World roundup: November 5 2020

Stories from Turkey, North Korea, Ethiopia, and more

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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

November 4, 1979: The Iran Hostage Crisis begins

November 4, 1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a right-wing Israeli radical named Yigal Amir. Rabin’s murder is often seen as the reason for the failure of the Oslo peace process, which he’d begun a couple of years earlier with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Oslo’s internal flaws probably doomed it to failure anyway, but Rabin’s killing did hasten the shift of Israeli politics to the right and led indirectly to Benjamin Netanyahu’s first stint as prime minister.

November 5, 1556: At the Second Battle of Panipat, the army of the would-be Hindu ruler of northern India, Hemu (or Hemchandra Vikramaditya), is defeated by the Mughal Empire under the young Emperor Akbar and his regent, Bayram Khan. A wounded Hemu was brought before Akbar to be executed, but it’s said the 13 year old emperor refused, so instead he touched Hemu with his sword while Bayram Khan actually did the killing. The Mughal victory ended a string of successes by Hemu, a Hindu notable who became the de facto ruler of the remnants of the Suri empire before claiming a regal title in his own right after defeating the Mughals and occupying Delhi earlier in the year. His death collapsed his kingdom and left the Mughals as the unchecked power in northern India.

Novvember 5, 1605: Guy Fawkes is arrested by English authorities for his role in the “Gunpowder Plot,” a scheme by a group of Catholics to blow up the House of Lords with King James I in it and install James’ young daughter Elizabeth as a Catholic monarch. Fawkes became the symbol of the plot, and his arrest is celebrated annually as “Guy Fawkes Day” or “Guy Fawkes Night.” Fawkes’ image went from reviled would-be assassin in the years following the foiled plot to something more sympathetic by the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Since the publication of V for Vendetta, whose protagonist wears a Guy Fawkes mask, his image has morphed further into a symbol of resistance to the establishment, whatever one defines that to be.

INTERNATIONAL

Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for November 5:

• 49,011,024 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (12,796,982 active, +604,689 since yesterday)

• 1,238,825 reported fatalities (+8717 since yesterday)

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

• 386,820 confirmed coronavirus cases (+2311)

• 10,639 reported fatalities (+81)

Al-Monitor’s Mustafa Sönmez reports on the continuing collapse of the Turkish lira and with it the Turkish economy:

In October alone, the price of the dollar rose 9%. The Central Bank stood by, unlike in September, when it had raised interest rates to prop up the lira. The bank’s inaction only fueled the rush for dollars as many feared that they could be late in seeking the safe haven of hard currencies. Strikingly, hard currency has come to account for about 60% of individual deposits in Turkey.

Higher foreign exchange prices translate to a higher cost of anything that Turkey imports, including inputs and intermediate goods needed by local industries. The jump in producer prices totaled 6.3 percentage points in September and October, while the year-on-year increase exceeded 18%, though the full impact on consumer prices has yet to be seen. Consumer prices rose 3.1 percentage points in September and October, hitting nearly 12% over a year. Independent researchers say the actual inflation rate is much higher than the official figure.

The rising prices, in turn, are curbing demand and consumption in a country where more than half of workers are paid the minimum wage and about 10 million people are jobless. The downtick is affecting businesses of all types and sizes.

LEBANON

• 89,186 confirmed cases (+2089)

• 683 reported fatalities (+7)

Lebanon’s caretaker government has apparently blown past a November 3 deadline set by the country’s major creditors to provide information relevant to a forensic audit of the Lebanese Central Bank. Oopsie! Fortunately the creditors, perhaps realizing that Lebanon does only have a caretaker government at this point, have given Beirut a three month extension. It’s possible, though by no means guaranteed, that Lebanon will have a new government in place by then.

