World roundup: April 13-14 2024
To I assume no great surprise, this one is mostly about Iran and Israel.
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TODAY IN HISTORY
April 13, 1953: Central Intelligence Agency director Allen Dulles orders the creation of Project MKUltra, a program for human experimentation into “mind control” drugs and techniques. Among its more unsavory components were experiments in which human subjects, often pulled involuntarily from prisons and mental institutions, were dosed with drugs (LSD in particular), usually without their consent. Some of the techniques MKUltra tested eventually found their way into George W. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” (torture) program, and it has spawned innumerable conspiracy theories since the revelation of its existence in the 1970s.
April 13, 1975: An attack by Christian Phalangist militia fighters on a bus carrying Palestinian fighters and civilians in eastern Beirut triggers the Lebanese Civil War.
April 14, 43 BCE: The legions of Mark Antony win a victory and suffer a defeat on the same day in the Battle of Forum Gallorum in northern Italy. Antony was was confronted by a Republican army under the command of that year’s consuls, Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa, bolstered by a group of Julius Caesar’s veterans led by Octavian. Antony’s army attacked Pansa’s part of the army and won a fleeting victory before an attack by Hirtius forced Antony to withdraw. Pansa was badly wounded and would die on April 22. The outcome of Forum Gallorum was inconclusive and led to a second, decisive engagement, the Battle of Mutina, a week later.
April 14, 1912: Shortly before midnight, the allegedly unsinkable ocean liner RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg and, well, begins sinking. In part due to the fact that it carried enough lifeboats for only about half of the passengers on board (and a third of the passengers it could have carried at full capacity), the Titanic’s sinking became one of the biggest maritime disasters in history, killing more than 1500 people.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Gaza ceasefire negotiations are going badly enough that, instead of actually negotiating, the Israeli government and Hamas are blaming one another for impeding progress toward a deal. On Saturday, prior to the Iranian attack on Israel (we’ll get to that below), Hamas delivered its response to the latest offer on the table and needless to say it wasn’t “yes.” The group has apparently not budged on demands for an indefinite ceasefire and the Israeli military’s (IDF) full withdrawal from Gaza, while the Israelis have not budged in their strict rejection of those terms. In Gaza, meanwhile, there were reports on Sunday that the IDF was allowing women, at least, to pass through its checkpoint from the southern into the northern part of the territory. As far as I know the IDF hasn’t confirmed any policy shift so it’s unclear what’s happening or how many people have been able to return to northern Gaza.
In the West Bank, Israeli settler mobs attacked several Palestinian villages near Ramallah on Friday after a 14 year old settler was reported missing. The violence resumed on Saturday after authorities discovered the body of the missing settler and the IDF claimed that he was the victim of a “terrorist attack.” The mob killed at least one Palestinian on Friday and wounded dozens more, while destroying several homes and other property.
LEBANON
The IDF attacked a building apparently belonging to Hezbollah near the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek on Sunday. There were no casualties but this is another Israeli strike well north of the border region and reflects the continued expansion of the Israeli-Hezbollah back and forth to more distant parts of Lebanon.
IRAN
In the wake of Iran’s overnight drone and missile strike against Israel, my sense is that it was larger than might have been hoped but less serious than it appeared in the moment. The attack involved over 300 projectiles—drones as well as ballistic and cruise missiles—but most of them appear to have been intercepted by Israeli air defense systems supplemented by the US, UK, French, and Jordanian militaries. Those that did make it to target appear to have hit exclusively military sites, concentrated in the occupied Golan region and the Negev Desert in southern Israel. There have been reports of injuries but no deaths (at least yet), and in terms of damage accounts vary all the way from none (the Israeli story) to extensive (the Iranian story). Both parties here have incentive to exaggerate in either direction but more objective estimates (possibly complicated by Israeli restrictions on media access) suggest the damage was relatively limited.
If you peruse those corners of the media/analysis landscape that are constantly urging war with Iran, the consensus appears to be that this attack was intended to cause vast damage and high casualties but that Israel and company successfully thwarted it. I don’t think that’s accurate. The nearly two weeks that passed after Israel’s attack on that Iranian consular building in Damascus suggest the Iranians were carefully considering how to retaliate without triggering further escalation and that they wanted to give the Israeli and US governments plenty of time to prepare for what was coming. There have been several reports that the Iranian government communicated its plans (in a broad sense, at least) to the US through regional intermediaries, including a message sent via the Turkish government just before the attack was launched. And the message out of Tehran on Sunday has been that the Iranians are prepared to consider the matter closed but reserve the right to attack again should the Israelis retaliate.
This all points toward the Iranians intending the effect of their attack to be more symbolic than tangible, to send a message without giving the Israelis much of an excuse to continue spiraling this situation into a full-blown regional war. What remains to be seen is whether the Israeli government is going to avail itself of this opportunity to hop off the ride. It’s mildly promising to see Israeli rhetoric since the attack focusing on the defensive success rather than on the need for retaliation. It may also be promising that Joe Biden has reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US will not support an Israeli attack on Iran. Biden on Sunday got his fellow G7 leaders to condemn the Iranian attack, which was undoubtedly meant to assuage Netanyahu.
