World roundup: January 30 2024
World roundup: January 30 2024
Stories from Iran, Sudan, Haiti, and elsewhere
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My apologies, but it has been a busy few days on the podcasting front and my throat has been quite raw today. I will need to forego our usual voiceover this evening.
TODAY IN HISTORY
January 30, 1959: After more than four years, the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, Said bin Taimur, defeats a rebellion by the elected Imam of Oman, Ghalib Alhinai, that is known as the Jebel Akhdar War. The war ended the split between the coastal sultanate and the Ibadi Imamate, which controlled the interior of Oman and had been nominally but not really practically subject to the sultan in Muscat. It also ensured that Said would control Oman’s oil reserves, most of which were in the Imamate’s territory. That in turn meant that Britain, as Said’s benevolent great power patron, would actually control the oil. So it really worked out well for everybody.
January 30, 1969: The Beatles give their last public concert, an unannounced affair on the rooftop of their Apple Corp (no, not that Apple) headquarters on Savile Row in London. The band played a 42 minute set before police shut them down. The Beatles broke up that September.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Hamas leaders are reportedly “studying” the latest proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza and an exchange of prisoners with the Israeli government. According to “a senior Hamas official” the basic outline has three stages—the release of remaining civilian hostages from Gaza, the release of captive Israeli soldiers, and finally the repatriation of the bodies of captives who have been killed since October 7. Said official didn’t go into further details but Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told reporters in Paris on Monday that the deal on the table calls for a 45 day ceasefire and the release of 35 hostages (that being the number of civilians still thought to be in Hamas custody) and upwards of 4000 Palestinians in Israeli custody. That really doesn’t sound like a tenable proposal from the Israeli perspective, and indeed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already said he won’t release “thousands” of Palestinian prisoners in a new deal.
Israeli operatives entered the Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday disguised as medical staff. Once inside they gunned down three men later characterized by Israeli officials as members of a “Hamas terrorist cell” who were “hiding” inside the medical facility. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad later confirmed that the men were in fact militants. One was allegedly plotting an “imminent” attack. There are a lot of unanswered questions about this operation, the answers to which bear heavily on the justification for sending an armed kill squad into a working hospital. The official Israeli story—that the targets were “hiding” in the hospital and that the Israel team went in to stop an “imminent” attack—checks a number of legal boxes. Still, even in this light sending a hit team into a hospital with what were apparently “shoot on sight” orders (they reportedly never attempted to effect an arrest) raises several red flags. And the picture changes quite a bit if those men were not so much “hiding” as wounded and being treated in the hospital—which one of them seems to have been—or if the alleged Hamas attack wasn’t quite as imminent as Israeli officials are claiming.
SYRIA
The UAE embassy in Damascus has an ambassador in residence for the first time since the Emirati government cut ties with Bashar al-Assad’s government in the early phases of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. UAE Ambassador Hassan Ahmad al-Shihi officially presented his credentials to Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad on Tuesday. The UAE has led the way in terms of Arab governments reconciling with Assad. It reopened the embassy back in 2018.
SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi oil giant Aramco has since 2021 been planning to someday increase its maximum production capacity from 12 million to 13 million barrels per day. It abruptly announced on Tuesday that it’s abandoning that goal on orders from the Saudi government. The reason for the change is unclear but it’s reasonable to speculate that the Saudi government doesn’t see global oil demand rising to a level that would justify the investment needed to boost capacity. The Saudis are currently producing just 9 million bpd and global oil prices are still around $82/barrel, which is well below where analysts believe the Saudis want it to be to finance both their annual budget and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s big development plans.
IRAN
Joe Biden told reporters on Tuesday that he’s decided how to retaliate for Sunday’s drone strike that killed three US soldiers in Jordan. Unsurprisingly he didn’t go into any detail. Given the circumstances, the main question is whether he’s going to order attacks against Iranian interests in the Middle East or against Iran itself. The Biden administration is telegraphing a potential multi-phase retaliation and it may try to dance right up to the line of attacking Iran without crossing over—attacking an Iranian naval vessel in international waters, for example. It’s unclear where the Iranian government may be setting its red line but this is obviously a very combustible situation that could continue to escalate into war.
