World roundup: January 14 2021
Stories from Yemen, Ethiopia, Cuba, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
January 13, 532: The Nika Riots (think soccer riot on steroids) begin in Constantinople. Basically, two factions of chariot racing hooligans, the Greens and the Blues, both frustrated over taxation, corruption, and recent crackdowns on their hooliganism by the authorities, broke out in revolt during that day’s chariot races. Over the next week the mob seized control of the city, crowned its own “emperor” (against his wishes, it seems), and nearly put the real emperor, Justinian I, to flight. A few of Justinian’s military officers were able to slip out of the city and bring their soldiers back with them, while the emperor offered leaders in the Blue faction a hefty bribe to turn on the Greens. The Byzantine historian Procopius says that some 30,000 people were killed in the ensuing massacre, which ended with Justinian firmly back in control of the city, though that figure may be a bit too high.
January 13, 1951: A French army is able to win a decisive victory over a larger Việt Minh force in the Battle of Vĩnh Yên. The battle ended a several months-long string of victories by the Việt Minh and helped extend the First Indochina War all the way into 1954.
January 14, 1761: The Third Battle of Panipat
January 14, 2011: Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali resigns after over 23 years in power and almost a month of protests. Ben Ali’s resignation marked the successful conclusion of the Tunisian Revolution (this date is annually commemorated as “Revolution and Youth Day” in Tunisia) and the first major victory of the Arab Spring movement. It helped spark and motivate similar movements in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, though none of those worked out quite as successfully.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for January 14:
93,509,890 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (24,709,866 active, +749,265 since yesterday)
2,001,289 reported fatalities (+15,361 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
YEMEN
2110 confirmed coronavirus cases (+1)
612 reported fatalities (+0)
The Houthis say they won’t let their new terrorist designation undermine peace talks, such as they are, though it may not be entirely up to them. The designation could, depending on how it’s implemented, greatly complicate any interaction with the Houthis, such as one might need to have in order to, you know, negotiate with them.
It could also—probably will, in fact—interfere with humanitarian relief work in northern Yemen, as we’ve said here time and time again. The head of the United Nations’ humanitarian office, Mark Lowcock, warned in a speech on Thursday that the move is likely to raise food prices in that part of the country by upwards of 400 percent, creating a “famine on a scale that we have not seen for nearly 40 years.” Even if the US creates exemptions in the designation for humanitarian work, a dubious proposition at best, they won’t be adequate to prevent serious harm to civilians. The incoming Biden administration can reverse the designation, but whether or how quickly it will remains unclear and in the meantime some damage is going to be done.
LEBANON
237,132 confirmed cases (+5196)
1781 reported fatalities (+41)
Lebanese media has apparently linked the ammonium nitrate that exploded and destroyed Beirut’s seaport back in August to three Syrians with ties to the government of Bashar al-Assad. This raises the possibility that the material was intended for use in the Syrian military’s homemade weapons, such as its infamous “barrel bombs.” Ammonium nitrate is a crude but obviously effective fuel for such devices.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
529,814 confirmed cases (+9754) in Israel, 150,505 confirmed cases (+736) in Palestine
3870 reported fatalities (+53) in Israel, 1665 reported fatalities (+7) in Palestine
In a relatively hilarious turn of events, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is apparently appealing to Arab Israeli voters ahead of the March snap election. Politically this makes some sense, given that two of Netanyahu’s most serious challengers—Naftali Bennett and Gideon Sa’ar—are coming at him from the right. Netanyahu and his Likud Party got a scant 11,000 Arab votes in Israel’s last election, so in that sense his numbers with that community have nowhere to go but up. But on a cosmic level the idea that the man who tried to panic Jewish voters in 2015 with warnings that “Arab voters” were voting “in droves” is now trying to win over those same Arab voters with speeches about a “new era” for Arab Israelis is beyond parody. Unless it works, I guess.
ASIA
AZERBAIJAN
226,200 confirmed cases (+380)
2971 reported fatalities (+14)
The Azerbaijani government has returned 54 Armenian prisoners of war captured during last fall’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh, but it’s believed they’re holding scores more, perhaps as many as 200. Both sides are obliged to return POWs under the terms of their ceasefire agreement, but the Azerbaijanis are claiming that at least some of the Armenians they’re holding (they won’t say how many) were captured after the war ended and therefore aren’t, strictly speaking, POWs. Appeals from Yerevan have gone unanswered, something that’s definitely not winning embattled Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan any political good will. The Armenians, in case you’re wondering, are reportedly still holding three Azerbaijani POWs.
