World roundup: December 9 2025
Stories from Thailand, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and elsewhere
All this month Foreign Exchanges is joining several other Substack outlets in raising money for GiveDirectly’s Rwanda initiative. Thanks in part to FX readers that effort has been so successful that GiveDirectly has raised its initial $1 million goal to $1.2 million, which would support more cash payments to impoverished families. If you’re able, please support the campaign. Those of you who are not already subscribed to FX can purchase an annual subscription at this link (it must be that link to support GiveDirectly), save 20% on your first year, and I will contribute 50% of your payment to GiveDirectly’s campaign:
Thanks for reading!
TODAY IN HISTORY
December 9, 1824: The armies of Peru and Gran Colombia defeat a Spanish royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho. Considered one of the last major engagements of the Latin American wars of independence, the Peruvian-Colombian victory ensured Peru’s independence and cleared the way for the Peruvian commander, General Antonio José de Sucre, to enter Upper Peru (modern Bolivia) and campaign there.
December 9, 1987: The First Intifada begins after a traffic accident involving an Israeli military truck at Gaza’s Erez checkpoint kills four Palestinians. Protests over the incident spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem and became the largest popular uprising against the Israeli occupation since the 1967 Six Day War. It ended in October 1991 (in the most commonly cited interpretation) after the deaths of over 2200 people, more than 2000 of them Palestinian.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Somebody seems to have shelled the Mezzah military airport in Damascus on Tuesday, though there’s no indication at this point of either casualties or damage. This is potentially noteworthy in that the US military is reportedly aiming to establish a “presence” at a military facility in Damascus and Mezzah may well be the facility in question. That could paint a proverbial target on it.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) carried out a new round of airstrikes across southern Lebanon overnight, insisting as ever that it was targeting Hezbollah sites. I haven’t seen any reporting as to casualties yet, though it seems unlikely that there were none. Lebanese officials are pressing for an expanded ceasefire monitoring system, potentially including the presence of international military personnel (from France and/or the US) to not only track violations of the ceasefire but also to assess Israeli claims that Hezbollah is rearming and to observe the progress of Beirut’s effort to disarm the group.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Hamas is now suggesting that it will not advance to “phase two” of Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire framework until Israeli “violations” of that accord stop. Politburo member Hossam Badran spoke primarily about Israel’s failure to substantially increase the amount of aid entering the territory and its refusal to reopen the Rafah checkpoint between Gaza and Egypt, two things that are supposed to happen under the framework. Israeli officials have floated the idea of partially reopening Rafah for people who need to leave Gaza (e.g., medical evacuees) but they are still resisting the idea of reopening it in the other direction.
The Israelis say that they are planning to reopen the Allenby checkpoint along the Jordanian-West Bank border to humanitarian traffic on Wednesday. Israel closed that checkpoint following a shooting incident in late September and only reopened it to travelers after that. Reopening it to aid trucks may allow more assistance to flow from Jordan to the Gaza border, but it’s not going to mean anything in terms of aid getting into Gaza without further action from the Israeli government.
Elsewhere:
Reporters Without Borders has named Israel the world’s “top killer of journalists” for the third straight year. The IDF has killed 29 Palestinian journalists in 2025, out of a total of 67 journalists killed worldwide. Mexico was the second-deadliest place for journalists this year as nine were killed there.
An IDF officer has revealed to Israeli public broadcaster Kan that the Israeli military is now “fully aware and cooperating with Israeli settlers building new farm outposts in the West Bank.” This supposedly marks a shift from the IDF’s previous approach to outpost construction, which was to turn a blind eye to the practice (I’m not sure I buy that, but the fact that an IDF lieutenant-colonel is talking about this to a media outlet seems significant). This shift, if that’s what it is, coincided with the appointment of Avi Bluth as IDF commander for the West Bank in July 2024. Outpost construction is often the first step in building new settlements. Technically outposts are illegal but the Israeli government frequently legalizes them after the fact, opening them up for expansion.
New Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz is restoring that country’s diplomatic relationship with Israel. Former President Luis Arce severed that relationship back in October 2023, during the early weeks of the Gaza genocide.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Militants attacked a checkpoint in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province overnight, killing at least six soldiers. There’s been no claim of responsibility. The Pakistani Taliban is active across that province, but this incident took place in the Kurram district which has also had problems with local militias in recent years.
THAILAND
Fighting along the Thailand-Cambodia border continued into a second day on Tuesday and now appears to be escalating, as a Cambodian military that was not especially active on Monday began to attack Thailand more intensely overnight. At least 13 people have been killed so far in this latest round of clashes, nine in Cambodia and four in Thailand, with dozens more wounded. The fighting has forced some 400,000 people to flee the border area on the Thai side and some 55,000 to do likewise in Cambodia.
