World roundup: August 22 2024

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August 22, 1153: A Crusader army captures the city of Ascalon (modern Ashkelon) from the Fatimid Caliphate, ending a nearly seven month siege. Ascalon had been a priority for the Crusaders since the First Crusade, and its importance had only grown since then as it served as a Fatimid beachhead into Crusader territory and was the main point of origin for Fatimid raiding parties. With brief interruptions the city remained in Crusader hands until the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate destroyed it in 1270 as part of its wider and ultimately successful campaign to eliminate the Crusader kingdoms altogether.

August 22, 1864: An international convention held in Geneva produces a treaty outlining humane “rules” of war, including provisions for the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers. That treaty would subsequently be amended and expanded four times and is the basis of the First Geneva Convention, which was adopted along with the other three Geneva Conventions in 1949.

Reuters published a blockbuster scoop today, and I really hope you’re sitting down in a calm environment because this is a stunner: apparently Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demands are the main obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza. Whoa. The biggest obstruction is, as has been previously reported, Netanyahu’s insistence on an indefinite Israeli military (IDF) presence in Gaza, via the IDF’s “Netazarim Corridor” in the central part of the territory and the “Philadelphi Corridor” along the Gaza-Egypt border. This is a demand Netanyahu added to the negotiations after Hamas announced its acceptance of the Biden administration’s ceasefire proposal and accompanying United Nations Security Council resolution back in June. He also introduced new demands regarding the duration of a ceasefire and the status of Palestinian prisoners freed by the Israeli government, but Reuters’ sources suggested that there’s room for compromise on all of the remaining disputes except the extended IDF occupation.

The above has all been well documented, and yet it seems discordant with the Biden administration’s professed optimism in recent days that its “bridging proposal” would close the final gaps between the parties. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to the region this week was supposed to be the final push toward a deal, but instead appears to have set the process back, as The New York Times reports:

A visit to the region this week by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken ended without any apparent resolution to major sticking points — and in acrimony, with Mr. Netanyahu and Hamas officials trading blame for obstructing progress.

Israeli negotiators were taken aback and, in some cases, angered by Mr. Blinken’s statements this week apparently affirming that Mr. Netanyahu had accepted the American bridging proposal and that it was now up to Hamas to follow suit, according to people familiar with the talks.

Those statements — which came after a nearly three-hour meeting on Monday between Mr. Blinken and Mr. Netanyahu — made it appear that the Israeli prime minister and the Biden administration saw eye-to-eye on aspects of the proposal that Hamas clearly would not accede to, one of the people said, dimming the prospects of an agreement. Instead, they said, Mr. Blinken could have called more vaguely for flexibility on both sides.

Ceasefire negotiations are apparently continuing in Cairo, though these appear to be between the Israeli and Egyptian governments—Cairo also rejects the idea of an indefinite/permanent IDF presence on the Gaza border—rather than between Israel and Hamas. As such, whatever slim hope there seemed to be last week that a deal might actually be forthcoming has mostly vanished. And ongoing IDF assaults on parts of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah suggest that even a diminution of the violence is still some ways off. In the West Bank, meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike reportedly killed at least three Palestinians in the Tulkarm refugee camp on Thursday. Hamas’s Qassam Brigades armed wing reported a battle between Israeli forces and its Tulkarm units. It’s unclear whether the people killed were affiliated with Hamas.

The Greek-flagged Sounion, an oil tanker that came under attack by Houthi fighters in the Red Sea on Wednesday, “now represents a navigational and environmental hazard” according to the European Union’s Red Sea maritime operation. The crew has reportedly been evacuated from the vessel, but the 150,000 metric tons of crude it’s carrying aren’t so easily removed. The vessel is at anchor so at least it’s no longer adrift, and there are efforts underway to try to tow it to port.

Unspecified “gunmen” attacked a police unit in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Thursday, killing at least 11 police officers and wounding seven more. Given the location there’s no obvious suspect among Pakistan’s myriad armed groups and there’s a strong possibility these were criminal bandits rather than ideological militants. Earlier in the day, gunmen opened fire on a school van in another part of Punjab, killing two students and wounding six other people including the driver. That incident appears to have been motivated by a personal dispute between the attackers and the driver.

According to The Guardian, recent attacks by Arakan Army rebels have driven thousands of Rohingya to attempt a dangerous exodus:

Thousands of Rohingya are being forced to flee from their homes in Myanmar and escape on dangerous boat journeys after being targeted by armed rebels, activists and officials say.

Having seized control of much of Myanmar’s Rakhine state from the military, the rebel Arakan Army has turned on the Rohingya minority in areas it controls, shelling villages, forcing them to leave their homes and reportedly rounding up groups of men.

A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said precise numbers could not be verified but that thousands of Rohingya had fled the townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung in recent weeks.

Rohingya activists in the Nayapara refugee camp in Bangladesh said they found the bodies of three people washed up on the banks of the Bangladeshi side of the Naf River, which forms the border with Myanmar, on Tuesday, while dozens have more have been recovered in recent weeks.

Thai health authorities have confirmed a case of mpox caused by the strain that’s caused a global health emergency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That marks the first known case of the virus in Asia and the second outside of Africa, following a case in Sweden that was detected earlier this month. There doesn’t appear to be any indication of spread but Thai officials are reportedly monitoring 43 people who came into contact with the infected patient.

