World roundup: April 6-7 2024
World roundup: April 6-7 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Japan, Ecuador, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
April 6, 1250: The Battle of Fariskur ends the ill-fated Seventh Crusade.
April 6, 1896: The Games of the First Olympiad, AKA the first modern Olympics, open in Athens. The ancient Olympic Games, believed to have begun in the early 8th century BCE, were discontinued either by Roman Emperor Theodosius I, in the 390s, or by Theodosius II, in the 420s. French educator Pierre de Coubertin (d. 1937) was the driving force behind their revival, which led to the creation of the International Olympic Committee in 1894 and the first modern Games two years later.
April 7, 529: The Codex Justinianeus, the first section of Roman Emperor Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, is completed. The Corpus Juris Civilis was meant to standardize and codify imperial law, which had fragmented into multiple codices and laws that didn’t necessarily cohere with one another. Justinian ordered a review and modernization of these law codes upon his accession as emperor. The Codex is the product of that effort. The Corpus Juris Civilis has influenced everything from canon law in the Catholic Church to the legal codes of the Ottoman Balkans and modern Greece to contemporary international law.
April 7, 1994: One day after Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated when their aircraft was shot down before landing in Kigali (either by Hutu extremists or by the then-rebel Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front militia), Hutu génocidaires begin slaughtering Tutsi Rwandans en masse. The ensuing genocide left hundreds of thousands dead, including Twa Rwandans and some Hutu along with the Tutsi, with highest estimates putting the death toll at over one million. It finally ended in July, with the RPF seizing control of the country under current Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) pulled out of Khan Younis on Sunday, which means that most of its forces have now been withdrawn from the Gaza Strip. Only one IDF unit is currently in the territory, occupying the “Netzarim Corridor” that the IDF is using to divide northern and southern Gaza. Before anyone gets their hopes up I don’t think this withdrawal means an end to the Gaza operation is nigh, nor do I think it reflects a retreat even though it does come a day after militants killed at least four Israeli commandos in Khan Younis. Israeli officials characterized the withdrawal as a “rest and refit” maneuver ahead of the IDF’s entry into the city of Rafah, which could come at any time after the Eid al-Fitr holiday this week. There’s also plenty of reason to think the IDF is redeploying forces in preparation for an attack by Iran that, depending on the form it takes, could mark the start of that regional war the Israeli government seems to crave.
In the meantime, a new round of ceasefire talks is set to begin in Cairo, including delegations from both the Israelis and Hamas. In addition to demanding improvements in Gaza’s humanitarian situation the Biden administration is also reportedly putting increased pressure on the Israeli government to make a deal, and may be pushing the Egyptian and Qatari governments to apply similar pressure to Hamas. So the chances of a deal may be increasing, though that doesn’t mean a deal will get done. Hamas issued a statement on Saturday declaring its refusal to “back down” from its previous demands, which were and presumably still are unacceptable to the Israelis. One demand in particular, the return of displaced people to northern Gaza, has reportedly become a key sticking point, and it’s apparently here where the Biden administration is leaning on Israeli leaders to be flexible. This is a political issue for Hamas, which wants/needs to show some concern for civilian safety in response to criticism that its October 7 attack in southern Israel put those civilians squarely in the IDF’s crosshairs.
Speaking of Hamas and its political considerations, Akbar Shahid Ahmed at HuffPost has published an interview with two of the group’s senior officials, Mousa Abu Marzouk and Basem Naim. It’s a very interesting interview. We don’t have the time or space here to parse it and I’m not sure there’s much value in that given that they’re both clearly pushing a narrative, but I’d urge anyone interested in that narrative to click over and read the piece.
SYRIA
A roadside bomb killed at least seven children in southern Syria’s Daraa province on Saturday. Syrian state media blamed the incident on unspecified militant groups, the remnants of rebel factions that have surrendered but still bear enmity toward the government, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is claiming that it was a pro-government militia that planted the device in some sort of unspecified “assassination” operation. It’s also saying that the blast killed eight children. The SOHR claimed on Sunday that a clash between two “rival” militant groups—one of them led by a former Islamic State member “who now works for military intelligence”—had left at least 17 people dead in the wake of the bombing.
LEBANON
The IDF carried out airstrikes in eastern Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley on Sunday. In a rare acknowledgement of responsibility, Israeli officials said the attack targeted “a military complex and three other terrorist infrastructure sites belonging to Hezbollah's air defense network.” They further characterized the strikes as “retaliation” for the downing of an Israeli drone the previous day.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Unspecified gunmen reportedly ambushed a police vehicle in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday, killing at least two police officers and wounding two other people. This operation was presumably carried out by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) or one of its various splinter groups. Also on Saturday another police officer was killed in a roadside bombing in the same province, while Pakistani authorities say that an army unit killed at least eight TTP fighters in a clash on Friday night.
Elsewhere, a motorcycle bomb killed at least two people and wounded five others in southwestern Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Sunday. There’s been no claim of responsibility in this attack either, but Baluch separatists have been fairly active of late so that’s one obvious theory.
INDONESIA
Indonesian police reported on Sunday that a joint police-military security unit killed two “regional commanders” of the rebel West Papua Liberation Army in a clash on Thursday in Central Papua province. A number of rebel fighters were reportedly wounded in the incident but were apparently able to flee.
JAPAN
The Financial Times is reporting (here’s an unpaywalled summary) that the Biden administration wants to expand AUKUS, the US-UK-Australia alliance based in part around providing Australia with nuclear-powered submarines that is definitely in no way about arming for World War III with China, to include Japan. Defense ministers from the three principals are apparently going to announce on Monday that they intend to open up “Pillar II” of the alliance, the part that doesn’t deal specifically with submarines, to new potential members. According to the FT, Pillar II “involves collaboration on technologies such as undersea capabilities and hypersonic weapons.”
