World roundup: September 16 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Colombia, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
September 16, 1955: A group of senior military officers begins an uprising they call the “Revolución Libertadora” against Argentine President Juan Perón in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. The coup would end with Perón’s resignation on September 21 and the junta assuming power on September 23.
September 16, 1970: The Black September conflict begins in Jordan, as King Hussein declares martial law and orders the Jordanian army to quash unruly Palestine Liberation Organization militants across the country. Although the main conflict ended several days later, after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser orchestrated a ceasefire, fighting between Jordanian security forces and the PLO continued through the following summer. That’s when Hussein finally expelled the group’s leadership from Jordan and they decamped to Lebanon.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Syrian, Jordanian, and US governments announced on Tuesday that they’ve devised a “roadmap” to stabilizing southern Syria, following July’s outbreak of violent clashes between Syrian security forces and Druze militias. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani told reporters in Damascus that the plan includes the prosecution of anyone found culpable in that violence, the provision of humanitarian aid and restoration of basic services in Syria’s Suwaydah province, the return of people displaced by the violence, and some sort of “process of internal reconciliation.” It also includes the deployment of government security forces in the region, though they’ll be without anything that could be characterized as a “heavy weapon” because they’re apparently pulling all of those out of the region. This is part of the US-led effort to broker some sort of agreement between the Syrian and Israeli governments.
The Israeli military (IDF) expanded its occupation of southern Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that it has been organizing and arming those Druze militias and paying fighters’ salaries. Israeli officials have been demanding the “demilitarization” of southern Syria. A recent Israeli proposal would reportedly create a security structure for southern Syria akin to the one that the Israeli and Egyptian governments imposed on the Sinai in the 1979 Camp David Accord, dividing it into a series of zones in which the Syrian government would have varying degrees of sovereignty. The Israelis are also insisting on maintaining at-will access to Syrian airspace for the purposes of conducting airstrikes on Iran. In return for the Syrian government’s compliance with these demands the Israelis would withdraw from most, but not all, of the territory they’ve occupied since Assad’s overthrow.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz took to social media on Tuesday to declare that “Gaza is burning,” which he meant as a boast rather than a statement of abject horror. Gaza City was indeed burning, after the IDF began the main phase of its operation to seize and obliterate northern Gaza under cover of heavy airstrikes. It did so despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of civilians who had not yet obeyed—and who may not have been planning to obey, to be clear—the IDF’s forced evacuation orders. Al Jazeera is reporting at least 68 people killed in Gaza City on Tuesday out of at least 78 total across Gaza (UPDATE: those figures now stand at 91 and 106, respectively), though if the bombing has been as intense as reported I have to think that it’s been very difficult for health officials to keep an accurate count of the casualties. Thousands of people reportedly fled during the bombardment but again there’s virtually no chance that anyone has an accurate estimate as to how many.
On a partially related note, a United Nations expert commission issued a new report on Tuesday concluding that the Israeli campaign in Gaza constitutes a genocide. The commission found the Israeli government guilty of four of the five conditions outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention: “killing members of a group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.” Any one of them would be enough for a determination of genocide. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that it “categorically rejects this distorted and false report.”
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly acknowledged that international sentiment has turned against Israel, telling the audience at an economic conference that the country is experiencing “a type of isolation.” He opined that Israel will have to adopt “some signs of an autarky” and become like “Sparta” or perhaps “Athens and super Sparta.” In fairness Sparta, which won the Peloponnesian War with the support of the Persian Empire, is a decent model for the sort of pretend “isolation” that Netanyahu is imagining for Israel as a client of the United States, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it that way. The Israeli leader blamed this “isolation” on Muslim migration to Europe and Chinese and Qatari manipulation of social media, rather than any actions taken by his government. After his remarks seemed to roil Israeli markets a bit he partially walked them back on Tuesday.
YEMEN
The IDF attacked the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah again on Tuesday, striking what it called “military infrastructure.” I haven’t seen any word as to casualties but the new attack did come on the same day that people were attending funerals for the 31 Yemeni journalists who were killed in the IDF’s bombardment of northern Yemen last week. That figure is up from the 11 previously reported, while the overall death toll of 46 has remained unchanged.
