World roundup: October 6-7 2025
Stories from Somalia, France, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
October 6, 1973: The Yom Kippur War begins with an Egyptian surprise attack against unprepared Israeli military units in the then-occupied Sinai Peninsula and a Syrian attack on Israeli units in the Golan. The war ended almost three weeks later in a tactical Israeli victory that nevertheless sparked a wave of domestic criticism over the intelligence failure that left the Israelis so unprepared for the initial attack. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s government fell not long after as a result. Despite Egypt’s defeat, its initial success was celebrated back home and gave President Anwar Sadat (at US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s urging) the political capital to shift Egypt’s Cold War orientation toward the US and begin the negotiations that would eventually lead to the Camp David Accords.
October 6, 1981: Members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad assassinate Egyptian President Anwar Sadat during the annual “Military Day” parade celebrating the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. EIJ targeted Sadat over his diplomatic outreach to Israel after the war, most especially the aforementioned Camp David Accords in 1978.
October 7, 1571: A Holy League fleet wins a major victory over the Ottoman Empire at the naval Battle of Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth, thanks largely to more advanced ship designs and the adoption of firearms for close quarters sea combat. The Ottomans lost some 200 ships to the Christians’ ~50, and although they replaced those vessels their navy after Lepanto was never quite the Mediterranean power it had been before. The victory has been widely celebrated in Europe as one of the most important naval battles in history, though its impact on the tactics of naval warfare may have been more important than its immediate geopolitical impact.
October 7, 2001: The US military begins its invasion of Afghanistan. Though it replaced Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government with a friendly regime within weeks, the US finally left Afghanistan nearly 20 years later (in August 2021) with the Taliban back in control of the country.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Syrian soldiers and Syrian Democratic Forces fighters battled in Aleppo province overnight, leaving at least one of the former dead and raising fears of a full-on conflict that a US brokered meeting on Tuesday seems to have prevented. The US military brought SDF commander Mazloum Abdi to Damascus, where he met with Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qusra and the two sides subsequently declared a ceasefire. Each party is unsurprisingly blaming the other for starting the clashes. The SDF claims that militias aligned with Damascus tried to besiege two predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo city, while the government is claiming that SDF fighters attacked security checkpoints and fired rifles and mortars in both neighborhoods without provocation. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Syrian military discovered an illicit tunnel operated by Kurdish militia fighters.
Elsewhere, the process of selecting Syria’s first post-Assad parliament went about how you would have expected, which is to say that minorities (religious and ethnic) and women didn’t make out terribly well. Of the 119 members of parliament selected in Sunday’s round of indirect voting (21 seats went unfilled to reflect parts of the country that are presently outside government control), just six went to women and only ten went to members of the country’s various minority groups. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will appoint one-third of the new legislature (70 people), after having appointed the committees that ultimately chose this first group of MPs. He can use that prerogative either to entrench the dominance of Sunni Muslim men in the parliament or to add a bit of diversity to that body.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed two people in drone strikes in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, both of whom it claimed were affiliated with Hezbollah. It also killed two people on Monday, one in southern Lebanon and the other in northeastern Lebanon’s Hermel district. Meanwhile, Lebanese army commander Rudolph Haikal briefed the cabinet on Monday on plans to disarm Hezbollah, which have been reduced in scope from full disarmament by the end of the year to removing the group’s military elements from southern Lebanon as far north as the Litani River. Hezbollah leaders have said they will not disarm under present circumstances, particularly with the IDF bombing Lebanon on a near daily basis.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Tuesday marked the two year anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups and the carnage that the IDF has inflicted upon Gaza ever since. It also marked day two of the latest attempt at ending that carnage, at least for a little while, as Israeli and Hamas negotiators spoke indirectly in Cairo. Day one reportedly ended “positively,” though the main topic seems to have been outlining a plan for the next several days of talks so the parties weren’t tackling any major points of dispute. The group gathered in Cairo will be expanding over the next couple of days to include US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and a Turkish delegation.
There are many potential stumbling blocks for the negotiators to get over before they get to even a preliminary deal, but interestingly so far the lack of an IDF ceasefire doesn’t seem to be one of them. Israeli forces have killed at least 118 people in Gaza since Saturday, the day Donald Trump called for an “immediate” ceasefire, and while there has been a notable decrease in fatalities over the past three days—ten people were killed in the territory on Tuesday—that’s definitely not a ceasefire. The Qatari Foreign Ministry noted as much on Tuesday. The idea that Trump, who proposed the framework now under discussion and who is at least trying to control the negotiating process, can call for a ceasefire only for the Israelis to defy him without incurring any repercussions probably does not bode well for these talks. Hamas is looking for “guarantees” that the Israeli government won’t violate a potential deal and right now there’s no reason for them to trust any guarantee that the US might give.
IRAN
Somebody attacked an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility in Iran’s Kurdistan province on Monday night, killing two IRGC personnel and wounding three other people. There’s no indication as to responsibility but it seems reasonable to suspect that one of Iran’s Kurdish militant groups was involved.
