World roundup: March 22-23 2025
Stories from Turkey, Sudan, Canada, and elsewhere
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: Tomorrow is my birthday. Normally my birthday falls within my daughter’s “spring break” week from school, which is when we try to take a little family vacation so I’m not working anyway. This year that is not the case. So with your indulgence, as I did last week for a different reason I will not be doing a newsletter for subscribers tomorrow and we will double up on Tuesday. Thanks for your support.
TODAY IN HISTORY
March 22, 235: Roman Emperor Severus Alexander is assassinated during a mutiny of the Legio XXII Primigenia at the city of Moguntiacum (the modern German city of Mainz). His assassination ended the Severan dynasty and brought to the throne the legionary commander Maximinus Thrax, the first of the so-called “barracks emperors” (soldiers who were proclaimed emperor by legionaries rather than taking office via a political process). Maximinus Thrax struggled to attain wide recognition and in 238 revolts began to break out in what became known as the “Year of the Six Emperors” on account of the fact that the empire saw six imperial claimants over the course of the year. That chaos in turn led into what historians call the Crisis of the Third Century, during which the empire broke apart into three constituent pieces (the main empire, the “Gallic Empire” in modern France and Britain, and the “Palymrene Empire” in the Levant and Egypt). The Crisis finally ended when Diocletian restored imperial unity in 285.
March 22, 1739: Amid rising tension between Delhi merchants and Nader Shah’s occupying Iranian army, rumors spread that Nader Shah himself had been killed in some sort of violent encounter. Perhaps sensing an opening, a mob of Delhi residents attacked the Iranians, killing hundreds of them. As it turned out Nader Shah was very much alive, and in response to the violence he unleashed his very angry army on the city. The ensuing sack was among the most violent in history, with perhaps as many as 30,000 people killed in a matter of hours.
March 23, 1879: A small Chilean army defeats a much smaller Bolivian force at the Battle of Topáter, which helped trigger the 1879-1884 War of the Pacific. The conflict, fought over a variety of issues including control of Pacific shipping routes and nitrate deposits in the region, ended with Chile victorious over a Bolivian-Peruvian alliance. The resulting settlement saw both defeated countries ceding territory to Chile, including Bolivia’s entire parcel of Pacific coastline.
March 23, 1991: The rebel Revolutionary United Front, with the support of Liberian rebel leader Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia, invades Sierra Leone, kicking off the 1991-2002 Sierra Leone Civil War. Sierra Leone’s government eventually emerged victorious thanks in part to substantial foreign assistance, particularly from the UK. The RUF was later charged with committing a vast array of war crimes. Taylor became president of Liberia in 1997 but lost power in 2003 toward the end of the overlapping Second Liberian Civil War. Extradited to The Hague, Taylor was tried and convicted in 2012 on 11 war crimes counts and sentenced to 50 years in prison by the post-war Special Court for Sierra Leone.
MIDDLE EAST
TURKEY
Turkish authorities officially imprisoned Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on Sunday, simultaneously removing him from office pending a forthcoming trial on corruption charges. Sunday, as fate would have it, is also the day İmamoğlu was likely to be named the 2028 presidential candidate for the opposition Republican People’s Party, making his arrest on Wednesday either one heck of a coincidence or a fairly obvious attempt to eliminate the main rival to incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s reelection. Interestingly the government seems to have decided not to pursue “terrorism” charges against İmamoğlu, which legally means the CHP-controlled Istanbul municipal council will be allowed to select his replacement. A terrorism charge would have cleared the way for Erdoğan to appoint someone to that post.
As far as I know the CHP was still planning to hold its primary on Sunday and İmamoğlu was still expected to win. At time of writing I had not yet seen any results from the primary. Between his arrest and Istanbul University’s decision to revoke his bachelor’s degree, however, İmamoğlu’s chances of actually appearing on the 2028 ballot look slim at present. Hundreds of thousands of people at a minimum have turned out in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey to protest his arrest and the Turkish central bank has reportedly burned through a healthy portion of its foreign reserves over the past several days trying to stabilize a crashing lira. But neither of those things seems likely to move Erdoğan into reversing course.
