World roundup: December 8 2020
Stories from Turkey, Ethiopia, Mexico, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
December 7, 1941: The Japanese military attacks 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 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.
December 8, 1953: US President Dwight Eisenhower delivers his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Eisenhower’s speech, and the program it announced, was meant to focus international attention on the peaceful uses of nuclear power, either as a way to ease fears about nuclear weapons or as cover for the massive US nuclear buildup that followed. Or, hey, why not both? The Atoms for Peace program helped build research reactors in Iran, Israel, and Pakistan. Two of those countries eventually weaponized their nuclear programs, though ironically it’s the one that didn’t that’s become Washington’s fixation.
December 8, 1980: Former member of the Beatles John Lennon is shot and killed outside of his home in New York City by Mark David Chapman.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for December 8:
67,965,514 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (19,407,222 active, +536,938 since yesterday)
1,550,372 reported fatalities (+8399 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
YEMEN
2436 confirmed coronavirus cases (+0)
660 reported fatalities (+0)
The Trump administration on Tuesday blacklisted Hasan Irlu, a Quds Force officer who is allegedly Iran’s “envoy” to the Houthis, along with Yousef Ali Muraj, a Pakistani national also alleged to have links to the Quds Force; and al-Mustafa International University, which is located in Qom and allegedly supports Quds Force overseas operations. Irlu’s designation appears to be the most significant and may be intended as a warning to the Houthis that they could be next. The administration has considered designating the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, which is a very bad idea but that’s never stopped Donald Trump before.
TURKEY
893,630 confirmed cases (+33,198)
15,314 reported fatalities (+211)
Al-Monitor’s Pinar Tremblay looks at some recent signs of improvement in the generally tenuous Saudi-Turkish relationship:
As the unofficial Saudi-led boycott of Turkish goods in multiple Arab states is hurting the Turkish sphere of influence, King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a phone conversation on Nov 20. A day later, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told Reuters that the kingdom’s relations with Turkey are “good and amicable.”
Indeed, Saudi Arabia sent humanitarian aid following the earthquake in Izmir in early November. When asked why this aid was not covered in Turkish media, a senior Turkish diplomat speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said, “The aid offered came six days after the earthquake, and right around the time Biden was elected [in the United States]. We did not think much of it.”
Another senior bureaucrat told Al-Monitor, “Erdogan called Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa Nov. 12 to offer his condolences for the late Bahraini prime minister, but the real reason was to send a message to Riyadh that we are ready to talk.” These friendly gestures and phone calls right before the G-20 meeting in Saudi Arabia was interpreted as a first step for thawing relations.
The election of Joe Biden may have the Saudis looking to settle their comparatively minor issues with Qatar and Turkey in order to prepare for an Iranian resurgence should Biden lift US sanctions. For the Turks, better relations with Saudi Arabia could mean more foreign investment, or at least an end to the boycott Tremblay mentioned. But as she writes, the issues dividing Turkey and the Saudis, like Ankara’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and their competition for leadership in the Islamic (or at least Sunni) world, aren’t going to be discarded easily.
IRAQ
568,138 confirmed cases (+2123)
12,477 reported fatalities (+17)
At least six people have now been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces across the Sulaymaniyah region in Iraqi Kurdistan. Yesterday we’d noted one person who was killed by security guards outside the Kurdistan Democratic Party office in the town of Chamchamal, and it appears two more people were killed overnight and three on Tuesday across demonstrations in multiple towns. People are angry that the cash-strapped Kurdistan Regional Government has been unable to pay salaries and carry out other basic functions.
EGYPT
119,281 confirmed cases (+434)
6813 reported fatalities (+23)
According to the Egyptian military, its soldiers have killed some 40 militants in the northern Sinai since September, in addition to arresting 24 and destroying 440 insurgent “hideouts.” Six Egyptian soldiers have been killed over that same period in clashes with those militants. These figures are impossible to independently verify, and it should also be noted that, among other human rights abuses, the Egyptian military has been accused of staging “firefights” against militants in order to cover up summary executions.
KUWAIT
144,900 confirmed cases (+301)
900 reported fatalities (+3)
Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah on Tuesday appointed Sheikh Sabah al-Khalid al-Sabah as his new prime minister, which is convenient because Sheikh Sabah was already PM. He “resigned” after Saturday’s parliamentary election in keeping with Kuwaiti electoral rules.
