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• There’s no end in sight for the political crisis in the Persian Gulf. After Qatar dismissed a list of demands made by a bloc of four Arab states, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain said they would maintain the month-old air, land and sea blockade of Qatar. Significantly, they did not announce any new punitive measures, nor did they relax their stance on Qatar, which they claim is backing Islamist extremists and using its influence to “sabotage” its neighbors. Doha rejects these charges. From my colleagues’ report: ”The joint statement by the four foreign ministers expressed ‘regret’ for Qatar’s refusal, which it said ‘shows a lack of seriousness in dealing with the roots of the problem.’… “Taking questions at a news conference, the ministers did not rule out that they would impose further sanctions. But they also emphasized that they intend to solve the crisis ‘peacefully.’ Their next step, the statement said, would be to hold another meeting in Bahrain, but they did not say when that would be.” • More grim scenes in Venezuela today as supporters of President Nicolas Maduro stormed the halls of the country’s National Assembly, a legislature dominated by the opposition, and beat up lawmakers and other opponents of the government. The attack left at least 15 people injured, according to opposition leaders, including one lawmaker who was rushed to the hospital with broken ribs and a head wound. From my colleagues: “The assault appeared to mark a dangerous new escalation of violence against opponents of the leftist government, although it was not the first time lawmakers have been bloodied by the pro-Maduro gangs, known as ‘colectivos.’… “The attackers were eventually cleared out of the building Wednesday by security forces using tear gas and fire extinguishers. Opposition lawmakers remained in the building. They sang the country’s national anthem and said they would continue with their legislative meetings.” • As opposition protesters continue their rather epic march to Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still talking tough about the supposed threats to his rule. He gave a rare interview to the editor of German publication Die Zeit. The full thing is certainly worth the read. Here’s an interesting excerpt that dovetails with my piece earlier this week on how Erdogan’s thinking sometimes aligns with that of Trump: “ZEIT: Why would the media, which is independent in Germany, engage in anti-Turkey propaganda? What kind of interest would it have in doing so? “Erdogan: I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘independent media’ anywhere in the world. At some level, they are all — whether print or broadcast media — dependent, either ideologically, or they are pursuing their own interests. If there were such a thing as independent media, we wouldn’t have all these problems. We see things quite clearly: They head in whichever direction the wind is blowing. The German media is no different. Nobody can say that isn’t the case. We know very well that’s how things are.” |
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A pick-up truck filled with migrants returns to the city of Agadez, Niger, after it was turned back by military checkpoints in the Sahara desert. (Javier Manzano for The Washington Post) The other graveyard Hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing war, poverty and persecution have crossed the Tenere, a barren, Texas-sized stretch of the Sahara, over the past few years. They scrounge together life savings and bet them all on a treacherous journey — first across the Tenere; then farther into the Sahara to Libya; then the choppy seas of the Mediterranean — in hopes of a better life in Europe. The world has looked on in horror at the thousands who have died when their overloaded boats capsized at sea. And while more people do perish on that final leg, the sandy graveyard of the Tenere has claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. “I think we’ve over-talked the sea and under-talked the deserts,” said Tuesday Reitano, the deputy director of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. The Tenere is located in Niger, which, per the U.N.’s development rankings, has long held the grim position of the world’s poorest country. Smugglers in Agadez, a city on the edge of the desert that functions as a migrant transit hub, stuff people into pickup trucks and then speed through the roadless expanse for days until they reach the Libyan border, where their human cargo is dealt to new handlers. Niger’s military once escorted smugglers’ convoys to the Libyan border, raking in bribes along the way. Then, late last year, Niger began to enforce a new law criminalizing the smuggling business. Military and police officers were replaced at all desert checkpoints between Agadez and the Libyan border. Raids were conducted on migrant ghettos in Agadez, aiming to shutter the shadow smuggling economy. Halfway through 2017, it appears the strategy has succeeded only in pushing smugglers and migrants toward riskier routes where they are at lower risk of detection by security forces. “They say that very few people are coming through Agadez now, but that’s not true. People are just avoiding the checkpoints now because it is illegal,” said Ibrahim Manzo Diallo, a journalist based in Agadez. Crossing tougher terrain has increased the odds that smugglers will abandon migrants in the desert. The IOM has confirmed such 52 deaths since April — the real number is certainly many times higher. “A lot of migrants come back from the desert saying ‘I didn’t know what it was like,'” said Monica Chiriac, an IOM spokeswoman in Niger. “‘Had I known, I would have never left.'” — Max Bearak
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un celebrating the successful test-fire of a Hwasong-14 ICBM on July 4. (Agence France-Presse/Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service) The big question After Tuesday’s first-ever North Korean test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, the issue of how to deal with Pyongyang is back at the top of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. But President Trump’s preferred strategy has been to dump the North Korean problem in China’s lap, demanding that Beijing pressure its ally instead of Washington. Beyond that, Trump has seemingly done little planning on how to conduct diplomacy if China failed or refused — and it has mostly done the latter so far. So we asked Post national correspondent Philip Bump: How light has Trump’s thinking been on North Korea? “There are two ways you could look at Trump’s rhetoric. “One school — the one championed by Trump — holds that he was deliberately vague about his foreign policy plans so as not to tip his hand to his campaign opponents. The other school counters that Trump’s vagueness was driven not by strategy but by either incuriosity or general laxity. “On North Korea, his rhetoric almost certainly fell into the latter category. “Trump formulated his strategy on North Korea years before he ran for office, arguing that the situation should be left to China. He repeated this often on the campaign trail, fleshing out his proposal no further than to advocate for improved missile defenses for the U.S. and South Korea. “Beyond that, the argument was China, China, China. China wouldn’t contain North Korea because it didn’t respect Barack Obama, he argued at one point. Were he president, he’d use economic pressure on the Chinese to get them to intervene. “Once he became president, though, his tune changed. After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he explained that the North Korea situation wasn’t as simple as one (read: he) might have thought. He explained that he wouldn’t label China a currency manipulator (one of his favorite campaign trail threats) because the country was helping with the North Korean threat. He vacillated between praising China’s efforts and giving up on them. “The biggest tell that Trump wasn’t prepared to deal with North Korea was a tweet on January 2. Trump explained that the country was developing a nuclear weapon that could strike the U.S. but that, on his watch, “[i]t won’t happen!” This week, that promise looks awfully hollow. It was the sort of promise made by someone who is either vastly overconfident, vastly underinformed — or both.” |
Many Poles are amped up about President Trump’s visit — which may not be a great thing. Meanwhile, how is Vladimir Putin preparing for his own Trump audience? The Post takes a guess. In other Europe news, you just read about some of the horrors of the journey migrants must make in attempting to reach the continent, and Bloomberg View explains why this year’s edition of the migrant and refugee crisis is so intractable. And in Britain, some prominent Brexiteers seem to be turning against their own project.
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Near the end of August, the U.S. will experience its first total solar eclipse in almost 40 years. The best place to see it will be Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and the Wall Street Journal has more on how residents of the small town feel about the expected influx of visitors. Meanwhile, ProPublica interviews a retired Republican who served in the Wisconsin legislature for more than three decades about his views on voter identification laws, while The Independent reports on how American public schools are rethinking a cruel practice known as “lunch shaming.”
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