World roundup: February 1-2 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Africa, Panama, and elsewhere
You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:
THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
February 1, 1713: Ottoman forces capture Swedish King Charles XII—who’d been taking refuge within the empire for nearly four years at this point—in what is known as the Skirmish at Bendery. Charles, who at the time was at war with a coalition led by Russia (the “Great Northern War”) was forced to return to Sweden, finally making his arrival in November 1714.
February 1, 1979: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran after several years in exile, just in time to seize power.

February 2, 1982: The Syrian army under Rifaat al-Assad, brother of Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, begins a month-long siege of the city of Hama intended to suppress a Muslim Brotherhood-led uprising there. By the time the siege ended on February 28, Rifaat’s forces had killed perhaps as many as 40,000 people in what is now known as the “Hama Massacre.”
February 2, 1943: The remnants of the German Sixth Army surrender to the Soviets, ending the Battle of Stalingrad a bit over five months after it started. The combined Axis army that attacked Stalingrad suffered upwards of 1 million casualties as well as the loss of thousands of vehicles, the initiative on World War II’s Eastern Front, and the sense of inevitability that previous Axis victories had created. The battle served as a turning point, after which it would be the Red Army, not the Axis, that was on the offensive.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, unspecified gunmen killed at least ten people in a predominantly Alawite village in Syria’s Hama province late Friday night. The “massacre,” as the SOHR characterized it, was carried out by “Sunni Muslims” and seems at least by outward appearance to have been “sectarian” in nature. On Saturday, the SOHR reported new clashes between Turkish-backed militants and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces group near the city of Manbij that left at least ten of the former dead. A car bombing in the same vicinity reportedly killed at least nine people including an unknown number of Turkish proxies. There’s no clarification as to who planted that bomb but the SDF seems a reasonable guess.
Newly minted interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa made his first official trip abroad on Sunday, to Saudi Arabia. The message is hard to miss, given the previous Syrian government’s closeness to Iran. Aside from making geopolitical statements, Sharaa needs Gulf money to rebuild Syria and Gulf influence to support his quest to gain relief from Western sanctions. Presumably those were the main items on his agenda. The first world leader Sharaa hosted in Damascus was Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Thursday, no doubt to discuss those same issues.
IRAQ
Some enterprising soul attacked the Khor Mor gas field in northern Iraq on Sunday via drone, to no apparent effect. A UAE-led consortium operates that field and said after the incident that there had been no effect on production. No group had claimed responsibility at time of writing nor was there any clear suspect apart from possibly Islamic State.
UPDATE: Musings on Iraq’s Joel Wing suggests this was an Iraqi militia operation, borne out of “frustration” over the setbacks suffered by their compatriots in the Iranian-aligned “resistance axis” over the past several months. Those setbacks have at least some elements within the militia framework feeling marginalized and Wing argues that this strike was a way of letting authorities in Baghdad and the US know that they’re still around.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Hamas and the Israeli government completed another detainee exchange on Saturday, freeing three October 7 hostages and 183 Palestinian detainees respectively. Also as planned, the Israeli government opened the Rafah border checkpoint for the first time since May to allow medical evacuations from Gaza into Egypt. A group of 50 patients accompanied by caregivers left through the checkpoint on Saturday, the first wave of 400 who are to be permitted egress over the next few weeks. I haven’t seen any indications of the unexpected complications or grievances that attended the first two regularly scheduled swaps in this process, which may bode well for the rest of the six week “first phase” truce that’s currently in place in Gaza.
What happens beyond that first phase is very much up in the air. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Saturday that negotiations on the “second phase” of the ceasefire agreement will begin on Monday, though they won’t involve Hamas just yet. Instead Netanyahu will open those talks in Washington, where he’ll be trying to convince Donald Trump to let him wreck the negotiations and resume massacring Palestinians. Trump and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, are likely to push back insofar as they view a resumption of the genocide as an impediment to their plans to “remake” the region via, primarily, a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. They will probably try to convince Netanyahu that they can guarantee whatever outcome he wants in Gaza—Hamas out of power being his most important demand—without a return to violence. How hard they’ll try remains to be seen. Haaretz’z Chaim Levinson reported on Sunday that Netanyahu and Trump will make some sort of statement on the normalization project after their meeting, but it may be only “a symbolic declaration” as opposed to “a statement with concrete details.”
It also remains to be seen whether Trump and Witkoff will promise Netanyahu the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Trump spoke by phone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Saturday and the issue did reportedly come up in conversation. But Sisi must not have warmed to the idea because neither the White House nor the Egyptian president’s office mentioned the issue at all in their summaries of the call. Also on Saturday, officials from the Arab League, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates met in Cairo and issued a joint statement rejecting the idea. But The New Arab reported on Sunday that the Trump administration is linking US involvement in Egypt’s dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to Sisi’s willingness to take in displaced Palestinians. Egypt and Ethiopia continue to feud over the operation of the GERD and its effect on Nile River water levels. The US might be willing to weigh in on Egypt’s behalf if Sisi is prepared to enable Trump’s crime against humanity.
