At least 55 people were killed in deadly clashes between rival militias in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Close to 150 others were also injured in these clashes that erupted on the night of 14th August and raged through the next day as well. The fierce gun battle forced the closure of the city's main airport while also leaving residents trapped in their homes, unable to escape the violence. The escalation in violence comes on the heels of months of relative peace after nearly a decade of civil war in Libya, where two rival sets of authorities are locked in a political impasse. Mohammed Saleh brings you this report.

Escalation in violence after months of relative peace

Sudan has been ravaged by months of internal fighting between the forces of rival generals. As is the cost of war, Sudanese are looking for creative ways to stay afloat and fend for their families. How are war-torn locals supporting themselves?

Sudan war compels locals to fight for survival and support their families

Six people were killed and scores of others wounded in a bomb blast on Thursday (July 27) near the Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum, the most-visited Shiite pilgrimage site in Syria, said the interior ministry.&nbsp;

The blast took place south of Damascus just before the annual commemoration of Ashura, a time when the death of Prophet Mohammed's grandson Imam Hussein in the seventh-century battle is mourned by the Shiites.

Six deaths were recorded by the interior ministry, state news agency SANA reported, revising an earlier toll of five.

More than 20 people were wounded in the attack which the interior ministry said was a "terrorist bombing".

ALSO READ |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/russian-fighter-jets-fire-at-us-reaper-drone-while-flying-over-syria-619369">Russian fighter jets fire at US Reaper drone while flying over Syria</a>

A source at the nearby Al-Sadr hospital told AFP earlier that the facility had received 10 wounded after a car bombing near the shrine.

<h2>Explosion caused by bomb placed in taxi</h2>

State television reported that the explosion was caused by a "bomb placed in a taxi by unidentified people". &nbsp;

"We heard a huge blast and people began to run," said 39-year-old civil servant Ibrahim, while speaking to AFP. "Then ambulances arrived and security forces cordoned off the area," he added.&nbsp;

He stated that the explosion took place "near a security building around 600 metres (yards) from the mausoleum of Sayeda Zeinab", who was Prophet Mohammed's granddaughter and the daughter of Imam Ali, a founding figure of Shiite Islam.

Security measures were tightened by the authorities around the mausoleum for the commemoration of the 10-day Ashura, the most important in Shiite Islam.

WATCH |&nbsp;First Iraqi PM to visit Syria since 2011

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On Tuesday (July 25), an explosion took place in a car in the same area in which two civilians were wounded, a security official was quoted as saying by the official media.&nbsp;

During the civil war of the country which erupted in 2011, the Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum was hit by several deadly bombings. Since then the mosque complex, featuring a gold dome and turquoise ceramics in the Iranian style, has been defended by Shiite militiamen, mostly Iraqi and Lebanese along with the army.

In recent years, the attacks have declined with some of the security measures relaxed.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Six people were killed and scores of others wounded in a bomb blast on Thursday (July 27) near the Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum, the most-visited Shiite pilgrimage site in Syria, said the interior ministry.

Six people were killed and scores of others wounded in a bomb blast on Thursday (July 27) near the Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum, the most-visited Shiite pilgrimage site in Syria, said the interior ministry. The blast took place south of Damascus just before the annual commemoration of Ashura, a time when the death of Prophet Mohammed's grandson Imam Hussein in the seventh-century battle is mourned by the Shiites. Six deaths were recorded by the interior ministry, state news agency SANA reported, revising an earlier toll of five. More than 20 people were wounded in the attack which the interior ministry said was a "terrorist bombing". ALSO READ | Russian fighter jets fire at US Reaper drone while flying over Syria A source at the nearby Al-Sadr hospital told AFP earlier that the facility had received 10 wounded after a car bombing near the shrine. Explosion caused by bomb placed in taxi State television reported that the explosion was caused by a "bomb placed in a taxi by unidentified people". "We heard a huge blast and people began to run," said 39-year-old civil servant Ibrahim, while speaking to AFP. "Then ambulances arrived and security forces cordoned off the area," he added. He stated that the explosion took place "near a security building around 600 metres (yards) from the mausoleum of Sayeda Zeinab", who was Prophet Mohammed's granddaughter and the daughter of Imam Ali, a founding figure of Shiite Islam. Security measures were tightened by the authorities around the mausoleum for the commemoration of the 10-day Ashura, the most important in Shiite Islam. WATCH | First Iraqi PM to visit Syria since 2011 On Tuesday (July 25), an explosion took place in a car in the same area in which two civilians were wounded, a security official was quoted as saying by the official media. During the civil war of the country which erupted in 2011, the Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum was hit by several deadly bombings. Since then the mosque complex, featuring a gold dome and turquoise ceramics in the Iranian style, has been defended by Shiite militiamen, mostly Iraqi and Lebanese along with the army. In recent years, the attacks have declined with some of the security measures relaxed. (With inputs from agencies) You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here. WATCH WION LIVE HERE

Six killed in bomb blast at shrine near Syrian capital

Amid the civil war in Sudan that has forced millions to flee, refugees seek safety and humanitarian aid from the united nations. However, neighbouring countries are struggling to work around saturated capacities and limited resources as Sudanese continue to flee the conflict.

Sudanese refugees seek UN for aid

The bodies of 128 Spanish Civil War victims are being exhumed in Spain by forensic scientists from the General Francisco Franco Mausoleum near Madrid. The process is gruesome because it involves disturbing bodies of people who were moved from other parts of Spain after the 1936–1939 war and reburied without their families' permission.

Spain: Corpses exhumed from former mausoleum of dictator Franco

Crisis in Sudan worsens, dozens of infants die due to the ongoing civil war

Pakistan Army on Wednesday reacted against the violent demonstrations that took over the&nbsp;nation, a day after country's premier paramilitary force arrested former prime minister Imran Khan inside Islamabad High Court. The army, which has directly ruled the South Asian nation&nbsp;for over thirty years since it came into being in 1947, acknowledged the attacks on "Army properties and installations" by the demonstrators protesting against Khan's arrest.

"What the eternal enemy of the country could not do for seventy-five years, this group, wearing a political cloak, in the lust for power, has done," the Pakistan Army stated, in an indirect jibe at India, country's much-bigger neighbour with whom it has fought wars and shares bitter bilateral ties.

ALSO READ |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/pakistan-anti-military-protests-beaten-up-imran-khan-sent-to-8-day-physical-remand-591020">Pakistan anti-military protests: 'Beaten up' Imran Khan sent to 8-day physical remand</a>

Pakistan and India's ties have taken the turns of bittering and souring since the two nations became independent from British in 1947, and the country was partitioned into present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

"The army showed extreme patience, tolerance and restraint and without caring about its own reputation worked with extreme patience and tolerance in the wider interest of the country. Army should give its immediate response which can be used for its nefarious political purposes. Army's mature response thwarted this conspiracy.&nbsp;We are well aware that behind this are the orders, directives and directives of some evil leadership of the party. There was and is complete pre-planning," the army statement added.&nbsp;

ALSO WATCH |&nbsp;Pakistan: Protests erupt after Imran Khan's arrest

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The army warned against what it termed as further escalation of violence.

"Any further attack on the army, including all law enforcement agencies, military and state installations and properties will be severely retaliated against by the very group that wants to push Pakistan into a civil war and has repeatedly attacked them."

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Pakistan Army on Wednesday reacted against the violent demonstrations that took over the nation, a day after country's premier paramilitary force arrested former prime minister Imran Khan inside Islamabad High Court.

