Enemy of God

Days 11–17 — January 11–17, 2026

The Gate

The mass killing began on the eighth and ninth. By the eleventh, the death toll had passed five hundred. By week's end, estimates ranged from three thousand to thirty thousand dead—the true number unknown, buried under blackout.

The Revolutionary Guard and Basij opened fire on crowds across all thirty-one provinces. Hospitals in Tehran and Shiraz overflowed with gunshot wounds. The government shut down the internet. Starlink signals were jammed, then cut—for the first time.

Nearly five thousand fighters from Iraqi militias crossed the border under cover of pilgrimage. They gathered at a base in Ahvaz before dispersing to suppress the protests. Kata'ib Hezbollah. Harakat al-Nujaba. The Badr Organisation. Reports indicated Afghanistan's Fatemiyoun Brigade and Pakistan's Zainebiyoun Brigade participated as well.

Eyewitnesses in the Kurdish regions said the security forces did not speak Persian. In Karaj, witnesses reported forces speaking Arabic—and taking photographs with the bodies.

State television acknowledged three thousand one hundred seventeen dead. Human rights organizations estimated far higher. A German-Iranian surgeon provided hospital records to Time magazine suggesting more than thirty thousand. The true count remained buried under the blackout.

On the tenth—after the killing had already begun—the attorney general declared that protesters would be considered "enemy of God." The charge formalized what the bullets had already carried out.

The Burning

Fire came to Chile.

Wildfires ignited in the Biobío and Ñuble regions on the sixteenth. By week's end, more than forty-five thousand hectares had burned. At least twenty-one dead. More than fifty thousand evacuated.

The city of Penco bore the worst. Roofs collapsed. Vehicles melted into twisted frames. A school and a church burned. Charred bodies were found across fields, in homes, along roads, inside cars. Families fled running with their children in the dark.

The mayor of Penco addressed President Boric: "Dear President Boric, from the bottom of my heart, I have been here for four hours, a community is burning and there is no presence."

Chile had endured more than a decade of drought. High summer temperatures and strong winds carried the flames.

The War

Russia launched eight hundred twenty-one strikes against twenty-seven cities and villages in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in a single twenty-four-hour period. Zaporizhzhia and parts of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast lost power overnight. In Kyiv, engineers worked around the clock to restore electricity.

Russia had destroyed sixty percent of Ukraine's gas production ahead of winter. Generating capacity had fallen from thirty-four gigawatts to fourteen. Blackouts lasted up to four days.

The UN Security Council convened on the twelfth to address the Oreshnik hypersonic missile strike near the Polish border the week before. Territorial gains had slowed—seventy-nine square miles in the prior four weeks, down from two hundred fifteen the month before. The war approached its fourth anniversary without resolution.

In Gaza, the United States announced Phase Two of the ceasefire on the fourteenth. The terms: demilitarization, governance, reconstruction. A National Committee for Gaza Management met in Cairo. Former UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov was appointed high representative for Gaza under a newly formed Board of Peace.

Since the ceasefire took effect in October 2025, Israeli forces had killed at least four hundred forty-two Palestinians. Twelve hundred injured. Only forty-three percent of promised aid trucks had entered. Thirty organizations remained banned.

The Return

In Sudan, the government announced its return to Khartoum.

Prime Minister Kamil Idris declared that after nearly three years operating from Port Sudan, the government would resume functions in the capital. The army had recaptured Khartoum from the RSF in March 2025. The return was symbolic—a claim of normalcy amid catastrophe.

The catastrophe: one hundred fifty thousand dead. Twenty-five million facing hunger. Nearly thirteen million displaced. The army reported heavy losses inflicted on the RSF in Darfur and Kordofan. The UN's human rights chief visited for the first time since the war began. He called conditions "despicable."

The Reckoning

In Seoul, a court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison on the sixteenth for obstruction of justice and fabrication of documents stemming from his December 2024 martial law decree. An independent counsel had requested the death sentence on the separate insurrection charge.

In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, eighty-one, claimed a seventh term on the fifteenth. The government shut down the internet, detained thousands of opposition supporters, and raided the home of opposition leader Bobi Wine, who went into hiding. The electoral commission declared Museveni the winner with seventy-one percent. The United States Senate called it a "hollow exercise."

The Machines

The United States and Taiwan signed a semiconductor agreement worth five hundred billion dollars.

Taiwan pledged two hundred fifty billion in direct investment and two hundred fifty billion in financial guarantees to build advanced semiconductor and artificial intelligence production capacity in the United States. Tariffs on Taiwanese goods fell from twenty percent to fifteen.

Taiwan's chip industry had long been called a "silicon shield"—protection against Chinese invasion through economic indispensability. Beijing expressed stern opposition.

For the first time in twenty-five years, an astronaut was medically evacuated from the International Space Station. Crew-11 undocked on the fourteenth and splashed down the following morning, their mission cut short by a month. NASA disclosed neither the astronaut nor the condition.

The Passing

Bob Weir, founding member and guitarist of the Grateful Dead, died on the tenth at seventy-eight. Cancer, then lung complications. His final performances had been the band's sixtieth anniversary concerts at Golden Gate Park. Bill Kreutzmann remained the only surviving original member.

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, died on the thirteenth at sixty-eight. Prostate cancer.

The Ledger

The threat became the act. "Enemy of God" passed from warning to warrant to mass grave. Foreign fighters crossed borders to kill protesters in streets they did not know, in a language they did not speak. Fire consumed a Chilean city while its mayor pleaded for help that did not come. A former president imprisoned in Seoul; a lifelong president crowned again in Kampala with the internet dark. The wars ground on—Ukraine freezing, Gaza starving, Sudan returning to a capital it never truly left. A chip deal worth half a trillion dollars. An astronaut evacuated from orbit. A guitarist who played for sixty years laid to rest. The silence that follows the blackout. The smoke that follows the fire.

Here continues the account of the year 2026.