Conflict Zones in the Time of Coronavirus: War and War by Other Means

Nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, the extent of the virus’s spread in Afghanistan is unclear. Official figures claim the country has seen fewer than 50,000 cases and 2,000 deaths, but there is no question that these figures are wildly underreported. And while the Afghan government is not above concealment and disinformation, this underreporting is more likely caused by weak governance, poor public health capacity, and a lack of access to testing and healthcare services for women. Aware of these limitations, the country’s Ministry of Public Health conducted an antibody survey this summer, the results of which suggested that as many as 10 million Afghans—a third of the population—had been infected. Anecdotal evidence is similarly dire, with Kabul gravediggers reporting death rates close to three times normal.

Uncertainty about the prevalence of the disease intersects with an otherwise unsettled year in Afghanistan. This uncertainty is driven in no small part by a drawdown of U.S. forces and the halting start to intra-Afghan peace negotiations, so it can be difficult to attribute specific developments to individual causes. The coronavirus pandemic is likely a contributing or accelerating factor in all of the issues described here, but not the only one.

Ongoing Pandemic-Era Challenges to Military Readiness

Along with the beginning of intra-Afghan negotiations, the Taliban have launched a brutal offensive across much of Afghanistan, and the self-proclaimed Islamic State has committed still more atrocities against civilians. To some extent, these attacks are simply a continuation of the Taliban and the Islamic State’s tactics over the last several years. But experts also see them as a way of testing the Afghan National Security Forces, which are now less able to rely on U.S. air support as a result of the drawdown agreed to in Doha in February 2020.

The attacks likely also are exploiting coronavirus-specific vulnerabilities. In addition to reductions in direct military support caused by the drawdown, the United States has also dramatically reduced contact with Afghan security forces to minimize the risks of coronavirus exposure. Other NATO forces have faced outbreaks, and the foreign contractors needed to sustain both Afghan and international forces have been affected. There are reports of widespread infections on crowded bases in Afghanistan, with Afghan commanders in some provinces claiming infection rates among security forces reaching 60 to 90 percent, figures that are difficult to verify given the limited testing capacity.

There is less reporting about infection rates in Taliban base areas across the border in Pakistan, but it is hard to detect an effective reduction in their battlefield effectiveness. While it is not clear that the Taliban have specifically targeted areas because of coronavirus infection rates in the Afghan army and police, some provinces with high reported rates have seen intense fighting.

Compounding Harms and Declining International Support

The pandemic has made persistent problems in Afghanistan worse. The virus’s spread in Iran—one of the world’s first hotspots—has driven Afghan economic migrants back home. This year will easily see the largest ever return of Afghan migrants, fueling the disease’s spread in Afghanistan, reducing vitally needed foreign income, and placing further strains on local services.

While Afghan public health officials have tried to repurpose some capabilities for coronavirus testing, contact tracing, and support, fear of the virus has closed or strained community health facilities. Polio vaccination drives have been suspended or ineffective, leading to a spike in child polio cases. Afghan authorities prudently closed schools in the spring, and while elementary schools reopened in September, they have again closed for an early winter break, with unclear plans for reopening.

The international community’s response to these challenges has been mixed. Afghanistan has been able to secure emergency support to address the pandemic and its macroeconomic effects, but long-term donor commitments are declining (while still generous). Donors torn between expressing support for Afghanistan’s government and addressing their frustrations at its shortcomings are increasingly erring on the side of aid conditions that are well intentioned but unlikely to be met.

As noted in April, Afghanistan’s long-term progress has been deeply tested by the combination of peace negotiations with the Taliban and pandemic shutdowns. When it is eventually safe from a public health perspective for Afghan citizens to return to schools and community health centers, will they be safe from Taliban attacks?

Negotiations

In April, large-scale negotiations between the Taliban’s and the Afghan government’s delegations seemed unworkable, given coronavirus-related travel restrictions. This pessimism proved unwarranted, as both in-person talks between the Taliban and Afghan government teams in Doha and even repeated travel between Kabul and Doha for in-person consultations between government negotiators and senior leaders have been possible, apparently without leading to coronavirus outbreaks. Improved testing has certainly been part of the solution, as has the generosity and flexibility of the talks’ Qatari hosts. Notably, countries other than Qatar reportedly remained willing to serve as hosts for the Afghan talks, at least suggesting that there may be logistically feasible options for talks on other conflicts.

That hopeful development, however, has not yet allowed substantial progress toward consolidating a peace process, reducing violence, or even facilitating a coordinated public health response to the pandemic. The antagonists’ divergent perceptions of the military situation and future U.S. decisions about a withdrawal and the peace process have so far been more powerful than the opportunity afforded by the talks.

Conclusion

The coronavirus pandemic has both exposed and worsened preexisting governance weaknesses in Afghanistan. Coinciding with a dramatic U.S. drawdown and negotiations that seem to legitimize the Taliban as a political actor in the country, the virus is putting stress on both the military situation and the social progress Afghanistan has made over the past two decades.

The coronavirus pandemic has put a heavy strain on governance in unrecognized and breakaway territories across the former Soviet Union. Due to conflicts and sovereignty disputes, these de facto administrations already suffered from a lack of capacity and limited access to international funds even before the pandemic, making them ill-equipped to deal with a major public health crisis. All told, the pandemic has had very different effects on the various protracted, unresolved territorial conflicts in former Soviet states.

Different Breakaway Territories, Different Fates

The coronavirus was a contributing factor to Azerbaijan’s decision to restart the long-running Nagorny Karabakh conflict on September 27. The world was distracted by other issues, and person-to-person diplomacy—which had averted previous attempts to restart the conflict—was not possible. Azerbaijan was able to launch a military offensive that largely achieved its aims—at the cost of around 6,000 lives lost—forcing the Armenian government to sign a new agreement very much in Azerbaijan’s favor on November 10.

The dynamic was different in Georgia’s disputes. In Abkhazia, which seeks greater international engagement, the pandemic opened up channels for rapprochement between the authorities in Abkhazia on the one hand and international agencies and the Georgian government in Tbilisi on the other. The World Health Organization provided medical supplies and public health assistance to Abkhazia via territory controlled by the Georgian government. However, South Ossetia, the other territory that de facto broke away from Georgia in the 1990s and now prioritizes deeper relations with Russia, redoubled its stance of international isolation and non-cooperation with Tbilisi.

Beleaguered Governance Structures in Eastern Ukraine

In eastern Ukraine, events developed differently again. After Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan protests, two regions with traditionally pro-Russian sentiments sought to break away from Kyiv with strong support from Russia. More than 13,000 have died in the ensuing fighting, and the conflict remains unresolved.

As noted in a previous Carnegie paper, these areas of eastern Ukraine not controlled by the Ukrainian government were especially vulnerable to a pandemic due to weak governance structures; a failing healthcare system; and large, elderly populations. The two regions, which call themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), escaped the worst of the earlier phase of the pandemic, but they were hit badly in the fall of 2020.

In the week of October 11, for example, Donetsk’s de facto administration reported 717 new infections and sixty-five deaths. However, these numbers are almost certainly underreported. There was a severe lack of testing capabilities, and in October the DNR began reporting “some 200 daily pneumonia cases.” (The overall population may now be 2 million in both regions, having dropped sharply after 2014 as a result of the conflict).

