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A man rushes past members of security forces during clashes between gangs and security forces, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti November 11, 2024.
UN will resume aid flights to Haiti as gangs gain ground
The UN Humanitarian Air Service is scheduled to restart flights to Haiti on Wednesday, a week after several planes attempting to land at Port-au-Prince airport came under small arms fire. The attacks wounded a flight attendant and resulted in the US Federal Aviation Administration banning all commercial flights to the island nation for a month.
Despite the arrival this summer of a Kenyan-led international force to help Haitian National Police push back against growing gang violence, the gangs have continued to sow chaos. The UN estimates that 20,000 people fled Port-au-Prince over the course of four days of fighting last week, and on Monday, an attack on the affluent suburb of Petion-Ville — as safe a place as you’ll find in the capital — resulted in at least 28 deaths. Women and girls are being victimized through the systemic use of sexual violence by the gangs, and medical providers have reported a “worrying increase” of such attacks this year, with some areas seeing 40 rape victims seeking treatment daily, just a fraction of the total.
Police are far from blameless: Doctors Without Borders says cops attacked one of their ambulances on Nov. 11, tear gassed the paramedics, held them captive, and summarily executed at least two patients, who the police said were gang members. There is chaos in the corridors of power, as GZERO reported last week, with erstwhile Prime Minister Garry Conille forced out of office and accusations of corruption flying in the transitional presidential council.
Is there hope? Not much. The resumption of aid flights may help some Haitians avoid acute hunger but will do little to end the violence. We’re watching for another 600 Kenyan troops to be deployed this month as promised, and to see whether other countries that have pledged forces follow through. We’re also following US efforts to transform the Kenyan-led mission into a proper UN peacekeeping operation before the Trump administration takes power in late January.
New buildings skyline in Changjon area, Pyongan Province, Pyongyang, North Korea
Putin to visit North Korea and Vietnam
Russian state media reported Monday that President Vladimir Putin will travel to North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks as Moscow tries to build influence among middle powers in Asia.
This will be Putin’s first trip to Pyongyang in 24 years, and he’ll find the city much changed. In 2000, the massive unfinished Ryugyong Hotel loomed skeletally over Stalinist-era apartment blocks, in an almost-too-on-the-nose metaphor for the country’s paranoid and feeble state two years after the 1994-1998 mass famine. Putin was in town to officially reestablish relations with North Korea, which had ruptured following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, the DPRK is no less totalitarian, but the economy can now support a facade of prosperity in Pyongyang — including cladding for that still-empty hotel, and some high-rises nearby to soften the landscape. It also now has nuclear weapons to protect itself from the US and artillery shells Russia needs in Ukraine, meaning Putin has to show up with something a little more high-tech in hand.
He’s previously pledged to help North Korea put spy satellites in orbit, which it accomplished for the first time last year. But a subsequent launch this May, which South Korean intelligence believes was aided by Russian technicians, exploded shortly after takeoff. Nonetheless, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says he wants to launch three more spy satellites this year, and we have our eye out for any indication of where the cooperation might go from here.
The Vietnam leg is less juicy by comparison. Hanoi and Moscow have a tight military relationship stretching back to the early Cold War, but Vietnam has recently been courting better relations with the US to offset threats from China. We’re expecting a carefully choreographed visit with little that could rock the boat.
XIÁN, CHINA- In the photos, people visit the scenic place of the city wall of Xi'an in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, northwest China, on March 4, 2020.
Hard Numbers: Chinese cities lift home-buying restrictions, Humanitarian aid ship sets sail, Car gun theft triples, Opposition wins in North Macedonia, Malaysia introduces orangutan diplomacy
230 million: On Thursday, officials in Hangzhou and Xi’an, cities with a combined population of more than 25 million people, lifted all restrictions on buying new homes. The moves are part of a push by many Chinese cities to bolster the country’s sagging property market. The announcements drew more than230 million views on the social media site Weibo.
1: Thefirst ship moving humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza departed Thursday for a floating platform built by the US military. On arrival, the cargo will be transferred to smaller US vessels that will then bring it ashore.
