Algerian court increases jail time for French journalist convicted of 'terrorism'

A court in Tizi Ouzou, in eastern Algeria, on Wednesday announced a ten-year sentence in the appeal trial of French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, accused among other things of "glorifying terrorism". Arrested in May 2024, he has been detained since his trial in June, when he was originally sentenced to seven years in prison.


Issued on: 03/12/2025 - RFI

Mother of Christophe Gleizes, Sylvie Godard (L) next to Christophe Gleizes' brother, Maxime Gleizes at a march in Avignon in support of French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes detained in Algeria and convicted of "glorifying terrorism", 16 July 2025. © CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP


"The accused did not come to Algeria to do journalistic work but to commit a hostile act," said the prosecutor, who also requested a fine of 500,000 Algerian dinars (approximately €3,300).

Christophe Gleizes, 36, a contributor to the French magazines So Foot and Society, imprisoned in Algeria since the end of June, had previously asked the court for leniency, stating that he should have applied for a journalist visa instead of a tourist visa to come and report.

Called to the stand at his appeal trial on Wednesday morning, 36-year-old Gleizes asked for leniency, acknowledging that he had made "many journalistic errors despite [his] good intentions."

A contributor to the French magazines So Foot and Society, Gleizes also admitted that he should have been aware that some of his contacts were linked to an organisation classified as terrorist in Algeria.

"I beg your mercy so that I can be reunited with my family," he said in an emotional testimony.

Tourism visa

Gleizes had travelled to Algeria to write an article about the country's most successful football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK), based in Tizi Ouzou, 100 km east of Algiers.

French NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said he was arrested on 28 May 2024 and placed under judicial supervision, for "entering the country with a tourist visa, for 'glorifying terrorism' and 'possession of publications for propaganda purposes that harm the national interest'".

The justice system accused him of having been in contact with an offical from the JSK, who was also one of the leaders of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), which was classified as a terrorist organisation by Algerian authorities in 2021.

According to RSF, the initial exchanges between the two men "took place well before this categorisation by the Algerian authorities" and "the only exchange that occurred in 2024 concerned the preparation of his report" on JSK, "something Christophe Gleizes has never hidden."

Gleizes "has no business being in prison; his only crime is having done his job as a sports journalist and loving Algerian football," Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF told the press in October.

During the initial trial in June, Gleizes' French lawyer, Emmanuel Daoud said that there had been "a complete misunderstanding of the journalistic profession," by Algerian authorities.

"We had to explained to the judges that a journalist does not engage in politics," that he "is not an ideologue," "not an activist," Daoud told France Inter radio.

The lawyer insisted however on his respect for the "independent and sovereign" Algerian justice system and refuted accusations circulating in France that the journalist was "being held hostage".

He stressed that Gleizes had been able to receive visitors, had access to his criminal file, and consulted with his lawyers.

Support campaigns

In September, RSF launched a petition and an campaign in support of Gleizes and called on football clubs to raise awareness of Gleizes' imprisonment by making statements before matches.

"Support for Christophe Gleizes is a grassroots movement of all those who love journalism and those who love sport," Bruttin said.

At the end of November, nine media organisations published a petition, calling for Gleizes' release, stating that the"freedom of the press cannot be held hostage".

They reiterated that "a reporter who interviews a sports official is not complicit in their positions: they are doing their job."

They added that "diplomatic tensions must never lead to imprisonment, especially of journalists", referring to the recent tensions between France and Algeria.

Indeed at the time of his arrest, Gleizes found himself caught in the midst of a diplomatic crisis between France and its former colony, marked in particular by the withdrawal of the two ambassadors and the reciprocal expulsions of diplomats.

Tensions escalated with France's recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in July 2024, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.

Last November, Algerian authorities arrested the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, who spent a year in prison on national security charges before being pardoned last month.

Relations also took a dive when in January this year, when Algeria refused to take back an Algerian influencer deported from France, accused of inciting violence on social media.

Macron joins family's push to free jailed French journalist in Algeria

France is ramping up diplomatic efforts to secure the release of Christophe Gleizes, the French sports journalist handed a seven-year prison sentence in Algeria, with President Emmanuel Macron insisting he wants to see him home “as soon as possible”. 

Gleizes’s parents told RFI they hope to meet Macron as soon as possible to push for their son's freedom.


Issued on: 04/12/2025 - RFI

The family of Christophe Gleizes, a French sports journalist convicted in Algeria of "glorifying terrorism", protest in Avignon, southern France, on 16 July 2025. Their banner reads: "Journalism is not a crime." © AFP - CHRISTOPHE SIMON

The Elysée Palace said Thursday that Macron was “deeply concerned” by the verdict and would continue engaging with Algiers to secure the journalist’s return to France.

It follows the decision by an Algerian appeals court, a day earlier, to uphold his conviction for “glorifying terrorism” and “possessing publications for propaganda purposes harmful to national interests”.

Gleizes, 36, a freelancer for So Foot and Society, is France’s only journalist imprisoned abroad, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

His detention comes at a tense period in relations between France and Algeria. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has called the journalist’s freedom “a major element” in ongoing discussions between the two countries.

“We will do everything in our power to secure the release” of Gleizes, the minister told broadcaster France 2. “Discussions are ongoing, and we will continue them with the Algerian side.”

'Still in shock'

Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 while reporting in Tizi Ouzou, the heart of the Kabylie region and home to JS Kabylie, Algeria’s most decorated football club.

Algerian authorities accuse him of having contact with figures linked to the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), which they labelled a terrorist organisation in 2021.

He has been detained since his trial in June.

His mother Sylvie Godard and stepfather Francis Godard told RFI on Thursday that the decision to uphold the sentence had blindsided them.

“We are still in shock over this verdict,” said Sylvie. “We thought he would get a suspended sentence, maybe a prison sentence, but definitely not another seven-year prison sentence.”

Sylvie and Francis Godard, the mother and stepfather of French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, at the headquarters of press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders in Paris, on 27 August 2025. © AFP - STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

Inside a 'violent' hearing

Francis Godard said the hearing itself was exceptionally charged, with prosecutors' arguments tipping into invective. He told RFI: “The verdict is harsh and it must be said that the hearing was also violent.”

He added that the presiding judge repeatedly tried to portray Christophe as an accomplice in a criminal operation.

According to his mother, Gleizes appeared stunned but stoic when the verdict was announced. “His face was pale,” she said.

The family attempted to speak to him briefly before he was taken back to prison, but Sylvie recounted: “There wasn’t much humanity... They forbade us from seeing him.”

Release campaign

Gleizes now has one week to decide whether to appeal to Algeria’s highest court.

