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PROGRAMMING NOTE 1: As previously mentioned, tonight’s roundup will be our final regular newsletter of 2025. We’ll be resuming our regular schedule on January 4. Happy Holidays and thanks for supporting the newsletter!
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TODAY IN HISTORY
December 18, 1499: Increasing repression from proto-Spanish authorities sparks a rebellion among Muslims centered on the Alpujarras region near Granada. This first “Alpujarras Rebellion” was violently put down by 1501, with the Spanish monarchy forcing any Muslims remaining in Granada to convert to Christianity or be expelled from the region. That choice was subsequently extended to Muslims elsewhere in Castile and by the early 1520s would be forced upon all Muslims in the rest of Spain.
December 18, 2005: The four year Chadian Civil War begins when the rebel group Rally for Democracy and Freedom attacks the town of Adré near the Sudanese border. The rebels, backed by Sudan and its Janjaweed militia, were eventually defeated by the Chadian government of President Idriss Déby, and an agreement between Déby and then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir ended the conflict in January 2010.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
According to Reuters, discussions are intensifying between the Syrian government, the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the Trump administration about advancing the Damascus-SDF integration process before the end-of-year deadline the two sides set earlier this year. There doesn’t seem to be much expectation of a deal in the next couple of weeks but there could be some potential for progress around a new proposal from the Syrian government that sounds like it would allow the SDF to maintain a fair amount of cohesion as long as it cedes some control to Damascus and allows other Syrian security forces to operate in the territory it currently controls. That latter concession has apparently been difficult for the SDF to accept. Lurking in the background is the Turkish government, which wants to see the SDF brought under central Syrian authority and has suggested in recent days that it’s losing patience with this negotiating process.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) carried out multiple airstrikes across Lebanon on Thursday, ahead of a Friday meeting in Paris on implementing the ostensible Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire. In addition to striking targets in the southern part of the country, the Israelis also bombed sites in northeastern Lebanon’s Baalbek-Hermel province. I haven’t seen any reports of fatalities but at least four people were wounded.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Speaking of meetings, Barak Ravid is reporting that US envoy Steve Witkoff will be holding one “with senior officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey” on Friday to discuss the stalled Gaza ceasefire. The four guarantors, apparently including the US, are concerned “that both Israel and Hamas are slow-walking the implementation of the second phase of the deal and are interested in maintaining the current status quo.” They’ll discuss ways to pressure both parties to move forward.
Elsewhere, the Trump administration has blacklisted two more International Criminal Court justices for the heinous crime of investigating possible Israeli war crimes. The two judges were part of a panel that earlier this week ruled against an Israeli effort to halt the court’s Gaza investigation. The US has repeatedly sanctioned the ICC and its personnel for investigations into Israeli and US actions.
YEMEN
The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports that Saudi Arabia is threatening military action against Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council:
As many as 20,000 Saudi-backed forces are gathering on the border of Yemen as the separatist Southern Transitional Council comes under pressure to withdraw from the huge territorial gains it has made in the last month in the vast, oil-rich governorate on Hadramaut in eastern Yemen.
The STC is using its advance to raise its demand for Yemen to revert to two states, north and south, as it had been until 1990.
The STC, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, has been warned there is a possibility of direct airstrikes by Saudi forces, a development that would threaten key STC positions. Well-paid troops, mainly drawn from a Saudi-funded militia called the National Shield, have been gathering in the al-Wadeeah and al-Abr areas close to the Saudi border.
The STC’s recent offensives have left the political situation in southern Yemen in a state of uncertainty, with the nominal Yemeni government having fled Aden. The New Arab is reporting that the group “could move to declare a parallel administration in Yemen to govern areas under its control” in the next few weeks if the internationally recognized government doesn’t return to its de facto capital. A Saudi intervention would obviously affect those plans, and the threat of such an intervention would probably increase significantly if the group were to form its own government.
