World roundup: November 2-3 2024
Stories from Iran, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
November 2, 1917: The Balfour Declaration is issued. In a letter to Walter Rothschild, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour expressed the British government’s support for “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Balfour’s letter was less committal than Rothschild and other Zionist leaders wanted, in that he did not express support for making Palestine a “Jewish state.” Nevertheless the declaration became the basis of British policy in Mandatory Palestine moving forward and is a major milestone in the eventual creation of the state of Israel.
November 2, 1964: Saudi King Saud bin Abdulaziz is ousted in an internal family coup. Saud and his brother/crown prince, Faisal, had been engaged in a power struggle since their father’s death in 1953, a struggle that Faisal really won earlier in the year when he and the rest of the ruling family stripped Saud of his authority and forced him to name Faisal as his regent. Saud’s mismanagement of the country, along with concerns that he was losing the “Arab Cold War” to Gamal Abdel Nasser and republicanism, led to his marginalization and ultimately removal from power. Finally in November the ruling family officially deposed Saud and made Faisal king.
November 3, 644: The second Muslim caliph, Umar, is assassinated. Between the total conquest of the Persian Empire and the capture of most of the Byzantine Empire, Umar’s caliphate saw a massive expansion in the Arab empire that had been established by Muhammad. He was murdered by a slave, Piruz Nahavandi (or “Abu Lulu”), who had previously been a soldier in the Persian army. His motives are unclear, but revenge for the Arab conquest may have been among them.
November 3, 1903: Panama declares itself independent of Colombia, at the encouragement of a US government that wanted to deal with an independent and…oh, let’s say “persuadable” Panamanian government in constructing the Panama Canal. Commemorated as Panamanian Separation Day.
INTERNATIONAL
In a new report released to mark International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists on Saturday, UNESCO revealed that 162 journalists were killed on the job in 2022 and 2023, or one roughly every four days in other words. Latin America and the Caribbean was the deadliest region for journalists over that period, seeing 61 of them killed. For the first time in several years 2023 saw more journalists killed inside combat zones than outside of them, a shift fueled primarily by the Israeli military’s (IDF) killing of journalists in Gaza.
Eight members of the OPEC+ bloc announced on Sunday that they will extend voluntary oil production cuts through at least the end of the year. Those eight countries—Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—collectively adopted a 2.2 million barrel per day cut in November of last year to account for lagging demand, particularly in China.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Washington Post offers another report on the IDF’s use of Palestinian human shields:
For two weeks in late July and early August, said Mohammed Saad, 20, he and two other Palestinian men were forced by an Israeli army unit in Gaza to enter buildings feared to contain explosives and photograph every inch before troops were given the all clear to enter.
When the soldiers were done with him, he said, someone shot him in the back.
Saad was among four Palestinian men who spoke on the record to provide vivid accounts of what they described as Israel employing detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza — defined by the Geneva Conventions as using civilians or other detainees to shield military operations from attack — in this case, by forcing them to carry out life-threatening tasks to reduce risk to Israeli soldiers.
Their nearly contemporaneous accounts are detailed, corroborated by other witnesses, and consistent with testimony by an Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza, and with interviews collected by Breaking the Silence, an organization that works with troops who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories. They described a practice in which Palestinians are detained, interrogated and ultimately released, indicating the Israeli army did not believe them to be militants. They described events that took place between January and August.
Amid multiple IDF strikes across Gaza over the weekend, which killed at least 30 people on Sunday alone, Palestinian officials are claiming that one drone strike hit a clinic in Gaza city on Saturday during the World Health Organization’s polio vaccination drive. The strike wounded six people, four of them children. Israeli officials are denying any involvement, which would probably carry more weight if the IDF hadn’t spent the last 13 months regularly attacking Gazan medical facilities. The IDF had agreed to institute humanitarian pauses in Gaza city to allow the delayed vaccination effort to proceed.