This comes as Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio is visiting Washington this week, with he and Joe Biden reportedly planning to unveil “the biggest upgrade to their security alliance since they signed a mutual [defense] treaty in 1960.” It’s all part of a broader project to turn Japan’s “Self-Defense Forces” into more of a full-fledged military that can assume a larger role in the US-led, not-at-all-about-China Indo-Pacific order, which includes arrangements like AUKUS. The upgrade would likely put the US Forces Japan military command on similar footing with its US Forces Korea counterpart.
AFRICA
SENEGAL
New Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko unveiled his new cabinet on Friday, calling it “a breakaway government ... that embodies the project, a systemic transformation voted for by the Senegalese people.” Sonko and his protege/boss, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, are promising a “breakaway” from Senegal’s political past and apparently named a number of relative newcomers to key ministerial posts. It remains to be seen whether they can follow through on their promise or even coexist in their current arrangement—as Alex Thurston pointed out in his most recent FX column (updated to reflect Faye’s election), the recent history of these sorts of political partnerships in West Africa has not been particularly good.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
CODECO militants attacked a village in the eastern DRC’s Ituri province on Saturday, killing at least 25 civilians at last count. CODECO, an association of ethnic Lendu militias, is one of the most violent of the many armed groups in the eastern Congo. A United Nations report issued last month apparently said that it and the Allied Democratic Forces group “are responsible for most civilian killings” in that region.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military launched a drone attack on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Sunday, for reasons that defy explanation. At least three drones struck the plant, including one that hit uncomfortably close to one of its six reactors. International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi took to Twitter to condemn the attack, saying that such strikes “significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident.” There doesn’t appear to have been any substantial damage this time around, though Russian officials say that three people were wounded on site.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sounded the alarm again about his country’s dwindling supply of antiaircraft ammunition. How or when he might expect to get resupplied is anybody’s guess, particularly with the US House of Representatives still flailing about over the approval of additional support. Even with renewed foreign support the Russian military can presumably continue to exhaust Ukrainian air defenses with drone and missile strikes. All it takes is for a few projectiles to make it on target to cause damage, as with the Russian missiles that killed at least eight people in Kharkiv on Saturday.
SLOVAKIA
Voters in Slovakia elected former Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini as their new president on Saturday with a bit over 53 percent support. Pellegrini’s election is a gift to current PM Robert Fico, whose Smer party is presently in a coalition with Pellegrini’s Hlas party. Fico and current President Zuzana Čaputová do not see eye to eye but Fico and Pellegrini should generally be on the same page. Slovakian presidents don’t have a tremendous amount of power but they can be an obstacle to an unfriendly government.
AMERICAS
ECUADOR
The Mexican government has severed diplomatic relations with the government of Ecuador, after Ecuadorian authorities raided the Mexican embassy in Quito late Friday to arrest former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas. Earlier in the day the Mexican government had granted Glas’s request for asylum. He’d holed up in the embassy in late December, fleeing corruption charges that he’s insisted are politically motivated. Regular readers may note that the Mexican and Ecuadorian governments already weren’t getting along, with the latter having expelled the Mexican ambassador on Thursday over unflattering comments that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made about last year’s Ecuadorian presidential election.
That hostility aside, attacking the embassy of another country violates what is as close to inviolable a diplomatic principle as there is. Several days ago we saw the Israeli military strike an Iranian consular building in Damascus, so this is becoming something of a trend. But attacking a diplomatic outpost in a third country is one thing. What the Ecuadorian government did on Friday, attacking a foreign embassy on its own soil, breached the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which bars host country security forces from entering embassy grounds without permission of the ambassador. It’s unsurprising that the raid sparked an outpouring of condemnation from around the world, and in particular from other countries in Latin America.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The New York Times reported late last month that Israeli authorities have created a mass facial recognition program in Gaza that draws in part on Google Photos. This appears to violate Google Photo’s rules, but The Intercept’s Sam Biddle reports that the company doesn’t seem all that interested in talking about it:
The mass surveillance of Palestinian faces resulting from Israel’s efforts to identify Hamas members has caught up thousands of Gaza residents since the October 7 attack. Many of those arrested or imprisoned, often with little or no evidence, later said they had been brutally interrogated or tortured. In its facial recognition story, the Times pointed to Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose arrest and beating at the hands of the Israeli military began with its use of facial recognition. Abu Toha, later released without being charged with any crime, told the paper that Israeli soldiers told him his facial recognition-enabled arrest had been a “mistake.”
Putting aside questions of accuracy — facial recognition systems are notoriously less accurate on nonwhite faces — the use of Google Photos’s machine learning-powered analysis features to place civilians under military scrutiny, or worse, is at odds with the company’s clearly stated rules. Under the header “Dangerous and Illegal Activities,” Google warns that Google Photos cannot be used “to promote activities, goods, services, or information that cause serious and immediate harm to people.”
Asked how a prohibition against using Google Photos to harm people was compatible with the Israel military’s use of Google Photos to create a “hit list,” company spokesperson Joshua Cruz declined to answer, stating only that “Google Photos is a free product which is widely available to the public that helps you organize photos by grouping similar faces, so you can label people to easily find old photos. It does not provide identities for unknown people in photographs.” (Cruz did not respond to repeated subsequent attempts to clarify Google’s position.)