3: A new report finds the rate of guns stolen from cars in the United States hastripled over the past decade. In 2022, the last year for which stats are available, about 112,000 guns were reported stolen in the US, and just over half were taken from automobiles, most of them parked outside people’s homes.
58: Following an election earlier this week in North Macedonia, the opposition VRMO will control58 of the 120 seats in Parliament and the presidency. As a result, party officials say they can form a coalition government with like-minded allies to defy demands from Bulgaria’s government to recognize rights for the country’s Bulgarian minority in its constitution. Bulgaria can block North Macedonia’s bid to join the European Union, which requires unanimous approval of all members.
2: Malaysia’s government announced a plan to send rare orangutans, majestic primates only found in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra, as gifts to zoos in countries that buy its palm oil. Malaysia isthe world’s second-largest producer of palm oil, a product found in more than half of supermarket packaged products. The EU said last year it wouldphase out the import of palm oil as a biofuel because its production encourages deforestation in some of the last regions where orangutans live wild.A crane moves humanitarian aid for Gaza in a joint mission between NGOs Open Arms and World Central Kitchen at the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, March 8, 2024.
Aid trickles into Gaza – but how’s it getting there?
Amid warnings that close to 600,000 Gazans face famine, the World Food Programme said six of its trucks managed to enter northern Gaza for just the first time in three weeks on Wednesday.
What aid is actually getting into the enclave, and by what routes?
By land: Before the war, an average of 500 aid trucks entered the Gaza strip daily. In the first week of March, the Israeli government, which controls access points into Gaza (see our explainer here), allowed in an average of just 164 per day.
By air: The US, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and France have all begun airdropping food. But a single truck can deliver ten times as much food as a plane, according to the UN, and people who need food the most might not get any.
By sea: An EU-backed ship is sailing to Gaza from Cyprus now, carrying about ten trucks worth of aid. A US Army team is also sailing from Virginia with equipment to build a floating pier, which could theoretically receive enough food to feed Gaza, but will take at least two months to become operational.Palestinians are carrying injured victims to the hospital following an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on March 7, 2024, as battles continue between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
No Gaza truce by Ramadan
The Hamas delegation left Cairo Thursday after four days of fruitless talks that Israel boycotted, meaning there will be no cease-fire in Gaza ahead of Ramadan.
The impediments: Israel boycotted the talks because Hamas refused to provide a list of living hostages in advance. Hamas, for its part, said it could not agree to any cease-fire without Israel committing to withdrawing its troops in a phased pullout.
The nightmare for Gazans: A quarter of the population is reportedly "one step away" from famine conditions — with 575,000 on the verge of starvation.
France, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, the US, and Jordan have airdropped aid, but the trickle won’t suffice. US President Joe Biden is expected to announce the construction of a floating pier off Gaza to take in aid by sea in his State of the Union speech tonight.
What we’re watching: Will Israel go ahead with its threatened invasion of Rafah? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had set a March 10 deadline for hostages to be returned. A leaked US diplomatic cable this week said that such an invasion could result in “mass civilian casualties, extensive population displacement, and the collapse of the existing humanitarian response.”FILE PHOTO: Palestinians carry bags of flour they grabbed from an aid truck near an Israeli checkpoint, as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, February 19, 2024.
As Gazans face starvation, aid organizations struggle to help
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war is dire, and it’s being exacerbated by the convoluted array of logistical and political obstacles that aid organizations are facing.
With nearly two million people displaced from their homes and the specters of starvation and disease looming, here’s a look at the challenges aid organizations face to save lives.
Who’s on the ground in Gaza? Even before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the economically-devastating Israeli blockade on Gaza, which is backed by Egypt, left 80% of people in the enclave dependent on international aid, according to the UN.
Between 2014 and 2020, the United Nations spent close to $4.5 billion in Gaza, largely through its agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA. Qatar also provided well over $1 billion in aid to the territory before the war, with Israel’s approval.
The Red Cross, World Food Program (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO), Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Crescent have all also remained active in Gaza during the war in various capacities, but with significant limitations. The WFP, for example, recently announced it is suspending deliveries to north Gaza — where one-in-six children are estimated to be malnourished — due to security concerns such as gunfire and people attempting to break into trucks carrying aid.