QATAR
140,203 confirmed cases (+117)
239 reported fatalities (+0)
Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted on Tuesday that the UAE “supports Saudi Arabia's benevolent efforts” to negotiate an end to the over three year long Qatari diplomatic crisis. That’s the first official comment the UAE has had on those negotiations and it’s not exactly a full endorsement. But it’s probably as close as Emirati officials will get, at least until they see what (if anything) the talks produce. The Qataris have suggested they won’t accept a settlement to the situation that doesn’t involve all four of the countries that joined the initial boycott back in 2017—Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The UAE is likely to be the most intransigent among that group.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
178,837 confirmed cases (+1260)
596 reported fatalities (+2)
Speaking of the UAE, the US Senate may have enough votes to pass a resolution that would block the US government from selling F-35s and other advanced US weapons systems to the Emiratis. That vote is scheduled for Wednesday, and there’s a similar resolution currently under consideration in the House of Representatives. The votes are somewhat irrelevant, as Donald Trump would certainly veto any effort to stop the sale, but they might send a message to Abu Dhabi about its standing in Washington once Trump is out of office.
IRAN
1,062,397 confirmed cases (+11,023)
50,917 reported fatalities (+323)
The US Treasury stressed in a statement on Tuesday that it maintains “broad exceptions” to its sanctions regime that would permit the sale and export of humanitarian items to Iran. This is not the first time it’s issued such a statement, and the reason is that a lot of people just aren’t buying it:
U.S. economic sanctions on Iran could impede its access to coronavirus vaccines, business and financial analysts say, imperiling efforts to contain the largest outbreak in the Middle East and risking continued spread of the virus throughout the region.
While a spokesman for the Covax global vaccine program said Iran has received a U.S. government exemption to procure vaccines, analysts warn that financial sanctions hamstring Iran’s efforts to participate in the program and to make related medical purchases.
“The Trump administration has deliberately failed to provide the kind of clarity and guidance that would be necessary to allow financial institutions that contain Iranian accounts” to allow Iran “use of its own money for making these purchases,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and publisher of Bourse & Bazaar, a media company supporting business diplomacy between Europe and Iran.
Iran’s initial payment to COVAX has been frozen, so regardless of what Treasury says the sanctions are impeding humanitarian sales. On some level, even if these exceptions really do protect such trade as the Trump administration claims, what matters isn’t the reality but the perception of reality. The “maximum pressure” campaign has undoubtedly scared financial institutions away from engaging with Iran on any level, and those that are still willing to engage have to cut through a massive amount of additional paperwork and bureaucracy because of US sanctions. For some firms it’s just not worth the trouble, and for the real diehards it still creates massive delays and greatly increases the potential for misinterpretations or errors to muck up the process.
ASIA
ARMENIA
142,928 confirmed cases (+584)
2372 reported fatalities (+28)
With Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ignoring an opposition-imposed noon deadline to either resign or face a new civil disobedience campaign, protesters blocked streets and subway trains in Yerevan on Tuesday. Demonstrations also took place in several other major Armenian cities. Pashinyan continues to resist calls for his resignation in the wake of Armenia’s defeat in the recent war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Opposition politicians, who lack the votes in parliament to remove Pashinyan from office, are threatening to escalate civil disobedience to pressure him to resign.
AFGHANISTAN
48,366 confirmed cases (+230)
1908 reported fatalities (+6)
According to the New York Times, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is creating a host of disputes over what will happen to the land it appropriated for its military outposts:
[Jamal] Khan [whose farm in Kunar province was seized by US forces several years ago] is one of countless Afghans whose land became a casualty of the U.S.-led war and the sprawling military infrastructure born from it. They have been forced to navigate a maze of Afghan and American bureaucracy and indifference, stoking a growing bitterness toward coalition forces and the Afghan government alike.
Despite the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan from more than 100,000 in 2011 to fewer than 5,000, some of the property they occupied has not been returned. Instead, the bases and the land have been transferred to Afghan security forces.
The Americans have left Watapur but Mr. Khan does not have his land back, and similar conflicts linger across wide swaths of the country. In at least half a dozen of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, The New York Times has found land disputes involving owners who said they had simply been shut out.
In a country where due process is nearly impossible in the face of corruption and state erosion, the U.S. presence has added to a long history of land disputes that have often served as an underlying cause of local conflicts.
INDIA
9,735,975 confirmed cases (+32,067)
141,398 reported fatalities (+404)
Indian farmers continued their protest against a recent agricultural deregulation law on Tuesday with another national strike involving several Indian trade unions. Protesters are continuing to blockade highways and rail lines around Delhi and the protests have spread to southern India—though they’re still strongest in northern India, where they began on a small scale back in August.
New Delhi reportedly believes that China is aiding rebels in northeastern India via proxies in neighboring Myanmar. According to Indian officials, Beijing is relying on the Arakan Army and the United Wa State Army, both of which are battling the Myanmar government, are acting as conduits for passing arms to insurgents in the Indian state of Nagaland, as well as for bringing insurgent leaders out of India for training in China. The Chinese government does have a history of supporting Indian rebel groups and has a well known relationship with the United Wa State group, though any relationship it has with the Arakan Army is not as well established. Chinese officials have of course denied these claims.
