World roundup: September 11 2023

Stories from Iran, India, Ukraine, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

September 11, 1565: The Great Siege of Malta ends.

French painter Charles-Philippe Larivière’s 1840s Lifting of the Siege of Malta (Wikimedia Commons)

September 11, 1973: With the support of the US government and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency, a Chilean military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrows President Salvador Allende, who died (probably by suicide) as soldiers seized the presidential palace in Santiago. Pinochet ruled as a dictator until 1990, becoming Chile’s legal president in 1981 under a newly-promulgated constitution, then continued to exert significant authority as military commander in chief until 1998. His regime is noted for its extensive human rights violations and for overseeing the neoliberalization of the Chilean economy under the Milton Friedman-trained “Chicago Boys,” a process that generated high levels of growth but also high levels of inequality. His legacy is still being felt in Chilean politics to the present day.

September 11, 2001: Al-Qaeda operatives kill nearly 3000 people by flying airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. A fourth plane, probably intended for the US Capitol, was brought down over Pennsylvania. The attacks sparked the “Global War on Terror,” which included US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and during which the United States essentially ran roughshod over the rest of the world and any concept of international law. It’s difficult to assess that conflict in a historical context given that it’s still going over two decades later.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Rival Palestinian factions that have been battling for the past five days inside Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp declared a joint ceasefire, one they described as “immediate and lasting,” on Monday. Sunday’s apparent ceasefire seems to have collapsed very quickly, as renewed fighting killed at least one person on Monday prior to the new ceasefire announcement. Overall this latest round of violence has killed at least ten people and left dozens wounded, according to Reuters. The Fatah Party and Islamist militants in the camp have been battling since late July, when said Islamists allegedly killed an officer in Fatah’s armed wing. One of the suspects in that incident was either killed or gravely wounded on Monday but that’s probably not going to be enough to satisfy Fatah, which has been demanding the arrest of anyone involved in the July attack.