World roundup: February 24-25 2024
World roundup: February 24-25 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Brazil, and elsewhere
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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
February 24, 1525: In a battle outside the northern Italian city of Pavia, a besieging French army under King Francis I is so thoroughly defeated by a Habsburg relief force that Francis himself is taken prisoner. Francis’ capture led directly to the end of the 1521-1526 Italian War, which had begun over Charles V’s election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1520 and Pope Leo X’s decision to switch alliances from Francis to Charles, Leo having decided that the emperor would be a more useful partner in his spiritual battle against Martin Luther. Francis spent the rest of the war in captivity, first in Genoa and later in a series of Spanish cities, before he and Charles signed the Treaty of Madrid in 1526, ending the war on terms favorable to the Habsburgs.
February 24, 1739: The Battle of Karnal
February 25, 628: Sasanian Persian nobles overthrow Emperor Khosrow II in favor of his son, Kavadh II, who promptly had his brothers and his father executed. Khosrow was on the verge of losing the 602-628 war against the Byzantines, which had begun very promisingly for the Sasanians but fell apart beginning with Khosrow’s ill-advised 626 siege of Constantinople. One of Kavadh’s first actions as emperor was to make peace with Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, after which his brutality toward the rest of his family plunged the Sasanian Empire into a civil war from which it never fully recovered.
February 25, 1943: The World War II Battle of Kasserine Pass, in central Tunisia, ends in an Axis tactical victory but a strategic stalemate.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
We are apparently supposed to think there’s been some unspecified progress in ceasefire talks over the past couple of days, as there have been a number of media reports to that effect over the weekend and White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that negotiators in Paris had reached an “understanding” as to the outlines of a deal. Cutting through the talking points that means there still isn’t an actual deal, and the soft Ramadan deadline that the Israeli government has set for the start of its ground assault on Rafah (March 10 or thereabouts) is rapidly approaching.
As far as the “understanding” to which Sullivan referred is concerned, something called a “US framework” appears to have been leaked to the press on Saturday. It talks about a “first phase” during which around 40 hostages would be released and the Israeli military operation would cease for one day per hostage. This more or less locks in a roughly six week ceasefire with the possibility of extension, but the tit-for-tat setup also means the operation will definitely start again once all the hostages have been released. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that point in an interview with CBS on Sunday, making it clear that there will be a ground incursion into Rafah either imminently or after the ceasefire expires. If you told me he was intentionally looking to scuttle the negotiations with that interview I would believe it.
In other items:
The Israeli military (IDF) reportedly delivered its plan for evacuating civilians from Rafah to Netanyahu on Monday morning. There’s been no reporting yet on the substance of said plan or whether there even is any substance. For all I know they gave him a piece of paper with the letters “L,” “O,” and “L” printed on it, or whatever the Hebrew equivalent might be.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has reached what director Philippe Lazzarini is calling a “breaking point,” facing a $450 million budget shortfall after the Biden administration and several other Western governments suspended their contributions in response to Israeli accusations that even the US intelligence community now finds at least somewhat dubious. I’ve reached broken record status on this point, but it’s worth repeating that UNRWA is the primary relief agency in Gaza and provides the infrastructure for other agencies to operate in the territory. It might be possible to replace it with something else someday, but not right now when all of Gaza has been turned into an active war zone and its civilian population is suffering an acute humanitarian crisis. I’ve seen various US governments do various terrible things over the years but the Biden administration’s casual decision to freeze UNRWA funding under these circumstances is chilling and puts a lie to any of its claims of concern for Palestinian lives.
UNRWA has already suspended its meager relief operations in northern Gaza, not so much for lack of funding as because, according to the agency, it’s become impossible “to conduct proper humanitarian operations” there. Apparently this is because starving people trapped in that area have been waylaying UNRWA trucks before they reach distribution points. UNRWA hasn’t had Israeli permission to deliver aid to northern Gaza in at least a month so the amount of food getting to that area has been minuscule anyway, and the UN World Food Program suspended its own operations there a few days ago citing ongoing violence. It’s very likely that civilians in northern Gaza are starving to death but with no functioning government and no working hospitals there’s no way to be sure.
Journalist Oren Ziv at Local Call reported a few days ago on Israeli soldiers looting homes and stores in Gaza. This appears to be happening regularly, and is so normalized within the IDF that soldiers have posted countless social media videos showing off their plunder. Looting is a war crime, but the IDF as ever operates with complete impunity when it comes to international law. Senior IDF officers have in recent days been issuing “knock it off” style statements regarding this issue but I think that’s more because of how the looting looks than because of the looting itself.
SYRIA
Syrian state media is reporting that at least 14 civilian truffle hunters were killed in Raqqa province on Sunday by a landmine attributed to Islamic State. Truffle hunting is common in Syria’s desert areas and has become one of the few ways civilians can try to eke out a decent living in a country whose economy has been battered by war and sanctions for over 12 years now. Groups of truffle hunters have become easy targets for IS fighters, though in this case it’s unclear whether the landmine was intended for them or had been left by IS previously.
