The World Today for April 11, 2023

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The Spiral

BURKINA FASO

Security forces in Burkina Faso recently murdered a 16-year-old boy and others in Ouahigouya, a regional capital of the landlocked West African country. In a chilling report, the Associated Press detailed the teenage boy’s gruesome murder in the street, citing an 83-second video.

Such episodes could stem from Burkina Faso’s leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who took power in a coup in September, recruiting 50,000 volunteer fighters to help him fight al Qaeda, Islamic State, and other militants who have been running rampant in the country, the Institute for Security Studies wrote. Jihadists have killed thousands of people – at least 44 on Sunday in two of the most recent incidents, for example – and displaced two million others. But the volunteer fighters have contributed to a repressive and corrupt atmosphere in the country, as this Vatican News story about security forces killing a missionary illustrated.

As the Soufan Center explained, Islamic militants recently killed 50 soldiers in the remote northeastern Oudalan Province. Their deaths came shortly after Traoré announced that French forces that had been aiding the country’s counter-terrorism efforts would be departing the country. The change appealed to citizens who have not forgotten their country’s fight for independence from France in 1960, but it left a vacuum that mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group almost filled until they likely were rerouted to fight in Ukraine.

The military junta that Traoré leads also recently expelled journalists from Le Monde and Libération, two major French daily newspapers, wrote Agence France-Presse, describing the deportations as “a new sign of the deterioration of press freedom and relations with France in this country bruised by jihadist violence.”

While militants attack soldiers and the country’s leaders avoid scrutiny, Burkina Faso is experiencing a horrific humanitarian crisis. A fifth of the country’s population, or 4.7 million people, will need financial and humanitarian aid worth $877 million in 2023, the United Nations said.

Born in 1988, Traoré is one of Africa’s youngest leaders. While saying that he would like to cultivate democracy and pragmatically partner with both the US and Russia – Burkina Faso’s military has many ties with the US, Rolling Stone magazine revealed – one of his first foreign policy moves has been improving ties with North Korea, the National Review wrote.

Still, the country is trying to rally. Around 64 percent of Burkinabes are Muslim, reported Reuters. Almost a quarter are Christians. Members of both religious communities recently gathered in the capital of Ouagadougou to promote religious tolerance and commemorate Ramadan and Lent.

Traoré might consider looking to such events rather than Pyongyang as inspiration.

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

What’s Mine

TAIWAN

China ended three days of military drills around Taiwan on Monday, the latest show of force by Beijing against the self-governing island it claims as part of its territory, Reuters reported.

Beijing ordered the drills over the weekend in response to a meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.

China had previously criticized the meeting as an act of “US-Taiwan collusion,” and warned that Beijing would “take resolute and vigorous measures to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the New York Times noted.

On Monday, Chinese officials and state media said the military had “successfully completed” the exercises and “comprehensively tested” the capabilities of multiple units under actual combat conditions.

The Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army hailed the exercises, noting that Chinese troops are “ready to fight all the time and can fight at any time, resolutely crushing any form of Taiwan independence separatism and foreign interference.”

The recent drills saw the use of warships and aircraft, including nuclear-capable H-6 bombers armed with live missiles, and the Shangdong aircraft carrier.

Taiwan’s defense ministry reported the presence of 59 military aircraft and 11 ships around the island. The Taiwanese military said it would calmly respond to China’s drills and not provoke conflict.

Even so, the three-day exercises prompted concern and condemnation from Taipei and its allies.

China has never renounced the use of force to seize control of the democratically-ruled island and has long held Taiwan as part of its territory, a claim that Taipei has strongly disputed.

Dreams and Nightmares

GEORGIA

Thousands of opposition supporters protested in Georgia’s capital this week amid growing criticism that the country’s government is moving toward autocracy and collaborating with Russia, Euronews reported.

Protesters marched in front of the parliament in Tbilisi, calling for the “release of political prisoners and the implementation of reforms” sought by the European Union to grant Georgia candidate status.

The demonstrations were organized by the main opposition group, the United National Movement, founded by imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili.

The marches come as the ruling Georgian Dream Party has come under intense scrutiny for allegedly imprisoning opponents, silencing independent media and secretly working with the Kremlin.

Last month, the government proposed a contentious bill that would classify non-governmental organizations and media that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad as “foreign agents.”

The government dropped the bill following a series of demonstrations and after critics said the draft law closely resembles similar legislation in Russia.

In March, Euronews reported on how shadowy political organizations were attempting to create the false impression that Georgian society was more divided on critical topics such as EU membership than it actually was. Analysts speculate that the Kremlin was behind the maneuver.

Meanwhile, the United States banned four Georgian judges last week, accusing them of corruption and also of abusing their positions to serve the interests of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is the founder of the Georgian Dream Party, Agence France-Presse added.

Paying For the Trouble

LITHUANIA

Lithuania is demanding more than $130 million in compensation from neighboring Belarus after accusing its neighbor of orchestrating the immigration of thousands of people during the migrant crisis in 2021, the Associated Press reported.

In 2021, the European Union experienced a surge in the number of migrants – primarily from Africa and the Middle East – attempting to enter the 27-nation bloc through Belarus.

At the time, the EU had imposed sanctions on Belarus and its authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko over his brutal crackdown on anti-government protests that swept the country following the 2020 Belarusian presidential elections.

Lukashenko was declared the winner of those polls but the opposition decried the results and demanded new elections.

Then, Lithuania and other EU countries accused Belarus of organizing the illegal passage of migrants from war-torn and impoverished countries into the bloc in retaliation for the sanctions, according to NPR.

Last week, Vilnius issued a diplomatic note to Belarus, saying that the compensation is to cover the cost paid by Lithuania to host the migrants and shore up its border.

Since mid-2021, Lithuania has denied entry to a total of 20,000 migrants from Belarus. The government granted Lithuanian border guards the authority to turn away migrants in August 2021.

Lithuania erected a barbed wire fence along its 422-mile border with Belarus after thousands of migrants crossed into its territory in 2021.

DISCOVERIES

The Horses of Old

Millions of years ago, horses roamed North America before they went extinct around 11,000 years ago. However, in the 16th century, Europeans reintroduced them to the eastern coast of the present-day United States, which had a significant impact on Indigenous ways of life.

While first introduced to the east coast around 1519, there have been historical debates about how and when the animals reached the American southwestern and western regions.

Now, recent research conducted by an international team of researchers and Native American groups has shed light on this issue, Live Science reported.

They wrote in a new study that horses were present and domesticated by Indigenous people in the western regions long before Europeans arrived in those areas.

Initially, Spanish documents and sources suggested that horses became more prevalent in the west and southwest after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt when Indigenous people forced Spanish settlers out of what is now New Mexico. But oral histories of the Comanche and Shoshone mention the equines decades before the revolt.

The researchers utilized various tools, including radiocarbon dating, and ancient and modern DNA analysis, to investigate the remains of 33 horse specimens collected across the US.

The team’s findings revealed that some horses, one from New Mexico and one from southern Idaho, dated back to the early 1600s. They also showed that horses were abundant in the Southwest and Great Plains by 1650.

DNA comparisons revealed that these horses were closely related to the Spanish horse bloodlines, but they were not directly imported from Europe. Instead, these creatures were dispersed from Spanish settlements along Indigenous trading routes in the early 17th century.

Further analysis also showed that the Native peoples fed, cared for, and even rode the hoofed animals.

This study not only challenges previous historical accounts but also opens the door for further research into the social dynamics between the horses and Indigenous groups, who formed close and sacred bonds with them.

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