World update: August 6 2019 (part 1)
Stories from Syria, Kashmir, and more
Hey folks, we’re back to normal operations here at FX. Since I wasn’t gone that long this time I did try to keep track of some major stories over the time I was away, which is good. But as a result this update will run longer than usual, which is…also good? You’ll have to decide for yourselves on that one. It’s so long, in fact, that we’re bumping up against Substack’s email length limits and so I’m going to have to do this in two parts.
THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
August 5, 1571: The Cypriot city of Famagusta formally surrenders to the Ottomans, ending a nearly 11 month siege. As the final Venetian-held city on Cyprus, Famagusta’s surrender meant the total Ottoman conquest of the island. What was supposed to be a peaceful handover turned ultra-violent when the Ottoman commander, Lala Mustafa Pasha, abruptly had Venetian commander Marco Antonio Bragadin mutilated and taken into custody (and ultimately executed a couple of days later) and then unleashed his soldiers on the residents of the city. It’s unclear why Mustafa did this—he argued that Bragadin had executed his Ottoman prisoners and murdered a group of Muslim pilgrims, but it may be that he was letting out some pent up frustration that a small Venetian garrison was able to hold off and embarrass his much larger besieging army for so long.
August 5, 1916: British forces defeat an Ottoman-German offensive targeting the Suez Canal in the Sinai. In addition to being Britain’s first major victory of World War I, the battle signified the end of the Central Powers’ plans to capture the canal and put Britain on the offensive in the Middle Eastern Theater. British forces spent the rest of the year pushing the Ottomans out of the Sinai before reaching Gaza in March 1917, where the war entered a stalemate that lasted for several months.
August 5, 1960: Although it was called the “Republic of Upper Volta” at the time, this is the date when Burkina Faso declared its independence from France.
August 6, 1806: Francis II abdicates and dissolves the Holy Roman Empire as a result of Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz and in the War of the Third Coalition. Luckily he landed on his feet—having already styled himself Francis I of the new Austrian Empire in 1804, he had a very nice golden parachute.
August 6, 1945: The United States drops the first of two atomic bombs on Japan, this one at Hiroshima. The full death toll is difficult to assess because of the nature of radioactive fallout but estimates of over 200,000 are probably within the ballpark.
August 6, 1962: Jamaican Independence Day
MIDDLE EAST
Last week the International Crisis Group issued a new report warning that the Middle East is having a “1914 moment,” and yes that means exactly what you think it means:
More than a century after World War I, the Middle East is experiencing its own 1914 moment. Then, the assassin’s bullet that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria put the entire European continent on fire. Today, a single attack by rocket, drone or limpet mine could set off a military escalation between the U.S. and Iran and their respective regional allies and proxies that could prove impossible to contain. Left to their own devices – and determined not to lose face amid the legacy of 40 years of enmity – Washington and Tehran have placed themselves on a collision course. In the absence of direct communication channels, third-party mediation seems the most likely avenue to avert a war that both sides claim they do not seek. Now is the time for international and regional diplomacy to escalate in turn: to persuade the U.S. and Iran to step back from the brink and point the way toward a regional process of communication and dialogue that might set the stage for a mutual accommodation.
SYRIA
On the plus side, though, the Syrian government on Thursday agreed to a “conditional ceasefire” in war-torn northwestern Syria, after weeks of steady bombardments targeting rebels (and hitting civilians) by Syrian and Russian forces. It took a little while for the ceasefire to take hold, but by Friday monitors were reporting no airstrikes in the area, so this is really a positive development—aaaaand it’s all over:
The Syrian army has resumed operations against armed rebels in Idlib, scrapping a ceasefire in the last opposition-held stronghold.
In a statement carried by state media on Monday, the army accused the rebels of violating the truce that was brokered last week during talks in Kazakhstan following a three-month campaign supported by Russia.
"Armed terrorist groups, backed by Turkey, refused to abide by the ceasefire and launched many attacks on civilians in surrounding areas," SANA reported the army as saying. "The armed forces will resume their military operations against terrorists," it said.
