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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
July 17, 1968: In a bloodless coup sometimes called the “17 July Revolution,” the Iraqi Baath Party ousts President Abdul Rahman Arif and takes power under its leader, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. To this day the circumstances surrounding the coup remain murky, but the result is not—the Baathists controlled Iraq until the US invasion in 2003 ousted them. Bakr himself hung around until 1979, all the while slowly losing authority to his deputy, Saddam Hussein, until Hussein forced him out and assumed the presidency himself.
July 17, 1976: Indonesia annexes East Timor. The region would remain in an almost constant state of violent rebellion, at a cost of tens of thousands of people killed, until regaining its independence in 2002.
July 18, 1195: The Battle of Alarcos
July 18, 1290: English King Edward I (or Edward “Longshanks”) issues his Edict of Expulsion, forcing an estimated 16,000 Jews out of England. This was the culmination of at least two centuries of rising anti-semitism in the kingdom. The ban lasted until Oliver Cromwell lifted it in 1657.
July 19, 711: The Battle of Guadalete
July 19, 1864: The Third Battle of Nanking ends with a decisive Qing victory and the final eradication of the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The battle, which ended after the death of rebel leader Hong Xiuquan and saw the Taiping forces lose perhaps as many as 100,000 men (double that if you include the entire siege of Nanking, which began in March), was the last major battle of the Taiping Rebellion.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for July 19:
14,634,732 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (5,296,010 active, +220,073 since yesterday)
608,559 reported fatalities (+4316 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
496 confirmed coronavirus cases (unchanged)
25 reported fatalities (unchanged)
A car bombing in a village near the Turkish border in northwestern Syria’s Azaz region killed at least five people on Sunday and wounded 85 more, according to the Turkish authorities in control of that area. The Kurdish YPG militia seems like the obvious suspect, though nobody has claimed the bombing and it could have been Syrian rebels or the Islamic State.
The previous day, two bombings in southern Damascus killed at least one person and wounded another. There’s been no claim in that incident either, as far as I know, but there’s a decent chance it was connected with Sunday’s parliamentary election, which opposition leaders have denounced as a “farce.” The outcome is irrelevant and likely was determined in advance. At the very least, holding an election limited to territory controlled by Damascus at a time when millions of Syrians are still displaced would seem to prefigure the outcome. The Damascus attack may have been an attempt to disrupt the vote. Azaz lies outside government-held territory and so there was no election there to try to disrupt.
YEMEN
1606 confirmed cases (+25)
445 reported fatalities (+2)
The separatist Southern Transitional Council declared Sunday that it will try to extend its control over Yemen’s Hadhramaut region in “the coming days.” It’s unclear how it intends to go about this or what kind of reception it expects to get, but this does presumably mean more conflict with the Yemeni government in the near future.
IRAQ
92,530 confirmed cases (+2310)
3781 reported fatalities (+90)
Two rockets struck Baghdad’s Green Zone in the vicinity of the US embassy on Sunday. What makes this incident noteworthy is that it took place in the daytime, when most of these rocket strikes seem to happen at night, and that it took place during a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. There’s no obvious reason why those two things would be connected, but assuming the rockets were fired by an Iranian aligned militia like Kataib Hezbollah, it’s interesting that they’d step on Zarif’s trip like this. Zarif is in Baghdad to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Khadhimi, who will then head off to Riyadh as he tries to maintain Iraq’s precarious balance between the two regional heavyweights. The rockets had no effect, and apparently didn’t even get close enough to trigger the embassy’s defense system.
LEBANON
2859 confirmed cases (+84)
40 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Washington Post’s Liz Sly outlines the financial shenanigans at the root of Lebanon’s economic collapse:
The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to the sharp downturn in the economy, but it is not the cause of the huge hole that emerged late last year in the country’s finances, Azzi said. Lebanon produces almost nothing and has relied for years on an inflow of dollars from the sizable number of Lebanese working overseas.
Those dollars fueled an arrangement that Azzi and other analysts say amounted to a Ponzi scheme, under which banks offered high interest rates to lure U.S. dollar deposits and then lent the money to the government — until the deposits ran out.
