World roundup: December 22 2020

Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Central African Republic, Romania, and more

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Hello everybody! We’re coming up on Christmas and so Foreign Exchanges is going to be taking a little break after tonight’s roundup. We will be back to a regular schedule no later than January 12, 2021. In the meantime…well, I don’t know, to be honest. This is such an unusual holiday—we’re not traveling to see family for the first time I can remember since I left home back in…a long time ago—that I thought I’d leave things a bit open this year. I need a break, don’t get me wrong, so posting will be considerably lighter than usual. But unlike in past years, when I’ve mostly gone dark this time of year, I’m reserving the right to throw in a roundup here and there, or maybe some other kinds of content. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas to those who are celebrating it!

THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

December 21, 1822: An Egyptian army under Ibrahim Pasha defeats the Ottomans at the Battle of Konya.

December 21, 1907: The Chilean army massacres a group of striking miners and their families in the city of Iquique. The killings are known as the Santa María School massacre, named after the Domingo Santa María school where the striking miners had made camp. The death toll is thought to have been between 2000 and around 3600—a definitive count is all but impossible since the authorities dumped the bodies into a mass grave that wasn’t exhumed until 1940. The massacre broke the strike and set back the Chilean labor movement.

December 21, 1988: Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board as well as 11 people on the ground. Questions as to who carried out the bombing have never been entirely settled. Among the prime suspects are/were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, and the Iranian government, possibly as retribution for the US shooting down Iran Air Flight 655 earlier in the year. There was also suspicion that a clandestine CIA smuggling operation was used by terrorists, perhaps in collaboration with the Syrian government, to get the bomb on board the flight. Most suspicion, however, fell on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The only person ever convicted in court in connection with the bombing was Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was found guilty by a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands. The US government has since charged a Libyan bomb maker, Abu Agilah Masud, in connection with the attack. He’s already in prison in Libya. Gaddafi accepted responsibility for the bombing in 2003, but he did so arguably under duress as it was a requirement for sanctions relief. He denied any knowledge of the plot and there remains (at least in fringe circles) suspicion that the evidence against Libya was manufactured by the US and UK governments.

December 22, 1522: The Siege of Rhodes ends with an Ottoman victory and the displacement of the Knights of Rhodes.

Ottoman Janissaries attacking the walls of Rhodes, from a manuscript of the contemporary Süleymanname by Ottoman chronicler Fethullah Chelebi Arifi (Wikimedia Commons)

December 22, 1769: The Sino-Burmese War ends with a Burmese victory. The border between Qing China and Burma was weakly demarcated if at all, which prompted several efforts on both sides to encroach on the frontier. This “war” actually consisted of four separate Chinese invasions starting in 1765, each of which was defeated by the Burmese. The outcome went a long way toward defining the Chinese-Myanmar border as it exists today. It also, as a side effect, forced Burmese rulers to give up their designs on Siam (modern Thailand), since they couldn’t invade Siam and guard against Chinese invasion at the same time.

December 22, 1894: French army captain Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason for supposedly passing classified information to German intelligence. The ensuing “Dreyfus Affair,” which ended with his pardon in 1906, was a public scandal that focused on the absurd weakness of the evidence against Dreyfus and a bizarre criminal proceeding that managed to convict him twice while acquitting the actual spy, French counter-intelligence officer Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. At the core of the Dreyfus case was deeply-rooted antisemitism, whose very public emergence motivated journalist Theodor Herzl to organize the First Zionist Congress in 1897. That congress is generally regarded as the beginning of the Zionist movement.

INTERNATIONAL

Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for December 22:

• 78,346,451 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (21,511,665 active, +604,973 since yesterday)

• 1,722,848 reported fatalities (+13,180 since yesterday)

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

• 10,442 confirmed coronavirus cases (+124)

• 630 reported fatalities (+9)

The Trump administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions against the Syrian Central Bank as well as nine entities and several individuals with ties to the Syrian government. Among those sanctioned was Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as members of her family. She’d already been hit with a previous round of sanctions.

YEMEN

• 2087 confirmed cases (+0)

• 606 reported fatalities (+0)

The Houthis said on Tuesday that their fighters shot down a Saudi reconnaissance drone in Marib province. There’s been no comment from the Saudis to my knowledge.

