World roundup: December 14-15 2024

Stories from Syria, South Korea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: We are approaching the holiday season and it has been my custom to take a couple of weeks off at this time of year to recharge. With family arriving as soon as this coming weekend my plan at this point is for Thursday’s roundup to be our final scheduled roundup of 2024, with the intention of resuming our regular schedule on January 7. We will have at least one column coming out during that period and I imagine there may be one or two major events that might cause me to pop in but for the most part we’ll be in vacation mode. As always, thanks for reading and supporting the newsletter!

THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY

December 14, 1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team become the first human beings (that we know of, I suppose) to set foot on the South Pole. The expedition had set out from its base camp on October 19 and arrived back on January 25, 1912.

December 14, 1995: The Dayton Agreement ends the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. While ending that war was no minor feat, the agreement has had mixed at best results overall. Under Dayton’s terms the various warring parties—Bosniak, Bosnian Croat, and Bosnian Serb—agreed not to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina but instead to establish an internal partition between the Serbian Republika Srpska and the Croatian-Bosniak Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The effect has been similar to a full partition or arguably worse, because instead of two functioning states (or one, had Republika Srpska united with Serbia) what’s emerged is one state whose two component halves rarely agree on anything. That leaves most governance up to the “High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina” who is selected by Dayton’s “Peace Implementation Council” or in other words imposed on Bosnia from abroad.

December 15, 1256: Having already received the surrender of the last Assassin imam, Rukn al-Din Khurshah, Mongolian warlord Hulagu and his army enter and destroy the main Assassin fortress at Alamut, completing their campaign against that infamous religious order.

The surrender of Alamut, as depicted in a manuscript of Persian historian Rashid al-Din’s 14th century Compendium of Chronicles (Wikimedia Commons)

December 15, 1925: Reza Pahlavi is crowned Shah of Iran.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 48 people across Gaza on Sunday. Among them was yet another journalist, Al Jazeera’s Ahmed al-Louh, who Israeli officials later asserted was a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. One IDF airstrike hit a displaced persons shelter in Khan Younis, while Israeli soldiers raided a shelter in Beit Hanoun, killing at least 15 and forcing the survivors to relocate to Gaza City. Israeli attacks killed at least 22 people on Saturday. That death toll includes seven killed in a strike on a shelter in, yes, Gaza City. The Israeli government continues to demand credit for evacuating civilians from combat zones, but it makes no difference when every square inch of the territory is a combat zone.

Palestinian Authority security forces killed a senior figure in the Jenin Brigades, a PIJ affiliate, in fighting in the Jenin refugee camp on Saturday. The PA is on the rampage in the West Bank in what it’s calling “Operation Protect the Homeland,” targeting the members of militant groups that aren’t under the PA/Fatah umbrella. One might question which “homeland” they’re “protecting” but I digress. Elsewhere, the Israeli government announced on Sunday that it’s closing its embassy in Dublin over what Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the “extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government.” In recent months Ireland has joined South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel and has recognized Palestine as a state, while Irish officials have indicated that they do recognize the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

SYRIA

There are a number of items related to Syria:

• According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, “loyalist elements of the former regime” ambushed a group of insurgents, or I guess ex-insurgents now, from the Turkish-backed Faylaq al-Sham faction on Saturday in Syria’s Latakia province, killing four of them. Syria’s new authorities announced that they’re sending reinforcements to the region, which is not ideal given that Latakia and its environs are the Alawite heartland and many of the fighters that may now be deployed there are Sunni extremists of one variety or another. Speaking of Sunni extremists, the SOHR also reported that Islamic State fighters killed six shepherds near Palmyra on Saturday.

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Saturday that Washington has “been in contact” with the factions now in control of Damascus. There had been some question about this given that the main faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is still designated as a terrorist group by the department Blinken runs. I guess the rules about interacting with those sorts of folks are more flexible than US officials typically acknowledge. It’s unclear what the contact has entailed but there’s no indication that the Biden administration is prepared to offer any sanctions relief—not that you would expect anything that dramatic a scant week after HTS and company seized power.

• “Four Syrian officials” have told Reuters that while the Russian military is reducing its presence in the country it is not leaving altogether. HTS and company do not seem to be pushing the Russians out of Syria, nor do they seem to have had any meaningful discussions about maintaining Russia’s military bases—which, again, it’s been a week and there are obviously more pressing issues that need to be addressed.

