World roundup: April 25 2024
World roundup: April 25 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
April 25, 775: The Battle of Bagrevand
April 25, 1846: A small detachment of US soldiers is resoundingly defeated by a much larger Mexican contingent in what became known as the Thornton Affair, after the US commander Captain Seth Thornton. This was the first military engagement of the Mexican-American War, which ended in February 1848 with Mexico’s surrender, including its recognition of the US annexation of Texas and the cession of the territory that includes the modern states of California, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.
April 25, 1898: The US Congress declares war on Spain retroactive to the imposition of a US naval blockade on Cuba on April 21. This marks the start of the Spanish-American War, which ended in August with Spain’s surrender and the cession of Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico to the US along with a renunciation of Spain’s claim on Cuba.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) reportedly intensified its bombardment of the southern Gazan city of Rafah on Thursday, amid speculation that its ground assault on that city could begin in a matter of days or perhaps week. One might note some incongruity between the Israeli government’s insistence that it intends to evacuate civilians from Rafah to protect them and its escalation in airstrikes that are already killing those same civilians en masse. Of course, for those things to be incongruous, Israeli leaders would have to be sincere in their desire to minimize civilian deaths, and the conduct of the entire IDF operation in Gaza strongly suggests otherwise. According to Reuters there’s been a trickle of civilians out of Rafah in recent days as fear of the ground assault increases. But most people seem to be staying put, either waiting for guidance from the IDF or resigned to the fact that no place in Gaza is truly safe.
In other news:
Khalil al-Hayya, a senior figure in Hamas’s political bureau, has given an interview to the AP in which he says Hamas would disarm and transition into a political party upon the formation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with borders set along pre-1967 lines. This is being treated as a major shift in Hamas’s operating principles, in that the Hayya seems to accept the continued existence of Israel whereas Hamas’s charter calls for its destruction. In reality Hamas leaders have been talking about accepting pre-1967 borders since at least 2008 and in 2017 the group adopted a new political document that explicitly accepts a state along pre-1967 lines—without recognizing Israel. This is unacceptable to the Israeli government because the implication is that Hamas will accept a state along pre-1967 borders only as an interim step on the way to fully eliminating Israel. I don’t see anything in Hayya’s comments that would suggest Hamas’s position has changed, and at any rate the Israeli government is thoroughly committed to suppressing any Palestinian state along any borders so the whole thing is basically moot.
Palestinian officials said on Thursday that the IDF killed a 16 year old Palestinian during a raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Israeli officials say their heavily armed soldiers were viciously attacked with rocks and responded with live fire at the rock throwers. I’m sure it was very harrowing for them.
There’s apparently another push underway to try to negotiate a ceasefire. According to Israeli media the Egyptian government put forward a new proposal on Wednesday, one that prompted a meeting of Israel’s “war cabinet” and a denunciation from Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich via X. The proposal has three components—a suspension of the IDF’s Rafah preparations, a ten week ceasefire and prisoner exchange, and some sort of commitment for a one year ceasefire in the deal’s third phase. The Israeli government would agree to release 50 Palestinian prisoners for every soldier freed by Hamas and 30 prisoners for every civilian freed by Hamas. One big sticking point remains the question of how many of the hostages in Gaza are still alive—Hamas seems unable or unwilling to provide a figure. The war cabinet has agreed to allow an international team to visit Hamas fighters taken prisoner since October 7 to assess their conditions, which could be a gesture toward securing a deal.
Palestinian workers are continuing to recover bodies from mass graves found on the sites of two Gazan hospitals, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, that have been assaulted by IDF soldiers in recent months. According to Al Jazeera they’ve recovered 392 bodies as of Thursday. They’ve alleged that around 20 of the bodies recovered so far show indications that they were buried alive and some display signs of torture. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Thursday that the Biden administration wants “to see this thoroughly and transparently investigated,” but the administration seems content to allow the Israeli government to investigate itself.
The United Nations and aid organizations working in Gaza say they’re finally seeing an increase in the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza, presumably stemming from changes the Israeli government has implemented to mollify international outrage over the drone strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on April 1. But the amount of aid getting into Gaza still isn’t enough to meet the need, which has been worsened by more than six months of inadequacy. The question nobody seems to be asking is why the Israeli government insisted for months prior to the WCK incident that it was doing everything in its power to maximize the flow of aid into Gaza, when this increase shows clearly that it was not.
