Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to Global Eye from the BBC World Service.

In the next half hour, we'll bring you some of the best journalism

from our teams across the world.

I am Kalkidan Yibeltal, a journalist based in Nairobi,

and for the past week I've been here in the world's youngest nation,

South Sudan, where renewed conflict between the army

and rebels aligned with a jailed opposition leader

is threatening a fragile peace agreement.

The UN has warned that this country, which is not 15 years old yet,

could be on the road to a full-blown civil war.

I'll be guiding you through as to what's happening here

and why the world needs to pay attention.

Coming up on the programme...

With rare and exclusive access to Puntland,

the hard to reach semi-autonomous region of Somalia,

we are on the ground with the region's defence force

as it battles fighters from the Islamic State group.

The Horn of Africa has become a crucial nexus for IS

since it was largely driven out of the Middle East.

And as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues,

we will reveal how Iranian state media uses propaganda and AI

to push their government's preferred narrative

about the course of the war.

This is South Sudan's largest state, Jonglei,

some 250km north of the country's capital, Juba.

It's not an easy place to reach.

Conditions are dangerous

and the roads are among the least developed in the globe.

According to the UN, the entire country had

just around 400km of paved road by 2022.

Additionally, insecurity makes road travel risky.

So to get here, we had to join aid workers

in one of their humanitarian flights.

CELEBRATORY GUNFIRE, WHOOPING

The ongoing armed clashes in Jonglei began

with a sudden upsurge in late December.

Rebel forces known as

the Sudan People's Liberation Army In Opposition, or SPLA-IO,

announced they would be marching to the country's capital

to overthrow the government.

They had overpowered the army in several positions

and took control of local administrations.

The military responded with air strikes

and civilians paid the heaviest prices.

An unknown number of them were killed,

villages were burned down and masses fled.

I spoke to some Jonglei residents

who had been forced to flee for their lives.

Alarms were sounded by the UN, by the African Union and others

that South Sudan could be facing a return to civil war.

So how did this young country, once so full of hope, come to this?

To understand, you need to know these two men.

Salva Kiir, who's been the President of

the country since independence, and Riek Machar,

his main opponent, who until last year

was First Vice President

following a power-sharing agreement signed in 2018.

But about a year ago, Machar was put under house arrest

and was later charged with several offences,

including treason.

His supporters, including those in the SPLA-IO,

saw the move as politically motivated

and vowed to fight the authorities.

During the recent clashes,

rebel leaders called for Machar's release.

As well as being the youngest,

South Sudan is one of the most impoverished countries in the world.

Since independence,

it's been blighted by a deadly cycle of violence,

and it's been heavily impacted by the effects of climate change.

According to the World Food Programme,

10 million of its 14 million people

are now dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Besides security,

logistics is a key challenge that humanitarians face here

in South Sudan as they seek to reach to millions of people

in scattered and remote villages.

To get to many people living in those areas

that are not accessible by road,

aid agencies often use boats like this

that are currently being loaded with all these essential supplies,

and they're going to be dispatched on the River Nile.

When South Sudan broke away from Sudan

and declared independence,

there was much euphoria and optimism.

But the years that followed were marked by recurrent violence

and administrative impotence

that continued to keep a nation endowed with rich natural resources

in the shackles of poverty.

Several countries in this region

are grappling with chronic security problems.

Sudan is in the middle of a three-year civil war,

and Somalia is struggling to contain Islamist insurgency.

The UN's Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan

has expressed grave concern over the situation here,

and aid agencies warn the world shouldn't look away

as another country slides deeper into disorder.

Nearly a decade after its defeat in the Middle East,

the Islamic State group has shifted its focus to Africa,

with IS branches emerging across the continent.

In the Horn of Africa, Somalia's semi-autonomous state

of Puntland has become one of the group's main strategic hubs.

Last year, the UN estimated

there were about 800 IS fighters in Somalia,

more than half of them foreign fighters.

BBC reporter Sahnun Ahmed travelled to Al-Miskad mountains

to embed with Puntland Defence Forces,

who are leading the fight against IS.

PHONE LINE RINGS

GENERATOR WHIRS

CHILD ANSWERS PHONE

Muna is an officer in the Puntland Defence Forces.

