World update: August 11 2020
Stories from Iraq, India, Russia, and more
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Apologies if tonight’s update is a little more haphazard than usual. We’re on our second power outage of the day so I’m struggling to finish sitting in the dark on my laptop using my phone as a hotspot. It’s been a real fun time.
THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
August 10, 1920: The Ottoman Empire signs the Treaty of Sèvres, formally withdrawing from World War I and surrendering to the Allied Powers. The terms, which required the empire to give up not only all of its Arab territory but most of its Anatolian territory as well, were so lopsided that they quickly sparked the Turkish War of Independence. The new Republic of Turkey emerged victorious from that war, and the terms of the ensuing 1923 Treaty of Lausanne superseded Sèvres.
August 11, 1473: The Battle of Otlukbeli
August 11, 1960: Chadian Independence Day
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for August 11:
20,505,144 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (6,332,944 active, +259,574 since yesterday)
744,691 reported fatalities (+6336 since yesterday)
In today’s global news:
A new study just published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene has attributed at least 800 deaths and thousands of illnesses to “misinformation about the coronavirus.” All of the attributable deaths could be traced to advice to drink high-proof alcohol or even methanol as a means of disinfecting the body. The study also tracked advice related to other, presumably less lethal folk remedies, including a number of suggestions to drink various kinds of animal urine, and linked online fake news to attacks on medical personnel and on people of Asian descent.
At World Politics Review, the University of Birmingham’s Claire Mcloughlin looks at how non-governmental groups are stepping in to manage the pandemic in regions and among populations where state control is weak:
Even though these spaces ostensibly lie beyond the control of a centralized state, they are not governance vacuums. In the absence of state authority, myriad entities are stepping up and stepping in. From cartels to community organizations, aid agencies to violent rebel groups, nonstate actors are performing vital public health functions and delivering essential services. This pandemic response beyond the reach of the state is a messy arrangement where new and adapted social and political organizations are collaborating to ensure people’s everyday survival.
Some of these groups have humanitarian goals, while others are overtly political. But regardless of their motives, their actions are reshaping power and authority, sometimes undermining the state, but more often creating new, collaborative links between governments and society. In many of these so-called ungoverned spaces, as sociologist Philip Abrams put it, “the state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itself the mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is.” Carefully observing what unfolds in these spaces now may reveal the nature of power within them—and, perhaps, the future of state authority more generally.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
1327 confirmed coronavirus cases (+72)
53 reported fatalities (+1)
In a new report from France 24, residents of northeastern Syria are accusing the Turkish government of deliberately restricting water levels on the Euphrates River. Both the Euphrates and the Tigris have seen their water levels drop over the past few decades, due in part to a major Turkish project to dam both rivers for electricity generation, but with much of northeastern Syria now in Kurdish hands the Turks have more incentive to reduce water flows, which are crucial to the region’s agricultural production. The water flow on the river is now measurably below what Turkey is obliged to maintain under an agreement with the Syrian government, though under the present circumstances there’s no possibility of enforcing such an obligation.
In a new report, the Quincy Institute’s Steven Simon calls for US diplomatic engagement with the Syrian government while heavily criticizing the Trump administration’s recent move to impose broad sanctions on Damascus:
Whether a sanctions policy can be judged successful hinges on its objective. If sanctions are intended to produce regime change, then in the case of Syria the policy is failing and unlikely ever to succeed. If the objective is to crush Syrian society and turn Syria into a country only barely ruled by a government in Damascus unalterably convinced that surrender entails annihilation, it might well succeed. But success will come at the cost of regional stability and the awful fate of Syrians pulverized by sanctions against a government they are currently unable to influence. Assad will remain, and the U.S. will be under pressure to contain the centrifugal forces that societal collapse will unleash across the region.
Thus, if regime change remains the main U.S. objective, and creating a “quagmire” for Russia persists as a collateral aim, the U.S. will have succeeded in leaving all parties worse off. This is not generally held to be the standard for a successful foreign policy.
IRAQ
156,995 confirmed cases (+3396)
5531 reported fatalities (+67)
According to the Iraqi military, a Turkish drone strike in Iraq’s Erbil province has killed two senior officers in the Iraqi border guard. Iraqi officials announced their deaths on Tuesday but it’s not clear from the reporting I’ve seen when the strike actually took place. At least five other people were killed in the strike, which apparently took place as the officers were meeting with representatives from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is currently the target of a major Turkish military operation in northern Iraq.