“We are regaining our fighting spirit and we are going to regain our energy so that we can get him out of there as quickly as possible,” his mother told RFI.

She added that the family is hoping for direct engagement with the French president. “We really hope to meet with [Macron] in the next few days and discuss with him the possible courses of action and strategies to be implemented.”

Gleizes also has the backing of press freedom groups including RSF, which denounced his sentence as “outrageous”.

The case has injected fresh strain into relations between Paris and Algiers, already complicated by disagreements over Western Sahara and the expulsion of diplomats last year.

French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal was arrested in Algiers and sentenced in March to five years in prison for making comments about Western Sahara that Algerian authorities said undermined the country's territorial integrity.

He was freed last month after intense negotiations with Algeria by France and Germany.

(with AFP)

GOOD NEWS

Algeria frees French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal for transfer to Germany

Algeria has pardoned French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal after a request from Germany, to where he will be transferred for medical treatment after a year in detention, it was announced Wednesday.


Issued on:  13/11/2025  RFI

French Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, now 80 but pictured here in 2015, was suffering from prostate cancer in an Algerian jail, according to his family, and will now be treated in Germany. © JOEL SAGET / AFP

After German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday urged Algeria to free the 81-year-old, "the president of the republic decided to respond positively", the Algerian presidency said.

The statement said Germany would take charge of the transfer and treatment of Sansal, who has prostate cancer, according to his family.

Sansal was given a five-year jail term in March, accused of undermining Algeria's territorial integrity after he told a far-right French outlet last year that France had unjustly transferred Moroccan territory to Algeria during the 1830 to 1962 colonial period.

France 'concerned' over disappearance of writer Boualem Sansal in Algeria

Algeria views those ideas - which align with longstanding Moroccan territorial claims - as a challenge to its sovereignty.

He was arrested in November 2014 at Algiers airport. Because he did not appeal March's ruling, he was eligible for a presidential pardon.

Steinmeier urged Algeria to make a humanitarian gesture "given Sansal's advanced age and fragile health condition" and said Germany would take charge of his "relocation to Germany and subsequent medical care".
'Mercy and humanity'

French President Emmanuel Macron had also urged Tebboune to show "mercy and humanity" by releasing the author.

Sansal's daughter Sabeha Sansal, 51, told Ffrench news agency AFP by telephone from her home in the Czech Republic of her relief.

"I was a little pessimistic because he is sick, he is old, and he could have died there," she said. "I hope we will see each other soon."

A prize-winning figure in North African modern francophone literature, Sansal is known for his criticism of Algerian authorities as well as of Islamists.

He acquired French nationality in 2024.

Appearing in court without legal counsel on June 24, Sansal had said the case against him "makes no sense" as "the Algerian constitution guarantees freedom of expression and conscience".

When questioned about his writings, Sansal asked: "Are we holding a trial over literature? Where are we headed?"

French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal sentenced to five years in prison

His case has become a cause celebre in France, but his past support for Israel and his 2014 visit there have made him largely unpopular in Algeria.

The case has also become entangled in the diplomatic crisis between Paris and Algiers, which has led to the expulsion of officials on both sides, the recall of ambassadors and restrictions on holders of diplomatic visas.

Another point of contention was the sentencing to seven years in prison of French sportswriter Christophe Gleizes in Algiers on accusations of attempting to interview a member of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), designated a terrorist organisation by Algeria in 2021.

Both Sansal and Gleizes's prosecution came amid the latest rise in tensions between Paris and Algiers, triggered in July 2024 when Macron backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
Civil servant turned novelist

An economist by training, Sansal worked as a senior civil servant in his native Algeria, with his first novel appearing in 1999.

"The Barbarians' Oath" dealt with the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Algeria and was published in the midst of the country's civil war which left some 200,000 people dead according to official figures.

He was fired from his post in the industry ministry in 2003 for his opposition to the government but continued publishing.

Algeria court upholds writer Boualem Sansal's five-year jail term

His 2008 work "The German Mujahid" was censored in Algeria for drawing parallels between Islamism and Nazism.

He has received several international prizes for his work, including in France and Germany.

In recent years Germany has offered refuge to several high-profile prisoners from other countries.

The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was treated at Berlin's Charite hospital after being poisoned in August 2020.

Last year Germany welcomed several other high-profile Russian dissidents as part of a historic prisoner swap with Moscow.

(with newswires)

Algeria pardons French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal


Algeria’s president on Wednesday granted a humanitarian pardon to French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal following a German request for his release. The 81-year-old writer, whose year-long imprisonment sparked widespread criticism, arrived in Berlin late Wednesday for medical treatment.


Issued on: 12/11/2025 - 
By: FRANCE 24

Video by: Morgan AYRE

French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal was granted a humanitarian pardon, the Algerian presidential office said in a statement on Wednesday.

Sansal, 81, was arrested on November 16, 2024, in Algiers and sentenced on appeal in July 2025 to five years in prison for comments deemed harmful to national unity.

His pardon came after German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged Algeria to free Sansal. "The president of the republic decided to respond positively to the request of the esteemed president of the friendly Federal Republic of Germany", said the Algerian presidential statement.

READ MOREFrench-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal won't appeal sentence, hopes for pardon


Steinmeier thanked Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in a statement for the "humanitarian gesture" that "demonstrates the quality of the relations and trust between Germany and Algeria".

Hours after the pardon was announced, Sansal arrived in Berlin, according to the German presidential office.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday thanked his counterparts in Algiers and Berlin for Sansal's release on humanitarian grounds.

Macron, while visiting the southern city of Toulouse, said he had spoken by phone with Steinmeier "to express my deep gratitude for Germany's good offices", after Berlin requested and obtained Boualem Sansal's pardon.

"I acknowledge this gesture of humanity from President Tebboune and thank him for it," he said of the Algerian leader, adding that he remained "available to discuss with him all matters of interest to our two countries".

Prior to the pardon, Macron had called on Tebboune to show "mercy and humanity" by releasing the author.

READ MOREMacron urges 'mercy' for jailed writer Sansal in call with Algeria's Tebboune

Sansal is known for his criticism of Algerian authorities as well as of Islamists. He was arrested in November after saying, in an interview with a far-right French media outlet, that France unfairly ceded Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial era.

His statement, which echoed a long-standing Moroccan claim, was viewed by Algeria as an affront to its national sovereignty.

The author's arrest in Algiers deepened a diplomatic rift with France, which analysts have said is the worst the two countries have seen in years.

Sansal's pardon a 'relief' says French PM

© France 24
04:16

'I hope we will see each other soon'

Sansal's daughter Sabeha Sansal, 51, expressed her relief over the decision in a phone call from her home in the Czech Republic.

