The latest issue of the Weekly Intelligence Brief, the CIB’s news and analysis newsletter, is now out and available to read online and in print. The latest issue –the first in 2018– contains several updates from the CIB’s Middle East Desk and a report one some of the latest developments in Somalia.

Two members of the CIB’s Middle East Desk, Jake Lewis and newcomer Marissa Morini, contributed to this issue. Lewis authored a brief report about increasing tensions between Israeli authorities and African immigrants in Israel, after the government proposed a bill to deport several thousands to an unnamed African destination, believed to be Rwanda. Morini reported on the unlikely alliance between troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian Kurds, who are now fighting in unison against an invading Turkish army in Syria’s northern regions. Another report, by CIB Analyst Nathan Lake, focuses on the death of five Iranian security officers during a riot in Tehran by members of a Sufi splinter group, the Gonabadi Dervishes, demanding the release of fellow arrested members.

Finally, on page 2 of this issue of the Weekly Intelligence Brief, readers can access a longer analysis of how al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked radical group in Somalia, is using UN-supplied aid money from international partners, including the United States, to fund its operations. The aid is given by the UN to people displaced by conflict and famine in Somalia, but al-Shabaab, which controls much of the road network in the interior of the country, taxes aid convoys and thus ends up making tens of thousands of dollars each day.

The latest issue of the Weekly Intelligence Brief, can be accessed here, along with all of the publication’s previous issues.