World update: February 1-2 2020

Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Mozambique, and more

THESE DAYS IN HISTORY

January 31, 1865: The US Congress passes the 13th amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. President Abraham Lincoln signed it the following day, and the amendment was then submitted to the states for ratification, reaching the required three-fourths threshold in December. Several states took longer to ratify the amendment, including Mississippi, which finally decided that slavery ought to be illegal in 1995.

February 1, 1713: The Skirmish at Bendery

February 1, 1979: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran after years in exile.

February 2, 1982: The Hama Massacre begins

February 2, 1943: The remnants of the German Sixth Army surrender to the Soviets, ending the Battle of Stalingrad a bit over five months after it started. The combined Axis army that attacked Stalingrad suffered upwards of 1 million casualties as well as the loss of thousands of vehicles, the initiative on World War II’s Eastern Front, and the sense of inevitability that previous Axis victories had created. The battle served as a turning point, after which it would be the Red Army, not the Axis, that was on the offensive.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

Syrian rebels launched a couple of new offensives around the city of Aleppo on Saturday, perhaps in an effort to draw the Syrian military’s focus away from Idlib province. Multiple Hayat Tahrir al-Sham car bombings and rockets targeted Syrian forces to the west of Aleppo, while Free Syrian Army forces attacked government positions near the city of al-Bab a short distance northeast of Aleppo. It’s unclear whether either of these offensives actually achieved anything. Pro-government media claimed that they did not, but HTS claimed that its fighters did capture part of a hill outside of the city.

It’s also unclear whether these two operations were coordinated although that seems at least a reasonable supposition. If they were, that raises some uncomfortable questions about collaboration between Turkey and the formerly al-Qaeda affiliated HTS. There’s no evidence that Turkish soldiers were involved in the operation around al-Bab, but the FSA is Turkey’s proxy and it’s highly unlikely it would have undertaken an offensive without at least informing the Turkish military beforehand.

YEMEN

Local sources have apparently confirmed some of the details surrounding a US drone strike in Yemen’s Marib province on January 25 that may have killed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula boss Qassim al-Rimi. Some sort of an airstrike did apparently hit a building containing AQAP fighters on that day in a region in eastern Marib. However, the claim that Rimi was among those killed remains unconfirmed.

A new United Nations report finds that new weapons in the Houthi arsenal “have technical characteristics similar to arms manufactured in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” That’s about as close as the UN can come to accusing Iran of arming the Houthis short of catching them in the act somehow. The possibility does exist that the Houthis are buying Iranian weaponry on the black market, though there’s something of an Occam’s Razor thing here where the much simpler explanation is that Iran is supplying them directly.

IRAQ

Iraq has a new prime minister, but his mandate doesn’t seem to extend much beyond arranging a new parliamentary election. The PM is Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, who previously served as communications minister from 2010 to 2012. The appointment of an aging (75 years old) former mid-level cabinet minister practically screams “caretaker,” and indeed the message out of Baghdad seems to be that this was a last-ditch compromise between the leading Shiʿa parties to appoint a stop-gap PM in order to forestall a threat by Iraqi President Barham Salih to appoint a replacement for the outgoing Adel Abdul-Mahdi on his own initiative.

Allawi meeting with current (for now) Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office via Twitter)

Allawi’s nomination has not been terribly well-received by Iraqi anti-government protesters, many of whom turned out on Sunday in Baghdad, Basra, and several other cities to express their disapproval. Although his selection basically represents the much-disliked Iraqi political system throwing up its collective hands in frustration at its own dysfunction, he is nevertheless a product of that system, and so the protesters were bound to be underwhelmed.

One person who seems very much whelmed, on the other hand, is cleric/militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who has apparently turned on the protesters yet again and is ordering his militia to clear roads and city squares of demonstrators and to create the impression that Allawi actually has popular support. This is Sadr’s second heel turn in two weeks, sandwiched around a sudden face turn a few days ago. Sadr’s flip-flopping is meant to serve one purpose—his own aggrandizement—and while it’s undoubtedly costing him some of the support he used to have with the Iraqi public he’s now positioned himself as a powerful political force in Baghdad. It remains to be seen whether he’ll be able to maintain that stature after a new election.

