World update: March 19 2020

Stories from Iran, India, Nigeria, and more

Mar 20, 2020

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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

March 18, 1921: The Peace of Riga formally ends the 1919-1920 Polish-Soviet War. The Poles emerged somewhat victorious, though the Soviets were able to blunt an attempted Polish offensive in Belarus and eastern Ukraine. Nevertheless, the newly-independent Poland was able to regain some of the territory that had been lost to the Russian Empire during the three 18th century partitions of Poland, while Russian leaders’ ambitions to export the Soviet revolution throughout Europe were blunted. Poland’s borders with what had by then become the Soviet Union were of course redrawn again during and after World War II.

March 18, 1965: During the Voskhod 2 space mission, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first person to conduct a spacewalk. Leonov exited the Voskhod spacecraft and spent 12 minutes, 9 seconds in space. The mission’s end the following day almost became a tragedy when weather forced the capsule to touch down off course, in the heavily forested Upper Kama Upland region. Leonov and his fellow cosmonaut, Pavel Belyayev, had to spend the night in the forest because the terrain made their planned airlift impossible and ground rescuers couldn’t reach them until the following day.

March 19, 1279: A heavily outnumbered Mongol (Yuan) fleet defeats a Song Dynasty fleet at the Battle of Yamen, today in China’s Guangdong province. Despite the disparity in numbers, the Yuan were able to blockade the Song fleet in Yamen’s harbor until it ran out of food and water, and then once the Song were desperate enough to attack the Mongols engaged in a ruse to drawn them into an engagement unprepared. In the wake of the defeat, the young Song Emperor Zhao Bing committed suicide, bringing the Song Dynasty to an end and leaving China entirely in Mongolian hands.

March 19, 1962: French and Algerian forces begin a ceasefire under the newly agreed Évian Accords that would mark the end of the fighting in the Algerian War of Independence. The Accords laid out the terms of Algerian independence while preserving some French commercial and military interests, and were put to an April referendum in France and a July referendum in Algeria, winning approval in both.

COVID-19

According to BNO News, there are now 246,722 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide. Of those, 150,490 are active cases and there have been 10,178 fatalities due to the pandemic.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

According to The New Arab, the Syrian military killed at least eight civilians in shelling a village in Daraa province on Wednesday evening. The shelling was in response to an attack on an army position that killed two Syrian soldiers, which itself was apparently a retaliation for an earlier incident in which a pro-government paramilitary group gunned down three former Free Syrian Army leaders.

In northwestern Syria, meanwhile, two Turkish solders were killed and another wounded in what the Turkish military says was a rocket attack by “radical groups” in Idlib province on Thursday. They’re the first two Turkish soldiers killed in combat in Idlib since a ceasefire negotiated by Turkey and Russia took effect earlier this month. It’s unclear what “radical groups” were responsible and whether they were pro- or anti-government. Another Turkish soldier died on Wednesday night in Idlib of an apparent heart attack.

IRAQ

(177 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 12 reported fatalities)

The US led coalition in Iraq has halted training activities with the Iraqi military in light of the pandemic. The Iraqi military is trying to minimize large gatherings of its forces in order to contain the virus, which naturally makes it difficult to train.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

(573 confirmed cases in Israel, 47 in Palestine, no reported fatalities)

Israel’s Mossad spy agency swept into action this week to try to alleviate the coronavirus crisis, covertly obtaining some 100,000 COVID-19 test kits from an unknown source, probably in the Persian Gulf. This sort of decisive move was welcome news to Israeli policymakers…or at least it would have been, except for the fact that the test kits are apparently incomplete and therefore useless. Oops. Israeli officials are reportedly trying to obtain the missing component, a liquid that is necessary for conducting the tests.

EGYPT

(210 confirmed cases, 6 reported fatalities)

The Egyptian government is imposing a 7 PM to 6 AM curfew on commercial establishments, excluding pharmacies and some shops involved in the food business (grocery stores, bakeries, and so forth). The measure will run at least through the end of the month. Meanwhile, human rights groups are calling for the release of prisoners to fend off the possibility of a coronavirus outbreak in the penal system. Egyptian officials have banned visits to prisons as a measure to protect the civilian population, but don’t seem inclined to do anything to protect the prisoners inside those facilities.

QATAR

(452 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The pandemic has hit one of the poorest and most vulnerable populations in the Middle East—Qatar’s migrant workers. Qatar has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the Persian Gulf, and authorities have already closed down parts of Doha’s industrial area, where many workers live in squalid conditions. It’s unclear how many people the Qataris have placed under quarantine or what, if any, measures they’re taking to prevent the spread of the virus among the migrant population.

