Every day thousands of people try to cross Mexico’s border to enter the United States.
Migrant crossings at the US-Mexico border have hit an all-time high.
More than 10,000 people entered the United States every day this week.
The crisis is putting President Joe Biden under pressure as he heads into an election year.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Mexico to ask for support in keeping migrants within its borders. The two countries have reached an agreement to keep border crossings between the two countries open after temporary closures.
But how can this be achieved?
And how will the issue of immigration play out politically inside the US?
Presenter: Laura Kyle
Guests:
Rebekah Wolf – Senior advocacy strategist at the American Immigration Council, a non-profit organisation
Leon Fresco – Immigration lawyer and former deputy assistant attorney general in charge of Immigration at the US Department of Justice
Maureen Meyer – Vice president for programs at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organisation
Talks between Lopez Obrador and US officials follow temporary shutdown of some rail crossings.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says an agreement has been reached with United States officials to keep border crossings between the two countries open after temporary closures during a high number of crossings.
The announcement comes one day after Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO, met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “direct” talks about the challenges of increasing migration.
“This agreement has been reached. The rail crossings and the border bridges are already being opened to normalize the situation,” Lopez Obrador said at a press conference. “Every day there is more movement on the border bridges.”
Seeking to project a firm stance on migration, a key issue in the upcoming US presidential election, President Joe Biden’s administration has pressured countries throughout Latin America to step up enforcement.
“The regional challenge of migration requires regional solutions,” Mayorkas said in a social media post on Wednesday, after what he called a “very productive meeting” with Mexican officials.
“And we appreciate Mexico’s commitment to continue its efforts alongside us and with others.”
This month, the US temporarily shuttered a handful of border crossings, including two rail bridges, in an effort to stem rising migrant numbers.
The Biden administration has also taken a number of steps that critics say severely restrict asylum applications, a legal right under both US and international law.
For several decades, the US has poured funds and resources into an enforcement-heavy approach towards immigration. Human rights advocates have criticised the policy for doing little to deter people who are often fleeing violence and poverty while increasing the risks for migrants navigating the myriad dangers of the journey north.
Across the world, rich countries have taken increasingly harsh steps to crack down on migration from poor countries as anxieties over migration help fuel the rise of far-right politicians and parties in the US and Europe.
Last week, France passed an immigration bill that President Emmanuel Macron touted as a necessary compromise but that rights groups derided as “the most regressive bill of the past 40 years for the rights and living conditions of foreigners”.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, called the bill an “ideological victory”.
The package, valued at $250m, will include air defence system components and artillery rounds.
Ukraine has welcomed the latest arms package from the United States to aid its fight against Russia as the war approaches the two-year mark.
The package, valued at $250m and announced on Wednesday night, will include air defence system components, ammunition for HIMARS, 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, stinger antiaircraft missiles, and medical equipment.
“We are grateful to the American government and people for their unwavering support. Ukrainian people appreciate your leadership,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said on X on Thursday.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it would “cover Ukraine’s most pressing needs”.
“US leadership in the coalition of over 50 countries providing Ukraine with military aid is critical to countering terror and aggression not only in Ukraine but around the world,” he said.
I thank @POTUS Joe Biden, Congress, and the American people for the $250 million military aid package announced yesterday.
Additional air defense missiles and components, anti-tank weapons, ammunition, mine clearing, and other equipment will cover Ukraine’s most pressing needs.…
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 28, 2023
US President Joe Biden has asked Congress to provide another $61 bn in aid to Ukraine. But Republicans are refusing to approve the package without an agreement by the Democrats to tighten security around the US-Mexico border.
The White House has warned that without the additional appropriation, US aid for Ukraine’s fight against Russia will run out by the end of the year.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday the West’s strategic defeat on Moscow had “completely failed”.
Lavrov told Russian state media that the Group of Seven countries intend to discuss the “peace formula” proposed by Zelenskyy, which they agreed on at a “secret summit” held about 10 days ago.
