World roundup: April 1 2025
Stories from Myanmar, South Sudan, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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It has officially been six years to the day since I began this newsletter, so let me start off by thanking you all for your support of Foreign Exchanges over that time!
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 1, 1939: The Spanish Civil War comes to its official end when Nationalist leader Francisco Franco announces the surrender of the remaining Republican forces. The March 28 fall of Madrid to Franco’s besieging army had rendered the war pretty much over at that time, so this announcement was a bit anti-climactic. Franco went on to rule Spain, quite brutally as it happens (check out the “White Terror” if you’re unfamiliar, it’s got a very appropriate name), until his death in 1975.
April 1, 1941: An anti-British military coup in Baghdad ousts King Faisal II’s regent, Abd al-Ilah, as well as his prime minister, Nouri al-Saeed, and restores a pro-Axis (not pro-Nazi, necessarily, but definitely friendly with the Germans) former prime minister, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, to power. Concerned that their empire was about to be severed by a pro-German government in the Middle East, Britain moved in to reverse the coup. The subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War lasted about a month and ended with Gaylani fleeing the country and Abd al-Ilah back in charge in Baghdad.
April 1, 1976: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne co-found Apple, Inc. If you’ve never heard of Wayne that’s because less than two weeks later he sold his 10 percent stake in the company to the other two for what wound up being $2300. Apple is now worth trillions of dollars, so I think we can all agree he made a smart decision.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
It’s been around three weeks since the Syrian government reached an agreement at least in principle with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces group that should incorporate its military wing into the Syrian security establishment. Syrian officials turned their focus toward a similar accord they’d been negotiating with Druze militias and, well, they’re apparently still working on that. According to The New York Times, those talks “stalled” last month, after Syrian security forces and their jihadist compatriots massacred hundreds of Alawite civilians and for some reason Druze leaders started to question the government’s commitment to their community’s safety. Now Druze militias are functioning as the de facto security forces in southern Syria’s Suwaydah province and pressure may be mounting for the Syrian government to make whatever concessions will be required to reach a deal.
LEBANON
The Israeli military’s (IDF) Tuesday morning airstrike in southern Beirut’s Dahieh area apparently killed the intended target, a Hezbollah official named Hassan Bdair who was involved with the group’s “Palestinian file.” It also killed at least three other people, one of whom was Bdair’s son. In response to the strike, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called it a “clear breach” of Israel’s November ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah and President Joseph Aoun pleaded for international recognition of Lebanon’s “right to full sovereignty.” As far as the Israeli and United States governments are concerned Lebanon has no sovereignty, at least not any that they’re obliged to recognize.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Local Call’s Meron Rapoport considers a number of recent comments from Israeli officials and media that indicate where the IDF’s Gaza campaign is heading:
Connecting all these dots leads to a fairly clear conclusion: Israel is preparing to forcibly displace the entire population of Gaza — through a combination of evacuation orders and intense bombardment — into an enclosed and possibly fenced-off area. Anyone caught outside its boundaries would be killed, and buildings throughout the rest of the enclave would likely be razed to the ground.
Without mincing words, this “humanitarian zone,” as [Israeli journalist Yinon] Magal so kindly put it, in which the army intends to corral Gaza’s 2 million residents, can be summed up in just two words: concentration camp. This is not hyperbole; it is simply the most precise definition to help us better understand what we are facing.
There is of course an argument to be made that Gaza was already a sort of concentration camp prior to the October 7 attacks, but certainly what Rapoport is describing is more straightforward in its presentation.
Elsewhere, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rescinding his decision to name former naval commander Eli Sharvit as the next director of the Shin Bet domestic security agency. Sharvit’s past comments about Netanyahu and Donald Trump made his appointment politically impossible. It is still unclear why Netanyahu tried to appoint him in the first place.
A new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project finds that the IDF’s campaign in Gaza has “killed more journalists than the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined. It is, quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters.” The effect, as the report notes, is to turn conflict zones like Gaza into “news graveyards” that make it easier for participants to commit atrocities with “impunity.”
YEMEN
US airstrikes on the northern Yemeni port city of Hudaydah killed at least three people and wounded two others on Tuesday, according to the Houthi movement. Apparently the US strikes targeted “water infrastructure” in the city for reasons that escape me and that I’m not sure have any military justification.
IRAN
The Trump administration on Tuesday blacklisted two individuals and six entities allegedly involved in a “network” that’s been procuring components for Iran’s armed drone program. Said network apparently stretches across Iran, the UAE, and China. The US Justice Department also announced charges against two Iranian nationals over similar activities. Neither is in US custody.
