World roundup: March 16-17 2024
World roundup: March 16-17 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Niger, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who are celebrating! Tonight’s update may be a bit shorter than usual because I spent an inordinate amount of time today making Guinness stew.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We are approaching Spring Break here at Foreign Exchanges, which has some additional significance this year for family reasons (regular readers will know there’s been some upheaval on that front over the past several months). I’ll be stepping away from the newsletter after Thursday’s roundup and we will return to our regular schedule on Tuesday, April 2. Thanks for reading!
THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
March 16, 1527: Though outnumbered, an early Mughal army under the dynasty’s founder, Babur, defeats a conglomeration of forces under Rajput leader Rana Sanga at the Battle of Khanwa in northeastern India. Babur made effective use of field artillery and wagon fortifications, as well as the defection of a large portion of Rana Sanga’s army, to win the battle. In defeat, Rana Sanga’s alliance fell apart and Mughal control of northern India was secured—at least until they were (temporarily) ousted from power in 1540.
March 17, 1861: The first Italian parliament proclaims King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia as king of a newly unified Italy. This was the culmination of a unification process (the Risorgimento) that began amid the Revolutions of 1848, though the process wasn’t completed until the Italians took Venice from Austria in 1866 and Rome from the Papacy in 1870.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
There is apparently some newfound optimism about the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza, mostly because Hamas has reportedly softened its negotiating position. I’m not entirely clear how, but a number of outlets have suggested that the group is no longer pushing hard for a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli military (IDF) withdrawal from the territory, which were both nonstarters for the Israeli government. Hamas leaders, the story goes, are starting to realize that their hopes of a Ramadan uprising have fizzled and they may be feeling some rising resentment from Gaza’s civilian population as it continues to bear the brunt of the consequences for the October 7 attacks. Even a temporary ceasefire could help tamp down those feelings. A new round of negotiations was supposed to begin in Qatar on Sunday, but I haven’t seen any reporting as to how it went.
In other items:
It hasn’t been a great few days for Hamas, which may help explain the softening of its negotiating position. The Israeli military now believes it has confirmed that Marwan Issa, deputy commander of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, was indeed killed in an IDF airstrike last weekend. Hamas officials were also displeased with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to name Mohammad Mustafa as the PA’s new prime minister on Thursday, criticizing the “unilateral” appointment. The PA’s ruling Fatah Party clapped back, pointing out that Hamas had acted pretty unilaterally itself on October 7, and that might have stung a bit given how things are going at present.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated over the weekend that no matter how many Palestinian kids he kills, and no matter how much facile criticism he takes for it from Israel’s Western enablers, he’s committed to an IDF assault on Rafah. In a press conference on Sunday alongside visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Netanyahu did stress that the IDF won’t leave Rafah’s civilian population “locked in place” but will instead “enable them to leave.” Rhetorically this seems a far cry from the “actionable” evacuation plan the Biden administration says it has demanded and even from the nebulous “humanitarian islands” idea the IDF floated a few days ago, but maybe I’m reading too much into what Netanyahu is quoted as saying.
The Washington Post published a report on Saturday looking at one of the more inscrutable aspects of the situation in Gaza, the thousands of people who are currently classified as “missing.” It’s impossible to know how many of them are genuinely missing, as opposed to those who are actually dead but whose bodies haven’t been recovered, or those who have been seized by the IDF without notification. At this point many of the undiscovered dead might never be identified.
Of those who have been confirmed dead, with the official toll now approaching 32,000 the United Nations says that more than 13,000 have been children. That number will of course continue to increase, because of the violence but also more and more because of starvation. I don’t really have a point to make here, other than to note once more that while children in Gaza are starving to death right now because of a blockade that’s being enabled by US military support, the only solution the Biden administration has offered (absent a ceasefire) is an over-complicated emergency seaport scheme that might, in the best case scenario, be able to start accepting aid shipments two months from now.
SYRIA
A landmine killed at least 19 civilians who were hunting truffles in eastern Syria’s Raqqa province on Saturday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The explosive was almost certainly planted by Islamic State at some point, though there’s no way to know that for certain nor is there any indication as to how long it had been there. IS fighters do frequently attack truffle hunting parties but whether they intentionally targeted this one is impossible to say.
On Sunday morning, an apparent Israeli missile strike hit targets near Damascus, wounding at least one Syrian soldier. The SOHR claimed the strike targeted a Hezbollah weapons shipment.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Armed attackers, including a number of suicide bombers, struck a military base in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday, killing at least seven security personnel. At least six of the attackers also died during the battle. A group calling itself “Jaish-e-Fursan-e-Muhammad” claimed responsibility for the attack.
