Knock-On Effects
NEED TO KNOW
Knock-On Effects
MIDDLE EAST
The death of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza marked what could become the beginning of the end of the conflict in Gaza.
As the leader of Hamas, the Iranian-backed governing body of the Gaza Strip, Sinwar was an architect of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and saw 250 more kidnapped. Since the attack, the resulting Israel-Gaza war has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Israeli leaders say his death will turn the page.
“Hamas will no longer rule Gaza,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the news broke, according to the Associated Press. “This is the start of the day after Hamas.”
Even so, the Oct. 7 attacks also triggered other conflicts in the region that might just be getting started, say observers.
The Lebanese capital Beirut, formerly a buzzing cosmopolitan city on the Mediterranean Sea, is now quiet due to Israeli attacks against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed political party and militant group, the BBC reported.
As the AP wrote, Those attacks have ranged from killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September and, more recently, his heir apparent, Hashem Safieddine, to targeting the group’s extensive financial networks.
Thousands have been killed or injured in the past few weeks. Beirut has become full of refugees from the south where the Israeli army has invaded. Life is now on hold, according to Maya Bekhazi Noun, an entrepreneur in the city, who said about 85 percent of restaurants, bars and other businesses have closed or limited their hours.
“It is difficult to keep the places open for joy when there are many people sleeping without enough food and supplies nearby,” she told the BBC. “We are on hold. We were aware of the war in the south – and somehow affected by it too – but many like me didn’t expect the war to come this close.”
Meanwhile, tensions are continuing to rise quickly in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority, which runs the region, has been losing popularity and power for a host of reasons, creating a vacuum that Hamas and other hawkish anti-Israeli forces could exploit to ramp up operations against Israel in the territory, argued World Politics Review.
Already, violence there is at the highest level seen in decades, noted Vox, mainly spiking due to settlers’ increasing aggression, according to Haaretz. Meanwhile, over the past year, Israeli forces killed 165 children in the territory, the UN reported.
Israel, which has withheld tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority, arguably shares the blame for this situation because the Authority has been unable to pay officials and others, putting enormous financial stress on residents who otherwise had a stake in tolerating Israeli power in their backyards, analysts writing in the Conversation explained.
Most concerning is Israel and Iran’s attacks on each other. Over the weekend, Israel launched strikes on Iran in retaliation for the massive volley of ballistic missiles that Iran fired at Israel last month, the Times of Israel wrote. The Hindustan Times worried that the tit-for-tat attacks might trigger World War III.
This escalation, in spite of limited casualties in Israel or Iran, is what many world leaders warned Israel about last year, even as it remained unimaginable, wrote Max Boot, a columnist for the Washington Post.
“A year ago, it was unthinkable for Israel and Iran to be directly attacking each other’s territory … (even as) the two countries have carried on a shadow war for years,” he said. “Now, what was unthinkable has, alas, become routine.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
J’Accuse
CANADA
A Canadian official on Wednesday accused Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah of orchestrating a campaign of violence targeting Sikh separatists in Canada, an allegation that intensifies an ongoing diplomatic spat between the two countries over India’s campaign of transnational repression against its perceived enemies, Axios reported.
On Tuesday, Canadian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison spoke before a parliamentary national security committee about the allegations, which first emerged in a Washington Post report this month.
He told the committee that Shah had authorized intelligence-gathering operations and attacks against Sikh separatists on Canadian soil. He added that he “confirmed” Shah’s involvement, but did not provide further details.
Morrison’s comments come amid rising tensions between Canada and India that were set off last year when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Indian government agents were responsible for the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023.
Nijjar was a Canadian-Sikh activist and prominent advocate for the creation of an independent Sikh state in India’s Punjab region, a projected state known as Khalistan.
The diplomatic clash led both countries to expel each other’s top diplomats.
Indian officials have called the accusations “preposterous,” countering that Trudeau’s claims are politically motivated to secure political support from Canada’s large Sikh community – one of the largest outside India.
Delhi has also criticized Ottawa for failing to present sufficient evidence, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Shah, a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, holds a very influential role in the government and is the driver of a series of major national policies, including the contentious changes to Kashmir’s autonomy and a citizenship law widely criticized for its perceived anti-Muslim stance.
India has long regarded Sikh separatists as terrorists and quashed the movement domestically in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the Khalistan movement has largely disappeared in India, it has retained support in the global Sikh diaspora.
The controversy has also spread to the United States: Recently, federal prosecutors charged two Indian nationals with attempting to organize the assassination of another Sikh activist and US citizen, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York.
Indian officials have been reportedly more receptive to US concerns and have initiated an internal probe regarding Pannun’s case, suspending an intelligence officer linked to the planned attack.