ASIA
MYANMAR
AFP is reporting that a military airstrike on a town in central Myanmar’s Sagaing region on Monday evening killed at least 40 people. The attack either targeted or inadvertently struck (the former seems more likely) a local full moon festival and related protest against the country’s ruling junta. Myanmar officials have yet to comment on the incident.
JAPAN
World Politics Review’s Elliot Waldman considers the political implications of Saturday’s Liberal Democratic Party leadership election:
Japan is set to have its first-ever female prime minister after Takaichi Sanae won an upset victory in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership election over the weekend. Opinion polls had suggested Takaichi’s opponent, 44-year-old agriculture minister and political scion Koizumi Shinjiro, had more paths to victory, but those polls underestimated the extent of her support among the LDP’s rank-and-file members.
Takaichi, 64, is a hardline conservative with a controversial past. A protégé of the late longtime leader Abe Shinzo, she was serving as Abe’s internal affairs minister in 2014 when old photos emerged of her posing with Yamada Kazunari, Japan’s most prominent neo-Nazi. (She claimed she didn’t know of Yamada’s extremist views at the time.) Gender-equality advocates have also raised concerns about her long-held view that married couples should be legally required to share the same surname. Former Prime Minister Kishida Fumio reportedly referred to Takaichi as “Taliban” in private.
Kishida and other moderates helped stymie Takaichi’s last bid for the LDP’s top job in 2024, when she narrowly lost to veteran lawmaker Ishiba Shigeru. Ishiba has since presided over back-to-back election losses that saw the LDP-led coalition lose its majority in both houses of the Diet, Japan’s legislature, as newer right-wing populist parties made gains. As a result, Takaichi’s extreme views, once seen as a liability, are now viewed as a strength for LDP members seeking to shore up their right flank.
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AFRICA
SUDAN
The New Arab, citing Arabic-language media, is reporting that the Sudanese military “repelled a huge assault” by Rapid Support Forces militants on the besieged North Darfur city of Al-Fashir on Monday. At least 13 people were killed and 19 wounded in the fighting, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, though recovery work was still continuing so those figures may undercount the real toll. Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration reported on Sunday that there’s been a “surge” in displacement in and around Al-Fashir this year. According to the agency, the number of already displaced persons sheltering in the city dropped from roughly 699,000 to roughly 204,000 between March and September. The current population of Al-Fashir now stands at 413,454, down from a prewar figure of around 1.1 million.
MALI
The AP reports on worsening conditions in Mali’s capital, Bamako, under an ongoing jihadist fuel blockade:
Endless lines stretched in front of gas stations in Mali’s capital Bamako late into Monday night, as commuters desperately tried to find fuel. Residents are starting to feel the impact of a blockade on fuel imports to the city declared in early September by a militant group affiliated with al-Qaida.
Amadou Berthé, a bank employee in Bamako, said he traveled 20 kilometers (12 miles) by motorcycle taxi to find gas for his car, which broke down due to a lack of fuel as he was returning from work
“I’ve been to more than 20 gas stations and still can’t find any fuel,” Berthé said, sitting on the back of the motorcycle with an empty jerry can on his knees.
Militants from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) have relentlessly attacked fuel tankers coming from neighboring Senegal and Ivory Coast, plunging the capital of the landlocked West African country into crisis. Despite being one of Africa’s top gold producers, Mali is ranked the sixth least developed nation in the world, with nearly half its population living below the national poverty line.
SOUTH SUDAN
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, which is tasked with monitoring the increasingly tenuous ceasefire in South Sudan, reported on Tuesday that the parties to said ceasefire—including the South Sudanese military—are actively recruiting new fighters. Of greater concern, the commission says that some number of those recruits (some willing, others not) have been children. Clashes have been escalating throughout the year between forces loyal to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and those loyal to Vice President Riek Machar, whom Kiir arrested back in March.
SOMALIA
Somali authorities have painted a minimalistic but overall positive picture about the al-Shabab attack on the Godka Jilow prison in Mogadishu over the weekend—nobody killed other than the attackers, no prisoners released. According to Drop Site’s Mohamed Gabobe that story is, in technical terms, bullshit:
At roughly 2 a.m. local time, the government announced that the siege on Godka Jilow had ended, claiming that they had killed seven attackers. The toll of government fighters and civilians is not yet officially known, nor are the number of detained Al-Shabaab members who may have escaped during the prison assault. The security official who spoke to Drop Site did not confirm whether any senior intelligence officials had been killed.
Footage that later surfaced online showed several alleged Al-Shabaab members re-captured by the government after initially escaping the prison. A second Somali intelligence official confirmed to Drop Site that “some” Al-Shabaab suspects did completely escape during the siege, but was unwilling to go into further detail.
Most of the reporting on this story has elided the sophistication of al-Shabab’s operation, which apparently targeted not only the prison but an intelligence facility in the same compound. The attackers disguised themselves and their vehicle as government security forces affiliated with Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) and attacked during a regular weekly meeting of senior NISA personnel. Not only were they able to get access to uniforms and fake ID cards, they seem to have known enough about the facility’s operations to know that the meeting would be taking place at the time of the attack.
