World update: November 14 2019
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, and more
THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
November 13, 1918: Allied forces occupy Istanbul. Under the Armistice of Mudros, which signified the Ottoman Empire’s surrender, Allied soldiers were permitted to occupy the empire’s Bosphorus Fort, but a military occupation of the city was something of a gray area. Still, the Ottomans were in no position to object. The later Treaty of Sèvres would have made Istanbul an “international city,” but the Turkish War of Independence and subsequent Treaty of Lausanne incorporated it into the new Republic of Turkey.
November 13, 1956: Israeli forces attack the West Bank village of Samu in retaliation for a Palestinian bombing a couple of days earlier. The battle left 16 Jordanian soldiers, three civilians, and one Israeli soldier dead and contributed to two later events—the 1967 Six Day War and the breakdown in Palestinian-Jordanian relations that culminated with the Black September events of 1970. It also led to a joint condemnation of Israel’s actions at the United Nations by France, the UK, the US, and the USSR, which needless to say was a rarity.
November 14, 1965: The Battle of Ia Drang, the first major engagement between the United States and the North Vietnamese Army, begins. It ended on November 18 with both sides claiming victory, though the NVA’s ability to fight the much better armed US army to a draw was a boost to their morale and probably the battle’s greatest and longest-lasting effect.
November 14, 2001: Fighters with the Northern Alliance enter and occupy the city of Kabul, marking the effective end of the US war in Afghanista—just kidding. I had you going there for a second, didn’t I?
MIDDLE EAST
YEMEN
Reuters says the Saudis are “intensifying” their back-channel talks with the Houthis to try to bring the Yemen war to an end. They’re looking to build on the framework they established in settling (for now, at least) the beef between the Yemeni government and southern separatists, which basically involved giving the separatists control of a couple of government ministries in return for them standing down. Before they get anywhere near a political settlement, though, the Saudis will need to negotiate a sustained ceasefire with security guarantees, especially along their Yemeni border.
TURKEY
The recent success that Turkey has had in repatriating foreign Islamic State fighters hasn’t just been about Ankara’s pressure. Several European courts have begun issuing rulings obligating their governments to take back citizens who went to Syria to join the extremist group. Many of these are non-combatants, including children taken to Syria by their parents, but for those who represent a security concern it’s going to be interesting to see how their home countries take them back legally without either turning them loose or, at best, trying them on relatively minor charges that don’t carry much of a prison term. The fact is that many of them, even the fighters, committed their most serious crimes in Syria and/or Iraq, not at home. So there’s not much with which they can be charged once they’re back in their own countries.
IRAQ
Iraqi security forces murdered another four protesters in Baghdad on Thursday amid an offensive to push them back into Tahrir Square. The goal is to contain the demonstrators in the square, surround it, and then carry out mass arrests (best case) or mass killings (worst case) to bring the protests to an end. They have been able to drive demonstrators away from the Green Zone in recent days but do not appear to have made any progress on Thursday.
This is what Tahrir Square looked like on October 25—I don’t imagine it’s changed much since then (Xequals via Wikipedia Commons)
LEBANON
According to two Lebanese broadcasters, the country’s political factions have agreed to make former finance minister Mohammad Safadi Lebanon’s new prime minister. Safadi’s name emerged from a meeting between current PM Saad al-Hariri and representatives of Hezbollah and the Shiʿa Amal party. Hariri has been angling to retain his post but to appoint a “technocratic” cabinet around himself. More to the point, he’s been trying to use Lebanon’s unrest to justify forcing Hezbollah, Amal, and the Maronite Free Patriotic Movement party—his main rivals—out of the government. Those parties have resisted, and the compromise may be that they’ll go but Hariri has to go too. It remains to be seen exactly how “technocratic” the next cabinet will be—protesters have been demanding a completely depoliticized government but leaders like President Michel Aoun have poured cold water on that idea.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have agreed on a ceasefire after a new round of rocket attacks and Israeli strikes—kicked off when the Israelis killed a senior PIJ leader in a missile strike early Tuesday morning—killed at least 34 people (all of them in Gaza). The Israeli military claims that 25 of those were “confirmed militants,” whatever that means. Hamas managed to stay out of the fighting, which probably prevented escalation and very likely has left it in a stronger position to control PIJ moving forward. However, already there are signs that this ceasefire may be flimsy. PIJ claims that under the deal the Israelis have promised to stop gunning down protesters at the Gaza fence every week, but the Israelis will only say that they’ve agreed to a basic ceasefire without any additional terms. So that could be a recipe for discord as soon as tomorrow’s Gaza protest.
