World update: February 18 2020

Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Libya, and more

THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

February 17, 1979: The Sino-Vietnamese War begins with a Chinese invasion, in response to Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia (ousting the Khmer Rouge) the previous year. The “war,” such as it was, lasted only about a month and ended when the Chinese army, having stalled out around 20 kilometers over the border, declared victory and withdrew. Vietnam also claimed victory in repelling the invasion, and their claim is generally more accepted today though admittedly the Chinese military did do serious damage to northern Vietnam’s infrastructure. Ultimately it’s hard to determine which side “won” in a war that ends this indecisively.

February 17, 2008: Kosovo declares its independence from Serbia. The Kosovan parliament voted (with Serbian MPs boycotting) to declare independence after United Nations-supervised negotiations on a sort of independence-in-all-but-name status fell apart. Though still not recognized by Serbia and an ongoing source of tension in the Balkans, this date is commemorated as Independence Day in Kosovo.

February 18, 1229: The Sixth Crusade ends

February 18, 1911: A French pilot named Henri Pequet flies some 6500 letters from the Indian city of Allahabad to the nearby Indian city of Naini in the first “official” airmail flight in world history. An “unofficial” airmail flight had taken place the day before in California. As an achievement the 13 minute flight itself left something to be desired—it probably would have been less trouble to ship the letters overland given how short a distance they had to travel. But as a proof of concept I think you’d have to say Pequet’s flight worked out pretty well.

February 18, 1965: The Gambia declares independence from the United Kingdom. Initially it remained a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but Gambian voters opted to form a republic in a referendum held shortly after independence. Annually commemorated as Independence Day in The Gambia.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The Turkish and Russian militaries have begun conducting joint patrols in northwestern Syria again after a two-week pause amid a heavy Syrian government offensive to capture the M5 highway. The ostensible reason for the suspension of patrols was “bad weather,” but it seems pretty clear that the Turks stopped participating due to anger over the offensive. And while the resumption of these patrols might signal that things are calming down, a Turkish team sent to Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the situation in northwestern Syria reportedly told the Russians that Ankara is prepared to drive the Syrian government back “to previous borders” militarily. It is inconceivable that the Syrians would agree to give up the gains they’ve won over the past couple of weeks, no matter how many threats Turkey makes. Indeed, while the situation on the ground seems to have been fairly calm Tuesday, after the Syrian army made substantial gains in Aleppo province the day before, the Russian-Syrian air campaign in the region shows no sign of stopping or even slowing down.

YEMEN

According to Al Jazeera, tribal militias engaged in a firefight with Saudi soldiers on Monday when the latter attempted the town of Shahn in Yemen’s Mahra province. It’s unclear how serious the incident was, and the fact that only one person was reported wounded suggests it wasn’t a massive gun battle. But this highlights the Saudis’ contentious presence in Mahra, where they are most certainly not universally welcome. The Saudis moved military forces into the province in 2017 ostensibly to cut off a Houthi smuggling route, but they’ve expanded their presence and it would appear their real goal is the construction of an oil port on Mahra’s coast, one that allows the Saudis to bypass the insecure Strait of Hormuz bottleneck. That the local tribes in Mahra don’t want the Saudis there seems to be of little concern. Unrest in this province has repercussions not just in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, but in Oman, where the Mahri people are a significant minority in Dhofar province.

TURKEY

In a fairly surprising development, a Turkish court on Tuesday acquitted nine of the 16 activists who have been brought up on terrorism charges related to the 2013 protests over government plans to destroy Istanbul’s Gezi Park. The other seven activists have not yet gone on trial. The court ordered the release of philanthropist Osman Kavala, the only one of the nine who had been held in pretrial detention. Then, because justice in Turkey is more aspiration than reality, the Turkish government simply issued a new warrant for Kavala’s (re-)arrest. His status at this point is unclear.

