World roundup: March 9-10 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Portugal, and elsewhere
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Ramadan Mubarak to those who are observing the fast.
THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
March 9, 1500: Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral sets sail with a fleet bound for India by a circuitous route through the western Atlantic Ocean. In April, Cabral’s fleet made landfall in what is now eastern Brazil. It’s unclear whether he knew the land was there or just stumbled on it while making a wide turn toward the southern tip of Africa. Either way, this was the one part of the Americas that was far enough east to fall within Portugal’s allotted colonial domain under the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Cabral’s fleet eventually continued on around Africa to Calicut, where he and his crew massacred around 600 people on ten merchant ships in retaliation for an attack on a Portuguese factory, and then headed back to Portugal.
March 10, 241 BCE: A Roman fleet under Gaius Lutatius Catulus and Quintus Valerius Falto defeats a Carthaginian fleet at the Battle of the Aegates, just off the west coast of Sicily. The Carthaginians subsequently agreed to the Treaty of Lutatius, which ended the First Punic War by forcing Carthage to abandon Sicily and pay a war indemnity to Rome.
March 10, 1861: The Toucouleur Empire of Omar Saidou Tall conquers the city of Ségou, bringing an end to the already reeling Bamana Empire and consolidating much of West Africa (modern Guinea, Mali, and Senegal) under Omar Tall’s control. Although it was riding high at this point, the Toucouleur Empire’s further expansion was stymied by the Fula Massina Empire to the north, and by the 1890s it was swept aside by French colonization.
March 10, 1916: The British high commissioner for Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, pens the tenth and final letter in his exchange with Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Over the course of those ten letters the two men established the conditions under which Hussein would lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Britain later reneged on its promises to support the creation of a single “Arab Caliphate” ruled by Hussein.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The US military dispatched the USAV General Frank S. Besson Jr., an Army logistics support vessel, to Gaza on Sunday in order to begin work on Joe Biden’s emergency humanitarian pier scheme. The US military has estimated, in what seems like a “best case” scenario, that it will take 60 days to construct the pier, and the Biden administration has yet to explain how aid will get from there to people who need it. There’s no indication that it’s prepared to sidestep the Israeli military (IDF), which means any maritime aid shipments could be subject to the same bottlenecks—including, apparently, a refusal to approve visas for aid workers—that Israeli officials have set up to prevent aid from getting into Gaza by land.
Nor has the administration explained how the pier and the hypothetical distribution operation are going to be secured. Making the IDF responsible for security seems like the definition of putting the fox in charge of the hen house, but there’s no apparent alternative given the administration’s insistence that it will not put US soldiers ashore. All it will take is one Hamas attack or one IDF “oopsie” to upend this entire scheme. But even if all of these logistical challenges are resolved, there’s still one question nobody seems interested in answering: what are the people of Gaza supposed to do for the next 60 days when they’re dying of starvation right now? One answer might be on the way in the form of a European relief shipment that’s waiting in Cyprus while aid workers build what Reuters called “a makeshift jetty” in Gaza “out of rubble.” This seems even more dubious than the US military effort, and even if it succeeds it will face the same issues with respect to distribution and security.
The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Hamas spokesperson Husam Badran on Saturday in which Badran laid out the group’s thinking with respect to ceasefire negotiations. Essentially it sounds like Hamas hasn’t budged on its insistence on a full, indefinite ceasefire, which remains a nonstarter for the Israeli government. There is one piece of actual news in the interview, which is that negotiators met again in Cairo on Sunday apparently to discuss a two-day Ramadan ceasefire in hopes that a short pause could create momentum toward a longer one. I have not yet seen any indication as to how that meeting went.
The WSJ cites “Egyptian officials” who say that the group’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, “believes Hamas has the upper hand in negotiations,” which if accurate seems delusional to me but I guess that’s why I would make a lousy militant leader. One consistent through-line in analyses of Hamas’s negotiating position is that Israeli and Western analysts—who, to be clear, are just guessing—believe Sinwar wants the IDF operation to continue into Ramadan because he thinks it will further inflame regional tensions and amp up pressure on Israel. Again I’m not sure this reflects reality. If nothing else, the Biden administration’s continued indulgence insulates the Israeli government from any need to factor regional tensions into its calculus.
