World roundup: July 25 2024
World roundup: July 25 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan, and elsewhere
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Today’s roundup is coming out early due to a prior commitment this evening. Thanks for reading!
TODAY IN HISTORY
July 25, 1139: An army under the future Afonso I, then Count Afonso of Portugal, defeats the Almoravids at the Battle of Ourique. Details of this battle are sketchy, but it was apparently such a glorious victory that in its aftermath Afonso declared Portugal’s independence from the Kingdom of León and thereby gave himself a promotion from count to king. Later legends had Afonso being visited on the eve of the battle by, variously, Saint James the Greater (whose tomb is held to lie in Santiago de Compostela), Saint George, or even Jesus Himself, guaranteeing victory.
July 25, 1799: In the finale to his big, failed eastern campaign, Napoleon once again defeats an Ottoman-Mamluk army at the Battle of Abukir. The French expedition had stalled out at Acre and political upheaval back in France was demanding his attention. Abukir offered him a chance to declare victory and then slip out of Egypt and head home, while the French occupation of Egypt continued through August 1801 when a British intervention brought it to an end.
INTERNATIONAL
There’s some positive climate news to report: Tuesday was not the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. It was the second-hottest, meaning it was warmer than Sunday’s previous record but cooler than Monday’s current record. Baby steps!
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
A new report from Airwars confirms that casualty figures provided by Gaza’s Health Ministry are considerably more accurate than its detractors might suggest:
In the largest and most in-depth public analysis of the MoH data yet, Airwars used open source monitoring to independently identify nearly 3,000 full names of civilian victims killed in the first 17 days of the war. Every name is listed below, linked to individual reports detailing where and how they died. Where possible the reports include personal stories of lives lost.
By comparing those victims' names with the first list produced by the MoH, this investigation found a high correlation between the official MoH data and what Palestinian civilians reported online - with 75% of publicly reported names also appearing on the MoH list.
The research only relates to the initial weeks of the war - and evidence suggests the MoH figures have become less accurate as Gaza's health infrastructure has been decimated by the war. Yet it adds to the growing consensus that the MoH figures are broadly reliable, while strengthening trust that Palestinians posting on social media are not exaggerating the civilian toll, said Mike Spagat, a professor specialised in casualty figures at Royal Holloway, University of London and chair of Every Casualty Counts.
“This painstaking research provides strong validation for both the first Ministry of Health list of the dead and the reliability of social media posts from Palestinians collected by Airwars covering the same period,” Spagat said. “Neither list is complete but the 75% matching rate demonstrates convincingly that both capture a large fraction of the underlying reality.”
Reuters, citing “a senior US official,” is reporting that Gaza ceasefire talks “appear to be in their closing stages.” Given how many times the Biden administration has painted a too-rosy picture of the negotiations there is no reason to believe this unless/until there’s an actual ceasefire in place. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Thursday meetings with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are expected to include some discussion of whatever gaps remain in the talks, with Biden’s decision not to seek reelection and Harris’s possibly more hostile view of Israeli activities in Gaza (a theory that’s being asserted in Democratic Party circles without any evidence to support it) looming over the discussions.
In the meantime the carnage in Gaza continues unabated. The Israeli military (IDF) says it recovered the bodies of five people killed during the October 7 attacks whose bodies were taken into Gaza by militants. And Al Jazeera reports that eight Palestinians who were released from the IDF’s Ofer Prison in the West Bank on Thursday are accusing their former captors of torturing them and of depriving captives of food and medicine to the point of death in several cases. Several show physical indications of torture.
SYRIA
The Washington Post has published a sweeping investigation of US sanctions policy (more on that below), along with a number of related pieces on sanctions’ side effects. One of those pieces explores sanctions’ role in creating Syria’s drug trade:
Yet, despite extraordinary efforts to stem the tide, billions of Captagon pills from dozens of manufacturing centers continue to pour across Syria’s borders and through its seaports. The trade’s ripple effects are expanding ever outward, to include rising levels of addiction in wealthy Persian Gulf countries and the appearance of drugmaking labs in neighboring Iraq and as far away as Germany, according to Iraqi and German officials.
