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British PM Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shake hands at Windsor Guildhall, Britain, February 27, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Post-Brexit trade, West Bank chaos, Nigeria’s vote count, Teddies for Turkey
A historic post-Brexit breakthrough
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a plan on Monday they say will finally resolve the complex problem of post-Brexit trade involving Northern Ireland. In the coming days, skeptics (and opponents) of the deal within Sunak’s Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland will read the proposal closely to decide whether to approve it. The deal is intended to ease the flow of trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, some of which will flow across the UK’s border with the Republic of Ireland and into the EU. The deal creates two lanes for trade: a faster-flowing green lane for goods transiting only between Britain and Northern Ireland and a red lane with more rigorous customs checks for goods bound for the EU. The two biggest (of many) issues that will now be debated in Britain’s parliament: How to determine which lane each shipment of goods will travel through and what role the European Court of Justice will play in resolving trade disputes that involve Northern Ireland. Sunak appears to believe that his plan will pass parliament, but the scale of this important political victory for the embattled PM will depend on how much opposition from his own party and the DUP force him to rely on the opposition Labour Party for the votes needed to get it done. Sunak was in Belfast on Tuesday to sell the deal to the DUP.
West Bank on the brink
The West Bank experienced one of the largest single acts of settler violence on Sunday, when scores of Jewish settlers stormed the town of Hawara, near Nablus, torching vehicles and houses and leaving at least one Palestinian dead. The assailants said it was a “revenge” attack for the shooting of two Israeli brothers by a Palestinian gunman. (Another Israeli was killed in the West Bank on Monday.) This comes as the security situation in the occupied West Bank has been deteriorating for the better part of a year, with a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel leading to raids on Palestinian terror cells by the Israeli army. While the Israeli Defense Forces have been criticized for not acting fast enough to quell the violence in Hawara, recent events have revealed stark divisions within the far-right government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu. While some members of the government egged on the settlers – including the finance minister, who originally supported calls for burning down Hawara before walking it back – Netanyahu, for his part, gave a rare speech calling on Israelis not to take the law into their own hands and condemning "anarchy." Many analysts say this is a sign that the strong-minded leader fears he’s losing control of the security situation in the West Bank, a sensitive issue that will continue to deepen government fissures if it goes unchecked. Indeed, Bibi can’t afford cracks in his coalition after a new poll found that he would lose elections if they were held today.
Nigerian election count walk-out
Nigeria's two main opposition parties on Monday walked out of the site where results from Saturday's presidential election are being gradually announced after crying fraud over the slower-than-expected electronic transmission of results from polling stations. But according to Amaka Anku, Eurasia Group's top Africa analyst, there is a process for political parties to register complaints over election results related to the new system without having to abandon the premises. All political party agents, she explains, receive copies of the results sheets from each polling station and must sign off on the tallies at various stages of the counting process well before the national count begins. Those are the same sheets that are then uploaded onto a publicly available website. Nonetheless, the inability of the electoral commission to meet the high expectations it created — that those sheets would be immediately published — "casts a shadow over the whole process," says Anku. Final results are now expected on Tuesday, with ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu in the lead so far.
Teddy bears for quake survivor kids in Turkey
It's not all bad news out there. On Sunday, fans attending a Turkish league soccer game in Istanbul between local club Beşiktaş and Antalyaspor in Istanbul showered the field with teddy bears and other toys to be donated to child survivors of the recent earthquakes, the worst natural disaster in Turkey's history. The outpouring of support happened when the match was stopped for a moment of silence at 4 minutes and 17 seconds, marking the exact time — 4:17 am on Feb. 6 — when the first quake struck. But once the ceremony ended, it all got political, with thousands of members of the Çarşı, a hardcore Beşiktaş fan club, chanting to demand that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan step down over his handling of the catastrophe and lax building standards enforced prior to it. There's no love lost between him and the famously left-wing, working-class Çarşı, rabidly loyal Beşiktaş fans with an anti-authoritarian streak whom Erdoğan knows will definitely not vote for him in the May 14 election.
People work at the site of a mudslide after pouring rains in Petropolis, Brazil.
Hard Numbers: Deadly mudslides in Brazil, Israel strikes Syria, Saudi women seek bullets, problem parrots in New Zealand
105: At least 105 people have been killed in mudslides and floods in Brazil. The disaster saw streets “turned into rivers” in the city of Petropolis, 40 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. Hundreds are now expected to be facing homelessness in the wake of the floods.
2: For the second time this month, Israel has conducted missile strikes against targets in Syria. The target this time was reportedly a building where unknown military officials were meeting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
28,000: A railway company has received 28,000 applications from Saudi women seeking a very cool job: driving bullet trains between Mecca and Medina. But only 30 positions for female train drivers are open. Women weren’t allowed to drive in the Kingdom until 2018.
92: Roughly 92 percent of all escaped pets in New Zealand are exotic parrots from other countries. Authorities now say this is a “real problem” as the birds introduce new diseases and crowd out native birds for nest space and food.Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, attends a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the killing of senior Iranian military commander General Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. attack, in Tehran, Iran January 3, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Iranian revenge for Suleimani, China back in Nicaragua, German bleats for vaccines, Turkish inflation explodes
2: On the second anniversary of the US assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi vowed to avenge his death unless former president Donald Trump and other American officials are tried in court. At the time, Tehran hit back by attacking US military bases in Iraq.
