World roundup: November 9-10 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Russia, Haiti, and elsewhere

You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:

---

THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY

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.

November 10, 1444: The Ottomans, under Sultan Murad II, defeat a combined Hungarian-Polish “Crusader” army at the Battle of Varna in what is today Bulgaria. Murad was called out of retirement by his army after having abdicated in favor of his young son, Mehmed II (who would one day be known as “Mehmed the Conqueror” but not just yet) to lead them against the Crusaders, who were threatening an advance on Constantinople. The victory was not overwhelming—the Ottomans lost so many warriors that Murad initially wasn’t sure they’d won the battle—but the death of Polish-Hungarian ruler Władysław III/Vladislaus I shattered their alliance and the Crusade, ending the threat it posed to the Ottoman Empire.

Polish painter Jan Matejko’s 1879 Battle of Varna depicts Vladislaus I leading the cavalry charge that wound up getting him killed (Wikimedia Commons)

November 10, 1659: The Maratha leader Shivaji and his outnumbered army defeat the Adilshahi under Afzal Khan at the Battle of Pratapgarh. It was the first major victory Shivaji would win over a Muslim kingdom, but it would definitely not be the last. His kingdom grew rapidly in the wake of the battle and became the nucleus of the Maratha Empire, which subjugated the Mughal Empire in the middle of the 18th century and became India’s dominant political entity until it was defeated by the British East India Company in the early 19th century.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Qatari government announced on Saturday that it is getting out of the Gaza ceasefire mediation business, at least for the time being. Lamenting a lack of “willingness and seriousness” on the parts of both Hamas and the Israeli government, the Qatari Foreign Ministry said that it “notified the parties 10 days ago, during the last attempts to reach an agreement, that it would stall its efforts to mediate between Hamas and Israel if an agreement was not reached in that round.” The announcement buries whatever was left of an actual negotiating process, and it also corresponds to reporting on Friday that the Qataris had asked Hamas’s political leadership to leave the country. Notably, though, there’s still no confirmation of that story—Hamas insists it hasn’t received such a message and the Qataris are staying mum.

An Israeli airstrike killed at least 36 people in northern Gaza’s besieged Jabalya area on Sunday. The strike hit a residential building and “many” of the casualties are reportedly women and children. The casualty figure may rise as it’s likely there are still people trapped under rubble.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s Famine Review Committee warned on Friday that the Israeli siege of northern Gaza is about to push that region into a state of famine, if it hasn’t done so already. The panel says that relevant actors have just days “to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” which “is likely to dwarf anything we have seen so far in the Gaza Strip” since the October 7 attacks.

LEBANON

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 41 people across Lebanon on Sunday, including at least 23 (seven of them children) in one attack on a village north of Beirut. Additional deaths were reported in southern and eastern Lebanon as well. Sunday’s carnage comes after the Israelis killed more than 40 people from Friday into Saturday.

SYRIA

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is claiming that another Israeli airstrike in Damascus’s Sayyidah Zaynab suburb killed at least nine people on Sunday, “including a Hezbollah commander” whose identity beyond that is apparently unknown. The SOHR is reporting that at least four of the victims were civilians while Syrian media puts that figure at seven.

IRAQ

A pair of Turkish drone strikes killed at least five people in northern Iraq over the weekend, all apparently linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). One on Saturday evening killed three people in Iraq’s Dohuk province, including a “senior PKK official” according to Reuters. The second strike, on Sunday, killed two members of the Sinjar Resistance United (YBS), a Yazidi militia that has PKK ties and is thus regularly targeted by Turkish forces.

YEMEN

The US military carried out another round of airstrikes targeting Houthi facilities in northern Yemen overnight. According to US Central Command, the strikes targeted “weapons storage facilities.” Details beyond that are unclear. Elsewhere, on Friday night a Yemeni soldier opened fire on a group of Saudi soldiers in eastern Yemen’s Hadramawt province, killing at least two of them and wounding a third. The rationale behind the attack is unclear. A Houthi official took to social media to praise the attack but did not claim responsibility for it, and there’s been no comment as yet from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or any other Yemeni militant group.

