World roundup: October 29 2020
World roundup: October 29 2020
Stories from Azerbaijan, Ivory Coast, France, and more
This is the web version of Foreign Exchanges, but did you know you can get it delivered right to your inbox? Sign up today:
THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
October 28, 312: Constantine makes himself the sole ruler of the western Roman Empire by defeating his rival Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. This battle is perhaps most famous for the religious vision that Constantine allegedly received the night before, in which either Jesus Christ or Sol Invictus (surviving references are to Christ but there are hints that it may have been the solar deity), showed him a sign and promised him victory if he affixed that sign (traditionally said to have been the “Chi-Rho,” the interlocking Greek letters “ΧΡ” that represent the first two letters of “Christ” and came to symbolize Jesus) to his soldiers’ shields. This is supposedly the first step in Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, though it was still some time before he appears to have declared himself a Christian and official worship of Sol Invictus continued and was even promoted by Constantine himself for several years to come. The battle left Constantine as the unquestioned ruler of the Roman west, with his fellow Augustus Licinius as ruler of the Roman east, and effectively marks the end of the Emperor Diocletian’s (d. 305) four emperor “Tetrarchy” system. Naturally the two Augusti eventually went to war with one another, with Constantine emerging victorious as the sole Roman Emperor in 324.
October 28, 1922: Sticking with Rome, Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party begins the two day March on Rome that would end with its takeover of the Italian government. As Mussolini’s blackshirts approached the city, Prime Minister Luigi Facta called for martial law, but Italian King Victor Emmanuel III opted instead to get rid of Facta and make Mussolini his new prime minister. I’m sure it all worked out fine in the end.
October 29, 1923: Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, officially declares the country a republic, although it had been functioning as one for over three years by that point. Annually commemorated in Turkey as “Republic Day.”
October 29, 1929: The “Crash of ‘29,” which began with “Black Thursday” on October 24 and continued with “Black Monday” on October 28, ends with “Black Tuesday.” Over those final two days the stock market lost roughly a quarter of its value. By July 1932 the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at just over 40 points, down from roughly 380 in September 1929. The crash signaled the onset of the Great Depression, a global economic crash that especially hit industrialized Western nations and those countries dependent on the West for trade and investment and that wouldn’t really end in many places until after the onset of World War II.
October 29, 1956: The Suez Crisis begins
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for October 29:
45,312,962 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (11,141,668 active, +545,499 since yesterday)
1,185,733 reported fatalities (+7167 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
77,778 confirmed coronavirus cases (+1933)
610 reported fatalities (+8)
Al Jazeera is reporting that the official investigation into August’s explosion at Beirut’s seaport will not lead to charges against any senior Lebanese political figures. It’s not that senior Lebanese political figures weren’t responsible, mind you. It’s that the investigation was never intended to reach that far up the country’s political hierarchy. So much for any real accountability or political reform emerging from this disaster.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
313,114 confirmed cases (+564) in Israel, 52,571 confirmed cases (+623) in Palestine
2508 reported fatalities (+14) in Israel, 473 reported fatalities (+8) in Palestine
As we noted yesterday, the Trump administration says it will now mark “Israel” as the birthplace on the passports of US nationals born in Jerusalem. That violates Jerusalem’s international status, which remains unsettled, but is the logical result of the administration’s 2017 decision to recognize the city as Israel’s capital. It’s a relatively minor bureaucratic step that just reinforces this administration’s willingness to go out of its way to contribute even in small ways to the further immiseration of the Palestinian people.
Speaking of that immiseration, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 Palestinian-owned olive trees have been destroyed by Israeli settler-colonizers in the West Bank over the past three weeks, during harvest season. At least 23 Palestinian farmers have been injured in settler-colonizer attacks. This would be illegal under Israeli law, which is supposed to govern West Bank settlement-colonies, but the fact is that Israeli authorities haphazardly enforce the law in the West Bank when it comes to settlers and almost never except in the most egregious cases (murder, for example). There are even cases where the Israeli military itself appears to have destroyed olive trees amid alleged clashes with Palestinians who are enraged by the loss of their crops and livelihoods.
EGYPT
107,209 confirmed cases (+179)
6247 reported fatalities (+13)
The movement in Saudi Arabia to boycott Turkish products seems to be creating an economic opportunity for Egypt. Al-Monitor’s George Mikhail reports that Egyptian companies are pushing hard to replace those Turkish products with Egyptian alternatives, which could give a significant boost to those Egyptian firms, especially in the construction industry. The Egyptian Chamber of Commerce has issued its own call to boycott Turkish products, both in solidarity and because of Egypt’s own geopolitical issues with Turkey.
