World roundup: December 12 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Korea, Ukraine, and elsewhere

Dec 12, 2024

You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:

I need to release tonight’s roundup early and a bit abbreviated due to a family commitment this evening. We will catch up on things tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

TODAY IN HISTORY

December 12, 627: A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats a Sasanid Persian army at the Battle of Nineveh. The Byzantine victory broke the Persian resistance and allowed Heraclius and his army to raid deeper into the heart of the empire. Two months later what was left of the Persian army and the Persian nobility overthrew Emperor Khosrow II, who was already on shaky ground due to the failure of his siege of Constantinople in 626, and so brought to an end the Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628. It was the last war the Romans and Persians ever fought against one another, as both empires would soon be confronted by the Islamic caliphate emerging from Arabia.

This plaque, on a 12th century cross held by the Louvre museum in Paris, depicts Heraclius receiving the submission of Persian emperor Khosrow II—an event that did not happen (Wikimedia Commons)

December 12, 1098: The army of the First Crusade captures the Syrian fortress of Maʿarrat al-Nuʿman. The end of this siege saw some of the worst atrocities committed during the campaign, as Crusaders slaughtered as many as 20,000 surrendered defenders and civilians. After the siege, the Crusaders quickly ran of out provisions and by several accounts (even in “official” Crusader chronicles) turned to cannibalism to survive.

INTERNATIONAL

Perhaps this comes as no surprise, but a new report finds that violence is on the rise around the world:

The data, released today by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), shows in raw numbers how the level of conflicts around the world have doubled over the past five years, amid wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar and elsewhere.
Among the data for this year, ACLED found that the number of people killed in conflicts in 2024 had grown by 30 percent since the preceding year, from 179,099 deaths in 2023 to 233,597 in 2024.
The war in Ukraine was the deadliest in 2024, with 67,000 reported deaths, while 35,000 deaths were reported in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
By the end of the year, the number of acts of violence recorded by ACLED is projected to reach almost 200,000, a quarter higher than last year and double what it was five years ago, with sharp increases found in Lebanon (958 percent), as Israel staged a large-scale military intervention, and Russia (349 percent), which has seen more attacks amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Israeli airstrikes killed “dozens” of people across Gaza on Thursday, according to civil defense officials. A couple of those strikes killed at least 15 people serving as security for aid trucks entering southern Gaza, which is the sort of thing that doesn’t just kill the people who were targeted but also helps to exacerbate the territory’s humanitarian crisis—a crisis that United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesperson Louise Wateridge called “apocalyptic” during a tour of central Gaza with journalists. Another strike killed at least 25 people in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, with dozens more reportedly wounded, and those figures may rise as recovery work continues. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports on the dire conditions facing the still-living residents of Gaza as they approach a second winter under Israeli onslaught:

Tens of thousands of people sheltering on Gaza’s exposed Mediterranean coastline face harsh winter conditions with inadequate shelter, food and fuel, as temperatures plunge in the devastated territory and a series of storms destroy their makeshift tents.
In recent weeks, bad weather has forced hundreds living in the coastal strip of Gaza around al-Mawasi to evacuate their shelters, ruining cooking utensils, clothes, stocks of food and precious firewood. Al-Mawasi was designated a “humanitarian zone” by Israeli military offensives and is packed with people displaced during 13 months of fighting, airstrikes and artillery bombardment.

The Paraguayan government moved its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem on Thursday, becoming one of six countries to recognize that city as Israel’s capital. In Paraguay’s case this is actually a re-recognition—it shifted the embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 but moved it back to Tel Aviv a few months later, after the election of former President Mario Abdo. Current President Santiago Peña announced shortly after taking office last year that he would reverse Abdo’s decision.

SYRIA

Syria’s new interim government revealed a bit more about its plans to AFP on Thursday. According to government spokesperson Obaida Arnaout, The Gang is “suspending” Syria’s constitution and its parliament for what is intended to be a three month transition, during which time “a judicial and human rights committee” will “examine the constitution and then introduce amendments.” Three months strikes me as a very short turnaround if the aim is to amend the constitution and then presumably select a more permanent government, but time with of course tell. Arnaout also stressed that the new government aims to institute “rule of law” and will “respect religious and cultural diversity in Syria.”

