World roundup: March 29-30 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Myanmar, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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Eid Mubarak to those who are celebrating!
TODAY IN HISTORY
March 29, 1430: The Siege of Thessaloniki ends with the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine-turned-Venetian city.
March 29, 1857: An Indian sepoy named Mangal Pandey engages in an act of insurrection against East India Company officers at his military base outside of Kolkata. He was arrested and later hanged, as was his immediate superior for refusing to arrest him. Pandey’s case highlighted the growing dissatisfaction many sepoys were feeling toward the EIC, and his example (along with what many felt was a disproportionate punishment) helped spark the Sepoy Mutiny, also known as the Indian Rebellion of 1857. That insurrection failed, but it also prompted the British government to take direct control of India, stripping it from the EIC.
March 29, 1879: In arguably the decisive battle of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, a force of around 2200 British soldiers and auxiliaries defeats a Zulu army nearly ten times its size at Kambula. Coming just a few days after a smaller British force had suffered a devastating defeat in the Battle of Hlobane and two months after a decisive Zulu victory at Isandlwana ended the initial British invasion of Zululand, Kambula showed that a properly entrenched British army using rifles and field cannon could pick apart even a much larger Zulu force, and the effect on Zulu morale appears to have been profound. A second British invasion of Zululand brought the war to a close in early July. British authorities broke the Zulu kingdom apart into 13 chiefdoms.
March 30, 1282: Sicilians rebel against the rule of Charles I of Anjou, sparking the War of the Sicilian Vespers. The conflict took its name from the evening prayers on Saturday, March 30, the day before Easter. Sometime during or after that service, a group of Sicilians had an unfriendly encounter with a group of Frenchmen in Palermo. Resentments over Sicily’s relatively low status within Charles’ Mediterranean empire erupted into a six week massacre of Frenchmen on the island. A 20 year war ensued, at the end of which the Angevins retained control over their mainland Italian kingdom, Naples, but Sicily came under the control of Aragon.
March 30, 1856: Representatives of Austria, France, the Ottoman Empire, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the 1853-1856 Crimean War. The war was a serious Russian defeat, and the terms reflected that. The Black Sea was designated as neutral territory, barring all warships—but especially Russian warships—from its waters. Russia was also forced to give up territory in the Danube region and forfeited to France any claim it had as being the protector of Christian subjects in the Ottoman Empire.
March 30, 1867: US Secretary of State William Seward and Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl agree on a sale price of $7.2 million for the US to purchase Alaska. The sale would be finalized in a treaty that was ratified by the US Senate that October. The Russians had realized they couldn’t hold on to Alaska in the event of a US migration there (a la the California Gold Rush), and the Russian government needed the cash. Reception in the US wasn’t uniformly positive, but the whole “Seward’s Folly” sentiment has been exaggerated in the contemporary consciousness and for the most part the US public seems to have supported the acquisition.
March 30, 1912: Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco and French diplomat Eugène Regnault sign the Treaty of Fez, making Morocco a French protectorate. Abd al-Hafid signed the treaty with a French army encircling the city, so you might say he was well motivated to agree to a lopsided arrangement that looked more like a colonial capitulation than a protectorate along the lines of Egypt’s relationship to Britain. Of course, in fairness, Egypt’s relationship to Britain looked increasingly like a colonial one by this point too. The treaty was not well received by the Moroccan public. Riots broke out the following month in Fez, and concessions made to Spain in the Rif (or “Spanish Morocco”) helped fuel the Rif War, which ended in 1927, between Spain and the Berber tribes of the region.
