World roundup: May 21 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Taiwan, Somalia, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
May 21 878: The Aghlabid Emirate captures the Sicilian city of Syracuse after a roughly nine month siege.
May 21, 1799: Napoleon lifts his failed siege of Acre and withdraws to Egypt (and, not long after that, to France).
May 21, 2006: Montenegro holds a referendum on leaving what remained of Yugoslavia and becoming an independent state. Amid allegations of irregularities, 55.5 percent voted in favor of independence, which was just over the 55 percent needed to pass the referendum. May 21 is now annually commemorated as Independence Day in Montenegro.
INTERNATIONAL
A new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification finds that “rangelands” (plains, savannas, tundras, etc.) around the world are disappearing due to human activity. According to the UNCCD, as much as half of all such land worldwide is now considered “degraded” in some way, an estimate far higher than previous studies have suggested. An array of activity is to blame—climate change heads the list, but urbanization and the increasing demand for farmland are also major factors. Healthy rangelands support pastoral communities that are otherwise driven into extreme poverty and/or competition with farmers for scarce resources, which inevitably sparks violence. Moreover, well managed rangelands can be important carbon sinks and support food production.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Guardian is reporting, and I hope you’re sitting down for this because it’s a real shocker, that the Israeli security forces that are supposed to be protecting Gazan humanitarian aid shipments from attacks by settler mobs are in fact working with the mobs to help arrange the attacks:
Individual members of Israel’s security forces are tipping off far-right activists and settlers to the location of aid trucks delivering vital supplies to Gaza, enabling the groups to block and vandalise the convoys, according to multiple sources.
Settlers intercepting the vital humanitarian supplies to the strip are receiving information about the location of the aid trucks from members of the Israeli police and military, a spokesperson from the main Israeli activist group behind the blockades told the Guardian.
The claim of collusion by members of the security forces is supported by messages from internal internet chat groups reviewed by the Guardian as well as accounts from a number of witnesses and human rights activists.
Those blocking the vehicles say the aid they carry is being diverted by Hamas instead of being delivered to civilians in need, a claim relief agencies reject. US officials have also said that Israel has offered no evidence to support allegations that Hamas is diverting aid.
The actual reason they’re blocking aid vehicles is because they want civilians in Gaza to starve to death. That can’t be said in polite society, but that’s the bottom line. Israeli authorities have reportedly sentenced all of one Israeli soldier to a whopping 20 days in prison for refusing to defend an aid convoy last week but that appears to be the extent of their interest in enforcing humanitarian law. The Biden administration has, true to form, condemned these crimes against humanity in a general sense but refuses to take any practical action that might punish those responsible or hold the Israeli government accountable for ensuring aid delivery. If these attacks continue, someone—probably a Palestinian truck driver—is inevitably going to be killed, at which point the administration will I’m sure be very concerned and maybe even moderately perplexed.
Elsewhere:
Israeli leaders continued to lambaste the International Criminal Court on Tuesday for its decision to seek warrants for the arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges, while in Gaza the Israeli military (IDF) continued committing war crimes. Life is full of ironies, I guess. The UN Relief and Works Agency announced on Tuesday that the IDF’s Rafah campaign has forced it to shut down humanitarian aid distribution in that city because of the risk to aid workers. Closures at Rafah’s two aid checkpoints—the Rafah checkpoint itself and the Kerem Shalom checkpoint—have caused the agency to run short on supplies anyway, particularly medical supplies. The Rafah closure is also preventing medical evacuations for badly injured civilians.
On the aid front, the US military’s Central Command said on Tuesday that over 569 metric tons of supplies have been received via its offshore Gazan pier. It’s unclear how much of it has actually reached any Palestinians. A whopping ten truckloads of aid apparently were transferred to a UN warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Friday, but only five of 16 trucks made it to the facility on Saturday as the others were “intercepted” along the way by “crowds of needy residents” (according to Reuters). Zero trucks have been sent from the pier since then, and the UN now says it’s mapping out alternative routes to avoid further interceptions.
