World roundup: June 29-30 2024
World roundup: June 29-30 2024
Stories from Iran, Sudan, France, and elsewhere
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: This is just a reminder that tonight’s roundup will be our last for a while, as I’m taking the next couple of weeks for FX’s annual summer break. We will return to regular programming no later than July 16. Thanks for reading!
THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
June 29, 1444: Albanian rebel leader Skanderbeg (George Castriot) defeats a considerably larger Ottoman army at the Battle of Torvioli by outmaneuvering the Ottomans and striking their forces from behind. This was one of the first major engagements in Skanderbeg’s 1443-1468 rebellion and his surprising victory earned him significant support from Hungary and the papacy. He was for a time able to win independence for an Albanian principality under the “Albanian League,” but a few years after his death the Ottomans were able to reconquer the region.
June 29, 1881: Sudanese religious leader Muhammad Ahmad declares himself to be the Mahdi and begins to establish an independent political entity, kicking off the 18 year long Mahdist War against the British Empire.
June 30, 1520: During La Noche Triste (“the Night of Sorrows”), Hernán Cortés and his forces are driven out of Tenochtitlan by the Aztecs. He regrouped and returned the following year to besiege and ultimately capture the city.
June 30, 1934: On the “Night of the Long Knives,” Nazi leaders purge their party’s original paramilitary wing, the SA or Sturmabteilung, including its leader Ernst Röhm, and target party opponents like German Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen. Estimates of the death toll range from a low of 85 to a high of somewhere around 1000.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Hamas political official Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut on Saturday that “Hamas is ready to deal positively with any proposal that secures a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and a serious swap deal.” Nothing like that appears to be on the table, though the Biden administration (probably) spoon-fed another Big Scoop to Axios’s Barak Ravid on Saturday in which it claimed that it has “presented new language” to Israel and Hamas, covering parts of its ceasefire proposal. According to Ravid, this language deals with the terms of the negotiations that are supposed to take place during the first phase of the ceasefire. Hamas reportedly wants to limit the scope of those talks to the terms of a second round of prisoner exchanges, while the Israeli government wants to discuss a wider range of issues, particularly the “demilitarization” of Gaza. The administration seems to think that if it can get both parties on board with this piece that will close the deal.
In other news:
You may have noted in one of those links above that a massive crowd of Israelis, estimated at around 130,000 people, protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday to call for a ceasefire and prisoner deal. Tens of thousands of Israelis protested in Jerusalem on Sunday, but for a completely different reason—these were ultra-orthodox men angry over the prospect of being conscripted into the Israeli military (IDF). The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to begin the conscription process, though Netanyahu hasn’t made any move in that direction as yet. Sunday’s demonstrations turned violent, as protesters lit fires and threw rocks while police used skunk water to try to disperse them.
With heavy fighting continuing across Gaza—that “less intense phase” is coming any day now, I’m sure—the Gazan Health Ministry announced at midday on Sunday that the territory’s remaining medical infrastructure had only enough generator fuel to remain in operation for about 48 more hours. A precipitous decrease in fuel supplies is also threatening to worsen the territory’s already critical hygiene crisis.
An IDF airstrike killed one Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant and wounded five more people in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the West Bank city of Tulkarm on Sunday. Violence in the West Bank continues to escalate, along with the Israeli government’s annexation efforts. The latest step in that direction involves the legalization of five settlement blocs. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has reportedly agreed to release some of the revenues he’s been withholding from the Palestinian Authority in return for steps like this that expand the settlement footprint in the territory. Each expansion puts the mythical “two state solution” a bit further out of reach, which is Smotrich’s intent.
There continues to be much discussion around Gaza’s “day after” plan, or more specifically around the fact that Netanyahu still won’t articulate one. According to The Wall Street Journal, “a plan that is gaining currency in the government and military envisions creating geographical ‘islands’ or ‘bubbles’ where Palestinians who are unconnected to Hamas can live in temporary shelter while the Israeli military mops up remaining insurgents.” There’s a term for this arrangement that doesn’t rely on euphemisms like “islands” and “bubbles”: concentration camps. They’re talking about putting Palestinians into concentration camps. The aim, interning a civilian population to separate it from insurgents, recalls the earliest uses of concentration camps in the Spanish government’s Reconcentration policy during the Cuban War of Independence and subsequent policies implemented by the US in the Philippines and the UK in South Africa.