A Panama-flagged bulk carrier in Odesa region [Press service of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine/Handout via Reuters]
Cargo ship hits mine
Meanwhile, a bulk carrier headed to a River Danube port to load grain hit a Russian mine in the Black Sea on Wednesday, injuring two crew members, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday.
“A Panama-flagged civilian vessel was blown up on an enemy sea mine in the Black Sea … The vessel lost its course and control and a fire broke out on the upper deck,” Ukraine’s southern military command said on Telegram.
A captain, sailor and an Egyptian citizen were injured, with the latter taken to hospital in the city of Izmail, the head of the Odesa regional prosecutors office said.
Moscow has ramped up its attack in the Black Sea since leaving the United Nations-brokered grain deal in mid-July, which allowed for the safe passage of Ukrainian grain shipments.
Ukraine has pushed back Russian warships in the western part of the Black Sea to allow some cargo ships in and out along a maritime corridor. But the water remains heavily mined, including by Russian planes, and is particularly dangerous in stormy weather.
In what scientists call a “slow-moving disaster”, a “zombie deer disease” is spreading across the United States after a case was detected in Yellowstone National Park.
The lethal disease has no cure and is prevalent in deer and elk, but studies suggest that it may spread to humans.
Here’s what we know about the disease and whether people should be worried.
What is zombie deer disease?
Zombie deer is a chronic wasting disease (CWD) that first surfaces in deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer and moose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a national health agency in the US. It is unclear how the name “zombie deer” emerged.
It eats away at the brains of those animals and causes dementia-like symptoms, eventually leading to death. There are also no treatments or vaccines.
CWDs are spread by prions – a set of proteins that are almost indestructible and affect both animals and humans. They cause a type of rare progressive neurodegenerative disorder – which means it affects the nervous system and gradually worsens.
The World Health Organization has urged keeping agents of known prion diseases, such as animals infected with zombie deer disease, from entering the human food chain. However, there is no strong evidence that humans can get infected with CWD prions from animals.
What are the symptoms of zombie deer disease?
The prions of the disease cause cells in the brain and spinal cord to fold abnormally and start clumping.
Around a year after getting infected, animals start showing symptoms including dementia, wobbliness, drooling, aggression and weight loss.
Where has zombie deer disease been detected?
A deer carcass in Yellowstone National Park tested positive for the disease in mid-November, announced the National Park Service.
The CDC also reported that “as of November 2023, CWD in free-ranging deer, elk and/or moose has been reported in at least 31 states in the continental United States, as well as three provinces in Canada”.
Cases have also been reported in Norway, Finland, Sweden and South Korea.
The first-ever zombie deer disease case, however, was first discovered in Colorado in 1967, according to the US Geological Survey.
Chronic Wasting Disease has been confirmed in a Yellowstone National Park mule deer found near Yellowstone Lake.
What is the risk of zombie deer diseases spreading to humans?
So far, there have not been any reports of zombie deer disease transmitting to humans.
Experimental research on CWDs suggests, however, that it is a possibility, especially if humans eat infected meat. Currently, the CDC estimates that up to 15,000 animals infected with CWD are eaten each year.
Additionally, the temperatures needed to cook off its prions in meat are far above regular cooking temperatures.
Within animals, it spreads through their saliva, urine, blood or faeces. The prions can also remain in environments for a long time, according to the CDC.
Have diseases spread from animals to humans before?
It’s fairly common. In the 1980s and 90s, “mad cow” disease was found to have spread from animals to humans in the United Kingdom. A total of 232 people worldwide have died from the disease, according to the Food and Drug Administration based in the US.
From rabies to avian influenza, zoonotic diseases — that can spread from animals to humans — have long posed a major public health challenge that has been exacerbated as humans have encroached more and more into the natural habitats of a range of animal species.
COVID-19, the world’s most devastating pandemic in a century, is also widely believed to have spread to humans from animals in a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Nearly 7 million people around the world have died from COVID-19 in less than four years.
What precautions can people take against zombie deer disease?
The CDC has listed several precautions against eating meat infected with CWDs, such as:
Test hunted animals before eating the meat.