SYRIA
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a new wave of deadly violence targeting Syria’s Alawite community on Friday. According to the SOHR at least 72 people had been killed in targeted attacks over Thursday and Friday, 58 of them in the Alawite heartland in Latakia and Tartus provinces. It’s unclear whether Syrian security forces themselves or their ex-rebel compatriots are responsible for these latest attacks.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) bombarded southern Lebanon on Saturday, calling into question whatever remains of November’s Israeli-Hezbollah truce agreement. Multiple IDF strikes, provoked by incoming rocket fire from Lebanon for which Hezbollah denied any responsibility, left at least eight people dead.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
IDF airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 26 people overnight, bringing the death toll there since the October 7 attacks to more than 50,000. Israeli forces also further expanded their latest ground operations to include the southern city of Rafah. One IDF strike on Saturday killed a member of Hamas’s politburo, Salah Bardawil, along with his wife in the Mawasi area—which, you may recall, Israeli officials have previously designated as a “safe” zone. An IDF airstrike hit Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least five people including another Hamas political official named Ismail Barhoum.
Elsewhere:
It’s been more than three weeks since the Israeli government resumed its blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, and aid organizations are once again warning about escalating malnutrition across the territory. Shortages of food and fuel are shutting down United Nations kitchens and the price of food for sale in Gaza’s markets has spiked to levels that are unaffordable for most people. Israeli officials have made it clear that they won’t lift the blockade unless/until Hamas agrees to their demand for an extended truce and additional prisoner exchanges, and at this point there’s nothing forcing them to reconsider—even the mild pressure the Biden administration claimed to have applied toward humanitarian relief is absent under the Trump administration.
The Israeli security cabinet late Saturday approved the creation of what it’s cleverly calling a “Voluntary Emigration Bureau” to enable any Gaza residents who would like to leave the territory for parts unknown to do so. The “voluntary” label aside, this bureau would be in keeping with Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan. Whatever the Israeli government has planned for emptying out Gaza will undoubtedly be compulsory and at any rate after it has decimated Gaza and starved its population there is no way that any relocation could be considered truly “voluntary.”
The security cabinet has also voted to upgrade neighborhoods in 13 West Bank settlements to the status of independent settlements in their own rights, a step that will streamline their further expansion to the detriment of the surrounding Palestinian population. It seems displacement and annexation are the orders of the day all around.
The full Israeli cabinet voted on Sunday to remove Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara from office, citing “substantial and prolonged differences of opinion” between her office and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Basically, as with his attempted sacking of Shin Bet boss Ronen Bar, Netanyahu is trying to purge non-loyalists from senior administrative posts a la Donald Trump. Among the Israeli AG’s responsibilities is serving as a semi-independent check on government abuses, and since Baharav-Miara, like Bar, was appointed by the previous Israeli government Netanyahu has been displeased with her in that capacity from the start. A new AG who is more beholden to Netanyahu might also influence the course of his ongoing corruption trial. His moves against Bar and Baharav-Miara have sparked new anti-government protests.
YEMEN
Another round of US airstrikes killed at least one person and wounded another 13 in Sanaa on Sunday, according to northern Yemeni officials. There were also reports of US strikes on the Houthi movement’s Saada heartland but no details as to possible casualties.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
According to the Afghan government, the Trump administration has rescinded the rewards the US government had previously offered for three senior Taliban figures. Most prominent among these is Afghan Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has been the subject of a $10 million US bounty. The other two figures are also members of the Haqqani family. There’s been no indication of any change in their status on the US side, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was still listing Sirajuddin Haqqani as wanted on its website as of Sunday. But the Afghan government did just release an imprisoned US national on Thursday so the timing of these reports is interesting. It may also be worth noting that Sirajuddin Haqqani appears to be on the outs—as in literally outside Afghanistan—with senior Taliban leadership after criticizing the group’s hardline approach toward the status of women.
