World roundup: October 17 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Japan, Kenya, 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:
TODAY IN HISTORY
October 17, 1437: The Battle of Tangier ends in disaster for the attacking Portuguese, led by the famed Prince Henry the Navigator. Not only did the Portuguese fail to take the city, they wound up facing a siege of their own encampment by a Marinid relief army and were forced to leave behind another royal, Prince Ferdinand, as a hostage lest their entire army be wiped out. He eventually died in custody. Having failed in his attempt to seize Tangier, a key northern terminus of the north-south trans-Saharan trade network, Henry devoted his time to finding a maritime route around the western coast of Africa that could connect Portugal directly to Mali. That effort, needless to say, proved to be much more successful.
October 17, 1973: OPEC imposes an oil embargo against countries that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War—Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The embargo immediately caused a spike in oil prices and contributed to shortages that led to gasoline rationing in the targeted countries. It notably did not cause any of the targeted countries to change policy.
INTERNATIONAL
According to Reuters and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the coral bleaching event that began back in February 2023 is now the largest ever recorded, encompassing “77% of the world’s coral reef areas” that satellite data shows have “been subjected to bleaching-level heat stress.” The previous record holder, the 2014-2017 bleaching event, covered 66 percent of those areas. It’s unclear how much of those reefs have died but it may not matter—coral needs cooler water to recover from a bleaching event and there doesn’t seem to be much expectation that oceans temperatures are going to decline meaningfully in the near future. The emerging La Niña cycle might provide some relief, but whether it can really counter the warming caused by climate change is questionable.
On a related note, several new studies are warning that a geographically concentrated global food supply chain is too vulnerable to climate change-fueled water crises:
High food prices, meet the global water crisis.
The world’s food supply is under threat because so much of what we eat is concentrated in so few countries, and many of those countries are increasingly facing a water shortage. That’s the conclusion of three independent studies published this week.
One study, published by World Resources Institute, found that one quarter of the world’s crops is grown in places where the water supply is stressed, unreliable or both.
A second, published by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, crunched the data slightly differently, concluding that half the world’s food production is in areas where water availability is projected to decline.
The third study, published by the European Union’s environmental agency, found that even some ordinarily wet parts of the continent face a drying trend.
All three recommend urgent course corrections. Those include plugging leaks, reducing food waste, restoring wetlands and setting corporate targets on sustainable water use.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) says it has confirmed the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in an apparent firefight with Israeli soldiers in Rafah on Wednesday. Israeli officials say they were able to use dental records and DNA (information they would have had on file from back when Sinwar was in Israeli prison) to make the identification. Somewhat incredibly, after the IDF had spent over a year making Sinwar its top individual target in Gaza, Israeli soldiers killed him in an apparently random encounter rather than some sort of targeted operation.
Sinwar’s death definitely marks a turning point in this conflict (to the extent one can call it a “conflict”). It especially marks a turning point for Hamas, which cannot replace so integral a figure without changing the nature of the organization. At a bare minimum it’s seems likely that its leadership will once again be divided between a Gaza boss (likely Sinwar’s younger brother, Muhammad, another Israeli target) and a diaspora political leader. The latter have tended to be less militant in their aims and more open to political engagement than the former, and Muhammad Sinwar may not be able to overawe the group’s politburo the way his brother did.
I’ll leave it to others to try to assess Sinwar’s legacy. The one thing I will say is that his October 7 scheme has definitely brought the Palestinian issue back to the forefront of regional politics, after Netanyahu thought he’d successfully buried it. But obviously that’s come at an almost unfathomable cost. His death, in battle with Israeli forces above ground, runs counter to the picture Israeli officials have painted over the last several months of a man desperately hiding in Gaza’s tunnel network, surrounded by October 7 hostages. Whatever happens to Hamas in its current iteration, I suspect the image of Sinwar fighting to the end is going to resonate with young Palestinians whose feelings toward Israel have hardened over the past 12 months.
