World roundup: September 11 2024

Stories from Egypt, Libya, Mexico, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

September 11, 1714: The Siege of Barcelona ends with the French-Bourbon besiegers victorious over the city’s Habsburg defenders. The siege was one of the final engagements of the War of the Spanish Succession, which had begun back in 1701 following the death of Habsburg Spanish King Charles II. It pitted Charles’ chosen heir, the Bourbon royal Philip of Anjou, against the Habsburg claimant Archduke Charles of Austria (later Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI) for control of the decaying but still large and wealthy Spanish empire. Barcelona’s surrender brought an effective end to the war and also ended the Principality of Catalonia, a hitherto independent entity joined in dynastic union with the kingdom of Aragon, as new King Philip V reshaped Spain from a loose union of polities into a single, centralized political entity.

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 (the official story, at least, is that he committed 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

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Israeli official Gal Hirsch told CNN over the weekend that the Israeli government might be willing to offer Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar “safe passage” out of Gaza in return for the release of the remaining October 7 hostages. This seemed (and still seems) dubious, given that Hirsch is not a senior figure in the Israeli government (he’s “coordinator for hostages and the missing”) and because he made it clear that he wasn’t speaking for the government (he characterized the safe passage idea as something he “believes” the government would be willing to offer). However, Hirsch gave an interview (unpaywalled version here) to Bloomberg on Tuesday in which he went further, claiming that he has already made the offer to Hamas. This is odd to say the least, inasmuch as he presumably doesn’t have the authority to do that. Israeli leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, have talked about allowing Hamas leadership to go into exile in the past but I’m not sure they’ve specifically included Sinwar.