World roundup: October 22 2025

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

PROGRAMMING NOTE: As I said in Monday’s newsletter, I have been losing my voice so I’m taking this week off from the voiceover feature. As always, those who require a voiceover for accessibility reasons can use the Substack app’s text-to-voice feature.

TODAY IN HISTORY

October 22, 1859: The Spanish government declares war on Morocco, sparking the six month Hispano-Moroccan War. Repeated attacks by Berber tribesmen from the Moroccan Rif region against the Spanish North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla prompted the declaration. In a relatively anti-climactic conflict the Spanish army occupied the northern Moroccan city of Tétouan and that effectively ended the fighting. The Treaty of Wad Ras, signed in late April 1860, obliged Morocco to pay a hefty war indemnity, expanded the territories of both Ceuta and Melilla, and gave the southern Moroccan coastal city of Sidi Ifni to Spain as well. The Spanish government returned Sidi Ifni to Morocco in 1969.

October 22, 1884: The International Meridian Conference, which was a real thing, designates the line of longitude running through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich as the international Prime Meridian. Previously most major seafaring countries, at least, designated their own separate prime meridians that often ran through their capital cities (Germany used the “Berlin Meridian,” for example, and France used the “Paris Meridian”). But such was the ubiquity of British map-making that the UK/Greenwich prime meridian had become the international standard by default even before this conference made it official. Nowadays the international Prime Meridian is the IERS Reference Meridian, which still runs through Greenwich but is around 100 meters east of the previous one.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

This story appears to be developing, but Syrian security forces have surrounded a camp housing a group of foreign jihadist fighters, called Firqatul Ghuraba, in Idlib province. They’re looking for two French nationals who are now wanted by the French government. Initial efforts focused on negotiating the surrender of the two French nationals but it sounds like things have taken a turn and there have been reports of “clashes.” Firqatul Ghuraba leader Omar Omsen has reportedly called on other foreign fighters in Syria to “mobilize” against the security forces. Firqatul Ghuraba was one of several foreign jihadist groups that were broadly aligned with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham during the Syrian Civil War, but now that HTS has taken over the Syrian government and is dependent on Western support the presence of those groups is starting to become inconvenient.