World roundup: October 27 2022

Stories from Iran, Somalia, Colombia, and elsewhere

Oct 28, 2022

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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

October 26, 1185: A revolt over high Byzantine taxes breaks out among Bulgarians living in Moesia. This insurrection, known as the “Uprising of Asen and Peter” after its leaders—two brothers (identified as Vlach but probably with mixed Bulgarian heritage) who were named, you know, Asen and Peter—quickly led to a restoration of the Bulgarian Empire, which had been subjugated by the Byzantines in the 11th century. The restored empire is dated to the start of the uprising, though its independence wasn’t secured until around 1187 and technically its war with Byzantium continued all the way until the Fourth Crusade (temporarily) ended the Byzantine Empire in 1204. This “Second Bulgarian Empire” survived until it was eradicated by the Ottomans in 1396.

October 26, 1947: Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir signs the Instrument of Accession that brings his state into union with India. When British colonial authorities partitioned India and Pakistan, they decided to leave Kashmir’s fate up to Kashmir. The region’s Muslim majority was divided between independence and union with Pakistan, while its Hindu minority favored union with India. Hari Singh seemed to favor independence, but conflict between Kashmiri Muslims and Hindus prompted him to turn to India for help and Kashmir thus joined India.

October 27, 1942: A Japanese fleet defeats a smaller US fleet in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, part of World War II’s Guadalcanal campaign. Although the US took heavier losses in this engagement, with two ships sunk including the fleet carrier USS Hornet, Japan’s losses in aircraft and trained pilots proved to be more strategically significant in the long term and so this battle is regarded as a Pyrrhic victory.

October 27, 2019: During an overnight US special forces raid in the town of Barisha, in Syria’s Idlib province, Islamic State leader and would-be caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is killed. According to US officials Baghdadi attempted to flee, but upon being surrounded he detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and two children.

INTERNATIONAL

In today’s global news:

Worldometer is tracking COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
The New York Times is tracking global vaccine distribution.
With the start of the United Nations’ COP27 climate summit just days away, UN Climate Change issued a new report on Wednesday advising that humanity is well off track to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This is not exactly breaking news, but the report sets out just how far off track things are. Scientists have said that global carbon emissions need to be around 45 percent lower in 2030 than they were in 2010 to have a shot at hitting the Paris limit. At their current pace, it seems carbon emissions in 2030 will be 10.6 percent higher than they were in 2010. Seems like a problem, but what do I know? Shockingly, the pledges governments made to revisit emissions reduction plans during last year’s COP26 summit have gone mostly unfulfilled. A report from the UN Environment Program puts the world on track to heat up by 2.8 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Should be fun!
On the plus side, I guess, the International Energy Agency is predicting that the war in Ukraine and resultant energy crisis will fast track a transition to renewable energy sources. Much as I’d like to believe that, when energy companies are still making massive investments in fossil fuels, like the potentially disastrous East African Crude Oil Pipeline project, it doesn’t seem like there’s really that much urgency behind shifting to cleaner alternatives.

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz headed to Ankara on Thursday for a confab with his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar. Afterward, they told reporters that they agreed “to resume working relations,” as Gantz put it. Israeli-Turkish relations have been in a bit of a rough patch since 2018, at least in terms of upper-level government contacts, but so far this year they’ve exchanged ambassadors and now restored full military contacts so they seem to be getting along now. Gantz, I’m sure, relished the chance to take this trip to burnish his public image ahead of next week’s Israeli election. Gantz’s Blue and White party is nominally part of Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s coalition, but Gantz would undoubtedly like to outperform Lapid and make himself a legitimate PM candidate.

IRAQ

The Iraqi parliament voted on Thursday to confirm new Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaʿ al-Sudani and his cabinet, finally giving Iraq a government over a year after the country’s last parliamentary election. Among the promises Sudani made during his first address as PM, he pledged to amend Iraqi electoral law within three months and to hold a new election within a year. That’s presumably meant as a concession to Muqtada al-Sadr, whose partisans won last year’s election but quit parliament en masse when they were blocked from forming a government. It remains to be seen whether Sadr will be appeased.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli and Lebanese governments officially signed their US-brokered deal delineating their maritime border on Thursday. The conclusion of the agreement allows both countries to begin exploiting offshore gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean. But according to Lapid the deal also marks Lebanon’s formal recognition of Israel, “in front of the entire international community.” I can understand why he’d try to spin it that way—with the election approaching he’d like the Israeli public to believe he’s just scored a major diplomatic win. But Lebanese President Michel Aoun rejected Lapid’s interpretation and I think the fact that Beirut would only engage with the Israelis through the mediation of the US during this process suggests they did not, in fact, make any sort of policy shift regarding their bilateral relationship.

