World roundup: October 29 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
October 29, 1923: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk declares the founding of a Turkish Republic, replacing the by-now obviously defunct Ottoman Empire. Although Atatürk’s Grand National Assembly had been functioning as a republican government since 1920, this day is annually commemorated as “Republic Day” in Turkey.
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 US 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 points in September 1929. The crash signaled the onset of the Great Depression, a global economic collapse 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: Israeli military forces, backed by France and the UK, invade Egypt’s Sinai region, kicking off what became known as the Suez Crisis. British and French leaders were upset over Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decision in July to nationalize the Suez Canal and use its revenues to pay for his Aswan High Dam project. Their aim was to a) seize the canal and b) remove Nasser from power. Militarily their plan met with some initial success, but diplomatically it was such a dismal failure that the United States stepped in and threatened both Britain and France to cease and desist, which they did. Nasser’s ultimate victory cemented his stature as an anti-colonial force in the Arab and non-aligned worlds and the episode highlights the post-World War II shift in the Western world that had the US moving to the top of the hierarchy and Britain and France reduced to a subordinate status.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Tuesday brought news of another overnight massacre in northern Gaza. This time, the Israeli military (IDF) reportedly killed at least 93 people and wounded another 35 in an airstrike targeting a residential building in Beit Lahia. Dozens remain missing so the casualty figures may rise. The IDF says it is investigating the strike, and while I would never presume to speak on its behalf something tells me that whatever it finds, a “Hamas command center” will be involved. The wounded were taken to Beit Lahia’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, whose operations are mostly in tatters after an IDF raid on the facility last week that carted off several of its medical personnel. US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called the strike a “horrifying incident with a horrifying result.” I was not watching his briefing so I cannot say whether or not he was smirking as he said that.
The Israeli Knesset’s vote to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in Israel and therefore in the Occupied Territories has generated a fair amount of outcry among Western governments. Miller expressed the Biden administration’s “deep concern” over the ban, which is kind of ridiculous given that the administration tried to cripple UNRWA by defunding it earlier this year. A joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom over the weekend expressed “grave concern.” European Union foreign policy coordinator Josep Borrell argued that the ban “stands in stark contradiction to international law.” I just felt like collecting these here as a reference for later, after none of these actors has done anything more meaningful than expressing rhetorical disapproval.
The government of Norway actually did something, referring the ban to the International Court of Justice to determine whether it is consistent with the Israeli government’s obligation to ensure that aid reaches Gaza’s civilian population. But even that is a dead end from a practical standpoint, inasmuch as Israeli officials can simply ignore an ICJ ruling without repercussion. The UNRWA ban comes as the Biden administration has threatened to tinker with Israeli military aid, which would be an actual repercussion, unless Gaza’s humanitarian aid crisis improves by November 13. It also comes as, according to The Financial Times, “aid to Gaza has fallen to its lowest level since the war began.” Banning UNRWA from Gaza will worsen, not improve, that situation, but suffice to say it’s a long shot that the administration will actually follow through on its threats.
SYRIA
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an IDF airstrike killed at least two people near the city of Al-Qusayr in Syria’s Homs province on Tuesday. That area is near a busy crossing point along the Lebanese-Syrian border and has been targeted by the IDF previously.
LEBANON
Hezbollah announced the appointment of Naim Qassem as its new secretary-general on Tuesday. Qassem was the deputy to former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and had been serving as the group’s acting leader since the IDF airstrike that killed Nasrallah last month. The man believed to have been Nasrallah’s heir apparent, Hashem Safieddine, was killed in another airstrike earlier this month. Qassem became deputy in 1991 under Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, and there’s sort of a “last man standing” nature to his elevation. Given that, it’s unclear whether he’ll have the same degree of command over the organization that Nasrallah did.
ASIA
GEORGIA
Eurasianet’s Giorgi Lomsadze suggests that this weekend’s heavily disputed Georgian parliamentary election may usher in a new period of political discord:
Georgia appears headed for a potentially protracted political crisis. The incumbent Georgian Dream party, bankrolled by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, is claiming a convincing victory in the country’s October 26 parliamentary elections, while an array of opposition forces and observers insist the results were rigged.