Pakistan Army on Wednesday reacted against the violent demonstrations that took over the nation, a day after country's premier paramilitary force arrested former prime minister Imran Khan inside Islamabad High Court. The army, which has directly ruled the South Asian nation for over thirty years since it came into being in 1947, acknowledged the attacks on "Army properties and installations" by the demonstrators protesting against Khan's arrest. "What the eternal enemy of the country could not do for seventy-five years, this group, wearing a political cloak, in the lust for power, has done," the Pakistan Army stated, in an indirect jibe at India, country's much-bigger neighbour with whom it has fought wars and shares bitter bilateral ties. ALSO READ | Pakistan anti-military protests: 'Beaten up' Imran Khan sent to 8-day physical remand Pakistan and India's ties have taken the turns of bittering and souring since the two nations became independent from British in 1947, and the country was partitioned into present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. "The army showed extreme patience, tolerance and restraint and without caring about its own reputation worked with extreme patience and tolerance in the wider interest of the country. Army should give its immediate response which can be used for its nefarious political purposes. Army's mature response thwarted this conspiracy. We are well aware that behind this are the orders, directives and directives of some evil leadership of the party. There was and is complete pre-planning," the army statement added. ALSO WATCH | Pakistan: Protests erupt after Imran Khan's arrest × The army warned against what it termed as further escalation of violence. "Any further attack on the army, including all law enforcement agencies, military and state installations and properties will be severely retaliated against by the very group that wants to push Pakistan into a civil war and has repeatedly attacked them." WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.

Imran Khan's supporters 'want to push Pakistan into civil war': Army

The first flight of the Red Cross&nbsp;carrying humanitarian aid landed in Sudan on Sunday, where deadly clashes between forces of rival generals continued for the third week.

"The eight tonnes of humanitarian cargo includes surgical material to support Sudanese hospitals and volunteers from the Sudan Red Crescent Society," said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

On April 15, the fighting started between forces which are loyal to two rival generals, leaving around 500 dead and thousands wounded while displacing tens of thousands from their homes.

Since the conflict started, dead bodies have remained on the capital's streets and the ICRC's Africa regional director Patrick Youssef, while speaking to journalists from the Sudanese Red Crescent, said that they are "trying to get to the bodies in the streets".

ALSO READ | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/sudan-violence-enters-third-week-un-says-country-falling-apart-as-casualties-top-500-587527">Sudan violence enters third week: UN says country falling apart as casualties top 500</a>

Around 16 per cent of hospitals are completely functioning in the capital city of Khartoum, as per the report of the World Health Organisation, after many facilities were shelled in the ongoing fighting.

The shipment left Amman, the capital of Jordan, and arrived in the eastern city of Port Sudan which was called by Youssef as the only entry point currently available for aid to reach Sudan.

He stated that the medical kits present on the plane were "enough to stabilise 1,500 patients", adding that the ICRC was aiming for security guarantees to further send aid to Darfur and Khartoum.

The regional director stated that some aid was delivered by them to Darfur at the beginning, but "it was not enough, and we could not get anything to Khartoum".

Meanwhile, Sudan's former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok on Saturday warned that the conflict could turn into one of the worst civil wars in the world.

"God forbid if Sudan is to reach a point of civil war proper...Syria, Yemen, Libya will be a small play," said Hamdok speaking at an event in Nairobi. "I think it would be a nightmare for the world,” he added.

WATCH | Sudan violence enters third week, UN says country "Falling apart"

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also appealed for negotiations to end the civil strife.

"There is no right to go on fighting for power when the country is falling apart," he said while speaking at Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television on Saturday.

"My appeal is for everything to be done to support an African-led initiative for peace in Sudan,” he added. Around 75,000 people have been displaced from their homes due to the fighting, said the UN.

Around 20,000 have fled to Chad, 4,000 to South Sudan, 3,500 to Ethiopia and 3,000 to the Central African Republic, it stated.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)

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The first flight of the Red Cross carrying humanitarian aid landed in Sudan on Sunday, where deadly clashes between forces of rival generals continued for the third week.

The first flight of the Red Cross carrying humanitarian aid landed in Sudan on Sunday, where deadly clashes between forces of rival generals continued for the third week. "The eight tonnes of humanitarian cargo includes surgical material to support Sudanese hospitals and volunteers from the Sudan Red Crescent Society," said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). On April 15, the fighting started between forces which are loyal to two rival generals, leaving around 500 dead and thousands wounded while displacing tens of thousands from their homes. Since the conflict started, dead bodies have remained on the capital's streets and the ICRC's Africa regional director Patrick Youssef, while speaking to journalists from the Sudanese Red Crescent, said that they are "trying to get to the bodies in the streets". ALSO READ | Sudan violence enters third week: UN says country falling apart as casualties top 500 Around 16 per cent of hospitals are completely functioning in the capital city of Khartoum, as per the report of the World Health Organisation, after many facilities were shelled in the ongoing fighting. The shipment left Amman, the capital of Jordan, and arrived in the eastern city of Port Sudan which was called by Youssef as the only entry point currently available for aid to reach Sudan. He stated that the medical kits present on the plane were "enough to stabilise 1,500 patients", adding that the ICRC was aiming for security guarantees to further send aid to Darfur and Khartoum. The regional director stated that some aid was delivered by them to Darfur at the beginning, but "it was not enough, and we could not get anything to Khartoum". Meanwhile, Sudan's former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok on Saturday warned that the conflict could turn into one of the worst civil wars in the world. "God forbid if Sudan is to reach a point of civil war proper...Syria, Yemen, Libya will be a small play," said Hamdok speaking at an event in Nairobi. "I think it would be a nightmare for the world,” he added. WATCH | Sudan violence enters third week, UN says country "Falling apart" UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also appealed for negotiations to end the civil strife. "There is no right to go on fighting for power when the country is falling apart," he said while speaking at Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television on Saturday. "My appeal is for everything to be done to support an African-led initiative for peace in Sudan,” he added. Around 75,000 people have been displaced from their homes due to the fighting, said the UN. Around 20,000 have fled to Chad, 4,000 to South Sudan, 3,500 to Ethiopia and 3,000 to the Central African Republic, it stated. (With inputs from agencies) You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here. WATCH WION LIVE HERE

Red Cross aid's first flight reaches Sudan as fighting intensifies

Israel is in a state of anarchy. A planned judicial reform has triggered massive protests. What is this reform all about?

Gravitas Plus: Will Israel descend into a civil war?

Pakistan's drone strike in Waziristan kills 2 children as collateral Is Israel headed for a Civil War over Netanyahu's plans to curtail Israeli judiciary's independence? & El Salvador begins to fill up Latin America's biggest prison with gang criminals

World at War | Direct face off between Russia & United States in Ukraine War

Pope Francis who is currently on a visit to South Sudan will meet the victims of the Civil War and pay homage to a local liberation hero. This comes a day after he appealed to its leaders to turn their backs on the violence, ethnic hatred and corruption ravaged African nation.

Pope Francis to meet victims of Civil War in Africa's South Sudan

Taiwan's Defence Ministry reported that China deployed 71 warplanes around the island during 'weekend war drills.'

Earlier on Monday, it said that 47 planes from the Chinese air force crossed the Taiwan Strait's median&nbsp;line in the previous&nbsp;24 hours.

Responding to the statement, China said it operated "strike drills"&nbsp;in the sea and airspace around Taiwan on Sunday.&nbsp;

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71 PLA aircraft and 7 PLAN vessels around Taiwan were detected in our surrounding region by 6 a.m.(UTC+8) today. R.O.C. Armed Forces have monitored the situation and tasked CAP aircraft, Navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond these activities. <a href="https://t.co/DagRhnN69F">pic.twitter.com/DagRhnN69F</a>
— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) <a href="https://twitter.com/MoNDefense/status/1607180600355721217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 26, 2022</a></blockquote>
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China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, called the drills a response to the provocation from Taiwan and the United States. Beijing continues its military activities close to the democratically governed island.&nbsp;

The Chinese-claimed island rejects&nbsp;the sovereignty claims. They revealed Beijing has been trying to disturb regional peace. They have also tried to intimidate Taiwan's citizens.

