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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.
Russian President Vladimir Putin holds talks with U.S. President Joe Biden via a video link in Sochi, Russia December 7, 2021.
What We’re Watching: Biden vs Putin, Rohingya vs Facebook, Peruvian congress vs president
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin agree to disagree. But what a disagreement it is…. From what we know, during their Tuesday video call, the Russian president made clear that NATO’s flirtations with Ukraine are a red line, and that Moscow is prepared to defend its sphere of influence. The Kremlin also wants to see movement on the 2015 Minsk peace plan, which would give Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine broad autonomy. Biden meanwhile stressed that if Russia stirs up fresh trouble in Ukraine, the US is prepared to impose more severe economic sanctions. The US president also told Putin that Washington doesn’t accept the idea that Ukraine’s interests are subordinate to Russia’s. All of that leaves us more or less where we were before the call: Russia with more than 100,000 troops camped out on the Ukrainian border, and the US sounding the alarm about a possible invasion.
Rohingya sue Meta. Dozens of Rohingya refugees in the UK and the US want $150 billion in compensation from Meta, the parent company of Facebook, for allegedly allowing hate speech targeting the minority ethnic group to spread like wildfire in Myanmar. More than 10,000 Rohingya — most of whom are Muslim — were killed in August 2017, when the country's trigger-happy military, egged on by radical Buddhist monks, carried out a bloody crackdown against Rohingya communities. Meta, for its part, has as of Tuesday evening yet to reply to the lawsuit, which claims Facebook turned a blind eye to its algorithm amplifying misinformation, failed to invest in moderators and fact-checkers, and didn't take down accounts that explicitly called for violence against the Rohingya. The legal case is only the latest example of Meta, which has admitted its past mistakes in Myanmar, being haunted by its business practices. Regardless of what happens in court, shutting down in Myanmar is a non-starter because for most people there Facebook is the internet.
Peru’s new president is on the ropes already. Impeaching presidents is practically a national pastime in Peru, which has had six of them in as many years. Now it’s the newly-elected Pedro Castillo’s turn. After a scandal-ridden and erratic first four months in office, the leftist former schoolteacher — a political novice from Peru’s oft-neglected highlands who won the presidential runoff election by a hair — has seen his approval ratings plunge from a meager 40 percent to a flashing-red 25 percent. Lawmakers are talking about booting him, and while there isn’t quite enough support in Peru’s fractious parliament just yet, the bell could toll soon enough unless Castillo rights things — and fast.A soldier looks at a banner attached to a military vehicle outside Myanmar's Central Bank during a protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar, February 15, 2021.
Myanmar is a danger to its neighbors — will anyone step in?
Remember Myanmar? It's been over five months since the military — the Tatmadaw — seized power in a coup, sidelining the quasi-democratic civilian government led by former human rights icon Aung San Suu Kyi. Anti-coup demonstrations quickly arose around the country, and the Tatmadaw tried to put them down just as swiftly, responding with brutal violence that killed over 800 civilians.
And although the media has largely moved on, the situation is getting worse in ways that aren't only bad for Myanmar's people, but also for its neighbors.
The economy is taking a huge hit, with the banking sector on the brink of collapse. The provision of many social services, like vaccines (not only for COVID, but also for polio and tuberculosis), has all but stopped. The Tatmadaw continues to face widespread resistance from democracy activists and ethnic militias, and foreign powers like China and the US have done little to bring stability to Myanmar.
Beijing, for its part, has had historically poor relations with the Tatmadaw but is now reluctantly supporting the junta to protect Chinese interests in the country. Washington, on the other hand, is firmly anti-junta but refusing to engage it — Washington seems unwilling to do anything except impose sanctions while putting out press releases about the "restoration of democracy." None of this will bring the country of 55 million back from the brink.
The reluctance of outside players to do more is short-sighted. Because as much as the junta has made life miserable for the people of Myanmar, the country that straddles the invisible border between South and Southeast Asia is also at risk of becoming a huge problem for its neighbors.
One of the biggest issues is that the junta, for all its repression, can't control the whole country. And that's not new. Myanmar is, as historian Thant Myint-U has written, "a colonial creation" comprising various regions with different ethnic groups who were never effectively integrated into a unified state. In fact, since its founding in 1948, no single government has controlled the entire territory of Myanmar, with several armed ethnic minority groups fighting for their self-determination in what remains the world's longest-running civil war. Chief among them are the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group living in Rakhine state whom the Tatmadaw has since 2017 violently persecuted in what looks like genocide.