QATAR
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio turned up in Qatar on Tuesday to urge that country’s government to continue serving as a mediator in negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire, despite the IDF bombing of Doha last week and one day after he’d suggested that those talks were doomed to failure during his stop in Israel. According to Rubio the US and Qatar are close to agreement on an “enhanced” defense pact, which is interesting coming one week after the Qataris learned that their current defense pact with the US doesn’t protect them from Israeli attacks.
IRAN
The Trump administration blacklisted more than a dozen people and companies allegedly linked to an Iranian “shadow banking network” on Tuesday. The list of designees included two Iranian nationals who allegedly purchased a cool $100 million in cryptocurrency on Tehran’s behalf, as well as other entities tied to the export and sale of Iranian oil.
ASIA
INDIA
The Naxalite militant movement suspended its longstanding rebellion against the Indian government on Tuesday, according to a statement issued through its Communist Party of India (Maoist) political arm. The group now says that it’s ready for negotiations with Indian officials, who hadn’t yet commented at time of writing. Indian security forces have been intensifying their campaign against the rebels with the aim of defeating them by the end of March. They’ve killed several of the organization’s senior leaders in recent months, including one as recently as Monday, which presumably explains Tuesday’s announcement.
CHINA
Nobody could have predicted, but Donald Trump’s trade war with China is crippling American farmers:
Since President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in February, Beijing has retaliated by halting all purchases of American soybeans.
That decision has had devastating repercussions for farmers in North Dakota, which exported more than 70 percent of its soybeans to China before Trump unveiled the new tariffs this year. Unless China agrees to restart its purchases as part of a trade deal, farmers that depend on the Chinese market will be facing steep losses that could fuel farm bankruptcies and farm foreclosures around the United States.
China’s reluctance to purchase American soybeans and other agricultural products is expected to be a central topic as top officials from the United States and China meet for another round of economic negotiations in Spain this week.
So far the only reporting I’ve seen about those talks has involved the TikTok sale “framework,” so I don’t know if they’ve touched on this issue at all. But apparently US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has ample reason to resolve these tensions. According to the NYT he owns around $25 million in North Dakotan farmland whose profitability is heavily dependent on exports to China.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Rapid Support Forces militants attacked the besieged city of Al-Fashir in Sudan’s North Darfur state on Tuesday, killing at least 18 people. According to AFP that figure only accounts for bodies brought to the city’s working medical facilities and it’s believed there are more dead unaccounted for in the neighboring Abu Shouk displaced persons camp. The militants appear to be slowing advancing through the camp and according to one “witness” they “have installed artillery and defensive positions” along the way. RSF attacks on the camp and the city have intensified in the past couple of days and this may represent the militants’ final push to seize both, though it’s hard to get a big picture analysis of the situation given the paucity of news getting out of the region.
NIGERIA
Islamic State West Africa Province fighters reportedly ambushed a military unit in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state on Monday but may have come off worse in the ensuing firefight. The Nigerian military is saying that its forces killed eight ISWAP attackers and drove the rest off. The Nigerian military also on occasion exaggerates these sorts of reports so take it with a grain of salt. Also on Monday, Nigerian officials are claiming that their forces, with the help of “local vigilantes,” killed three ISWAP fighters in an operation in neighboring Adamawa state.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The M23 militant group held a parade in the eastern Congolese city of Goma on Sunday in which it apparently displayed some 7000 new recruits. Amid what appears to be a breakdown in negotiations between M23 and the Congolese government this show of force was undoubtedly meant to send a message to Kinshasa, though it’s unclear whether all of the “recruits” were there entirely of their own free will. As far as the peace talks are concerned nothing of note appears to be happening. Under the US-brokered agreement between the Congolese and Rwandan governments, at some point the latter will be obliged to terminate its support for M23, but if there’s no corresponding M23-DRC peace deal in place it’s far from clear what Rwandan leaders will do.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A new report from the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab alleges that the Russian government, as The Guardian put it, “is running an extensive network of more than 200 camps to re-educate, Russify and [militarize] Ukrainian children.” That outlet had reported last week on “military-style training camps” inside Russia that were taking in children who’d been “forcibly” removed from Ukraine. Not all of these camps appear to include military training but they do all seem designed to more or less turn these Ukrainian kids into patriotic Russians. Many of the facilities seem to be under construction, suggesting that Moscow plans to bring in additional children. The report will undoubtedly fuel renewed calls for investigations into and prosecutions of alleged Russian war crimes.