INTERNATIONAL
A new study published in the journal Science a few days ago concludes that “global warming has notably reduced the amount of water that’s being stored around the world in soil, lakes, rivers, snow and other places, with potentially irreversible impacts on agriculture and sea level rise.” According to its findings, the planet has lost “over 2,000 gigatons” of “soil moisture” over the past 20 years and land is losing its capacity to reabsorb lost moisture—which means more flooding, for example, in instances of heavy rain. This even apparently explains a “wobble” that scientists have detected in the Earth’s rotation, caused by the loss of all that water mass.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa installed his new transitional government on Saturday, featuring 23 ministers and a few stabs at something approximating “diversity.” Interestingly Sharaa has done away with the post of prime minister, which presumably means he’ll be handling all executive functions moving forward. On the diversity front, The Gang includes one member of each of four Syrian religious/ethnic minority groups—Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Kurds—and one woman (the aforementioned Christian, Hind Kabawat, who is now minister for social affairs and labor). All of the major cabinet ministries will be controlled by people connected with the “Salvation Government” that Sharaa and his jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham organization ran in Idlib province during Syria’s civil war.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya announced on Saturday that the organization had accepted a ceasefire proposal put forward by mediators Egypt and Qatar. The Israeli government quickly rejected it and offered a “counterproposal” with the support of the Trump administration. The Egyptian-Qatari framework seems to have been pretty close to what was reported several days ago, wherein Hamas would release five living captives over a 50 day truce while negotiations resume over a durable ceasefire. It’s unclear what is in the Israeli counterproposal but more than that it’s unclear whether any of the details matter. If Hamas announced in the next hour that it had accepted Israel’s new terms there’s every reason to expect that the Israelis would reject their own offer and demand something else, continuing a game of ceasefire whack-a-mole whose only purpose is to give the Israeli government a veneer of respectability while its military (IDF) continues slaughtering Palestinians.
The failure of this agreement to come together is of course Hamas’s fault, somehow. Pay no mind to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s feeling his oats to such an extent that he’s more or less acknowledging that he’s sabotaging negotiations to continue inflicting punishment on Gaza and its people. According to Netanyahu the resumption of intense IDF violence is causing Hamas to “crack” under the pressure, which is opening up all sorts of possibilities from his perspective. Not having to do with releasing the remaining captives, mind you—there’s no indication Netanyahu has ever cared much about that. But he is excited about the possibility of Hamas agreeing to disarm and send its leaders into exile, at which point he’ll have a clear path toward implementing Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. That’s the only scenario under which he’s going to be willing to end, finally, what’s been a politically very useful massacre.
IRAN
The Iranian government’s reply to Donald Trump’s recent letter reportedly rules out direct negotiations with US officials on the subject of Iran’s nuclear program, but expresses a willingness to engage in indirect talks. This is nothing that Iranian officials haven’t already said publicly, and the rationale—their mistrust of the man who tore up Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with the US during his first term—seems entirely reasonable under the circumstances. Nevertheless I imagine Trump isn’t going to take this response well. He told NBC News in an interview on Sunday that if Iranian officials “don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” though he then also suggested that he might “do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago” and it’s unclear whether he meant in addition to the bombing or as an alternative to it.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The Afghan government has released US national Faye Hall nearly two months after it arrested her, according to former US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. The circumstances around Hall’s detention are unclear as are the circumstances around her release. She’s the fourth US national released by Afghan authorities so far this year. The Biden administration secured the release of two of them in a January prisoner exchange, while earlier this month Kabul freed George Glezmann in what it characterized as a “goodwill gesture” to Donald Trump.
PAKISTAN
According to AFP Pakistani security forces killed at least 11 civilians in three drone strikes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday. The provincial government, characterizing the strikes as part of an “anti-terror operation” against “a hideout and transit point” apparently used by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), has acknowledged that “some unarmed civilians were present in the vicinity of the operation site.” It called the loss of civilian life “deeply regrettable.” In another operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Saturday, TTP militants killed at least seven soldiers while Pakistani forces killed at least seven of the militants. And a bombing in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province killed one police officer and one civilian.
INDIA
Indian security forces killed at least 16 Naxalite rebels in a clash in Chhattisgarh state on Saturday. Authorities continue to crack down on the Maoist militants, whose rebellion began in the late 1960s but has diminished to a fairly low level insurgency after hitting a peak of activity around 2010. Officials estimate that Indian forces have killed nearly 400 of the rebels over the course of last year and so far this year. The Indian government has declared an intention to eradicate the Naxalites completely by early next year.
MYANMAR
The official death toll from Friday’s earthquake is now approaching 1700 in Myanmar (with at least 18 killed in Thailand) and will likely have risen beyond that by the time you read this. Foreign support is finding its way to Myanmar, primarily from countries in the region including China, India, and Russia, and some aid has also arrived from Western governments including the US. Nevertheless, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is warning that a “severe shortage of medical supplies is hampering response efforts.”