It’s much less clear that Sinwar’s death is going to bring about an end to (or even a reduction in) the carnage, even as desperate US presidential candidates are trying to nudge things in that direction. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it the “beginning of the end,” which sounds cool but means nothing. Netanyahu has no interest in ending the killing. Frankly I’m not sure he can end the killing, because the killing has become his government’s main or perhaps even sole raison d’être. If it stops killing what’s left? Going back to debating his judicial overhaul plan? Netanyahu’s political fortunes have improved dramatically with every new atrocity he’s inflicted, so what incentive does he have to stop? There’s no pressure to do so coming from the Biden administration, today’s rhetoric notwithstanding. Maybe Sinwar’s successors will give Netanyahu the surrender he’s demanding and in that way try to force him to stand down. But I’m not even sure that would be enough to stop him.
Sinwar’s death has overshadowed everything else out of Gaza, but there were a few other stories today:
Palestinian officials are saying that another IDF airstrike on a school turned shelter in Jabalia killed at least 28 people on Thursday, including children. You already know what’s coming next, but the IDF said the facility was being used as a command center by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.
The United Nations says that the IDF has fired on UN aid convoys “at least four times in three months” and detained a UN polio vaccination team last month for several hours at gunpoint. None of those shootings resulted in any casualties but that seems to have been a matter of pure luck. Aid workers are describing a lack of coordination between the civilian officials responsible for clearing convoys and the soldiers who are manning checkpoints in the territory, so it’s possible this is more incompetence than malice. Though more than a year into this the level of incompetence at the very least speaks to indifference on the part of the Israelis.
Israeli authorities have apparently shut down the import of commercial food to Gaza, ostensibly over fear that Hamas was benefiting from the scheme. Commercial shipments are not a substitute for humanitarian aid but they have complemented the aid, particularly in terms of bringing perishable food items into the territory.
It’s not just the Biden administration that’s pushing Israel not to target nuclear sites when it eventually retaliates for Iran’s latest missile strike. Russian officials say they’ve conveyed a similar message to their Israeli counterparts. It very much remains to be seen whether the Israelis are going to honor these concerns.
SYRIA
Russian airstrikes killed at least 10 people and wounded another 32 in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province on Wednesday, according to the rebel-aligned Syrian Civil Defense organization. There’s been a spike in the level of violence in northwestern Syria over the past few days and it may have something to do with the Israeli war in Lebanon. Maybe the Russians want to discourage any rebel group that gets any ideas about testing the Syrian military now that its Hezbollah partner is dealing with that Israeli assault and the loss of several of its senior figures.
The IDF carried out an airstrike in the northwestern Syrian city of Latakia early Thursday morning, targeting a “weapons depot” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The strike wounded two people. There’s nothing especially remarkable about this except for the location—Latakia is close enough to Russian military facilities that it’s usually spared Israeli attack.
YEMEN
The US military says it used B-2 stealth bombers to strike underground Houthi weapons depots around the city of Sanaa and in Yemen’s Saada province early Thursday morning. US Central Command says it’s received no reports of civilian casualties in the strikes, but neither does it seem to have an assessment of the damage they caused. While the use of the B-2s is notable this does not seem appreciably different than any other attack the US has carried out against the Houthis over the past several months. The Houthis are pledging to retaliate.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The UN’s Afghanistan mission is calling for an investigation into reports that Iranian border guards fired on a group of some 200 Afghan nationals who crossed into Iran earlier this week, killing “dozens” of them. The Afghan government says it’s opened its own investigation into the alleged incident. Iranian officials are denying the allegation but the Iranian government does not look particularly fondly on undocumented Afghan migrants and border guards may be on edge anticipating militants and/or criminal smugglers.
INDONESIA
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) announced on Thursday that it will “support” President-elect Prabowo Subianto when he takes office on Sunday, though it’s unclear what exactly that means. The party has not explicitly said that it will join the ad hoc parliamentary coalition Prabowo has assembled, which already accounts for a majority but would be greatly strengthened by adding the PDI-P, the largest party in the legislature. If the party does join the coalition, or at least effectively joins it, that would leave Prabowo without any organized parliamentary opposition at the outset of his presidency.
CHINA
The Biden administration on Thursday blacklisted three Chinese firms and one individual over their alleged support for the Russian military. The firms are accused of developing and manufacturing the Russians’ Garpiya long-range attack drone. This is the first allegation of Chinese firms directly manufacturing arms for Moscow; previous sanctions had focused on the provision of “dual use” products to support Russia’s own arms manufacturing capabilities.