IRAN

Protests over the death of Mahsa Amini flared violently overnight, following memorials marking 40 days since her funeral. Amnesty International says it confirmed that Iranian security forces killed at least eight people from Wednesday evening into Thursday and at least two were killed on Thursday in what appears to have been a very violent crackdown attempt in the predominantly Kurdish city of Mahabad. Protesters in Mahabad reportedly attacked government buildings in that city, which has not typically been part of the Amini demonstrations and may have been motivated in part by the death of a demonstrator the previous day. Far from suppressing the unrest, police violence seems to be fueling more of it.

Iranian officials are now trying to pin Wednesday’s mass shooting at a shrine in the city of Shiraz on the protesters, or “rioters” in their parlance. The thing is, not only has Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack (which I guess could be a fabrication), the Iranians themselves pinned the shooting on “takfiri terrorists” after they’d arrested the shooter. They seem to be blaming the protesters for creating an environment of instability that somehow enabled the Shiraz attack, but the effort to link these two things could be meant to pre-justify an even heavier security response to the protests.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

Islamic State fighters reportedly attacked a military transport vehicle in western Afghanistan’s Herat province on Thursday, killing at least five military personnel. Afghan officials have cited a number of injuries as well but to my knowledge have not offered specific details.

MYANMAR

The foreign ministers of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states met in Jakarta on Thursday to discuss the civil war that continues to ravage Myanmar. As has been the case since it seized power in February 2021, Myanmar’s ruling junta was not invited to send a representative. ASEAN members remain committed to the five-point peace plan they negotiated with the junta last year, even though there’s been no hint of progress toward implementing that plan. The bloc has been internally divided as to how or whether to pressure the junta to start making some progress, and Thursday’s meeting doesn’t appear to have resulted in any sort of consensus. The junta warned that any pressure from ASEAN would be detrimental to the peace process, though since there is no discernible peace process it’s unclear how anything could be detrimental to it.

PHILIPPINES

At least two soldiers were killed in an attack in the northern Philippine province of Abra on Thursday. One soldier was wounded in the incident and another is now missing and may have been captured. The attackers are suspected of being part of the communist New People’s Army rebel group, though as far as I know there’s been no claim of responsibility from the NPA or anyone else. The northern Philippines was hit by a significant earthquake over the weekend and the country’s military has deployed to the region as part of the recovery effort. Philippine soldiers and NPA fighters clashed on Wednesday in Camarines Sur province in an engagement that left at least two rebel combatants dead.

MALI

A new report from Human Rights Watch says that Islamic State fighters have killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands in eastern Mali’s Gao and Ménaka regions, seizing considerable territory along the way, so far this year. The Tuareg Dawsahak people have borne the brunt of much of this violence. Mali’s ruling junta has claimed that it’s gotten a handle on the country’s jihadist insurgencies but this report, coupled with reports of al-Qaeda’s activities around Bamako, would seem to undermine those claims.

NIGERIA

The US State Department on Thursday ordered all non-emergency personnel and the families of all US personnel to leave Abuja, the latest in an escalating series of US warnings about some unspecified terrorist threat to the Nigerian capital. There’s still no indication when this supposed attack might happen or what it might target.

SOMALIA

According to The New York Times, the Somali government has asked the Biden administration to intensify US drone activity:

The Biden administration is weighing a request by Somalia that the United States loosen restrictions on its military drone strikes targeting Shabab militants in the troubled Horn of Africa nation, according to several U.S. officials.
The request comes as a new Somali administration has launched an offensive against Al Shabab, with several local clan militias joining the central government’s fight. President Biden also recently redeployed 450 U.S. troops to Somalia, reversing former President Donald J. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal in January 2021.
But the Somali government wants U.S. military operators to be able to attack groups of Shabab militants who might pose a threat to Somali forces — even if they are not firing upon them at the moment, the officials said. Such a move would further escalate American involvement in the long-running counterterrorism war.