Avoid “deer and elk that look sick or are acting strangely or are found dead”.
Use latex or rubber gloves when removing the internal organs of hunted deer, while minimising contact with the brain and spinal cord tissue.
Do not use household knives or kitchen utensils when handling deer meat.
Determining whether a deer is infected can only take place after it is killed because testing requires samples of tissue deep within the brain.
A group of pro-Palestine protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza blocked access to one of the entrances to New York’s JFK International Airport during the busiest travel week of the year. Later footage showed police arresting some of the demonstrators.
Washington, DC – “Florida man makes announcement.”
That’s how the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid, described the launch of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign last year: with the headline equivalent of a shrug.
It was a low point for Trump. Disappointing results for his handpicked candidates in the midterm elections had bruised his reputation as a Republican kingmaker, and conservative commentators like Ann Coulter had turned their backs on him.
For a moment, it appeared as if Trump had finally lost his momentum — that his immunity to scandal and setbacks had worn off. His third campaign for the White House debuted to little fanfare.
But now, Trump is leading the race for the Republican nomination by proverbial miles, with public opinion polls showing him dozens of percentage points ahead of his closest rivals. More worryingly for Democrats, surveys also suggest President Joe Biden is trailing him in a potential match-up in the general elections.
And that comes in spite of Trump’s legal troubles. This year, Trump became the first former United States president to be charged with a crime. But four indictments later, his campaign is still going strong.
The bottom line: Last year’s reports of Trump’s political demise may have been greatly exaggerated. “Teflon Don” is back.
So how did Trump bounce back from the problems he endured in 2022? Why haven’t his legal woes derailed his presidential campaign? And can his opponents stop his march back to the White House?
The short answer: The former president’s personality and agenda remain popular with many Americans. While voters rejected many Trump-like candidates in the midterms, it was not necessarily a rebuke of the man himself. The criminal charges he faces also boosted the conservative perception that Trump is a victim of a “corrupt” system. It is too early to tell whether Trump will maintain his momentum, but the lack of a strong Republican alternative and Biden’s dwindling popularity are playing into his hands.
The midterms
Trump appeared to be at a crossroads after the 2022 midterm elections. An anticipated “red wave” of Republican victories failed to materialise, with many Trump proteges floundering.
Trump had previously played a decisive role in electoral contests across the country. He helped allies win Republican primaries and pushed out critics in the party.
So when the Democrats managed to keep control of the Senate and Republicans won a smaller-than-expected majority in the House of Representatives, Trump became the face of his party’s lacklustre performance.
But Rina Shah, a political strategist and commentator, said many Republican candidates who were backed by the former president last year tried to emulate him without having his qualities.
“Trump has what appears to be just the right mix of strength, vigour, charisma — that approachability yet unapproachability,” Shah told Al Jazeera.
For the popularity of Trumpism to be judged accurately, she added, Trump himself needs to be on the ballot.
The appeal
Shah explained that many voters perceive Trump to be a success story: A self-described billionaire who swept into office over more experienced political candidates. He has convinced his supporters that he alone can fix politics in Washington, DC.
Trump seized on some Americans’ dissatisfaction with the political system by framing himself as a political outsider. He recently said he would be a “dictator” — but only on his first day in office, so that he could close the border and drill for more oil.
Critics have blasted his statements as indicative of an authoritarian streak. But his strongman bluster and propensity for raging against the establishment have proven to be an appealing combination, both in the US and abroad.
Trump employed that approach in 2016 when he defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for the presidency. And in the years since, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina have used similar strategies, even embracing comparisons to Trump.
“DC remains broken, and for that reason, Trump can continue to bang the same drum,” Shah said.
“His talking points are not fresh. It’s the same stuff he’s been saying for years. It’s even more fascist-sounding. It’s even more dictatorial-sounding. But it still seems to apply to those who are aggrieved with the system.”
Some critics have dubbed former US President Donald Trump ‘Teflon Don’ for his ability to repel scandal and attack [File: Evan Vucci/AP Photo]
The energy
By the end of 2022, however, he appeared to have lost some of his vigour, said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank.
