World roundup: July 26-27 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Thailand, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
July 26, 657 (give or take): The climactic confrontation of the Islamic world’s first civil war (“fitna”), the Battle of Siffin, takes place in what is today eastern Syria. The battle pitted the forces of Caliph Ali against those loyal to Syrian governor Muʿawiyah. Ali’s outnumbered forces won the battle tactically, but to avoid further loss of life he agreed to resolve his dispute with Muʿawiyah via arbitration, only to have the arbitrators rule against him in 659. He ignored that ruling but was then assassinated in 661 by a group that became known as the Kharijites (“leavers”), former supporters who broke with him over the decision to seek arbitration in the first place. Muʿawiyah became caliph, inaugurating the Umayyad dynasty.
July 26, 1847: A constitutional convention in the Commonwealth of Liberia adopts a declaration of independence and constitution establishing the Republic of Liberia as a sovereign nation. Annually commemorated as Liberian Independence Day.
July 27, 1794: Challenged by Maximilien Robespierre to arrest all those he deemed “traitors” to the revolution, which could have included pretty much any or all of them (he didn’t specify), members of France’s National Convention decide it would just be easier to arrest Robespierre instead. In what is now known as the “Thermidorian Reaction” since it took place in the month of Thermidor on the revolutionary calendar, Robespierre and dozens of his associates were rounded up by a faction within the National Convention calling itself, appropriately, the Thermidorians. A group of 22, including Robespierre, were executed the following day. The Thermidorians established a new constitution the following year that dissolved the Convention and created a five-member Directory as the main organ of the revolutionary government.
July 27, 1953: The Korean Armistice Agreement, signed by the United Nations Command, the North Korean People’s Army, and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army at Panmunjom, halts fighting in the Korean War. The agreement set terms for a ceasefire, a prisoner exchange, and the fixing of what was supposed to be a temporary border and demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, with subsequent peace talks meant to finalize the details surrounding the end of the war. So, about that—those subsequent talks, at the 1954 Geneva Conference, failed, and the temporary armistice has remained the last word on the Korean War since its signing.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Syrian government is expecting to hold its first election in September to fill its 210 seat “People’s Assembly” interim legislature. One third of that body will be appointed by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa while the rest will be contested electorally. Syrian officials have said they intend to allow international observers to monitor the election and that they’re committed to “proportional” representation for minority communities and parts of the country (like the Kurdish-held northeast and Druze communities in the south) that remain largely outside government control.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Under growing pressure to avert mass starvation in Gaza—to the extent that it’s not already too late—the Israeli military (IDF) on Sunday instituted what it’s calling “tactical pauses” in three parts of the territory (the Mawasi humanitarian zone, Deir al-Balah, and Gaza City) from 10 AM through 8 PM daily. Paired with that the IDF says it will ensure that secure routes for humanitarian aid trucks to reach those areas will be open from 6 AM through 11 PM daily. Somehow, despite Sunday’s “pauses,” the IDF still managed to kill at least 63 people, several of them in an airstrike on Gaza City where one of the “pauses” was supposed to be in effect.
Officials in Gaza say that the Israeli-caused famine has claimed at least 133 lives so far, 87 of them children. Several Western governments have been demanding that Israeli officials do something to ease the territory’s humanitarian crisis, if only because of the optics of starving children, and Sunday’s announcement of these operational pauses came after the Israeli government began allowing airdrops into Gaza again. Airdrops aren’t terribly effective at alleviating humanitarian crises and they pose risks to the population, but they do look impressive on TV and that’s what really matters to the Israelis right now.
The UAE is also reportedly building a pipeline to bring water from Egypt to Mawasi under a plan that supposedly received Israeli approval “several weeks ago.” The pipeline is expected to provide water for around 600,000 people, which is certainly significant though not sufficient on its own.
As I mentioned on Friday, the Israeli government’s main line of defense from charges that it is intentionally starving Gaza’s civilian population has been the claim that it is allowing plenty of aid to enter the territory but either the United Nations is refusing to distribute it or Hamas is stealing it. To the former charge, Israeli leaders are characterizing these humanitarian pauses as a sort of challenge to the UN to deliver aid under relatively stable conditions. To the latter charge, we’ve already learned that the US Agency for International Development has found no evidence that Hamas has been stealing aid. As it turns out, neither has the IDF:
For nearly two years, Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid provided by the United Nations and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza.
