World roundup: October 10 2024

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

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TODAY IN HISTORY

October 10 (maybe), 732 (again maybe): A Frankish Merovingian army under Mayor of the Palace and de facto ruler Charles Martel (namesake of the future Carolingian Dynasty) defeats an invading Arab-Berber army at the Battle of Tours (Poitiers) in what is today western France. Not terribly much is actually known about this battle, at least not that can be disconnected from the legends that grew up around it. In the European consciousness Martel would be credited with saving Latin Christendom from certain annihilation at the hands of a massive conquering Islamic army. Contemporary historians question whether the army was really all that massive and whether its aim was really conquest or just raiding and pillaging.

Charles de Steuben’s 1837 Bataille de Poitiers, en octobre 732 (Wikimedia Commons)

October 10, 1911: An uprising in the city of Wuchang (which is now a part of the city of Wuhan) led by the Tongmenghui movement leads to the Xinhai Revolution. It ended in February 1912 with the toppling of the Qing Dynasty and the formation of the Republic of China. This marked the end of thousands of years of imperial Chinese rule. Commemorated today in Taiwan as the National Day of the Republic of China.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

A United Nations investigation into the Israeli military’s (IDF) attacks on health facilities in Gaza has concluded that they reflect the “deliberate” commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity:

The investigatory committee focused on Israeli assaults on four hospitals in different areas of the Gaza Strip, as well as attacks on health care workers and ambulances, concluding in a report released Oct. 10 “that Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health care system of Gaza.”

“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination,” the report found.

“The actions of Israel violate international humanitarian law and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and they are in stark contravention of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion of July 2024,” the report said.

The investigation further concluded that Israeli security forces violated key tenets of international law of armed conflict, in particular of “the principles of precaution, distinction and proportionality, constituting the war crimes of willful killing and attacks against protected objects” in repeated assaults on the al-Shifa, al-Awdah, Nasr and Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospitals.

On the subject of potential war crimes, an IDF airstrike hit another school-turned-shelter in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah on Thursday, killing at least 28 people and wounding another 54 according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. The facility was, according to Israeli officials, another Hamas “command center.” And +972 Magazine’s Ibrahim Mohammad and Mahmoud Mushtaha report on the IDF’s intense assault on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. Among the many horrifying details in that piece is the claim that “bodies are strewn across the streets” of Jabalia because ambulances have been unable to reach them.

IRAQ

Israel’s Channel 14 decided earlier this week to include an image (complete with red crosshairs) of Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, arguably the most respected figure in “Twelver” Shiʿism, in a graphic rendition of an Israeli enemies list, apparently because he’s criticized the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Although there’s no reason to make that much of the ravings of a single extremist medial outlet, under the circumstances the image set of a wave of opprobrium in Iraq and forced the US ambassador to that country, Alina Romanowski, to take to social media to disavow any threat on Sistani’s life (without directly mentioning Israel, of course). The station’s threat against Sistani is unhinged, and while hindsight is of course 20/20 one wonders if the Biden administration’s decision to indulge every single Israeli escalation over the past year might not have helped bring us to this point.

LEBANON

For the third time in less than a month the IDF targeted downtown Beirut with airstrikes on Thursday, killing at least 22 people and wounding at least 117 according to Lebanese officials. Reuters is reporting that the strikes targeted a senior Hezbollah political official named Wafiq Safa, who was not among the casualties. As that report notes, this may represent a broadening of Israel’s targeting to include people on Hezbollah’s political side as well as its military side. Elsewhere, the UN reported on Thursday that Israeli forces had fired on no fewer than three outposts manned by UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon over the preceding 24 hours. At least two peacekeepers were wounded in these presumably intentional (three separate incidents makes it hard to call them accidental) attacks. The Italian government summoned Israel’s ambassador in Rome in response to these attacks.

Satellite imagery shows “wide-spread destruction” in three southern Lebanese border villages that have been subject to Israeli ground assaults. That damage aside, and although the IDF has deployed four divisions on this front, the Israelis so far seem to be struggling to hold on to the villages that they’ve entered. They’ve lost at least 13 soldiers in clashes with Hezbollah, whose losses are uncertain but allegedly number in the dozens.