“He didn’t seem to have anything new to say. He looked like he was going through the motions,” Olsen told Al Jazeera. But that changed in 2023. “By the middle of the spring, he had rediscovered his energy.”
It was a return to form for Trump. He kicked off his campaign tour in March with a major rally in Waco, Texas, delivering a speech that drew on fears of a corrupt “deep state” and US cultural decline.
The US, he warned, had shrivelled into a “third-world banana republic”, and only he could fix the mess.
Trump once again looked like the answer for those seeking a “dramatic change”, Olsen said.
Olsen also pointed out that, by that point, Trump had rivals on the campaign trail to bash. Former United Nations envoy Nikki Haley had announced her campaign in February, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was poised to launch his bid. Those rivalries gave fuel and focus to Trump’s ire.
“I think he got [his energy] back because he was under attack on the left and from the right — because there’s nothing he likes better than a good fight,” he said. “And to back down in the face of a fight is something he finds shameful.”
Former US President Donald Trump used the mugshot taken by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia as a marketing tactic for his campaign [Handout/Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via Reuters]
The charges
And then came the legal drama.
In March, Trump was criminally charged in a New York state case over allegations that he illegally paid off an adult film actress in 2016, ahead of the elections. Less than three months later, he was charged in a federal case over accusations that he had retained secret government documents.
In August, he would face two more sets of changes — one at the federal level and one in Georgia — over his efforts to overturn the 2020 elections.
With each indictment, Trump’s star rose higher with Republican voters. So much so that Republican Congressman Thomas Massie jokingly suggested that DeSantis should also get himself charged to keep up with the former president.
“We got to find some judge in Florida that’ll indict DeSantis quick, to close this indictment gap,” Massie was quoted as saying by the Miami Herald in July. “It’s a truism that anytime someone is being persecuted, their camp rallies to their defence.”
The charges, however, are serious: They could theoretically put Trump behind bars for years. Prosecutors have said they are confident the evidence they gathered is sufficient to convict him.
But as the stack of charges grew higher, the former president’s supporters interpreted the indictments as proof that a corrupt legal system was out to get him.
Olsen said that while some of Trump’s fans may have considered voting for someone else, “the indictments made them rally around him”.
The state charges in New York and Georgia were brought by elected Democratic prosecutors, and the federal indictments were put forward by special counsel Jack Smith, who was selected by Attorney General Merrick Garland, himself a Biden appointee.
Trump has denied accusations of wrongdoing in all cases, painting them as a Democratic-led witch hunt.
Most recently, Colorado’s top court barred Trump from being on the ballot in the state during the presidential election next year. Trump is expected to appeal before the US Supreme Court.
Trump’s Republican rivals have so far failed to close the gap they face in the polls, where they trail the former president by a significant margin [File: Brian Snyder/Reuters]
The Republican competition
Trump’s court cases have prompted many of his Republican rivals to leap to his defence. In March, DeSantis called the New York indictment “un-American” and promised that Florida would not aid in the ex-president’s extradition.
Long seen as the man to take on Trump in the Republican primaries, DeSantis has struggled to equal the former president’s rallying power. Instead, the Florida governor has faced questions about his likability.
There were also vulnerabilities in DeSantis’s campaign that helped Trump emerge as the runaway frontrunner in the Republican race.
A much-anticipated campaign launch on Twitter (now X) in May was marred by technical difficulties. The Florida governor’s focus on “culture war” issues failed to meaningfully expand his base. And his calls for changes to popular social safety net programmes opened him up to criticism from Trump and others.
“The joke is that there are two kinds of people in Florida: Those who think DeSantis is a great leader and those who know DeSantis,” said Ronald Stockton, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Stockton added that the weakness of the Republican opposition helped revive Trump’s campaign, as more and more figures in the party started seeing him as the winning horse.
Haley, the former UN envoy, is also pushing to be a serious Republican alternative to Trump, but current polls suggest it is unlikely she will catch up to the former president.
What about Biden?
