World roundup: March 12 2024
World roundup: March 12 2024
Stories from Nepal, Sudan, Haiti
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TODAY IN HISTORY
March 12, 1930: Mahatma Gandhi leads a 24 day march covering more than 240 miles from the Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat to the village of Dandi, known as the “Salt March” or the “Dandi March.” Gandhi’s aim was to protest the British monopoly on salt production, so he and his followers manufactured their own salt at Dandi after arriving there on April 6, in violation of the 1882 British Salt Act. The march was a landmark event in both the conception of non-violent protest and the Indian independence movement.
March 12, 1938: Nazi Germany occupies Austria in an event known as the Anschluss. Uniting Austria and Germany was one of the primary tenets of the Nazi Party and the most important component of its Heim ins Reich project to incorporate all ethnic Germans into a “Greater Germany.” The Nazi occupation, which was welcomed by many Austrians, rendered irrelevant a planned referendum on unification that Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg had scheduled for the following day.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
A charity ship that’s carrying some 200 metric tons of food intended for Gaza set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday for what will be the first test of a potential maritime aid corridor. Organizers have refused to specify where and when the vessel is supposed to turn up off the Gazan coast, but it should be at least a day or two before it arrives. The World Central Kitchen NGO, which has supplied the food, says it has people in Gaza building a makeshift pier facility to offload the aid but it’s unclear whether that will be ready when the ship arrives. From there it’s even less clear how WCK intends to distribute the aid within Gaza. This relief effort is not connected with the US military’s supposed project to build its own offshore pier, though there is obvious overlap between the two projects particularly in terms of inspection and distribution logistics. While the Israeli government has expressed support for the US effort I’m not entirely clear whether it’s comfortable with this charity operation.
According to Reuters there’s yet another maritime project now under consideration. This one would involve commercial shippers who would be paid for their efforts through some sort of international fund that the US would help establish but would not help finance. It would employ barges and cranes to bring aid to shore and could ostensibly be ready in about a month (versus two months for the US military’s scheme). Here, as with the other projects, there’s no clarity as to what would happen to the aid once it gets to Gaza.
In other news:
This probably comes as no surprise at this point, but Hamas and the Israeli government are nowhere close to agreeing on a ceasefire deal according to the Qatari Foreign Ministry. Rhetoric about having a deal in place by the start of Ramadan has given way to rhetoric about hoping to reach a deal before the end of Ramadan so you know things are not going well.
In a confused and confusing interview with MSNBC over the weekend, Joe Biden appeared to suggest that an Israeli ground assault on Rafah under current conditions (i.e., without any apparent plan to evacuate civilians from the area ahead of time) would cross some sort of “red line” as far as Washington is concerned. On Monday, POLITICO reported that Biden might consider conditioning further military aid to Israel should Israeli leaders go forward with the Rafah operation. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly told Biden to cram his red line and the Biden administration is now desperately trying to walk back any semblance of a threat to reconsider arming Israel under any circumstances. Netanyahu has already effectively told Biden to get bent with respect to humanitarian aid, hence the need to try these untested maritime schemes to try to get around Israeli bottlenecks. Remind me; who’s the client state in this relationship again?
This should also not be news to anybody but the humanitarian situation in Gaza alone is enough to make continued arms shipments to Israel a violation of US law. A group of 25 NGOs sent an open letter to that effect to the White House on Tuesday, following on the heels of a similar message sent to Biden by a group of eight US senators. The emergency pier plan and recent US aid airdrops demonstrate not only that the Israeli government isn’t allowing enough aid to enter Gaza by land but also that the Biden administration knows this yet refuses to do anything about it. Note that it’s the administration breaking the law here, not Israel. But it’s ok, because something something rules-based order.
Israeli soldiers killed a Jordanian national during a raid near the West Bank city of Tulkarm on Monday. Israeli officials are claiming he was an “accomplice” to a Palestinian militant but Palestinian authorities are claiming that he was simply in Tulkarm to visit family and that, moreover, Israeli forces shot him and then let him bleed out in an ambulance “for more than an hour and a half before he died.” Israeli forces also shot and killed a 12 year old Palestinian boy on Tuesday in East Jerusalem, after he allegedly fired “aerial fireworks in their direction.”
