World roundup: April 27-28 2024
World roundup: April 27-28 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Central African Republic, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: The newsletter will be taking a brief hiatus next week while I attend to family matters. We’ll be on our usual schedule through Thursday’s roundup and will resume our usual schedule on May 14. Those of you who were reading this newsletter last summer will know that it’s been a time of change and upheaval on my end. I’ve tried to minimize the effect on my work but that’s not always possible. There may be additional interruptions at times in the coming months but I will try to keep those to a minimum. I appreciate your patience.
THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
April 27, 1960: The Togolese Republic declares its independence from France. Commemorated annually as Independence Day in Togo.
April 27, 1961: The Republic of Sierra Leone gains its independence from the United Kingdom as the result of negotiations that had taken place the previous year. Commemorated annually as Independence Day in Sierra Leone.
April 27, 1978: The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, with the support of the Soviet Union, undertakes a coup against Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan that is known as the “Saur Revolution.” PDPA leader Nur Muhammad Taraki assumed the presidency after Khan’s execution on April 28, and mismanaged things so badly that his own party ousted and executed him in September 1979. That incident led directly to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and, with few and very brief exceptions, Afghanistan has been in a state of war ever since.
April 28, 224: This is the date generally given for the Battle of Hormozdgan, which effectively ended Parthian rule over the Persian Empire and installed the Sasanian dynasty in its place. Then-Emperor Artabanus IV was responding to the rise of the Sasanids under Ardashir V, king of Pars. Ardashir’s smaller but better armed and better prepared force met the Parthians at Hormozdgan—the location of which remains unconfirmed but was probably near the Iranian town of Ram-Hormoz—and won a decisive victory, killing Artabanus in the process. Ardashir V of Pars soon became Ardashir I of Persia, and the Sasanians ruled the empire until the Arab invasion swept them (and the Persian Empire in general) aside in the 7th century.
April 28, 1192: The newly elected king of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat, is assassinated in the city of Tyre.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Loathe as I am to make too much of yet another potential head fake regarding a ceasefire, talks are apparently advancing and Hamas is reportedly sending a delegation to Egypt on Monday to submit its response to the latest proposal. The Israeli government has already looked over and had a chance to amend the original Egyptian plan so we can assume it’s comfortable with where things are. This is generally where these negotiations have broken down in the past, with Hamas responding with its own demands that the Israeli government inevitably finds unacceptable. However, a “senior Hamas official” told AFP on Sunday that the response contains “no major issues,” and if that’s the case maybe this really will mark a breakthrough. It remains to be seen whether Hamas’s definition of a “major issue” comports with the Israeli government’s definition.
With all necessary caveats in mind, “two Israeli officials” have told Axios’s Barak Ravid that this time around they’ve offered to discuss a “restoration of sustainable calm” after the initial ceasefire/prisoner exchange is implemented. This is, as he notes, the first time since October 7 that Israeli officials have even nodded in the direction of an indefinite ceasefire. The proposal also includes the Israeli military’s (IDF) withdrawal from Gaza and the return of displaced Palestinians to the northern part of the territory, and it drops the number of prisoners Hamas would be expected to release in the initial exchange to something less than 40, which had previously been a red line for Israel. Hamas has said there are fewer than 40 hostages still alive who fit the criteria for that first round of exchanges (i.e., women and elderly and/or infirm men).
I doubt that Hamas is going to come back with a simple “yes” because the group’s leaders will then feel like they’ve left something on the table. If they come back with a “yes if” or “yes but” the question then becomes whether their counter-proposal is acceptable to the Israelis or is at least close enough to keep the Israelis from walking away. Given how primed the IDF seems to be for invading Rafah it’s hard to imagine the Israeli government being very open to additional concessions, but who knows?
In other items:
Hamas leaders may be feeling some pressure to exhibit greater negotiating flexibility on their part. A spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry gave two interviews to Israeli media over the weekend calling on both Israel and Hamas to show “more commitment and more seriousness” about reaching a deal. Given Qatar’s role as patron to Hamas, one assumes that message is intended to land harder on them than it does on the Israelis. In Gaza, meanwhile, there are indications that anger toward Hamas is on the rise. Polling, to the extent that polling under these circumstances can be considered reliable, suggests that the group’s support is slipping as people blame it for failing to protect civilians after October 7 and for failing to negotiate a ceasefire.
Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinians and wounded two others at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday. According to Israeli officials they were part of a group of “militants” who attacked the checkpoint. The circumstances beyond that are unclear but Palestinian media is reporting that the Israeli personnel prevented ambulances from getting to the scene for some time, perhaps as long as an hour, and has suggested that the two deceased Palestinians may have bled to death during that time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, according to a number of accounts from Israeli media, in a real lather over the possibility that the International Criminal Court might indict him over (alleged) war crimes in Gaza, so much so that he’s been haranguing the Biden administration to prevent it. Now, seeing as how the US government refuses to join the ICC because it believes itself above international law, you might wonder how it could have any leverage over anything the court might or might not do. But of course it does because it could sanction the court and/or court officials. An ICC indictment would be embarrassing for Netanyahu and might mean he’d need to be more selective about his international travel moving forward, but needless to say you’re unlikely to see him in the docks at The Hague anytime soon regardless of what the Biden administration does.
