World roundup: October 3-4 2020
Stories from Yemen, Azerbaijan, Sudan, and more
Happy Sukkot to those celebrating it!
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
October 2, 1187: Jerusalem’s garrison, led by Balian of Ibelin, surrenders to Saladin.
October 2, 1944: The Warsaw Uprising ends with the Polish resistance defeated. Estimates vary, but over the two month conflict the Nazis killed upwards of 200,000 civilians and expelled hundreds of thousands more from the city. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 Polish resistance fighters were also killed against at least 2000 German soldiers (with several thousand more MIA).
October 3, 42 BC: First round of the Battle of Philippi, pitting the army of assassins Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus against the combined armies of Triumvirs Marc Antony and Octavian. Brutus’s forces defeated Octavian’s, but Antony’s forces defeated Cassius’s and Cassius subsequently committed suicide after false reports told him that Brutus had also been defeated. So the battle was more or less a draw. The two armies would meet again 20 days later, at which point the Triumvirs soundly defeated Brutus and he, too, committed suicide.
17th century Flemish painter Pauwels Casteels’ The Death of Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi takes some…oh, let’s say “historical liberties” with its subject, but it looks nice and really isn’t that more important? (Wikimedia Commons)
October 3, 1932: In accordance with the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930, Iraq gains independence from Britain upon the expiration of its United Nations Mandate, albeit with Britain retaining substantial political and commercial influence in the newly “independent” kingdom. Commemorated annually as Iraqi National Day.
October 3, 1990: The German Democratic Republic (“East Germany”) is merged into the Federal Republic of Germany (“West Germany”) after a 45 year separation. Commemorated annually as German Unity Day.
October 4, 1957: The Soviet Union successfully launches Sputnik 1, putting the first artificial satellite in orbit and terrifying a whole bunch of people in Washington DC.
October 4, 1993: The two-day Battle of Mogadishu, later memorialized in the book/film Black Hawk Down, ends. The battle began with a calamitous US/UN mission to capture a couple of aides to self-declared Somali President Mohamed Farrah Aidid, which went south very quickly when Somali fighters shot down a US Black Hawk helicopter (they later shot down a second). In the end 21 international soldiers were killed (19 of them US) and one captured, while at least 200 Somalis (both civilians and militants) were also killed.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for October 4:
35,389,694 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (7,733,274 active, +249,546 since yesterday)
1,041,543 reported fatalities (+4013 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
4366 confirmed coronavirus cases (+37)
205 reported fatalities (+1)
According to The New Arab, Islamic State fighters attacked an oil field in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province on Saturday, killing at least 17 Syrian soldiers. Whatever casualties the IS group suffered—presumably there were some—are unknown.
YEMEN
2041 confirmed cases (+0)
591 reported fatalities (+2)
Fighting between government forces and Houthi rebels in Yemen’s Marib province and around the port city of Hudaydah has killed at least 23 people since Wednesday, according to “Yemeni officials and tribal leaders” who spoke to the AP. Marib contains much of Yemen’s accessible oil (most of Yemen’s total oil reserves are probably offshore but for obvious reasons cannot be exploited under present circumstances) and is therefore a prime target for the Houthis. The fighting near Hudaydah is reportedly threatening to disrupt operations at the port, which is the destination for most of Yemen’s incoming humanitarian aid as well as its largest commercial port.
IRAQ
379,141 confirmed cases (+3210)
9399 reported fatalities (+52)
Despite understandable concerns about the pandemic, pilgrims are reportedly flocking to the Iraqi city of Karbala ahead of Arbaeen, the largest annual pilgrimage in the world (Hinduism’s Kumbh Mela pilgrimage is larger but is not annual). In most years attendance at the festival, commemorating the burial of the Shiʿa Imam Husayn, ranges between 10 and 20 million people—last year it was estimated at 14 million—and while Iraqi authorities have imposed caps on this year’s event (1500 pilgrims per country arriving by air and another 2500 pilgrims permitted to arrive overland from Iran), the total crowd could still wind up being very large.
JORDAN
15,640 confirmed cases (+891)
101 reported fatalities (+13)
Jordanian Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz resigned on Saturday ahead of a new parliamentary election scheduled for November 10. Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolved parliament last weekend, which obligated Razzaz to step down though he’ll remain in an interim capacity until Abdullah appoints a new PM whose job will simply be to oversee the election. Abdullah is hoping that a new parliament and new government will quell popular unrest over the weak-and-getting-weaker state of the Jordanian economy, which has been compounded by a recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
266,775 confirmed cases (+2332) in Israel, 41,498 confirmed cases (+420) in Palestine
1719 reported fatalities (+37) in Israel, 330 reported fatalities (+1) in Palestine
Thousands of people across Israel defied lockdown on Saturday to hold another of their weekly protests demanding the resignation of scandal-plagued Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli government recently imposed new rules for public gatherings that require social distancing and bar people from traveling more than one kilometer from their homes to demonstrate. Accordingly many of the protests seem to have been relatively small, though one in Tel Aviv was reportedly fairly large.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
98,801 confirmed cases (+1041)
426 reported fatalities (+0)
According to the Wall Street Journal, the economy of Dubai is struggling in tandem with the fortunes of the emirate’s air carrier:
Emirates Airline powered Dubai’s rise from desert backwater to teeming Mideast metropolis, making the city one of the world’s biggest intercontinental hubs and generating a yearslong economic boom.