IRAQ

Prospective new Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Allawi is running into some predictable trouble as he tries to form a cabinet that can pass a parliamentary confidence vote. Allawi at this point has the support of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Sayroon party and the Popular Mobilization Units’ political arm, the Fatah Alliance. But they’re it, and even their support is tentative and conditional. Allawi has been unable to get many other parties, especially Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties, to support his plan to appoint cabinet ministers who are unconnected to political parties. Everybody hates partisanship, you know—except when it comes to their own party. And so party leaders are hesitant to give up their own fiefdoms. Allawi is also suffering from the less-than-enthusiastic reception his appointment got from Iraqi protesters. If the public were clamoring for him to take over, he might have some leverage over the party bosses. But they aren’t.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

There’s a perverse display of colonial exploitation happening in the West Bank these days, as the Israeli government has barred the export of produce from the occupied territory into Israel and, therefore, to anywhere else. Why? Well, because the Palestinian Authority decided last fall to stop importing Israeli beef, depriving Israeli rangers of a literally captive market for their wares. So the Israeli government has responded in kind, with the obvious difference being that Israeli ranchers are free to sell beef elsewhere, while Palestinian farmers cannot export their produce unless the Israel government permits it. It’s these everyday indignities that Israeli leaders and the Trump administration are trying to formalize under the Kushner Accords, which theoretically create a Palestinian “state” that can perform even the most basic functions of statehood only with Israeli permission.

The International Crisis Group’s Tareq Baconi suggests that rather than piecemeal attempts at resisting the occupation, the PA—which is itself little more than a tool of occupation—should consider disbanding:

It’s therefore clear that many Palestinians view the PA’s dismantlement as a prerequisite for Palestinians to secure their freedom and rights, whether in one state or two. Those who continue to view the PA as a state-in-the-making, including many PLO leaders, reject this view, however. They argue that the PA, and the institutions of state it has built, must be reformed to resist the occupation rather than continue to operate within it. Their rationale is shaped, among other concerns, by a fear of what a void where the PA once stood might mean, in terms of soaring unemployment and crippled public services, including schools and hospitals.

These are not idle concerns, and any advocate of dismantling the PA must come up with adequate answers. At the same time, it seems unrealistic to assume the PA can reform itself to resist further Israeli settlement and annexation of the West Bank or to reclaim sovereignty. The PA’s very structures have been designed and have evolved to stabilize, rather than disrupt, Palestinian lives under occupation. And its ability to govern is premised precisely on its acquiescence to Israeli constraints.

IRAN

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted in state media on Tuesday characterizing the decision to vote in Friday’s parliamentary election as a national and religious obligation. He’s doing that because turnout may be low. Iranians, from the protesters demanding change to people who are just trying to make ends meet under US sanctions, appear frustrated with their economy and their political leaders across the board. On top of that, those inclined to vote for reform-minded candidates have little option since the Guardian Council has purged most reformist candidates from the ballot. It’s not a recipe for enthusiastic voters.

The actual results of parliamentary elections in Iran aren’t tremendously impactful except as an indicator for public opinion, through certainly President Hassan Rouhani’s last year or so in office will go more smoothly if he’s got a friendly parliament in place. The most important consideration for Khamenei and other senior leaders is that turnout be high, as proof of Iran’s supposedly vibrant politics. It’s even more important in this election, after recent protests and amid the ongoing maximum pressure campaign from the US.

ASIA

KYRGYZSTAN

Chinese plans to construct a $280 million free trade zone and “logistics center” across the border in Kyrgyzstan’s Naryn province have been called off in the face of popular opposition among local residents. The perils of trying to build a commercial empire, I suppose. Residents apparently rejected the project as a Chinese “land grab.”

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban fighters attacked a checkpoint in Kapisa province on Tuesday, killing at least nine members of a pro-government militia. Nevertheless, that US-Taliban “reduction in violence” agreement is expected to start any day now.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with Donald Trump at Davos earlier this year (White House photo via Flickr)

Meanwhile, the long awaited (?) and pretty much already known results of Afghanistan’s September presidential election were officially released on Tuesday and, wouldn’t you know, incumbent Ashraf Ghani won reelection with a hair over 50 percent of the vote, barely avoiding a runoff. As unsurprising as Ghani’s victory was, even less surprising was the reaction of main challenger Abdullah Abdullah, who rejected the official results and even went so far as to declare himself president. Even Juan Guaidó is thinking this guy needs to dial it down a notch. There are myriad concerns about fraud, to be fair, and even Ghani’s apparent victory is marred by fact that turnout was somewhere around 20 percent. But Abdullah isn’t really contesting the results because of fraud so much as because it’s the only way for him to retain some national political prominence. If he raises enough of a stink he might even get to keep his make-work job as Afghanistan’s “chief executive.”

