World roundup: September 17 2024

Stories from Lebanon, Myanmar, Algeria, and elsewhere

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TODAY IN HISTORY

September 17, 1176: Byzantine Emperor Manuel I leads an army into battle against the Seljuk Turks at Myriokephalon. Well, technically, he led his army into a Seljuk trap and thus a catastrophic defeat. The loss cost the Byzantines what proved to be their final opportunity to regain control of Anatolia—the Crusader conquest of Constantinople in 1204 would slam the door on those hopes entirely.

September 17, 1978: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Accords under the auspices of US President Jimmy Carter. The accords nodded in the direction of Middle East peace but mainly focused on a bilateral treaty between Egypt and Israel, the former becoming the first Arab state to recognize the latter.

Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin at Camp David (US government archives)

September 17, 1982: Lebanese Christian militias, with the support of the Israeli military, massacre hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra neighborhood in western Beirut and the nearby Shatila refugee camp. Arguably the worst and most infamous of the myriad atrocities committed during the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War, the massacre was declared an act of genocide by the United Nations General Assembly.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Nation’s Abdullah Shihipar says that the Israeli military (IDF) has reduced medical care in Gaza to “pre-Civil War” (that’s US Civil War) levels:

The Civil War began more than 160 years ago, so why make this comparison? The simple answer is that many of the conditions in Gaza are similar to the ones found in the 1860s. In fact, the situation in Gaza is worse in some ways than in the Civil War, because medicine has come so far since then.

While the Civil War saw many deaths from disease, this was in part due to a lack of knowledge. Medicine had simply not progressed enough to be able to respond to the needs of the soldiers. Today, there are no such barriers standing in the way of Palestinian doctors. They have the expertise and the skills to save lives. But Israel has deliberately targeted Gaza’s medical infrastructure and prevented vital equipment from entering the war zone. The spread of disease, death, and famine is the direct result of these choices.

Israel has quite literally plunged Gaza into a pre–Civil War medical context. Doctors at Gettysburg and Antietam had anesthesia and painkillers to give to their patients, while some Palestinian children have found themselves undergoing amputations with no anesthesia. During the Civil War, the majority of deaths were attributable to combatants. In Gaza, civilians make up a large proportion of the dead: killed by a sniper’s bullet while evacuating, eviscerated in an air strike, or dying of disease and starvation in a tent.

Elsewhere:

• On Tuesday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that he’d expanded Israel’s “war” aims to include the return of tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes in northern Israel due to the conflict with Hezbollah. If this sounds to you like the prelude to escalation, well, that’s probably what it is—especially given what happened in Lebanon later in the day (more on that in a moment). According to Haaretz, the looming possibility of escalation with Hezbollah is what’s preventing Netanyahu from firing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—don’t change horses mid-apocalypse, that sort of thing.

• A new survey from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research finds that 57 percent of Palestinians in Gaza believe that Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel was a bad idea against 39 percent who still support it. This is noteworthy in that the PCPSR has asked this question numerous times and this is the first time that it’s showed a majority of people in Gaza having a negative opinion regarding October 7. A majority of Palestinians in the West Bank still supports the attack, though that is shrinking and of course the West Bank hasn’t experienced the brunt of the Israeli retribution. Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of rigging PCPSR poll results, though this one should theoretically dispel that notion.

• The UN General Assembly on Thursday debated a resolution calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of “Palestinian territory,” following the International Court of Justice opinion earlier this year that found the occupation had become a “de facto annexation.” The resolution gives Israel 12 months to comply, though “compliance” here is debatable since like all UNGA actions it’s non-binding. The assembly could vote Tuesday evening or Wednesday (it had not voted at time of writing).

LEBANON

In what was presumably an Israeli attack of some kind, at least 11 people were killed and more than 4000 wounded across Lebanon (according to the most recent government statistics) in hundreds of coordinated pager explosions that took place on Tuesday afternoon. This was after the Israeli military killed at least three people—it identified them as Hezbollah fighters—in an airstrike on a border village in southern Lebanon. The wounded in the pager attack included the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon and at least 14 people in Syria. It remains unclear how the Israelis pulled this off. Evidence so far is pointing toward the theory that they got their hands on a shipment of pagers known to be used by Hezbollah and implanted explosives in them, but I gather that some sort of remote hack can’t be entirely ruled out as yet.

Among the dead was at least one child, which I think highlights something important about this strike. It seems designed to appear highly targeted—we’re told that the pagers belonged to Hezbollah members and the explosions seem to have been relatively small—while in reality being essentially untargeted and an act that in any other context the US government would likely denounce as terrorism. For one thing, all we have is the Israeli government’s word that these pagers were used exclusively or even primarily by Hezbollah. I suspect we’ll come to find out that a number of civilians were caught up in this scheme as well, though how many remains to be seen—I imagine most Lebanese civilians have traded their pagers for smartphones nowadays. Regardless of who was using them, however, when the Israelis detonated these devices they couldn’t possibly have known where they would be or who/what would be in the vicinity.