It’s unclear why the officers were meeting with PKK personnel but it may have been part of an effort by the Iraqi government—which opposes the Turkish operation but has been powerless to stop it—to negotiate the relocation of the PKK away from northern Iraq or at least away from civilian populations in northern Iraq. The killing of these two officers could give Baghdad a stronger justification for demanding an end to Turkey’s activities in northern Iraq. On the other hand, the revelation that they were in contact with the PKK will fuel Turkish complaints that the Iraqis are too friendly with an internationally designated terrorist group and in that sense it could provide justification for Turkey’s actions. The Iraqi government has already canceled a planned visit by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and has summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad to protest the incident.
Elsewhere, the US military says that one of its convoys was attacked north of Baghdad on Tuesday, causing no casualties but some material damage. At the same time, US officials say they’ve determined that the alleged attack on another convoy near the Kuwaiti border on Monday never took place. That attack was “claimed” by a little-known militia group called Ashab al-Kahf (“people of the cave,” a reference to a very old Christian legend that was included in the Quran), who produced what was apparently a pretty low-quality video purporting to show the incident. Both Iraqi and Kuwaiti officials later denied that any attack had taken place.
LEBANON
7121 confirmed cases (+309)
87 reported fatalities (+7)
Protesters held a vigil in Beirut on Tuesday for the victims of the port explosion that took place exactly one week ago. The official death toll from that blast now stands at 171, though the BBC was reporting 220 yesterday and with many people still missing it does seem likely the count will rise a bit more before it tops out. The demonstrators, are clearly unsatisfied with the resignation of Prime Minister Hassan Diab (who is still serving in an interim capacity) and his cabinet the day before, as their heavy and at times violent overnight protests showed. On Tuesday they called in particular for the removal of President Michel Aoun, though even Aoun’s resignation won’t be enough to fix what’s broken in Lebanese politics.
At Responsible Statecraft, Emile Nakhleh calls for a United Nations “trusteeship” for Lebanon, which I guess could work though it would meet a massive amount of resistance within the Lebanese ruling class. It also sounds uncomfortably similar to the post-World War I mandate system that really got Lebanon into this mess in the first place. Still, with a situation as bleak as the one facing the Lebanese people, no idea should be dismissed out of hand.
On the plus side, the UN World Food Program says it’s sending 50,000 metric tons of wheat flour to Lebanon to try to stabilize what is a potentially critical food shortage in the wake of the explosion. I’m not sure whether the WFP plans to route that shipment through Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest port, or to try to use whatever is still left of Beirut’s port.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
86,593 confirmed cases (+1871) in Israel, 14,875 confirmed cases (+365) in Palestine
622 reported fatalities (+9) in Israel, 104 reported fatalities (+4) in Palestine
The Israeli government on Tuesday closed down Gaza’s Kerem Shalom crossing after a back and forth of more than a week involving incendiary balloons launched out of the enclave and Israeli airstrikes in retaliation. Most of whatever meager amount of goods the Israeli government deigns to allow into Gaza passes through Kerem Shalom so this will further the immiseration of the people living there. Mission accomplished, I guess. Meanwhile, Egypt opened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza to two-way traffic for 72 hours on Tuesday for the first time since the pandemic hit the region. The terms for anybody trying to leave Gaza will be restricted, but this could offer anyone needing medical treatment to go get some.
Meanwhile, with Benjamin Netanyahu worried about his legal future and increasingly resistent to the idea of handing the premiership over to Benny Gantz (I know, who could have predicted), it looks like their national “unity” coalition may be on the verge of collapse over a budget impasse. Even if they manage to come to some sort of agreement at the last minute, the speed with which the Netanyahu-Gantz relationship has deteriorated (again, who could have predicted) strongly suggests it won’t be long before Israel is facing a new election.
Having kind of a rough time lately (Ukrainian government via Wikimedia Commons)
Netanyahu would probably like to move forward on his West Bank annexation plan before that happens, especially inasmuch as it would help him politically. But with the Trump administration “busy with other things” as Netanyahu put it in an interview on Monday, he instead seems to be reviving a plan to greatly expand Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. It’s not quite as impactful as annexation, but it would at least further the goal of making a Palestinian state impossible. So that’s something, at least.
EGYPT
95,834 confirmed cases (+168)
5059 reported fatalities (+24)
Egyptians are voting in a two-day election for their new senate, which was created under a slate of constitutional amendments adopted last year. For a host of reasons this is a purely cosmetic exercise. For one thing, the senate is intended to serve a consultative role only, so it won’t be passing legislation. For another, the voters only get to select two-third of its 300 members—President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi gets to pick the rest. For still another, well, Sisi rigs elections anyway. I don’t know if he’ll care enough to rig this one, but regardless the outcome probably shouldn’t be considered legitimate.