LEBANON

While demonstrations in Beirut have attracted more attention, Al Jazeera reports on the the real epicenter of anti-government protests, Tripoli:

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Palestinian Authority announced on Saturday that it’s cutting all contact with the US and Israeli governments in response to the lopsided Kushner Accords, including—and this is something of a surprise—on security issues. PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced the policy change at an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday, so there may be some flexibility in the details though “we’ve cut all contact” seems pretty unambiguous. Abbas also said that he’s personally refused to take Donald Trump’s calls or to look at the Accords, lest Trump claim that Abbas had been consulted on the plan or anything like that. Cutting security ties is a very big step in that it’s been the one area in which the PA has reliably cooperated with both Israel and the US despite everything that’s happened with respect to Israel-Palestine over the past several years. It also risks a retaliation, from Israel at least. I’m not sure the Trump administration could do any more to immiserate the Palestinians than it’s already done.

The Arab League as a whole, meanwhile, finally offered the unambiguous rejection of the Accords that most Arab governments had been too timid to offer earlier in the week. The foreign ministers’ post summit statement said that the plan “does not meet the minimum rights and aspirations of Palestinian people,” while Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said that “the plan leads to a status that amounts to a one-state situation that comprises two classes of citizens, that is apartheid, in which the Palestinians will be second-class citizens, deprived of the basic rights of citizenship.”

The Accords have also met understandable resistance among Palestinians. Protests have broken out across the West Bank and Gaza, though they’ve been suppressed to some degree by a stepped-up Israeli security presence. Gaza has been in a low-level conflict for several days, as sporadic rocket fire and “explosive balloon” launches have been met with repeated but limited Israeli airstrikes. No serious casualties have been reported, but the Israeli government did impose a new ban on cement shipments into Gaza on Sunday as a punitive measure.

Arab citizens of Israel are also protesting the Accords. One of the deal’s less-discussed features is a clause that would allow Israel to jettison much of its Arab population by transferring a majority-Arab region in central Israel to the control of a hypothetical Palestinian “state.” I put “state” in quotes there because nothing in the Kushner Accords envisions the Palestinians actually getting a legitimate state with control over its own borders, security, or basic resources. In reality this would just allow the Israeli government to forcibly deport a large number of its Arab citizens to one of the several West Bank Bantustans the deal would actually create. Seems like an odd move for an Israeli government that’s so quick to respond to criticism by pointing out out how Arab Israelis are totally equal citizens.

EGYPT

Egyptian authorities say that a natural gas pipeline in northern Sinai was bombed by militants on Sunday. The Islamic State’s Sinai branch was likely responsible though no group claimed the attack. The pipeline supplies gas to El-Arish, the main city in northern Sinai. It had to be shut down for repairs but it’s not clear how much gas flow to the city has been affected.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

A mortar shell that Pakistani authorities say was fired from across the border in Afghanistan killed seven members of a single family in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday. It’s unclear who was responsible, but a Pakistani Taliban faction seems likely.

CHINA

The Chinese government is injecting 1.2 trillion yuan (which sounds less impressive in dollars, $173.8 billion) into the economy to try to cushion losses due to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Chinese stock markets are opening Monday for the first time since they shut down for the Lunar New Year and, well, it’s not a pretty sight. The stimulus is intended to ease what could be a It was another very busy weekend for the virus, which has now infected 17,388 people worldwide, killing 362 of them. It passed a gruesome milestone on Saturday with the announcement of the virus’s first fatality outside of China—a 44 year old man who traveled from Wuhan to the Philippines and died there. If you’re in the US, though, don’t worry. Donald Trump says he’s “shut down” the virus, which I assume means he had Rudy Giuliani send it a cease and desist letter or something. Regardless, we’re probably fine. The Chinese government, for some reason, doesn’t seem to have accepted Trump’s offer of assistance. Rudy would probably be happy to write another notice on their behalf, so I’m not sure what the problem is.