But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.
In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.
Who could have predicted, really. This leaves the uncomfortable question of why the Israeli government has been preventing food from getting into Gaza if it wasn’t to stop Hamas from stealing it. There’s no official answer to that question though several Israeli officials have certainly been forthcoming about their desire to starve the people of Gaza.
Drop Site has a thorough report on Hamas’s position with respect to the latest breakdown in ceasefire negotiations, including a Sunday evening speech by the chair of the group’s politburo, Khalil al-Hayya, in which he argued that US and Israeli leaders were “plotting to sabotage” the talks. It includes an outline of the amendments Hamas officials sought to make to the most recent ceasefire proposal, which rather than advancing negotiations became the pretext for the US and Israeli governments to abandon them.
IRAQ
A group of gunmen apparently affiliated with the Kataʾib Hezbollah militia stormed an Iraqi Agriculture Ministry office in southern Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least three people including a police officer. KH is saying that one of its fighters was killed in the incident, which apparently stemmed from some sort of dispute over a recent appointment within that ministry office.
IRAN
Members of the Baluch jihadist group Jaysh al-Adl attacked a courthouse in the city of Zahedan on Saturday, sparking a clash that left at least nine people dead including three of the attackers. The group is claiming that its fighters killed at least 30 judicial and security personnel and attributed any civilian casualties to Iranian security forces. Jaysh al-Adl, whose ideology is a mix of Sunni jihadism and Baluch separatism, is frequently active in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province, of which Zahedan is the capital.
ASIA
THAILAND
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and acting Thai PM Phumtham Wechayachai are heading to Malaysia on Monday to try to negotiate an end to the border conflict in which their countries have been embroiled since Thursday. Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim—whose position as this year’s chairperson of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has left him as the most obvious candidate for mediator—organized the meeting with an apparent assist from Donald Trump, who threatened both the Thai and Cambodian governments with tariff penalties if either refused to negotiate. It’s unclear how much of a role that threat played, as both governments had previously expressed at least some interest in negotiations. The death toll currently stands at 35 or more, 22 in Thailand and at least 13 in Cambodia, with upwards of 220,000 people displaced and most villages in range of the fighting abandoned.
According to The Guardian’s Rebecca Ratcliffe, a personal falling out between “political patriarchs” may be at the root of this conflict or at least has become a major factor in intensifying it. It seems the long-standing public friendship between Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen (former PM and Hun Manet’s father) and former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra (father of suspended Thai PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra) has ended on bad terms, for reasons nobody outside their respective inner circles seems to know.
PHILIPPINES
Soldiers killed at least seven New People’s Army rebels in the central Philippines’ Masbate province on Sunday. This engagement was the follow-on to a clash several days ago in which two NPA fighters were killed. A Philippine army spokesperson later suggested that the military is close to defeating the Communist NPA insurgency in Masbate altogether. Authorities have previously estimated that the NPA is down to just a few hundred fighters nationally, perhaps the lowest number the group has had since its establishment in the late 1960s.
TAIWAN
Taiwanese voters headed to the polls on Saturday for a wide-ranging recall election targeting 24 members of the Legislative Yuan or a bit over one-fifth of that body. They apparently voted not to recall any of them. The failed effort had been organized in support of President Lai Ching-te’s Democratic Progressive Party and targeted members of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), whose effective control of parliament (in collaboration with the smaller Taiwan People’s Party) has stifled much of Lai’s domestic agenda. Supporters argued that the KMT has been colluding with the Chinese government to undermine Taiwanese politics, a charge the KMT rejects.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Rapid Support Forces militant group introduced its own Sudanese government on Saturday, with RSF boss Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo as chair of its presidential council and Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, leader of an allied branch of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, as his deputy. Politician Mohamed Hassan al-Taishi was named prime minister. The RSF, along with Hilu’s SPLM-N and other groups, signed a charter back in February that signaled their intent to form a government to rival the one controlled by the Sudanese military. It seems unlikely that this government is going to garner much international recognition but its existence likely strengthens the RSF’s position in the event of peace talks. Notably, amid concerns that Sudan might wind up being at least de facto partitioned, the coalition has proposed this government as the “legitimate” government of the entire country, rather than of those parts of Sudan that are under RSF control.