Also Read|&nbsp;<a href="www.wionews.com/photos/covid-horror-six-pictures-show-reality-of-coronavirus-outbreak-haunting-china-546043">COVID Horror: Six pictures show reality of coronavirus outbreak haunting China</a>

Taiwan's defence ministry&nbsp;said that the planes and jets implicated during the incursion crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.&nbsp;

The ministry provided a map showing the brief crossing was an unofficial buffer.

Furthermore, Taiwan's Defence Ministry has reported the presence of seven Chinese navy ships. They also mentioned using unspecified combat aircraft to warn the Chinese planes.&nbsp;

The ministry also mentioned that the missile systems monitored their flight using standard wording for its response. In recent years, China has increased the strain on the self-governed island to accept Beijing's rule. On the other hand, Taiwan's government says it wants peace but will defend itself if China attacks.&nbsp;

Watch|&nbsp;<a href="Ukraine war: Russian bombardment rain down on Kherson">Ukraine war: Russian bombardment rain down on Kherson</a>

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The Defence Ministry of Taiwan posted the update on Twitter. The tweet stated, "71 PLA aircraft and 7 PLAN vessels around Taiwan were detected in our surrounding region by 6 a.m.(UTC+8) today. R.O.C. Armed Forces have monitored the situation and tasked CAP aircraft, Navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond to these activities."

The conflict between China and Taiwan is a complex one. After the end of World War II in 1945, Taiwan's administration transferred from Japan to the Republic of China. The subsequent splits between PCR People's Republic of China) and ROC (Republic of China), due to the Chinese civil war, has made the situation more controversial.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)

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Taiwan's Defence Ministry reported that China deployed 71 warplanes around the island during 'weekend war drills.' Earlier on Monday, it said that 47 planes from the Chinese air force crossed the Taiwan Strait's median line in the previous 24 hours.

Taiwan's Defence Ministry reported that China deployed 71 warplanes around the island during 'weekend war drills.' Earlier on Monday, it said that 47 planes from the Chinese air force crossed the Taiwan Strait's median line in the previous 24 hours. Responding to the statement, China said it operated "strike drills" in the sea and airspace around Taiwan on Sunday. 71 PLA aircraft and 7 PLAN vessels around Taiwan were detected in our surrounding region by 6 a.m.(UTC+8) today. R.O.C. Armed Forces have monitored the situation and tasked CAP aircraft, Navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond these activities. pic.twitter.com/DagRhnN69F — 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) December 26, 2022 × China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, called the drills a response to the provocation from Taiwan and the United States. Beijing continues its military activities close to the democratically governed island. The Chinese-claimed island rejects the sovereignty claims. They revealed Beijing has been trying to disturb regional peace. They have also tried to intimidate Taiwan's citizens. Also Read| COVID Horror: Six pictures show reality of coronavirus outbreak haunting China Taiwan's defence ministry said that the planes and jets implicated during the incursion crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait. The ministry provided a map showing the brief crossing was an unofficial buffer. Furthermore, Taiwan's Defence Ministry has reported the presence of seven Chinese navy ships. They also mentioned using unspecified combat aircraft to warn the Chinese planes. The ministry also mentioned that the missile systems monitored their flight using standard wording for its response. In recent years, China has increased the strain on the self-governed island to accept Beijing's rule. On the other hand, Taiwan's government says it wants peace but will defend itself if China attacks. Watch| Ukraine war: Russian bombardment rain down on Kherson The Defence Ministry of Taiwan posted the update on Twitter. The tweet stated, "71 PLA aircraft and 7 PLAN vessels around Taiwan were detected in our surrounding region by 6 a.m.(UTC+8) today. R.O.C. Armed Forces have monitored the situation and tasked CAP aircraft, Navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond to these activities." The conflict between China and Taiwan is a complex one. After the end of World War II in 1945, Taiwan's administration transferred from Japan to the Republic of China. The subsequent splits between PCR People's Republic of China) and ROC (Republic of China), due to the Chinese civil war, has made the situation more controversial. (With inputs from agencies) WATCH WION LIVE HERE

China deployed 71 jets into Taiwan air defence zone in largest incursion so far, says Taiwan

The civil war in Sri Lanka lasted for 26 years. Even 13 years later, the scars haven't healed. Relatives are still longing for their loved ones who went missing in those deadly times.

South Asia Diary: 13 years after Sri Lanka's civil war

According to a recent survey by YouGov and The Economist, 43% believe a civil war in the US is somewhat likely in the coming decade.

Why do Two-fifths of Americans believe the US civil war is likely within a decade?

The majority of Americans believe that civil war is at least somewhat likely to occur over the next ten years, according to a recent survey.&nbsp;

US citizens feel that divisions among people will worsen in the years to come and that they have gotten worse since 2021 began.&nbsp;

Compared to only 8% who say the country has been less divided, two-thirds of Americans (66%) believe that political divisions in our country have gotten worse since the start of 2021. Few expect a better future: 62% expect political divisions to worsen.

Political violence has escalated since the beginning of 2021, according to a comparable percentage (63%) as the percentage who claim that political divisions have gotten worse (66%).

Republicans are more inclined than Democrats to claim that the political chasm has widened recently and that it will continue to do so. The partisan disparity in opinions on the likelihood of political violence, both now and in the future, is substantially less.

Fears of political violence have increased since the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

A large-scale war on the size of the American Civil War (1861–1865), according to the majority of analysts, is still unlikely.

However, many worry that there will be more overt political animosity and violence, especially as Republican candidates for Congress, governorships, and other state election positions accept Trump's false claim of electoral fraud.

(With inputs from agencies) 
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The majority of Americans believe that civil war is at least somewhat likely to occur over the next ten years, according to a recent survey. US citizens feel that divisions among people will worsen in the years to come and that they have gotten worse since 2021 began.

The majority of Americans believe that civil war is at least somewhat likely to occur over the next ten years, according to a recent survey. US citizens feel that divisions among people will worsen in the years to come and that they have gotten worse since 2021 began. Compared to only 8% who say the country has been less divided, two-thirds of Americans (66%) believe that political divisions in our country have gotten worse since the start of 2021. Few expect a better future: 62% expect political divisions to worsen. Political violence has escalated since the beginning of 2021, according to a comparable percentage (63%) as the percentage who claim that political divisions have gotten worse (66%). Republicans are more inclined than Democrats to claim that the political chasm has widened recently and that it will continue to do so. The partisan disparity in opinions on the likelihood of political violence, both now and in the future, is substantially less. Fears of political violence have increased since the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. A large-scale war on the size of the American Civil War (1861–1865), according to the majority of analysts, is still unlikely. However, many worry that there will be more overt political animosity and violence, especially as Republican candidates for Congress, governorships, and other state election positions accept Trump's false claim of electoral fraud. (With inputs from agencies) WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.

Two-fifths of Americans believe civil war likely within a decade

Two protesters were killed and Iraq declared a nationwide curfew after supporters of Muqtada Al-Sadr stormed the government palace in Baghdad's Green Zone. Molly Gambhir tells you why Iraq could soon descend into a civil war.

WION Fineprint | 2 protesters killed in clashes in Baghdad's Green Zone

Ousted Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan refuses to relent, the PTI chief has been spilling the beans in the economic crisis-hit country after calling off his Freedom march late last month. Imran Khan has now warned that the country may lose its nuclear deterrence and get disintegrated.

