World roundup: March 15-16 2025
Stories from Yemen, Zambia, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: I will be away from the newsletter tomorrow for the St. Patrick’s Day holiday, so Tuesday’s roundup with be a double. I’m going to be doing the same thing next week for reasons I will explain at that time. Thanks for reading!
TODAY IN HISTORY
March 15, 44 BCE: A group of Roman senators calling themselves “the Liberators” assassinates Julius Caesar due to fears that he had designs on ending the Roman Republic and making himself a monarch. Their actions ironically hastened the end of the Republic, sparking first the Liberators’ Civil War and then the civil war between Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian, which left Octavian victorious and in so dominant a position that he was able to make himself emperor.
March 15, 2011: Protests against the government of Bashar al-Assad that had begun in the city of Daraa earlier in the month spread to Damascus, the Syrian capital. This is usually the date marked as the start of the Syrian civil war. That conflict finally ended in December 2024 when rebel forces entered Damascus and deposed Assad, who fled to Russia.
March 16, 1527: Though outnumbered, an early Mughal army under the dynasty’s founder, Babur, defeats a conglomeration of forces under Rajput leader Rana Sanga at the Battle of Khanwa in northeastern India. Babur made effective use of field artillery and wagon fortifications, as well as the defection of a large portion of Rana Sanga’s army, to win the battle. In defeat, Rana Sanga’s alliance fell apart and Mughal control of northern India was secured—at least until they were (temporarily) ousted from power in 1540.
March 16, 1968: American soldiers massacre hundreds of people in the South Vietnamese village of Sơn Mỹ, an incident that became known as the “My Lai Massacre.” According to the Vietnamese government US forces slaughtered 504 people, concentrated primarily in the hamlets of Mỹ Lai (whence the incident takes its name) and Mỹ Khê. They raped several women and children and mutilated their bodies after executing them. The US military initially covered up the atrocity by claiming that the deaths had occurred during a battle against Viet Cong forces, but the efforts of military veteran Ronald Ridenhour and journalist Seymour Hersh eventually uncovered the truth. Despite the extent of the brutality only one US soldier was convicted in connection with the massacre—Lieutenant William Calley. US President Richard Nixon commuted his life sentence and Calley wound up serving three and a half years in house arrest.
March 16, 1988: The Iraqi military massacres between 3200 and 5000 Kurds in the city of Halabja using mustard gas and an undetermined nerve agent. The attack was the gruesome centerpiece of Saddam Hussein’s Anfal Genocide, which targeted Iraqi Kurds who resisted Hussein’s government with Iranian assistance, under a broader plan to “Arabize” northern Iraq.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Syrian Defense Ministry is claiming that Hezbollah fighters abducted and murdered three Syrian soldiers from an area west of the city of Homs over the weekend and says it has begun a retaliatory operation along the Lebanese border. Hezbollah is denying that any abduction took place, and Lebanese sources are instead saying that the three soldiers “crossed into Lebanese territory” and engaged in a gunfight with members of a local smuggling network in the border village of Qasr. All three were killed and the Lebanese military repatriated their bodies to Syria. There have been reports of Syrian artillery fire on Qasr.
A piece of previously unexploded ordinance appears to have exploded in the Syrian city of Latakia on Saturday, killing at least 16 people and wounding another 18. Those figures have risen over the past several hours as civil defense workers clear the site, so they may rise still further as that work continues. Syria remains littered by mines, bombs, and other explosive devices, the remnants of its civil war.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed one person in a drone strike in southern Lebanon on Saturday. Three more strikes in the region on Sunday left at least four people dead in total. Invoking their blanket exemption from all ceasefires, Israeli officials claimed that the strikes targeted members of Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the IDF said that a gunshot from the Lebanese side of the border had hit a vehicle in a northern Israeli community, an act it called “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
Elsewhere, I know Donald Trump has talked about making Canada the 51st state but it really sounds like the US is closer to annexing Lebanon. After having dictated Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s cabinet selections, Washington is now reportedly demanding the right to choose the country’s next central bank governor. According to Reuters, US officials are screening candidates based on their willingness to “confront Hezbollah.” Sounds like a very normal and healthy process. Former Lebanese central bank governor Riad Salameh, who was strongly supported by the US while in office, ended his term in 2023 as the target of an Interpol “red notice” over embezzlement and other corruption charges.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF has also been invoking its ceasefire exemption with increasing frequency in Gaza, where it’s killed at least 15 people across a number of strikes over the past two days according to local authorities. That includes at least nine killed, four of them journalists, in one attack on northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya area on Saturday. Israeli officials have attempted to justify their frequent ceasefire violations here by claiming that their strikes target Palestinians who appear somehow to be “threatening” Israeli personnel, but in the case of Saturday’s strike the IDF is claiming it targeted six Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants without, as far as I know, invoking any sort of immediate threat as justification.
