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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
January 25, 750: An outnumbered rebel army defeats the Umayyad caliphate in battle near the Great Zab River in modern Iraq. The victory proved to be the decisive engagement of the Abbasid Revolution that saw the Umayyads overthrown and the caliphate assumed by the new (and still mostly unknown at this point) Abbasid dynasty, who moved the imperial capital from Damascus to Kufa and then in 762 to the newly-built city of Baghdad.
January 25, 1971: A Ugandan military coup led by General Idi Amin overthrows the socialist regime of President Milton Obote. Amin would rule Uganda as a brutally authoritarian dictator until he was ousted during the Uganda-Tanzania War of 1979.
January 26, 1565: A coalition of Muslim kingdoms in southern India known as the Deccan Sultanates defeats the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire at the Battle of Talikota. Muslim forces captured and executed Vijayanagara regent Rama Raya and were then able to sack the city of Vijayanagara itself. The empire never really recovered and a couple of the Deccan sultanates conquered it fully in 1646.
January 26, 1699: The Treaty of Karlowitz ends the 1683-1699 Great Turkish War that pitted the Ottoman Empire against a coalition of Christian powers. What is mainly noteworthy about Karlowitz is that it was the first treaty the Ottomans concluded in clear defeat, forced to give up significant European territory to the Habsburgs, Venice, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
January 26, 1788: The British First Fleet arrives at the future Port Jackson and plants a flag on Sydney Cove, marking the establishment of Britain’s penal colony in Australia. Annually commemorated as Australia Day.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Reporter Jenan Moussa of the UAE-based Al-Aan TV outlet took to social media on Saturday to share what she called “worrying reports coming out of Syria of mass executions on Thursday in [the] Alawite village of Fahel, near Homs.” According to her reporting unspecified “gunmen” killed at least 58 men in Fahel, a predominantly Alawite community, and two more in the village of Maryamin, which is home to both Alawites and Murshidis, members of a small Alawite “offshoot.” A third village was also attacked but Moussa said she’d been unable to get any information beyond that.
It’s unclear whether the attackers were directly affiliated with the Syrian government, though notably that government does have an ongoing “security operation” taking place in western Homs province to supposedly root out anyone affiliated with the former regime of Bashar al-Assad. Moussa’s description of events in Maryamin suggests that the security sweep happened first and relatively without incident, but then another wave of gunmen swept into the village and carried out multiple atrocities. It’s possible the second wave consisted of irregulars who were either linked to the government (but not officially part of its security forces) or who took advantage of the security operation to carry out sectarian violence. Either way, if Syria’s new authorities are actually serious about governing for all Syrians, and not just jihadist Sunnis, this is the kind of thing they’ll need to stop.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed on Sunday that it had confirmed the “summary executions” of 35 people over 72 hours. Presumably this is related to what Moussa reported, but whether it concerns the same incidents is unclear. Syrian state media is reporting on an unspecified “criminal group” that’s taking advantage of a “security sweep” to carry out attacks against civilians in Homs. According to these reports the government began arresting members of this group on Friday.
LEBANON
As expected, the Israeli military (IDF) failed to meet its deadline on Sunday to withdraw from southern Lebanon. It decided to mark the occasion by killing at least 22 people, most (21) of whom had committed the capital crime of attempting to return to their homes. The Israelis also killed one Lebanese soldier, which seems a bit counterproductive insofar as their excuse for extending the occupation of southern Lebanon is that the Lebanese military hasn’t deployed into the area fast enough. Mind you that’s an excuse—The Washington Post reports that the IDF doesn’t ever seem to have seriously considered abiding by this withdrawal deadline:
Around the 40-day mark [of the ceasefire], a Washington Post review of satellite imagery, data sources and interviews with Lebanese and Western officials and diplomats found that Israel had advanced into dozens of areas of new territory, carried out near-daily strikes and damaged or destroyed more than 800 buildings in a strip of land near its border.
The pace of damage was greater in the first 40 days of the truce than in a year of cross-border fighting before all-out war erupted in September 2024.
