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This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• Palestinian journalist and historian Said Aburish has died at 77, leaving behind a long list of published works that mix history and personal opinion, attacking everything from the House of Saud to Arab nationalism and dictatorship.
• A mysterious assassination highlights some of the complexities of the identity of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Mohamed Al-Shami Abu Al-Absi, the leader of the Al Qaeda affiliated Jubhat al-Nusra brigade, was found dead near the Turkish border on Wednesday.
• An interview with Syrian dissident cartoonist Ali Ferzat.
• Iran continues supplying Assad with military equipment via Iraqi airspace.
• Slain Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto’s partner and husband Kazutaka Sato is calling for an investigation into her death. He expressed his grief at her loss in an interview with CNN.
• A new book titled Revolutions collects fallen photojournalist Rémi Ochliks photographs of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
• Oliver Bullough writes about Putin’s electoral success in the tormented member of the Russian Federation — “Politically, Chechnya is an extreme but exemplary case of the system that Putin has created across the whole Russian Federation. ”
• The makers of the Kalashnikov face economic hardship, hoping to turn their luck around with a global campaign and new guns.
• A new Human Rights Watch report based on interviews with former Libyan detainees and on documents released following the fall of Gaddhafi alleges abuse and torture by the CIA and rendition of detainees to Libya.
• Gaddhafi’s former spy chief, Abdallah al-Senussi, was extradited from Mauritania to Libya.
• Algeria’s new prime minister took office.
• Extremists in Mali executed an Algerian diplomat, Tahar Touati, whom they had captured five months ago.
• A team from the ICC was in Mali to investigate whether or not war crimes have been committed by extremists in the north.
• Tanzanian television journalist Daudi Mwangozi was killed by police while covering rioting that broke out in the Iringa region.
• In Nigeria, 31 cellphone towers were damaged in attacks that haven’t been claimed, although Boko Haram has previously threatened to do so.
• In the Congo, large-scale poaching of elephants is providing ivory that is fueling war.
• A colonel in the Palestinian security forces was gunned down in Jenin.
• International donors pledged an extra $2.4bn in aid money to Yemen this week, bringing the total pledged aid this year to $6.4bn.
• An export pipeline of natural gas east of Sana’a was bombed days after it had been repaired.
• A Bahraini court upheld the sentences of thirteen opposition activists facing jail terms.
• Iraqi troops raided nightclubs, beating customers and owners, in a crackdown on a growing nightlife in Baghdad.
• The Daily Beast interviews former American ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker.
• Asadullah Khalid has been tapped by President Karzai to be Afghanistan’s new intelligence chief, but has been connected to torture, other abuses and trafficking.
• The Afghan army has expelled and/or arrested hundreds of its soldiers in connection with the green-on-blue attacks that have plagued the relationship between the Afghan army and NATO forces.
• Malnutrition of children in southern Afghanistan, the provinces most ravaged by war, is at famine level. One-third of the children of the south of the country suffer famine-level deprivation.
• Prince Harry is returning to Afghanistan for a four-month tour of duty commanding an Apache helicopter.
• An excellent interactive graphic from Al Jazeera on the never-ending political/ethnic violence plaguing the streets of Karachi, Pakistan’s economic hub.
• The victory speech for Quebec’s new premier, Pauline Marois, the province’s first female premier and a separatist, was marred by a possible assassination attempt. One person was killed in the shooting. The suspect has been arraigned on 16 charges.
• Kimberly Rivera, a US soldier who has been living in Canada with her family for five years after deserting to escape the war in Iraq, now faces deportation.
• The White House has a weekend deadline for their decision on whether or not to designate the Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization.
• An appellate court upheld the narco-terrorism conviction of Khan Mohammed, the first member of the Afghan Taliban to be tried in US court.

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Photo: Nevay-Deh, Afghanistan. A young boy watches a joint Afghan-NATO patrol. Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty.