World roundup: December 1 2020
Stories from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Peru, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
December 1, 1640: Portuguese nobles declare John (João) IV (d. 1656) their new king. This is significant in that it meant they were simultaneously declaring an end to the 60 year old Iberian Union and were no longer subject to the rule of Spanish King Philip IV (d. 1665). The 1640-1668 Portuguese Restoration War ensued, which—as any present day map of Europe will confirm—ended with a Portuguese victory and confirmation of the new monarchy.
December 1, 1918: The “South Slavic” (Slovenian and Croatian) parts of Austria-Hungary are united with Serbia and Montenegro as the “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” This name was changed in 1929 to the “Kingdom of Yugoslavia” and again after World War II to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This experiment in dueling nationalisms broke apart—quite violently, in case you missed it—in the 1990s.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for December 1:
64,179,499 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (18,262,967 active, +576,938 since yesterday)
1,485,778 reported fatalities (+11,887 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
7973 confirmed coronavirus cases (+86)
422 reported fatalities (+5)
According to Reuters, an unnamed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ “commander” was killed along with three other people in an airstrike in eastern Syria sometime over the weekend. The vehicle they were in had just crossed into Syria from Iraq when it was attacked. The presumption is that Israel was responsible.
YEMEN
2197 confirmed cases (+6)
619 reported fatalities (+0)
Houthi artillery fire has reportedly killed at least ten civilians, including seven children, over the past two days (UPDATE: UNICEF says 11 children were killed, which would mean at least 14 civilians in total). In the larger of two incidents, Houthi shelling killed at least eight people, including five children, in Hudaydah province’s Durayhimi district on Sunday. Two more children were killed in an artillery strike in the contested city of Taiz on Monday.
At Responsible Statecraft, Paul Pillar offers a comprehensive explanation as to why the Trump administration’s plan to designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is a bad idea. In addition to complicating humanitarian aid efforts and potential peace talks, the fact is that the Houthis do not meet the statutory definition of an FTO. As Pillar says, it’s a stretch to describe what the Houthis are doing as “terrorism,” and it’s an even bigger stretch to suggest they threaten US interests, which is one of the conditions for the designation. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter, because the Secretary of State has the authority to pretty much designate any group as an FTO regardless of their particular characteristics.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
338,127 confirmed cases (+1281) in Israel, 88,004 confirmed cases (+2357) in Palestine
2877 reported fatalities (+12) in Israel, 747 reported fatalities (+15) in Palestine
Israel may be heading to yet another parliamentary election. Deputy Prime Minister Benny Gantz said Tuesday that his Blue and White party will join several opposition parties in voting to dissolve the Knesset on Wednesday, which would begin a multi-stage no confidence process. Gantz, who is supposed to become prime minister in November under the terms of what appears to be an unenforceable power sharing arrangement with current PM Benjamin Netanyahu, may be looking for some leverage to force Netanyahu to adhere to their agreement and/or to force the PM’s Likud party to compromise on what’s become a very lengthy and acrimonious budget battle within their “national unity” coalition. Or both—there’s apparently a loophole in the power sharing agreement that allows Netanyahu to remain PM if the government fails to agree on a budget. What a coincidence.
If Gantz gets what he wants then presumably his party will switch positions and support continuing the current government. But if not, those lucky duck Israeli voters will get to experience a fourth election in two years. What fun!
SAUDI ARABIA
357,623 confirmed cases (+263)
5907 reported fatalities (+11)
There’s been an interesting wrinkle to Friday’s assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, probably by Israel. On Tuesday, Saudi UN ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi criticized the killing in an interview with Russian media, calling it “a loss to the entire Muslim Umma [community].” Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir also angrily rejected Iranian suggestions that Riyadh was involved in, or at least aware of, the assassination plot. This comes a day after the governments of both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which have normalized their relations with Israel, also condemned Fakhrizadeh’s assassination. Yes, this is the very definition of closing the barn door after the horse has already escaped, but I think it indicates the extent to which the Gulf Arab states recognize their vulnerability should Iran decide to take some form of retaliation. All three governments called on Iran to restrain itself, though I think you can more properly read those calls as pleas for Iran to leave them out of whatever comes next.
In sort-of-unrelated news, the Saudis have apparently agreed to allow Israeli commercial flights to and from Bahrain and the UAE to use Saudi airspace. That’s awfully generous of them.
