World roundup: September 21-22 2024
World roundup: September 21-22 2024
Stories from Lebanon, Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere
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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
September 21, 1857: The Siege of Delhi ends with a British victory, snuffing out the last remnants of the Mughal Empire and doing much to undercut the 1857-1859 Indian Rebellion.
September 21, 1860: A combined British and French army defeats a Qing Dynasty army at the Battle of Palikao, named for a bridge in the eastern part of Beijing. The defeat caused the Xianfeng Emperor to flee his capital, leaving the city in European hands and hastening the end of the Second Opium War.
September 22, 1965: The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, fought over Kashmir, ends with a UN-brokered ceasefire. Although the outcome was indecisive, India was able to prevent a Pakistan-backed insurgency in Kashmir and demonstrate military superiority over its rival while sending the Pakistani economy into a rough patch. The war also caused India and Pakistan to look for new allies, as the US and UK imposed an arms embargo on both countries and criticized both the Indian and Pakistani governments for their conduct. Pakistan’s current relationship with China and India’s Cold War relationship with the Soviet Union developed as a result.
September 22, 1980: The Iran-Iraq War begins
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Several Israeli media outlets are reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be preparing to order an Israeli military (IDF) “siege” of northern Gaza, which it would undertake after first ordering any civilians remaining in that area to leave. I guess you might say he’s considering a plan to cleanse northern Gaza of its ethnically Palestinian population. I think there’s a term for that, probably something like “Super Nice Thing to Do.”
This would likely be similar to other forced IDF evacuations in Gaza since October 7, by which I mean the Israelis wouldn’t actually do anything to enable or facilitate the evacuation but would simply set a deadline beyond which anyone remaining in the combat zone will arbitrarily be considered an enemy combatant. Those civilians who would be able to evacuate would presumably have to cram into the geographically shrinking Mawasi “protected” zone, which is already packed with over 1 million people and lacks any sort of humanitarian infrastructure. Apparently Netanyahu is considering other options, though clearly “agree to a ceasefire and go from there” is not one of them.
Elsewhere:
An investigative report by Israeli media outlet Channel 12 a few days ago illustrated the extent to which Netanyahu has been an obstacle to a ceasefire. As Haaretz described it, the report showed that “Netanyahu did everything in his power to make sure” talks were “not successful.” The Israeli PM has “walked back several promises,” introduced “nonstarters” into the talks, and undermined his negotiators at seemingly every turn. You’ll get none of this in US media, apart from maybe a brief reference to Netanyahu’s intransigence buried eight paragraphs into a story about how the Biden administration says Israel is on board with a ceasefire and Hamas is the lone holdout.
This is taking on a real “day ending in -y” quality but the IDF bombed another Gazan school on Saturday, this one in Gaza city. The airstrike killed at least 22 people, most of them children according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. As with most of the territory’s schools (the ones that are still standing, that is), the facility had been converted into a makeshift shelter. The IDF called the bombing “a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control center” that was allegedly “embedded” in the school.
The Middle East’s Only Democracy™ sent a unit of IDF soldiers to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday, ordering the network to cease operations for at least the next 45 days on the charge of “incitement to and support of terrorism.” The Israeli government has already shut down Al Jazeera’s operations inside Israel proper, putting itself in the company of such paragons of democracy and press freedom as Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
Gideon Saar has reportedly decided not to make himself a candidate for defense minister after all, citing the need to minimize political disruption during a time of high tension between Israel and Hezbollah (more on that in a moment). It’s unclear what this means for the current occupant of that office, Yoav Gallant, who is clearly on the outs with Netanyahu. It’s similarly unclear whether Saad is ruling out bringing his New Hope party into Netanyahu’s coalition altogether. It’s possible he would be prepared to accept a different cabinet post.
LEBANON
Cross-border fire between the IDF and Hezbollah continued to intensify through the weekend, with Netanyahu bragging about the “series of blows” Israel has inflicted upon the group in recent days and Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem talking about a “new phase” in this ongoing conflict. On Saturday Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at the IDF’s Ramat David airbase near Haifa, prompting civilian evacuations across northern Israel and marking the group’s deepest strikes inside Israel since the 2006 Lebanon War. The IDF says it struck scores of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon overnight and into Sunday morning. It killed at least three people in Lebanon on Sunday, possibly including two Hezbollah fighters.
The death toll from Friday’s IDF airstrike in a southern Beirut suburb has now risen to at least 45 and seems likely to rise further as recovery work continues. In addition to the already confirmed dead Ibrahim Aqil the strike also killed another senior Hezbollah commander, Ahmad Mahmoud Wahabi, who was also part of the group’s Radwan special operations unit. I’ve seen speculation that the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah’s communications devices earlier in the week forced Radwan to call an in-person meeting of its senior officers that the IDF then attacked, but I have yet to see any confirmation of a direct connection between the incidents.