IRAN

Iranian media is reporting that militants killed at least five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij auxiliary militia in Sistan and Baluchistan province on Sunday. Details beyond that are uncertain. Earlier in the day authorities said that Iranian security forces had killed three militants and arrested nine others but it’s unclear whether these two incidents are connected in any way.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday rejected claims that Tehran orchestrated a plot to assassinate Donald Trump. He referred to the charge, as reflected in the US Justice Department’s unveiling of charges against three alleged participants on Friday, as “fabricated” and “a third-rate comedy.” He called for “confidence-building” steps from both sides, reflecting the Iranian government’s attempts to mitigate the likely return of Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

Officials in the Afghan Foreign Ministry told Reuters on Sunday that they are sending a delegation to the United Nations COP29 climate summit, which opens in Azerbaijan on Monday. For the country’s Taliban-led government, which has not been formally recognized by anyone since returning to power in 2021, getting the chance to participate in a major UN conference is a big diplomatic deal. The Taliban has participated in UN-led conferences related specifically to Afghanistan and it’s been invited to participate in regional forums, but these COP summits are on another level. That said, the Taliban’s delegation will be limited to participating as observers only due to their lack of formal UN recognition.

PAKISTAN

A suicide bomber killed at least 26 people and wounded more than 60 others on Saturday in a railway station in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. The Baluchistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the attack, which it says targeted Pakistani soldiers inside the station. Baluch militant attacks in Quetta are relatively rare so this one, with such a high casualty count, has unsurprisingly garnered a good deal of attention.

JAPAN

Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru will put his new minority government to its first parliamentary test on Monday and expectations are that he will be able to remain in power, albeit in a much diminished capacity. Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeitu, lost their collective majority in last month’s snap election and Ishiba has opted to lead a minority government rather than try to broaden that coalition. Given the fragmentation of Japan’s various opposition parties it’s likely Ishiba will be able to get one or more to support him—reportedly he’s targeting the centrist Democratic Party for the People (whose leader just had to publicly apologize over an extramarital affair) for Monday’s confirmation vote and presumably beyond—but to survive and pass any legislation he’ll need to compromise with those parties moving forward.

AFRICA

SUDAN

The UN Security Council’s Sudan sanctions committee blacklisted two senior Rapid Support Forces officers on Friday, head of operations Osman Mohamed Hamid Mohamed and West Darfur commander Abdel Rahman Juma Barkalla. Both will be subject to travel restrictions and asset freezes. The US had proposed this step back in August but the Russian government delayed approval while it “studied” the matter.

NIGERIA

Fighters from Lakurawa, a relative newcomer to Nigeria’s constellation of militant groups, attacked a village in Kebbi state on Friday and killed at least 15 people. Nigerian authorities sounded an alarm about this group a few days ago, saying that it was active in Kebbi and Sokoto states in the northwestern part of the country. It is apparently an alliance of militias drawn from the herding communities that straddle the Niger-Nigeria border that developed in the security vacuum created after the July 2023 Nigerien military coup.

CHAD

At least 15 Chadian soldiers were killed and another 32 wounded in clashes with “jihadists” in the Lake Chad region on Saturday, according to the Chadian army. There’s not much more to this story by way of details. Boko Haram and its Islamic State West Africa Province offshoot/rival are both active around Lake Chad. The former carried out an attack on a Chadian military base last month that left at least 40 people dead, and the Chadian army has been engaged in counter-insurgency operations in the area since then.

MOZAMBIQUE

The South African government partially reopened the country’s border with Mozambique on Saturday, three days after closing it amid growing unrest over Mozambique’s disputed election last month. Authorities cited improvements in administration on the Mozambican side of the border for the decision to reopen it to cargo traffic.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The New York Times, citing “US and Ukrainian officials,” is reporting that the Russian government has amassed an army of some 50,000 soldiers in Kursk oblast as it prepares a major push to take back the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in that province. This includes thousands of North Korean troops and notably does not, according to a US assessment, include any significant number of soldiers diverted from Russia’s ongoing offensives in eastern Ukraine. US officials are expecting the Ukrainians, who are thought to be well dug-in, to put up heavy resistance, but it’s unclear how long they’ll be able to sustain it. There is now apparently some concern that if/when the Ukrainian position buckles, Russian forces may not simply drive them back across the border but may attempt to turn this operation into a new incursion into Ukrainian territory.

UKRAINE

In eastern Ukraine, meanwhile, the Russian military said on Sunday that its forces had captured another village near the resource-rich town of Kurakhove. The Russians have been advancing toward that town for a couple of months now and are very close to entering it. However, there are indications that Russia’s (relatively) rapid advances in eastern Ukraine of late have come at a heavy cost. The UK military is estimating that Russian forces averaged around 1500 casualties per day in October, a staggering figure if it’s anywhere close to accurate. Even for Russia that’s a rate of loss that may be difficult to sustain barring a new mobilization drive, a step that President Vladimir Putin has been reluctant to take. This may help explain why he’s brought those North Koreans in to provide additional bodies.