UPDATE: There’s apparently been another major exchange of fire on Friday morning, though no casualties have been reported so far. This could be one isolated exchange before the ceasefire really kicks in or it could mean the ceasefire is kaput—it’s too early to know.
KUWAIT
The Kuwaiti government resigned en masse on Thursday after parliament took steps toward a no-confidence motion in Interior Minister Khalid al-Jarrah al-Sabah. The resignation isn’t going to cause any political upheaval but it does reflect the power of the Kuwaiti legislature, which suffice to say is a rarity in the Persian Gulf. Khalid al-Jarrah al-Sabah is a senior royal and yet parliament was still able to force his ouster.
IRAN
The Iranian government has reportedly increased the price of gasoline from roughly nine cents per liter to 13 cents per liter while imposing a soft ration of 60 liters per month for private vehicles and 500 liters per month for taxis and public vehicles. Any fuel purchased beyond those caps will cost 26 cents per liter.
The State Department’s inspector general has found that administration officials, including Iran envoy Brian Hook, discriminated against a department employee in part because she was Iranian:
The report was fueled in large part by Democrats’ demands after a whistleblower shared with Congress emails in which Trump political appointees and outside conservative figures appeared to plot to sideline Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil servant of Iranian descent.
Nowrouzzadeh, a U.S.-born staffer who joined government during the George W. Bush administration, was abruptly taken out of the Policy Planning division of the State Department in the wake of these conversations. One of the officials involved in curtailing her detail was Brian Hook, who led the Policy Planning division at the time and is now a top Iran aide to Pompeo. Policy Planning is a sort of in-house think tank at the department.
Career government staffers like Nowrouzzadeh are sworn to serve the public in a non-partisan manner, no matter which party controls the executive branch. But the Trump team took office suspicious of the career staffers, with some believing they comprised a “deep state” disloyal to Trump. The suspicions were especially pronounced at the State Department, which many Trump aides view as a Democratic stronghold.
Operating on the apparent believe that she’d been born in Iran (she wasn’t, if that matters), conservative media decided in 2017 that Nowrouzzadeh was an Iranian spy, and since the Trump administration collectively hates career government staffers and treats right-wing media as gospel, Hook and other political appointees in the department moved her out of her post. Perhaps my favorite part of that POLITICO piece is Hook’s justification that he didn’t need Nowruzzadeh in the Policy Planning division because Hook himself is an expert on Iran. In reality, if Brian Hook could find Iran on a map I’d be pleasantly surprised.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Gunmen attacked and killed a police counter-terrorism official and wounded two other people outside Peshawar on Thursday. No group has claimed responsibility but some Pakistani Taliban faction seems likely.
Phase two of religious conservative political leader Fazl-ur-Rehman’s plan to oust Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan got off to a fairly humble start on Thursday. Hundreds of Rehman’s supporters were able to interrupt traffic along the Grand Trunk Road that connects Islamabad with the Afghan capital, Kabul, but if Rehman was hoping for mass roadblocks and traffic interruptions across Pakistan that, uh, didn’t happen. Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam considers Khan illegitimate and holds that the Pakistani military put him in office. There’s probably a kernel of truth to that claim, but it’s unproven and Rehman doesn’t appear to have nearly enough popular support to really challenge Khan’s position.
SRI LANKA
Sri Lankan voters will choose a new president on Saturday, with 35 candidates on the ballot but probably only two who have a real shot at winning: former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa candidate of the opposition Sri Lanka People's Front, and current minister of housing construction and cultural affairs Sajith Premadasa, candidate of the ruling United National Party. Rajapaksa is believed to be the front-runner, with most Sri Lankans worried about national security in the wake of the Easter terrorist bombings earlier this year. But he may be losing ground to Premadasa as the campaign wears on and a series of mini-scandals takes its toll on his popularity.
