World update: May 9-10 2020
Stories from Qatar, Libya, Brazil, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
May 8, 1429: The Siege of Orléans ends with the withdrawal of the besieging English forces and, therefore, a French victory. This siege was the first victory by the French army under the leadership of Joan of Arc and helped reverse French fortunes in the Hundred Years’ War. This was not a devastating defeat for the English army, but it seemed likely at the time that if England had captured Orléans it would have been able to conquer all of France. The ensuing Loire Campaign was more decisive, opening up the city of Reims to the French army and giving the French Dauphin Charles the legitimacy to have himself crowned King Charles VII.
Miniature of the siege, from a manuscript of 15th century French poet Martial d'Auvergne’s Vigiles de Charles VII (Wikimedia Commons)
May 8, 1945: The German high command in Berlin signs its instrument of unconditional surrender, providing for the withdrawal and disarmament of the German military and the ouster of the Nazi-led government and ending World War II in Europe. Because the instrument was signed late into the evening, and thanks to the wonder of time zones, Victory in Europe, or “V-E,” Day is celebrated on May 8 in points west of Berlin and on May 9 in most points east of Berlin, like Russia and Israel.
May 9, 1271: Lord Edward, Duke of Gascony—the future King Edward I of England or, if you’re a Mel Gibson fan, Edward Longshanks—lands at Acre to begin what historians now regard as the Ninth Crusade. Edward’s Crusader army was far too small to make any serious gains, in part because the French army that was supposed to join him was wiped out besieging Tunis. But with some assistance from the neighboring Mongolian Ilkhanate he was able to win a number of small victories against Mamluk forces and prevented Sultan Baybars from eradicating the Crusader presence in the region. Admittedly this only bought the Crusaders another couple of decades—Acre, the last Crusader state in the Levant, fell to the Mamluks in 1291—but as Crusades go that counts as a huge success.
May 9, 1865: President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation declaring that the Confederacy’s armed resistance was “virtually” over and obliging any countries or ships at sea that were harboring Confederate fugitives to turn them over to authorities. There were still small rebel units in the field, so the fighting wasn’t completely at an end, but this date is frequently cited as the formal conclusion of the US Civil War.
May 10, 1857: A unit of sepoys in the town of Meerut mutinies against their commanders in the British East India Company, marking the start of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. This was more a widespread series of local uprisings than a unified revolt, and its causes and aims varied from place to place, but overall it proved to be too great a challenge for the EIC to manage. Although British forces did eventually suppress the movement, finally declaring an end to hostilities in July 1859, the result was the end of the EIC’s control of India and the advent of direct crown rule, also known as the British Raj. This had the additional effect of formally ending the Mughal Empire, though Mughal emperors hadn’t held real power in over a century.
May 10, 1869: The First Transcontinental Railroad, a track linking the eastern US rail network to California, opens when Central Pacific Railroad boss Leland Stanford ceremonially drives in the “Golden Spike” at Promontory, in the Utah Territory. The CPRR track, which began at Sacramento, linked up with a section of rail built by the Union Pacific Railroad Company that ran from Omaha to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where it linked up with the eastern network. By November the line had been extended to the Pacific Coast at the Oakland Long Wharf.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for May 10:
4,178,154 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (+79,875 since yesterday)
2,403,976 active cases
283,734 reported fatalities (+3510 since yesterday)
In a last minute plot twist, the United States on Friday blocked a vote in the United Nations Security Council on a French-Tunisian resolution calling for a humanitarian global ceasefire to help focus pandemic response efforts in vulnerable states. Something about the resolution’s mention of the World Health Organization appears to have set the US off, though since it had agreed to the text the day before it’s unclear why it suddenly reversed course. In order to satisfy both the US and China, the text made an oblique reference to “all relevant entities of the United Nations system,” which includes the WHO without spelling it out. The Trump administration naturally blamed China somehow for causing the ruckus, even though the US had previously only objected to an explicit mention of the WHO—to reiterate—it had agreed to this specific language a day earlier only to pull the football back just before the vote.
