World update: April 30 2020
Stories from China, Germany, Bolivia, and more
This is the web version of Foreign Exchanges, but did you know you can get it delivered right to your inbox? Sign up today:
THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
April 29, 1916: A British army besieged at Kut, in Iraq, surrenders to the Ottomans in what was the worst military disaster in British history to that point.
April 30, 1803: US representatives Robert Livingston and James Monroe and French representative François Barbé-Marbois sign the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in Paris. The treaty ceded France’s vast Louisiana Territory in North America to the United States, roughly doubling its size, in return for $15 million. Livingston and Monroe intended to negotiate the purchase of the port city of New Orleans and were prepared to pay up to $10 million just for the one city. But Napoleon decided to sell the entire territory becausenhe needed a large chunk of land in North America less than he needed peaceable relations with the US and money for his inevitable war with Britain. Most of the Louisiana Territory wasn’t really Napoleon’s to sell, as it still belonged to indigenous tribes, but in purchasing it the US bought the “right” to acquire that native land by whatever means it chose.
April 30, 1975: The North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong capture Saigon, bringing the Vietnam War to a close. The North Vietnamese had begun their assault on the city the day before, when the remaining US personnel in Saigon began an evacuation known as “Operation Frequent Wind” that cleared out the US embassy and moved some 7000 US and Vietnamese nationals out of the country in the largest helicopter evacuation in history. The North Vietnamese government, which wasn’t really the “North” Vietnamese government anymore, renamed Saigon Hồ Chí Minh City, and this date is commemorated annually in Vietnam as Reunification Day.
INTERNATIONAL
I’m renaming this section of the newsletter because it’s going to be staying after the pandemic dissipates when there are things of interest to discuss that don’t really fit anywhere else. Yes, I’m assuming at some point the pandemic will actually go away.
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for April 30:
3,304,220 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (+86,037 since yesterday)
2,031,335 active cases
233,830 reported fatalities (+5801 since yesterday)
In today’s global news:
There’s apparently been some promising early research into a coronavirus vaccine. Oxford university researchers developed the vaccine and a lab in Montana recently tested it on six rhesus macaque monkeys. None of the monkeys that received the vaccine contracted COVID-19 after exposure. It’s still much too early to celebrate. The next step involves human trials that are meant to ensure that the vaccine is safe, followed by another round of human trials to see if it’s actually effective in humans.
European Union counter-terrorism chief Gilles de Kerchove says that the pandemic is benefiting extremist groups like the Islamic State and is causing a rise in “extremism on the far-right and far-left in Europe.” As far as I can tell this is a way to argue that part of Europe’s stimulus spending should go to security, because it’s unimaginable that a large amount of money could just be spent on helping societies recover without letting police and the military wet their beaks. But I think it’s illustrative to see what de Kerchove (and Reuters) defines as “far-right” and “far-left.” On the “far-right” there’s apparently been a rise in racist and xenophobic language online as well as chatter about using the virus to attack governments or other groups deemed “enemies.” On the “far-left,” de Kerchove identifies some conspiracy thinking about the relationship between the virus and 5G telecommunications networks—which doesn’t seem in any particular way “leftist,” and some blogs that “are using the virus to push an anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation agenda.” The last time I checked the far-right was at least as anti-globalist as the far-left, and the notion that criticizing capitalism—the failures of which have been amply put on display in this crisis—is somehow dangerously extremist on a par with actual threats of violence is ridiculous. But Both Sides, etc.
A day after we learned that the US economy contracted by an annual rate of almost five percent in the first quarter of 2020, the European Central Bank revealed that the eurozone countries collectively experienced their own 3.8 percent contraction just in the quarter itself. That tops the eurozone’s previous record contraction, experienced during the 2008 economic crash, and puts the bloc on course for a potentially 10-15 percent annual contraction in 2020.