For the last 12 months,

she has been fighting the Islamic State group.

Her job has kept her apart from her eight children.

In the last year, she has only seen them twice.

I was born and grew up in Somalia.

For years, I've watched militant groups take root here.

EXPLOSION

Since the state collapsed in 1991,

Somalia has been scarred by civil war.

By 2006, groups like al-Shabab filled the vacuum,

smothering Somalia's chance at development.

The instability they have caused

has allowed another dangerous player to take hold.

The so-called Islamic State group.

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

The group had territorial strongholds

in countries like Syria and Iraq,

until US-backed forces and the Syrian army

began to drive them out.

By 2019, the group was thought to have been largely defeated.

After losing ground in the Middle East,

IS shifted its focus to Africa,

branches starting to operate across the continent,

with Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland

functioning as a strategic hub.

It is home to terrorists who take advantage of conditions in Africa

to grow and export their ideology.

ISIS controls their global network from Somalia.

Known as IS Somalia,

this branch is now one of the most influential hubs globally,

bringing in foreign fighters, training them, embedding them.

The brotherhood is now established and it's spreading everywhere!

Now it's right here in Somalia!

Puntland is leading the fightback.

Its security force has managed to push IS Somalia

out of the key port city of Bosaso.

The Puntland Defence Force has only held this area for a few months.

About 500 soldiers are based here, including Muna.

SHE LAUGHS

Muna is one of the few women in the Puntland army -

currently in a support role,

but she has fought in battles against IS.

The army has managed to regain territory from IS,

but at a great cost for the soldiers.

The rule of IS in these mountains

has also taken a heavy toll on the local community.

Nestled in the mountains lies Daardaar, home to 600 people.

Once under the rule of IS,

the army retook control in March 2025

with the help of US air support.

But the scars remain.

Said Mohamed has been the imam in Daardaar for seven years.

When IS came to the village, they removed him from the mosque.

IS has been active here since late 2015.

For years, they were largely overlooked,

allowing the group to grow more entrenched in these mountains.

Local residents say the arrival of foreign fighters

brought a new battle of ideology.

The most shocking, the murder of a pregnant mother.

Shukri Musa was killed along with

her seven-year-old son, Saeed, who was deaf.

The militants may have left,

but fear remains.

Fear that they could come back.

The group are still present in this region

and sleeper cells are launching attacks.

One not far from here

is a reminder of the threat and the danger they still pose.

Defeating IS requires international support.

A US strike here in May 2024 killed three IS fighters...

..a crucial part of driving the group out of Daardaar.

Cooperation between the Puntland Defence Forces

and the US is ongoing.

For the Puntland Defence Force,

the push to the front is only days away.

I met 24-year-old Abdikhair,

a young soldier who captured an IS foreign fighter alive.

Abdikhair had only been in the front line

for three months when he helped detain this IS militant.

In June 2025,

the UN estimated that the Islamic State group had

up to 800 fighters in Somalia,

over half of them foreign.

Since then, local reports suggest hundreds have been killed

or captured in a government counter-offensive.

A little outside the camp...

..a drone scouts ahead.

We are with the army now.

They are moving in small groups to a new staging area.

They have found a cave with 50 to 60 IS militants,

and from this new position

they are planning to launch an attack on this IS hideout.

Despite the support of an American surveillance drone

out of sight overhead, the closer the soldiers go to the enemy,

the more I felt their mood darken.

Phase one - a surprise mortar attack

on the caves from a distance.

They waited for the all clear.

Then they moved.

We are just approaching where they set up their position

to launch mortar attacks on IS's hideouts.

The army's vantage point offers

a bird's-eye view of IS positions in the valley below.

Mortars, $200 a shot...

..slam across the mountain.

IS are at less than 1km away,

just opposite where we are now.

The militants didn't fight back.

With no return fire,

the enemy could be unharmed, lying in wait.

The drone went up to see if the target had been hit.

The entrance appeared damaged.

That's the cave.

That's the cave? Yes.

For the Puntland forces,

it was a strange kind of victory.

After months in the mountains,

the decisive blow had come from elsewhere.

We were later told American drones struck the fighters in the caves.