ASIA
MYANMAR
Myanmar’s ruling junta held a national “moment of silence” on Tuesday for the victims of Friday’s earthquake—whose death toll has now surpassed 2700 and is likely to rise still higher. The display of mourning might strike some as a bit hypocritical, given that doctors working on disaster relief efforts are accusing the junta of blocking aid from reaching people who need it. Military officials appear to be skimming and in some cases outright confiscating aid that will presumably wind up on the black market at some point. They’re also preventing aid and aid workers from getting to parts of the country that are contested or under rebel control. The junta has continued to conduct airstrikes on rebel-controlled regions, even as several rebel groups—including the National Unity Government and the Three Brotherhood Alliance (which includes the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army)—have announced temporary ceasefires.
CHINA
At his Sinocism newsletter, Bill Bishop summarizes a speech that Chinese President Xi Jinping made last June in which he “outlined China’s strategic goal of becoming a global science and technology power by 2035.” At a time when the Trump administration is gutting federal funding for science research, Xi’s remarks offer a pretty stark “New Cold War” contrast:
Xi emphasized that Chinese-style modernization requires scientific and technological modernization to support high-quality development. He highlighted China’s recent technological achievements while acknowledging persistent challenges in original innovation capability, key technologies, and talent shortages.
The speech identified five key elements of a science and technology power:
Strong basic research and original innovation capabilities
Strong capabilities to tackle key core technologies
Strong international influence and leadership in global science
Strong abilities to cultivate and attract high-level talents
Strong governance systems and world-class innovation ecosystems
Xi Jinping also outlined five major tasks to achieve this goal:
Leveraging China’s nationwide system to accelerate scientific self-reliance and strengthen coordination of resources and research forces
Promoting deep integration between scientific innovation and industrial innovation to develop new quality productive forces, focusing on key areas like integrated circuits, AI, and quantum technology
Comprehensively deepening reforms of scientific and technological systems to stimulate innovation and reduce bureaucratic burdens on researchers
Advancing integrated development of education, science, and talent to build competitive advantages in human resources
Practicing international openness and cooperation while coordinating security concerns and participating in global scientific governance
The speech concluded with a call for the entire nation to unite in pursuing the “grand goal of building a science and technology power” with only 11 years remaining until the 2035 target.
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea’s Constitutional Court says it will finally issue its ruling on President Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment on Friday. If at least six of its eight justices uphold the impeachment Yoon will be removed from office, triggering a snap election within 60 days. If the court overturns the impeachment Yoon will be restored to full-time duty, though he’ll be heavily compromised given everything that’s happened since his attempted self-coup in December. A new poll from Gallup Korea found that 60 percent of the South Korean public supports Yoon’s ouster.
AFRICA
ALGERIA
The Algerian military said on Tuesday that its forces had shot down an “armed surveillance drone” that crossed into Algerian airspace near the Malian border. This appears to have been a Malian military drone, though officials in Mali are only acknowledging that the device “crashed” without getting into the details. Mali’s ruling junta is battling a renewed rebel movement in the northern part of the country so it is plausible that one of its drones might have strayed into Algeria. The two countries have a fairly tense relationship, partly over Malian military operations near the border.
SOUTH SUDAN
Foreign Policy’s Clémence Pinaud sums up the current state of affairs in South Sudan:
South Sudan has once again returned to the brink of war, the United Nations warned on March 24. The country had made international headlines earlier in March after members of an ethnic militia attacked a U.N. helicopter in Nasir, a town rocked by fighting between the South Sudanese national army and a local rebel militia called the White Army. The U.N. peacekeeping mission was trying to evacuate a government army general and his soldiers when members of the White Army—largely from the Nuer ethnic group—shot at them, killing 28 people, including a U.N. crew member.
The South Sudanese government, headed by President Salva Kiir, blamed the attack on Juba’s main opposition party, led by Vice President Riek Machar, and arrested its leadership—including Machar himself—either detaining them or placing them under house arrest.
The event put a spotlight on South Sudan’s worsening interethnic tensions as well as the fragility of the 2018 peace agreement that mapped out a system of shared governance between Kiir’s government—which is largely aligned with the Dinka, the largest ethnic minority in a country of more than 60 ethnic groups—and Machar’s opposition group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition (SPLA-IO), the leadership of which largely hails from the Nuer community, the country’s second-largest ethnic minority.
But make no mistake: War never stopped in South Sudan, and the peace agreement was already under threat. Though the recent fighting flared up in the country’s oil-rich Upper Nile region, government military troops have also geared up their attacks on the SPLA-IO in other regions.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The Congolese government and M23 militants both confirmed on Tuesday that they will hold their first direct negotiations on April 9 in Qatar. I mean, they probably will. I’m not sure it’s a completely foregone conclusion given that the parties were supposed to meet in Angola last month only for the militants to cancel at the last minute—though to be fair I suspect M23 will be reluctant to jerk the Qatari government around the way it did to the Angolan government. That said, this meeting is eight days away and any major developments in the DRC could upend it.