JAPAN
New polling from the Nikkei newspaper suggests that Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is set to lose its sole parliamentary majority in the October 27 snap election. The party would still remain in government but would be dependent for its House of Representatives majority on its coalition partner, the Komeito party (as it is in the less powerful upper chamber of the Japanese parliament, the House of Councillors). While those parties do collaborate, Komeito is not as enthused about plans to beef up the Japanese military self-defense forces and that could cause some friction with new Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru. Ishiba could seek an alternative coalition partner more aligned to his goals. Another survey, from Jiji Press, found that public support for Ishiba’s government is only 28 percent, which is very low given that Ishiba only recently took office. I guess he’s not getting much of a “honeymoon.”
AFRICA
SUDAN
Human Rights Watch is warning that Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia’s Amhara region are at “grave risk” due to the ongoing conflict between the Ethiopian government and the Fano militia. According to HRW, “armed men and local militias” have been responsible for multiple atrocities, including murder and kidnapping for ransom, near two Sudanese refugee camps in the region. It’s accusing the Ethiopian government of intentionally refusing to secure the camps.
MOROCCO
The UN’s Western Sahara envoy, Staffan de Mistura, reportedly proposed partitioning that disputed territory in a UN Security Council session on Thursday. His proposal, as related by Reuters, would create an independent state in the southern part of the territory, controlled by the Polisario Front rebel group, while recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the rest of it. Di Mistura acknowledged that neither the Moroccan government nor Polisario had seemed amenable to the idea. Moroccan officials have been slowly gaining international support for their plan to treat Western Sahara as an autonomous part of Morocco, most recently winning French support in July.
SOMALIA
A suicide bombing killed at least seven people and wounded six more in a cafe near a police academy in Mogadishu on Thursday. Unsurprisingly al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.
KENYA
The Kenyan Senate on Thursday voted to remove Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua from office. Gachagua had faced an array of corruption-related charges, which his defenders insist were politically motivated, and was unable to testify in his own defense after having to be rushed to the hospital with chest pains earlier in the day. Senators opted not to delay the vote to give him time to recover. Kenyan President William Ruto and Gachagua are apparently not on great terms, and Ruto hasn’t made any public comment on the impeachment.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The UK government on Thursday blacklisted 22 Russian cargo vessels—18 oil tankers and four liquefied natural gas carriers—that are all allegedly part of the “shadow fleet” that’s been enabling Moscow to dodge the G7-imposed cap on Russian oil prices. Western governments appear to be undertaking a new coordinated effort to identify and sanction the ships in this fleet, with the US and Canada having already issued a “call to action” over the issue.
UKRAINE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky turned up at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday for this week’s defense ministers’ summit. He’s there to pitch his “Victory Plan” to the assembled ministers and, apparently, to bring a warning about an influx of North Korean soldiers fighting for the Russian military.

Zelensky told reporters in Brussels that Ukrainian intelligence believes that Pyongyang is training “10,000 soldiers” to potentially join the Russians in Ukraine, warning that their deployment would escalate the conflict to the status of “world war.” It’s unclear to me whether anybody outside of Ukraine has seen any evidence of North Korean soldiers being prepared for deployment to Ukraine. There does seem to be a growing consensus that North Korean military engineers and officers are assisting Russian forces in the use of North Korean-made munitions, but that’s not the same thing as North Korean soldiers serving on the battlefield.
AMERICAS
CUBA
The Cuban government on Wednesday accused the US government of indifference with respect to its investigation of a September 2023 Molotov cocktail attack on the Cuban embassy in Washington DC. The Cuban government is upset that the attacker still hasn’t been identified and that the attack itself hasn’t been labeled a “terrorist” incident, and it’s suggesting that the US is violating its obligation to protect foreign embassies and diplomatic personnel on US soil. The US State Department is rejecting that allegation.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Intercept’s Sam Biddle reports that the US military is aiming to create undetectable phony social media personalities to carry out influence operations and disinformation campaigns:
The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.
The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content,” the entry reads.
The document specifies that JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that “appear to be a unique individual that is recognizable as human but does not exist in the real world,” with each featuring “multiple expressions” and “Government Identification quality photos.”
In addition to still images of faked people, the document notes that “the solution should include facial & background imagery, facial & background video, and audio layers,” and JSOC hopes to be able to generate “selfie video” from these fabricated humans. These videos will feature more than fake people: Each deepfake selfie will come with a matching faked background, “to create a virtual environment undetectable by social media algorithms.”