A massive crowd turned out to protest the election results on October 28, and fresh protests are likely as opposition parties and local election watchdogs are gathering evidence of vote-rigging. They are demanding an international investigation into the alleged fraud, saying they intend to fight the official results to the end.
One relatively well-documented and described trend that will be scrutinized is the apparent coercion by Georgian Dream of rural and socially vulnerable voters who are dependent on the government for income.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has led the calls for an investigation into the election results, while Georgian Dream officials accuse those questioning the outcome of attempting to foment a revolution at the behest of the US and EU.
PAKISTAN
Unspecified gunmen killed two police officers guarding a polio vaccination team in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday. As we’ve noted several times in this newsletter, Pakistani vaccination teams are frequently targeted by jihadist militants in particular, and the attackers here were likely members of the Pakistani Taliban or one of its offshoots.
INDIA
Canadian authorities reportedly suspect that Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah was directly involved in the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia last June. This is a major development inasmuch as Shah is one of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest lieutenants and is often called the “second most powerful” person in India. The Canadian investigation apparently points toward Shah as the driving force behind a campaign to assassinate prominent Sikh separatists both within India and abroad. The Indian government has consistently denied that it is targeting these figures for assassination.
MYANMAR
The Canadian, EU, and UK governments coordinated the announcement of new sanctions pressuring Myanmar’s military junta on Tuesday. The main targets appear to be entities that have been supplying the junta with aviation fuel and other equipment supporting its military’s air power. August reportedly saw the junta carry out its highest number of airstrikes since it seized power back in February 2021. According to a UK statement those strikes killed “dozens” of civilians.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Reuters reports on the horrific findings of a recent UN mission on sexual violence in Sudan:
Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allies have committed "staggering" levels of sexual abuse, raping civilians as troops advance and abducting some women as sex slaves during the more than 18-month war, a U.N. mission said on Tuesday.
Victims have ranged between eight and 75 years, said the U.N. fact-finding mission's report, with most sexual violence committed by the RSF and allied Arab militia in an attempt to terrorize and punish people for perceived links to enemies.
"The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering," said mission chair Mohamed Chande Othman in a statement accompanying an 80-page report based on interviews with victims, families and witnesses.
The report echoed investigations by Reuters and rights groups into widespread sexual abuse in the conflict.
GUINEA
Guinea’s ruling junta has reportedly dissolved 53 political parties and placed dozens more under “observation,” steps that I’m assuming will not do much to advance the restoration of civilian rule in that country. The Guinean Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization apparently began a review of scores of parties back in June in order to, per its report, “clean up the political arena.” In addition to the 53 declared irredeemable for a variety of reasons, the ministry also suspended 54 parties for at least three months and put another 67 under “observation” while they address concerns raised in the investigation. Guinean junta leaders promised after they seized power in 2021 that they would cede power back to an elected government by the end of 2024. Needless to say they are not on schedule to meet that deadline.
SOMALIA
The Somali government on Tuesday declared a senior diplomat in Ethiopia’s Mogadishu embassy, Ali Mohamad Adan, persona non grata, giving him 72 hours to leave the country. The Somali Foreign Ministry cited Adan’s failure “to respect the laws of the host nation and abstain from involvement in its internal affairs,” apparently without going into additional detail. Presumably it has something to do with the Ethiopian government’s diplomatic relationship with the separatist administration in the Somaliland region. Somali officials expelled Ethiopia’s ambassador earlier this year over the same issue.
MOZAMBIQUE
Human Rights Watch is alleging that Mozambican police have killed at least 11 protesters and wounded over 50 more in demonstrations over the country’s disputed election earlier this month. Last week saw opposition-organized protests rejecting the official results, which have the ruling Frelimo party’s presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, winning with just over 70 percent of the vote. International observers have alleged numerous irregularities and the opposition Podemos party has filed a lawsuit demanding a recount.
BOTSWANA
Botswana is holding a general election on Wednesday and polling suggests that the Botswana Democratic Party, which has ruled the country since it gained independence in 1966, may lose. Part of the reason, according to The New York Times, is the declining price of diamonds:
The Botswana Democratic Party, which has governed the southern African nation since its independence in 1966, enters Wednesday’s national elections facing an unlikely threat to its grip on power: diamonds.