SAUDI ARABIA
291,468 confirmed cases (+1521)
3233 reported fatalities (+34)
Against all odds, the State Department’s inspector general has apparently cleared Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of wrongdoing in declaring an extremely dubious national security emergency last year in order to ram through a package of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over a congressional hold. And they said justice is dead. Interestingly, the inspector general did criticize Pompeo for failing to do anything to ensure that these weapons would not be used to murder civilians in Yemen. But don’t worry, no actual repercussions will come of it. In that sense, Pompeo will suffer less for having helped kill Yemeni civilians than the guy who investigated him for it, Steve Linick, who Donald Trump fired earlier this year at Pompeo’s behest. Linick’s interim replacement, Stephen Akard, resigned last week, perhaps hoping to get ahead of the process.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
37,269 confirmed cases (+107)
1344 reported fatalities (+16)
With intra-Afghan peace talks seemingly imminent, the International Crisis Group argues that the Taliban has a lot of work to do if it intends to have a productive, good faith negotiating process with the Afghan government:
As peace talks in Afghanistan unfold, the Taliban’s positions on a number of critical topics to be discussed with the Afghan government remain ambiguous or undefined. The group has undertaken some preparatory deliberations but has a long way to go before it reaches consensus on ideas for Afghanistan’s future. It is vital for the talks’ eventual success that the insurgency determine a coherent political vision, accept an open debate in Afghan society of its positions and demonstrate a willingness to compromise at the negotiating table. The group’s vision should include clear positions on what it wants to change as compared with the post-2004 Afghan constitution and political system, and by what mechanism; how to protect the rights of women and minorities; and how to restructure Afghan security forces, including what role, if any, Taliban fighters should have therein. The U.S., other donors and Afghan civil society actors should engage with the Taliban, to the extent possible, to nudge the movement in this direction.
INDIA
2,328,405 confirmed cases (+61,252)
46,188 reported fatalities (+835)
An investigation by Kashmiri police has reportedly uncovered evidence that Indian soldiers staged a phony shootout last month to cover up their summary execution of three Kashmiri men. All three men, who were cousins, were reported missing by their families—who insist they had no connection to any militants—the day before the supposed shooting. The family has identified them as the three “militants” killed by Indian soldiers on July 18, but only through photographs as Indian authorities practically broke a land speed record disposing of their bodies.
BHUTAN
113 confirmed cases (+3)
No reported fatalities
Even Bhutan apparently cannot escape the coronavirus. The unassuming South Asian country, one of a handful of countries left that hasn’t reported a COVID-19 death, entered a pandemic lockdown for the very first time on Tuesday after a Bhutanese woman who returned home from Kuwait tested positive for the virus despite having been in quarantine for 30 days after her arrival. She apparently made the rounds during her ten post-quarantine days, coming into contact with at least 210 people.
OCEANIA
NEW ZEALAND
1570 confirmed cases (+1)
22 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Speaking of countries suddenly having a hard time with the coronavirus, New Zealand is back in lockdown mode after confirming its first case of locally-transmitted COVID-19 in over 100 days. The lockdown conditions are restricted to Auckland, at least for the time being. Just when they thought they were out, I guess.
AFRICA
SUDAN
12,033 confirmed cases (+77)
786 reported fatalities (+5)
According to Sudanese officials, at least 25 people have been killed since Sunday in another bout of inter-communal fighting in Port Sudan. Members of the Nuba community who have been displaced from Sudan’s troubled South Kordofan state occasionally clash with the Beni Amer people who live in the Port Sudan area. In this instance a Nuba protest apparently entered a Beni Amer-controlled area and that sparked the violence.
LIBYA
6302 confirmed cases (+373)
132 reported fatalities (+7)
Outbound flights took off from Tripoli’s Mitiga airport on Sunday for the first time in four months. The facility had been shut down due to the military offensive by the “Libyan National Army” on Tripoli, and then after the LNA was driven out of western Libya it remained closed due to the pandemic.