MAURITIUS
The Mauritian government and the UK are reportedly on the verge of concluding a final agreement transferring control of the Chagos Islands from the latter to the former. Crucially the deal has the approval of the Trump administration, which is necessary given that the US military’s Diego Garcia facility sits on the largest of the Chagos and the US was in a position to block any deal. A draft agreement between the two principals reached last year was held up over the Mauritian election in November and criticism of its terms from both US and UK quarters. The basic details of the October draft seem to have remained in place—in short, the Chagos will be turned over to Mauritius, which has agreed to lease Diego Garcia to the UK for at least the next 99 years so that the military base can be maintained there.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Vladimir Putin on Tuesday began the planned conscription of 160,000 men aged 18-30, the largest conscription the Russian military has seen since 2011. Ostensibly the size of this mobilization is part of a general effort to increase the size of the Russian military and these men are not intended to fight in Ukraine, but realistically it’s hard to know how or where they’ll be used.
FINLAND
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told reporters on Tuesday that his government will withdraw Finland from the 1997 Ottawa Treaty that sought to ban the use of anti-personnel landmines. A couple of weeks ago the governments of Poland and the three Baltic states made similar declarations, and all for the same reason: fear of Russia. Finland was the last European Union member to join the Ottawa convention, and quitting it would open the possibility of mining its side of the Russian border to deter some hypothetical future invasion. It could also pose a tremendous risk to Finnish civilians, but I digress.
AMERICAS
PARAGUAY
The Paraguayan government recalled its ambassador from Brazil on Tuesday, after the Brazilian government admitted to spying on Paraguay back in 2022 under former President Jair Bolsonaro. Current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration says it ended the spying program as soon as it discovered the activity but has apparently not revealed much about the nature of that program to understandably interested Paraguayan officials. Paraguay has also suspended its participation in negotiations around the use of the shared Itaipu hydroelectric dam.
EL SALVADOR
The Trump administration is now acknowledging that one of the men it expelled to El Salvador last month, Kilmar Ábrego García, was shipped out due to “administrative error” and that he is not, as it turns out, a member of the MS-13 gang. Though to be fair, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency says that his “removal was carried out in good faith” so I guess that’s something. Perversely, the administration now says it has no “legal authority” to get Ábrego García out of the Salvadoran prison to which it also apparently had no legal authority to send him. This is of course a travesty but there seems to be little interest on the administration’s part in rectifying it. Who could have predicted that a policy of mass deportation with minimal or no due process might go wrong?
HAITI
Insurgents from the Viv Ansanm gang coalition attacked the town of Mirebalais in central Haiti on Tuesday and freed some 500 inmates from a local prison. Haitian authorities dispatched extra police units to the town and later claimed to have the situation under control, but it’s unclear how many—if any—of those escaped inmates have been recaptured. I haven’t seen any word as to casualties. As the BBC notes, Viv Ansanm has controlled most of Port-au-Prince since its formation last February, but incidents like this suggest that the coalition is trying to expand its range of operations to other parts of the country.
UNITED STATES
The Trump administration will roll out its broad “reciprocal tariff” package on Wednesday, an event it’s euphemistically decided to call “Liberation Day.” While it’s hard to know exactly what the tariffs will look like and even harder to predict their effects, The Financial Times has outlined a “worst case scenario” that would cost the global economy some $1.4 trillion and cause massive inflation in the United States. Obviously the FT is generally pro-“free trade” so I’m not sure it can be considered purely neutral on this subject, but the projection is still something to consider.
Finally, over at his Sawahil newsletter Alex Thurston sees, in the failure of the so-called “SignalGate” scandal to really take off, a tacit acknowledgement of the brutal absurdity of America’s national security industry:
In short, then, I think Signalgate is an indication that the overarching foreign policy framework of the U.S. for the last quarter century no longer takes itself completely seriously. The most thoughtful parts of the leaked chat have to do with managing optics and messaging, not with actually weighing whether the strikes will accomplish anything (let alone whether they’re the right thing to do). Perhaps the scandal will acquire renewed momentum and actually take down some members of the Trump team, but right now it’s looking like they’ll survive it, politically. I think that’s because there’s something of an acknowledgment that much of natsec is really just very violent theater. Of course it’s bad and dangerous to have communications about military operations on a poorly secured and monitored group chat, but ultimately these operations represented one of innumerable incidents of the world’s strongest military power bombing one of the world’s poorest and most devastated countries. I’m not sure how much would be fundamentally different if the Trump team had had the same conversation on live television.
Thank you Derek for doing this for over 6 years now! I appreciate it
Derek - congratulations and thank you for six years! FX is an incredible resource!