World roundup: June 10-11 2024
World roundup: June 10-11 2024
Stories from Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
June 10, 1190: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I drowns in southern Anatolia on his way to join what we now call the Third Crusade. His death contributed heavily to the breakup of the Crusader army and therefore to Richard the Lionheart’s decision to abandon plans to besiege Jerusalem.
June 10, 1898: US Marines and Cuban forces capture Guantánamo Bay from Spain after a five day battle. The US quickly established a naval base there that proved critical in winning the decisive naval battle and siege of Santiago in July, which essentially ended the Spanish-American war in Cuba. The conflict continued on other fronts until August and Guantánamo remains a US possession to the present day.
June 11, 786: The Battle of Fakhkh, near Mecca, results in the decisive defeat of a small early Shiʿa uprising. What makes this battle notable is that one of the rebel leaders, Idris b. Abdullah, survived and fled to northwestern Africa, where he established the Idrisid dynasty and is credited with founding the nation of Morocco.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in the Middle East amid what seems like it might be new momentum toward a ceasefire in Gaza. Blinken’s previous seven trips to the region since October 7 have mostly been busts, but maybe the eighth time is the charm. On Monday, the United Nations Security Council voted 14-0 (Russia abstained) to back the ceasefire proposal that Blinken’s boss, Joe Biden, put forward a couple of weeks ago and to demand that Hamas agree to its terms. On Tuesday, Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said that the group “accepted” the resolution. That is notably not the same as accepting the ceasefire but he did say Hamas was ready to negotiate over specifics and it’s now being reported that the group has given a formal response to the proposal to the Egyptian and Qatari governments that includes “amendments” related to the “permanent ceasefire” it’s seeking. Although the UN resolution asserted that the Israeli government has already agreed to Biden’s proposal, its reaction to the resolution’s passage has been lukewarm at best.
The UN resolution repeats Biden’s statement that the initial first phase of the ceasefire could be extended indefinitely as long as negotiations continue on the terms of the second phase. It seems clear that the Israeli government will not countenance moving on to a second phase unless Hamas agrees in those talks to essentially dissolve itself as both a political and militant actor, and it will break off negotiations if there’s no indication that Hamas is prepared to accede to that demand. Officially the Israelis have said only that Biden’s proposal “enables Israel to achieve” its goals, which means they will looking for a specific outcome to negotiations or else they will resume military operations. That doesn’t sound like the full-stop “agreement” that Blinken and company keep insisting that the Israeli government has given to the proposal, but what do I know?
It doesn’t seem like Hamas, or more to the point its Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, is open to the scenario outlined above. According to The Wall Street Journal, “messages…that Sinwar has transmitted to cease-fire negotiators” indicate that he believes the situation in Gaza is doing more harm to Israel than to Hamas and that he views the massive number of civilian casualties as “necessary sacrifices.” In this telling, Sinwar is prepared to move on to a full-blown Israeli military occupation of Gaza because he views it as untenable for the Israelis. Which is probably true, but that doesn’t do much for the thousands of Palestinians who would have to die in order to bring this grand plan to fruition. There are other interesting details in Sinwar’s communiques, assuming the WSJ’s reporting is accurate—he seems to have been caught off guard by the scale of violence and hostage taking directed against Israeli civilians on October 7, for example, and apparently had it in his head that Hezbollah and Iran were prepared to go to war with Israel to support Hamas. One belief that Sinwar has expressed in the past is that the Palestinian cause only garners international attention when “blood” is involved, which explains his “necessary sacrifices” comment. Whatever else you might want to say about him, I don’t think he’s wrong in his assessment that the international community tends only to notice Palestinians when they’re being killed.
Elsewhere:
Israeli security forces killed at least four Palestinians during a raid on a village near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday. One was allegedly a Hamas member. Another Israeli raid on Tuesday reportedly killed at least six Palestinians in a village near the city of Jenin. The target in that case appears to have been a Palestinian Islamic Jihad cell.
Blinken attended a Jordanian summit on the humanitarian situation in Gaza on Tuesday and announced a pledge for $404 million in new US aid. That will definitely make up for the $15 billion or so in emergency military aid the US devoted to Israel in Biden’s military supplemental package, on top of the $3.8 billion the US provides to Israel annually. I think the efficacy of this additional aid is less important to the Biden administration than the political impression it could create—in his announcement, Blinken made a point of criticizing countries that “have expressed great concern over the suffering of the Palestinian people” but “have provided very little or nothing at all,” which was obviously a shot at China and Russia.
The Joe Biden Memorial Pier is sadly once again offline. The UN World Food Program suspended operations from the pier on Sunday, citing an elevated risk to aid workers following the Israeli military’s very bloody hostage rescue/massacre in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. The US military is still denying allegations that the Israeli military (IDF) used the pier to help stage that operation but the IDF did operate in an area of the Gaza beach close to the facility. The Pentagon insists that the Israelis were not inside the pier’s “security cordon” but apparently they were at least close enough to raise that possibility.