IRAN

(18,407 confirmed cases, 1284 reported fatalities)

The Trump administration on Thursday announced new sanctions targeting five Iranian firms. At Responsible Statecraft, Barbara Slavin notes the outpouring of nearly universal support to help Iran weather its COVID-19 outbreak:

As Iran confronts a crisis that could kill millions of its citizens, much of the rest of the world, except for the United States, is coming to its aid.
China, the original source of the novel coronavirus, has sent medical experts and planeloads of supplies to Iran, the third most affected country after China and Italy.
Iran’s neighbors, and sometime rivals, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, have also provided cash and goods, setting aside their other differences with the Islamic Republic.
Britain, France, and Germany, the so-called E3, stepped forward, pledging $5.6 million as well as medical goods, including equipment for lab tests, protective body suits, and gloves. “France, Germany and the United Kingdom express their full solidarity with all impacted by COVID-19 in Iran,” the E3 wrote in a statement. “We are offering Iran a comprehensive package of both material and financial support to combat the rapid spread of the disease.”
And what of the world’s greatest power?

SPOILER ALERT: we’re not helping. People are dying and there’s an opportunity to build some genuine diplomacy with Iran while helping to save their lives, but we’re clearly not interested.

ASIA

GEORGIA

(40 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The Georgian government has shut down all retail shops except grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations. Although Georgia only has 40 confirmed cases of the virus right now, it’s got around 1200 people in quarantine who may potentially be infected.

AZERBAIJAN

(34 confirmed cases, 1 reported fatality)

Not one to let an opportunity slip away, Azerbaijani president/dictator Ilham Aliyev suggested in his Nowruz address on Thursday that he’s going to use COVID-19 as an excuse to crack down on his country’s already pretty limited political opposition. Aliyev argued that his opponents constitute a “fifth column” and are engaged in “provocations” against his government. Those “provocations” amount more or less to criticizing his response to the pandemic and boycotting his sham parliamentary election last month.

INDIA

(173 confirmed cases, 4 reported fatalities)

The Indian government has barred all incoming flights for one week effective March 22, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued an appeal to the Indian people to stay home to arrest the spread of the virus. Modi wants Indians to obey a full day curfew on Sunday. Of particular concern, given the impact that religious pilgrimages have had on the spread of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia, Modi has to be worried about a massive planned pilgrimage to Ayodhya later this month to celebrate the construction of a new Hindu temple there. Hundreds of thousands are expected to attend, which could make the whole shindig quite a playground for the virus.

Modi is between a rock and a hard place here, as his heavily Hindu nationalist politics can’t very well accommodate asking devout Hindus to tone it down (indeed, the construction of the temple to Rama in Ayodhya, on the site of a former mosque, has been a major achievement for Modi and his political movement), but at the same time he’s looking at a serious risk of new COVID-19 cases, particularly inasmuch as testing in India has not been sufficient and there are likely a number of COVID-19 carriers out there who don’t know they have the virus.

BANGLADESH

(17 confirmed cases, 1 reported fatality)

Speaking of pilgrimages and COVID-19, at least 10,000 people and possibly upwards of 30,000 gathered in the town of Raipur on Wednesday for a mass prayer event to ward off the virus. Ironically that’s the kind of thing that does the opposite of warding off the virus. As in India, there’s good reason to believe that the low number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Bangladesh has more to do with a lack of testing than with the actual state of the pandemic there.

INDONESIA

(309 confirmed cases, 25 reported fatalities)

On the plus side, the pilgrimage event in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province that we discussed yesterday has apparently been canceled. Unfortunately, thousands of people had already arrived, so some damage may have been done regardless.

CHINA

(80,928 confirmed cases, 70,420 recoveries, 3245 deaths)

In positive pandemic news, for the first time since COVID-19 first identifiably emerged in the city of Wuhan in December, Chinese officials reported no cases of domestic transmission of the virus on Thursday. China did have 34 new cases of the infection but all involved people entering the country from overseas. Additionally, further study now suggests that the virus may have been less deadly in Wuhan than commonly thought. Most reporting on COVID-19 has cited a mortality rate of around 3.4 percent, but this new research suggests it may have been as low as 1.4 percent. The mortality rate for people 60 and older was 2.6 percent, however, so countries with a higher percentage of older people may see a higher death toll (though they’re also operating with the benefit of knowing the virus’s severity, whereas Chinese authorities had to learn that on the job, so to speak).

AFRICA

LIBYA

According to the United Nations, the “Libyan National Army” shelled the town of Ain Zara, just south of Tripoli, on Thursday, killing at least nine people. Several of the dead were children. The UN has been calling for a coronavirus-inspired ceasefire in Tripoli but to no apparent avail.

MOROCCO

(58 confirmed cases, 2 reported fatalities)

The Moroccan government has arrested at least 12 people on charges that they’re spreading #FakeNews about the pandemic. One woman apparently denied that the coronavirus existed on her YouTube channel. This effort to silence ostensibly irresponsible voices is running up against the Moroccan government’s less-than-stellar reputation when it comes to protecting civil rights, especially when it comes to dissenting political speech.