LEBANON
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed on Wednesday that the IDF has killed “half of the Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon” over the past six months. This seems fanciful to say the least, and has been denied by officials in Hezbollah and Lebanese intelligence services. It’s likely Gallant was spinning a yarn for the benefit of the Israeli public.
YEMEN
Houthi officials say they’ve carried out attacks against several commercial vessels in the Red Sea region over the past couple of days, a claim that aligns with reports from the US, UK, and European Union that their vessels have been intercepting drones and missiles fired from northern Yemen. There’s no indication that any of these attempted strikes caused damage, but the Houthis had gone somewhat quiet of late so this flurry of new activity is noteworthy. It seems likely that they toned things down to avoid inflaming the already inflammatory Israel-Iran dynamic, but with that episode apparently behind us they’re now free to resume their activity.
IRAN
The Biden administration on Thursday, along with the governments of Canada and the UK, blacklisted more than a dozen individuals, companies, and cargo ships allegedly involved in Iran’s drone program. US officials cited Iran’s attack on Israel earlier this month as well as its support for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine as the rationale for the new sanctions.
ASIA
MYANMAR
The paramilitary group calling itself the “Karen National Army” now appears to be in control of the town of Myawaddy, after reportedly driving out Karen National Union rebels earlier this week. The group’s leader, Saw Chit Thu, has supported Myanmar’s ruling military junta and reportedly controls a substantial network of illicit businesses along the Myanmar-Thailand border, specializing in human trafficking and online scam operations with ties to Chinese organized crime groups. He’s been sanctioned for these activities by the UK government. The KNA seems to have engineered this takeover by first refusing to fight alongside the Myanmar military against the KNU and then, once the rebels had seized Myawaddy, moving his forces into the town alongside what was left of the military garrison. With the junta sending a relief army to try to regain control of the town and its important border crossing, the KNU determined that its position was vulnerable and withdrew.
INDONESIA
Indonesia’s Nasdem party announced on Thursday that it will support President-elect Prabowo Subianto’s government, bringing him close to a functional parliamentary majority. Nasdem won 69 seats in the Indonesian House of Representatives in February’s election. According to Reuters Prabowo’s coalition currently controls around 48 percent of the seats in the next legislative session and Nasdem could put it over 50 percent. However, the party didn’t go into much detail in terms of the extent of its support—it’s unclear, for example, whether it intends to join Prabowo’s coalition outright or simply provide its votes when it sees fit. Prabowo is still negotiating with other parties to try to amass more parliamentary support.
AFRICA
BURKINA FASO
Human Rights Watch says it has evidence that Burkinabé soldiers “summarily executed” 223 people in the villages of Nondin and Soro in late February. That evidence includes witness testimony, analysis of video and photos, and indications of mass graves taken from satellite imagery of the two villages. The massacres took place during a wave of jihadist violence across northern Burkina Faso and were likely carried out as acts of retribution against communities accused of supporting the insurgents. Burkinabé security forces have a habit of lashing out against civilians in response to jihadist activity, and authorities in Ouagadougou rarely if ever investigate these sorts of allegations.
CHAD
The US military said on Thursday that it’s pulling at least some of its personnel out of Chad, after Chadian officials ordered a suspension of US military activity at an airbase near N’Djamena and suggested that they might tear up the Status of Forces Agreement that governs the US military presence. The Pentagon characterized this as a “temporary step,” but it’s unclear how temporary it will be. The personnel in question will be redeployed to Germany. Between this and the situation in Niger this hasn’t been a good month for the US military presence in Africa.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The Congolese government is taking aim at Apple’s supply chain:
Congo’s government is questioning Apple about the tech company’s knowledge of “blood minerals” from a conflict zone in the African country that could be smuggled into its supply chains and is demanding answers within three weeks.
A group of international lawyers representing Congo said Thursday that they sent letters to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and its French subsidiary this week, raising concerns about human rights violations involving the minerals extracted from mines in the country’s troubled east that might end up being used in the company’s products.
They included a list of questions challenging Apple to show how it monitors its supply chains in a region where more than 100 armed rebel groups operate, some of whom have been accused of carrying out mass killings of civilians.
Writing to Cook, the lawyers said “it has become clear to us that year after year, Apple has sold technology made with minerals sourced from a region whose population is being devastated by grave violations of human rights.”
EUROPE
BELARUS
The Belarusian government claimed on Thursday that its security forces has prevented drone strikes targeting Minsk and its environs, launched by “radicals” based in Lithuania. There’s no confirmation of this claim and no information as to when these alleged drone strikes are supposed to have taken place. The Lithuanian military called the claim “nonsense.”
