Off Leash Intel · loading
3 direct mentions across 3 briefings, with 5 linked developments.
Latest linked intelligence
Rwanda-backed M23 forces advanced toward Uvira and that approximately 200,000 civilians fled fighting after a U.S.-brokered DRC-Rwanda ceasefire. Competing accusations from the Congolese and Rwandan governments, including unsupported claims about Rwandan weapons and troop deployments.
Unverified development · updated through
Rwanda-backed M23 forces advanced toward Uvira and that approximately 200,000 civilians fled fighting after a U.S.-brokered DRC-Rwanda ceasefire. Competing accusations from the Congolese and Rwandan governments, including unsupported claims about Rwandan weapons and troop deployments.
Open source reportGeography
Marker precision is disclosed on selection. Country and regional centroids show geographic scope, not an exact incident site.
Government of Rwanda dossier
5 mapped developments across 2 map positions. Centroid markers show geographic scope, not an exact incident site.
Goma and Bukavu
Amnesty International as alleging that M23 tortured, disappeared and killed detainees in Goma and Bukavu. Amnesty said the documented violations may constitute war crimes and called for international pressure on Rwanda to end its support for M23.
Approximate map position: country centroid. The extracted place did not have provider-resolved coordinates.
1 supporting public source attached
Chronology
Off Leash update 10 Dec VENEZUELA •Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado was expected to accept her award in person in Norway yesterday, but she never showed up. •A Nobel official told media that Machado was "unfortunately not in Norway." That would seem to suggest she's still in Venezuela, since the hardest part of her trip would've been escaping the authoritarian regime that has banned her from traveling abroad for the past 10 years. •Separately, two U.S. F/A-18 fighter jets circled the Gulf of Venezuela for about 40 minutes yesterday, marking the closest that U.S. military aircraft have come to Venezuelan airspace since Operation Southern Sentinel began in September. •A U.S. military official said the flights were not intended to be provocative, but Nicolas Maduro's government will surely feel threatened by the proximity of U.S. jets to Venezuela's richest oil regions. DRC •Rwanda-backed (and Rwanda-armed) M23 rebels advanced toward Uvira, which is the last major city in eastern DRC that's still under Kinshasa's control. •Around 200,000 civilians have already fled the latest round of fighting - most of which has taken place after DRC and Rwanda signed a U.S.-brokered ceasefire at the White House. •DRC's Pres. Tshisekedi explicitly blamed his Rwandan counterpart, Pres. Kagame, for the ongoing conflict: "This is a proxy war aimed at challenging our sovereignty over a highly strategic area, rich in critical minerals and economic potential that is crucial to the future of our nation." •Rwanda counter-accused DRC and Burundi of violating the truce, too, but DRC and Burundi are not sending troops SAM systems, laser guided anti tank weapons, EW jamming systems and armed drones into Rwanda like Rwanda is into DRC. •Separately, Glencore became the first company to export cobalt from DRC under the country's new quota framework. •Glencore has only exported a small test batch of cobalt and is still sitting on a massive stockpile of cobalt that it mined as a byproduct of copper extraction during the export ban and as it deciphered the new, post-ban rules. •Its cautious small test shipment - and the fact that other miners continue to stockpile instead of even testing exporting - suggests the new rules remain opaque and hard to comply with. THAILAND AND CAMBODIA •Thai and Cambodian troops continued to clash along their shared border, sending hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing to shelters they hadn't bothered to deconstruct after the last bout of skirmishes subsided in July (which perhaps offers some insight into the low confidence the local population placed in that truce's staying power). •Both sides continue to blame the other and insist they're only acting in self defense against the other's aggressions. •So far, the casualty count has remained fairly low compared to the escalating rhetoric: Cambodia says intruding Thai soldiers have killed just six civilians this week. •Pres. Trump - who was present when Thailand and Cambodia formalized their truce in October - said he'd "have to make a phone call" today to try to revive the ceasefire. CHINA •Pres. Trump said he would allow semiconductor giant Nvidia to export its H200 chips to "approved customers" in China who will use them to develop artificial intelligence models. •The H200 is a generation behind Nvidia's latest chips, which is probably part of why Trump felt comfortable sharing it with China. (China hawks have successfully lobbied to bar Chinese companies from using the latest U.S. chip tech.) •Another factor behind Trump's decision could be the 25% royalty the U.S. government will reportedly collect on H200 sales to Chinese customers. 1/2
Open source reportOff Leash update 9 DEC GAZA •Former senior Shin Bet official Shalom Ben Hanan told the NYT that Hamas is "still standing" despite its two-year war with Israel. •Ben Hanan cited official estimates that Hamas still has around 20,000 active fighters after quickly replacing its casualties. •Hamas also appears to be reasserting its role in policing Gaza - though its senior officials insist they'll be willing and ready to cede power to an appointed transitional government once one is formed. DRC •Just days after signing a document in the White House Oval Office reaffirming a U.S.-brokered peace deal with the DRC, Rwanda's Pres. Kagame's proxy M23 invaded further into DRC territory in direct defiance of President Trump's peace efforts. •Local reports suggest the M23 is bringing in reinforcements from Rwanda, and leveraged the added troop strength to capture the village of Luvungi near the Burundian border. •Analysts also spotted signs that the rebels used freshly-supplied Rwandan surface-to-air missiles, armed drones, and jammers. •Burundi - which is receiving thousands of fleeing civilians – echoed these reports and blamed Rwanda for the chaos. Its Foreign Minister accused Kigali of "playing a double game. It claims to be negotiating and signing agreements, but in the meantime, it is intensifying attacks on the civilian population with kamikaze drones that kill instinctively.” YEMEN •The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) separatist coalition announced that it had captured not only Hadramout, but all eight of Yemen's southern governates - including the port of Aden. •The STC's claim is credible but unconfirmed, and Saudi Arabia may still mount some resistance in defense of the government it was backing in Aden. •STC control of the south would mark a major change in the course of Yemen's long-running civil war. It would also increase the likelihood of Yemen ultimately re-fracturing into the two countries that comprised it before unification.
