Foreign Digest: Mali, India, Belarus and Syria

Mali: Malians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution recently by referendum recently that transitions back toward civilian rule, albeit with increased presidential powers, and a representative assembly and elections. A military junta had seized power last year amidst and Islamist terrorist insurgency. France had led an international force to support its former colony against the al-Qaeda affiliates, with some success, but the Junta then turned instead toward Kremlin-associated Russian mercenaries. Al-Qaeda was responsible for the deadliest terrorist attacks ever, the September 11, 2001 Attacks on America that killed nearly 3,000 people. The terrorists have been conducting attacks also on multiple neighboring States in the Sahel. India: The opposition in India, across the political, religious and ethnic spectrum, has agreed to work together to oppose the ruling Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister in the next parliamentary elections in 2024. The Premier is popular among the majority Hindus but who is feared for increased authoritarianism and for a history of religious persecution. Similar efforts against authoritarian leaders who had usurped representative government based on separation of powers and the rule of law in Hungary and Turkey succeeded in forcing run-off elections, but the control of state media and other factors was decisive for those strongmen, a factor that would not be present in India. Belarus: The Belarusian dictator recently claimed he told Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin that he could kill a rebellious mercenary leader given exile from Russia in Belarus, thereby admitting he holds such tyrannical power, despite his claims to the contrary and the pretense of having won elections that were rigged. He also claimed to have persuaded Putin, the ex-Soviet intelligence officer trying to restore the Soviet Union, not to kill the exiled mercenary leader who had been close to Putin, but led a rebellion against the failing Russian war effort in its aggression against Ukraine. The claim by Putin’s ally validates the obvious attribution to the Russian strongman of the many killings of Russian political opponents, journalists, and other critics, including those in exile in the West, for which Putin denies responsibility. Syria: The United States killed an “Islamic State” Islamist terrorist leader in Syria last week in a drone strike, after Russian aircraft had harassed the unmanned aircraft, as they have repeatedly been doing lately. A small American force has been fighting the al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria, while the Russians are backing the terrorist-sponsoring Baathist regime of Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad, who is also supported by Iran and its terrorist proxies against various rebels in a civil war that has killed over half a million people in eleven years and caused millions to flee. The Russians have stopped abiding by deconfliction protocols that had been agreed to between the U.S. and the Russian Federation.