Although the growth situation is comparatively worse in Europe, the unemployment situation is easily worse in the US. Europe’s unemployment rate has only ticked up slightly, while in the US the number of new jobless claims has skyrocketed and by the time new data is released next month some estimates suggest the US unemployment rate could be in double digits. The difference? European governments have by and large tied corporate subsidies to employee salaries, meaning companies only get the aid if they keep workers on the payroll, while the US government has focused more on just doling out fat stacks of cash. The longer the economic crisis wears on the harder it will be for European firms to avoid layoffs even under this subsidy program, but in the short run at least the economic shock in Europe has been cushioned.
Much like the Great Pacific Garbage patch, scientists have discovered that ocean currents are causing large deposits of microplastics to collect on the bottom of the ocean in areas that also happen to serve as breeding grounds for many animals at or near the bottom of the oceanic food chain. These creatures frequently ingest the microplastics, which means the pollutants are still working their way into the ecosystem even after falling to the ocean floor.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
43 confirmed coronavirus cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Syrian media is reporting that Israeli helicopters attacked targets in southern Syria from airspace over the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan on Friday morning. There were no reported casualties but some material damage. Hezbollah has a number of bases in that area.
The Kurdish YPG militia is denying responsibility for Tuesday’s bombing in Afrin that killed at least 52 people at last count. To reinforce the point, the Syrian Democratic Council, which is the political arm of the Syrian Democratic Forces and is controlled by the YPG and its political arm, the PYD, condemned the attack in a statement. The SDC/SDF blamed Turkey and its Syrian militia proxies and their occupation of Afrin for causing the attack and the YPG said that “we have no connection to what happened.” It is possible the attack was carried out by the Islamic State, though that’s purely speculation. If it was IS they likely wouldn’t claim responsibility, since their interests are better served by keeping suspicion focused on the Kurds.
Bashar al-Assad showing Vladimir Putin around Syria back in January (Russian government via Wikimedia Commons)
According to Bloomberg, Russian President Vladimir Putin is getting fed up with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his inflexibility when it comes to negotiating a formal end to the Syrian conflict. As evidence, it offers some anonymous sources as well as several recent comments critical of Assad in Russian media outlets and from Russian think tanks, places that likely wouldn’t speak ill of the Syrian president without some assent from Putin’s government. Assad has been refusing to discuss making any substantive constitutional changes that might lead to a political settlement with at least some rebel factions, and it would not be surprising if that started to grate on Putin, who presumably would like to declare victory in Syria and start bugging out. But Assad kind of has Putin over a barrel at this point, since it would not look terribly good for the Russian leader to have invested so much in keeping Assad alive and in power only to abandon him now.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
15,946 confirmed cases (+112) in Israel, 344 confirmed cases (unchanged) in Palestine
222 reported fatalities (+7) in Israel, 2 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Palestine
Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit issued an opinion to the Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday saying that he sees no reason why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not continue in that position despite his unfortunate corruption indictment. The court is expected to rule Sunday on the issue and there’s no reason to expect it will bar Netanyahu from remaining as premier. There is on the other hand plenty of reason to wonder whether Mandelblit is going to allow politics to interfere with Netanyahu’s prosecution.
EGYPT
5537 confirmed cases (+269)
392 reported fatalities (+12)
At least ten Egyptian soldiers were either killed or wounded on Thursday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in northern Sinai. The Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate was presumably responsible.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
12,481 confirmed cases (+552)
105 reported fatalities (+7)
The Financial Action Task Force put the UAE on its equivalent of probation on Thursday, warning that Emirati officials need to do more to investigate and protect against money laundering and terrorism financing. The UAE will now be under a one year review program, after which it could wind up on the FATF “grey list” of countries whose financial systems are of concern and that are in danger of slipping onto the blacklist. Nations on the FATF blacklist are subject to international financial restrictions. The UAE may be shielded from the worst effects of FATF designation by the United States, but just being on the task force’s radar is an embarrassment that I’m sure Emirati officials do not appreciate.
ASIA
TAJIKISTAN
15 confirmed cases (+15)
No reported fatalities
The Tajik government finally acknowledged its first confirmed coronavirus case on Thursday. Well, technically it acknowledged its first 15 confirmed coronavirus cases, which undoubtedly also confirms that it’s been lying about the country’s lack of any cases for the past several weeks. Tajikistan has experienced a spike in deaths due to “pneumonia” recently that officials have implausibly attributed to other causes.
