World roundup: January 23 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Russia, 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:
TODAY IN HISTORY
January 23, 1368: Chinese rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang is crowned Hongwu Emperor. Zhu, also known as the Emperor Taizu, emerged as the leading figure in the multi-factional Red Turban Rebellions against the Yuan Dynasty that began in the 1350s. His coronation marks the start of the Ming Dynasty, which ruled China until the mid-17th century.
January 23, 1963: Fighters from the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) attack Portuguese forces in the Tite region, kicking off the almost 12 year Guinea-Bissau War of Independence. Badly outgunned, PAIGC fighters were able to use the terrain to their advantage and armed themselves with weapons taken from defeated colonial soldiers. They won the war simply by outlasting the Portuguese, and when the National Salvation Junta came to power in Lisbon after the 1974 Carnation Revolution it began negotiations with PAIGC that ultimately led to Guinea-Bissau’s independence in September of that year. PAIGC also negotiated the independence of Cape Verde from Portugal the following year.
INTERNATIONAL
Readers will no doubt be pleased to learn that billionaires the world over had themselves a pretty decent 2024. A new report from Oxfam finds that those folks saw their collective wealth rise by a cool $2 trillion last year, which works out to around $5.7 billion per day and is three times the increase they saw in bad old 2023. For some reason Oxfam apparently presented this news as a negative thing, and its report includes a lot of frankly extraneous details about how, for example, 44 percent of the world’s population is living at or below the global poverty line (earning $6.85 per day or less) and 10 percent of women are living in extreme poverty ($2.15 per day or less). Frankly as long as the pie keeps getting higher at the top—and judging from the scenes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, it will—then I’m sure some of that wealth will trickle down onto the rest of us in due course.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
At The Conversation, Vrinda Narain and Fatemeh Sadeghi warn that the new Syrian government could be dangerous for women:
While [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] and its leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, claim to be moderate and focused on governance, the group’s treatment of women raises serious concerns about the future of women’s rights in Syria.
Starting in Idlib, but now spreading to other major cities, HTS enforces strict laws based on its interpretation of Islamic law, severely restricting women’s mobility, dress and public participation.
Women must be accompanied by a male guardian to access public areas, and the HTS morality police can fine, shame or detain those who violate the dress code. Women are confined to domestic roles, and those who challenge this are harshly punished, with activists and aid workers facing harassment, arrest and intimidation.
The situation for Syrian women after 13 years of civil war is deeply troubling, especially when compared to similar regional power transitions.
Last month Sharaa and company did appoint Maysaa Sabrine as the first female governor in the over 50 year history of the Syrian Central Bank and they’ve also appointed a couple of women to cabinet positions, so it may be going too far to compare them to the Afghan Taliban. That said, it’s an open question whether those appointments say anything meaningful about the government’s views on women or are meant as token gestures toward equality.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Count Foreign Policy’s H.A. Hellyer among those who are skeptical that the Gaza ceasefire (which he argues would be better termed a “truce”) will last beyond its initial phase:
For Hamas, the situation is rather simple; the organization needs a cease-fire, and it has declared its intention to abide by all three phases of the deal. The prospects for Hamas as an organization with a cease-fire are still quite precarious, but the options without a cease-fire are even worse. Hamas is completely cut off from the outside world, and reports suggest that the people of Gaza resent it, considering the tremendous crisis the Gaza Strip was plunged into as a direct response to Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
For Israel, the situation is quite different. There is no withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) specified for the agreement’s first phase; and even if every IDF soldier were to leave Gaza, Israel would continue to be the occupying power there, as the International Court of Justice has specified. But the question here is about the intention to stop fighting; and here, there are clear signs to the contrary.
Trump expressed a severe lack of confidence that the truce will hold just hours into his presidency, and key Trump officials, such as his national security advisor and defense secretary, have voiced support for Israeli objectives that, by definition, would negate the cease-fire altogether.
