World update: November 16-17 2019
Stories from Lebanon, China, Bolivia, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
November 15, 1884: The Berlin Conference begins, with the goal of regulating European colonization of Africa. Its declaration obliged European powers to establish political control over their spheres of influence in Africa in order to claim possession of them. Sometimes identified as the beginning of the “Scramble for Africa,” though in actuality African colonization was already well underway and only sped up in the wake of the conference.
November 15, 1889: A republican military coup ousts Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, ending the Brazilian monarchy.
November 15, 1983: The “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” declares its independence, some eight years after the “Turkish Federated State of Cyprus” broke away from the Cypriot government after a pro-Greek military coup and the invasion of northern Cyprus by Turkish forces. Turkey is the only country that has diplomatically recognized the separatist state.
November 16, 1532: Spanish forces under Francisco Pizarro ambush and capture the Incan emperor Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca. Atahualpa’s captivity and eventual execution (the following August) were the first step in the Spaniards’ conquest of the Incan Empire.
November 17, 1869: The Suez Canal officially opens in a joint French-Egyptian ceremony. Although it came under almost immediate financial pressure due to the costs of construction and some technical flaws that required improvements, the canal made an almost immediate impact on international commerce and also helped cause the Panic of 1873 because of its detrimental effect on British maritime trade. The Egyptian monarchy’s heavy debt obliged it to sell its shares in the canal to the British government, which provided an opening for Britain to establish control not only over the canal, but over all of Egypt.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Syrian Civil Defense is claiming that nine civilians were killed by pro-government airstrikes in Idlib province on Sunday, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the figure at 12. As always these figures should be treated as unconfirmed, but they do make it clear that the Syrian government intends to maintain at least a minimal amount of pressure on the rebels in Idlib even though much of its attention has shifted to northeastern Syria. On Saturday, meanwhile a car bombing in the Turkish-held town of al-Bab killed at least 18 people. Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the Kurdish YPG militia and say they have a suspect in the attack in custody.
YEMEN
The Sudanese government says that six of its paramilitaries detailed to the pro-government coalition in Yemen were killed in a Houthi attack earlier this week. The coalition has used Sudanese soldiers mostly in patrolling the Saudi-Yemeni border against Houthi attacks, and that appears to be what these soldiers were doing when they were attacked. They may have been killed in the same incident in which a UAE soldier was killed in Saudi Arabia’s Najran province, which was reported on Wednesday, but that’s unclear.
IRAQ
Protesters in Baghdad appear to be regaining ground previously lost to Iraqi security forces. The New Arab says they retook part of the Ahrar Bridge on Sunday, after seizing part of the Sinak Bridge the day before. They also took Kilani Square in central Baghdad on Saturday, with at least one protester being killed in the process. The bridges have been the main focal point for protesters in Baghdad who are trying to get across the Tigris and gain access to the Green Zone, where most of the city’s government buildings and embassies are located. A rocket struck the Green Zone late Sunday but does not appear to have caused any casualties or significant damage. A bombing near the main protest camp in Tahrir Square late Friday killed at least two people, in addition to the three protesters killed earlier in the day by Iraqi security forces. Given the location it seems likely that the bombing was meant to target protesters, which suggests that pro-government forces may have been responsible. Protests have also continued in cities across southern Iraq, but the real activity seems to be in Baghdad right now.
LEBANON
The effort to end Lebanon’s extended period of political dysfunction may be back to square one, after presumptive prime minister nominee Mohammad Safadi abruptly withdrew himself from consideration for the office on Saturday. In a statement, Safadi argued that he would not be able to get Lebanon’s various political parties and stakeholders behind his government and urged instead that current caretaker PM Saad al-Hariri be allowed to continue in that position. The possibility of a Safadi-led cabinet did little to impress protesters who are demanding a depoliticized “technocratic” government, as there’s little about Safadi that could be considered either non-political or technocratic.
With protesters commemorating a month in the streets on Sunday, it’s hard to figure out what comes next. Hariri clearly wants to remain in office, but he wants to do so at the head of a cabinet made up entirely of so-called “technocrats,” which you can translate as “no ministers with ties either to Hezbollah or the Free Patriotic Movement,” which is the Maronite party led by President Michel Aoun and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. Essentially he wants to use the political crisis to sideline his opposition. Hezbollah has been keen to see Hariri return as PM as well, because it’s doing pretty well for itself under the status quo, but it’s resisted his demands for a “technocratic” cabinet that would strip Hezbollah of much of its political strength relative to Hariri. The FPM, meanwhile, accused Hariri of undermining Safadi’s candidacy in order to hang on to his office, and in a later statement Safadi himself also suggested that Hariri had torpedoed him.