UKRAINE
Late last month the Ukrainian government announced that it will allow men aged 18 to 22 to leave the country. After the Russian invasion in 2022 Ukraine’s martial law decree had barred all men aged 18 to 60 from going abroad, even though not all of them were eligible for conscription (initially restricted to men aged 27-60 and currently restricted to men aged 25-60). Unsurprisingly there were concerns that allowing men younger than the minimum conscription age to leave would cause a military manpower shortage down the road. Now the thinking is that allowing men aged 18-22 to travel will reduce the current exodus of 17 year olds and possibly improve future conscription numbers as more young men are imbued, in their late teens, with a sense of patriotism and a desire to serve. I suppose only time will tell whether that logic makes sense.
ITALY
An Italian court has approved the extradition of a Ukrainian national named Serhii Kuznietsov, who is wanted in Germany in connection with the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. While I am not a lawyer and I try not to turn this newsletter into the nightly international crime blotter, I do think it’s worth noting—as the AP report does—that lawyers for Kuznietsov, a former captain in the Ukrainian army who was arrested while on vacation with his family, challenged the extradition on the basis that he should enjoy “functional immunity” from prosecution since he was (allegedly) acting on orders when he (allegedly) orchestrated and carried out the pipeline attack. Of course his lawyers may have concocted that claim as a legal tactic, but it still stood out to me. The Ukrainian government has repeatedly denied having any role in the bombing.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
Donald Trump appeared to reveal on Tuesday that the US military has bombed three alleged Venezuelan drug boats, not two as previously thought. Whether this was an actual revelation or just some random outburst from a dying brain is unclear and suffice to say there are no details available regarding this third alleged incident. In every one of these cases the US military seems pretty clearly to be violating both US and international law even under the assumption that all of its claims about these boats are true.
COLOMBIA
The Trump administration late Monday decertified several countries as US war on drugs “partners,” including Afghanistan, Bolivia, Colombia, Myanmar, and Venezuela. Of these the most significant was clearly Colombia, which found itself decertified for the first time since 1997. The administration declined to take any punitive steps beyond decertification, issuing a waiver that will sustain current levels of US aid and support, but the symbolic significance is high and this may open the door to punishments down the road.
It’s unclear whether the administration took this step for any reason actually related to counternarcotics as opposed to the general bad blood that exists between Donald Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, but it may be worth noting that Trump did single Petro out for criticism in announcing the decertifications. Petro returned fire, accusing Trump of trying to set a “puppet president” in place in Bogotá and ceasing Colombian arms purchases from the US. Ironically this may actually help the unpopular Petro by allowing him to marshal any anti-US feelings of Colombian voters in support of the left-wing candidate heading into next year’s presidential election. He might want to compare notes with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on that front.
UNITED STATES
Finally, in what I assume cannot possibly be a good sign, Wired reports that US investors seem quite bullish when it comes to spyware:
The United States has emerged as the largest investor in commercial spyware—a global industry that has enabled the covert surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, politicians, diplomats, and others, posing grave threats to human rights and national security.
In 2024, 20 new US-based spyware investors were identified, bringing the total number of American backers of this technology to 31. This growth has largely outpaced other major investing countries such as Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom, according to a new report published today by the Atlantic Council.
The study surveyed 561 entities across 46 countries between 1992 and 2024, identifying 34 new investors. This brings the total to 128, up from 94 in the dataset published last year.
The number of identified investors in the EU Single Market, plus Switzerland, stands at 31, with Italy—a key spyware hub—accounting for the largest share at 12. Investors based in Israel number 26.
US-based investors include major hedge funds D.E. Shaw & Co. and Millennium Management, prominent trading firm Jane Street, and mainstream financial-services company Ameriprise Financial—all of which, according to the Atlantic Council, have channeled funds to Israeli lawful-interception software provider Cognyte, a company allegedly linked to human rights abuses in Azerbaijan and Indonesia, among others.
Also, if you have’t done so yet please check out Gretchen Heefner’s new FX piece on the checkered history of US military involvement in Greenland.