Elsewhere:
The truce/ceasefire is still holding, at least. The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least two people in southern Gaza on Thursday. Details beyond that are unknown and the IDF says it is “looking into” the incident. You may feel that such actions are inconsistent with a truce and you would be right. But the power imbalance here is such that the Israelis are allowed to kill a few Palestinians here and there and continue to insist that they haven’t broken the deal. That same consideration would of course not be extended to the Palestinians.
US mercenaries are reportedly heading to Gaza to operate and secure a checkpoint along Gaza’s Salah al-Din Road through which any civilians looking to return to northern Gaza will be required to pass. They’re working for a “consortium” of three companies contracted for the job and supported by the US as well as the governments of Egypt and Qatar. If the experiment in private security contracting goes well it could be expanded to include additional firms and responsibilities, though not if the carnage resumes in six weeks.
According to Drop Site News, leaked “internal documents” show that “Microsoft is a major provider of cloud services and artificial intelligence for the Israeli military” whose importance to the IDF “spiked dramatically in the months following October 7, 2023.” The company’s “advanced cloud and AI services” apparently have been instrumental in facilitating the slaughter of Palestinians, and while that might sound bad please consider that it made millions of dollars for Microsoft.
The IDF’s ongoing operation in the West Bank city of Jenin has reportedly displaced hundreds of people so far. Local officials are claiming that Israeli forces are ordering evacuations within the Jenin refugee camp, though the IDF claims it’s unaware of any such orders. The Israelis have killed at least 12 Palestinians in this operation so far and have reportedly surrounded the refugee camp and at least one of Jenin’s hospitals.
IRAN
The Financial Times reported on Thursday that Donald Trump is putting his Middle East envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, in charge of his administration’s Iran file. Witkoff is at present best known for reportedly pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing to the current Gaza truce. Expanding his portfolio to include Iran may be the strongest indicator yet that Trump wants to at least broach the idea of diplomatic engagement with Tehran. It’s hard to read the tea leaves here and Trump has made senior appointments that suggest a more confrontational approach (Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio as Secretary of State). But he’s also rather strikingly broken ties with some of the biggest Iran hawks who served in his first term and seems intrigued by the idea of calming, rather than escalating, Middle Eastern tensions in contrast with Joe Biden.
Trump famously wrecked the Iran nuclear deal by withdrawing from it in 2018. I’ve always suspected that if you could present him with that same deal but with his name on it rather than Barack Obama’s he’d take it in a heartbeat. That’s no longer possible given the steps Iran has taken to enhance its nuclear capabilities over the past several years, but the old deal could still serve as a roadmap to a new one if Trump is actually serious. The Iranian government certainly seems open to talking, at least.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the murder of a Chinese national in Afghanistan’s Takhar province earlier this week. IS says it attacked the vehicle in which he was traveling, though I’m not entirely clear as to whether they intentionally targeted him or he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another group calling itself the “National Mobilization Front” had already claimed responsibility and further said that the Chinese national “was training Taliban intelligence in monitoring social media platforms,” without offering any evidence. Afghan authorities have said that he was working for a Chinese mining firm. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that it was “deeply shocked” by the killing and called on the Afghan government to better protect Chinese interests.
Elsewhere, International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced on Thursday that he’s seeking arrest warrants for Afghan Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani. He’s accusing both of “criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds” over the Afghan government’s treatment of women.
PHILIPPINES
Gunmen allegedly affiliated with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front attacked a military unit assigned to guard a United Nations Development Program project site in the Philippines’ Basilan province on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding another 12. Two attackers were also killed in the incident. If these militants are/were affiliated with the MILF that’s a potentially troubling development, inasmuch as the rebel group reached a peace deal with the Philippine government in 2014 and has been mostly quiet since then.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Somebody apparently attacked a major Sudanese oil refinery north of Khartoum on Thursday, and the reason I say “somebody” is that the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces group are accusing one another of responsibility. The RSF claimed all the way back at the start of this war (in April 2023) to be in control of the facility so logically the military would seem to be the more likely culprit. Indeed its forces have reportedly advanced as far as the outskirts of the refinery. The military has also reportedly been advancing on the largely RSF-controlled city of Bahri, which—you guessed it—is located north of Khartoum. That seems to cover both motive and opportunity. Nevertheless, the military is insisting that the RSF set fire to the refinery in order to destroy the facility before the military could seize it.