The one thing I think we can say with some certainty is that the Iranian government does not want a regional war. Not only has it expressly denied any role in Sunday’s strike, it’s also presumably behind Tuesday’s announcement by Iraqi militia Kataʾib Hezbollah—Washington’s prime suspect in the Jordanian attack—that it’s temporarily “suspending” its attacks against US forces. There doesn’t seem to be much question that this is a last-ditch attempt to forestall or at least minimize the US response. It’s unlikely to prevent a retaliation altogether but it could convince the Biden administration to reduce the severity of that retaliation.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The Chinese government has reportedly accepted the credentials of a new Afghan ambassador appointed by the Taliban-led government in Kabul. It has thus become the first government in the world to recognize that government, at least in any practical sense. Chinese officials won’t say whether accepting the new ambassador equates to formal recognition, but Beijing sent its own ambassador to Kabul back in September and it’s hard to see how formal recognition would be any different than what they’ve done.
PAKISTAN
Baluch Liberation Army militants killed at least 15 people in Pakistan’s Baluchistan region in a series of overnight attacks. At least 12 BLA fighters were also killed in the melee, three of them in suicide bombings. Another bombing in Baluchistan on Tuesday killed at least two people near a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party campaign rally—this one was claimed by Islamic State.
Speaking of PTI, leader and former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison on Tuesday on charges of revealing state secrets. The charge stems from a political rally in 2022 in which Khan reportedly waved a classified document in front of the audience. It’s one of some 150 criminal cases Khan is facing in what he and his supporters insist is a coordinated attempt to ensure he’s never able to run for office again. Khan was already made ineligible for this year’s election due to his legal challenges.
VIETNAM
As expected, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s visit to Vietnam included the signing of new joint security agreements that will see the two countries cooperate in patrolling the South China Sea. Without saying so explicitly it seems pretty clear these agreements are directed at China, whose expansive SCS claims overlap with both Manila’s and Hanoi’s. At the very least it’s unlikely the Chinese government will regard this newfound cooperation very warmly.
CHINA
According to Reuters, the US Justice Department has spent the past few months attempting to disrupt a hacking network known as “Volt Typhoon” that is allegedly tied to the Chinese government. This group first came to light last year and there are apparently concerns that it’s laying the groundwork to disrupt US military communications in the Pacific region in the event of a war. It’s unclear from the reporting what efforts the DOJ has made to target the group.
NORTH KOREA
The North Korean military conducted another cruise missile test on Tuesday, its third in under a week. State media described the missile as long-range and “strategic,” which means it’s nuclear-capable. These tests are once again happening at such a frequency that I’m not sure there’s any sense making note of each specific event—particularly insofar as these cruise missile tests, unlike North Korea’s ballistic missile tests, don’t actually violate any international restrictions on the North Korean military.
AFRICA
SUDAN
International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan on Monday told the United Nations Security Council that there are “grounds to believe” that both the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces group have committed war crimes in the Darfur region since their conflict began last April. Khan told the council that the ICC is “collecting a very significant body of material, information and evidence that is relevant to those particular crimes.” The RSF has been credibly accused of massacring civilians in the West Darfur city of Geneina in possibly the most egregious example of the sorts of crimes to which Khan was referring. The Sudanese military insists that it Khan’s charges against it are unfounded.
WEST AFRICA
At Foreign Affairs, Joseph Sany and Kehinde A. Togun argue for a change in US policy toward coup-hit West Africa:
The eight coups d’état that have rocked Africa’s Sahel region since 2020 are a flashing, red-light warning: Washington’s efforts to stabilize the region have failed. For too long, the United States has acted on the assumption that jihadi terrorism is the source of the Sahel’s crises and therefore funneled military assistance to the governments fighting it. But Washington must jettison that misconception. The extremist violence and wave of coups that have plagued the region are twin symptoms of a deeper problem: corrupt, failed governance that radicalizes civilians and soldiers alike. Outside efforts to solve the Sahel crises must shift their focus away from security assistance aimed at reinforcing countries’ combat proficiency and toward building responsive governance that grants Africans, particularly youths, the promise of a brighter future.
The military assistance that the United States and Europe have given to Sahel governments that are unresponsive to their people’s basic needs has contributed to the region’s rise in violence, including coups. These aid programs have too often allowed corrupt regimes to enrich themselves and prioritize their own security at the expense of their societies. Assistance must instead aim to protect the population and counter deprivation and radicalization. Tackling corruption and repression would also pay economic dividends, as the rule of law is a precondition to broad, stabilizing prosperity. Moreover, to thwart coup attempts in the near term, Western partners must support an African-led plan—a so-called short game—that can assemble regional governments, African multilateral organizations, and civil society to immediately counter attempts to overthrow legitimately elected leaders. The prerequisite for these changes is a shift in mindset: the United States and its European allies should treat Africans as valuable partners in regional policymaking rather than as the targets of solutions shaped in Washington or Paris.