The Trump administration on Sunday announced an extension of the deadline through at least February 18—I’m not sure anyone should be expecting the IDF to meet that objective either—and the Lebanese government confirmed the extension on Monday morning. It’s not like Beirut has much choice here so if/when the Israelis demand another extension one assumes they’ll continue to acquiesce. How much longer this can continue before Hezbollah resumes fighting is anybody’s guess.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The prospects for a continued truce in Gaza were also looking shaky for a while on Sunday, as the IDF was preventing “tens of thousands” of Palestinians from returning to northern Gaza while accusing Hamas of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreement. Allowing displaced Gazans to return to the north is itself an obligation under the ceasefire, but the Israeli argument is that Hamas broke the deal first by failing to release an October 7 hostage named Arbel Yehud. As a civilian, Yehud should have been released before any captive IDF soldiers, yet she was not included in Saturday’s detainee exchange—which involved the release of four female IDF personnel. It’s not clear why Yehud wasn’t part of Saturday’s exchange, but according to Al Jazeera Palestinian Islamic Jihad has now agreed to release her ahead of next weekend’s scheduled exchange. That could happen within a matter of hours or days, at which point the IDF will presumably lift its blockade.
UPDATE: Sure enough, after I’d already written the above (and past the point where I felt like rewriting it), the Israeli government announced that it had reached a deal with Hamas that will see Yehud and two other hostages released later this week (prior and in addition to Saturday’s scheduled release). In return it’s allowing Palestinians to return to northern Gaza as of Monday morning.
In other items:
Saturday’s exchange did go according to plan, apart from the Yehud omission, with Hamas and company releasing four October 7 hostages and the Israeli government freeing 200 Palestinian detainees. The third exchange is scheduled to take place next Saturday.
Israeli forces killed a two year old child in a village near the West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday night. According to Israeli officials soldiers surrounded and then opened fire on a house where “a terrorist was believed to be holed up.” It’s unclear whether they made any effort to see what they might be shooting at. The IDF is more or less besieging Jenin and its environs at present.
Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that he would like to see Arab countries, and particularly Egypt and Jordan, take the population of Gaza in as refugees, on an either “temporary or long term” basis. This provocatively pro-ethnic cleansing take—he quite literally expressed the view that it would be best to “just clean out that whole thing,” with “that whole thing” referring to Gaza—is not unexpected, although I have to say I did at least think Trump would wait until the ceasefire, for which he’s taken credit, had lapsed before he started openly advocating crimes against humanity. It’s unlikely that Arab governments are going to be willing to assume the political risks associated with this idea—even Israeli leaders have refused to touch it, though it’s surely what most/all of them would like to see happen. So at least for now it’s probably best to file this under “take Trump seriously but not literally,” but it would be naive to just dismiss his comments out of hand.
Those ethnic cleansing comments were accompanied by an acknowledgement that Trump had lifted the US government’s hold on 2000 pound bombs bound for Israel, reversing the one token gesture Joe Biden had made toward reducing the indiscriminate carnage in Gaza. Again this was to be expected and, like Trump’s decision to lift the Biden administration’s token sanctions on Israeli settlers, is more symbolic than anything else.
ASIA
MYANMAR
The battle lines in Myanmar have hardened to such an extent that rebel groups are reportedly establishing their own universities:
In the past 15 months, ethnic rebel forces have scored numerous victories in the countryside, and anti-junta forces now claim control of more than half the country’s territory, giving rise to optimism among supporters.
But the junta retains control of Myanmar’s major cities and the capital, Naypyidaw, as well as most of the country’s wealth and air power. A clear-cut victory remains elusive for the rebels, who lack significant international support, a steady flow of munitions and, most important, a unified command structure, said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst with the Janes group of military publications.
The 18 schools, which are all located in ethnic rebel territory, are recognized by the shadow National Unity Government, said its deputy minister of education, Sai Khaing Myo Tun. Students pay little or nothing to attend.