Staggering amounts are now missing from the banking system — perhaps as much as $100 billion, according to government figures.
Three-quarters of the deposits in the entire banking system were denominated in U.S. dollars, and many ordinary Lebanese may have lost most or all of their savings, said Jad Chaaban, an economist at the American University of Beirut.
These games made a small number of Lebanese people extraordinarily rich, and those elites, who own a large chunk of Lebanon’s political system, are standing in the way of any reform that might impinge on their ability to continue making money, like restrictions on capital flight or a forensic audit of Lebanese banks to figure out what’s happening. Both are among the prerequisites for an International Monetary Fund bailout, in addition to being crucial to containing and investigating this collapse.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
50,289 confirmed cases (+924) in Israel, 8549 confirmed cases (+345) in Palestine
409 reported fatalities (+8) in Israel, 62 reported fatalities (+3) in Palestine
Thousands of Israeli protesters clashed with police outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence again on Saturday. Demonstrations against Netanyahu’s government—and outside his house—are growing more frequent, partly in response to Israel’s spiking coronavirus situation but also because of the resumption of the PM’s corruption trial. The judge presiding over the case rejected Netanyahu’s request for a six-month continuance (citing the challenge posed by questioning masked witnesses) on Sunday, ordering pre-trial hearings to continue and setting January for the trial to begin in earnest. The drumbeat of testimony about Netanyahu’s corruption—er, I mean alleged corruption—is guaranteed to inflame things further.
KUWAIT
59,204 confirmed cases (+300)
408 reported fatalities (+1)
Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah was hospitalized on Saturday, forcing Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah to temporarily assume some of his responsibilities. Kuwaiti officials haven’t exactly been forthcoming with details, but the emir apparently went through some kind of surgery—“successfully,” of course—on Sunday, even though the purpose of his hospitalization was initially described as “medical checks.” Sabah is 91, and his half-brother/heir Nawaf is 83, so we’re not talking about a robust ruling family in the prime of life here. He’s also had heart problems, though again Kuwaiti officials aren’t big on discussing his medical information. Sabah had some kind of medical issue last fall, which flared up after he’d arrived in the US and forced him to cancel a visit to the White House. It’s unclear whether this incident is related in any way to that one.

Sheikh Sabah during his 2018 White House visit (White House photo via Wikimedia Commons)
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
56,922 confirmed cases (+211)
339 reported fatalities (+1)
The UAE is aiming to send a probe to orbit Mars, aboard a Japanese rocket that’s scheduled to launch on Monday (UPDATE: that did launch on Monday) after being delayed twice due to bad weather. That’s nice. If the Emiratis are able to surveil Mars half as efficiently as they’re surveilling their own citizens, they might really learn some valuable information.
IRAN
273,788 confirmed cases (+2182)
14,188 reported fatalities (+209)
The Country That Is Totally Not Israel may have expanded its ongoing low-level war on Iran, as mysterious explosions were reported at a power station in Isfahan province on Sunday and along an oil pipeline in Khuzestan province on Saturday. There were no casualties in Saturday’s explosion and a couple of injuries reported in the blast on Sunday. The Iranians are blaming the power plant explosion on a bad transformer, but as far as I know they haven’t explained the pipeline incident.
Iranian authorities have officially postponed the planned execution of three men accused of participating in anti-government protests last fall. World of their death sentences led to an outpouring of opposition among Iranians online and may have contributed to a recent resumption of street protests. The men may now get a retrial and/or even have their guilty verdicts thrown out, or they could just get executed at a later date. I’d like to be more precise, but that’s what happens when you’re talking about an arbitrary justice system.