IRAN
975,951 confirmed cases (+13,881)
48,628 reported fatalities (+382)
Regardless of whether or how (though I think it’s more a question of “how” than “whether” at this point) the Iranians respond to the Fakhrizadeh killing (which they now say was carried out using a hitherto-unknown remote controlled weapon of some kind) on an international level, in terms of domestic politics the fallout has already begun to manifest. The Majles, Iran’s parliament, passed on Tuesday a bill calling for the Iranian government to suspend its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and its nuclear inspectors. This is not a binding piece of legislation, since Iranian nuclear policy is set by the Supreme National Security Council, which answers to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and not to parliament. But it does reflect that there’s been a hardline reaction to Friday’s assassination. If the Iranians were to decide to scrap their relationship with the IAEA it would wreck whatever remains of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and significantly raise tensions between Tehran and Washington, even after Joe Biden becomes president.
Reuters is reporting on some behind-the-scenes resistance from European governments to the Trump administration’s decision back in October to expand US sanctions against Iran’s banking sector. The British, French, and German governments all resisted the move on the grounds that it would impede the sale of basic humanitarian goods (food, medicine, etc.) to Iran, and Germany’s central bank appears to have outright violated those sanctions by keeping a line of credit open for several Iranian banks, at least a couple of which were blacklisted. Assuming this is accurate it would appear the Trump administration has opted not to penalize the Bundesbank for its “transgression,” perhaps realizing that might be a bridge too far even for US sanctions policy.
ASIA
AZERBAIJAN
125,602 confirmed cases (+4426)
1433 reported fatalities (+41)
The Azerbaijani military moved in to claim control of the Lachin district on Tuesday. That’s the third of three regions around Nagorno-Karabakh that had been occupied by Armenian forces in the 1990s but returned to Azerbaijani control in the wake of the recent Karabakh conflict. In addition to those three districts the Azerbaijani military seized a significant portion of Karabakh itself, though most of it remains in Armenian hands at least for now. In related news it seems the Russian and Turkish governments have managed to reach an agreement on the operation of a joint center to monitor compliance with the ceasefire Azerbaijan and Armenia signed last month. Russian peacekeepers are already deployed in Karabakh, while this center will operate from inside Azerbaijan and will use drones and other technology to support the peacekeeping mission.
AFGHANISTAN
46,717 confirmed cases (+219)
1797 reported fatalities (+23)
An Afghan helicopter attack in Ghazni province on Sunday killed at least two children, wounded two others, and left two more missing. The helicopters were reportedly attacking Taliban fighters near a village but hit several buildings in the village itself “by mistake.” Also on Sunday, at least 31 Afghan soldiers based near Ghazni city were killed in a suicide bombing. The Afghan military claimed Monday to have killed the Taliban “mastermind” of that attack in an overnight airstrike. Another bombing near the Russian embassy in Kabul reportedly injured some embassy personnel on Tuesday. Authorities believe that Afghan security forces were the intended target, not the embassy or its staff.
In Doha, meanwhile, there are reports that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is personally holding up peace talks between his government and the Taliban. These reports claim that negotiators have reached agreement on the logistical framework of the talks, which is where they’ve been hung up since September, but Ghani is objecting to the fact that the framework does not refer to his government by its official name, “the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.” This isn’t necessarily just an aesthetic concern and could have actual implications in terms of establishing the legitimacy (or otherwise) of Ghani’s government.
CHINA
86,542 confirmed cases (+12) on the mainland, 6397 confirmed cases (+82) in Hong Kong
4634 reported fatalities (+0) on the mainland, 109 reported fatalities (+0) in Hong Kong
China’s Chang’e 5 lunar rover successfully touched down on the surface of the moon on Tuesday. The rover will collect soil samples and then upload them to an ascent vehicle for the trip back to Earth. If all goes well this mission will be the first collection of lunar soil samples since a Soviet mission in 1976.
OCEANIA
AUSTRALIA
27,912 confirmed cases (+8)
908 reported fatalities (+0)
The Australian and Chinese governments are now embroiled in a spat over Twitter, after a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson over the weekend tweeted a doctored image of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child. This was in reference to the outcome of a recent investigation into apparent war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded an apology from Beijing on Monday, but the Chinese government has responded by arguing that if anybody should be apologizing, it’s the Australian government to the Afghan people. The Australian military’s chief of staff, Angus Campbell, has already made such an apology, but who’s counting? This tiff obviously has more to do with the rotten state of the Australian-Chinese relationship, but it’s a sign that things aren’t improving on that front.
AFRICA
SUDAN
18,045 confirmed cases (+235)
1255 reported fatalities (+6)
Don’t look now, but the Sudanese-Israeli normalization process looks like it’s hitting a rocky patch. The interim government in Khartoum wants the US Congress pass legislation that would protect Sudan from future lawsuits related to its formerly friendly relationship with al-Qaeda. Immunity from future lawsuits is seen as a key to attracting foreign investment to Sudan, which in turn is seen as a key to salvaging Sudan’s imperiled economy. Unless Congress passes such legislation by the end of the year, Sudanese officials may pull out of the normalization agreement. But according to the New York Times, the chances of an immunity bill passing are still very much up in the air. In particular there’s a reluctance to immunize Khartoum from lawsuits related to the 9/11 attacks, which could be legally viable even though those attacks took place more than five years after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was expelled from Sudan and returned to Afghanistan.