IRAQ
Iraqi military and paramilitary security forces reportedly killed at least ten Islamic State fighters over the weekend in the Wadi Tharthar region, which straddles the border between Iraq’s Saladin and Anbar provinces. This was one of apparently several anti-IS operations the Iraqi government carried out on Saturday across the country.
LEBANON
An Israeli strike killed at least five civilians in southern Lebanon on Saturday, bringing the total number of Lebanese civilians killed by the IDF since October 7 to at least 56. Hezbollah says its fighters launched “dozens” of rockets into northern Israel on Sunday in retaliation. I haven’t seen any indication of casualties.
YEMEN
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula announced the death of its leader, Khalid Batarfi, on Sunday. He will be…missed? Or not, I guess. Batarfi assumed leadership of AQAP in 2020 after a US drone strike killed his predecessor. The circumstances surrounding his death are unclear. AQAP’s new leader is apparently Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
A motorcycle bomb killed at least two people in Peshawar on Sunday. Police are suggesting that the bomb exploded “prematurely,” according to the AP, though it’s unclear when it was supposed to go off or what the target was supposed to be. As far as I know there hasn’t been a claim of responsibility but this seems likely to have been a Pakistani Taliban operation.
Elsewhere, the Pakistani parliament and regional assemblies elected the Pakistan People’s Party’s Asif Ali Zardari as Pakistani president on Saturday. This will be Zardari’s second stint as president, having previously served in that office from 2008 through 2013. His election was part of the coalition deal the PPP reached with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz last month. The Pakistani presidency is essentially a ceremonial position.
MYANMAR
The Indian government has begun deporting Myanmar nationals who have fled over the border in the months since the February 2021 coup that brought Myanmar’s military back to power and set the country on the path to civil war. Last month Indian officials announced that they were ending a long-standing free movement policy along the Myanmar border due to the frequent influx of civilians and Myanmar security forces attempting to escape the conflict, which they claim is causing instability in India’s Manipur state (among other complaints). Anyone deported under this policy will be returning to what is effectively a war zone, which is strictly speaking not congruent with international refugee law.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The deputy commander of the Sudanese military, Yasser al-Atta, rejected a potential ceasefire on Sunday unless it involves the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group withdrawing from civilian areas it has seized. The RSF had the previous day expressed support for a Ramadan ceasefire, as outlined in a United Nations Security Council vote on Friday. But I doubt it will be amenable to Atta’s terms. According to Reuters the military has made some recent gains in Omdurman (more on this below), but that’s not enough to outweigh the successes the RSF has had in Darfur and Wad Madani and certainly doesn’t put the military in a position to dictate ceasefire terms.
LIBYA
The president of Libya’s Presidential Council, Mohamed Menfi, and the speakers of both of the country’s legislative bodies, Aguila Saleh of the House of Representatives in Benghazi and Mohamed Takala of the High State Council in Tripoli, issued a joint statement on Sunday expressing support for the formation of a new, united Libyan government. The eastern and western factions in Libya have been backing rival governments for months and the current prime minister in Tripoli, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, has insisted that he’ll only step aside following an election. The statement didn’t go into any detail but rather called for the formation of a “technical committee” to work out those details.
GABON
Members of the Economic Community of Central African States agreed this weekend to lift the sanctions they imposed on Gabon following that country’s military coup last August. At the time, the bloc said that those sanctions—which included the suspension of Gabon’s membership—would be in place until the restoration of “constitutional order.” Gabon’s junta has said it’s aiming for new elections in August 2025, so it’s unclear why the bloc decided to take this action now.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
According to The New York Times, the steady gains the Russian military made in the days following its seizure of the city of Avdiivka last month have tapered off. This suggests that the Ukrainian military has managed to regroup along a stable new front line and/or that the Russian military has run out of steam for the time being. That does not mean the line is necessarily going to remain frozen very long.
Elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal attempts to explain why the Ukrainian government has dispatched special forces soldiers to counter Russian mercenaries in Sudan:
The front line in the war between Ukraine and Russia now extends into Africa.
With fighting in Ukraine at a near stalemate, a global battle over weapons and economic resources is taking shape, as both sides dig in for a war that could last many more years.