TUNISIA
1738 confirmed cases (+21)
52 reported fatalities (+1)
Tunisian President Kais Saied has named former interior minister Hichem Mechichi as his new prime minister designate, following the resignation of Elyes Fakhfakh last month when the Islamist Ennahda party withdrew its support for his government. Looking to beat the rush, perhaps, Mechichi has already promised to form a “technocratic” government, something Ennahda opposes on principle. Since Ennahda is the largest party in the Tunisian parliament, its support is probably critical for any would-be PM—though it’s not absolutely essential, given that Tunisia’s parliament is highly fragmented since last year’s election. If Mechichi isn’t able to get parliamentary approval for whatever cabinet he winds up forming, Tunisian voters will likely be heading back to the polls to try to sort things out.
GUINEA
8018 confirmed cases (+88)
50 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Guinean officials have scheduled their country’s presidential election for October 18. Incumbent Alpha Condé will be standing for a technically legal but ethically dubious third term. Constitutional amendments passed in March technically mean that Condé’s first two terms don’t count, which was the main point of drawing them up in the first place.
MALI
2577 confirmed cases (+4)
125 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Thousands of Malians protested in Bamako on Tuesday evening to once again demand the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. They’ve spurned a mediation effort by the Economic Community of West African States that has been intent on protecting Keïta while promising reform and some sort of unity government. Keïta has used the ECOWAS agenda as a template for offering concessions to his opponents, to no effect thus far.
NIGER
1158 confirmed cases (unchanged)
69 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Nigerien security forces, backed by French air support, have begun an operation to hunt down those responsible for killing six French aid workers and two Nigeriens in a wildlife park over the weekend. It appears they’re treating the attack as the work of Islamist terrorists, though as far as I know there’s been no definitive determination as to the culprits.
NIGERIA
47,290 confirmed cases (+423)
956 reported fatalities (+6)
Gunmen attacked a village in central Nigeria’s Benue state on Monday, killing at least 13 people. Nigerian authorities are attributing the attack to a local dispute over “chieftaincy affairs,” whatever that means.
SOUTH SUDAN
2472 confirmed cases (+2)
47 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Fighting that began over the weekend in South Sudan’s Warrap state has killed at least 81 people, including 55 South Sudanese security forces and 26 civilians. The security forces were reportedly in the area to conduct a “disarmament exercise” when something happened to trigger the violence.
ETHIOPIA
24,175 confirmed cases (+584)
440 reported fatalities (+20)
At least six people have been killed since Sunday in clashes between protesters and Ethiopian security forces in the Wolaita zone, which is part of the country’s catch-all Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' region. The SNNP is the only one of Ethiopia’s nine regions that isn’t explicitly tied to an ethnic group, and several of its constituent ethnic groups have begun demanding the same consideration that Ethiopia’s larger ethnic groups have received. One SNNP group, the Sidama, has already started the process of forming its own region via a referendum last year, but the Wolaita and others have not been able to advance their claims.
SOMALIA
3227 confirmed cases (unchanged)
93 reported fatalities (unchanged)
At least 19 people (15 inmates, four guards) were killed Monday in a prison riot in Mogadishu. The situation has apparently calmed down. There are al-Shabab prisoners in that facility but it’s unclear how many (if any) of the dead prisoners belonged to the extremist group.
MAURITIUS
344 confirmed cases (unchanged)
10 reported fatalities (unchanged)
There’s been some good news in the race to stop a grounded oil tanker from dumping its entire fuel load into the Indian Ocean off the Mauritian coast. Workers were reportedly able to pump some 1000 metric tons of fuel out of the disintegrating vessel on Tuesday, leaving some 1800 still in its tanks. The ship, MV Wakashio, ran aground last month with some 4000 metric tons of fuel on board, of which a bit over 1000 has already leaked into the ocean. A team of UN personnel has arrived to try to help contain and clean up the spill as well as to assist with efforts to prevent the rest from leaking out.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
897,599 confirmed cases (+4945)
15,131 reported fatalities (+130)
The Russian Health Ministry on Tuesday approved the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday. They were able to do this after a scant two months of human testing, which…look, I’m neither a doctor nor a scientist, but does that not strike anybody else as pretty quick? Is it just me? Putin says one of his own daughters has taken the vaccine—I wonder how the family discussed that—and she’s doing OK. And he’s already got at least one eager customer in the form of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, so that’s something. I mean, it would probably be more impressive if Russia’s first customer weren’t a head of state so keenly and openly interested in killing his fellow countrymen, but still. The Russians are planning to roll out mass vaccination—voluntary, of course—by as early as October, so I guess if there are any serious side effects (or if it, you know, doesn’t work) we’ll find out then.
