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TODAY IN HISTORY
November 8, 960: An Arab army from Aleppo is returning from a raid into Byzantine territory when it is ambushed and resoundingly defeated by a smaller imperial force at the Battle of Andrassos. The near-destruction of its army was a crippling blow to Aleppo’s ruling dynasty, the Hamdanids, who within the decade would be reduced from bitter Byzantine foe to the status of an imperial vassal.
November 8, 2002: The United Nations Security Council unanimously passes Resolution 1441, calling on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to disarm under the terms of previous UN resolutions or face “serious consequences.” Funny story: Hussein had already disarmed, but we got to see what the serious consequences were anyway! It all really worked out just swell.
November 9, 1799: In what became known as the Coup of 18 Brumaire, a group of plotters including Napoleon Bonaparte forces the Directory and its legislatures to disband and replaces that government with the French Consulate, with Napoleon as First Consul. The plotters manufactured a phony Jacobin coup attempt and used that as cover to undertake their own coup. Napoleon was able to overthrow the Directory and sideline his fellow coup plotters, leaving him as the most powerful man in France.
November 9, 1989: An announcement (botched, as it turns out) by the East German government that it would open checkpoints along the Berlin Wall leads a throng of East Berlin residents to the wall in an attempt to get into West Berlin. Amid the crowds of people trying to cross, some began chipping pieces off of the wall, and over the next several weeks what had been the most in-your-face symbol of the Cold War was torn down.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The New Arab is reporting that Druze militia fighters attacked a security unit in southern Syria’s Suwayda province on Saturday, killing one officer and wounding several others. The attackers were apparently part of the “National Guard” group, which is aligned with Druze community leader Hikmat al-Hijri. Other clashes between Druze fighters and government forces have been reported in Suwayda since Thursday, raising fears that the July ceasefire that snuffed out a major outbreak of violence in that province could be fraying. It’s unclear why these clashes have been taking place. Among Syrian Druze leaders, Hijri has been the most vocally opposed to the current Syrian government and has expressed support for Israel’s intervention in southern Syria.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least three people in multiple airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Saturday. One strike near the Mount Hermon region close to the Syrian border killed a pair of brothers the IDF later claimed were “smugglers” aligned with Hezbollah. Saturday’s attacks drew a lame statement from the European Union on “preserving the ceasefire” that referenced “all parties” rather than the one specific party that keeps violating it.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed has new revelations about the Biden administration’s “look the other way” approach to Israeli war crimes:
In the final weeks of his administration, President Joe Biden personally considered new American intelligence about Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza that prompted concerns that American and Israeli officials were violating U.S. and international law – then rejected suggestions from advisers to reduce American involvement in the war, three former U.S. officials told HuffPost.
The intelligence reporting described Israeli officials’ own view of whether their treatment of Palestinians through large-scale attacks and severe limits on humanitarian aid was illegal, two former officials said. U.S. officials identified the information as so serious and sensitive that it prompted an urgent interagency meeting including the president, per one former official.
Reuters reported on a similar story on Friday, basically that the administration was aware of concerns within the IDF about possible war crimes but ultimately decided to wash its hands of the issue. The Biden administration’s complicity in the Gaza genocide is pretty well established at this point, but it’s important to catalogue the extent of it even if the possibility of any real accountability for the people who were responsible is low.
Elsewhere:
The IDF killed at least one person in central Gaza’s Bureij region on Saturday and wounded another in Khan Younis. In both cases Israeli personnel opened fire on people who had encroached on the “yellow line” that in theory demarcates Israel-controlled territory. Israeli soldiers also killed one Palestinian during a raid on a refugee camp near the West Bank town of Tubas on Saturday night.
Over the weekend Hamas repatriated the body of Hadar Goldin, an Israeli soldier killed during the 2014 Gaza War. There are still four people whose remains are to be turned over to the Israeli government under the terms of the ceasefire, but there are concerns that locating those bodies amid the rubble in Gaza could take time. The Red Cross/Red Crescent society is involved in recovery work.
