World update: August 6 2019 (part 2)

Stories from Sudan, Russia, and more

Continued from Part 1

AFRICA

SUDAN

The big news here is that on Sunday, Sudan’s ruling military junta and leaders of the civilian movement that’s been demanding a transition to a civilian government signed a constitutional agreement that should remove the final obstacles to that transition. The deal, brokered in part by the African Union, establishes a three year transitional period leading to elections, with a civilian government and legislature under a joint civilian-military executive council. The big remaining sticking point, on immunity for members of the junta, seems to have been resolved with a decision to give them immunity but to give the transitional legislature the power to revoke that immunity.

LIBYA

An apparent drone strike carried out by the “Libyan National Army” killed at least 42 people in the southwestern Libyan town of Murzuq on Sunday. The LNA admits striking the town but has denied bombing civilians. It claims to have targeted a group of “Chadian mercenaries.” But the LNA uses that term to refer to members of the Toubou ethnic community, which straddles the Libyan-Chadian border, is frequently involved in human trafficking, and opposes the LNA, which renders the term “mercenaries” meaningless.

MALI

Leaders of central Mali’s Dogon and Fulani communities signed an agreement on Monday to suspend the inter-communal violence that’s killed hundreds in both groups over the past several years. Malian Prime Minister Boubou Cisse oversaw the signing ceremony. The agreement promises to be every bit as effective as previous ceasefires at ending Fulani-Dogon violence, which is to say not really effective at all.

NIGERIA

Nigerian authorities have decided to allow Ibrahim Zakzaky, Nigeria’s most prominent Shiʿa figure and the founder of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, to travel to India along with his wife so they can both receive medical care. The Zakzakys have been in government custody since 2015, a circumstance that has motivated repeated IMN protests that invariably turn violent when Nigerian police get involved. The Nigerian government declared the IMN a terrorist organization last month after several protests in Abuja, but those demonstrations have continued anyway and officials are undoubtedly hoping that the decision to allow Zakzaky to go abroad will finally ratchet down those tensions.

CAMEROON

Hey, remember how Donald Trump was going to drain the swamp? Well you’ll be excited to learn that the Cameroonian government, in an effort to avoid any nasty consequences from its ongoing and often quite violent efforts to suppress its anglophone separatist movement, has hired none other than former acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker, mostly because he’s on good terms with our totally above reproach president. And it turns out the Cameroonians aren’t the only folks paying a premium for access to Trump:

The contract also represents the latest in a growing list of African governments pouring money into lobbying firms to carve out more influence in Washington under Trump, whose surrogates and campaign affiliates have cashed in on lobbying for foreign governments, catching the attention of human rights advocates and public transparency watchdogs. 

“Over the past several years, there has been a hugely significant increase in the number of U.S. lobbyists representing foreign nationals, many of them connected to the Trump administration,” said Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of Vanguard Africa, which supports democracy movements in the region. “Many of Trump’s fundraisers and supporters have struck it rich in this sector, often working on behalf of the world’s worst human rights abusers,” said Smith, who has done work on behalf of Cameroonian opposition figures. He cited Zimbabwe, which hired the Trump-linked lobbying group Ballard Partners in a bid to scrap long-standing U.S. sanctions, as well as Clout’s work for Cameroon.

“In Washington, this sort of access to Trump, whether perceived or real, is a hugely lucrative endeavor,” Smith said. It’s difficult to say how such lobbying efforts have yielded results yet in Zimbabwe’s case, as it is still under U.S. sanctions.

Swamp drained, folks. You love to see it.

MOZAMBIQUE

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi and Ossufo Momade, leader of the opposition RENAMO movement, signed a peace deal in Johannesburg on Tuesday to bring an end to RENAMO’s insurgency and pave the way toward the group’s participation in Mozambique’s general election in October. RENAMO and the ruling FRELIMO movement fought a civil war from 1977-1992, but after more than 20 years at relative peace RENAMO resumed its insurgency in 2013.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The Trump administration finally, officially withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on Friday. The decision, justified by alleged Russian violations of the treaty, opens the door to placing new US missiles in Europe and/or Asia—more likely the latter, since European leaders have uniformly rejected the idea of hosting new US weapons even as they’ve supported the administration’s justification for scrapping the treaty. The underlying goal here is probably to allow the placement of US warheads across the Asia-Pacific region as a warning/threat to China. Russia is only incidentally involved. The withdrawal represents a huge setback for arms control efforts and, while it doesn’t put us on an inexorable path to nuclear holocaust or anything, it does push us all a little closer to that scenario than we were previously.