IRAN
The first round of Iran’s presidential election on Saturday resulted, as expected, in the need for a second round. Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian and hardline conservative Saeed Jalili both exceeded polling expectations, respectively taking a bit over 42 percent and a bit under 39 percent of the vote. Underperforming his polling was Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, whose fourth try at the presidency didn’t go any better than the previous three. Maybe he’ll finally get the message, but I have my doubts. Also managing to come in under expectations was turnout, which had been projected in the 40-45 percent range but just barely failed to crack the 40 percent line to make this the lowest turnout election in Iran’s post-revolution history.
Pezeshkian’s performance may cause some consternation among the conservative Iranian establishment, but the low turnout reflects something even more troubling to them than the electorate’s desire for change—it suggests that voters are continuing to give up on the political system altogether. In terms of what it might mean for the runoff, that remains to be seen. Qalibaf has already endorsed Jalili but there’s some reason to believe that at least a portion of his voters will prefer Pezeshkian or decide to stay home. To win Pezeshkian likely has to convince reform-minded voters who skipped this round to come out in the second round. His presence on the ballot didn’t do the trick on Saturday but the fact that he’s made it into the runoff could theoretically spark some additional interest.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The United Nations on Sunday opened its third conference on Afghanistan since the Taliban regained power there in 2021, and for the first time the Taliban was in attendance. The UN didn’t invite the Taliban to the first of these sessions, in May 2023, and disinvited it from the second session this past February when Taliban leaders demanded a number of preconditions including international recognition for their government. The two day session, in Qatar, is supposed to chart a way forward in terms of addressing Afghanistan’s dire humanitarian situation and the Taliban-led government’s still-frosty relations with most of the international community.
One big reason for that frostiness is the Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women, but spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid basically told the rest of the world to get over it in his remarks on Sunday. Without directly addressing the issue, which the Taliban regards as purely domestic, Mujahid argued that “policy differences amid states are natural, and it is the duty of experienced diplomats to find ways of interaction and understanding rather than confrontation.” I suspect that kind of rhetoric is not going to move the process forward.
NORTH KOREA
The North Korean military apparently conducted another weapons demonstration on Monday morning, in response to ongoing joint US-Japanese-South Korean military exercises. There’s no additional detail available yet. On Sunday, North Korean state media referred to that trilateral relationship as “the Asian version of NATO,” which I assume it meant derogatorily though I’m not sure any of the participants would completely reject the comparison.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group won another significant victory over the weekend when it captured the city of Singa, capital of southeastern Sudan’s Sennar state. The Sudanese military hasn’t disputed the claim but it says its forces are still in the city and are still battling. The RSF’s recent advances across southern and southeastern Sudan are starting to raise a possibility that seemed almost unthinkable a few months ago: a full military victory. The group is increasingly isolating the military to a pocket of territory around Port Sudan in the northeastern part of the country, and where partition previously seemed likelier than a decisive outcome now the military’s position is looking more and more tenuous.
MAURITANIA
Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani reportedly won reelection on Saturday, as expected. Preliminary results released on Sunday had him at 56 percent of the vote with nearly all counting complete. Runner-up Biram Dah Abeid, who sits at a bit over 22 percent of the vote, is alleging that there were “irregularities” in the election and other opposition parties have similarly made noise about rejecting the results. But their chances of seriously challenging the outcome are slim at best.
NIGERIA
Three apparently female suicide bombers killed at least 18 people and wounded dozens more in separate attacks in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state on Saturday. All three bombings took place in the town of Gwoza, which is close to the Cameroonian border. There are also unconfirmed reports of a fourth attack on a military outpost in the same town that may have killed at least three more people. The use of women and girls as suicide bombers used to be a hallmark of Boko Haram, but it’s unclear at this point whether these attacks were carried out by that group or its Islamic State West Africa Province offshoot.
KENYA
Human Rights Watch says it’s confirmed that Kenyan police killed at least 30 people during last Tuesday’s nationwide protests against President William Ruto’s now-abandoned tax increase plan. HRW official Otsieno Namwaya accused police of “shooting directly into crowds without justification, including as protesters try to flee,” violating both “Kenyan and international law.” Most of the deaths appear to have occurred in Nairobi, though HRW says it doesn’t have “confirmation on the exact number of people killed” there and elsewhere.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
M23 rebels reportedly seized control of two more towns in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province over the weekend—the town of Kanyabayonga overnight Friday-Saturday and the town of Kirumba on Sunday. These new advances have set potentially tens of thousands of people to flight and put the insurgents well on the road to the northern part of the province and major cities like Beni and Butembo.