IRAN

Israel’s security cabinet was set to meet Thursday evening to try to hash out a retaliation for last week’s Iranian missile strike. At time of writing I had not seen any indication as to how that meeting went, but the outcome will probably be blanket permission for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do what he wants.

Among the options still on the table is a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities and/or a strike against Iranian oil facilities. The Biden administration seems particularly concerned about the former, which could backfire and push Iran to cross the threshold to nuclear-armed state, and it’s unclear whether the IDF could pull off such an attack without US help. Gulf Arab states, meanwhile, seem urgently opposed to the latter. Their fear is that an attack on Iran’s oil industry could prompt Iranian partners to retaliate by attacking oil facilities throughout the region. According to Axios the Biden-Netanyahu phone call on Wednesday narrowed the gap between what the latter wants to do to Iran and what the former would prefer, though we’ll see how that plays out once the retaliation takes place.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

Unspecified militants killed two police officers in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Thursday. Later, and in what appears to have been a separate incident, the Pakistani military said that its forced killed four also-unspecified militants in a different part of the province. Usually, “militant” activity in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa refers to the Pakistani Taliban, though Islamic State is also active in that region. Tensions are also high in the province in the wake of the government’s decision to ban the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement rights group.

MYANMAR

Jacobin has published the transcript of a recent speech by Myanmar union leader Khaing Zar Aung on the conditions faced by organized labor under the country’s military government:

In February 2021, the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar [CTUM] issued a statement condemning the coup and leaving the National Tripartite Forum. We organized our members and the opposition on all fronts. Members and leaders of CTUM took to the streets and helped bring hundreds of thousands out in protest. The military issued arrest warrants against all the CTUM central committee members, including myself.

All our passports were declared void, and we all have court cases against us for state treason. The CTUM headquarters office was ransacked, and everything was taken. Our family members are under constant threat — forcing many to leave the country. Many were tortured to death or forced into hiding.

Our organization has experience fighting against the military regime, having done so since 1988. We can confidently say that today’s regime is much weaker than the one twenty years ago, and the democratic forces are much stronger. The military has lost more than half of the country’s territory because of the coordinated attacks by democratic armed forces. We can win, and we will win.

However, the international community can and must do more to support our people, who are risking their lives to free our country.

AFRICA

SUDAN

Al Jazeera reports on conditions in the last functioning hospital in the Sudanese city of Bahri:

ERITREA

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi turned up in Asmara on Thursday as guests of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. The three discussed strengthening their mutual relationships and expressed “unequivocal respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the countries of the region” as well as their shared interest in “confronting interference in the internal affairs of the countries of the region under any pretext or justification.” All of this rhetoric was of course aimed squarely at Ethiopia, whose government continues to cultivate a relationship with the separatist government of the Somaliland region—a violation, in the Somali government’s view, of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, to say nothing of interference in internal Somali affairs. All three of these countries have grievances with Ethiopia and this summit no doubt was no doubt watched closely in Addis Ababa.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The Ukrainian military says it conducted a successful overnight drone strike on an arms depot in the Adygean Republic in Russia’s northern Caucasus region. It’s also claiming a strike on a drone storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region. There’s no indication as to the extent of any damage in either incident.

Responsible Statecraft’s Peter Rutland argues that Western governments are obfuscating the failure of their Russian sanctions policy by repeatedly changing the policy’s goals:

On September 26-27 the Fletcher School at Tufts University hosted a workshop on “Global repercussions of Russia-West economic warfare.” It brought together two dozen experts, both academics and practitioners, to discuss the impact of the sweeping sanctions imposed on Russia by some 50 countries in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The meeting, organized by Tufts professors Christopher Miller and Daniel Drezner, did not come up with a decisive answer to the key question: are the sanctions working — and the related question, should they be wound up, continued, or intensified?

In part, this is because Western leaders have been vague when it comes to defining the goals of the sanctions, which have shifted over time. Initially, the goal was to deter Russia from launching the invasion. That did not work. So then the goal was to crash the Russian economy, force a bank run and collapse of the ruble, which would hopefully cause Russian elites, and/or the Russian people, to rise up against Putin and force him to abandon the war. For a week or two, that seemed to be working. But the Russian Central Bank imposed strict controls to stop the outflow of capital and ended the convertibility of the ruble. The Russian economy did not collapse.