"I was a little pessimistic because he is sick, he is old, and he could have died there," she said. "I hope we will see each other soon."

A prize-winning figure in North African modern francophone literature, Sansal acquired French nationality in 2024.

Appearing in court without legal counsel on June 24, Sansal had said the case against him "makes no sense" as "the Algerian constitution guarantees freedom of expression and conscience".

When questioned about his writings, Sansal asked: "Are we holding a trial over literature? Where are we headed?"

His case has become a cause celebre in France, but his past support for Israel and his 2014 visit there have made him largely unpopular in Algeria.

The case has also become entangled in the diplomatic crisis between Paris and Algiers, which has led to the expulsion of officials on both sides, the recall of ambassadors and restrictions on holders of diplomatic visas.

READ MORE'Insult to injury': What’s behind the rising tensions between France and Algeria?

Another point of contention was the sentencing to seven years in prison of French sportswriter Christophe Gleizes in Algiers on accusations of attempting to interview a member of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), designated a terrorist organisation by Algeria in 2021.

Both Sansal and Gleizes's prosecution came amid the latest rise in tensions between Paris and Algiers, triggered in July 2024 when Macron backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
Civil servant turned novelist

An economist by training, Sansal worked as a senior civil servant in his native Algeria, with his first novel appearing in 1999.

"The Barbarians' Oath" dealt with the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Algeria and was published in the midst of the country's civil war which left some 200,000 people dead according to official figures.

He was fired from his post in the industry ministry in 2003 for his opposition to the government but continued publishing.

His 2008 work "The German Mujahid" was censored in Algeria for drawing parallels between Islamism and Nazism.

He has received several international prizes for his work, including in France and Germany.

In recent years Germany has offered refuge to several high-profile prisoners from other countries.

The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was treated at Berlin's Charite hospital after being poisoned in August 2020.

Last year Germany welcomed several other high-profile Russian dissidents as part of a historic prisoner swap with Moscow.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

POETRY IS TERRORISM

Algeria jails pro-democracy Hirak poet for five years on terrorism charges

Algeria on Tuesday jailed pro-democracy activist Mohamed Tadjadit for five years on terrorism charges, in what human right groups have called an "alarming signal' for human rights in the country. Known for his public poetry readings during Algeria's 2019 Hirak movement, Tadjadit has been imprisoned multiple times by the Algerian authorities.


Issued on: 12/11/2025 - 
By: FRANCE 24

Algerians demonstrate in the streets of Algiers in support for the Hirak pro-democracy movement on May 7, 2021. © Anis Belghoul, AP

Algerian activist Mohamed Tadjadit, dubbed "the poet of the Hirak" during Algeria's 2019 mass pro-democracy protests, was jailed for five years Tuesday on charges including "condoning terrorism", his lawyer said.

Tadjadit became prominent for his public recitations during protests by the Hirak movement, which erupted in February 2019 and helped force the resignation of longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Tadjadit's lawyer, Fetta Sadat, said in a post on Facebook that her client was convicted of "condoning terrorism", "supporting terrorist organisations" and "spreading extremist ideas", among other charges.

The prosecution had sought a 10-year sentence.

In a joint statement on Monday, some 20 NGOs including Amnesty International and writers' rights group PEN America said the allegations against Tadjadit were "baseless" and called for his release.

"The persecution of Tadjadit is based on his poetry and peaceful activism, making his continued imprisonment a violation of his fundamental rights," the statement added.

"His prosecution sends an alarming signal to others who raise their voices for human rights and the rule of law in Algeria," it said.

"The authorities imprisoned Tadjadit at least six times between 2019 and 2025, for his artistic expression and political activism," it added.

Tadjadit's last release from prison came in November last year under a presidential pardon.

But in January, he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in a separate case before an appeal reduced that term to one year.

Upon his election in December 2019, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune oversaw a crackdown on the protests with ramped-up policing and the imprisonment of demonstrators.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Google denies removing Maps border between Western Sahara and Morocco

Google on Tuesday denied removing the borderline between the Western Sahara and Morocco on its Maps application, saying that the line had never been visible for Moroccan users. The Western Sahara is a disputed, mineral-rich territory largely controlled by Morocco but claimed by the pro-independence Polisario Front.


Issued on: 12/11/2025 
By: FRANCE 24

A screenshot of Google Maps' depiction of the border between Morocco and Western Sahara, as seen in Paris on November 12, 2025. © Google Maps


The dotted lines illustrating the border between Western Sahara and Morocco, indicating the former's disputed territory status, have never been visible to people using Google Maps in the latter, the company told AFP on Tuesday.

After media reports last week highlighted the discrepancy, tying it to the UN Security Council endorsing the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, the tech giant has released a statement saying the different border displays have always been the case.

"We have not made changes to Morocco or Western Sahara on Google Maps," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to AFP.

UN Security Council backs Moroccan plan for disputed Western Sahara

"These labels follow our longstanding policies for disputed regions. People using Maps outside of Morocco see Western Sahara and a dotted line to represent its disputed border; people using Maps in Morocco do not see Western Sahara."

Western Sahara is a vast mineral-rich former Spanish colony that is largely controlled by Morocco but has been claimed for decades by the pro-independence Polisario Front, which is supported by Algeria.

The United Nations Security Council had previously urged Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and Mauritania to resume talks to reach a broad agreement.

But, at the initiative of US President Donald Trump's administration, the council's resolution supported a plan, initially presented by Rabat in 2007, in which Western Sahara would enjoy autonomy under Morocco's sole sovereignty.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Algerian feminists at the frontiers of solidarity

Friday 24 October 2025, by Amel Hadjadj


11 June 2025, Algiers airport. Four suitcases lined up on the control belt. Inside, there are no flags or banners: just neutral clothing, swimsuits and portable batteries. Sarah Lalou, Yakouta Benrouguibi, Doha A. and Amel Hadjadj play the tourists. Their real goal? To join the Global March to Gaza, an international mobilization to break the blockade of Gaza.


In Algeria, where demonstrations are tightly controlled, our participation is a gamble. However, in 48 hours, the Algerian feminist movement has self-organized to make this mission possible: securing visas according to strategic options, buying tickets, contacting comrades in Egypt, and developing a secure communication plan.
June 6 - Preparing for the impossible

Taking the decision to participate on behalf of the feminist movement was made in a hurry, after a phone call in early June with Algerian director and actress Adila Bendimerad, who told me: “The strength of the masses can exert pressure, and we have no right to be absent in the face of the atrocity that Palestinians are experiencing.”