The Israeli government is demanding that “nations of the civilized world”—a designation that I gather is supposed to include Israel itself as well as the US—boycott the ICC over its pursuit of Netanyahu and Gallant. Israeli and US officials are outraged at the ICC’s apparent equivalence between Netanyahu and Gallant, on the one hand, and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, who are also on the court’s radar, on the other. In fairness, Netanyahu and Gallant have racked up a much higher body count. European governments that support Israel and are also ICC members are scrambling to articulate coherent responses to Monday’s news but at least a few, led by France, are expressing support for the court.
In testimony before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ruefully said that the ICC news “complicates the prospects” for negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza. There’s absolutely no logic to this—ceasefire talks are almost totally defunct at this point and anyway there’s no coherent reason why anything the ICC does should affect them one way or the other—it’s just one of those things US officials say anytime an international organization does something they don’t like. “We were so close to solving everything and now you’ve ruined it! I hope you’re happy!”
IDF personnel killed at least seven Palestinians and wounded another 19 during a raid in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday. AFP reported an exchange of fire between the Israeli soldiers and masked militants. It’s unclear how many of the casualties were combatants but at least a few of them have been identified as civilians.
The Israeli government on Tuesday seized camera equipment belonging to the AP that was providing a live feed of Gaza from the southern Israeli city of Sderot. According to The Middle East’s Only Democracy™, the feed violated its foreign media rules because the AP was providing the footage to the now-banned Al Jazeera outlet. After a sharp international backlash that even had the Biden administration expressing “concern,” it appears the Israelis have reversed course at least for the time being and have returned the equipment to the AP.
SYRIA
Islamic State fighters killed three Syrian soldiers in an attack in the Syrian Desert on Tuesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. IS remnants frequently use the desert to carry out hit and run assaults on Syrian security forces.
YEMEN
The Houthis are claiming that they shot down another US MQ-9 Reaper drone on Tuesday, which if true would be the second time they’ve done so since Thursday. The US military acknowledged reports of a downed drone but hasn’t said anything more.
IRAN
Nationwide memorial services began on Tuesday for former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and the other officials who were killed when their helicopter crashed on Sunday. Reuters described the events in Tabriz as “muted,” which is at least plausible given that Raisi, for example, oversaw the violent crackdown the Mahsa Amini protests in late 2022. Mixed public feelings would not be out of the question.
Al Jazeera, meanwhile, has a piece on Iran’s new foreign minister, Ali Bagheri, who is replacing the departed Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on at least an interim basis. It’s unlikely that this is going to augur any substantive change in Iranian foreign policy—for one thing, Bagheri is a temporary replacement for the moment (though he presumably stands a good chance of keeping the job longer term), and for another, Iranian foreign policy is fundamentally crafted by the supreme leader and the security establishment rather than the foreign ministry. Abdollahian’s brief term was marked by a “fewer problems with neighbors” approach that saw Iran improve relations with, among others, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He was clearly successful at implementing that strategy and it remains to be seen whether Bagheri can be as successful, but the overall approach is unlikely to change.
ASIA
GEORGIA
POLITICO is reporting that a new bill being circulated in the US Congress would give the Biden administration (and potential successors) the authority to sanction Georgian officials. It comes in response to the Georgian parliament’s passage (or impending passage, now that it’s been vetoed) of a controversial “foreign agents” law that critics argue could be used to undermine political opposition. On the carrot side, the legislation also reportedly dangles the promise of new trade and military deals for Tbilisi if the Georgian government shows “significant and sustained progress towards reinvigorating its democracy.”
Presumably that would include shelving the foreign agents law, something Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party has now intimated it would be willing to consider if it sees significant progress on those agreements “within a year maximum.” What this means for the now-vetoed bill is unclear. Georgian Dream could decide to hold off on overriding said veto while it sees what happens in Washington, or it could go ahead and override with the understanding that the law could be repealed if the US-Georgian relationship improves sufficiently.
AFGHANISTAN
Turkey’s main air carrier, Turkish Airlines, flew its first direct commercial flight from Istanbul to Kabul in nearly three years on Tuesday. Turkey, like most other countries, suspended direct flights to Afghanistan when the Taliban retook power in 2021, but it has maintained diplomatic channels and commercial ties and as a result has a relatively cordial relationship with the Taliban-led government (though it does not formally recognize that government). The plan, for now, is for Turkish Airlines to fly four round-trip Istanbul-Kabul flights per week.