The Arab Center’s Daniel Brumberg thinks the protesters are fighting an uphill battle:
Lebanon’s protesters have to contend with three tasks if the demonstrations continue. The first is devising a feasible plan to advance real democratic change under the umbrella of an authoritative leadership. On this score, the problem they face is that even the most carefully calibrated electoral reform will not prevent the return of sectarian parties. The second challenge is that other religious groups may not favor a total overhaul of the system. That thousands of Aoun’s supporters took to the streets on November 3, proclaiming that he is “not corrupt nor a thief” and insisting that he should remain in office, suggests that Hariri’s resignation has only sharpened the differences between those groups seeking revolutionary change and those favoring more limited reforms. Finally, the protesters must rely on a military that, despite its apparent unity and non-sectarian nature, is squeezed between the demonstrators and a far more powerful Shia militia, Hezbollah. Caught in a no-win situation, the army cannot be counted on to defend the protesters at all costs.
Oh, and Lebanon’s banks will remain closed at least through Monday as bank workers continue to strike over unsafe conditions, with bank patrons increasingly upset that they can’t access their money. Other than that, everything is fine.
EGYPT
At least three Egyptian security forces were killed on Sunday by a roadside bomb in northern Sinai. The Islamic State was presumably responsible.
SAUDI ARABIA
Aramco has decided that it’s worth $1.7 trillion ahead of its partial IPO next month. That’s down a fair bit from the $2 trillion Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman seems to think the company is worth, but still north of the $1.5 trillion or even less that some analysts think it’s worth. The upshot if you’re investing is that it looks like the shares will start out in the $8-$8.50 range when the stock goes on the market on December 12. Expect the price to be inflated by wealthy Saudi investors, who will be motivated either by national pride or out of fear that if they don’t pump the stock price up they’ll be shaken down by their government again, as well as by the sovereign investment funds of Saudi client states, mostly in obedience to their patron.
IRAN
Protests over higher gasoline prices and rationing spread to cities across Iran late Friday, with at least one person being killed (details on this are sparse) amid reports of injuries and property damage. Protests continued and spread further on Saturday, with reports of clashes between demonstrators and police in which one police officer may have been killed and over 1000 people were arrested. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has defended the higher gas prices and the ration caps, arguing that the extra revenue will not go into the treasury but will instead be used to fund expanded cash welfare for poor families. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also weighed in on Sunday, criticizing the “hooligans” he said were responsible for the protests. Iranian officials appear to be restricting internet access in an effort to undercut the protests.
The anti-Iran think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies finally dropped all pretenses on Friday and registered its “FDD Action” arm as a lobbying group. FDD has long been arguably the most…oh, let’s say “proactive” think tank in DC in terms of trying to get policymakers to adopt its ideas and especially to get the media to adopt its deeply ideological framing of issues as conventional mainstream wisdom. It’s been extremely successful in both areas—the Trump administration has until very recently basically let FDD write its Iran policy, and most mainstream news stories on Iran treat FDD ideologues as reliable, even-handed experts.
ASIA
GEORGIA
An estimated 20,000 people protested in Tbilisi on Sunday calling for a snap election. The protesters are unhappy that parliament earlier this week failed to pass a measure that would institute full proportional voting for next year’s election, in place of Georgia’s current system in which some seats in parliament are elected proportionally and others in district races. The ruling Georgian Dream party, led by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, seems uneasy about the idea of going to a totally proportional system, and enough of its members voted against implementing it in time for next year’s election to defeat the measure.
AFGHANISTAN
Dual bomb blasts near the Kabul Military Training Center early Monday have reportedly wounded at least four people. There may be more to say about this in tomorrow’s update as details are still sketchy at this point.
Two Afghan prosecutors were shot and killed on the road from Kabul to Bagram airbase on Saturday. It’s unknown who attacked them. One of the detainees at Bagram is Anas Haqqani, who was supposed to be one of three Taliban prisoners released by the Afghan government under a prisoner exchange deal that would have also freed US and Australian captives held by the insurgents since 2016. That deal is now in limbo after the Afghan government apparently had second thoughts. Kabul hasn’t explained itself yet other than to accuse the Taliban of failing to observe the conditions of the swap without going into detail about what that failure entailed.