Somali officials seem to think that a recent local uprising against al-Shabab in central Somalia’s Hirshabelle state could spread to other parts of the country and dislodge the jihadist group from areas it’s controlled in some cases for years. What they’re asking would likely oblige the Biden administration to designate Somalia, or at least parts of it, as a “war zone” to dodge a requirement for presidential approval for drone strikes.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Congolese soldiers are continuing to battle M23 militia fighters in North Kivu province’s Rutshuru region, where the rebels have since the weekend been threatening a major highway running into the provincial capital, Goma. At least ten civilians have been killed in the area since Sunday, when M23 captured a village near the highway. The rebels are reportedly in control of part of the highway but have not been able to break through toward Goma, at least not yet.

SOUTH AFRICA

The US embassy in South Africa issued a warning on Wednesday about a potential terrorist attack in Sandton, a suburb of Johannesburg, coming this Saturday. The warning drew a rebuke on Thursday from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who indicated that US officials hadn’t consulted with his government prior to issuing the warning and accused the embassy of stoking a general panic. He added that his government is assessing the warning. It’s unclear what the potential target might be but there is apparently a Pride parade scheduled for Saturday in Sandton so that’s one possibility.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

Vladimir Putin delivered a speech on the state of the Ukraine war on Thursday, which briefly raised fears that he might announce some major new escalation like he’s annexing Ukraine’s sewage system or deploying giant robots or something. He did not do anything like that, but instead talked about standing up to Western aggression and genders (seriously). That said, Putin’s government did suggest a potential escalation earlier in the day when his foreign ministry argued that commercial satellites found to be involved in the Ukraine war could be considered legitimate military targets. Leaving aside the technical merits of that argument, attacking satellites would be unprecedented and would open a whole new vista into space warfare that I suspect we’d all be better off not opening.

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Bosnia’s Central Election Commission on Thursday confirmed the election of Milorad Dodik as president of the country’s Republika Srpska region earlier this month. Dodik’s runner up, Jelena Trivić, has accused him of rigging the outcome. The Commission conducted a recount that it said found a number of irregularities, but none that would have changed the outcome of the election.

NORWAY

Earlier this week, Norwegian authorities said they’d arrested a suspected Russian spy posing as a Brazilian academic. He was apparently working at the University of Tromsoe. It is unclear how the Norwegians learned about this man or whether there was some precipitating incident that led them to investigate him, but he’d reportedly attended a seminar on “hybrid threats” that included discussion of pipeline attacks, which as you might expect is a particularly sensitive issue in Europe these days.

COLOMBIA

The Colombian Congress passed a law on Thursday giving President Gustavo Petro the authority to negotiate settlements to conflicts with Colombia’s various armed groups. Petro came into office promising intensive negotiations with rebels, paramilitaries, and/or criminal gangs in an effort to end the internal warfare that’s marked much of Colombian history for the past several decades. The new law will allow him to pursue peace talks with groups that have already expressed interest in negotiations, including the National Liberation Army (ELN), ex-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) factions, and the Clan del Golfo cartel. Among other details it establishes channels for those groups to make contact with Colombian officials without fear of arrest.

UNITED STATES

Finally, the Biden administration’s newly unveiled nuclear weapons policy document is already getting rave reviews:

Following months of delays, the Biden administration released its Nuclear Posture Review Thursday. The document declares that “the fundamental role of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our Allies, and partners,” while also stating that America’s nuclear arsenal could be used to deter conventional “attacks that have a strategic effect against the United States or its Allies and partners.”
The policy falls short of what some hoped would be a significant shift to American nuclear posture following President Joe Biden’s statements on the campaign trail, according to Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association.
“This broad and ambiguous nuclear weapons declaratory policy walks back President Biden’s earlier position and pledge to narrow the role of U.S. nuclear weapons,” Kimball said in a statement, adding that “policies that threaten the first use of nuclear weapons” carry “unacceptable risks.”