Negotiations on either extending the Gaza truce or moving to the second phase of January’s ceasefire agreement are continuing, primarily it seems via Egyptian mediation. Given that the parties can’t even seem to agree on what they’re trying to achieve, with the Israelis focused on an extension and Hamas still insisting on transitioning to that second phase, it seems clear that the situation is at an impasse. Media outlets continue to note that there’s been no return to full-scale fighting since the first phase of January’s agreement lapsed earlier this month, though the Israelis are once again blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and the events of this weekend suggest that the IDF may be gradually ramping back up to full-scale fighting perhaps in hopes that if it moves slowly enough nobody will notice. If we’re back to a point where the IDF isn’t even going to manufacture a perceived threat to justify its attacks then functionally I’m not sure there’s anything left of the truce.
In Israel, meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving to fire the head of the Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar. The two men do not get along and Bar is investigating three of Netanyahu’s aides over allegations that they’ve been getting paid to do public relations work on behalf of Qatar. Netanyahu has reportedly been “inspired” by Donald Trump to purge the upper levels of Israel’s security agencies and install loyalists in those positions.
YEMEN
President Peacemaker decided to reopen his predecessor’s undeclared war on Yemen’s Houthi movement over the weekend, with the US military killing at least 53 people and wounding another 98 in the initial round of what promises to be an extended campaign. In a social media screed, Trump said he would “use overwhelming lethal force” to stop Houthi attacks against Red Sea commercial shipping, attacks the group said it was going to resume on Wednesday morning due to the reimposed Israeli blockade on humanitarian relief entering Gaza. Killing a bunch of Yemeni civilians is apparently preferable to forcing the Israeli government to meet its basic obligations under international humanitarian law.
I should note that those casualty figures are courtesy of officials in northern Yemen, which means they’re ultimately courtesy of the Houthis. Those officials are claiming that most of the casualties were women and children, and the reader is free to treat that with as much or as little credence as they want. On the other hand, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz claimed in a Sunday morning TV interview that the strikes “targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out.” I don’t see any reason to assume that the Trump administration is any more credible a source here than the Houthis, though again I leave it to the reader to make those judgments. The Houthis are claiming to have attacked the USS Harry S. Truman carrier group in the Red Sea in retaliation though there’s no indication of any damage. They also say they’re planning to target US commercial ships in the region.
It’s been nearly ten full years since the US began backing Saudi Arabia’s ultra-violent campaign to remove the Houthis from power in northern Yemen and suffice to say the military option hasn’t worked yet. Waltz and other Trump courtiers are contending that they’re going to Get The Job Done, despite Trump having already been president for four of those ten unsuccessful years. It’s unclear what the administration aims to do differently other than its undoubtedly greater willingness to kill civilians, though it’s threatening to attack “Iranian targets” in Yemen in an attempt to pressure Tehran into making the Houthis stand down. I guess we’ll see if that does the trick.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
The Baluchistan Liberation Army is claiming responsibility for an ambush that killed at least five Pakistani paramilitary security personnel and wounded another 30 on Sunday. The incident—which began with a roadside bombing followed by an attack by gunmen—targeted a bus convoy in Baluchistan province’s Nushki district, which lies along the Afghanistan border. On Saturday, security forces raided two suspected Pakistani Taliban “hideouts” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The ensuing battles left at least two soldiers and nine alleged militants dead. Elsewhere a bombing (so far unclaimed) in the city of Peshawar killed one local religious notable and another Pakistani security unit was ambushed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kurram district. There’s been no word yet as to casualties in that incident.
