World roundup: September 13-15 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Thailand, Brazil, and elsewhere

Sep 16, 2024

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Programming note: I am fighting a cold that has settled primarily in my throat and so I am going to have to forego tonight’s voiceover. I gather there are some issues with Substack’s updated text-to-voice feature so I do apologize for any inconvenience.

THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY

September 13, 533: A Byzantine army under Belisarius defeats the Vandals in the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage. This was Belisarius’s first victory in his invasion of North Africa and kicked off his campaign to restore the western Mediterranean to imperial control.

September 13, 1993: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chair Yasser Arafat sign the Oslo I Accord in Washington, DC. Oslo I established a Palestinian government of sorts, the Palestinian Authority, and included provisions for the eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Occupied Territories and economic cooperation between the Israelis and Palestinians. It was supposed to be an interim agreement but, well, you can see how that went.

September 14, 1829: The Treaty of Adrianople ends the Ottoman-Russian War of 1828-1829. The Ottomans ceded control over the eastern shore of the Black Sea and the mouth of the Danube River, re-guaranteed Serbia’s autonomy, allowed Moldavia and Wallachia to become Russian protectorates, and paid a large indemnity to the Russians.

September 14, 1960: At a meeting in Baghdad, the governments of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela agree to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Everything has gone really well ever since. Also on this date, with CIA help, Congolese Army Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in a bloodless coup in Kinshasa. That worked out really well too.

September 15, 1821: The Captaincy-General of Guatemala—encompassing the modern states of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua—declares its independence from Spain. The date is commemorated as independence day in all five of those countries.

September 15, 1894: The Imperial Japanese Army captures the city of Pyongyang from Qing Dynasty China in one of the earliest engagements of the First Sino-Japanese War. China opted to abandon Korea to the Japanese, and when the war ended with a Japanese victory the Korean peninsula came under Japan’s regional sphere of influence.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

A ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Ansar Allah/Houthi movement apparently penetrated Israeli air defenses on Sunday before impacting in an uninhabited part of central Israel. There were no casualties but the incident set off a flurry of claims about the nature of the missile and whether it poses a unique threat to Israel. The Houthis described it as a “hypersonic ballistic missile,” which may be a misnomer. Ballistic missiles often achieve hypersonic speeds, but the classification of “hypersonic weapons” refers to devices that can be maneuvered mid-flight like cruise missiles—which is generally not the case with ballistic weapons. Then there’s the question of whether it evaded Israeli air defenses altogether. The Israeli military (IDF) is claiming that their systems did intercept the missile but failed to destroy it in mid-air, so the wreckage impacted the ground.

Elsewhere:

Haaretz is reporting that “senior Hamas officials recently told representatives of other Palestinian organizations” that the group would be willing to modify its demand that the IDF withdraw from Gaza in a ceasefire deal. According to this report the group is now prepared to accept an Israeli military presence along the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza and the Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian border during the “implementation” phases of a deal, provided the deal include a “timetable” for a full withdrawal and end to the Israeli campaign. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already balked at any sort of guaranteed end of the Gaza operation so it seems unlikely that he’d be open to this idea.
Children in Gaza opened their second school year without school earlier this month, raising fears that this crisis is creating a “lost generation” of Palestinian kids. At this point even a cessation of violence wouldn’t be enough to remedy this situation, since the IDF has destroyed some 90 percent of Gaza’s schools and all of its post-secondary institutions. We should probably also mention the estimated “25,000 school-age children” the IDF has killed or injured, and the hundreds of thousands it’s left without food, clean water, or basic medical care.
Jack Khoury at Haaretz reports on a possible rise in criminal violence within the Israeli Palestinian community, following an apparent car bombing that killed four people in Ramla on Thursday and another that wounded five in Acre on Saturday. These sorts of incidents are a bit too granular for this newsletter, but it speaks to a level of disinterest by Israeli authorities because the violence is largely confined to the Israeli Palestinian population.

IRAQ

The US military’s Central Command claimed on Friday that a joint US-Iraqi operation killed four Islamic State “leaders” last month, one of whom was subject to a $5 million US bounty. They were among 14 IS members killed during an extended raid in western Iraq’s Anbar province on August 29. US officials described Abu Ali al-Tunisi as the group’s “technical director,” allegedly responsible for bomb making and other weapons development activities. IS’s Iraqi operations leader was also reportedly among the dead.