BELARUS
69,005 confirmed cases (+58)
592 reported fatalities (+3)
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the presidential candidate who allegedly lost a probably-rigged election on Sunday to incumbent Alexander Lukashenko, turned up in Lithuania on Tuesday after a suspicious disappearance on Monday. It turns out that Tikhanovskaya was detained for seven hours by Belarusian authorities on Monday after trying to file a complaint about Sunday’s vote count, then she made the decision—purely voluntarily, you understand—to flee the country. She does not appear to have done so with an eye toward keeping up the resistance in exile, as she released a video message that seemed to urge her supporters not to make a big stink of the whole affair.
Lukashenko’s government has already jailed Tikhanovskaya’s husband, blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was originally planning to run in the election, and she has two children who may be at risk, so her decision to tap out after what I’m sure was a harrowing few hours in custody is understandable. But despite her plea to supporters not to put themselves at risk, demonstrations are continuing. How long they continue, absent a figure around whom the demonstrators can rally, is unclear. Belarusian authorities have now reportedly taken the country’s internet offline, which is a tactic routinely used to disrupt the cohesion of protest movements but is also often a strong signal that something horrible is about to happen.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
91,635 confirmed cases (+1636)
3712 reported fatalities (+72)
Al Jazeera has a report on the deteriorating political situation in Bolivia:
BRAZIL
3,112,393 confirmed cases (+54,923)
103,099 reported fatalities (+1242)
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro says new data showing a rise in fires in the Amazon rain forest is a “lie,” even though his own government produced the data. The number of fires in the Amazon is up 17 percent for the month of August so far, compared with last year—unless, again, it’s all a lie. Or maybe Bolsonaro is making a more metaphysical point, like he’s trying to say that the material world itself is a kind of “lie” crafted by the corrupting Demiurge to trap the pure essence of the human soul inside these empty meat sacks we call bodies. In that sense this data would be a lie, as indeed would be the whole Amazon itself and really all of human existence. Though I guess that would also make Bolsonaro’s presidency a lie, and I’m not sure how he’d feel about that. It’s a real head scratcher.
GUATEMALA
57,966 confirmed cases (+979)
2233 reported fatalities (+11)
The head of a French NGO called Agronomes et Vétérinaires sans frontières, Benoît Maria, was ambushed and murdered on Tuesday in northeastern Guatemala. As far as I know there hasn’t yet been any information as to who carried out the attack nor as to any motive behind it.
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
300 confirmed cases (+19)
8 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Trinidad and Tobago held a general election on Monday in which Prime Minister Keith Rowley has already declared victory for his People's National Movement party. The preliminary count shows the PNM winning 22 seats, which is the slimmest possible majority in the country’s 41 seat legislature but nevertheless is, if it holds up when the official count is announced, indeed a majority.
UNITED STATES
5,305,957 confirmed cases (+54,519)
167,749 reported fatalities (+1504)
Finally, TomDispatch’s Ben Dreyfuss wonders if the Trump administration is gearing up for a pre-election military confrontation with its favorite target:
Was Donald Trump’s January 3rd drone assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani the first step in turning the simmering Cold War between the United States and Iran into a hot war in the weeks before an American presidential election? Of course, there’s no way to know, but behind by double digits in most national polls and flanked by ultra-hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump is a notoriously impetuous and erratic figure. In recent weeks, for instance, he didn’t hesitate to dispatch federal paramilitary forces to American cities run by Democratic mayors and his administration also seems to have launched a series of covert actions against Tehran that look increasingly overt and have Iran watchers concerned about whether an October surprise could be in the cards.
Much of that concern arises from the fact that, across Iran, things have been blowing up or catching fire in ways that have seemed both mysterious and threatening. Early last month, for instance, a suspicious explosion at an Iranian nuclear research facility at Natanz, which is also the site of its centrifuge production, briefly grabbed the headlines. Whether the site was severely damaged by a bomb smuggled into the building or some kind of airstrike remains unknown. “A Middle Eastern intelligence official said Israel planted a bomb in a building where advanced centrifuges were being developed,” reported the New York Times. Similar fiery events have been plaguing the country for weeks. On June 26th, for instance, there was “a huge explosion in the area of a major Iranian military and weapons development base east of Tehran.” On July 15th, seven ships caught fire at an Iranian shipyard. Other mysterious fires and explosions have hit industrial facilities, a power plant, a missile production factory, a medical complex, a petrochemical plant, and other sites as well.
“Some officials say that a joint American-Israeli strategy is evolving -- some might argue regressing -- to a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes,” concluded another report in the Times.