World roundup: March 12 2025

Stories from Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and elsewhere

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.

Gandhi (center) leading his followers on the march (Wikimedia Commons)

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

SYRIA

Reuters, citing “six sources,” reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration “encouraged” the Syrian Democratic Forces group to come to terms with authorities in Damascus on the integration agreement they reached earlier this week. Buried deeper in the story is a possible explanation for this encouragement, which is that “the Pentagon has started developing plans” in case Donald Trump eventually orders a US military withdrawal from Syria. Trump attempted such a withdrawal in his first term only to back down in the face of opposition from within his own administration as well as concern that the US would be abandoning the SDF to a potential Turkish invasion. The SDF’s new deal with Damascus should, if it’s successfully implemented, forestall a potential conflict with Turkey, removing one obstacle to revisiting Trump’s earlier idea.