In the meantime, the bank is running out of foreign currency reserves and as a result is planning to eliminate subsidies on a wide range of imported goods—including basic items like food and fuel—in order to make those reserves last longer. With Lebanon’s poverty rate spiking, these subsidy cuts could not come at a worse time and the potential for them to spark new political unrest is high. The pain is being felt across Lebanon’s entire socioeconomic spectrum, including among Syrian refugees. One of those refugees set himself on fire outside the United Nations refugee agency’s offices in Beirut on Wednesday, possibly because he’s been unable to pay for heath care for his daughter though his motive isn’t known for certain. The man was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

IRAQ

• 489,571 confirmed cases (+3701)

• 11,175 reported fatalities (+47)

A double-tap bombing in Diyala province on Thursday killed at least three women and wounded three police officers. There’s been no claim of responsibility but given the location the Islamic State is probably the likeliest suspect. Meanwhile, Iraqi President Barham Salih approved a new electoral law ahead of a snap election that Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has called for next June. The new arrangement is a substantial change for Iraqi voting procedures, as instead of voting for legislators according to party lists organized by province, Iraqi voters will now choose their representatives in direct district-by-district races. That change is intended to weaken the grip Iraq’s political parties have over elections and is a response to calls from protesters for electoral reform. Parliament passed the measure earlier this week over the objections of a number of parties.

ASIA

AZERBAIJAN

• 60,873 confirmed cases (+1364)

• 794 reported fatalities (+14)

Reporters inside the Karabakh capital city of Stepanakert reported Thursday that the city had come under intense artillery fire from Azerbaijani forces. There were also reports of other major towns in Karabakh coming under fire, in violation of the agreement the two sides made late last week to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible. Azerbaijani officials denied these reports and offered counter claims that Karabakh forces were shelling Azerbaijani civilians. Karabakh officials also denied those claims.

AFGHANISTAN

• 41,935 confirmed cases (+121)

• 1554 reported fatalities (+6)

The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction issued a new quarterly report Thursday in which it found that the number of violent attacks targeting Afghan security forces and/or civilians increased by 50 percent over the previous quarter. I’d say this happened “in spite of” the start of intra-Afghan peace talks, but I rather think it’s because of the talks. As the Taliban jockeys for more leverage at the negotiating table, and as the Islamic State looks to play spoiler, the incidence of attacks is increasing.

NORTH KOREA

• No acknowledged cases

You may recall that North Korea unveiled a whopping new missile last month during a military parade, creating a bit of a buzz around the possibility that Pyongyang had mastered the technology for putting multiple warheads on a single missile. While not discounting that possibility, Arms Control Wonk’s Joshua Pollack has a different and perhaps more reasonable theory:

There’s another possibility that I’ve yet to see explored at length, though. Let’s call it a dark horse. It’s another approach to beating missile defense, and one that requires a heavy payload, but no more than a single warhead per missile. That’s the fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS).

FOBS was a Soviet innovation, brought to fruition in the mid-1960s, before the USSR developed its own multiple-warhead missiles. It involved a modified ICBM that launched its payload into low earth orbit. When the payload approached its target, an onboard retro-rocket would fire, deorbiting the warhead.

The advantage of FOBS was its ability to circumvent NORAD’s lines of early-warning radars in Canada. The FOBS weapon could be launched in any direction, allowing the USSR to launch an attack over the South Pole if desired.

FOBS could in theory still defeat US radar, and the technology is much simpler than multiple warhead technology. As Pollack notes, even if this is FOBS the North Koreans are likely working on a multiple warhead vehicle, so this would only be a stopgap in that sense. It’s an interesting theory, but I have to say I really hope we never find out whether it’s true.

AFRICA

NIGERIA

• 63,508 confirmed cases (+180)

• 1155 reported fatalities (+0)

The International Crisis Group has a new report shedding light on a little-understood phenomenon—the Islamic State’s expansion into Africa:

Information about ISIS’s growth in Africa is scarce. Crisis Group can now shed new light on the subject, however, based on extensive interviews with former fighters about how ISIS cultivates and supports allies on the continent. In November 2019 and March 2020, Crisis Group interviewed sixteen defectors from Boko Haram and ISWAP. Among the persons interviewed were several former fighters who had served as bodyguards for different senior commanders, as well as one of the men involved in running the electronic communication platforms used by Nigerian jihadists to consult with the ISIS caliphate in the Levant. The account below is pieced together primarily from their testimony, with information almost always corroborated by at least two of those sources, consulted independently.