The Indonesian parliament was forced on Thursday to cancel a vote on changing the country’s electoral laws due to lack of a quorum possibly related to the massive protests that were taking place outside the parliament building in Jakarta. The legislature was set to consider two measures. One would have overturned a ruling by the Indonesian Constitution Court earlier this week that dismissed a challenge to the age limit (30 years old) for candidates for regional governor. The other would have lightened a requirement that parties must hold at least 20 percent of the seats in a regional legislature in order to nominate a candidate for governor.

Both of those measures were intended to allow President Joko Widodo’s (Jokowi) youngest son, the 29 year old Kaesang Pangarep, to run for governor of Central Java province. The court changed Indonesian electoral rules last year to allow another of Jokowi’s sons, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, to run for vice president despite being too young by law. As it happens, the chief justice at the time was Jokowi’s brother in law, Anwar Usman. He’s since been dismissed for failing to recuse himself in such an obvious conflict of interest. Judging by the protests it would seem at least some portion of the Indonesian public has had its fill of high level nepotism.

The Chinese government has drastically ratcheted down the number of permits it’s issuing for new coal-fired power plants, which could be very welcome news from a climate perspective. The Guardian reports that it approved only 9 gigawatts of new coal plants over the first half of this year. That’s “a reduction of 83% compared with the first half of 2023, according to a report by two thinktanks, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor.” China has accounted for 90 percent of new coal plant construction worldwide so far this year, the outcome of last year’s boom in permitting. But it’s also rapidly expanding its wind and solar power capacity, which suggests it’s hedging its bets and may not fully utilize all that new coal capacity.

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The World Food Program says it’s been able to bring an aid convoy into the Darfur region this week, after the Sudanese military agreed to reopen a key checkpoint along the Chadian border. This was a relatively small shipment probably intended as a test run, and the convoy’s apparent success likely means more aid will begin flowing. The WFP says it has enough food for around 500,000 people queued up to enter the region, which is nowhere near enough to meet the need but is at least something.

Gunmen attacked a village in northern Nigeria’s Niger state on Wednesday, killing at least 13 farmers. There’s no confirmation as to the identity of the attackers and Niger state is frequently plagued by banditry, but AFP is reporting that Nigerian officials believe Boko Haram was responsible. Niger state is far afield from Boko Haram’s traditional territory in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state, but there have in the past been indications of collaboration between Nigerian jihadist groups and criminal gangs and it’s certainly possible that Boko Haram has leveraged those links to expand its operations to other parts of the country.

An overnight Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at the Russian military’s Marinovka airfield, located near the city of Volgograd. Russian officials are claiming that the drones were intercepted and the fire caused by wreckage, which if true would suggest that the damage was not severe. Meanwhile, an oil refinery in southern Russia’s Rostov oblast has been on fire for five days now, following a previous Ukrainian drone strike. Video seems to show considerable damage to that facility though that’s far from confirmed.

Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk oblast have reportedly been using US-provided HIMARS units to destroy the pontoon bridges that the Russian military keeps trying to construct across the Seym River. The destruction of three permanent bridges over that river in recent days has left what the Ukrainians estimate to be around 3000 Russian soldiers trapped and vulnerable to encirclement. The Ukrainians are expanding the territory under their control along the Russian side of the border but seem to have more or less stopped trying to advance any deeper into Russia for fear of overstretching themselves.

The Russian military captured another village in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast on Thursday, moving it a bit closer to the logistically significant town of Pokrovsk. The Russians seem to be advancing a bit faster in recent days than they had been previously, which is presumably the opposite of the effect the Ukrainian military was hoping to cause when it invaded Kursk. Ukrainian personnel are now complaining to the media that untrained conscripts are being thrown onto the front line in Donetsk and their struggles are hampering the effort to defend against the Russian offensive. If that’s the case, then it further calls into question the wisdom of devoting thousands of trained and seasoned Ukrainian soldiers to an invasion of Russia that seems unlikely to do much more than generate a bunch of Russian POWs and maybe boost Ukrainian morale in the short-term. The people back in Kyiv who hatched this scheme are insisting that the training is fine and say that commanders in the field are blaming the conscripts to excuse their own failures.

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The Venezuelan Supreme Court on Thursday confirmed President Nicolás Maduro’s reelection. Call me crazy, but I don’t think this ruling is going to convince Venezuela’s political opposition, their supporters, or their international backers that the official result of last month’s election was legitimate. It does, however, highlight the dearth of options for the opposition to pursue its claim that elections officials rigged the vote count. There is no legal, institutional path forward for that case.

Finally, Responsible Statecraft’s William Hartung takes issue with cheerleaders for ever-increasing military budgets:

America’s commitment to arm Israel and Ukraine while attempting to stockpile large quantities of weapons for a potential war with China is putting strains on America’s weapons manufacturing base, leading many influential policy makers and corporate officials to suggest measures that would super-size this nation’s already enormous military-industrial complex.

This argument is taken to the extreme in a new piece in The National Interest by Arthur Herman of the arms contractor-funded Hudson Institute, entitled “Three Cheers for the Military-Industrial Complex.” The article repeats many of the stock arguments of current advocates of higher Pentagon spending while throwing around misleading statistics and dubious assumptions along the way.

Myth number one routinely put forward by today’s proponents of throwing more money at the Pentagon is that the U.S. military has somehow been neglected over the past few decades, and that therefore we need to inject hundreds of billions of dollars in additional spending into the arms sector to restore our defenses to an acceptable level. This argument has appeared in a recent report by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) on the need for a renewed policy of “peace through strength,” as well as in an analysis from a congressional commission charged with assessing the state of America’s defenses.

Both reports — as well as Herman’s article — are based on a false premise.