But now, the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation it has wrought have forced the first major downsizing for an airline that has weathered Middle East conflicts and oil-market shocks. As a result, the state-owned carrier’s woes are tearing through Dubai’s economy.
The airline’s parent company, one of Dubai’s biggest employers, has slashed tens of thousands of jobs from its 100,000-strong workforce after the pandemic halted much of global air travel, a fall from grace for an airline that long outmuscled competitors in the U.S. and Europe for landing rights and passengers.
That has in turn driven an exodus of Dubai-based expatriates linked to the airlines, shrinking spending at restaurants, bars and even private schools.
SAUDI ARABIA
336,387 confirmed cases (+390)
4875 reported fatalities (+25)
While we’re on the subject of religious ceremonies, Saudi authorities on Sunday officially reopened Mecca for those making the Umrah pilgrimage. The Umrah can be performed at any time and is a recommendation in Islam but is not an obligation like the annual Hajj. Saudi authorities suspended it earlier this year amid the pandemic, and later held a vastly downsized Hajj. Right now the pilgrimage is limited to people who are already inside the kingdom and only 6000 people per day are being permitted, but if all goes well the Saudis plan to expand to more people and open it up to foreigners in stages.
IRAN
471,772 confirmed cases (+3653)
26,957 reported fatalities (+211)
The Iranian government on Saturday issued a warning to both Azerbaijan and Armenia regarding spillover from the ongoing conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh (see below). Apparently a number of mortar rounds from that clash have landed on Iranian territory, and one wounded a six year old child on Wednesday. Tehran has thus far showed no interest in engaging in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict apart from offering to mediate. It does have close relations with Armenia, though, and has denied allegations that it’s shipping weapons to Yerevan.
ASIA
AZERBAIJAN
40,691 confirmed cases (+130)
596 reported fatalities (+1)
It’s been a full week since hostilities began (or resumed) in Nagorno-Karabakh, and increasingly the fighting appears to be expanding from the frontier between Nagorno-Karabakh and the rest of Azerbaijan into civilian population centers. Specifically, the weekend brought reports of Azerbaijani shelling of the city of Stepanakert, the “capital” of the unrecognized Karabakh republic, and of Armenian strikes on Ganja, the second largest city in Azerbaijan. It remains to be seen whether those attacks, which have drawn a condemnation from the International Committee of the Red Cross, signal an intensification of the fighting, which has otherwise remained reasonably contained. There’s been no regional intervention apart from Turkey’s, which has already been well documented, and even the Armenian military proper doesn’t seem to have really gotten involved yet—though to be fair, the line between Karabakh’s military forces and Armenia’s may not be the sharpest.
On the ground, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced Sunday that his forces had captured the city of Jabrayil in the southeastern part of the territory controlled by the Karabakh republic. That came a day after Azerbaijani officials announced the capture of several villages in the northeastern part of that territory. None of these alleged conquests have been confirmed to my knowledge but they would be the first major territorial advances since the fighting began. There’s no word on any civilian casualties or displacement, though a lot of civilians have already fled the frontier region so that may keep casualties to a minimum. Aliyev also ruled out any talk of ceasefire unless accompanied by an Armenian plan to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh and the territories surrounding it, all of which came under the de facto control of the Karabakh republic government back in the early 1990s.
KYRGYZSTAN
47,428 confirmed cases (+244)
1066 reported fatalities (+0)
Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary election on Sunday appears to have gone well for the country’s two largest establishment parties. The votes are still being counted, but President Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s Unity party and the My Motherland Kyrgyzstan party look like they’ve won around 46 percent of the vote between them, with Unity slightly ahead with about 24.5 percent. Only two other parties crossed the 7 percent threshold for winning seats, both by slim margins. The question now will be whether these two major parties can agree to form a coalition. It may be difficult for either to get to a majority without the other.
AFGHANISTAN
39,341 confirmed cases (+44)
1462 reported fatalities (+0)
A suicide car bombing targeting a government building in Nangarhar province on Saturday killed at least 15 people, 13 of them civilians. According to Afghan officials the bombing was meant to be the opening salvo of an attack on the building, but security forces were able to snuff that attack out quickly. No group has claimed responsibility, but given the location either the Taliban or the Islamic State could have been involved.
OCEANIA
NEW CALEDONIA
27 confirmed cases (+0)
No reported fatalities
The French overseas territory of New Caledonia voted against declaring independence in a referendum on Sunday, though the margin was slimmer than in a previous independence referendum in 2018. A bit over 53 percent voted against leaving France with turnout over 85 percent. The 1998 Nouméa Accord, in which Paris agreed to devolve more powers to the local New Caledonian government, allows for three independence votes, so another may be forthcoming in 2022.