PAKISTAN
Pakistani authorities say their security forces killed 16 alleged Pakistani Taliban (TTP) fighters who attempted to cross from Afghanistan into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday. The Pakistani government regularly accuses its Afghan counterpart of harboring TTP and Baluch militants either maliciously or through neglect of its border regions. Sunday’s incident came one day after a shooting in which militants in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province killed four police officers and four laborers from neighboring Punjab province. Baluch separatists frequently target workers brought into the province from other parts of Pakistan.
SOUTH KOREA
The South Korean Constitutional Court overturned the impeachment of Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on Monday, restoring him as both PM and acting president, a role he assumed after the December impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol. The court has yet to rule on Yoon’s impeachment, which would trigger a snap presidential election if it is upheld.
AFRICA
SUDAN
After seizing the Republican Palace in Khartoum on Friday, the Sudanese army continued its advance through that city over the weekend. Army officials are claiming to have taken several prominent institutional buildings from Rapid Support Forces militants, including the Sudanese central bank and the headquarters of the General Intelligence Service. The heaviest fighting may now be in the vicinity of Khartoum International Airport. On Sunday RSF shelling killed at least three civilians, including two children, in military-controlled Omdurman.
Outside the capital region, the RSF has reportedly been attacking the city of al-Maliha in Sudan’s North Darfur state for the past few days and as of Saturday had killed at least 45 people there according to the Resistance Committees conflict tracker. The militants claimed to have taken al-Maliha—which is some 200 kilometers north of the besieged provincial capital, Al-Fashir—on Thursday but the casualties have continued to pile up since then. The city is located near the Chadian and Libyan borders so it has a fair amount of strategic value.
MALI
A roadside bomb killed two members of the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MSA) militant group in eastern Mali’s Ménaka region on Saturday. The MSA is aligned with Mali’s ruling junta and is opposed to the rebel groups that have resumed their uprising in northern and eastern Mali of late. The nature of this attack suggests a possible jihadist perpetrator, though there’s been no claim of responsibility as yet.
KENYA
Al-Shabab fighters attacked a police outpost near the Somali border in northern Kenya’s Garissa county on Sunday, killing at six police reservists according to Kenyan officials. The attackers looted the camp for weapons before withdrawing. It’s unclear how many casualties the militants suffered though those same Kenyan officials insist that a “number” of the attackers were killed in the clash.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The Congo River Alliance, the umbrella organization whose components include the M23 militant group, announced on Saturday that its forces would withdraw from the eastern Congolese town of Walikale, which they’d just taken on Thursday. An anonymous “senior member of the alliance” explained to Reuters that the withdrawal was a test of the Congolese government’s interest in a ceasefire—if its military stayed out of Walikale despite the withdrawal, in this scenario, that would indicate that it is in fact interested in a cessation of hostilities. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense, or at least it would if M23 actually withdraws. As of Sunday, according to AFP, its fighters were still in Walikale and showing no indication that they were preparing to depart.
It is possible that the militants are just taking their time and will eventually leave, and on the plus side there haven’t been any reports of new fighting in the area (although there have been reports of clashes between M23 and pro-government militias in South Kivu province). But adding to a complicated picture, Ugandan military commander Muhoozi Kainerugaba took to social media on Sunday to declare that “in one week either M23 or UPDF (Uganda People’s Defence Force) will be in Kisangani…by order” of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Kisangani is around 450 kilometers west of Walikale in the DRC’s Tshopo province and needless to say its seizure by either the militants or the Ugandan army—which is operating in Ituri province—would be an extraordinary escalation.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
US and Ukrainian negotiating teams met in Saudi Arabia on Sunday to iron out their plan heading into Monday’s scheduled talks with the Russian government. The Trump administration is aiming to work out the details behind a proposal to halt attacks on energy infrastructure to which both the Ukrainians and Russians have agreed in principle. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff also seems to be aiming for some sort of agreement to protect commercial shipping in the Black Sea, though it’s possible that the parties will want to give the energy ceasefire a chance to actually take effect before they move on to something else. The discussion may also include preliminary talks on the details of a full ceasefire though I wouldn’t expect much progress, if any, on that front.
