World update: April 11-12 2020
Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Ethiopia, and more
Happy Easter to those who are celebrating! FX did consider taking a break today, but given that circumstances dictate a pretty subdued holiday anyway, and given that there is news to cover, it seemed sensible to continue working as normal.
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
April 10, 1815: Indonesia’s Mount Tambora volcano begins the largest eruption in human history with an explosion that was heard 1200 miles away and knocked roughly a full mile off of the volcano’s elevation. The subsequent year, 1816, is known as “The Year Without a Summer” because of the ensuing volcanic winter. Global temperatures dropped by as much as 0.7 degrees Celsius and agricultural yields were drastically reduced all over the world. This caused worldwide famine and may have, among other things, contributed to westward migration in the United States and the invention of the bicycle.
April 10, 1998: The governments of the UK and Ireland as well as Republican and Unionist forces in Northern Ireland sign the Good Friday Agreement, ending the Northern Ireland conflict, AKA “The Troubles.” The agreement recognizes Northern Ireland as part of the UK but also left open the possibility of Irish reunification if majorities in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were ever in favor. It also allowed the people of Northern Ireland to claim British or Irish citizenship, or both if they preferred. The deal’s survival has relied to a great extent on the soft Irish border, owing to the fact that both Ireland and the UK were in the European Union. It very much remains to be seen whether it can survive Brexit.
April 11, 1241: The Battle of Mohi
April 11, 1979: The Tanzania People's Defence Force, along with a group of Ugandan opposition fighters called the Uganda National Liberation Front, seizes Kampala and forces Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to flee into exile after over eight years in power. Amin sought sanctuary first in Libya and later in Saudi Arabia, where he lived until his death in 2003. His time in power is remembered mostly for its brutality toward ethnic minorities and political opponents, with estimates of the number of people killed on Amin’s orders ranging from around 100,000 at the lower end to upwards of 500,000 at the higher end.
April 11, 2019: Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir is ousted by his military after 29 years in power, amid widespread public protest against his government. Obviously it’s far too soon to talk about What It All Means for Sudan, but so far a joint civilian-military transitional government has held together, with a plan to hold elections in 2022, and has taken steps to end the country’s multiple insurgencies and to get it removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. Bashir has already been convicted on corruption charges in Sudan and may be extradited to the International Criminal Court, where he’s under indictment over his conduct of the Darfur War.
April 12, 1204: The army of the Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople, temporarily eliminating the Byzantine Empire.
April 12, 1861: Batteries from the new “Provisional Forces of the Confederate States” open fire on Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, kicking off the American Civil War. The garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, agreed to surrender and evacuate the fort the following day. Two US soldiers were killed the day after that when some ammunition in the fort exploded during a ceremonial salute to the US flag, but they were the only two fatalities connected with the battle. The fort remained in Confederate hands until they evacuated it in 1865 during William T. Sherman’s war-ending Carolinas Campaign.
COVID-19
Worldometer’s pandemic figures for April 12:
1,852,359 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide (+72,616 since yesterday)
1,314,854 active cases
114,194 reported fatalities (+5415 since yesterday)
In pandemic-related news:
World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cautioned on Friday against any premature decisions to lift lockdown and other containment measures, warning that they could lead to a “deadly resurgence” in the pandemic. Additionally, the WHO says it’s working to provide more protective gear for medical personnel amid reports that in some countries upwards of 10 percent of health care workers are contracting the virus.
The WHO is also “working hard to get more information” about claims that COVID-19 patients are testing positive again for the virus after being discharged from hospitals. There are a growing number of anecdotal reports like this, and while the likelihood is that these patients were never actually clear of the virus—that the test that found they were was either administered incorrectly or produced a false negative—if it turns out that people exposed to the virus are somehow being reinfected or that the virus is able to hide in the body somehow and thwart testing, that’s going to have a huge impact on decisions about relaxing or removing containment measures.
At his Nonzero Newsletter, Robert Wright argues that while it would be a bad idea to cut the WHO’s funding, as Donald Trump apparently wants to do, there are good reasons to investigate its handling of the initial stages of the COVID-19 case. In particular, Wright contends that the WHO was too willing to regurgitate early Chinese obfuscations about the likelihood of person-to-person transmission. This was probably done to keep the Chinese government from getting mad and cutting off contact with the WHO, and not because the WHO is somehow enthralled to Beijing. But it’s still not good.
The Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for systematic debt relief for developing nations, whose current debt burdens are limiting their ability to respond to the pandemic:
Before a series of key meetings this week, the Jubilee Debt Campaign said it was vital to relieve the mounting financial pressure on poor countries by cancelling their debt payments this year.
The JDC said that among the 121 low and middle-income countries for which 2019 data was available an average of 10.7% of government revenue was spent on public health systems, compared with 12.2% on external debt payments.