IRAN
The Trump administration blacklisted 29 transport vessels and their management companies on Thursday over their alleged involvement in the “shadow fleet” that transports Iranian oil and related products in spite of US sanctions.
ASIA
CAMBODIA
Cambodian officials accused the Thai military on Thursday of striking the city of Poipet in northwestern Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province. Poipet is both a major border crossing and a casino hub that draws in a large number of Thai nationals under normal circumstances—indeed, the Thai government estimates that there are between 5000 and 6000 Thai nationals currently stuck in Poipet due to a Cambodian border closure. The Cambodians are claiming that Thai strikes have damaged at least four casinos, though it’s unclear whether that’s just since the two countries resumed their border conflict earlier this month or if it goes back to their previous major clash back in July. At least some of those casinos are allegedly involved in online scam operations, which the Thai government has adopted as one of its justifications for this conflict.
In a potentially positive development, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says that the Cambodian and Thai governments have agreed to allow an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) observer mission to visit the border region. The observer team will report on the situation at an ASEAN foreign ministers summit on December 22. It’s a small step but one that could potentially open a path toward brokering a new ceasefire.
TAIWAN
The US State Department announced on Thursday that it has green lit an $11.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan, the largest US-Taiwanese arms deal yet. Aside from the top line number the deal is notable for its similarity to arms packages that the US has sent to Ukraine, including dozens of HIMARS multiple rocket launch systems and hundreds of Army Tactical Missile Systems to go with them. That could reflect a shift in how the US and Taiwanese governments are viewing its defense needs. Unsurprisingly, the announcement of the sale drew an angry response from Beijing.
AFRICA
SUDAN
A Rapid Support Forces drone strike hit a major power plant in Sudan’s River Nile state on Thursday, causing blackouts across the country including in Khartoum and in Port Sudan, the Sudanese military government’s de facto capital. The strike killed at least two people and caused a fire in the facility.
Elsewhere, the Egyptian government issued a somewhat vague statement on Thursday warning that its “red lines” in Sudan were under threat and that it could take “measures and actions” stipulated under the terms of its mutual defense pact with the Sudanese military. That statement emerged from a meeting between Sudanese military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo. Burhan has been making the international rounds of late to try to drum up more direct support for his conflict against the RSF. It’s unclear what exactly those red lines are or what might prompt Sisi to escalate Egypt’s involvement in the conflict.
BURKINA FASO
Burkinabè authorities have finally released the 11 Nigerian military personnel whose airplane was forced to land in Burkina Faso last week due to technical issues. Nigerian officials have said that the aircraft was heading to Portugal for maintenance (hence, perhaps, the technical issues), but there seems to have been some sort of dispute over whether or not it had permission to enter Burkinabè airspace. The Nigerian government apparently apologized for the situation and that seems to have secured the release of both the people and the plane, which they say will now continue on to Portugal.
KENYA
ProPublica looks at the impact that the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts had on humanitarian aid in Kenya:
A top concern: the administration’s failure to fund the World Food Program’s operation in Kenya, where about 720,000 refugees, among the most vulnerable people on earth, relied on the organization to survive. After providing $112 million in 2024, the U.S. abruptly cut off money in January without warning, leaving the program with no time to find adequate support or import the food needed for the rest of the year.
For months afterward, U.S. government and humanitarian officials warned Washington that the cutoff had led to increasingly dire circumstances. They begged Trump’s political advisers, including Thornton, to renew WFP’s grant and give the money it needed to avert disaster. The embassy in Nairobi sent at least eight cables to the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, explaining the situation on the ground and projecting mass hunger, violence and regional instability.
Those warnings went unheeded. Rubio, facing pressure from lawmakers and humanitarian groups, nevertheless publicly asserted that the agency’s mass cuts had spared food programs — even as the administration failed to fund WFP in Kenya behind the scenes. “If it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent, you’re not included in the freeze,” Rubio told reporters on Feb. 4. “I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that.”