32: China reopened over the weekend its embassy in Managua, which had been shuttered since the Nicaraguan government decided to recognize Taiwan almost 32 years ago. Nicaragua is the latest country to establish ties with Beijing, which has been pushing hard to increase its economic and political clout — and diminish Taipei’s — across Latin America.
700: About 700 goats and sheep were assembled in Schneverdingen, south of Hamburg, in the form of a syringe to encourage Germans to get vaccinated. If you're interested in crazy vax incentives around the world, take our quiz here.
36: Turkey's year-on-year inflation soared to 36 percent in December, the highest rate in almost two decades. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to defy economic orthodoxy by keeping interest rates low despite rising prices and a crashing lira.
Inequity and conflict in Yemen: interview with UN's David Gressly
Why you should remember Yemen’s forgotten war In Yemen, the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis you’ve probably never heard of, 80 percent of people need international aid just to survive.
Two-thirds are hungry, and half don’t know where their next meal will come from.
Life is very hard in Yemen, UN Resident Coordinator David Gressly tells Ian Bremmer. Most infrastructure is destroyed, few can access clean water or health care, and many Yemenis are afraid to go outside because of landmines.
Meanwhile, 1.2 civil servants continue to show up to work, with little or no pay. If they stayed home, the state would cease to exist. The UN is asking for $3.6 billion simply to feed Yemenis and keep the lights on through 2022, but is now still short $1.6 billion. Gressly says that means many Yemenis will go hungry next year.
Regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia have turned Yemen into a seven-year proxy war, with civilians paying the price. The country is divided between the Houthis, an Iran-backed Shia militant group, and the internationally recognized government with Saudi Arabia on its side.
It’s unlikely the conflict will end anytime soon. The Biden administration has delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization and stopped selling weapons to the Saudis. Gressly thinks that’s a step in the right direction, but not enough.
Watch the episode of GZERO World on Yemen's forgotten war: https://www.gzeromedia.com/gzero-world-with-ian-bremmer/caught-in-the-crossfire-yemens-forgotten-war
A woman sits with children on a rubble from damaged buildings in Kobani, Syria.
Syria before and after
This week, we mark the 10-year anniversary of the beginning of Syria's catastrophic civil war.
As the Arab Spring brought protesters into streets across the Middle East and North Africa in early 2011, some of Syria's 22 million people decided to join in. Pro-democracy demonstrations began in the southwestern city of Deraa.
It wasn't crazy at the time to imagine that President Bashar al-Assad, in power since 2000, might step beyond the brutal legacy of his father, the dictator Hafez al-Assad, to open a period of reform that created new opportunities, particularly for his country's youth.
Instead, he answered protests with guns. Demonstrations multiplied across the country and turned violent. Into the resulting maelstrom stepped Assad's allies, Russia and Iran, to protect their investment in his continued rule. The US dithered, half-heartedly supporting some rebel groups but mostly staying away.
Iran-backed fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen backed the Syrian army. Well-armed Syrian Kurds saw an opportunity to win greater autonomy by weakening Assad. Fundamentalist extremists of various tribes joined the fight. Turkey sent soldiers, and Saudi Arabia provided cash and weapons to destabilize Assad. Western powers intervened to try to contain the carnage.
Assad's army — with backing from its friends — bombed hospitals, tortured prisoners, and used chemical weapons against civilians. The Obama administration warned these crimes crossed a "red line" but did virtually nothing to enforce it. In total, years of shooting, shelling, and bombing has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, about 22,000 of them children.
The war is now over, though the Syrian army hasn't recaptured all its northern provinces. Assad has won because those with the deadliest weapons were willing to commit atrocities to survive, and because outsiders did far too little to stop them.
The cost
Today, more than half the 22 million people living in Syria in 2011 have been forced from their homes. Six million are now in other countries. Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan host more than 90 percent of these refugees.
Of those who weren't able to escape, thousands have been murdered inside Syrian prisons, and tens of thousands more prisoners remain missing, according to a report from the UN Human Rights Council. An untold number of people still living in Syria suffer from untreated emotional and psychological damage.
About 70 percent of Syrians now live in poverty. Before the war began, 47 Syrian pounds bought one US dollar. The official price stands today at about 1,250 pounds. The International Committee of the Red Cross reports that 30 percent of women have no income at all to support their families, and about 80 percent of Syrian youth struggle to afford food.
An entire generation of Syrian children faces an uncertain future. In 2017, a report from the International Rescue Committee found that a third of Syria's children don't go to school. Of those who continue their studies, half of middle school-aged children were unable to read at a second-grade level, and nearly 60 percent couldn't solve a second-grade math problem.
Then there's the physical wreckage. Today's Syria lies beneath millions of tons of rubble. Roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals have been destroyed, and there's little money to rebuild them.
And Assad, who tested positive for COVID-19 this week, remains in charge.
Syria's frozen future
For the foreseeable future, life in Syria isn't going to improve from today's uneasy quiet. Russia and Iran got the outcome they wanted and now, burdened with COVID costs and Western sanctions, they have better things to spend money on than rebuilding Syria.
Europe and the United States will direct humanitarian assistance toward suffering Syrians, but they won't finance the reconstruction of a country led by Assad.
A few Syrian refugees will return, but most believe they're better off where they are and fear retribution if they go home.
Bottom-line: John Milton's fallen angel famously declared that it's "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." One wonders whether Assad agrees.