Of the 121 countries, 64 were spending more on debt servicing than on public health. The JDC said there was already pressure on the budgets of poor countries even before the economic shock of Covid-19, which had led to falls in commodity prices, huge capital flight, an increase in future borrowing costs, and loss of income in other ways such as remittances.
Many African, Latin American and some Middle Eastern countries commonly pay more than 10% interest on their borrowings while richer nations can pay 1% or less.
If there is any debt relief it will likely come in the form of payment suspensions, rather than forgiveness, because that’s how the West rolls. Just because we’ve exploited the rest of the world and maintain a global economic system that keeps these nations struggling to get out of poverty is no reason for them to try to skirt their debt obligations. Moral hazard, people!
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
25 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (unchanged since yesterday)
2 reported fatalities (unchanged since yesterday)
There may be a silver lining in COVID-19 for the Turkish government, in that it’s apparently causing Syrians who have been displaced into camps close to the Turkish border in recent months to return to their homes in southern Idlib province. They’re making the decision to quit overcrowded camps that could be hit hard by the virus even if it means going back to homes that are directly in the line of fire if/when the Syrian military and its Russian allies resume their northwestern air campaign and ground offensive. The effect from Ankara’s perspective is to reduce the possibility of a wave of refugees hitting the border in the near term.
TURKEY
56,956 confirmed cases (+4789)
1198 reported fatalities (+97)
With an apology to the nation, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced his resignation on Sunday after a badly botched curfew implementation, but in a somewhat surprising move, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has rejected it. On Friday, Soylu’s ministry announced it was imposing a 48 hour full lockdown in Turkey’s 30 largest cities, in an effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem is, it made that announcement a scant two hours before the curfew was to go into place, which sent residents in those places scrambling to race to stores and stock up on supplies. The crowds the announcement generated probably did more to undermine containment than the curfew has done to bolster it. Soylu resigned in the face of heavy criticism, and it’s unclear why (or for how long) Erdoğan has decided to keep him around.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
11,145 confirmed cases (+402) in Israel, 290 confirmed cases (+22) in Palestine
103 reported fatalities (+2) in Israel, 2 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Palestine
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin may have doomed the country to a fourth straight snap election on Sunday when he rejected Benny Gantz’s request for more time to negotiate a coalition arrangement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Rivlin tapped Gantz to form Israel’s next government after last month’s election, Israel’s third in less than a year. His deadline to complete the process is Monday.
After exploring the possibility of forming an anti-Netanyahu coalition and apparently deciding that it would be impossible, Gantz has been negotiating with Netanyahu over the formation of a “national unity government,” depicting it as an act of sacrifice in the midst of a national public health emergency. But after the two seemed close to an agreement just a couple of weeks ago, their negotiations appeared to break down over the past week, with both Netanyahu’s Likud Party and Gantz’s Blue and White Party (or what’s left of it in the wake of its dissolution) accusing one another of undermining the talks at the last minute. Nobody seems to know for sure why the talks have broken down, but there’s some speculation that Netanyahu himself wrecked them because recent polling has suggested his usual far-right coalition would do better in a fourth election and he might be able to form a government without Gantz. It’s unclear what Rivlin will do if Gantz misses the deadline. He could give Netanyahu a crack at forming a government but the numbers aren’t in his favor. That leaves a new election as the likeliest outcome barring a last minute turn of events.
SAUDI ARABIA
4462 confirmed cases (+429)
59 reported fatalities (+7)
OPEC+, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, has reportedly finalized an agreement to cut global oil production by nearly 10 million barrels per day in an effort to stabilize flagging prices. The bloc had a deal in place late last week, but hit a rough patch on Friday due to resistance from the Mexican government and disagreements over negotiating further cuts from the major G20 oil producers who aren’t in OPEC+ (chiefly but not only the United States). The agreement has OPEC+ cutting production by 9.7 million bpd initially with the US, Brazil, and Canada contributing another 3.7 million and other major oil producers contributing more, for a potential total cut of up to $20 million bpd. That would easily be the largest cut in global oil production ever. Those initial cuts will start tapering after two months, but some cuts will remain in place for two years, until April 2022. But there’s a big catch to the US cut that could affect the whole deal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the main architects of the deal (Russian government via Wikimedia Commons)
The Trump administration has promised to make extra cuts in US production on Mexico’s behalf, but it’s also told OPEC+ that any US production cuts will be dictated by the market. These positions are contradictory. US production is down because at current prices shale oil extraction is generally not profitable. But if these cuts boost global oil prices, shale extraction will become profitable again and US frackers will respond to that by ramping up production. That will render both the US cuts under the agreement and these extra cuts it’s supposedly making to help Mexico null, at which point it’s unclear whether the Saudis and Russians will be willing to maintain their own cuts. This is unlikely to be a problem initially, however, as this deal probably won’t do much more than help stabilize prices where they are. Global demand for oil is down because of the pandemic and its associated lockdowns, and even a cut of this size isn’t going to overcome that.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
607 confirmed cases (+52)
18 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Taliban have reportedly released 20 prisoners, their first contribution to an extended prisoner exchange agreement with the Afghan government that’s supposed to pave the way toward peace talks. Negotiations over the terms of the prisoner exchange broke down on Tuesday when the Taliban withdrew its representatives from Kabul and complained that the Afghan government was delaying the process. But Kabul released 100 prisoners the following day and has released 200 more since then in an effort to salvage things. That effort is apparently paying off. US and Taliban representatives, meanwhile, met in Doha on Friday to air some grievances related to the implementation of the other parts of their February peace accord. Specifically, the US wants the Taliban to reduce its attacks on Afghan security forces while the Taliban is demanding that the US stop attacking its forces and stop carrying out attacks that threaten civilians. The US has maintained the right to attack the Taliban in defense of Afghan forces but is not supposed to undertake any offensive actions against the insurgent group, according to the peace deal.