Israeli officials are talking about maintaining the current tempo of their operations against Hezbollah until they feel comfortable allowing evacuated residents of northern Israel to return home. In the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza that sure sounds like a statement of open-ended war. What is the Biden administration, which supposedly doesn’t want to see a war between Israel and Hezbollah, doing? Nothing, apparently. “US officials” told honorary White House spokesperson Barak Ravid over the weekend that while they are “extremely concerned” about the state of this conflict they’re hoping “to use growing Israeli military pressure on Hezbollah to get a diplomatic deal to return civilians to their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.” Hezbollah has already offered such a deal—a Gaza ceasefire—but the administration and the Israeli government want to force the Lebanese group to stand down independently of what’s happening in Gaza.
The Israelis say they’re trying to achieve “deescalation through escalation,” which is the sort of barking mad phrase that’s usually confined to discussions about how to win a nuclear war but in this case is offered as a rationale for the Biden administration to watch idly and hope for the best. These “US officials” say they agree with the Israeli approach but acknowledge that it requires making an “extremely difficult calibration” lest Israeli leaders overshoot “deescalation” into “all-out war.” The Israelis are able to take this risk because, if they do get the calibration wrong, they know the US will be there to defend them from the consequences.
IRAN
According to Reuters, the Iranian government may have supplied Russia with short-range ballistic missiles recently but it has not—at least not yet—provided the launchers for those devices. The likeliest explanation for this is that the Russian military is planning to build its own mobile launchers that are better suited for the local terrain than the units the Iranians use. However, there is at least a sliver of a chance that the Iranians are holding back on launchers to see if there’s any room for reopening diplomatic contact with the West. If that’s the explanation then they’ll presumably be assessing that during this coming week’s United Nations General Assembly session.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
A roadside bombing killed at least one police officer and wounded another three who were all guarding a diplomatic convoy in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday. The convoy included diplomats from 12 countries who were there to attend a commerce and tourism summit organized by a “local chamber of commerce.” None of them were apparently harmed.
INDIA
Authorities in India’s Manipur state are reportedly on alert over claim that some 900 militants have crossed into the province from neighboring Myanmar. Said militants are presumably coming in from Myanmar’s Chin state, as the Chin and Manipur’s Kuki peoples have an ethno-linguistic connection. The rebel Chin National Army has been waging an off-and-on insurgency against the Myanmar government since the 1980s, so these could be fairly seasoned and well-equipped fighters who are heading to India. The Kuki have been violently battling Manipur’s majority Meitei community since last May and have reportedly started employing drones of late, which may be coming from Myanmar.
SRI LANKA
Sri Lankan voters on Saturday elected Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the Marxist People’s Liberation Front party and the leftist National People’s Power coalition, as their new president. Dissanayake took a bit over 42 percent of the vote in the initial count, putting him well ahead of runner up Sajith Premadasa of the centrist SJB coalition, and finished with just under 56 percent in Sri Lanka’s ranked choice voting system (this is the first time in Sri Lankan history that the counting has gone to a second round). Incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe took just over 17 percent of the vote and was eliminated after the initial round of counting. Dissanayake should take office on Monday and will be immediately challenged to address the country’s cost of living crisis.
INDONESIA
West Papua National Liberation Army rebels released New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens on Saturday, nearly 20 months after they took him captive. Mehrtens had flown five passengers to Indonesia’s Highland Papua province back in February 2023 when they were all detained by the rebels. They subsequently released the passengers as they were all Indonesian nationals. They’d been demanding concessions for Mehrtens’ release—it’s unclear whether they received any.
CHINA
Leaders of the Quad member states (Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, and US President Joe Biden) got together in Delaware on Saturday for what will sadly be Biden’s last summit with The Gang (and Kishida’s too, come to think of it).
They discussed expanded maritime security collaboration, among other things, but the main headline seems to have been a “hot mic” comment from Biden in which he opined that China is “testing us all across the region.” This is significant because even though The Quad is obviously an anti-China alliance, for diplomatic reasons its members always try to tip-toe around that issue and insist that they’re just in it for the love of the game. To the extent that they refer to China in joint statements it’s obliquely and generally without mentioning it by name. Biden’s comments will obviously undermine that pretense a bit.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Rapid Support Forces group is continuing what the UN calls a “full-scale assault” on the Sudanese city of Al-Fashir, which it began more than a week ago. Getting steady updates on this situation seems to be a challenge but AFP reported that at least 14 people were killed in the fighting on Saturday alone and there are reports of a “massive” exodus out of the city and into nearby displacement camps. While the UN calls on the RSF to stand down, The New York Times reports that the group’s prime foreign backer, the UAE, is using the cover of humanitarian relief to funnel more weapons into the country:
Eager to cement its role as a regional kingmaker, the wealthy Persian Gulf petrostate is expanding its covert campaign to back a winner in Sudan, funneling money, weapons and, now, powerful drones to fighters rampaging across the country, according to officials, internal diplomatic memos and satellite images analyzed by The New York Times.
