World roundup: June 13 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Africa, Haiti, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
June 13, 1971: The New York Times begins publishing excerpts from “The Pentagon Papers,” portions of the Department of Defense’s history of US involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968 leaked by RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg. The documents revealed details about US activity in Indochina that were previously unknown to the American public and made it clear that four consecutive presidential administrations—Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—had lied consistently about the scope and nature of that activity.
June 13, 1983: The space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, crosses the orbit of Neptune and becomes the first man-made object to pass the orbits of all the major planets of this solar system. It continued to transmit telemetry data until April 2002 and still sent weak signals back to Earth until January 23, 2003. It’s believed to be further from the sun at this point than any spacecraft save Voyager 1, though it will be surpassed by Voyager 2 sometime in the next few years.
INTERNATIONAL
The United Nations refugee agency estimates that there are currently more than 120 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, up from a bit over 117 million at the end of 2023 and 110 million a full year ago. As the agency noted, that’s roughly equal to the population of Japan. Violence in Gaza, Myanmar, and Sudan is fueling much of the recent displacement.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
+972 Magazine’s Ruwaida Kamal Amer recounts what residents of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp experienced during Saturday’s Israeli military operation:
It began without warning. “Planes were bombing. Tanks were firing. Quadcopter drones were shooting. People were running and screaming. It felt like Judgment Day, as if we were living our last moments.”
This was the scene at around 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 8 in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. Aerial bombardment, as described by a journalist in the camp who preferred to remain anonymous, was accompanied by the entry of dozens of Israeli military and police special forces personnel who emerged from aid trucks. “We couldn’t understand what was happening,” the journalist added.
As later became clear, a major Israeli military operation was underway to retrieve four hostages whom Hamas had kidnapped from the Nova music festival almost exactly eight months prior. In doing so, Israeli forces unleashed devastation on Nuseirat camp, killing at least 276 Palestinians and wounding approximately 700 more.
“The intensity of the bombing felt like an earthquake,” Enas Al-Louh, a 45-year-old from Gaza City who had sought refuge in the camp, recounted. “I thought my life would end right there. I was screaming at my children not to leave my side so that we could die together. For more than an hour, we lived through the horror of nonstop bombing and shelling.”
Elsewhere:
Foreign Exchanges has tried to respect the Biden administration’s sensitivities with regards to the current phase of Israeli military’s (IDF) Gaza operation. So in that vein, the IDF did not advance deeper into western Rafah on Thursday and is not now threatening the Mawasi beach area. It has not, according to Palestinian media, carried out several attacks on Mawasi despite telling Palestinian civilians that the area was a designated safe zone. It has not been carrying out a full scale offensive in Rafah for over a month now and thus is not violating the red line that the Biden administration never established.
The UN Relief and Works Agency says that Israeli officials are still obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid, despite constant claims that they’re doing all they can to flood Gaza with relief. The Rafah border checkpoint remains closed due to the IDF’s non-seizure of its Gazan side, while access through the nearby Kerem Shalom checkpoint apparently remains restricted. The Joe Biden Memorial Pier hasn’t been much help either, as it happens. In response, Israel’s COGAT occupation agency has insisted that it’s in regular contact with UNRWA and repeated its claim that the agency is colluding with Hamas (a claim for which it has yet to provide much evidence).
Another IDF raid reportedly killed at least three Palestinians in a town near the West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday. Israeli officials say their forces killed “two senior wanted suspects” but have not offered any information as to the identity of the third casualty.
This will probably come as a shock, but Haaretz is reporting that the Israeli government has transferred some $448,000 to illegal West Bank outposts over the past six years, including outposts owned by settlers who have been sanctioned by the United States. That the settler movement gets support directly from the Israeli government is not news, but I think this highlights just how ineffectual the Biden administration’s effort to blacklist individual settlers really is. Unless it’s prepared to sanction the Israeli government it will never be able to impact the movement or the systemic anti-Palestinian violence it engenders.
LEBANON
Hezbollah kept up its bombardment of northern Israel for a second straight day on Thursday, in response to the IDF airstrike that killed one of the group’s senior officials. It fired at least 40 projectiles, one day after a 200-plus projectile barrage in the immediate wake of the airstrike. There’s no word as to damage or casualties, but an IDF airstrike on southern Lebanon late Thursday night reportedly killed at least one civilian (UPDATE: make that at least two civilians) and wounded seven other people.