SOUTH AFRICA
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled his new cabinet on Sunday. Its composition is not as important as the fact that it came into existence at all. Disputes between the African National Congress and its new coalition partners, chiefly the Democratic Alliance, had reportedly threatened to fracture said coalition before it even got started governing. How long this coalition can actually last remains anybody’s guess.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed the capture of two more villages in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast on Sunday. One of them, Novooleksandrivka, now marks the westernmost point of Russia’s advance in Donetsk, according to AFP.
FRANCE
Sunday’s snap French parliamentary election appears to have gone as expected, meaning it was a big win for the far right National Rally (RN) party and a big loss for French President Emmanuel Macron. RN won a bit over 33 percent of the overall vote, followed by the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) coalition in second at just over 28 percent and Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition well back in third at 21 percent. As it stands right now, an Ipsos-Talan analysis projects RN to emerge as the largest party in a hung parliament, falling shy of a majority by anywhere between nine and 59 seats. Projections are difficult to make at this point, however, because many seats will go to a runoff round on July 7. Since French electoral rules allow for the possibility of three (or more) way runoffs those races are still hard to predict.
Much will depend on the wheeling and dealing that goes on before the next round. If Macron genuinely wants to prevent RN from winning a parliamentary majority he’ll have to bite the proverbial bullet and make some kind of arrangement with NFP or at least with its more moderate constituent parties like the Socialists and Greens. (Technically if Macron wanted to prevent RN from winning a parliamentary majority he wouldn’t have dissolved parliament in the first place, but I digress.) The leftists have already indicated that they’re prepared to order their third place candidates to drop out in races where the Ensemble candidate came in second behind the RN candidate, but Macron and his acolytes have sent mixed signals about reciprocating.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
The first round of peace talks between the Colombian government and the Segunda Marquetalia rebel faction, which took place over the past week in Venezuela, seems to have gone well. In a joint statement on Sunday the parties announced that SM has agreed to a “unilateral ceasefire” and to the release of the captives it is holding. The government appears to have agreed to a moratorium on any offensive military action against SM, though it’s retaining the right to respond to actions by SM fighters. The two sides agreed to meet in Colombia’s Nariño department by July 20 to finalize these agreements. It’s unclear whether they’ve set a date for a second round of peace talks but presumably there will be one at some point provided these agreements hold.
UNITED STATES
ABC News is reporting that the US military put several of its bases in Europe on Force Protection Condition Charlie over the weekend. That’s the second-highest state of alert and is ordered “when an incident occurs or intelligence is received indicating some form of terrorist action or targeting against personnel or facilities is likely.” There doesn’t seem to be any other information available on this as yet.
Finally, at Inkstick Julia Gledhill questions the logic underpinning the US military’s ever-increasing budget:
The Senate Armed Services Committee recently voted to inflate national security spending by $25 billion, a dangerous increase to an already superfluous budget.
Spearheaded by Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, the proposal invokes the Reagan-era mantra of “peace through strength.” But a larger budget won’t make Americans any safer.
Runaway national security spending is integral to the never-ending pursuit of US military dominance. This pursuit is dangerous to both US democracy and the world because it encourages militarism — not just at home but abroad. So the notion that increased budgets automatically translate to enhanced safety and global influence is misguided. It reflects decisionmakers’ unwillingness to make difficult tradeoffs on foreign and defense policy matters.
Bigger budgets also do not, by virtue, bolster national power. Instead they can lead to unnecessary expenditures on non-essential weapon systems, further ingraining non-competitive military contractors into the US economy at great opportunity cost. Overfunding national security programs can undermine military readiness by diverting resources from critical security needs and complicating strategic decision-making at the Pentagon. The department already struggles to make these decisions due in part to expansive, unrealistic, and unclear strategic guidance from the administration.
Further increasing the national security budget can exacerbate this issue. Evermore spending pushes the United States toward strategic insolvency while providing increasingly marginal returns in military capability. Despite what the White House and policymakers might think, the United States has political and economic limits. It cannot and should not do everything, everywhere, all at once. More spending is economically irresponsible and dangerous, as it risks sparking arms races with other countries.