QATAR
132,150 confirmed cases (+211)
231 reported fatalities (+1)
What should have been a fairly routine day at Doha’s international airport earlier this month has turned into a diplomatic incident after Qatari authorities detained and strip searched at least 18 women attempting to board flights out of the country. Apparently the Qataris discovered a newborn discarded in a garbage bin on October 2 and decided to strip search would-be passengers to determine if any had just given birth. As far as I know this…oh, let’s say “unique” investigative technique didn’t find the child’s biological mother, but it did understandably freak a lot of people out, and now the governments of Australia (13 of the women were Australian) and the UK (two of them were British) have some questions for the Qatari government. Qatari officials have expressed “regret” over the situation, though the savvy reader may note that’s not the same as apologizing.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
130,336 confirmed cases (+1312)
488 reported fatalities (+3)
The Trump administration has reportedly notified Congress that it’s prepared to move forward with the sale of F-35 aircraft to the UAE. Thoughts and prayers go out to Emirati air force pilots and their families in this trying time.
OMAN
114,434 confirmed cases (+0)
1208 reported fatalities (+0)
The Qatari government has stashed a cool $1 billion in Oman’s central bank to help Muscat cope with low oil prices and the pandemic, which have battered an economy that wasn’t exactly robust in the first place. That’s not much money in the big scheme of things, but it’s probably the first of many such injections to come. The more aid Qatar provides to Oman the less Oman has to depend on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and that means it’s less likely the Omanis will have to take sides in the dispute between Qatar and those other two Gulf states.
SAUDI ARABIA
346,482 confirmed cases (+435)
5363 reported fatalities (+15)
Saudi police have arrested a knife-wielding man who attacked the French consulate in Jeddah on Thursday, wounding a guard. There’s no official indication as yet with respect to the man’s motive, but given what happened in France on Thursday (see below) and the state of France’s reputation in the Islamic world these days, I think we can probably make an educated guess.
IRAN
596,941 confirmed cases (+8293)
34,113 reported fatalities (+399)
The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it’s blacklisted 11 companies and individuals allegedly involved in the sale of Iranian petrochemical products in violation of US sanctions. All 11 will have any US-based assets frozen and US entities and individuals will be barred from doing business with them, and bans on travel to the US will be issued where relevant. The administration also says it’s seized a shipment of missiles from Iran bound for the Houthis in Yemen, though it does not appear to have gone into any detail about that.
ASIA
AZERBAIJAN
53,152 confirmed cases (+1015)
708 reported fatalities (+9)
The Azerbaijani military and its allied mercenaries are reportedly advancing on the Karabakh town of Shusha, which is located about five kilometers away from the breakaway region’s “capital,” Stepanakert. It also lies at the Karabakh end of the “Lachin corridor” that links the predominantly Armenian region to Armenia proper. Basically if Azerbaijan captures it, the Karabakh Republic is in a lot of trouble. Apart from that development Thursday was a fairly typical day in Karabakh, with the two sides trading their now-routine accusations that the other side attacked civilians and the “Minsk Group” once again trying to organize negotiations on a ceasefire that won’t hold.
Representatives of the three Minsk co-chairs—France, Russia, and the US—are scheduled to meet with the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in Geneva on Friday. They were supposed to meet Thursday, but regardless there’s little chance they’ll be successful. Even if they manage to negotiate a fourth ceasefire at this point there’s no reason to believe it will go any differently than the first three. The Iranian government is also reportedly getting in on the mediation game, in collaboration with Russia. There’s actually a slim chance an Iranian initiative could make some progress, if only because the Iranians are willing to include Turkey in the process while the Minsk chairs are going out of their way to exclude it. Whatever you want to say about Turkey’s role in fomenting this conflict, it’s now pretty difficult to envision a peaceful end to it that doesn’t involve Ankara on some level. Still, I don’t expect the Iranians to have any more success than any other outside actor has had, which is to say none.
INDONESIA
404,048 confirmed cases (+3565)
13,701 reported fatalities (+89)
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took his Asian tour to Indonesia on Thursday to pitch Muslims on a regional effort to counter China:
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Indonesians to take a firm stand against China’s treatment of its ethnic minority Muslims, seeking to rally support on the issue in the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority country—whose government has been wary of criticizing Beijing.
Mr. Pompeo delivered the remarks to a Muslim youth group in the Southeast Asian country Thursday. It was one of the Trump administration’s most direct attempts to persuade Muslims to challenge Beijing on its policies in Xinjiang, the far-western province where human-rights groups say authorities have put a million or more mostly Muslim Uighurs in re-education camps.
“I know the Chinese Communist Party has tried to convince Indonesians to look away from the torments your fellow Muslims are suffering. I know these same CCP officials have spun fantastic tales of happy Uighurs, eager to discard their ethnic, religious and cultural identities to become more ‘modern’ and enjoy the benefits of CCP-led development,” Mr. Pompeo said. “When you hear these arguments, I just ask you to do this: Search your hearts. Look at the facts, listen to the tales of the survivors and their families.”
