World roundup: December 7 2023
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Azerbaijan, Guyana, and elsewhere
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Happy Hanukkah to those who are celebrating!
TODAY IN HISTORY
December 7, 1941: The Japanese military undertakes a coordinated series of attacks on US and British colonial holdings throughout the Pacific region. Of these, certainly the best remembered is the assault on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. Over 2400 people were killed in what was intended to be a preemptive strike to ensure that the United States would not interfere with Japanese plans in the Pacific. Of course it had the opposite effect, drawing the United States into World War II. Which, needless to say, did not work out to Japan’s (nor, for that matter, to its European allies’) benefit.
December 7, 1965: During the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I issue the Catholic–Orthodox Joint Declaration of 1965. The declaration reversed the mutual excommunications that had been issued by Pope Leo IX and Ecumenical Patriarch Michael I Cerularius in the Great East-West Schism of 1054. The Catholic and Orthodox churches are still in schism, of course, but their relationship has improved considerably since the 11th century.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
An Israeli military (IDF) column appears to have advanced into the heart of Khan Younis on Thursday, amid reports of heavy fighting in the middle of the city. Israeli officials say their forces are approaching the home of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s Gaza political leader and one of Israel’s most wanted fugitives following the October 7 militant attacks. Sinwar is presumably not there, so this seems more a symbolic statement than a serious tactical operation. Sinwar is one of the IDF’s main targets—at least that’s what officials have said—and while there’s still no indication that Israeli leaders have a plan for how or when to end this campaign the capture or (more likely) killing of Sinwar and other senior Hamas figures would give them an opportunity to declare victory and transition to whatever is coming next (they don’t seem to have a plan for that either).
Al Jazeera has been reporting heavy IDF bombardments in Rafah. Israeli officials have advised people displaced by the fighting in Khan Younis to evacuate south to Rafah but the IDF has clearly not given them safe passage to do so. There are also reports of fighting in parts of northern Gaza, including the Jabalya refugee camp, even though most of the IDF’s resources are now directed at southern Gaza. Overall the official death toll has now risen past 17,000, though as I’ve been saying that figure is probably undercounting the true death toll by a substantial amount. The Biden administration continued its rhetorical performance of concern for civilian lives on Thursday, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointedly noting to reporters that “there does remain a gap between…the intent to protect civilians…and the actual results that we’re seeing on the ground.” Blinken reportedly delivered a similar message to Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer in a phone conversation.
The Israeli military operation has been underway for two full months now and the cumulative effect of incessant violence coupled with the destruction of infrastructure, the crowding of civilians into ever smaller “safe” (allegedly) zones, and the lack of sustained humanitarian assistance is starting to add up. In addition to hunger, the United Nations is seeing an increase in communicable diseases including respiratory illnesses and digestive conditions, a result of overcrowding and a scarcity of clean water. The Egyptian government says it’s trying to boost the amount of aid entering Gaza through the Rafah checkpoint but the fighting in Khan Younis has substantially complicated efforts to distribute that aid there or further north.
In other items:
There may actually be a sliver of good news on the aid front, because the UN and the Israeli government are reportedly in discussions on opening the Kerem Shalom checkpoint to aid trucks entering southern Gaza from Israel. Unlike Rafah, which is meant to accommodate pedestrians, Kerem Shalom was built to handle truck traffic and its use could significantly increase the capacity for aid to enter Gaza. Only 80 trucks passed through Rafah on Thursday, compared with the UN’s 100 truck per day minimum and the roughly 170 trucks that entered Gaza per day during the seven day ceasefire last month. This still won’t resolve the issue of aid distribution within Gaza. In the absence of adequate aid the threat of disease continues to loom very large over this conflict.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both say that the October 13 IDF bombardment that killed one journalist and wounded six others in southern Lebanon was likely an intentional act and should be investigated as a potential war crime. Israeli officials have insisted that the incident was accidental but both NGOs argue that it is implausible that the IDF didn’t know that it was firing on journalists rather than combatants. The Lebanese government says it’s adding this incident to a standing complaint it’s opened with the UN Security Council regarding civilians killed in IDF attacks.