The response from Myanmar’s ruling junta sounds like it has been spotty at best, as one might expect given its overall lack of capacity and the fact that the country has been fragmented by civil war for over four years now. But it has apparently been able to continue carrying out airstrikes on rebel-held parts of the country, so at least its priorities are in order. As far as the rebels are concerned, the “National Unity Government” that oversees the “People’s Defense Force” militias that sprang up in the wake of the February 2021 coup announced “a two-week pause in offensive military operations” over the weekend, but it’s unclear how many of Myanmar’s more established ethnic rebel factions are going to follow suit.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Sudanese military on Saturday claimed the capture of the Souq Libya, a major market in the city of Omdurman, from the Rapid Support Forces militant group. This is another in a series of major military advances that have left the RSF hanging by a thread not just in Khartoum but in the entirety of Sudan’s capital region. On Sunday, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo acknowledged that his forces had quit Khartoum in recent days but insisted it was not a retreat but a “tactical” redeployment to positions they still hold in Omdurman. Apparently things aren’t going well for the militants there either.
BURKINA FASO
Suspected jihadist militants attacked a Burkinabè army unit in the country’s East region on Friday, killing “several dozen” soldiers and civilian volunteer auxiliaries. The army has reportedly launched a retaliatory operation in the area and “several” militants have been killed.
NIGER
Niger’s ruling junta announced on Sunday that it’s withdrawing from the “Multinational Joint Task Force” that’s supposed to be combating jihadist violence in the Lake Chad region. That organization, which also includes contributions from Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria, has had mixed success at best owing largely to a failure of coordination. Niger’s withdrawal will only exacerbate that problem. It’s unclear how the MNJTF plans on responding to this development.
NIGERIA
A pro-Palestine demonstration organized by the Shiʿa Islamic Movement of Nigeria in Abuja turned violent on Friday, leaving at least six people (five IMN members and one police officer) dead. I suspect that the subject of the protest was less relevant to the violence than the fact that the IMN was behind it. The Nigerian government has never been particularly generous toward the country’s Shiʿa minority and it outlawed the IMN itself in 2019 over the group’s militant activities. The IMN is insisting that its demonstration was peaceful until soldiers attacked it, while Nigerian officials are claiming that IMN members came armed and struck first as police were responding to some sort of “distress call.”
SOMALIA
US Africa Command says it carried out an airstrike targeting Islamic State elements in Somalia’s Puntland region on Saturday, killing “several” of the group’s personnel. As usual, AFRICOM didn’t go into much detail except to assure its audience that no civilians were harmed.
Elsewhere, the government of the separatist Somaliland region has unsurprisingly reacted badly to Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s offer to give the US “exclusive control” of an airbase and seaport in the city of Berbera. As it happens Berbera is also Somaliland’s capital, and as far as its government is concerned it is not Somalia’s to give away. Regional foreign minister Abdirahman Dahir Aden called Mohamud’s offer “desperate” on Saturday. There’s been a fair amount of speculation that Donald Trump might recognize Somaliland’s professed independence, perhaps in a deal that includes the use of Berbera’s strategic facilities. Mohamud also offered Trump the use of the seaport of Bosaso in Puntland, which hasn’t declared independence but does regard itself as largely autonomous and will likely resent the Somali government making such an offer.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Donald Trump is reportedly “angry and pissed off” at Russian President Vladimir Putin, after Putin once again questioned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy on Friday. This seems odd, inasmuch as Trump himself has done exactly the same thing, but I’ve long since given up trying to figure out how the US president’s beautiful mind works (if it’s still working at all). At any rate, in his NBC interview on Sunday Trump raised the prospect of imposing “secondary tariffs on all oil coming out of Russia” if a) his effort to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine fails and b) he blames Putin for that failure. Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who spent part of his weekend with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, fueled speculation about a rift between Trump and Putin, telling reporters in London that he felt Trump might be “running out of patience” with Russia.
UKRAINE
Trump also seems to be losing patience with Zelensky, whose frosty reception to a new and even more exploitative US mineral rights proposal had Trump telling reporters on Sunday that the Ukrainian leader is “trying to back out of the rare earth deal and if he does that he’s got some problems, big, big problems.” We’ve already seen what those problems might look like so I don’t know that there’s any reason to dwell on it, but Zelensky may want to take note.