So in fact the danger to civilians was extreme and the terror will likely linger by design. The method of attack was intended to sow fear among Hezbollah members, who now have to wonder how else they may be at risk. But that same fear is undoubtedly going to take root among Lebanese civilians, who now have to wonder if, say, the guy standing next to them in line at the grocery store might suddenly explode.

For whatever it’s worth the Biden administration quickly went to its favorite media conduit to deny any involvement or foreknowledge. It may be worth noting that Israeli leaders went ahead with this attack just “hours” after US envoy Amos Hochstein reportedly “urged” them not to continue escalating their conflict with Hezbollah. I guess they didn’t get the message. The timing is certainly curious—Al-Monitor is reporting that the Israelis made an abrupt decision to proceed amid concerns that Hezbollah had gotten wind of the plot.

YEMEN

A member of the Houthi movement’s politburo, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, claimed on Monday that the Biden administration has offered to recognize its government in Sanaa if it stops attacking Israel and commercial shipping in the Red Sea region. US officials dismissed the claim. I don’t think it’s worth making much of this but it’s entirely possible the US has offered to facilitate some sort of political resolution in Yemen—maybe not recognition of the Houthis exactly but something that involves them in a future Yemeni government—in return for a cessation of the group’s attacks.

ASIA

GEORGIA

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze suggested on Tuesday that his government is considering a “revision” of its relationship with the United States, following the Biden administration’s imposition of several new sanctions targeting Georgian individuals the previous day. Kobakhidze apparently accused the administration of interfering in Georgian politics in a meeting with US ambassador Robin Dunnigan, mentioning the possibility of said “revision” in the event that “one more such step is taken” by Washington.

AFGHANISTAN

In another bit of diplomatic progress, the Afghan government says it reopened the country’s embassy in Oman on Sunday. The Taliban has been disavowing Afghan diplomatic missions that were appointed by the country’s previous, Western-backed government, so this reopening presumably means the Omani government accepted the appointment of a new mission by the Taliban. Details are unclear and the Omani government hasn’t commented. Last month the UAE accepted a Taliban-appointed ambassador so Kabul seems to be slowing expanding its diplomatic footprint.

MYANMAR

A new UN report paints an extremely grim picture of human rights in Myanmar:

On Tuesday, a report issued by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, said 5,350 civilians had been killed by the military since the coup [in February 2021]. The report was based partly on remote interviews with hundreds of victims and witnesses because investigators are denied access.

Of those deaths, 2,414 people died in the latest reporting period from April 2023 to June 2024, an increase of 50 percent compared with the previous reporting period. Hundreds were killed in air and artillery attacks.

“Myanmar is plumbing the depths of the human rights abyss,” said James Rodehaver, head of the UN rights office’s Myanmar team.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Rodehaver noted: “Myanmar’s military has created the crisis by instrumentalising the legal system, criminalising nearly all forms of dissent against its attempts to rule the country.”

The UN report also revealed that nearly 27,400 people have been arrested since the coup and are thought to be in military training centres.

CHINA

According to Reuters, the US military is aiming to flood the Indo-Pacific region with (allegedly) cheap anti-ship weapons to counter Chinese naval strength. This includes mobile missile launch devices that could be used in an initial attack on Chinese vessels and a very large number of devices known as “QUICKSINK,” which seem to be basically anti-ship guided bombs that would be used to finish off damaged vessels. China has an edge on the US Navy in terms of the number of vessels at its disposal, but as the Reuters piece notes the current Houthi operation in the Red Sea shows the potential effectiveness of relatively low cost anti-ship capabilities.

AFRICA

ALGERIA

World Politics Review’s Francisco Serrano believes that the absurdities surrounding the official vote count from this month’s presidential election show the weakness of Algeria’s military regime:

As soon as the election results were announced, however, their credibility was shot to pieces. Mohamed Charfi, the head of Algeria’s election watchdog, said on Sept. 7 that the level of “provisional average turnout” surpassed 48 percent. But a day later, additional information revealed significant incongruencies that would put the turnout level at 25 percent at best, leading not just [presidential challengers Abdelali Hassan] Cherif and [Youcef] Auchiche to challenge the validity of the [Algerian electoral commission] ANIE’s tallies, but also [President Abdelmadjid] Tebboune.

When the final electoral results were announced on Sept. 14, the ANIE doubled its tally of the number of ballots cast, putting the turnout rate at over 46 percent, and declared Tebboune the official winner with 84.3 percent of the vote.

Few Algerians will believe the regime’s figures in any case. They have long lost faith in voting as a way to choose their leaders or any aspect of how they are governed. Another low-turnout, so-called election simply further underlines Algerians’ disillusionment with army rule behind an imposed democratic façade.

But the blatant contradictions in the preliminary figures released by the ANIE paint a picture of an authoritarian regime that has either become too sloppy at rigging elections or unable to agree on how best to effectively hide its unpopularity.

As Serrano points out, Tebboune is old now (78) and by the 2029 election he’ll be one year older than his predecessor, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was when protests over his age and infirmity forced his resignation in 2019. It’s been five years and the regime hasn’t addressed the public discontent underpinning those protests in even a cosmetic way.