Rajapaksa’s stint as defense secretary corresponded with his brother Mahinda’s stint as president, which corresponded with the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War and a whole mess of war crimes allegations regarding the Sri Lankan military’s treatment of the Tamils and other minority groups. And so there are naturally some concerns about what kind of president he’d make. Rajapaksa needs some minority support to win, but he’s unlikely to get it from the Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims probably aren’t terribly thrilled about him either. But Premadasa hasn’t done much to appeal to minorities either, as both candidates have pitched their appeals more toward the country’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
CHINA
Hong Kong experienced a fifth straight day of heavy violence particularly around the region’s college campuses. Students erected barricades and protesters blocked roads and clashed with police. An elderly street cleaner died after apparently being struck in the head by a brick thrown by protesters. Members of the protest movement have reportedly offered condolences over his death but are blaming the government for its refusal to accept their Five Demands and take steps to end the violence. All that said, the most shocking Hong Kong-related incident of the day actually happened in London, where Hong Kong Justice Secretary Teresa Cheng was attacked by a group of protesters. Hong Kong officials say she suffered “severe bodily harm” but haven’t offered any details. That’s the first time a Hong Kong minister has been involved in the protests.
NORTH KOREA
The North Korean government has rejected a US offer to restart negotiations on its nuclear weapons program in December, accusing Washington of proposing talks just for the sake of having talks. This is problematic because North Korean leader Kim Jong-un set an “or else” deadline for the end of the year to resume talks with the US, though he’s left the “or else” part intentionally vague. Pyongyang is especially bent out of shape at the moment because US and South Korean military officials are holding their annual meetings this week and are planning to go ahead with joint military exercises as scheduled next month. North Korea especially considers the joint exercises to be a national security threat.
AFRICA
LIBYA
Authorities in eastern Libyan grounded a flight out of Misrata’s airport on Thursday, forcing it to land at Benghazi for security checks. The flight was then allowed to continue on to its destination, Jordan. The eastern Libyan government, such as it is, then declared that it was ordering all flights from Misrata and Tripoli passing over eastern Libya to be stopped for such checks. The Libyan government in Tripoli then ordered a hold on flights from those two cities to Egypt and Jordan while it works out new routes that don’t go over eastern Libyan airspace.
GUINEA
One protester died in Guinea on Thursday, bringing the total to 14 people who have been killed while demonstrating against President Alpha Condé’s alleged plans to amend the constitution in order to reset his term limit clock. It’s unclear how the protester was killed, but the death will feed fears that Condé’s security forces are turning to violence to suppress opposition.
KENYA
Kenyan and Somali officials agreed on Thursday to normalize relations between their countries. The two nations have been engaged in a running spat for several months over the the location of their maritime border and therefore the ownership of potential offshore energy deposits. Most recently they stopped issuing visas on arrival to each other’s nationals. They’ll start normalizing relations by reversing that move.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 has uncovered substantially more Russian involvement with Ukraine’s Donbas rebels than Moscow has let on:
In a call on July 3, 2014, Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov — who has been Russia’s point person on eastern Ukraine — told Borodai that Russian fighters “were departing for the south to be combat-ready,” mentioning a “certain Antyufeyev.” A week later, a man named Vladimir Antyufeyev gave a news conference in the rebel capital of Donetsk that he had just arrived from Russia and that he planned to take over security and internal affairs in the aspiring breakaway statelet.
Other phone calls between rebels refer to “special phones, you cannot buy them. They are gotten through Moscow. Through FSB,” Russia’s intelligence agency. Others refer to cash support from Russia and a request from [rebel leader Alexander] Borodai to a Russian cellphone number that “our helicopters” carry out raids.
And, in conversations among themselves, the rebels talked about how a top Russian general had delivered equipment to them on the order of “the person beginning with ‘Sh.’ Do you know him?”
“No, I do not,” the second person said.
“Well, Shoigu. Shoigu,” the first person said, referring to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
MOLDOVA
The Moldovan parliament on Thursday voted to accept a new government headed by former finance minister Ion Chicu. He replaces Maia Sandu, whose government lost a confidence vote on Tuesday after her governing coalition fell apart. Chicu is likely to be less keen on getting Moldova into the European Union than was Sandu, but he did promise on Thursday to make good on Moldova’s loan obligations toward the International Monetary Fund, so I guess that’s something.