Educators are also trying to establish a school system for primary- and secondary-school students, many of whom live in camps for displaced people.
CHINA
The CIA has apparently now decided that it’s “more likely” that COVID was the result of a lab leak than a natural development. This is a “low confidence” assessment and may be more a reflection of the changing politics in Washington than any new evidence the agency has uncovered, so take that under advisement. There’s also nothing in the agency’s assessment as to intentionality. The Chinese government continues to deny claims that COVID was developed in a lab.
NORTH KOREA
The North Korean military tested what state media called “a strategic cruise missile” on Sunday. Details are minimal but the missiles can apparently be launched underwater, at least according to Reuters. It’s unclear if this represents Kim Jong-un’s response to the comments Donald Trump made on Thursday about reviving the diplomatic engagement they had during the latter’s first term in office, though if the timing wasn’t intentional then it’s quite a coincidence.
AFRICA
SUDAN
A drone strike targeting the Saudi Hospital in the besieged Sudanese city of Al-Fashir killed more than 70 people on Saturday. That hospital has been identified by both the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders as the only generally functioning medical facility left in Al-Fashir and so unsurprisingly it is “packed with patients receiving care” according to WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Local officials and the Sudanese military have pinned the strike on the Rapid Support Forces group, which is besieging the city.
NIGERIA
According to AFP, Islamic State West Africa Province fighters on Friday ambushed a military unit in the “Timbuktu triangle,” a remote region along the border between northeastern Nigeria’s Borno and Yobe states, killing at least 27 soldiers. Also on Friday, Reuters is reporting that ISWAP fighters attacked a military base in the town of Malam-Fatori, near the Nigerian-Nigerien border in Borno state, killing at least 20 soldiers. As far as I can tell these reports are describing two discreet incidents that took place in two different (and not particularly close) locations, though given that I haven’t seen any outlet reporting on both attacks it is possible that these are conflicting accounts of the same incident.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Late on Sunday Corneille Nangaa, political leader of the Congo River Alliance coalition that includes M23 as well as several other militant factions, told Reuters that rebel forces had seized control of the city of Goma, the capital of the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province, and were giving the remaining Congolese forces there until 3 AM local time to surrender. That deadline has passed and at time of writing there was no information as to what was happening either with the soldiers or the hundreds of thousands of people either resident in Goma or displaced there by violence in other parts of the province.
Earlier in the day, the Congolese government cut off all diplomatic ties with M23’s patron, Rwanda. Likewise the governments of France, the UK, and the US have all publicly demanded that the Rwandan military stop supporting the militants, whose attacks have killed at least 13 peacekeepers—three from the United Nations, the rest from the Southern African Development Community—in recent days. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has also called on the Rwandans to stand down.
Rwandan officials have acknowledged deploying military forces into the eastern DRC but insist they’ve done so purely in defense and are not aiding M23. That would probably be easier to believe if Rwandan drones weren’t participating in the militants’ operations. The Guardian reported on Saturday that the Rwandan military was “massing troops” along its side of the border, which put them very close to the center of Goma given the city’s location. It’s unclear whether they’ve participated directly in seizing the city. The UN Security Council met to discuss this situation on Sunday and there was speculation that the Rwandans had been aiming to take Goma before any sort of international response could be formulated.
EUROPE
BELARUS
It looks like Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is going to win a seventh term in office, as exit polling puts him at 87.6 percent in Sunday’s election. Please try to contain your surprise. Election officials are putting turnout at 81.5 percent, a figure that is just as simple and believable as Lukashenko’s margin of victory.
UKRAINE
There was some question as to whether or not Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid applied to Ukraine as well as everyone else, given that the only two exceptions the Trump administration mentioned on Friday were Israel and Egypt. However, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the US is not interrupting military aid. Humanitarian aid may be another question, though Zelensky didn’t seem particularly concerned about that when he addressed reporters on Saturday.