The International Labor Organization says that an apparently hijacked tanker named MT Gulf Sky, which has been penalized by the US for allegedly transporting Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions, has now turned up in Iranian waters. Two Iranian nationals reportedly tried to purchase the vessel, and when the US intervened to block that it appears the Iranians just took what they couldn’t buy.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
263,496 confirmed cases (+1580)
5568 reported fatalities (+46)
The Pakistani Taliban, which has been degraded by factionalization in recent years, recently announced that one of its largest splinter groups was returning to the fold, suggesting that the organization may be rebuilding its strength:
In the first week of July, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant organization announced the return of the Hakimullah Mehsud group to its fold. The faction and several others like the Mehsud division led by Khan Said “Sajna” and the Jamaatul Ahrar group commanded by Omar Khalid Khurasani splintered from the TTP in 2014 following violent inter-factional feuds after then-Emir Hakimullah Mehsud’s death in a U.S. drone strike. Compounded by the government’s launching of Operation Zarb-e-Azb in the same year, this reduced the TTP to a shadow of its former self. The alliance of Islamist outfits based in Pakistan’s erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) had plunged the country into unprecedented levels of violence after its formation in 2007. This included notable plots such as the assault on the Karachi airport in June 2014 and the Peshawar army school attack in December 2014.
The return of the Hakimullah Mehsud faction is by no means unprecedented, given developments such as the merger of the Sajna faction in 2017 and the rehabilitation of the Jamaatul Ahrar outfit within the framework of the TTP’s ideology in 2015, albeit with a great degree of operational independence. Moreover, the TTP has incurred significant leadership losses in the past two years, including the killing of the previous emir, Mullah Fazlullah, in June 2018 and the death of former Deputy Chief Khalid Haqqani in February, and has maintained a muted operational presence even in past strongholds such as Pakistan’s North and South Waziristan, where its elements managed to return in 2018-19 after being dislodged due to Operation Zarb-e-Azb, and later, Operation Radd-ul-Fassad. Yet, the TTP remains resilient due to a number of factors.
INDIA
1,118,107 confirmed cases (+40,243)
27,503 reported fatalities (+675)
The Indian government apparently hasn’t let the pandemic slow down its lurch into authoritarianism:
As India struggles to quell surging coronavirus infections, lawyers accuse the authorities of rounding up government critics and keeping them in detention in the middle of a pandemic. It is part of a strategy, they say, to stifle activists who are protesting what they see as iron-fisted and anti-minority policies under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In recent weeks, [student activist Natasha] Narwal and nearly a dozen other prominent activists — along with potentially dozens of other demonstrators, though police records are unclear — have been detained. They are being held under stringent sedition and antiterrorism laws that have been used to criminalize everything from leading rallies to posting political messages on social media.
India’s coronavirus restrictions, some of which are still in effect, have blocked pathways to justice, lawyers and rights activists say. With courts closed for weeks, lawyers have struggled to file bail applications, and meeting privately with prisoners has been nearly impossible.
Law enforcement officials in New Delhi, who are under the direct control of India’s home ministry, have denied any impropriety. But rights groups say the arrests have been arbitrary, based on scant evidence and in line with a broader deterioration of free speech in India.
CHINA
83,660 confirmed cases (+16) on the mainland, 1886 confirmed cases (+108) in Hong Kong
4634 reported fatalities (unchanged) on the mainland, 12 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
The United Kingdom may be about to follow the lead of Australia and the United States and suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong in response to China’s new security law there. UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is scheduled to make some kind of statement on that front on Monday. On Sunday, Raab criticized what he called China’s “gross and egregious” human rights violations against its Uyghur population, which drew an angry response from the Chinese ambassador to the UK with promises of retaliation for any new UK sanctions.
AFRICA
SUDAN
10,992 confirmed cases (+310)
693 reported fatalities (+20)
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary unit has reportedly interdicted some 160 would-be mercenaries who were on their way to Libya, most of them Sudanese nationals. Sudanese fighters have been crossing into Libya with some regularity, and the United Nations suggested earlier this year that many of them have come from the same Arab tribes from which the RSF draws its fighters. Which is of course not to say that the RSF itself has been funneling fighters to Libya, of course. We wouldn’t want to cast any aspersions. It’s probably just a coincidence.
