World update: March 26 2020
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Japan, Italy, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
March 25, 1821: Greek insurrectionists officially declare a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, marking the start of the Greek War of Independence even though the actual fighting had actually begun in mid-February. The war did of course end with Greece seceding from the empire and becoming an independent state, and so this date is commemorated annually as Greek Independence Day.
March 25, 1975: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by his nephew, Prince Faisal bin Musaid, in the royal palace. Prince Faisal was declared legally insane, but it’s possible he was avenging the 1966 death of his brother, Prince Khalid bin Musaid. Khalid was killed by a police officer while leading a protest over King Faisal’s introduction of television into the kingdom. Prince Faisal’s insanity diagnosis was quickly overturned, mostly so that he could legally be executed for the assassination. It was the only violent handover of power in Saudi history…so far, anyway.
March 26, 1344: The third Siege of Algeciras ends with a Castilian victory.
March 26, 1913: A joint Bulgarian and Serbian army captures Edirne (Adrianople), after a siege that began in November of the previous year. The siege proved to be the final major engagement of the First Balkan War, which ended in May with the Ottoman Empire ceding most of its remaining European territory to the Balkan League. The Ottomans, however, were able to take back the city during the Second Balkan War, which was caused by the breakup of the Balkan League due to concerns that Bulgaria had become too powerful, and it remains part of Turkey today.
March 26, 1971: Bangladeshi (or “East Pakistani” at the time) leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman issues a declaration of independence from Pakistan (“West Pakistan”), an act that marks the start of the Bangladesh Liberation War. That conflict ended in December, after an Indian intervention, with Bangladesh a newly independent state, and March 26 is annually commemorated as Bangladeshi Independence Day.
COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic crossed another milestone on Thursday, surpassing half a million cases worldwide—534,386 to be exact, according to BNO News, up 60,217 from yesterday and of which 390,253 are active. The virus has killed 24,182 people, an increase of 2767. It probably bears mentioning more often than I mention it, but these are only official figures and there is a strong likelihood that the virus has actually infected far more people than are being counted.
Leader of the G20 nations met via video conference on Thursday to discuss the pandemic, committing to vague-sounding pledges to resolve supply chain issues and ensure the smooth worldwide flow of necessary goods to combat the coronavirus. They apparently committed to injecting at least $5 trillion in stimulus into the global economy, of which I would expect roughly $4.99 trillion to wind up in the hands of people who don’t really need any more money.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports on the impact COVID-19 is having, and will likely continue to have, on the world’s extremely vulnerable prison populations:
Inside many of these poorly maintained prisons, safeguards such as quarantines, social distancing, sanitary items and even proper health training are rare, say human rights groups and prison monitors. And the restrictive measures some detention facilities have taken, such as suspending prison visits, have sparked tensions and even unrest from Latin America to Europe to the Middle East.
Outside the walls, prisoners’ families dread the coming weeks. “It’s a very dark situation for the families,” said Mona Seif, an Egyptian activist whose brother is jailed at Cairo’s notorious Tora prison.
China and South Korea, among the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus, have reported large outbreaks in their prisons. China alone has reportedly had 806 cases in five prisons across three provinces. In Spain, where the virus is spreading rapidly, 37 prison workers nationwide and two inmates have been infected. On Tuesday, Spanish authorities confirmed that a 78-year-old inmate had died; the facility where the prisoner was held is now under quarantine.
