World roundup: March 16 2021

Stories from Syria, Libya, Russia, and more

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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

March 15, 44 BC: A group of Roman senators calling themselves “the Liberators” assassinates Julius Caesar due to fears that he had designs on ending the Roman Republic and making himself a monarch. Their actions ironically hastened the end of the Republic, sparking first the Liberators’ Civil War and then the civil war between Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian, which left Octavian victorious and in so dominant a position that he was able to make himself emperor.

Flemish painter Victor Honoré Janssens’ 17th-18th century The Death of Caesar (Wikimedia Commons)

March 15, 2011: Protests against the government of Bashar al-Assad that had begun in the city of Daraa earlier in the month spread to Damascus, the Syrian capital. This is usually the date marked as the start of the Syrian civil war. I’m reluctant to try to pass historical judgment on an event that hasn’t really ended yet, but it seemed important to note the anniversary.

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 16, 1988: The Iraqi military massacres between 3200 and 5000 Kurds in the city of Halabja using mustard gas and an undetermined nerve agent. The attack was the gruesome centerpiece of Saddam Hussein’s Anfal Genocide, which targeted Iraqi Kurds who resisted Hussein’s government with Iranian assistance, under a broader plan to “Arabize” northern Iraq.

INTERNATIONAL

Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for March 16:

• 121,228,379 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (20,767,729 active, +448,599 since yesterday)

• 2,681,932 reported fatalities (+9830 since yesterday)

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

• 16,656 confirmed coronavirus cases (+100)

• 1110 reported fatalities (+6)

The Syrian military reported late Tuesday that its air defenses had responded to an Israeli missile attack in the vicinity of Damascus. A statement from the defense ministry says that “most” of the missiles were shot down and that the rest caused only material damage. Generally the Syrian military overstates its successes in these sorts of incidents, so there may be more to say about this tomorrow.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 12 Syrian soldiers were killed Tuesday when their convoy was ambushed in Daraa province while en route to arrest a “former opposition commander.” Possibly he wasn’t super keen on the idea of being arrested. Daraa remains a sensitive spot for the Syrian government, having been the place where the 2011 protests against Bashar al-Assad began. It’s still home to multiple former rebel groups that cut deals with the government in 2018 when Assad’s forces recaptured the province, and some of those groups (or some members of those groups) still aren’t necessarily happy about how things worked out. This has meant an uneasy peace that occasionally gets broken by incidents like this.

Assad’s government may have invited some more unrest on Tuesday when it announced cuts to fuel subsidies that will raise the price of gasoline from 475 to 750 Syrian pounds per liter. On top of that, Syrians who need more than their 75 subsidized liters of gas per month will now be paying 2000 pounds per liter for the additional fuel instead of the previous price of 1300. The Syrian government has been cutting fuel subsidies and blaming it on US sanctions, which are part of the picture to be sure but are only one of a number of factors contributing to Syria’s economic collapse. Needless to say Syrians who are already barely scraping by are likely to find this cut hard to stomach.

YEMEN

• 2969 confirmed cases (+61)

• 707 reported fatalities (+9)

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen says its forces destroyed an “explosives-laden” boat off of Yemen’s Red Sea coast north of Hudaydah.

A crowd of protesters stormed the presidential compound in the Yemeni city of Aden on Tuesday, angry over the government’s failure to pay public sector salaries and pensions for retired soldiers. Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik and some members of his cabinet were reportedly inside the compound taking shelter but there’s no indication that they’re in serious danger. Even though the Yemeni government is based in Aden that city is somewhat unfriendly territory for it, as it’s largely controlled by separatists from the Southern Transitional Council. The STC is allied with the government but it’s a very tenuous and often hostile relationship.

Human Rights Watch is accusing the Houthis of causing the fire that killed “scores” of people in a migrant detention center in Sanaa earlier this month. The International Organization for Migration has said that at least 60 people were killed in that fire, substantially higher than the eight deaths initially reported but not an unreasonable figure given how overcrowded the facility reportedly was. HRW claims, based apparently on interviews with survivors, that Houthi guards fired “unknown projectiles” into the facility in response to a protest by detainees over conditions there.

TURKEY

• 2,911,642 confirmed cases (+16,749)

• 29,623 reported fatalities (+71)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan complained to reporters on Tuesday about the Saudi government’s decision to participate in joint exercises with the Greek military in the eastern Mediterranean scheduled for later this month. Airing grievances is pretty much Erdoğan’s day job and thus not terribly newsworthy, but in this case he dropped the interesting tidbit that Saudi officials have approached him about buying armed Turkish drones. The last thing anybody needs is for the Saudis to find a new weapons supplier, though on the bright side Erdoğan may have blown the potential sale (perhaps intentionally) by making it public.