NORTH KOREA
The North Korean military carried out some sort of weapons launch on Monday, firing what appears to have been at least one ballistic missile off of the country’s east coast according to both the South Korean and Japanese militaries. Japanese officials reported a second launch so there may have been two missiles involved. It’s unclear what weapons were launched but the South Korean government is hosting a “Summit for Democracy” conference starting on Monday, and one of the attendees happens to be US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Presumably the North Koreans seized the opportunity to make a statement.
AFRICA
NIGER
Niger’s ruling junta announced on Saturday that it is withdrawing from its military cooperation agreement with the United States “with immediate effect,” according to Reuters. The US government sent a delegation of some sort to Niger earlier in the week that apparently offended the junta somehow, as it cited some unspecified breach of diplomatic protocol in announcing the end of the military arrangement. The way US officials have described the trip it sounds like it might have included some uncomfortable discussions about the junta’s plans—or lack thereof—for transitioning Niger back to some semblance of civilian rule and/or, and this may more likely, about the junta’s relationship with Russia.
The implications for the US military could be significant, given that Niger was US Africa Command’s primary operational hub in West Africa. That said, the Pentagon began consolidating US operations in Niger after the coup in July and has already been talking to governments in coastal West African states about setting up new bases. So it wasn’t entirely unprepared for something like this.
NIGERIA
At least 16 soldiers attempting to quell a violent land dispute were attacked and killed in southern Nigeria’s Delta state on Thursday. They were responding to clashes between the Okoloba and Okuama communities when according to the Nigerian military they “were surrounded by some community youths and killed.” Nigerian authorities say they’ve made arrests in the case and are continuing to investigate.
SOMALIA
The Indian Navy reported on Saturday that its personnel had seized the MV Ruen, a cargo vessel that Somali pirates hijacked back in December. Indian officials say their personnel forced the surrender of some 35 hijackers and rescued 17 crew members. This is the first recovery of a vessel taken by Somali pirates since 2017, which admittedly might have something to do with the fact that Somali piracy had been on the decline until a few months ago.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Vladimir Putin has—and I hope you’re sitting down because this one is a real shocker—won Russia’s presidential election. Though the odds were stacked against him, the two-term incumbent eked out a narrow win with, at last check, a bit over 88 percent of the vote. It was a close race between Putin and his main challenger, Some Other Guy, but in the end the very real votes of actual Russians, in this completely free and fair election, carried the day. Official turnout, also a definitely real and meticulously counted figure, was around 74 percent.
The Ukrainian military marked Putin’s triumph with a series of drone strikes over the weekend, killing at least two people in Belgorod oblast in one of them. Primarily they targeted, as they’ve been doing for some time now, Russian oil facilities. One attack caused a fire at a Rosneft refinery in Samara oblast on Saturday, while an overnight strike reportedly caused a fire at a refinery in Krasnodar oblast. Russian authorities also accused the Ukrainians of targeting civilian electrical infrastructure.
MOLDOVA
Authorities in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region accused the Ukrainian military of having attacked one of their military bases with a drone on Sunday. The Moldovan government later said it couldn’t confirm that any attack had taken place, while the Ukrainian government rejected the charge and accused Transnistria and its Russian ally of “trying to carry out provocations and manipulate the information space by spreading fakes.”
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
The Colombian government announced on Sunday that it is suspending its ceasefire with the ex-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) faction Estado Mayor Central in three provinces—Nariño, Cauca, and Valle del Cauca. According to Colombian officials, EMC fighters have broken the ceasefire by attacking security forces and civilians in those three regions. As far as I know there hasn’t been any reaction yet from the EMC.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Nick French of Dollars & Sense looks at the benefits that are accruing to US companies as a result of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, particularly with respect to US defense contractors:
The U.S. corporations with the most direct complicity in Israeli crimes, of course, are military contractors. According to Molly Gott and Derek Seidman, writing for the investigative news website Eyes on the Ties, five of the six biggest weapons manufacturers in the world are based in the United States. Those are Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon).
Disturbingly, but unsurprisingly, many of these companies saw their stock prices shoot up when Israel’s war on Gaza began, Gott and Seidman reported. And weapons company executives have been publicly enthusiastic about the opportunities for profit opened up by the war. Discussing the conflict on an earnings call on October 24, RTX CEO Greg Hayes declared, “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking.” On General Dynamics’s earnings call the following day, the company’s CFO and Executive Vice President Jason Aiken said, “If you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”
There can be little doubt that Israeli forces are using these weapons to commit war crimes against Palestinians. As Stephen Semler reported in Jacobin, many of the specific weapons that the Biden administration has sent to Israel have been repeatedly used to commit war crimes in the past. This includes Hellfire missiles, artillery shells, and assault rifles that have been used to kill clearly identified civilians. It also includes white phosphorus, which Semler describes as “a brutal incendiary weapon capable of burning straight through flesh, bone, and even metal” that is outlawed for use near civilians by Protocol III of the Geneva Conventions. Israel has used white phosphorus repeatedly, including in the current war.