UN Security Council resolutions are only meaningful when anybody bothers upholding them, and in this case the call for a global ceasefire would surely have been ignored in a number of places. So the practical effect of blocking the vote is questionable at best. Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s action here should rightly be taken as further evidence that the US is a rogue state.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
47 confirmed coronavirus cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Syrian rebels from the Hurras al-Din faction attacked pro-government forces early Sunday morning on the al-Ghab Plain, which is located in northwestern Hama province. At least 35 pro-government fighters and 13 rebels were killed. That’s the biggest death toll in a single engagement in northwestern Syria since a Turkish-Russian negotiated ceasefire went into effect in March. Hurras al-Din is a remnant of the former Nusra Front group that kept its overt allegiance to al-Qaeda while the rest of the organization reformed into what is now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the largest rebel group in northwestern Syria.
YEMEN
51 confirmed cases (+17)
8 reported fatalities (+1)
The World Health Organization announced Sunday that it’s suspending operations in northern Yemen in order to force Houthi officials to start being more forthcoming about the COVID-19 outbreak in areas under their control. So far they’ve only confirmed two cases of the coronavirus, but it is very likely there are considerably more than that. Using the Houthis’ own lack of reporting against them, the WHO declared that it’s reallocating resources to places with larger COVID-19 outbreaks. Like southern Yemen, for example, where authorities have declared the city of Aden “infested” amid a spike in confirmed COVID-19 cases.
LEBANON
845 confirmed cases (+36)
26 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The New York Times’ Ben Hubbard looks at the questionable practices that have brought Lebanon’s economy to the brink of total collapse:
The immediate breakdown was a nationwide shortage of dollars. Since Lebanon produces almost nothing for export, the country’s primary source of dollars has been large deposits from wealthy investors in the central bank, which were needed to maintain the link to the Lebanese pound.
To keep those investments coming, the central bank offered ever-higher interest rates for large deposits, whose yields could be covered only by newer deposits at even higher rates.
That strategy, which analysts have likened to a state-sponsored Ponzi scheme, ran out of gas last year when new depositors suspected the policy was unsustainable and stopped coming. Soon, the real dollars in the bank were far short of the theoretical dollars that had been earned in interest on previous deposits.
That shortage has now hit individual Lebanese account holders, whose banks have either limited dollar withdrawals or stopped handing out dollars altogether. At the same time, the Lebanese pound has lost about two-thirds of its value on the black market, further burdening the lives of people who once moved easily between the two currencies.
EGYPT
9400 confirmed cases (+436)
525 reported fatalities (+11)
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Friday approved a number of changes to the country’s emergency law that will add to his already virtually dictatorial powers. In measures Egyptian officials say are necessary to respond to the pandemic, Sisi will now have the authority to close schools and other public sector institutions and ban any and all gatherings. The new measures also give him the authority to restrict commerce and involve the military justice system in administering civilian law related to lockdown measures, and these measures seem more like naked power grabs than essential pandemic response tools.
QATAR
22,520 confirmed cases (+1189)
14 reported fatalities (+1)
In what was presumably another of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s ingenious plans, it would appear that the Saudis created a fake coup in Qatar earlier this month:
Recent days have seen fresh attempts to create a set of alternative facts in the form of unsubstantiated Twitter rumors and videos that claimed that a coup attempt was underway in the Qatari capital, Doha. An article in the English-language Saudi Gazette on May 3 carried an interview with Sheikh Mubarak bin Khalifa Al Thani, a member of Qatar’s ruling family, asked the Emir to stand down and claimed, implausibly and without providing any evidence, that “Iran and Turkey are controlling Qatar.”
Hours later, early in the morning of May 4, the hashtag “Coup in Qatar” began trending on Twitter alongside videos that appeared to show gunshots being fired and a phalanx of tweets suggesting that senior members of the Qatari ruling family had intervened to remove Sheikh Tamim from power. Analysis by Marc Owen Jones, a Doha-based professor of digital humanities, exposed the videos as having been doctored, and traced a pattern of amplification by prominent Saudi-based Twitter users.
