World update: May 16-17 2020
Stories from Yemen, Afghanistan, Burundi, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
May 15, 1811: Paraguay’s May 14 Revolution, a military coup against Governor Bernardo de Velasco, succeeds in forcing him to create a three man governing junta including himself and two military appointees. The junta was the first in a series of local governments that increasingly substituted local governance for colonial rule from Spain. Although it was a very long road from here to Paraguay’s formal declaration of independence in 1842, this date and the preceding one are commemorated as Independence Day in Paraguay today.
May 15, 1940: Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald open a small restaurant called “McDonald’s Bar-B-Que” in San Bernardino, California, serving mostly, well, barbecue. A few years later they streamlined the operation to focus on their most popular item, hamburgers. Since as far as I know there are no McDonald’s Bar-B-Que restaurants in existence anymore, I can only assume this disruptive change was the death-knell of their business, and it just goes to show you that innovation isn’t always a panacea. That’s a little business lesson for you folks.
May 15, 1948: The Arab-Israeli War begins.
May 16, 1916: The British government ratifies the Sykes-Picot Agreement, establishing it as the Allied blueprint for the post-war remains of the Ottoman Empire.
May 17, 1997: Having chased Zaire’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, into exile the day before, military forces aligned with Laurent-Désiré Kabila and the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo enter Kinshasa, bringing an end to the First Congo War. Kabila succeeded Mobutu as president of Zaire, which was quickly renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The war, which had begun the previous year when Rwandan Patriotic Front forces invaded Zaire in pursuit of fleeing Hutu génocidaires, was reignited the following year when Kabila expelled his erstwhile Rwandan and Ugandan allies from the country. The Second Congo War technically ended in 2003, though military conflict in the eastern DRC has continued through the present day.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for May 17:
4,799,266 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (+82,257 since yesterday)
2,626,180 active cases
316,520 reported fatalities (+3618 since yesterday)
In this weekend’s global news:
Donald Trump suggested on Saturday that he might restore partial funding to the World Health Organization, but when I say “partial” I mean about 10 percent of what the US provides to the WHO annually. This would put the US contribution on par with China’s and thereby alleviate Trump’s apparent concern that Beijing is getting a free ride on America’s money. Trump suspended the entire US payment to the WHO last month on the supposition that the organization has been too deferential to China in its handling of the pandemic. The Trump administration continues to insist that the United States and China are locked in a global superpower competition for influence on which could hinge the fate of mankind, while simultaneously doing everything it possibly can to lose that competition, if you assume it actually exists. But China makes for a good scapegoat and it’s election season, so there you have it.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says it’s recorded 230 cases of the inflammatory condition that seems to affect children infected with the coronavirus, with two fatalities. Almost nothing is understood about the condition, including whether or not it’s actually caused by the coronavirus or there’s some other kind of correlation. It’s thankfully been fairly rare, but the possible link to SARS-CoV-2 raises questions as to the convention wisdom that only the elderly and people with comorbidities are really at risk.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
58 confirmed coronavirus cases (+7)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that airstrikes in the vicinity of Albukamel near the Iraqi border late Saturday killed at least seven Iran-backed militia fighters. There’s been no claim of responsibility but Israel is the likeliest candidate.
Syrian billionaire Rami Makhlouf posted another Facebook video over the weekend complaining about how he’s being treated by his cousin, Bashar al-Assad. This is the third such video Makhlouf has put online in recent weeks, which suggests he’s somehow protected from Assad’s retaliation. Although, to be fair, Makhlouf says in this video that he’s been ordered to cough up “120 percent” of his telecommunications firm’s profits to the state “or else we will be arrested.” The “we” there seems to include his wife and may include other higher ups at the firm, Syriatel. Makhlouf also says that authorities are demanding his resignation from Syriatel, which seems to be a bigger issue for him than the monetary demand.