IRAQ

• 768,352 confirmed cases (+5267)

• 13,827 reported fatalities (+39)

Iraq’s al-Balad airbase, which houses US personnel, came under rocket fire on Tuesday. A total of seven rockets were fired at the base while another five reportedly landed in a neighboring village. There’s no report of any casualties nor has there been a claim of responsibility as yet.

LEBANON

• 423,433 confirmed cases (+3480)

• 5474 reported fatalities (+52)

The collapsing Lebanese pound hit 15,000 per US dollar on the black market on Tuesday, just two weeks after it hit 10,000 per dollar in what at the time seemed like a significant, albeit very unfortunate, milestone. Lebanon still doesn’t have a functional government after months of internal squabbling. The World Bank now estimates that over half of the Lebanese population can be classified as poor and almost a quarter are living in extreme poverty.

IRAN

• 1,763,313 confirmed cases (+8380)

• 61,427 reported fatalities (+97)

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has begun using a more advanced centrifuge to enrich uranium at its Natanz facility. The Iranians are using the so-called “IR-4” device, which is more advanced than the “IR-2” devices it had already begun using. The use of both of these designs is prohibited by the 2015 nuclear deal, which limits Iran to using relatively primitive/inefficient “IR-1” centrifuges only.

ASIA

ARMENIA

• 179,287 confirmed cases (+585)

• 3277 reported fatalities (+12)

A new poll organized by the US-based International Republican Institute finds that 55 percent of Armenians support the idea of a snap election, a result that syncs with other recent surveys. Though embattled Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has dangled an offer to hold a snap election as a potential way out of Armenia’s political crisis, his government has also suggested it doesn’t see much popular interest in an early vote—a claim that these polls presumably undermine. As to how Armenians are likely to vote if there is a snap election, the results are murky to say the least. It’s clear that Pashinyan has lost a substantial amount of support since signing a lopsided and unpopular ceasefire agreement to end last fall’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh. But it’s also clear that there’s no significant support lining up behind any of the alternatives to the PM’s “My Step” coalition.

AFGHANISTAN

• 56,016 confirmed cases (+21)

• 2460 reported fatalities (+0)

Several women and possibly a child were killed Monday by a “sticky bomb” planted on a bus carrying Afghan government workers in Kabul. There seem to be several conflicting claims of casualties, including “five women,” “five people,” and “three women and a child.” On Tuesday, gunmen attacked a bus carrying university students and teachers in Baghlan province, killing at least two people. Neither of these incidents has been claimed and the Taliban has disavowed at least the latter.

INDIA

• 11,438,464 confirmed cases (+28,869)

• 159,079 reported fatalities (+187)

The Indian government is reportedly planning to slash its imports of Saudi oil by upwards of 25 percent starting in May, due to a dispute between New Delhi and OPEC. Indian officials have asked the oil cartel to raise production caps in order to bring global oil prices back down, an idea that OPEC+ members considered and rejected earlier this month.

MYANMAR

• 142,162 confirmed cases (+15)

• 3203 reported fatalities (+1)

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Thailand-based NGO that focuses on human rights in Myanmar, is reporting that at least 20 anti-junta protesters were killed by Myanmar security forces on Monday, extending what had been the bloodiest weekend since last month’s coup into a third straight day of violence. At least 11 of those deaths have already been confirmed by the AFP. Meanwhile, the World Food Program says that the prices of basic staple foods are beginning to skyrocket in major cities like Yangon and Mandalay as well as in restive parts of Myanmar like parts of Rakhine and Kachin states. Shortages of food and fuel as well as constraints on the country’s banking sector are causing the price spike.

NORTH KOREA

• No acknowledged cases

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Japan on Tuesday on the first leg of their joint Asian tour. The reason I’m mentioning this under “North Korea” is because according to the State Department the two of them, along with their Japanese counterparts Motegi Toshimitsu and Kishi Nobuo, “reaffirmed their commitment to the complete denuclearization of North Korea.”