TURKEY

• 2,062,960 confirmed cases (+19,256)

• 18,602 reported fatalities (+251)

According to Voice of America, the Turkish and Israeli governments are in talks to restore full diplomatic relations, perhaps as soon as early next year. Relations between the two countries worsened badly after the Gaza flotilla incident in 2010, improved somewhat over the next several years, and worsened again when Ankara withdrew its ambassador from Israel in 2018 over violence in Gaza and the US embassy’s move to Jerusalem. But reports emerged earlier this month that the Turks are preparing to appoint (or have already appointed) a new ambassador. So that suggests a thaw is in the works.

Positioning himself as an adversary of Israel has suited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan politically, but geopolitically he’s looking at a potentially rocky relationship with the incoming Biden administration as well as a new anti-Turkey alliance in the eastern Mediterranean involving Israel as well as Cyprus, Egypt, and Greece. Improving relations with Israel could help Turkey reposition itself within the regional diplomatic structure.

IRAQ

• 586,503 confirmed cases (+1158)

• 12,725 reported fatalities (+15)

The Washington Post reports on concerns around Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s efforts to close down his government’s displaced persons camps:

Humanitarian aid groups are warning that if the camps are closed, tens of thousands of people, most of them women and children, risk homelessness or violent reprisals from Shiite militiamen and even from their own tribes and kin over perceived affiliation with the Islamic State or simply because they share its Sunni Muslim faith.

These families have been ostracized and deprived of basic rights, and their young generation now risks growing up as an underclass susceptible to recruitment into a new wave of extremism.

“If these families felt able to go home by now, then they probably would have done,” said one humanitarian worker, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing the ability to work in the camps. “Kicking them out in the hope that they go home will be disastrous. There’s no plan, and there are no guarantees.”

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

• 382,487 confirmed cases (+4228) in Israel, 125,506 confirmed cases (+1561) in Palestine

• 3136 reported fatalities (+25) in Israel, 1198 reported fatalities (+29) in Palestine

A 17 year old Palestinian boy was shot and killed late Monday by Israeli police in East Jerusalem. The police are claiming he opened fire on them first. Elsewhere, a 52 year old Israeli woman was found murdered near a squatter settlement in the northern West Bank, also on Monday. The Israeli military says it’s bolstering its presence in the vicinity of the Tal Menashe settlement. Authorities are just beginning to investigate her murder and there’s no proof she was attacked by a Palestinian or Palestinians, but certainly that scenario cannot be ruled out.

As expected, the Israeli Knesset dissolved on Tuesday in the absence of an agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and deputy PM Benny Gantz on a 2021 budget. Lucky duck Israeli voters will now get to go back to the polls on March 23 for their fourth election since April 2019. The system works! It’s too early to make any definitive statements about how this next election might go, but in contrast with the past three votes wherein it’s seemed like Netanyahu was either firmly in control or at least in decent shape, this time around there seems to be a sense that his premiership might be coming to the end of the line.

To a large extent that’s because of the defection earlier this month of former Likud Party member Gideon Sa’ar, who plans to head his own list in this election in an effort to block Netanyahu’s reelection and then sweep back in and replace him as Likud Party boss. Even though Sa’ar is going to run to Netanyahu’s right, he’s reportedly attracting support from the Israeli “center” and “left,” such as they are, simply because he’s a viable alternative to Netanyahu in a way that Gantz probably isn’t anymore because of his decision to try to work with the PM in the national “unity” government that just collapsed. In case you haven’t realized it yet, Israeli politics are profoundly broken.

ASIA

ARMENIA

• 154,602 confirmed cases (+537)

• 2673 reported fatalities (+17)

An estimated 25,000 people took to the streets of Yerevan on Tuesday to call for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation. Pashinyan has been under fire since signing a very disadvantageous ceasefire last month to end the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. He’s refused to step aside and he’s still firmly in control of parliament, so there’s little threat of a successful no-confidence vote. It’s been hard to gauge the extent of public opposition to Pashinyan in the wake of the ceasefire. But this new round of protests apparently includes a national strike effort organized by the opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation party, and that may offer a pretty good gauge of where Pashinyan really stands with the Armenian public.