KASHMIR
9205 confirmed cases (+759) in India, 5230 confirmed cases (+219) in Pakistan
331 reported fatalities (+43) in India, 91 reported fatalities (+5) in Pakistan
At least three Indian civilians were killed and seven civilians in total wounded in cross-border artillery exchanges in Kashmir this weekend. As usual, Indian and Pakistani forces each accused the other of firing first.
INDONESIA
4241 confirmed cases (+399)
373 reported fatalities (+46)
Three Papuan separatists suspected of involvement in an attack on the Grasburg mine in late March were killed by Indonesian security forces in two separate raids on Thursday and Friday. That March attack killed on New Zealand national and left two Indonesian nationals critically wounded. Two rebel fighters killed in Thursday’s raid have apparently been identified as among the attackers in that March incident and the third is also believed to have been involved. All were members of the West Papua Liberation Army.
CHINA
82,160 confirmed cases (+108) on the mainland, 1005 confirmed cases (+4) in Hong Kong
3341 reported fatalities (+2) on the mainland, 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
The northern Chinese city of Suifenhe is continuing to ratchet up COVID-19 containment measures, as an increasing number of COVID-19 cases seem to be entering China from Russia. The city has already imposed some lockdown measures but plans also to beef up its border controls.
A warning from the Chinese government about the risk that the coronavirus might be reintroduced into the country from abroad, exacerbated by a report that five Nigerian nationals had tested positive for the virus, has reportedly caused a xenophobic backlash against African migrants in the city of Guangzhou:
The African community in Guangzhou is on edge after widespread accounts were shared on social media of people being left homeless this week, as China's warnings against imported coronavirus cases stoke anti-foreigner sentiment.
In the southern Chinese city, Africans have been evicted from their homes by landlords and turned away from hotels, despite many claiming to have no recent travel history or known contact with Covid-19 patients.
CNN interviewed more than two dozen Africans living in Guangzhou many of whom told of the same experiences: being left without a home, being subject to random testing for Covid-19, and being quarantined for 14 days in their homes, despite having no symptoms or contact with known patients.
A group of African ambassadors to China has gone so far as to write a letter to the Chinese Foreign Ministry demanding more information about the treatment of Africans in Guangzhou. Authorities in the city say they’re not discriminating in their enforcement of containment procedures, and Chinese officials have said that the vast majority of the COVID-19 cases entering the country involve returning Chinese nationals, not foreigners.
NORTH KOREA
No confirmed cases
Kim Yo-jong appears to be back in her brother Kim Jong-un’s good graces, as North Korean media reported over the weekend that she’s been named “an alternate member of the political bureau of the central committee.” Kim Yo-jong held a position in that bureau previously, but was removed after the break down of US-North Korean diplomatic efforts last year. She’s been gradually recovering her stature over the past few months, though whether that signals that Kim Jong-un is pivoting back toward diplomacy or just that he likes his sister again is unclear.
AFRICA
SUDAN
19 confirmed cases (unchanged)
2 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Sudanese government is imposing a ban on inter-city travel among other measures to contain COVID-19. It hasn’t had that many cases yet, but as in many developing nations the infrastructure to handle a large outbreak just doesn’t exist, so the government is taking extra precautions to try to prevent one. Of course the infrastructure to weather a lockdown doesn’t exist in these places either, which raises questions about whether containment could be more harmful than the virus in impoverished countries.