Trump is not only polling well against his Republican opponents but also against his Democratic rival, Biden. Several recent polls show him edging out Biden in key swing states like Michigan, Nevada and Georgia.
Stockton, Olsen and Shah all said Trump’s strong numbers against Biden are due to voters seeing the incumbent president as old and weak.
“It’s really entirely about Joe Biden’s vulnerability in terms of age, just not looking physically as strong as Trump,” Shah said.
Biden, 81, is older than Trump by less than four years, but to many, he shows his age more than the former president.
“Trump looks like a man who is really ready for a four-year presidency,” Stockton said. “And Biden doesn’t. He just looks weak and he looks ineffective. He is not but he looks that way. And so, that’s a real factor.”
There is also policy. While some indicators point to a healthy economy, many Americans are still reeling from inflation. The influx of arrivals at the southern US border — including more than 2 million migrants last year — has also been a weak spot for Biden.
Republican officials have been transporting migrants northward towards Democratic-controlled cities and states, putting a strain on the social services systems in these places.
Biden has been trying to curb unauthorised migration, angering many of his fellow Democrats, particularly progressives. But he still cannot match Trump’s harsh rhetoric on the issue.
“Trump is seen as very good on the economy. He’s seen as very good on immigration. And he’s seen as non-interventionist internationally,” Stockton said.
Russia has claimed that US sanctions levied against the Arctic LNG 2 project undermine global energy security.
The Russian foreign ministry’s spokeswoman hit out on Wednesday at Washington’s “unacceptable” move to clamp down on the massive Arctic LNG 2. The sanctions are just the latest measure implemented as the West seeks to limit Moscow’s financial ability to wage war in Ukraine.
The remarks came after Washington announced sanctions against the new liquefied natural gas plant that is under development on the Gydan Peninsula in the Arctic last month.
“We consider such actions unacceptable, especially in relation to such large international commercial projects as Arctic LNG 2, which affect the energy balance of many states,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
“The situation around Arctic LNG 2 once again confirms the destructive role for global economic security played by Washington, which speaks of the need to maintain this security but in fact, by pursuing its own selfish interests, tries to oust competitors and destroy global energy security.”
Russia is the fourth-largest producer of sea-borne LNG behind the United States, Qatar and Australia.
The Arctic LNG 2 project is a key element in Russia’s efforts to boost its share of the global market to a fifth by 2030-2035 from 8 percent now.
However, the sanctions saw partners from China, Japan and France who hold a combined 40 percent of the project suspend participation last week. Project developer Novatek was also forced to declare force majeure over LNG supplies from the project, which was slated to start production in early 2024.
Western countries, seeking to cripple Moscow’s military might, have imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russian firms and individuals following the Kremlin’s decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February last year.
However, Russia insists that Europe has been hit harder by the sanctions due to raised energy prices, while it has been successful in swiftly finding new markets in Asia.
Almost all of Russia’s oil exports this year have been shipped to China and India, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday.
Wave of drones
Russia hopes that the income from Asian energy customers can continue to help drive its invasion, as it eyes Ukraine’s struggle to access funds and weapons from Western partners.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed after Russian forces sent a wave of attack drones against the country in an overnight raid.
The Ukrainian air force said that 32 of 46 Iranian-made drones deployed by Russia had been shot down.
The air force said the military had destroyed drones over parts of central, southern and western Ukraine. Most of those that got through defences struck near the front line, mainly in the southern Kherson region.
Oleh Kiper, the governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region, said that a 35-year-old man was killed by debris from a downed drone in a residential area. Another man died in the hospital from his injuries.
Four others, including a 17-year-old boy, were injured, according to Kiper.
More than 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, with about half of recent deaths occurring far behind the front lines, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG), the United States Navy-led coalition of the willing intended to allow international shipping to continue navigating safely through the Red Sea, is set to activate within days. Including allies from Europe and the Middle East, as well as Canada and Australia, the operation has been snubbed by three important NATO countries, France, Italy and Spain.
What is the exact task of OPG?