In the West Bank, the Israeli military (IDF) killed at least five more people in airstrikes on Jenin on Saturday. It also killed a 73 year old man in the Jenin refugee camp overnight and at least two people in an airstrike on Sunday that Israeli officials say was meant to thwart an “imminent attack.” Israeli forces demolished 23 buildings in the camp on Sunday. The IDF has reportedly expanded its Jenin operation, which began almost as soon as the Gaza truce went into effect last month and which it now claims has killed over 50 “terrorists,” to the town of Tammun just north of Nablus. Eventually the entire northern West Bank is likely to get some version of the Gaza treatment.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a new report on Friday that, among other things, rejects the notion that the current Afghan government has any claim on the $3.5 billion in Afghan Central Bank funds that Washington looted back in 2021. Actually it looted $7 billion, but it later made about half of that available to pay out claims related to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The other half went into the ironically-named “Fund for the Afghan People”—ironic in the sense that it has never paid out a single cent to or for “the Afghan People.” The money has earned interest, though, and now stands at around $4 billion. The SIGAR report argues that the Afghan government, which wants that money, is not entitled to it because the US government not only doesn’t recognize it but has its “parent” organization, the Afghan Taliban, on its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list and under sanctions.
PAKISTAN
Separatist militants attacked a Frontier Corps paramilitary security unit in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province late Friday. Between the firefight that immediately ensued and a subsequent retaliatory operation by Pakistani forces on Saturday at least 18 paramilitaries and 24 militants were killed, according to Pakistani authorities. The Baluch Liberation Army claimed responsibility. Also on Saturday, unspecified gunmen attacked a Pakistani security vehicle in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing all four security personnel and their driver. The Pakistani Taliban is most active in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa although there are Islamic State elements in that province as well.
INDIA
Paramilitary security forces killed at least eight Naxalite rebels during an operation in India’s Chhattisgarh state on Saturday. The Indian government has cracked down on the Maoist militants of late and says that its forces have killed around 287 of them over the past year.
AFRICA
SUDAN
An artillery barrage apparently courtesy of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group killed at least 56 people and wounded another 158 in the Sudanese city of Omdurman on Saturday. The shelling reportedly came from the western parts of the city, which are under RSF control, and hit a crowded vegetable market. Also on Saturday two people were killed in an airstrike in an RSF-controlled part of neighboring Khartoum. Presumably this was a military strike although that’s not completely clear.
DJIBOUTI
The Djiboutian military said on Sunday that it had carried out a drone strike near the Ethiopian border that killed eight members of the rebel Armed Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy. I say “near” the Ethiopian border, but there are reports circulating in Ethiopian media suggesting that the strike actually took place over the border on Ethiopian soil. Djiboutian authorities have rejected those claims and there’s as yet been no comment from the Ethiopian government.
SOMALIA
The US military carried out airstrikes in Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region late Saturday that killed several “key figures” in the Somali Islamic State branch, according to both the regional government and Donald Trump. The Somali government confirmed the operation, which it said was “jointly coordinated” between Mogadishu and Washington.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The AP reports that M23’s latest offensive push in the eastern DRC has coincided with a change in the group’s public face:
After Rwanda-backed M23 rebels took control of the biggest city in eastern Congo this week, the man who emerged from the shadows to assert his leadership was not the group’s long-time military leader.
Sultani Makenga, an ethnic Tutsi rebel leader sanctioned by both the U.S. and the U.N., was nowhere to be seen in Goma’s Serena Hotel as the bearded Corneille Nangaa, in military fatigues, was ushered into the hall. Nangaa, who is not a Tutsi and who analysts say brings a more diverse, Congolese face to the group, told reporters of his plan to fight all the way to Kinshasa, the national capital a thousand miles away.
The spectacle was significant because it captures the evolution of M23 from an ethnic Tutsi-dominated outfit more than a decade ago to one that’s now actively seeking to be seen as a Congolese nationalist group. That’s the case despite the military support it gets from neighboring Rwanda, according to observers and analysts in Africa’s Great Lakes region.
Nangaa leads the Congo River Alliance, a political umbrella group that includes M23 alongside several other armed groups and political parties. He used to run the DRC’s electoral commission and seemingly was on good terms with President Félix Tshisekedi, but he formed a rival political party in 2023 and not long after fled the country out of what he claimed was concern for his personal safety. M23 joined his coalition last year in an attempt to broaden its appeal beyond Congolese Tutsis and make itself acceptable to opponents of Tshisekedi more generally—hence Nangaa’s assertion about going “all the way to Kinshasa.”
SOUTH AFRICA
Donald Trump declared via social media on Sunday that “South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY” and announced that he “will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!” Sounds very clear and well thought out to me. The Financial Times pulled out the secret decoder ring to determine that Trump is upset over a new expropriation law rolled out by the South African government last month that allows for land seizures in cases where negotiations with owners over a purchase price are going nowhere and there’s no “intent” to utilize the land or develop it.