YEMEN
128 confirmed cases (+6)
20 reported fatalities (+2)
A UK-flagged tanker named the Stolt Apal was reportedly attacked by pirates about 75 miles off the Yemeni coast in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday. The ship’s guards as well as the intervention of an unknown “coalition” warship (probably on an anti-piracy mission in the region) drove off the attackers. There are a plethora of potential suspects in that region, from African pirates to the Houthis to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Elsewhere, at least 14 people were killed in fighting between Yemeni government forces and southern separatists around the city of Zinjibar on Saturday. Pro-government forces are still trying to take the city, capital of Yemen’s Abyan province, from the separatists, who withdrew from their tentative alliance with the government late last month and seized control over several parts of southern Yemen.
The New York Times examines the role some of the Trump administration’s more loathsome participants have played in boosting US support for the Saudi war effort:
Weapons supplied by American companies, approved by American officials, allowed Saudi Arabia to pursue the reckless campaign. But in June 2017, an influential Republican senator decided to cut them off, by withholding approval for new sales. It was a moment that might have stopped the slaughter.
Not under President Trump.
With billions at stake, one of the president’s favored aides, the combative trade adviser Peter Navarro, made it his mission to reverse the senator. Mr. Navarro, after consulting with American arms makers, wrote a memo to Jared Kushner and other top White House officials calling for an intervention, possibly by Mr. Trump himself. He titled it “Trump Mideast arms sales deal in extreme jeopardy, job losses imminent.”
Within weeks, the Saudis were once again free to buy American weapons.
Navarro, as it turns out, was lobbied by Raytheon, which has made a whole bunch of money selling weapons to Saudi Arabia that were (probably) later used to kill Yemenis. The NYT suggests that the administration has sullied the once noble business of arms sales, which used to be a tool of diplomacy but have now been reduced to simple profit margins for defense contractors. Of course that is willfully naive, but in this as well as many other areas this administration has managed to pull the mask off of longstanding horrors that once had a sort of veneer of respectability about them.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
16,617 confirmed cases (+10) in Israel, 381 confirmed cases (+5) in Palestine
272 reported fatalities (+4) in Israel, 2 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Palestine
China’s ambassador to Israel, Du Wei, was found dead in his Tel Aviv residence on Sunday. There is at this point no reason to regard his passing as anything more than a natural event, but it still seemed worth noting.
Israel finally has a real government again, as the Benjamin Netanyahu-Benny Gantz led national “unity” government was approved by the Knesset in a Sunday vote. The Israeli people had been living under a series of interim governments since the first of three inconclusive elections last April. The two will share power, with Netanyahu serving as prime minister for 18 months while Gantz inhabits the made-up office of “alternate prime minister.” In 18 months they’re supposed to switch roles, though it’s hard to imagine a scenario under which Netanyahu doesn’t pull the rug out from under Gantz by forcing a new election.
EGYPT
12,229 confirmed cases (+510)
630 reported fatalities (+18)
The Arab Center’s Khalil al-Anani looks at how Pharaoh Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is using the pandemic to bolster his royal stature:
Like other authoritarian regimes around the globe, the government in Egypt is exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the guise of fighting the coronavirus, it is cracking down on critics and imposing more restrictions on personal freedoms. Egypt’s repressive regime, led by General Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, has taken several political measures over the last two months ostensibly to control the outbreak of the disease. These actions will have a long-term impact on Egypt’s political life that goes beyond the coronavirus crisis. Externally, Sisi is employing the pandemic as a way to score political points and improve his regime’s image on the international stage. Since the global outbreak of COVID-19, Egypt has dispatched medical shipments to a number of countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Italy. The irony of sending these supplies out of the country while Egypt itself is grappling with fighting the coronavirus is striking. In fact, Egypt’s politicization and exploitation of the coronavirus pandemic cannot be overlooked and should be examined closely.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
6664 confirmed cases (+262)
169 reported fatalities (+1)
Political rivals Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah finally settled their dispute over the outcome of last year’s presidential election, agreeing Sunday to a deal that redefines their current power-sharing relationship but in principle leaves it basically intact. Under the terms of the arrangement Ghani will remain president, while Abdullah assumes a new role as chair of the High Council for National Reconciliation, the body leading peace talks with the Taliban. Abdullah will also get to appoint half of the new cabinet, though it’s not entirely clear which ministries he’ll control. It doesn’t appear he’ll get either the finance or foreign ministries, but he’s likely to get at least one major portfolio—interior, perhaps. The agreement will allow Kabul to focus on negotiating with the Taliban and even clarifies things a bit by making Abdullah the point person for those talks. That is, assuming it’s not too late to revive them.