Multiple Russian and Syrian airstrikes were reported on Monday right after the announcement. Apparently, although there was a lull in airstrikes, fighting on the ground didn’t really abate all that much despite the ceasefire. The claim that the rebels “launched many attacks on civilians” appears to be unsubstantiated, but there were plenty of reports of ceasefire violations over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the Turkish military has actually started massing forces along its southeastern border with Syria, putting some meat to its frequent warnings about attacking the Syrian Kurds. And so the Trump administration is scrambling to appease Ankara and stop, or at least delay, that attack, which among other things could trigger an instantaneous ISIS revival in the region when the Kurds stop devoting resources toward securing the thousands of ISIS prisoners they’re holding.
On Monday the US gave Turkey a “final offer” that included a joint US-Turkish operation to set up a nine mile deep, 87 mile long safe zone on the Syrian side of the border. All YPG forces would withdraw from that zone, which covers about a third of the border between the Euphrates River and the Iraqi border. The US and Turkey would jointly patrol the area, and if things went smoothly there the zone would eventually be extended to cover the rest of the border. Turkey has been demanding a 20 mile deep safe zone patrolled only by Turkish forces, and what it really wants is freedom to pound the YPG at will the way it does with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey and northern Iraq, so it’s unlikely to find this offer acceptable. In which case the US government has made it clear that the YPG would be on its own (Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Tuesday said that a Turkish attack would be “unacceptable” but pointedly did not say the US would try to stop it), and I know I sound like a broken record at this point but YPG leaders really should be on the phone right now with Bashar al-Assad and/or the Russians.
YEMEN
A missile attack on a military parade in Aden on Thursday killed 36 paramilitary fighters with the Security Belt, the armed wing of the separatist Southern Transitional Council. The Houthis claimed the attack but the STC is now accusing al-Islah, Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, of involvement. It’s unclear why the STC is making this claim but it could signal another round of the low-level violence that’s plagued Aden for much of the war and that regularly exposes the deep fissures within the nominally pro-government coalition. The STC has lost some of its sway recently after its patron, the UAE, opted to withdraw most of its forces from Yemen, and that could be part of the dynamic behind this outburst.
To the north, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE are urging the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition to come to some kind of agreement that allows for reopening Sanaa’s international airport. The facility has been effectively closed for three years, which the agencies say has prevented thousands of critically ill people from going abroad for urgent medical care.
TURKEY
As part of its anti-Fethullah Gülen campaign the Turkish government is now burning books, which I think we can all agree is one of the hallmarks of a flourishing democracy. To be fair, the tomes—at least 300,000 taken from schools and libraries so far, and that estimate may be a major undercount—are all heavily steeped in dubious Gülenist propaganda, such as the math textbook that, uh, uses the letters “F” and “G,” and other books that…mention the state of Pennsylvania, where Gülen now lives. It’s all very healthy and normal.
IRAQ
Israeli F-35I fighters reportedly bombed two military bases being used by the Iran-aligned Badr militia in Iraq last month. The first raid struck a militia base north of Baghdad on July 19, while the second hit Camp Ashraf, northeast of Baghdad, three days later. Ashraf was formerly used by the Mujahedin-e Khalq when Saddam Hussein was in power. Reports of the strikes dribbled out in bits and pieces and details are still hard to confirm, but al-Ain, an Emirati news site, says that the second strike killed at least 40 people, militia fighters and Iranian advisers. While neither the Iraqi nor Israeli governments are talking, it seems clear from all the reporting that the Israelis were responsible for the strikes, at least one of which was apparently intended to destroy a shipment of missiles from Iran. If that’s true then these would mark the first Israeli airstrikes in Iraq since the Osirak reactor strike in 1981, which either set the Iraqi nuclear program back ten years or didn’t really affect it at all, depending on whose version of events you believe.