I asked myself: is this an action that makes sense, or just agitation? What can this bring to these thousands of people under the bombs? I had a hard time deciding. Then I consulted my feminist comrades to find out who would agree to accompany me on this three-day march in the Egyptian desert to Rafah.

Louisa Aït Hamou, Soumia Salhi, Fatma Oussedik – all enthusiastically welcomed this new form of mass action, a renewed internationalism that is not limited to Westernism. They all wanted to participate, but backed down due to the physical conditions, given their age. I multiplied the calls to my comrades of my generation. Some were reluctant, others were willing but held back by their situations – motherhood, immediate responsibilities.

My decision was crystallised by hearing the Franco-Palestinian European Parliament deputy Rima Hassan, speaking from the Madleen boat of the Freedom Flotilla: “We are trying to bring a minimum. This will not be enough to meet the needs of Gazans, but symbolically, it will open a breach and put pressure on states that do not take concrete action.”

At the beginning, I joined the group of the artists’ delegation formed by Adila Bendimerad: sharing information, relaying messages from the organizers of the Global March, monitoring and analysing the trajectory of the Soumoud caravan and the flotilla. Meanwhile, messages continued to circulate among feminist friends.
9 June – building a team

Three days after I bought my plane ticket, on the day the Freedom Flotilla was kidnapped in international waters by the Zionist entity, two feminist comrades, Yakouta and Sarah, contacted me to inform me that they had made themselves available for the Global March. I then decided, with the other members of the Algerian Feminist Journal, to centralize the information, to get out of bilateral telephone communications and to write an email to all our partners in the feminist movement, specifying the need for help to carry out this action.

The answers were not long in coming: from the first minutes, many explained that they were thinking about it, but had difficulty accessing concrete information. Not a single negative answer. Each one tries to bring what she can: a contact, the payment of a ticket, a portable battery, a message of support, advice...

It was a moment that reminded us that this movement is not the reproduction of a white or bourgeois feminism: it is a profoundly anti-colonialist and decolonial movement. In all our diversity, we shared the same anger and the same energy, active, ready for any risk for oppressed peoples.
June 10

In the morning, a feminist comrade, Lyna TBD, tells us that another young feminist, Doha, is trying to leave and would like to join this mini-delegation. The rest of the comrades are informed, and a new race begins to integrate the young Doha into the group.
June 11 in the evening - embarking on an act of solidarity

As we were preparing to fly, the news came: pushbacks and excessive checks were multiplying in Egypt. It’s like love at first sight. Panic in the two delegations that leave together (artists and feminists). Then, we pull ourselves together.

The instructions are clear: don’t back down, stay vigilant, pretend to be tourists, as planned. Between 12 and 15 June, the organisers had to negotiate permits to go to Rafah. We also had to change our luggage, given the expected searches at Cairo airport: no more flags, remove tents and sleeping bags, prepare suitcases with tourist belongings.

On that day, the communiqué that we were supposed to issue once we arrived in Rafah resulted in a final text that was submitted for signature and translation.

The information about the controls and the risk of deportation prompted the Egyptian comrades to offer us accommodation in their homes. Imane, my Egyptian friend, contacted me and insisted that I had explained to her and repeated that we might be held up for hours at Cairo airport: “When you are at my house, we will all sleep to recover.”
Arrival in Cairo: control, visas, search

At Cairo airport, the tension is immediate. Obtaining visas and going through the border police takes hours. Controls were reinforced, luggage searched down to the smallest detail: chargers, personal belongings. Every object is scrutinized, every gesture monitored. We stand firm, repeating tirelessly: “We are here for tourism.”

While we are waiting for our turn, we witness a chilling scene: a group of Algerians is being expelled. They chant loud and clear slogans of resistance in the middle of a corridor guarded by heavily armed police, equipped as if they were ready for war. Their imposing presence and martial posture are reminiscent of the militarization of border control in so-called authoritarian states, where the repression of dissenting voices is carried out through systematic physical and psychological violence. However, this militarization and increased surveillance is not the prerogative of authoritarian regimes alone: in these democracies, border control may be more subtle, but remains just as violent, in particular through the imposition of racist and discriminatory migration policies that restrict the fundamental right to free movement.

This scene of expulsion brutally illustrates the political dimension of our trip. State control is not limited to the simple management of visitor flows, but is part of a security logic aimed at stifling any form of protest or international solidarity likely to challenge the imperialist and colonial order.
June 12 - Imane’s welcome

It is only around 6 am that we finally leave the airport, exhausted but relieved. Outside, the taxi to go to Imane’s is waiting for us. She insisted: we must not go to the hotel, too dangerous because of the controls and surveillance. Her
house becomes our first refuge. We sleep for a few hours to regain our strength.
Organize, declare, remain cautious

The day is first devoted to rest and the necessary procedures. The Global March to Gaza asks us to declare our names, which we do. We also contacted the Algerian embassy in Egypt, which listened to us and ensured careful follow-up, without promising direct protection in the event of arrest.
The sit-in at the journalists’ union: a first collective act

At the end of the afternoon, around 7 p.m., we discreetly joined the sit-in in front of the Egyptian journalists’ union, guided by our Egyptian comrades. Around us: activists of the Egyptian left, journalists, former prisoners of conscience. The slogans demand the authorization of the Global March, the lifting of the blockade, the end of the complicity of states.

We try to blend in with the crowd, to pass for Egyptians, but caution is required, tension is constant.
The organisers’ instructions: waiting for the starting point

Late in the evening, the organizers announced that the starting point would be announced the next day at 10:30 a.m. We remain on the lookout, ready to act, aware of the risks.
June 13 - The day everything changes

A meaningful breakfast. Before receiving instructions for our departure, we share a suspended moment: a Palestinian breakfast with the mother of Bissan Aouda, the storyteller, content creator and journalist from Gaza, known for her line that has crossed screens and borders: “I’m Bissan, I’m still alive.”

Bissan’s mother, who has been a refugee in Cairo for a few months, is there with her four sisters and two brothers, all uprooted by the violence of the war. Together, they try to rebuild a semblance of daily life, far from Gaza but still with their hearts turned to their land.

Around this simple and strong meal – fresh bread, olive oil, za’atar, olives, labneh – the exchanges are intense. Bissan’s mother tells us about the living conditions of Palestinian refugees in Cairo, the daily hardships, the exile that drags on without an answer.

The conversation shifts to the political vision of Palestinian women, the pain of recent losses, but also the incredible strength of women in the continuity of the struggle. She evokes what resistance means today: “We resist through life, through reproduction, through the refusal of extermination. Every child who is born is a no to erasure.”