AFRICA
SUDAN
13,653 confirmed cases (+0)
836 reported fatalities (+0)
The Trump administration seems to be winning the military side of Sudan’s interim government over to the idea of normalizing relations with Israel in exchange for sanctions relief:
Top Sudanese military leaders, who govern jointly with civilian technocrats in a Sovereign Council, have become increasingly vocal in their support for normalization with Israel as part of a quick deal with Washington ahead of the U.S. election.
“Now, whether we like it or not, the removal (of Sudan from the terror list) is tied to (normalization) with Israel,” the deputy head of the council, Gen. Mohammed Dagalo, told a local television station on Friday.
“We need Israel ... Israel is a developed country and the whole world is working with it,” he said. “We will have benefits from such relations ... We hope all look at Sudan’s interests.”
Such comments would have been unthinkable until recently in a country where public hostility toward Israel remains strong.
It remains so strong, in fact, that the civilian part of the interim government is resisting the idea of normalization for fear that it will generate a backlash. A rift between the government’s military and civilian factions threatens to undo the progress Sudan has made over the past year in terms of transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy, and risks upending the peace agreement the interim government just negotiated with several Sudanese rebel groups. In other words, if the administration continues to pressure Khartoum on this issue there’s a not-insubstantial chance that it could collapse the Sudanese government and possibly the entire Sudanese state. Other than that, though, it’s a really sound policy.
MALI
3184 confirmed cases (+14)
131 reported fatalities (+0)
The Malian government has reportedly released 180 Islamist militants it was holding prisoner and has flown them to northern Mali. Speculation seems to be high that they’re negotiating a swap for prominent opposition politician Soumaïla Cissé, who was kidnapped back in March, allegedly by jihadists. The circumstances of his abduction have never been fully revealed, but it contributed to the protests that eventually led to the ouster of former Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in a coup in August. Mali’s new transitional government—and the military junta that underpins it—may view securing Cissé’s release as a way to win some popular support and possibly to improve its standing with the Economic Community of West African States. Bamako is still waiting for ECOWAS to decide whether or not to lift the sanctions it imposed immediately following the coup.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
1,215,001 confirmed cases (+10,499)
21,358 reported fatalities (+107)
If you were planning a beach vacation to eastern Russia’s Kamchatka region, I’d hold off for a little while. Apparently something is causing “oil products” and phenol to leak into the ocean in that area, and that’s killing ocean life and causing people who come into contact with the water to become sick. The source of the substances remains unknown.
BELARUS
79,852 confirmed cases (+0)
851 reported fatalities (+0)
Tens of thousands of people—opposition sources estimated the crowd at over 100,000—marched in Minsk again on Sunday to call for Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s resignation. Smaller demonstrations broke out in other cities across the country. Belarusian police responded with water cannons and reportedly arrested “scores” of protesters.
GERMANY
301,571 confirmed cases (+1543)
9602 reported fatalities (+5)
Over 30 years after German reunification, the pandemic has reportedly highlighted inequities that still exist between the former East and West Germanies, though in this case the eastern part of the country is coming out ahead for a change. The five states of the former East Germany have overall been far less impacted by the pandemic than has the former West Germany, owing to the fact that the region has seen a population drain and that its demographics now largely skew older and more rural, meaning there’s less social interaction that could contribute to spreading the virus. Eastern Germany’s economy is also expected to contract less than western Germany’s economy, in part because eastern Germany’s economy has lagged behind western Germany’s for the past 30 years and has less to lose under the current circumstances.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
78,434 confirmed cases (+788)
653 reported fatalities (+4)
The third of three tankers carrying Iranian gasoline to Venezuela has reportedly docked at Venezuela’s Guaraguao port. Venezuela is struggling mightily under a serious gas shortage that is affecting basic operations like farming in addition to preventing millions of Venezuelans from using their cars. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced a fuel rationing program to begin on Monday and suggested that domestically produced gasoline may also be on the menu. Without some domestic production these periodic influxes of Iranian gasoline will not be enough to meet Venezuela’s needs.
UNITED STATES
7,636,912 confirmed cases (+34,066)
214,611 reported fatalities (+332)
Finally, Donald Trump remains in the hospital, having tested positive for COVID-19 last week and been bundled off to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday. His treatment reportedly consists of all the drugs ever developed for any reason, though despite the fact that at least one of those drugs is only recommended for people who are in serious respiratory distress, we’re meant to believe he’s doing just fine and will be back to work before you know it. Though to be honest, since his “work” before this mostly consisted of watching Fox News and tweeting about it, they could just relocate him to the hospital indefinitely and it wouldn’t really matter.
I keep trying and failing to find a foreign policy angle to this story apart from the obvious fact that the president of the United States is ill and maybe on some drugs that can make people act erratically (or more erratically, in this case), but I have nothing. Well, apparently Mike Pompeo decided to cut this week’s planned East Asia trip short because of Trump’s illness for some reason, so I guess there’s that.