Earlier this year, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – the PKK – announced it would disband, bringing to a close a decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state. In a February statement, party leader Ocalan wrote from his internment on Imrali prison island: “There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realisation of a political system. Democratic consensus is the fundamental way.” In July, some PKK fighters took the first step towards disarmament, burning their weapons rather than surrendering them, at a ceremony held in Suleymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan.

This week, CPT Iraqi Kurdistan reports on the impact of the disarmament process. For the first time since 2015 – the last attempted peace process – there have been no bombardments in Iraqi Kurdistan. The absence of bombardments is cause for hope, although both the PKK and the Turkish armed forces have continued to mobilize, expanding their military presence and obstructing civilian movement in the region. Still, the team warns that “the increasing military presence by both actors makes the situation appear fragile. CPT Iraqi Kurdistan urges full and meaningful engagement with the peace process.

In the West Bank, CPT Palestine continues to report on the abuses of Israeli apartheid. Our team reports on five-year-old Mohammed and his seven-year-old brother Abdel Fattah, who were taken by armed soldiers, accused of spying while playing with a ball. Their family was fined, and the soldiers threatened the kids with arrest. They report, too, on the Tamimi family, who were brutally attacked by settlers in August. The elderly head of the family was stabbed, while settlers blocked the ambulances that came to take him to hospital. All this for the family’s land, where settlers have since installed caravans and raised Israeli flags.

And CPT reservist Maggie Nelson reflects on her time in Al-Khalil/Hebron. She spent time with CPT Palestine in 2022 and 2023, when she monitored the checkpoints as schoolkids passed on their way to and from school. This year she returned to reunite with the friends she made then and see how their daily lives and struggles have been affected by the last two years of genocide in Gaza. “You cannot stop the soldiers from searching us,” one of them testified. “But it matters that you are there, that you are watching us, that you care. It changes how we feel when we walk past them. It matters to us more than you know.”