Pakistan: Imran Khan warns against country heading towards civil war

Pakistan’s ousted prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday warned of a civil war saying that the country would “break into pieces” if the establishment didn’t announce elections soon.

In an interview to local a television channel Bol News, Khan, who was ousted through a no-confidence motion in April, said, “We will see if they allow us to go towards elections through legal and constitutional means otherwise this country will go towards [a] civil war.”

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party chief further said there was "no question" of returning to the National Assembly as that would "mean accepting the conspiracy" that had removed his government.

He claimed that Indian think tanks based in abroad are conspiring to break Balochistan province from Pakistan.

"Indian think tanks abroad are mulling to separate Balochistan, they have plans, this is why I am putting pressure," Khan said, without mentioning who he is pressuring.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/i-had-a-weak-government-and-was-blackmailed-from-everywhere-imran-khan-484354" hreflang="en">'I had a weak government and was blackmailed from everywhere': Imran Khan</a>

Sharply reacting to Khan’s statements, PM Shehbaz Sharif tweeted, “While I am in Turkey inking agreements, Imran Niazi is making naked threats against the country. If at all any proof was needed that Niazi is unfit for public office, his latest interview suffices. Do your politics but don't dare to cross limits &amp; talk about division of Pakistan.”

Ever since removed from office earlier this year, Khan had been demanding fresh elections claiming that his government was ousted because of a so-called conspiracy hatched by US.

Watch |&nbsp;'Protests called off to stop bloodshed': Former Pakistan PM Imran Khan

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According to him, the incumbent coalition government led by Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party was "imported" and not a true representative of the Pakistani people.

Imran said that if Pakistan were to lose its nuclear deterrent capability, it would be fragmented into three pieces. "If the right decisions aren't made at this time then the country is going towards suicide," he warned.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/called-off-azadi-march-to-prevent-bloodshed-says-imran-khan-483660" hreflang="en">Called off Azadi March to prevent 'bloodshed', says Imran Khan</a>

The former PM led his thousands of supporters to Islamabad last Wednesday in a protest and had planned to stage a sit-in until new elections were announced but abruptly called off the sit-in at the last minute after making it to the capital.

He later threatened to return after six days if the government failed to give a date for snap polls in the country.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Pakistan’s ousted prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday warned of a civil war saying that the country would “break into pieces” if the establishment didn’t announce elections soon.

Pakistan’s ousted prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday warned of a civil war saying that the country would “break into pieces” if the establishment didn’t announce elections soon. In an interview to local a television channel Bol News, Khan, who was ousted through a no-confidence motion in April, said, “We will see if they allow us to go towards elections through legal and constitutional means otherwise this country will go towards [a] civil war.” The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party chief further said there was "no question" of returning to the National Assembly as that would "mean accepting the conspiracy" that had removed his government. He claimed that Indian think tanks based in abroad are conspiring to break Balochistan province from Pakistan. "Indian think tanks abroad are mulling to separate Balochistan, they have plans, this is why I am putting pressure," Khan said, without mentioning who he is pressuring. Also read | 'I had a weak government and was blackmailed from everywhere': Imran Khan Sharply reacting to Khan’s statements, PM Shehbaz Sharif tweeted, “While I am in Turkey inking agreements, Imran Niazi is making naked threats against the country. If at all any proof was needed that Niazi is unfit for public office, his latest interview suffices. Do your politics but don't dare to cross limits & talk about division of Pakistan.” Ever since removed from office earlier this year, Khan had been demanding fresh elections claiming that his government was ousted because of a so-called conspiracy hatched by US. Watch | 'Protests called off to stop bloodshed': Former Pakistan PM Imran Khan According to him, the incumbent coalition government led by Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party was "imported" and not a true representative of the Pakistani people. Imran said that if Pakistan were to lose its nuclear deterrent capability, it would be fragmented into three pieces. "If the right decisions aren't made at this time then the country is going towards suicide," he warned. Also read | Called off Azadi March to prevent 'bloodshed', says Imran Khan The former PM led his thousands of supporters to Islamabad last Wednesday in a protest and had planned to stage a sit-in until new elections were announced but abruptly called off the sit-in at the last minute after making it to the capital. He later threatened to return after six days if the government failed to give a date for snap polls in the country. (With inputs from agencies) WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.

Pakistan could split into 3 parts & also lose its nuclear deterrent capabilities: Ex-PM Khan

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Chief Minister has promised to deploy his forces against the Federal government if Imran Khan calls for another protest. Is Pakistan heading for civil war? What does this internal instability mean for the world? Palki Sharma tells you.

Gravitas: Is Pakistan heading for civil war?

Is Imran Khan planning a 'rebellion'? Pakistani lawmakers say he's pushing the country into a civil war. They say full-fledged civil unrest is now imminent. Will the former Pakistani Prime Minister succeed? Molly Gambhir gets you a report.

Gravitas: Is Imran Khan planning a rebellion?

Yemen's exiled president stepped aside and transferred his powers to a presidential council on Thursday, as international and regional efforts to end the country's long-running civil war gained momentum with a two-month truce.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, major players in the conflict appear to have played a role in President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's decision, quickly welcoming it with a pledge of $3 billion in aid. The head of the new council has close ties to Riyadh.

Whether the switch will expedite an end to the grinding war remains to be seen, as UN-sponsored negotiations have been at an impasse and fighting, airstrikes and missile attacks continued until late last month. The Houthis did not immediately comment on Hadi's announcement.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/yemens-warring-parties-agree-two-month-truce-in-major-breakthrough-467528">Yemen's warring parties agree two-month truce in major breakthrough</a>

Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group, described the power transfer as A Big Deal. The development, he tweeted, is the most consequential shift in the inner workings of the anti-Houthi bloc since war began.

Hadi said the newly established council will run the internationally recognized government and lead negotiations with the Iranian-backed Houthis, according to a statement aired on state-run media.

The move is meant to unify the anti-Houthi camp after years of infighting and disputes, and was almost certainly orchestrated in Riyadh, where Yemeni factions were meeting over the past week to discuss efforts to end the war.

With this declaration a Presidential Leadership Council shall be established to complete the implementation of the tasks of the transitional period. I irreversibly delegate to the Presidential Leadership Council my full powers, Hadi declared on Yemen's state-run TV.

Hadi also sacked Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a powerful military figure, and also delegated al-Ahmar's powers to the presidential council.

The presidential council is chaired by Rashad al-Alimi, an advisor to Hadi and former interior minister with the government of late strongman President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Al-Alimi enjoys close ties with Saudi Arabia and other political groups inside Yemen, including the powerful Islah party the transnational Muslim Brotherhood's branch in Yemen.

Watch |&nbsp;A collapsing healthcare system in Yemen

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The council has seven other members, all whom have political and military influence on the ground in Yemen. That includes Aydarous al-Zubaidi, head of the secessionist Southern Transitional Council an umbrella group of heavily armed and well-financed militias propped up by the UAE since 2015.

Sheikh Sultan al-Aradah, the powerful governor of energy-rich Marib province, was also named a member of the council. So was Tariq Saleh, a militia leader and nephew of the late president who has close ties with the UAE.

Hadi was named president of Yemen in 2012 with a mission to oversee a democratic transition following its Arab Spring uprising that ended Saleh's longtime rule.

However, the Houthis, a religious movement turned rebel militia, allied with Saleh and seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, forcing Hadi and his government into exile in Saudi Arabia.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/coalition-air-strikes-pummel-yemen-despite-rebel-truce-466047">Coalition air strikes pummel Yemen despite rebel truce</a>

Months later, Saudi Arabia formed a military coalition and entered the war to try to restore Hadi's government to power.