Myanmar's restive ethnic patchwork is both a blessing and a curse for the Tatmadaw. The junta can't control the whole country, but at the same time, anti-Tatmadaw factions are likely too divided to unite and bring them down. Indeed, as we saw in recent months, a number of ethnic groups condemned the coup, but only a few have actively fought back against it, with most instead working to advance their own interests.
To be clear, Myanmar is not a "failed state" like, say Somalia, where the central government barely exists and can't provide basic services or meet vital needs at all.
But the outlook is nonetheless bleak — because while the Tatmadaw controls just enough of Myanmar to prevent regime change, it doesn't control enough to contain the risk of instability to its neighbors. This risk can take several forms.
First, as the economy collapses and people suffer, losing access to whatever services they may once have had, Myanmar could soon become a major source of refugees. Already, thousands have fled into Thailand (which turned some of them back) and India. China closed its border and sent troops to defend it. But more refugees are likely.
And with them comes a responsibility for which few South and Southeast Asian countries are prepared. Just as Syrian refugees inflamed tensions in the Middle East, with countries like Lebanon and Jordan struggling to integrate this influx into their own populations, Myanmar's refugees will pose economic and social challenges to its neighbors as well.
Additionally, there is the threat of illicit and criminal activity gaining a larger foothold in Myanmar. As the rule of law further breaks down, illicit businesses — like methamphetamine production, which was a massive problem in Myanmar before the coup, and wildlife smuggling — will increase. Drug trafficking and criminality of this kind have a way of bleeding across borders fast.
Lastly, there is a real, if limited, potential for greater Islamist extremism taking root in the country. Myanmar, particularly Rakhine, is home to a small number of weak Islamist groups — including the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army — that have in recent years attracted a smattering of foreign fighters and committed heinous violence against Hindu and Buddhist civilians. They could use the ongoing crisis to bolster recruitment both from Myanmar and from further afield, just as the Islamist insurgency in the Philippines brought fighters from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Middle East. Powerful Islamist groups such as Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent have already identified the Rohingya as a cause célèbre.
Even a limited uptick in extremism would pose a risk to surrounding countries, particularly Bangladesh, which borders Rakhine. But the shockwaves could be felt further afield. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak once warned that Rakhine could be a "fertile ground for radicalization and recruitment by [the Islamic State] and affiliated groups" and thus constitutes a "serious security threat to the region." The coup has only augmented that problem.
And yet, even with all these potentially nasty risks growing, foreign powers seem unwilling to act — that is, by actually engaging the junta (which the US has so far refused to), and pushing it into some power-sharing agreement.
But with China narrowly focused on its own self-interest, and the US boxed in by its commitment to "restoring" democracy in Myanmar, there is, at the moment, little reason to be hopeful, either for Myanmar or for its neighbors.
Charles Dunst is an associate with Eurasia Group's Global Macro practice
Quick Take: Myanmar’s military coup is nothing like the US insurrection
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. I've got your Quick Take kicking off the week. Plenty of things we could talk about, but I thought we would actually discuss Myanmar, because it's not generally something in the news. And yet just this weekend, we had a successful military coup and immediately of course you see Americans say, "Hey, that's just like what happened in the United States, could have been us." And the answer is no, no. What happened in the US was an insurrection that failed, but it was not a coup and the reason it was not a coup is because the military played absolutely no role. In fact, all of the former secretaries of defense said that Democrat and Republican, that it was a free and fair election, and that Biden was going to be president. That needed to be respected. The joint chiefs wrote their letter together saying that it was critical to stand for the constitution.
No, not only did the military not play a role in undermining the transition, it actively stood up and the professionalization and the independence of the military, ultimately reporting to the American people, serving the American nation is a big piece of why the US political system retains its resilience, despite all of the erosion of institutions, all of the delegitimacy. That is not the case in Myanmar, where until 10 years ago it was a military dictatorship. There then was a transition that was imperfect. And now we are back to military dictatorship once again, as the military took over everything. Now it's worth going back to 10 years ago, when the transition of power that, that ended up with Aung San Suu Kyi being released, the incredibly well-known opposition figure who was under house arrest and ended up being allowed to functionally run the country. That agreement was with a new constitution.