By the spring, WFP still had not received funding, ran low on supplies and would be forced to stop feeding many of Kenya’s refugees. In Kakuma, the third-largest camp in the world, WFP cut rations to their lowest in history, trapping most of the 308,000 people in the camp with almost nothing to eat.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
M23 militants may be withdrawing from the eastern Congolese city of Uvira, though it’s still not entirely clear. AFP reported on Thursday that the group’s “police and plain-clothed intelligence agents” were still operating in the city while the rest of its forces and their artillery had reportedly withdrawn some 9 kilometers to the north. It’s unclear if these remaining forces are also going to leave the city, but if they do not then the Congolese government will likely not regard this as an actual withdrawal. Its military seems intent on moving into Uvira to restore control, which M23 may not be willing to permit.
EUROPE
EUROPEAN UNION
The European Union and the South American common market, or Mercosur, have been negotiating a free trade agreement since 1999. They reached an agreement in principle in 2019 but a final deal has stalled primarily over opposition from European agricultural interests. Negotiations had nevertheless progressed far enough that there was some thought that a deal could be signed as soon as this weekend, but the EU abruptly pulled out of those plans on Thursday. Once again the issue appears to be opposition from European herders and farmers, who staged a major protest against the proposed deal in Brussels on Thursday. Their opposition has caused the French and Italian governments to get cold feet, which made it impossible for the EU to move forward.
It’s unclear whether this is just a bump in the road or a turning point in this saga. The appetite for a deal with Mercosur seems to be declining in Europe, particularly with populism on the rise. On the South American side there seems to be a clear sense of exasperation with the EU’s indecision, though that doesn’t mean the regional interest in concluding a deal has diminished.
RUSSIA
The European Union has blacklisted 41 more vessels allegedly connected to Russia’s “shadow fleet,” bringing the total number of ships it’s designated to more than 600. Designated ships are denied access to EU ports and maritime services.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, World Politics Review’s Charli Carpenter looks at the legal issues surrounding the Trump administration’s war on boats:
For the past two weeks, concerning reports have circulated that the U.S. military deliberately targeted survivors of an initial attack on a suspected drug-trafficking boat on Sept. 2. The decision was allegedly made by Adm. Frank M. Bradley, acting on orders from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to leave no survivors from the first of what has since become a broader campaign of attacks against such boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. In addition to the media coverage, the revelations have attracted significant attention from Congress, with lawmakers from both parties demanding release of the full video of the attack and calling Bradley in for questioning. Meanwhile, the Trump administration denies giving such orders and is backpedaling to avoid the political fallout, despite having otherwise proudly trumpeted its lethal strikes against drug traffickers.
Why this particular issue, and why now? After all, the Trump administration’s campaign against small boats in the Caribbean had already attracted opprobrium for several months from human rights lawyers, U.S. allies and the even the United Nations. NPR reports that troops involved in the strikes are concerned about their personal liability. Adm. Alvin Holsey, the head of Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America, abruptly announced his resignation in September, reportedly after raising similar concerns over the killings. This week, he formally retired earlier than planned.
These wider concerns go well beyond the question of the two survivors of the initial Sept. 2 strike, who were then killed by a second strike while clinging to the wreckage of their boat. Many legal analysts argue that because no state of war exists between the U.S. and Venezuela, the killings constitute outright murder in violation of international human rights law, which requires arrest and due process for criminal suspects.
Even if an armed conflict could be said to be occurring between the U.S. and Venezuela, it would still be a war crime to target the civilian boats at all, given that they are not engaged in an armed attack against U.S. forces. Moreover, without boarding them, it is impossible to determine whether those aboard the boats are civilians or members of a Venezuelan armed group. When in doubt as to that determination, even in the case of a valid military target in the context of a genuine war, a person is assumed to be a civilian under international law and must not be intentionally targeted.
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Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Derek! Thank you for all that you do to keep us informed.