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Colombia hosts meeting on Venezuelan political crisis.
Colombia convenes new Venezuela summit
Representatives from about 20 countries, including the US, gathered in Bogotá on Tuesday as part of the Colombian government’s push to restart talks between Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and the fractious opposition. Neither side has sent representatives, but both say they support the event.
How’d we get here? Several years ago, Maduro, who had mismanaged the economy and rigged his own re-election, was on the ropes. As popular protests swelled, millions fled his country, and fresh US sanctions choked off crucial revenues. But opposition infighting and global demand for oil — Venezuela has more of it than anyone else — kept him firmly in power.
Now, with elections approaching next year, the opposition – along with the US, EU, and most of the region – wants the powerful but unpopular Maduro to guarantee a level playing field. He, however, wants the US to ease Trump-era sanctions. Maduro has shown he can hang on pretty well under sanctions, but he may not want to risk a rerun of the 2018 protests over an overtly unfair vote.
A previous round of talks in Mexico stalled late last year, but Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro is hoping that his good relations with neighboring Caracas will enable him to broker a new deal where others have failed.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro’s not going anywhere. What comes next for Venezuela?
Just four years ago, most observers would have bet good money that Nicolás Maduro’s days at the top were numbered.
In 2018, Venezuela’s strongman president had declared himself the winner after a reelection battle that was broadly considered to be rigged. Maduro’s subsequent crackdown on anti-government protesters made him one of the world’s most reviled and isolated leaders.
It’s now been 10 years since Maduro, the foreign minister at the time, was handed the top job, and his power is more entrenched than ever. How has the Venezuelan despot survived and what might this mean for the country's politics and its people?
Meet Maduro. A former bus driver from Caracas, Maduro got his political training as a young man in Cuba. Upon returning to Venezuela, he became a big shot in the union movement and in leftist politics as a member of the United Socialist Party.
An avid backer of Chavismo – the left-wing populism championed by his predecessor Hugo Chávez – Maduro was tapped to take on presidential responsibilities after Chávez's death in 2013.
Like Chávez, Maduro’s authoritarian predilections were apparent from the get-go. Amid growing popular discontent, in 2015 he declared “Operation Liberation and Protection of the People” (the irony!) to address what he called the country’s growing security concerns. Maduro deployed 80,000 security forces to round up alleged detractors, leading to scores of extrajudicial killings.
This leadership style of quashing dissent and jailing political opponents and journalists came to a head after the widely disputed 2018 election, when thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest Maduro’s win, broadly dubbed a sham. The regime’s brutal response to the protests – security forces killed dozens of demonstrators and shuttered independent news organizations – further solidified Maduro’s pariah status in many parts of the world.
The sanctions weapon. The US has used sanctions as a bludgeon against Venezuela since 2006, when the Bush administration banned arms sales to the Chávez regime due to its ties to rogue states, like Cuba and Iran.
But this campaign ramped up a lot during the Maduro years. The Trump administration, in particular, adopted a merciless approach to Caracas, enforcing sanctions that cut it off from US financial markets, essentially limiting its oil sales to the black market and prohibiting purchases of Venezuelan debt.
Venezuela’s economy has since been through the wringer. From once having the highest per capita income rate in Latin America, Venezuela is now flailing. Starved of investment, hyperinflation topped an absurd 65,000% in 2018. The country’s oil output has remained sluggish over the past decade despite the fact that it has the biggest liquid gold reserves in the entire world. Consider that in 1998 Venezuela was producing around 3 million barrels of crude per day – that number slipped to 626,000 in 2020.
To be sure, years of corruption, underinvestment, and mismanagement have also pummeled the petrostate’s economy. In 1997, one independent group claimed that around $100 billion had been embezzled from the state oil company in the preceding 25 years.
Given the heft of Western sanctions, how have Venezuela and Maduro managed to stay afloat?
Who’s isolating whom? Taking a page out of Chávez’s playbook, Maduro has worked hard to cultivate ties with other heavily sanctioned states and US rivals like Iran, Russia, and China, as well as Turkey.