Huge profits from the pills — which cost less than a dollar to make but fetch up to $20 each on the street — have attracted a host of dangerous accomplices, from organized crime networks to Iranian-backed militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern intelligence officials. In recent months, smugglers began moving weapons as well as drugs, the officials said. Jordanian raids on smuggling convoys have netted rockets, mines and explosives apparently intended for Islamist extremists in Jordan or possibly for Palestinian fighters in Gaza and the West Bank.
Most profoundly, the drugs have provided a lifeline for the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has seized on Captagon as a way to stay in power, current and former U.S. officials said. As the United States and other Western countries ramped up pressure with sanctions — to hold Syrian officials accountable for war crimes or to pressure Assad to negotiate an end to the conflict — Syria’s ruling class found salvation in a small white pill, one that conferred massive profits and partial insulation from the punishment U.S. policymakers were serving up.
“This is the stream of revenue on which they are relying in the face of sanctions pressure from us and from the European Union,” said Joel Rayburn, the U.S. special envoy to Syria from 2018 to 2021. “The Assad regime could not withstand robust sanctions enforcement, except for Captagon. There is no other source of revenue that could make up for what they lost due to sanctions enforcement.”
ASIA
AZERBAIJAN
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev apparently told reporters a few days ago that Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators have agreed on “up to 90 percent” of a “draft peace treaty.” That seems promising, but Eurasianet suggests that closing the last few gaps may prove impossible. In particular, Azerbaijan is demanding that the Armenian government rewrite the country’s constitution to remove a reference to the “unification” of Armenia proper with Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government has reportedly held internal discussions about amending the constitution but the politics around such a sensitive topic may prove impossible for him to navigate.
MYANMAR
Two Myanmar rebel groups, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, declared on Thursday that their fighters had seized two key towns—Lashio in Shan state and Mogok in Mandalay state. Those claims haven’t been confirmed and there are indications that MNDAA fighters and Myanmar security forces were still battling one another in Lashio, while video circulating online appeared to show the TNLA in control of Mogok. Losing either town would be a huge blow to Myanmar’s military government. Mogok controls much of the country’s substantial gem trade and its loss would mean the loss of a major revenue stream. Lashio is home to the Myanmar military’s Northeast Command headquarters and its loss could leave the whole of Shan state effectively in rebel hands.
PHILIPPINES
The tanker MT Terra Nova capsized off the coast of Manila on Thursday morning amid dangerous sea conditions created by Typhoon Gaemi. One of its 17 crew members was killed but the others have been rescued. The vessel is carrying 1.4 million liters of industrial fuel and Philippine authorities are now fighting time and the storm in an effort to contain the oil spill before it becomes catastrophic.
NORTH KOREA
The governments of South Korea, the UK, and the US issued a warning on Thursday about a “global cyber espionage campaign” being carried out by hackers working for North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau in an effort “to steal classified military secrets.” According to their joint advisory the campaign has targeted multiple arms manufacturers as well as military bases in the US, NASA, and the US Department of Justice, and has used ransomware attacks to finance its activities. It’s been successful, though the extent of its success is unclear.
AFRICA
SUDAN
A new report from Amnesty International accuses China, Russia, Turkey, and the UAE of supplying arms to Sudan that are fueling the conflict between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces group. Some of these shipments appear to violate an international arms embargo covering Sudan’s Darfur region. The UAE’s support for the RSF is fairly well documented at this point, despite Emirati denials, but there may be some revelations here concerning the shipment of Russian arms (used by both sides), Chinese weapons and drones (both sides), and Turkish materiel (primarily in support of the Sudanese military).
SOMALIA
The Intercept’s Nick Turse highlights a new report on the US military’s refusal to take accountability for its actions in Somalia:
A new report by the Center for Civilians in Conflict, or CIVIC, shared exclusively with The Intercept, underlines what Mohamed told me: Civilian victims and survivors of U.S. drone strikes in Somalia say that attaining justice in the form of official acknowledgment, apologies, and financial compensation would help them move on from the trauma they experienced.
