World update: May 12 2020
Stories from Turkey, Afghanistan, Brazil, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
May 11, 868: A woodblock printed copy of a Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra, a Mahayana Buddhist text, is completed. Why is this noteworthy? Because this particular copy, included among a trove of documents discovered in a cave in Duhuang, China, in 1900, is—at least as far as the British Library is concerned—“the world’s earliest dated, printed book.” Thanks to the intact dedication at the end of the text, scholars can determine exactly when, by whom, and for whom the document was produced—it reads “Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 15th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong.” That apparently corresponds to May 11, 868.
The text’s frontispiece (Wikimedia Commons)
May 12, 1364: Jagiellonian University is founded as the “University of Kraków” by Polish King Casimir III, making it the oldest university in Poland. The institution hit a rough patch after Casimir’s death in 1370, but had its funding restored and a permanent location obtained for it by King Władysław II Jagiełło (r. 1386-1434), founder of the Jagiellonian dynasty. After having been known as the Kraków Academy for much of its existence, the university’s name was changed several times around the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, eventually settling on its current moniker in 1817 in honor of the Jagiellonians.
May 12, 1551: The National University of San Marcos is founded in Lima, Peru, under a decree from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Initially called the “Royal and Pontifical University of the City of the Kings of Lima,” it is officially the oldest still active university in the Americas and is sometimes called the “Dean of the Americas” for that reason. The Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, is older, but didn’t receive its official charter until 1558.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for May 12:
4,337,625 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (+85,335 since yesterday)
2,447,309 active cases
292,451 reported fatalities (+5320 since yesterday)
In today’s global news:
The World Health Organization says it has seen “potentially positive data” on a number of prospective COVID-19 treatments but that more research is required on the most promising ones before it can be determined if any are worth pursuing. There have been several preliminary trials that have shown some effectiveness in reducing treatment times, including one involving the antiviral drug remdesivir and another in Hong Kong involving a “cocktail” of three different medications. Research is also proceeding into potential vaccines, but it’s likely that a treatment will be identified first, with a vaccine to follow later or possibly not at all.
The International Water Management Institute’s Alan Nicol writes that the pandemic and its related demand for frequent hand washing has highlighted the lack of clean drinking water in many regions. According to Nicol over 840 million people around the world lack access to clean water, and if that could be remedied it would reduce the overall death toll from disease by six percent.
The German and Estonian governments have put a new global ceasefire resolution before the United Nations Security Council, after the US blocked a French-Tunisian resolution on Friday because it obliquely said something non-derogatory about the WHO. The new resolution keeps the previous one’s call for a worldwide 90 day humanitarian ceasefire to allow countries to focus on responding to the coronavirus, but it’s considerably shorter and it eliminates any mention of UN agencies, oblique or otherwise. The issue now becomes China, which previously threatened to veto any resolution that didn’t mention the WHO explicitly. The oblique reference in the last resolution was supposed to be a compromise between China and the US, which didn’t want any WHO mention.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
47 confirmed coronavirus cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The New Arab is reporting that three ex-Syrian rebels were murdered in Daraa province between Monday and Tuesday morning. There’s been some recent unrest in Daraa but at this point it’s unclear who was responsible. Former rebels are a frequent target, but whether this is pro-government forces exacting revenge, some sort of factional clash with other rebel or ex-rebel groups, or the Islamic State is unknown.
Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman claims that part of the reason the Israeli Air Force has been able to attack targets in Syria with near impunity is that the Russian government is not allowing the Syrian military to use its Russian-made S-300 air defense systems to target Israeli planes. Those systems still being operated by Russian personnel, who are apparently under orders not to fire on the Israelis. I don’t know how reliable Melman is but this seems plausible. Russia wants to maintain its relationship with Israel, and it wouldn’t do to have Russian missiles knocking Israeli planes out of the sky. These Israeli airstrikes are targeting Iran and its allied militias, not the Syrian military, so the Russians don’t really have any interest in stopping them anyway. And there’s always the chance that they could try using the S-300s and find out they’re ineffective, which would be a huge embarrassment for Moscow. Better to just keep them under wraps.