The local healthcare system came under severe strain. On November 1, the DNR-administered health ministry announced the death of the region’s leading intensive care physician, Natalya Smirnova. (The cause of death went unstated.) Hospitals were reported to be understaffed and overcrowded.

The pandemic also further damaged the economies of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were already weak. In September 2020, the International Crisis Group reported that the regions were plagued by “mass unemployment, with Russian subsidies and Ukrainian pensions filling the gaps.” In November, one of the largest employers in Luhansk, the Alchevsk Metals Factory, which had 13,000 workers in 2018, reportedly shut down.

Thus far, the impact of the crisis on the conflict in eastern Ukraine itself has not been fully visible. The two de facto administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk have not collapsed. However, over the long term, the hollowing out of governance structures is likely to make these regions less viable, more reliant on Russia for support, or potentially more open to cooperation with the rest of Ukraine.

In 2017, the Russian government was estimated to be footing the bill for about half of Donetsk’s budget and 80 percent of Luhansk’s budget. Those figures are likely to be even higher now. Overall, Russian subsides are close to $2 billion a year. Russia also provides discounted gas and reportedly has given more than 300,000 passports to local residents in Donetsk and Luhansk, granting them many of the rights of Russian citizens.

In the long run, Russia may find this level of support unsustainable as its political dividend is questionable. In theory, the Ukrainian government should be able to exploit the failure of these breakaway regions to make a case for their reintegration. However, trade and people-to-people communication was reduced in 2020. Through most of the year, Ukraine suffered from the effects of the pandemic itself, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky endured a series of domestic crises, limiting his ability to spearhead a new initiative on the conflict.

By undermining the legitimacy of the two self-described people’s republics in Donetsk and Luhansk, the pandemic has in theory made the conflict easier to resolve, but it will be a long process. Political realities in both Kyiv and Moscow constrain both sides from discussing compromise measures. Moreover, both Ukraine and Russia have been hit hard by the pandemic and must focus primarily on their domestic responses to the crisis rather than engaging with the dispute in eastern Ukraine.

Conclusion

Having had very different impacts on all the post-Soviet conflicts, the pandemic has been the catalyst for more diplomacy and genuine engagement in only one of them, Abkhazia. Elsewhere, it has generally sown more confusion and conflict.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and its regional proxies have navigated the coronavirus pandemic with a combination of denial, deflection, and determination. They first attempted to conceal the virus’s outbreak, then blamed their adversaries for spreading it, and eventually steeled themselves to continue the path of “resistance,” despite the economic hardship. The net effect is that the power of Iran and its regional proxies appears relatively undiminished, while the living conditions of the citizens under their care have further deteriorated.

The pandemic was an opportunity for Iran’s proxies, which style themselves as hybrid actors interested in the delivery of services to their constituents, to mount early public demonstrations of power and mobilize their public health resources. In time, however, the cross-sectarian and transnational nature of the pandemic meant that states, not militias, would have to take the lead in closing borders, conducting national testing, and leading public health and education strategies directed at all citizens, regardless of sect.

Years before the pandemic hit, Iran’s outsized influence in four Arab capitals—Baghdad, Beirut, Sanaa, and Damascus—was established largely as a result of the power vacuums created by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. The embattled leaders of Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria are all either indebted to Iran for its support, reliant on Iran for their survival, fearful of ignoring Iranian demands, or a combination of all three. The economic crises caused by the pandemic have only accentuated this dependency.

The Pandemic’s Stark, Underreported Impact on Iran

The combination of the pandemic, U.S. sanctions, falling oil prices, mismanagement, and corruption have debilitated Iran’s economy in 2020 but triggered little introspection among Tehran’s ruling elite. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei initially alleged the coronavirus was a U.S. bioweapon, which provided him the pretext to appoint a commander from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, rather than a physician, to lead a newly formed Health Command Center. Indeed, despite hopes in Washington that the pandemic might hasten the Islamic Republic’s collapse, the virus has seemingly accelerated Iran’s transition from (elderly) clerical rule to (middle-aged) military rule.

Early on, the Shia shrine city of Qom was one of the initial epicenters of coronavirus outbreaks outside China, and in March 2020 it was estimated that 90 percent of all coronavirus cases in the Middle East at the time had originated in Iran. Many of these cases were thought to be either Shia pilgrims visiting Iran or Shia fighters training in the country.

As of early December, Iran officially had over 1 million coronavirus cases and ranked eighth in the world with more than 50,000 deaths. But leaked government data from July 2020 suggested that coronavirus deaths were nearly three times greater than those reported at the time. These leaks reflected the anger of Iranian health ministry officials toward the country’s security and intelligence forces, who have a history of suppressing unflattering news about Iran so as not to embolden Tehran’s adversaries. The Iranian government’s contradictory messaging was further on display when President Hassan Rouhani inexplicably claimed in July that 25 million Iranians may have been infected with the virus. That stark figure is one hundred times the official tally in December 2020, and it outstripped the number of reported cases at the time (about 270,000) by an even wider margin.

The Fallout for Iranian Proxies and Partners

In neighboring Iraq—which has many pilgrims and fighters who travel to Iran frequently—COVID-19 cases began to skyrocket in the summer. Like their patrons in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iraqi Shia militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) sought to rehabilitate their tattered image—after overseeing violent crackdowns against peaceful protesters last year—by building temporary, mobile hospitals to treat coronavirus patients. Yet the economic and political grievances that triggered Iraq’s popular unrest—which included the burning of Iranian consulates—has worsened. Even senior Iraqi officials admit the country’s economy is in crisis and “riddled with corruption.”

Lebanese Hezbollah—Iran’s chief regional proxy—also helped violently quell popular protests and was accused of bringing the coronavirus into Lebanon from the early outbreak in Iran. Like the PMF in Iraq, Hezbollah deployed volunteers and doctors and created makeshift healthcare facilities in Lebanon. Critics accused them of performing theatrics more than offering genuine medical assistance.

Any popular goodwill Hezbollah generated beyond its Shia base likely evaporated after the massive August 2020 fire at an ammonium nitrate depot at the Beirut port triggered one of the largest explosions in human history. Though over 200 people were killed, thousands were injured, and huge swathes of the city were destroyed, Hezbollah—which operated freely in the port and has used ammonium nitrate in past operations—helped thwart an independent investigation. For years, Hezbollah’s lack of a formal role in the Lebanese government allowed the group to wield power without accountability. Given its active role in Lebanese politics today, however, one Lebanese observer assessed that Hezbollah “got power but they lost the country and the people.”

In war-torn Yemen—considered the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis by the UN—coronavirus cases are presumed to be high but impossible to quantify given the lack of testing and humanitarian access. The leadership of the Iran-backed Houthis, who control most of the country, contended the pandemic was an American “biological warfare” plot, accused Saudi Arabia of sending virus-stricken Yemenis back home to spread the virus, and warned its citizens not to wear “COVID-infected” face masks ostensibly airdropped by Saudi airplanes. Yet given Yemen’s graver challenges—including widespread famine and the return of more lethal diseases such as polio and cholera—the coronavirus is not the top crisis on the Yemeni government’s agenda.