On a related note, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has now accused the IDF of using an “aid truck” in Saturday’s operation, which if true is a war crime and could significantly increase the risk to actual aid workers moving forward. The IDF is still denying this allegation. The UN human rights office on Tuesday raised the possibility of additional war crimes stemming both from the IDF’s (arguably) excessive violence and from the decision by Hamas and company to house hostages in the midst of a civilian population.
SYRIA
Iraqi security forces, with US assistance, reportedly killed a “senior” Islamic State figure going by the name Abu Zainab in the Syrian city of Raqqa. It’s unclear when this operation took place but the Iraqi military says it was “during the past days,” which…doesn’t really narrow it down now that I think about it.
LEBANON
An IDF airstrike killed one civilian in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, a few hours after overnight IDF strikes in northeastern Lebanon’s Hermel area killed at least three Hezbollah fighters. Those latter strikes are some of the deepest the IDF has made into Lebanese territory since October 7 and reportedly targeted a tanker convoy entering Lebanon from Syria. Later on Tuesday the Lebanese military reported that another IDF airstrike in southern Lebanon killed one “senior” Hezbollah figure (supposedly “the most important” Hezbollah official the Israelis have killed since October 7) along with three other unidentified people.
YEMEN
Yemen’s Houthi movement on Monday explained its arrest of several aid workers last week (at least 18, 11 of them from the UN) as the result of an investigation into what it called “an American-Israeli spy network.” There’s no way to confirm or refute that allegation but it is the only comment the Houthis have made about those arrests, as far as I know. The Houthis also apparently struck two cargo vessels in the Gulf of Aden over the weekend. Both suffered damage but have been able to continue sailing.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
The Pakistani army attacked a “militant hideout” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province over night, killing at least 11 people. It’s unclear who the militants in question were, but they’re allegedly linked with whichever group planted the explosive device that killed seven Pakistani soldiers in that province on Sunday. Some sort of Pakistani Taliban affiliation seems likely.
MYANMAR
Local sources in Myanmar’s Rakhine state are claiming that Myanmar security forces have begun “emptying villages on the outskirts” of the regional capital, Sittwe, in preparation for some sort of move against that city by the Arakan Army rebel group. The rebels have seized control of much of the province since beginning a coordinated offensive with two other regional rebel factions in late October and last week threatened to begin taking military outposts in the rest of the state, including in Sittwe. If they’re able to take the city it would be the first time rebels have been able to capture a state capital and would be arguably the biggest blow Myanmar’s junta has suffered in the seven-plus months since the rebel offensive began. Given the reputation that Myanmar security forces have earned there are concerns that local populations could face grave mistreatment as they’re being (forcibly) evacuated.
SOUTH KOREA
The South Korean military is saying that its personnel fired “warning shots” at a group of North Korean soldiers who crossed the Military Demarcation Line, the de facto border between the two countries located within the Demilitarized Zone, on Sunday afternoon. The reason for the incursion is unclear and the North Korean soldiers withdrew without further incident. Tensions between the Koreas are spiking after several waves of back and forth provocations caused Seoul to cancel a 2018 bilateral agreement that had imposed a number of restrictions intended to minimize the risk of these kinds of border incidents.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The UN International Organization for Migration said on Monday that it now estimates the number of internally displaced persons in Sudan to have surpassed 10 million. That figure includes some 2.8 million people who’d already been displaced prior to the start of the current war between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces group, but the circumstances of their displacement don’t change the fact that the conflict has put them at far greater risk from violence and in terms of their humanitarian situations.
US Sudan envoy Tom Perriello told the BBC on Tuesday that Washington expects the city of Al-Fashir, in Sudan’s North Darfur state, to fall to the RSF “imminently.” The paramilitaries have been besieging the city for several weeks, sparking concerns about a humanitarian catastrophe plus the potential for genocidal violence against its mostly non-Arab population when the RSF attack finally begins. Al-Fashir is the last major city in Darfur that is not controlled by the RSF and as a result it’s become a haven for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the group’s conquest of the rest of the region. Perriello also told Reuters that the US government believes that parts of Sudan “are in famine,” but a lack of information is preventing any sort of official designation to that effect. He blamed both the RSF and the military for impeding humanitarian assistance and looting what aid does enter the country.
NIGERIA
Authorities are blaming regional bandits for an attack on a village in northwestern Nigeria’s Katsina state on Sunday night that left at least 26 people dead and many more abducted. Criminal gangs operating across large swathes of northern Nigeria frequently loot villages and carry off residents for ransom. They occasionally carry out attacks across the border in southern Niger as well.
Amnesty International issued a new report on Monday alleging that “dozens” of women and girls have been rescued from jihadist militants in northeastern Nigeria only to wind up being detained and abused by military personnel. The report is based on 126 interviews and covers the entire 14-plus year period since Boko Haram first began its insurgency. Some of those women report years-long detentions, allegedly over suspicions around their ties to the insurgents. According to the report some were so badly treated in custody that they later chose to return to Boko Haram. Nigerian authorities are calling the allegations “unsubstantiated.”
