World update: September 19 2019
Stories from Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Ukraine, and more
THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
September 18, 1810: The Government Assembly of the Kingdom of Chile, or the “First Government Junta,” takes power in the colony by pledging allegiance to the deposed King Ferdinand VII of Spain and rejecting Napoleon’s imposition of his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne, thus kicking off the Chilean War of Independence. Though it was supposed to be temporary, the junta continued fighting after Ferdinand’s restoration and kept fighting until Chile became an independent nation in the 1820s. Commemorated as Chilean Independence Day.
September 18, 1947: The National Security Act creates the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Boy that sure worked out great for everybody.
September 19, 634: The Siege of Damascus ends
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Two competing Syrian ceasefire resolutions were both defeated in the United Nations Security Council on Thursday. Russia and China vetoed the first, a blanket ceasefire for northwestern Syria. They then proposed an alternative, a ceasefire with exemptions for groups that are under Security Council sanction (like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), and got exactly zero votes apart from their two. There’s plenty of evidence in the Syrian context now to conclude that any ceasefire with any sort of exemption is in reality not a ceasefire at all, so it’s unsurprising that the rest of the council opted not to endorse this one.
Meanwhile, Syrian media is reporting the downing of a drone near Damascus. I haven’t seen any other details.
YEMEN
A bombing in Yemen’s Hadhramaut province on Wednesday killed at least six Yemeni soldiers and the senior Saudi officer in the area. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was likely responsible but nobody has made any claim. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition says it destroyed an unmanned boat rigged with explosives that was launched by the Houthis into the Red Sea from Hudaydah province. It’s unclear what the target was but the Houthis have carried out attacks against ships in the Red Sea in the past. The coalition subsequently announced that it undertook a military operation in the area that destroyed four Houthi facilities for assembling explosive boats and sea mines.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Coming off an election that left him scrambling to retain some sort of hold on power, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday offered his main rival, Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz, a chance to discuss a national unity government. Gantz rejected the offer out of hand. That Netanyahu offered, after rejecting the idea of a unity government during the campaign, shows that he understands the ramifications of Tuesday’s vote, which left him without a clear path to forming a coalition and without much of a claim on remaining as PM. That Gantz rejected it shows that he’s committed to his pledge not to form a coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud party unless and until it gets rid of Netanyahu and breaks its alliances with several small far right religious parties. He may try to drag out negotiations to see if Netanyahu’s corruption case gives Likud members an extra justification for jettisoning him in favor of new leadership.
The truth is that neither Netanyahu nor Gantz had a particularly good night on Tuesday, it’s just that Netanyahu’s night was worse. The only blocs to emerge from this election stronger than they were previously are Avigdor Liberman’s Yisraeli Beiteinu party and the predominantly Arab Joint List, which is now the third largest party in the Knesset. The Joint List will, as ever, likely be shunned by the other parties. Liberman is working to negotiate a unity government, probably with Gantz as PM. His success shows that the Israeli electorate is growing tired of Netanyahu but is still firmly tilted toward the right.
Another interesting takeaway from Tuesday’s vote is the apparent decline in popularity of the parties (including Likud) most closely identified with the West Bank settlers movement. Those parties collectively dropped from 51 seats after April’s election to only 38 following Tuesday’s do-over. It remains to be seen, but this election could mean the end of the tenuous coalition Netanyahu has been holding together between the settlers movement and the ultra-orthodox parties. They don’t really have that much in common politically, but Netanyahu has been able to keep them generally aligned. Liberman already seems to have peeled away the ex-Soviet Jewish vote, which was the third pillar of Netanyahu’s coalition and likewise isn’t really on the same page politically as the other two groups once he’s removed from the picture.
EGYPT
A roadside bomb in northern Sinai killed at least one Egyptian soldier and wounded two others on Thursday. No group has claimed responsibility but presumably Islamic State Sinai was the culprit.