US officials, chiefly Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have suggested that Washington is open to recognizing the new government even though it’s still designating that government’s leading faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as a terrorist organization. Earlier this week Blinken outlined a few prerequisites the US would have, including the aforementioned “respect” for the rights of minorities as well as commitments to ensuring the flow of humanitarian aid (including for the 1.1 million people the UN estimates have been newly displaced by HTS’s recent march on Damascus) and preventing Syria from becoming a threat—either to its immediate neighbors or as a hub for international terrorism. The US is also expecting help in locating Americans who were held by Assad’s security forces—one US citizen, a man named Travis Timmerman, has already been found and released, but the search for journalist Austin Tice continues.

I would imagine some resolution to the problem of Syria’s chemical weapons program is also on Washington’s list of requirements. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons held an emergency summit on that subject on Thursday, after informing the new government earlier this week that it is obliged to safeguard and enable the destruction of any chemical weapons it finds. OPCW head Fernando Arias González also expressed concern about the IDF’s massive ongoing bombardment of Syrian military sites because, go figure, they might hit a chemical weapons storage site and cause a catastrophe.

As for the other global power that may have some interest in Syrian events, Al-Monitor’s Joyce Karam reports that the Chinese government seems mostly unpreturbed by what’s happened—except with respect to the role being played by one of HTS’s close affiliates:

The fall of the Assad dynasty in Syria after over five decades of authoritarian rule in the heart of the Levant has sent shockwaves across global capitals, including Beijing. But it would be a mistake to assume that it’s a major setback for China, given its good ties with deposed President Bashar al-Assad.
Yes, the Assads' regional policies were in semblance with China’s when it came to supporting the Palestinians, defying US policy and shoring up ties with Iran. But it was Bashar’s cronyism, his mishandling of the war and the economy that made him less of a strategic asset for Beijing.
As it looks forward, China’s biggest concern in post-Assad Syria is about the Uyghur separatist group — the Turkestan Islamic Party — fighting alongside the main rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
As the Assad rule disintegrated on Sunday, China’s official reaction was to urge stability. Beijing “is closely following the development of the situation in Syria and hopes that Syria returns to stability as soon as possible,” China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

LEBANON

The US military’s Central Command confirmed on Thursday that the IDF has withdrawn from the town of Al-Khiyam in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh province. This marks the first Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon under the terms of the mostly notional ceasefire agreement it reached with Hezbollah last month. The IDF continues to pound Lebanon from the air on a daily basis but it does have 60 days from the onset of the agreement to withdraw its ground forces. Hezbollah in the meantime is obliged to pull its forces north of the Litani River.

IRAN

According to a new International Atomic Energy Agency report, the Iranian government has agreed to accept “tougher monitoring” of its Fordow uranium enrichment facility. Tehran is ramping up enrichment activity at that site in retaliation for the censure it suffered at last month’s IAEA board of governors meeting, so this is apparently a concession to fears that this escalated activity could be the prelude to a nuclear weapons program. The IAEA estimates that Iran currently has enough uranium enriched to the 60 percent level to produce four weapons (after additional enrichment), though there’s no indication that Iranian officials have decided to take that path.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

According to Drop Site, negotiations over the placement of a Chinese naval base in Pakistan are breaking down over a particularly substantial Pakistani demand:

The breakdown of talks with China comes amid a broader crisis facing the military, with public discontent over a failing economy, rigged elections, and the imprisonment of former prime minister Imran Khan triggering mass public protests in the capital this November. China has been long cited as a potential savior for the country's flailing economy. But, as Drop Site News has learned, that relationship appears to be in free fall over public and private disputes over security concerns, as well as China's demand to build a military base inside Pakistan.
Earlier this year, Drop Site reported on negotiations over the creation of a Chinese military base at the strategic Pakistani port city of Gwadar. According to classified Pakistani military documents, Pakistan had given private assurances to China that it would be permitted to transform Gwadar into a permanent base for the Chinese military.
As part of those ongoing talks, as Drop Site has learned from sources informed about the conversations, Pakistan's military-backed government has asked China to provide it sweeping concessions, including economic and military aid to insulate it from Western backlash over the strategically located port. But the request for a nuclear second-strike capability to be provided to Islamabad by Beijing goes well beyond previously known demands.