But after almost 20 years of drone strikes, even in cases in which the Pentagon has admitted to killing innocent people, the U.S. has failed to apologize to any Somali survivors, much less offer amends.
“The civilians we interviewed described not only devastating physical harm, like deaths and injuries, but also significant economic burdens and long-lasting psychological trauma,” Madison Hunke, CIVIC’s U.S. program officer, told The Intercept. “Most respondents agreed that justice comes down to a perpetrator of harm being held accountable for their actions and the victims being treated with the dignity they deserve.”
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The Biden administration on Thursday blacklisted several individuals and entities with ties to the “Congo River Alliance” rebel coalition and particularly its largest member, the M23 militia. Among those designated were the alliance’s leader, Corneille Nangaa, and M23’s leader, Bertrand Bisimwa.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
European Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told reporters in Brazil on Thursday that the G7 is likely to reach a deal to use frozen Russian assets to secure a $50 billion loan for Ukraine by October. The Gang already agreed to this plan in theory earlier this year but members are still working out the details. Interest on those frozen Russian assets, most of which are in European institutions, will be used to make service payments on the loan. The lump sum loan is viewed as a less politically vulnerable way to use those assets to support Ukraine, as other options might be subject to the whims of political change among G7 and/or European Union member states. “Trump-proofing” is how this is being described.
CROATIA
The Croatian government on Thursday declared three Montenegrin officials—Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Bečić, parliamentary speaker Andrija Mandić and parliamentarian Milan Knežević—personae non gratae, barring them from entering Croatia. All were involved in the passage of a resolution in the Croatian parliament last week declaring that the killing of 100,000 people in Croatia’s Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II constituted “genocide.” The Croatian government lambasted that resolution as “unacceptable, inappropriate, and unnecessary,” and suggested that Montenegrin officials were exploiting the history at Jasenovac for “political goals.”
Earlier this year, Montenegro supported a United Nations resolution that established July 11 as the annual commemoration of the 1995 Bosnian Serb genocide of Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica. Pro-Serb politicians in Montenegro had demanded the Jasenovac resolution in response. That was the “political goal” to which the Croatian government referred. The vote seems to have stirred up some discomfort in Croatia, whose Nazi past often gets an…oh, let’s say “complicated” modern reception.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
The US is reportedly trying to nix an idea under consideration by the G20 (whose finance ministers are meeting in Brazil this week) to impose a global tax on super-wealthy individuals. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cited the supposed “difficulty” of coordinating a global tax system in justifying her opposition but insisted that doesn’t mean the Biden administration is opposed to raising taxes on billionaires in principle. Germany is also reportedly cool to the idea, which is primarily being pushed by the Brazilian government with support from countries including France, Spain, and South Africa.
UNITED STATES
Finally, as I mentioned above The Washington Post has published a deep look into the growth and the impacts of US economic sanctions:
Today, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations. They have become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare, and their overuse is recognized at the highest levels of government. But American presidents find the tool increasingly irresistible.
By cutting their targets off from the Western financial system, sanctions can crush national industries, erase personal fortunes and upset the balance of political power in troublesome regimes — all without putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.
But even as sanctions have proliferated, concern about their impact has grown.
In Washington, the swell of sanctions has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry. Foreign governments and multinational corporations spend exorbitant sums to influence the system, while white-shoe law firms and K Street lobbying shops have built booming sanctions practices — in part by luring government officials to cash in on their expertise.
Elsewhere, sanctions have pushed autocratic regimes into black market trade, empowering criminal networks and gangs of smugglers. U.S. adversaries are ramping up their efforts to work together to circumvent the financial penalties. And like military action, economic warfare can leave collateral damage: Sanctions on Venezuela, for instance, contributed to an economic contraction roughly three times as large as that caused by the Great Depression in the United States.
Compounding their harmful effects is the fact that sanctions rarely work. South Africa is the most prominent example that sanctions defenders cite for their efficacy, but a list of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world—Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela—shows a consistent pattern by which sanctions have failed to achieve their aims. In some cases, it’s not even clear what the aims are anymore—punishing people seems to have become the end rather than the means.