On earthquakes and spy balloons
Some updates on things I've written about recently.
I’ve written about the politics of earthquake relief and the alleged Chinese intrusions into U.S. airspace this week. There’s important updates on both stories. The disaster relief story is pretty grim, and the spy balloon story is pretty funny, so I’ll save that one for the end.
Politics on the backs of earthquake victims
The aftermath of the recent earthquake continues to be a major issue here in the Levant. The official death toll in Turkey and Syria has surpassed 43,000, which more than double the worst-case scenario that experts had been warning about. Rescuers are still sifting through the rubble.
Jordan was thankfully not affected. The government and public are opening their hands to help their regional neighbors. Relief efforts have also sparked a local debate over the effect of international sanctions on Syria. The local station Radio Balad ran a story about Jordanian reactions to the sanctions, which I helped translate as part of my Fulbright research project.1
The article does a good job emphasizing some important points. First, reopening the borders to trade is not the same as endorsing the other government; it’s possible to have normal economics relations with chilly political relations. Second, the issue of humanitarian aid is separate from the issue of reconstruction and economic recovery. U.S. sanctions allow the United Nations to give blankets to homeless Syrians, but they don’t allow Jordanian construction contractors to rebuild their neighborhood.
The main barriers to emergency aid are internal to Syria, as the story of the Kurdish relief convoys shows. Syrian troops demanded that the Kurdish Red Crescent hand over half its supplies before entering government territory, consistent with the government’s desire to both control aid in general and squeeze the Kurdish enclaves of Aleppo specifically. Turkish-backed rebels also blocked an aid convoy from North and East Syria, claiming that the Kurdish-led entity “is exploiting the suffering of Syrians” to boost its own standing.
The United Nations managed to open a few more border crossings from Turkey into rebel territory, after negotiating with the government for permission. (Human Rights Watch calls it “too little, too late.”) But “cross-line” deliveries between government and rebel territory continue to be stalled.
Much of the holdup is on the rebel side. Publicly, Islamist rebel leader Abu-Muhammad Jolani has claimed that his forces “don’t have teams ready” to receive the cross-line deliveries. Privately, a source in Jolani’s group told Reuters that the rebels “won’t allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping.”
Across the Turkish border, experts have argued that much of the damage in Turkey was the result of shoddy building practices encouraged by the government. (They’ve been raising the alarm for awhile.) The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has treated construction contractors as the engine of economic growth; as a friend from Turkey puts it, the AKP vision is “concrete everywhere.” Ironically, the AKP first came to power on a wave of public anger about the previous government’s response to the 1999 earthquake.
Mistrust of internal enemies has also slowed the response. The government is accused of leaving the military out of the initial earthquake response planning — the 2016 coup attempt is a bitter memory — and of censoring Twitter after the tremor. Police reportedly seized an aid shipment organized by the Kurdish-led opposition party, and another distributed by left-wing labor unions. Politicians accused volunteers of undermining the government’s ability to credibly lead relief efforts.
The earthquake has stirred up anti-Syrian and anti-Armenian racism. Nativist politician Ümit Özdağ accused Syrian refugees of looting in the aftermath of the disaster. (One of the alleged “looters” turned out to be a Turkish rescue worker.) Nationalist media in Azerbaijan — an enemy of Armenia and ally of Turkey — spread conspiracy theories that Armenian volunteers in Turkey were looting homes and even murdering Turks.
Turkish elections are coming up in spring 2023, and the earthquake will weigh heavily on everyone’s campaigns.
“Spy balloon” or hobbyist toy?
After shooting down a Chinese surveillance balloon over American airspace, the U.S. Air Force has been on high alert for intruders, identifying and destroying several unidentified “objects” over the past week. Well, it turns out one of those “objects” was probably a hobbyist toy.
The Biden administration has admitted that the most recent objects were “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions.” Aviation Week magazine matched the location and altitude of one “objects” to a pico balloon that the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade reported missing around the same time.
Pico balloons are floating transmitters sent out by amateur radio clubs. They cost between $12 and $180 each. AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles cost $439,000 each. Oops! Also, the F-22 Raptor jet that carries these missiles costs several hundred million dollars. The Chinese balloon was the first air-to-air kill ever made by an F-22.
The whole saga feels like something out of a South Park episode.
On the topic, someone drew my attention to a hilarious recording of a U.S.-Chinese aerial encounter. Just listen to the end:
My full-time job here in Jordan is researching how Arab media deals with translation and international news. The views expressed here do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.