MYANMAR
A military airstrike on a village in central Myanmar’s Mandalay region killed at least 27 people and wounded another 30 on Friday, according to the Mandalay People’s Defense Force militia and local media. The area where the village is located is under rebel control but there’s no indication that this strike, which reportedly hit a market, was aimed at any sort of military-related target.
Elsewhere, Al Jazeera reports on a particularly bloody campaign by the Chin National Defense Force rebel group to seize the town of Falam in Chin state. The CNDF has lost dozens of fighters in the offensive that it launched back in November but it has reportedly driven the remaining military forces in Falam back to a single outpost that its fighters have “encircled.” The CNDF, one of many “defense forces” that sprang up across Myanmar in opposition to the country’s February 2021 coup, has worked with the Arakan Army in neighboring Rakhine state but is apparently operating independently in Falam. Its seizure of the town would mark a significant victory for the anti-junta rebel movement generally.
CHINA
The Hong Kong-based holding company CK Hutchison is apparently in a bit of hot water with the Chinese government for having sold its ports business to the US-based firm BlackRock. That business, as it happens, includes the Panama Ports Company, which runs major ports at either end of the Panama Canal. Government-aligned media has apparently published a series of editorials and articles questioning the decision to sell off the ports business, particularly to an American company. CK Hutchison hasn’t commented on the bad press but previously insisted that the BlackRock deal had nothing to do with pressure from the Trump administration for those ports to be brought under US control.
AFRICA
BURKINA FASO
Human Rights Watch is accusing “pro-government militias” of having carried out “an apparent massacre” of civilians in Burkina Faso’s Boucle du Mouhoun region on Monday and Tuesday. That allegation is based on an analysis of video that has circulated online and appears to show militia fighters rounding up and executing mostly Fulani civilians near the city of Solenzo. Burkinabè security forces are frequently accused of attacking civilians thought to be friendly with jihadist groups, and that’s particularly true when it comes to the Fulani community given that it is predominantly Muslim. Authorities are denying that any sort of massacre took place and are calling the videos “fake information aimed at undermining social cohesion.”
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
It sounds like DRC-M23 peace talks will commence in Angola on Tuesday as scheduled, though perhaps not exactly as planned. Congolese officials told AFP late Sunday that Kinshasa will send a delegation to Luanda for those negotiations but did not indicate whether its representatives will be open to the direct talks with M23’s delegation that Angolan officials have said they intend to mediate. The militants are claiming that the Congolese military has intensified its attacks on “densely populated areas” of the eastern DRC that are under M23 control, accusing the government of trying to “torpedo” the negotiations. Angolan President João Lourenço called for a ceasefire on Saturday but that appears to have gone unheeded.
ZAMBIA
The AP reports that there are major concerns about the environmental impact of an accident that took place at a Zambian copper mine last month:
Authorities and environmentalists in Zambia fear the long-term impact of an acid spill at a Chinese-owned mine that contaminated a major river and could potentially affect millions of people after signs of pollution were detected at least 100 kilometers (60 miles) downstream.
The spill happened on Feb. 18 when a tailings dam that holds acidic waste from a copper mine in the north of the country collapsed, according to investigators from the Engineering Institution of Zambia.
The collapse allowed some 50 million liters of waste containing concentrated acid, dissolved solids and heavy metals to flow into a stream that links to the Kafue River, Zambia’s most important waterway, the engineering institution said.