The Biden administration has repeatedly spoken of its desire for the “denuclearization of North Korea” rather than a desire for the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The former involves convincing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, or forcing it to give them up when “convincing” inevitably fails, while the latter involves a much more comprehensive review of the entire security situation in the Koreas, including the disposition of American forces in South Korea. Put another way, the latter is possible and pursuing it as a goal could lead to major progress in reducing tensions with North Korea, while the former is impossible (short of war) and pursuing it as a goal will only increase those same tensions. The Biden administration should be talking about the latter but instead it keeps talking about the former.

SOUTH KOREA

• 96,380 confirmed cases (+363)

• 1678 reported fatalities (+3)

When Blinken and Austin head on to South Korea they may not get the warmest of receptions. Apparently there’s a bit of a parliamentary mutiny underway within the ruling Democratic Party over the terms of the new cost sharing deal Seoul and Washington have reached covering the US military deployment in South Korea. Several Democratic Party legislators have complained about the agreement, though whether there’s enough discontent to sink the deal is unclear.

AFRICA

LIBYA

• 147,121 confirmed cases (+1041)

• 2406 reported fatalities (+4)

Libya’s now-defunct, probably, Government of National Accord officially handed power on Tuesday to the new national unity government led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, which is apparently going by the name “Government of National Unity” or GNU. Which is a weird choice for acronym, because I was always taught that no GNUs is good GNUs.

I’m so, so sorry

Anyway, Dbeibah’s GNU still needs to receive a formal handover from the rival government in eastern Libya, but as it has already won nearly unanimous parliamentary approval and even “Libyan National Army” honcho Khalifa Haftar seems to have dropped his objections to the peace process, it seems unlikely that the eastern government will stand in the way.

A new UN report casts a bit of a shadow over the GNU’s birth, however, finding that there is truth to allegations that several participants in the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum were offered bribes to support Dbeibah’s candidacy for prime minister. “At least three” forum delegates were apparently offered between $150,000 and $200,000 in return for their votes. There’s no indication that Dbeibah knew about this effort and UN insists that all three of the delegates in question rejected the bribes. Of course there’s also no particular reason to believe that Dbeibah was unaware of the bribes, and it’s entirely possible that other delegates did accept bribes (it’s a bit hard to believe that these offers were only made to three people), but I’m sure the UN would like to treat this as water under the bridge so as not to risk the peace process collapsing.

MALI

• 9018 confirmed cases (+85)

• 364 reported fatalities (+1)

At least 11 Malian soldiers were killed and 14 more wounded when their patrol was ambushed on Monday in northern Mali. Islamist militants of some sort were presumably responsible. Another 11 soldiers are missing following the attack so the casualty count may rise.

NIGER

• 4870 confirmed cases (+5)

• 183 reported fatalities (+1)

Attackers killed at least 58 people in Niger’s Tillabéri region on Monday when they ambushed a convoy of people returning home from a regional market and then continued their rampage through a nearby village. Tillabéri lies along the “triple border” region with Burkina Faso and Mali and is the heartland of the Islamic State’s affiliate in that region, known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. There are also al-Qaeda affiliates active in that region but the apparent brutality exhibited toward civilians suggests this was an IS operation.

NIGERIA

• 161,074 confirmed cases (+179)

• 2018 reported fatalities (+2)

The Danish government says it’s sending a naval frigate to the Gulf of Guinea from this November through next March in an effort to “deter pirate attacks.” Predominantly Nigerian gangs have turned that region into the global hotspot for piracy, far surpassing the now-relatively placid Horn of Africa. November-March coincides with peak season for piracy because seas are calmer. The Danish ship will station itself in international waters to respond to distress calls from commercial ships.

ETHIOPIA

• 178,108 confirmed cases (+1490)

• 2573 reported fatalities (+18)

The Ethiopian government says it’s not open to international mediation with respect to its ongoing dispute with Egypt and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The Sudanese government on Monday said it had requested four-party mediation from the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations, and the United States. Years of talks over the construction and operation of the GERD have gotten more or less nowhere, with Sudan and especially Egypt still concerned over the dam’s impact on Blue Nile and Nile river water levels. The Ethiopians say they’re still amenable to African Union mediation but not to the involvement of “outsiders.”

MOZAMBIQUE

• 64,929 confirmed cases (+413)

• 732 reported fatalities (+7)

Several international NGOs and aid groups are calling attention to the effects of northern Mozambique’s ongoing jihadist insurgency:

Northern Mozambique’s humanitarian crisis is growing rapidly, with nearly 670,000 people displaced by the Islamic extremist insurgency in Cabo Delgado province, international aid groups said Tuesday.

