World roundup: February 29 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Chad, Haiti, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
February 29, 1992: For obvious reasons fewer things have happened on February 29 than on most days in history, so we’ll go with the start of the two-day Bosnia and Herzegovina independence referendum. With just over 63 percent turnout the vote was nearly unanimous, with over 99 percent supporting independence. March 1 is commemorated as Independence Day in Bosnia and Herzegovina today.
February 29, 2004: Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is removed from office in a coup d’état amid a developing offensive by the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation and Reconstruction of Haiti rebel group. By this point that operation was going so well for the rebels that they’d taken Haiti’s second-largest city, Cap-Haïtien, and were threatening Port-au-Prince. US personnel on February 29 presented Aristide with a resignation letter to sign and then airlifted him out of Haiti in what he later described as a “kidnapping.” The United Nations Security Council then voted to authorize an international intervention to deal with the instability. US officials have denied that they sought to remove Aristide from power and claim they got him out of the country to save him and forestall a potential “bloodbath” if the rebels moved on the capital. However, speculation lingers that Aristide’s 2003 call for reparations from the French government sealed his fate and that the rebel uprising was simply a convenient justification.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd of starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza City on Thursday, leaving at least 112 dead and more than 750 wounded according to Gazan authorities. According to the Israeli military (IDF), the crowd mobbed a convoy of food trucks—the implication being that they were somehow looting the trucks even though, again, the IDF has been starving them for nearly five months. It’s claiming the soldiers only fired warning shots to disperse the crowd and that the deaths were the result of a stampede and the panicked drivers running people over in the commotion. There are a couple of problems with this narrative, though, one being that any stampede was the direct result of the Israeli gunfire and the other being that a large number of the casualties were apparently shot. The AP has published video related to the incident but I have to warn you it is not easy to watch.
There’s been such a steady stream of atrocities out of Gaza that it’s hard to isolate on any particular one and especially hard to do that without losing sight of the grander atrocity within which they’re all taking place. But this one does stand out both for its magnitude and its timing, as we’re on the cusp of either a ceasefire or an IDF ground assault on Rafah and its hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians. The Biden administration, which has armed and enabled the IDF through every one of those atrocities, responded to this one by stressing the need for said ceasefire and meekly asking the Israeli government to investigate what happened on Thursday—if, you know, it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Joe Biden theorized that the incident could “complicate” ceasefire talks, while also acknowledging that it’s unlikely a deal could be in place by Monday—shockingly, it seems he was bullshitting everybody about that earlier this week.
In other stories:
At Axios, Barak Ravid’s sources are now telling him that the Biden administration is considering airlifting humanitarian supplies into Gaza. A handful of other countries have already conducted aid airdrops into Gaza and between Israeli obstruction and the breakdown of any remaining semblance of order within the territory there may not be any other option. Which doesn’t change the fact that this option is absolutely terrible. Airdrops are an incredibly inefficient way to sustain a relief operation and the fact that we’re at this point, with the Biden administration having used precisely none of the leverage it has with the Israeli government to demand a greater commitment to improving Gaza’s humanitarian situation is in itself a failure of the highest order.
According to Reuters, Palestinian economist/businessman Mohammad Mustafa is the favorite to become the Palestinian Authority’s next prime minister, replacing the outgoing Mohammad Shtayyeh. The highlight on Mustafa’s resume, under the circumstances, appears to be his past work on Gaza reconstruction. That experience presumably means he has at least a functional working relationship with senior Hamas officials, so he could serve as something of a unifying figure in that regard.
A Palestinian attacker killed two Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Eli on Thursday before being killed in turn by an IDF reservist.
SYRIA
Israeli airstrikes killed one Hezbollah fighter near the Lebanese border in Syria’s Homs province on Thursday. There were also reports of Israeli strikes hitting targets near Damascus but I have not seen any word as to additional casualties.
IRAQ
A Turkish drone strike killed two members of the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ) militia and wounded a third in northern Iraq’s Nineveh province on Thursday. The YBŞ has a close affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and is frequently targeted by the Turkish military.
ASIA
MALDIVES
The Indian government said on Thursday that it has begun the process of rotating its military forces out of the Maldives and replacing them with civilians. The Indian military previously had some 75 personnel in the Maldives to operate three aircraft (two helicopters and a plane) used mostly to transport medical patients and for search and rescue operations. Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu ran in last year’s election on a platform of getting those forces out of the country and has set a March 15 deadline for that process to be completed. That has since been extended to mid-May. Muizzu’s geopolitics favor China and he’s expressed an intention of reducing the Maldives’ dependence on India in a variety of ways.
MYANMAR
An explosion ripped through a market in the city of Sittwe, capital of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, on Thursday, killing at least seven people according to local media. According to the rebel Arakan Army group, the blast was the result of shelling by a Myanmar naval vessel and left at least 12 people dead and 31 “critically” wounded. Myanmar’s ruling junta blamed artillery fire by the AA. Neither account can be verified. Sittwe is still in government control, though the AA has been on the offensive elsewhere. It’s unclear why the Myanmar military would have fired on a city it holds, though I suppose anything is possible.