As for Syria, even before the pandemic began, the country’s lengthy civil war had claimed between 400,000 and 600,000 lives and forced half the population to flee from their homes. The pandemic has reportedly been “out of control” in Syria, but cases remain significantly undercounted. The outbreak reportedly hit Iranian fighters and Iranian-supported units hardest, and among the casualties was a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in Syria. While U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration believed the pandemic could weaken Iran’s presence and influence in Syria, so far these predictions have not borne out. The UN World Food Programme estimates that 9.3 million Syrians are unsure where their next meal is coming from, while the number of Syrians lining up for bread has visibly increased. Syrian refugees in neighboring countries have also been hit hard. Aid organizations have expressed concerns about Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s restrictions of humanitarian access and expropriation of international financial assistance.

Conclusion

While the coronavirus pandemic could have provided Tehran, its regional proxies, and Washington an opportunity to cooperate against a common foe, the hostility and mistrust of the Trump era has proved too wide for even a deadly pandemic to bridge. At the same time, economic hardship has made Tehran’s regional proxies more, not less, reliant on Iranian largesse. At some point, popular economic and political frustrations within Iran, and against Tehran’s regional proxies, will once again resurface. But history has shown such backlash is more likely to happen when people’s expectations have been raised and then dashed, rather than during times of financial destitution.

As the year has progressed and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic have been felt across Iraq, the country has fallen into parallel political, economic, and social crises. Political instability and gridlock have kept government officials from passing much-needed economic relief and public health measures, and the resulting impasse has stoked continued protests, which have been repeatedly met with repression and violence.

Iraq’s Slow-Burning Pandemic Quandary

Iraq initially benefited from a slower curve of coronavirus infections within its borders compared to neighboring countries, but it has now emerged as one of the worst-affected countries in the Middle East and North Africa. As of December 4, Iraq had recorded over 558,000 cases and over 12,300 deaths. The country has seen a consistently high number of daily recorded cases, averaging well over 1,000 cases per day since June 10.

Mirroring the global response, the Iraqi government has tried various policies to stem the spread of the virus. The country’s borders were officially closed for several months, and domestic travel (notably between the region of Iraqi Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq) was suspended until September. During the summer, intermittent curfews and a mask mandate were introduced. However, as the pandemic has endured, mask use has become less prevalent as pandemic fatigue has set in. Meanwhile, winter has begun, and the region is starting to see signs of a second wave of infections. Iraq seems incapable of or unwilling to impose renewed restrictions.

Iraq’s Intractable Political and Economic Turbulence

Since the transitional government was installed in May 2020, Prime Minister Mustafa al- Kadhimi has strived to at least provide the perception of a functioning healthcare system. Yet Iraq has suffered greatly from years of cyclical violence and conflict, and endemic corruption has eroded any semblance of effective and operational healthcare infrastructure. Meanwhile, healthcare workers have become targets of abuse, intimidation, and violence—including at the hands of the families of some coronavirus patients.

Prior to the pandemic and the concurrent political crisis, a string of Iraqi governments had both faced off against and at times enabled the nonstate armed actors operating formally and informally throughout the country. These actors are known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a collection of militias that behave as both nonstate and quasi-state security actors. Amid the ensuing political instability and challenges to state authority and legitimacy, PMF leaders have used the pandemic to further entrench their local fiefdoms of power. In some cases, they also have provided their own actual healthcare services to the public and have taken part in public awareness campaigns about the pandemic to promote public health and safety measures across the country.

The economic emergency triggered by the collapse of oil prices now poses a long-term threat to Iraqi coffers. This economic malaise has been compounded by political paralysis, with agreements on even basic issues such as the country’s annual budget remaining elusive. One sign of a reprieve has materialized, as Iraqi legislators passed a controversial bill in mid-November to borrow $10.2 billion from domestic sources, mainly to fund government salaries—exacerbating ongoing tensions between Erbil and Baghdad.

Iraq’s Ongoing Public Protests

The compounded public health and economic challenges throughout the year have coincided with steadfast public opposition to the country’s political elite. While protest marches were initially suspended as the virus spread, bands of protesters remained permanently rooted in the squares of major cities across southern Iraq like Baghdad, Nasiriyah, and Basra. This region marks the epicenter of the Tishreen Revolution, a protest movement that engulfed the south of the country in late 2019 in response to continued economic and social disenfranchisement and marginalization by the country’s political leaders. Protesting corruption, the lack of job creation, and economic challenges, the protests have arguably been the largest and most sustained form of public mobilization in Iraq since 2003. As public anger over the country’s dire economic situation and the intensifying public health crisis worsened, protests resurfaced, driven in large part by the continued targeted assassinations of activists and civil society actors by militia groups.

The government’s nonresponse to the violence sparked a return to the streets by thousands of protesters, culminating in the one-year anniversary of the start of the protests on October 25 and officials’ decisions to clear the squares of demonstrators. As the protest movement has continued, it has devolved into a more partisan face-off between supporters of competing political factions, as well as continued violence between the state and protesters. In November, there were frequent attacks on the protest movement, including a recent confrontation in Nasiriyah.

Conclusion

Iraq’s interlocking crises are growing as the country’s governing bodies find themselves lacking the means and the political will to respond to the people’s needs. Iraq’s challenges will only increase in the months ahead. Baghdad’s lengthy list of urgent tasks includes tackling the pandemic, finding funds to acquire coronavirus vaccines in 2021, conducting controversial elections in the coming year, and adjusting to a challenging security environment, including a recalibrating of the country’s relationship with the United States.

Iraq has weathered several political inflection points since 2003, almost all of which have sadly plunged the country into different forms of strife and conflict. The country can ill afford any form of internal conflict, yet the risks of such tensions remain potent, and the drivers of conflict plaguing the country have only been exacerbated by the daunting additional challenges it now faces on all fronts.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Israel and the occupied territories were marked by some cooperation between the relevant Israeli and Palestinian authorities aimed at stemming the spread of the virus. But since then, conditions have deteriorated substantially. As expected, the common purpose of fending off the virus has neither resulted in a political breakthrough between occupier and occupied nor redirected new energy toward peacemaking.

From Low-Grade Cooperation to Chaos in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

The virus is now spreading wildly inside Gaza and the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem where the Palestinian Authority (PA) counts Palestinian cases as a part of its numbers. Throughout the Palestinian territories, the number of infections climbed from a few cases a day in April to around 2,500 cases a day or more by late November and early December. How did the community trust and cooperation with Israel that characterized the Palestinian territories’ early and effective pandemic response break down and allow the virus to start spreading widely through Palestinian communities as it is now?

The situation began to unravel in May, when the PA ended all coordination with the Israeli Civil Administration in the occupied territories after the new Israeli government was sworn in under a coalition agreement that promised to move forward on annexing parts of the West Bank. Israel reacted by severely limiting PA security forces in the West Bank, including forces tasked with enforcing virus prevention measures. Though a lack of coordination with Israel and the loss of customs revenue streams certainly reduced Palestinian capacities to mitigate the spread of the virus, a surge of cases in the territories may have been only a matter of time.