Treacly words aside, Mike Pompeo doesn’t care about the Uyghurs and neither does his boss, except to the extent they can weaponize the situation in Xinjiang against China. If anything, their cynical adoption of the Uyghur cause has helped weaken its credibility by wrapping it up in Great Power politics. But I digress.
Pompeo meeting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo (State Department via Twitter)
In his meetings with Indonesian officials, meanwhile, Pompeo focused on military cooperation to counter Beijing’s claims over the South China Sea, while the Indonesians stressed bilateral economic ties. Pompeo talked about increasing US investment in Indonesia but doesn’t appear to have gone into any specifics.
AFRICA
IVORY COAST
20,628 confirmed cases (+73)
124 reported fatalities (+0)
At Foreign Policy, researcher Jessica Moody (catch her appearance on FX’s award-eligible podcast here) has an excellent preview of Saturday’s Ivorian presidential election:
There is a sense of foreboding to Ivory Coast’s upcoming presidential election, due to be held on Oct. 31. The last time Ivorians went to the polls against the backdrop of fractious political debate and elevated intercommunal tensions, in 2010, the result was widespread violence that left at least 3,000 people dead.
That year the election pitted then-President Laurent Gbagbo against opposition leader Henri Konan Bédié and former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara, the country’s current president. The vote sparked significant unrest when the Electoral Commission declared Ouattara the winner, but Gbagbo, supported by the Constitutional Council, refused to stand down. Ouattara, with the assistance of Forces Nouvelles rebels, France, and the United Nations, seized the presidency, and Gbagbo was later sent to the International Criminal Court, where he was tried for crimes against humanity, only to be acquitted in January 2019.
This year, the election, which had looked like it might include those very same politicians—Gbagbo, Ouattara, and Bédié, all of whom remain key political figures in Ivory Coast—now appears to be a much more solitary affair for the president.
Assuming the opposition doesn’t find a way to prevent the vote from taking place, it would be stunning if Ouattara didn’t win a (constitutionally questionable) third term. The real uncertainty surrounding this election regards what will happen after that.
ETHIOPIA
95,301 confirmed cases (+481)
1457 reported fatalities (+6)
At least 27 people have been killed in new border violence involving militias in Ethiopia’s Afar and Somali states. The confrontation stems from a 2014 decision by the Ethiopian government to redraw the boundary between those states to move three towns from the Somali region into the Afar region. That move has led to repeated clashes in the years since and is still a source of resentment among Ethiopian Somalis, though officials in the Somali region are blaming Afar militias for sparking this latest round of fighting.
TANZANIA
509 confirmed cases (+0)
21 reported fatalities (+0)
Tanzania held its general election on Wednesday, and while official results aren’t available yet opposition leaders are already alleging widespread fraud down to the level of stuffing ballot boxes. They’ve been warning of fraud for months, amid wider complaints about President John Magufuli’s suppression of both political dissent and press freedoms. There’s no proof of any manipulation of the vote itself, though several tech firms like Twitter and Google have suggested that Tanzanian authorities suspiciously throttled their operations on Wednesday. And the question of whether the campaign overall has truly been free and fair, given the allegations of Magufuli’s authoritarianism, seems like an open one.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
11,211 confirmed cases (+0)
305 reported fatalities (+0)
Attackers believed to have been affiliated with the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces militia killed at least 18 people and burned down a church in a village in the DRC’s North Kivu province late Wednesday.
MOZAMBIQUE
12,525 confirmed cases (+110)
91 reported fatalities (+0)
Mozambican authorities claim that their army is approaching the main base used by Islamist militants in the country’s northern Cabo Delgado region. This secret lair is believed to be in a forested region near the port town of Mocímboa da Praia, which the insurgents captured back in August and still control. The Mozambican government has bolstered its security forces with mercenaries, possibly hired by the foreign energy companies that are trying to exploit-er, I mean, to develop Cabo Delgado’s large offshore gas deposits.
EUROPE
BELARUS
96,529 confirmed cases (+984)
973 reported fatalities (+4)
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had a busy day on Thursday. For one thing, he reorganized his security apparatus, appointing Minsk police chief Ivan Kubrakov as his new interior minister and naming former interior minister Yuri Karayev, former Belarusian KGB police chief Valery Vakulchik, and former deputy interior minister Alexander Barsukov to new posts as “presidential aides” tasked with security in different parts of the country. In case it wasn’t obvious from their collective LinkedIn profiles, these moves strongly suggest that a crackdown on opposition protests is forthcoming. Then, in probably related news, Lukashenko largely closed Belarus’s borders with Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine, ostensibly over the pandemic but let’s say that seems like a convenient cover story and leave it at that.