The findings relate only to the period prior to these men’s defection (2017 or early 2018 at the latest) and are specific to the experience of Boko Haram and ISWAP. But they provide a sense of how ISIS deployed limited yet targeted support such as ideological and operational guidance, as well as small amounts of money, to upgrade the capabilities of a distant jihadist group adopting the ISIS brand and make it a far more potent insurgent force. They also show how the group supports its franchises without exerting direct control, even if the relationship is at times fraught, and how local groups themselves, and factions within them, benefit from ISIS ties. The research complements earlier work by Crisis Group on how ISIS can take advantage of local disorder and grievances, often piggybacking on local conflicts. 

CAMEROON

• 22,103 confirmed cases (+0)

• 429 reported fatalities (+0)

The 11 teachers who were abducted in Cameroon’s North West region earlier this week were released on Thursday. It was indeed anglophone separatist fighters who kidnapped the teachers, and apparently it was pressure from local citizens that prodded the fighters to let them go. The separatists appear to be making a habit of attacking schools in Cameroon’s North West and South West regions, which probably is not winning them a lot of local support.

ETHIOPIA

• 98,391 confirmed cases (+510)

• 1508 reported fatalities (+5)

The latest round of talks between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam collapsed Wednesday having made no progress toward an agreement about the dam’s operations. It sounds like the parties intend to continue talking at least, so it wasn’t a complete catastrophe. The longer the disagreement over the GERD continues the greater the chances of some kind of water conflict become, but at the moment I think it’s fair to say that the Ethiopian government has other priorities.

That’s because, despite international calls for restraint, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is mobilizing his military for a full-on war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. There was some hope that Wednesday’s Ethiopian military incursion into the Tigray region, sparked by reports of a TPLF attack on an Ethiopian military base, might be a one-off, but reports of shelling in Tigray have not stopped and those have now been joined by reports of what looks like a major military call-up. Tigray regional president Debretsion Gebremichael has characterized the fighting from his side as “a war we’re conducting to preserve our existence,” so needless to say the TPLF doesn’t seem inclined to stand down either at this point.

A civil war in Ethiopia obviously has serious regional implications. In this case, if the conflict escalates it could easily (I’m probably understating it in fact) draw in Eritrea, whose population is majority Tigray/Tigrinya-speaking (though Eritrean Tigrinya don’t necessarily identify with Ethiopian Tigray) but whose government has its own issues with the TPLF. If it continues long enough there’s good reason to believe it could bring in some or all of Sudan, Somalia, and South Sudan.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

• 1,712,858 confirmed cases (+19,404)

• 29,509 reported fatalities (+292)

The Russian parliament is apparently debating legislation that would give former presidents blanket lifetime immunity from prosecution once they leave office. I’m sure this is meant as a general good governance sort of thing and isn’t meant to shield any one person specifically. Although I can see how you’d come to that conclusion, considering that Russia has only had three post-Soviet presidents and one of them is dead, and I don’t think protecting Dmitry Medvedev from prosecution is the foremost thing on legislators’ minds. The bill, if passed, would replace existing law that only grants ex-presidents limited immunity for acts committed while president. It would require a parliamentary supermajority to lift the immunity. There’s also a measure under consideration that would entitle ex-presidents to a lifetime seat in the Russian Federation Council (senate), which likewise confers legal immunity.

Vladimir Putin has already pushed through changes to the Russian constitution that could allow him to remain in office for 16 more years, which would make him 84. What’s interesting about these new initiatives is they suggest he might not be completely sold on the idea of sticking around as president and is looking for alternatives that would still insulate him from any potential legal problems. At this point there’s no indication Putin is waffling on the idea of staying on as president, but I will say there are some stories floating around, though nothing from a source credible enough for me to treat seriously yet, suggesting that Putin may resign at some point due to health issues, with speculation that he may have Parkinson’s Disease. This would be a shocking development, but again until I see it reported somewhere credible I’m going to treat it skeptically.

