World roundup: September 24 2020

Stories from Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and more

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Hello friends. For a variety of reasons but mostly because I’m feeling the onset of some burn out, FX will be taking a little break after tonight’s roundup and will return, barring any unforeseen developments, on Tuesday. Thanks for your support!

THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

September 23, 1803: A small British army defeats a Maratha army as much as six or seven times its size at the Battle of Assaye. The British victory helped establish military supremacy in the Deccan, the Maratha Empire’s home turf, and led to Britain’s victory in the Second Anglo-Maratha War. It also launched the military career of the British commander, Major General Arthur Wellesley, who would later be invested the first Duke of Wellington and become a major thorn in Napoleon’s side.

September 23, 1932: Abdulaziz “Ibn Saud” unites his two kingdoms, the Nejd and the Hejaz, into one, the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Commemorated annually as Saudi National Day.

September 24, 1877: The Imperial Japanese Army defeats a heavily outnumbered and even more heavily outgunned samurai force under the command of rebel leader Saigō Takamori, whose entire 500 man army was wiped out. The battle ended the Satsuma Rebellion and the role of the samurai as Japan’s warrior class. You may have seen a fictionalized version of this battle in the film The Last Samurai, though there’s no historical analogue for Tom Cruise’s character.

INTERNATIONAL

Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for September 24:

• 32,401,723 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (7,495,455 active, +314,855 since yesterday)

• 987,156 reported fatalities (+5872 since yesterday)

In a new story based on its big FinCEN leak, BuzzFeed looks at the role shell companies play in funneling illicit money around the world:

With a website claiming more than 200 employees and an office in a business complex in the middle of Singapore, Ask Trading — “a trading and investment company focusing on the Russia/CIS market” — might appear to be a thriving midsize business.

But actually it’s a mirage. Under even the slightest scrutiny, it starts to disappear.

That office, BuzzFeed News discovered during a visit, is just a few sparsely populated cubicles. The company’s current website is only one page, and photographs on it were lifted from published materials about other firms. And public records show Ask was not doing what it claimed to do.

Yet between 2001 and 2016, it managed to move at least $671 million in transactions through Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of New York Mellon, from sources no one at those banks ascertained, for purposes it never revealed.

Shell companies like Ask Trading keep a low profile, but they play an outsize role in the dark economy, the trillions of dollars of dirty money that course through Western banks in full view of government regulators.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

• 3966 confirmed coronavirus cases (+42)

• 183 reported fatalities (+2)

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the one-time al-Qaeda branch that controls much of Idlib province, now says it’s abandoning suicide vehicle bombings as a tactic. In part this is another attempt by HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani to portray HTS as a well-meaning insurgency rather than a group with deep roots in the global jihadist movement. But it also reflects HTS’s efforts (perhaps with some outside help, though I wouldn’t want to speculate about such things) to arm itself with weapons that are more effective than suicide attacks at achieving the same types of goals, like artillery, drones, and night-vision gear.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

• 212,115 confirmed cases (+7425) in Israel, 37,591 confirmed cases (+508) in Palestine

• 1378 reported fatalities (+53) in Israel, 274 reported fatalities (+2) in Palestine

Hamas and the PLO’s Fatah faction have reportedly reached an agreement to hold a new Palestinian election in the next six months. That vote is slightly overdue in that the Palestinians held their last parliamentary election back in 2006. Hamas won and, well, that was that. The Palestinian Authority is even more overdue for a presidential election, seeing as how Mahmoud Abbas is in the sixteenth year of the four year term to which he was elected back in January 2005. But it appears they’re going to stick with a parliamentary election only for now. Well, maybe. Hamas and Fatah have gone down this road a few times over the past decade and yet they never seem to actually hold it together long enough to have a vote.

The Washington Post’s John Hudson reported yesterday on one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s funny little quirks, and…well, you can read it for yourselves:

Most politicians go to great lengths to conceal their dirty laundry.