YEMEN
The Houthis reportedly attacked another cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday, the Verbena, causing fired on board (it was apparently carrying wood) and injuring one crew member who had to be evacuated. Beyond the reported fires I haven’t seen any indication as to how seriously the ship was damaged. The US military is now saying that it struck three Houthi missile sites on Thursday night in response.
IRAN
Shockingly, the US-European move to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency has produced the opposite of the presumably intended effect. According to the IAEA, the Iranian government is responding by increasing its uranium enrichment capacity and has already set up new centrifuge assemblies in its Fordow enrichment facility. To be fair, diplomats at the IAEA are saying that the increase they’re seeing is actually less substantial than they’d expected after the censure resolution passed. It’s unclear why but the fact that Iran is gearing up for a presidential election in two weeks may have something to do with it. Once a new administration is in place there could be additional fallout from the censure.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
A US national who was arrested by the Afghan government back in 2022 is reportedly in need of “medical treatment in a civilian hospital without delay,” according to UN rapporteur Alice Jill Edwards. Corbett ran a consulting firm that worked with Afghanistan’s previous government. He left the country in 2021 but the firm continued to operate, and when he returned to Afghanistan in 2022 the Taliban authorities arrested him. He’s yet to be charged with a crime and Edwards said on Thursday that his health is “declining rapidly” in custody.
MYANMAR
Myanmar’s ruling junta is still struggling to deal with the country’s myriad rebel groups, but according to Reuters it does seem to be catching up to them in one aspect:
Myanmar's resistance fighters notched decisive breakthroughs last year by relying on a scattered fleet of drones in battles against one of Southeast Asia's most feared militaries.
But as the civil war grinds on, the rebels increasingly find their familiar weapons - Chinese-made commercial drones modified to carry arms - in the unfamiliar hands of the country's ruling junta, according to seven people with knowledge of the matter.
"The battle is changing now as drones are being used by both sides," said a 31-year-old rebel fighter in the country's southeast, identifying himself by the nom de guerre of Ta Yoke Gyi.
He said the junta began using armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack the rebels at around the turn of the year and that his unit recently shot down a drone, which they identified as Chinese from its components and had been modified for combat. Two rebel fighters in other parts of Myanmar also described similar skirmishes to Reuters.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The United Nations Security Council voted 14-0 (with Russia abstaining) on Thursday to order the Rapid Support Forces to lift its siege of the Sudanese city of El Fasher. It might as well have ordered cigarettes to stop causing cancer for all the practical effect this resolution is likely to have. That said, when the RSF doesn’t lift the siege the resolution could offer a legal path for countries to impose harsher sanctions against the group and maybe even its international backers. The latter seems unlikely given the wealth and influence of its most important backer.
SOMALIA
The International Crisis Group’s Omar Mahmood outlines some of the reasons for the recent rise in Somali pirate activity:
This surge can be attributed to both international and domestic factors. Over-fishing by foreign trawlers has frustrated local fishermen. They say the practice is on the rise, and not purely because of actors operating completely outside of the law: they also fault the government for handing out more licenses while failing to simultaneously step up regulation to ensure compliance with government restrictions. As locals’ frustration mounts, pirates may garner more sympathy (and potentially support and recruits) in communities that dot the Somali coast.
Meanwhile, the security arrangements that served as an impediment to piracy have deteriorated. Combined with a gradual downturn in the number of international naval forces patrolling off the Somali coast in recent years as the incidents of piracy eased, the attention of some remaining forces has been diverted to deterring attacks by Yemen’s Houthi forces further north in the Red Sea. Local Somali security forces in Puntland also have been distracted as of late. Their attention has focused on supporting an uprising by clan brethren in Somaliland, which declared independence from Somalia in 1991; fending off branches of militant jihadist groups Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State; and dealing with a tense election cycle that concluded in January 2024.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Allied Democratic Forces militants are believed to have been responsible for an attack on a village in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province on Wednesday that left at least 42 people dead. The ADF has killed scores of people in a slew of similar attacks over the past couple of weeks
SOUTH AFRICA
The African National Congress announced on Thursday that it has secured a general agreement with the opposition Democratic Alliance party as well as an unspecified number of smaller parties to form a coalition government. The ANC lost its sole parliamentary majority in last month’s general election and was facing a Friday deadline to cobble together at least a functional majority to elect a president in the new legislature’s first session. The Inkatha Freedom Party announced on Wednesday that it was ready to enter an ANC-DA coalition, suggesting that negotiations were advancing toward this resolution.