PAKISTAN
16,473 confirmed cases (+948)
361 reported fatalities (+18)
A US think tank called the Center for Advanced Defense Studies has produced a new report alleging that both Pakistan and India have nuclear supply networks that run much deeper than previously known:
India and Pakistan’s illicit procurement of nuclear technology relies on international commercial activity and consequently leaves a trail of publicly available information (PAI) through trade, corporate, flight, vessel, and other data. Each of these data points provides an indicator that can be used to identify proliferation risk. The challenge, then, is to identify, aggregate, and synthesize these risk indicators within vast amount of disparate data.
Leveraging C4ADS’ trade data holdings of more than 750 million records, we set out to map the international supply chains behind nuclear procurement in Pakistan and India, isolating those entities that present the most risk for illicit dual-use trade.
Our report, “Trick of the Trade,” finds that nuclear technology procurement networks in both Pakistan and India are larger and more visible in publicly available information (PAI) than previously documented.
KASHMIR
Another cross-border exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistan forces in Kashmir on Thursday left at least three people dead on the Pakistani side and one person on the Indian side. One of the Pakistani dead was a soldier and the rest were civilians. As usual, each side accused the other of firing first.
INDIA
34,863 confirmed cases (+1801)
1154 reported fatalities (+75)
India has apparently sent 50 million hydroxychloroquine tablets to the United States to make Donald Trump happy. The fact that there’s not much evidence that hydroxychloroquine helps significantly in the treatment of COVID-19 patients and a bit more evidence to suggest that it’s harmful is, of course, irrelevant. Trump’s weird fixation with the drug has caused demand for it to skyrocket, and Indian drug companies are moving quickly to produce it—for export, of course. On the plus side, this extra production may help alleviate the Trump-caused shortage of the drug for people who actually need it for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
PHILIPPINES
8488 confirmed cases (+276)
568 reported fatalities (+10)
The Philippine government on Thursday lodged a protest over what it termed China’s “illegal designation” of the South China Sea’s Fiery Cross Reef as a “regional administrative center.” The reef is located in the Spratly Islands, control of which is disputed between Manila and Beijing thanks to the Chinese government’s expansive and largely unrecognized claim to control nearly the entire South China Sea. That claim does not correspond with any mainstream understanding of maritime rights, though China has tried to bolster it by building and occupying man-made islands in the area. It’s reportedly built Fiery Cross Reef into one of its most important military bases in the region.
While other countries are emptying their jails and prisons to reduce the risks of coronavirus transmission in those facilities, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has his security forces packing those places to the brim with lockdown violators. And those who actually survive long enough to be put in detention are apparently lucky duckies. The United Nations has warned of the “excessive and sometimes deadly force” that Philippine authorities are using to enforce lockdowns. This is par for the course for Duterte, who takes a sort of spree killer approach to governance, but it’s particularly alarming in the present situation, with hundreds of COVID-19 cases already having been confirmed inside Philippine detention facilities.
CHINA
82,874 confirmed cases (+12) on the mainland, 1038 confirmed cases (unchanged) in Hong Kong
4633 reported fatalities (unchanged) on the mainland, 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is “beginning to explore proposals for punishing or demanding financial compensation from China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.” Actually it’s unclear whether this effort is being managed by the administration or by the Trump 2020 campaign, to the extent there’s any difference between the two. Donald Trump is very angry that people are blaming him for botching the US response to the pandemic and not blaming China for…forcing him to botch the response, I guess? He and his advisers have reportedly talked about stripping China of its sovereign immunity, which would allow US citizens to sue it from money they’ll never collect, or even unilaterally canceling some US debt to China, which sounds like such a bad idea even the administration has already denied that it’s considering anything of the sort. Probably this will end with a reinstatement of tariffs on Chinese imports and with Trump pretending, yet again, that China is paying them.
AFRICA
LIBYA
61 confirmed cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (+1)
Libya’s Government of National Accord has reportedly rejected “Libyan National Army” commander Khalifa Haftar’s offer of a Ramadan ceasefire. From a tactical perspective it makes sense that the GNA wouldn’t want to stop fighting while it has a little momentum, but also Haftar didn’t exactly lay the right groundwork for the ceasefire by abruptly declaring himself the ruler of Libya earlier this week.