All the while, the Emirates is presenting itself as a champion of peace, diplomacy and international aid. It is even using one of the world’s most famous relief symbols — the Red Crescent, the counterpart of the Red Cross — as a cover for its secret operation to fly drones into Sudan and smuggle weapons to fighters, satellite images show and American officials say.
The war in Sudan, a sprawling gold-rich nation with nearly 500 miles of Red Sea coastline, has been fueled by a plethora of foreign nations, like Iran and Russia. They are supplying arms to the warring sides, hoping to tilt the scales for profit or their own strategic gain — while the people of Sudan are caught in the crossfire.
But the Emirates is playing the largest and most consequential role of all, officials say, publicly pledging to ease Sudan’s suffering even as it secretly inflames it.
CHAD
Chad’s opposition Socialists Without Borders party is claiming that government “intelligence agents” abducted its general secretary, Robert Gam, in N’Djamena on Saturday. If the name of the party sounds familiar, that may be because Chadian security forces killed its leader and would-be presidential candidate Yaya Dillo back in February in what sure seems to have been an extrajudicial execution. As far as I am aware, Gam’s whereabouts remain unknown.
UGANDA
Ugandan military commander Muhoozi Kainerugaba took to social media on Saturday to end his 2026 presidential campaign before it ever really started. Kainerugaba, son of current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, said that he will back his father instead, appearing to confirm that the now 80 year old incumbent is planning on running again in two years. Museveni has been president since 1986 and for some reason has been accused of governing more or less like a king—down to arranging his son’s eventual succession.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Ukrainian military and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) successfully attacked two more Russian arms depots over the weekend, one in Krasnodar Krai in southwestern Russia and the other in Tver oblast northwest of Moscow. The Ukrainians have had a successful run over the past few days attacking these facilities with long-range drones, but the extent of the damage they’ve done is unknown. The city of Tikhoretsk, in Krasnodar Krai, was forced to declare a “local emergency situation” on Saturday following the strike there.
Elsewhere, The Washington Post reports that Vladimir Putin is coming to the realization that his repeated threats to use nuclear weapons in response to escalations in Western military aid to Ukraine are starting to lose their effect. He’s apparently considering other ways to retaliate against the West, including covert sabotage operations in Western countries, diplomatic action like closing Western embassies in Moscow, and/or supporting non-state groups that are in conflict with Western interests—the Houthis seem to be one possibility.
FRANCE
New French Prime Minister Michel Barnier finally put together a cabinet over the weekend including a broad ideological range of ministers extending all the way from French President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right alliance to Barnier’s own center-right Republican Party. Surely this will go over well in a hung French parliament after an election in which Macron’s group lost 86 seats and the Republicans lost 22, leaving them more than 90 seats shy of a collective majority. Barnier has made little pretense about the fact that his government will be depending on the far-right National Rally party to provide the votes he needs to get any legislation passed, which should tell you all you need to know about the kind of agenda he and his ministers will be pursuing.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
Protesters supporting former/would-be Bolivian President Evo Morales clashed violently with supporters of incumbent Luis Arce in El Alto on Sunday, as the former continued their multi-day march on La Paz. This was the second major confrontation those groups have had since the march began on Tuesday. Morales accused Arce, his former economy minister, of using “paramilitary groups to incite violence” against his supporters. Arce and some of his senior officials have insinuated that the protest march represents an attempted coup by Morales, rhetoric that seems vaguely dangerous as the marchers approach the capital.
UNITED STATES
Finally, you may be interested in a recent talk on US foreign policy from Van Jackson, courtesy of the Center for International Policy:
Everybody wonders how changes in American politics might impact the prospect of World War III, America’s role in the world, the changing logic of trade, financial flows, and industrial policy. Basically, what’s the connection between American politics and the emerging world order such as it is?
In answer of that question, I want make three points, which I’ll then situate in the context of the US presidential election.
The first point is that America’s current approach to Asia is closer to a primacist grand strategy than to any alternative strategy—and that’s a big deal because the requirements of primacy and the requirements of sustaining peace in this region are incompatible.
The second point is that it’s not useful and is in fact dangerous to think of great-power competition as a struggle for hegemony or domination—that’s not what’s happening.
And three, what’s actually happening is an ethnonationalist competition within capitalism.
And these three points about how we should understand the world situation owe something to American politics.
Kamala Harris, for her part, has not proposed a different way of seeing China or relating to the world—she’s a bit of a blank slate on foreign policy but she’s also (as far as we’ve seen) a primacist and American exceptionalist. Trump and the MAGA movement are effectively far-right accelerationists on China and are still primacists on foreign policy generally, but they talk about it more nakedly and have different priorities for how to exercise primacy.