MADAGASCAR
Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina named army general Ruphin Zafisambo as his new prime minister on Monday, replacing Christian Ntsay whom he sacked last month in response to the ongoing “Gen Z” protest gripping Antananarivo. Protest organizers had been demanding Rajoelina’s resignation prior to that appointment, but after news broke that Zafisambo had been named PM they…continued to demand Rajoelina’s resignation. In fact they announced a 48 hour deadline for that resignation, which could make Wednesday night interesting. Rajoelina announced plans to hold a “national dialogue” in response to the ultimatum.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
Donald Trump told reporters in the White House on Monday that he has “sort of made a decision pretty much” about whether or not to sell Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. That really clears things up. Whatever he pretty much decides could be a big deal inasmuch as the Tomahawk’s range is as far as I know considerably longer than any missile currently available to the Ukrainian military, but Trump might have to write off the US-Russia relationship if he provides it to Kyiv. Trump said that he wants to know “where they are sending” the missiles before he makes a final determination.
He might also want to ask how the Ukrainians plan on firing them, because at present the Ukrainian military doesn’t possess any of the weapons platforms that the US military employs for that purpose. The US would presumably have to provide Ukraine with Tomahawk-capable ground launchers and the technical expertise to operate them, though nobody in either government seems to be talking about that at the moment.
FRANCE
New French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu unveiled his cabinet on Sunday. I didn’t think this relatively mundane event warranted any special mention in this newsletter, but apparently I was wrong because Lecornu resigned a day later after less than a month in office. The reception his cabinet garnered seemed to make it clear that it would not survive a parliamentary confidence vote, spurring his decision to step down. However, French President Emmanuel Macron then met with Lecornu and either granted him (or ordered him to take) 48 hours to hold consultations with party leaders to try to salvage his premiership, possibly by reconfiguring the cabinet.
In the highly likely event that Lecornu’s consultations fail to produce a workable government, France’s political crisis will likely have reached full meltdown. Macron will have burned through three prime ministers in about 13 months, mostly because he keeps insisting on appointing people from his deeply unpopular center-right milieu and thereby challenging a parliament that’s dominated by parties on the left and far right. He has a few options:
He could appoint another PM cut from that same cloth and see if he can break Lecornu’s record for fastest resignation
He could compromise and name a PM who actually has some purchase on either the left or right, but Emmanuel Macron compromising feels less likely than RFK winning the Nobel Prize in medicine
He could finally accede to calling a snap parliamentary election, but given his unpopularity that’s likely to return an even less cooperative parliament and more gridlock
He could resign
That last one offers the most likely path out of this gridlock but risks the election of a far right figure like the National Rally party’s Jordan Bardella (or perennial RN candidate Marine Le Pen if she can somehow escape her current political ban). It would also be humiliating for Macron, which is not really his thing.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
According to The New York Times, Donald Trump has simplified his administration’s Venezuela policy:
President Trump has called off efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, paving the way for a potential military escalation against drug traffickers or the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Richard Grenell, a special presidential envoy and executive director of the Kennedy Center, had been leading negotiations with Mr. Maduro and other top Venezuelan officials. But during a meeting with senior military leaders on Thursday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Grenell and instructed him that all diplomatic outreach, including his talks with Mr. Maduro, was to stop, the officials said on Monday.
Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Maduro’s failure to accede to American demands to give up power voluntarily and the continued insistence by Venezuelan officials that they have no part in drug trafficking.
So regime change it is, apparently. Trump is reportedly considering “multiple military plans for an escalation” that “could also include plans designed to force Mr. Maduro from power.” What this will ultimately look like is unknown as yet but the likelihood that these military efforts will at least intensify from blowing up speedboats in the southern Caribbean seems pretty high. Maduro claimed on Monday that his security forces thwarted a “false flag” plot to bomb the shuttered US embassy in Caracas, which if true could certainly be the sort of thing that triggers US escalation.
MEXICO
The Trump administration on Monday blacklisted 12 Mexican entities and eight individuals allegedly involved in supplying the Sinaloa Cartel with fentanyl precursor chemicals. One of the firms had been sanctioned by the Biden administration but according to the US Treasury Department it has used “front companies” to maintain its operations.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Donald Trump says he’s thinking about invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act, which empowers the president to deploy the US military and/or federalized National Guard forces to quell (as the name suggests) insurrection, to enable his plans to invade/occupy multiple US cities despite opposition from judges as well as local and state Democratic Party politicians. The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard outlines the steps that the Trump administration is taking to prepare for this eventuality:
In his second term, Trump’s aides and advisers have been clearly setting up a justification for invoking the law — softening up MAGA adherents to accept yet another shockingly dictatorial move from the president.
It’s no accident, after all, that members of Trump’s Cabinet have repeatedly used the term “insurrection” and “insurrectionists” to describe the protesters standing up to U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Gestapo-style operations. And Stephen Miller, the ghoulish architect of Trump’s deportation machine, described [an] Oregon judge’s ruling [blocking a National Guard deployment to Portland] as “legal insurrection.”
Like an incantation, they call the notion of insurrection into being to justify the Insurrection Act’s invocation when no such justification exists in material reality.
“The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them,” JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, where Trump’s storm troopers [are] already wreaking havoc in Chicago, said on Monday. “Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.”