Moscow has been actively mining gold and training fighters in several African nations for years, but it is now stepping up economic pressure to deter smaller countries, such as Ecuador, from sending weapons to Kyiv, even indirectly.
For Ukraine, sending troops to Africa is an audacious new venture—part of a strategy to disrupt Russia’s military and economic operations abroad, make the war more costly for Moscow, and position itself as a bulwark against Russian incursions, including in regions where the West has been reluctant to get directly involved.
“It’s impossible to overcome Russia simply by fighting on a small piece of land, like the front line in Ukraine,” said a 40-year-old Ukrainian officer, who goes by the call sign Prada and led one of the Ukrainian teams in Sudan. “If they have gold mines in Sudan, we need to make them not profitable.”
The Ukrainian forces have apparently helped the Sudanese military make some progress against the Russian-aligned RSF, possibly including those recent gains in Omdurman mentioned above. The piece goes on to outline some of the potential risks to Ukraine should it, for example, be accused of worsening the Sudanese war. But contrary to the WSJ’s characterization the war in Ukraine has not been a near-stalemate for the past several weeks, and even if it is back in stalemate territory it’s unlikely to stay there indefinitely given Russia’s advantages in manpower and materiel. I’ve always said I would make a lousy general so don’t go by me, but for Ukraine to divert resources to Sudan at this particular moment seems like an odd decision and nothing in this piece really helps make it seem less odd.
PORTUGAL
The votes have nearly all been counted following Portugal’s parliamentary election on Sunday and the big winner appears to be the far-right Chega party, which shot to third place and has unofficially won around 18 percent of the vote or 46 seats in the next session of the 230 seat Portuguese parliament. As for the two mainstream parties, the center-left Socialists and the center-right Democratic Alliance (AD), they are in a virtual dead heat at around 28.7 percent of the vote or around 74 seats apiece. A small Madeira party aligned with the AD looks like it will win three seats, giving the AD control of 77 seats on the night, and as a result the Socialists have already conceded. But the AD may now need Chega to form a government. The AD has so far rejected even negotiating for Chega’s support, let alone bringing the party into a governing coalition, so it remains to be seen how it intends to approach the post-election period. It may try to form a minority government, but it could be difficult for such an arrangement to actually get anything done.
AMERICAS
EL SALVADOR
The Salvadoran government extended its crime-related state of emergency for at least another month on Friday, at the behest of President Nayib Bukele. On March 27, this state of emergency will have been in place for a full two years and it might be time to change the name to “state of normalcy” because it seems unlikely that Bukele will give it up anytime soon. Violent crime has declined substantially under the state of emergency, but so have civil rights, conditions in overcrowded Salvadoran prisons, etc.
HAITI
Finally, the US military said on Sunday that it has airlifted non-essential personnel out of the US embassy in Port-au-Prince, as gang violence continues to grip the Haitian capital. Gang fighters battled police and National Palace guards throughout the weekend, while Caribbean Community member states announced plans to hold an emergency meeting on Monday that may involve talk of a political transition away from Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is currently in effective exile in Puerto Rico.
According to The New York Times, the humanitarian situation in the city and across Haiti may be approaching a breaking point:
As the security situation worsens, so does the food insecurity. Nearly one million of Haiti’s 11 million people are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N. About 350,000 of them are on the run, living on the streets, in tent cities or in overcrowded schools, as gangs invade their neighborhoods.
Most people now only leave their homes to do essential things, like go to the bank or shop for food and water. They take advantage of a lull in the violence to buy groceries. But experts fear that stocks will soon begin to dwindle as more and more goods pile up on the docks, because transportation by road is too dangerous and gangs have seized ports.
One person described the scene at a supermarket Saturday as a “carnival,” because so many people spent hours in line to stock up on supplies. Zanmi Lasante, a health organization affiliated with Partners In Health, which has worked in Haiti for decades, said it has enough fuel to run its generators for about a week.
Doctors Without Borders had to increase its hospital bed capacity from 50 to 75, as more and more people unable to access the closed public hospital showed up with gunshot wounds. One patient arrived at 3 p.m. for treatment of a gunshot wound from that morning. He died minutes later, said Dr. James Gana, who treats patients and helps run the clinics.