And then there’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Over the years, the Israeli leader has developed a reputation among the staff at the U.S. president’s guesthouse for bringing special cargo on his trips to Washington: bags and suitcases full of dirty laundry, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The clothes are cleaned for the prime minister free of charge by the U.S. staff, a perk that is available to all foreign leaders but sparingly taken advantage of given the short stays of busy heads of state.

“The Netanyahus are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry for us to clean,” said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details of a foreign leader’s visits. “After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional.”

I think part of the reason Netanyahu and Donald Trump get along so well is that at their core they’re both petty grifters who have somehow managed to rise to positions of great power and influence.

Trump, left, possibly asking Netanyahu how much starch he prefers in his collars (White House photo via Flickr)

Netanyahu is of course now on trial in Israel over relatively small ball corruption, the kind of charges Trump might face at some point if the United States had a functioning justice system. The Netanyahus are notorious for trying to squeeze every last perk out of their station, and are even infamous back home on this very same issue, laundry.

IRAN

• 436,319 confirmed cases (+3521)

• 25,015 reported fatalities (+175)

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has built a new naval base for the purpose of giving it “total dominance,” as IRGC commander Hossein Salami put it, over the Hormuz Strait. Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, and consequently about a quarter of the world’s oil traffic flows through it. It is a likely flashpoint for a potential US-Iran conflict, though the longer it remains so the more Gulf states like Saudi Arabia will invest in pipeline infrastructure to the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, which allows them to bypass the strait altogether.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, imposed new sanctions against multiple Iranian individuals and entities on Thursday, this time over allegations of human rights violations. These kinds of targeted sanctions are small potatoes, especially since the administration has already sanctioned just about everyone and everything in Iran that can be sanctioned. But now that the US has declared unilaterally that United Nations sanctions against Iran are back in effect, it’s opened up a new potential pathway to escalate tensions with Tehran, as Paul Pillar notes:

Of course, the Trump administration will do whatever it wants regarding U.S. sanctions. It already had sanctioned just about everything Iranian-related it can think of. It also has aggressively used secondary sanctions to discourage other countries from doing business with Iran. Thus there is not much more the administration can do unilaterally, apart from intensifying the aggressiveness of the secondary sanctions.

The charade becomes more of a worry if the administration were to start taking physical actions such as intercepting Iran-bound shipments at sea. Under the current circumstances, such a move would be state-sponsored piracy, as well as risking escalation to wider military conflict.

The administration’s rhetoric about “enforcing” U.N. sanctions is as fanciful as its other rhetoric on this matter. No one has given it the authority to enforce what it says it is enforcing, and the United States itself is currently the biggest violator of the relevant Security Council resolutions.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

• 39,170 confirmed cases (+25)

• 1451 reported fatalities (+5)

Afghan officials say their security forces have killed at least 65 Taliban fighters in heavy fighting in Paktika province. The clash began when the Taliban attacked a military facility late Wednesday. At least three Afghan police officers were also killed in the engagement.

Journalist Stefanie Glinski reports on the economic struggles that continue to fuel Taliban recruitment and have given the insurgents a rural political base:

For many rural (and less well-educated) Afghans, Taliban indoctrination finds a receptive audience, greased by the fact that the Taliban use family, friends, and community connections to recruit new members. Decades-old promises of a better life under the national government have failed to materialize: Omari’s family is part of the 90 percent of Afghanistan that lives below the national poverty line of $2 per day, according to the Afghan Ministry of Economy. Three-quarters of Afghans live in rural areas, where even basic services are in short supply; the Ministry of Education this month revealed that 7,000 schools across the country don’t actually have buildings—including in Omari’s native Achin district.

While many Afghans fear that a Taliban return to power will bring the excesses of the 1990s—a harsh, austere interpretation of Islam that imposed strict rules, summary justice, and the disappearance of women from public life—for many poor, desperate, rural Afghans who’ve seen little good come out of Kabul, the attitude is often: Why not give the Taliban a try?