Children as young as 11 are being beheaded by the rebels, according to workers for Save the Children, who interviewed grief-stricken families.

The number of displaced has dramatically increased by more than 500,000 in the past year and nearly 1 million people are in need of food aid, according to the U.N. A high number of the displaced are dependent upon the generosity of already poor families, with shortages of water, food, and sanitation widespread.

More than 2,600 people have died in the conflict since it started in 2017, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

• 4,409,438 confirmed cases (+9393)

• 92,937 reported fatalities (+443)

The Russian government on Tuesday decried what it called “unprecedented” pressure being placed on several countries not to employ the Russian-made Sputnik V COVID vaccine. Which just sounds ridiculous, I mean where in the world are they getting the idea tha-

Buried deep in the dry, 72-page annual report of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lay a startling admission: U.S. health officials under President Donald Trump worked to convince Brazil to reject Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.

The document, released in January, drew little attention at first. But that changed on Monday when the official Twitter account for the Sputnik V vaccine posted a screenshot of the previously overlooked claim, citing a report by Brasil Wire, and criticized the United States for effectively blocking Russia’s attempts at vaccine diplomacy.

Ah, well, nevertheless. Although there were some understandable concerns about the rushed testing process Sputnik V went through, subsequent testing has demonstrated its effectiveness. And it’s been much easier for developing nations to acquire since, unlike vaccines made by Western drug companies, the United States and Europe aren’t hoarding supplies of Sputnik V.

UNITED KINGDOM

• 4,268,821 confirmed cases (+5294)

• 125,690 reported fatalities (+110)

The United Kingdom is rolling out a brand new, post-Brexit foreign policy designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century, the centerpiece of which is a proposal to drastically increase its nuclear arsenal. That kind of seems like it’s geared to meet the challenges of the 20th century, frankly, but I’m sure Boris Johnson knows what he’s doing. The question now is whether the Biden administration plans to get serious about a rogue state planning to undermine international nonproliferation goals or if it only reserves that kind of talk for countries like Iran and North Korea.

AMERICAS

BOLIVIA

• 260,059 confirmed cases (+670)

• 11,974 reported fatalities (+16)

According to Reuters, “tens of thousands” of people turned out on Monday, particularly in Bolivia’s conservative Santa Cruz region, to protest the weekend arrest of ex-junta leader Jeanine Áñez. Far right regional governor-elect Luis Camacho, who is himself still under investigation over his role in the 2019 coup that ousted former President Evo Morales, led the rally.

BRAZIL

• 11,609,601 confirmed cases (+84,124)

• 282,400 reported fatalities (+2798)

Jair Bolsonaro named cardiologist Marcelo Queiroga on Monday as his fourth health minister since the start of the pandemic. His predecessor, Eduardo Pazuello, saw his career fall victim to the same spike in COVID cases that’s currently killing 2000 Brazilians per day, give or take. Queiroga pledged to continue following Bolsonaro’s COVID policies, which should be real good news for everybody.

UNITED STATES

• 30,192,224 confirmed cases (+52,650)

• 549,367 reported fatalities (+1248)

The good news is there’s a serious push in Congress to allocate an additional $12 billion toward the US State Department, extra resources that will be needed to reorient US foreign policy away from militarism. The bad news is the push is motivated by a need to Compete With China, which is probably the silliest rationale imaginable for this proposal. Hopefully the ends will justify the means.

Finally, if you missed Daniel Bessner’s latest Foreign Exchange column yesterday, he took up the problem of international anarchy and asked whether we should look to an unlikely place to build stronger global institutions:

In 2021, the dream of an international working-class movement is mostly a dead letter; though various socialists and communists might refer to it, there are few, in my opinion, who genuinely think that a transnational workers’ uprising is in the offing. Instead, many on the left believe—rightly—that the nation-state will be the engine of socialist transformation.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that socialists are free to ignore the problem of international anarchy, especially because the realities of twenty-first century geopolitics present us with an interesting question: Do we actually live in a state of international anarchy? Or, put another way, does the existence of a US empire of 750 military bases, an empire that has regularly deployed troops to most of the world’s countries, indicate that there is in fact a supranational body that shapes international politics, and that body is, in fact, the US empire? And does this not suggest, to use Marxist terms, that if capitalism is the prerequisite for socialism (in that it creates the conditions that make socialism possible), then perhaps the US empire is the prerequisite for planetary organization (in that it creates the truly global structures necessary for the latter)?