MIDDLE EAST
IRAQ
316 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (unchanged since yesterday, 27 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Two rockets landed in Baghdad’s Green Zone on Thursday near the US embassy, to no apparent effect. Meanwhile, US forces evacuated a second Iraqi military base, the Qayyarah airfield near Mosul. US forces have already withdrawn from a base in western Iraq’s Qaim region as part of a plan to consolidate American personnel. US officials say that consolidation is itself part of a broader plan to hand responsibility for anti-Islamic State operations off to Iraqi forces, though it’s hard not to conclude it’s also an effort to better protect US personnel from hostile pro-Iranian militias. In addition to the redeployment, the US government also (at least according to Iraqi sources) once again renewed Iraq’s waiver to purchase gas and electricity from Iran, though for 30 days rather than the customary 45. Iraq is dependent on Iran for energy and would likely defy US sanctions if push came to shove, so it’s preferable for the US to continue issuing waivers rather than have its sanctions appear weak.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
2693 confirmed cases (+523), 8 reported fatalities (+3) in Israel; 83 confirmed cases (+21), 1 reported fatality (unchanged) in Palestine
The soap opera of Israeli politics experienced another abrupt plot twist on Thursday when opposition leader Benny Gantz engineered his election as speaker of the Knesset and in the process shattered his own political coalition. This means he’s agreed to form a national unity government with Benjamin Netanyahu. Under the terms of that agreement Gantz will serve probably as either Netanyahu’s defense minister or his foreign minister for 18 months (which means his stint as speaker is going to very temporary), after which Netanyahu will rotate out of the prime minister’s office and Gantz will take over. The likelihood that this exchange of power will actually come to pass is probably negligible, but Gantz—whose move can also be taken as an admission that he’d failed to form a working government coalition, probably because of his refusal to work with Arab parties—was apparently willing to accept it rather than risk sending Israel back to a fourth snap election in the middle of a pandemic.
In the process of agreeing to accept Netanyahu’s leftovers, Gantz has apparently brought an end to his Blue and White Party. The co-founder of Blue and White, Yair Lapid—who was going to choose the party’s speaker candidate until Gantz pulled the rug out from under him—has refused to go along with the unity arrangement and is apparently taking most of the party with him into the opposition. Which means that in one very tumultuous day Netanyahu, who may now face trial on corruption charges while serving as PM unless Gantz shields him from that, managed to neuter his main rival and splinter Likud’s main opposition party. Really kind of stunning when you consider Netanyahu wasn’t operating with much leverage here.
I don’t know what Gantz sees happening here. He may believe that Netanyahu is on his way to a conviction, which would now leave Gantz positioned to assume his mantle as the leader of the right/far-right bloc in the Knesset. That’s Gantz’s natural position, notwithstanding all the people who have nonsensically tried to describe him as “center-left” over the past two years. He might believe that Netanyahu really will voluntarily step down in 18 months, though personally I think the Tooth Fairy is more believable. Maybe he genuinely thinks this is the right thing to do, with Israel dealing with the pandemic and most Israelis seemingly hoping for a unity government (or more to the point, hoping they don’t have to vote again anytime soon). Or maybe he just saw no way out after three inconclusive elections, and took what he figured was the best path to some degree of power.
EGYPT
495 confirmed cases (+39), 24 reported fatalities (+3)
The Egyptian government has expelled a journalist for The Guardian, because a few days ago she reported on a study at the University of Toronto that concluded Egypt likely has far more COVID-19 cases than official figures indicate. This is a strong indication that not only does Egypt have far more COVID-19 cases than official figures indicate, the Egyptian government is well aware of it.
SAUDI ARABIA
1012 confirmed cases (+112), 2 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Saudi authorities say they intercepted drones launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels toward the kingdom early Friday. Earlier this week both warring sides in Yemen expressed interest in establishing a ceasefire in order to focus attention on the pandemic, but this would seem to be incongruous with any potential pause in hostilities.
IRAN
29,406 confirmed cases (+2389), 2234 reported fatalities (+157)
The Trump administration on Thursday imposed new sanctions against 15 Iranian individuals and five Iranian companies, proving once again that it has no intention of alleviating pressure on Iran during the pandemic. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo actually used Wednesday’s video conference involving G7 foreign ministers to lobby other countries to tighten the screws on pandemic-hit Iran as well, though he does not appear to have made much immediate headway. Iranian officials, meanwhile, have banned travel between cities in an effort to suppress COVID-19 transmission.
The Iranians also say they have no idea what happened to Robert Levinson, the ex-FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and whose family now believes he died there. The Iranians have long said Levinson wasn’t in their custody, even though it emerged last year that they had a legal case pending against him.
ASIA
KAZAKHSTAN
112 confirmed cases (+32), 1 reported fatality (+1)
The Kazakh government on Thursday reported that country’s first COVID-19 fatality, and in fact the first COVID-19 fatality that’s been reported in any of the five former Soviet Central Asian states. Suspicion remains high that none of the governments of these states have been truthful in their public statements with respect to the pandemic, so this may not in fact be the first pandemic-related death in the region, just the first to be acknowledged. Similarly, the official count of 112 cases of the virus in Kazakhstan may be significantly lower than the actual number of infected.
