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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
August 1, 1798: The Battle of the Nile
August 1, 1927: The Nanchang Uprising marks the start of the Chinese Civil War. In a direct response to the Shanghai Massacre of April 12, in which Kuomintang forces purged Chinese Communist Party members from their ranks (and killed thousands of them, though the casualty figures are disputed), a CCP army captured Nanchang, home of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Nationalist Party. This was one of several CCP uprisings around the country. Realizing they couldn’t hold the city against a counterattack, the CCP withdrew on August 5 and undertook what became known as the “Little Long March” south to Guangdong province. China’s People’s Liberation Army dates its founding to this uprising.
August 2, 338 BCE (or thereabouts): Philip II of Macedon defeats a Greek army organized by Thebes and Athens at the Battle of Chaeronea. The outcome effectively ended any chance of Greek resistance to a Macedonian takeover. After harshly punishing Thebes, Philip engaged in heavy diplomacy to win over Athens and Corinth and isolate Sparta. He managed to unite most of the Greek city-states behind him in what historians call the “League of Corinth,” which was one of the key preliminary steps in his grand plan to invade the Persian Empire. Philip didn’t live long enough to lead that campaign, but his son Alexander picked up where dad left off.
August 2, 216 BCE (or thereabouts): At the Battle of Cannae in southeastern Italy, the Carthaginian general Hannibal annihilates a much larger Roman army in what has often been regarded as the closest thing to a total military victory in history. Hannibal’s cavalry outflanked and completely encircled the Roman infantry in a pincer movement, then attacked from all sides. Of the 86,000 or so Roman soldiers who began the battle (to about 50,000 for Hannibal), Livy says that the Carthaginians killed 67,500 and that’s the low estimate. Polybius cites a death toll of over 85,000. Included among the dead was Lucius Aemilius Paullus, one of the Roman consuls for that year. The outcome left the Roman army broken and so demoralized people living in the city of Rome that they turned to human sacrifice in a desperate attempt to find some cosmic favor. Cities in southern Italy began to declare allegiance to Hannibal. But Hannibal couldn’t besiege Rome and the Roman Senate refused to surrender, and the Second Punic War continued. Suffice to say Rome’s fortunes eventually improved.
August 2, 1964: The USS Maddox, in North Vietnamese territorial waters, exchanges fire with several North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, as it came to be known, along with a second alleged engagement two nights later that turned out to be fictional, kicked off the Vietnam War.
August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, sparking a US military buildup that would eventually lead to the Gulf War and, as far as that conflict’s fans are concerned, nothing else whatsoever.
INTERNATIONAL
In today’s global news:
Worldometer is tracking COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
The New York Times is tracking global vaccine distribution.
MIDDLE EAST
YEMEN
Let’s start with some rare good news: United Nations Yemen envoy Hans Grundberg issued a statement on Tuesday announcing that Yemen’s warring parties have agreed to extend their four-month ceasefire for at least another two months. Grundberg made the announcement just hours before the ceasefire was set to expire and was later confirmed by Yemen’s presidential council and by the rebels’ political council. This isn’t the expanded deal that the UN had been seeking, but it is preferable to a return to fighting. And given that the terms of April’s ceasefire still haven’t been implemented fully, a simple extension was the best realistic outcome here.
IRAQ
Iraqi political grandee Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his supporters to end their occupation of the Iraqi parliament building but to continue their four day (and counting) sit-in protest inside Baghdad’s “Green Zone.” Sadr’s Shia rivals in the Coordination Framework staged a counter-protest outside the “Green Zone” on Monday but also reportedly offered Sadr a deal whereby he would remove his supporters from the parliament building but the building itself would remain closed, forestalling a vote on forming a new Iraqi government. It’s unclear if Sadr’s decision to order his followers out of the building is linked to that offer. The decision to exit the parliament building eases tensions somewhat and means that Iraqi security forces won’t try to clear the building by force. How long they’ll let Sadr keep his protesters in the “Green Zone” is also unclear. I don’t imagine the Iraqi government relishes a confrontation with Sadr but this situation can’t go on indefinitely.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Monday’s Israeli raid in Jenin apparently resulted in the arrest of Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander Bassem Saadi. This has put the Israeli military on alert for the possibility of Islamic Jihad, which is based in Gaza, launching some sort of retaliatory attack. The Israeli army closed major roads and set up checkpoints around Gaza on Tuesday, and while nothing happened it’s still warning of an elevated risk of incident.