That allowed the military ... it was a compromise. It allowed them to still have a fair amount of power. So for example, they still control the security ministries directly, unlike the civilian control in the United States. And they were guaranteed 25% of all seats in parliament, no matter what. And then you have elections on top of that to determine the rest and the military can stand their political figures in those elections as well. So, despite the fact that here's a woman that had been under house arrest and was allowed to come to power and you move towards civilian rule, it wasn't full civilian rule. The military still played a very significant role. You'd call it a hybrid system and look, the economy was in horrible shape. There was hope on the part of the military that by allowing a transition, that the country would do better economically, and they could also make more money themselves and there would be some liberalization.
So, all of that is what we saw over the last 10 years, generally welcomed by the United States and the Obama, Biden administration at that point. Now a new military leader right now, who really wants to hold onto power, but had no good way to do it. they tried to reform the constitution to provide additional safeguards and benefits for the military last year, that failed. They had elections recently. They really underperformed in those elections. They said it was a fraud. They had tried to delay the elections because of coronavirus, no dice, the Supreme Court threw out the claims of fraud there. That's obviously a equivalent to what we saw in the United States in terms of the judiciary and they were threatening, if you're not willing to compromise with us in particularly let the military leader who was about to retire, become the president, or otherwise have power, that they were going to change the constitution by force.
And they were engaging in some ... you saw tanks rolling around in major cities over the last few days, that kind of thing. Well, they didn't come to a deal. And as a consequence of no deal, the military swooped in. Now, Aung San Suu Kyi is yet again being detained. She has told the people not to tolerate this, functionally to revolt. But the other leaders of her party also being detained. So too, many members of the local media has been taken over by the military. Means of communication, temporarily shut down. In other words, this was well-planned and the military is in charge of everything now. So, what are the implications of this? First point, Aung San Suu Kyi, she won the Nobel Prize. Everyone knows her. She's no hero. After being in office, you probably one of the things Myanmar also famous for aside from her is this incredible ethnic cleansing that occurred against local Rohingya.
As a consequence, you had villages that were burned to the ground. Thousands of people killed, massive numbers of refugees streaming into Bangladesh as a consequence, other places. And she supported that. She supported the ethnic cleansing. It's a nationalist position, having nothing to do with her interest in democracy away from the military. A little bit like Navalny and his Russian nationalist position against Central Asians or Ukrainians or Georgians for example. Even though he's pro democracy, not someone I think should get the Nobel Peace Prize. In the case of Myanmar, much bigger deal because she was so well-known internationally, so revered and then became such a disappointment in such a massive human rights disaster debacle. Having said that, she still is the strongest voice for democracy in the country. And so the fact that she's now being detained, absolutely falls against everything that democracies in the world should want for the future of Myanmar.
You want her released, you want the civilian government to be able to come back. There will be some demonstrations, I'm sure, but domestically nowhere near the kind of capacity to undo this military rule. Internationally, the influence is mostly China and the Chinese may not like military leadership, but they certainly aren't going to undermine it or oppose it. As long as the economic relations with China continue to be stable, as they will. Furthermore, other countries with significant economic relations with Myanmar in the region, Southeast Asian countries, Japan, they all have relations with Myanmar that are based on noninterference. So, they're not going to stand for significant US sanctions. So, if the United States is saying, "You got to let her go. They've got to do something or else." There ain't much, or else. The United States is a marginal player here. And here I think it's important for us to understand that the United States increasingly frequently in a GZero world American exceptionalism, doesn't get you very far.
So, in the United States, whether it's saying the North Koreans can't have nukes or else. Or else what? Well, they're a nuclear power and the administrations on both sides of the aisle have been unable to do anything about that. Assad must go. Or else what? The United States has marginal influence over Syria. They're engaging much more closely with the Russians, with Iran, with other countries. Obama's gone, Assad is still there. The Russians must release Navalny or else. Or else what? Navalny probably tomorrow is going to be sentenced to a long jail term. The United States will put more targeted sanctions on Russia. The Europeans will be more reluctant because they trade much more with the Russians and a lot of them are reliant on energy there. What is the United States it's going to do? Myanmar, same thing. So, the United States is on the right side of these issues, but increasingly in a more fragmented world where the Chinese, the Russians are willing to say, "Screw you, we're not paying any attention." Other countries are more aligned, particularly with China economically. It's getting harder for the Americans to do that. And it's also getting harder because the United States at home has just had this horribly contested election, that delegitimizes American efforts to tell other countries, "This is what you should be doing in terms of domestic governance." All of which is to say, it's going to be harder for Biden to pull off these sorts of statements and make them stick. It makes it more compelling for the Americans to engage multilaterally and not make these announcements themselves but have a large number of allies on board. Strength in numbers, but also coordination in terms of what values really will stick as opposed to those the Americans care about but nobody else really does. And finally, this is a problem it's likely to get worse over time.