Reflecting its mercantile approach to geopolitics, Beijing has given Caracas billions of dollars worth of loans in recent years in exchange for oil. China has also helped Caracas deliver the goods in violation of US sanctions. Moscow has similarly doled out cash to help keep Caracas afloat.
Maduro has also deepened relations with the US’ forever enemy, Iran, with Caracas sending Tehran billions of dollars worth of gold in exchange for oil, gas, and food. The friendship is deep, with Iran reportedly set to revamp the Paraguana Refining Center, Venezuela's largest, in the near term. Crucially, the overhaul will replace US technology – originally used to build Venezuela's oil infrastructure – with … Chinese and Iranian parts.
Moreover, under Maduro, illicit economies – including trading of illegal drugs, gold, and oil – made up a whopping 21% of Venezuela's gross domestic product in 2021.
The perks of a ”pink tide.” Maduro has benefited enormously from the region’s changing politics. A “pink tide” across Latin America in recent months has seen a slew of leftist governments come to power that are more sympathetic to Maduro’s socialist, anti-imperialist agenda.
“For a long time, diplomacy in Latin America wasn't very ideological because state sovereignty was the most sacrosanct principle,” says Will Freeman, a Latin America expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Governments in the region are now taking a more ideological approach to diplomacy,” resulting in leftist leaders in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and elsewhere wanting to deepen ties with the socialist in Caracas.
A dysfunctional opposition. It’s been a boon for Maduro that the opposition has proven to be lackluster and underwhelming. Many place the blame at the feet of former wunderkind Juan Guaidó.
After the 2018 election, Guaidó, then president of the opposition-controlled legislature, set up a shadow government backed by the West. But critics say Guaidó made no progress in moving the country toward new elections and that he failed to get the military or courts onside. Popular support has also nosedived, with just 6% of Venezuelans polled in Nov. 2022 saying that they’d vote for him.
After Guaidó’s allies voted to remove him from office in December, the former de facto leader said the move would create a “power vacuum” that would only boost Maduro.
And he might have been right: The Biden administration recently moved to ease some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector. While this has largely been aimed at boosting production and keeping global prices down amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine that the White House would have felt as comfortable making overtures to the Maduro regime if there was a powerful and popular opposition to deal with in Caracas.
“Venezuela is fixed.” Not quite. Feeling emboldened by Maduro’s staying power, some Venezuelans have adopted the slogan “Venezuela is fixed” — a tongue-in-cheek reference used in the country when conditions mildly improve. They point to the fact that the International Monetary Fund recently predicted that Venezuela's economy will grow by 6% this year, while the poverty rate decreased for the first time in seven years.
But the current political dynamic is more a result of “broad disillusionment and disengagement from politics,” says Freeman, adding that “Maduro has not become popular by any stretch of the imagination.”
What’s more, the humanitarian situation remains grim. Half the country lives in poverty, down from 65% in 2021, giving rise to one of the world's biggest refugee crises in recent years. Venezuela is also one of the world’s most unequal states, with the wealthiest Venezuelans 70 times richer than the poorest. It’s for this reason, Freeman says, that what we've seen is “more of an economic recovery on the surface” only. The foundation remains rotten.
What now? Maduro’s political future is as secure as ever. But there’s no quick fix for Venezuela's economy or its people. Indeed, it’ll take years of investment and billions of dollars to modernize the country's energy infrastructure in order to boost output. And while other petrostates are looking to diversify their economies, Caracas is a million steps behind.
And what about the vote next year? “The elections will be very unfree and very unfair,” Freeman says, adding that “Maduro will steal them if he needs to, though he may not need to if the opposition remains this divided.”
For now, at least, Maduro, often derided as “the bus driver” from Caracas, is likely feeling pretty good about things.
Stories we overlooked in 2022
A handful of stories – the war in Ukraine, China’s zero-COVID policy, and US elections – have dominated much of the media coverage this year. Meanwhile, many other crucial global stories have been woefully undercovered. We take a look at four of them.
