World roundup: December 5-6 2020
Stories from Qatar, Sudan, Romania, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
December 4, 1676: A Swedish army under King Charles XI defeats an invading Danish army at the Battle of Lund. Though a relatively small battle in terms of the number of soldiers involved, in percentage terms this is one of the bloodiest battles in European history. Of the 21,000 or so soldiers involved on both sides, roughly two-thirds were killed or wounded. The Swedish victory thwarted the Danish invasion and is therefore considered a turning point in the 1675-1679 Scanian War.
December 4, 1976: Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the president/dictator of the Central African Republic, proclaims himself Emperor Bokassa I of the new “Central African Empire.” The practical difference between Bokassa’s heavily authoritarian dictatorship and his imperial rule was pretty negligible. The French government engineered Bokassa’s ouster in 1979 in favor of his predecessor as president, David Dacko, and the empire went out the door with him.
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.
December 5, 1945: Flight 19, a group of five US Navy Grumman TBM Avenger planes on a training flight, disappears off the east coast of Florida along with all 14 crew members. Subsequently a Martin PBM Mariner sent out to search for the planes was lost along with all 13 crew members. No wreckage has ever been found and there’s only speculation as to what caused the disappearances, but the pair of incidents became probably the most famous episode in the popular legend of the “Bermuda Triangle.”
December 6, 1240: The Mongols sack Kyiv
December 6, 1904: In his State of the Union message to Congress, US President Teddy Roosevelt issues his “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The Roosevelt Corollary took the mostly defensive (at least in principle) Monroe Doctrine, which warned against European intervention in the Western Hemisphere, and made it offensive, stipulating that while European nations should butt out, the United States was entitled “to the exercise of an international police power” in the Americas. This remained US policy until Franklin Roosevelt introduced his “Good Neighbor Policy,” and then once that brief interlude was over the Corollary became the basis of US policy toward Latin America during much of the Cold War.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for December 6:
67,377,387 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (19,263,618 active, +534,942 since yesterday)
1,541,373 reported fatalities (+7537 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
YEMEN
2337 confirmed coronavirus cases (+33)
639 reported fatalities (+6)
Unknown gunmen shot and killed a prominent Yemeni academic in the city of Dhale on Saturday. Since the victim, Khalid al-Hameidi, was known for his secularism and his criticism of Islamist extremists, it’s likely he was targeted by either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, but to my knowledge neither group has yet claimed responsibility.
On Friday evening the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations office reported some kind of attack on a “merchant vessel” off Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Nothing seems to have come of it and (again as far as I know) there are no details to indicate whether the incident had any actual connection to Yemen other than geography.
KUWAIT
144,369 confirmed cases (+205)
891 reported fatalities (+2)
Saturday’s Kuwaiti parliamentary election produced heavy turnover but unfortunately a bit of a step back for the cause of women in Gulf Arab society. Results released on Sunday show that 31 of the 50 seats in the legislature will be filled by new people. All 50 seats will be filled by men, however, as the 29 women who ran for seats all lost. One woman had been elected in Kuwait’s 2016 election, hence the step back. Candidates identified as members of the opposition (political parties are officially proscribed in Kuwait, so essentially everybody runs as an independent, but there are broad opposition and pro-government alliances in lieu of formal parties) appear to have done well, which could spell trouble for any austerity measures Emir Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah is planning to pursue.
BAHRAIN
87,930 confirmed cases (+198)
341 reported fatalities (+0)
The Bahraini government “clarified” (read: changed) its policy on imports from Israel over the weekend. After Bahraini Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani suggested a few days ago that Manama would not distinguish between products made in Israel proper and products made in the occupied West Bank, Bahraini state media said on Saturday that he’d been “misinterpreted.” Sure, OK, whatever. They were “misinterpreted” in the sense that they generated criticism for the Bahraini government and needed to be walked back.