In case you have any doubt, there does not appear to be an actual “Sheikh Mubarak bin Khalifa Al Thani.” Which is too bad because he probably would be a cool guy if he were real. If you didn’t hear about the fictional coup that’s understandable, because the intended audience seems to have been the Saudi people. The goal may have been to divert the narrative away from their Dear Leader’s myriad failures, most recently including the pandemic response and the death of longtime Saudi human rights activist Abdullah al-Hamid while in government custody.
SAUDI ARABIA
39,048 confirmed cases (+1912)
246 reported fatalities (+7)
Speaking of people who either are or may be dead in Saudi custody, Human Rights Watch says that Prince Faisal bin Abdullah, a cousin of MBS who used to run Saudi Arabia’s branch of the Red Crescent Society, was disappeared by authorities in late March and hasn’t been seen since. Faisal was one of many Saudi princes arrested and shaken down back in 2017 during the kingdom’s “anti-corruption drive.” It’s unclear why he’s been detained again but it could be part of an ongoing effort to get rid of any potential threats to MBS’s eventual succession as king.
IRAN
107,603 confirmed cases (+1383)
6640 reported fatalities (+51)
This is a late-developing story, but Iranian media is reporting that one person was killed and several injured in an unspecified mishap during a naval exercise. That’s the official story. There are a whole bunch of unofficial reports that the incident was actually much worse. Those reports say that the mishap was a “friendly fire” incident in which one Iranian support ship was sunk, with upwards of 40 people now missing and possibly dead. If that’s the case there could be major fallout inside Iran, and even the “friendly fire” version of the story leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Maybe more on this in tomorrow’s update, stay tuned.
Iranian authorities say they’re interested in discussing a prisoner exchange with the Trump administration, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Spokesperson Ali Rabiei told Iranian media over the weekend that the government is ready to discuss “all prisoners” with no preconditions but hasn’t gotten a response from the US. The administration has been trying to secure the release of US Navy veteran Michael White, who’s been in Iranian custody since 2018, but if Rabiei is to be believed (and granted that’s a substantial “if”) then the door could be open to discussions about other US nationals being held by Iran—perhaps including dual nationals, whose status is always more precarious than prisoners who do not have Iranian citizenship.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
4402 confirmed cases (+369)
120 reported fatalities (+5)
A protest over food distribution amid the pandemic in Afghanistan’s Ghor province turned violent on Saturday, leaving at least four protesters and two Afghan police officers dead. The demonstrators alleged that Afghan officials are giving an unequal share of food to politically connected people, and the violence seems to have started when they began throwing rocks at police. Some police officers reportedly responded with gunfire. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says it will look into the allegations about the gunfire and about the food distribution.
INDIA
67,161 confirmed cases (+4353)
2212 reported fatalities (+111)
There was a “clash” between Indian and Chinese soldiers along China’s shared but poorly defined border with India’s Sikkim state on Saturday. But before you start running for the fallout shelter, you should know this was just a brawl, apparently, that left seven Chinese and four Indian soldiers injured. These sorts of things are alarmingly not that infrequent, owing to the fact that several spots along the border are not demarcated and so there are areas claimed by both countries.
CHINA
82,918 confirmed cases (+17) on the mainland, 1048 confirmed cases (+3) in Hong Kong
4633 reported fatalities (unchanged) on the mainland, 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
Authorities in northeastern China’s Jilin province reclassified the city of Shulan from medium to high COVID-19 risk on Sunday, suggesting that there may be a new Chinese outbreak of the pandemic looming. Perhaps most troubling from a psychological standpoint is that the Chinese government reported new cases of the virus in Wuhan over the weekend, the first time that’s happened in over a month.
The Chinese foreign ministry on Saturday issued an 11,000 word (!) rebuttal to “24 lies” it says the Trump administration has perpetrated about China’s response to the pandemic. These responses ranged from the reasonable—correctly noting that there’s no evidence to support US conspiracy theories that the virus was created in the Wuhan virology lab—to the questionable—asserting that Chinese officials informed the rest of the world about the pandemic in a “timely” and “open and transparent” way. At the very least that contention is subjective. The upshot is that if you were hoping for a quick improvement in the US-China relationship, I’m afraid I have some bad news.