The United Arab Emirates is preparing a new UN Security Council resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire, in response to Secretary-General António Guterres’s invocation of Article 99 of the UN Charter on Wednesday. The resolution will likely be debated on Friday and there’s every reason to believe the Biden administration will veto it with the usual empty rhetoric about how “this is unhelpful,” “a ceasefire will benefit Hamas” or (my personal favorite) “we want to give diplomacy time to work.” The administration will have to weigh its commitment to Israel against the diplomatic cost of vetoing another ceasefire resolution. Ideally the lives of Gaza’s residents would also factor into the administration’s decision-making, but there’s no reason to think it actually will.
Political scientist and “terrorism expert” Robert Pape is in Foreign Affairs this week arguing that the Israeli campaign in Gaza has already failed in its most obvious goal, the eradication of Hamas. He contends that the IDF’s operations have been so indiscriminate that they “are now producing more terrorists than they are killing.” One could quibble with his use of “terrorist” but the point stands regardless—this war is accomplishing the opposite of what Israeli leaders say they want to accomplish.
YEMEN
The Biden administration on Thursday blacklisted 13 individuals and entities allegedly involved in fundraising on behalf of the Houthi rebel movement in northern Yemen. Presumably the Houthis’ recent attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and its attempted attacks on southern Israel have put the group back on Washington’s naughty list.
LEBANON
Israeli officials say that an anti-tank missile fired from southern Lebanon killed a civilian in northern Israel on Thursday. This incident came after multiple back-and-forth strikes across the border throughout the day. At least nine people (three of them civilians) have now been killed in such exchanges on the Israeli side of the border since October, while more than 110 have been killed in Lebanon.
EGYPT
The Arab Center’s Imad Harb looks at how the Egyptian government is managing its role in the conflict in Gaza:
Egypt has considered the Gaza Strip to be a soft underbelly since it ruled it prior to 1967, but also after it regained control of the Sinai Peninsula from Israel in 1982, and especially since Hamas began to govern the enclave in 2007. Egypt has also seen developments inside Gaza or resulting from Israel’s relations with the Strip through the prism of Egypt-Israel relations that began in 1979. In fact, since 2007, it has been careful not to appear too accommodating to Hamas or too discordant with Israeli policy toward the organization or the territory. On many occasions, the Israeli hammer of blockading Gaza and attacking its people and installations has been complemented by an Egyptian anvil of repeated closures of the Rafah border crossing, destruction of tunnels used for smuggling materiel, construction of fortifications on the border, and actual flooding of border areas.
Today, Egypt is called upon to be an indispensable actor in what is happening now with Israel’s war on Gaza and in what may be in store for the enclave. Playing such a role, however, runs squarely into Cairo’s record of relations with Hamas since 2007 as well as its history of relations with the Zionist state. Straddling the dividing line will continue to be a tricky mission given two seemingly irreconcilable goals: preserving cordial ties with Israel while rejecting the latter’s apparent policy of playing a zero-sum game with the Palestinians. In the end, Egypt is likely to muddle through with the ongoing crisis in Gaza, but without acquiescing to Israeli demands to accept an influx of Palestinians or to US requests for an Egyptian security role in the post-war Strip.
ASIA
AZERBAIJAN
In something of a surprise, the Armenian and Azerbaijani governments announced on Thursday that they’ve reached agreement on a prisoner of war exchange that’s intended to serve as the opening step of a comprehensive peace deal. Under the deal, Azerbaijan will release 32 Armenian POWs and the Armenians will release two Azerbaijanis. Additionally, the Armenian government agreed to drop its objection to Azerbaijan as the host for next year’s COP29 climate summit. Obviously there’s a long way to go to get to that peace deal but this is the most positive development in the Armenia-Azerbaijan relationship in months, if not years.
Elsewhere, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Thursday scheduled a snap presidential election for February 7. I haven’t seen any polling yet but I’m going to get out in front of things and predict right now that he’ll manage to win reelection. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I feel that way, but it probably has something to do with Aliyev riding a wave of postwar popularity in a country where elections are managed showpieces anyway.
