World roundup: November 16-17 2024
Stories from Sudan, Ukraine, Suriname, and elsewhere
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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
November 16, 1532: Spanish forces under Francisco Pizarro ambush and capture the Incan emperor Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca. Atahualpa’s captivity and eventual execution (the following August) were the first steps in the Spaniards’ conquest of the Incan Empire.
November 16, 1914: The Austro-Hungarian and Serbian armies open one of World War I’s first major engagements, the Battle of Kolubara. Over the course of the next two weeks the Austro-Hungarians would drive the Serbs back, eventually forcing them to evacuate Belgrade. However, the Serbian army regrouped and counterattacked against a by-then overextended Austro-Hungarian force, and by mid-December they had retaken Belgrade and forced the surviving Austro-Hungarians out of Serbia altogether. The battle resulted in staggering casualties on both sides but thwarted the Austro-Hungarian military’s 1914 Serbian campaign. The Central Powers would invade Serbia again the following year with much different results.
November 17, 1869: The Suez Canal officially opens in a joint French-Egyptian ceremony. Although it quickly came under financial pressure due to the costs of construction and some technical flaws that required improvements, the canal made an immediate impact on international commerce, both for better and worse (it helped cause the Panic of 1873 because of its detrimental effect on British maritime trade). The Egyptian monarchy’s heavy debt obliged it to sell its shares in the canal to the British government, which provided an opening for Britain to establish control not only over the canal, but ultimately over all of Egypt.
November 17, 1885: The decisive engagement of the brief (two week) Serbo-Bulgarian War, the Battle of Slivnitsa, begins in western Bulgaria. It would end two days later with a decisive Bulgarian victory that allowed the Bulgarian army to enter Serbian territory. Alarmed by the merger of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, two polities created by the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the Serbian government used a border dispute as a pretext to declare war and invade, but their defeat at Slivnitsa turned the war on its head. Austria-Hungary subsequently threatened to intervene and thereby halted the Bulgarian invasion a few days after it began. But the war, short as it was, affirmed the Bulgarian-Rumelian merger and sparked a military reform effort in Serbia.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
An Israeli military (IDF) airstrike reportedly hit a residential building in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia area on Sunday, killing at least 50 people including some 15 children. Civil defense officials said that their workers were being prevented from reaching the site of the attack and were expecting the death toll to continue to rise once they were finally able to dig through the rubble. This incident was the deadliest of several IDF strikes in Gaza on Sunday that killed at least 94 people in total—another 20 in a second Beit Lahia attack and at least 24 in central Gaza’s Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps. Al Jazeera is reporting a death toll of at least 111 for the day but apart from the Beit Lahia strike that figure isn’t broken down by incident.
Elsewhere, Yemen’s Houthi movement is claiming that it carried out a drone strike against “a vital target” in the Israeli port city of Eilat on Saturday. As far as I know there’s been no indication of any strike in Eilat from Israeli officials. And Al-Monitor reported on Sunday that Israeli President Isaac Herzog had to cancel his plans to attend the United Nations COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan after the Turkish government denied permission for his plane to pass through Turkish airspace. The alternative air route between Israel and Azerbaijan passes through Iranian airspace so obviously that was not going to work either. Israel does have a delegation in Baku but it’s unclear how it got there.
LEBANON
According to Reuters, an IDF airstrike on central Beirut on Sunday killed the head of Hezbollah’s media relations office, Mohammad Afif, along with at least three other people. This was one of at least two IDF strikes to hit Beirut’s downtown area—the second killed at least two people, whose identities haven’t been made public. Israeli attacks also hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, parts of southern Lebanon, and eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek district over the weekend, killing at least six people in a village near Baalbek on Saturday and at least 11 people near the southern city of Tyre on Sunday.
Israeli ground forces reportedly captured a hill some 5 kilometers inside the Lebanese border on Saturday before withdrawing amid fighting with Hezbollah militants. Believe it or not that marks their deepest penetration into Lebanon since they began ground operations in that country at the beginning of October. While it doesn’t get much attention amid all the airstrikes, it must be said that if the IDF set out to actually hold Lebanese territory their operation hasn’t gone according to plan.
IRAQ
A bombing killed three Iraqi Kurdish security personnel and wounded three Iraqi soldiers in Saladin province on Sunday. There’s no definitive information as to responsibility but it seems reasonable to assume that this was an Islamic State attack unless proven otherwise.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Baluchistan Liberation Army fighters attacked a Pakistani paramilitary security outpost in Baluchistan province and killed seven of its personnel on Saturday. The attackers wounded another 18 people.