YEMEN
65 confirmed cases (+9)
10 reported fatalities (+1)
At least six fighters have reportedly been killed in over 24 hours of fighting between pro-government and southern separatist forces in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan. It appears the Yemeni government made an advance on the provincial capital, Zinjibar, and the separatists deployed additional fighters to reinforce their position.
TURKEY
141,475 confirmed cases (+1704)
3894 reported fatalities (+53)
The Turkish government on Tuesday took the totally normal and not in any way unhinged step of declaring that Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates have formed an “Alliance of Evil.” As one does. Foreign ministers from all five of those countries met virtually on Monday and wound up issuing a joint statement criticizing Turkey’s recent efforts to grant itself exclusive energy rights in the eastern Mediterranean. That’s an exaggeration, but not much of one given that Turkish ships are drilling in Cypriot waters and that Ankara cut a maritime agreement with Libya’s Government of National Accord late last year that divides much of the region between them, ignoring Greek and Cypriot claims in addition to, uh, international law. This seems to me like a weird fight to pick at a time when the oil and gas markets are so depressed, but I guess that’s why I’m not a diplomat.
According to Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman, the Turks are also angry about a new US-encouraged initiative to settle intra-Kurdish hostilities in northern Syria:
Turkey has begun to openly signal its displeasure with US-backed peace talks between Syrian Kurdish rival groups, raising the specter of failure for the latest US attempt to fulfill what have so far proven irreconcilable goals: to pursue it its partnership with the Kurds and to repair ties with its NATO ally, Ankara, which have been badly frayed because of it.
Turkish disgruntlement was palpable in a May 11 dispatch in Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. It characterized the effort to unite disparate Syrian Kurdish factions as more of a conspiracy aimed at creating “international representation space” for the “terrorist organization in northern Syria.”
The Turks are pressuring Nechirvan Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan and a long-standing Turkish ally who is nevertheless one of the main forces behind the effort to bring the Democratic Union Party (allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey) and the Kurdistan National Congress (allied with Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party) to the negotiating table. An agreement between the factions would undermine Turkey’s claims that the PYD wants to turn northeastern Syria into its own state.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
16,529 confirmed cases (+23) in Israel, 375 confirmed cases (unchanged) in Palestine
260 reported fatalities (+2) in Israel, 2 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Palestine
One Israeli soldier died Tuesday near the West Bank city of Jenin when he was struck by a rock that had emerged from the hand of a nearby Palestinian. I realize that’s a lot of passive phrasing, but since that’s typically how the media phrases things when an Israeli soldier kills a Palestinian I figured I’d adopt the format here. Israeli authorities seem pretty sure who threw the rock and are trying to locate that person.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
4963 confirmed cases (+276)
127 reported fatalities (+5)
Two separate attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday killed at least 40 people in total. In Kabul, gunmen attacked a maternity clinic run by Médecins Sans Frontières, killing at least 16 people including two newborn babies. In Nangahar province, meanwhile, a suicide bomber attacked the funeral of a senior police official, killing at least 24 people and wounding another 68. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Nangarhar attack. Nobody has claimed the Kabul attack, probably because killing newborns isn’t something anybody wants to advertise, but there are reasons to believe that IS was responsible there as well, or failing that an extremist Taliban faction like the Haqqani Network. The main Taliban leadership has mostly stuck to a pledge it made in talks with the US in February to keep hostilities out of major cities like Kabul. Moreover, it seems unlikely that Taliban leaders who are trying to project themselves as future leaders of Afghanistan would have green lit an attack on a maternity clinic.
In the wake of the attacks, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he’d ordered his security forces “to switch from an active defense mode to an offensive one and to start their operations against the enemies.” Whether that impacts the peace process is a new and exciting question.
CHINA
82,926 confirmed cases (+7) on the mainland, 1048 confirmed cases (unchanged) in Hong Kong
4633 reported fatalities (unchanged) on the mainland, 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
Foreign Policy claims it’s received a leaked copy of a dataset of coronavirus cases in China compiled by the National University of Defense Technology in Hunan province. It hasn’t revealed any of the information in the dataset, at least not yet, but if it’s legitimate it could provide a check on the frequently questioned official COVID-19 figures the Chinese government has been releasing. More to come, perhaps.