Presumably by “certain classes of people” Trump is talking about white South Africans, whose assorted grievances he appeared to take very seriously during his first term—I leave it to the reader to ponder why that might be. The expropriation law could disproportionately impact whites, who still own most of the farmland in South Africa. In his second term Trump is being guided/directed by oligarch Elon Musk, who was of course born in South Africa (and is of course white), and South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel has added a new level of tension to the US-SA relationship. So in hindsight I suppose something like this was inevitable. Again I leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks with respect to motive.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
Two Russian airstrikes killed at least 18 people in total on Saturday. The larger of the two took place in the central Ukrainian city of Poltava and reportedly struck a residential building, leaving at least 14 people dead. The other strike hit a school-turned-shelter in Sudzha, a town in the Ukrainian-held part of Russia’s Kursk oblast, killing at least four people. There’s some dispute over the latter strike, which Russian officials attributed to the Ukrainians. It’s unclear why the Ukrainian military would bomb a town it already controls, though I guess anything is possible. Russian strikes also killed at least four other people across Ukraine.
NORWAY
Late in the day on Friday, the Norwegian government announced that it was releasing the Silver Dania, the cargo ship it impounded the previous day on suspicion of having damaged a data cable running under the Baltic Sea last weekend. The vessel’s Norwegian ownership insists that it had nothing to do with the cable incident. Norwegian authorities said they had “conducted a number of investigative steps” and satisfied the Latvian officials who requested the impoundment, so there was no reason to keep the ship in custody. Said investigation is ongoing.
AMERICAS
PANAMA
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama on Sunday as the first leg of his first overseas trip. He was mainly there to deliver a threat to Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, which according to the State Department was that the “status quo” with respect to the Panama Canal “is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the [1999 treaty that returned the canal to Panama].” Donald Trump has accused the Panamanian government of allowing China to “run” the waterway and has even threatened military force to seize it, without really explaining what his specific grievance is or how Mulino might address it.
Mulino did reportedly tell Rubio that his government will review its contracts with the Hong Kong-based firm CK Hutchison Holdings to operate ports on either end of the canal and later said that he would not be renewing Panama’s Belt and Road agreement with China (and would even “study the possibility of terminating it early”). But he seems to be firing blind here in hopes that anything will resonate with Trump and end his threats against the canal.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Donald Trump made his plans official on Saturday, announcing the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico (except for Canadian energy products, for which the tariff will be 10 percent) and 10 percent tariffs on imports from China. He cast these measures as a response to immigration and the “national emergency” posed by fentanyl—while lying about the severity of that “emergency,” which doesn’t really have anything to do with Canada anyway—and in addition to the new duties he also eliminated a small dollar “de minimis” exemption to tariffs that has in the past been linked with the fentanyl trade. The tariffs will kick in on Tuesday, though goods that had already been shipped up to 12:01 AM Eastern on Saturday will not be subject to them. The Canadian and Mexican governments have already announced their own retaliatory sanctions, while the Chinese government is holding back for the moment.
Trump finally admitted on Sunday that US consumers may feel some “pain” as a result of these tariffs, which is probably a major understatement but is at least an acknowledgement that the United States will not immediately recoup the capacity needed to replace products that will now cost more than they did previously. These tariffs will be lifted long before that happens, though Trump hasn’t offered any conditions for lifting them so we may be here for a while. Beyond the pocketbook impacts, however, the most interesting thing about this policy may be what it says about the second Trump administration’s worldview. The Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor explains:
Trump knows the United States has more leverage over its neighbors than they do over his country. But exploiting that position of strength could cause a historic rupture. “The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won’t make other countries eager to do deals,” noted the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board. “Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions. But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history.”
Barbara Matthews, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, argued that Trump’s moves this weekend ushered in a new era where “Washington no longer considers international trade to be either benign or always beneficial.” She added that it also “tells the world that the United States’ trade treaty commitments come with a caveat: trading partners must support U.S. policy priorities.”
Such a “might-makes-right” approach to geopolitics is precisely what successive U.S. administrations have criticized about the behavior of putative rivals in China and Russia. Now, Trump has offered the strongest indication yet that he is shirking decades of alliance-building and careful multilateral diplomacy for an embrace of great-power competition.
Now consider comments Rubio made in an interview a few days ago seeming to acknowledge the end of the “unipolar” world order. Rubio said that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power…that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia.”
That’s arguably a more realistic analysis of the geopolitical landscape than anything anyone in the Biden administration ever articulated. But if that’s really how the Trump administration sees the world then this embrace of naked national interest and transactional foreign policy is curious and maybe incoherent. If great power competition is back on the menu, how much sense does it make to openly antagonize close allies and major commercial partners through hostile trade policy? That question is above my pay grade, but something doesn’t seem to add up.