Challenges to President Pierre Nkurunziza’s rule are becoming professionalised, as demonstrated by the attacks on two military camps in Bujumbura last December. Godfroid Nyombare – Nkurunziza’s former chief of secret service and main plotter of the failed coup last May – has reportedly created an armed rebellion. And security forces have started using rape as a weapon of war, signalling their intent to break Bujumbura’s quartiers contestataires psychologically as well as physically.

Amid ongoing concerns about gun violence in the United States and Mexico, a new report highlights several bureaucratic obstacles hampering US efforts to stem the flow of illicit arms to its southern neighbor.

The U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes of Africa, Mr Thomas Perriello, would be visiting Burundi as part of his government’s efforts at ending crisis in the country. The African Media Hub of the U.S. Department of State said in a statement that the Envoy would be visiting crisis-ridden Burundi, as well as Brussels, Belgium, Rome and Italy.

The collapse in Saudi relations with Iran after the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric marks a grim start to the new year for Saudi Arabia’s King Salman. Since succeeding his half-brother, Abdullah, who died in January 2015, the 80-year-old Salman has gone to war in Yemen, faced Islamic State-backed suicide bomb attacks inside his borders, and watched rival Iran sign an historic nuclear accord brokered by the U.S., the kingdom’s strongest ally for the past 50 years.