• HTS/Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa told reporters in Damascus over the weekend that “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflict,” even as he criticized the Israeli government for threatening “a new unjustified escalation” with the actions it’s taken over the past week. The IDF has carried out more than 800 airstrikes across Syria since former leader Bashar al-Assad fled the country last weekend, targeting military sites including air defenses. It has also occupied a “buffer zone” in southern Syria’s Golan region and is trying to force inhabitants to leave the area—going so far as to destroy infrastructure in the places it wants to depopulate. Meanwhile the Israeli government has allocated some $11 million to developing the parts of the Golan it occupied back in 1967, with the goal of doubling the settler population there.

LEBANON

Hezbollah’s leader acknowledged that the group has suffered a setback with Assad’s ouster but seemed to downplay its significance in a speech this weekend:

“Hezbollah has lost the supply route coming through Syria at the current stage, but this is a small detail and may change with time,” the Hezbollah leader, Naim Qassem, said Saturday in a televised speech.

He added that Hezbollah — which recently agreed to a cease-fire with Israel after months of war — would look for alternate means of getting supplies or see if its Syria route could be re-established under “a new regime.”

He did not specifically mention the coalition of rebel forces that swept into Damascus, the Syrian capital, last weekend, or Syria’s deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, who had for years relied on help from Hezbollah and Iran in his country’s civil war.

Read further into that piece and you’ll learn that the Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire “has appeared to hold despite periodic exchanges of fire,” which is how The New York Times characterizes near-daily Israeli airstrikes. It’s the newspaper of record, you know. At any rate, I realize Qassem doesn’t have many options and the Syrian government is still a blank slate right now, but something tells me it is not going to be amenable to taking over Assad’s role as a supply line from Iran.

ASIA

GEORGIA

Georgia’s electoral college voted to make former soccer player Mikheil Kavelashvili the country’s new president on Saturday. This is not a huge surprise insofar as Kavelashvili was the only candidate running and had the backing of the ruling Georgian Dream party, whose opponents are effectively boycotting politics in protest against what they claim was a rigged parliamentary election back in October. It does set up an interesting scenario later this month, when incumbent Salome Zourabichvili’s term is officially supposed to end. Zourabichvili is still refusing to leave office, citing the aforementioned disputed election and therefore the electoral college’s supposed illegitimacy. I don’t see how she has any recourse here but I suppose we’ll find out.

SOUTH KOREA

The South Korean parliament voted on Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk-Yeol over his attempted self-coup earlier this month, with 12 members of his own People Power Party joining the opposition to make 204 votes for removal—four more than needed. It could be that Yoon’s defiant address on Thursday was the final straw for the party, which had saved him in the previous impeachment vote. He reiterated that defiance after Saturday’s vote, promising to fight his impeachment when the case moves to the South Korean Constitutional Court for final approval. The court has up to six months to issue a ruling and in the meantime Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will now legally assume presidential responsibilities while Yoon is suspended. Yoon could cut that interim period short by resigning but he’s shown no inclination to do so.

AFRICA

SUDAN

A Rapid Support Forces drone strike reportedly killed at least 38 people in the besieged North Darfur city of Al-Fashir on Sunday. According to the city’s resistance committee, the drone fired four missiles into the center of Al-Fashir. Initial casualty estimates were much lower and the current estimate may rise as recovery work continues. The strike comes two days after an RSF drone killed at least nine people in the city’s last functioning hospital.

LIBYA

Rival armed factions battled one another in the Libyan city of Zawiyah on Sunday, setting fire to parts of Libya’s second largest oil refinery and forcing the National Oil Company to declare “force majeure.” It’s unclear what started the fighting nor has there been any word that I’ve seen as far as casualties. Zawiyah is located west of Tripoli and the violence apparently forced the closure of the main coastal road that links it to other parts of the country, which may make it more difficult to get confirmed information as to what’s happening.

WEST AFRICA

Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) members have convinced three junta-led breakaway states—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—to accept a six month “grace period” after they leave the bloc as scheduled on January 29. Which means their actual exit date is now July 29, with ECOWAS apparently planning to spend that six month period urging them not to go. In the meantime the three countries will remain part of the bloc’s visa-free travel zone among other things. The grace period also allows more time for people and entities that will be impacted by their eventual departure—which the juntas still say is “irreversible’’—to prepare.

MALI

An apparent jihadist militant attack on a village in central Mali’s Mopti region left at least seven people dead and caused significant property damage on Sunday. A local civil society group is reporting at least nine dead, including two people killed in a follow-on attack targeting a neighboring village.