AFGHANISTAN
53,831 confirmed cases (+57)
2324 reported fatalities (+7)
The Afghan National Directorate for Security says its operatives killed a Ghor provincial councilor with alleged ties to the Taliban in a gunfight near the provincial capital, Faroz Koh. It’s unclear when this incident took place. One security officer was also killed in the clash.
PAKISTAN
511,921 confirmed cases (+3097)
10,818 reported fatalities (+46)
A battle between Pakistani soldiers and Islamist militants in the North Waziristan region on Thursday left at least six people dead, three on each side.
INDIA
10,528,508 confirmed cases (+15,677)
151,954 reported fatalities (+189)
Upwards of one million Hindus are gathering for the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage at Haridwar in what is either going to be a marvel of planning and organization or the mother of all super spreader events. Kumbh Mela does not take place annually, but when it does take place it is invariably the largest pilgrimage in the world, usually attracting tens of millions of pilgrims. The comparatively low attendance at Haridwar reflects restrictions that are already in place. Indian authorities say they’ve implemented additional measures to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, though of course there won’t be any way to know how effective they’ve been until after the fact.
INDONESIA
869,600 confirmed cases (+11,557)
25,246 reported fatalities (+295)
Indonesian authorities say they detected a Chinese research vessel in the Sunda Strait earlier this week with its tracking system turned off. The ship has since returned to international waters. The Sunda Strait runs between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, so needless to say it’s a little strange for a Chinese ship to be poking around there, particularly one that’s shut off its tracking system. Last month, Indonesian fishermen discovered an autonomous underwater vehicle near Sulawesi Island, and while there’s no evidence linking this ship or China to that AUV, the coincidence is, at least, curious.
CHINA
87,844 confirmed cases (+138) on the mainland, 9415 confirmed cases (+29) in Hong Kong
4635 reported fatalities (+1) on the mainland, 161 reported fatalities (+0) in Hong Kong
Speaking of China’s expansive maritime claims, the Trump administration on Thursday sanctioned an unknown number of Chinese officials and their families over issues related to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. It also blacklisted the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which means US citizens and businesses are barred from interacting with it and the company is reportedly being delisted by the S&P Dow Jones. On the plus side, all of these sanctions are clearly working, as the trade deficit that’s enraged Donald Trump so much reached a mere $317 billion in 2020. “Wait, that seems pretty big,” I can already hear you saying, and sure it’s up substantially from around $276 billion in 2017, Trump’s first year in office. But let’s not get hung up on numbers here. It feels like the deficit should be smaller, right? And isn’t that what really matters?
Chinese authorities reported the country’s first COVID-19 fatality in eight months on Thursday, so that seems noteworthy. The death was linked to an ongoing outbreak in Hebei province, and coincided with the arrival of a World Health Organization team that’s studying the coronavirus’s origins in Wuhan.
SOUTH KOREA
70,728 confirmed cases (+524)
1195 reported fatalities (+10)
One of the themes of this week’s North Korean Workers’ Party conference was new General Secretary Kim Jong-un’s desire to improve his military with lots of swanky new technology, including more advanced nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered submarines (and new missiles for those submarines, apparently). That’s spurred calls for South Korea to get into the nuclear game itself—not with nuclear weapons, but with its own nuclear-powered warships. There’s always a risk of an arms race breaking out on the Korean peninsula, with Japan possibly playing along as well, though it’s also possible that the North Koreans are laying out these big (and maybe not entirely feasible) plans as a negotiating ploy for dealing with the Biden administration.
AFRICA
ALGERIA
103,127 confirmed cases (+267)
2822 reported fatalities (+3)
At least five people were killed and three more wounded by a roadside bomb in Algeria’s Tebessa province on Thursday. Algeria has a small Islamic State president and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is technically still active though barely these days, but so far there’s been no indication as to culpability.
ETHIOPIA
129,922 confirmed cases (+467)
2008 reported fatalities (+2)
The humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region, already dire following November’s war, appears to be getting worse:
Over the past two months, most hospitals in Tigray have been looted or destroyed in fighting between troops loyal to the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and forces led by the regional Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) party.
Health services have collapsed and food and medicines are in short supply.
Around 2.3 million people, more than half of Tigray's population, are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations.
International organizations are sounding the alarm and are demanding unhindered access to the entire Tigray region.
The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, says he’s received reports “of grave and distressing human rights abuses, including killings, targeted abductions and forced return of refugees to Eritrea” in the region. Satellite imagery suggests major destruction in two camps housing those Eritrean refugees. None of this can be verified, of course, because the Ethiopian government won’t allow media or independent NGOs to into the region without strictly limiting their activities.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
20,479 confirmed cases (+476)
626 reported fatalities (+0)
At least 46 civilians are believed to have been killed in an attack this week on a village in the DRC’s Ituri province. The Islamic State-aligned Allied Democratic Forces militia was likely responsible. Congolese security forces are still recovering bodies so the death toll may well rise.