This moment overwhelms us. It reminds us that our march, our actions, our slogans are only one thread among others in this immense tapestry of struggles, carried daily by these women.
10:30 a.m. - instructions for departure to Ismailia

The instructions come: impossible to leave for Al Arish from Cairo, we have to get as close as possible, Ismailia becomes our next destination. We have to leave in small groups, by taxi, under the guise of tourism.

Yakouta Benrouguibi, a lawyer and feminist activist, rereads Egyptian laws and reminds us of the seriousness of the risks incurred in the event of arrest: “Attempting to cross a military zone, undermining state security” can lead to imprisonment for decades. We decide to go anyway.
1:30 p.m. - A tense ride

A VTC agrees to take us, attempting a route through Port Said, which is longer but would put us out of suspicion in the event of arrest and police control. Each checkpoint is a chasm in the stomach, with warning messages about arrests and confiscations of passports.

In the vehicle, the silence is heavy, and the radio is turned up at each checkpoint to convince people that we are tourists carried away by the vibrations of the music.
The blockade in Ismailia

Finally, we reach the outskirts of Ismailia. But then, everything comes to a halt. The police blocked the entrance: no one was passing anymore. Our passports are confiscated without a word. “We felt that it was getting tighter, that the room for manoeuvre was disappearing,” one of us says.

We were ordered to turn back, escorted out of the city. At the exit of the latter, at the nearest checkpoint, we were made to get off. The driver, worried, cannot wait. We retrieve our belongings, exhausted but determined.

Passports are returned nationality by nationality. For Algerians, the wait is longer, the uncertainty heavier. We see the flags, the faces, the looks of those who, like us, have not given up.
The birth of an international sit-in

It is there, at the checkpoint, that solidarity materializes. A Palestinian flag is raised. Then another. Then an Algerian flag, a Swiss, Moroccan, Tunisian flag. Slogans are flying: “Free Palestine!” “End the blockade!” “Stop bombing Gaza!”

There are dozens, then hundreds of us, sitting on the hot asphalt. A moment of shared revolt, a common cry born of despair and dignity. Comrades in Algeria are in charge of communication. The press release is being relayed beyond the borders.

This press release was at the heart of our commitment. The result of collective writing, reflections, re-readings, shared emotions and anchored convictions. Entitled “We, Algerian feminist activists and organizations, march towards Gaza,” this text carried the voice of a profoundly anti-imperialist and decolonial Algerian feminism, faithful to the heritage of our people’s struggles against colonization. In it, we affirmed that our fight for women’s rights is inseparable from the fight against the oppression of peoples, against colonialism and against imperialism that crush lives, in Palestine as elsewhere.

The press release was not intended to be a mere text of intent: it was a political act in itself, a cry shared with more than 3,000 participants from 80 countries who had joined the Global March for Gaza – and the Soumoud ground convoy. It recalled that the march was not a miracle solution, but a refusal of inaction, a way of breaking the complicit silence in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, perpetrated by the Zionist occupation and its allies. Every word carried the pain of the thousands of deaths, the starving children, the women murdered by the bombs, but also the dignity of a people standing up and the responsibility of states and peoples to stand by them.

In it, we unambiguously denounced the complicity of the powers that arm the oppressor, we called on states to break their silence, to act for an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of the blockade, the end of the occupation. We called on the people to march, everywhere, because to remain immobile would be to betray. And we said, “We will not betray.”

This text, signed by our organizations, by our names, was also a moral shield in the face of possible accusations, a way of explaining, of assuming our choices, while reminding us that our action remained peaceful, respectful of local laws, but firm in its demands. It carried the very essence of our presence: to say that Palestine will be free, and that as long as injustice reigns, we will march.
Evening - The trap closes and the repression is brutal

The day waned, the negotiations came to a standstill, and the police arrived in large numbers: buses, trucks, armoured vehicles. The message came: “You got your message across. Now go.” We refuse: how can we leave when comrades have not recovered their passports? While Gaza is bleeding? Threats mounted: “Either you leave, or it’s immediate expulsion.”

Night falls. Men in civilian clothes, masked, appear. They hit, tear, humiliate. “It was cold, methodical violence. Nothing wild, but everything effective.” Protesters are dragged, loaded onto buses to random destinations: airports, police stations, abandoned highways.

We, by chance or misfortune, are on the bus not affected by the immediate evictions. We are, by physical force and violence, on the bus, our bodies aching, our nerves raw. Inside, the silence is heavy, interspersed with sighs, muffled tears, and glances exchanged in an attempt to reassure each other. Everyone is trying to understand: where are we going? What will be the next humiliation?

And it was in this suffocating situation that information surfaced on Facebook: Iran had responded to Israel’s attack. A demonstrator, his phone still shaking in his hand, whispers: “Iran... Iran has just bombed Tel Aviv.” A shiver runs through the bus. We look at each other, flabbergasted. It is not fear, nor simple joy: it is the awareness of an unexpected shift.

A protester next to me blurts out, almost in a faint voice: “This must be the only positive point in the history of the mullahs’ regime.” Another, younger, immediately qualifies: “You have to go slowly... Iran or not, it’s still Palestinian land.”

The words float, suspended, as the bus bumps into the night. Each and every one of us weighs what this means: a legitimate response, yes, but a war that spreads, a greater risk, peoples caught in a vice.

This moment, in this cramped bus, with fear in our bellies and low voices analysing, testifies to the spirit of this Global March: its radicalism. A conscious, critical, collective radicalism.

And looking around us, we see it clearly: the dominant groups in this march, those who stay until the end, are anarchists, far-left activists, anti-colonialist feminists. Those who have no state flag, only that of the peoples.

Finally, we are dropped off 20 minutes from the centre of Cairo, by a miraculous coincidence. We have experienced fear, anger, but also the beauty of solidarity without borders. What do I remember? The extraordinary courage of the people who helped us: the Egyptian people, the anonymous comrades, those who took risks to shelter, protect, feed us.

We have seen the limits of diplomacy, the brutality of states, but also the strength of peoples. No feminist struggle is complete if it ignores the global colonial order. On that day, we saw what it means: to resist, together, without a state flag, but with the flags of the peoples.

As a precaution, we decided not to go back to Imane’s house right away, for fear of exposing her if we were followed. Almost three hours later, on the way to our host’s house, our VTC is stopped, our passports confiscated again. The driver, in solidarity, improvises a story: we are his customers, tourists. He negotiates, we get our passports back. At Imane’s, the welcome is comfortingly warm, an extension of international solidarity.
June 14 - assessment and caution

The Algerian embassy in Cairo contacted us unexpectedly. The interlocutor praised our commitment by describing us as “heirs of the mujahidates,” but recalled the limits of diplomacy: in the event of arrest, little could be done. He offers material help that we refuse, not wanting to expose Imane.