After that, the goal shifted to one of attrition, increasing the cost to Putin in the hope that it will make him more willing to come to the negotiating table and end the war. By ratcheting down the declared goals, leaders can keep insisting that the sanctions are working.

UKRAINE

The Guardian, citing “senior officials in Kyiv and Seoul,” is reporting that “dozens” of North Korean military engineers are serving with Russian forces in Ukraine to assist in the use of North Korean-made KN-23 ballistic missiles. This aligns with reporting earlier this week claiming that North Korean military personnel had been killed in a Ukrainian strike on a Russian position in Donetsk oblast, though it’s still unclear whether those specific personnel were involved in missile-related activities. If this is accurate it reflects the first known use of foreign soldiers as part of the Russian war effort, excluding mercenaries of course. It is certainly plausible that the Russians have requested the presence of North Korean personnel to train their forces on the use of North Korean armaments, while for North Korea this is an opportunity to get a sense for how those armaments will perform in actual combat.

AMERICAS

HAITI

Haitian gangs reportedly attacked another town on Thursday, in this case Arcahaie in Haiti’s West department. According to the AP, local residents began calling in to radio stations on Thursday morning reporting the attack and requesting a police response. Haitian authorities later claimed that police were “on site” though details beyond that remain uncertain, including any sort of casualty assessment. A number of radio stations identified the attackers as members of the “Taliban” gang, which operates out of the Canaan suburb of Port-au-Prince. This attack took place one week after members of the Gran Grif killed at least 115 people in the town of Pont-Sondé in Haiti’s Artibonite department. Clearly the gang violence that has gripped the Haitian capital for several months is metastasizing to other parts of the country.

UNITED STATES

Finally, at Foreign Policy, the Middle East Institute’s Khaled Elgindy remarks on the “unmitigated failure” of the Biden administration’s post-October 7 approach toward Israel:

A year ago, in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, U.S. President Joe Biden traveled to Tel Aviv and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reiterate his administration’s unwavering support for Israel. Biden’s embrace of Netanyahu was rooted in the belief that only positive inducements and constant reassurances—both militarily and diplomatically—could restrain Israel’s actions in Gaza. In reality, though, this “bear hug” diplomacy has resulted in an unmitigated failure.

Since the onset of Israel’s offensive campaign in Gaza, the Biden administration has pursued four policy objectives: supporting Israel’s military campaign to eliminate the security threat posed by Hamas; helping to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza; mitigating harm to Palestinian civilians; and preventing an all-out war in the region.

A year later, however, more than 42,000 Palestinians are dead, and most of Gaza is in ruins, with its 2 million inhabitants facing one of the worst humanitarian disasters of this century. Israel has failed to achieve its stated goal of completely eliminating Hamas, and some 100 hostages remain captive in Gaza. Meanwhile, U.S.-sponsored cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas have all but collapsed, even as the war has now spread to Lebanon, and the threat of a wider war with Iran looms on the horizon.

Although Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran clearly bear responsibility for the ongoing violence, the Biden administration must also accept blame as the most powerful foreign-policy actor in the region and the chief enabler of the war. Despite the Biden administration’s often public frustration with Israel at being repeatedly defied and left in the dark, by continuing to provide Israel with unrestricted political and military support it has undermined its own diplomacy and brought us to the brink of an all-out regional war.

While previous U.S. administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have been highly deferential to Israel, Biden has been unique in his uncompromising, almost fundamentalist, refusal to use U.S. leverage or apply any meaningful pressure on Israel. This has resulted in an incoherent U.S. policy that is jarringly disconnected from realities on the ground—as well as the administration’s own policy objectives.

Increasingly I find myself rejecting this argument because it assumes that Biden and his administration haven’t welcomed the events of the past year, with Israel turned loose to strike at Iranian partners in the Middle East. The excessive civilian casualties that have resulted seem, for Biden and company, to be an abstract nuisance at most and maybe on some level even embraced as a path toward a “solution” (as revolting as that sounds) to the “Palestinian issue.” That said, the perception that Biden’s policy has failed on its own (publicly-stated) terms—and the fact that said perception is even filtering through relatively mainstream DC vectors like the MEI and Foreign Policy, is in itself a significant development.