INDIA
Jacobin’s Prabhat Patnaik outlines the intersection of the Indian government’s neoliberalism and its authoritarianism:
The Modi government’s wholehearted embrace of neoliberalism, even when the crisis of that economic model is causing mass distress, is precisely what constitutes its attraction for Indian monopoly capital.
Earlier support for neoliberalism in the belief that it would bring about rapid growth that would ultimately benefit everyone disappears when there is mass unemployment and acute distress. That is when neoliberalism requires a new prop to sustain itself, for which it forms an alliance with neofascist elements.
In India, this neoliberal/neofascist alliance has taken the specific form of a corporate-Hindutva alliance. The Modi government is an expression of this alliance.
Its purpose is to bring about a change in discourse so that issues of unemployment, inflation, and economic distress are pushed to the background. Meanwhile, Hindu supremacism comes to the forefront, even as the government continues to pursue an aggressive neoliberal strategy to the benefit of globalized capital and the domestic monopoly capital integrated with it.
TAIWAN
Thousands of people hit the streets of Taipei on Tuesday to express opposition to an emerging parliamentary plan to increase legislative authority over the Taiwanese government. No party won a majority in January’s parliamentary election but the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party appear to be joining forces to clamp down on the Democratic Progressive Party-led government of new President Lai Ching-te. Controversy over the proposal has already led to some dramatic scenes inside parliament, including a brawl on Friday, while DPP politicians and many of the protesters are accusing leaders of the other two parties of working on behalf of the Chinese government.
CHINA
The Chinese government on Tuesday blacklisted former US congressperson Mike Gallagher for having “interfered in China’s internal affairs.” It apparently didn’t go into detail, but Gallagher has been staunchly pro-Taiwan in his politics so I think we can connect the dots there.
AFRICA
SUDAN
According to Doctors Without Borders, fighting in and around the Sudanese city of El-Fasher has killed at least 85 people since May 10. That figure comes from just one of the city’s medical facilities, Southern Hospital, which happens to be the only medical facility in El-Fasher that’s still operating and is running dangerously low on supplies. The Rapid Support Forces group has surrounded El-Fasher, the only major city in Sudan’s Darfur region that remains nominally under military control.
NIGERIA
Unspecified gunmen attacked a pair of villages in Nigeria’s Plateau state late Monday, killing at least 40 people and perhaps many more than that if unofficial claims prove accurate. The attackers were apparently part of a bandit group that was fleeing an attack by Nigerian security forces when they swarmed through the villages. At least seven of the bandits were killed.
Elsewhere, Nigerian security forces on Monday reportedly rescued some 350 people who’d previously been abducted by Boko Haram. Their recovery was the culmination of a multi-day operation in the Sambisa Forest in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state. An unspecified number of militants were killed during the rescue.
SOMALIA
The unrecognized government of Somalia’s breakaway Somaliland region is claiming that the Ethiopian government has upgraded its consulate in the regional capital, Hargeisa, to an embassy. That would suggest that Ethiopia is now recognizing Somaliland as an independent state, and though there’s been no official comment from Ethiopian officials there are indications that Addis Ababa has promoted its top consular official in Hargeisa to ambassadorial rank. Several months ago the Ethiopian and Somaliland governments announced a deal that would give Ethiopia access to the Somaliland coast for the purpose of building a naval base, presumably in return for diplomatic recognition. The Somali government has threatened to go to war with Ethiopia if it takes that step, and last month it ordered the closure of the Ethiopian consulate in Hargeisa. Obviously that order has been ignored.
KENYA
The Washington Post discusses Kenya’s increasing centrality to US foreign policy in Africa:
Kenyan President William Ruto’s state visit to Washington this week — the first by an African president since 2008 — highlights the deepening ties between Nairobi and Washington even as Russian mercenaries, Chinese loans, wars and coups are rolling back U.S. influence elsewhere on the continent.
