World roundup: December 5 2024
Stories from Syria, South Korea, Ethiopia, and elsewhere
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I have a commitment this evening so tonight’s roundup is out a bit earlier than usual. We will catch up tomorrow!
TODAY IN HISTORY
December 5, 1757: At the Battle of Leuthen, Prussian King Frederick II (“the Great”) wins one of the most impressive victories of his storied military career, using a diversionary attack and a sophisticated oblique maneuver to rout an Austrian army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine that was twice the size of his force. Fully a third of the 66,000 man Austrian army was killed, wounded, or captured. Frederick’s victory enabled him to move on to besiege the city of Breslau (Wrocław) in mid-December. Breslau’s fall left Prussia largely in control of Silesia and all but ensured its victory in the Third Silesian War, one of the many conflicts within the larger Seven Years’ War.

December 5, 1941: The Red Army under Georgy Zhukov begins a major counteroffensive against the Nazi Wehrmacht in the Battle of Moscow. The combination of the Soviet military and a brutally cold Russian winter crippled the German forces, and the offensive ended on January 7, 1942 with the exhausted Red Army having driven the Nazi line back some 150 miles from the Soviet capital.
INTERNATIONAL
OPEC+ member states held their monthly chitchat on Thursday and agreed, as expected, to continue their current level of oil production through at least March. That means the eight members who had been maintaining “voluntary” cuts of around 2.2 million barrels per day through January will keep on keeping on. In theory, they will begin ramping up production slowly with the aim of getting back to full production by September 2026, though if the oil market remains relatively weak they will surely adjust that plan again. With Donald Trump returning to the White House and promising to ratchet up US oil production, that scenario seems likely.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed goes into detail about Amnesty International’s new determination that the Israeli government is committing genocide:
The declaration from Amnesty, an influential watchdog organization with wide international reach and respect, represents a significant addition to the chorus of accusations that the U.S.-backed Israeli offensive constitutes a genocide – one of the gravest possible violations. Its decision was based on more than 200 interviews and a review of visual and digital documentation of Israeli conduct in Gaza, as well as media coverage, reports by the United Nations and humanitarian organizations and statements by Israeli officials and Palestinian groups in Gaza.
“Amnesty International concedes that identifying genocide in armed conflict is complex and challenging, because of the multiple objectives that may exist simultaneously. Nonetheless, it is critical to recognize genocide when it occurs in the context of armed conflict, and to insist that war can never excuse it,” the group’s report reads.
The report cites in particular the “relentless” Israeli attacks on civilians, infrastructure and cultural sites, and the U.S.-backed offensive’s displacement of around 2 million Palestinians “into ever-shrinking, ever-changing pockets of land … forcing people to live in conditions that exposed them to a slow and calculated death.”
Hamas political official Bassem Naim told the AP on Thursday that ceasefire negotiations are once again underway, confirming a report from Axios the previous day. The Qatari government has even resumed its role as mediator after stepping away from the talks last month. According to Naim there’s no new proposal on the table as yet so the talks seem limited to the informal level for the time being. There’s no indication if/when a new formal round of talks might be scheduled.
In the West Bank, Israeli settler mobs attacked two towns near the city of Nablus on Wednesday, apparently after a confrontation with Israeli security forces over a nearby settlement construction project. They apparently set fire to several buildings and injured at least one person. The problem of settler violence has only gotten worse since the October 7 attacks. A new study from Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, reported by Local Call’s Oren Ziv, finds that 50 entire Palestinian villages have been emptied of residents by settler mobs over that period, while seven more have been partially depopulated. The sites where most of the displacement has happened coincide with areas of new illegal settlement construction. As you might expect this activity is all condoned, if not outright supported, by the Israeli state.
SYRIA
In another massive blow to the Syrian government, insurgents led by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized the city of Hama on Thursday. Previous reporting had the rebels approaching the city on three sides but also suggested that the Syrian military was strengthening its resistance and even counterattacking. Insurgent forces were apparently able to break into parts of the city on Thursday afternoon, and after a few hours of fighting the Syrian military opted to pull out altogether. In theory I suppose government forces are aiming to regroup (again) and establish a defensive line further south. But the more ground they give the less this looks like an orderly retreat and the more it looks like they’re being routed.
Hama’s significance is both symbolic and tangible. On the symbolic front the insurgents now control three major Syrian cities, including the recently-conquered Aleppo and Idlib, which they’ve held consistently since 2015. On that basis one could argue that their progress over the past week is comparable to the successes these groups had back in the heyday of their uprising in 2012-2013, though the durability of this new progress remains an open question. Assuming HTS and company can hold on to what they’ve taken, though, the way is now open for them to move further south into Homs province and threaten to cut off northwestern Syria’s coastal Latakia and Tartus provinces—historic strongholds for the Assad family and home to most of Russia’s military presence in Syria—from Damascus. It may be worth noting on this score that HTS leader “Abu Mohammad al-Julani” has apparently started referring to himself by his actual name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in the group’s online communiques. Presumably this is part of his effort to rebrand himself to Western audiences as a friendly secular moderate rather than the leader of a hardline religious faction.