I feel fairly certain there will be an Israeli response to this attack, but that response could also be carefully calibrated to give Israel the “last word” without risking further escalation. The big risk here is that Netanyahu is so hell-bent on war, for his own petty reasons, that he’s committed to escalation no matter what. We don’t know exactly what Biden said to him after the attack, but in point of fact Netanyahu doesn’t need US support to attack Iran—he needs US support to shield Israel from further retaliation. If Biden’s “ironclad” commitment to Israeli security extends to protecting it from the consequences of another provocative attack against Iran then his “you’re on your own” message to Netanyahu is meaningless.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
That bus hijacking in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Friday left at least 11 people dead—two killed in an initial attack on a car and nine (not eight as previously reported) who were taken from the bus and killed. There’s still no clear indication as to the identity of the attackers, but witness accounts have them selecting those nine people from the bus because they were apparently Punjabi. That suggests that it was some sort of Baluch nationalist group that carried out the attack.
INDONESIA
The Indonesian military is having to deny reports that its airstrikes risked the life of kidnapped New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens. He was abducted by West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) militants back in February 2023. The militants have released a new video in which he claims that Indonesian airstrikes have forced his relocation due to safety concerns, an assertion the Indonesian military labeled a “hoax.” The TPNPB says it will only release Mehrtens in the context of a United Nations-mediated negotiation.
AFRICA
NIGER
Thousands of people reportedly protested in Niamey on Saturday demanding the expulsion of the US military from Niger. The military junta currently ruling Niger announced last month that it’s canceling the military cooperation agreement under which US forces are currently stationed in the country, but the Pentagon has played dumb since then and there’s been no real move toward a redeployment. Saturday’s protests echoed demonstrations that took place after the junta seized power last July over the continued French military presence in the country.
SOMALIA
The MV Abdullah, a cargo ship seized by Somali pirates last month, has been released after the payment of $5 million in ransom, according to the pirates themselves. It’s unclear who came up with the money. The vessel is Bangladeshi and was carrying cargo to the UAE when it was taken.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Allied Democratic Forces militants are believed to have been responsible for several attacks in the vicinity of the town of Beni in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province throughout the weekend. They killed at least 10 and perhaps 14 or more civilians.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
According to Russian officials, the Ukrainian military killed at least 16 people and wounded 20 more late Friday when it shelled the town of Tokmak, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia oblast. There’s no way to confirm the casualty count. On Saturday the Russian military said that its forces captured the village of Pervomaiske, near Avdiivka, though again that’s unconfirmed.
Ukraine’s overall military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Sunday that he believes the Russians are hoping to take the town of Chasiv Yar by May 9, the date Moscow celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Russian military has seemingly made Chasiv Yar the focus of its attention over the past few weeks. If/when the Russians take that town they will have a clear line of advance on the city of Kramatorsk to the northwest.
AMERICAS
HAITI
Haiti’s transitional council has run into something of a rough patch. The constituencies backing its nine members—seven political parties and two interest groups—are unhappy with the notice that appeared in the Haitian government gazette on Friday announcing the council’s formation, claiming that it includes “major modifications” that “distort” the council’s agenda. The announcement’s wording suggests that the composition of the council is ultimately subject to final approval by outgoing (I guess) Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, which apparently wasn’t part of the deal according to the stakeholders. Coverage of the announcement on Friday also noted that it indicated that Henry is only going to step down when (if?) the council appoints his successor, when previous reporting had suggested he would resign when the council took office.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s William Astore considers America’s “addiction to war”:
When I was in the U.S. military, I learned a saying (often wrongly attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato) that only the dead have seen the end of war. Its persistence through history to this very moment should indeed be sobering. What would it take for us humans to stop killing each other with such vigor and in such numbers?
Song lyrics tell me to be proud to be an American, yet war and profligate preparations for more of the same are omnipresent here. My government spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined (and most of them are allies). In this century, our leaders have twice warned of an “axis of evil” intent on harming us, whether the fantasy troika of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea cited by President George W. Bush early in 2002 or a new one — China, Russia, and North Korea — in the Indo-Pacific today. Predictably given that sort of threat inflation, this country is now closing in on a trillion dollars a year in “defense spending,” or close to two-thirds of federal discretionary spending, in the name of having a military machine capable of defeating “evil” troikas (as well as combating global terrorism). A significant part of that huge sum is reserved for producing a new generation of nuclear weapons that will be quite capable of destroying this planet with missiles and warheads to spare.
My country, to be blunt, has long been addicted to war, killing, violence, and massive preparations for more of the same. We need an intervention. We need to confront our addiction. Yet when it comes to war and preparations for future conflicts, our leaders aren’t even close to hitting rock bottom. They remain in remarkable denial and see no reason to change their ways.