AFRICA

BURKINA FASO

Insurgents attacked a village in northern Burkina Faso’s Séno province overnight, killing upwards of 20 people. No group has claimed responsibility but Séno borders Niger, where the Islamic State’s West Africa/Greater Sahara affiliate is active.

SOMALIA

The Somali government has declared a state of emergency, not over al-Shabab but over locusts. The same swarm that’s hammering Kenya and has spread across East Africa and all the way to South Asia is, unsurprisingly, also battering Somalia. With Somalia already pretty food insecure, there are fears that the swarm could hang around long enough to wreck April’s harvest. Locusts can be a food source themselves, though the spread of Western farming practices and particularly pesticides has made what used to be a traditional response to locust outbreaks much riskier than it once was.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The Allied Democratic Forces militia was extremely active over the past week, killing at least 62 people in attacks on at least 10 different eastern Congolese villages. Congolese security forces undertook an offensive against the ADF in November and later that same month claimed to have killed one of the group’s senior leaders. ADF activity did seem to decline in January, suggesting that offensive was working. But this flurry of attacks in recent days would seem to suggest otherwise.

MOZAMBIQUE

Two global oil giants, Exxon and Total, have asked the Mozambican government to send more soldiers to protect their gas drilling projects in the country’s northern Cabo Delgado province. There’s an active Islamist insurgency in that region that goes by many names—Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jamo, Ansar al-Sunna, and al-Shabab (no relation to the Somali group)—and IS claims that it has an active presence in Mozambique as well though it’s made a number of claims in this region (like the claim that the Congolese ADF group is an IS affiliate) that haven’t been confirmed and frankly seem a little dubious. Northern Mozambique has a huge recently discovered gas field and there are hopes that its revenues could significantly improve the national economy. History tells us that it’s much more likely those revenues will go to Exxon, Total, and a handful of local tycoons without really doing much to help anybody else, but anything is possible.

EUROPE

KOSOVO

The two parties that won October’s Kosovan parliamentary election—the center-left Vetëvendosje and the center-right Democratic League of Kosovo—have reached agreement to form a coalition government under Vetëvendosje leader Albin Kurti, who should take office on Monday. The new coalition will also include several smaller parties and is expected to control 77 seats in Kosovo’s 120 seat assembly.

UNITED KINGDOM

British police on Sunday shot and killed a man in south London in an incident they’re classifying as “terrorist related.” The suspect allegedly stabbed several people, at least one very critically, and was wearing what turned out to be a fake suicide vest.

The UK’s post-Brexit trade talks with the European Union are set to get off to a great start on Monday, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce that he will not concede anything to Brussels while expecting the EU to give him whatever he wants. In a nutshell, Johnson is going to demand a full free trade agreement with the EU without aligning the UK with EU rules on labor or environmental protections, subsidies, and other trade considerations, and without accepting the role of European courts in settling any trade disputes.

On the EU side, instead of knuckling under to British pressure Brussels has opened negotiations by suggesting that it will exclude Gibraltar from any UK-EU trade deal unless the UK government reaches a separate agreement on the territory with the government of Spain. In short, the EU now backs Spanish territorial claims on the enclave. That could be awkward. More generally, the EU is wary of the UK engaging in a race to the bottom on trade and business regulations and has suggested London will have to align itself with EU rules if it wants a free trade deal. UK leaders, meanwhile, continue to insist that they do too have some leverage in these negotiations, despite months of evidence to the contrary.

AMERICAS

UNITED STATES

Finally, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the December 6 shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola, in which a Saudi stationed there for training killed three people and wounded eight others. AQAP released a recording on Sunday by the possibly deceased (see above) Qassim al-Rimi to that effect, and has also produced evidence that they were in contact with the shooter, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani. The FBI has been investigating Alshamrani over suspicions that he’d been radicalized, though it hadn’t previously linked him to any specific terrorist group.