Venezuela: The challenge of migrating again
Since strongman President Nicolás Maduro responded with an iron fist to widespread protests in 2014 over shortages of goods and sky-high inflation, Venezuela has been subject to more severe US economic sanctions that have put its already-struggling economy on life support. (One of the first sanctions was imposed by the Bush administration in 2006 over Caracas’ failure to crack down on drug trafficking and terrorism.)
As a result of the economic and political crises gripping the country, more than 7 million Venezuelans have fled since 2015, making it one of the world’s largest migrant crises. For those who stayed behind, their quality of life is abysmal: Joblessness is rife, the medical system is in tatters, and more than 67% live in extreme poverty. Meanwhile, most of those who fled sought refuge in Latin America, mainly in Colombia, where they have struggled to find jobs – forcing many women to resort to sex work or even to sell their hair to survive.
But 2022 brought fresh challenges for Venezuela's migrant population. Global inflation has disrupted Latin America’s gig economy, which many Venezuelan migrants rely on to get by. As a result, thousands have been forced to uproot their lives – again – resulting in new migration routes to North America.
Consider that in the first 10 months of this year, Venezuelans accounted for 70% of people who trekked through the Darien Gap, a perilous crossing between Colombia and Panama that’s submerged in dense jungle and swarming with drug cartels and guerrilla groups. The US recently lifted some sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in a bid to offset losses from Russia. But Washington is still a long way off from reaching any agreements with the Maduro regime that would rescue Caracas’ economy.
Afghanistan: No reprieve for Afghan women
If 2022 was the year that the world stood with Ukraine, then 2021 was about standing with the people of Afghanistan after the Taliban swept to power at lightning speed.
At the time, Taliban officials said they would safeguard women’s “Islamic right” to study and work. But unsurprisingly, 18 months later that message has proven hollow. Life under Taliban rule has again proven intolerable for Afghans, particularly for women and girls. The Taliban has banned girls aged 13-18 from attending school, and more recently forbid women from attending university, prompting sporadic protests. Women have also been banned from working for nongovernment organizations, while public spaces in Kabul, the capital, are also off limits to Afghan women.
What’s more, Afghanistan’s economy is in tatters as the Taliban remains cut off from the bulk of its foreign reserves, which are mostly held in US banks. As a result, food insecurity is widespread, and the security situation is also spiraling as ISIS-K, a Taliban rival, feels emboldened to wreak havoc. As long as the Taliban remains in charge, Washington is unlikely to unlock any funds.
Rohingya: Stranded at sea
Around a million Rohingya – a Muslim minority long persecuted by the military and political elite in majority-Buddhist Myanmar – have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since 2017, after Myanmar’s military perpetrated a massacre against them. Since then, Rohingya refugees have languished in squalid conditions in Cox’s Bazar, a sprawling tent city for refugees, where violence, gang rape, and murder are rife.
In the meantime, many Rohingya have preferred to try their luck at sea, getting into rickety boats in hopes of reaching Malaysia, which opened its borders to stateless Rohingya in 2016. But 2022 has proven one of the deadliest years at sea for the Rohingya, according to the UN. Case in point: For more than a month, a vessel with at least 160 Rohingya aboard, including children who have gone weeks without food, was stranded in the Andaman Sea, while another is presumed to have sunk earlier this month with 180 Rohingya on board.
Meanwhile, negotiations between the Bangladesh government and Myanmar’s military dictatorship – which resumed earlier this year after a hiatus – on the potential voluntary repatriation of Rohingya have not proven fruitful.
Yemen: The forgotten war
Photos of Yemeni children are difficult to stomach – the protruding ribs and sunken faces. But after eight years of war, we don’t see many of these images in the media these days.
While fighting between the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government ebbed this year as a result of a ceasefire, the two sides failed to reach an agreement in October to extend the truce. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation remains dire: At least 17 million Yemenis are food insecure, and 2.2 million children under five have required medical care for malnutrition this year.