SYRIA

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday named a former communications minister, Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, as his new prime minister. The appointment follows July’s parliamentary election, which Assad’s National Progressive Front coalition won in a real shocker. Jalali has been blacklisted by the European Union, though I doubt that was high on Assad’s list of concerns.

JORDAN

Jordan’s King Abdullah II also named a new prime minister this weekend, tapping his chief of staff Jafar Hassan to replace the outgoing Bisher Khasawneh. Hassan is viewed as a “technocrat” who consequently may be acceptable to what is likely to be a more opposition-oriented parliament in the wake of Tuesday’s election. Khasawneh resigned following the election, but will stay on in a caretaker role until Hassan and his cabinet are ready to take over.

YEMEN

The second attempt to salvage the damaged oil tanker Sounion in the Red Sea got underway on Saturday. So far it seems to be working, though the Greek military acknowledged on Sunday that the operation “is proceeding at a very slow pace.” The Houthis attacked the vessel last month, setting it adrift and on fire and risking the spill of the roughly 1 million barrels of oil it was transporting. The salvage operation is aiming to tow the ship to an unspecified port, where the focus will turn toward ensuring that the fire is suppressed and offloading the oil.

ASIA

INDIA

Suspected Kashmiri militants killed at least two soldiers and wounded two others amid a gun battle in India’s Jammu region on Friday. Jammu and Kashmir state is set to begin a provincial election on Wednesday, its first since 2014, and it has experienced a spike in militant activity in recent weeks as a result.

MYANMAR

Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing made an appeal for international humanitarian aid on Saturday to cope with the effects of Typhoon Yagi. That storm carved a path of destruction across the Philippines, China, and Vietnam, and its remnants dumped heavy rain on Myanmar. That rain triggered flooding and landslides that have left at least 113 people dead (with many still missing) and displaced over 320,000. The fly in the ointment here is, of course, the fact that the junta has earned very little international goodwill upon which it might draw for support. Indeed, the junta has burned considerable goodwill by blocking humanitarian relief efforts in the wake of previous disasters. Concerns about the security environment for aid groups will also undoubtedly hamper relief efforts.

THAILAND

At World Politics Review, researcher Michael Hart warns political drama has been diverting attention away from a resurgence of militancy in southern Thailand:

For the past month, political upheaval in Bangkok has once again dominated international news coverage of Thailand. On Aug. 7, Move Forward—a progressive party that won the most seats in the May 2023 election but was sidelined from power in post-election dealmaking—was disbanded by the country’s Constitutional Court. A week later, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who since last August had headed an uneasy governing coalition led by the Pheu Thai party, was forced out of office by the court and replaced as prime minister by Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
The abrupt change marks the latest chapter in the unstable alliance between Pheu Thai and the country’s pro-military parties that emerged in the aftermath of last year’s election. But the political intrigue in Bangkok has distracted attention from what should be urgent priorities for the government, particularly efforts to resolve the long-running conflict in southern Thailand, which has been showing worrying signs of escalation in recent months.
On Aug. 9, separatist insurgents detonated three bombs in a coordinated attack targeting the entrance to a fishing port and police housing in Mueang, in Pattani province. The first blast was designed to lure responding security forces to the scene before the second and third devices, one of which was a powerful vehicle bomb, were triggered. The attack injured 10 people, including nine police officers. On June 30, another car bombing in Bannang Sata, in nearby Yala province, killed one person and wounded 21 outside police housing.
These attacks form part of an escalatory pattern of roadside bomb blasts targeting military and police vehicles in the southern provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala and parts of Songkhla, where Malay rebels that have fought the Thai state for decades are keen to remind the authorities of their presence.

NORTH KOREA

North Korean state media reported Friday on a visit by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to a uranium enrichment site linked to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. It’s unclear whether Kim visited the enrichment facility at Yongbyon—which was already known to Western analysts—or another facility (it’s believed North Korea operates at least one other enrichment site), but analysis of the imagery seems to point toward the Yongbyon plant. That imagery will undoubtedly be picked apart for whatever intelligence value it has, but for the North Korean government the value presumably comes from getting the country’s nuclear program back into international headlines for a few days.