POLAND
Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday tapped Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to retain his gig for another four year term. Morawiecki’s Law and Justice Party retained its parliamentary majority in last month’s election, though it did lose five seats compared with its performance in the 2015 election.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
The Movement for Socialism (MAS) party of ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales agreed on Thursday to work with the opposition parties who helped oust him to arrange new elections as soon as possible (a new presidential election has to happen within 90 days under Bolivian law). Under the arrangement MAS has resumed its position as the majority party in both houses of the Bolivian Congress and had one of its members, Mónica Eva Copa Murga, elected as president of the Senate. It also may be possible for Morales to return to Bolivia after the elections, though it seems he will be barred from running for his former office.
Earlier in the day at least two people were killed in clashes between Morales supporters and Bolivian police. The anger Morales supporters felt over Sunday’s coup has been exacerbated now that the presidency has been seized by an arch-conservative Christianist, former senator Jeanine Áñez, who is now best known for having referred to Bolivia’s indigenous religious traditions as “satanic rights” on Twitter (since deleted, for obvious reasons) a few years ago.
Contrary to the insistence of the US media and Good Liberals all over social media, there is little doubt that what happened on Sunday was a right-wing elite putsch against a leftist indigenous president. Morales wasn’t perfect—he manipulated the system to remain in office too long, for example, and there was cause to criticize both his environmental and indigenous policies—but the forces that ousted him don’t care about any of that. All that mattered to them is that he wasn’t The Right Sort to hold power. The outcome of Sunday’s coup isn’t going to strengthen Bolivian democracy or improve its approach to environmental or economic issues. It’s empowered precisely the forces that will make all of those things worse in order to feed the insatiable elite demand for power and wealth.
Áñez has in the meantime appointed a new cabinet. Which, as it turns out, includes no indigenous Bolivians, quite a step for someone who has made “inclusion and unity” two of the cornerstones of her (likely brief) presidency. The issue of indigenous rights has emerged as the main concern in the wake of Morales’s (who was himself an indigenous Bolivian) ouster:
The perceived disrespect of indigenous symbols has also whipped up outrage among Morales supporters in Bolivia and across Latin America. Social media videos showing the burning of the Wiphala – the multi-coloured flag of native people of the Andes closely associated with Morales’s legacy – has brought thousands on to the streets waving the banner.
One police chief made a public apology after another video showed officers cutting the flag out of their uniforms.
Áñez herself has drawn criticism after racist remarks against indigenous people were unearthed in tweets attributed to her from 2013.
“This is definitely an anti-indigenous government,” said María Galindo, founder of the Mujer Creando feminist movement. “It’s not just racism but also the issue of the plurinational state,” she said.
It should be noted that Galingo has been a critic of Morales, but even she seems concerned about the direction the new Bolivian government is going. Áñez has one mandate, and that’s to oversee a legitimate presidential election. We’ll see if she does that, but one thing I’ll predict ahead of time is that if she rigs the election you won’t hear a word about it from the US government or the Organization of American States, two institutions that don’t really care how the Right gets and maintains power in Latin America, as long as it does.
Rare earth minerals definitely aren’t my thing, but lefty political scientist Thea Riofrancos makes a compelling argument here that lithium may not have been a central motivator behind the coup:
UNITED STATES
Finally, NBC News had a scoop on Tuesday that really highlights the rigor with which the Trump administration has approached its mission to Drain the Swamp when it comes to the State Department:
A senior Trump administration official has embellished her résumé with misleading claims about her professional background — even creating a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it — raising questions about her qualifications to hold a top position at the State Department.
An NBC News investigation found that Mina Chang, the deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, has inflated her educational achievements and exaggerated the scope of her nonprofit's work.
Whatever her qualifications, Chang had a key connection in the Trump administration. Brian Bulatao, a top figure in the State Department and longtime friend of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, attended a fundraiser for her nonprofit in Dallas and once donated $5,500 to her charity, according to a former colleague of Chang's.
Chang, who assumed her post in April, also invented a role on a U.N. panel, claimed she had addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and implied she had testified before Congress.