ALGERIA
84,152 confirmed cases (+953)
2447 reported fatalities (+16)
The Algerian army says its soldiers killed three “terrorists” on Tuesday in a clash in Jijel province. It’s unclear whether these “terrorists” are affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or some other militant group.
BURKINA FASO
2931 confirmed cases (+45)
68 reported fatalities (+0)
While we were away, incumbent Roch Kaboré was deemed the winner of Burkina Faso’s November 22 presidential election. Suffice to say this does not come as a surprise, though there was some suspense heading into the vote as to whether he would win outright in the first round or be forced into a runoff. As it happens he won fairly comfortably with around 58 percent of the vote. Opposition leaders have alleged fraud but independent election observers seem to have approved of the conduct of the election. Kaboré was less successful on the parliamentary side of things, however, as his People’s Movement for Progress party was only able to win 56 seats, eight shy of a majority in the 127 seat assembly. Alex Thurston contends that should be enough for Kaboré and the MPP, which relies on the fragmentation of the various Burkinabé opposition parties to advance its agenda despite lacking an outright majority.
NIGERIA
67,838 confirmed cases (+281)
1176 reported fatalities (+3)
Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for an attack in northeastern Nigeria over the weekend in which its fighters killed at least 76 people. The incident took place around the villages of Zabarmari and Koshobe, outside the city of Maiduguri. Early reports put the death toll at closer to 110 people but they’ve been adjusted down. However, there are still people missing, so the casualty count may rise again.
ETHIOPIA
110,554 confirmed cases (+480)
1709 reported fatalities (+3)
Late Saturday, the Ethiopian military reportedly captured (or whatever other term you want to use) the Tigray regional capital, Mekelle, leading to a declaration by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Sunday that his “law enforcement operation” against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front had achieved victory. A few hours later, six rockets struck Eritrea’s capital city, Asmara. If they were fired by TPLF forces—as seems reasonable to conclude, especially given the active role Eritrea has apparently played in this conflict—then it suggests Ethiopia’s civil war may be far from over. The TPLF later claimed to have shot down an Ethiopian military aircraft and recaptured the town of Axum, which the Ethiopian Defense Forces claimed to have seized nearly two weeks ago. Meanwhile, in addition to the tens of thousands of refugees who have fled Tigray into Sudan over the past month, a new humanitarian crisis has emerged in the form of some 96,000 Eritrean refugees who have been living in camps in the Tigray region and are now reportedly cut off from access to food.
I keep using the word “claim” because with a media and communications blackout in place in Tigray there’s no way to verify what’s really happening. Since TPLF leaders are also saying they withdrew from Mekelle we can presumably conclude that city is in government control, but whether it was taken with relatively little fighting and few casualties, as the government has claimed (there’s that word again) is unclear (what little evidence has emerged suggests that particular claim is a lie). TPLF boss Debretsion Gebremichael has been warning of a “genocide” against the Tigrayan people and has asked Abiy to withdraw his forces from the region, but Abiy seems intent on continuing his pursuit of Debretsion and other senior TPLF figures. The rocket fire and the capture of Axum (if true) suggest that the TPLF is still capable of engaging in pitched battle with Ethiopian forces, but even if its capabilities are degraded the potential for an extended guerrilla insurgency remains high.
University of Florida scholar and returning guest Terje Østebø joined the FX podcast earlier today to discuss this situation.
SOMALIA
4451 confirmed cases (+0)
113 reported fatalities (+0)
The Somali government expelled Kenya’s ambassador and recalled its own from Nairobi on Monday, amid allegations that the Kenyan government is interfering in the electoral process in Somalia’s southern Jubaland region. The Somali Foreign Ministry’s statement does not appear to have gone into detail, but Mogadishu’s relationship with the Jubaland regional government has been frosty while regional president Ahmed Mohamed Islam, reelected last August in a contest the Somali government initially declared illegitimate, does have good relations with the Kenyan government.
EUROPE
NATO
NATO, an organization that’s been searching for a purpose since December 26, 1991, is now apparently going to pivot to China because why not:
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization should devote much more of its time and resources to security threats posed by China even while seeking to deter Russian aggression, a high-level assessment of the alliance’s future says in a report to be made public Tuesday.
The study commissioned by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg followed criticism last year by French President Emmanuel Macron that the alliance was experiencing “brain death” because of difficulties coordinating among its 30 members and uneven U.S. leadership.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to strengthen ties with NATO and U.S. allies.