SAUDI ARABIA
Whatever immediate impulse there may have been for the US and/or Saudi Arabia to retaliate for Iran’s still-alleged attack on two Saudi oil facilities over the weekend seems to have dissipated for the time being, though of course that may change quickly. The Pentagon says it is “consulting” with the Saudis as to ways in which they might use the billions of dollars in military hardware they’ve been buying for the last several years to help maybe defend the kingdom, rather than putting it all toward blowing up Yemeni hospices and so forth. Notably the US military is not saying whether or not it believes the attack came from Iran, even though the Trump administration has been shouting precisely that for five days now. The Pentagon says it will let the Saudis take the lead on pointing fingers, and right now they don’t seem to be of a mind to do so—maybe for fear of losing the rest of the oil production capacity.
Letting the Saudis take the lead seems reasonable enough, but it could signal a break with the “Carter Doctrine,” promulgated by the former president in his 1980 State of the Union address. Carter said that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” Obviously he was talking about the Soviets, not Iran—which isn’t actually an “outside force” in the region. Nevertheless the Carter Doctrine has been broadly interpreted pretty much ever since to mean PROTECT THE SAUDIS AND THEIR PRECIOUS OIL FROM ALL THREATS NO MATTER THE COST. But Trump has as much as said this is the Saudis’ problem, though he’s offered US support should they choose to respond. Coming from any US president, but especially one who has at times seemed more devoted to the Saudis than to his own country, that’s a pretty shocking position to take.
IRAN
Even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who just a couple of days ago was calling Saturday’s attack an “act of war,” told reporters on Thursday that the Trump administration wants a “peaceful resolution” to this crisis. This came after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told CNN that any US or Saudi military strike against Iran would lead to “all-out war.” Pompeo says that the US is going to try to build a “coalition” to counter Iran, which is a strange thing to say since the administration was already trying and failing to do that anyway. The bottom line is that it would appear, at least for the moment, that things are leveling off short of a military confrontation.
The Trump administration even, finally, came through on visas for Zarif and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to attend the UN General Assembly next week. Rouhani complained on Wednesday about a delay in issuing those visas and had said that he and Zarif might not attend unless they were issued in short order.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The Taliban detonated a truck bomb outside a hospital in Zabul province on Thursday, killing at least 20 people and wounding at least 95 more. The death toll is likely to climb as rescuers dig through the rubble. On Wednesday evening, a US drone strike in Nangarhar province killed at least 30 civilians who were relaxing by a fire after a long day harvesting pine nuts. US officials in Afghanistan insist that the strike targeted Islamic State fighters but say they’re investigating the reports of civilian casualties. Village elders in the area apparently notified the governor of Nangarhar province well in advance that the harvest would be taking place and yet there were still no safeguards put in place to prevent something like this from happening. It’s hard to believe there might be some Afghan civilians who want the US to leave their country even if it does mean the Taliban taking over again.
The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it’s pulling back some $160 million in development aid to Afghanistan, citing corruption. I realize the idea of anybody who works for Donald Trump criticizing anybody else for corruption is absurd, but Afghanistan ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world and that corruption has greatly hamstrung efforts to, say, build up the Afghan military to the point where the US could leave without risking an immediate Taliban takeover.
INDONESIA
Indonesian authorities say that three civilians were killed Thursday during a gun battle between police and separatists in Papua province. Indonesian security forces say they will investigate the incident. Papua province remains on high alert following a spate of major and sometimes violent protests against the treatment of Papuans in Indonesian society, and there are still extra police and soldiers in the province as a result.
OCEANIA
TUVALU
Tuvalu’s parliament on Thursday surprisingly elected a new prime minister, Kausea Natano, in a move that now has people watching to see if it impacts Taiwan. Outgoing PM Enele Sopoaga was considered very pro-Taiwan, but with China throwing money around the South Pacific to convince nations to cut ties with Taipei and recognize Beijing, it’s unclear where his successor stands on the issue.
SOLOMON ISLANDS
Only 16 countries in the world still recognize Taiwan, after the Solomon Islands cut its ties with Taipei earlier this week. That move seems to be blowing up in Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s face a little bit, however. Not only has it apparently cost him the opportunity to discuss new development projects with the Trump administration and put USAID’s aid programs to the Solomons under review, but it now has pro-Taiwan leaders in Malaita province talking about secession. Sogavare’s political position is so shaky at this point that it looks like he will skip the UN General Assembly for fear that he might lose his job while he’s out of the country. Hopefully China made this all worth his while.