The end of Palestinian-Israeli coordination also complicated efforts to bring medical supplies and equipment into the occupied territories, which delayed coronavirus testing and COVID-19 treatment. To make matters worse, the PA’s revenue was cut drastically by pandemic response measures and its refusal in June to accept any of the customs revenue Israel collects on its behalf, a response to Israel’s threat of annexation. Because of this, the PA was left dependent on Palestine’s private sector, its diaspora community, and donor contributions. Over time, support for the PA among Palestinian civil society for the PA’s effective early handling of the pandemic turned to recriminations as public sector employees, including police officers and healthcare workers on the front lines of the pandemic, did not receive their full salaries. Though the Israeli government eventually transferred the withheld revenue back to the PA in early December (Israeli deductions are promised on future disbursements), the damage to an effective pandemic response and to public goodwill for the PA cannot so easily be undone.

In Gaza, Hamas’s effective early management of the pandemic gave the group renewed legitimacy and purpose among the Palestinian population and, to a degree, the international community. Israel, with support from the United States, marginalized the PA and reinforced its policy of keeping Gaza a separate political entity. When the PA rejected aid shipments from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) meant for pandemic relief because the shipments came via Tel Aviv and without PA coordination or knowledge, the UAE and Israel were only too happy to have these supplies sent to Gaza. Likewise, while desperately needed budgetary support from Saudi Arabia to the PA was cut off in the spring at the urging of the U.S. government, Israel has allowed around $30 million in Qatari cash payments to be made to families in Gaza. The Arab Gulf countries’ flirtations with (and in some cases commitments to) normalized diplomatic ties with Israel and other political jockeying to garner U.S. favor not only hurt the PA’s efforts to combat the virus but also undermined any possibility of Palestinian national reconciliation.

From Confronting the Virus to Curbing Protests and Courting Normalization

Meanwhile, after receiving early kudos for his handling of the initial coronavirus outbreak in March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struggled to find the right strategy later on, as Israel opened up schools and the economy too quickly and as the virus spread particularly among its Orthodox and Arab communities. A second lockdown imposed in September managed to curtail the rise in cases from 8,000 a day to under 1,500 a day. But this lockdown has taken a severe toll on the economy, the morale of the country, and the prime minister’s political fortunes.

Netanyahu’s political travails clearly contributed to the government’s mishandling of the pandemic. His need to placate the Orthodox community and their representatives in his governing coalition led to lax enforcement of coronavirus-related restrictions. And the now daily protests outside the prime minister’s residence have created an image of a lack of confidence in almost every aspect of Netanyahu’s leadership.

The breakup of the unity government led by Netanyahu and Benny Gantz is almost certain by year’s end, or else by early next year. The looming evidentiary portion of the prime minister’s trial has reinforced his determination to form a narrow, right-wing government that could legislate deferral of his trial or undermine it. All that remains to be determined is the date of the election. Gantz would prefer the elections be held as soon as possible; Netanyahu, realizing his handling of the pandemic and the economy has hurt him with voters, seeks to delay them ideally until June, in anticipation of a vaccine.

The only pieces of good news for Netanyahu were the Emirati and Bahraini normalization agreements, which had a much more profound impact on the Israeli-Palestinian equation than anything coronavirus-related.

Conclusion

The pandemic and its economic aftermath will lock Palestinians in a struggle for the survival of their national movement without the regional support and donor assistance that they have come to rely on during other turbulent times. And Israelis will be preoccupied with internal matters and regional concerns that will keep Palestinians and their relationship to Israel on the backburner. Stagnation on the peacemaking front, however, does not mean a static political situation on the ground; a single spark—one more home demolition or one more attack at a security checkpoint—or another unexpected event is all that may be needed to place Palestine and Israel back on top of everyone’s priority list.

In the months since the coronavirus began spreading to Libya, the pandemic has rippled across the country’s overlapping afflictions of civil war, political divisions, economic collapse, and humanitarian suffering. In some ways, the pandemic’s effects have further entrenched the country’s rival militia factions, while in other ways the public health crisis has given rise to nascent grassroots activists determined to combat the pandemic’s ill effects.

Battlefield Developments and a Fragile Truce in Libya

The pandemic’s impact on the country’s civil war is ultimately ambiguous, especially compared with the more consequential effects of foreign intervention and battlefield exhaustion. Escalating conflict in and around Tripoli in the spring of 2020 dashed initial hopes that the pandemic might spur a lull in the fighting between the opposing forces of eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar and those of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). As the foreign backers of the Libyan protagonists continued to pour mercenaries and advanced weaponry into the country, foreign and Libyan combatants seemed undeterred by the risk of coronavirus infections.

By the summer of 2020, GNA forces had pushed Haftar’s fighters well out of the country’s western region to the central Sirte Basin, where constraints imposed by logistics and each sides’ foreign supporters produced a stalemate. An informal ceasefire in August paved the way for the lifting of Haftar’s blockade of oil facilities in mid-September and the signing of a formal truce in October, which included professed commitments by the Libyan factions to a political roadmap and elections.

The international dialogue efforts that shepherded and built upon these agreements have tried to adapt to pandemic-related restrictions, conducting meetings virtually and outside the country following social distancing and other public health measures. Implementation of these protective practices has varied: UN-brokered meetings in Tunis and Geneva followed a strict protocol of testing and distancing, while a separate Libyan dialogue convened by the Moroccan government was more lax. Some Libyan delegates to the international talks have tested positive for the virus, and at least two of them have died. Though virtual meetings are safer, international mediators emphasize their limitations. “You just can’t do real political dialogue over Zoom,” noted one of them in a telephone interview.¹

Rising Public Discontent at Libya’s Governance Shortfalls

Alongside these political developments, the late summer was marked by intense protests in both GNA- and Haftar-controlled areas—primarily against abysmal service delivery, electricity blackouts, corruption, the country’s banking crisis, and shortages of basic goods. The pandemic and what citizens perceived to be the authorities’ deficient responses added to the ire of the demonstrators.

By late summer, Libya was experiencing a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths. This troubling development belied previously rosy assessments about the containment of infections and spurred a new round of government-directed curfews in Tripoli that protesters suspected was aimed at quelling dissent. These pandemic-related measures increased the public’s anger toward the rival governments in eastern and western Libya and compounded fatigue from a drawn-out war that neither side’s leadership could sell as a victory. Public pressure driven by the protests in the west and the east, combined with an emerging fragmentation of factional coalitions, helped prompt both sides and their foreign backers to push for a truce. That said, the fallout from the pandemic was probably one causal factor among many—and the prospects for a durable peace remain uncertain.

Militia Exploitation and Grassroots Mobilization

In other realms, the pandemic has had more discernible effects. Armed groups have instrumentalized the crisis to assert their power, as evidenced by the GNA-aligned militia crackdown on the late summer protests in Tripoli. Similarly, in Haftar-controlled eastern Libya, the militarization of the local public health response and the silencing of dissent both have been acute. Some of this dissent has been related to the mismanagement of the pandemic response, and some of it has been related to Haftar’s corruption and nepotism more broadly. These dual sources of public dissent were epitomized, respectively, by the April 2020 arrest of a doctor and the brazen murder of an outspoken female lawyer and Haftar critic in early November 2020.

In western Libya, there have been cases of militias diverting or obstructing deliveries of pandemic-related aid at international borders and ports and reportedly enriching themselves by reselling pandemic-related services and equipment at inflated prices. Some hybridized militias, deputized by weak state authorities to act as police forces, have succumbed to community pressures—failing to enforce pandemic-related bans on public gatherings, according to Libyan activists. More positively, the pandemic has not significantly disrupted counterterrorism actions by either of the Libyan factions against violent extremists like members of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment. Moreover, restrictions imposed by the pandemic—along with the civil war— have reportedly “impeded” the Islamic State’s logistics and recruitment.

