to and raise children; they are to be married off without their consent. They don’t have to have affection for the suitor; he just has to be the choice of the parents. A husband can even beat his wife in Islam as a discipline. In the case of Amina, she was the design of the father, Usman, to seal his friendship with Suleiman, whom he met while they were trading. Aisha, the mother of Amina, will be regarded as a failure if her daughter Amina does not agree to the marriage. Amina went into spirited debate with her mother on why marriage to a man she never had affection for should be forced on her. When the mother would not stop weeping, Amina caved in to save the mother from societal mockery, but she refused to loosen up to the ‘husband,’ Suleiman, even months after the marriage. Suleiman’s much persuasion with gifts could not win Amina over, and he eventually had to return Amina to her father’s house. Amina’s father had thought that, like most girls who eventually overcome their initial rejection of such a forced marriage, his daughter would get over it. But Amina was an oddball; she never yielded. Does that speak to Africa and especially Muslim Northern Nigeria, where underage girls are married off to men who could be their fathers or where women are not sent to school for an education because society has cast out a role for them only in the kitchen and in the maternity ward? Definitely yes, because there are stories of many girls who are running off with men of their choice and many such forced marriages that are ending in death for the unaccepted husbands by the wives. Society will undoubtedly yield to the recalcitrance of these oddballs. Can a woman rule in Africa? Fictional Amina reigned and ruled in fictional Zamanda. But there are women, a few of them ruling in some African countries. Amina’s choice by the kingmakers has some divine touch, the novel telling us God is not happy with Africa for putting women on the backburner in political affairs. But women are certain to rebel against that attitude, and many are rebelling now. Amina fired back so angrily at the suggestion of Daud, a prince of Zamanda whose turn it was to be king but who was not chosen by the kingmakers, who rather chose Amina by divine will, that “a woman cannot rule where you have princes”: “I have no idea about the selection process. And I was as surprised as anyone else when I was pronounced the queen by the kingmakers. Besides, I would gain nothing by supplanting the Hamajah dynasty. By the way, where did you get the wrong notion that a woman cannot rule over men.” Amina rejected the idea of her stepping down for Daud, who had gone to persuade her to. At 13 years of age, Amina would rather keep company with cattle rearers and roam the wild, and at age 15, she flatly rejected a forced husband, Suleiman. She did not marry eventually, but she went on to become a great queen who not only ruled over men, but also developed her kingdom greatly and proved the idea that women cannot rule over men wrong. In Nigeria and in Africa, the Amazons will definitely overcome.

Bitter Power Struggle

This is how beautifully the novel opens the discussion of power contests and struggle among princes that typifies the instability that has become the bane of African governments since all of them became independent of their colonizers yet still appear as if they cannot govern themselves, as variously alleged by these ex-colonizers.

“The king’s court is like the wild. It is appropriate to say it is akin to the Serengeti, where all manners of animals roam in the wild and with each of them seeking a turf for dominance, power, and dominance.”

Queen Amina, Soldier on Horseback, typifies government as likened to animals that roam in the wild. In the Serengeti, these animals are court jesters, talebearers, spies, hangers-on, and all manner of counselors. In today’s government structure they will be presidents, vice presidents, secretaries to governments, chiefs of staff, senate presidents, deputy senate presidents, committee chairmen, speakers of the house of representatives/assemblies, ministers, commissioners, legislators, civil servants, heads of parastatals, etc. Each of them struggles to capture the attention of the king or the president or the prime minister. They want dominance for power and control. Their inordinate ambition sparks bitter contests for power. After the king has emerged, the next stage of the power struggle is to capture the king himself. This struggle sparks off instability in Africa which the ex-colonizers seize to keep African nations permanently exploited and underdeveloped. In Nigeria, the 1966 Igbo coup was woven around an Igbo design to capture power, and the countercoup of 1966 was designed to return power to the North, the North being a euphemism for the Fulanis who lost power when their leader Sir Ahmadu Bello was killed in the 1966 coup. The civil war and the end of it and the restoration of a semblance of peace in the hands of General Yakubu Gowon with General Murtala Mohammed, who planned the revenge coup, becoming unruly and uncontrollable and eventually upstaging Gowon, installing himself as the head of state who will not consult anybody, as he alleged Gowon not to have done. Gowon was removed, and Obasanjo, the unwilling Yoruba man, became the head of state until he gave power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari in civilian garb. Shagari was removed in the intrigues of generals led by Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Tunde Idiagbon. Another palace intrigue that produced Babangida, who also, as alleged, was almost removed by his friend General Maman Vatsa in a planned but unexecuted coup, and until now President Bola Tinubu, who told the whole nation it was his turn in the power struggle to be president because it was the turn of his Yoruba ethnicity. Of course, he won through intrigues and a bitter power struggle. As it was for the bitter power struggle in Nigeria and all nations, so it was for Amina in Zamanda. The kingmakers chose Amina, who was accepted by popular acclaim but rejected by ambitious princes who would not accept a woman to rule over men. Amina, being a woman, could not lead prayers over men, and it was the king that must lead because he is both the natural and the spiritual leader. Amina ran away to Ashara, a nearby kingdom, to escape the plan of Daud, a prince who must be king by all means, to kill her.