SOUTH AFRICA
Former South African President Jacob Zuma’s MK party has reportedly petitioned the country’s Constitutional Court to postpone Friday’s planned session of parliament, which will be the first since last month’s general election. By law the South African legislature is required to meet within two weeks of an election to begin the new session, with its first order of business being the election (or reelection) of the country’s president. MK is alleging irregularities in the election, in which it finished in third place but fell short of the majority it apparently expected to win in Kwazulu-Natal province. The African National Congress, which suffered its worst ever election result and lost the parliamentary majority it had held consistently since 1994, is still negotiating with other parties about some sort of coalition arrangement that would return incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa to office.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed the capture of two more Ukrainian villages on Tuesday, one in Kharkiv oblast and the other in Luhansk oblast. The former is apparently located near the strategically significant city of Kupiansk.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is reportedly planning to send another Patriot air defense battery to Ukraine. This is the second Patriot system the US has sent to Ukraine and it comes after President Volodymyr Zelensky made another appeal for additional air defenses on Tuesday to protect sensitive sites—in particular sites connected with Ukraine’s battered electrical infrastructure—from Russian bombardment. All of the countries in Ukraine’s support network acknowledge that air defenses are Kyiv’s most immediate need, but all seem to be expecting the other members of the network to pick up the slack because they’re each unwilling to weaken their own air defense capabilities to strengthen Ukraine’s.
The US State Department on Tuesday announced that it’s rescinding a 2018 ban on the provision of US arms to Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, a restriction that was imposed due to the unit’s neo-Nazi roots. Azov and the Ukrainian government have gone to some lengths to try to rebrand the unit—which has transitioned from far right militia to an “official” part of the Ukrainian National Guard—in Western media but those roots are still there, as is Azov’s reputation for human rights violations. Apparently we’re not concerned with those things anymore.
HUNGARY
Sunday’s European Parliament elections produced a somewhat interesting outcome in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party won but with only 44 percent of the vote, its worst showing in an EP election since Hungary joined the European Union. The outcome has reinforced arguments that former Fidesz official Péter Magyar’s new Respect and Freedom party, which finished in second place with 30 percent of the vote, could be a genuine threat to Fidesz in national elections.
NORWAY
A Norwegian mining firm called Rare Earths Norway says it has confirmed the discovery of Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth oxides in a site in southeastern Norway. It estimates that the site contains some 8.8 million metric tons of oxides, including 1.5 million metric tons of “magnet-related rare earths which can be used in electric vehicles and wind turbines.” The site should be a major contributor to the EU’s efforts to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled rare earth metals and should also be a substantial boon for the Norwegian economy.
AMERICAS
HAITI
Haiti’s “transitional council” unveiled interim Prime Minister Garry Conille’s new cabinet on Tuesday. This is at least notionally the next step in the restoration of some kind of central authority in the country. Conille, who spent part of his weekend in a hospital due to some unspecified health incident, is going to pull double duty as PM and interior minister, which gives him direct control over Haiti’s national police force. Seeing as how Haiti’s most immediate problem is the fact that criminal gangs/insurgent groups control most of Port-au-Prince this seems somewhat understandable. The council’s mandate should now turn toward organizing new elections, but in the meantime Haiti remains in limbo awaiting the potential deployment of a Kenyan-led multinational security force.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Inkstick’s Taylor Barnes looks at how workers at US defense contractors are navigating their personal objections to enabling Israel’s decimation of Gaza:
Dissent over US support for Israel’s war on Gaza has rocked workplaces across the country, where firings, rescinded job offers, canceled assignments, and workplace retaliation have been reported by a variety of professionals, including law school graduates, Apple store employees, journalists, and artists.
The military-industrial complex has its own unique and formidable barriers holding back the dissenters who find themselves on the inside. (The engineer told Inkstick they wound up in the defense industry because they needed good healthcare and to pay off student loans from a pricey undergraduate aerospace engineering program, which they took on in the hopes of working for NASA. “I was desperate, and that” — military contractors — “was the only option.”) Arms plants are among the most secretive workplaces in the country, where concerns over revealing trade secrets, losing security clearances, and violating non-disclosure agreements chill workers’ speech.
Remarkably, given the incentives to stay quiet, the engineer and another dissident employee at Boeing shared several stories with Inkstick about how they and their colleagues were speaking up about the war.
At Northrop Grumman, the engineer said their operations manager confided in them that he took “comfort” in the fact that their specific building did not make weapons for Israel. (The engineer says the manager works on the Trident missile, which delivers nuclear warheads from ballistic missile submarines.) The engineer told Inkstick, however, that other buildings at their worksite make parts for the F-35, a fighter jet that Israel uses to bomb Gaza.
The operations manager told his colleague, “Yeah, this is really horrible what we [the United States] are doing,” the engineer recalled.