AFRICA
LIBYA
The Arab Center’s Imad Harb writes that while the “Libyan National Army’s” offensive against Tripoli has stalled out, Libya still faces either a lengthy civil war and/or a partition:
The apparent hiatus in large-scale fighting between Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Fayez al-Sarraj, and the renegade General Khalifa Haftar, who commands the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), should not be misconstrued as leading to peace in the battered country. In fact, the ceasefire that was arranged for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday in August was punctuated by bombings and troop movements, reminding everyone that the festering Libyan crisis continues to threaten the unity and survival of whatever remains of state institutions. The GNA, assisted by powerful militias, still presides tenuously in Tripoli and extends its writ over a swathe of territory in western Libya while the LNA boasts of controlling the rest of the country.
This generally sums up an unfortunate reality in Libya on the 50th anniversary of Muammar Qadhafi’s coup, in September 1, 1969, against King Idris al-Sanusi and his establishment of republican rule that later evolved into a jamahiriya (republic of the masses), one that was practically bereft of state institutions. That the late colonel’s failure at leadership and governance was at least partly responsible for the current situation is a given. Since his killing in 2011, however, the failure of other Libyans and those in the international community to hold the line on keeping Libya a unified country has become a testament to the vagaries of elite carelessness and multilateral neglect. To be sure, the international community’s shirking of responsibility to prevent the final collapse of post-2011 Libya is tantamount to complicity in the creation of conditions for Libya’s partition—as well as complete anarchy and chaos in northern Africa.
TUNISIA
Former Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali died of cancer in Saudi Arabia on Thursday. Ben Ali was the first Arab autocrat to be challenged and ultimately removed in the 2011 Arab Spring movement, and despite its struggles Tunisia has mostly maintained the democratic system that was put in place when he shuffled off into exile. Contrasted with Syria or Egypt, that’s a remarkable achievement. And speaking of Tunisian democracy, officials say that presidential candidate Nabil Karoui will remain in jail on corruption charges even as he’s running in the country’s presidential runoff. Karoui and lawyer Kaïs Saïed finished second and first, respectively, in the first round of the election on Sunday. The date for the runoff still hasn’t been set.
ALGERIA
The Algerian establishment appears to have lost its patience with the opposition and things could be about to take a nasty turn now that the country has scheduled a presidential election that not many Algerians seem to want:
Protester Khalil Che of Oran told Al-Monitor that throughout their demonstrations, the Hirak learned the value of peaceful protest, while the regime used the same tactics as of old. “They will hold elections alone,” he said. “No one in this country wants their elections. We want new elections, yes, but on our terms.”
Imposing a vote upon the people, he said, was unlikely to end well. “We will go out peacefully in huge numbers to protest their elections. All those things they do, like criminalizing people, taking them to jail, it’s how they think. It’s like old times. This will not stop us. We still say no to elections with this mafia. There is nothing that will stop us. Nothing will change our opinion.”
Despite the pushback from the street, the appetite for compromise that had previously typified the government’s response to the Hirak appears to be diminishing. Protesters are arrested routinely by the security services every week. An independence war veteran, 86-year-old Lakhdar Bouregaa, remains in prison after being arrested in June on charges of insulting the army after he publicly criticized Salah. On Sept. 11, prominent opposition figure Karim Tabou was arrested in front of his home on charges of undermining the army after he accused Salah of seeking to “close the game.”
Authorities arrested another significant opposition leader, Fodil Boumala, on Wednesday. They also arrested the former head of Algeria’s ruling National Liberation Front, Mohamed Djemai, in another showy anti-corruption display. As with previous such arrests, this one is unlikely to appease the protesters.
SOUTH SUDAN
A new investigation is highlighting the extent to which South Sudan’s destructive civil war has been fueled by wealthy international actors:
The report, released by the Sentry, an investigative arm of the nonprofit group Enough Project, pulls back the veil on how powerful elites and warlords in one of the world’s poorest nations have stayed in power and amassed vast personal wealth off the state’s public funds and resources while international banks, corporations, and foreign investors stood to profit.
“Nearly every instance of confirmed or alleged corruption or financial crime in South Sudan examined by The Sentry has involved links to an international corporation, a multinational bank, a foreign government or high-end real estate abroad,” the report says.