On the battlefield, the Ukrainian military said on Sunday that it had retaken a village in Luhansk oblast. It’s unclear whether this signals any sort of new Ukrainian operation in that province, which is almost entirely under Russian control. Ukrainian forces have reportedly seen a couple of small gains in the Donbas over the past several weeks, perhaps reflecting some operational exhaustion on the part of the Russians.
UNITED KINGDOM
I’m sure most, if not all, of you heard that London’s Heathrow airport closed for much of the day on Friday, after a fire at a nearby electrical substation knocked out power to the facility. The airport partially reopened Friday night and was “fully operational” on Saturday, but as The Wall Street Journal reports the aftershocks of the hours-long closure of one of the world’s busiest airports could take days to completely dissipate:
The first inbound aircraft, a British Airways Airbus A380, landed on Saturday at 4:35 a.m., followed by flights by Virgin Atlantic, Qantas, United and American Airlines.
However, airlines still had to cancel scores of flights Saturday after the airport shutdown resulted in aircraft being out of position and crews hitting their duty-time restrictions.
Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport and the main gateway for American travelers into the region, was shut for about 18 hours Friday, disrupting thousands of flights and affecting more than 200,000 passengers.
It seems problematic that such a load-bearing piece of global infrastructure can be laid low by something as relatively minor as a fire at a single electrical substation, and I imagine whatever investigation comes of this incident will spend some time dwelling on that issue.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
The Trump administration has reportedly reached some sort of deal with the Venezuelan government that will allow it to resume repatriation flights to that country. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro began refusing to receive such flights after the administration failed to renew a sanctions waiver that had allowed Chevron to extract and sell Venezuelan oil. It was at that point that the Trump administration began planning for the expulsion of Venezuelan migrants to prison in El Salvador. Venezuelan officials say they’re also pursuing the release and repatriation of the migrants who were part of that Salvadoran stunt.
CANADA
As expected, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney moved on Sunday to dissolve parliament and schedule a snap election for April 28. Carney’s Liberal party is riding a polling surge following his election to replace the unpopular Justin Trudeau and thanks to a torrent of abuse from Donald Trump for which many Canadians seem inclined to punish the Conservative Party. Carney himself seems to be enjoying a strong honeymoon period in terms of popularity, and if the central question going into the election is over which party leader is best equipped to stand up to Trump that seems to favor him strongly.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s William Hartung looks ahead to the billions of dollars that the US government is likely to shower upon Silicon Valley in the artificial intelligence arms race:
Alex Karp, the CEO of the controversial military tech firm Palantir, is the coauthor of a new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. In it, he calls for a renewed sense of national purpose and even greater cooperation between government and the tech sector. His book is, in fact, not just an account of how to spur technological innovation, but a distinctly ideological tract.
As a start, Karp roundly criticizes Silicon Valley’s focus on consumer-oriented products and events like video-sharing apps, online shopping, and social media platforms, which he dismisses as “the narrow and the trivial.” His focus instead is on what he likes to think of as innovative big-tech projects of greater social and political consequence. He argues, in fact, that Americans face “a moment of reckoning” in which we must decide “what is this country, and for what do we stand?” And in the process, he makes it all too clear just where he stands — in strong support of what can only be considered a new global technological arms race, fueled by close collaboration between government and industry, and designed to preserve America’s “fragile geopolitical advantage over our adversaries.”
Karp believes that applying American technological expertise to building next-generation weapons systems is not just a but the genuine path to national salvation, and he advocates a revival of the concept of “the West” as foundational for future freedom and collective identity. As Sophie Hurwitz of Mother Jones noted recently, Karp summarized this view in a letter to Palantir shareholders in which he claimed that the rise of the West wasn’t due to “the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”
Count on one thing: Karp’s approach, if adopted, will yield billions of taxpayer dollars for Palantir and its militarized Silicon Valley cohorts in their search for AI weaponry that they see as the modern equivalent of nuclear weapons and the key to beating China, America’s current great power rival.
Happy Birthday!
Felíz aniversário!