Also in limbo are the results of Afghanistan’s September presidential election, after challenger Abdullah Abdullah on Sunday again rejected a proposed recount that would have included some disputed ballots. Abdullah is refusing to participate in any recount that includes ballots that didn’t pass biometric screening. He’s rejected two such recounts and, well, it’s unclear what electoral authorities plan on doing next.
PAKISTAN
At least three Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed and five wounded early Saturday by a roadside bomb in Baluchistan province. No group has claimed responsibility but Baluchistan is home to separatist insurgents and Islamist militants so the possibilities are plentiful.
SRI LANKA
Former Sri Lankan defense minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa has won that country’s presidential election by an unexpectedly wide margin, taking over 52 percent of the vote to runner up Sajith Premadasa’s 42 percent. Rajapaksa ran as an unrepentant Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist, creating concern among Sri Lanka’s Tamil and Muslim minorities reminded that his stint as defense minister corresponded with numerous accusations of war crimes by the Sri Lankan military in the waning days of its civil war against the Tamil Tigers insurgency. He’s now trying to strike a more conciliatory tone. Rajapaksa’s election creates a new headache for India, as he’s a bit too friendly with China for New Delhi’s comfort.
INDONESIA
Indonesian counter-terrorism police killed two suspected militants and arrested a third in North Sumatra province on Saturday. The suspects are believed to have been involved in planning a suicide bombing in the city of Medan on Wednesday in which six people were wounded in addition to the dead bomber.
CHINA
It’s been another active weekend in Hong Kong. Student protesters barricaded themselves in on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, using molotov cocktails and bows and arrows to fend off Hong Kong police, while additional clashes were reported in Kowloon’s Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei districts. Protesters have been using Hong Kong Polytechnic’s campus as a base from which to shut down one of the main highways linking Hong Kong island to Kowloon. By Monday morning police had effectively besieged the campus and were warning that they could start using live fire against the demonstrators if the arrow fire and gas bombs didn’t stop. Police then reportedly stormed the campus, but were driven back and then agreed to suspend offensive operations. Residents and protesters have reportedly been trying to relieve the demonstrators on the campus by breaking through the government cordon.
Amid all the excitement, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army made a sudden appearance in Hong Kong on Saturday, but not in their capacity as soldiers. Instead, they ventured out in shorts and t-shirts to help clean up streets that have been littered by the protests. That’s mighty neighborly of them, and far be it from me to question anybody’s motives, but I think the subtext was pretty hard to miss.
The New York Times, meanwhile, has published a cache of leaked documents related to China’s systematic detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. They make it pretty clear that Beijing’s “they’re just vocational schools” language is purely intended for an external audience:
Of the 24 documents, the directive on how to handle minority students returning home to Xinjiang in the summer of 2017 offers the most detailed discussion of the indoctrination camps — and the clearest illustration of the regimented way the party told the public one story while mobilizing around a much harsher narrative internally.
Even as the document advises officials to inform students that their relatives are receiving “treatment” for exposure to radical Islam, its title refers to family members who are being “dealt with,” or chuzhi, a euphemism used in party documents to mean punishment.
The documents advise officials to explain to the students that their relatives have been “infected” by Islamic extremism and that they should be “grateful” the government has given them the opportunity to be reeducated. It also instructs officials to threaten those students by warning that their loved ones could be forced to remain in detention longer if the students’ “behavior” was deemed problematic.
SOUTH KOREA
US and South Korean officials have decided to postpone joint military exercises that were to take place later this month. The move is an attempt to revive diplomacy with North Korea, which regards the joint exercises as a national security threat. The North Koreans say that Donald Trump promised to cancel the exercises altogether when he met with Kim Jong-un last year in Singapore, and really for all we know he did make such a promise and then reneged.
Seriously, who knows what they talked about? (Wikimedia Commons)
The postponement doesn’t seem to have gone over well in Pyongyang, which is now upset over a United Nations vote earlier in the week that was critical of North Korea’s human rights record.