Drawing on a trove of documents and forensic financial analysis, the report sheds new light on the scale of corruption in South Sudan, an oil-rich country that has been in civil conflict for over five years. It also provides a detailed portrait of how China has expanded its political and financial footprint in Africa, operating with South Sudanese security services and militias widely accused of carrying out atrocities and war crimes against civilian populations.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
An attack on a displaced persons camp in Ituri province has killed at least 28 people in the past couple of days, according to the UN’s mission in the DRC. The camp holds civilians displaced by the ongoing conflict between the herding Hema and farming Lendu peoples. It’s unclear whether one of those groups attacked the camp or some other group.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Washington Post is reporting that the phone conversation that caused an intelligence community whistleblower to allege that Donald Trump is mishandling sensitive information involved Ukraine and (probably) the president’s reelection campaign:
The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.
Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.
That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call.
It’s no secret that Trump and Giuliani want the Ukrainian government to facilitate an investigation into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, potential Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son. Giuliani himself is apparently happy to go on national cable TV and say so openly:
What might Trump have promised in exchange for such help? Well, last week the administration unfroze $250 million in Ukrainian military aid and threw in another $140 million for good measure. So that’s interesting. If Trump did exchange military aid for political favors that’s prima facie an impeachable offense. Or at least it would be if enough people in Congress actually cared about investigating presidential misconduct. There’s no evidence that they do, though. Certainly there’s no evidence that Congressional Democratic leadership cares, especially not in a case like this where there’s a real chance that some of the scandal could blow back on the frontrunner in the Democratic primary.
UNITED KINGDOM
The UK Supreme Court will issue its ruling early next week on the legality of Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament. Johnson was within his authority to call the Queen’s Speech and suspend parliament, unless he was doing so specifically to stifle debate on Brexit. Which he obviously was, but it’s difficult to prove that in a legal sense. A Scottish court has already ruled that the suspension was illegitimate but left it up to the Supreme Court to hear the appeal and determine whether parliament should reconvene. If he loses the case, it now appears that Johnson intends to keep parliament suspended anyway, though I’m not sure how he expects to pull that off.
AMERICAS
CUBA
The United States on Thursday expelled two Cuban diplomats from that country’s UN delegation because of “their attempts to conduct influence operations against the United States,” according to the State Department. It’s restricted the rest of Cuba’s UN delegation to Manhattan over the same charge. The State Department offered no other details as to what the diplomats were allegedly doing.
If anybody is still interested in the peculiar and still-unsolved case of those US and Canadian diplomats and family members who exhibited severe brain ailments while in Havana between 2016 and 2018, a new theory has emerged that challenges the prevailing but wholly unsubstantiated “sonic attack” scenario. A Canadian government-funded suggests that the victims were afflicted by some sort of neurotoxin. Since Cuban authorities were heavily fumigating to control mosquito populations during that time because of the Zika virus, it’s very plausible that, rather than being attacked by a hypothetical sonic weapon, these people were unfortunately but unintentionally exposed to some very nasty pesticides.
CANADA
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apparently done either brownface or blackface so many times that he can’t remember them all. Truly this is an amazing time to be alive. Trudeau is not resigning, though—he’s apparently content to wait and get clobbered in next month’s federal election.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Foreign Policy in Focus’s John Feffer says that, while John Bolton may have departed—he’s already reportedly badmouthing Donald Trump behind closed doors, which is hilarious—his legacy will live on in the Trump White House:
Looked at another way, however, Bolton accomplished what he set out to do. He scuttled the negotiations with North Korea by referring to the Libyan example of denuclearization (Pyongyang knew full well what happened to Muammar Qaddafi’s regime). He made sure that U.S. troops remain in Syria and in Afghanistan as well. He put the fear of a coup in the heart of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. And he ratcheted up the pressure on Iran to the point of near-conflict.
Now, with Trump declaring that the United States is “locked and loaded” in the wake of the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil supplies, Bolton is no doubt pleased at the prospect of his wildest dream fulfilled: a war with Iran. He nearly pushed the president into military action against Tehran back in June when Trump self-reportedly stopped the strike 10 minutes before it was scheduled to take place.
Bolton also, I would add, ensured that Trump would pull the US out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and maybe/probably decline to renew New START. For a guy who loathes nuclear arms control treaties those are also some noteworthy accomplishments.
Gone but unfortunately not forgotten (White House via Wikimedia Commons)