ISIS attacks in Iraq were down in July for the second month in a row and hit their lowest level since March. It’s probably too early to say for sure, but this could signify that ISIS’s “Revenge of the Levant” offensive, which began in April and peaked in May, is petering out.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash tweeted last week that the Emiratis and the Saudis prefer diplomacy with Iran to a regional military conflict. Which is boilerplate language and doesn’t mean all that much. What’s interesting, though, is the evidence emerging that Dubai has started pushing back against Abu Dhabi’s overall hostility toward Tehran:
Previously, some regional media reported a change in UAE's position regarding Iran. The Anadolu news agency in Turkey had also reported that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and ruler of of Dubai has called for a change in the UAE's policy vis-a-vis Iran.
The UAE generally operates collectively but its emirates don’t always see eye to eye. In this case, Dubai’s economy depends on minimizing disruptions to regional commerce and on maintaining friendly political and commercial relations with Iran. Its economy is weakening because of US sanctions against Iran and because of the recent rise in Persian Gulf tensions. Abu Dhabi doesn’t have those same concerns, but while it is the dominant emirate in the union that dominance isn’t absolute.
SAUDI ARABIA
On Friday, Saudi officials announced changes to the kingdom’s stifling guardianship laws that will allow women over 21 to obtain passports and leave the country without the permission/company of a male guardian. It is a major step forward for women’s rights in the kingdom—arguably even bigger than last year’s decision to allow women to drive. Though the sense of progress would probably be greater if the Saudis weren’t still imprisoning multiple activists who fought for this very reform. It’s unclear when exactly the changes will take place.
IRAN
Iranian media reported on Monday that officials seized yet another tanker last week, this time near Farsi Island in the middle of the Persian Gulf. This vessel, reportedly Iraqi in origin, was allegedly smuggling Iranian fuel and it, along with its seven crew members, was taken into custody. Iraq’s oil ministry is denying any link to the ship, which is probably owned by a private Iraqi merchant. It is the third oil tanker the Iranians have nabbed since mid-July. On a related note, the British government has apparently decided to drop its efforts to organize a pan-European mission to protect freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf region and has joined a US-led effort to do so. The UK had been pushing for a European mission that would be untainted by the Trump administration’s increasingly overt push for regime change in Tehran, but new Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s desire for closer ties with Washington apparently won out over that consideration. Interestingly, the Chinese government also might sign on to the US effort, which could provide cover for other countries to participate.
It would appear that the Trump administration’s decision last week to sanction Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif came only after Zarif had turned down an offer, extended by Senator Rand Paul, to meet with Donald Trump:
Zarif told Paul that the decision to meet Trump in the Oval Office was not his to make; he would have to consult with Tehran. He expressed concern that any meeting might end up as little more than a photo op, without substance, the sources told me. Last December, when I interviewed Zarif at the Doha Forum, he said that Tehran wanted more than just a photograph and a two-page document from any future talks—a reference to the limited outcome of Trump’s first summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, in Singapore last year. “We don’t just do a talk for a photo opportunity and a two-page document,” he said. “We have a hundred-and-fifty-page document,” a reference to the detailed nuclear accord that Trump abandoned.
Zarif then reportedly took the offer back to Tehran, where Iranian officials turned it down. That likely opened room for John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to convince Trump that sanctioning Zarif would be an appropriate response to what Trump likely perceives as a snub. The optics—Zarif taking the offer back to his bosses in Tehran who decided not to accept—would have made it easy for Pompeo to convince Trump (who doesn’t know any better) that Zarif is a mere underling and that sanctioning him wouldn’t have any real impact on the chances for diplomacy. Which is BS, but again Trump wouldn’t know that.
ASIA
TURKMENISTAN
To push back against rampant speculation that Turkmen President/special forces commando/multi-sport athlete/singer-songwriter Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow is actually dead, the Turkmen government has released a bunch of videos showing the Turkmen leader doing all kinds of cool stuff on his summer vacation. This is a little weird given that the explanation for Berdimuhamedow’s recent absence from public view (he hasn’t conclusively been seen since July 5) has been that his mother is gravely ill. But I suppose we all process grief in different ways. At least one of the videos appears to go out of its way to show the date as August 4, 2019, to allay fears about Berdimuhamedow’s health. But since all of these things are heavily edited anyway, to show the president excelling at whatever activity he happens to be doing, none of them can be considered particularly reliable.