AFRICA
LIBYA
Authorities in the city of Misrata on Sunday impounded a civilian aircraft operated by Libyan Airlines out of the city of Benghazi when it stopped at Misrata airport for maintenance. This move was presumably a retaliation for the “Libyan National Army’s” decision earlier in the week to begin forcing all flights from western Libya crossing eastern Libyan airspace to land for security checks. The LNA has threatened strikes against Misrata and its airport—the only functioning international airport in western Libya—if the aircraft is not allowed to return to Benghazi.
BURKINA FASO
Burkina Faso’s army says it’s killed 32 alleged terrorists in two offensives in the northern part of the country in recent days—24 on Friday and another eight on Saturday.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
At least 15 people were killed on Friday in an attack on the village of Mbau in North Kivu province. Several of the victims were found in the area around the village. It’s likely the attackers were from the Allied Democratic Forces Islamist group, which has been attacking civilians in retaliation for a new Congolese military operation against it. Locals say they’ve killed at least 40 civilians just in the past week.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Russian government says that it will return three captured Ukrainian naval vessels to Kyiv on Monday. It seized the ships last November after they allegedly entered Russian waters near the Kerch Strait. The handover should help build momentum toward a planned resumption of Ukraine peace talks next month in Paris.
BELARUS
Belarus held its parliamentary election on Sunday, which is mostly an exercise in political theater since authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko rules the country pretty much on his own. But it could be meaningful political theater. Lukashenko is in the midst of one of his periodic outreaches to the West, which he sometimes does just to let Russian President Vladimir Putin know that Belarus isn’t a Russian colony. But he’s been a little louder about it than usual this time around, restoring diplomatic relations with the US in September and issuing a threat on Sunday to pull out of a Russia-Belarus integration agreement unless Moscow agrees to maintain subsidies for energy exports to Belarus. If he deals fairly with opposition parties in this vote it would be another signal to the West that he’s interested in improving ties. And by “fairly” I mean in Belarusian terms, under which the election of even a couple of opposition legislators can represent a huge concession toward democratic values.
FRANCE
France’s “Yellow Vest” protesters returned in force this weekend to mark the one year anniversary of their protest movement. On Saturday, the Yellow Vests’ weekly protest day, an estimated 28,000 protesters set fire to cars in Paris and threw rocks at police, who responded with the usual tear gas/water cannon program. Many turned out again on Sunday to mark the actual anniversary with a smaller and tamer demonstration that included a sit in at the Galeries Lafayette department store.
UNITED KINGDOM
Four more polls had nothing but good news for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson over the weekend:
A YouGov poll showed support for the Conservatives stood at 45%, the highest level since 2017, compared with Labour on 28%, unchanged. The pro-European Union Liberal Democrats were on 15%, and the Brexit Party was on 4% unchanged.
A separate poll for SavantaComRes also said support for Johnson’s Conservatives was the highest since 2017 with his party on 41% with Labour on 33%.
The Conservatives have a 16-point lead over Labour, according to an opinion poll published by Opinium Research.
A poll by the Mail on Sunday said Johnson’s party had a 15-point lead over Labour.
There are a lot of questions about whether Brexit has distorted the British electorate enough to make polling more unreliable than usual, so take these results with a grain of salt.
AMERICAS
CHILE
Chilean President Sebastián Piñera on Sunday promised that there would be “no impunity” for members of his security forces found to have committed human rights abuses in responding to recent anti-austerity protests. More than 20 protesters have been killed by security forces and there are potentially thousands of abuse complaints floating around—over 1000 of them are already being investigated by prosecutors.
BOLIVIA
It’s been difficult to stay on top of the details of what’s happening in Bolivia, partly because much of the real news is in Spanish and, well, my three years of high school Spanish didn’t exactly leave me fluent in the language. Sadly, but predictably, events are being filtered and heavily edited by US English-language media. But the general picture that’s emerging should be troubling even for people who supported the coup that ousted Evo Morales earlier this month as some sort of triumph for Bolivian democracy. Because the right-wing forces behind far-right acting (sort of) President Jeanine Áñez appear to be consolidating power in a way that isn’t indicative of a transitional government whose sole intention is to organize new elections.