Given the parlous capacity of political authorities in both eastern and western Libya, one potentially significant effect of the pandemic has been the mobilization of civil society, municipal councils, and other local actors. Groups like the Red Crescent and the Scouts have distributed testing kits, produced protective gear, and conducted public awareness campaigns. In the eastern city of Tobruk, for example, activists have worked with municipal police and the local council to combat price fixing on masks and hand sanitizer. It’s too soon to tell, however, whether this laudable activism will translate into more formalized political and economic decentralization. Municipal officials and civil society actors remain dismayed at the muted responsiveness of central authorities to their efforts, especially what activists say is the GNA’s spotty-to-nonexistent allotment of pandemic-related relief funds.

Conclusion

Moving forward, the picture for Libya is mixed. On the one hand, the halt in fighting, the resumption of oil exports, and the ongoing, UN-brokered political and economic discussions—however tenuous—have provided a respite from active conflict for governing authorities, medical personnel, and civil society to better tackle the pandemic. The widespread summer protests demonstrated the ability of popular mobilization to demand accountability in governance more broadly. There also have been recent signs that the wave of reported coronavirus cases and deaths may be trending downward. Resumed oil sales have given the country an economic boost, offset somewhat by pandemic-related restrictions, and a recent agreement by the long-divided Central Bank of Libya to unify the foreign exchange rate could undercut the black market and bolster citizens’ purchasing power.

Still, political fissures and social inequalities—exposed and aggravated by the pandemic—are likely to persist, given long-standing patterns of corruption and financial mismanagement. Armed groups remain entrenched and in some instances have been more emboldened by their exploitation of the public health crisis and the aftermath of the latest fighting. An impasse in ceasefire implementation has been accompanied by a buildup of foreign military forces, escalatory moves on the ground, and jockeying and obstinance by Libyan elites. Civic and municipal actors have been energized by the pandemic and in some areas are enjoying newfound legitimacy, but they can only do so much. It is now time for Libya’s political leaders to put aside self-serving agendas and meet the needs of the country’s citizens.

Notes

¹ Author telephone conversation with a Western diplomat involved with Libyan dialogue, December 14, 2020.

Nearly a year after the coronavirus outbreak first gripped the city of Wuhan, with over 73 million cases reported worldwide, North Korea still claims that it has had zero confirmed cases of the virus. That is highly unlikely—North Korea, as usual, relies on concealment and disinformation to project an image of stability both internally and externally. But North Korea does appear to have avoided a serious outbreak, albeit at a high cost. Pyongyang’s efforts to stave off the virus through border closures and other containment measures have perhaps impacted its economy more severely than the international sanctions regime ever has, restricting many of the illicit activities it previously relied on to evade sanctions.

With even less visibility into the country than usual, the international community may not learn the full effect of these measures for some time. But the pandemic is providing a lesson on North Korea’s priorities that should inform the negotiations around its nuclear program. Pyongyang’s willingness to self-impose such punishing economic measures in the face of an external security threat casts further doubt on the effectiveness of sanctions as a coercive tool to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

North Korea Shuts Down

After efforts at rapprochement with North Korea ground to a halt in 2019, South Korean President Moon Jae-in saw a new opportunity to reinvigorate inter-Korean cooperation during the pandemic. Moon envisioned the crisis leading to cross-border coordination, assistance, and aid, as North Korea’s vulnerable public health system would inevitably require support. But Moon’s hopes have not been realized. During the pandemic, inter-Korean cooperation has not just stalled, but deteriorated. In June, North Korea cut off contact with South Korea and blew up the inter-Korean liaison office, a de facto embassy between the two countries.

In the near term, vaccine distribution may yet present an opening for cooperation, as North Korea will inevitably need to procure coronavirus vaccines from abroad, though it may prefer to do so from Russia or China. But thus far, Pyongyang has continuously rejected most foreign assistance, considering it a means of both highlighting the country’s vulnerabilities and potentially spreading the virus. Instead, to block what it perceives as both a public health threat and a potentially destabilizing national security threat, North Korea has closed itself off from the outside world to an extent remarkable even for such a famously opaque state.

North Korea originally closed its porous border with China on January 21, even before China locked down Wuhan. Over the summer, North Korea stepped up its controls, reportedly closing its borders to virtually all trade except pandemic-related aid. North Korea’s control measures are further intensifying this winter as concerns proliferate about the risk of indoor gatherings and other potential seasonal hazards. North Korean state media has even falsely claimed that snow and seasonal migratory birds could spread the virus.

According to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), North Korea recently locked down Pyongyang, its capital city of around 3 million, and other areas. It also instituted several measures not supported by science, such as prohibiting fishing and salt production in the ocean over fears that the water could be contaminated by the coronavirus. The country has also held up or halted shipments of food, aid, and other goods amid paranoia that foreign goods can spread the virus. The NIS reported at least one execution of an official who violated pandemic countermeasures. Meanwhile, in September, North Korean soldiers fatally shot a South Korean government official and burned the body after the official was found floating in the ocean near the two countries’ disputed maritime border in what was believed to be a deeply misguided antivirus control measure.

The international community has little visibility on what impact these measures have had on the ground. But at the very least, they have disrupted supply chains of food and other necessities, endangered the livelihoods of North Koreans that depend on informal trade with China, and impeded the efforts of international organizations working in the country, which have been forced to withdraw most or all of their staff due to quarantine measures.

No Help Wanted

Restrictions on foreigners in North Korea have made expats’ jobs and daily lives so difficult—with strict lockdowns in Pyongyang, shortages of imported goods, and even a prohibition on diplomatic mail—that the already small community of foreign aid workers has been reduced to single digits. Reportedly, only two UN workers and one Irish NGO worker remain in the country, down from around seventy UN and foreign NGO workers at the beginning of the year. A lack of transparency has always impeded aid efforts in North Korea, but with the number of diplomatic staff and aid workers so diminished, this severe dearth of visibility might affect foreign aid to the country well after the pandemic has subsided. There is no guarantee if or when foreign workers will be allowed back into the country. And a lack of data and access has already caused North Korea to be left out of a December 2020 annual report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which identifies countries with the greatest need and suggests priorities for humanitarian assistance plans.

To make matters worse, North Korea is facing two crises at once. In August and September, the country experienced severe flooding from multiple typhoons that damaged nearly 100,000 acres of crops and at least 16,000 homes, as well as other buildings and infrastructure. The natural disaster left “thousands” without homes and at least seventy-six dead. Facing food insecurity and extensive flood damage, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un insisted that his country still could not accept international aid due to the risk that it might expose North Koreans to the virus.

While these measures may have prevented an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak, they have done so at significant economic cost. An estimated 95 percent of North Korea’s official trade, and the majority of its unofficial trade, is done over the border with China. With the border closed, North Korea’s official trade with China in the first nine months of 2020 was down 73 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the Korea International Trade Association. That fall in trade is substantially higher than the 57 percent drop that took place the first nine months of 2018, after the imposition of harsh international sanctions that came into force the previous year. Moreover, North Korea’s self-imposed isolation also has entailed shutting down illicit cross-border trade and shipping that have long eluded sanctions enforcement. North Korea has essentially cut off the few lifelines its sanctions-embattled economy had left before the pandemic.