ARMENIA
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan visited the breakaway, predominantly Armenian Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday and apparently went well beyond his previously measured rhetoric on the divisive issue of Karabakh’s status. Pashinyan outright called for Karabakhs unification with Armenia, which would seem to close the door on the negotiations he’s consistently said he wants with the Azerbaijani government. It even seems to have gone beyond previous Armenian government statements about Karabakh, which have typically skirted the line when it comes to recognizing Karabakh’s separatist government and to talk of union/annexation. Obviously his remarks are not likely to be well-received by the Azerbaijanis.
AFGHANISTAN
Negotiations between the US and the Taliban are apparently moving pretty quickly:
The Taliban is claiming that negotiators have “resolved differences” around the eventual US withdrawal and Taliban “guarantees” about divesting itself of alliances with other extremist groups (i.e., al-Qaeda). US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been a little less specific but still sounds very optimistic:
With US-Taliban talks apparently nearing a breakthrough and Taliban-Afghan talks now potentially on the horizon—Taliban officials have said they’ll talk with Kabul once they’ve reached agreement on a US withdrawal—questions are looming about Afghanistan’s upcoming presidential election. The Taliban opposes the election and has threatened attacks to destabilize it, and even putting their concerns aside there are legitimate reasons to question holding an election at a time when Afghanistan may be on the verge of a huge political upheaval.
PAKISTAN
One person was killed and 13 wounded on Tuesday in a bombing in a predominantly Hazara part of Quetta. No group has claimed responsibility but the Hazara tend to be a target for Sunni extremist groups rather than more secular Baluch nationalists.
KASHMIR
The Indian government took a series of increasingly worrisome steps in Kashmir over the weekend. The sequence began on Saturday, when the Indian government ordered tourists and pilgrims to vacate the province due to the “latest intelligence inputs” and “prevailing security situation” there. OK, ominous enough I guess. Tensions ratcheted up further through Sunday and into Monday, as Indian authorities imposed severe restrictions on public movements, closed schools, and began shutting down mobile networks. Thousands of Indian soldiers moved into the province and several Kashmiri politicians were placed under house arrest. All troubling developments.
Then, later in the day on Monday, Indian authorities let the other shoe drop. Instead of coming in response to some threat of violence by Kashmiri militants, the steps New Delhi had taken over the weekend were preemptive, building up to the announcement on Monday that the Indian government is stripping Kashmir of its autonomous status under Article 370 of the Indian constitution and Article 35A, which was introduced by presidential order in 1954. Article 370 exempted Jammu and Kashmir from the Indian constitution, and was a concession to the region’s independent status when India and Pakistan came into being in the late 1940s. Article 35A extended that autonomy and allowed the regional legislature to bar those who were not considered residents of the region from owning property, among other things. India’s ruling, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has made abolishing the region’s autonomy one of its main campaign promises. By moving thousands of soldiers into the region, evacuating Indian civilians, imposing movement restrictions, and arresting local politicians, the Indian government did as much as it could to suppress what it had to know would be a major public outcry in response to this decision.
In the short-term, the revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy will mean incorporating the region into the rest of India as another province or provinces—a bill to divide the region into two new provinces is already making its way through the Indian parliament (that move has been hailed by residents of the predominantly Buddhist enclave of Ladakh, which would become one of the two provinces). The move is also sure to be challenged in court, where lawyers will argue that the text of Article 370 prevents its revocation without the acquiescence of Kashmir’s constituent assembly—which dissolved in 1956. The long-term result will likely be a concerted effort to encourage Hindu Indian citizens to move into Kashmir and demographically change the region, akin to the Chinese government’s program to move Han Chinese into Xinjiang until they overtook Uyghur’s as the region’s largest ethnic group (though perhaps not quite that overt).
Kashmir (Blue = India, Green = Pakistan, Yellow = China) (Planemad via Wikimedia Commons)
This will undoubtedly raise tensions between India and Pakistan, which claims Kashmir and views itself as the rightful protector of Kashmiri Muslims. And, indeed, protests broke out across Pakistan on Monday after the Indian government made its move. The Pakistani army said on Tuesday that it “firmly stands by the Kashmiris in their just struggle to the very end,” so that sounds exciting. The Chinese government is also expressing opposition—it controls a piece of the Ladakh region, and its border there has never been well demarcated. It also violates the agreement under which Kashmir became part of India in the first place, which should call into question the legal basis on which India has the right to continue claiming jurisdiction over the region. It won’t, but it should.