FRANCE
1,282,769 confirmed cases (+47,637)
36,020 reported fatalities (+235)
A knife-wielding attacker beheaded one person, killed at least two others, and wounded several more in an attack at a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday. The attacker was arrested and is apparently a Tunisian national who entered Europe last month. The attack is being treated as a terrorist act though there’s no indication at this point that the attacker was working with anyone else. That said, another knife-wielding man, this one Afghan, was arrested while attempting to board a tram in Lyon later in the day. There’s been no word on motive other than “terrorism” so it’s impossible to say whether either of these men was motivated by the recent controversy surrounding the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty, the display of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, or French President Emmanuel Macron’s subsequent criticisms of Islam. But as in the above-mentioned case in Saudi Arabia, we can probably make some educated guesses.
Separately, an armed man was shot and killed by French police in Avignon on Thursday. I say “separately” because, while early reports had this man shouting “Allahu Akbar” while waving a gun at people, it turns out he was a member of the far-right Generation Identity organization and was most definitely not a Muslim. He may also have been motivated by the Paty murder, though because he’s not Muslim it’s likely his attempted violence will be chalked up to some kind of mental or emotional disorder rather than to terrorist motivations.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
90,876 confirmed cases (+0)
784 reported fatalities (+0)
A Qeshm Fars Air cargo plane apparently arrived in Caracas on Tuesday via Iran (with stops in Tunisia and Cape Verde), despite US sanctions against the airline and, well, pretty much everybody else who could possibly have been involved with the flight. There’s no indication as to what it was carrying but the flight itself shows that ties between Iran and Venezuela are continuing to develop.
MEXICO
906,863 confirmed cases (+5595)
90,309 reported fatalities (+495)
The Washington Post looks at what the diversification of Mexican gangs from drugs to a much broader range of activities has meant in Zacatecas state:
The arrest this month of Mexico’s former defense minister stunned the nation, with U.S. prosecutors alleging he had helped a cartel send thousands of kilos of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States. But the crisis confronting Mexico goes far beyond the occasional headline-grabbing bust.
Organized crime here once meant a handful of cartels shipping narcotics up the highways to the United States. In a fundamental shift, the criminals of today are reaching ever deeper into the country, infiltrating communities, police forces and town halls. A dizzying range of armed groups — perhaps more than 200 — have diversified into a broadening array of activities. They’re not only moving drugs but kidnapping Mexicans, trafficking migrants and shaking down businesses from lime growers to mining companies.
“Zacatecas is in the hands of criminals,” said a schoolteacher who heard the attack on Barrón Guzmán and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “The state government isn’t in control.”
UNITED STATES
9,212,767 confirmed cases (+91,530)
234,177 reported fatalities (+1047)
Finally, this isn’t really foreign policy related but for the first time I can recall the United States has gotten its very own explainer from the International Crisis Group, on the subject of Tuesday’s election. If you’re a fan of the “if it happened there” genre of writing, then I think you’ll find this an excellent example of the style—except, of course, in this case it’s not meant to be satirical in any way:
Under the circumstances, the responsibility of all officials at every level of government, of foreign partners, of civil society and of the media should be to anticipate sources of friction and grievance within the voting public and move quickly to address them. In the limited time that remains before the election, state and local governments should acquaint themselves thoroughly with the legal tools at their disposal and, with support from civil society, use them as needed so that voting and ballot counting can proceed in an orderly fashion without duress. Traditional and social media should take extra precautions not to pronounce winners prematurely, particularly in “battleground states” where margins are likely to be thin. They must not provide a platform for candidates to declare themselves victors before the outcome is known, or proliferate pernicious disinformation; some have taken steps in this direction, but the challenge will require constant management.
For their part, foreign heads of state should refrain from offering their congratulations until the institutional process has run its course, regardless of any potential pressure from the U.S. to do otherwise. If events take an ugly turn, both domestic political and foreign leaders with easy access to Trump and his inner circles should tell them privately and publicly that they will have no support if they try to interfere with tabulation of results or, should they lose, the peaceful transfer of power. In the interim, U.S. political leaders at every level should follow the lead of the two Utah state gubernatorial candidates, who recently recorded a public service announcement in which they jointly commit to peacefully upholding the democratic process. Ideally, more leaders representing the country’s two major political parties – Democrats and Republicans – would get together ahead of the vote to make similar public pledges.
The failure of democratic institutions to deliver a peaceful election and, depending on the result, transfer of power in the United States would be bad for the American people, for the country’s governance, for the nation’s credibility and thus its influence abroad, and for foreign partners who (even after four years of Trump) still turn to the U.S. for a measure of stability and security. With luck, and perhaps a little help from its friends, the U.S. could still avoid election trouble and emerge ready to begin repairing the social fractures that have helped bring it to this dangerous place.