BANGLADESH
Interim Bangladeshi head of government Muhammad Yunis delivered a national address on Sunday revealing that authorities have confirmed the deaths of some 1500 people during the protests that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina back in August. Previous estimates had put that figure in the 1000 range. Yunis further claimed that Hasina’s 2009-2024 administration may have overseen the forced disappearances of some 3500 people (some 1600 disappearances have apparently been confirmed). These figures form the core of the Bangladeshi government’s push to secure Hasina’s extradition from India to stand trial. There’s been no sign that New Delhi is prepared to accede to that demand.
CHINA
As expected, Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held what will presumably be their final in-person meeting in Peru on Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. They apparently agreed on the need to maintain human control over the use of nuclear weapons, rather than turning that over to artificial intelligence. So that’s good, I guess? I don’t know if they watched any of the Terminator films prior to their chat but this seems like a reasonable position, so reasonable in fact that it’s a little disturbing we’re even having these sorts of conversations. At any rate, if you were expecting anything substantive to come out of this meeting you were probably disappointed, though with the Biden administration about to give way to Trump II there really wasn’t much for Biden and Xi to discuss.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The New Arab suggests that the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group may be close to seizing control of the North Darfur city of Al-Fashir:
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are close to seizing full control of Sudan’s El Fasher city from the rival Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) after months of intensive battles in the North Darfur State.
The area is home to Zamzam camp, one of the country’s largest internally displaced camps where thousands have fled since the outbreak of fighting between the two rival military groups in April 2023.
The RSF first moved on El Fasher, a Sudanese army stronghold, in April, but has recently pushed into the centre, closing in on the SAF’s military headquarters, according to researchers.
Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been tracking the conflict using satellite imagery, found that “defensive positions” have been set up in Zamzam camp, suggesting those on the ground are expecting an imminent attack.
Al-Fashir has been under siege for so long that there have been reports of famine in Zamzam and other camps around the city. It is packed with hundreds of thousands of people from other parts of Darfur who fled in the face of RSF atrocities against the region’s non-Arab populations. There is every reason to expect that the RSF will visit similar atrocities on these people if/when it takes the city.
GABON
Gabonese voters, or at least some of them, headed to the polls on Sunday and opted in a landslide to adopt a new constitution. Preliminary results put turnout at just 53.5 percent, barely more than the 50 percent required for the vote to count, but of those who voted over 91 percent supported the new charter. Sunday’s referendum was a step on the road toward restoring civilian rule after Gabon’s August 2023 military coup. Notably, after that coup ousted the Bongo dynasty that had ruled the country since 1967, the new constitution limits presidents to two seven year terms (previously they could serve an unlimited number of five year terms) and bars family members of incumbent presidents from succeeding to that office.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Allied Democratic Forces jihadists attacked a village in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province late Friday, killing at least 13 people. Several others are missing and presumably either abducted or killed.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A new investigation from the AP finds that the Russian military is producing thousands of decoy drones to overwhelm and deplete Ukrainian air defenses:
Unarmed decoys now make up more than half the drones targeting Ukraine and as much as 75% of the new drones coming out of the factory in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, according to the person familiar with Russia’s production, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the industry is highly sensitive, and the Ukrainian electronics expert.
The same factory produces a particularly deadly variant of the Shahed unmanned aircraft armed with thermobaric warheads, the person said.
During the first weekend of November, the Kyiv region spent 20 hours under air alert, and the sound of buzzing drones mingled with the boom of air defenses and rifle shots. In October, Moscow attacked with at least 1,889 drones – 80% more than in August, according to an AP analysis tracking the drones for months.
On Saturday, Russia launched 145 drones across Ukraine, just days after the re-election of Donald Trump threw into doubt U.S. support for the country.
Since summer, most drones crash, are shot down or are diverted by electronic jamming, according to an AP analysis of the Ukrainian military briefings. Less than 6% hit a discernible target, according to the data analyzed by AP since the end of July. But the sheer numbers mean a handful can slip through every day – and that is enough to be deadly.
UKRAINE
It took considerably longer than I thought it would, but Joe Biden over the weekend finally gave the Ukrainian military something that it’s been demanding for several months:
President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use a powerful American long-range weapon for limited strikes inside Russia in response to North Korea’s deployment of thousands of troops to aid Moscow’s war effort, according to two senior U.S. officials.
The easing of restrictions on allowing Kyiv to use the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to hit targets inside Russia is a significant reversal in U.S. policy and comes as some 10,000 elite North Korean troops have been sent to Kursk, a region of Russia along Ukraine’s northern border, to help Moscow’s forces retake territory gained by Ukraine.
The Biden administration fears that more North Korean special forces units could follow in support of this effort.