PHILIPPINES
442,785 confirmed cases (+1400)
8670 reported fatalities (+98)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday night that he has no intention of agreeing to a holiday season ceasefire with the rebel New People’s Army. Nor does he appear in any hurry to resume peace talks with the communist rebels. Indeed, he went so far as to say that “there will be no cease-fire ever again” as long as he’s president. Duterte claims that the Communist Party of the Philippines is aiming to force the creation of a coalition government, though the CPP hasn’t said that publicly. Duterte came into office in 2016 offering the CPP concessions and expressing an openness to peace talks, but a lack of progress since then appears to have changed his mind.
CHINA
86,646 confirmed cases (+12) on the mainland, 7076 confirmed cases (+100) in Hong Kong
4634 reported fatalities (+0) on the mainland, 112 reported fatalities (+0) in Hong Kong
The Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned US Chargé d’Affaires Robert Forden on Tuesday to complain about the Trump administration’s decision to blacklist 14 members of the National People’s Congress. Beijing has promised a “reciprocal” retaliation but hasn’t made it yet.
NORTH KOREA
No confirmed cases
The Trump administration on Tuesday blacklisted six companies and four cargo vessels for allegedly helping North Korea to export coal in violation of United Nations sanctions. Three of the firms are based in mainland China and another is based in Hong Kong.
AFRICA
NIGERIA
70,195 confirmed cases (+550)
1182 reported fatalities (+1)
Amnesty International on Tuesday accused the Nigerian military of culpability in the deaths of over 10,000 people in its custody since 2011. These people were all taken into custody in connection with the Boko Haram insurgency, many despite no evidence connecting them with the militants or their activities. Amnesty identified one prison camp in Maiduguri, Giwa Barracks, where 166 people are believed to have died in just one month in April 2017. Conditions at that camp were sub-human. Obviously Boko Haram and its Islamic State offshoot aren’t exactly human rights paragons. But the war against those groups is made much harder when the authorities that are supposed to be protecting people are instead brutalizing them.
ETHIOPIA
114,266 confirmed cases (+531)
1766 reported fatalities (+11)
The Ethiopian military on Tuesday admitted its soldiers opened fire on a UN team attempting to check on refugees in the country’s restive Tigray region over the weekend. Whoopsie! Authorities say the UN security personnel ran two checkpoints, and that led to the shooting. Fighting in Tigray is ongoing, and it continues to hamper efforts to bring badly needed humanitarian aid into the region. Despite an outward projection of calm, anecdotal evidence (the only kind that can escape the Ethiopian government’s media blackout) suggests the situation in Tigray—and particularly in its capital city, Mekelle—is quite dire.
Both the UN and the US government are now saying that they have evidence that the Eritrean military has entered northern Ethiopia and is assisting the Ethiopian military in its campaign against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. UN personnel have reportedly seen Eritrean soldiers in the region, while US officials say that communications intercepts and satellite images bolster those claims and suggest that potentially thousands of Eritrean personnel are now stationed in Tigray. The TPLF said weeks ago that Eritrean soldiers were involved but both the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have denied it.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
13,750 confirmed cases (+155)
344 reported fatalities (+0)
Congolese police had to deploy inside the halls of parliament in Kinshasa on Tuesday as violence broke out on the floor of the legislature for the second straight day. Supporters of President Félix Tshisekedi clashed with members of former President Joseph Kabila’s Common Front for Congo (FCC) coalition. Tshisekedi dissolved their tenuous political alliance late Sunday and is trying to cobble together his own governing coalition, but the FCC still holds a majority of seats in the National Assembly and seems intent on keeping it that way.
MOZAMBIQUE
16,373 confirmed cases (+47)
136 reported fatalities (+0)
Jihadist insurgents in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province may have seized control of the village of Mute in an attack that began late Monday. That puts them closer than ever (roughly 20 kilometers) to the hub of the major offshore energy project currently underway on Mozambique’s Afungi peninsula. Government forces backed by private military contractors are reportedly attempting to recapture the village.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
2,515,009 confirmed cases (+26,097)
44,159 reported fatalities (+562)
The Russian government on Tuesday officially announced that it’s signed a 25 year lease on a Red Sea naval base in Sudan. Russian and Sudanese officials signed a preliminary agreement on the base last month. The deal entitles the Russian Navy to station up to four vessels at a time a Port Sudan and can be renewed indefinitely in increments of ten years if neither side objects. This new base is part of a Russian base building spree in Africa, along with planned facilities in the Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Madagascar, and Mozambique.