Elsewhere, the Russian military claimed the capture of three Ukrainian villages over the weekend, one in Zaporizhzhia oblast and two in Donetsk. One of the Donetsk villages, Zaporizhzhya (spelled differently to distinguish from the province), is located just seven kilometers from the border of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk oblast, a region Russian forces have yet to enter. If the Russian military is able to take and hold territory in another Ukrainian province it could have profound ramifications for any potential peace talks.
AMERICAS
ECUADOR
CNN reported on Saturday that Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is building a new naval facility in the city of Manta that he’s expecting to fill with US military forces sent ostensibly to help Noboa’s government deal with gang violence. He’s been pleading for international military aid (from Brazil and Europe as well as the US) and was in Florida over the weekend to discuss the idea with Trump. Noboa’s main opponent in next month’s presidential election, Luisa González, opposes any foreign intervention, so what happens here will be impacted by, and could impact upon, that contest. Speaking of the election, Noboa sacked his vice president, Verónica Abad, on Saturday. The two are on poor terms, and since under Ecuadorian law presidents must hand power to their vice presidents while campaigning that has made for a difficult situation. Noboa named Cynthia Gellibert, his secretary-general of public administration (i.e., chief of staff), as Abad’s interim replacement.
EL SALVADOR
Drop Site is reporting that the deal under which the Trump administration shipped alleged Venezuelan gang members off to prison in El Salvador had a little more to it than has been openly acknowledged:
U.S. President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have long presented themselves as crusaders of justice battling the scourge of transnational criminal gangs. Earlier this year, the Trump administration declared MS-13—a violent Salvadoran gang that originated in the U.S.—and other Latin American criminal groups to be “terrorist” organizations.
The narrative hit a cinematic apogee earlier this month when Trump swept up a klatch of Venezuelans he said were hardened gangsters, paired them up with some alleged members of MS-13 and sent them down south to be detained in Bukele’s “terrorism” prison.
The truth turns out to be much messier. Not only did Trump deport Venezuelans who were likely completely innocent, but also a specific MS-13 member who is emblematic of alleged corruption at the highest ranks of the Salvadoran government: a man called “Greñas.”
It turns out that “Greñas,” AKA Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, is high up enough in the MS-13 hierarchy that he has knowledge of “secret negotiations between the gang and Bukele’s government, aimed at lowering gang violence in exchange for political support.” Bukele is apparently quite keen to prevent anyone who knows about those negotiations from talking to US authorities lest the embarrassing information become public, and the Trump administration is helping him to maintain the coverup.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Brown University’s Costs of War project has published a new report on the long-term health effects that the US invasion of Iraq had on the city of Fallujah that seems relevant for contemporary war-zones:
Based on interdisciplinary biological, environmental, and anthropological research in Fallujah, Iraq, this report finds that people who have returned to bombarded homes and neighborhoods may face increased risk of negative health impacts from heavy metal exposure, both for themselves and for future generations. The findings support prior research which has demonstrated that those who are first at the scenes of war-damaged areas may be at a higher risk of reproductive health harms, and that Fallujah’s population faced a 17-fold increase in birth anomalies and myriad other health problems linked with the 2003 U.S. invasion. This study found that exposure to remnants of war, amplified by vitamin deficiencies, may play a role in these health outcomes.
The authors’ bone sampling research detected uranium in the bones of 29% of study participants in Fallujah and lead was detected in 100% of participants’ bone samples. The amount of lead detected in participants’ bones was 600% higher than averages from similarly aged populations in the U.S. The authors’ environmental sampling detected higher levels of heavy metals in the soils of more heavily bombarded neighborhoods, indicating the enduring distribution of heavy metals linked with military activity.
Additionally, the research found that in the process of being displaced, returning, and re-establishing households, nutritional gaps can compound reproductive health risks for returnees.
Returnees to bombarded cities in places such as Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, and Lebanon likely face negative long-term health impacts from heavy metal exposure, both for themselves and for future generations. Returnees can limit negative health impacts by wearing personal protective equipment and prioritizing certain nutritional practices, such as vitamin protocols.