We remain confined, as a precaution, in contact with our comrades and organizers. There is no point in risking arrests in a context of radical refusal by the Egyptian authorities.
June 16 - last hours in Cairo

After a quiet day, we pack our bags. In the afternoon, we participate in a meeting at the headquarters of the El Karama party, with left-wing parties, to talk about the march, the Soumoud caravan, the regional context and the Iranian response. Later that night, we leave for the airport. Our checks are going well, others are being searched and arrested. On the plane, the slogans rise, a last collective cry.

We then witness an unexpected act of solidarity: a pilot refuses to take off until the 15 Algerians arrested are released. After two hours, the plane finally takes off. It was only symbolic: but it was important.

This experience is a concrete illustration of the intersectional and decolonial feminism that marks the contemporary Algerian feminist movement. We are not just women marching for Gaza; we carry a global critique of the global system of oppression, a legacy of Algerian anti-colonial struggles that is reflected today in an internationalist commitment to solidarity.

The repression experienced demonstrates how the capitalist and imperialist world order, consolidated by complicit states, works to muzzle any dissenting voice, especially those that defend the oppressed and colonized peoples. Our feminist approach rejects the fragmentation of struggles: women’s rights are intrinsically linked to the struggle against racism, colonialism, capitalism and militarism.

By joining the Global March to Gaza, we wanted to materialize this political feminism that takes into account the interconnection of dominations. This collective action, even if limited by repression, is an act of feminist political resistance that refuses to leave Palestinian women, children and men isolated, rendered invisible or reduced to passive victims. They are actors in their struggle, and our solidarity is intended to support their power of life, resistance and social transformation.

The ordeal of the journey, the tensions, the refusal of entry, the police brutality have also highlighted the political precariousness of internationalist activism, subject to the security logics of states, but also the strength of the collective and of transnational sisterhood.

This journey also shows that feminist political action is not limited to a symbolic space: it involves bodies, risks, strategies, and requires solid and active support networks.

This journey, marked by solidarity, state violence, and determination, is a vivid testimony to the need for a decolonial, anti-racist, and internationalist feminism. We, Algerian feminist activists, have embodied the continuity of a historic struggle against all forms of oppression, from Algerian women in the Mujahidate to Palestinian women under blockade.

Our march was not a simple walk, but a radical political act, a clear rejection of injustice and the silent complicity of states. In a world where borders are hardening, where solidarity is often prevented, our action has drawn a space of transnational resistance, carried by the collective strength of women and peoples in struggle.

On that day, in the midst of repression, we learned that international feminist solidarity is a bulwark against barbarism, a source of hope and a weapon against oppression.

Because as long as Gaza bleeds, as long as Palestine is under occupation, as long as women, political minorities and all the oppressed remain far from their rights, as long as imperialism and capitalism prioritize militarization, armaments and war: our feminist and decolonial struggle cannot stop.

31 August 2025

Translated by International Viewpoint from Inprecor.


Attached documentsalgerian-feminists-at-the-frontiers-of-solidarity_a9232.pdf (PDF - 936 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article9232]


Amel Hadjadj
Amel Hadjadj is an Algerian feminist activist.


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Empire by Numbers: 392 U.S. Military Interventions Across Every Region of the World

by Michael Holmes | Oct 9, 2025 | ANTIWAR.COM

Monica Duffy Toft and Sidita Kushi’s 2023 book Dying by the Sword is both a work of scholarship and an unflinching indictment. It demolishes the enduring myth of the United States as a hesitant warrior, reluctantly drawn into conflicts by others. Instead, using their Military Intervention Project – the most comprehensive dataset of its kind – they prove that America has been the most interventionist state in modern history. The numbers are stark. From 1776 to 2019 the United States engaged in 392 military interventions. Thirty-four percent of these occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, twenty-three percent in East Asia and the Pacific, fourteen percent in the Middle East and North Africa, thirteen percent in Europe and Central Asia, and nine percent in sub-Saharan Africa. More than half of all interventions have taken place since 1945, and nearly one-third since the end of the Cold War. Remarkably, Toft and Kushi note that 1974 was the last year in which the United States did not launch at least one new military intervention. Before that, the only other pause in the postwar era was 1952 – underscoring how constant war has become the American default. Measured over time, the tempo of U.S. intervention has accelerated dramatically. Between 1776 and 1945, Washington intervened roughly once to one and a half times per year. During the Cold War this climbed to nearly 2.5 interventions annually. After the Cold War it surged to 4.6 per year, and since 2001 it has remained extraordinarily high at 3.6 annually.

Perhaps the book’s most damning finding comes from their comparison of U.S. hostility levels with those of its enemies. During the Cold War, the hostility levels were roughly symmetrical. But in every period before and after, the United States displayed higher hostility levels than its adversaries – often significantly higher. This strongly suggests that most U.S. wars throughout its history were not defensive wars, but imperial wars of choice in which Washington was the prime escalator. Moreover, from 1776 until the end of the Cold War more than 75 percent of all US interventions were unilateral. Since 1990 this percentage dropped to 57.7 percent. The self-declared global policeman never cared very much for global opinion or international law.

One of Toft and Kushi’s most revealing statistical facts is that America’s principal adversaries today are not random enemies, but rather the very countries it has intervened in most often throughout its history. The top seven are telling: China, Russia, Mexico, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua. Far from building stability, repeated interventions left behind legacies of grievance, mistrust, and resistance. What emerges is a sobering picture: today’s conflicts are not accidents of geopolitics but the direct outgrowth of a long history in which Washington sought to impose its will by force. In other words, America’s most enduring enemies are, to a large extent, the ones it helped create. And crucially, U.S. military interventions, interference, economic sanctions, and constant threats in these countries not only entrenched cycles of hostility but almost certainly contributed to their lack of democracy, liberalism, and prosperity – the authoritarian regimes that Washington now loves to demonize are, in no small part, the product of its own aggressions. When people live under siege from a great power, when their societies are scarred by violence, poverty, and the erosion of education and opportunity, they do not become more democratic or liberal. Instead, fear, hardship, and insecurity create fertile ground for authoritarian rule – and Washington’s aggressions have repeatedly helped bring exactly that about. In the starkest terms, America manufactures its own enemies, and then condemns them for the very conditions it helped to create.

This review draws on both the book and its companion case studies to provide a chronological overview of the crimes that resulted from this pattern of intervention. From the scorched-earth campaigns against Indigenous peoples to the water-cure torture in the Philippines, from the terror bombings of Japan, Germany and Korea to the support for death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador, from the chemical devastation of Vietnam to the War on Terror, Toft and Kushi’s evidence adds up to a damning portrait. America’s wars have rarely been wars of survival. They have overwhelmingly been wars of choice, driven by expansionist, commercial, and imperial ambitions.

