World roundup: October 8 2024

Stories from Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere

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TODAY IN HISTORY

October 8, 451: The Council of Chalcedon opens, with the aim of settling the Christological debates embroiling Christianity. The council repudiated the 449 Second Council of Ephesus and adopted a dyophysite position on the nature of Christ, declaring that Jesus had two natures, one fully human and one fully divine, joined in a “hypostatic union.” This was a major theological debate at the time and it would continue to be an issue all the way up to the Arab conquests of the 7th century, which saw several communities that had rejected Chalcedon come under Islamic rule.

Russian painter Vasily Surikov’s 1876 Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (Wikimedia Commons)

October 8, 1856: Chinese authorities storm a British-flagged ship, the Arrow, in Canton harbor on suspicion of piracy. What probably didn’t seem like a big deal at the time wound up kicking off the Second Opium War, which ended with China ceding additional territories to Britain’s colony at Hong Kong and parts of Outer Manchuria to Russia.

October 8, 1912: Montenegro declares war against the Ottoman Empire, beginning the First Balkan War. The Ottomans, outmanned and outgunned by the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia, backed by Russia), lost decisively within a matter of months. The Treaty of London, signed on May 30, 1913, ratified Albania’s independence, with its borders to be determined by the “Great Powers” (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom). The treaty also forced the Ottomans to cede the rest of their Balkan territory to the League and give up the island of Crete, which promptly formalized its annexation to Greece. Bulgaria emerged as the new dominant Balkan state, which created an imbalance of power that ultimately led to the Second Balkan War.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) continued its renewed assault on northern Gaza on Tuesday, sending heavy armor into Jabalia while pounding the area with airstrikes. Palestinian officials say that casualties have been reported but first responders are unable to reach them due to the intensity of the Israeli operation. There’s a strong possibility that the IDF’s endgame here is the elimination of all human life in Jabalia and eventually all of northern Gaza. It’s been ordering civilians to evacuate all of Gaza north of the “Netzarim corridor,” ostensibly for their own safety, only to then fire on those civilians who do attempt to flee:

Palestinians fleeing sites of Israel’s renewed military operation in northern Gaza are being shot at as they evacuate, according to residents there and footage shared with CNN documenting their journey.

Mohammad Sultan, 28, said he and his family fled their house in Jabalya in northern Gaza “due to the intense and continuous bombardments in the area.” When he went back to retrieve food, water and blankets, he and other civilians were fired at, he said.

“Drones were firing at everyone passing by on the road,” Sultan told CNN. “Three people were shot right in front of me. My brother and I tried to help the injured get to the hospitals, but a little girl was shot in the neck, and her father was also injured.”

The shooting took place at Abu Sharkh roundabout in Jabalya, according to Sultan. CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment.

Shooting at civilians while they’re obeying your order to evacuate may seem contradictory if you haven’t been paying attention to this conflict. If you have, though, you know that the point of the evacuation orders is not to protect civilians, it’s to create the appearance that the IDF cares about protecting civilians.

Elsewhere, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was scheduled to visit Washington this week, apparently to coordinate Israel’s forthcoming retaliation for last week’s Iranian missile strike. That meeting is now off, apparently at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s insisting that the Israeli security cabinet first decide on the nature of the retaliation and that he and Joe Biden discuss it by phone before he’ll clear Gallant’s trip. Effectively he’s trying to cut Gallant and the US out of the loop, perhaps because he doesn’t want Washington pushing for a less provocative response to try to minimize the chances of further escalation. So that’s probably bad news, but I suppose time will tell.

SYRIA

Syrian media is reporting that an Israeli airstrike killed at least seven people and wounded another 11 in a suburb of Damascus on Tuesday. There doesn’t appear to be much additional detail available about this strike as yet.

LEBANON

Netanyahu came very close to giving up the game on Tuesday, when in a “video address” he commanded the Lebanese people to “free [their] country from Hezbollah” lest they face “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.” The term for what he’s describing is “collective punishment,” which is a war crime, and his government is now into its second round of it with the escalation of its campaign in Lebanon. The Qatari government announced on Tuesday that it is opening an “air bridge” to bring humanitarian aid into Lebanon, suggesting that the country is getting the full Gaza experience of intense direct violence coupled with deliberate efforts to deprive Lebanese civilians of basic needs.