Conclusion

The pandemic hasn’t been the boon for inter-Korean cooperation that Moon had hoped. But it has also called into question the merits of the opposite approach: squeezing the North Korean economy so tightly with sanctions that it is coerced into forgoing its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic relief. For the past fourteen years, sanctions have failed to force North Korea to make that strategic decision, and many experts have derided their efficacy. In its approach to the pandemic, North Korea has further revealed the level of hardship, self-imposed or otherwise, that it is willing to endure so as to mitigate an external security threat.

While the pandemic is unlikely to transform the course of negotiations or present an opportunity for conflict resolution, it should shape how U.S. and South Korean policymakers view North Korea’s priorities going forward. Whether in the face of a global public health crisis or U.S. pressure, the Kim regime’s national security interests will continue to trump economic interests. Without a doubt, North Korea wants sanctions relief. But it is clearer than ever that, as long as Pyongyang perceives a threat to its security, economic coercion will not be enough to convince it to denuclearize. Economic incentives, too, cannot change North Korea’s strategic calculus without strong corresponding security guarantees to mitigate vulnerabilities to what it perceives as its greatest existential threat—the United States.

While reliable data are lacking, the coronavirus pandemic appears to be hitting Somalia hard. The public health crisis seems to be heavily taxing the country’s healthcare system, which was already reeling from decades of conflict and underinvestment. And while the government has reached a political compromise to select the country’s new leaders, the virus has failed to deter the terrorist group al-Shabab. Though the government and Somali citizens mostly have not seen the pandemic as a severe threat, given the many other challenges they face, the virus has nonetheless further exposed the country’s weak institutions and governance shortcomings.

Limited Public Health Capacity

As the pandemic spread earlier this year, Somali authorities’ early public health moves were sensible. They closed national borders, schools, and universities; canceled flights and issued social distancing guidelines; and distributed protective gear. But poor implementation has undermined the effectiveness of these measures. Economic hardship has prevented Somalis from following through on isolation recommendations and lockdowns. Government officials have even failed to leverage their public platforms, often not following their own guidelines. As of December 15, the Somali Ministry of Health and Human Services has reported 4,579 coronavirus cases and 121 deaths in the country, and both numbers are likely dramatic underestimates. Unofficial sources such as satellite images of mushrooming gravesites paint a different picture.

Even restrictions that could be effectively enforced, like barring flights, were lifted starting in July—more because of the need to alleviate the pandemic’s secondary, largely economic effects than because of any success in managing the crisis or tracking the virus’s spread. In the best-case scenario, Somalis, along with their government, have ignored guidelines on coronavirus prevention and social distancing, and in the worst cases, they have stigmatized those who have observed them.

According to one of the most comprehensive assessments of the situation in Somalia, “The deficiencies in the governance response to COVID-19 in Somalia . . . are . . . closely related to wider political divisions that affect the country’s relatively young and unconsolidated federal system of government.” For example, the federal and state governments delegated responsibility to local districts but did not provide adequate guidance or resources for the tasks assigned, such as creating isolation centers.

Halting Signs of Political Progress

I projected in April that the pandemic would delay or undermine the steps the Somali government needed to take to improve its legitimacy and manage the country’s conflict, including resuming political dialogues between the federal and state governments, conducting a constitutional review, and coordinating one-person, one-vote elections. But in the end, these political dialogues continued or even accelerated, with the pandemic providing a rationale for logistically less challenging online talks.

In September, an agreement was reached on a compromise electoral model. The agreed-upon process, which was also used in 2016, is not really an election per se. Instead, a small number of clan-appointed delegates will choose the government, without any mandate from the millions of Somalis who will cast no vote in this process. Further, the new electoral bodies created to administer the process were immediately challenged for blatantly political appointments and a lack of women representation. The model is likely similar to what would have been agreed on even without the pandemic.

Yet for all its weaknesses, this new indirect quasi-election is likely the only realistic option other than simply extending the current government’s term beyond its mandated end in February 2021. Successfully holding any electoral process during the pandemic would set Somalia apart from some of its neighbors, like Ethiopia or Kenya, countries that have postponed elections due to the viral outbreak. The agreement on this leadership selection process—struck amid the pandemic—is fragile and could easily break down in ways that would fuel violence, but it is probably better than no agreement or an indefinitely postponed election.

Al-Shabab’s Relentless Attacks

Meanwhile, the pandemic has not affected al-Shabab’s terrorist activities. According to Sunguta West, “Its fighters have sustained [or even accelerated] their operations, increasingly targeting civilians, government officials, and security forces.” West went on to say, “The persistent attacks have further strained and frustrated the military response being carried out by the Somali National Army . . . which is backed by the African Union Mission in Somalia,” whose mandate was extended in line with the electoral calendar. Supporting U.S. forces are now expected to leave by early next year, meaning that the strain on Somalia’s armed forces will likely intensify.

As West put it, “Top al-Shabaab leaders’ radical interpretation of Islamic teachings has informed the [initial] rejection” of sensible public health measures to combat the pandemic. West went on to write, “The group used affiliated media channels . . . and social media channels . . . to portray the disease as a punishment from God to nonbelievers for their evil deeds against Muslims and jihadists” and to argue that “the disease was an American and European problem that had no impact in their region.”

As West also observed, “Months after beginning this disinformation campaign in opposition to government measures,” al-Shabab shifted gears and “started responding to the virus.” In June, al-Shabab launched a facility and a hotline for treating patients with COVID-19 (both civilians and fighters). West noted that the organization only took action “after it became apparent that the disease would decimate its fighting force and lead to a loss of support if [al-Shabab] did not provide help for the local people.” The movement created a pandemic response team, and according to West, a senior leader used the media to “[urge] the people to seek treatment to avoid infecting other Muslims.”

The Changing Khat Market

In April, I also expressed a concern that pandemic-related movement restrictions might limit the availability of the stimulant drug khat, with drug withdrawal potentially increasing violence given al-Shabab fighters’ frequent use of the drug. There have been some supply reductions and associated price increases but not a dramatic collapse in the substance’s availability. Nevertheless, the khat economy has been effectively restructured, with more of the drug being smuggled in via new, land-based routes after the cessation of inbound flights. These trends have negatively affected both government revenue and income for the women who were previously the main sellers of the drug. These changes, and the way more of the khat trade has shifted from licit to illicit channels due to pandemic-related movement restrictions, “may have [long-term] security implications,” according to Sahra Ahmed Koshin.

Looking Ahead

Somalia’s government selection process and new government may benefit from a resumption of previous forms of international support. On November 1, the African Union Mission in Somalia announced the gradual easing of restrictions on the secure international compound in Mogadishu.¹ The U.S. government may provide early vaccination to its essential personnel, allowing more U.S. officials to return to Somalia, but international development organizations will be slower to return, and Somali staff’s access to the compound will remain severely limited.

Coronavirus vaccination campaigns in most parts of Africa will probably begin in earnest only in the spring of 2021 for logistical and operational reasons. Somalia’s vaccine rollout will be even later, given the compounded effects of ongoing conflict, al-Shabab attacks, and weak governance.