QATAR
139,908 confirmed cases (+125)
239 reported fatalities (+0)
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan suggested to AFP on Saturday that a resolution to the Qatar diplomatic crisis might really be on the way. Although there have been rumblings of a Qatari-Saudi detente all week, Qatari officials have been noting that there won’t really be an end to this three-plus year long dispute unless all four of the countries that initially moved to boycott Qatar in 2017—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates—agreed to normalize their relations with Doha again. Faisal told AFP that “the eventual resolution will involve all parties concerned,” so perhaps this is not just a bilateral process. That said, without some public acknowledgement from the UAE, which is probably more hostile toward Qatar than even the Saudis have been, it’s difficult to know if they’re really on board.
SAUDI ARABIA
358,713 confirmed cases (+187)
5965 reported fatalities (+11)
Despite all the recent talk about a looming Israeli-Saudi rapprochement, something happened on Sunday that made it pretty clear they won’t be normalizing relations as long as Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz is still around:
In a fiery address at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal condemned Israel as the last Western colonizer of the Middle East. He disparaged its claims of upholding human rights and enumerated decades of crimes committed against the Palestinians.
“They’re demolishing homes as they wish and they assassinate whomever they want, and yet the Israeli Knesset passed a law that defines the citizenship of Israel as exclusively Jewish, denying the non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel of equal rights under the law,” Prince Turki said. “What kind of democracy is that?”
He prefaced his remarks by saying they represented his personal view, but as a senior prince who advises the Saudi king, his comments are closely monitored as a policy bellwether. Following criticism of Palestinian leaders by another senior Saudi royal in October, Prince Turki’s comments reveal the divergent views at the top echelons of the secretive kingdom toward warming relations with Israel.
Former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold, who was in the audience, apparently took offense at Turki’s remarks, and things deteriorated a bit from there.
Salman and Turki come from an older generation that still links diplomacy with Israel to a settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may be champing at the bit to toss the Palestinians under the proverbial bus, but this is one area where he’s stymied by the fact that he’s not king yet. Familial dynamics may continue to stymie him after he becomes king.
ASIA
ARMENIA
141,937 confirmed cases (+978)
2326 reported fatalities (+17)
Over 20,000 people protested again in Yerevan on Saturday to renew calls for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation. Pashinyan has been facing demands for his ouster since last month’s resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict left Armenia holding the very short end of the stick, ceding all the territory around Karabakh and part of the Karabakh enclave itself to Azerbaijani control. Organizers are warning of more protests and “acts of civil disobedience” if Pashinyan does not step down soon. Saturday’s protest was large enough to renew public pressure on Pashinyan, but he’s under no political pressure because his “My Step” coalition enjoys a substantial parliamentary majority.
AZERBAIJAN
146,679 confirmed cases (+4356)
1632 reported fatalities (+39)
Part of the Karabakh settlement involved the creation of a guaranteed transit corridor across Armenian territory that will link Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which borders Turkey, to Azerbaijan proper. Although the details of that corridor have yet to be worked out, the idea has raised Turkish hopes of a larger regional network linking Turkey to Azerbaijan, and on from there to the energy-rich Caspian Sea, the energy rich Turkic nations of Central Asia, and all the way to China.
Assuming this really comes to pass—and Russia and Iran might have something to say about that—Al-Monitor’s Fehim Taştekin suggests that the reality of that network might not meet Ankara’s lofty expectations:
To start with, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are not exactly scrambling for pipelines to meet some extraordinary energy demands. Similarly, Turkish manufacturers are not desperate for transport means to meet some sort of a boom in Central Asian demand for Turkish goods.
Moreover, will Russia acquiesce to rival projects in the Caspian? Russian energy giants such as Gazprom, Transneft and Lukoil are doing business in Azerbaijan. The Russians hold a stake in Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR, which, in turn, holds a stake in the Russian oil refinery Antipinsky. And criticism is on the rise in Russia that Moscow has already given too many concessions to Turkey. Political commentator Konstantin von Eggert, for instance, said he believes that the outcome in Nagorno-Karabakh is “a geopolitical catastrophe” for Moscow and that “Turkey has gained a very important foothold in the region.” Along with Turkey, regional players such as Iran and China may be now emboldened to “further muscle into the region, in Central Asia and in South Caucasus, without consulting too much with Moscow or fearing repercussions from the Kremlin,” he said.