As expected, the IDF on Tuesday began expanding its ground invasion to include coastal areas of southwestern Lebanon. It’s also deployed a fourth division to the Lebanese front—the first reservist division so deployed. For Hezbollah’s part, the group’s deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem, said on Tuesday that it supports the Lebanese government’s efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, which as far as I know is Hezbollah’s first public statement of support for a cessation of fighting. The Biden administration, for whatever it’s worth, has reportedly given up on the idea of a ceasefire (assuming it ever actually supported one in the first place). Qassem is at the point Hezbollah’s de facto leader, given that the IDF killed his boss, Hassan Nasrallah, last month and Israeli officials believe they’ve also killed two of his likeliest successors, Hashem Safieddine and another unnamed candidate.

The Turkish government announced on Tuesday that it has organized a seaborne evacuation of its nationals from Lebanon (those who want to leave) that will take place in Beirut on Wednesday. For now, at least, Western governments have been advising their nationals who want to escape the war zone to find space on one of the decreasing number of flights leaving from Beirut Airport. The problem with that approach, aside from the optics of telling citizens that they’re on their own, is that Beirut Airport is the only way out of Lebanon by air and if it’s damaged by the IDF that route will slam firmly shut. Lebanese officials claim they’ve received “assurances”—but no guarantees—from their Israeli counterparts that the IDF will not strike the airport, which means little under the circumstances. The Biden administration has also called on the Israelis to leave the airport untouched, which means even less.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

Pakistani authorities have reportedly charged former Prime Minister Imran Khan with attempted murder, after one of many police officers wounded in clashes with Khan’s supporters over the weekend subsequently died of his wounds. This seems like a stretch even by the tortured standards of previous charges leveled against Khan, given that he was in prison when the incident took place. Police are blaming Khan for “inciting” his followers by calling for protests, which is also a stretch to be fair.

INDIA

The results of Jammu and Kashmir state’s first provincial election in ten years were released on Tuesday and probably were not what India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was hoping they would be. The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party, which opposes the Indian government’s 2019 decision to strip the state of its legal autonomy, won 42 seats while the Indian National Congress party won six, giving the allied parties a collective 48 seats in the 90 seat state legislature. The BJP took 29 seats, sweeping the majority Hindu Jammu region. Elsewhere, however, the election in northern India’s Haryana state went much better for the BJP, which appears to have upset the Congress party to take control of that legislature. Congress party officials are suggesting that they will appeal the result.

CHINA

The Chinese government on Tuesday announced that it is slapping tariffs on imported European brandy in the 30-39 percent range. It is responding to a vote by European Union member states last week to impose tariffs of anywhere from 17 to 35 percent on Chinese-made electric vehicles. Those tariffs are scheduled to come into effect at the end of this month unless the EU and China reach some sort of negotiated settlement, and the brandy tariffs are presumably now going to be part of the talks as well. Tuesday’s move seems aimed squarely at the French government, which supported the EV duties.

NORTH KOREA

Ukrainian media last week reported that six unspecified North Korean military officers were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on a Russian-occupied part of Donetsk oblast. There’s no confirmation of that, but on Tuesday South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun argued that the report was “highly likely” to have been accurate. If North Korea has been providing weapons to Russia then it is fairly reasonable to assume that North Korean military personnel have accompanied arms shipments to ensure their successful use and possibly train Russian soldiers on their use. It’s not a huge leap from there to North Korean soldiers deploying to Ukraine in other capacities, though there’s no evidence of that as yet.

AFRICA

SUDAN

According to Reuters, the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces group are both targeting humanitarian aid volunteers:

Local volunteers who have helped to feed Sudan's most destitute during 17 months of war say attacks against them by the opposing sides are making it difficult to provide life-saving aid amid the world's biggest hunger crisis.

Many volunteers have fled under threat of arrest or violence, and communal kitchens they set up in a country where hundreds are estimated to be dying of starvation and hunger-related diseases each day have stopped serving meals for weeks at a time.

Reuters spoke with 24 volunteers who manage kitchens in Sudan's central state of Khartoum, the western region of Darfur and parts of the east where millions of people have been driven from their homes since fighting erupted between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

International humanitarian agencies, which have been unable to get food aid to parts of Sudan at risk of famine, have ramped up support for such groups. But that has made them more of a target for RSF looters, 10 of the volunteers told Reuters by phone.