Also on Sunday, an Israeli missile strike killed at least two members of Hezbollah on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Lebanese border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Hezbollah confirmed the deaths and indicated that they were killed by the Israeli military without going into much more detail.
EGYPT
At Al Jazeera, Giorgio Cafiero warns that the already weak Egyptian economy is taking a beating because of regional crises:
Already facing a deep crisis, Egypt’s economy appears poised to take a hit from Israel’s war on Gaza and the spiralling tensions in the Red Sea, analysts have said.
Currently on “life support”, Egypt’s deteriorating economy suffers from growing public debt now at more than 90 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), capital flight and the currency’s fall against the US dollar.
Now, those challenges are being compounded by the war, as it edges closer and closer to Egypt’s border, with a large chunk of Gaza’s population pushed into Rafah, after four months of displacement as a result of Israel’s relentless attacks. Tourism and the Suez Canal are two of Egypt’s major sources of foreign exchange.
There’s already talk of boosting assistance to Egypt via the International Monetary Fund, and that’s without factoring in the possibility that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees might start coming across the border from Gaza at some point in the next several weeks.
YEMEN
The US and UK militaries undertook another major round of airstrikes against Houthi sites in northern Yemen on Saturday, hitting at least 18 targets according to the AP. According to the Houthis one of the strikes killed one person and wounded another six in Yemen’s Taiz province. This is the fourth such round of strikes since the two militaries began attacking the Houthis on January 12, though the US has carried out strikes fairly consistently in between. It comes after a flurry of Houthi attacks against ships in the Red Sea region in recent days, including a strike that has left the cargo vessel Rubymar listing, taking on water, and apparently spewing oil into the sea. The environmental damage from that spill may be considerable, and will be compounded if the Rubymar spills its fertilizer cargo into the sea along with the oil. The Houthis were apparently so chastened by Saturday’s strikes that they attacked an oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday, without damaging it.
ASIA
MYANMAR
According to the AP, a lot of military aged people in Myanmar are scrambling to leave the country before they wind up being conscripted into service:
The street in front of Thailand’s embassy in Yangon has been filled with visa applicants queued up to get numbered appointment tickets. Overwhelmed, the embassy announced it would accept only 400 visa appointments per day, and they must be made online. According to the Thai Foreign Ministry, some 7,000 Myanmar nationals have applied for visas, Thailand’s Bangkok Post newspaper reported Thursday.
Each day at the state passport office in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, 4,000-5000 people were lining up to get one of the 200-250 daily appointment tickets. Two women died and one was injured after they fell into a ditch in a pre-dawn rush to get a coveted early place in line.
A 32-year-old news translator from Yangon said he made a snap decision to leave the country after the conscription announcement, and flew to Thailand a few days later. Like almost all persons willing to discuss their plans, he spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of the legal consequences.
He said he was very concerned because serving in the military is like entering a labyrinth with no way back out, giving the example of his uncle, who joined the army for a five-year enlistment but was not allowed to leave for more than 40 years.
CAMBODIA
To no great surprise, the Cambodian People’s Party reportedly swept Sunday’s Cambodian Senate election, winning at least 50 and possibly all 58 seats. I say “to no great surprise” because the CPP did win all 58 seats in 2018 and hasn’t lost one of these votes since Cambodia began popularly electing its senate in 2006. Although the outcome was a foregone conclusion, this election is noteworthy because it marks former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s return to politics after he passed the PM’s office to his son, Hun Manet, last year. Hun Sen will most likely become president of the Senate in the new session, which will give him considerable political influence and allow him to serve as acting head of state when Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni is out of the country or otherwise indisposed.
OCEANIA
TUVALU
Tuvalu’s parliament unanimously elected former attorney-general Feleti Teo as the country’s new prime minister on Monday. He replaces Kausea Natano, who lost his race in last month’s election. That vote was closely watched for any indication that it might augur a shift in Tuvalu’s position with respect to Taiwan, Tuvalu being one of the 12 countries (including the Vatican) that still have formal diplomatic relations with Taipei, and/or in terms of Tuvalu’s security relationship with Australia. Teo’s positions on these issues are unknown, but the fact that he was elected without opposition at least suggests they aren’t controversial.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The United Nations is claiming that the Sudanese military is interfering with its ability to bring humanitarian aid into Sudan’s Darfur region from neighboring Chad. Darfur has been arguably the region hardest hit by the ongoing conflict between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces group, as RSF fighters and allied Arab militias have reportedly carried out multiple attacks against non-Arab populations. Nearly 700,000 refugees have crossed from Darfur into Chad but many more are still displaced inside Sudan. The Sudanese military is objecting to this allegation and insists it has to restrict border crossings to prevent military supplies from being smuggled into Sudan for the RSF.
BURKINA FASO
A bombing targeting a Catholic mass in the northern Burkinabé village of Essakane killed at least 15 people on Sunday. There’s been no claim of responsibility as far as I know but it’s reasonable to assume one of Burkina Faso’s active jihadist groups was behind it.