What’s more, as GZERO's Alex Kliment previously wrote, international attention for Ukraine has drawn humanitarian resources away from Yemen, making it harder to finance aid missions there. As of October, just 47% of the UN-led Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen had been funded by the international community. With longtime land and sea blockades preventing humanitarian shipments, stalemate remains the most likely scenario in 2023.
January 6th Committee votes on criminal referrals against Trump.
What We're Watching: Jan 6. panel's final report, Japan's nuclear U-turn, Fiji's unresolved election, Venezuela's opposition shakeup
Jan. 6 committee suggests Congress ban Trump from office
After an 18-month inquiry, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has released its final report, blaming Donald J. Trump of a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and of failing to stop the insurrection when he knew the situation was spiraling out of control. The report also points fingers at some of Trump’s former wingmen – such as Mark Meadows, Trump’s final White House chief of staff, and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani – naming them as potential “co-conspirators.” So what now? The report lays out steps to prevent this sort of calamity from happening again, including a proposal to strengthen the 14th Amendment's ban on insurrectionists that would prevent Trump and his enablers from ever holding office again. Though the report – which Trump has called “highly partisan” – carries no legal weight, it sends a powerful message to the US Justice Department, which is conducting its own investigation into the Jan. 6 attack.
Japan reverses course on nuclear power
Japan announced on Thursday that it will extend the lifespan of its existing nuclear power plants, restart mothballed ones, and build new facilities to replace those that get phased out. PM Fumio Kishida says this is necessary to maintain the power supply while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But it's a major about-face for Japan, which in 2011 shut down all its atomic plants after the Fukushima meltdown, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. On the one hand, public support for embracing nuclear has turned around recently due to rising energy costs and Japan's push to wean itself off Russian oil and natural gas. On the other, the archipelago remains as vulnerable to seismic activity as it did when a magnitude 9 earthquake triggered a tsunami that rocked Fukushima — not to mention what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Do you think Japan is doing the right thing? Let us know here.
A self-coup in Fiji?
Fiji is known for its pristine beaches, world-class scuba diving, and kava, the mildly hallucinogenic national drink. But its politics have a dark side: Every few years, there's a military power grab. After a recent messy election delivered a hung parliament, an alliance of three opposition parties on Friday confirmed an earlier deal to return former PM Sitiveni Rabuka to the premiership. But current PM Frank Bainimarama won't concede and had responded by deploying the army to help the police maintain "law and order." Many Fijians are suspicious — after all, Bainimarama came to power 16 years ago in a bloodless coup, as did Rabuka in 1987. What's more, the recent unrest has rekindled a long-held beef between majority ethnic Fijians and minority ethnic Indians. We don't know how this will all turn out, but things are not looking good in this Pacific island paradise.
Is Guaido’s time up?
Four years ago, Juan Guaido was touted as Venezuela's rising political star, who was going to rescue the country from strongman President Nicolas Maduro and bring better days to the people of Venezuela. Now, the former wunderkind is on the verge of being ousted as head of the opposition ahead of a vote next week in the National Assembly. At least 70 lawmakers from three of the four parties that make up Venezuela's opposition say they will back a motion to ditch Guaido as leader. “We can’t continue with a strategy that has shown no results,” one lawmaker said. In 2018, after general elections that were broadly seen as a power grab by Maduro, Guaido set up a shadow government backed by the West. But as Maduro has retained control of the military, and Guaido’s domestic popularity has plunged to around 17% – only a handful of Western governments (including the US) now recognize him as the country’s legitimate president. Infighting within the opposition is good news for the Maduro regime, which was already buoyed by the US recently easing some sanctions on its oil sector. Critics say Guaido has made no progress in moving the country towards new elections. But who will replace him?
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Why Washington is chatting up Nicolás Maduro again
You can isolate some of the oil-rich strongmen all of the time, or all of the oil-rich strongmen some of the time, but that’s about it these days, as Joe Biden is quickly learning.
Last week, it emerged that the White House is exploring ways to relax certain sanctions against the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro. Under a proposed deal, Washington would allow US oil major Chevron to resume exporting oil from the country while Maduro, for his part, would agree to restart talks with the opposition about free and fair elections.