Easily the Ghani-Abdullah agreement’s most charming feature is that it rewards former Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum by giving him a promotion. Dostum, a general in the Afghan army and the most influential Uzbek politician in Afghanistan, served as Ghani’s vice president until he opted to flee into exile in Turkey in 2017 rather than potentially face prosecution for the (alleged, I guess) kidnapping and rape of one of his rivals within the Uzbek community. Despite that little hiccup on his record, Abdullah was willing to accept Dostum’s support last year, and he’ll now get a bump in rank from general to marshal. So that’s nice.
PAKISTAN
40,151 confirmed cases (+1352)
873 reported fatalities (+59)
Pakistani ambassador to the US Asad Khan suggested on Saturday that Islamabad would be open to the Indian government opening its own dialogue with the Afghan Taliban as part of the stalled peace process. US Afghan envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had previously suggested that such a dialogue might be helpful, but it’s longstanding Pakistani policy to resist any direct communications between India and the Taliban, who have been a Pakistani client. Khan didn’t exactly endorse the idea, but he sounded like the Pakistani government wouldn’t interfere if New Delhi were to take that step.
AFRICA
LIBYA
65 confirmed cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Artillery fire hit a displaced persons shelter in Tripoli on Saturday, killing at least seven people. It’s unclear which side was responsible, but the Government of National Accord accused Khalifa Haftar’s “Libyan National Army” of the deed.
It’s been well-reported that Haftar is getting support from the Russian government via its Wagner Group private military company. But a new United Nations report finds that another Haftar backer, the United Arab Emirates, has also been providing Haftar with some very helpful mercs:
The report said the mercenaries were affiliated with Lancaster 6 DMCC and Opus Capital Asset Limited FZE, both registered at free zones in the United Arab Emirates, and traveled to Libya in June 2019 for a “well funded private military company operation” to support Haftar, who is fighting to dislodge the United Nations-recognized government.
Opus and Lancaster 6 financed and directed an operation to provide Haftar’s forces with helicopters, drones and cyber capabilities through a complex web of shell companies, according to two diplomats who briefed Bloomberg on the contents of the UN Panel of Experts report shared with the Security Council’s sanctions committee in February. The diplomats also shared excerpts of the report with Bloomberg. UN officials declined to comment as the report is not public.
The team of about 20, led by South African national Steve Lodge, arrived in Libya in late June 2019 and abruptly pulled out a few days later, leaving the North African country aboard two boats to Malta. UN investigators said in the report they were unable to determine why the team pulled out, but that the explanation provided by their lawyers — that they were providing services related to oil and gas — was not convincing.
SOMALIA
1421 confirmed cases (+64)
56 reported fatalities (+1)
An al-Shabab suicide bomber killed the governor of Somalia’s Mudug region on Sunday, along with three of his bodyguards. His death makes two governors in Somalia’s autonomous Puntland state assassinated by al-Shabab in the past three months.