A dire situation. As the reported death toll from the fighting in Gaza creeps toward 30,000, an estimated 1.9 million people — over 80% of the territory’s population — have been displaced by the war, more than half of whom are sheltering in the enclave’s south. The UN says the entire population is at risk of famine, while preventable diseases are killing people as the health system collapses.
Israel has placed severe restrictions on the flow of aid into Gaza since the war began, and the military has faced allegations of targeting aid delivery trucks. Prior to the war, roughly 500 trucks entered Gaza per day. From February 1 to 23, an average of 93 trucks per day entered Gaza, and there were seven days when 20 or fewer trucks made it in, according to UNRWA.
“This situation in Gaza is extremely dire because there is no safe place for Gazans to move from — no ‘escape valve,’” says Paul Spiegel, Director of Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. “Furthermore, the severe restrictions of basic lifesaving goods into Gaza — fuel, water, food and medicines, combined with the attacks on health facilities — make it very difficult for people to survive.”
Meanwhile, over a dozen countries — including the US — have frozen funding to UNRWA after Israel alleged that 12 of its employees participated in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA fired the employees implicated and has launched an inquiry.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, on Thursday warned that the agency has reached a “breaking point… at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza.”
If the war in Gaza escalates, more than 85,000 people could die over the next six months on top of the death toll so far, according to projections in a new report from Spiegel and a group of fellow epidemiologists. The report projected that thousands will still die even if a cease-fire is reached.
“UNRWA remains the organization with the biggest footprint and capability to deliver aid in Gaza, by far. If UNRWA reduces its services substantially, many more people will die,” says Spiegel.
FILE PHOTO: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they attend a joint press conference, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada September 22, 2023.
Canada shows Kyiv the money
Defense officials say Ottawa will inject CA$30 million into a push to buy ammunition, working with Czechia, aka the Czech Republic, to get artillery shells into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers. Allies are being urged to step up since US funding lapsed – and in the wake of Ukraine’s withdrawal from Avdiivka amid heavy losses.
At the Munich Security Conference, as attendees absorbed news of the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Denmark announced it would send all of its artillery to help the struggling Ukrainians and called on other countries to do more.
Republicans in the US Congress, under the influence of Donald Trump, meanwhile, have blocked aid, and rookie House Speaker Mike Johnsonhas failed to bring a Senate-passed $95-billion aid package for Ukraine and Israel up for a vote. Johnson is under threat from hardline Republicans who may try to oust him if he passes aid for Ukraine. But Democrats are considering taking steps to protect Johnson if he helps them get the package passed.
Unlike the US, Canada’s government has not wavered in its support for Ukraine, although the amounts of money are tiny in comparison. Defense Minister Bill Blair signed a memorandum of understanding with Czechia but has not yet revealed any details.
Canada is also facing intense pressure to boost its defense spending. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenbergsaid Tuesday that Canada needs to set a date to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP, NATO’s guideline for members. Canada spent just 1.38% of GDP on defense in 2023. Meanwhile, only 11 of NATO’s 33 members met the 2% guideline last year, but several European countries have been increasing their spending sparked by fears of Russian aggression.
Sep 21, 2023; Washington, DC, USA; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits President Joe Biden at the White House. Zelenskyy is slated to pitch to lawmakers and President Biden on continuing aid to Ukraine as it battles in an ongoing war from the invasion by Russia.
Ukraine’s about the economy, stupid
Over the past 20 months, Joe Biden has framed US backing for Ukraine as, variously, a struggle for the future of freedom, as a deterrent against Chinese designs on Taiwan, and even as part of a fight to tame inflation.
But as polls show waning interest among US voters for sending weapons to Ukraine, the White House is taking a different tack: job creation?
The US has sent more than $40 billion in weapons to Kyiv, and last week the White House asked Congress for $60 billion more in Ukraine aid, about half of which would be for arms.
The Biden administration is now pushing lawmakers to make the case that this money boosts employment: After all, when Washington sends weapons to Ukraine, they’re made in US factories. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News that Ukraine aid had created jobs in 38 states.
Earlier this year, reports suggested that the US arms industry, which accounts for 10% of all US factory output, was having trouble finding enough labor to meet the surge in demand.