AZERBAIJAN

• 205,877 confirmed cases (+2284)

• 2294 reported fatalities (+41)

With that ceasefire agreement having left many issues unresolved—particularly Karabakh’s long-term status—the International Crisis Group suggests the international community could have a role to play in stabilizing the region:

An evolutionary approach may be wiser than a forced settlement. Specifically, there may be a logic to leaving Nagorno-Karabakh’s status formally unresolved, at least until the displaced (both Armenians who fled recent fighting and Azerbaijanis forced out in 1994) return and new economic relationships are established between communities. While the precise details of Russia’s mandate will become clearer and evolve with time, Moscow will play a leading part. Turkey, which backed Azerbaijan during the war, looks set to assume a support role in ceasefire monitoring. But a crucial component of a new order will be opening up trade and economic ties to reverse 30 years of Armenian isolation. For that, Moscow cannot work alone or even just with Ankara. A new economic, transport and communications infrastructure to interconnect the region will require broader international investment and attention. In the meantime, humanitarian measures will be critical for not only meeting the needs of those most hurt by war but also improving prospects for cohabitation and a better future for the region.

AFGHANISTAN

• 51,089 confirmed cases (+201)

• 2105 reported fatalities (+16)

At least five prison healthcare workers were killed in a roadside bombing in Kabul on Tuesday. They were handling COVID-19 containment efforts at a prison in the city housing a large number of Taliban prisoners, but the Taliban says it was not involved in the attack.

Although they have a frequently violent) rivalry with one another across Afghanistan, the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute’s Michael Semple argues that the Taliban has made effective use of the Islamic State’s presence in Afghanistan when pursuing its political agenda:

In this context, the existence of the Islamic State has made it easier for the Taliban to rationalize the hard-line stances it would have pursued anyway to achieve its long-standing political goals. For instance, although avoiding a cease-fire was important to prevent the Islamic State from recruiting defectors, the Taliban also knew that an early end to their military campaign would reduce their leverage in the negotiations. Bearing these priorities in mind, then, Taliban negotiators have invoked the threat of the Islamic State to persuade the U.S. delegation to push forward without a cease-fire, by claiming that competition with this jihadist rival required them to present a hard line to their own ranks, according to sources involved in the negotiations. Indeed, one of the achievements of the Taliban’s diplomacy has been convincing Western diplomats that they would eventually embrace a settlement, all while refusing to make substantive compromises and continuing to instruct their fighters to carry on the insurgency against the Afghan government.

The Taliban has also parlayed its anti-IS activities into a stronger international profile, gaining support from Russia and Iran, for example, in part because it’s cast itself as the enemy of the greater IS evil.

JAPAN

• 200,658 confirmed cases (+2135)

• 2944 reported fatalities (+44)

The Japanese and South Korean militaries mobilized aircraft on Tuesday to respond to a joint Russian-Chinese bomber patrol over the western Pacific Ocean. This touching display of bro-ship between Moscow and Beijing might have gone over better if they hadn’t skirted other countries’ airspaces, but fortunately nothing came of the patrol other than some tense moments and, probably, some good times.

AFRICA

SUDAN

• 23,316 confirmed cases (+216)

• 1468 reported fatalities (+7)

The US Congress on Monday voted, as part of a larger spending and pandemic relief package, to restore Sudan’s sovereign immunity and to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars for Sudanese debt relief. This is part of the arrangement the Trump administration make with Khartoum to entice it to normalize relations with Israel. The sovereign immunity provision explicitly excludes any lawsuits related to the 9/11 attacks, for which there’s a chance Sudan could be held liable due to its prior relationship with al-Qaeda. Sudanese officials have suggested that if they’re held liable in such a lawsuit they could withdraw from the normalization deal altogether. However, the legal case against Sudan isn’t that strong—Osama bin Laden had long since left Sudan and headed back to Afghanistan by September 2001, for example—so it’s unlikely (but not impossible) that this will be a problem.