A new US intelligence assessment suggests that Netanyahu’s government “may be in jeopardy.” I’m mentioning this only because I assume some of you have seen the headlines and might have questions. But Israel isn’t facing another election until 2026 unless Netanyahu’s coalition implodes, and while the coalition does have internal issues the fact is that Netanyahu and his partners need each other if they’re going to remain politically relevant. Polling indicates that they would be crushed in a snap election. I haven’t read this report so I don’t know how it gets around these basic facts but from here I don’t see any reason other than blind optimism to think that Netanyahu is going anywhere.
LEBANON
Israeli airstrikes targeted eastern Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley for the second straight day on Tuesday, killing at least two people (both later confirmed to be members of Hezbollah). Israeli officials characterized the strikes as retaliation for a barrage of cross-border rocket fire from Hezbollah late Monday.
BAHRAIN
The Biden administration on Tuesday blacklisted four individuals in Iran over their alleged links to Bahrain’s al-Ashtar Brigades insurgent group. The AAB is a militant Shiʿa outfit that is opposed to Bahrain’s Sunni absolutist monarchy and has been designated as a terrorist group by several countries including the US.
ASIA
NEPAL
According to the AP, a new wave of protests is demanding, essentially, to reverse the results of Nepal’s 2006 Democracy Movement:
Sixteen years ago, mass protests in Nepal forced then-King Gyanendra Shah to give up the throne and clear the way for a republic. Now, a new wave of protest is trying to bring him back.
The capital of the Himalayan country is again teeming with demonstrators, this time demanding that Shah be reinstated as king and Hinduism brought back as a state religion. Royalist groups accuse the country’s major political parties of corruption and failed governance and say people are frustrated with politicians.
“Come back king, save the country. Long live our beloved king. We want a monarchy,” the crowd chanted at a rally last month in Kathmandu.
Growing frustration with the present system has led to calls for radical change. Pro-monarchy rallies have been growing larger, and an increasing number of homes and businesses are displaying portraits of the ex-king and his ancestors.
THAILAND
Thai election authorities are going to court to dissolve the Move Forward Party, the party that won last May’s election but was then unable to form a government due to opposition from the Thai military. Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled in January that the party’s opposition to the kingdom’s strict lèse-majesté law violated the Thai Constitution, opening the door to a forced dissolution. If that happens, Move Forward’s leaders could be barred from politics for ten years. Move Forward proved quite popular among younger voters last year and a move to eradicate it could spark discontent among that demographic.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Sudanese military made perhaps its most significant gain to date, seizing control of Sudan’s national broadcasting headquarters from the Rapid Support Forces group. That facility, which contains the country’s national radio and television broadcast stations, is located in Omdurman, where the military has been on a successful run of late. The RSF apparently gave up the facility after an intense overnight battle.
The United Nations World Food Program says it needs $242 million to continue supporting some 1.2 million Sudanese refugees displaced by the military-RSF conflict into neighboring Chad. The WFP has been struggling for months to maintain its refugee operations in Chad, but a rapid influx of people from Sudan combined with the approach of Chad’s rainy season (which makes reaching refugee camps difficult) has made the situation significantly more dire.
GUINEA
New Guinean Prime Minister Bah Oury told Radio France International on Tuesday that Guinea’s military government is unlikely to complete a transition to democratic rule by the end of this year. He suggested instead that the transition might be completed sometime in 2025. Guinea’s junta had pledged to hold new elections by the end of 2024 after it seized power back in September 2021, in an agreement with the Economic Community of West African States bloc. But in ousting Guinea’s transitional government last month—appointing Bah Oury to lead a new one—the junta seems to have delayed the process somewhat.
SOMALIA
Pirates apparently seized a cargo ship, the MV Abdullah, off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday. The vessel was reportedly carrying some 55,000 metric tons of coal from Mozambique to the UAE when it was taken, along with all 23 members of its crew. There’s been a resurgence in Somali piracy since November, coinciding with and perhaps feeding off of the Houthi campaign against commercial shipping that began around the same time.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
No fewer than three groups of purported Russian militants claimed to have entered Russia from Ukraine on Tuesday with one, the “Freedom of Russia Legion,” saying its fighters had attacked the village of Tyotkino in Russia’s Kursk oblast. Russian authorities are claiming that their forces repulsed all of the attacks but there’s no confirmation of that. “Freedom of Russia” and another of Tuesday’s attackers, the “Russian Volunteer Corps,” carried out several border attacks last year but have been relatively quiet in recent months. Overnight, the Ukrainian military was apparently able to carry out a successful drone strike on a large oil refinery in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod oblast, forcing its closure, as well as another oil facility in Oryol oblast.