Empire at Home: Conquest and Expansion

The first century of American military activity was devoted above all to continental conquest. The wars against Indigenous nations were systematic campaigns of annihilation and displacement, not isolated frontier skirmishes. Entire villages were burned to the ground, crops destroyed, and populations forced onto death marches like the Trail of Tears. From the Seminoles in Florida to the Sioux and Apache on the Plains and in the Southwest, the pattern was the same: the use of overwhelming force to clear land for settlers, often accompanied by massacres of noncombatants.

At the same time, the young republic projected force overseas. In North Africa, the Barbary Wars saw U.S. naval bombardments of Tripoli and Algiers, coupled with punitive raids on coastal towns. In the Caribbean, American warships landed marines in places like Cuba and Puerto Rico long before they became formal U.S. possessions. In the Pacific, early interventions targeted Polynesian islands and Chinese ports in the name of commerce, often leaving destruction behind.

The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 was the republic’s first major overseas conquest. Framed as defense, it was in reality an expansionist war that stripped Mexico of half its territory. U.S. troops occupied cities, committed looting, and carried out summary executions of suspected guerrillas. Civilians bore the brunt of the violence, and the conquered lands became the foundation of America’s continental empire.

By mid-century the pattern was unmistakable: the United States was not a besieged power fighting for survival. It was an expansionist republic using force to displace, conquer, and secure commercial advantage.

The Imperial Turn: From the Caribbean to the Pacific

By the end of the nineteenth century the United States had outgrown its continental frontier and turned outward. The Spanish-American War marked the opening of a new imperial phase. Cuba was occupied, Puerto Rico and Guam annexed, and the Philippines violently subdued. In the Philippines the U.S. military unleashed a counterinsurgency so brutal it stands comparison with the worst colonial wars of Europe. Villages were burned to the ground, civilians herded into concentration zones, and torture became routine. The “water cure,” a form of simulated drowning, was applied systematically. On the island of Samar, General Jacob Smith ordered his troops to turn the region into a “howling wilderness” and to kill any male over ten years old. Tens of thousands of Filipinos died in a war of pacification waged under the banner of civilization.

The new century saw the Marines become the iron fist of American empire in the Caribbean and Central America. Nicaragua was invaded repeatedly, sometimes for years at a stretch, and its politics subordinated to Washington’s will. Honduras endured a series of occupations and landings designed to protect American corporate interests. Haiti was occupied from 1915 to 1934, during which time U.S. forces imposed forced labor, shot down protestors, and maintained direct military rule. In the Dominican Republic, another occupation beginning in 1916 installed a regime sustained by American bayonets and riddled with abuses against civilians. In Cuba, formal independence masked a reality of repeated American interventions, military occupations, and economic domination.

The methods were strikingly consistent: forced labor in Haiti, executions and collective punishments in the Dominican Republic, massacres of insurgents in Nicaragua, and the training of local security forces whose brutality was legendary. Across the Caribbean basin, U.S. interventions propped up regimes, safeguarded corporate plantations and banks, and crushed dissent through violence.

Beyond the hemisphere, the United States projected power into China, joining other imperial powers in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, and into the Pacific, using gunboat diplomacy to enforce commercial treaties. In every theater the hallmark was not restraint but escalation. Where opponents resisted, the United States used overwhelming force – burning villages, occupying capitals, and imposing direct control.

By the eve of World War I, the United States had become an unmistakable imperial power. Its reach extended across the Caribbean and Central America, into the Pacific and Asia, and onto the world stage in Europe. And the price was paid not only in annexed territory but in the blood of civilians subjected to massacres, scorched-earth campaigns, and military occupations.

World Wars and the Globalization of Violence

The entry into World War I projected American power onto the European continent for the first time, but the war was framed by what came before and after: the consolidation of empire in the Caribbean and the beginnings of global intervention. Marines still patrolled Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua even as American troops crossed the Atlantic. By 1918 the United States was both a European belligerent and a hemispheric occupier.

World War II is often remembered as the “good war,” but Toft and Kushi’s framework strips away the mythology. American bombing campaigns targeted cities and civilian infrastructure with devastating effect. In Europe, raids destroyed cultural centers like Dresden. In Asia, strategic bombing reached its apotheosis in the firebombing of Tokyo, which incinerated more than 100,000 civilians in a single night, and in the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were not surgical strikes. They were deliberate acts of mass killing designed to terrorize populations into submission.

The Cold War transformed America’s global reach into a permanent system of intervention. Korea was the first testing ground. Between 1950 and 1953 the U.S. Air Force dropped more tonnage of bombs on the peninsula than it had on the entire Pacific during World War II. Cities and villages were flattened, dams and irrigation works destroyed, producing widespread famine and civilian deaths. The case narratives describe entire towns erased from the map.

Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos followed. The My Lai massacre, in which U.S. troops slaughtered hundreds of unarmed villagers, became emblematic of a war fought with pervasive disregard for civilian life. Napalm and Agent Orange were used indiscriminately, burning flesh and poisoning generations. Strategic hamlets, free-fire zones, and search-and-destroy missions blurred any line between combatants and civilians. The countryside was devastated, millions displaced, and the land itself poisoned.

At the same time the covert side of American power expanded. In 1954 in Guatemala, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the elected government of Jacobo Árbenz. What followed was one of Latin America’s darkest chapters: a forty-year civil war marked by massacres of entire villages, forced disappearances, and a genocidal campaign against the Mayan population.

From East Asia to Latin America to the Middle East, the record is consistent. U.S. interventions escalated conflicts, empowered repressive regimes, and inflicted extraordinary violence on civilian populations. And the dataset shows what the narratives make visceral: in the majority of these confrontations it was the United States, not its adversaries, that chose escalation and inflicted the greater share of destruction.

Central America’s Dirty Wars

Nowhere is the brutality of U.S. intervention more visible than in Central America during the 1970s and 1980s. The Military Intervention Project records these episodes in detail, and the case studies give them human texture: scorched-earth campaigns, death squads, massacres, and systematic terror carried out by governments and paramilitaries armed, trained, or financed by Washington.

El Salvador’s US-backed government prosecuted its war with death squads that hunted down priests, nuns, teachers, and peasants. The 1981 El Mozote massacre, in which nearly a thousand civilians were slaughtered, is only the most infamous example. U.S. advisors trained the Atlacatl Battalion that carried it out, and successive administrations poured military aid into the country despite overwhelming evidence of systematic killings.