“Second-strike capability” simply means that a country is able to retaliate even if an enemy’s nuclear first strike eliminates a substantial portion of its nuclear program. It’s the basis of nuclear deterrence/“mutually assured destruction” and the reason why the US government prizes its “triad” of land-based, air-based, and submarine-based nukes. China possesses this capability, as do Russia, the US, and—crucially, for this discussion—India (Israel would also be a nuclear triad state but of course as we all know Israel* definitely** does*** not**** possess***** nuclear****** weapons*******).

Pakistan is not a nuclear triad state, and seems to be particularly deficient in the area of submarine-launched nukes although Drop Site doesn’t get into exactly what they’ve demanded of Beijing. The Pakistanis want to be on par with India, but clearly the Chinese government is either uncomfortable with giving Pakistan this capability—which in addition to being a security concern in its own right would violate China’s obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty—or it’s expecting more in return than simply getting naval access to a port it has essentially built. Drop Site has been chronicling a decline in Pakistani-Chinese relations more generally, as Chinese loans to Pakistan go unpaid, Pakistan’s economic dependence on China grows, and Chinese nationals in Pakistan find themselves increasingly targeted by violence that Pakistani security forces are apparently incapable of preventing.

INDIA

Indian soldiers killed at least seven Maoist Naxalite rebels in a battle in Chhattisgarh state on Thursday. Indian officials apparently did not go into any detail regarding how this incident came about but authorities have intensified their operations against the Naxalites in recent months.

MYANMAR

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2024 Myanmar opium report finds that some 45,200 hectares of Myanmar land was used to cultivate opium poppies this year. That’s 4 percent less than what was under cultivation last year, a tiny drop that nonetheless looms large because it’s the first time that figure has declined since Myanmar’s military seized power in its 2021 coup. Opium production in Myanmar thus also declined, by 8 percent to 995 metric tons. It doesn’t sound like these declines can be traced to any action by the government or the country’s various militant groups—in fact, the report speculates that a deteriorating security situation in key opium-growing regions may simply have made production more difficult. Myanmar easily remains the world’s largest opium producer, after the Afghan government’s crackdown on poppy farming drastically reduced cultivation levels there.

CHINA

Intrigue suggests that mounting US restrictions on chip exports to China may be putting otherwise US-friendly companies in a bind:

One of the reasons the US has been able to ratchet up this pressure on China’s chip sector is because of its dominance over one of three sector bottlenecks: chip design (where Nvidia leads). The other two bottlenecks are conveniently controlled by US partners: Taiwan’s TSMC dominates advanced manufacturing, and Dutch company ASML dominates the extreme ultraviolet radiation tech that underpins it all.
This arrangement offers the US a lot of leverage in a critical sector. But one of the reasons US partners have gone along with US export controls (and forgone sales to China) is that, while their China revenues have dropped, they can still make a tonne of cash there by selling lower-tech chips. And yet as the China-US tit for tat escalates, tighter US controls risk further eating into revenues from ASML, Nvidia, and beyond.
So while the US and its partners are presenting a united front for now, that unity will come under more pressure as the stakes rise and the export controls continue to bite.

SOUTH KOREA

As expected, a group of South Korean opposition parties has submitted a new motion to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol following his attempted self-coup last week. A vote is scheduled to take place on Saturday, barring of course another walkout by Yoon’s People Power Party. Indeed it’s unclear how much support Yoon has left within the party, as he’s now apparently rejected PPP leadership’s demand that he resign or at least recuse himself from state affairs. The opposition in theory only needs eight of PPP’s 108 members of parliament to support impeachment for the motion to pass. Party leader Han Dong-hoon appeared on Thursday to give members free rein to attend Saturday’s session and vote as they wish.

Yoon is also facing an investigation into whether his actions last week comprised a “rebellion” against the South Korean state. He’s denied that charge but authorities tried for a second time to send police into his presidential offices to search for evidence. Security personnel prevented an initial attempt at a raid on Wednesday.