KOSOVO

• 22,206 confirmed cases (+661)

• 720 reported fatalities (+6)

Kosovan President Hashim Thaçi—well, former president I guess—resigned his office on Thursday before being flown to detention at The Hague over war crimes allegations stemming from the Kosovo War in the 1990s. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) has brought charges against Thaçi over his time as a commander in the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which battled for independence from Serbia and stands accused of multiple crimes targeting ethnic Serbs and other minorities, as well as political opponents. Thaçi insists he did nothing wrong and said his resignation was about maintaining the integrity of the Kosovan presidency, not an admission of guilt.

Thaçi in happier, or at least freer, times, signing the US State Department guestbook back in February (State Department photo via Flickr)

DENMARK

• 51,753 confirmed cases (+1223)

• 733 reported fatalities (+4)

The Danish army is about to undertake a massive cull of Denmark’s farmed mink population, after researchers found that the animals had incubated a brand new and possibly antibody resistant strain of the SARS-Cov2 pathogen. Some 12 people are known to have been infected with the new strain. While there’s not much risk of this strain spreading widely, its potential antibody resistance could make it less susceptible to a potential vaccine and that’s obviously a cause for concern.

IRELAND

• 64,046 confirmed cases (+563)

• 1933 reported fatalities (+3)

Hey, here’s a heartwarming story:

When the crew and passengers of the nuclear-powered icebreaker ship 50 Years of Victory reached the north pole in 2018, they placed a time capsule in the ice floe.

The metal cylinder contained letters, poems, photographs, badges, beer mats, a menu, wine corks – ephemera from the early 21st century for whomever might discover it in the future.

The future came pretty swiftly. The cylinder was found this week on the north-western tip of Ireland after floating an estimated 2,300 miles from the Arctic Circle, where global heating is melting a record amount of ice.

See, isn’t that awesome? A real time capsule! From…2018! Wow! I hope it gives us a good sense of what life was like back then! And to think all we had to do to release this jewel was to melt the Arctic ice cap and possibly doom human society to catastrophic collapse! Nice to see some good news around here for a change.

AMERICAS

BOLIVIA

• 142,062 confirmed cases (+126)

• 8758 reported fatalities (+7)

Former Bolivian President Evo Morales reportedly plans to return to Bolivia next Monday in dramatic fashion, crossing the border from Argentina in an “800-vehicle convoy” to Bolivia’s Chapare region, where he started his political career. As far as I can tell this story is based on one report from one Bolivian newspaper, so take it for what it’s worth. Certainly it wouldn’t be surprising if Morales wanted to make a grand entrance to highlight his Movement for Socialism party’s triumphant restoration after last November’s putsch. There remains some speculation that Morales might try to steal the spotlight from his former finance minister and the incoming Bolivian president, Luis Arce, but if you listened to this week’s podcast then you heard Thomas C. Field Jr. say there’s no real indication that’s going to happen.

UNITED STATES

• 9,919,522 confirmed cases (+118,204)

• 240,953 reported fatalities (+1125)

Finally, in case you missed it, earlier today Daniel Bessner offered the first of what I hope will not be too many Foreign Exchanges post-election pieces, on what to expect from a Biden foreign policy:

Of course, it’s difficult to know for certain what Biden’s foreign policy will be, given that we don’t yet know whom he will appoint to the most important foreign policy positions—National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, and, to a lesser degree, Secretary of State.

But to provide a tentative answer to this question, we can examine a piece Biden published last spring in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, titled “Why America Must Lead Again,” which laid out his basic approach to foreign policy. Though the essay is too long to summarize, I’d like to highlight and discuss some points that jumped out to me.

First, Biden promises to “once more have America lead the world.” This is classic euphemistic language similar to that deployed by the “foreign policy establishment,” or what Ben Rhodes, Obama’s close advisor, once referred to as the “Blob.” In this discourse, “leadership” means hegemony, which suggests that Biden will continue to waste an enormous amount of money and resources on the US military and its system of global bases. As he puts it, he “will ensure” that the United States retains “the strongest military in the world.” Under Biden, a commitment to armed primacy will remain extant.