The conflict has in recent years become a regional proxy war that has killed more than 150,000 people, including over 14.500 civilians. It has also created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

Welcoming Hadi's move, Saudi Arabia urged the presidential council to embark on U.N.-led negotiations with the Houthis to find a political, final and comprehensive settlement to the conflict, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

Powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also met with the council head and its members, according to Saudi state-run TV.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/yemens-iran-aligned-houthi-group-claim-responsibility-for-drone-attack-on-saudi-arabia-464007">Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group claims responsibility for drone attack on Saudi Arabia</a>

The warring sides announced a two-month cease-fire earlier this month, the first nationwide truce in Yemen in six years.

Hadi's announcement came as Yemeni talks called by the Saudi-based Gulf Cooperation Council entered their final day on Thursday.

The Houthis boycotted the GCC-facilitated efforts because they're taking place in Saudi Arabia, their adversary's territory.

Yemen's exiled president stepped aside and transferred his powers to a presidential council on Thursday, as international and regional efforts to end the country's long-running civil war gained momentum with a two-month truce.

Yemen's exiled president stepped aside and transferred his powers to a presidential council on Thursday, as international and regional efforts to end the country's long-running civil war gained momentum with a two-month truce. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, major players in the conflict appear to have played a role in President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's decision, quickly welcoming it with a pledge of $3 billion in aid. The head of the new council has close ties to Riyadh. Whether the switch will expedite an end to the grinding war remains to be seen, as UN-sponsored negotiations have been at an impasse and fighting, airstrikes and missile attacks continued until late last month. The Houthis did not immediately comment on Hadi's announcement. Also read | Yemen's warring parties agree two-month truce in major breakthrough Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group, described the power transfer as A Big Deal. The development, he tweeted, is the most consequential shift in the inner workings of the anti-Houthi bloc since war began. Hadi said the newly established council will run the internationally recognized government and lead negotiations with the Iranian-backed Houthis, according to a statement aired on state-run media. The move is meant to unify the anti-Houthi camp after years of infighting and disputes, and was almost certainly orchestrated in Riyadh, where Yemeni factions were meeting over the past week to discuss efforts to end the war. With this declaration a Presidential Leadership Council shall be established to complete the implementation of the tasks of the transitional period. I irreversibly delegate to the Presidential Leadership Council my full powers, Hadi declared on Yemen's state-run TV. Hadi also sacked Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a powerful military figure, and also delegated al-Ahmar's powers to the presidential council. The presidential council is chaired by Rashad al-Alimi, an advisor to Hadi and former interior minister with the government of late strongman President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Al-Alimi enjoys close ties with Saudi Arabia and other political groups inside Yemen, including the powerful Islah party the transnational Muslim Brotherhood's branch in Yemen. Watch | A collapsing healthcare system in Yemen The council has seven other members, all whom have political and military influence on the ground in Yemen. That includes Aydarous al-Zubaidi, head of the secessionist Southern Transitional Council an umbrella group of heavily armed and well-financed militias propped up by the UAE since 2015. Sheikh Sultan al-Aradah, the powerful governor of energy-rich Marib province, was also named a member of the council. So was Tariq Saleh, a militia leader and nephew of the late president who has close ties with the UAE. Hadi was named president of Yemen in 2012 with a mission to oversee a democratic transition following its Arab Spring uprising that ended Saleh's longtime rule. However, the Houthis, a religious movement turned rebel militia, allied with Saleh and seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, forcing Hadi and his government into exile in Saudi Arabia. Also read | Coalition air strikes pummel Yemen despite rebel truce Months later, Saudi Arabia formed a military coalition and entered the war to try to restore Hadi's government to power. The conflict has in recent years become a regional proxy war that has killed more than 150,000 people, including over 14.500 civilians. It has also created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Welcoming Hadi's move, Saudi Arabia urged the presidential council to embark on U.N.-led negotiations with the Houthis to find a political, final and comprehensive settlement to the conflict, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also met with the council head and its members, according to Saudi state-run TV. Also read | Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group claims responsibility for drone attack on Saudi Arabia The warring sides announced a two-month cease-fire earlier this month, the first nationwide truce in Yemen in six years. Hadi's announcement came as Yemeni talks called by the Saudi-based Gulf Cooperation Council entered their final day on Thursday. The Houthis boycotted the GCC-facilitated efforts because they're taking place in Saudi Arabia, their adversary's territory.

Yemen's president steps aside amid efforts to end war

A judge in&nbsp;El&nbsp;Salvador&nbsp;ordered the&nbsp;arrest&nbsp;Friday of&nbsp;former&nbsp;president&nbsp;Alfredo Cristiani for alleged links to the murder of&nbsp;six&nbsp;Jesuit priests and two co-workers by the army during the country's the&nbsp;civil&nbsp;war, prosecutors said.

On November 16 1989, Salvadoran troops from the now banned Atlacatl battalion shot dead the&nbsp;Jesuits, five of them Spanish, at the Central American University in San&nbsp;Salvador. They also killed a woman who worked as their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter.

On February 25, prosecutors filed charges against Cristiani, who was&nbsp;president&nbsp;in 1989-1994, and a group of soldiers for alleged involvement in the murder.&nbsp;

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/australian-police-officer-acquitted-in-death-of-indigenous-teenager-461445">Australian police officer acquitted in death of indigenous teenager</a>

Prosecutors said on Twitter Friday that a judge has ordered Cristiani, who is outside the country,&nbsp;former&nbsp;lawmaker Rodolfo Parker and four colonels to be put "under provisional detention."&nbsp;

The&nbsp;former&nbsp;president, whose whereabouts are unknown, denied the charges and attacked Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado in a statement.&nbsp;

"The attorney general, in bad faith and with a clear disregard for the truth, has publicly accused me of omission and cover-up," said Cristiani, who, in his capacity as&nbsp;president, was also commander-in-chief at the time of the&nbsp;killing. "The truth is that I never knew of the plans they had to commit those murders."&nbsp;

He said that the military "never informed me or asked me for authorization because they knew that I would never have authorized Father Ellacuria or his brothers to be harmed."&nbsp;

Also read |<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/leaders-of-sarah-everard-vigil-had-rights-violated-by-police-court-rules-461443">&nbsp;Leaders of Sarah Everard vigil had rights violated by police, court rules</a>

Cristiani also asserted that "at this time there are no procedural guarantees in&nbsp;El&nbsp;Salvador" because most prosecutors and judges are controlled by the&nbsp;president.&nbsp;

Of the four colonels who were ordered arrested on Friday, one is already serving a 30-year prison sentence in Spain for the crime.&nbsp;

The authorities also ordered that three generals and two other colonels charged in the case be given alternative measures to detention because of their age and health condition.

Another general and a colonel accused in the case have already died.&nbsp;

Ten Salvadoran soldiers were convicted of the killings in 1991, but an amnesty for crimes committed during the country's 1980-1992&nbsp;civil&nbsp;war&nbsp;meant they were freed in 1993.

A judge in El Salvador ordered the arrest Friday of former president Alfredo Cristiani for alleged links to the murder of six Jesuit priests and two co-workers by the army during the country's the civil war, prosecutors said.