SOMALIA
Al-Shabab rebels seized the town of Mahas in central Somalia’s Hiran region on Sunday after an apparently intense assault that included “multiple” suicide bombings. There’s no word yet as to casualties. Mahas has been serving as a hub for Somali military operations in the surrounding parts of Hirshabelle state so its capture by the jihadists is a significant development. It’s more evidence that, after losing ground in a sustained government and local militia operation last year, al-Shabab has stabilized itself and is once again on the offensive.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Allied Democratic Forces jihadists attacked a church in the northeastern DRC’s Ituri province on Sunday, killing at least 38 people and wounding another 15. Unconfirmed local reports have put the death toll so far at 434 and several people are still missing in the wake of the incident.
Elsewhere, World Politics Review’s Mohamed Keita highlights the skepticism surrounding the US-Qatari effort to negotiate peace in the eastern DRC:
While Trump has all but proclaimed a historic peace, worthy in his mind of the Nobel Peace Prize he covets, the war has raged on, deepening a humanitarian catastrophe worsened by the impact of U.S. funding cuts to international aid. These contradictions have fueled skepticism among observers about whether these diplomatic breakthroughs will deliver on the ambitious promises made to the people of the region, or whether they are simply politically expedient transactional exchanges based on narrow security and economic interests.
From a regional perspective, the treaty marks the most significant global diplomatic engagement on the conflict in eastern Congo since the 2013 Addis Ababa accord, which involved no less than 11 states and four international and regional institutions. Coming 10 years after the end of the Second Congo War, the Addis Ababa accord was the first major initiative seeking to comprehensively cement peace after the deadliest conflict since World War II. It included, among other things, a comprehensive political process to find solutions to the root causes of the conflict as well as an enforcement and follow-up mechanism involving civil society. Unfortunately, lack of political will by the signatories and subsequent disengagement by the international community foreclosed its chances of success.
By contrast, the U.S.-Qatari approach is neither multilateral nor grounded in the regional chessboard, and it is not nearly so comprehensive. Denis Mukwege, the Congolese gynecologist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his efforts to end rape as a weapon of war in eastern Congo, blasted the “bilateral approach favored by Washington in the face of a crisis that is largely regional in scope” and asserted that the U.S.-led initiative will “sow the seeds of repeated conflicts and mass atrocities.”
EUROPE
EUROPEAN UNION
Donald Trump announced on Sunday that US and EU negotiators have reached at least the outline of a trade deal after a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland. He didn’t go into any detail apart from noting the 15 percent tariff that the US will impose on EU products, which is half of the EU tariff rate Trump had most recently threatened but significantly higher than the 10 percent rate EU negotiators were hoping to achieve.
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed the seizure of two more Ukrainian villages on Saturday, including a second village in central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Ukrainian officials haven’t commented on those claims but have instead focused their public statements on heavy fighting around the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast and in Sumy oblast, where Russian forces have established a foothold on the Ukrainian side of the border.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
The US Treasury Department listed a Venezuelan organization known as the “Cartel of the Suns” as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group on Friday. Allegedly run by “high-ranking Venezuelan individuals” who report to President Nicolás Maduro, the group supposedly supports cartels and gangs like Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and is “using the flood of illegal narcotics as a weapon against the United States.”
UNITED STATES
Finally, ProPublica reported earlier this month on a Microsoft program that has most likely left the Pentagon “vulnerable” to Chinese hackers:
Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.
But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.
“We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” said one current escort who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.
The system has been in place for nearly a decade, though its existence is being reported publicly here for the first time.
Microsoft now says it’s stopped using those Chinese engineers on its Pentagon work. But ProPublica has since learned that it’s been employing the same program in its cloud computing work for several other federal offices including the departments of Commerce, Justice, and Treasury.