The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the “coordination center” established by the US military in Israel to monitor the ceasefire “is replacing Israel as the overseer of humanitarian aid” in Gaza. This is another in a long line of quiet decisions taken by the US government over the past two years demonstrating that, public pronouncements aside, Washington knows how depraved Israeli actions in Gaza have been. After spending those two years repeatedly denying that the Israeli government was throttling the flow of aid. this should be taken as an admission that those denials were all bald-faced lies. That said, whether this shift will actually mean more aid getting into Gaza very much remains to be seen—the “coordination center” has barely gotten off the ground and, according to the Post, “multiple people familiar with the center’s first weeks of operations have described it as chaotic and indecisive.”
IRAQ
Early voting in Iraq’s parliamentary election began on Sunday and the full election will take place on Tuesday. I have nothing to offer here by way of predictions other than that turnout will probably be low—it’s dropped from 44 percent in 2018 to 41 percent in 2021 and there’s not much reason to expect that pattern to change this time—cheating will probably be rampant, and the negotiations that follow the voting will probably be long and difficult. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaʿ al-Sudani will be hoping to come out of that process with a second term, a feat no Iraqi PM has achieved since Nouri al-Maliki (whose second term ended in 2014).
Muqtada al-Sadr, the political/religious leader whose movement won the 2021 election but failed to form a government—prompting him to “retire” from politics—is boycotting the election. If his followers honor that decision that alone should ensure considerably lower turnout, which would allow Sadr to claim that the entire political process has been discredited and possibly attempt to “unretire” on that basis.
IRAN
Iran’s drought is not only affecting Tehran, it’s also causing a water crisis in the country’s “second city,” Mashhad. Iranian media reported on Sunday that water levels in the reservoirs supplying that city have dropped below 3 percent of capacity, prompting new calls for better water management though it seems to me they might be past the point where that will be enough. In Tehran, meanwhile, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian has gone so far as to broach the idea of evacuating the city if its water situation does not improve, which has apparently sparked a backlash among conservatives and conservative-aligned media. Both cities can survive for a time by relying more heavily on aquifers, but that water can’t be replenished as easily as reservoirs and overusing it can cause subsidence and other serious issues. Rainfall across Iran for the past year has been down over 80 percent from normal levels.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
Ceasefire talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan may have once again broken down, but according to officials in both countries the ceasefire itself remains in place. There are no plans at present for another round of talks after the third one collapsed in Istanbul on Friday, which means there’s no indication when or if the Pakistani government might consider reopening the border checkpoints it closed when the two countries exchanged heavy fire for several days last month. The main dispute continues to be the presence of Pakistani Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
CHINA
The Diplomat’s Marina Yue Zhang highlights a “fundamental asymmetry” in the New Cold War’s balance of power:
When U.S. President Donald Trump emerged from his October summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, he declared it a “12 out of 10” success. Washington, it seemed, had won a major concession. In exchange for tariff relief, Beijing agreed to pause its escalating export controls on rare earth elements for one year, granting U.S. industry a vital reprieve.
This interpretation is dangerously wrong. It mistakes a tactical maneuver for a strategic retreat. Chinese-language analysis of the summit reveals a different story: one of strategic patience from a power that understands both its structural dominance and its acute vulnerabilities. Beijing’s move was not a concession but a calculated exercise of power – a strategic pause that maintains leverage while managing vulnerabilities.
Beijing’s confidence rests on a fundamental asymmetry in 21st century great power competition. U.S. chokepoints, built on high technology, are proving fragile. China’s chokepoints, built on grubby industrial processes, are proving extraordinarily durable.
The asymmetry of time favors China: building a single integrated mine-to-magnet supply chain takes 10 to 15 years. This explains why, 15 years after China’s 2010 rare earth embargo against Japan, Western dependence has barely budged. Meanwhile advanced semiconductor technologies become obsolete far faster – and China has already found “good enough” substitutes.