A judge in El Salvador ordered the arrest Friday of former president Alfredo Cristiani for alleged links to the murder of six Jesuit priests and two co-workers by the army during the country's the civil war, prosecutors said. On November 16 1989, Salvadoran troops from the now banned Atlacatl battalion shot dead the Jesuits, five of them Spanish, at the Central American University in San Salvador. They also killed a woman who worked as their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter. On February 25, prosecutors filed charges against Cristiani, who was president in 1989-1994, and a group of soldiers for alleged involvement in the murder. Also read | Australian police officer acquitted in death of indigenous teenager Prosecutors said on Twitter Friday that a judge has ordered Cristiani, who is outside the country, former lawmaker Rodolfo Parker and four colonels to be put "under provisional detention." The former president, whose whereabouts are unknown, denied the charges and attacked Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado in a statement. "The attorney general, in bad faith and with a clear disregard for the truth, has publicly accused me of omission and cover-up," said Cristiani, who, in his capacity as president, was also commander-in-chief at the time of the killing. "The truth is that I never knew of the plans they had to commit those murders." He said that the military "never informed me or asked me for authorization because they knew that I would never have authorized Father Ellacuria or his brothers to be harmed." Also read | Leaders of Sarah Everard vigil had rights violated by police, court rules Cristiani also asserted that "at this time there are no procedural guarantees in El Salvador" because most prosecutors and judges are controlled by the president. Of the four colonels who were ordered arrested on Friday, one is already serving a 30-year prison sentence in Spain for the crime. The authorities also ordered that three generals and two other colonels charged in the case be given alternative measures to detention because of their age and health condition. Another general and a colonel accused in the case have already died. Ten Salvadoran soldiers were convicted of the killings in 1991, but an amnesty for crimes committed during the country's 1980-1992 civil war meant they were freed in 1993.

El Salvador orders arrest of former president over killing of six Jesuits in civil war

“How Civil Wars Start,” a new book by political scientist Barbara F. Walter, was cited all over the place in the days around the anniversary of last winter’s riot at the Capitol. The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp and my New York Times colleague Michelle Goldberg all invoked Walter’s work in essays discussing the possibility that the United States stands on the edge of an abyss, with years of civil strife ahead.

The book begins with a story from the fall of 2020: the kidnapping plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, hatched by a group of right-wing militiamen who opposed Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions. Fortunately “the FBI was on to them” and foiled the plot — but the alleged kidnapping conspiracy, Walter argues, is a harbinger of worse to come. Periods of civil war often “start with vigilantes just like these — armed militants who take violence directly to the people.”

Here’s a skeptical question, though: When we say the FBI was “on to” the plotters, what exactly does that mean? Because at the moment the government’s case against them is a remarkable tangle. Fourteen men have been charged with crimes, based in part on evidence reportedly supplied by at least 12 confidential informants — meaning that the FBI had almost one informant involved for every defendant.

And according to reporting from BuzzFeed’s Jessica Garrison and Ken Bensinger, one of these informants, an extremely colorful convicted felon named Stephen Robeson appears to have been a crucial instigator of the plot. He is alleged to have used government funds to pay for meals and hotel rooms, encouraged people “to vent their anger about governors who enacted COVID-19 restrictions” and “to plan violent actions against elected officials and to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials,” and followed up aggressively, calling potential plotters “nearly every day.”

Robeson’s role has become enough of a headache for the prosecution, in fact, that they recently disowned him, declaring that he was actually a “double agent” (meaning&nbsp;triple&nbsp;agent, I think) who betrayed his obligations as an informant by trying to destroy evidence and seeking to warn one of the accused conspirators ahead of his arrest. Prosecutors had already ruled out testimony from an agent who ran one of their key informants, probably because he spent much of 2019 trying to drum up business for his private security firm by touting his FBI casework.

Presumably we’ll find out more about all this when the case comes to trial, but for now it’s reasonable to wonder whether Whitmer’s would-be kidnappers would have been prepared to go all the way with their vigilante fantasies, absent some prodding from the feds.

And those doubts, in turn, might be reasonably extended to the entire theory of looming American civil war, which assumes something not yet entirely in evidence — a large number of Americans willing to actually put their lives, not just their Twitter rhetoric, on the line for the causes that currently divide our country.

Overall, the academic and journalistic literature on America’s divisions offers a reasonably accurate description of increasing American division. The country is definitely more ideologically polarized than it was 20 or 40 years ago; indeed, with organized Christianity’s decline, you could say that it’s more metaphysically polarized as well. We are more likely to hate and fear members of the rival party, more likely to sort ourselves into ideologically homogeneous communities, more likely to be deeply skeptical about public institutions and more likely to hold conspiratorial beliefs — like the belief that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 election — that undercut the basic legitimacy of the opposition party’s governance.

At the same time, the literature suffers from a serious liberal-bias problem, a consistent naivete about the left and center’s roles in deepening polarization. For instance, in the Bush and Obama eras there were a lot of takes on the dangers of “asymmetric polarization” — the supposed ideological radicalization of the Republicans relative to the Democrats. Across most of the 2010s, though, it was clearly liberals who moved leftward much more rapidly, while Republicans basically stayed put — and yet somehow the perils of that kind of asymmetry get much less expert attention.

Likewise the drama of protest politics in 2020 is often analyzed in a way that minimizes the revolutionary symbolism of the left’s protests — the iconoclasm and the toppled statues, the mayhem around federal buildings and the White House, the zeal to rename and rewrite — and focuses intensely on the right’s response, treating conservative backlash as though it emerges from the reactionary ether rather than as a cyclical response.

The other bias in the civil-war literature is toward two related forms of exaggeration. First, an exaggerated emphasis on what Americans say they believe, rather than what (so far, at least) they actually&nbsp;do. It’s absolutely true that if you just look at polling data, you see a lot of beliefs that would seem to license not just occasional protest but some sort of continuing insurrection. This includes not only the Trumpist stolen-election theories but also popular beliefs about recent Republican presidents — that George W. Bush had foreknowledge and allowed Sept. 11 to happen or that the Russians manipulated vote tallies in order to place Donald Trump, their cat’s-paw, in the White House.

However, an overwhelming majority of people who hold those kinds of beliefs show no signs of being radicalized into actual violence. For all the talk of liberal “resistance” under Trump, the characteristic left-wing response to the Trump administration was not to join Antifa but to mobilize to elect Democrats; it took the weird conditions of the pandemic and the lockdowns, and the spark of the George Floyd killing, to transmute anti-Trumpism into national protests that actually turned violent.

Likewise, despite fears that Jan. 6 was going to birth a “Hezbollah wing” of the Republican Party, there has been no major far-right follow-up to the event, no dramatic surge in Proud Boys or Oath Keepers visibility, no campaign of anti-Biden terrorism. Instead, Republicans who believe in the stolen-election thesis seem mostly excited by the prospect of thumping Democrats in the midterms, and the truest believers are doing the extremely characteristic American thing of running for local office.

This has prompted a different liberal fear — that these new officeholders could help precipitate a constitutional crisis by refusing to do their duty in a close election in 2024. But that fear is an example of the other problem of exaggeration in the imminent-civil-war literature, the way the goal posts seem to shift when you question the evocations of Fort Sumter or 1930s Europe.

Thus we are told that some kind of major democratic breakdown is likely “absent some radical development” (as Beauchamp puts it); that we are already “suspended between democracy and autocracy” (as Remnick writes); that “the United States is coming to an end” and the only question “is how,” to quote the beginning of Stephen Marche’s new book, “The Next Civil War.” But then it turns out that the most obvious danger is an extremely contingent one, involving a cascade of events in 2024 — a very specific sort of election outcome, followed by a series of very high-risk, unusual radical choices by state legislators and Republican senators and the Supreme Court — that are worth worrying about but not at all the likeliest scenario, let alone one that’s somehow structurally inevitable.

Similarly, we are first told that “civil war” is coming, but then it turns out that the term is being used to mean something other than an actual war, that the relevant analogies are periods of political violence like the Irish Troubles or Italy’s “Years of Lead.” And then if you question whether we’re destined to reach even that point, you may be informed that actually the civil war is practically here already — because, Marche writes, “the definition of civil strife starts at twenty-five deaths within a year,” and acts of anti-government violence killed more people than that annually in the later 2010s.

