World roundup: August 24-25 2024

Stories from Lebanon, Afghanistan, Germany, and elsewhere

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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY

August 24, 410: A Visigothic army under Alaric sacks Rome. This was the first time the city had been sacked by a foreign army since the Gauls did so around 800 years earlier and is considered one of the milestones in the collapse of the Roman Empire in the western Mediterranean. Rome was no longer a political capital but its prestige (and wealth) as the mother city of the empire and the center of Christianity in the west was still immense. Alaric continued plundering south through Italy, but his plans to invade Sicily and North Africa were interrupted first by weather and then by his death. The Visigoths moved into what is now southern France, where they established a kingdom within what was ostensibly Roman territory.

French painter Joseph-Noël Sylvestre’s 1890 The Sack of Rome in 410 by the Barbarians (Wikimedia Commons)

August 24, 1516: The Battle of Marj Dabiq

August 25, 1580: An army under the Duke of Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, fighting on behalf of King Philip II of Spain, defeats an army under António, Prior of Crato, at the Battle of Alcântara, part of the War of Portuguese Succession. Both António and Philip were claimants to the then-vacant throne of Portugal, and this victory allowed Philip’s army to capture Lisbon and eventually led to Philip’s crowning as King of Portugal in March 1581. The crowns of Portugal and Spain were held in personal union (the “Iberian Union”) until the 1640-1668 Portuguese Restoration War.

August 25, 1920: The Battle of Warsaw ends with a surprising, arguably even miraculous (hence the moniker “Miracle on the Vistula”) Polish victory over the invading Russian Red Army. The costly defeat seems to have ended any Russian ambitions of a decisive victory in what is known as the Polish-Soviet War, and with Polish leaders having been similarly disabused of their chances for victory the two sides began peace talks in earnest in autumn 1920. An armistice was reached in October followed by the Peace of Riga in March 1921, in which Poland recognized Soviet governments in Belarus and Ukraine while those states ceded some 135,000 square kilometers of territory to Poland. That land reverted back to Belarus and Ukraine during and after World War II.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Hezbollah and the Israeli military (IDF) exchanged heavy fire on Sunday in a clash that’s left both of them claiming victory and may mark the end of the Fuad Shukr affair, at least for the time being. The IDF struck first, carrying out dozens of airstrikes in what it said was a preemptive assault meant to interrupt a larger Hezbollah strike. The Lebanese militants still apparently fired off hundreds of rockets and drones, the former seemingly meant to confound Israeli air defenses to open the way for the latter to attack IDF targets well inside Israel. Details are still emerging, but according to Reuters the death toll was surprisingly light, with three people confirmed dead in Lebanon and one in Israel. Indications are that, despite speculation that Hezbollah would attack civilian population centers to retaliate for the Shukr strike in southern Beirut, both parties stuck to military-related targets.

As I said above, both Hezbollah and the IDF are claiming victory. The Israelis say that their preemptive strikes took “thousands” of Hezbollah rocket launchers out of action, which is an absurd number but who am I to say otherwise? Hezbollah is insisting that the IDF strikes had no effect, which also seems unlikely but the group was apparently able to fire off hundreds of projectiles so certainly the preemption was not total. The main takeaway at this point seems to be that both parties are satisfied, or at least that they’re broadcasting satisfaction publicly. That suggests neither is planning to take this any further steps for now. The Israeli government has even resumed operations at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, which it had suspended during the festivities. This is presumably not a step it would have taken if the IDF had plans for more “preemptive” strikes.

However, while what happened on Sunday doesn’t show any sign of escalation it also doesn’t suggest anything in the way of deescalation either. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave an address later on Sunday in which he said that the group would assess the effectiveness of its attacks and that “if the result is satisfactory, we will consider that the response process has been completed, and if the result is not sufficient, we will reserve the right to respond at a later time.” According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s main target was the IDF’s Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv, which the Israelis say was undamaged. Put two and two together and that means another barrage may be forthcoming. Beyond that, all the underlying conditions fueling fears of escalation—mass disruption and population displacement in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, and beyond that the IDF massacre in Gaza—are unchanged from what they were before Sunday’s strikes.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

With the IDF continuing to pound Deir al-Balah and Gaza’s humanitarian situation worsening, the already dim prospects for ending the massacre dimmed a little more over the weekend. In what I’m sure the Israeli and US governments consider a win, Hamas rejected (not for the first time) the late-stage demands that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has loaded into the ceasefire proposal over the past couple of months. According to Haaretz there’s a new “version” of that proposal circulating that is intentionally vague on any future IDF presence along the “Philadelphi Corridor” separating Gaza and Egypt. Under this scenario the IDF would occupy the corridor temporarily under a ceasefire deal, with the understanding that it would withdraw at some unspecified date in favor of some unspecified “permanent alternative” for monitoring the border.

This is supposed to represent a compromise, even though it mostly gives Netanyahu what he wants while allowing Hamas to claim a nebulous public relations win if you squint at the whole thing in just the right way. It’s unclear whether Hamas’s rejection entailed this particular ceasefire variant. It sounds like the Egyptian government—which also objects to an indefinite IDF presence along the corridor—may be OK with it, and that could influence Hamas’s sentiment.