MALI

The al-Qaeda aligned Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin jihadist group carried out one of its most daring operations to date on Tuesday, attacking several targets in and around Mali’s capital city of Bamako. Their main focus appears to have been a gendarmerie training school but there were reports of gunfire throughout the city. Malian security forces appear eventually to have run off the attackers, but JNIM’s demonstration that it is capable of carrying out attacks in Bamako is likely to have longer-term repercussions. There’s been no word yet as to the number of casualties.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Fighters from the CODECO militia attacked a village in the eastern DRC’s Ituri province overnight, killing at least ten people. Local officials say there are now rumors of pending attacks on other villages in the area.

EUROPE

NATO

Inkstick’s Ian Platz argues that the introduction of a new NATO secretary-general should also mark an opportunity for The Gang to update its policies on minimizing civilian harm:

The 75th North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit convened earlier this summer among an ever rising tide of transatlantic crises that continue to push and stress the alliance in ways not experienced since the Cold War. Europe is in the third year of Russia’s full scale war on Ukraine, domestic political tensions are rising in the US, threats of hostilities are growing in the Balkans, and the NATO family of 32 countries settles further into an era of threatening action by Russia with direct support from China, North Korea, and Iran.  

As Mark Rutte takes on the role of NATO Secretary General, he inherits these challenges and more, illustrating the importance of the alliance in its mission to maintain transatlantic security. And yet, these challenges are all overshadowed by one gap that NATO must make a priority in Rutte’s tenure: modernizing and enhancing the alliance’s approach to and capacity for reducing civilian harm during its military operations.

At first read, what I suggest may seem redundant as NATO has an established policy on reducing civilian harm in combat, and it is a strategic and moral need of the alliance’s goal of a safe and secure Europe. But NATO’s policy has not received the scrutiny and clear-eyed discussions necessary, nor has the policy been updated to reflect the harsh realities of large-scale combat operations seen in Ukraine. 

RUSSIA

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced on Monday that it’s shutting down its operations in Russia after the Russian government removed it from a list of officially approved foreign charities. MSF has been active in Russia since 1992 and had been supporting efforts to aid those displaced by the Ukrainian military’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk oblast.

UKRAINE

The Russian military on Tuesday apparently captured the town of Ukrainsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. Ukrainsk is around 30 kilometers south of Pokrovsk, which is the main focus of Russia’s attention right now, and its capture extends Russian control to the west of Donetsk city.

AMERICAS

BOLIVIA

Former Bolivian President Evo Morales’s march on La Paz began on Tuesday and has already seen its share of violence, as marchers clashed with counter-protesters not long after they got underway. The counter-protesters, at least some of whom appeared to be supporting current President Luis Arce, were unable to disrupt the march. At least 13 people were injured, as police apparently observed but did not intervene.

COLOMBIA

The Colombian military says that National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels were behind an attack on an outpost in Colombia’s Arauca department that left two soldiers dead and 21 wounded. ELN’s ceasefire with the Colombian government lapsed last month without renewal, though the two sides have not given up on the idea of peace talks.

UNITED STATES

Finally, in case you missed it earlier today please check out the introduction to new FX contributor Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’ forthcoming series on the anti-war political tradition:

I’m grateful for the opportunity that Derek has afforded me to run a monthly feature here at Foreign Exchanges devoted to the “anti-war political tradition.” I have the strong conviction that this tradition is critically needed in this moment. Whatever hope there might have been under Joe Biden to halt the US’ forever wars—a pledge that marked his 2020 presidential campaign—has been upended by the wars in Ukraine and Palestine, in which the Democratic president has approved nearly limitless financial assistance for the Ukrainian and Israel war efforts. However justified these wars might be in the eyes of their defenders, the question arises as to what has happened to the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party.

The fact of the matter is that anti-war protests have been in decline since the end of the Vietnam war with few exceptions along the way, perhaps most notably the nationwide protests against George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Most Democratic politicians, however, backed that war, perhaps most notably Hillary Clinton—a fact that Barack Obama was able to successfully use against her in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Obama himself, though, would continue the country’s forever wars, particularly through a drone bombing campaign that involved nearly six hundred airstrikes across three countries—Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. 

As the Israeli campaign in Gaza threatens to spill over into a larger Middle East war, and fears mount over nuclear escalation in Ukraine, US forever wars—whether through direct or indirect intervention—show no signs of ending. The anti-war movement proves to be in desperate need of revival. And there are signs that it might be experiencing such a revival: the Floyd protest against police violence went global, for example, and student protests against the Israeli campaign in Gaza invoked for many the memory of 1968. Yet the anti-war political tradition is one that is hardly taught in political science and history departments. Instead, if one were to survey the classes being offered this fall in schools around the country, one would find ample offerings on rightwing nationalism, violence, fascism, nativism, etc., but few on the anti-war movement.

As I noted in my preface to that piece, Daniel’s series will be offered exclusively to paid FX subscribers. This is a break with our usual practice but this is a unique project and it felt appropriate to offer it as a reward to those who made it possible. If you’re not already subscribed, please consider doing so today.