Haftar’s main foreign backer, the United Arab Emirates, on Thursday expressed its continued support for the would-be dictator, after a couple of other Haftar allies seemed to balk a little after his big declaration on Monday. At the same time, though, the Emiratis called on all the warring parties in Libya to recommit to the UN-managed peace process—a process that Haftar has explicitly rejected in word and deed.
GHANA
2074 confirmed cases (+403)
17 reported fatalities (+1)
The Ghanaian government imposed a three week lockdown in the cities of Accra and Kumasi that lapsed ten days ago without renewal. The number of coronavirus cases in Ghana has increased by 24 percent since. Some of that increase may be due to authorities working through a backlog of older tests, but nevertheless it bears watching as other countries start making plans to ease their own lockdowns.
MALI
490 confirmed cases (+8)
26 reported fatalities (+1)
Under the guise of counter-terrorism, security forces in Mali and Burkina Faso are perpetrating human rights abuses and looking the other way at abuses by paramilitary groups, all of which are driving potential recruits (paywalled) toward extremism:
In Mali, for example, Dan Na Ambassagou, an ethnic Dogon vigilante militia, has operated with near total impunity. The group is responsible for large-scale massacres against ethnic Fulani communities, including women and children, who they accuse of collaborating with local jihadist groups. In one notorious incident last year, Dan Na Ambassagou killed 160 Fulani herders in the village of Ogossagou.
And in Burkina Faso, the parliament in January passed a “Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland” law that will provide weapons and two weeks of training to local volunteers. The move has raised alarm among human rights groups that fear that unaccountable militias will likely exacerbate the problem. A predominantly ethnic Mossi militia, known as the Koglweogo, has already carried out attacks on Fulani civilians.
These state-sponsored policies are “exponentially increasing the vicious cycle of violence and reprisals” and “complicating the response to the terrorist problem for the countries involved,” [Human Rights Watch’s Corinne] Dufka said. Two jihadist groups in particular, Katibat Macina and Ansarul Islam, whose ranks are largely, though not exclusively, comprised of ethnic Fulani, have proven particularly adept at inserting themselves into local sociopolitical dynamics.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
50 confirmed cases (unchanged)
No reported fatalities
At least 25 people have reportedly been killed this week in fighting between opposing factions of the Popular Front for the Rebirth of the Central African Republic in northern CAR. The factions of the group, which emerged from the dissolution of the CAR’s large Muslim Séléka coalition, are now battling for control of natural resources around the city of Ndele and the surrounding Bamingui-Bangoran province.
EUROPE
KOSOVO
799 confirmed cases (+7)
22 reported fatalities
Kosovan President Hashim Thaçi nominated former finance minister Avdullah Hoti to be the country’s next prime minister on Thursday. He is from the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) party and had served as deputy PM under his predecessor, Albin Kurti, before the LDK quit Kurti’s coalition earlier this year and brought down his government. Kurti has accused Thaçi of engineering his ouster in order to install a government that would be amenable to swapping land with Serbia, in order to settle the hostility that has marked relations between the two countries since Kosovo gained independence in the 1990s. Assuming Hoti’s new cabinet wins a parliamentary confidence vote later this week, which it probably will, Kurti has suggested he might challenge the formation of that government in court.
SLOVAKIA
1396 confirmed cases (+5)
23 reported fatalities (+1)
New Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovič’s cabinet comfortably won its confidence vote on Thursday, winning approval from 93 of the 141 legislators who voted. Matovič’s Ordinary People party won 53 seats in February’s general election and he was able to negotiate a four party center-right governing coalition. With control of 95 seats it does have latitude to amend the constitution, though obviously its first priority is going to be managing pandemic response.
CZECH REPUBLIC
7682 confirmed cases (+103)
236 reported fatalities (+9)
Officials in the Czech Republic and Denmark say they’ve seen no ill effects since they started easing their coronavirus lockdowns a couple of weeks ago. Both countries have gone relatively slowly, opening individual sectors in a staggered manner. Neither has seen a spike in new cases, though obviously it’s too soon to declare that either has managed to avoid a resurgence.