The Biden administration on Tuesday blacklisted Algoney Hamdan Daglo Musa, a senior RSF official who the US State Department says has been involved “in RSF efforts to procure weapons and other military materiel that have enabled the RSF’s ongoing operations in Sudan.” One assumes he doesn’t have many assets that are under US jurisdiction so the effect with be largely symbolic.

TUNISIA

Alex Thurston offers some thoughts over at his Sawahil newsletter about Tunisian President Kais Saied’s very successful consolidation of power. Whatever one makes of the sham election Saied just conducted and, uh, “won,” his rise from a relative unknown who took a bit over 18 percent of the vote in the first round of the 2019 presidential election to Tunisia’s unquestioned dictator in five years is impressive if you’re into autocratic takeovers. Alex notes, for example, Saied’s ability to cultivate multiple international partners to benefit his regime:

Tunisia enjoys substantial international funding and legitimation from (a) the European Union and various European countries on a bilateral basis, especially in connection with migration control; (b) the United States, especially in connection with counterterrorism and security; (c) Algeria, which has extended generous loans as part of what one commentator went so far as to call a “vassalization” of Tunisia; and (d) various other powers, including China, Russia, and Iran. Tunisia continues to display a wide range of alliances, whether from the Western powers that view Tunisia as an indispensable “partner” or from authoritarian states that also see advantage in courting Saied.

BURKINA FASO

Jihadist militants attacked a town in the Gnagna province of Burkina Faso’s East region on Sunday, killing at least ten people and wounding more than 50. As far as I can tell there’s been no claim of responsibility as yet.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The UK government on Tuesday blacklisted Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense unit, over alleged chemical weapons use in Ukraine. The UK and US, alongside Ukraine, have claimed that Russian forces are using Chloropicrin, a pesticide that was used as a choking agent during World War I. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been unable to confirm those claims and Russian officials deny them.

UKRAINE

Russian forces have for the first time reached the city of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. Toretsk has sat more or less on the front line in Donetsk since the Russian-backed Donbas “republics” declared their independence from Ukraine in 2014, but the Russians have been making an effort to take it for several weeks now. Reports put Russian soldiers in the city center though Ukrainian forces have not yet withdrawn and fighting is ongoing. Russian forces also made gains on Tuesday in another part of Donetsk, seizing two villages near the similarly targeted town of Kurakhove.

AMERICAS

HAITI

Haitian Foreign Minister Dominique Dupuy lashed out via social media on Monday over a new crackdown on Haitian migrants in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Last week Dominican officials announced a new push to deport upwards of 10,000 undocumented migrants per week and they have deported thousands of Haitians since then, despite a standing request by the United Nations that countries not deport Haitian nationals given the dangerous conditions in that country at present. Dupuy called videos that have circulated online showing Dominican officials detaining Haitians “dehumanizing” and “an affront to human dignity.”

UNITED STATES

Finally, Yaniv Cogan at Drop Site News reports that even as it was patting itself on the back for convincing the Israeli government to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza last October, the Biden administration had signed off on a policy that would allow the IDF to attack the convoys carrying it:

The following day, after an additional round of Cabinet meetings, this time helmed by both Blinken and Biden, an outline of the decision was publicly announced by Prime Minster’s Netanyahu’s office: “We will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip” and, in a separate Hebrew version, “In light of President Biden's demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population located in the southern Gaza Strip or moving there, and as long as these supplies do not reach Hamas. Any supplies that reach Hamas will be thwarted.” The Hebrew word לסכל, “to thwart,” is frequently used by Israel to describe targeted killings and assassinations. The previous policy of "thwarting" all humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza was conveyed to Egypt as an explicit threat to "bomb" aid trucks.

The substance of the Blinken-approved policy was starkly conveyed by Security Cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich, who later told the Israeli media: “We in the cabinet were promised at the outset that there would be monitoring, and that aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and its organizations [sic] would be bombed from the air, and the aid would be halted.”

While it could be argued that the intent was to allow attacks only on convoys that had been explicitly diverted by Hamas, this policy is colored by two Israeli positions: first, that anyone (other than IDF personnel) carrying a gun in Gaza is Hamas and two, that any UN Relief and Works Agency personnel in Gaza are Hamas. So any convoys that were guarded by armed police and any convoys involving UNRWA personnel—which means pretty much any convoy, period—effectively became “legitimate” targets. And while it insists that it opposes Israeli attacks on aid workers and convoys, the Biden administration has done precisely nothing in response to repeated incidents of such attacks.