SUDAN

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab reported “unprecedented” levels of violence in and around the Sudanese city of Al-Fashir on Friday amid what it called “a major multidirectional [Rapid Support Forces] attack from the northern, eastern, and southern directions.” The RSF has been besieging Al-Fashir for several months and this report may indicate that it’s finally moving to take the city, which is the last major population center in Darfur that remains under Sudanese military control. Local officials are claiming that the RSF’s attack was thwarted but the paramilitary group claims its forces were able to gain ground.

ALGERIA

Algerian election authorities released the official final results of the September 7 presidential election on Saturday, and they’re a bit different from the provisional results announced previously. Incumbent Abdelmadjid Tebboune still won, mind you, but now they’ve given him a bit over 84 percent of the vote instead of a bit under 95 percent. That’s much more believable. Even Tebboune’s campaign had questioned the plausibility of those earlier results.

GUINEA-BISSAU

Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embaló cracked open the door to a reelection bid on Sunday, three days after he’d seemingly closed it. Speaking to members of his Madem G15 party, Embaló said that although “I declared that I would not be a candidate for a second term, following the advice of my wife and family…if you think that I should go back on my decision, then I am entirely at your disposal.” The election has to take place in either November or December, so he’ll have to make up his mind fairly soon.

SOUTH SUDAN

As expected, the South Sudanese government announced on Friday that it’s postponing the country’s planned elections for at least another two years. Those elections, already postponed once back in 2022, were to have taken place in December, but the government has made virtually no preparations for them. Multiple major steps still need to be taken, “drafting a new constitution” and “conducting a national census” being two of the most onerous. The second postponement is likely to test South Sudan’s tenuous political stability and a third one is almost unthinkable, though it’s hard to imagine the country’s leaders getting their act together by December 2026.

SOMALIA

A pair of roadside bombs killed at least five people and wounded another eight in Mogadishu on Saturday. This was presumably the work of al-Shabab, though it may be worth noting that the International Crisis Group recently released a report warning of a growing Islamic State presence in Somalia. I tend to agree with Alex Thurston that this report seems “a little breathless,” but at any rate IS’s presence in Somalia is mostly confined to the Puntland region and it would be surprising if the group were able to carry out attacks in the Somali capital.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The US State Department announced new sanctions targeting the Russian media outlet RT on Friday. These measures build upon previous sanctions levied against the outlet for its alleged role in spreading Russian disinformation and propaganda but also accuse it of running crowd-funding campaigns to purchase equipment—including drones, radios, and night-vision gear—for the Russian military. Also on Friday, the Russian government announced the expulsion of six UK diplomats on claims of spying. The UK government denied the allegations.

Speaking of the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Washington on Friday, where among other things he and Joe Biden fretted about the possibility of Russian cooperation with an Iranian nuclear weapons program. There is still no evidence that Iran is trying to manufacture nukes, but it would not be out of the question for Russia to pay for the drones and missiles it’s getting from Tehran by providing Iran with technical information that would be useful if the Iranians did decide to join the nuclear club. The Trump administration’s decision to tear up the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the Biden administration’s decision not to rejoin it just keep looking smarter and smarter as time goes by.

Biden and Starmer (and their respective entourages) at the White House on Friday (Stefan Rousseau - Pool via Getty Images)

UKRAINE

In news from Ukraine:

Whatever else Biden and Starmer discussed on Friday they apparently did not come to a decision regarding the Ukrainian military’s use of long-range Western munitions to strike targets inside Russia. It’s generally felt that they’ve already decided to drop, or at least ease, the restrictions they’ve placed on Ukraine’s strike capabilities, but Starmer suggested that they’re planning to talk it over “with a wider group of individuals” on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session later this month.
The Russian military reportedly seized another village near the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk over the weekend. Russian forces are now close enough to Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian logistical hub, that they’re shelling the city—they killed at least one person in that fashion on Sunday.
The Russian and Ukrainian governments, mediated by the UAE, negotiated another major prisoner swap that saw the release of 103 POWs by each side on Saturday. This is perhaps the most tangible result of the Ukrainian military’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk oblast, which has nabbed Ukraine hundreds of new prisoners. Those POWs enabled this swap as well as the one that took place late last month.