That kind of claim strikes me as a ridiculous abuse of language. The United States is a vast empire of more than 330 million people in which at any given time some handful of unhinged people will be committing deadly crimes. And we are also a country with a long history of sporadic armed conflict — mob violence, labor violence, terrorism and riots — interwoven with the normal operation of our politics. If your definition of civil war implies that we are always just a few mass shootings or violent protests away from the brink, then you don’t have a definition at all: You just have a license for perpetual alarmism.

I am very aware that I’m always the columnist making some version of this calm-down argument, sometimes to a fault. So I want to stress that the problems that undergird the civil-war hypothesis are serious problems, the divisions in our country are considerable and dangerous, the specific perils associated with a Trump resurgence in 2024 entirely real.

But there are also lots of countervailing and complicating forces, and the overall picture is genuinely complex — at least as complex, let’s say, as the informant-riddled plot against Whitmer. And as with that conspiracy, it’s worth asking whether the people who see potential insurrection lurking everywhere are seeing a danger rising entirely on its own — or in their alarm are helping to invent it.

“How Civil Wars Start,” a new book by political scientist Barbara F. Walter, was cited all over the place in the days around the anniversary of last winter’s riot at the Capitol.

“How Civil Wars Start,” a new book by political scientist Barbara F. Walter, was cited all over the place in the days around the anniversary of last winter’s riot at the Capitol. The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp and my New York Times colleague Michelle Goldberg all invoked Walter’s work in essays discussing the possibility that the United States stands on the edge of an abyss, with years of civil strife ahead. The book begins with a story from the fall of 2020: the kidnapping plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, hatched by a group of right-wing militiamen who opposed Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions. Fortunately “the FBI was on to them” and foiled the plot — but the alleged kidnapping conspiracy, Walter argues, is a harbinger of worse to come. Periods of civil war often “start with vigilantes just like these — armed militants who take violence directly to the people.” Here’s a skeptical question, though: When we say the FBI was “on to” the plotters, what exactly does that mean? Because at the moment the government’s case against them is a remarkable tangle. Fourteen men have been charged with crimes, based in part on evidence reportedly supplied by at least 12 confidential informants — meaning that the FBI had almost one informant involved for every defendant. And according to reporting from BuzzFeed’s Jessica Garrison and Ken Bensinger, one of these informants, an extremely colorful convicted felon named Stephen Robeson appears to have been a crucial instigator of the plot. He is alleged to have used government funds to pay for meals and hotel rooms, encouraged people “to vent their anger about governors who enacted COVID-19 restrictions” and “to plan violent actions against elected officials and to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials,” and followed up aggressively, calling potential plotters “nearly every day.” Robeson’s role has become enough of a headache for the prosecution, in fact, that they recently disowned him, declaring that he was actually a “double agent” (meaning triple agent, I think) who betrayed his obligations as an informant by trying to destroy evidence and seeking to warn one of the accused conspirators ahead of his arrest. Prosecutors had already ruled out testimony from an agent who ran one of their key informants, probably because he spent much of 2019 trying to drum up business for his private security firm by touting his FBI casework. Presumably we’ll find out more about all this when the case comes to trial, but for now it’s reasonable to wonder whether Whitmer’s would-be kidnappers would have been prepared to go all the way with their vigilante fantasies, absent some prodding from the feds. And those doubts, in turn, might be reasonably extended to the entire theory of looming American civil war, which assumes something not yet entirely in evidence — a large number of Americans willing to actually put their lives, not just their Twitter rhetoric, on the line for the causes that currently divide our country. Overall, the academic and journalistic literature on America’s divisions offers a reasonably accurate description of increasing American division. The country is definitely more ideologically polarized than it was 20 or 40 years ago; indeed, with organized Christianity’s decline, you could say that it’s more metaphysically polarized as well. We are more likely to hate and fear members of the rival party, more likely to sort ourselves into ideologically homogeneous communities, more likely to be deeply skeptical about public institutions and more likely to hold conspiratorial beliefs — like the belief that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 election — that undercut the basic legitimacy of the opposition party’s governance. At the same time, the literature suffers from a serious liberal-bias problem, a consistent naivete about the left and center’s roles in deepening polarization. For instance, in the Bush and Obama eras there were a lot of takes on the dangers of “asymmetric polarization” — the supposed ideological radicalization of the Republicans relative to the Democrats. Across most of the 2010s, though, it was clearly liberals who moved leftward much more rapidly, while Republicans basically stayed put — and yet somehow the perils of that kind of asymmetry get much less expert attention. Likewise the drama of protest politics in 2020 is often analyzed in a way that minimizes the revolutionary symbolism of the left’s protests — the iconoclasm and the toppled statues, the mayhem around federal buildings and the White House, the zeal to rename and rewrite — and focuses intensely on the right’s response, treating conservative backlash as though it emerges from the reactionary ether rather than as a cyclical response. The other bias in the civil-war literature is toward two related forms of exaggeration. First, an exaggerated emphasis on what Americans say they believe, rather than what (so far, at least) they actually do. It’s absolutely true that if you just look at polling data, you see a lot of beliefs that would seem to license not just occasional protest but some sort of continuing insurrection. This includes not only the Trumpist stolen-election theories but also popular beliefs about recent Republican presidents — that George W. Bush had foreknowledge and allowed Sept. 11 to happen or that the Russians manipulated vote tallies in order to place Donald Trump, their cat’s-paw, in the White House. However, an overwhelming majority of people who hold those kinds of beliefs show no signs of being radicalized into actual violence. For all the talk of liberal “resistance” under Trump, the characteristic left-wing response to the Trump administration was not to join Antifa but to mobilize to elect Democrats; it took the weird conditions of the pandemic and the lockdowns, and the spark of the George Floyd killing, to transmute anti-Trumpism into national protests that actually turned violent. Likewise, despite fears that Jan. 6 was going to birth a “Hezbollah wing” of the Republican Party, there has been no major far-right follow-up to the event, no dramatic surge in Proud Boys or Oath Keepers visibility, no campaign of anti-Biden terrorism. Instead, Republicans who believe in the stolen-election thesis seem mostly excited by the prospect of thumping Democrats in the midterms, and the truest believers are doing the extremely characteristic American thing of running for local office. This has prompted a different liberal fear — that these new officeholders could help precipitate a constitutional crisis by refusing to do their duty in a close election in 2024. But that fear is an example of the other problem of exaggeration in the imminent-civil-war literature, the way the goal posts seem to shift when you question the evocations of Fort Sumter or 1930s Europe. Thus we are told that some kind of major democratic breakdown is likely “absent some radical development” (as Beauchamp puts it); that we are already “suspended between democracy and autocracy” (as Remnick writes); that “the United States is coming to an end” and the only question “is how,” to quote the beginning of Stephen Marche’s new book, “The Next Civil War.” But then it turns out that the most obvious danger is an extremely contingent one, involving a cascade of events in 2024 — a very specific sort of election outcome, followed by a series of very high-risk, unusual radical choices by state legislators and Republican senators and the Supreme Court — that are worth worrying about but not at all the likeliest scenario, let alone one that’s somehow structurally inevitable. Similarly, we are first told that “civil war” is coming, but then it turns out that the term is being used to mean something other than an actual war, that the relevant analogies are periods of political violence like the Irish Troubles or Italy’s “Years of Lead.” And then if you question whether we’re destined to reach even that point, you may be informed that actually the civil war is practically here already — because, Marche writes, “the definition of civil strife starts at twenty-five deaths within a year,” and acts of anti-government violence killed more people than that annually in the later 2010s. That kind of claim strikes me as a ridiculous abuse of language. The United States is a vast empire of more than 330 million people in which at any given time some handful of unhinged people will be committing deadly crimes. And we are also a country with a long history of sporadic armed conflict — mob violence, labor violence, terrorism and riots — interwoven with the normal operation of our politics. If your definition of civil war implies that we are always just a few mass shootings or violent protests away from the brink, then you don’t have a definition at all: You just have a license for perpetual alarmism. I am very aware that I’m always the columnist making some version of this calm-down argument, sometimes to a fault. So I want to stress that the problems that undergird the civil-war hypothesis are serious problems, the divisions in our country are considerable and dangerous, the specific perils associated with a Trump resurgence in 2024 entirely real. But there are also lots of countervailing and complicating forces, and the overall picture is genuinely complex — at least as complex, let’s say, as the informant-riddled plot against Whitmer. And as with that conspiracy, it’s worth asking whether the people who see potential insurrection lurking everywhere are seeing a danger rising entirely on its own — or in their alarm are helping to invent it.