GERMANY
163,009 confirmed cases (+1470)
6623 reported fatalities (+156)
The German government on Thursday outlawed Hezbollah’s political wing and undertook and undertook raids on several mosques and offices connected with the Lebanese party. Like the rest of Europe, Germany had already banned Hezbollah’s paramilitary arm, but in slapping a terrorist label on the whole organization German authorities have now gone beyond most other European countries as well as the European Union. The United Kingdom similarly has banned Hezbollah in full. The move was welcomed by the US and Israeli governments, for obvious reasons, and will bar Hezbollah from raising money or distributing propaganda in Germany. It’s unclear why the Germans decided to take this action now.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
1110 confirmed cases (+57)
59 reported fatalities (+4)
Governments all over the world are using the pandemic as cover to dole out goodies to their pals and to crack down on their oppositions. Nowhere has this pattern been more obvious than in junta-led Bolivia:
One striking example of a crackdown during the pandemic comes from Bolivia. Before the outbreak, the right-wing government led by interim president Jeanine Áñez presided over the detention of hundreds of opponents, the muzzling of journalists and a “national pacification” campaign that left at least 31 people dead, according to the national ombudsman and human rights groups.
Then, in March, Añez’s outspoken interior minister, Arturo Murillo, unveiled what he called a new “cyberpatrol” — to be run by the armed forces, police and his own staff — with the aim of identifying and prosecuting those deemed to be spreading “misinformation” during the coronavirus outbreak. A subsequent presidential decree stated that violators could be charged with “a crime against public health” and face up to 10 years in prison.
On April 15, the Añez government shocked observers by announcing that 67 “political actors” already had been charged with violating the new decree — and that 37 of them had been “quickly convicted.”
“The government of Bolivia is one of the more crystal-clear cases of a government taking full advantage of this health crisis, this global pandemic, to go after opposition leaders and restrict fundamental freedoms,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
COLOMBIA
6507 confirmed cases (+300)
293 reported fatalities (+15)
Colombian President Iván Duque has seen his popularity tick up amid the pandemic. New polling shows that roughly 70 percent of Colombians approve of the job Duque is doing in response to the crisis, and a lame 23 percent overall approval rating in February shot up to 52 percent in just two months.
HONDURAS
771 confirmed cases (+33)
71 reported fatalities (+5)
US prosecutors indicted former Honduran national police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla on drug trafficking charges on Thursday in a new filing that implicates President Juan Orlando Hernández. Prosecutors already convicted Hernández’s brother, Tony, in relation to the same case last year and have strongly suggested that President Hernández himself was involved in the scheme. Nevertheless, because Hernández is bending over backwards to accommodate Donald Trump’s xenophobia, there is no push from the Trump administration to deal with him in the way there has been with, say, alleged drug trafficker and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
UNITED STATES
1,095,023 confirmed cases (+30,829)
63,856 reported fatalities (+2201)
The US military is diverting another $546 million from its construction budget to help finance Donald Trump’s big beautiful Mexican border wall. Again this would be something to note for the next time the Pentagon asks for a massive budget increase.
Finally, while we’re on the subject of corruption, the Trump administration is also taking advantage of the pandemic to speed up its plans to sell pieces of the country off to the highest bidder:
The Trump administration has ratcheted up its efforts amid the coronavirus pandemic to overhaul and overturn Obama-era environmental regulations and increase industry access to public lands.
The secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt, has sped efforts to drill, mine and cut timber on fragile western landscapes. Meanwhile, the EPA, headed by the former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, has weakened critical environmental laws and announced in March that it would cease oversight of the nation’s polluters during the Covid-19 crisis.
The rollbacks appear to follow a playbook put forth by influential conservative thinktanks, urging the White House to use the pandemic as justification for curtailing, or eliminating, environmental rules and oversight. President Trump should have “the ability to suspend costly regulations without extensive process”, according to a recent report by the Heritage Foundation.