ETHIOPIA
71 confirmed cases (+2)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
According to the Financial Times, the Saudi government has repatriated almost 3000 Ethiopian migrant workers back to Ethiopia (3651 confirmed cases, +364; 47 reported fatalities, +3) so far this month without screening them for COVID-19. Saudi officials are characterizing these as voluntary repatriations coordinated with workers’ home countries, but there are major questions as to whether that’s really the case. On the Ethiopian side, there are deep concerns that at least some of those being repatriated already have the virus, risking a wider outbreak in Ethiopia. To ameliorate those concerns Ethiopian authorities are quarantining the returnees, but the pace of the repatriations is already taxing Ethiopia’s capacity to accept them, and hastily set up quarantine centers are now themselves at high risk for COVID-19.
EUROPE
BELARUS
2578 confirmed cases (+352)
26 reported fatalities (+3)
The leader of a WHO delegation that visited Belarus earlier in the week, Patrick O’Connor, warned on Saturday that its COVID-19 outbreak was “entering a new phase” in terms of “community transmission.” He called on Belarusian officials to implement more stringent lockdown measures to fend off a much larger outbreak. So far, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has resisted severe containment measures and has suggested taking a sauna and drinking some vodka as potential treatments for the virus.
FRANCE
132,591 confirmed cases (+2937)
14,393 reported fatalities (+561)
The number of COVID-19 patients in France who are in intensive care seems to have leveled off, which could suggest that its outbreak is similarly slowing down. Over 14,000 people have died of the virus in France thus far. The daily number of new fatalities is a lagging indicator of the pandemic’s severity, but the number of cases in serious condition potentially offers more information about where things stand. It’s probably too early to draw any definitive conclusions, however.
UNITED KINGDOM
84,279 confirmed cases (+5288)
10,612 reported fatalities (+737)
Speaking of people who are out of intensive care, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson actually left the whole hospital on Sunday, one week after he went in as his COVID-19 symptoms were worsening. In a video statement Johnson, who campaigned for Brexit on a platform of xenophobia and who leads a party committed to gutting the UK’s social welfare system, praised the National Health Service for saving his life, in particular two nurses who both happen to be immigrants. One wonders if he’ll remember that if/when his buddy Donald Trump is urging him to sell pieces of the NHS off to private US firms as part of a post-Brexit US-UK trade deal. Hell, one wonders if he’ll remember it long enough to address the severe shortages of protective gear in the NHS right now. The UK government continues to insist that Johnson was never put on a ventilator, though by all outward appearances it’s systematically lied about his condition for over a week now, constantly downplaying its severity.
AMERICAS
The World Bank is predicting that the overall economy in Latin America and the Caribbean will shrink by 4.6 percent this year, and that doesn’t include the heavily sanctioned Venezuelan economy. Tourism is obviously dormant, and the weak global economy means that migrant workers in other parts of the world aren’t sending remittances back home at the same rate as before the pandemic. The substantial debt load that many countries in the region are already carrying (see above) is undoubtedly going to hamper their ability to respond to the economic situation.
PARAGUAY
134 confirmed cases (+1)
6 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Paraguay’s strict COVID-19 containment efforts appear to have been successful in limiting the spread of the virus, but they’ve also shut the country down to such an extent that people are struggling to obtain basic necessities, especially food and medicine. President Mario Abdo Benítez’s government has promised to ramp up welfare programs to deliver food and cash to desperate Paraguayan homes, but so far its efforts haven’t matched its promises.
UNITED STATES
560,402 confirmed cases (+27,523)
22,105 reported fatalities (+1528)
Donald Trump on Friday threatened to levy sanctions against countries that refuse to accept deportees from the US. It’s entirely unclear what he’s talking about, and his memo to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordering him to develop a sanctions plan didn’t mention any specific countries or incidents.
Finally, TomDispatch’s Rajan Menon has some thoughts about what the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout will reveal about the United States:
Doctors use stress tests to assess the physical fitness of patients. Governments use them to see whether banks have enough cash in reserve to honor their obligations to depositors and creditors in economic crises. The International Monetary Fund conducts stress tests on national financial systems. Now, like several other countries, notably Italy and Spain, the United States faces a different, far tougher stress test imposed by Covid-19. The early results are alarming.
Since the first infection in the U.S. came to light in the state of Washington on January 20th, the disease has spread across the country at a furious pace. Hospitals, especially in New York City, have been deluged and are already at the breaking point. And things will get worse — and not just in New York. Yet the most basic necessities — protective masks, gowns, rubber gloves, and ventilators — are so scarce that they are being reused, further increasing the risk to healthcare workers, some of whom have already contracted Covid-19 from patients. The experiences of China, Italy, and other countries suggest that the disease will take the lives of many of these brave people; indeed, some here have already paid the ultimate price.
And this pandemic will subject our political system, economy, and society to a set of stress tests into the distant future.