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military has reportedly pulled its US-made M1A1 Abrams battle tanks off of the front line due to their vulnerability to Russian drones. The US sent 31 of those vehicles to Kyiv in January 2023 and five of them have apparently been lost in combat. It seems the tanks are unable to move over open ground without being seen by Russian surveillance drones and then targeted by Russian attack drones and artillery. The Ukrainian and US governments spent several months in 2022 bickering about whether or not the US would send Abrams tanks to Ukraine. They’ve made no tangible impact on the war and in hindsight it seems the Ukrainians would have been better served had the US sent additional artillery or antiaircraft assistance instead.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration appears likely to announce on Friday a new $6 billion outlay of military aid for Ukraine. That would be the largest single tranche of arms the US has committed to Ukraine to date. This package would be authorized under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which covers direct purchases from defense contractors rather than the shipment of weapons out of existing US stockpiles. Among other considerations, that means it will take months at a minimum for these weapons to actually get to Ukraine. The package is likely to include advanced air defense systems, additional multiple rocket launch units, drones, and artillery munitions.
NORTH MACEDONIA
As expected, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova of the right-wing VMRO-DPMNE alliance won the first round of North Macedonia’s presidential election on Wednesday but fell short of winning an outright victory. She and incumbent Stevo Pendarovski will head to a runoff on May 8, coincident with North Macedonia’s parliamentary election. Siljanovska took a bit over 41 percent of the vote, well ahead of Pendarovski at just over 20 percent, and it seems all but certain that she will win the second round vote. This apparent electoral turn to the right may have implications for North Macedonia’s EU accession process, as the Bulgarian government is blocking the process and VMRO-DPMNE opposes the concessions Sofia is demanding in return for lifting that block.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
The Colombian military announced on Thursday that its forces had killed some 15 Estado Mayor Central militants and wounded 12 others in an operation last week in Colombia’s Cauca department. EMC is one of the two main groups of dissident former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fighters. It has been engaged in peace talks with the Colombian government but an internal rupture seems to have split it into two factions, one of which spurned further negotiations.
HAITI
Haiti’s long-awaited (?) transitional council officially took office on Thursday in a ceremony held in Port-au-Prince’s National Palace despite the threat from insurgent violence in the vicinity. To mark the occasion, Prime Minister Ariel Henry finally resigned, via letter from his de facto exile in the US. He’s being replaced on an interim basis by Finance Minister Michel Patrick Boisvert, who’d already been running whatever is left of Haiti’s government with Henry stuck in the US. The council will nominate a new candidate for interim PM at some point—though I suppose it could also decide to stick with Boisvert—who will ostensibly be charged with arranging a new election. None of this matters, of course, if Haitian authorities can’t get a handle on the insurgency that now controls most of the country’s capital. Leaders of that uprising do not seem inclined to stand down in favor of this council.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s Bob Dreyfuss considers how badly the two most recent US presidential administrations have mismanaged concerns over Iran’s nuclear program:
It was President Donald Trump, of course, who condemned the U.S.-Iran agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) while running in 2016. With his team of fervent anti-Iran hawks, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, he took a wrecking ball to relations with Iran. Six years ago, Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and, in what he called a campaign of “maximum pressure,” reinstituted, then redoubled political and economic sanctions against Tehran. Characteristically, he maintained a consistently belligerent policy toward the Islamic Republic, threatening its very existence and warning that he could “obliterate” Iran.
Joe Biden had been a supporter of the accord, negotiated while he was Obama’s vice president. During his 2020 presidential campaign, he promised to rejoin it. In the end, though, he kept Trump’s onerous sanctions in place and months of negotiations went nowhere. While he put out feelers to Tehran, crises erupting in 2022 and 2023, including the invasion of Israel by Hamas, placed huge obstacles in the way of tangible progress toward rebooting the JCPOA.
Worse yet, still reeling from the collapse of the 2015 agreement and ruled by a hardline government deeply suspicious of Washington, Iran is in no mood to trust another American diplomatic venture. In fact, during the earlier talks, it distinctly overplayed its hand, demanding far more than Biden could conceivably offer.
Meanwhile, Iran has accelerated its nuclear research and its potential production facilities, amassing large stockpiles of uranium that, as the Washington Post reports, “could be converted to weapons-grade fuel for at least three bombs in a time frame ranging from a few days to a few weeks.”