Any remaining concerns about Trump’s willingness to continue arming Ukraine may have dissipated on Friday, when the US State Department revealed that US arms sales to foreign governments hit a record $318.7 billion last year—$200.8 billion in direct sales from US defense firms and $117.9 billion in sales arranged by the US government. US arms sales to Israel accounted for part of that boom but the bulk of it can be attributed to the war in Ukraine. Not only has Washington been buying weapons for Ukraine directly, but US firms are the vendors of choice for many countries that have supplied their own arms to Kyiv and need replacements. Donald Trump is a known fan of arms deals so one assumes he’ll appreciate this news.
SWEDEN
The Swedish government says it is opening an investigation into the possible sabotage of a data cable running under the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Latvia. Said cable was reportedly damaged on Sunday, becoming the latest in a series of incidents involving undersea infrastructure in the Baltic. Although European governments have repeatedly suggested an intentional Russian “hybrid warfare” operation is the cause, The Washington Post reported earlier this month that European and US officials were coming to believe the damage has been accidental rather than deliberate. Sunday’s incident does not appear to have had any significant impact on connectivity.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
Donald Trump slapped a range of sanctions and tariffs on Colombia on Sunday after the Colombian government refused entry to two US military planes carrying deportees. Among the measures an apparently enraged Trump imposed were an immediate 25 percent tariff on Colombian imports that will rise to 50 percent in a week and travel bans on several Colombian officials. Colombian President Gustavo Petro retaliated with his own 25 percent tariff on US imports (he initially announced a 50 percent tariff but then reduced it) while also offering a potential compromise by suggesting that he would accept deportation flights if the deportees were put on civilian aircraft and treated in a “dignified” manner rather than as “criminals.” The Trump administration has deported hundreds of immigrants so far to several countries including Brazil, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Brazilian government has also complained about the treatment of deportees, who are apparently handcuffed during these flights.
Petro is playing with the weaker hand here by far and it will be interesting to see if he’s prepared to take the economic and political hit that will come from standing up to Trump on this issue. His social media statements on Sunday evening suggest he’s hoping to open Colombia up to trade (and migration?) from all over the world to make up for the commercial losses that these US penalties could cause. That’s a worthwhile long term project but Petro has a bit over one year left in office and that doesn’t exactly lend itself to undertaking “long term” projects under economic duress.
UNITED STATES
The US Senate confirmed former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth as Donald Trump’s defense secretary on Friday and former South Dakotan Governor Kristi Noem as his homeland security secretary on Saturday. As far as I can tell, Hegseth’s main qualification for the job is that he promised to stop getting blackout drunk while he’s got it (he’s sticking with his Christian nationalist cult though, just in case you were wondering) while Noem’s is that she shot a dog once. I’m sure they’ll be great.
Finally, Responsible Statecraft’s Marcus Stanley considers the absurdity of Trump’s calls for the US and other NATO members to spend 5 percent or more of their GDPs on their militaries:
Besides the implications for spending and deficits, a commitment to spend at least 5% of national economic production on the military would change the essential nature of military budgeting. Instead of setting the budget by assessing actual concrete needs for national defense — a process that already leads to a significant degree of waste and abuse— a spending floor would require spending to mechanically increase as the size of the economy grows, regardless of documented military needs.
The effect would be like a “military tax” on the U.S. economy, requiring a nickel of each additional dollar of production to go to the Pentagon.
The policy would also have significant effects globally, as it would tend to hard-wire an arms race dynamic into the world economy. With the U.S. and close allies increasing military spending each year as their economies grew, U.S. rivals would also feel pressure to spend more in order to keep up. Global military expenditures, already at the highest levels ever recorded, would likely spiral upward. This in turn would feed the U.S. justification for continuing to increase military spending.
While rivals that are significantly poorer than we are, such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea, would certainly feel stress to their economy in trying to keep up with our spending, a wealthier manufacturing power like China has a great deal of ability to boost military spending in response to a U.S. buildup. Estimates of Chinese military spending vary, but are generally at around 2% of GDP, leaving substantial room for growth.
Burning down the house with this one Derek 🕺