The death toll since Morales resigned and went into exile in Mexico on November 10 is at least 23 amid multiple clashes between Morales supporters and police, including nine from one demonstration on Friday evening in what Morales termed a “massacre.” That figure is from Saturday so it may have risen. Áñez gave security forces what appears to be blanket impunity in an executive order she issued on Thursday, which seems to have increased their willingness to use lethal force in dealing with protesters. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights criticized her for the decree, which it says “exempts” security forces “from criminal responsibility,” and the UN has begun to get involved in efforts to deescalate the situation. In addition to the deaths, the unrest has led to shortages of food and other basic goods in La Paz, but Morales supporters say they will continue their protests:
Apart from the killing, Bolivian security forces have been arresting members of Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) party, and this is where things get very untenable for the “saving Bolivian democracy” crowd. There are now reports that Áñez’s government plans to start rounding up elected MAS officials, and it’s already talked about arresting journalists it says are “causing sedition.” That’s not going to do very much for Bolivian democracy.
Áñez has already expelled Cuban doctors and Venezuelan diplomats from the country, which she has no mandate to do, and if that sounds familiar it’s because she’s playing covers out of Jair Bolsonaro’s greatest hits catalogue—though in fairness, at least Bolsonaro was savvy enough to make it look like he was trying to do Brazil’s Cuban doctors a favor as he was forcing Havana to withdraw them. Anyway I’m sure that a host of conservative and Good Liberal commentators are already rushing to excuse these things and explain how they’re all actually wonderful developments for freedom, or whatever.
VENEZUELA
Venezuela experienced a revival of its anti-government protests on Saturday, as would-be president Juan Guaidó attempted to revive his flagging opposition movement with nation-wide demonstrations and calls for additional resistance to the government of Nicolás Maduro. Guaidó is apparently planning a flurry of protests in the coming days to show that there’s still some steam behind his efforts, but Saturday’s turnout didn’t exactly inspire much confidence that he’s revitalized his supporters.
Maduro, meanwhile, praised the “dollarization” of Venezuela’s economy in an interview on Sunday. With hyperinflation rendering the bolívar almost worthless, transactions in Venezuela are increasingly being conducted in foreign currency, primarily US dollars. Maduro has previously tried to block dollarization but now seems to have accepted it, and may have also intended Sunday’s comments as a tweak at the Trump administration and its sanctions policy.
CUBA
The Trump administration on Saturday blacklisted Cuban Interior Minister Julio César Gandarilla Bermejo for human rights violations in Cuba and in Venezuela. The move basically means that Gandarilla Bermejo and his children are barred from entering the US, so unless they were hoping to see the Grand Canyon or Dollywood or something its impact will be entirely symbolic.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Ryan Summers and Ben Freeman from the Center for International Policy have developed a primer on all of the very legal ways that foreign countries toss around money to buy influence in the US, from hiring lobbyists to wowing journalists to funding universities and think tanks:
For example, as our UAE report documented, Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has an extremely close relationship with lobbyists working on behalf of the UAE and his public comments often echo their talking points. An article Knights wrote on June 14, 2018, on the UAE’s move to “liberate” the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, deeply embroiled in the Saudi-UAE war in that embattled land, closely mirrored an article disseminated by Hagir Elawad & Associates, a firm working on behalf of that country. It, in turn, had been written by Anwar Gargash, the current UAE minister of state for foreign affairs.
FARA filings show as well that Knights has a very close relationship with Richard Mintz, managing director of the Harbour Group, which also represents the UAE in Washington. He reportedly coordinated with Knights on four separate trips to visit UAE forces in Yemen. Afterward, Knights would write a distinctly uncritical analysis about UAE operations in Yemen, never, for instance, mentioning the targeted-assassination program that UAE officials oversaw there or the fact that those same forces gave U.S.-supplied weapons to al-Qaeda and other militant groups in that country. He also dismissed accusations of war crimes by UAE forces as just the work of “local proxies.”
While registered foreign agents legally have to declare anything they distribute on behalf of a foreign power, there is no such requirement for think-tank experts. In fact, such institutions don’t even have to disclose that they receive funding from foreign powers. Under current law it’s perfectly legal for scholars whose work is funded by a foreign government to craft an article with that government’s registered foreign agents without disclosing any of their ties.
This can become particularly problematic when such experts testify before Congress without disclosing their potential conflicts of interest. The House of Representatives requires witnesses to fully reveal foreign funding before testifying, but in many instances, such experts don’t disclose the money their institutions receive from foreign governments. A POGO report found that the existing House rule relating to testimonial transparency is remarkably weak, allowing many witnesses to adopt a particularly narrow interpretation of the “issues related” to their testimony. In the process, they simply don’t disclose their foreign ties.