NIGER

Nigerien authorities say that two jihadist attacks in the country’s Tillabéri region left at least 39 civilians dead between December 12 and 14. These incidents took place in the same area where there were reports of a jihadist attack that killed at least 90 soldiers and 40 civilians on December 11, but Nigerien officials continue to insist that those reports are false.

ETHIOPIA

Addis Standard’s Batseba Kasahun writes that foreign actors are looting the war torn Tigray region’s gold resources to devastating effect:

Tigray’s gold-rich landscapes have become centers of chaos and lawlessness. Mining sites across the region have turned into battlegrounds for control, with deadly clashes regularly erupting. Since April, many have died in violent altercations tied to the mining activities.

A particularly gruesome incident near the Weri River highlighted the escalating instability in the region, with fatalities underscoring the high stakes and pervasive lawlessness. The conflict involved a diverse group of participants: former combatants in Tigray, local youth, internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, and foreign nationals.

The Rahwa mine, renowned for its substantial gold reserves, has drawn comparisons to the “blood diamond” mines of the Congo. An anonymous official from Tigray’s Mining Bureau described the site as heavily militarized, with generals and armed groups exploiting advanced machinery to dominate the illegal trade.

Foreign nationals, particularly Chinese miners, have been implicated in the illegal mining operations. Operating without proper licenses, these foreign actors often collaborate with local armed groups and military leaders, heightening tensions with the local population.

Another major foreign actor appears to be the UAE, given that much of the gold eventually winds up being sold in Dubai markets. The UAE, coincidentally I’m sure, helped arm the Ethiopian government during its 2020-2022 war against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The illicit mining is reportedly wreaking havoc with the region’s environment, its economy, and its tenuous security situation.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Peace talks between Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame that were supposed to have taken place on Sunday wound up being canceled. The Angolan government, which was supposed to have served as mediator, announced the cancellation without offering an explanation, but the Congolese government blamed Kagame for refusing to show up while the Rwandan government cited Tshisekedi’s unwillingness to engage in direct negotiations with the M23 militant group. Rwanda’s support for M23 and its ongoing rebellion in the eastern DRC is the reason these talks were organized in the first place. The cancellation was preceded by escalating violence in the DRC’s North Kivu province, where a ceasefire between the militants and the Congolese government has all but broken down. Authorities on Friday accused M23 of killing at least 12 civilians earlier in the week, a charge the rebels rejected.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

A Russian oil tanker broke apart amid choppy weather in the Black Sea on Sunday, leaving at least one person dead and spilling upwards of 4200 metric tons of oil or oil product into the water. A second tanker was damaged and is now drifting but I’m not sure whether it too is spilling its cargo into the sea. Russian authorities are reportedly responding to the spill and have opened investigations into what happened on both vessels to cause them to take so much damage.

UKRAINE

The Russian military seized two more villages in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast on Sunday, one near Pokrovsk and the other near Kurakhove. Those are the two axes on which the Russians have focused most of their efforts in recent months. Russian “war bloggers” have claimed that their forces are as close as 1.5 kilometers outside of Pokrovsk, and the situation there is so critical that the Ukrainian military replaced its Donetsk commander on Saturday.

AMERICAS

UNITED STATES

Finally, Informed Comment’s Juan Cole wonders whether we can finally declare the Global War on Terror to have been a resounding failure:

The region is now, however, seeing a resurgence of radical, populist political Islam of a sort that is unlikely to be good for American interests. In 2021, Afghanistan fell again to the Taliban. The Arab Spring revolts sometimes took this direction. The Houthis, political Islamists, have 80% of the population of Yemen under their rule, and the Muslim Brotherhood has some of the rest. Tripoli and Western Libya are ruled by exponents of political Islam. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in the Sudan, challenged by the Rapid Support Forces, has increasingly turned to fighters animated by political Islam — a comeback for a group that had been powerful in previous Sudanese governments but lost out to secularists in the 2019 revolution.

It is true that some of these movements are Shiite political Islamists, and some are Sunni, and that they are most often at loggerheads. They have very occasionally cooperated, as in 2004 in Iraq. But if they are generally anti-American, it is cold comfort to Washington that they do not like each other, either.

And now a former al-Qaeda affiliate, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or Levant Liberation Council, which is still listed by many countries — including the US — as a terrorist organization, has proved victorious in Syria.