AFGHANISTAN
94 confirmed cases (+52), 2 reported fatalities (+1)
The Trump administration’s threat to cut $1 billion in US aid to Afghanistan has apparently shaken some things loose in terms of the Afghan government’s talks with the Taliban. Kabul has reportedly agreed to release 100 Taliban prisoners by the end of the month, which may in part be related to a much larger general prisoner release meant to help contain COVID-19. It’s a far cry from the 5000 the Taliban want released as a precursor to talks, but it could be a confidence building measure. If these 100 are released and don’t immediately rejoin the Taliban’s war effort, perhaps the Afghan government would be willing to consider a larger subsequent release.
CAMBODIA
98 confirmed cases (+2), no reported fatalities
The European Union has finally made good on a long-standing threat to impose tariffs on some Cambodian imports in response to human rights abuses by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government. At World Politics Review, analyst Tej Parikh argues that this move is unlikely to have much impact:
Nevertheless, the economic fallout will not significantly threaten Hun Sen’s standing. The direct costs of the sanctions, not including knock-on effects related to lost investment, are around $100 million per year—less than 1 percent of Cambodia’s GDP. The tariffs are also limited to low value-added products that amount to just 20 percent of the country’s EBA preferences. That likely reflects the EU’s own concerns over damaging Cambodians’ livelihoods with wider-ranging measures. Hun Sen will consider the costs manageable, and has even promised tax breaks and wage subsidies to affected workshops to soften the blow. The government is already looking at ways to streamline customs procedures and considering cuts to electricity costs to further support factories.
Hun Sen will be further shielded from the impact of the EU’s modest sanctions by his sheer grip over Cambodia’s state apparatus. The wily leader has been at the helm in Phnom Penh for 35 years, making him one of the world’s longest serving rulers. He maintains control over the military—his son is the commander of the army—as well as the police and judicial institutions, giving him the power to quash any potential dissent linked to the fallout from the EU’s trade sanctions, whether from opponents or loyalists. And with the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, disbanded and the independent media silenced, few voices remain to amplify potential calls for anti-CPP protests.
On top of Hun Sen’s dominance over Cambodian politics and its business community, he’s cultivated good relations with China that should serve him well in making up for whatever economic impact should arise due to new EU tariffs.
INDONESIA
893 confirmed cases (+103), 78 reported fatalities (+20)
Indonesian security forces killed one suspected terrorist and wounded two others in a raid in Central Java province on Thursday. The men were allegedly involved with Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, an extremist group affiliated with the Islamic State.
CHINA
81,285 confirmed cases (+114), 3287 reported fatalities (+10) on the mainland
With information apparently showing that nearly all of its newly confirmed COVID-19 cases were caused by people entering the country, the Chinese government on Thursday more or less barred entry to China, period. Foreign residents of China who aren’t in China right now may find they’re not going to be allowed back for a while, and people who hold visas to enter China will, starting Friday, have those visas reconsidered on a case by case basis. Even Chinese citizens currently overseas are going to have a hard time returning, not so much because they’re being denied entry as because the Chinese government has so drastically cut the number of incoming international flights. That measure may make it harder for Beijing to demonstrate the global leadership it’s been trying to show during the pandemic, since a lot of Chinese foreign assistance typically flies out in the cargo holds of outbound passenger jets.
JAPAN
1401 confirmed cases (+94), 47 reported fatalities (+2)
While Japan has somehow managed to dodge a pandemic that’s hit China and South Korea hard, a spike of 47 new cases of the virus in Tokyo on Thursday raised fears that Japanese luck may be running out. The Japanese government, which has hitherto taken a pretty laid back approach to COVID-19, took some preliminary steps toward declaring a national emergency, and officials are asking residents of the capital to remain home as much as possible for the next three weeks or so. Japan and the International Olympic Committee have already agreed to postpone the 2020 Olympics until 2021, and there are signs that health officials are working to ramp up testing and create additional hospital space for potential coronavirus patients.