Her piece goes on to outline the technical reasons why China is particularly dominant in the critical realm of “heavy rare earth elements” and why Xi opted for something approaching detente last month despite having a stronger hand than Trump. In short, Beijing still depends on licensed Japanese and German processing technology and until it can develop domestic alternatives it can’t risk completely cutting off mineral supplies to the West. China’s supply chain also relies to a considerable degree on access to rare earth deposits located in unstable, war-torn Myanmar, which helps to explain why Beijing has been intervening to try to quash some of that country’s unrest.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Sudan Doctors Network is accusing Rapid Support Forces militants of burning bodies and digging mass graves to obfuscate the bloodbath that followed their seizure of the city of Al-Fashir last month. The United Nations International Organization for Migration estimates that some 82,000 people fled the city when the RSF conquered it, out of some 260,000 still believed to have been in the city at the time it fell. That leaves tens of thousands at the mercy of a group that has been credibly accused of genocide in Darfur, but a “communications blackout” has made it difficult to assess how many of them might have survived.
NIGERIA
The Wall Street Journal reports on the Nigerian government’s scramble to respond to Donald Trump’s recent threat of military intervention:
A Nigerian official was told by a U.S. counterpart that, with Thanksgiving coming up, Nigeria should go quiet and wait for the president’s attention to shift, a Nigerian official said. A White House official said the consistent message to the Nigerians is that the president takes the situation seriously and the Nigerians should take steps to address the killings [of Christians].
Meanwhile, Nigerian officials said they have been scrutinizing TikTok and social-media posts, to map how the view that the fight between pastoralists and farmers is a Christian genocide, once relegated to the fringes of social media, became a preoccupation in Washington.
Officials on both sides have discussed setting up a call between [Trump and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu], said a U.S. official familiar with the talks. But as of Saturday there wasn’t one on Trump’s schedule.
Tinubu—a Muslim married to one of Nigeria’s most prominent Christian Pentecostal preachers—debated traveling to Washington, to explain the complex religious tapestry of a country evenly split between both faiths, Nigerian officials said.
But Nigerian officials said they remembered the televised dressing-down Trump gave South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in a Washington meeting in May.
Put that way it is kind of a no-win situation for Tinubu.
CAMEROON
Jacobin’s Fanny Pigeaud outlines the tense post-election situation in Cameroon:
In Cameroon, history seems frozen in time. For forty-three years, power has had only one face: that of Paul Biya. The ninety-two-year-old president has just secured an eighth term in office, which should extend his reign for another seven years. Officially, he won 53.7 percent support in the October 12 presidential election, against 35.2 percent for his main opponent, the seventy-nine-year-old former minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary.
Yet, this “reelection” hasn’t gone down well. Many Cameroonians are deeply weary, and Issa Tchiroma Bakary is challenging the results. He denounces massive fraud both during and after the contest, some of which involved agents of electoral supervisory board Elecam and was filmed by voters on the ground. He claims victory — and has urged his supporters to take to the streets.
In the north, his stronghold, as well as in the west, his instructions have been heeded. Several cities have seen demonstrations, as well as “dead city” operations on Monday, November 3, which paralyzed economic activity.
The protests have been accompanied by violence. Public buildings, shops, and private property were set on fire, ransacked, and looted, and security forces made hundreds of arrests. In Douala, a bustling port city that has always been an opposition stronghold, at least four people were reported killed on Sunday October 26 in clashes with the police. According to two United Nations sources, regime security forces have killed a total of forty-eight people in suppressing post-election protests. Strife had already broken out during the count: in Dschang, in the west of the country, young people, suspecting fraud, set fire to the ruling party’s headquarters and a wing of the courthouse housing Elecam.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Rwandan and Congolese negotiators gave initial approval to the “Regional Economic Integration Framework” during a meeting in Washington on Friday. The REIF is one of the cornerstones of the US-brokered peace deal between the two countries, which hasn’t actually generated any peace yet but who’s counting? It’s supposed to bring Western investment into the resource-rich eastern DRC, with Rwanda facilitating regional development by reining in the M23 militant group and getting a piece of the economic action in return. It’s unclear when this framework is going to get final approval—a plan to bring both heads of state together for a signing ceremony on November 13 appears to have fallen through and there’s not yet any indication as to rescheduling. The Congolese government may be looking for more progress in its negotiations with M23 before it moves forward.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
An overnight Russian bombardment from Friday into Saturday left at least seven people dead and targeted electrical substations servicing Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear power plants. The Russian military has long made the Ukrainian power grid one of its primary targets, but attacking facilities that can supply power that would be used in backup/safety elements in working nuclear reactors is somewhat more reckless than the typical strike on electrical infrastructure. The Ukrainians are also targeting Russian energy infrastructure and their drone strikes “disrupted” power and electricity service in the cities of Belgorod and Voronezh overnight Saturday into Sunday.