MYANMAR
A new United Nations report finds that defense contractors from China, India, North Korea, Russia, and several other countries have continued to supply the Myanmar military despite the fact that it’s been engaged in an ethnic cleansing effort against the Rohingya people in Rakhine state (and despite UN sanctions against North Korea, while we’re at it). Some 700,000 Rohingya refugees have been massed in camps in Bangladesh since they were chased out of Myanmar in 2017, unable to return because they’d almost certainly be subject to the same genocidal violence they fled.
CHINA
Well, if you were hoping that the US-China trade war was nearing an end, consider your hopes dashed. Donald Trump announced new 10 percent tariffs on some $300 billion in Chinese products on Thursday, mostly on consumer goods. On Monday, the Chinese government announced that it’s banning the purchase of US agricultural products and took the relatively provocative step of devaluing its currency, the renminbi or yuan, to its lowest level against the dollar in over a decade. The intent is to counteract the tariffs by making Chinese imports so cheap that even with the additional levies they’re still cheaper than competing products. It also made for a fun day on the stock market.
In response, on Monday evening the US Treasury Department declared China a “currency manipulator,” which opens the door for the US to take its complaints to the International Monetary Fund. That probably won’t achieve anything meaningful, and the effect of the designation probably won’t be that great given that we’re already in a trade war, but it will likely cause China to retrench further and make it that much harder to break the current impasse.
On a related issue, the Chinese government is warning that it “will be forced to take countermeasures” should the US decide to start staging intermediate-range missiles around East Asia. Now that the Trump administration has withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty (see below) it could indeed begin to dot the Asia-Pacific region with missile batteries. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has even said as much, out loud. Beijing will likely use all the economic leverage it has to discourage countries from agreeing to host US weapons. Australia has already said it won’t do so, but that’s not terribly meaningful since it wouldn’t make much sense for the US to station intermediate-range missiles in Australia anyway.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong was hit with a general strike and protests on Monday that blocked roads, canceled flights, and shut down public transportation. Opposition groups have moved from simple demonstrations to more overt acts of civil disobedience as their movement has morphed from opposition to a controversial extradition bill to more general demands to protect Hong Kong’s autonomy from Beijing. In several areas the situation turned violent as police responded with tear gas and batons.
NORTH KOREA
On Friday, North Korea conducted yet another test of what it says is a new multiple-rocket platform, the same one it claimed to have tested on Wednesday and may also have tested the week before, and also too maybe in May, though South Korean officials seem pretty convinced that the May test involved solid-fueled, short-range ballistic missiles. Then they conducted another weapons test on Monday, possibly of the same launcher though details are still sparse. Monday’s test was coupled with harsh words from North Korea’s foreign ministry regarding US-South Korean military activities, with Pyongyang suggesting it “will be compelled to seek a new road” unless the exercises are stopped. On Tuesday, the North Koreans accused the US and South Korea of violating no fewer than three agreements they made with Pyongyang last year via a list of offenses including arms sales and joint exercises. The Trump administration is still choosing not to react to these tests, which all things considered is definitely not the worst thing they could do.
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea and Japan are brewing up their own trade war, which escalated last week when the Japanese government decided to revoke South Korea’s “fast track export status” and South Korea reciprocated, while President Moon Jae-in promised that his country “won’t be defeated by Japan again.” Yikes. Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have been trending down since South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled last year that Japanese companies must pay individual South Koreans with claims related to forced labor practices imposed during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The Japanese government considers that matter closed by a 1965 treaty and reparations payment, but the court ruled that the reparations didn’t apply to individual claims. Japan has the bigger economy but South Korea is one of its largest export markets and sends millions of tourists to Japan every year, so it does have some leverage in this spat.
Stay tuned for part 2, arriving shortly.