LEBANON
An IDF commando team abducted a man they described as a Hezbollah “senior operative” in an amphibious operation in the northern Lebanese town of Batroun early Friday morning. The Lebanese military and the UN’s Lebanese peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) are reportedly investigating the incident, though Israeli officials have now openly acknowledged it so I’m not sure what they’re investigating exactly. This is the first known Israeli operation of its kind in this latest round of conflict with Hezbollah. Elsewhere, the IDF killed at least three people in one airstrike near Sidon on Sunday as it continued to stand back and pulverize southern and eastern Lebanon.
Analysis of satellite imagery of the damage the IDF has done in southern Lebanon point to the possibility that it is carving out a “buffer zone” on the Lebanese side of the border. This is a policy it’s clearly been implementing in Gaza and it amounts to an illegal land grab even if the territory in question isn’t physically occupied by Israeli forces or settled by Israeli civilians. Under international law the Israeli government has one option if it wants to create a buffer zone, which is to create it out of Israeli territory. When asked if it is pursuing the creation of a buffer zone inside Lebanon, the IDF has been dodging the question according to the AP.
SYRIA
The IDF said on Sunday that its personnel “recently detained” a man in the southern Syrian town of Saida who was allegedly gathering intelligence on Israeli forces along the Syrian border. Gathering intelligence on hostile military forces is something I’m sure the IDF does all the time but of course it’s illegitimate when one of the Bad Guys does it. Anyway, this is the first known IDF ground raid in Syria amid the current round of regional violence, and while I’m not sure if two instances means we can now say that the IDF is on a regional kidnapping spree, it certainly seems to be heading in that direction.
IRAN
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seemed to leave no ambiguity about a future Iranian response to the IDF’s most recent strikes on Iran, promising on Saturday that Israel and the US “will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response.” Meanwhile, Barak Ravid reported on Saturday that the Biden administration has conveyed a message to Iran that, should it attack Israel again, the US “won't be able to restrain” an Israeli retaliation. Given that said retaliation will almost certainly occur after the US election, “won’t want to restrain” is probably more accurate.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Iranian officials have been telling their counterparts in the region (the ones who have been delivering that message from the US) to expect a “strong and complex” retaliation that would be more intense than their previous strike on Israel. It may involve additional types of weapons and larger warheads, for example, in addition to the potential for an attack to come from Iraq as well as Iran. The Iranians are waiting until after the election on Tuesday, we’re told, because they don’t want to risk throwing additional support to Donald Trump.
Anticipating not just a forthcoming Iranian strike but further continuation/escalation of this back-and-forth in the months to come, the US military announced the deployment of additional assets to the Middle East on Friday including B-52 bombers. These assets are going to be moved into the region over a period of several months (though the bombers arrived on Saturday) and will probably offset the departure of one of the two carrier battle groups the US Navy currently has in the region.
ASIA
INDIA
Indian security forces killed three suspected Kashmiri militants in two incidents on Saturday. One of those incidents took place in southern Kashmir’s Anantnag region, where two suspected militants were killed in a clash with Indian soldiers. In the Kashmiri state capital of Srinagar, meanwhile, soldiers and police surrounded a home containing another alleged militant then killed him in another gun battle. On Sunday, an apparent militant grenade attack targeting a group of soldiers in Srinagar left at least 11 people wounded in what Reuters described as a “crowded flea market.”
BANGLADESH
Hundreds of people turned out in Dhaka on Saturday to protest against what they say has been a spate of religiously and ethnically motivated violence targeting Bangladeshi minority communities since the ouster of the country’s previous government in August. Primarily this violence has targeted the Hindu community, which is viewed as having been particularly supportive of that government, under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Bangladesh’s current interim government has responded to this violence in a somewhat wishy-washy way, condemning it in principle but also arguing that these communities are being attacked for political rather than religious or ethnic reasons—which doesn’t really make the violence any more acceptable, but I digress. Protest leaders are demanding legal protections for minority communities as well as guaranteed representation for those communities in future governments.