MALI

A militant attack on a military base in the northeastern Malian town of Tarkint on Thursday killed at least 29 soldiers. There’s been no claim of responsibility and groups aligned with both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have been active in the area.

BURKINA FASO

(27 confirmed cases, 1 reported fatality)

Burkinabe authorities announced that country’s first COVID-19 fatality on Thursday, which also happens to be the first reported COVID-19 fatality in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Along with South Asia and Southeast Asia, there continues to be a fear that the pandemic will catch on in sub-Saharan Africa and that the current availability of testing will not be enough to track it.

NIGERIA

(8 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The Carnegie Endowment’s Matthew Page explores the allure of Dubai for wealthy Nigerians looking to sock away the money they’ve (usually illegally) siphoned out of their own country:

The case of Nigeria—home to Africa’s largest economy and the world’s seventh most populous country—offers valuable insights into this phenomenon. For Nigerian PEPs [“politically exposed persons”] in particular, Dubai is an accessible oasis far away from the political drama in their capital, Abuja, or the hustle and bustle of their biggest city, Lagos. But a dearth of specific information about Nigerian PEPs’ property in Dubai has long precluded a deeper analysis of the share of illicit financial outflows from Nigeria; that is, until 2016, when the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (now known as C4ADS) acquired the data of a private database of Dubai real estate information (dubbed the “Sandcastles” data). At least 800 properties were found to have links to Nigerian PEPs or their family members, associates, and suspected proxies. With such information and continued monitoring, Nigerian and Emirati authorities and national and international actors could ramp up their scrutiny on high-end property transactions involving Nigerian elites to ensure that these purchases are not being made with pilfered public funds. The two countries could also deepen bilateral law enforcement cooperation by sharing information and assisting investigations more responsively and routinely. For their part, Western governments, the United Nations, and other international organizations could press the UAE to make its property and corporate records more transparent.

SOMALIA

(1 confirmed case, no reported fatalities)

US Africa Command says it carried out an airstrike last week near Mogadishu that killed five “terrorists” and, of course, no civilians. But The Intercept has learned of at least two reports of civilians killed in that strike, which hit a minibus, and another report from a Somali lawmaker who claims between four and six civilians were killed in the strike. Africa Command never acknowledges civilian casualties in its strikes and never really bothers to check, though it claims that it does try to assess collateral damage. Independent research suggests that the civilian death toll from US strikes in Somalia, the frequency of which has gone up significantly under the Trump administration, is far higher than the Pentagon admits.

EUROPE

SERBIA

(103 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The Serbian government on Thursday closed its borders and airports to passenger traffic from outside the country. Freight and humanitarian services will be unaffected. The Serbian government is warning of a maxed-out healthcare system and has begun procuring medical supplies and expertise from China, after the European Union restricted exports of the former.

ITALY

(41,035 confirmed cases, 3405 reported fatalities)

Italy hit a gruesome milestone on Thursday as its COVID-19 death toll surpassed China’s, despite Italy having experienced about half the number of cases. That suggests Italian authorities haven’t done enough testing, but it could also be due to the fact that Italy’s population skews much older than China’s and older patients are at greater risk of dying.

FRANCE

(10,995 confirmed cases, 372 reported fatalities)

French authorities reported steep increases in both the number of new COVID-19 cases (up by 1861) and fatalities (up by 108).

MONACO

(10 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

Monaco may only have 10 confirmed cases of COVID-19, but one of them happens to be the country’s head of state, Prince Albert II. He’s reportedly continuing to work, counting his money or whatever it is billionaire princes do, from home.

Stay strong; I know we can get through this together (Wikimedia Commons)

AMERICAS

ARGENTINA

(97 confirmed cases, 2 reported fatalities)

Argentine President Alberto Fernández has announced a mandatory stay-at-home quarantine in effect starting Friday through at least the end of the month. People will be permitted to leave home for work as well as to obtain food and medicine/healthcare.

BRAZIL

(635 confirmed cases, 7 reported fatalities)

With the number of cases and deaths rising in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, decided to cause a diplomatic incident with China this week by blaming Beijing for the spread of the coronavirus. Chinese officials reacted angrily and the usual diplomatic squabbling ensued. Whatever you believe about China’s early response to the pandemic it is undeniably the case that pointing fingers Beijing’s way will not save a single person from contracting the virus now. It is also undeniably the case that, like his kindred spirit Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro would much rather have people talking about his (or his son’s) diplomatic offenses than about the myriad ways he and his government botched their own initial response to the pandemic, since the latter is starting to hurt him politically.

HAITI

(2 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

After acknowledging its first confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday, the Haitian government declared a state of emergency, closed Haiti’s borders, and imposed a national 8 PM to 5 AM curfew. Haiti had already tried to limit incoming travelers in hopes of keeping the virus out of the country altogether, but clearly that didn’t work.

GREENLAND