World roundup: December 10-11 2022
Stories from Qatar, Bangladesh, Kosovo, and elsewhere
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
December 9, 1824: The armies of Peru and Gran Colombia defeat a Spanish royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho. Considered one of the last major engagements of the Latin American wars of independence, the Peruvian-Colombian victory ensured Peru’s independence and cleared the way for the Peruvian commander, General Antonio José de Sucre, to enter Upper Peru (modern Bolivia) and campaign there.
December 9, 1987: The First Intifada begins
December 10, 1877: A Russian army defeats an Ottoman garrison and captures the town of Plevna, in modern Bulgaria.
December 10, 1898: The Treaty of Paris ends the Spanish-American War. Under its terms, Spain agreed to give up its claims on Cuba (which became a US protectorate) and turned Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico over to the United States. It is often considered the end of the Spanish empire, though Spain still held some colonies so that’s not really accurate, and the first emergence of the United States as a major world power.
December 11, 861: The Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil is assassinated by his Turkic royal guard in his palace in Samarra. Al-Mutawakkil’s murder was the final straw in the capture of the caliphate by its Turkish slave soldiery and kicked off a 10 year period known as the “Anarchy at Samarra,” during which four caliphs were enthroned and deposed in rapid succession, each backed by some faction of the military. The period ended with the accession of the caliph al-Muʿtamid, who reigned from 870-892 mostly due to the efforts of his brother, al-Muwaffaq, who pacified the Turks and essentially ruled the caliphate from behind the throne.
December 11, 1917: British General Edmund Allenby enters the newly captured city of Jerusalem.
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
SYRIA
According to US Central Command, US forces killed two Islamic State fighters in an overnight operation. One of those fighters was described as an IS “official” who was responsible for carrying out attacks in Syria. CENTCOM did not go into detail but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is claiming that the operation took place in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province.
YEMEN
A United Nations convoy was reportedly ambushed en route from the Yemeni city of Seiyun to the city of Maʾrib on Friday. Two Yemeni soldiers were killed in the incident. There’s no indication as to responsibility but there are plenty of candidates, from Houthi rebels to al-Qaeda to IS to a militant faction within the fragmented pro-government coalition.
QATAR
According to The New York Times Qatar, alongside defense contractors, is emerging as an unqualified winner of the war in Ukraine:
Russia’s war in Ukraine has jolted global energy markets, leaving Europe short of natural gas, raising prices for all fossil fuels and threatening a global recession.
But one country has maneuvered effectively to gain economic and political advantage from the turmoil: Qatar.
Long a big exporter of liquefied natural gas to Asian countries, Qatar is poised to become a critical energy source for Europe, which is pivoting away from its dependence on Russia. Qatar is also drawing closer to China, undermining Russian hopes of diverting to Asia most of the energy Europe is no longer buying.
Qatar, many energy experts said, is becoming the Saudi Arabia of natural gas — an indispensable energy supplier with vast reserves and very low costs. This means Qatar will be able to sell natural gas longer and more profitably than other major exporters like Australia and Russia even as climate change forces many countries to reduce their use of fossil fuels.
With Australia’s gas reserves peaking and Russia limited in its potential customers, the Qataris stand to make a substantial amount of money in the coming decades as everybody pretends that natural gas is somehow environmentally friendly. Sure, the downside is the potential destruction of human civilization, but at least they’ll be thriving in the meantime.
IRAN
The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned China’s ambassador in Tehran on Sunday to express discontentment with part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia. Specifically, the Iranians are displeased with parts of a joint statement issued by Xi and representatives of the Gulf Cooperation Council states. Their main grievance has to do with the statement’s treatment of the islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, and Abu Musa, which are located in the Strait of Hormuz and are controlled by Iran but claimed by the UAE. The statement called for negotiations on the status of those islands, which the Iranian government rejects as a matter of policy. The statement included other language referencing Iran’s nuclear program and its regional activities that drew the ministry’s attention but the bit about the islands appears to have been the main irritant. Iran’s relationship with China is its most important diplomatic contact so it’s rare to see any hint of discord between them.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
On Sunday, at least seven people were killed in an exchange of fire across the Afghan-Pakistani border. The incident took place at the Chaman border crossing in Baluchistan and began, according to the Afghans, when Pakistani forces tried to stop the Afghans from building a new security checkpoint on their side of the border. According to the Pakistanis the Afghans opened fire, killing at least six people and wounding 17 more on the Pakistani side of the border, and the Pakistanis retaliated. Afghan officials say that one Afghan soldier was killed and ten people wounded.
PAKISTAN
At least one person was killed and six more wounded in a bombing targeting a bakery in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Saturday. There’s been no claim of responsibility but Pakistani authorities are attributing the attack to “anti-state elements” and that probably means Baluch separatists.
BANGLADESH
Tens of thousands of people reportedly turned out in Dhaka on Saturday for demonstrations organized by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. They were there to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government and the appointment of a caretaker administration to run the country through its next general election. BNP has accused Hasina and her Awami League party of vote rigging and have called for her resignation as a way to ensure that the next election, which is scheduled for 2024, is conducted fairly.
CHINA
According to Al Jazeera, the Chinese government’s decision to ease “Zero-COVID” restrictions has not yet sparked a grand reopening of public life, as many people still remain concerned about the pandemic:
Some health officials have been warning about the potential for a spike in new infections, which may be contributing to people’s reticence even though official government COVID figures have not shown an increase in cases.
AFRICA
TUNISIA
Hundreds of people marched in an opposition-organized protest in Tunis on Saturday to express their opposition to President Kais Saied’s political agenda and his government’s failure to strengthen Tunisia’s weak economy. The demonstration comes one week before a new parliamentary election that will be the first under Saied’s new constitution. That vote will help cement the changes he’s made since suspending parliament and seizing essentially unchecked power back in July 2021. He’s substantially strengthened the presidency while weakening other government institutions and proscribing large opposition parties.