NIGER
The Economic Community of West African States spent this weekend easing the economic penalties it has imposed on the military governments of Guinea, Mali, and Niger in recent years. ECOWAS members agreed on Saturday to immediately lift most of the sanctions they imposed on Niger after last year’s coup, including land border and airspace restrictions, then agreed on Sunday to an easing of sanctions against the other two countries. Mali and Niger have, along with Burkina Faso, declared their withdrawal from the regional bloc and are exploring some sort of confederate relationship between their countries. ECOWAS officials—in particular the bloc’s current chair, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu—have asked the juntas running those three countries to reconsider their decision and are apparently looking to reduce tensions with all of the region’s military governments.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Al Jazeera’s Simon Speakman Cordall reports on the reorganization of the former Wagner Group:
Command of Wagner’s overseas presence has been assigned to Russia’s military intelligence (GRU), specifically General Andrei Averyanov. Through a series of intermediate PMCs like Convoy, established in Russian-occupied Crimea in 2022, and Redut, active in Ukraine, but established in 2008 to protect Russian commercial interests, maintaining legal deniability, Wagner’s Ukrainian operation is being retitled the Volunteer Corps, with other operations becoming the Expeditionary Corps.
That its ambition remained undimmed was evidenced by its initial instruction to build a fighting force across Africa of some 40,000 contractors – since reduced to 20,000 but far larger than its current footprint.
Some measure of General Averyanov’s intent can perhaps be gained from looking at past command of Unit 29155, the wing of Russian military intelligence reported to be responsible for overseeing foreign assassinations and destabilising European countries.
According to Cordall, the Expeditionary Corps has particularly focused on strengthening its position in Libya, both because of the country’s mineral wealth and because it is well-positioned as a logistical hub supporting other Wagner legacy operations across Africa.
UKRAINE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday updated his government’s military death toll for the first time since late 2022. Presumably to mark the start of the Russian invasion’s third year and to counter much higher Russian claims, Zelensky told reporters at the “Ukraine 2024” forum that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the conflict, “not 300,000, not 150,000, not whatever Putin and his deceitful circle have been lying about.” The Ukrainian government has been reluctant to share casualty information publicly for fear of depressing military recruitment, and it’s reasonable to question whether Zelensky is being completely forthright with this figure. The New York Times, citing anonymous “US officials,” reported that the Ukrainian military had lost “close to 70,000” personnel back in August. Admittedly the Times is not exactly a paragon of absolute truth either, but you’d think if it and those “US officials” were going to fabricate Ukrainian casualty figures they would want to underestimate them.
Zelensky also suggested that last year’s big counteroffensive failed because Ukraine’s plans were leaked to the Russians somehow. He didn’t offer any supporting evidence for this allegation but whatever gets him through the day, I guess. He and his defense minister, Rustem Umerov, also blamed delays in Western arms shipments for leaving Ukrainian military units vulnerable and hampering operations.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
Foreign Policy’s Oliver Stuenkel says that newly discovered evidence suggests that the Biden administration played an important role in preventing a Brazilian coup:
Two weeks ago, Brazil’s federal police launched a high-profile raid against former President Jair Bolsonaro and more than 10 of his allies, including Brazil’s former navy chief, national security advisor, and ministers of defense and justice. Authorities accused the group of plotting a potential coup after Bolsonaro’s failed 2022 reelection bid.
Court documents related to the raid suggest that Bolsonaro personally edited a decree that would have overturned election results and imprisoned a Supreme Court justice; a general loyal to the president confirmed he would provide the troops needed to carry out the coup. Bolsonaro also allegedly pressured his cabinet to more forcefully share disinformation about supposed weaknesses in Brazil’s electoral system. The former president was asked to hand over his passport to authorities and may face decades in jail.
The recent revelations suggest that Brazilian coup-mongers’ plans were more advanced than initially believed. In the end, however, they did not get their way—in part due to divisions within Brazil’s armed forces that were the target of concerted pro-democracy efforts by U.S. President Joe Biden.
The piece goes on from there to outline the interactions through which the Biden administration used multiple channels, including the US military, to cajole Brazilian officials into jumping off of the Bolsonaro train. In hindsight we can probably chalk this up to a stopped clock still being right twice a day, but even so it does seem the administration handled this particular situation fairly well.
UNITED STATES
Several media outlets reported on Friday that the US military had begun tracking a high altitude balloon over the western United States. For a few days certain unhinged segments of the US national security and pundit communities felt a thrill they hadn’t experienced since the Chinese Balloon of Death saga a bit over a year ago. Sadly for them, this balloon turns out to have been of the hobbyist, rather than spy, variety, and it’s now reportedly left US airspace anyway. Better luck next time.
Finally, Responsible Statecraft’s Julia Gledhill argues that the Biden administration is trying to move the US government to a “permanent war footing”:
The White House is steering the United States into a budgetary ditch it may not be able to get out of.
The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget. Its new National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out a plan to “catalyze generational change” of the defense industrial base and to “meet the strategic moment” — one rhetorically dominated by competition with China, but punctuated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Instead of reevaluating its maximalist national security strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down. It is proposing a generation of investment to expand an arms industry that, overall, fails to meet cost, schedule, and performance standards. And if its strategy is any indication, the administration has no vision for how to eventually reduce U.S. military industrial capacity.