EUROPE
ITALY
2,336,279 confirmed cases (+17,246)
80,848 reported fatalities (+522)
Although he’s lost his Senate majority with the exit of Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva party from the ruling coalition, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte apparently has no plans to resign or dissolve his government. He may look to replace at least some of Italia Viva’s votes with friendly independents. Meanwhile, this latest in a very long list of Italian political upheavals, coming amid the pandemic, has unsurprisingly generated a fair amount of popular outrage. I don’t know if Renzi has any designs on someday retaking the PM spot, but if he does he might want to rethink those plans.
AMERICAS
CUBA
16,549 confirmed cases (+505)
160 reported fatalities (+2)
American University’s William LeoGrande highlights the “absurdity” of the Trump administration’s decision to return Cuba to the State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors:
President Obama removed Cuba from the list after a thorough review by the intelligence community concluded that Cuba was not, in fact, engaged in supporting terrorism. In 2020, as part of its program to impose new sanctions on Cuba every few months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the Trump administration listed Cuba as “not cooperating” with U.S. counter-terrorism efforts — despite the fact that Cuba signed a counter-terrorism cooperation agreement with the Obama administration in 2017, an agreement the Trump administration has ignored.
Pompeo designated Cuba as sponsoring terrorism on January 11, citing the same reasons he cited for designating Cuba as non-cooperative a year earlier: that Cuba was providing sanctuary to leaders of the Colombian National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN) and fugitives from U.S. justice. Pompeo threw in Cuba’s support for the government of Venezuela for good measure.
Pompeo’s rationale for Cuba’s designation is deeply disingenuous. The ELN leaders are in Havana because Cuba and Norway were facilitating negotiations between the ELN and the Colombian government, just as they had done to produce the 2016 peace accord between the government and Colombia’s other guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC). When Ivan Duque, who opposed the peace accord, was elected president, he broke off the talks in response to an ELN bombing in Bogota, and then demanded that Cuba extradite the ELN negotiators. Cuba, backed by Norway, refused on the grounds that the agreement to convene the talks, which the Colombian government signed, provided for the safe return to Colombia of the ELN negotiators if the talks broke down — an agreement that Duque refused to recognize. If this makes Cuba a sponsor of terrorism, Norway is equally guilty. But designating Norway as a state sponsor of terrorism would reveal the absurdity of Trump administration’s position.
UNITED STATES
23,848,410 confirmed cases (+230,457)
397,994 reported fatalities (+4069)
Along those same lines, Responsible Statecraft’s Paul Pillar accuses the administration, and specifically Pompeo, of politicizing counter-terrorism, citing recent moves against the Houthis and Cuba as well as Pompeo’s latest attempt to link Iran to al-Qaeda:
To achieve a trifecta of abuse of the terrorism issue, Pompeo has picked this same week to foment a misbelief that Iran and Al-Qaeda are, in Pompeo’s words, an “axis” and “partners in terrorism.” If this sounds a lot like an earlier supposed partnership between Al-Qaeda and another Middle Eastern state starting with the letter “I” — as well as an earlier “axis of evil” — it should. The Iranian regime, Shia and Persian, is no more of a partner with Al-Qaeda than was the secular regime of Saddam Hussein. Iran and al-Qaeda have been on opposite sides of almost every political, ideological, military, and sectarian divide, as manifested in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.
The presence of some Al-Qaeda types in Iran, mostly under a kind of house arrest, has been known for years and reflects a modus vivendi between enemies rather than anything approaching a partnership — see Michael Hirsh’s fine summary of the issue. Pompeo is presenting nothing new.
Pompeo’s presentation of such misleading material now, as well as his other manipulations supposedly in the name of counterterrorism, is part of the Trump administration’s salting of the earth before giving way to the Biden administration. And this manipulation will indeed present immediate difficulties for the new administration on such matters as putting policy toward Iran, Yemen, and Cuba on more productive tracks than the highly unproductive ones they are on now.
Now if you’re like me, you’d argue that things like the foreign terrorist organization list, which now includes the Houthis, and the state sponsors of terrorism list, which now includes (once again) Cuba, are and always have been inherently politicized. But Pillar, an ex-CIA analyst, would presumably disagree at least to some extent (he sort of acknowledges that past administrations have “abused” the FTO list, for example, in his piece). For him to make this criticism shows that here, as in many other aspects of US foreign policy, the Trump administration has been more extreme in its exploitation of the tools at its disposal. Which has been bad from a policy standpoint and probably isn’t good from a precedent-setting standpoint.