The official line, “to secure safe passage for the commercial ships”, is too vague for any naval flag officer to feel comfortable getting into. Admirals want politicians to give them precise tasks and clear mandates needed to achieve the desired results.
Defining the threat seems easy, for now: antiship missiles and drones of various types carrying explosive warheads have been targeting merchant ships on the way to and from the Suez Canal. All were fired from Yemen, by the Houthi group also known as Ansar Allah which now controls most of the country, including the longest section of its 450km-long Red Sea coast. All missiles were surface-launched, with warheads that can damage but hardly sink big cargo ships.
The Houthis at first announced that they would target Israeli-owned ships, then expanded that to include all those using Israeli ports, ultimately to those trading with Israel. After several attacks where the Israeli connection appeared very distant or vague, it is prudent to assume that any ship could be targeted.
All missiles neutralised by US and French warships so far were shot down by sophisticated shipborne surface-to-air missiles (SAM), proving that the modern vertical-launch systems guided by the latest generation phased array radars work as designed. Many nations earmarked to participate in OPG have ships with similar capabilities. Almost all also carry modern surface-to-surface missiles that can attack targets at sea or land.
If the task of OPG were to be defined narrowly, only to prevent hits on merchant ships, it could be performed using the centuries-old principle of sailing in convoys with the protection of warships.
In a convoy, slow, defenceless commercial cargos sail in several columns at precisely defined distances from each other — led, flanked and tailed by fast warships that can take on any threat. The system is effective, as the United Kingdom, Russia, Malta, and many other countries saved by convoys in World War II can attest.
But every strategy has its limitations. A convoy is big and cumbersome, extending for miles to give behemoth ships a safe distance from each other and to enable them to manoeuvre if needed. Whatever the protective measures taken, huge tankers and container carriers – longer than 300 metres (984 feet) – still present big targets. Captains of commercial ships are generally not trained in convoy operations, and most have no experience operating in large groups or under military command.
Their escorts, even if well-armed, carry a limited number of missiles and must plan their use carefully, allowing for further attacks down the shipping lane and ultimately leaving a war reserve for the defence of the ship itself. Once they expend some of the missiles, they need to replenish them – a task that is possible at sea but done much more quickly and safely in a friendly port out of reach of Houthi missiles.
To clear the critical 250 nautical miles (463km) along the Yemeni coast leading to or from the Bab al-Mandeb strait, advancing at assumed 15 knots (28kmph) — as convoys always sail at the speed of the slowest units — ships would be exposed to even the shortest-ranged Houthi missiles and drones for at least 16 hours.
And before even trying to make the dash, they would be particularly vulnerable in the staging areas in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden where ships would spend some time gathering, forming the convoy and setting under way.
The Houthi missile threat is now known to be high, and their arsenal is substantial. Naval planners must be worried by their ability to mount concentrated prolonged attacks simultaneously from several directions.
This was demonstrated in the very first attack, on October 19, when the Houthi launched four cruise missiles and 15 drones at USS Carney, a destroyer that is still operating in the Red Sea and will be part of OPG. The attack, probably planned to test the Houthis’ attack doctrine and enemy response, lasted nine hours, forcing the crew of the target ship to maintain full readiness and concentration for a prolonged period to intercept all incoming missiles.
Every admiral would tell his political superiors that military necessity would call for attacks on Houthi missile infrastructure on the ground in Yemen: fixed and mobile launch sites, production and storage facilities, command centres and whatever little radar infrastructure there exists. A proactive response to the missile threat, in other words, to destroy the Houthi ship-targeting capability, rather than the reactive one limited to shooting missiles down as they come in.
In theory, attacks against Houthi missile infrastructure could be based on satellite and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) reconnaissance and carried out by missiles launched from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and armed drones from distant land bases. But the only realistic chance at meaningful success would require the use of combat aircraft, bombers based on the two US Navy nuclear carriers in the region.
Attacks against targets in Yemen would have a clear military justification. But they would also carry a clear political risk: that of the West, particularly the US, being seen in the Arab and Islamic world as actually entering the Gaza war on the side of Israel. After all, the Houthis say their attacks on Red Sea ships are aimed at getting Israel to end the war.