GABON
Gabon’s military government has scheduled a presidential election for April 12 to mark a transition back to nominally democratic rule following the country’s August 2023 coup. The Gabonese parliament passed a new electoral law earlier this week, based on the constitution the country adopted in November, clearing the way for the vote to take place. Needless to say there’s a high likelihood that junta leader Brice Oligui Nguema will win the election (regardless of how anyone might actually vote) and thereby claim popular legitimacy for continuing his rule.
NIGERIA
Boko Haram militants reportedly attacked a village in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state on Wednesday, killing at least 20 fishermen according to local residents and officials.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
According to Reuters, economic anxiety may be pushing the Russian government toward settling the war in Ukraine:
President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia's wartime economy, just as Donald Trump pushes for an end to the Ukraine conflict, five sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters.
Russia's economy, driven by exports of oil, gas and minerals, grew robustly over the past two years despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But domestic activity has become strained in recent months by labour shortages and high interest rates introduced to tackle inflation, which has accelerated under record military spending.
That has contributed to the view within a section of the Russian elite that a negotiated settlement to the war is desirable, according to two of the sources familiar with thinking in the Kremlin.
Assuming this is true it’s possible that Donald Trump’s threats to intensify sanctions could contribute to this uneasiness.
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military is reportedly drafting a set of unspecified “reforms” to its recruitment process that are intended to make the idea of voluntary service more appealing to 18- to 25-year-old men. That population is currently exempt from compulsory military service, reflecting the Ukrainian government’s hopes not to see an entire generation destroyed in war, but the military continues to face a manpower shortage and Kyiv has been increasingly feeling pressure from the US government and elsewhere to lower the conscription age to 18. In theory if the Ukrainians can boost voluntary enlistment they can resolve the manpower shortage and address the pressure without expanding the draft.
IRELAND
The Irish parliament finally confirmed Fianna Fáil party leader Micheál Martin as taoiseach (prime minister) on Thursday. Martin’s accession has been a foregone conclusion since FF and its Fine Gael partner concluded a coalition agreement with a group of independent legislators. The confirmation vote had been scheduled for Wednesday but had to be delayed due to opposition objections to the coalition terms. Those were apparently resolved in time to hold the vote on Thursday. Under the terms of the coalition agreement, Martin is supposed to serve until 2027 and then turn the office over to outgoing PM and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris, who will be deputy PM in the meantime.

AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
A US federal judge in Seattle on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order blocking Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship, on the technicality that it is, in his words, “blatantly unconstitutional.” Trump’s order rejected citizenship for children born in the US to parents who are neither US citizens nor permanent residents, potentially opening them up to deportation to…well, I have no idea really, given that they infants in question would likely be stateless at that point. The Trump administration says it intends to appeal.
Speaking of stateless residents of the US, Inkstick’s Mathew Schumer notes that their already tenuous status is now much more tenuous:
Protocols pertaining to stateless individuals vary from country to country. In the US, statelessness is not recognized in American law in most capacities, and the legal system treats them as something like a conundrum.
“They’re the dolphins that got stuck in the tuna net,” said [lawyer Samantha] Sitterly in reference to a popular metaphor used by stateless people to make light of their situation.
In the past couple of years, ICE started keeping track of the stateless population of their detention centers, but with no clear-cut methodology described by the agency to determine which of its detainees are stateless, the numbers are difficult to verify. Sitterly says the number of calls she receives from other lawyers with detained stateless clients alone leads her to believe that the number is likely higher than ICE is letting on. ICE did not respond immediately to requests to comment.
In 2023, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) set policies to direct how its agents should handle stateless cases. These policies were designed to provide stateless people with an easier pathway to asylum and work visas. They only apply to individuals under USCIS jurisdiction, however, meaning they don’t apply to people with orders of supervision or removal.
Sitterly said her clients did not experience any improvements over the past year. With the ushering in of a new Trump administration, she doubts if she ever will.