BURUNDI
23 confirmed cases (+8)
1 reported fatality (unchanged)
Burundian authorities booted the World Health Organization out of the country a couple of days ago, probably because the WHO keeps airing its concerns about plans to hold a general election on Wednesday. But these are serious concerns, not just because of the potential for spreading the coronavirus but because those same authorities are using the pandemic to justify problematic measures like limiting the involvement of international election observers. That’s adding to tensions over what Al Jazeera reports has already been a very tense campaign:
The vote will mark the end, more or less, of the often violent three term presidency of incumbent Pierre Nkurunziza, and the outcome will determine whether the next president emerges from the opposition or from Nkurunziza’s CNDD-FDD party. If it’s the latter, then a whole lot of opposition figures fear that Nkurunziza is going to keep running the country from behind the scenes. Any action that reduces electoral transparency is going to raise fears that something untoward is about to happen.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
327 confirmed cases (unchanged)
No reported fatalities
Another Al Jazeera video report looks at a recent escalation in violence in the CAR, which is threatening to undermine its fragile February 2019 peace accord:
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
1455 confirmed cases (unchanged)
61 reported fatalities (unchanged)
At least 20 civilians were killed in an overnight attack on a village in the DRC’s Ituri province. There’s no confirmation on the perpetrators, but suspicion is falling heavily on the Cooperative for the Development of Congo, a paramilitary group made up predominantly of members of the Lendu ethnic group. The victims were predominantly members of the Hema ethnic group, which has been involved in an extended conflict with the Lendu largely rooted in the age old farmer (Lendu) vs. herder (Hema) rivalry.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
241,080 confirmed cases (+7938)
16,118 reported fatalities (+485)
The coronavirus may have spread into Brazil’s indigenous Tikuna community this month—there’s no way to know for sure because the Brazilian government hasn’t provided them with medical care—raising fears around what could be a nightmare scenario:
The Tikuna’s plight illustrates the danger from the coronavirus as it spreads to rainforest areas where tribe members live in close quarters with limited medical services. Most are reachable only by boat or small aircraft.
“We’re very worried, mainly because help isn’t arriving,” Sinésio Tikuna said in a telephone interview.
Brazil has Latin America’s highest COVID-19 death toll, with more than 15,000 as of Sunday. The country’s hardest hit major city per capita is in the Amazon — Manaus, where mass graves are filling up with bodies.
EL SALVADOR
1338 confirmed cases (+73)
27 reported fatalities (+1)
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele decided on Saturday to extend that country’s state of emergency, which was to have expired on Sunday. Seems normal, except that Bukele may not have the authority to do something like that without congressional approval, which of course he didn’t have. I mean, Bukele says he was within his rights, but El Salvador’s attorney general appears to disagree, as do several members of congress. And I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to Salvadoran politics lately, but it’s not as though Bukele has demonstrated an abiding commitment to democratic norms and the executive-legislative separation of powers. Congress was expected to pass its own emergency extension on Monday, which it still might do rendering Bukele’s decree superfluous. But there could still be some legal action over this business.
UNITED STATES
1,527,664 confirmed cases (+19,891)
90,978 reported fatalities (+865)
Finally, Donald Trump seems to be ridding himself of pesky inspectors general throughout the executive branch lately. Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch report that his most recent sacking, of State Department IG Steve Linick, is raising some major red flags:
With Linick’s ouster, some State Department officials felt Pompeo had effectively kneecapped the power and independence of the Office of Inspector General (OIG). “We are all pissed,” said one State Department official, who questioned how the office could maintain its political independence and impartiality in future investigations. “Without someone nonpolitical, what hope is there for us to go to OIG and use this tool? How can I feel comfortable calling even the anonymous tip line to report waste fraud and abuse?”
“It seems like a lot of people are getting fired for doing their job,” another official said. “It just makes me afraid.”
The move also infuriated Democratic lawmakers sitting on the committee that oversees the State Department. “This firing is the outrageous act of a President trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the Secretary of State, from accountability,” Engel, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr. Linick’s firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.”
The investigation into Pompeo, in case you’re wondering, involved allegations that Pompeo assigned a staff assistant to perform such critical diplomatic functions as walking his dog and picking up his dry cleaning. But that’s just one of myriad accusations that have been leveled at the secretary. Among other things, he’s allegedly turned diplomatic trips into vacation opportunities for himself and his wife, inserted his unappointed wife into the leadership hierarchy within the State Department, used State Department aircraft to ferry his ample backside to and from Kansas back when he was considering a Senate run there, and tasked diplomatic security staff to perform other personal errands on his behalf.
I’m sure it’s all just a series of misunderstandings, because we all know that Donald Trump cleaned up the swamp and his administration couldn’t possibly be outrageously corrupt. Anyway, the simplest way to make sure there is no corruption happening is to get rid of all the people whose job involves investigating and identifying corruption. If you think about it that way then these IG firings make perfect sense.
Just two buddies hanging out, protecting one another, and maybe doing a few crimes together although how are you going to prove anything now, suck it losers (State Department photo)