IRAN
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran announced via state TV on Monday evening that it has started up several new uranium centrifuge cascades. This is another step away from Iran’s obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal, but given that the nuclear deal barely exists anymore and that the Iranians apparently notified the International Atomic Energy Agency before taking this step it’s not a particularly serious concern. Also on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian indicated an interest in another round of talks on reviving the 2015 deal based on European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s recent proposal. It’s unclear whether there’s any appetite in Washington for new talks.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
There’s a bit more to say about the weekend US drone strike that reportedly killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul. The US claim is that the drone fired two Hellfire missiles at Zawahiri while he was on the balcony of his home. The lack of significant collateral damage has led to speculation that these were Hellfire R9X missiles, which use blades rather than explosives to strike individual targets. This doesn’t seem entirely consistent with claims from Kabul residents that they heard an “explosion,” though I’m sure these R9X’s make a pretty loud noise when they hit something. US officials are obviously not going into detail as to how they located Zawahiri but in broad terms it sounds like they’d tracked his family to Kabul and then waited for him to turn up there. There’s no DNA confirmation that it was Zawahiri who was killed, but the White House seems certain that it was him and even the Taliban-led Afghan government is acknowledging his death (see below). We will know for sure if/when al-Qaeda makes an official announcement.
I haven’t seen any claims regarding casualties other than Zawahiri from Saturday’s strike, and while the US government isn’t a reliable source when it comes to the damage caused by its own actions I would think if there were additional casualties the Afghan government would be making some hay out of that. Afghan officials are accusing the US of violating the 2020 Doha Agreement, which outlined the terms under which the US withdrew from Afghanistan. They may have a case, though the fact that the leader of al-Qaeda was apparently living comfortably in Kabul also at least arguably violates Doha so it’s probably a wash.
In terms of repercussions I suspect Zawahiri’s killing, while symbolically significant, is unlikely to have much effect on the functioning of al-Qaeda’s “central command,” if only because that gang has been something of an afterthought when it comes to Islamist militancy in recent years. Zawahiri was old and spent his last years in such deep seclusion that operationally it’s unclear whether he was active anymore. I’m not sure what this incident is going to mean for the Afghan people but it’s probably nothing good, especially if this makes it more difficult for Afghan officials to engage with the US on, say, the subject of their looted central bank funds.
MYANMAR
At least two people have been killed and nine wounded over the past two days in multiple incidents in the town of Muse, along the Chinese border in Myanmar’s Shan state. On Monday, a bombing targeting a police outpost killed at least one person and wounded five, while an attack on a police station Monday night killed at least one more person and wounded at least four and possibly as many as six. Another two people were wounded in a “drive-by shooting” on Tuesday. Several of the wounded are reportedly members of pro-government militias that operate in Muse in place of government security forces to accommodate Chinese sensitivities. There’s no indication as to responsibility but the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, one of a few armed groups that could have carried out these attacks, has denied involvement.
TAIWAN
As expected, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional junket did indeed make a stop in Taiwan on Tuesday. If you’re still able to read this, then that presumably means her trip didn’t spark World War III, and indeed as I write this the Chinese response to her arrival—which made her the highest level US official to visit Taiwan since Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s—has been predictably angry but also predictably tame in any practical sense. So far, Beijing has:
lodged a diplomatic protest with Washington
announced live fire military exercises in the vicinity of Taiwan to begin Tuesday night and continue perhaps through the weekend
sent military aircraft to “buzz” the median line of the Taiwan Strait
Additionally, Chinese hackers were likely behind a DDoS attack that took down Taiwanese government websites on Tuesday, but these appear to have been amateur volunteers rather than Chinese government personnel.
These are energetic responses but none of them signals that Armageddon is upon us. But the risks surrounding this trip aren’t just confined to intentional acts. The US Navy positioned considerable firepower in the vicinity of Taiwan on Tuesday in case the Chinese military attempted (or attempts, before Pelosi and company leave Taiwan on Wednesday morning) something more serious. Having the US and Chinese militaries on high alert so close to one another raises the potential for accidents, miscalculations, mistakes, and all sorts of other wonderful scenarios that could spark a war nobody wants.
And for what? So that Pelosi could drop an op-ed in The Washington Post that might as well have been published by the Democratic Party as campaign literature, mouth some vague platitudes about Freedom and Democracy, hold a few meetings that won’t produce anything of substance, and hop back on her plane without a care in the world. In the meantime, we’ll have to wait and see what (if any) longer term repercussions emerge from her visit, either for a Biden administration that didn’t seem all that keen on her going or for the Taiwanese people—many of whom, for what it’s worth, really didn’t want her to visit and who are likely to take the brunt of any retaliation Beijing attempts once Pelosi is gone.