UKRAINE
The Russian military, meanwhile, says its forces were able to capture a village called Nevelske in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast on Tuesday. Russian movement in Donetsk has slowed since its forces captured the city Avdiivka last month and followed that up with a number of quick advances. But clearly the Russians are still on the move to some extent.
The Biden administration on Tuesday ended a lengthy drought by announcing that it will send a new arms package worth some $300 million to Ukraine. This is no mean feat, as not only has the US military run out of funds allocated to replenish these arms it’s apparently some $10 billion in arrears with respect to such funding. Any hope of significant new funding for Ukrainian arms shipments lies with the administration’s supplemental military funding bill, which is currently in limbo in the US House of Representatives. I suspect the administration wants to put the Pentagon into a budgetary hole and then try to shame House Republicans into passing the bill by arguing that their delay is depriving US soldiers of needed weapons. It sounds like the new arms package will involve primarily mortar shells and ammunition for Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems and HIMARS units.
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
The European Commission plans to recommend that the European Union open full accession talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the fact that the country is dealing with an open secessionist movement in its Republika Srpska region. The EU is not in the habit of inviting new internal crises so it’s unclear whether member states will agree with the recommendation. While the Bosnian Serb secessionist movement complicates the country’s EU candidacy, if Bosnia and Serbia were both admitted to the EU it might actually reduce secessionist pressure by softening the Serbian-Bosnian border.
HUNGARY
The Hungarian government said on Tuesday that it had summoned US ambassador David Pressman to complain about Joe Biden calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a would-be dictator. Biden made that comment during a campaign stop last week after Orbán paid a visit to Donald Trump in Florida. Biden claimed that Orbán “stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship,” but the Hungarian government is insisting he never said that. Orbán is openly rooting for Trump to win November’s election.
AMERICAS
HAITI
In something of a surprise, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry agreed to resign late Monday under pressure from the US government and the Caribbean Community bloc. Henry is currently stuck in effective exile in Puerto Rico, having found himself unable to return from a trip to Kenya due to a massive gang offensive that has gripped much of Port-au-Prince and was aimed at ousting Henry from office. He released a video on Monday promising to step down after the formation of a “transitional council,” a project that Haitian politicians say they’re aiming to complete by Wednesday. For whatever its worth, the announcement appears to have quieted, if temporarily, the violence that’s gripped the Haitian capital for the past several days.
The council will assume presidential authority and appoint a new interim prime minister, with an eye toward finally organizing new elections. Its make-up remains uncertain, particularly if the gangs that forced Henry’s resignation demand to be involved (or reject the council plan outright). There’s unsurprising reluctance to bring these criminal groups into the legitimate political process but the bare fact is that they now collectively control about 80 percent of the capital and it’s unclear how anybody else in Haiti can stop them from forcing their way into the transition. Needless to say, plans for an international intervention to take on the gangs are now suspended, possibly indefinitely.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Responsible Statecraft’s William Hartung celebrates another massive military budget request and the “Great Power” competition that’s fueling it:
The Pentagon released its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 this week. There were no major surprises, unless you’re shocked by the fact we are continuing to over-invest in a strategy and a military force structure that is making the world less secure.
If this budget goes through as requested, the Pentagon and related activities like work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy will come in at $894 billion. That’s slightly less than the number being debated for this year, but far more than the levels achieved at other major turning points like the Korean and Vietnam wars or the peak of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Congress has shown little ability to provide adequate input or oversight of these huge figures. Over five months into the new fiscal year, it has yet to even pass a 2024 budget.
What could possibly justify devoting these enormous sums to the Pentagon at a time of urgent national need to address other threats to our lives and livelihoods, from climate change to epidemics of disease to rampant inequality? The primary answer is the same one we have heard repeatedly in recent years: China, China, and China.
But as I have noted in a recent paper for the Brown University Costs of War Project, by any measure the United States already spends two to three times as much on its military as China does, and outpaces it by far in basic military capabilities like nuclear weapons, naval firepower, and modern transport and combat aircraft. In the areas where there is room for doubt about the relative military power of the two rivals, from emerging technology to the likely outcome of a war over Taiwan, dialogue and diplomacy offer a far better chance of reaching a stable accommodation than spinning out scenarios for “winning” a war between two nuclear-armed powers, or by running a costly new arms race.