The move precedes by two months the return to the White House of President-elect Donald Trump, who has signaled he intends to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, though without offering details of how he will do so.
As they previously did with F-16s and Western battle tanks, among other things, Ukrainian officials have been characterizing this authorization as the One Weird Trick that will win the war for Kyiv. When it proves not to be that I imagine they’ll move on to some other request, although with Trump taking office they may not find Washington very receptive to their next pitch. From Russia’s perspective, while the Kremlin has been warning that any use of Western arms in this fashion would lead inexorably to World War III, I suspect they’ll manage to keep any retaliation in check as they’ve done every other time Ukraine and its support network has crossed a supposed Russian “red line.”
As the piece suggests the expectation is that Ukrainian forces will initially make use of the ATACMS to attack North Korean forces currently operating in Russia’s Kursk oblast. In particular the aim seems to be to kill enough North Korean soldiers that Pyongyang reconsiders any plans it might have to send additional units to Russia. Beyond that they may help the Ukrainians degrade Russia’s logistical support network to some degree, although they have a maximum range of only 190 miles so it’s not as though they will enable strikes deep inside Russian territory.
Meanwhile, a heavy overnight barrage of Russian missiles and drones pounded Ukraine’s electrical grid and has forced the Ukrainian government to adopt new power restrictions that will go into effect on Monday. The strikes also killed several people across the country, while a Sunday evening Russian airstrike killed at least ten people, including two children, in Ukraine’s Sumy oblast. Ukraine’s power grid has been battered repeatedly and there are serious concerns about whether it can sustain the country through another winter.
AMERICAS
SURINAME
At Jacobin, Sharda Ganga and Jerome Phelps look to Suriname for a case study in the workings of the Western-backed financial system:
Suriname is a former Dutch colony in South America, best known for the pristine Amazon forests that cover 93 percent of the country and make it one of only three countries that absorb more carbon emissions than they produce. It has recently become more interesting to the rest of the world for two main reasons: the fact that it is experiencing one of the world’s worst debt crises, and the discovery of offshore oil and gas in immense quantities.
The people of Suriname find themselves living in a dual reality. In the present, there is a brutal austerity program imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), wreaking the usual havoc on people’s lives. At the same time, politicians assure them that the country has a bright future ahead in which abundant oil revenues will solve all problems and benefit everyone.
Suriname is an important case study in the way financialized neocolonialism works in the twenty-first century. A feminist perspective on debt can supply us with invaluable tools for thinking about the destructive impact of debt and finding ways to combat it.
UNITED STATES
Finally, at Foreign Affairs Leslie Vinjamuri and Max Yoeli argue that this week’s G20 summit in Brazil may be an inflection point for US relations with the “Global South”:
The United States is failing in the global South. Its popularity and influence have waned, and policies that recent U.S. administrations have designed to close the gap have fallen short. Allegations of hypocrisy that countries in the global South now make—centered on the claim that the United States has supported Ukraine but has been complicit in mass death and suffering in Gaza and Lebanon—reflect historic skepticism that Washington’s advocacy for international norms reflects a commitment to humanitarian principles rather than self-interest, and a growing perception that developing countries bear the cost of uneven U.S. leadership. The disproportionate struggle that many global South countries faced in recovering economically from the COVID-19 pandemic only added to their disappointment with advanced economies’ so-called vaccine nationalism. The United States’ rejection of free trade has shrunk sought-after market access opportunities, while new industrial policies raise fresh hurdles. As a result, despite making significant strides in its economic and strategic engagement with the global South, the United States faces a trust deficit.
Countries in the global South have attempted to press the United States for better engagement in multilateral forums. But addressing the trust deficit through these postwar institutions has not been effective, because they have become part of the problem. They have failed to adapt to a new distribution of power, fueling charges of hypocrisy and breeding competitive multilateralism. Antagonistic alternatives—from the expanded BRICS to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—are vying for influence. American and Western leadership are not the only games in town, and more than ever, the United States must earn its partnerships with rising powers such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election has further raised the stakes. He has vowed to pursue a more unilateral, “America first” foreign policy, championing aggressive economic policies that will buffet emerging markets, antagonizing allies, partners, and adversaries alike, and threatening mass deportations while inveighing against immigrants with dehumanizing language. But Trump will not be able to ignore the global South’s collective demands. The markets and materials that these countries possess will only become more central to solving problems that the incoming president expresses great interest in addressing, such as bolstering U.S. supply chains and securing critical minerals. For the rest of the world, the participation of the global South is increasingly crucial to tackling challenges that Trump tries to ignore, such as climate change and global health crises.
Shout out to Suriname