Furthermore, Azerbaijan’s Caspian neighbors are using Russian conduits for energy supplies to Europe and increasingly turning to China for long-term partnerships. The downtick in Europe’s energy demand, coupled with China’s promise of large-scale purchases, diminishes the prospects for conduits running through Turkey, which include the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Erzurum gas pipeline, along with the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline.
INDIA
9,676,801 confirmed cases (+32,272)
140,590 reported fatalities (+374)
Protesting Indian farmers said on Saturday that they will step up their civil disobedience campaign in the coming days after negotiations with Narendra Modi’s government broke down. The farmers are angry over Modi’s push to deregulate Indian agriculture, which they fear will do away with government-run markets where farmers are guaranteed a minimum price for their products in favor of markets in which prices are dictated entirely by private wholesalers. The farmers are demanding the full repeal of the deregulation law, which passed in September, while the government has offered only to amend some portions of the measure. They’re calling for another general strike on Tuesday, which could rival or even eclipse last Thursday’s walkout, in which some 250 million people are believed to have participated. They’re also planning to continue blockading major highways around Delhi.
CHINA
86,619 confirmed cases (+18) on the mainland, 6898 confirmed cases (+95) in Hong Kong
4634 reported fatalities (+0) on the mainland, 112 reported fatalities (+0) in Hong Kong
The Trump administration late Friday canceled five “cultural exchange” programs with China—the Policymakers Educational China Trip Program, the US-China Friendship Program, the US-China Leadership Exchange Program, the US-China Transpacific Exchange Program and the Hong Kong Educational and Cultural Program. In announcing the move, the State Department characterized these initiatives as “soft power propaganda tools” of the Chinese government.
On a not entirely unrelated note, China’s Chang’e 5 lunar probe completed the next stage of its return journey on Sunday, as its lunar ascent vehicle successfully docked with its lunar orbiter. The ascent vehicle is carrying samples of rocks and soil from the moon’s surface that will, if all goes well, return to Earth later this month. Assuming all does go well this will be the first lunar soil collection since 1976 and will make China just the third country, after the US and the USSR, to carry out such a mission.
JAPAN
160,098 confirmed cases (+2424)
2315 reported fatalities (+32)
While the Chang’e 5 is starting its return trip to Earth, a Japanese probe carrying samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu landed successfully in Australia on Sunday. Researchers are hoping to get some hints to deep questions like the formation of our solar system and the distribution of water and/or organic compounds across it.
AFRICA
SUDAN
19,468 confirmed cases (+272)
1295 reported fatalities (+5)
New cracks appear to have opened up between the military and civilian halves of Sudan’s transitional government. The country’s sovereign council, which has been handling executive responsibilities since last August and is controlled by members of the military junta that ousted former President Omar al-Bashir last year, recently decreed the formation of a “Council of Transition Partners,” which according to Sudanese media is “responsible for leading the transition period, resolving differences [between those in power] and having all the necessary prerogatives to exercise its power.” Sudan’s civilian-run interim government, led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, apparently opposed this step and has argued that the sovereign council exceeded its mandate in undertaking it.
It would seem that the bit about “leading the transition period” is what really has people concerned. The government agreed with the formation of a new body to resolve internal disagreements, but has balked at the level of authority it’s been given. There are concerns that this new council is meant to take the place of a transitional legislature, on whose makeup the civilian and military factions have yet to find common ground.
LIBERIA
1676 confirmed cases (+0)
83 reported fatalities (+0)
Liberian voters will head to the polls on Tuesday for a referendum on tightening term limits that may really be a backdoor way of extending President George Weah’s stint in office. The measure will, if passed, reduce terms for presidents and members of the Liberian House of Representatives from six to five years and from nine to seven years for Liberian senators. On its surface it seems like he’s trying to shorten his stint, then, but given how other West African heads of state have been using referendums similar to this to justify resetting their term “counter” to zero, some opposition politicians have suggested he’ll later use a successful referendum to justify running for a third term—since his first would have been served under the previous system. Weah has denied that this is his intention, but even so the vote is likely to turn on the degree to which the Liberian public approves of the job Weah has been doing.