THAILAND

• 3516 confirmed cases (+2)

• 59 reported fatalities (+0)

Thousands protested outside the Thai parliament on Thursday, as lawmakers inside debated proposed changes to the constitution. Demonstrators are frustrated that the country’s 2014-2019 military government has never really given way to civilian rule, with 2014 junta leader Prayut Chan-o-cha having slid seamlessly into the role of “civilian” prime minister. They’re also demanding constitutional changes that would limit the power of the Thai monarchy and eliminate provisions that criminalize any criticism of the institution.

MALAYSIA

• 10,576 confirmed cases (+71)

• 133 reported fatalities (+0)

The future of the Malaysian government may depend on the outcome of the Sabah state election on the island of Borneo on Saturday. With opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim claiming, without offering any proof, that he’s amassed a parliamentary majority to replace Muhyiddin Yassin as prime minister, Muhyiddin will be hoping his coalition wins that election. If it does, he’s more likely to hang on as PM, at least long enough to convince King Abdullah of Pahang to dissolve parliament and hold a snap election. If it does not, then the chances of his coalition dissolving and Anwar supplanting him increase. Anwar is supposed to have his own royal audience to make his case to Abdullah, but the king canceled their scheduled meeting this week due ostensibly to illness, and he has yet to reschedule.

CHINA

• 85,314 confirmed cases (+7) on the mainland, 5057 confirmed cases (+7) in Hong Kong

• 4634 reported fatalities (+0) on the mainland, 104 reported fatalities (+1) in Hong Kong

Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong was reportedly arrested Thursday and charged with “taking part in an unauthorized assembly” for participating in a protest last October, as well as for violating a security law about wearing masks at such gatherings. Wong was already out on bail for separate charges, and it appears he quickly made bail in this case as well and was then released. His arrest has already sparked criticism from international NGOs and from the UK government.

AFRICA

SUDAN

• 13,592 confirmed cases (+14)

• 836 reported fatalities (+0)

The International Monetary Fund has approved an economic restructuring program drawn up by Sudan’s interim government. That should open the door to dept relief and potentially other international aid. The IMF will monitor the program’s progress through at least next June.

One major roadblock to the recovery of Sudan’s economy is the fact that it is still on the US State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors. And despite multiple denials from Khartoum, speculation persists that the interim government is going to trade diplomatic recognition of Israel for removal from that list. The head of Sudan’s sovereign council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has acknowledged discussing normalization with US officials in Abu Dhabi earlier this week, though it’s unclear where they left things, and now he’s apparently scheduled to meet with Netanyahu in Uganda “in the coming days.” Burhan seems amenable to a deal. But the civilian portion of Sudan’s hybrid interim government, led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, is resistant in large part over fears of a domestic backlash.

BURKINA FASO

• 1950 confirmed cases (+21)

• 56 reported fatalities (+0)

With polling indicating that people are not terribly satisfied with President Roch Kaboré, Alex Thurston looks at some of his leading challengers heading into November’s election. Many have ties to former Burkinabé President Blaise Compaoré, who was ousted in a popular uprising that culminated with a military coup in 2014. It remains to be seen how successful officials will be in terms of conducting the vote, given that large parts of the country are difficult to access due to persistent jihadist violence and that said violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

• 10,555 confirmed cases (+18)

• 271 reported fatalities (+0)

Fighters with the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces militia killed at least five people when they attacked a village in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province overnight. Local reports have the death toll at 11 or more, but the official count is five for now.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

• 1,128,836 confirmed cases (+6595)

• 19,948 reported fatalities (+149)

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has already been discharged from the German hospital where he was being treated for (alleged) Novichok poisoning, a fairly remarkable recovery about a month after he was (allegedly, I guess) poisoned. Doctors are cautioning that it will be at least another month before he’s back to full strength, but Navalny seems to be preparing for a return to Russia. When he does return he’ll need to find a new place to live, as the Russian government has apparently seized his Moscow apartment and other financial assets. A Russian court last year ordered Navalny to pay some $1.1 million in damages to oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin after he accused Prigozhin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, of “supplying contaminated food to Moscow kindergartens and sparking an outbreak of dysentery among dozens of children.”