The World Central Kitchen announced on Sunday that it is resuming operations in Gaza. It’s been almost a month since a triple-tap Israeli drone strike killed seven WCK aid workers, allegedly because somebody in the IDF thought they saw a gun on a WCK truck. WCK suspended its work in Gaza after that incident. According to the organization the IDF has apologized for the incident and “said they had changed their rules of operation,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari issued a statement on Sunday claiming that “over the last few weeks, the amount of humanitarian aid going into Gaza has significantly increased. In the coming days, the amount of aid going into Gaza will continue to scale-up even more.” Let’s just assume this is all true. Why did it take seven months and a famine to get to this point, with the IDF insisting all the while that it was already doing everything it could to maximize aid deliveries? Is there any chance we could get an answer to that question?
According to the BBC there’s some possibility that UK soldiers could be deployed to help secure aid delivered via the offshore pier the US Navy is currently supposed to be building. The Biden administration is refusing to put US forces on the ground in Gaza but somebody is going to have to collect the aid that’s dropped off at the pier and drive it over a causeway to the facility that’s being set up on land to receive and then distribute it. That, in theory, would be the British role, assuming they’re willing to risk it.
Reuters reported on Saturday that several bureaus within the US State Department have advised Secretary of State Antony Blinken not to trust Israeli assurances that the IDF is using US-supplied weapons in compliance with international law. This comes on the heels of a USAID report concluding that the Israeli government is violating US obligations around compliance with international law and non-interference with humanitarian operations. Four bureaus submitted a joint report to Blinken that found those Israeli assurances “neither credible nor reliable,” while citing eight examples of potential IDF violations along with 11 examples of the IDF “arbitrarily” interfering with humanitarian aid. Blinken is obliged to report to Congress on Israeli compliance with international law by May 8 and will almost certainly ignore these concerns when he does so.
LEBANON
Israeli airstrikes reportedly killed at least three people in southern Lebanon on Saturday, at least two of them members of Hezbollah. Lebanese state media reported Hezbollah’s claim that it had attacked targets in northern Israel in retaliation but there’s no word on any casualties.
YEMEN
A drone strike killed at least five people, all civilians, in Yemen’s Taiz province on Saturday. The Houthi movement and the nominal Yemeni government each blamed the other for carrying out the strike, with the government going so far as to claim it doesn’t even have any drones so it couldn’t have been responsible. That could be splitting hairs, as I suspect the UAE-backed militias that are aligned with the government do have drones, but I digress.
Speaking of drones, the Houthis claimed on Saturday that they’d shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone two days earlier, and released a video purportedly showing its wreckage. The Pentagon has acknowledged losing a drone in Yemen but nothing beyond that. Their announcement came one day after a Houthi missile damaged an oil tanker in the Red Sea, though apparently not severely.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Pakistani Taliban (TTP) gunmen appear to have kidnapped a judge from his car in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday. The kidnappers then released a video in which the judge, Shakirullah Marwat, says that it was the TTP that abducted him and that he would not be released until the group’s demands—which he didn’t outline—were met.
CHINA
The Chinese Coast Guard on Saturday reportedly confronted a Japanese Coast Guard vessel carrying several Japanese politicians, including a former defense minister, near the disputed East China Sea islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. The Japanese ship was on some sort of “inspection” mission, according to Japanese media. The Chinese embassy in Tokyo accused Japan of breaching a bilateral “consensus” regarding the islands called on Tokyo to “return to the right track of properly managing contradictions and differences through dialogue and consultation, so as to avoid further escalation of the situation.”
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Sudanese military on Friday called for an “urgent” United Nations Security Council meeting “to discuss the UAE’s aggression against the Sudanese people, and the provision of weapons and equipment to the terrorist militia,” referring of course to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group. Sudanese military officials have repeatedly accused the UAE of backing the RSF and those allegations do seem to be grounded in reality, though Emirati officials have repeatedly denied them. There’s no indication whether the UNSC is prepared to take up the issue but it did, on Saturday, issue a statement expressing “deep concern” over the apparently imminent RSF assault on the city of El Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur state.
BURKINA FASO
Burkina Faso’s ruling junta suspended by my count at least seven more foreign media outlets on Sunday, following the two-week suspensions it handed down to BBC Africa and Voice of America on Friday. The French outlet TV5Monde received another two week suspension while the rest were suspended indefinitely. All have run afoul of the junta for reporting on Human Rights Watch’s claim that Burkinabé military forces massacred some 223 civilians in two villages back in February. The junta on Saturday dismissed that claim as “baseless” and insisted that the February incidents are still under investigation. It accused outlets reporting on the HRW claim of trying to “discredit” Burkinabé forces.