SYRIA

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the country’s parliament on Sunday that his diplomatic efforts to mend ties with Turkey haven’t paid off as yet. This is not exactly breaking news, but there was at least one interesting wrinkle to his remarks—he specified that a Turkish military withdrawal from northern Syria was not a prerequisite for normalization talks. That could be an important clarification.

A Turkish withdrawal is still presumably a prerequisite for a successful conclusion to those talks, however, and the details may still be much easier said than done. It’s not that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wouldn’t be willing to trade land for peace, as it were. Both he and Assad seem eager to put their beef in the past and focus on the current regional turmoil instead. But Erdoğan has to worry about renewed fighting between Assad and rebel groups in the event of a Turkish withdrawal, which would send a new wave of Syrian refugees streaming toward the Turkish border. That would be a political nightmare for Erdoğan.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

The Taliban has apparently taken another step toward outlawing the presence of women in public:

The Taliban’s new vice and virtue laws that include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public provide a “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future, a top U.N. official warned Sunday.

Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the U.N. mission in the country, said the laws extend the “already intolerable restrictions” on the rights of women and girls, with “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers last Wednesday issued the country’s first set of laws to prevent vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home.

The laws empower the Vice and Virtue Ministry to be at the front line of regulating personal conduct and administering punishments like warnings or arrest if its enforcers allege that Afghans have broken the laws.

Aside from the effect on Afghan women, these new laws will further undermine the capacity for the UN or aid organizations to function in Afghanistan.

PAKISTAN

A bombing in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Saturday killed at least two children and left another 16 people wounded. The blast occurred near a police station and seven of the wounded were police officers. There’s been no claim of responsibility. There are several militant groups that operate in Baluchistan, including Baluch separatists, the Pakistani Taliban, and Islamic State.

PHILIPPINES

The Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels had another collision near the Sabina Shoal in the disputed South China Sea on Sunday. Their interpretations of the incident are wildly at odds, each blaming the other for initiating the contact. The previous day, Philippine officials accused the Chinese military of firing flares at a Philippine fisheries aircraft near the Subi reef, also in the South China Sea. The Chinese military has put a base on Subi, though its claim to the reef is disputed by Vietnam and Taiwan in addition to the Philippines.

AFRICA

MALI

Drone strikes killed at least 21 people (11 of them children) on Sunday in the northern Malian town of Tinzaouaten, according to the rebel Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad (CSP-DPA) group. Tinzaouaten is near the location of a battle last month in which the rebels defeated a force of Malian soldiers and Russian mercenaries (and a related or possibly subsequent engagement in which jihadist militants also inflicted several casualties on the Malian-Russian force), and it’s subsequently been targeted by airstrikes on more than one occasion. Malian authorities are insisting that the strike killed “terrorists,” not civilians.

NIGERIA

Members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria group are believed to have killed two police officers and wounded three others in an attack in Abuja on Sunday. The IMN is a Shiʿa Islamist organization. The Nigerian government outlawed it in 2019 amid protests demanding the release of its imprisoned leader, Ibrahim Zakzaky.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

There are reports of new fighting between the Congolese army and M23 rebels around Kirumba, a town in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province that the rebels seized back in June. Details are spotty, but this would presumably violate the ceasefire the parties have had in place since August 4. Whether it sinks that agreement altogether remains to be seen, but this certainly wouldn’t be the first time an M23 ceasefire has collapsed.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The Russian and Ukrainian governments exchanged 115 POWs apiece on Saturday in another prisoner swap mediated by the United Arab Emirates. The exchange comes around two weeks after the Ukrainian military invaded Russia’s Kursk oblast in an operation that has netted them over 240 Russian prisoners according to a visual “analysis” from The Washington Post. Russian authorities say the 115 prisoners they received on Saturday were taken in Kursk.

GERMANY

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a stabbing attack in the German city of Solingen on Friday that left at least three people dead and eight more wounded. A Syrian man reportedly turned himself in to police on Sunday in connection with the attack and was subsequently arrested. German authorities are saying that he “shares the ideology” of IS, which indicates that this was an IS inspired attack rather than something the group oversaw directly.

AMERICAS

UNITED STATES

Finally, amid reports that the Chinese tech sector is starting to overcome the Biden administration’s efforts to block “China’s access to advanced semiconductors and the equipment needed to make them,” Robert Wright considers the downsides to the administration’s approach:

Meanwhile there are other costs of the Biden policy. It has caused tension with US allies whose tech companies are affected (and the resolution of those tensions sometimes dilutes the policy). And, because the policy prohibits Taiwan’s TSMC foundry—the most advanced chip factory in the world—from exporting high-end chips to China, China now has less to lose from starting a war with Taiwan. A war would almost certainly leave the TSMC factory enduringly incapacitated, which would still stop the flow of advanced chips to the West.

The Biden policy also steepens the already severe challenge of having a constructive dialogue with China about the international governance of AI, or even about the nurturing of international AI norms. And lots of analysts say that ultimately any effective governance of AI will have to be international—and will have to involve, in particular, the world’s two AI superpowers, the US and China.

These bigger picture concerns are in addition to the harm this policy has done to US firms that previously sold semiconductor tools to China but have been cut off from that market by their own government.