BELARUS

• 76,651 confirmed cases (+294)

• 802 reported fatalities (+6)

Shockingly, news that both the United States and the European Union do not recognize him as the legitimate president of Belarus has not caused Alexander Lukashenko to slink away in disgrace. He apparently plans to just keep on being president, though I’m sure he’s really hurting on the inside.

AMERICAS

VENEZUELA

• 70,406 confirmed cases (+967)

• 581 reported fatalities (+7)

Venezuela’s crumbling oil infrastructure, underfunded in part due to years of harsh US sanctions that have crippled the Venezuelan economy, is apparently now leaking crude into the Caribbean. That’s just one of multiple environmental catastrophes being unleashed as Venezuela continues to deteriorate. State oil company PDVSA bears responsibility for many of them, and things are getting worse as officials attempt to bring some long dormant facilities back on line with little or no maintenance. The company is also struggling to store its unrefined crude, which it used to ship to the US for processing into refined fuel but now, well, not so much.

UNITED STATES

• 7,185,471 confirmed cases (+45,355)

• 207,538 reported fatalities (+942)

The Trump administration has decided to freeze funding for the Open Technology Fund, which claims to help civil society groups in Belarus, Hong Kong, and Iran develop technologies to evade government surveillance and censorship. Given the administration’s oft-stated interest in promoting democracy in Iran and its oft-stated concerns for activists in Hong Kong—not to mention its new interest in arbitrating Belarusian elections—this seems an odd decision, and it’s one about which the administration hasn’t had any comment. It may be part of the administration’s general hostility to journalism and media, which has even affected government funded outlets like Voice of America and Radio Liberty. Or maybe, just maybe, the administration’s rhetoric about freedom and democracy is all empty.

Finally, a new report from the Center for International Policy shows the extent of US and European arms sales in the Middle East:

As the world’s leading arms exporter, the U.S. holds a dominating presence in the global arms market, at 36% of total arms deliveries worldwide. This leading U.S. role is even more pronounced when it comes to the MENA region. The U.S. was far and away the largest arms supplier to the Middle East and North Africa for the period covered by this report, accounting for 48% of all deliveries of major weapons systems, nearly three times the share accounted for by the next largest supplier. The next four top suppliers were Russia (17%), France (11%), the United Kingdom (U.K.) (5%), and Germany (5%). Taken together, the top five suppliers accounted for 85% of all arms deliveries to the region from 2015 to 2019. China, which has been discussed as a possible replacement supplier if the U.S. or other suppliers cut back their transfers to the region, accounted for less than 3% of the deliveries to the Middle East and North Africa for the period 2015 to 2019. The one area in which Chinese arms exports have had an impact in the region is in the sale of armed drones…

The U.S. dominated arms transfers to the Gulf States. It was the top supplier to Saudi Arabia (74%); Kuwait (70%); the UAE (68%); Qatar (50%); and Bahrain (33%). The U.S. was also the top supplier to Morocco (91%); Israel (78%); Jordan (73%); and Lebanon (73%). In all, the U.S. was the top supplier to over two-thirds of the nations in the region – 13 of the 19. If the Trump administration goes ahead with a controversial plan to sell armed drones and F-35 combat aircraft to the UAE the U.S. share of arms exports to that nation could be even higher in the years to come.

I’m sure if you were in the business of justifying US arms sales you could devise an argument by which pouring weapons into one of the most unstable regions on the planet is not akin to dumping gasoline on a fire. But it would be bullshit.