World roundup: December 9 2024
Stories from Syria, South Korea, Haiti, and elsewhere
TODAY IN HISTORY
December 9, 1824: The armies of Peru and Gran Colombia defeat a Spanish royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho. Considered one of the last major engagements of the Latin American wars of independence, the Peruvian-Colombian victory ensured Peru’s independence and cleared the way for the Peruvian commander, General Antonio José de Sucre, to enter Upper Peru (modern Bolivia) and campaign there.
December 9, 1987: The First Intifada begins after a traffic accident involving an Israeli military truck at Gaza’s Erez checkpoint kills four Palestinians. Protests over the incident spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem and became the largest popular uprising against the Israeli occupation since the 1967 Six Day War. It ended in October 1991 (in the most commonly cited interpretation) after the deaths of over 2200 people, more than 2000 of them Palestinian.
INTERNATIONAL
I assume it comes as no surprise, but once it’s over 2024 will be the hottest year ever recorded, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. It will also be the first year in which the planet will have breached the 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. That doesn’t mean humanity has irrevocably surpassed the threshold—global temperatures are expected to cool a bit next year after a few more months of near-record figures—but it does mean we’re well on the way.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Washington Post reports on the mood in post-Bashar al-Assad Damascus:
The three-starred revolutionary flags hoisted over the central squares of Damascus hold the promise of a free Syria.
But the rapturous celebrations in the streets Monday were tempered by trepidation over whether the country’s new caretakers could deliver on that dream.
The sudden fall of Bashar al-Assad in the early hours of Sunday morning has left the Syrian capital in a state of stunned disbelief. A day later, some residents were emerging for the first time to take in the changed face of the city.
They picked through the homes and palaces of the ousted president and his family, marveling at the wealth they had accumulated over more than half a century of dynastic rule, as Syrians sank ever deeper into poverty.
“We just want to feel the moment,” said Siham Bader, 55, dressed in a baby-blue coat, as she joined the crowds wandering through an ornate office that once belonged to Assad’s wife, Asma. “We have joy and hope.”
Like others, though, she voiced concerns about the armed groups that are now in control: “We don’t know anything about them.”
The hesitancy is no doubt borne partly out of the tremendous uncertainty about what sort of government is going to emerge from the wreckage of the Assad administration, “uncertainty” being the dominant theme around all matters Syria right now.
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