As a reminder, a 2018 crisis brought on by Maduro’s repression and economic mismanagement drove millions of Venezuelans abroad. It also landed the country under “maximum pressure” financial and energy sanctions from the US, which were designed to squeeze Maduro — the heir to “21st Century Socialist” Hugo Chávez — from power.
Spoiler: it failed. Maduro and his cronies stuck it out, aided by a fractious opposition that squandered the confidence of its foreign backers. Now things are looking up for Maduro.
The Ukraine war is, of course, exacerbating a global energy crunch. And with the West seeking to isolate one oil superpower – Russia – Washington has had to look elsewhere for help bringing down prices.
Last week’s OPEC+ decision to cut production by 2 million barrels per day was a slap in the face to Biden. Washington had urged its eternal frenemies the Saudis to boost output to ease global price pressures and punch a hole in Vladimir Putin’s war chest. All of that has suddenly cast Venezuela, owner of the world’s largest oil reserves, in an even softer light as a longer-term option for getting more barrels back onto the market. The country once pumped as much as 3.5 million barrels daily before mismanagement and sanctions wrecked the industry. Today’s output is barely even 700,000 barrels.
And it’s not just the global context that’s changed, according to Risa Grais-Targow, a Latin America specialist at Eurasia Group. “The entire region is basically leftist now,” she says, “or it really will be when Lula wins in Brazil, so there's just no coalition there behind the US policy stance on Venezuela anymore.”
As if to underscore the point, Colombia, the US’ closest ally in the region, recently elected its first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro. One of his first steps was to reestablish ties with neighboring Venezuela, which his center-right predecessor had cut. (You can see GZERO’s full interview with Petro here.)
Would sanctions relief really change things in Venezuela? It would give the regime a fresh revenue stream, as Chevron has joint ventures with the state oil company, PDVSA. And signaling a thaw in US-Venezuela ties would help Caracas sell its oil to China and other Asian buyers at something closer to full price – for years, PDVSA has had to sell to them at knockdown rates over fears that the US might impose financial sanctions on any countries that buy from Venezuela.
What’s more, a deal could also lead to the US unfreezing some of the Maduro government’s funds pending a pact with the opposition to spend the money on humanitarian relief. Although the IMF sees Venezuela’s GDP growing 6% this year, it has fallen more than 80% over the past decade. More than a quarter of Venezuelans remain undernourished, according to the UN, and migrants continue to flee the country in large numbers.
Will Maduro actually make real concessions? A return to talks with the opposition probably isn’t hard for Maduro to agree to, says Grais-Targow. The bigger question is whether he’d really accept a free and fair election in 2024. Until now, the government has used all kinds of legal tricks to tilt the field in its favor, and the opposition boycotted the vote entirely in 2018.
Maduro is powerful but not necessarily popular. In regional elections earlier this year, opposition candidates did surprisingly well, even in some Maduro strongholds. In a truly free and fair vote – which the government hasn’t allowed in years – the opposition might stand a chance if it were able to unify behind a single candidate.
To underscore the point, earlier this week, after Venezuela’s opposition announced it would do just that in 2024, the president immediately announced that he might move the general election up to 2022, just to throw his opponents off balance.
All of that puts the question back in the White House’s court. How much is it willing to concede to a Venezuelan strongman who is suddenly approaching Tío Sam and the opposition from a position of relative strength? With the global energy crunch set to last for the foreseeable future, who really has whom over a barrel?
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Rescuers work at a residential building heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
What We’re Watching: Russia’s Zaporizhzhia strikes, Washington-Caracas dealings, Canadian asylum challenge, Macron’s intimacy
Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia provokes anger and fear
Ukraine’s foreign minister said Thursday that seven Russian missiles hit residential buildings overnight, killing a still unknown number of people in Zaporizhzhia, a city located in a region annexed by Russia in recent days and the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. President Putin has ordered Russian troops to take control of the plant. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi was in Kyiv Thursday as part of talks on creating a zone of protection around it to avoid a catastrophe. Last week, at least 25 people were killed and many more were wounded by a missile strike on a humanitarian convoy in this same region. It’s a reminder that though Russia is losing ground at the moment in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, it can still inflict great damage, including to civilians. And it’s one more attack that raises fears for nuclear safety.