UKRAINE

Four Ukrainian soldiers were killed in rebel shelling in the Donbas region on Tuesday, ending a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine that had lasted a bit over two weeks. The violence prompted new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to call for a resumption of the Minsk peace process, in which France and Germany brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine. That process has been dormant since 2016.

UNITED KINGDOM

New British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had a rough couple of days, as his party lost a by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire on Thursday to the Liberal Democrats. Losing single by-election isn’t normally such a big deal, but in this case the loss cut Johnson’s parliamentary majority down to all of one vote. It would probably be a mistake to blame Johnson for the outcome, but nevertheless it leaves him in an extremely precarious situation as he seems determined to lead the UK into a controversial no-deal Brexit.

AMERICAS

VENEZUELA

The Trump administration imposed new economic sanctions on Venezuela on Monday, freezing its assets and threatening the assets of anyone continuing to interact with Nicolás Maduro’s government. In theory the penalties only apply to dealings with Venezuelan officials, but since most Venezuelan companies have some interaction with the government the impact will likely be much broader than that. The sanctions came one day before the “International Conference for Democracy in Venezuela” in Peru, at which National Security Advisor John Bolton warned that the administration will sanction any entity doing business with Venezuela. The warning is thought to be meant mostly for Russia and China, which have continued to accept Venezuelan oil in payment for the country’s debts. Bolton is arguing that Moscow and Beijing would be better served backing Juan Guaidó’s opposition movement and then seeking repayment once he’s supplanted Maduro.

HONDURAS

Thousands of people hit the streets of Tegucigalpa on Tuesday demanding President Juan Orlando Hernández’s resignation. US prosecutors from the Southern District of New York have accused Hernández of financing his 2013 campaign party with drug money, a charge Hernández denies. The protests turned violent, with police using tear gas and demonstrators responding by throwing stones and sticks. Three buildings caught fire amid the violence, but it’s unclear how that happened.

Juan Orlando Hernández (Wikimedia Commons)

UNITED STATES

Finally, Mark Esper has assumed office as Donald Trump’s new defense secretary, not acting, and sounds like he’s really got no idea how he’s going to manage his boss:

The administration’s steps to restrict interagency deliberations have compounded the impact of president’s unpredictable decision-making style. More significantly, military officials have also had difficulty reconciling Trump’s demands with what they have traditionally been viewed as core U.S. defense interests.

Nowhere has that conundrum been clearer than in regards to long-standing defense allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Disagreement over how to treat battlefield partners in Syria led to Mattis’s resignation last December. Military leaders have also been dismayed by what they fear could be the abrupt withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and Syria and by steps that critics say have eroded the military’s nonpartisan standing, including the use of military funds for Trump’s border wall and placement of military vehicles on the streets of Washington on July Fourth.

It remains to be seen whether Esper can at publicly reinforce traditional Pentagon positions, such as reassuring anxious allies and making a case for maintaining counterterrorism missions overseas, while advancing the president’s priorities. Well-versed in policy matters and the arcane ways of the sprawling Pentagon bureaucracy, Esper sought to minimize those differences. 

“DOD does have a strong voice out there and we will exercise it,” he said. “But again I'm going to balance those two things as well because, at the end of the day, we're advancing America's interests.”

Yeah, that last part is just gibberish. Esper is charged with preserving a foreign policy consensus that’s been generally wrong and remains fixed in a shoot first, think later mentality while responding to every misfire in Trump’s prion-riddled brain. It’s probably not going to be a terribly enjoyable experience for him but, on the bright side, he’ll be able to cash out in a huge way once it’s over.