Convinced of a divine will for her choice as the queen and persuaded that society needs to change in its jaundiced view of women, Amina never gave up on her vision but ran to a foreign land where she resided for some years. Meanwhile, Daud, the very inordinately ambitious, rough, and tough would-be king, seized power by force, coercing all the kingmakers to make him king by force. After he became king by force, Daud was still not satisfied; he had his eyes on the fertile land of Nganga, which he went to fight for, despite the advice of his army general. He led the war personally, against the professional advice of his army. He got killed. This paved the way for the return of Amina from her land of exile in the Asara kingdom to Zamanda, her nativity.

Ethical relevance

Most people the world over think ethics must be foreign to human government. They would rather quote Niccolò Machiavelli to dictate or explain attitudes in government rather than the ethics of the religious books. The end justifies the means. Notable political scientists are reported to be behind the horrendous choices of prominent powers, especially the United States of America. For example, the renowned U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, was reportedly behind America’s foreign policy of sacrificing human lives for America’s expediency. Thus, many leaders and citizens of foreign nations were killed to achieve America’s objective. This is unethical, and it has bred more conflict in the world, even leading to general hatred for Americans everywhere. Sultan Daud, who forcibly snatched power in Zamanda, exemplified this unethical governance in the world. He was a wife snatcher; a land grabber; covetous; a cattle rustler, which he did through the herdsmen agents; impious and self-indulgent; mean-spirited and with insatiable desires, eyes that can never be satisfied, and an uncontrollable appetite for women. Amina, who replaced Daud after he was killed in a war, was a direct opposite of Daud. She was a patient woman who would wait for as long as it took to get what was due to her; she was loving and gentle, contented and bold, and courageous. If Africa is to turn around in her unstable governance, Amina must be a model.

Economic development and nation-building relevance

It is amazing that a novel situated in a background that looks very much like the north of Nigeria and among Muslims, where irresponsible and poor leadership has grounded the citizenry, will throw up a woman in a male-dominated system who will be such a wonderful model in economic development as Amina. The North is the sick child of Nigeria, dragging the nation down, but in Queen Amina, Soldier on Horseback, we read the possibility of greatness for the sick North if she will unshackle her womenfolk. Amina is proof that attendance at Harvard University or any of the other great institutions of the world is not a requirement for good leadership that transforms society. A good heart, a perceptive spirit, a determination to transform society in social justice, a humble and peaceful heart, and a courageous heart are the requirements. Thus, Amina relaxed the tense atmosphere that had been encouraged by the vicious rule of her predecessor, reduced heavy tax burdens, gave people their land back, set the blacksmiths free from burdensome taxes, and sent people to foreign nations to learn new technologies; removed all shackles from the feet of women and thus released the boundless energies of this segment of society that is more than half of the population, who had been rendered non- contributory to the economy; and ensured justice by first warning the corrupt judges and subsequently removing them when they will not change because they were set in their ways. Queen Amina built a new palace using local materials and architecture. She also beautifies the kingdom.

Queen Amina, Soldier on Horseback is a treasure trove, but it is fiction that ends like a true story. This may have to be expunged in the next reprint of the novel.


Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.