MOROCCO

• 420,648 confirmed cases (+2646) in Morocco, 10 confirmed cases (+0) in Western Sahara

• 7030 reported fatalities (+30) in Morocco, 1 reported fatality (+0) in Western Sahara

An Israeli delegation, led of course by US Viceroy Jared Kushner, visited Morocco on Tuesday to advance the “Western Sahara for normalization” agreement the Trump administration negotiated earlier this month. The delegation met with Moroccan King Mohammed VI and they all signed a declaration promising to take further steps toward normalization, including regular direct flights and expanded commercial ties leading to full diplomatic recognition.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

• 4936 confirmed cases (+0)

• 63 reported fatalities (+0)

After appearing to ease off on Monday, Central African rebels resumed their militant activity on Tuesday, forcibly taking control of the town of Bambari in the southern part of the country. Bambari is the fourth or fifth largest population center in the CAR. The Unity for Peace in Central Africa rebel faction is apparently responsible for the attack. It’s just one of several armed factions that have suddenly taken up arms again in the past several days. A number of them reportedly attempted to blockade Bangui over the weekend but United Nations peacekeepers said they were able to bring them under control. Additional fighting between government forces and rebels was reported on Tuesday along a major highway in western CAR linking the country to Cameroon. Both the Rwandan and Russian governments have sent military aid to Bangui in recent days, though the Russians are calling their reinforcements “military instructors.”

EUROPE

RUSSIA

• 2,906,503 confirmed cases (+28,776)

• 51,912 reported fatalities (+561)

Vladimir Putin signed two bills into law on Tuesday. One gives him—well, any ex-Russian president, but there aren’t a lot of those around and I don’t think he’s that concerned about Dmitry Medvedev’s legal future—lifetime legal immunity. The other allows him—ok, again I’m assuming he’s not doing this for Medvedev’s benefit—to become a senator automatically upon retirement. Both of these measures have raised suspicions that Putin might be preparing for retirement when his term ends in 2024 (or maybe even before), though he’s also legally allowed to run again. There’s no evidence he’s thinking this way but the timing of these bills is a little peculiar.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that it’s added a number of European Union officials to its travel blacklist in retaliation for sanctions the EU imposed in October over the apparent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. It didn’t make the new additions to the list public, but I’m sure whoever they are they are extremely bummed out.

ROMANIA

• 598,792 confirmed cases (+5009)

• 14,636 reported fatalities (+155)

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Tuesday tapped lame duck Finance Minister Florin Cîțu to form a new government. Assuming he succeeds, Cîțu will be succeeding his current boss, lame duck Prime Minister Ludovic Orban, who resigned after a disappointing election result earlier this month that nevertheless still left his National Liberal Party (PNL) in the strongest position to lead Romania’s next coalition. Iohannis’s decision presumably means that the PNL and its prospective coalition partners, who had been resisting Cîțu’s PM candidacy, have sorted out their disagreements, so he should have little trouble getting parliamentary approval.

AMERICAS

UNITED STATES

• 18,684,628 confirmed cases (+199,080)

• 330,824 reported fatalities (+3376)

Finally, the Quincy Institute’s Stephen Wertheim and Progressive International’s David Adler take one of Joe Biden’s big foreign policy ideas and pour some cold water on it:

Democracy is in disrepair. Over the past four years, President Donald Trump has mocked its rules and norms, accelerating the decay of democratic institutions in the United States. We are not alone: a global reckoning is underway, with authoritarian leaders capitalizing on broken promises and failed policies.

To reverse the trend, President-elect Joe Biden has proposed to convene a Summit for Democracy. His campaign presents the summit as an opportunity to “renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the Free World”. With the US placing itself once again “at the head of the table”, other nations can find their seats, and the task of beating back democracy’s adversaries can begin.

But the summit will not succeed. It is at once too blunt and too thin an instrument.Although the summit might serve as a useful forum for coordinating policy on such areas as financial oversight and election security, it is liable to drive US foreign policy even further down a failed course that divides the world into hostile camps, prioritizing confrontation over cooperation.

If Biden is to make good on his commitment to “meet the challenges of the 21st century”, his administration should avoid recreating the problems of the 20th. Only by diminishing antagonism toward the nations outside the “democratic world” can the US rescue its democracy and deliver deeper freedom for its people.

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OK, that’s it for us for a little while! Like I said above I’ll be in and out over the next couple of weeks. For those who are celebrating it, once again let me wish you and yours a Merry Christmas from Foreign Exchanges!