Although neither the Somali public nor the government have perceived or treated the coronavirus pandemic as a major threat, the virus has brought to light many of the challenges the country faces, including weak institutions and governance structures, a lack of coordination or rule implementation, and a lack of reliable public health data.

Notes

¹ This point is based on a memo with limited circulation from the African Union Mission to Somalia dated October 30, 2020.

Across all of Syria’s fragmented territories, the coronavirus pandemic is running unchecked. Weak governance, competing authorities, and a deepening economic crisis continue to hamper the country’s response to a severely underreported pandemic. A scaling down in the intensity of the conflict has not improved the pandemic response. Rather, Syria finds itself suffering through a globe-spanning winter wave of growing caseloads.

Throughout Syria, coronavirus infections are skyrocketing as different parties to the conflict continue to instrumentalize the response to advance their own respective agendas, straining the governance capacities of authorities across the country. In addition, the pandemic has added further challenges to the already halting diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the war.

Misdirection and Misinformation in Assad’s Pandemic Response

In areas held by the Syrian government, the UN and other sources suggest significant underreporting about the scale of infection rates by President Bashar al-Assad and his administration across its territory, with widespread community transmission. The lack of an adequate response, including dramatically insufficient testing and a lack of personal protective equipment, are compounding the problem for healthcare workers and citizens alike. Medical practitioners have resorted to trying to treat coronavirus patients virtually. Further compounding Syrians’ suffering, already dire economic conditions have deteriorated even more, with a dramatic devaluation of the Syrian pound and more widespread food insecurity affecting around 46 percent of Syrians as of April 2020.

Even as infection rates are increasing exponentially in Assad-held territories, the government is using misinformation to direct attention away from its incapacity to govern or handle the crisis. Regime-associated media outlets have been complicit in promoting the government line on the pandemic and lauding Russian, Iranian, and Chinese efforts to combat the pandemic and provide humanitarian support. These outlets have also echoed the government line in instrumentalizing the pandemic, blaming the spread of the virus on American injustice and the economic and political sanctions against the Syrian regime.

At the same time, in some instances, the pandemic is forcing the Assad regime to unwillingly acquiesce to local dissent. Compliance in regime-held areas usually requires harsh security measures to enforce central edicts. However, diminished regime resources, weak enforcement, and increasing popular discontent have opened the door for local leaders to challenge central authorities. In one recent incident, a local notable in the region of Suwayda ordered schools in his area to shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19, despite assurances from central authorities that the pandemic is under control. In response, the regional office of the Ministry of Education threatened to sue.

A War by Other Means in the Rest of Syria

Meanwhile, in places outside of regime control in northeastern Syria, there is a war by other means being waged. In these Kurdish self-administered zones, access to basic infrastructure, particularly water and electricity, is being instrumentalized by parties to the conflict. Disruptions to the Alouk water station—reportedly by the Turkish-linked Syrian National Army—have repeatedly cut off water supplies to the 460,000 residents of al-Hasakah and other urban centers, including the al-Hol and Areesh refugee camps. These disruptions have raised significant concerns over sanitation amid the pandemic.

Turkey has responded with claims that the Kurdish self-administration is to blame for the water crisis because it denied the area electricity needed to power the water station. Further compounding local residents’ misery, restrictions that the conflict’s different parties have imposed on cross-border aid have also hampered the delivery of humanitarian aid to the region.

Against this backdrop, a military war of attrition is ongoing between the self-administration authorities, the Syrian regime, and Turkish forces, all striving to expand and consolidate territorial and other gains. Military buildups continue along most conflict borders with occasional outbreaks of fighting.

The capacity of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to respond to the pandemic in self-administered areas is further hamstrung by the lack of cooperation with the Syrian government. While the SDF has been able to implement lockdown measures in areas under its control—including a recent lockdown of the courts—the refusal of residents in regime-held pockets or authorities at regime-held border crossings to abide by these measures has undermined their effectiveness at controlling the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, northwestern Syria, which also falls outside the Assad regime’s control, witnessed a tenfold increase in coronavirus infections between August and September. All told, confirmed positive cases nationwide climbed by more than 150 percent from September 20 to October 20. Even though a shaky ceasefire means that area hospitals are no longer being bombed, medical facilities are gravely overwhelmed. These worsening conditions have persisted even though eight nonstate armed groups came together with the support of the nongovernmental organization Geneva Call to issue a unified commitment to pandemic response measures. The UN Security Council, under pressure from the Russian delegation, closed one of two humanitarian access points into Syria, further hampering aid deliveries to northwestern Syria. The UN’s response to conditions in Syria is also being hampered by internal bickering, acquiescence to the Syrian regime’s demands, and competition between UN agencies among other challenges.

Conclusion

Beyond its public health toll, the pandemic has had consequences for international diplomatic efforts to end the Syrian war as well. In August, UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen planned to convene the UN-facilitated Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva; according to U.S. officials, Assad had agreed to participate in the round of talks. But the session had to be postponed when coronavirus infections were reported among participating delegates. The committee’s meetings resumed recently with some signs of progress.

In this broader context, the coronavirus pandemic is amplifying the disastrous impact of nine years of conflict on the Syrian people with no clear end in sight. Without a proper international coordination mechanism to deliver aid and more concerted diplomatic efforts to end the war, this misery will only deepen, boding greater instability ahead.

Read a newspaper story about a country or its economy “coming to a standstill” and, for the most part, you can be sure you are facing a journalistic flourish. Economies are said to “come to a standstill” when they merely fail to grow but otherwise keep ticking along as usual. Because this figurative usage is so widespread, it’s tricky to explain what has happened in Venezuela in 2020, the year when the country came to a terrifyingly literal standstill. The way this economic freefall coincided with a harsh crackdown on political dissent accounts for the odd fact that the pandemic was only the third worst disaster to hit Venezuela in 2020.

Venezuela’s Unprecedented Economic Collapse

In Venezuela, the virus doubles as pretext. Since March, the government of President Nicolás Maduro has implemented an uncommonly aggressive, long-lasting, and punitive lockdown, ordering much of the economy to shut down. But, like the king imagined by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a monarch who made sure never to be disobeyed by ordering the sun to set just as dusk approached each night, Maduro’s lockdown orders merely make official the thoroughgoing collapse of Venezuela’s economy.

Between 2013 and 2019, Venezuela experienced the worst slump economists have ever been able to measure anywhere (outside of wartime), with GDP shrinking by a shocking 62 percent. A country that had had a mass consumer middle class as recently as eight years ago saw hunger visit nearly every household, with firms shutting down en masse and virtually everyone coming to depend on sporadic government food handouts to survive.

And that was before the real crisis started, set off by the vicious one-two punch of U.S. sanctions on the oil industry and the coronavirus pandemic. For a regime with a long history of covering up bad public health news—whether it’s about malaria, diphtheria, HIV, or anything else—Venezuela’s official statistics on the prevalence of COVID-19 cases are meaningless. Nor would it be possible to say if increased caseloads overburdened the country’s healthcare system: it collapsed under the weight of underinvestment and economic dysfunction long before the pandemic set in.