Let’s not invent a civil war

Amid the ongoing Tigray conflict and 13-month war, the Ethiopian government makes territorial gains as it claims back Tigrayan city from rebels.

The Tigray conflict: Reports claims that Alamata is back in the Ethiopian government's hands

Amid the ongoing Tigray conflict and 13-month war, the Ethiopian government claims it has captured back Tigrayan city from rebels.

The Tigray conflict: Ethiopian government claims capture of Tigrayan city from rebels

Barbara F Walter, who is a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, said that the United States is closer to "civil war than any of us would like to believe".&nbsp;

Walter's remark appeared to be quite alarming for a democratic country that recently hosted the 'Summit of Democracy' with an aim to strengthen democracy and defend against authoritarianism globally.&nbsp;

Is American democracy in crisis?

Walter, who serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force, has given an analytical opinion of the US politics&nbsp;in a book, "How Civil Wars Start," which will be out in January.&nbsp;

However, a report has been published by The Washington Post, detailing what Walter has assessed about the country's political situation and how it might pan out in the near future.&nbsp;

ALSO READ | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/white-house-reacts-after-joe-manchin-says-he-wont-vote-for-joe-bidens-build-back-better-bill-438390">White House reacts after Joe Manchin says he won't vote for Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill</a>

The Post mentioned that Walter has studied conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Rwanda, Angola, Nicaragua during her career.&nbsp;

It is understood that the Political Instability Task Force monitors countries around the world and speculates over a possibility of political instability.&nbsp;

"We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe. No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war," Walter wrote in the to-be-published book, as quoted by The Washington Post.&nbsp;

Weighing in on the political situation of America, Walter said that "if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you'd look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely."

"And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory," she added.&nbsp;

ALSO READ | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/in-memo-us-air-force-gives-green-signal-to-gender-pronouns-use-for-internal-communication-438165">In memo, US Air Force gives green signal to gender pronouns’ use for internal communication</a>

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The CIA actually has a Task Force designed to try to predict where and when political instability and conflict is likely to break out around the world. It's just not legally allowed to look at the U.S. That means we are blind to the risk factors that are rapidly emerging here. <a href="https://t.co/86UMVwhi3C">pic.twitter.com/86UMVwhi3C</a>
— Barbara F Walter (@bfwalter) <a href="https://twitter.com/bfwalter/status/1463667263832211457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2021</a></blockquote>
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We know why democracies decline and ethnic factions emerge. We also know it can be driven by extremists with their own political agendas. Whether these extremists succeed depends on whether we, the American people, challenge them or not. <a href="https://t.co/L9TmIk6pGC">https://t.co/L9TmIk6pGC</a> <a href="https://t.co/Y0qn1v5Jn8">pic.twitter.com/Y0qn1v5Jn8</a>
— Barbara F Walter (@bfwalter) <a href="https://twitter.com/bfwalter/status/1470823914951655425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2021</a></blockquote>
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If we talk about US politics, the past two-three years have been topsy-turvy — a phase when the administration also changed as Joe Biden was sworn in as 46th US president.&nbsp;

The election was chaotic as former President Donald Trump multiple times claimed that there were some discrepancies in the counting of votes.&nbsp;

On January 6, the deadly attack on the US Capitol also turned out to be a black chapter in the political history of the US.&nbsp;

As mentioned by Walter, the US is now an "anocracy," somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.&nbsp;

Barbara F Walter, who is a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, said that the United States is closer to "civil war than any of us would like to believe".

Barbara F Walter, who is a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, said that the United States is closer to "civil war than any of us would like to believe". Walter's remark appeared to be quite alarming for a democratic country that recently hosted the 'Summit of Democracy' with an aim to strengthen democracy and defend against authoritarianism globally. Is American democracy in crisis? Walter, who serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force, has given an analytical opinion of the US politics in a book, "How Civil Wars Start," which will be out in January. However, a report has been published by The Washington Post, detailing what Walter has assessed about the country's political situation and how it might pan out in the near future. ALSO READ | White House reacts after Joe Manchin says he won't vote for Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill The Post mentioned that Walter has studied conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Rwanda, Angola, Nicaragua during her career. It is understood that the Political Instability Task Force monitors countries around the world and speculates over a possibility of political instability. "We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe. No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war," Walter wrote in the to-be-published book, as quoted by The Washington Post. Weighing in on the political situation of America, Walter said that "if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you'd look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely." "And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory," she added. ALSO READ | In memo, US Air Force gives green signal to gender pronouns’ use for internal communication The CIA actually has a Task Force designed to try to predict where and when political instability and conflict is likely to break out around the world. It's just not legally allowed to look at the U.S. That means we are blind to the risk factors that are rapidly emerging here. pic.twitter.com/86UMVwhi3C — Barbara F Walter (@bfwalter) November 25, 2021 × We know why democracies decline and ethnic factions emerge. We also know it can be driven by extremists with their own political agendas. Whether these extremists succeed depends on whether we, the American people, challenge them or not. https://t.co/L9TmIk6pGC pic.twitter.com/Y0qn1v5Jn8 — Barbara F Walter (@bfwalter) December 14, 2021 × If we talk about US politics, the past two-three years have been topsy-turvy — a phase when the administration also changed as Joe Biden was sworn in as 46th US president. The election was chaotic as former President Donald Trump multiple times claimed that there were some discrepancies in the counting of votes. On January 6, the deadly attack on the US Capitol also turned out to be a black chapter in the political history of the US. As mentioned by Walter, the US is now an "anocracy," somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.

Is United States on the cusp of a civil war? Member of CIA panel thinks so

Amid the ongoing civil war, government regains back 6 major regions in the northern part of Ethiopia. It has been 13 months since the inception of the civil war in the country.

Civil War in Ethiopia: Government regains control of 6 regions as the fierce fighting continues

Despite the claims by Yemen's security forces to gain ground, Humanitarian situation worsens in Yemen. According to stats, A Yemeni child under age 5 dies every 9 minutes in 2021.

The humanitarian situation worsens in Yemen

A storm of crisis looms ahead for displaced families living in Yemen camps as they are all set to face intense desert winter.

Displaced families living in Yemen camps face intense desert winter

Is Ethiopia's civil war a proxy battle between the West & East? A journalist claims Western diplomats "plotted to overthrow" Abiy Ahmed. The Ethiopian PM - who has now gone to the battlefield - is allegedly getting weapons from China & Iran. Palki Sharma has more.

Gravitas: Ethiopia's Civil War: A proxy battle between the West and East?

How is the Syrian civil war affecting children? Watch this heartbreaking report from Syria.

How civil war is destroying Syria’s future?

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