A Team Effort
CHAD
Chadian President Mahamat Déby Itno launched a military operation against the militant group Boko Haram and called on the international community to boost support for counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel, days after the jihadist group killed dozens of Chadian troops in the Lake Chad region, the Voice of America reported.
Over the weekend, Boko Haram militants launched a surprise assault that killed 40 Chadian soldiers and injured around 20 others at a garrison near Ngouboua, close to the Nigerian border.
Chad’s military estimated that roughly 300 heavily armed militants overran the base, torching vehicles and seizing weapons before retreating into the Lake Chad basin’s dense terrain – an area known as a haven for the group and its offshoot, Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
On Monday, Deby announced three days of national mourning and vowed a “full pursuit” of those responsible.
Government officials also appealed to the international community, saying collective action was necessary “to eradicate this scourge which threatens the stability and the development of the entire region,” Agence France-Presse wrote.
The recent violence underscores the Lake Chad region’s persistent security issues – militant attacks have plagued the area since Boko Haram’s insurgency began in Nigeria in 2009.
The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced 3 million others across Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, according to the United Nations.
Despite Déby Itno’s pledge to stop the group, analysts cautioned that it will be challenging for Chad to singlehandedly fight the jihadist group in the Lake Chad region, given its vast geography and terrain.
Chad has also sought further assistance from the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) – an 11,000-strong coalition of forces from Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger – to coordinate efforts against the militant group.
Double, Double Toil and Trouble
CHINA
Police in China’s biggest cities are cracking down on Halloween festivities this year, clearing streets of partygoers and interrogating costume choices, fearing that the holiday has become a sign of youth dissatisfaction with the government, NBC News reported.
The crackdown on Halloween follows unusually lively and large celebrations in Shanghai last year following the lifting of a three-year Covid-19 lockdown. Many young people used Halloween as a political outlet for political and social criticism, the news outlet said.
For example, some dressed up as Covid-19 test administrators to mock the lockdown, while others covered themselves in job advertisements to highlight weak employment opportunities in the country, according to France24.
But this year, the government, fearing another display of mockery and criticism, decided to quash the revelries.
Although formal restrictions on gatherings were not announced, Shanghai police vans last weekend lined up in popular streets like Julu Road that had hosted celebrations the previous year, with police questioning people in costume and checking IDs.
Videos on social media surfaced from another city, Hangzhou, showing costumed people being escorted away by police. Halloween events in the capital, Beijing, were also canceled.
The Chinese Communist Party has long subjected the Chinese to sweeping restrictions on cultural expression and political dissent, and is particularly wary of “Western” ideals, like the notion of Halloween, which officials fear will erode political loyalty among the young.
DISCOVERIES
Double Impact
For years, scientists thought the asteroid that struck Chicxulub, Mexico, was the single event that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.
But a new paper suggests that Earth experienced a double impact 66 million years ago.
Researchers from Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University recently confirmed the presence of a second asteroid crater from around the same period, off the coast of West Africa.
Dubbed the Nadir Crater, this five-mile-wide impact site lies almost a thousand feet below the Atlantic seafloor.
Using cutting-edge 3D seismic imaging technology, geologist Uisdean Nicholson and his team were able to visualize the Nadir Crater with unprecedented detail.
“There are around 20 confirmed marine craters worldwide, and none of them has been captured in anything close to this level of detail. It’s exquisite,” Nicholson said in a statement.
The images showed the crater’s various layers and allowed scientists to peel back sedimentary rock to look deeper into the impact’s structure.
“This is the first time we’ve ever been able to see inside an impact crater,” Nicholson told the Independent.
The Nadir asteroid was likely around 1,300 feet wide and slammed into Earth at a velocity of more than 12 miles per second, creating a fireball 24 times brighter than the sun. The resulting explosion was powerful enough to generate a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, triggering a massive “train of tsunamis” across the Atlantic.
The team noted that, in terms of energy, the asteroid couldn’t compete against the Chicxulub dino-killer.
“The (Chicxulub) impact produced as much explosive energy as 100 teratons of TNT, 4.5 billion times the explosive power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. It was the beginning of the end,” according to the US National Science Foundation. “What followed was irreversible climate change, species decline and extinction. In short, it wasn’t the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.”
Still, the authors are eager to investigate further and are now planning to drill down to the crater to retrieve samples that may help decode the exact environmental impact of the Nadir strike.
If confirmed, this dual-asteroid scenario could provide a fresh perspective on what made the dinosaurs’ fate so catastrophic.
While the chances of a similar catastrophic event are slim, scientists remain vigilant.
Currently, asteroid Bennu – measuring more than 1,600 feet wide – poses a small but notable risk, with a 1 in 1,750 chance of hitting Earth around the year 2300.