AFRICA
SUDAN
1365 confirmed cases (+201)
70 reported fatalities (+6)
At least three people were reportedly killed and another 79 wounded on Sunday in clashes between the Bani Amer and Nuba tribes in the eastern Sudanese city of Kassalla. The fighting began on Thursday but really flared up over the weekend. The Bani Amer and Nuba have been feuding across eastern Sudan for months, primarily over scarce water and other resources. The Bani Amer have lived in eastern Sudan for some time, but the Nuba are relatively recent transplants, having been displaced from southern Sudan amid the Second Sudanese Civil War and the ongoing insurgency in that region.
LIBYA
64 confirmed cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Khalifa Haftar’s “Libyan National Army” pounded Tripoli with heavy artillery fire over the weekend in an effort to regain momentum in its offensive to seize the Libyan capital. Heavy shelling hit especially the southern parts of the city, and there were reports of LNA forces making advances into southern Tripoli suburbs, though forces aligned with Libya’s Government of National Accord were reportedly making a counterattack in that area. The city’s Mitiga airport was also targeted, with shelling on Saturday reportedly damaging passenger planes and a fuel tank. Water supplies to the capital were also affected after gunmen reportedly attacked one of the main Libyan water utility’s power stations. GNA-aligned forces have recaptured some territory around Tripoli from the LNA in recent weeks, though they’ve been stymied in attempts to capture the LNA’s main airbase at al-Watiyah and its main forward operating base at Tarhuna.
MALI
704 confirmed cases (+12)
38 reported fatalities (+1)
At least three UN peacekeepers were killed and four more wounded on Sunday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in northern Mali. There’s no indication as to who was responsible.
BURKINA FASO
751 confirmed cases (+3)
49 reported fatalities (+1)
Jihadist insurgents have reportedly been targeting gold mines in northern Burkina Faso in an effort to generate funds for additional attacks. In some areas they’ve instituted protection rackets and are collecting payments from the mines and/or from the communities around the mines. Burkinabe authorities have been trying to shut the mines down in order to prevent them falling into insurgent hands, but many smaller mines are run illicitly so the government’s reach only extends so far. Shutting mines down also risks leaving the miners destitute, with no choice but to voluntarily work with the jihadists in order to make a living.
NIGER
821 confirmed cases (+6)
46 reported fatalities (+1)
More than 20 people were killed on Sunday when “armed bandits” overran three villages in western Niger. It’s unclear who was responsible, though the region—close to the border with Mali—has seen frequent jihadist attacks of late, usually carried out by the Islamic State’s local affiliate.
CAMEROON
2579 confirmed cases (+305)
114 reported fatalities (+6)
The mayor of the town of Mamfe in Cameroon’s South West Region, Ashu Prisley Ojong, was killed on Sunday when his convoy reportedly came under fire from separatist rebels. It was the latest violent incident in the country’s breakaway anglophone region, which has been brutalized by an insurgency that shows no sign of letting up despite calls for a ceasefire because of COVID-19.
EUROPE
MALTA
496 confirmed cases (+6)
5 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Maltese ambassador to Finland resigned on Sunday after posting and then deleting (under duress) a rant on Facebook in which he said “Seventy-five years ago we stopped Hitler. Who will stop Angela Merkel? She has fulfilled Hitler’s dream! To control Europe.” Whoops! The Maltese government says it will apologize to Germany formally. Comparing Merkel to Hitler is beyond the pale, to be sure, but the sentiment is rooted in a growing sense that southern Europe is being denied an economic recovery from the pandemic by a hegemonic, tight-fisted German government and its allies. Which isn’t unreasonable. I’m not saying Merkel should dignify this particular comment with a response, but she might want to note the feelings underlying it.
AMERICAS
ARGENTINA
6034 confirmed cases (+258)
305 reported fatalities (+5)
The Argentine government appears to be on track to default on its international loans within two weeks, making it the second country after Lebanon to do so this year and marking the third time Argentina has done so in the past two decades. The Argentine government of President Alberto Fernández had planned to renegotiate its $66 billion in debt, but those plans have been upended by the pandemic and its related economic downturn, and Buenos Aires now says it cannot meet its debt obligations while maintaining requisite coronavirus response activities. Creditors rejected Fernández’s restructuring plan on Friday and it seems unlikely the two sides will come to a compromise to fend off a default. Fernández, who has been in office for seven months, inherited a crippled economy from his predecessor, Mauricio Macri, and the pandemic has obviously made the situation even worse.