This does not appear to be a formal coalition agreement—the ANC is apparently still pursuing its goal of forming a “national unity government” with all of the country’s major parties on board—but it should be solid enough for Friday’s session. The ANC and DA, which finished in second place last month, have a collective parliamentary majority between them. They will presumably vote to reelect incumbent president and ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa though that’s not completely set in stone yet.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Russian authorities appear finally to be ready to take Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to trial. He’s been in pretrial custody since his March 2023 arrest, with prosecutors repeatedly requesting and receiving extensions to his detention. Gershkovich, who has been charged with spying, is a likely candidate to be sent back to the US in a prisoner swap but the Russians will only do that after his trial and, one assumes, conviction.
UKRAINE
As expected, Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a new bilateral security agreement on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy on Thursday. The deal is good for at least the next ten years and will see the US provide arms and training to the Ukrainian military. Zelensky framed it as a step toward full NATO membership for Kyiv, though that might be overstating things just a bit.
In a more immediately meaningful development, G7 leaders agreed on Thursday to back a US initiative to obtain a $50 billion loan for Ukraine that is secured by the interest generated by frozen Russian state assets. European Union members reached a tentative agreement last month to devote the interest on some €210 billion in frozen assets to Ukraine, but the US has been pushing for this lump-sum loan in lieu of sending Ukraine the roughly €3 billion those funds generate in annual interest. Details around the loan still need to be ironed out.
AMERICAS
HAITI
At Foreign Policy, Haitian activist Pierre Espérance questions the lack of transparency around the expected multinational security intervention in Haiti and especially around the role the United States is playing:
In the past several weeks, I have watched dozens of sleek U.S. military planes descend over Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I live. They were the first flights to land since gangs blockaded and halted commercial air traffic in March. U.S. news reports suggest that the aircraft contained civilian contractors and supplies to pave the way for the deployment of a Kenyan-led security mission to Haiti, which is expected to begin any day now.
But no one has informed Haitians who or what was on board. Even the members of Haiti’s new transitional government told me that they did not know precisely what the United States was flying into the country. Although the Haitian members of the presidential council have met with Kenyan and Haitian officials to discuss the force, they said they have not provided input to U.S. officials. Aides to newly installed Prime Minister Garry Conille confirmed that he has had no say on decisions related to the mission. It remains unclear what the force’s specific goals are or how it can contribute to rebuilding the Haitian state.
Haitians know far too little about the international security mission that is set to deploy on our soil. The United States should clarify its role in the mission and take responsibility for spearheading it, as it appears to be doing. Haitians must also be involved in managing the force, including developing its goals and monitoring its practices. We must ensure that it is accountable to the Haitian people if it is carried out with any of the carelessness, poor decision-making, excessive force, and sexual abuse that have marked previous interventions in our country. We must also ensure that the force is not seen as a panacea for the restoration of the Haitian state and its democracy.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The New Yorker’s Rachel Monroe reports on the emerging water dispute over the Rio Grande River as well as the broader water crisis in the western US:
The board was clear about who was to blame for the [Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers] mill’s closure: Mexico. As its name indicates, the Rio Grande Valley gets much of its water supply from the Rio Grande, which for about a thousand miles forms the border between the United States and Mexico. According to a 1944 treaty, Mexico is supposed to provide an average of three hundred and fifty thousand acre-feet of water per year from its tributary rivers to replenish the Rio Grande. But, in the past four years, it has supplied far less, sometimes nothing at all. This year, Mexico’s own reservoirs were so low that the prospect of fulfilling the treaty terms was “hydrologically impossible,” Bobby Janecka, who heads the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, wrote in February to the International Boundary and Water Commission, which oversees the reservoirs. “They’re continuing to use the water that’s owed to us,” Sean Brashear, the president of the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, told me. “And that leaves us going out of business.”
The issues with the Rio Grande reflect a greater crisis in the American West. In recent years, low water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which are fed by the Colorado River, have caused considerable alarm. But levels at the Rio Grande’s two major reservoirs in Texas—Amistad and Falcon—are even lower. Farmers in the lower Rio Grande Valley are bracing for the possibility of a summer with very little water allocated for irrigation, a prospect that could result in the loss of nearly half a billion dollars of revenue for one of Texas’s poorest regions. Todd Miller, a journalist who writes the “Border Chronicle” newsletter, told me that he’d recently spoken to water-district managers in the Valley who believed that they might have to institute municipal water restrictions if conditions didn’t improve: “Those almost dystopic scenarios of rationing water are absolutely being contemplated.”