“It is an environmental disaster really of catastrophic consequences,” said Chilekwa Mumba, an environmental activist who works in Zambia’s Copperbelt Province.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Russian military says it recaptured two more villages in Kursk oblast over the weekend. According to The New York Times, European analysts assess that the Ukrainian military’s footprint in Kursk has shrunk to a scant 30 square miles along the border after an intense Russian advance over the past week or so. Ukrainian forces are remaining in that small area mostly to interfere with any Russian attempt to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine’s Sumy oblast. Contrary to recent claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, it does not appear that the Ukrainians have been “encircled” by Russian forces.
UKRAINE
Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN on Sunday that he’s expecting Trump and Putin to speak sometime over the coming week to discuss the terms of a potential Ukrainian ceasefire. In not-quite-rejecting the ceasefire on Thursday, Putin told reporters that he needed to talk through some “issues” with Trump before he could properly assess the proposal.
It remains unclear what Putin is going to demand in return for agreeing to a ceasefire, but one assumes he’ll want some information as to what the US and Ukrainians are thinking with respect to any sort of peacekeeping arrangements once a ceasefire is in place. European leaders claim to be assembling a NATO/European Union-centric “coalition” that would put peacekeeping forces in Ukraine, though Putin has more or less rejected that general framework several times. French President Emmanuel Macron, one of the driving forces behind the “coalition,” argued over the weekend that “it’s not up to Russia” whether or not a sovereign Ukrainian government requests European peacekeepers. In the abstract that’s true, but Putin can simply refuse to entertain a ceasefire that doesn’t meet his demands. He might be risking some sort of economic retaliation from the US if he does that, but he might very well be prepared to take that risk.
SERBIA
In another in a series of anti-government protests following last November’s train station collapse in Novi Sad, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people turned out in Belgrade on Saturday:
The Serbian Interior Ministry put the attendance at 107,000 people or more, and given that the Serbian government has some incentive to downplay the size of the crowd we can probably assume it was larger than that. It appears at a minimum to have been the largest protest in Belgrade in several years. Despite the size things seem to have remained more or less peaceful throughout the day, but pressure is mounting on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and he’s shown little willingness to indulge the protesters’ demands. Instead, he’s been dismissing the demonstrations as the work of alleged foreign agitators. Protesters are demanding a full investigation into the Novi Sad incident as well as into allegations of abuses by Serbian security forces.
AMERICAS
EL SALVADOR
The Trump administration sent more than 250 imprisoned members (allegedly) of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador on Saturday in defiance of a federal judge’s order halting the deportation. It did so under a deal that the AP revealed on Saturday whereby the administration had agreed to pay the Salvadoran government $6 million in return for housing up to 300 alleged TdA prisoners for one year in its “Terrorism Confinement Center” mega-prison. The administration is claiming that the deportation flights were already in the air when the judge issued the order. It is appealing the ruling and may send additional prisoners to El Salvador if its legal efforts are successful—or if it decides to just ignore judges from now on.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Saturday’s deportations were made under the authority of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which grants the US president extraordinary powers to imprison and/or deport foreign nationals in time of war. Of course the United States is not at war—at least not any war that’s been legally declared by Congress—but the act does allow a president to invoke the law if an “invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.” Donald Trump is arguing that immigration, at least by members of this particular Venezuelan criminal gang, constitutes just such a “predatory incursion,” I guess by the Venezuelan government. It’s transparently bullshit, of course, but Saturday’s injunction notwithstanding I wouldn’t go placing any bets on him losing the argument in court.
Even if Trump’s argument wasn’t bullshit, it’s worth pointing out the Alien Enemies Act’s contemptible place in US history, as The Intercept’s Nick Turse has done:
Claiming the United States is being attacked by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang, President Donald Trump on Saturday invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to order the rapid detention and deportation of all Venezuelan migrants suspected of being members of TdA, treating them as wartime enemies of the U.S. government.
The president argued, in his proclamation, that members of the Venezuelan gang are “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”
The Alien Enemies Act is a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the “natives” and citizens of an enemy nation without a hearing and based only on their country of birth or citizenship. It has been invoked just three times in American history, each during a major conflict: the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. It is best known for its role in Japanese incarceration during World War II, a shameful part of U.S. history for which Congress and several presidents have apologized.