World roundup: February 27 2025
Stories from Turkey, Myanmar, Austria, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
February 27, 1844: A group of leading Dominicans called La Trinitaria declares independence from Haiti. Thus began the 12 year Dominican War of Independence, after which the Dominican Republic was established as an independent nation. Commemorated today as Independence Day in the Dominican Republic.
February 27, 1933: The Reichstag building in Berlin is set on fire one month after Adolf Hitler had become chancellor. Hitler and the Nazis pinned the arson on a communist named Marinus van der Lübbe, either alone or in collaboration with other communists. As far as I know, most historians nowadays believe that van der Lübbe set the fire alone, and that the Nazis manufactured the collaborator scenario to justify an already planned crackdown on communists that allowed them to tighten their grip on power.
INTERNATIONAL
In a rare bit of not-horrifying climate news, a new study from the United Kingdom’s Met Office and the University of Exeter used computer modeling to determine that it is unlikely that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation system is going to fail this century due to climate change. A breakdown in the AMOC, which circulates warm water into the northern Atlantic Ocean and carries cold water south, is one of the nightmare scenarios of runaway climate change because it would have catastrophic impacts on global weather patterns. The system does appear to be weakening but a corresponding system in the Pacific Ocean is mitigating the effect of that weakening to some degree. That said, as the AMOC weakens it will still contribute to severe weather impacts, and the computer simulations don’t say anything about a potential full collapse sometime next century.
MIDDLE EAST
TURKEY
As expected, imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan issued a statement on Thursday publicly calling on his followers to disarm and hold a congress with the aim of dissolving their organization. As I mentioned yesterday this is both the culmination of months of behind the scenes negotiations and the beginning of a peace process that could see the end of the PKK’s 46 year-plus rebellion, but there’s a long road between here and there.
The fact that the talks to date have been conducted privately means that Öcalan’s announcement came as something of a surprise to Kurds in Turkey and was not accompanied by any revelations in terms of concessions that the Turkish government has agreed to make. There’s been talk of a ceasefire, of easing the terms of Öcalan’s confinement, of freeing other imprisoned Kurdish leaders, of amnesties and asylum offers, of steps to protect Kurdish rights legally, and more, but none of that was put on the table on Thursday and it’s going to take more than just a call from Öcalan to convince PKK fighters to stand down.
SYRIA
Öcalan’s statement said nothing about Syria. This is potentially significant, inasmuch as the Turkish government regards the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia (the nucleus of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces organization) as basically a rebranding of the PKK and had reportedly been insisting that Öcalan also call for the YPG’s disarmament. But apparently Turkish officials were convinced to drop that insistence during their negotiations with Öcalan and other Kurdish leaders. Öcalan did make some comments that could obliquely be applied to the Syrian Kurdish situation—for example, he dismissed the idea that “administrative autonomy,” which is what the SDF has been establishing in northeastern Syria, can truly benefit the Kurdish people—but SDF leader Mazloum Abdi later flatly insisted that the statement was “not related to us in Syria.”
I don’t think even Abdi himself believes that. The SDF is still trying to negotiate an accord with the new Syrian government. If the PKK dissolves it could leave the SDF in a much weaker position regionally, which could leave it with less leverage in talks with Damascus. At the same time, an end to the Turkey-PKK conflict may also ease Ankara’s concerns about the SDF’s control of northeastern Syria, which could in turn ease the external pressure on the SDF and strengthen its bargaining position with respect to Damascus. Either way, if the process that began with Öcalan’s statement on Thursday actually leads anywhere it will surely have ramifications for Syrian Kurds.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli government sent a negotiating team to Cairo on Thursday, after a Wednesday evening exchange in which Hamas privately released the bodies of four deceased hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinians who were being held in Israeli detention. While technically they should be discussing the terms of a second phase to the nearly expired ceasefire agreement, the reality is those talks should have started weeks ago and even if Israeli officials sincerely wanted to negotiate such a deal (which they don’t) it’s far too late for that. So instead they’ll be discussing an extension of the current first phase of the deal. It remains unclear whether that’s going to be acceptable to Hamas.
In the meantime, the Israeli government is finding additional ways to threaten the ceasefire agreement. On Thursday it announced that the Israeli military (IDF) will not be withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border as it is supposed to do beginning on Saturday. In fairness to the Israelis, I guess, the withdrawal from that corridor was supposed to be part of the second phase of the ceasefire, which isn’t happening, but given that the main reason it’s not happening is that Israeli officials have refused to even open negotiations on its terms I think it’s still fair to regard this as a violation.
ASIA
MYANMAR
The New York Times reports on the human trafficking/online scam operations that have been proliferating in Southeast Asia over the past several years:
Following a military coup in Myanmar in 2021 and an ensuing civil war, the country’s border with Thailand has exploded into one of the most lawless and lucrative places on earth. Chinese criminal syndicates have moved in, making deals with rival factions to turn rainforests into high-rise settlements dedicated to online fraud.
With the Thai government failing to intervene forcefully, Chinese gangsters and militia commanders from Myanmar have smuggled tens of thousands of people across the riverine frontier to labor in these hubs of criminality, according to the United Nations. Thailand has also supplied the electricity and internet for the fraud centers, and served as a conduit for construction materials, instruments of torture and even the odd Lamborghini.
The raids this month were the latest offensive against the scam centers and freed thousands of people who were scammed into becoming scammers themselves. Often lured by false promises of good-paying jobs in I.T., engineering or customer service, citizens of at least 40 nations have been forced by Chinese criminals to engage in crypto-fraud, online dating deception, TikTok shopping swindles, WhatsApp real estate dodges, Instagram deep fakes and Facebook trickery.