AFRICA
MALI
2 confirmed cases (unchanged), no reported fatalities
Opposition leader Soumaïla Cissé was reportedly kidnapped in central Mali on Thursday, along with six other people in his security and political staff. One of Cissé’s bodyguards, who was taken and then released, subsequently died of injuries received during the kidnapping. It’s unclear who was responsible and for obvious reasons suspicion has fallen on Islamist extremists, who are active all over Mali these days. But Cissé’s disappearance/kidnapping comes just days before a parliamentary election scheduled for Sunday, which makes the timing just a bit suspicious.
CAMEROON
70 confirmed cases (unchanged), 1 reported fatality (unchanged)
The Southern Cameroons Defence Forces, one of several armed separatist groups active in Cameroon’s western anglophone region, announced Thursday that it would adopt a two week ceasefire, starting Sunday, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the only one of Cameroon’s separatists groups to take such a step but perhaps it will serve as a trail blazer for others.
EUROPE
GERMANY
43,938 confirmed cases (+6615), 267 reported fatalities (+61)
The German government has so far seemingly done a commendable job responding to COVID-19. Although Germany has seen a high number of confirmed cases, its mortality rate has been one of the lowest in the world at around 0.6 percent, likely due to an aggressive testing and intervention program. It’s even temporarily abandoned its austerity obsession to implement a 750 billion euro economic stimulus package. The success has buoyed the political stature of Angela Merkel’s government. Her Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union alliance is polling at around 36 percent, higher than it’s been at any time since Germany’s 2017 election, while her Social Democratic Union coalition partner has also seen a small bump.
ITALY
80,539 confirmed cases (+6153), 8215 reported fatalities (+712)
In Italy, meanwhile, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s approval rating has also shot up amid the pandemic crisis, even though his government’s response to COVID-19 hasn’t been nearly as effective. After some daily figures earlier this week suggested that Italy might be approaching a crest in the coronavirus wave, Thursday’s numbers demonstrated otherwise. Of particular concern was a spike of around 2500 new cases of COVID-19 in Italy’s Lombardy region, which has been hardest hit by the virus and where it was thought the pandemic might finally be running its course. That suggests that even as signs indicate the virus is migrating into southern Italy, it’s not really easing off in northern Italy as previously hoped.
Italy has begun receiving aid in the form of medical personnel and equipment from Russia, an indictment of what looks like an increasingly frail European Union. Critics are charging that Moscow only provided the aid to discredit the EU, but that elides the point that the EU has put itself in position to be discredited as member states have reacted to the pandemic by reverting to nationalist impulses rather than working as a common bloc. Ironically, the EU marked the 25th anniversary of the free movement Schengen Area on Thursday with most of the bloc’s internal borders closed and amid reports that member states are even starting to swipe medical shipments to other member states. The EU project has arguably never looked shallower than it does now.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
2915 confirmed cases (+360), 77 reported fatalities (+18)
Embattled and embittered Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday that Brazilians “never catch anything,” which must come as something of a surprise to the almost 3000 Brazilians who have already caught COVID-19 (one of whom, lest we forget, may be Bolsonaro himself). It probably also comes as small comfort to Brazil’s indigenous communities, who are demanding that the government force outsiders—chiefly wildcat miners and other people illegally squatting on rain forest land—out of their territories in order to minimize the chances that the coronavirus will spread into their communities. Of course, Bolsonaro is the one who keeps letting those outsiders exploit indigenous land in the first place, so he’s unlikely to be very sympathetic to their pleas.
GUYANA
5 confirmed cases (unchanged), 1 reported fatality (unchanged)
Guyana’s increasingly controversial March 2 election still has not produced a winner, as questions swirl about the reliability of the vote count. According to Saferworld’s Jason Calder, the situation is beginning to exacerbate the country’s racial fault lines:
The predicament in which the country finds itself was tragically predictable. Guyanese of African and Indian descent make up the two largest demographic blocks of the multicultural, English-speaking nation. Indo-Guyanese, descended from indentured laborers imported to work the colonial sugar plantations after the emancipation of enslaved Africans, hold the largest population share of any ethnic group in the country, but their share has been declining. The two groups are seen to support different political parties, Indo-Guyanese the PPP and Afro-Guyanese the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC), which is the dominant force behind the APNU-AFC coalition.