AFRICA
LIBYA
64 confirmed cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Government of National Accord says that four of its fighters were killed Tuesday in a UAE drone strike near the city of Misrata. The GNA says it responded with airstrikes against al-Jufra airbase in central Libya, where the drones originated.
MALI
730 confirmed cases (+18)
40 reported fatalities (+1)
This is from last month, but Sahel researcher Modibo Ghaly Cissé has written an excellent piece that tries to unpack the complicated role the Fulani people are playing with respect to the region’s Islamist insurgent groups:
Daily life in the Sahel has been punctuated by a rapid rise in violent attacks from militant Islamist groups in recent years. Thousands have been killed and millions displaced since a separatist-turned-militant Islamist conflict erupted in 2012. The disproportionate presence of Fulani among the militant Islamist groups that are responsible for this violence in northern Burkina Faso, western Niger, and northern and central Mali has shattered intercommunal trust and the social harmony for which the region was previously known. This is so despite only a small minority of Fulani having taken up arms and members of other identity groups being present within the extremists’ ranks.
The spread of insecurity in the Sahel has led some observers to simplify the current situation as a “Fulani jihad” or a “Fulani rebellion.” They point to insurgent groups such as Front de Libération du Macina (FLM) led by Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa in central Mali, Ansaroul Islam founded by Fulani Ibrahim Malam Dicko, the Fulani Tolebe fighters from Niger who fought with the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and who are now mixed within the ranks of the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara, and even Ansar Dine and other affiliates of Jamaʿat Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) that contain groups of Fulani fighters.
Fulani stigmatization, in turn, has precipitated the targeting of Fulani communities by neighboring community militias such as the Dozo in central Mali and the Koglweogo in Burkina Faso. These militias have mounted attacks killing hundreds of Fulani civilians that have spurred further recruitment for militant Islamist groups, propelling a deadly revenge-reprisal cycle.
Fulani leaders, thus, are faced with the dual challenge of defusing the group-wide stigmatization while stemming further recruitment from militant groups.
NIGERIA
4787 confirmed cases (+146)
158 reported fatalities (+8)
An estimated 23,000 people have been displaced from northwestern Nigeria into Niger over the past month due to the escalation of violence in that region. They in turn have displaced several thousand Nigeriens. The deteriorating situation in northwestern Nigeria is generally attributed to “banditry,” with little attempt to drill past that. But the sophistication and coordination involved in these “bandit” attacks seems to be increasing, which suggests at least to me that there’s more going on there than simple “bandits.” Alex Thurston and I discussed this situation and the difficulty of drawing any conclusions in what is a very opaque media environment in last week’s podcast.
ETHIOPIA
261 confirmed cases (+11)
5 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok declared Tuesday that he “cannot accept the signing of a draft agreement to the first phase” of the reservoir filling process for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River. This is an interesting role switch because it’s usually the Egyptian government that’s rejecting this or that Ethiopian plan for the GERD, but Hamdok’s concern is the same as Cairo’s, which is that the plan fills the reservoir too quickly, using too much water and leaving too little of it for downstream Nile River dependent states—or in other words, Sudan and Egypt. Unlike Egypt, the Sudanese government actually supports the GERD project in principle, both because it’s hoping to purchase electricity from the project and because it’s hoping the dam might prevent downstream flooding. So Hamdok’s rejection of Ethiopia’s current plan carries quite a bit of weight and should force all three countries back to the negotiating table.