Confined to these compounds, the scammers, many of whom are Chinese, have been beaten, subjected to electric shock and tied up for hours in a pose that mimics crucifixion, people who were witnesses to or victims of the abuse said. Another form of torture involves crawling on gravel, until knees and hands bleed.
CHINA
The Trump administration blacklisted six Chinese firms on Thursday for their alleged involvement in a “network” that provides Iran with drone and missile components. They’re linked to an Iranian firm called Pishtazan Kavosh Gostar Boshra that has been under US sanction for about a year now. The Chinese embassy in Washington criticized the “illegal unilateral sanctions.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump indicated on Thursday that he is unhappy with efforts by the Canadian, Chinese, and Mexican governments to curb the flow of drugs into the United States. Consequently, in addition to imposing his previously-announced 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports when the one month grace period he gave those countries expires on March 4, he’s also planning to slap another 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports on top of the 10 percent he’s already imposed. It’s entirely possible that Canada and Mexico will get another reprieve, but given that Trump has yet to even speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping since taking office it seems likely that this additional duty on Chinese products will take effect.
AFRICA
NIGER
Two attacks being attributed to “armed bandits” left at least 16 people dead in southwestern Niger’s Dosso region in recent days. The first incident took place over the weekend, the second a couple of nights later. There’s no additional information as to the perpetrators beyond “bandits,” but southwestern Niger is a jihadist hotspot so there’s a strong possibility that the attackers were of that persuasion.
SOMALIA
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed met with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Thursday during his first visit to Mogadishu since the two leaders agreed back in December to try to iron out their grievances. Given how platitudinous their post-meeting joint statement seems to have been I don’t think they discussed much of substance, but the fact that Abiy made the trip is itself an important demonstration that bilateral relations are still on a positive track. Technical negotiations on implementing the general agreement they outlined in that December meeting are ongoing and will be more meaningful in the long run.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Several explosions in the occupied Congolese city of Bukavu killed at least 11 people and left 65 more wounded on Thursday. The blasts occurred during a rally being held by the occupying M23 militant group and unsurprisingly seem to have been deliberate. Corneille Nangaa, the leader of the rebel Congo River Alliance that includes M23, said that grenades were used and further identified them as the type used by the Burundian army—which does have forces in the eastern DRC that have been battling M23.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
As planned, US and Russian negotiating teams met in Istanbul on Thursday, primarily to discuss the normalization of their respective diplomatic missions. Six hours of discussion yielded no public comment from either delegation so there’s no way to tell whether they actually made any substantive progress, even though there was nothing particularly high stakes on the agenda. Presumably there will be more of these meetings to come and we may see a relaxation of the restrictions (on staff size, for example) under which those diplomatic missions have been operating.
AUSTRIA
It would appear that Austria finally has a governing coalition, a mere five months after September’s parliamentary election. The conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), and the centrist NEOS party announced on Thursday that they had reached a deal to form the country’s next government. If that grouping sounds at all familiar, it’s because those three parties initially attempted to form a coalition after the election. Those talks failed, at which point Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen turned to the winner of September’s contest, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). However, talks between the FPÖ and ÖVP surprisingly also broke down after several weeks, giving the original Gang another crack at it. This time, faced with the prospect of a snap election in which FPÖ would likely have improved upon its strong result in September, the parties got a deal done.
AMERICAS
MEXICO
The Mexican government extradited 29 alleged cartel figures to the United States on Thursday, including high ranking members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. The group also includes Rafael Caro Quintero, who is accused of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985. This is the largest mass extradition from Mexico to the US in several years. I am not privy to the Mexican government’s decision making process but this sure seems like it might have something to do with that tariff deadline looming on March 4 (see above) as this is just the type of demonstrative gesture that Donald Trump could claim as a big victory to justify delaying Mexican duties again.
HAITI
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued a statement earlier this week warning about a “wave of extreme brutality” by criminal insurgents in Haiti since late January that “has resulted in the loss of many lives.” It further reported the displacement of some 6000 people from several parts of Port-au-Prince amid this new surge of violence. The UN-supported, Kenyan-led “multinational security support mission” (MSS) that is supposed to be reining in gang violence remains woefully undermanned (around 1000 personnel compared with the 2500 envisioned when the project began) and badly underfunded.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s Normal Solomon considers the role that America’s war fever has played in the rise and return of Donald Trump:
Overseas, the realities of nonstop war have been unfathomably devastating. Estimates from the Costs of War Project put the number of direct deaths in major war zones from U.S.-led actions under the “war on terror” brand at more than 900,000. With indirect deaths included, the number jumps to “4.5 million and counting.” The researchers explain that “some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease.”
That colossal destruction of faraway human beings and the decimation of distant societies have gotten scant attention in mainstream U.S. media and politics. The far-reaching impacts of incessant war on American life in this century have also gotten short shrift. Midway through the Biden presidency, trying to sum up some of those domestic impacts, I wrote in my book War Made Invisible:
“Overall, the country is gripped by war’s dispersed and often private consequences — the aggravated tendencies toward violence, the physical wartime injuries, the post-traumatic stress, the profusion of men who learned to use guns and were trained to shoot to kill when scarcely out of adolescence, the role modeling from recruitment ads to popular movies to bellicose bombast from high-ranking leaders, and much more. The country is also in the grip of tragic absences: the health care not deemed fundable by those who approve federal budgets larded with military spending, the child care and elder care and family leave not provided by those same budgets, the public schools deprived of adequate funding, the college students and former students saddled with onerous debt, the uncountable other everyday deficits that have continued to lower the bar of the acceptable and the tolerated.”
While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.