Open source reportOff Leash update 27 May GAZA •Al Jazeera reported that Hamas agreed to a ceasefire proposal suggested by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, but Witkoff quickly dashed hopes for a quick truce when he told Reuters that the proposal Hamas accepted was not his, but was instead a "disappointing and completely unacceptable" plan of Hamas's own creation. •An Israeli official corroborated Witkoff's disavowal of the proposal that Hamas accepted and said no Israeli government could accept its terms - which reportedly called for the release of 10 living Israeli hostages in two groups, in exchange for a 60- or 70-day ceasefire, a partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. •Witkoff's latest proposal - which is still on the table - reportedly differs from the one Hamas accepted on several key points, including the timing and sequence of hostage releases. NORTH KOREA •North Korea has arrested three shipyard officials over last week's botched destroyer launch, which left Kim Jong Un fuming and the 5,000-ton warship partially submerged sideways. •Western analysts studying the bungled launch attributed its failure to "pointed to a lack of experience, as well as political pressure from Mr. Kim for quick results." •In particular, the shipyard that constructed the ill-fated 470-foot (143-meter) vessel had no experience building ships that large, and was forced to launch this first attempt the risky way - sideways - because it doesn't have a big enough dry dock to launch by flotation or an incline wide enough for a stern-first launch. VENEZUELA •Guyana's vice president, Bharrat Jagdeo, rejected propaganda videos his Venezuelan counterpart, Delcy Rodrigues, shared purporting to show Guyanese citizens boarding a boat to cross the Essequibo River to vote in Sunday's Venezuelan regional elections: "It is dishonest and a sign of desperation when the vice-president of Venezuela has to use a fake video to support false claims that people were crossing the border to vote in the elections." •The 125,000 Guyanese who live in Essequibo did not, in fact, cross the river to vote in Sunday's election. Rather, the 21,403 voters who chose representatives for the disputed region - which the newly elected officials cannot access and don't control - came from a specially-created sliver of Bolivar state on the Venezuelan side of the river. It's telling that all 14 representatives they choose came from Pres. Maduro's ruling party. DRC •Amnesty International accused the M23 - and, implicitly, the Rwandan army that controls it - of violating international humanitarian law by torturing, disappearing, and killing detainees in Goma and Bukavu. •Citing interviews with former detainees, Amnesty said the violations it documented "may amount to war crimes," and called on "regional and international actors [to] pressure Rwanda to cease its support for M23." •Meanwhile, M23 confirmed yesterday that former Congolese president Joseph Kabila has arrived in Goma. [Some suggest Kabila has been in Goma for weeks, but this is the first clear confirmation of his return.] •The confirmation of Kabila's return will unnerve Pres. Tshisekedi's government, which lifted Kabila's lifelong immunity last week and plans to prosecute him for backing Rwanda's invasion and (allegedly) encouraging a coup to topple Tshisekedi. CARS •A German court convicted four former Volkswagen executives of fraud for their roles in the Dieselgate scandal, in which over 11 million Volkswagen diesel cars were installed with "defeat devices" that helped them illegally cheat diesel-efficiency tests by reducing emissions by up to 40-fold when a car recognized it was being tested. •Though ignobly motivated, the scandal helped accelerate a shift from high-pollutin' diesel cars to electric vehicles. In Europe alone, diesel's market share went from over half in 2015 to under 10% today.
Open source report