LIBYA
1866 confirmed cases (+10)
65 reported fatalities (unchanged)
In Libya, meanwhile, the Government of National Accord is reportedly deploying its forces toward Sirte in what looks like it could be preparation for an attack on that city. Having already driven Khalifa Haftar’s “Libyan National Army” out of western Libya, the GNA has set its sights on Sirte and the Jufra airbase, to the south. But Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has suggested that a GNA attack on Sirte would trip a “red line,” presumably meaning it would draw Egypt into the war. There’s a reasonable chance that he’s bluffing, but either way it seems the GNA is preparing to call.
SIERRA LEONE
1711 confirmed cases (+10)
65 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Security forces fired into a crowd of protesters in the northern city of Makeni on Saturday, killing at least four people. The protesters were angry over plans to transfer a generator to another town and threw rocks at police and soldiers.
MALI
2475 confirmed cases (+3)
121 reported fatalities (unchanged)
A mediation team sent by the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) organization to try to negotiate a settlement to Mali’s ongoing political crisis came up empty on Sunday, when opposition leaders appeared to reject its proposals. The umbrella group leading protests and demanding the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, which calls itself M5-RFP, accused the ECOWAS team of favoring Keïta. The mediation team, led by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, had proposed that Keïta form a national unity government while Mali’s Constitutional Court reconsider its intervention in March’s parliamentary election. The court partially overturned the results of that vote, handing victory to Keïta’s supporters and generating the popular outrage that birthed M5-RFP.
NIGERIA
36,663 confirmed cases (+556)
789 reported fatalities (+11)
Attackers categorized as “bandits” ambushed a military unit on Saturday in northwestern Nigeria’s Katsina state, killing at least 23 soldiers though there are several who remain missing so that total may climb. Additionally, at least five children were killed Saturday in the same area when a bomb exploded “accidentally,” according to Nigerian authorities. No, I have no idea what “accidentally” means in this case. Most violence in northwestern Nigeria is chalked up to “banditry,” though mounting evidence suggests these are actually pretty sophisticated gangs and there’s some evidence to suggest that they’ve established links with Islamist groups like the Islamic State or possibly even a resurgent Ansaru, an al-Qaeda affiliated group that broke away from Boko Haram in 2012.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
8403 confirmed cases (+79)
194 reported fatalities (+1)
Fighting between a Mai-Mai militia and an ethnically Tutsi militia called the Ngumino has killed more than 43 people since Thursday in the DRC’s South Kivu province. In the worst of the fighting, the Ngumino reportedly attacked a village as they were fleeing the Mai-Mai. Over 40 more people remain missing, so the death toll is likely higher than what’s already known.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
771,546 confirmed cases (+6109)
12,342 reported fatalities (+95)
At least 10,000 people, and by some counts considerably more, protested in the eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk to demand the release of their regional governor, Sergei Furgal. Russian authorities arrested Furgal and shipped him off to Moscow last week on murder charges dating back 15 years. The protesters seem to believe his real crime was getting elected and being popular despite belonging to the opposition Liberal Democratic Party. Even if he was involved in those murders, many of his constituents have suggested they don’t care, which I suppose is open-minded of them. The fact that Furgal was transferred to Moscow is a bit unusual and has added to the feeling that he’s been targeted for political reasons.
HUNGARY
4333 confirmed cases (+18)
596 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The European Union’s effort to devise an acceptable coronavirus response package to bolster its member states’ hard-hit economies looks like it is about to collapse, and taking center stage is an argument between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. There is still a bloc-wide disagreement over how much of the proposed €750 billion recovery fund should be disbursed, with wealthier states including Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden insisting that no more than €350 billion be distributed as grants and the rest as loans. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte called those terms “blackmail.” That dispute still appears to be the biggest sticking point.
That said, the argument between Orbán and Rutte is now getting more attention. It concerns not so much the size of the bailout or how much of it is distributed via which mechanism, but has more to do with a proposed “rule of law” clause that would allow the EU to freeze or redirect recovery funds in cases where there are concerns about the state of governance and democracy in the target nation. As there constantly are when it comes to Hungary. Feeling seen, as it were, Orbán lashed out personally at Rutte on Sunday, saying that “I don't know what is the personal reason for the Dutch prime minister to hate me or Hungary. But he is attacking so harshly and making very clear that because Hungary in his opinion does not respect the rule of law it must be punished financially.”