BRAZIL

The AP reports on the role Brazilian indigenous communities are playing in preserving the Amazon:

It was just before dawn when the Ashaninka people, wearing long, tunic-like dresses, began singing traditional songs while playing drums and other instruments. The music drifted through Apiwtxa village, which had welcomed guests from Indigenous communities in Brazil and neighboring Peru, some having traveled three days. As the sun rose, they moved beneath the shadow of a huge mango tree.
The dancing, which would last until the following morning, marked the end of the annual celebration recognizing the Ashaninka territory along the winding Amonia River in the western Amazon. The multi-day, nearly around-the-clock festivities included the ritual of drinking ayahuasca, the sacred psychedelic brew, archery tournaments, climbing towering acai palm trees and face-painting with red dye.
What was once a gathering to commemorate the Ashaninka has evolved into a showcase of what they have done: the village’s self-sufficiency, which comes from growing crops and protecting its forest, is now a model for an ambitious project to help 12 Indigenous territories in western Amazon, amounting to 640,000 hectares (1.6 million acres), about the size of the U.S. state of Delaware.
In November, the Organization of Indigenous People of the Jurua River, known by the Portuguese acronym OPIRJ, secured $6.8 million in support from the Amazon Fund, the world’s largest initiative to combat rainforest deforestation. With Apiwtxa as the model, the grant is geared toward improving Indigenous land management with an emphasis on food production, cultural strengthening and forest surveillance.

VENEZUELA

Venezuelan authorities arrested six foreign nationals on Saturday and charged them with plotting to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro. Three of those arrested were from the US—along with two Spaniards and one Czech—including one who served in the US Navy, possibly in a special operations role. Unsurprisingly, Venezuelan officials have claimed that the assassination plot was hatched by the Central Intelligence Agency. The US State Department called that claim “categorically false,” and frankly even a cursory knowledge of historical US activity in Latin American would show that…um, maybe we should just move on to the next item.

UNITED STATES

US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday that the Biden administration supports the establishment of two permanent UN Security Council seats for African nations, as well as one rotating seat reserved for “small island developing states.” This seems like a naked play for African approval, with US policy toward Gaza having cost it substantial support on the continent. But Thomas-Greenfield also made clear that the administration would not support giving either of these permanent African seat-holders the same veto rights as the council’s five current permanent members, which makes this whole offer less magnanimous than it might appear at first glance.

Finally, TomDispatch’s Michael Klare wonders whether the next US president is going to be prepared to deal with an escalating nuclear threat:

Consider this: For the past three decades, we’ve been living through a period in which the risk of nuclear war has been far lower than at any time since the Nuclear Age began — so low, in fact, that the danger of such a holocaust has been largely invisible to most people. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of agreements that substantially reduced the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles eliminated the most extreme risk of thermonuclear conflict, allowing us to push thoughts of nuclear Armageddon aside (and focus on other worries). But those quiescent days should now be considered over. Relations among the major powers have deteriorated in recent years and progress on disarmament has stalled. The United States and Russia are, in fact, upgrading their nuclear arsenals with new and more powerful weapons, while China — previously an outlier in the nuclear threat equation — has begun a major expansion of its own arsenal.
The altered nuclear equation is also evident in the renewed talk of possible nuclear weapons use by leaders of the major nuclear-armed powers. Such public discussion largely ceased after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when it became evident that any thermonuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would result in their mutual annihilation. However, that fear has diminished in recent years and we’re again hearing talk of nuclear weapons use. Since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to employ nuclear munitions in response to unspecified future actions of the U.S. and NATO in support of Ukrainian forces. Citing those very threats, along with China’s growing military might, Congress has authorized a program to develop more “lower-yield” nuclear munitions supposedly meant (however madly) to provide a president with further “options” in the event of a future regional conflict with Russia or China.
Thanks to those and related developments, the world is now closer to an actual nuclear conflagration than at any time since the end of the Cold War. And while popular anxiety about a nuclear exchange may have diminished, keep in mind that the explosive power of existing arsenals has not. Imagine this, for instance: even a “limited” nuclear war — involving the use of just a dozen or so of the hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) possessed by China, Russia, and the United States — would cause enough planetary destruction to ensure civilization’s collapse and the death of billions of people.
And consider all of that as just the backdrop against which the next president will undoubtedly face fateful decisions regarding the production and possible use of such weaponry, whether in the bilateral nuclear relationship between the U.S. and Russia or the trilateral one that incorporates China.