LESOTHO
No confirmed cases
Lesotho Prime Minister Thomas Thabane, under fire for allegedly murdering his former wife and already in the process of being removed from office, apparently told Agence France Presse on Tuesday that he will submit his resignation to King Letsie III on Wednesday. That doesn’t mean he’ll necessarily leave office on Wednesday, given that Lesotho’s parliament isn’t due to elect a new PM until May 22, but it would seem that he’s at least acquiesced to his upcoming departure.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
232,243 confirmed cases (+10,899)
2116 reported fatalities (+107)
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus and is being treated in a hospital. He joins Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who announced his positive test last month, and a couple of other cabinet ministers who have also contracted the virus. I know what you’re all thinking, but Peskov says the last time he met with Vladimir Putin in person was more than a month ago, and Putin has been telecommuting so it’s unlikely he would’ve come into contact with anybody who came into contact with either Peskov or Mishustin.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
177,602 confirmed cases (+8459)
12,404 reported fatalities (+779)
Even as Brazil’s number of coronavirus cases is still climbing precipitously and his approval rating dropping at a similar rate, President Jair Bolsonaro picked a new fight with regional governors on Tuesday by issuing a decree classifying gyms and salons as “essential businesses,” thereby exempting them from lockdowns. While I realize Bolsonaro probably needs a team of people to keep from looking like he’s dying of leprosy each day, there is no objective definition of the term “essential” that includes those places.
Bolsonaro is obsessed with reopening the Brazilian economy as quickly as possible, and he’s testing the limits of his power to classify businesses while daring governors to sue him and have the matter settled in court. If he wins this battle he could very well designate every business in the country “essential” and thereby restart the economy without a single governor’s approval. Failing that he could try to lead a military coup, which is what many of his supporters seem to want anyway. Whether the military would go along with that is an question. What is unquestionable is that Bolsonaro’s actions to date amid this crisis have gotten people killed:
The virus has been particularly hard on Manaus, a hot, humid and remote metropolis of two million in the Amazon rainforest. The city recorded about 2,800 deaths in April, about three times as many as its historical average for the month. The increase is comparable to what Madrid experienced at the peak of its epidemic, from mid-March to mid-April, according to The Times analysis.
The outbreak in Manaus laid bare the consequences of Brazil’s deep economic inequality and polarized politics. Manaus has struggled to obtain the medical equipment it needs, said its mayor, Arthur Virgílio Neto.
“We suffer from the absence of federal government,” said Mr. Virgílio, choking back tears. He has blamed the population’s lax compliance with the lockdown on Mr. Bolsonaro’s public disdain toward social distancing.
VENEZUELA
423 confirmed cases (+1)
10 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Venezuelan authorities have now arrested a total of 40 people in connection with last weekend’s attempted mercenary invasion to oust President Nicolás Maduro. That’s in addition to the eight people killed in the immediate response to the incursion.
NICARAGUA
25 confirmed cases (+9)
8 reported fatalities (+3)
It’s not just anonymous medical personnel who are suggesting that the Nicaraguan government is suppressing its actual COVID-19 statistics. There’s also apparently been a peculiar increase in the number of people dying from unnamed respiratory ailments and then being very quickly buried by Nicaraguan authorities, which I’m sure could be coincidental somehow but probably isn’t. A Nicaraguan NGO called Citizen Observatory claims that it compiled evidence of 1033 cases of coronavirus in the country through Saturday, which would certainly be more in line with figures seen regionally than the extremely low official count. The Nicaraguan government has done nothing by way of lockdown measures, though given the country’s recent political turmoil it’s also become somewhat isolated over the past couple of years and that has probably slowed the onset of the virus there.
UNITED STATES
1,408,636 confirmed cases (+22,802)
83,425 reported fatalities (+1630)
Many countries in Europe, Asia, and Oceania are slowly emerging from coronavirus lockdowns after suffering through the worst of their outbreaks and implementing measures to try to limit or prevent future waves of the virus. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is hell bent on reopening the US economy as quickly as possible at the height of the pandemic without doing any of that other stuff. That’s going to have a lot of unfortunate effects, including a number of international bans on travel from the United States:
One thing is sure: Gone are the days of the American abroad, at least for those hoping to summer in Europe this year. The new models on how to reopen European travel do not have room for the American tourist for the foreseeable future.
The European Union is set to release new guidelines called “Europe Needs a Break” on Wednesday that will recommend replacing travel bans with what they are calling “targeted restrictions” based on contagion levels and reciprocity among European and neighboring nations, many of which have been under draconian lockdowns backed by science. The key to any successful reopening in Europe is based entirely on risk assessment, meaning anyone coming from a nation deemed risky or careless will be the first to be banned. Simply put, anyone who has been under the lax American approach to the pandemic, which has been the laughing stock of Europe, won’t be welcome any time soon.