HUNGARY
256,367 confirmed cases (+2219)
6120 reported fatalities (+136)
The European Union is holding a summit starting Thursday in Brussels, where the main topic is likely to be the fate of the bloc’s €1.82 trillion, seven year budget and COVID-19 relief fund. Hungary and Poland are continuing to veto that package over a clause that would allow the EU to withhold funds from countries deemed to be violating EU standards as to the “rule of law.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Poland on Tuesday and insisted that the two sides are “one centimeter away” from a compromise agreement that would end the vetoes. But the other 25 EU member states are reportedly working on a Plan B that would allow them to proceed, at least on the relief fund if not the whole shebang, without Hungarian and Polish participation. That would be a provocative step and could have ramifications for EU unity overall.
AMERICAS
PERU
976,621 confirmed cases (+1505)
36,401 reported fatalities (+77)
Interim Peruvian Interior Minister Fernando Aliaga resigned on Tuesday, just five days after the resignation of his predecessor, Ruben Vargas, who himself had only been in the office for two weeks. Seems like a pretty high rate of turnover! Aliaga disagreed with interim President Francisco Sagasti’s decision to fire several senior police officials in response to a violent crackdown on protesters last month that left two people dead. Undaunted, Sagasti named yet another interior minister, José Elice Navarro, shortly after Aliaga’s resignation.
VENEZUELA
105,384 confirmed cases (+480)
928 reported fatalities (+4)
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó is holding a week-long “plebiscite” asking Venezuelans to “vote” on their “political future.” Using a combination of “web and mobile apps” as well as in-person voting, in theory at least, Guaidó’s plebiscite will ask voters to decide whether to extend the mandate of Venezuela’s current National Assembly, the one Guaidó leads, until a new general election in which President Nicolás Maduro would, presumably, not be on the ballot. Over the weekend, Maduro’s government held a poorly attended vote for a new National Assembly, a vote that Guaidó and most of the rest of Venezuela’s opposition boycotted. The result was a legislature packed with Maduro allies and an election whose outcome has been deemed illegitimate by the US, European Union, and several regional countries. I’m sure all of them will conversely accept Guaidó’s…whatever this is as somehow legitimate, but that’s unlikely to make much difference.
MEXICO
1,182,249 confirmed cases (+6399)
110,074 reported fatalities (+357)
There are a couple of interesting articles on the globalization of Mexican drug cartels out today, if you’re interested. One, at the Guardian, describes the Sinaloa cartel’s growing control over the global fentanyl trade, importing precursor chemicals from China (and increasingly from less regulated sources, like India and Vietnam) to manufacture the drug and then ship it across the border into the US. The other, from the Wall Street Journal, reports that recent drug busts in the Netherlands show an expansion of the Mexican meth trade into the European market:
Mexican cartels, which dominate drug trafficking in North America, are drawn to the Netherlands because it is a global trade nexus with sea and rail links to Asia that has long been Europe’s top manufacturer of synthetic drugs.
Piggybacking legitimate commercial channels, Mexican cartels are combining sophistication with ruthlessness to expand their reach world-wide. Their multinational drive is enabled by the advent over recent decades of highly potent synthetic drugs that don’t rely on crops or farmers and can be manufactured in compact facilities almost anywhere. Production experts instant-message instructions to overseas workers and hop the globe like factory troubleshooters in any industry.
With the U.S. drug market saturated and methamphetamine labs in Mexico already supersize, cartels that murder for market share see Europe as a new hub. The cartels are “like global corporations,” said DEA Regional Director for Europe Daniel Dodds. “If they can expand and broaden their customer base, they will.”
UNITED STATES
15,591,709 confirmed cases (+208,121)
293,398 reported fatalities (+2913)
Finally, The Intercept’s Nick Turse and Alex Emmons take a dive into likely defense secretary nominee Lloyd Austin’s troubling ties to the defense industry:
“I am certain that General Austin will find other ways to serve his country in retirement,” [former President Barack] Obama said as the general exited the government in 2016. But since he left the military more than four years ago, Austin has formed extensive private sector ties that could surface during his confirmation hearing. In addition to Raytheon, he joined the board of directors of the steel production company Nucor Corporation, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, and Guest Services, Inc., a hospitality management company.
And both Austin and Antony Blinken — Biden’s nominee for secretary of state — have ties to Pine Island Capital Partners, a large investment firm that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for acquisitions in defense companies this year, according to the New York Times.
Led by John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch at the time of its collapse in 2008, Pine Island boasts of an “experienced investment team with a group of deeply-connected and accomplished former senior government and military officials,” according to its website. In documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm notes that its team not only has “extensive connections to industry leaders,” but “unusual access to information.” Just last month, Pine Island raised $218 million to finance investments in “businesses in the defense, government service and aerospace industries.”
Imagine how US media would cover the nomination of General Austin if it was an African country or Russia or Venezuela or or or or.