Is the US ready to deal with Venezuela?
If you're Joe Biden right now, you can either isolate Russia or Venezuela, but with energy prices soaring, it's hard to freeze out both of those oil-rich countries at once. That's particularly true now that the Saudi-dominated OPEC+ grouping has decided to cut oil production in order to raise prices even further — with friends like these! That's the context for a Wall Street Journal scoop that details a proposal under which Washington would relax sanctions against strongman Nicolás Maduro's "21st Century Socialist" regime, allowing US oil giant Chevron to do a fresh deal there. In exchange, Maduro, whose repression and economic mismanagement have generated one of the worst refugee crises since 2018, would restart talks with the opposition about holding free and fair presidential elections in 2024. Venezuela has some of the world's largest oil reserves, but its once-booming oil industry has been crippled by mismanagement and US sanctions. Output has fallen from close to 3.5 million barrels per day in the late 1990s to barely over 500,000 today. Nudging that back up again would be a boon to Biden, but critics say the fresh revenue would embolden Maduro, a dictator the UN has accused of crimes against humanity. So long as the world needs oil — and it will for a long time still — there are no easy choices.
US-Canada asylum deal under scrutiny
Canada’s Supreme Case this week is hearing a case brought by human rights groups challenging the constitutionality of the Safe Third Country Agreement — a treaty brokered in 2004 by the US and Canada that requires asylum-seekers trying to cross select parts of the countries’ 5,525-mile border be sent back to the country where they first entered. Claimants say it violates Canada’s constitutional right to “life, liberty, and security” because asylum-seekers returned to the US are often placed in indefinite detention or returned to their home countries, where they face persecution. This appeal comes after a federal court in Ottawa ruled against the claimants in 2020, saying the evidence presented was “problematic for drawing systemwide inferences concerning the situation in the United States.” Meanwhile, US-Canada illegal border crossings have increased under President Biden, with more than 23,000 asylum-seekers caught trying to cross into Canada at unofficial border crossings in the first eight months of this year, the highest number on record since 2017. Ottawa and Washington are both keen to keep the STCA in place — and to extend it to all border points — so both will be watching this case closely.
What We're Ignoring: Macron wants Europe to get frisky
French President Emmanuel Macron, a known Europhile, has always wanted the EU — and the rest of Europe too — to do more on things like defense and foreign policy. Last May, he floated the idea of a European Political Community, similar to a United States of Europe, that would bring together the EU, the UK, and other non-EU countries in the region. Macron got a step closer to realizing his dream on Thursday, when 44 leaders gathered in Prague for the inaugural meeting of the EPC, a talk shop now being billed as a grouping of democracies to counter Russia. Among the invitees were British PM Liz Truss — who needed a quick break away from home — as well as the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey, whose democratic credentials are, ahem, shaky. Still, Macron thinks they can all get along to build what he referred to as a "strategic intimacy." They say French is the language of love, so it probably made sense in his head, but in English it felt awkward — and unleashed a torrent of Twitter memes.
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Restoring ties with Venezuela is a no-brainer for Colombia's new president
One of Gustavo Petro's first moves after becoming president of Colombia was to restore diplomatic ties with neighboring Venezuela.
Why? Petro says that closing the border between two countries who share the same blood has led to an economic "catastrophe."
What's more, he tells Ian Bremmer in an exclusive interview with GZERO World, globalization at its purest is about trade between neighbors like Colombia and Venezuela, which the previous government destroyed "to the point of stupidity."
Rebuilding ties with the Venezuelans is a priority for Petro, who sees it as an important step toward restoring the human rights of those on both sides of the border.