“The really big message is that NATO has to adapt itself for an era of great power competition that includes not only Russia, but also China,” said A. Wess Mitchell, who served as the top State Department official for Europe from 2017 to 2019 and co-chaired the group that wrote the 67-page report.
Seems to me the alliance could be “experiencing ‘brain death’” because it was never supposed to outlive the Cold War, but what do I know?
RUSSIA
2,322,056 confirmed cases (+26,402)
40,464 reported fatalities (+569)
The Russian military has deployed an S-300V4 air defense system to the Kurils, a disputed chain of islands in the northern Pacific that is also claimed by Japan under the name “the Northern Territories.” Russia seized those islands at the end of World War II and they’ve remained a sore spot in the Russian-Japanese relationship ever since. Russian officials said earlier this year they would deploy an S-300V4 system to the region for military exercises, but this appears to be a more permanent deployment.
MOLDOVA
108,863 confirmed cases (+1499)
2323 reported fatalities (+19)
Moldovan President-elect Maia Sandu on Monday called on the Russian government to withdraw its soldiers from the breakaway region of Transnistria, a request Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov deemed “irresponsible” on Tuesday. I guess that’s a “no,” then. The 1992 Transnistria War left the region de facto independent of Moldova and under the protection of the Russian military, and its status has been frozen since then—not unlike the current status of eastern Ukraine, come to think of it. Sandu, who is considerably less pro-Moscow than the man she’ll be replacing, current Moldovan President Igor Dodon, said on Monday that she wants to see those Russian soldiers replaced by peacekeepers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
MONTENEGRO
35,849 confirmed cases (+584)
504 reported fatalities (+5)
The Montenegrin and Serbian governments mutually expelled each other’s ambassadors on Saturday. It seems Serbian ambassador Vladimir Božović caused offense when, at a conference on Friday, he referred to the 1918 Podgorica Assembly, which determined that Montenegro should annex itself to Serbia and become part of the new “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes” that would eventually become Yugoslavia, as a “liberation.” Montenegrin authorities tend not to see it that way. Božović’s expulsion prompted the Serbian government to reciprocate.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
6,388,526 confirmed cases (+52,248)
173,862 reported fatalities (+697)
Over 11,000 square kilometers of the Amazon rain forest were destroyed in the 12 month period from last August to this August, the highest one year rate of destruction the forest has experienced since 2008. Looks like Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to protect the Amazon are really paying off!
PERU
965,228 confirmed cases (+1623)
36,031 reported fatalities (+65)
At Foreign Policy, the University of Chicago’s Michael Albertus makes the case for a new Peruvian constitution:
Peru’s political system is facing a serious crisis of legitimacy. The country has been ravaged by COVID-19, exposing major gaps and inefficiencies in its health care system. All of its former elected presidents are either jailed or facing corruption charges. Congress is deeply unpopular and inexperienced. Over half of its members are under investigation for corruption, some of whom are linked to the political party of the daughter of the country’s last dictator, Alberto Fujimori. And in spite of the country’s enviable record of economic growth over the last two decades, inequality remains sky-high, and many Peruvians remain mired in poverty.
It is no surprise that against this backdrop, Peru’s constitution is facing renewed scrutiny. The current constitution was written under the authoritarian rule of Fujimori in 1993, which echoes the authoritarian roots of Chile’s current constitution that was forged under the iron fist of Augusto Pinochet. Indeed, my research indicates that many young democracies operate under constitutions written in their authoritarian past.
Like Chile’s Pinochet-era constitution, Peru’s constitution embeds a host of elements that make it unresponsive to popular demands. Too much power is concentrated in an unaccountable Congress. Indigenous groups are underrepresented in politics. Peripheral regions of the country are often ignored when it comes to policymaking. The judiciary is unduly subject to political pressure. And some of the social and economic rights that the constitution enshrines are no longer in keeping with shifting social norms.
UNITED STATES
14,108,490 confirmed cases (+182,172)
276,976 reported fatalities (+2611)
Finally, at TomDispatch, William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger of the Center for International Policy offer (probably in vain) the incoming Biden administration a roadmap to a more sensible military budget:
In reality, it’s not that complicated. Pentagon spending could easily be reduced substantially even as the world was made a safer place. For that to happen, however, its budget would have to begin to deal with the actual challenges this country faces rather than letting billions of dollars more be squandered on outmoded military priorities and artificially inflated threats supposedly posed by our biggest adversaries.
One blueprint for doing just that has been put together by the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group of former White House, Pentagon, and congressional budget officials, retired military officers, and think-tank experts from across the political spectrum. They have crafted a plan to save $1.25 trillion from proposed Pentagon spending over the next decade.
As that task force notes, for durable reductions in such spending to become feasible, this country’s leadership would have to take a more realistic view of the military challenges posed by both China and Russia.