These realities and a winner-take-all constitution interact to create a toxic system that pits the two communities against each other in every election. Under Guyana’s proportional representation electoral system, it takes a mere plurality of votes to win the powerful presidency and appoint the cabinet. Under its party-list system, post-election coalitions are not permitted and parliamentarians are accountable to party chiefs rather than constituents.
There are few checks and balances in the system, although the High Court enjoys widespread confidence. The binary logic of the system effectively marginalizes the concerns of the country’s indigenous peoples—and their unfulfilled land claims—and those of mixed-race people and other ethnicities in the country known as the “Land of Six Peoples,” and of those who simply want to live as Guyanese without a hyphen.
VENEZUELA
107 confirmed cases (+16), 1 reported fatality (+1)
Dramatically ratcheting up its campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration’s Justice Department on Thursday indicted him, along with 14 other senior Venezuelan officials, on multiple charges of narco-terrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking. Apparently Maduro has been pumping cocaine into the US with the help of former FARC rebels in Colombia in an effort to get us all too high to notice his nefarious foul deeds and whatnot. Without this I bet nobody in the US would be doing cocaine, probably. Along with the indictment came a bounty of $15 million for information on Maduro, of the kind that somehow lands him in a US jail or, at least, someplace other than his presidential office in Caracas.
Drug kingpin, apparently (Russian government via Wikimedia Commons)
Normally indicting a head of state is not something one does, or even can do really, but luckily in this case the Trump administration long ago decided to support the claim that opposition leader Juan Guaidó is Actually Venezuela’s president, so Maduro has none of the normal diplomatic protections as far as Washington is concerned. This indictment is nevertheless all but unenforceable. What it does accomplish is giving Trump something on which he can campaign in the rich expat Venezuelan and Cuban communities of states like Florida and…well, mostly Florida. The indictment could also be used as justification for imposing additional sanctions on Venezuela and maybe even designating it as a state sponsor of terrorism, mostly in the hopes of immiserating and/or killing enough Venezuelans that the population rises up to overthrow Maduro. That sort of thing always works.
MEXICO
585 confirmed cases (+110), 8 reported fatalities (+2)
In what I guess you could say is an ironic twist of fate, Mexicans are now lining up along the US border to keep Americans out, due naturally to the pandemic. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not closed the border despite the vastly higher number of COVID-19 cases in the US, probably because he realizes it would enrage Donald Trump and he would rather not do that. AMLO is also under fire for what critics say has been a lackadaisical approach to containment, which has left Mexico right on the cusp of a serious situation according to its official figures.
CANADA
4039 confirmed cases (+630), 39 reported fatalities (+4)
The Trump administration has floated a plan to deploy US soldiers along the Canadian border as part of a pandemic containment plan, something the Canadian government strongly opposes. The US and Canada have closed their border to most non-commercial traffic, but US border patrol simply can’t manage that long a border, especially since most of its resources are devoted to the southern border because of Trump’s obsession with stopping non-white people from getting into the US.
UNITED STATES
85,327 confirmed cases (+16,980), 1294 reported fatalities (+257)
The United States reached a glorious milestone in American Exceptionalism on Thursday as its overall number of confirmed COVID-19 cases surpassed China’s to become tops in the world. We did it everybody! USA! USA! USA! To celebrate, Donald Trump is moving forward with plans to end all this social distancing crap and force Americans to go back to work, where they can die with dignity knowing that they’ve done their part to appease the bull market god.
Finally, with their impact on people all over the world intensified and highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Guelph’s Greg Shupak calls for an end to US sanctions:
Sanctions are war. They may not instantly shred flesh the way bombs and bullets do, but they kill and maim nonetheless.
Subjecting people to such cruelties is indefensible in ordinary times: in the pre-COVID-19 world, America’s economic warfare was killing cancer patients in Iran, keeping Syrian children with cancer from getting necessary medicines, and, according to an estimate by two US economists, killing perhaps forty thousand Venezuelans. But collectively punishing entire populations during a global pandemic is perhaps an even more ruthless form of barbarism.