There is no indication of any diplomacy at this point—quite the opposite, in fact, as Thai officials are insisting that their Cambodian counterparts aren’t interested in talking while Cambodian officials say they’re prepared to negotiate but are expecting their Thai counterparts to make the first move in that regard. It would seem that July’s ceasefire, which only froze the conflict in place and was reached after Donald Trump wielded tariff threats against both countries, has fully broken down. Maybe the next ceasefire will also involve some effort to address the root causes of this violence.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Trump administration blacklisted four people and four entities on Tuesday, all allegedly part of a “transnational network” procuring Colombian mercenaries on behalf of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces militant group. Those Colombian fighters have been serving in the field for the RSF but they’ve also been invaluable in training fighters for the group—including child soldiers. Allegedly.
NIGERIA
A Nigerian military transport was forced to make an emergency landing in Burkina Faso for “technical” reasons on Monday, at which point Burkinabè authorities took all 11 personnel on board into custody. They’re accusing the Nigerian military of entering Burkinabè airspace without permission. The Nigerian military says that they’ve “received cordial treatment,” though it’s unclear whether they can expect to be released anytime soon. It’s also not entirely clear why the Nigerian aircraft was flying over Burkina Faso but we can assume it was flying either to or from Benin, where Nigerian forces helped to thwart an attempted coup over the weekend.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
M23 fighters reportedly entered the city of Uvira in the eastern DRC’s South Kivu province on Tuesday, as the peace process there appears to be collapsing just days after DRC President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President/M23 patron Paul Kagame signed a major accord in Washington. Uvira is regarded as South Kivu’s “second city” (M23 already controls the provincial capital, Bukavu) and is strategically situated right on the border with Burundi. Congolese soldiers were reportedly fleeing in the direction of that border as M23 advanced. The US and European Union have issued a joint statement (also signed by the UK and several individual EU member states) calling on the Rwandan government and M23 to put a stop to this latest offensive, which has already displaced some 200,000 people.
EUROPE
LITHUANIA
The Lithuanian government declared a state of emergency on Tuesday over an escalation in balloon flights entering the country’s airspace from Belarus. Smugglers in the region often use meteorological balloons to evade authorities, but Lithuanian officials suspect that this increase in balloon flights is an act of “hybrid warfare” perpetrated by the Belarusian government. The balloons have on occasion forced the closure of the international airport at Vilnius and have apparently affected some 350 civilian flights over the past couple of months. The declaration will allow the Lithuanian military to get more involved in policing the border.
UKRAINE
Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi acknowledged on Tuesday that his forces are losing ground in Pokrovsk, though he’s still denying recent Russian claims to have captured that beleaguered city. According to Syrskyi, Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from some indefensible positions but are still holding on to the northern and western parts of the city. How much longer that will be the case remains to be seen. The focus of Russian attention at present appears to be the town of Myrnohrad just east of Pokrovsk. Russian military commander Valery Gerasimov claimed on Tuesday that his forces have encircled the town and control some 30 percent of its buildings.
Donald Trump gave an interview to POLITICO on Tuesday in which he lambasted European leaders and expressed particular frustration with Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing (at least so far) to accede to his proposed Russia-Ukraine peace deal. Zelensky reiterated in an online chat with reporters on Monday evening that he is not prepared to give up territory in the Donbas that Russia does not already control, which at this point appears to be the main divergence between the US and Ukrainian positions. In the POLITICO interview Trump returned to arguments he’s frequently made in the past, namely that Russia is winning the war and any settlement is only going to get worse for Ukraine the longer Zelensky holds out. Trump also renewed his demand for Ukrainian elections, something that Zelensky says he’d be prepared to do if the US and Europe were able to “ensure security.”
The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that in a phone call over the weekend US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner gave Zelensky an ultimatum of just days to accept Trump’s framework, with the aim of announcing a deal by Christmas. Zelensky asked for time to consult with European leaders, which he’s been doing over the past couple of days. They’ve reportedly edited the US framework document and may share the changes they’ve made with US officials as soon as Wednesday.
CZECHIA
Czech President Petr Pavel officially named Andrej Babiš as prime minister on Tuesday, a bit over two months after his ANO party won the country’s general election. Pavel had delayed this process a bit while waiting for Babiš to transfer control of his Agrofert holding company to a trust in order to reduce at least the perception of corruption. Babiš is pledging to reduce aid to Ukraine and to take a harder line with respect to the EU, albeit not as hard as full-blown euroskeptics like Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
AMERICAS
HONDURAS
Whatever tension already existed about the repeatedly interrupted counting of votes from last month’s Honduran presidential election may have been turned up to 11 on Tuesday, when current President Xiomara Castro claimed that there has been “manipulation” of the vote tallying system as part of an “electoral coup.” Supporters of Castro’s LIBRE party, whose candidate finished in third place in the official count, have begun protesting in small groups over the disruptions in the process, which the Honduran National Electoral Council (CNE) has insisted are due to technical problems and have not affected the integrity of the election.