MYANMAR
Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing reportedly remarked earlier this week that rebel groups ought to stop “being foolish” and “solve their problems politically” via negotiations with the junta. This seemingly impotent rhetoric is probably as close as the junta will get to admitting that it has been seriously rocked by the sustained rebel offensive that began in Shan state in late October and has since spread widely around the country. According to the AP, the junta has begun paroling “soldiers and police who had been jailed for desertion and absence without leave” under an “amnesty plan” meant to entice their return to active duty. Rebels claim they’ve received the surrender of hundreds of security personnel, so the junta is most likely dealing with a serious manpower shortage.
CHINA
China officially became the only country in the world operating “fourth generation” nuclear reactors this week, with the opening of a commercial power plant in Shandong province. Nuclear power is apparently in vogue again, now that memories of the 2011 Fukushima disaster are fading and countries are scrambling for non-carbon emitting power sources. This new generation of reactor, which is gas cooled rather than water cooled and includes a “passive safety system” to try to avoid what happened in Fukishima, is believed to offer significant improvements in safety over previous reactor models. According to The Wall Street Journal, Beijing is hoping that its work in advanced nuclear technology, which also includes projects involving smaller “modular” reactors, a thorium reactor, and a “fast breeder” reactor, will allow it to become the world leader in the export of nuclear power.
AFRICA
NIGER
The Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice rejected the Nigerien junta’s challenge to ECOWAS’s economic sanctions on Thursday. The junta had petitioned to have those sanctions lifted on the grounds that they’re unduly punishing the Nigerien people, but the court declared that the junta is not Niger’s “legitimate” government and therefore had no standing to make the challenge.
CHAD
World Politics Review’s Nathaniel Powell wonders what the future may hold for Chadian junta boss Mahamat Déby:
Chad’s leader, Gen. Mahamat Idriss Deby, is currently overseeing a complex political transition that is supposed to culminate in elections planned for next year. To do so, he has successfully coopted most of the country’s many armed groups and part of the political opposition. Combined with French commitments to protect him from armed overthrow, this has brought a measure of security to his regime.
Nonetheless, Deby faces significant longer-term challenges to his rule. Armed opposition persists, largely in the form of rebel groups based in Libya and the Central African Republic. The regime faces potentially serious internal fault lines, both among members of Deby’s immediate family and within the ruling clique’s narrow political and ethnic base. The Sudanese civil war and especially its dynamics in neighboring Darfur threaten to exacerbate these tensions, even as eastern Chad is already suffering a major humanitarian crisis due to the influx of refugees from the Sudanese conflict, adding a further threat to stability.
If he can navigate these challenges, Deby is almost certain to win the planned October 2024 presidential election, thus “civilianizing” his rule and returning it to a formally constitutional regime that benefits from full regional and international legitimacy. In the meantime, the day-to-day mechanics of repression and governance will remain intact.
SOMALIA
A new report from the NGO World Weather Attribution finds, presumably to no great surprise, that recent heavy rains in East Africa can be partially attributed to climate change. Those rains, which have been a consistent problem for the past couple of months, have caused massive flooding in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, displacing more than two million people and killing over 300. The crisis has especially hit Ethiopia’s Somali region and Somalia itself.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
M23 rebels reportedly captured the town of Mushaki in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province on Thursday, following a battle with the Congolese army. The AP describes Mushaki as “a pivotal transport hub that paves the way to larger cities in east Congo’s Kivu region, so at the very least this may give the rebels more leverage to pressure the provincial capital, Goma. The Congolese government has been demanding that regional and international peacekeeping forces leave North Kivu of late, and while those forces haven’t been particularly effective against M23 there appears at least to be some correlation with their draw downs and this latest rebel advance.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Russian government has decided to hold its upcoming presidential election on March 17. Vladimir Putin still hasn’t said that he’s definitely running for reelection but he’s expected to make an announcement to that effect soon and, like Aliyev above, I feel very confident predicting that he’ll win.
UKRAINE
In news from Ukraine:
UN officials told the Security Council on Wednesday that the Russian military is once again making a point of targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure heading into winter. This follows the pattern the Russians established last year, wherein they targeted electrical and heating infrastructure. Much of the damage they dealt last year hasn’t been repaired, so the cumulative effect on Ukrainians this winter could be dire.