Here is some more thought-provoking content

that the World Service has produced this week.

The Lives Less Ordinary podcast sat down with Ramla Ali,

a British-Somali boxer and Unicef ambassador,

to hear her inspiring story about how,

against the odds, she became

the first Somali boxer to compete at the Olympic Games,

after hiding her career from her family for many years.

She recently returned to Somalia for the first time

since coming to the UK in the 1990s.

Lives Less Ordinary episodes are now posted

in-vision on the BBC World Service YouTube channel,

or you can catch the podcast

on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Since the beginning of the US-Israeli war on Iran,

journalists have been finding ways to report on what's happening,

often in the face of incredible logistical and legal challenges.

But for those working for Iran's state-run media,

their assignment is a different one.

Their job has been to broadcast the message

that the Iranian government wants people to hear.

Reha Kansara, from the BBC's Global Disinformation Unit,

has been looking into how Iran's state media

has been flooding its services with propaganda

to distort the reality of what's happening on the ground.

State media in Iran announcing the beginning of the war,

when US and Israeli airstrikes hit Tehran.

It was quick and decisive - typical of news outlets.

But it wasn't long before facts were muddled with falsehoods

and half-truths.

Later that day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

suggested their joint forces had killed Iran's leader,

Ayatollah Khamenei, at his home.

Iran's silence was loud,

until a regime spokesperson called the reports of Khamenei's death

"enemy psychological warfare"

and state media dismissed them as rumours.

Then, the following morning, hours after US President Trump

publicly confirmed the supreme leader's death,

state media ran the news that Khamenei

had been killed by Israel and the US.

HE WEEPS

Reporters Without Borders say

Iran is one of the most repressive countries

when it comes to press freedom.

Now, in its attempt to control what people hear, see and watch,

all broadcasting on TV, radio, social media and news websites

is controlled by the state,

and Western media outlets, including BBC Persian,

are banned from reporting in the country.

The internet has been cut off,

and people can't have access to the internet

to get the news from there.

It has been like this for decades,

since the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

And I think in Iran,

censorship is the lock and disinformation is the key.

And it doesn't let the people see

exactly what's going on inside the country.

Iranian media has also routinely published bogus claims,

inflating the number of casualties behind enemy lines.

One such report claimed that Iranian forces had killed

or injured 650 American personnel in the first two days of the war.

At the time, the Pentagon had confirmed

only six soldiers had died.

New technology is also helping state media.

This video, showing the aftermath of a strike in Bahrain,

was posted online by the Iranian state-owned

English-language news outlet Press TV.

But it's not real. It was made using AI.

A closer look and these two cars are dissolving into one another.

A reverse image search brings no credible reports of the hit.

Instead, it brought up another version of the AI video.

Like much of the AI-generated content about the war

that's flooded social media,

it's unclear who made it and where it came from.

They have a narrative they're pushing,

which is that they are quite victorious,

their military is very strong.

And so we've been seeing various different examples

of AI-generated content coming out of state media -

state media, you know, X accounts, Telegram channels -

that kind of show either fake or exaggerated examples

of their attacks against US air bases or Israeli targets.

But the information space is distorted

even by the regime's critics.

When Iranian state media reported the funerals of 160 children

and staff, killed in what experts say was likely a US operation

targeting a military base close to a school in southern Iran,

opposers of the government claimed that this view

from the mass funeral was AI-manipulated.

The government's track record of feeding kernels of truth

alongside lies has sown doubt amongst many -

except, this time, their reporting was factually correct.

This wider shot shows the area surrounding the graves.

Within the image's metadata are the coordinates

for where it was captured.

We geolocated it to a cemetery roughly 3.7km away from the school.

Satellite imagery shows that these trees,

the road layout and this nearby building

match those visible in the footage.

Other satellite imagery from the day after the funeral

provides a clear image of the graves.

AI manipulation, the denial and inflation of deaths -

these tactics aren't new.

But in the state's attempt to display its might internationally,

half-truths and lies have spilled over.

Iran may see this as a battle it can win.

Thank you for joining me in South Sudan.

We want your feedback, so please let us know

what you think on social media

We will be back next week. Goodbye.