GUINEA
I was genuinely hoping that our “International Anti-Corruption Day” discourse was over, but apparently not. That’s because the US Treasury Department made the interesting decision to blacklist former Guinean President Alpha Condé among the voluminous list of people sanctioned on Friday. That’s not to suggest that Condé is innocent of the corruption and human rights allegations that have been leveled at him. But for one thing he’s no longer in power, and for another he’s facing prosecution by a military junta whose coup the US government officially condemned (the State Department’s term, not mine) when it happened—though the soldiers involved were apparently quite familiar to the US military. I don’t have any conclusion to draw here, it just struck me as interesting.
EUROPE
EUROPEAN UNION
There is a brewing corruption scandal roiling the European Parliament that’s seen several MEPs placed under investigation for allegedly taking payola from an unspecified Persian Gulf country. Authorities have not named the country, but Greek MEP Eva Kaili has been stripped of her post as parliamentary vice president after saying some nice things about Qatar, like calling the country “a frontrunner in labor rights.” That doesn’t prove anything, but at the very least I think we can all agree that the only way it makes sense to say that is if you’re getting paid for it. I would spend more time outlining this story if it had impacted a meaningful political body, but we’re just talking about the European Parliament here so let’s move on.
RUSSIA
Russia’s state news agency, TASS, is alleging that the US government barred Russian diplomats from visiting the graves of Soviet military personnel at Fort Richardson National Cemetery in Alaska this weekend. Russian diplomats have in the past been permitted to visit the facility, in which 11 Soviet personnel involved in World War II’s Lend-Lease Program are interred. It’s unclear why they would have been denied permission this time and the US State Department has not commented.
UKRAINE
Russian drone strikes on Odessa in recent days have shut down that city’s grain port, one of only three such facilities permitted to operate under the terms of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. Ukrainian authorities have not yet brought power generators on line to restore operations but they’re hoping to reestablish electricity in Odessa in the next few days. The Ukrainian military, meanwhile, reportedly spent the weekend attacking a hotel in Luhansk oblast that was allegedly serving as a base for Russia’s Wagner Group private military firm, along with another hotel in Melitopol that was allegedly serving as a barracks for Russian forces, possibly also used by Wagner.
KOSOVO
Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo are blockading roads amid renewed tensions with Kosovan authorities that have the Serbian government threatening to intervene. On Saturday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić confirmed that he will ask NATO peacekeepers for permission to deploy Serbian security forces to northern Kosovo under the terms of the UN Security Council resolution that ended the Kosovo War in 1999. There is a provision for such a deployment in the resolution, though when it was adopted Kosovo’s status relative to Serbia was still nebulous whereas these days it’s at least de facto independent. It would be shocking if NATO were to green light a Serbian intervention and Vučić seems to realize this, though NATO’s rejection will then allow him to claim that the international community is biased against Kosovan Serbs.
The latest unrest seems to stem from the arrest of an ethnic Serb former police officer who’s been implicated in recent attacks on Kosovan police and election officials. A forthcoming municipal election scheduled for December 18 and opposed by the Serb community also contributed to the unrest, but Kosovan officials have now postponed that vote. Kosovan Prime Minister Albin Kurti is accusing Vučić of trying to destabilize Kosovo.
AMERICAS
PERU
At least one person was killed over the weekend amid escalating protests stemming from the ouster and arrest of former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo on Wednesday. Protests are continuing in several Peruvian cities, including the southern city of Andahuaylas. It’s there that one protester was killed and another five wounded on Sunday, presumably by police. Indigenous groups and labor unions are talking about extended action including strikes, and the leftist Perú Libre party, with which Castillo is at least partially affiliated, held its own demonstration in Lima on Sunday.
The protests provided an unsettling backdrop to new President Dina Boluarte’s cabinet rollout, which featured a former prosecutor, Pedro Angulo, as prime minister. Boluarte has tried to play coy with calls for early elections, neither committing to them nor ruling them out. But at this point it’s unclear how much public support she has, if any, and the Peruvian Congress might be the only institution in the country that had less public support than Castillo. New elections may be the only way to stem the unrest, though that may well not be enough.
CUBA
Three members of the US House of Representatives—Troy Carter (D-LA), James McGovern (D-MA), and Mark Pocan (D-WI)—have apparently visited Cuba in the past few days, where among other things they met with President Miguel Díaz-Canel. There’s no indication that an end to the US embargo is nigh, or even a return to the Obama administration’s relative detente policy, but this visit follows a number of contacts between US and Cuban officials in recent months, mostly having to do with consular issues. Most significantly, the Biden administration announced a few months ago that it would begin processing visa applications out of the US Havana embassy sometime early next year, meaning for example that Cubans with family in the US will no longer need to go to Guyana to obtain travel papers.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Financial Times on Sunday broke news of what potentially is a very significant scientific development:
Here’s a non-paywalled summary:
The Financial Times said the fusion reaction, "produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, which was about 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in the lasers, the people with knowledge of the results said, adding that the data was still being analysed".
The US department of energy told the news outlet it will announce "a major scientific breakthrough" at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Tuesday (local time, Wednesday NZT).
"Initial diagnostic data suggests another successful experiment at the National Ignition Facility," the lab said.
"However, the exact yield is still being determined and we can’t confirm that it is over the threshold at this time. That analysis is in process, so publishing the information...before that process is complete would be inaccurate."
Assuming this all checks out it’s a huge milestone. The technology nowhere near anything that could actually be put into widespread use yet, and there will likely be potential complications along the way, but I’m choosing to treat this as a rare bit of good news until further notice.