The Financial Times has published a new piece outlining how HTS has been able to build its military capabilities to the point where it could pull off the operation that’s unfolded over the past week. I can’t speak to the veracity of any of it but it’s an interesting read. According to this account the group has developed (presumably with some outside help but that part isn’t clear) its own drone and missile manufacturing capacity and has acquired arms indirectly from rebel factions that were themselves supplied by Turkey as well as from Syrian military sources via black market trade. It’s also created its own military academy. Its rapid advance has of course enabled it to seize a fair amount of Syrian military hardware over the past few days, including (and this could be significant) air defense systems. Of course it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder whether the group is getting more (and more direct) outside assistance than this piece suggests.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government has reportedly expanded its efforts to oulaw women by shutting down nursing and midwifery training programs across the country. Such institutions were the only avenue remaining for Afghan women to legally continue any sort of education beyond grade school and had as a result become havens for women who’d been pursuing other educational options prior to the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Assuming this latest decision holds it will also have effects on women who require medical treatment, since under Taliban law male medical personnel cannot treat female patients without a male guardian present. The United Nations has already argued that Afghanistan needs thousands of additional midwives to meet demand and this will only exacerbate the problem.
CHINA
The Chinese government on Thursday blacklisted 13 US defense contractors and six executives over arms sales to Taiwan. Two of the firms appear to specialize in drone manufacturing: RapidFlight and BRINC Drones. US defense firms are already essentially barred from dealing with Beijing thanks to US restrictions so these measures are more or less symbolic.
SOUTH KOREA
Jacobin’s Kap Seol argues that South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s coup attempt could offer a chance to strengthen the country’s democratic underpinnings:
December 3 will likely go down in history as a great day for democracy not just in South Korea, but across the world, due to a combination of popular vigilance and pure luck that kept the constitutional order intact. South Koreans have now been offered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to renew the vibrancy of their democracy.
Much of their democratic future will depend on whether they can ditch the form of pro-business bipartisan politics that has proved vulnerable to the rise of an asinine wannabe strongman like Yoon, who initially used populist language to paint himself as an outsider disrupting establishment politics and later showed an unbridled willingness to weaponize the state apparatus against his own people to perpetuate his rule. In other words, their future hinges on whether they can build a meaningful left alternative to the status quo.
AFRICA
ETHIOPIA
The New York Times’ Alexis Okeowo assesses the extent of war crimes committed during the 2020-2022 war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, as well as the conflict’s lingering effects:
But while both sides have been accused of crimes, their atrocities differ in scale. The U.S. State Department has described “ethnic cleansing” in Tigray. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops destroyed fields, crops and grain stores while the government imposed a communications blackout and blocked humanitarian aid. Ninety percent of Tigray’s population faced famine, according to the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator in 2021. As Mark Lowcock, a former U.N. relief coordinator, has said, the Ethiopian government “basically wanted to starve the Tigrayans into submission or out of existence.”
A study by Kiros Berhane, a biostatistician at Columbia University, found that more than 100,000 women in Tigray may have been raped by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers and their allies. “When they raped them, they told them that they came to destroy their wombs so that Tigrayan women will not give birth to Tigrayan children,” Yirgalem Gebretsadkan, who heads the research center on gender-based violence for the Tigray government’s Commission of Inquiry on Tigray Genocide, told me. More than 80 percent of the women who reported being raped told the commission they had been gang-raped. Eritrean soldiers who were H.I.V.-positive were ordered to rape H.I.V.-negative women. Boys and men were raped, too. Some 600,000 people have been killed in the conflict and millions more have been displaced from their homes.
Both sides agreed to stop fighting in 2022. As part of the peace deal, the Tigray Defense Forces were required to surrender their arms and send 270,000 fighters to makeshift rehabilitation camps, which were supposed to help reintegrate them into society. But those forces have said they will not fully disarm until Eritrean forces withdraw. Two years on, Abiy has yet to ask them to leave parts of western Tigray, an indication, perhaps, that he does not trust Tigrayan leadership to keep the peace.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
According to AFP, fighting between the Congolese military and the M23 militant group is continuing to intensify in spite of an August ceasefire that is still technically in place. Beyond that, M23—which resumed low level activity in late October—is now apparently disavowing the ceasefire, arguing that it was between the Congolese and Rwandan governments and thus doesn’t apply to the militants. Of course, figuring out where M23 ends and the Rwandan military begins has been one of the mysteries of the group’s insurgency, so this claim that they’re distinct entities rings a little hollow. The insurgents appear to be focused on a road that leads into the city of Butembo, one of North Kivu province’s commercial centers, though there are reports of fighting in other areas between M23 and local pro-government militias.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is attending this week’s Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit in Malta, marking his first trip to a European Union country since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Apparently his appearance provided some lively moments, as he accused the United States of provoking the war in order to aggrandize NATO and establish (well, reestablish in a way) Russia as the West’s “new common enemy.” He then stormed out before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken could respond, possibly via a guitar riff although I can’t be certain of that.