ETHIOPIA
The Ethiopian government’s ombudsman’s office has determined that at least 351 people in the Tigray region and another 44 in the Amhara region starved to death over the past six months. Their deaths indicate ongoing struggles in getting food aid into parts of Ethiopia that were ravaged during the Ethiopian government’s 2020-2022 war against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Indeed, aid agencies say that of the 3.2 million people targeted for food aid in Tigray this month, just 14 percent had received it by January 21. New security arrangements designed to mollify US and US relief agencies that their aid isn’t being skimmed off by profiteers seem to be at least part of the reason for these new delays.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Financial Times affirmed on Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is indeed moving to sack his top military commander, Valery Zaluzhny. According to its report, Zelensky met with Zaluzhny on Monday to inform him of the change and offered him a new role as a military adviser as a consolation prize. Zaluzhny apparently told him to cram it. Now that the story is out, however, it sounds like Zelensky might put his plans on ice for a while. His spokespeople are denying any plans to get rid of Zaluzhny even as the FT says it’s just a matter of time. This is a brewing storm that isn’t going to go away very easily. Zelensky is broadly popular in Ukraine but Zaluzhny is too, and he’s got the additional advantage of being extremely popular within the Ukrainian military. Zelensky apparently views Zaluzhny as a political rival but firing him in the middle of the war is as likely to intensify that rivalry as it is to marginalize Zaluzhny.
UNITED KINGDOM
The Democratic Unionist Party has agreed to rejoin Northern Ireland’s power-sharing arrangement, after apparently reaching a deal with the UK government to ease customs checks on goods traveling between NI and the rest of the country. The DUP quit the arrangement back in February 2022 out of frustration with post-Brexit trade rules that maintained an open border with Ireland but created a customs border in the Irish Sea. It’s unclear exactly what changes the UK government is making to that arrangement but apparently it’s managed to satisfy DUP without irritating the European Union—at least, not yet. Northern Irish parties have until February 8 to form a government, which will be led for the first time by Sinn Féin, or else they’ll need to call a snap election.
AMERICAS
HAITI
Kenyan President William Ruto told Reuters on Tuesday that he’s still planning to deploy 1000 Kenyan police to Haiti, in spite of the Kenyan High Court’s ruling last week blocking said deployment. Or rather, he seems to have a plan to address the court’s concerns. The ruling deemed the deployment unconstitutional due to the lack of a “reciprocal arrangement” between the Haitian and Kenyan governments. So it sounds like Ruto intends to conclude one of those before making the deployment. Assuming he’s able to meet the court’s muster, this seemingly puts the international anti-gang intervention back on track—as soon as next week, according to Ruto.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s Nick Turse continues his extensive coverage of the US military’s unwillingness to accept responsibility for the civilians it regularly kills:
In war, people die for absurd reasons or often no reason at all. They die due to accidents of birth, the misfortune of being born in the wrong place — Cambodia or Gaza, Afghanistan or Ukraine — at the wrong time. They die due to happenstance, choosing to shelter indoors when they should have taken cover outside or because they ventured out into a hell-storm of destruction when they should have stayed put. They die in the most gruesome ways — shot in the street, obliterated by artillery, eviscerated by air strikes. Their bodies are torn apart, burned, or vaporized by weapons designed to destroy people. Their deaths are chalked up to misfortune, mistake, or military necessity.
Since September 2001, the United States has been fighting its “war on terror” — what’s now referred to as this country’s “Forever Wars.” It’s been involved in Somalia almost that entire time. U.S. Special Operations forces were first dispatched there in 2002, followed over the years by more “security assistance,” troops, contractors, helicopters, and drones. American airstrikes in Somalia, which began under President George W. Bush in 2007, have continued under Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden as part of a conflict that has smoldered and flared for more than two decades. In that time, the U.S. has launched 282 attacks, including 31 declared strikes under Biden. The U.S. admits it has killed five civilians in its attacks. The UK-based air strike monitoring group Airwars says the number is as much as 3,100% higher.