AFRICA
CHAD
This is something of a correction, but when I noted in yesterday’s roundup that Socialist Party Without Borders (PSF) leader Yaya Dillo would be running in May’s presidential election that was incorrect. As it happens, Chadian security forces apparently killed Dillo on Wednesday in an attack on the PSF’s headquarters in N’Djamena. Chadian authorities have accused Dillo and PSF of attacking Chad’s National State Security Agency (ANSE) the previous evening, a charge Dillo denied to reporters before he was killed. They’re claiming that he and other PSF members “retreated” to the party offices and then engaged in a battle with security forces.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The United Nations Congolese peacekeeping force (MONUSCO) handed over one of its facilities in the eastern DRC to Congolese forces on Wednesday, beginning their withdrawal from the country. Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi requested that the mission close down last year, citing its growing unpopularity and its manifest failure to inhibit any of the myriad armed conflicts roiling the eastern DRC. The UN has said it intends to fully close up shop by the end of this year.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in a speech on Thursday that if Western governments deploy military forces to Ukraine—something those governments all insist is not under consideration—they will be risking nuclear war. This is one of those things that probably didn’t need to be said, but point taken I suppose.
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military’s withdrawal from Avdiivka earlier this month does not appear to have involved a smooth redeployment to a stable new defensive line. Instead, Russian forces have been making steady incremental gains since taking Avdiivka and are now threatening a number of towns and villages that were supposed to be part of that new Ukrainian defensive line. They also appear to be threatening to undo the relatively minor gains the Ukrainians made in Zaporizhzhia oblast during last year’s counteroffensive. On the positive side of the ledger from Kyiv’s perspective, Ukrainian forces did apparently shoot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers on Thursday and have downed six Russian warplanes over the past two days. That doesn’t make up for the setbacks on the ground but it’s something, I guess.
According to The New York Times, the Biden administration may begin sending arms to Ukraine out of existing US stockpiles without having congressional approval to purchase replacements. This would be a significant change in the manner by which the US has been supporting Ukraine’s military brought on by the fact that the administration’s supplemental war funding bill is currently sitting on ice in the US House of Representatives. The administration still has around $4 billion in “presidential drawdown authority,” which allows it to send US military arms directly to Ukraine, but its budget for replenishing those supplies has been exhausted. Tapping into that $4 billion would open the administration up to the charge that it’s deliberately weakening the US military to try to strengthen Ukraine’s, but with Ukraine in an increasingly desperate place (see above) that may be a risk US officials are willing to take.
MOLDOVA
Parliamentarians in the separatist Moldovan region of Transnistria passed a resolution on Wednesday calling on the Russian government to “protect” them from Moldovan authorities. According to separatist leaders the Moldovan government is now conducting an “economic war” against the region by blocking imports. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it would consider the request and added that “protecting the interests of the residents of Transnistria, our compatriots, is one of our priorities.” I don’t want to make too much of this but Transnistria has long been a potential flashpoint and that potential has escalated amid the war in Ukraine.
AMERICAS
HAITI
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry headed to Kenya on Thursday to discuss the details of the anti-gang police intervention that the Kenyan government has promised to lead but that remains in legal limbo. The Kenyan High Court ruled last month that any deployment of Kenyan police to Haiti would be unconstitutional, partly because of the lack of a bilateral agreement between the two governments in place, so Henry and Kenyan President William Ruto are now attempting to fulfill that obligation. It’s unclear whether anything they negotiate will be enough to pass muster with the court, but as they say, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. Haitian gang kingpin Jimmy Chérizier celebrated Henry’s trip by unleashing a wave of violence across Port-au-Prince that he said was meant to “topple” the Haitian government.
UNITED STATES
Finally, I am urging you to read The Intercept’s new investigation into the provocative but increasingly questionable New York Times’ report on the prevalence of sexual violence amid the October 7 militant attacks in southern Israel:
The resulting report, published in late December, was headlined “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” It was a bombshell and galvanized the Israeli war effort at a time when even some of Israel’s allies were expressing concern over its large-scale killing of civilians in Gaza. Inside the newsroom, the article was met with praise from editorial leaders but skepticism from other Times journalists. The paper’s flagship podcast “The Daily” attempted to turn the article into an episode, but it didn’t manage to get through a fact check, as The Intercept previously reported. (In a statement received after publication, a Times spokesperson said, “No Daily episode was killed due to fact checking failures.”)
The fear among Times staffers who have been critical of the paper’s Gaza coverage is that Schwartz will become a scapegoat for what is a much deeper failure. She may harbor animosity toward Palestinians, lack the experience with investigative journalism, and feel conflicting pressures between being a supporter of Israel’s war effort and a Times reporter, but [freelancer Anat] Schwartz did not commission herself and [freelancer Adem] Sella to report one of the most consequential stories of the war. Senior leadership at the New York Times did.
Editorial leadership at the Times apparently pitched this story to Schwartz, not vice versa (according to her own account) and ran with it despite a conspicuous lack of hard evidence and even though Schwartz was apparently unable to justify the report in the face of what Times spokespeople call a “rigorous” review process. It’s no exaggeration to say that this one story, and the disturbing allegations it raised, helped sustain the Biden administration’s decision to sit on its hands while thousands of Palestinians were being slaughtered. To find out that those allegations rested on little more than innuendo and the paper’s systemic anti-Palestinian bias is very troubling.