Back in Russia, foreign ministry officials on Thursday closed Poland’s St. Petersburg consulate. This was their retaliation for the Polish government’s closure of the Russian consulate in Poznan back in October, over alleged acts of espionage and sabotage. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski threatened to shut down Russia’s entire Polish consular mission in response.
UKRAINE
A Ukrainian “senior official” told AFP on Thursday that Kyiv has rejected a US call for it to lower the country’s minimum conscription age to 18. The Biden administration believes that Ukraine’s struggles to maintain its defensive positions come down to a lack of manpower and would like to see it throw a broader segment of its population into the war. Ukrainian officials counter that their biggest problem is not manpower, it’s a dearth of arms coming from the US and other Western backers. They’re probably both right, but it’s a bit unseemly (to put it mildly) for the US government to keep effectively demanding the deaths of more Ukrainians.
FRANCE
In a televised address following the resignation of ousted Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that he has no intention of resigning himself and that he expects to replace Barnier in a matter of “days.” Whoever he appoints, assuming they can actually gain parliamentary support, will have to focus immediately on passing a 2025 budget. It was Barnier’s decision to impose a budget without a parliamentary vote that opened the door to his removal in Wednesday’s no-confidence vote.
IRELAND
New Left Review’s Daniel Finn offers some thoughts about Sinn Féin’s disappointing performance in last week’s Irish parliamentary election:
This background of demobilization helps explain why support for Sinn Féin proved to be so brittle over the past year. Although the party let others take the initiative in the movement against water charges and the campaign for abortion rights, it nonetheless benefited from the atmosphere that their victories created. Those memories were already starting to fade by 2020. Sinn Féin itself experienced a spike in membership following the election, but on a much smaller scale than the Scottish National Party in the aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum. A party that lacks organizational ballast is more likely to be disturbed by sudden political waves.
This brings us to the most obvious factor behind Sinn Féin’s polling decline: the heightened focus on immigration since the end of 2022, when protests against housing for refugees in Dublin’s north inner city began spreading to other parts of the country. This ominous shift was by no means a spontaneous or inexorable reaction to the latest immigration figures. If there had been a deliberate, high-level strategy to generate a sense of crisis around the issue and drive a wedge through Sinn Féin’s electoral base, it is hard to see how the government and other state bodies would have behaved any differently.
AMERICAS
PARAGUAY
The Paraguayan government expelled Chinese envoy Xu Wei from the country on Thursday after he made an address to Congress on Wednesday pitching the case for Asunción to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and unlock the “thousands of…advantages” that would come along with normalization with Beijing. Xu is supposed to be in Paraguay to attend a UNESCO event so it’s unclear how he wound up giving a speech to the Paraguayan legislature, but it doesn’t appear that he had permission from the government to do so.
CUBA
The Cuban government restored partial power on Thursday after the national electrical grid experienced another catastrophic failure on Wednesday morning. But officials say they’ve only been able to restore 1450 megawatts to the grid, far below regular peak generation of 3200 MW, so they will need to maintain daily rolling five hour blackouts across the country. Cuba’s electrical problems start with its aging, oil-burning power plants, which can’t be upgraded or replaced largely due to the US embargo, as well as a recent decrease in oil imports from traditional suppliers like Mexico, Russia, and Venezuela.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Inkstick’s Elizabeth Beavers argues that the US government should stop designating organizations as “terrorist” groups as that authority has become irretrievably politicized:
The US House of Representatives recently advanced a measure that, if finalized into law, would greatly expand the president’s ability to designate nonprofit organizations as supporters of “terrorism” and strip their tax-exempt status as punishment. Civil liberties advocates are rightly bemoaning the bill’s advancement, as it would be a dangerous tool for suppressing dissent and crushing peace and justice organizing — an especially worrying prospect as Donald Trump again prepares to take office.
Still, it is critical at this moment to recognize that, egregious as this bill is, it would merely be the logical extension of massive powers that already exist. Indeed, there are already several mechanisms by which the executive branch holds enormous discretionary power to label individuals, organizations, and states as “terrorists” and enact severe penalties on them as a result. These “terrorist” designation lists rarely receive mass scrutiny similar to what the recent bill received, but they do just as much harm.