Another referendum on repealing Liberia’s 1973 ban on dual citizenship will also be on the ballot. Proponents have argued that the ban excludes the country’s wealthy diaspora from returning to Liberia and investing in the country. Opponents are concerned that said wealthy diaspora could return and begin to dominate Liberian politics, though even if the ban is lifted Liberians with dual citizenship will still be barred from holding elected office.
MALI
5135 confirmed cases (+73)
164 reported fatalities (+1)
Mali’s interim legislature, the “National Transition Council,” met for the first time on Saturday and elected the deputy leader of August’s junta, Colonel Malick Diaw, as its speaker. This is not surprising, given that he ran unopposed and that the military has the largest single bloc in the 121 member assembly, controlling 22 seats. Several political parties and civil society groups have their own blocs in the new legislature. But the main opposition June 5 Movement has decided to boycott the council, saying it did not want to be a “stooge for a disguised military regime.”
ETHIOPIA
113,295 confirmed cases (+555)
1747 reported fatalities (+2)
Fighting continued in Ethiopia’s Tigray region over the weekend, as the Ethiopian military continues its pursuit of leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Several TPLF leaders, including its head, Debretsion Gebremichael, fled the regional capital of Mekelle when Ethiopian forces rolled into the city last weekend. Ethiopian authorities claim to know where Debretsion and the rest of the TPLF brain trust are located and insist they will resolve this ongoing crisis within days. In the meantime, though, on top of the thousands of people believed to have been killed and the tens of thousands displaced, this civil war in all but name has done considerable and potentially lasting damage to the Ethiopian economy:
Roads, bridges, a power plant and a sugar mill have been destroyed. The Ethiopian currency has sunk 20% against the dollar this year, suppressing purchasing power across a nation where millions of people are already dependent on food aid.
Foreign companies have been caught in the crossfire. Production at three textile factories in Tigray that supply Swedish fashion chain H&M has been halted. China has evacuated 500 of its nationals who were working in Tigray.
“What is clear is that this conflict will leave lasting damage on Ethiopia’s economy,” said Alex de Waal, executive director of the Massachusetts-based World Peace Foundation. “Ethiopia is in turmoil. The indication from the government that the war is over is not correct.”
EUROPE
BELARUS
147,157 confirmed cases (+1878)
1207 reported fatalities (+9)
Thousands of people hit the streets in Minsk and other cities in Belarus for yet another Sunday protest calling for President Alexander Lukashenko’s resignation. These demonstrations have been a weekly fixture since the disputed August presidential election, which Lukashenko won amid widespread claims of fraud. Belarusian security forces have opted for mass arrests in an effort to break the protest movement, and reports are that some 300 people were arrested in Sunday’s demonstrations.
MOLDOVA
116,365 confirmed cases (+808)
2419 reported fatalities (+16)
Moldovan President-elect Maia Sandu led a rally in Chișinău on Sunday to call for an early parliamentary election. Sandu has alleged that the legislature, and the government under Prime Minister Ion Chicu of already moving to undermine her planned anti-corruption efforts. Her supporters rallied on Thursday in the Moldovan capital as parliament was voting to strip her of one of the presidency’s few real powers, direct control over the country’s main intelligence agency.
ROMANIA
513,576 confirmed cases (+5231)
12,320 reported fatalities (+134)
Romanian voters headed to the polls on Sunday for a parliamentary election that exit polls suggest may be too close to call. Romanian Prime Minister Ludovic Orban has already declared victory for his National Liberal Party, but the polls show the PNL in a dead heat with the Social Democratic Party, with one survey putting PNL up by four points and another putting the PSD slightly ahead. The one solid takeaway is that turnout was dismal—roughly one third of eligible voters are believed to have participated, the lowest such figure in Romanian history. The PSD is currently the largest party in Romania’s Chamber of Deputies with 132 seats in the 329 seat chamber, compared with the PNL’s 82 seats. But Orban has managed to maintain a minority government based on confidence agreements with several smaller parties. Pre-election polling gave the PNL a fairly consistent if modest lead.