HUNGARY
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is apparently telling reporters that his Friday visit to the White House earned him “a complete exemption from” US sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports. His foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, is claiming that Hungary is now exempt from those sanctions “for an indefinite period.” This does not appear to comport with observable reality, in which Donald Trump gave Orbán a one year exemption and even that came with conditions—specifically, that he commit to buying $600 million in US liquefied natural gas as well as US nuclear reactor fuel and components that could cost Hungary over $300 million and as many as 10 US-made modular nuclear reactors that could cost upwards of $20 billion.
Now, the only thing Orbán really cares about here is preventing an energy price spike ahead of next April’s (probably) parliamentary election, so he’s presumably comfortable with any costly longer term expectations that he might even be able to dodge at some indeterminate point down the road. Still, he seems to be exaggerating his accomplishment a bit here for political effect.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
Rodrigo Paz officially became Bolivia’s new president on Saturday. He didn’t break any especially new ground in his inaugural address, but he and US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau did agree later in the day to restore bilateral relations at the ambassadorial level. This will be the first time the two countries have exchanged ambassadors since former Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled the US envoy from the country in 2008. Paz had pledged to restore normal relations during his presidential campaign.
EL SALVADOR
The New York Times reports on the treatment that the Venezuelan nationals who were trafficked to El Salvador by the Trump administration earlier this year received in Nayib Bukele’s prison camp:
In interviews, however, the men sent to the prison described frequent, intense physical and psychological abuse. Beyond the beatings, tear gas and trips to the isolation room, the men said they were mocked or ignored by medical personnel, forced to spend 24 hours a day under harsh lights and made to drink from wells of fetid water.
The New York Times interviewed 40 of the former prisoners, many at their homes in cities and towns across Venezuela. We then asked a group of independent forensic experts who help investigate torture allegations to assess the credibility of the men’s testimony.
Several doctors from that team, known as the Independent Forensic Expert Group, said the men’s testimonies, along with photographs of what they described as their injuries, were consistent and credible, providing “compelling evidence” to support accusations of torture. The group’s assessments in other cases have been used in courts around the world.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Intercept’s Nick Turse discusses Donald Trump’s “[compilation] of a domestic terrorist list” whose entries are kept secret:
Trump has also ordered his administration to compile a domestic terrorist list made up of his political foes, despite the fact there is no legal mechanism for labeling exclusively domestic organizations as terrorist groups. Under Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, he instructed his administration to target U.S. progressive groups and their donors as well as political activists who profess undefined anti-American, anti-fascist, or anti-Christian sentiments.
Unlike with prior lists, such as the State Department’s register of [Foreign Terrorist Organizations], it’s currently impossible to know if you are a member of a domestic terrorist group and what the penalties might include.
“By claiming this authority and by defining a wide range of political views—from anti-Christianity to anti-Americanism—as markers of domestic terrorism, the president has essentially created an enemies list and directed federal agencies to go after them. It is a classic authoritarian move, designed to sow fear and silence opposition to the administration’s policies,” Faiza Patel, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program told The Intercept.
“Existing laws allow the president to create a list of designated foreign terrorist organizations. Statutes specify the results of being on this list, such as being liable for material support and financial sanctions,” Patel said. “But neither this authority, and none of these laws, authorizes the president to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations.”
Lawmakers see Trump’s push to build secret terrorist lists as an authoritarian overreach that could result in government violence — or even deadly force — against American citizens exercising their constitutional rights in the United States.