According to Reuters, the Ukrainian government has presented its Christmas wish list to
Santa Clausthe Biden administration, and it is chock full of big ticket items. Among the pricier items, Kyiv is seeking F/A-18 aircraft, advanced drones, THAAD air defense systems, and Apache helicopters, along with those F-16s it’s been promised and more Abrams tanks and long-range artillery. The pattern since Russia’s invasion began has been for the Biden administration to reject Ukraine’s initial asks only to slowly give in over time on pretty much everything Kyiv has wanted. But this time around the budget, and political will, to maintain this sort of support is dwindling, so it’s unclear whether the Ukrainians will ever see any of their new requests fulfilled.The Ukrainians are also reportedly asking for US help to build up their own defense industry, which is not a bad idea inasmuch as it will reduce Kyiv’s utter dependence on military support from fickle Western governments. This effort is apparently going to begin with the manufacture of the ubiquitous 155mm artillery shell, but the key issue here is that Ukraine won’t be producing those shells domestically in any sort of quantity for at least two years. Building Ukraine’s manufacturing capacity is very much a long term effort that will do nothing to keep Kyiv in the fight it’s currently having with its much larger and more industrially capable neighbor.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that it is seeing an “alarming” rise in the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in Ukrainian hospitals, and when I say “antibiotic-resistant” I mean resistant to the very last line drugs that doctors prescribe when other antibiotics have failed. The CDC says it’s found more than 60 percent of patients suffering from infections in Ukraine to be dealing with these resistant bacteria, compared with an average of around 6 percent under typical circumstances.
GREECE
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spent Thursday in Greece, where he and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis agreed for all intents and purposes to reset their bilateral relationship. The historical bad blood between these two countries runs very deep, but their contemporary interaction took a turn for the better earlier this year when Mitsotakis’s government sent considerable aid to Turkey in the wake of February’s major earthquake near Gaziantep.
On Thursday the two men agreed to undertake a number of steps to increase commerce and resolve the many security issues that have kept them at odds for several years, including—and this is probably a longer term goal—the demarcation of their respective maritime economic zones. The eastern Mediterranean is rapidly becoming a fossil fuel hotspot—literally, if we wind up burning its fossil fuels—and tensions over who owns its potential resources have been one of the biggest sticking points between Athens and Ankara.
AMERICAS
GUYANA
The Guyanese helicopter that ominously disappeared on Wednesday evening near the newly tense Venezuelan border did in fact crash, killing five of the seven people aboard. Guyanese authorities were still at last check trying to determine what caused the crash but so far—and I suppose if there’s a silver lining to a fatal helicopter crash this would be it—there’s no indication that it was shot down by the Venezuelan military. There were reports of bad weather in the area at the time of the crash so that’s most likely the cause.
Speaking of the border, the US government unsurprisingly threw its lot in with Guyana in the dispute over the provenance of the Essequibo region on Thursday. Responding to recent Venezuelan moves to assert ownership of the region, the Biden administration expressed support for Guyanese sovereignty. The US military’s Southern Command reinforced that support by announcing plans to conduct joint “flight operations” with the Guyanese military on Thursday. I have no knowledge as to how that went but I’m sure everybody had some good, clean fun.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw brings us the latest news from the failed Pentagon accounting file:
Under the Inspector General Act, agency oversight officials are required to send reports to Congress every year summarizing their activities and findings. The most recent Defense Department report covers the period from April through September and was published on November 30. It includes summaries of investigations, updates on compliance with oversight actions, and unresolved issues still plaguing the department.
It contains over a dozen advisories and evaluations regarding programs supporting the war in Ukraine, many of which remain classified.
Among those issues made public, the inspector general found that heavy artillery howitzer cannons and dozens of Hummers destined for Ukraine required significant repairs and had not been properly maintained. The report noted that the contractors paid by the government had failed to provide upkeep on critical military equipment that could have just as easily been used by the U.S. military.
The inspector general also found that Pentagon officials did not always explain the payments they made when terminating contractors’ projects, potentially overpaying contractors to the tune of $22 million.
Most egregiously, the Defense Department failed to report inventory for its $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet program — an issue that dates back to the program’s launch in 2006.