In the meantime, former Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura still leads in the official count. This will no doubt be welcome news to Donald Trump and also, apparently, to El Salvador’s MS-13 criminal gang:
Gangsters from MS-13, a Trump-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, intimidated Hondurans not to vote for the left-leaning presidential candidate, 10 eyewitness sources told The Intercept, in most cases urging them to instead cast their ballots in last Sunday’s election for the right-wing National Party candidate — the same candidate endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ten residents from four working-class neighborhoods controlled by MS-13, including volunteer election workers and local journalists, told The Intercept they saw firsthand gang members giving residents an ultimatum to vote for the Trump-endorsed conservative candidate or face consequences. Six other sources with knowledge of the intimidation — including government officials, human rights investigators, and people with direct personal contact with gangs — corroborated their testimony. Gang members drove voters to the polls in MS-13-controlled mototaxi businesses, three sources said, and threatened to kill street-level activists for the left-leaning Liberty and Refoundation, or LIBRE, party if they were seen bringing supporters to the polls. Two witnesses told The Intercept they saw members of MS-13 checking people’s ballots inside polling sites, as did a caller to the national emergency help line.
“A lot of people for LIBRE didn’t go to vote because the gangsters had threatened to kill them,” a resident of San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras, told The Intercept. Mareros, as the gang members are known, intimidated voters into casting their ballots for Nasry “Tito” Asfura, known as Papi a la Órden or “Daddy at your service.” Multiple residents of San Pedro Sula alleged they were also directed to vote for a mayoral candidate from the centrist Liberal Party.
As The Intercept notes, LIBRE’s popularity had already dropped and it’s unlikely that the party would have won the election anyway. But it sure is interesting that MS-13 and Trump are pulling for the same guy, especially when Trump and his base have been hyping MS-13’s misdeeds as part of their overall case for curbing immigration and increasing deportations. Notably, the last National Party president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, just got a pardon from Trump after having been convicted of working with MS-13 to traffic cocaine into the US. I’m not saying that Trump is trying to turn Honduras back into a narco-state, just noting these coincidences.
HAITI
The AP is reporting that fighting between factions of Haiti’s Viv Ansanm gang coalition has left “dozens” of people dead in Port-au-Prince over the past two days. A local human rights organization called the Committee for Peace and Development says it’s “counted at least 49 people killed, burned and mutilated since Monday,” including at least 19 gang members, 19 women, and ten children recruited by the gangs. Viv Ansanm’s most notorious figure, Jimmy Chérizier, issued a video statement in which he suggested that the infighting was caused by a dispute over the practice of kidnapping in the city’s Bel-Air neighborhood. Another of the coalition’s senior figures, Kempès Sanon, was apparently wounded in the clashes but it’s unclear how seriously, while a high-ranking Bel-Air gang leader who goes by the name Dèdè was reportedly killed.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch publisher Tom Engelhardt offers some year-end thoughts about where things stand in the second Trump presidency:
What self-destructive creatures we turn out to be!
Can you even believe it? Only recently, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, met in Brazil for two weeks. While 194 countries were represented there, the historically greatest fossil-fuelizer on the planet, Donald Trump’s United States, was, of course, missing in action (for the first time in 30 years). Worse yet, while the conference was underway, the Trump administration announced a new plan to open 1.3 billion acres (no, that is not a misprint!) of coastal waters to new oil and gas drilling. As for the conference itself, after floundering and almost foundering, its member nations barely agreed on a way more or less forward, what were termed “baby steps” toward a better (or at least less utterly disastrous) future. And yet, can you believe this? The final agreement didn’t even include the words “fossil fuels” or reaffirm in blunt language that they should be phased out! (President Trump must have been pleased!)
Hey, and if that doesn’t cheer you up enough, consider this: a White House spokeswoman responded to the conference with the claim that President Trump had “set a strong example for the rest of the world” by pursuing new fossil-fuel development while it was underway. “President Trump has been clear,” she said. “He will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.”
Yes, indeed, what a world! After all, we’re talking about one of the two ways human beings have discovered to utterly devastate Planet Earth (the other, of course, being with nuclear weapons). And full credit is due. Consider us nothing less than remarkable creatures for coming up with not one but two ways to potentially do ourselves and this planet in.
Now, imagine this: “my” president, the man, inaugurated for a second time in January 2025, was the oldest nominee ever for that office and, should he complete this term, will be the oldest president in American history, older even than ancient Joe Biden when he left office (assuming, of course, that Donald Trump ever does leave office). And give him full credit: he’s essentially put his weight — and that’s no small thing, given that he’s been termed “technically obese,” even if his administration has been denying obese immigrants entry to this country — behind both ways of doing this planet in. After all, he only recently announced that, for the first time since 1992, the U.S. might once again begin testing nuclear weapons!
Thanks for reading! Please do consider supporting GiveDirectly’s campaign either with a donation or by subscribing to FX:
You do a very good job with these roundups. (And I won't mention that I appreciate the VO because I am lazy. You already know this.)
Yemen?