AFRICA
SOMALIA
Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre has named Mukhtar Robow as his new Minister of Religion. This otherwise innocuous news is made a bit more interesting because Robow happens to be the former spokesperson for al-Shabab. He broke with the organization in 2013 and turned himself into the Somali government in 2017. Former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed had Robow arrested in 2018 as he was running for president of Somalia’s South West state, but he’s apparently on decent terms with the country’s new leaders. Reuters speculates that they’re hoping Robow will help them in his home region of Bakool, where al-Shabab has a significant foothold.
REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The official results of last month’s two-round Congolese legislative election are in, and Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s Labor Party has emerged with 111 seats in the 151 seat National Assembly. Nguesso’s party had already claimed 102 seats after the first round of voting so its majority was not in question.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, authorities say their security forces killed at least 11 Allied Democratic Forces militia fighters in an operation in North Kivu state on Tuesday. DRC forces also reportedly killed at least eight members of a local “Mai-Mai” militia in North Kivu on Monday. Meanwhile, officials in Kinshasa are “reassessing,” according to the AP, the presence of UN peacekeepers in the eastern DRC after at least 36 people have been killed over several days of anti-UN protests and related violence. Most recently, a unit of peacekeepers returning from Uganda inexplicably opened fire on a Congolese border outpost on Sunday, killing five people.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Biden administration on Tuesday blacklisted a number of Russian individuals and entities, including Vladimir Putin’s alleged girlfriend Alina Kabaeva. The US Treasury Department sanctioned her in her capacity as the head of something called the “National Media Group” and not, at least officially, in her capacity as (possibly) Putin’s squeeze. The US State Department, in a related move, imposed visa restrictions on 893 Russian individuals and 31 people from other countries accused of supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. There will be no summer trips to see Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum in The Colony, Texas (look it up) for these folks.
The Russian Supreme Court on Tuesday designated Ukraine’s Azov Regiment as a terrorist organization under Russian law. Among other repercussions, this decision could pave the way for trials and presumably executions of Azov fighters who have been captured by Russian forces. Azov was a major part of the defense of Mariupol and there are “scores” of the group’s fighters now in Russian hands.
UKRAINE
The Razoni, the cargo vessel that left Odessa loaded with Ukrainian grain on Monday, has arrived at Istanbul. There it will be inspected by workers at the “Joint Coordination Center” on Wednesday morning before heading off (assuming it passes inspection) on its way. There are reportedly some 27 vessels waiting at various Ukrainian ports loaded with grain, so if the Razoni makes it out of the Black Sea successfully presumably there will be more to come. More work will be needed before ships can begin entering the Black Sea to take on additional Ukrainian exports. So that’s the good news.
The bad news is that the Russian government is now accusing the United States of playing a direct combat role in Ukraine. This accusation is based on an interview in which the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence unit, Vadym Skibitsky, told The Telegraph that US officials are working with Ukrainian officials to identify targets for Ukrainian artillery strikes and that the US is able to “veto” potential targets. I don’t know exactly what Skibitsky was talking about but it’s conceivable, for example, that the US has insisted on having some control over what the Ukrainians can and cannot target using US-supplied HIMARS systems. Which would be a little awkward for the Biden administration given that it’s disavowed playing any active part in the fighting.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, Forever Wars’ Spencer Ackerman assesses what the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri means, or more to the point doesn’t mean, for the War on Terror:
Without the objective of ending the War on Terror, the administration struggled, as have its three predecessors, to explain just what killing people like Zawahiri accomplishes. "It deals a significant blow to al-Qaeda and degrades the group's ability to operate, including [against] the U.S. homeland," said the senior official, using words that 20 years of evidence have demonstrated simply have no meaning. Whatever al-Qaeda is in 2022—relevant is not a word that I think describes the organization—it's weaker than it was on Friday, but parsing what exactly that means is academic. Far more substantial is the reality that the apparatus of the War on Terror, with the exception of the Afghanistan War, the original CIA torture program and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, remains in place. There are tonight 2500 troops in Iraq; their express mission is the only thing that changes. War on Terror authorities are useful tools of "Great Power Competition."
Biden said he hopes the killing of Zawahiri brings 9/11 relatives and survivors "one more measure of closure." As president of the United States, he could perhaps offer that closure by withdrawing from Iraq, grounding the drones and turning to the congressional work of repealing the Security State's post-9/11 authorities. Yet it was only weeks ago that Biden reaffirmed the basic American bargain of supporting the Muslim world's authoritarians so long as they agree to provide the U.S. with, among other things, the flow of oil. That bolsters Zawahiri's chief innovation within the modern jihadist movement, one he arrived at before bin Laden did, which is the contention that the United States has to be its chief target, since Washington bolsters their local oppressors. He was "continually urging [al-Qaeda commit] attacks on the U.S., reorienting on the U.S. as the main enemy," said the senior administration official, who let the thought drop beyond presenting Zawahiri as an inherent imminent threat.