NIGERIA
At least 23 members of Nigeria’s “Civilian Joint Task Force,” a paramilitary group established in 2013 to help Nigerian security forces combat Boko Haram insurgents, were killed in two incidents on Saturday. At least nine were killed when their vehicle hit an apparent Islamic State West Africa Province explosive device in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state, while two more were seriously injured. Another 14 fighters were killed in northwestern Nigeria’s Sokoto state, where the CJTF has expanded to assist security forces in their battles with organized criminal gangs. The militia had raided a known gang encampment but said gang later ambushed them as they were returning to Sokoto City.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
According to Rolling Stone, Russian mercenaries have taken over the hunt for notorious Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony:
Multiple sources independently describe to Rolling Stone a bloody near-capture of Kony by Russian mercenaries working for the Wagner Group, in a remote corner of the Central African Republic in early April. A social media post affiliated with Wagner also confirms some aspects of the group’s interest in the warlord.
“This amounts to hot pursuit [in] the African bush,” says a U.S. source familiar with efforts to capture the warlord. “The U.S. military got within 72 hours of Kony. Wagner may be even closer.”
The operation demonstrates Russia’s ever-expanding reach across Africa, and also illustrates the shortcomings of more than two decades of U.S. military strategy on the continent. Despite spending billions on counterterror operations, training, and infrastructure in Africa since the beginning of the Global War on Terror, extremist violence is at an all-time high, according to researchers at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a U.S.-funded research institute. Even as fatalities from terror attacks have spiked with “a near doubling in deaths since 2021,” a string of coups and civil wars has unraveled Washington’s partnerships and created chaotic power vacuums.
American adversaries like Wagner are stepping into the breach.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
According to The Wall Street Journal, the US intelligence community has assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not order the death of opposition figure Alexei Navalny in a Russian penal colony back in February. Navalny supporters have insisted that he was killed on Putin’s orders and apparently some European intelligence agencies are skeptical about this US conclusion. US officials also haven’t offered an alternative explanation, though presumably Navalny’s already compromised health combined with the likely mistreatment he received in prison could have cost him his life through natural—or if not “natural” then at least unintentional—means.
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military’s senior commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, reported via Telegram on Sunday that Ukrainian forces were withdrawing from three villages in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast—Berdychi and Semenivka near the town of Avdiivka and Novomykhailivka further south near the town of Maryinka. They’re attempting to redeploy along a new defensive line in hopes of stemming recent Russian advances around Avdiivka in particular. The Russian military claimed on Sunday that its forces had taken the village of Novobakhmutivka, also near Avdiivka, but Syrskii’s statement didn’t mention that.
SPAIN
With Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez set to announce on Monday whether or not he intends to resign over corruption allegations that have been leveled at his wife, thousands of his supporters rallied in Madrid on Saturday calling on him to stick around. There seems to be some feeling that Sánchez threatened to resign in order to generate a public outcry in an effort to silence far-right attacks against his wife, which go well beyond this one instance. If that’s true then he’ll presumably announce that he’s decided not to resign, but we shall see.
UNITED KINGDOM
The UK government is reportedly preparing a mass roundup of asylum seekers on Monday in order to implement its latest scheme to deport them to Rwanda. The UK parliament passed a second try at the deportation plan on Monday, supposedly including provisions that address the concerns that prompted the UK Supreme Court to overturn the first deportation plan back in November. Anyone caught in the dragnet will be herded into detention facilities to await the initial deportation flight sometime this summer—assuming the new iteration of this scheme isn’t overturned as well in the meantime. UK authorities are preparing for protests.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, Maha Hilal at TomDispatch recounts one of the lingering atrocities of the glorious US War on Terror:
“To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me… The time I spent in Abu Ghraib — it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.” That’s what Abu Ghraib survivor Talib al-Majli had to say about the 16 months he spent at that notorious prison in Iraq after being captured and detained by American troops on October 31, 2003. In the wake of his release, al-Majli has continued to suffer a myriad of difficulties, including an inability to hold a job thanks to physical and mental-health deficits and a family life that remains in shambles.
He was never even charged with a crime — not exactly surprising, given the Red Cross’s estimate that 70% to 90% of those arrested and detained in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion of that country were guilty of nothing. But like other survivors, his time at Abu Ghraib continues to haunt him, even though, nearly 20 years later in America, the lack of justice and accountability for war crimes at that prison has been relegated to the distant past and is considered a long-closed chapter in this country’s War on Terror.
I wonder how Talib al-Majli feels when he hears Joe Biden and company talk about the “rules-based order.” Its only real rule seems to be that, as far as the US is concerned, there are no rules.