GERMANY
1,184,845 confirmed cases (+14,750)
19,159 reported fatalities (+184)
Almost 13,000 people had to be evacuated from their neighborhood in Frankfurt on Sunday as authorities attempted to remove an unexploded 500 kilogram World War II bomb discovered several days ago by construction workers. Authorities were able to defuse the device.
FRANCE
2,292,497 confirmed cases (+11,022)
55,155 reported fatalities (+174)
Dozens of protests were held in cities across France on Saturday in opposition to elements of a new security law that forbid the filming of police officers on duty. Opponents allege the law is intended to cover up police brutality and undermine press freedom, though French authorities have…well, basically just insisted that it isn’t. Weird that the protesters don’t seem to be satisfied with that. The French government has pledged to amend the law on this particular point, but the United Nations has now raised concerns about other aspects of the law and their alignment with international human rights norms. Most of the protests appear to have been peaceful, but the demonstration in Paris turned violent in spurts as some protesters destroyed property and threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police.
UNITED KINGDOM
1,723,242 confirmed cases (+17,272)
61,245 reported fatalities (+231)
As everybody’s calendar now reads “December,” clearly we’re in the final days for a post-Brexit trade agreement before the UK leaves the European Union without one. I maintain that plucky elites on both sides of the English Channel will find a way to enrich themselves against the odds, but I will admit it’s getting down to the wire. Both parties very publicly committed to a last ditch round of talks over the weekend, but it seems even people who do little else but pay attention to Brexit have no idea what’s going to come of it.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
104,442 confirmed cases (+265)
919 reported fatalities (+3)
Venezuelan voters (it’s been a busy few weeks for elections) headed to the polls on Sunday to elect a new National Assembly. Or at least some of them did. I say “new” National Assembly because, with most opposition parties boycotting the election whatever emerges will surely be very different from the current legislature, and likely much friendlier with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Anecdotal observations suggest turnout was light, which would make sense given the boycott. Results, to the extent they’re really in doubt, should be available in the coming days.
UNITED STATES
15,159,529 confirmed cases (+173,861)
288,906 reported fatalities (+1076)
New research from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggests that “directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy” (microwaves, most likely) is “the most plausible mechanism” to explain the so-called “Havana Syndrome.” That’s the array of conditions that US diplomats and spies have reported suffering for a few years now, starting in Cuba (hence the name) but later including personnel stationed in China, Russia, and elsewhere. I am not a scientist so I really have nothing to add here beyond noting, as I’ve done before, that we’re still being told to accept on faith the existence of a weapon or class of weapons capable of delivering this radiofrequency energy, absent any evidence that such weapons exist or even that they could feasibly exist. We know that the Soviet Union and perhaps later Russia, and (let’s be honest) probably the US, have researched such weapons, but beyond that? Nothing. This seems like kind of an important piece to this story, but major media outlets, in particular the New York Times, don’t really seem to think it’s that big a deal.
Finally, a new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute finds that the US and China led the world in arms sales in 2019. That’s a little misleading, though, because while the United States accounted for a whopping 61 percent of all arms sales by the world’s top 25 arms manufacturing firms, China came in at a comparatively pacifistic 15.7 percent. The difference is that China’s figure represents a significant increase, while the US is pretty consistently lapping the field when it comes to blanketing the world with weaponry. The five leading US arms manufacturers—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics—were also the five largest arms makers in the world, and a sixth US firm, L3Harris Technologies, came it at number 10. Good for them! The UAE’s EDGE Group became the first Middle East-based arms dealer to crack the top 25, a real milestone in the diversification of killing people.
In total, the world’s top 25 arms sellers accounted for a cool $361 billion in sales. When war pays that well, is it any wonder it remains so popular among politicians and the folks who finance their campaigns? I don’t know what effect the pandemic has had on their business but I suspect somehow they’ll muddle through.