So, that's a little bit of what I think about Myanmar. I hope everyone's well, stay safe. If you're in New York, avoid snow. Snow is kind of fun actually. But avoid people. Be good. Talk to you soon.
Protest against the coup in Myanmar in front of the country's embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.
Myanmar generals turn back the clock
After weeks of saber-rattling, Myanmar's military took power on Monday. Aung San Suu Kyi and the entire leadership of her incumbent National League for Democracy party are now under arrest. The coup ends a five-year democratic experiment in a country where generals are used to calling the shots.
How did we get here, why was democracy so short-lived, and what happens next?
Myanmar has a long history of military rule since it became independent from the UK in 1948. The most recent previous coup was in 1990, when the NLD won a landslide election victory but the generals refused to accept the results and placed Suu Kyi under long-term house arrest. Suu Kyi's peaceful struggle for democracy won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and cast a global spotlight on this otherwise obscure Southeast Asian country until she was freed in 2010.
With its popularity in a death spiral thanks to an economic collapse stemming from half a century of international isolation, the junta (grudgingly) agreed to hold democratic elections in 2015. But there was a catch: the constitution barred Suu Kyi from being president or prime minister, and the military would retain a quarter of all seats in parliament and top security portfolios in the cabinet with no civilian oversight.
After the NLD swept the polls in 2015, Myanmar welcomed a surge of international development aid and investment. This massive influx of foreign cash helped Suu Kyi, as the de facto leader of the nation, navigate an often-testy relationship with the military, which rejected all attempts to curb its power by reforming the constitution.
Four years later, Suu Kyi shocked Western donors by defending the generals, indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court over their brutal 2017 military campaign against the Muslim Rohingya people. In what was described by the UN as "textbook ethnic cleansing," the army — egged on by radical Buddhist monks on Facebook — burned entire villages and forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. In response, foreign investment evaporated, and Suu Kyi's international reputation was forever tarnished.
But as Suu Kyi's star faded in the West, it became brighter at home, where a majority of the population has long viewed the Rohingya as invaders. Riding on her popularity, the NLD won big in last November's election, intensifying tensions between the civilian government and the army.
When the results showed a military-backed opposition party won a dismal 7 percent of the vote, the generals cried election fraud, threatening to suspend the constitution if their claims were not investigated. More importantly, their showing was so poor that the military feared it was losing its grip on power — especially the man on top.
The coup reverses the generals' declining influence in one fell swoop. Myanmar's new leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, was set to retire this year — now he's guaranteed to remain in charge at least until 2022, and perhaps (much) longer.
The junta has promised elections in one year, but will likely find some reason to delay. Even if the vote goes forward, the military will not accept an outcome short of victory for its allies. Meanwhile, the economy will be crippled by fresh international sanctions, and Myanmar itself will again become the pariah it was just over a decade ago.
Of Myanmar's few friends, China is the most important as its only reliable ally and top trading partner. While the new regime is widely expected to favor closer ties with Beijing, China is happy to oblige as long as Naypidaw follows through on the construction of a billion-dollar oil and gas pipeline for China to gain access to the Indian Ocean via a new port... located in Rakhine state, where most Rohingya live.
But it'll be a tough balancing act for the generals, who need China's cash and diplomatic support to offset Western sanctions but are wary of Myanmar (again) becoming a Chinese client state.'R' is for Rohingya: Sesame Street creates new muppets for refugees
BANGKOK (NYTIMES) - Six-year-old twins Noor and Aziz live in the largest refugee camp in the world. They are Rohingya Muslims who escaped ethnic cleansing in their native Myanmar for refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. They are also Muppets.
Bangladesh ships Rohingya refugees to remote island despite protests
Bangladesh says it is only moving refugees who are willing to go and that this will ease chronic overcrowding in camps.
Bangladesh begins transfer of Rohingya to controversial island
COX'S BAZAR (AFP) - Bangladesh began transferring several hundred Rohingya refugees on Thursday (Dec 3) to what the UN and rights groups worry is a dangerous low-lying island prone to cyclones and floods.