PAKISTAN

A police vehicle was hit with an improvised explosive in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday, killing at least one police officer and injuring two others. The officers were on their way to provide security for a polio vaccination effort in the area. Polio vaccine teams are a frequent target for militants. In this case, given the location some Pakistani Taliban faction was likely responsible. Speaking of which, former Pakistani Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan has apparently escaped custody. Ehsan announced his escape in an audio message earlier this month but Pakistani authorities only acknowledged it on Tuesday. He’d been in custody since turning himself in to authorities in 2017.

CHINA

The Wuhan coronavirus has now infected 75,199 people around the world and killed 2010 of them. The rate of spread still appears to be slowing down in China, though the World Health Organization cannot determine whether that’s a trend or just a temporary reprieve. There continue to be concerns about undetected cases of the virus, including in Indonesia. Models based on the spread of the disease elsewhere suggest that Indonesia should have at least five confirmed cases of the virus by now, and yet it still has none. Either Jakarta has gotten lucky or its detection methods aren’t working.

A database leaked to the AP purportedly shows that Chinese authorities are not just using “extremism” as a criteria for determining which Uyghurs get sent away for “vocational training”/reeducation:

The database emphasizes that the Chinese government focused on religion as a reason for detention — not just political extremism, as authorities claim, but ordinary activities such as praying, attending a mosque, or even growing a long beard. It also shows the role of family: People with detained relatives are far more likely to end up in a camp themselves, uprooting and criminalizing entire families like Emer’s in the process.

Similarly, family background and attitude is a bigger factor than detainee behavior in whether they are released.

“It’s very clear that religious practice is being targeted,” said Darren Byler, a University of Colorado researcher studying the use of surveillance technology in Xinjiang. “They want to fragment society, to pull the families apart and make them much more vulnerable to retraining and reeducation.”

AFRICA

LIBYA

Libya’s warring parties, the Government of National Accord and the “Libyan National Army,” resumed military-to-military talks under United Nations auspices in Geneva on Tuesday. This is very good news from the perspective of endi—and they’re done. The GNA pulled out of the talks after the LNA attacked Tripoli’s seaport with artillery. While the LNA claimed that it attacked an arms depot (after first claiming it attacked a Turkish ship carrying weapons for the GNA and its militia allies), Tripoli’s port regularly receives shipments of humanitarian aid and, more worryingly, fuel—a liquefied petroleum gas tanker was reportedly almost hit by the artillery fire. It’s unclear whether or when the GNA plans on reengaging.

KENYA

George Washington University’s Kimberly Ann Elliot writes that a potential US-Kenya free trade agreement would threaten intra-African institutions:

Many countries have responded by developing their own regional economic communities in eastern, southern, central and western Africa. The East African Community, of which Kenya is a member, is one of the most developed, though even it has yet to achieve a fully integrated, barrier-free economy among its members. During his visit to the White House, Kenyatta asserted that negotiating bilaterally with the U.S. is not incompatible with his country’s broader regional and continental ambitions.

But a bilateral deal with the U.S. will make it harder to bring the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Agreement) to fruition. If Kenya lowers barriers for U.S. exporters while its regional partners do not, those partners will likely erect barriers—rules determining the origin of imports—to prevent transshipment of American goods through Kenya. Washington will similarly insist on rules of origin that prevent exports from Tanzania or Uganda—members of the East African Community—from passing through Kenya on their way to the U.S. That will mean border checks have to remain in place to enforce the rules of origin, and that will raise the costs of trade within the East African Community, the exact opposite of what regional integration is supposed to achieve.

So why go down this path? Since 2001, the African Growth and Opportunity Act has provided duty-free, quota-free market access for eligible countries exporting all but a few products, mostly agricultural ones, to the United States. The program expires in 2025, however, and Kenya is afraid of losing valuable access to the American market. For most manufactured products, preferential market access has little value because existing U.S. tariffs on them are low or even zero anyway. But import duties are much higher on clothing and other labor-intensive manufactured goods.