MALI

Human Rights Watch issued a new report on Thursday accusing Malian security forces and their Russian mercenary auxiliaries of having killed at least 32 civilians and burned at least 100 homes in parts of central and northern Mali since May. Likewise, jihadist militants have “summarily executed” at least 47 people and displaced thousands over that period.

GHANA

Using Ghana’s recent presidential election as a jumping off point, Al Jazeera looks at what has been a difficult year for incumbent political parties across Africa:

While it is impossible to box all African countries and their electorates together, voters largely assessed some of the same key issues in deciding who to vote for, experts say.
“There’s a sense that voters want to punish parties for failure to boost economies, create jobs and fight corruption,” Graham Hopwood, executive director of the Namibia-based Institute for Public Policy Research, told Al Jazeera. In some cases, opposition groups played on these failures in their campaigns, and bonded to get stronger, he said.
Soaring inflation in Ghana – the kind not felt in a decade – corruption, and severe environmental degradation from illegal mining or “galamsey” proved the final death knell for the ruling NPP government led by President Nana Akufo-Addo.
The NDC campaigned on the government’s failures, but it was ultimately the low turnout of the NPP’s own support base that hurt the party, aptly reflecting how much it had let Ghanaians down. Voter turnout on Sunday was only 60 percent because many NPP supporters, frustrated with the government and lacking faith in the opposition, did not vote, Yeboah of the CDD said.

According to Al Jazeera’s count, of the 12 elections in Africa this year five of them (covering four countries and the breakaway Somaliland region) have seen total shifts of control to the opposition and two more have seen “significant opposition gains.” At least a couple of these same complaints (inflation and corruption) have fueled similar anti-incumbent sentiment across Europe and in the United States.

MOZAMBIQUE

The civil rights organization Plataforma Eleitoral Decide says that at least 110 people have been killed since October 21 in protests over Mozambique’s October 9 presidential election. According to Amnesty International those fatalities can be linked to violence from state security forces, who have shot 357 people over the course of these demonstrations. At least 34 people have been killed in protests so far this month, so clearly neither the demonstrations nor the government crackdown against them are showing any signs of weakening.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

Russian forces appear to have advanced to just a few kilometers outside the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which is experiencing “extremely intense” fighting according to Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi. Pokrovsk has been a prime Russian target for several months now. Its transportation links make it important to the Ukrainian military and it is home to the only mine in Ukraine that produces coking coal, a necessary element of the steelmaking process. That facility has reportedly begun shutting down operations due to the Russian advance.

BULGARIA

The European Union agreed on Thursday to admit Bulgaria and Romania into its free movement “Schengen zone” beginning at the start of next year. Both countries joined the EU in 2007 and have been deemed qualified for Schengen membership since 2010, but internal objections—largely driven by concerns over “undocumented migration”—had frozen the accession process in place. The final objector, Austria, dropped its veto ahead of Thursday’s vote.

UNITED STATES

Finally, The New York Times looks back at the US war in Afghanistan through the lens of a single province, Nuristan, that reveals the extent to which the US military wound up essentially defeating itself:

Convinced that Nuristan would become a transport hub and hide-out for Al Qaeda and its allies, the Americans built bases and aggressively patrolled an area that, for the better part of a century, had been granted autonomy from its own government.
Nuristan was never destined to be a focal point of the war on terror. It is isolated, even by the standards of Afghanistan, a landscape of sheer mountain ridges, snow-capped peaks and river gorges, as beautiful as it is unforgiving.
The British mostly steered clear of the area in their doomed forays into Afghanistan that began in the 1800s. The Russians, in their own failed bid more than a century later, barely entered. Even the Taliban avoided it during their rule in the 1990s.
Only the Americans dared to encroach into the region, and in doing so created the very insurgent stronghold they feared most.
The United States dropped more than 1,000 bombs in a place it never needed to be. Instead of winning hearts and minds, the Americans unwittingly sowed the seeds of their own demise here in the Waygal Valley — just as it did in much of Afghanistan — then stayed for years to reap the harvest.