For generations, diamonds have been the beating heart of the economy of Botswana, which ranks as one of the world’s top two diamond producers, regularly competing with Russia. The diamond industry has transformed Botswana into a beacon of hope on the African continent, and what the World Bank considers an upper-middle-income country.
But a global decline in diamond demand has hit Botswana’s economy hard. That has only deepened financial hardship for a population in which many believe that the government has upset the nation’s great rise through corruption and bad administration.
Aside from the possibility of a political upheaval there are concerns that the BDP will rig the outcome. Adding to the intrigue, former President Ian Khama’s Botswana Patriotic Front, which splintered off from the BDP in 2019, has emerged as a potential electoral spoiler and there’s a good deal of intrigue around the rivalry between Khama and his former ally-turned-successor, incumbent President Mokgweetsi Masisi.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A Ukrainian drone strike hit a military academy in Russia’s Chechen Republic on Tuesday, apparently sparking a fire but causing no casualties. This seems to be the first time a Ukrainian projectile has targeted the Chechnya region. Chechen Republic boss Ramzan Kadyrov is threatening to retaliate with “the kind of vengeance they've never even dreamt of.”
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed full control over the towns of Selydove and Hirnyk as well as three villages in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast on Tuesday, highlighting what has become a fairly rapid advance (by the standards of this conflict). Open source maps suggest that Russian forces took 196.1 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory during the week of October 20-27, which makes that one of Moscow’s most successful weeks from the standpoint of ground covered since the early phases of the invasion.
Russian forces had been fighting in Selydove for over a week now. The town is located around 20 kilometers south of the city of Pokrovsk, which has been a primary Russian target for months and which looks to be increasingly under threat. Nevertheless, the city’s coal mining operation is still running in large part because it’s Ukraine’s only source for the coking coal that sustains its domestic steel industry. The facility is located some distance west of the city so it’s a bit further away from the Russian advance, but if/when the city falls it’s hard to imagine a scenario whereby the mine wouldn’t follow quickly after.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
Supporters of former Bolivian President Evo Morales clashed with police in the town of Mairana on Tuesday, leaving at least 13 people (12 of them police officers) injured. Morales backers have been blocking roads in and around Mairana for a couple of weeks in an effort to prevent his potential arrest on rape charges that Morales claims are false and politically motivated.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Responsible Statecraft’s Nick Cleveland-Stout points out the extent to which foreign interests and defense contractors dominate congressional hearings:
A video on Congress.gov, overlayed with an uplifting guitar melody, explains what committee hearings are supposed to do; A hearing “provides a forum at which committee members and the public can hear about the strengths and weaknesses of a proposal from selected parties,” the disembodied voice says.
If only it were that simple.
In practice, hearings often give experts whose employers are funded by special interests a platform to publicly lobby Congress. From 2021 to 2024, 378 non-governmental witnesses testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House body that oversees foreign assistance, war powers, and arms exports, among other key foreign policy-making decisions. Just over one third of those witnesses — 137 of them — came from the world of think tanks.
A Responsible Statecraft analysis of think tank annual reports and congressional witness lists shows that a majority of the think tanks represented on the witness list cash checks from weapons manufacturers and foreign governments. Eighty-nine percent of think tank affiliated witnesses work for organizations that accept foreign government funding. The number is only slightly lower for the arms industry; 79% of witnesses affiliated with think tanks represent organizations that take donations from the top 100 Pentagon contractors.
In fact, less than 7% of think tank witnesses are affiliated with organizations that publish a list of their donors and say they do not accept funding from both Pentagon contractors and foreign governments. In other words, think tanks with Pentagon contractor or foreign government funding are called to testify nearly 14 times as often as think tanks without these financial ties.
For those of you who are Foreign Exchanges subscribers I hope you’ve had a chance to check out the second entry in Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’ anti-war movement series, published earlier today. If you’re interested in the subject but are not yet a subscriber I hope you’ll consider becoming one to support Danny’s work, not to mention the newsletter as a whole:
I appreciate the voice recording as always Derek.