Any bilateral trade deal between the United States and a single African country is, needless to say, likely to be negotiated on terms that are favorable to the US. If Washington were interested in doing right by Kenya and other potential African trade partners and not simply exploiting them (I know), Elliott contends it should extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act beyond 2025 and give the AfCFTA room to develop without interference. That would also probably be smarter from the standpoint of battling China for continental influence and goodwill.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

A suspected Allied Democratic Forces attack on a village in North Kivu province overnight killed at least 15 civilians and one soldier. The Congolese military has reportedly secured the village, though “secured” may be overstating it.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

An appeals court at The Hague on Tuesday reinstated a 2014 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling ordering Russia to pay $50 billion to the former owners of the former Russian oil giant Yukos. That company’s principal owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested and imprisoned on corruption charges in 2003, for what he claims were politically motivated reasons. Russian authorities dismantled Yukos. The court ruled in 2014 that the Russian government acted in bad faith, though that ruling was overturned in its first appeal in 2016.

UKRAINE

An outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday left at least one Ukrainian soldier dead and four more people wounded. The Ukrainian military and Donbas separatists each blamed one another for the flare up, with the Ukrainians accusing the separatists of shelling their lines unprovoked and the separatists claiming that Ukrainian forces attempted to attack separatist lines and the shelling was carried out in response to that.

GREECE

Thousands of people protested in Athens on Tuesday as transit workers held a one day strike in opposition to planned pension “reforms” that may amount to more austerity for a country that’s already had plenty. The reform proposal, according to Reuters, “creates a digital social security registry and delinks pensions from earnings, introducing more flexibility for the self-employed over contributions.” Critics suggest it’s a step toward privatizing the pension system, which would likely mean smaller benefits for retirees.

AMERICAS

BRAZIL

Jair Bolsonaro wants to create a new line of credit for Brazil’s indigenous communities. That sounds nice. All they’d have to do in return is give their rain forest land over to the huge mining and agribusiness concerns that are bankrolling Bolsonaro’s political career. This will allow indigenous Brazilian peoples to give up their indigenous lifestyles and become poor people in mainstream Brazilian society, while further hastening the clear cutting of the rain forest. A real win-win.

VENEZUELA

The Trump administration on Tuesday blacklisted Rosneft Trading SA, a division of Russian state oil firm Rosneft that is headquartered in Geneva. It alleges that Rosneft Trading SA has been helping Venezuela evade US sanctions on its oil sales. Tuesday’s announcement gives companies around the world 90 days to stop doing business with the Rosneft affiliate or risk running afoul of US sanctions themselves.

COLOMBIA

A “passenger vehicle” somehow exploded in southeastern Colombia’s Cauca province on Tuesday, killing at least seven people. It’s unclear exactly what happened but that region is known as an active drug trafficking area and is also home both to dissident ex-FARC rebels and ELN rebels. So some kind of roadside bomb seems plausible.

PANAMA

The European Union has added four more places to its list of tax havens—the Cayman Islands, Palau, Panama, and the Seychelles. Of those, Panama seems to be the most serious case as it’s already been blacklisted by the international Financial Action Task Force over money laundering issues. Being on the EU’s tax haven blacklist doesn’t actually carry much by way of automatic penalties though it is a black eye for any designee. Interestingly the EU did not put Turkey on the list even though Turkey technically does meet the standard because it doesn’t share tax information with several EU member states. Turkey has been making some changes in this regard and it would seem Brussels decided to give it more time to let those changes happen.

UNITED STATES

Finally, Donald Trump apparently wants to sell jet engines to China. I don’t really have a story here, but I do think it’s a little weird that we’re trying to muscle other countries into excluding Huawei from their 5G networks for national security reasons, but it’s very good and cool actually to equip (potentially) China’s military aircraft. And we would apparently expect China to let us do this, even.

I’m all for the notion that we should stop letting “national security” define US foreign policy. But this makes it seem like Trump’s opposition to Huawei is actually about crowding a Chinese company out of the market and this whole “national security” thing is just a smokescreen. That couldn’t be right, could it?