Elsewhere, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday morning TV that the administration will spend all of its remaining $6 billion in Ukraine funding before Donald Trump takes office on January 20. That’s about all it can do at this point to “Trump-proof” that aid. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Trump and Putin spoke by phone a few days ago and Trump “advised” the Russian leader “not to escalate the war in Ukraine.” Trump throughout the campaign suggested that he could resolve the conflict quickly, and one assumes his plan for resolving it tracks more or less with what Putin has demanded—Ukrainian neutrality and Russian control over most/all of the Ukrainian territory Moscow claims. Russia has expressed “openness” to hearing Trump’s ideas.

AMERICAS

MEXICO

The Mexican and US governments announced a new agreement on Saturday to govern their shared use of the Rio Grande River and its related Rio Bravo watershed. That relationship is currently governed by the 1944 US-Mexico Water Treaty, under which Mexico is required to deliver 430 million cubic meters of water to the US per year. The treaty is structured in five year cycles, such that Mexico can run water deficits for four years without violating it—provided it makes up those deficits in the fifth year. Farmers on the US side of the border have complained that this structure doesn’t provide them with a stable water supply, while the Mexican government incurs a political cost every time it releases water from its reservoirs to the US. The new agreement is supposed to remedy these regular water deficits while also increasing US-Mexican cooperation in areas like water conservation.

HAITI

Haiti’s political transition hit the proverbial skids on Sunday when the country’s transitional council sacked interim Prime Minister Garry Conille. It is aiming to replace him with Haitian businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. Conille and council president Leslie Voltaire have reportedly been at odds over how to respond to a corruption scandal within the council, and though their discord runs deeper than just that one issue it’s notable that all three of the council members implicated in that scandal signed the decree ousting Conille. Now the question becomes whether or not the council actually has the legal authority to remove a prime minister, power that rests solely with the Haitian Parliament under normal circumstances. Obviously there is no Haitian Parliament at present—indeed, neither Conille nor the council have any semblance of democratic legitimacy—so that creates considerable ambiguity.

UNITED STATES

Finally, you may have heard that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin deemed the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis in the Middle East “magnificent” in response to a reporter’s question on Friday:

Q: I just want to make sure I understand. Do you then feel that the war in Gaza was not a big factor or it did not play into how voters approached the election?

SECRETARY AUSTIN: I'm telling you what the media has said. The most important thing on voter's minds was the economy, and that's what people voted on. I did not say that this was not important. Of course it's important. I'm saying that what you've described as the most important thing to the people of America was the economy. So, I can't disagree with that, I think that's the way that people may have voted. But I can also say that things in Europe, things in the Middle East were very important as well. I think we've done a magnificent job there in terms of managing things and not allowing things to blossom into a full-blown regional war.

Spencer Ackerman has some thoughts about that:

A magnificent job there in terms of managing things. 

The low-end total of the dead in Gaza is 43,000 people in 13 months. The real death toll is surely to be far higher considering all the men, women and children crushed under buildings collapsed after the Israelis unleashed their U.S.-provided munitions, aided by the U.S. software in their targeting algorithms, to say nothing of the preventable disease and starvation. The IDF is currently disputing comments attributed to one of its generals about removing Palestinians from northern Gaza—comments stemming from an Israeli media report claiming (per GoogleTranslate, I don't speak Hebrew) "The IDF says that after entering Jabaliya twice in the past, this time there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes and that Humanitarian aid will regularly enter the southern Gaza Strip, since there are no more civilians left north of Gaza City." Haaretz editorialized in any event against the "mass displacement" the IDF is carrying out in Northern Gaza "in the spirit of the so-called 'Generals' Plan' proposed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, although officially, Israel denies that it is implementing it." 

A magnificent job there in terms of managing things. Shouldn't we be thanking them?

Not for nothing, and Spencer’s piece gets into this, but if what’s currently happening in the Middle East isn’t “a full-blown regional war” then I’m not sure the concept has any meaning. I do suspect we’ll see many more comments like this from people at high levels in the Biden administration’s foreign policy team moving forward, as they try to rewrite history to cast themselves as The Good Guys instead of what they really are, which is war criminals.

---

Finally, I want to say “thank you” to all of you for reading and supporting Foreign Exchanges. I know that many of you are probably feeling frustrated, exhausted, angry, or any combination of the above and more in the aftermath of the election and I also know there’s a tendency for people to unplug from anything related to politics under those circumstances—a tendency that sounds like it’s happening to some degree based on what I’ve seen via social media. I’m asking you, if you’re able, to please stick with FX. This newsletter has never been tied to a politician or political movement and I promise you I will give the Trump administration the same scrutiny I gave the Biden administration (and the first Trump administration, for that matter). Your support is what keeps this newsletter going and I hope you’ll continue to do so. Thanks again!