In Nicaragua, the U.S. sought to overturn the Sandinista government by funding and arming the contras. Their campaign of terror targeted civilians, burning schools and clinics, murdering teachers and health workers, and depopulating the countryside with indiscriminate violence. The International Court of Justice eventually condemned U.S. actions as unlawful aggression, but the policy continued for years, devastating the country.

Honduras became a staging ground for these operations. The U.S. military established bases and trained local security forces that carried out assassinations and disappearances against domestic opponents. The infamous Battalion 316, supported by U.S. advisors, ran a campaign of kidnappings and torture.

Across the region, the pattern was unmistakable. When popular movements sought reform or revolution, the United States responded with military force, coups, and proxy wars. The cost was borne by peasants, labor organizers, teachers, and clergy, who were systematically targeted by militaries and paramilitaries acting with U.S. support. The crimes were not incidental. They were the strategy: terrorizing populations into submission, destroying the social base of insurgency, and keeping governments aligned with Washington.

Latin America became a laboratory of repression. And it was all the more damning because the United States was not reacting to existential threats. These were small, impoverished countries. Their struggles threatened American dominance, not American survival. The wars were wars of choice, and the crimes were the price Washington was willing to exact to maintain control of its “backyard.”

Wars of Choice in the New American Century

The end of the Cold War did not bring an end to American interventionism. On the contrary, the pace quickened. The Military Intervention Project shows that nearly one-third of all U.S. interventions took place after 1991, and they were increasingly wars of choice against much weaker opponents. The pattern of disproportionate violence documented across earlier centuries continued into the present.

The 1991 Gulf War inaugurated the new era. U.S. airpower devastated Iraq’s infrastructure in a matter of weeks, targeting not only military sites but electricity grids, water treatment facilities, and bridges essential for civilian life. Tens of thousands of civilians died directly or indirectly from the bombing and its aftermath. The following decade of sanctions further destroyed Iraq’s economy and contributed to mass malnutrition and preventable deaths, especially among children.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq stands as the paradigmatic war of choice. Launched without a clear defensive justification, it toppled Saddam Hussein but unleashed chaos that killed hundreds of thousands. U.S. forces conducted night raids that killed civilians, detained tens of thousands without due process, and operated torture sites like Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were humiliated, beaten, and sometimes killed. The occupation fragmented the state, triggered sectarian war, and created the conditions for the rise of the so-called Islamic State.

Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history, followed a similar trajectory. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the occupation stretched for two decades. Night raids by U.S. and allied special forces repeatedly killed civilians, drone strikes hit weddings and funerals, and detention centers became notorious for abuse. Civilian casualties mounted year after year even as the war’s stated objectives shifted and receded. By the time of withdrawal, Afghanistan was left impoverished and unstable, with millions displaced.

Elsewhere, the U.S. turned increasingly to air campaigns and proxy wars. In 2011, NATO’s intervention in Libya, driven by American airpower, destroyed Muammar Gaddafi’s regime but left the country in ruins. Rival militias carved up territory, civilians bore the brunt of lawlessness, and the state collapsed into chaos. In Syria, U.S. military involvement fueled a brutal conflict that devastated entire cities like Raqqa, where bombardments leveled neighborhoods and killed thousands.

The era of drone warfare extended American violence across borders with little accountability. In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, drone strikes killed suspected militants but also countless civilians, spreading fear in rural areas where the constant buzzing of drones became a form of psychological terror. Families were obliterated at weddings and funerals, farmers struck in their fields, children killed in their homes. These were not accidents at the margins of precision warfare. They were the predictable consequences of a strategy that privileged remote killing over political solutions.

Across the globe, interventions destabilized entire regions. In West Africa, U.S. counterterrorism programs armed and trained militaries that later staged coups. In Somalia, interventions stretching from the 1990s to the present repeatedly produced cycles of violence, from the infamous Black Hawk Down incident to ongoing drone strikes and special operations. Even in Europe, interventions in the Balkans left a legacy of destroyed infrastructure and displaced civilians.

The post-Cold War interventions reveal most clearly what Toft and Kushi’s dataset proves statistically: these wars were not responses to existential threats. They were chosen. And in the overwhelming majority of cases, the United States used more force than its adversaries, escalating conflicts that might otherwise have remained local. The methods may have shifted – from scorched-earth to drones, from occupations to proxy wars – but the results were the same: shattered states, traumatized societies, and civilians paying the highest price.

Conclusion: The Arithmetic of Empire

Monica Duffy Toft and Sidita Kushi have done something rare. They have replaced myth with measurement. By assembling the most comprehensive dataset of U.S. military interventions ever created, they show in black and white what generations of victims already knew in blood and fire. The United States has not been a reluctant warrior. It has been the most interventionist power in modern history – rivalled only by the British Empire.

Even in its budgetary priorities, the imbalance is clear. The authors note that State Department spending – a rough proxy for diplomacy and peaceful engagement – has crept up only slowly from about 1 percent of Defense Department spending in the 1960s to around 4 or 5 percent in recent years. The pattern is unmistakable: the United States has consistently poured multiple times more resources into war-making than into diplomacy.

The figures are devastating. Three hundred and ninety-two interventions from 1776 to 2019. The trend is unmistakable. As America grew stronger, it intervened more often. And the methods were not defensive. In the vast majority of cases the United States used more force than its adversary. Time and again, it was Washington that escalated, that bombed, that occupied, that tortured. Its enemies, when they fought at all, were usually far weaker, and the overwhelming share of destruction was inflicted by American hands.

The case studies expose the human cost. They are not isolated aberrations. They are the record of a state that has consistently used its power to dominate, to coerce, and to destroy. The book’s great achievement is to prove this not just through narrative but through data. The dataset is the skeleton, the case studies the flesh. Together they show a nation that has institutionalized military intervention, made violence a default tool of policy, and exported suffering on a global scale.

Dying by the Sword is more than a history. It is an indictment. It demands that Americans and the world alike face a truth too long obscured by rhetoric about freedom and democracy: the United States has built its global position not on hesitant leadership, international law or human rights; but on repeated, aggressive wars of empire. And in those wars, it has too often been the author of the greatest crimes.

You can find Michael’s interviews with Jeffrey Sachs, Trita Parsi, Scott Horton and other antiwar voices on his author’s page for NachDenkSeiten — the videos are in English!

Michael Holmes is a German-American freelance journalist specializing in global conflicts and modern history. His work has appeared in Neue Zürcher Zeitung – the Swiss newspaper of record – Responsible Statecraft, Psychologie Heute, taz, Welt, and other outlets. He regularly conducts interviews for NachDenkSeiten.  He has reported on and travelled to over 70 countries, including Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Ukraine, Kashmir, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Uganda.  He is based in Potsdam, Germany.