Chad and Niger, formerly staunch U.S. allies, both asked American troops to leave their territory this year. Diplomatic heavyweight Ethiopia, once a key ally in Africa, is infuriated by U.S. allegations of gross human rights violations and ethnic cleansing during its recent two-year civil war. Washington’s fervent support for Israel has also put it at odds with continental players such as South Africa and Egypt, which have been vocal critics of the war in Gaza.
So the United States increasingly turns to Kenya: to broker cease-fires and negotiations; contribute to international peacekeeping operations in hot spots such as Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti; and gain support on topics ranging from Ukraine’s war to climate change.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The US military is elaborating a bit on its claim that Russia has placed an anti-satellite weapon into orbit:
The United States has assessed that Russia launched what is likely a counter space weapon last week that's now in the same orbit as a U.S. government satellite, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed Tuesday.
"What I'm tracking here is on May 16, as you highlighted, Russia launched a satellite into low Earth orbit that we that we assess is likely a counter space weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low Earth orbit,” Ryder said when questioned by ABC News about the information, which was made public earlier Tuesday by Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
"Russia deployed this new counter space weapon into the same orbit as a U.S. government satellite," Ryder continued. "And so assessments further indicate characteristics resembling previously deployed counter space payloads from 2019 and 2022."
Elsewhere, the Russian military began tactical nuclear drills in its Southern Military District (the one that borders Ukraine) on Tuesday, in case the subtext to date has been too subtle for anyone. This is the first tactical nuclear drill the Russian military has ever conducted publicly and it was announced earlier this month, after French President Emmanuel Macron made another of his off the cuff comments about deploying NATO military trainers to Ukraine.
SPAIN
The Spanish government announced on Tuesday that the recall of its Argentine ambassador will be permanent. Madrid recalled its envoy on Sunday, after Argentine President Javier Millei called the wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez “corrupt” during a political rally in Madrid. Wielding his trademark diplomatic gift, Millei responded to Tuesday’s announcement by characterizing the recall as “absurd, typical of an arrogant socialist.” That should help patch things up.
AMERICAS
HAITI
Haiti’s newest international intervention is apparently about to get underway. When it does, according to The New York Times, it will be encountering a well-entrenched gang insurgency:
They have a stranglehold on the country’s infrastructure, from police stations to seaports. They have chased hundreds of thousands of people from the capital. And they are suspected of having ties to the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president.
Western diplomats and officials say the influence and capability of many Haitian gangs are evolving, making them ever more threatening to the Kenyan-led multinational police force soon deploying to Haiti as well as the fragile transitional council trying to set a path for elections.
With their arrival just days away, the 2,500 police officers will confront a better equipped, funded, trained and unified gang force than any mission previously deployed to the Caribbean nation, security experts say.
UNITED STATES
Finally, at The Atlantic, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon report on new evidence of a more substantial than previously acknowledged Saudi role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks:
For more than two decades, through two wars and domestic upheaval, the idea that al-Qaeda acted alone on 9/11 has been the basis of U.S. policy. A blue-ribbon commission concluded that Osama bin Laden had pioneered a new kind of terrorist group—combining superior technological know-how, extensive resources, and a worldwide network so well coordinated that it could carry out operations of unprecedented magnitude. This vanguard of jihad, it seemed, was the first nonstate actor that rivaled nation-states in the damage it could wreak.
That assessment now appears wrong. And if our understanding of what transpired on 9/11 turns out to have been flawed, then the costly policies that the United States has pursued for the past quarter century have been rooted in a false premise.
The global War on Terror was based on a mistake.
A new filing in a lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims against the government of Saudi Arabia alleges that al-Qaeda had significant, indeed decisive, state support for its attacks. Officials of the Saudi government, the plaintiffs’ attorneys contend, formed and operated a network inside the United States that provided crucial assistance to the first cohort of 9/11 hijackers to enter the country.
Whatever else you might want to say about this, it clearly shows what a great idea it is for the Biden administration to be negotiating a binding security deal with the Saudi government. What better way to thank our good friends for the amazing gift that has been the last 23 years of US history?