AFRICA
SUDAN
AFP is reporting that Rapid Support Forces militants gunned down at least 13 people in a town in Sudan’s Gezira state on Sunday. RSF fighters have been rampaging through that state since the group’s regional commander, Abuagla Keikal, defected over to the Sudanese military last month. On Saturday, RSF shelling reportedly killed at least 12 people near Kutum, a town in Sudan’s North Darfur state. The RSF is continuing to besiege the capital of North Darfur, Al-Fashir. Kutum is around 120 kilometers northwest of that city.
MAURITIUS
The Mauritian Information and Communication Technologies Authority has banned access to social media sites in the country until November 11, one day after its forthcoming election. It’s responding to a scandal in which someone has spent the past couple of weeks releasing a series of potentially embarrassing conversations with various political and civil society officials via social media, but civil society groups are crying foul and opposition leaders have accused the government of closing off social media access as a last ditch scheme to undermine campaigning in an election that it’s worried about losing.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military on Sunday claimed that its forces had captured the village of Vyshneve, which if true puts them one step closer to their target city of Pokrovsk. Vyshneve is located just outside of Selydove, the town Russian soldiers seized last month that is located around 20 kilometers south of the city. The Russians captured two more villages on Saturday, one near the town of Kurakhove and the other along the border separating Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts. The commander of the Ukrainian military, Oleksandr Syrskyi, acknowledged via Telegram on Saturday that his forces are facing “one of the most powerful Russian offensives since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.”
MOLDOVA
With nearly all the votes counted, Moldova’s Central Electoral Commission says that incumbent Maya Sandu defeated challenger Alexandr Stoianoglo in Sunday’s presidential runoff. According to the CEC’s results Sandu took around 55 percent of the vote with turnout around 54 percent. Moldova’s election has been marred by allegations, fueled by Sandu, of a Russian-backed vote-buying scheme to unseat the pro-European Union incumbent. Her victory seems to be generating sighs of relief among Western officials; European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for example, has already taken to social media to offer congratulations.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
Bolivian authorities now say that supporters of former President Evo Morales took over 200 soldiers hostage when they seized three military outposts near the city of Cochabamba on Friday. That’s a much higher figure than was initially suggested when this story broke. The Bolivian Foreign Ministry on Saturday issued a statement saying that the government is open to talking with “all social sectors of the country” (a reference to Morales’ hunger strike-backed demand for negotiations between his movement and the government), but would not do so “while the Bolivian people continue to be victims of abuse by these groups who are not interested in the national and popular economy, and who only seek to materialize the personal and electoral interests of a former president.”
UNITED STATES
Finally, Foreign Policy in Focus’s Imran Khalid argues that in trying to “fence China out” of the global semiconductor market, the Biden administration has wound up “fencing [the US] in”:
As Washington doubles down on its semiconductor embargoes, a troubling paradox emerges: in trying to stymie China’s technological advances, the United States might just be fencing itself in. Each successive restriction aims to choke off China’s progress, specifically in artificial intelligence and high-performance chips. Yet these measures risk isolating the United States from global tech supply chains, harming its own industry and allies.
Take the new U.S. Treasury rule, effective January 2025, which tightens restrictions on American investments in Chinese semiconductors and quantum computing. Although the Biden administration’s objective is clear—to kneecap China’s semiconductor ascent—this gambit is not likely to work. The complexity of today’s tech landscape, with its entangled supply lines and “gray channels” of unofficial trade, underscores the futility of isolating China. Chinese firms continue advancing, with the support of both local innovation and resilient demand for tech alternatives.
Despite escalating sanctions designed to strangle China’s chip industry, the true costs of these measures ripple far beyond Beijing. American allies find themselves isolated, and domestic companies feel the sting of lost revenues. Take Nvidia, for instance. The American AI chip giant introduced its groundbreaking Blackwell architecture in March but offered a downgraded version to maintain ties with the Chinese market, a reluctant acknowledgment of a complex interdependence that persists despite Washington’s aspirations.