BRAZIL
162,699 confirmed cases (+6638)
11,123 reported fatalities (+467)
You can include the British medical journal The Lancet among those who are unimpressed with Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic:
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic reached Latin America later than other continents. The first case recorded in Brazil was on Feb 25, 2020. But now, Brazil has the most cases and deaths in Latin America (105 222 cases and 7288 deaths as of May 4), and these are probably substantial underestimates. Even more worryingly, the doubling of the rate of deaths is estimated at only 5 days and a recent study by Imperial College (London, UK), which analysed the active transmission rate of COVID-19 in 48 countries, showed that Brazil is the country with the highest rate of transmission (R0 of 2·81). Large cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are the main hotspots now but there are concerns and early signs that infections are moving inland into smaller cities with inadequate provisions of intensive care beds and ventilators. Yet, perhaps the biggest threat to Brazil's COVID-19 response is its president, Jair Bolsonaro.
When asked by journalists last week about the rapidly increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases, he responded: “So what? What do you want me to do?” He not only continues to sow confusion by openly flouting and discouraging the sensible measures of physical distancing and lockdown brought in by state governors and city mayors but has also lost two important and influential ministers in the past 3 weeks. First, on April 16, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, the respected and well liked Health Minister, was sacked after a television interview, in which he strongly criticised Bolsonaro's actions and called for unity, or else risk leaving the 210 million Brazilians utterly confused. Then on April 24, following the removal of the head of Brazil's federal police by Bolsonaro, Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, one of the most powerful figures of the right-wing government and appointed by Bolsonaro to combat corruption, announced his resignation. Such disarray at the heart of the administration is a deadly distraction in the middle of a public health emergency and is also a stark sign that Brazil's leadership has lost its moral compass, if it ever had one.
VENEZUELA
414 confirmed cases (+12)
10 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Venezuelan military said on Saturday that its forces recovered three Colombian light combat vessels on the Orinoco River. That’s a weird coincidence, given that a bunch of mercenaries tried to invade Venezuela last weekend with what the Venezuelan government has claimed was Colombian help. The Colombian navy says the vessels were probably “dragged away by strong river currents,” which, sure, that happens all the time. I think the US lost a destroyer once that way. Colombian officials are apparently trying to negotiate the return of their innocently missing property from the Venezuelans.
UNITED STATES
1,367,638 confirmed cases (+20,329)
80,787 reported fatalities (+750)
Finally, at Foreign Policy in Focus, John Feffer looks at Trump World’s efforts to bury its incompetence under a mountain of conspiracy theories:
The current pandemic presents a grand opportunity for conspiracy theorists. Go on the Internet and you’ll find a bumper crop of lunatic notions:
Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, one of the few sane voices coming out of the Trump administration, is actually “a Deep-State Hillary Clinton–loving stooge,” according to the right-wing American Thinker.
Billionaire Bill Gates helped create the coronavirus so that he could put microchips into people’s heads, argues the unshameable Trump ally Roger Stone.
The pandemic is just a ploy to push vaccines into people’s veins. “Make no mistake, the purpose of the coronavirus is to help usher in vaccine mandates,” writes anti-vaxxer Larry Cook. “Be woke. Know the Plan. Prepare. Resist.”
The rollout of 5G networks caused the coronavirus.
It’s bad enough to be hit by a pandemic and a massive economic downturn. Now we also have to deal with a calamitous collapse in common sense?
Still, all of these conspiracy theories pale in significance next to the crazy and dangerous propositions about China and the coronavirus coming from Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and much of the Republican Party. The other conspiracy theories circulate the Internet like bad memes, chasing their tails until they’re replaced with newer nonsense.
The Trump administration is playing a different game. Desperate to defect responsibility for its own catastrophic failures, Trump is weaponizing his China conspiracies — with considerably greater economic and geopolitical consequences.