Oil industry sanctions had catastrophic effects in two ways. Most obviously, barring U.S. companies from buying oil deprived Venezuela’s classic petrostate of the vast bulk of its revenue. Counterintuitively, though, the sanctions’ deeper impact came from barring oil industry–related exports to Venezuela. Without the additive chemicals, repair parts, and service contracts Venezuela needed to run its refineries, they were put out of commission one by one. And the same sanctions prevented Venezuela from importing refined gasoline, leading to widespread shortages of fuel.

Thus, the standstill. The old joke about how, if communists took over Antarctica the snow would run out, is actualized every day at Venezuelan service stations across the country. According to author interviews, even in Caracas, but especially in provincial cities and towns, the internal combustion engine has fallen into disuse in Venezuela.

Faced with the simple impossibility of fueling the buses, cars, and trucks that would normally ferry people between homes and workplaces and ship goods between ports and stores, the government has taken refuge in the virus, actively banning people from using services it could no longer provide.

Maduro’s Ruthless Crackdown

The Maduro regime’s approach to lockdowns has been characteristically punitive. In the southern state of Bolívar, police patrol the streets in “coronabuses”—rounding up anyone breaking the 6:00 p.m. curfew and shoving them in jail. For public health, it is risible: social distancing is a nonstarter in Venezuela’s notoriously overcrowded jails. For social control, though, it does the job.

At the national level, the long-running political standoff between government and opposition has largely lost relevance, as the government has redoubled autocratic control and has stepped up repression against dissidents. A recent Human Rights Watch report notes that, since the start of the crisis, the regime has “arbitrarily detained and prosecuted dozens of journalists, healthcare workers [who have criticized its response to the pandemic], human rights lawyers, and political opponents who criticize the government.” And a sobering piece in the New York Times notes that regime death squads have begun branching out from attacking the opposition and now routinely take aim at dissident socialists who dare to question Maduro’s choices.

In this climate of fear and extreme deprivation, organizing politically to challenge the regime has become virtually impossible. Opposition leader Leopoldo López fled the Spanish embassy in Caracas, where he had sought refuge after the failed 2019 uprising, and turned up in Madrid. López vowed to carry on his fight from exile, but it was hard not to see his decision to bolt as a kind of concession.

A sort of simulacrum of legislative elections took place on December 6, drawing little interest from voters. The election was not competitive: the opposition’s spots on the ballot were taken over by regime sympathizers, resulting in an empty, Soviet-style vote where all options on the ballot ultimately support the government. The sham election will put an end to the legislature elected in Venezuela’s last free and fair election, held in 2015, when opposition parties took two-thirds of the seats—and were quickly barred from passing laws or exercising oversight by the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, millions of Venezuelans who fled the country’s crumbling economy between 2017 and 2019 find themselves stranded abroad as jobs disappear and borders close. Those who have returned home to Venezuela have been branded “bioterrorists” for introducing the virus into the country and forced into quarantine facilities where conditions are described as “inhumane.”

Conclusion

To be sure, Venezuela’s slow-burning metamorphosis into a police state long predates the coronavirus pandemic. But the virus, in conjunction with the fuel crisis, has hastened that transformation. At the beginning of this decade, Venezuela still shared at least some vestigial traits with the region’s democracies. Today, it shares basically none.

The arrival of the coronavirus in war-torn Yemen in April 2020 became an opportunity for the warring parties to consolidate their positions and advance their competing military agendas on the ground, worsening an already devastating situation. As a result, most Yemenis view the pandemic as a threat that is secondary to their other preexisting challenges.

The War in Yemen Goes On

Yemen is not only witnessing a massive conflict but also weathering economic hardship and an unprecedented series of humanitarian crises, including famine and outbreaks of other diseases. As noted in the previous April 2020 piece on this topic, I did not expect the pandemic to positively change the intensity of the ongoing conflict, despite the hopes that emanated from some quarters.

True to my prediction, the hostilities in Yemen have only increased since then. The pandemic provided a convenient pretext for some of the warring parties, such as the Iran-backed Houthis and the Emirati-backed Southern Transitional Council, to proceed with military operations. The international community, preoccupied with handling the pandemic, was in no position to respond thoughtfully to these military operations. Would-be mediators have continued to pursue half-hearted diplomacy focused on Yemeni combatants, whereas a successful resolution to the conflict would actually require a diplomatic process focused on more influential regional actors. Meanwhile, the ongoing spread of the coronavirus has reaffirmed the indifference of the conflict’s factions toward the suffering of the Yemeni people.

How Combatants in Yemen Have Responded

Over the course of the pandemic, the conflict’s various parties have behaved in one of three ways. One recurring tendency has been to conceal the number of coronavirus infections in Yemen. Setting aside the country’s lack of testing capacity given the collapse of its healthcare sector, the number of likely cases as diagnosed by symptoms has also been hidden for more political reasons. In Houthi-controlled areas, the de facto security authorities have asked all the medical teams to not share the number of affected people with journalists or to write about the country’s medical situation on social media.

One reason for such concealment is clear. The Houthis are well aware that declaring such figures publicly would increase the Yemeni people’s frustration and dissatisfaction, which would put more pressure on the Houthis during the war. Other combatants’ policies may not include as much deliberate concealment as the Houthis’, but local authorities across the country have shown a strong tendency to downplay pandemic case figures.

The second, related way the warring factions in Yemen have responded to the public health crisis is by falsely claiming success in dealing with the pandemic: some authorities are making dubious claims that the areas under their control are free of the virus or are bragging about the supposedly strong precautionary measures they are taking. Almost all parties have attempted to polish their images among locals and international organizations.

Yet most of the public health measures they have actually taken have been merely nominal, without effective implementation and thus failing to tangibly combat the pandemic. In areas under the control of the internationally recognized government, some governorates have established quarantine centers for potential COVID-19 cases but have not provided the equipment or skilled medical teams that are needed. Given the paralyzed government’s financial and logistical inability to control the pandemic, government officials’ plans and declarations seem unrealistic. Similarly, the health minister of the Houthi de facto government announced that there are medical teams working on a vaccine, confidently stating, “The coronavirus medicine will come from Yemen.”

Third, many combatants have instrumentalized the pandemic to open new military fronts and continue fighting. International actors have, understandably, cited the danger of the pandemic to encourage a ceasefire and urge for peace talks such as those brokered by UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths. Despite a nominal ceasefire announced in March, the fighting has not only continued but also has dramatically expanded in several areas.

The Houthi offensive along the northern front of Marib and al-Jawf has intensified. Although Saudi-backed and Emirati-backed forces are nominally still in a coalition, fighting has broken out repeatedly between them in southern Yemeni governorates, including near Aden. This city has had the highest mortality rate in the world during the pandemic, according to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Even the island of Socotra has seen violent incidents—the first time that has happened since the 1970s. UN-led talks have continued virtually, but the combatants’ commitment to seeking a reduction in violence has also proved to be more virtual than real.

Conclusion

The warring parties in Yemen have exploited anything they can, including the pandemic and other outbreaks of illnesses, to advance their own respective interests without paying any serious attention to the negative impact on people’s lives. Facing such a wide array of other challenges, most Yemenis have largely forgotten about the pandemic or have given it less attention than other pressing problems. This does not, however, mean that the number of coronavirus cases in the country is low. No one has accurate numbers, but the stories told about the daily deaths that are occurring reveal much about the disastrous consequences of the pandemic across the country. Nonetheless, the pandemic of war remains the major danger confronting Yemenis.