It’s easy to point the finger at Orbán here, since he is a far-right tyrant wanna be whose efforts to undermine Hungarian democracy are a big part of the reason this “rule of law” issue is even on the table. But he has a point in that the “rule of law” clause is at this point extremely vague and risks arbitrary enforcement. And it should be noted that Rutte is no hero either. He’s a fiscal conservative who would seemingly prefer that there be no EU bailout package at all, despite the hardship that would inflict on people across the EU (not just in Hungary), and in his own way he’s adopting a nationalist approach to European politics just as Orbán professes. In Rutte’s case he’s trying to fend off a challenge from the Dutch far right, so maybe he’s not as committed to the cause as Orbán, but the end result is pretty much the same.
AMERICAS
FRENCH GUIANA
6655 confirmed cases (unchanged)
37 reported fatalities (unchanged)
According to the AP, the pandemic is highlighting the French government’s neglect of its largest overseas territory:
Months after the virus stabilized in mainland France, it grew in French Guiana. For weeks in June and early July, about a quarter of new daily infections reported in all of France were in French Guiana, which has just 0.5% of the French population. More than 6,500 cases have been recorded in the territory, although officials fear the number of infections is estimated to be much higher.
Its hospitals reached capacity in June, and the French military intervened to ferry patients to the French Caribbean island of Martinique. The national government sent 130 reserve health care workers to French Guiana, with more on the way.
Local officials say a porous border with Brazil and the rapid virus spread there was just part of the problem. They decry a lack of concern from the French mainland for a region where more than half the population lives under the national poverty line — some 10% don’t even have running water — and where it took more than a month to translate the government’s original COVID-19 guidance into all the local languages.
GUYANA
336 confirmed cases (+9)
19 reported fatalities (unchanged)
I don’t want to spin any conspiracies here, especially as it’s late and this update is already plenty long. But I will say it’s interesting that the Trump administration is attempting to push Guyanese President David Granger to drop his challenges to the results of Guyana’s March parliamentary election and leave office, while it’s also asking him to help broadcast US Voice of America media into neighboring Venezuela. Whether or not you believe VOA was US propaganda before Donald Trump took office, it’s pretty clear he’s bending it in that direction (or further in that direction, as the case may be). Seeking to enlist Granger to help push VOA into Venezuela while at the same time sanctioning him certainly suggests that there’s an attempt underway to strongarm him into playing ball. Granger has reportedly refused to do so, which may lead to increasing calls from the administration for his ouster.
UNITED STATES
3,898,550 confirmed cases (+65,279)
143,289 reported fatalities (+412)
Finally, TomDispatch’s Michael Klare says the Pentagon, struggling to maintain its global presence due to the pandemic, is turning to technology to fill in the gaps:
Such stopgap measures, and others like them now being undertaken by the Department of Defense, continue to provide the military with a sense of ongoing readiness, even aggressiveness, in a time of Covid-related restrictions. Were the current pandemic to fade away in the not-too-distant future and life return to what once passed for normal, they might prove adequate. Scientists are warning, however, that the coronavirus is likely to persist for a long time and that a vaccine — even if successfully developed — may not prove effective forever. Moreover, many virologists believe that further pandemics, potentially even more lethal than Covid-19, could be lurking on the horizon, meaning that there might never be areturn to a pre-pandemic “normal.”
That being the case, Pentagon officials have been forced to acknowledge that the military foundations of Washington’s global strategy — particularly, the forward deployment of combat forces in close cooperation with allied forces — may have become invalid. In recognition of this harsh new reality, U.S. strategists are beginning to devise an entirely new blueprint for future war, American-style: one that would end, or at least greatly reduce, a dependence on hundreds of overseas garrisons and large manned warships, relying instead on killer robots, a myriad of unmanned vessels, and offshore bases.