- Colombia's new president Gustavo Petro: Biden team aware the war ... ›
- Will Colombia really elect a leftist? - GZERO Media ›
- The Graphic Truth: Venezuela's sprawling LatAm exodus - GZERO ... ›
- The Graphic Truth: Global hunger hotspots in 2021 - GZERO Media ›
- New Venezuela talks: Maduro won, so what's there to talk about ... ›
Supporters of Iraqi leader Moqtada al-Sadr swim as they protest inside the Republican Palace in the Green Zone, in Baghdad.
What We're Watching: Deadly clashes in Iraq, China-Russia military drills, Colombia-Venezuela restore ties
Iraq’s deepening political crisis
Hundreds of Iraqi protesters stormed the government palace and took to the streets Monday after popular Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose bloc won the most seats in parliamentary elections last fall, announced he was stepping back from politics. At least 30 people were killed and more than 380 were injured in clashes between al-Sadr supporters, Iran-aligned groups, and Iraqi security forces. Moreover, al-Sadr announced he was starting a hunger strike until the violence stops. It's the the worst violence Baghdad has seen in years, most of which is concentrated around the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and government buildings. For almost a year, Iran-aligned parties have prevented al-Sadr from forming a new government, prompting his 73 lawmakers to resign en masse this summer in protest, which in turn led to sectarian clashes. Al-Sadr — who has long railed against Iran’s influence over Iraqi social and political life— retains widespread influence over some institutions and has proved adept at whipping his supporters into a frenzy. (Last month, hundreds of his supporters breached Baghdad’s Green Zone and occupied parliament.) The Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday whether parliament will be dissolved and new elections called – though the constitution says the legislature must agree to dissolve itself. That’s unlikely given that parliament is now dominated by a pro-Iran bloc, which became the biggest parliamentary faction by default after al-Sadr withdrew. Iraq’s military announced a nationwide curfew as the situation continues to deteriorate.
Updated on Aug. 30.
China, Russia hold joint drills
China and Russia kicked off on Monday joint military exercises in Russia’s far east. The week-long exercise occurs every four years, though this year the geopolitical landscape is ... quite different. In 2018, Russia had about 300,000 troops participate in the drills, though only 50,000 are expected to take part this year given that up to 75% of Russian troops are busy fighting the war in Ukraine, causing some observers to say this is merely an act of political theatre. In pushing through with the drills despite Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and China's stepped-up war games around Taiwan, Beijing and Moscow likely want to show they're doing business as usual under the friendship "without limits" agreement signed between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping earlier this year. What's more, the drills, known as the Vostok exercises, which means “east,” are a good opportunity for Moscow to demonstrate it still has strong military ties with other former Soviet republics and crucial non-aligned countries, like India. Other friendly nations like Laos, Nicaragua, and Syria will join the drills, too. This development comes as Moscow is keen to flex its military muscle given that Ukraine on Monday began a counteroffensive to take back territory from Russian forces in the south.
Colombia-Venezuela ties back on
Colombia and Venezuela have reestablished full diplomatic relations after three years. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s new leftist president, previously vowed to restore ties with Venezuela's strongman President Nicolás Maduro, who’s long been accused by the West of using an iron fist to quash dissent. Indeed, Colombia’s previous conservative president, Iván Duque, joined the ranks of dozens of countries — including the US, UK and EU — in rejecting Maduro's sham reelection in 2018 — and recognizing then-Speaker Juan Guiado as the country’s legitimate president. Maduro, for his part, severed ties with Bogota in 2019 after the Venezuelan opposition tried to cross over from Colombia to deliver truckloads of food and medicine. (Since 2017, more than 90% of Venezuelans have been living below the poverty line.) Bogotá and Caracas have agreed to reopen the 1,200-mile land border in hopes of boosting economic ties. Colombia’s economy minister says that bilateral trade could reach $1.2 billion this year and grow to a whopping $4.5 billion by 2026, in large part due to Venezuela's natural gas exports. That would be a massive boon for Venezuela, whose economy has been in dire straits since the US imposed crippling economic sanctions in 2015, giving rise to a devastating refugee crisis.