Aware of the perils of such a development that could easily cause the conflict to spread, the US has tried to tread carefully, engaging with regional powers, and sending messages that it wants no escalation. It even openly demanded of its ally Israel that it limit civilian suffering and end the conflict as quickly as possible — to no avail.
The White House and the Pentagon are now walking on hot coals. If they do nothing, the Red Sea route will quickly close, causing US, European and Asian economies significant damage. If the half measures they currently propose, just escorting convoys without attacking missile sites on land, fail to secure safe passage, they will have lost face and failed in preventing an economic downturn. And if the US is eventually forced to attack, it will have directly contributed to a dangerous escalation that may be difficult to contain.
Mindful of all these dilemmas, France, Italy and Spain are playing it safe: they will “unilaterally” deploy their frigates to the Red Sea to “protect the ships of their respective nations”. Should the US Navy ultimately attack Yemen, the Europeans will be able to claim that they did not contribute to the intensification of the war, shoving all the responsibility to the US.
Kyiv, Ukraine – Whenever Svitlana Matvienko hears the wailing of air raid sirens, she goes down to the nearby subterranean shopping mall.
There, a barista she’s on a first-name basis with gets her a large latte, and Matvienko clacks away on her tiny silver laptop, sitting next to several dozen others waiting out the air raid.
“I’m like a little Pavlov dog, but the sirens make me drool for coffee,” the 52-year-old freelance marketing expert told Al Jazeera with a sense of self-deprecating humour that helps Ukrainians cope with the war.
The crowd around her is minuscule in comparison with last year, when hundreds of people thronged the same Metrograd mall, often staying for the night with their weeping children and squealing pets.
To Matvienko, the December 15 air raid was yet another multimillion-dollar exercise in the futility of Russia’s war effort, with all the cruise missiles and kamikaze drones shot down and no casualties reported.
And when asked about what awaits her and all of Ukraine in 2024, the ginger-haired, petite mother of two pointed up, as if her manicured forefinger could pierce the ceiling towards the grey sky and howling sirens, and said: “A lot more of this.”
This year has been uneasy and somewhat disappointing to many Ukrainians.
The long-awaited counteroffensive in eastern and southern regions stalled as Russian bombardment of urban centres resumed to sow panic and destroy power stations and central heating facilities.
“Because the summer counteroffensive lacked notable results, Ukrainians got back to feeling danger and threat that seemed to have subdued as they were getting used to the ongoing war,” Svitlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists, a group in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
“We need to adapt to the war again, to correct expectations and life strategies taking into account more realistic estimates,” she said.
The counteroffensive’s fiasco seems sobering in comparison with last year’s emotional rollercoaster, when Russian troops horrified Ukraine by advancing from three directions – only to withdraw from around Kyiv and northern regions and to suffer a string of humiliating defeats in the east and south.
This winter, the tables seem to have turned.
“Now is the time to switch to defence” along the crescent-shaped front line that traverses eastern and southern Ukraine for more than 1,000km (600 miles), says Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevich.
“For the winter campaign, Ukraine’s logic is to hold the front. Hold the Black Sea, keep the ports open, work the political field to guarantee the reception of military aid as the spring approaches,” he told Al Jazeera.
Kyiv’s manpower and arsenals are too depleted to go on the offensive next year, according to some top Ukrainian military experts.
“We don’t have the resources for next year’s operation,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, the former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera.
Polls show that the number of Ukrainians who believe that the war should go on until Ukraine regains all lost territories, including the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014, is going down, albeit insignificantly.
Sixty percent believe in Kyiv’s imminent military triumph, as opposed to 70 percent last year, according to a Gallup poll released in October. And almost a third of those polled – 31 percent – think that peace talks with Russia should begin “as soon as possible,” compared with 26 percent last year, the poll said.
Most of the supporters of immediate negotiations come from southern (41 percent) and eastern (39 percent) Ukraine, where most of the hostilities took place this year, the poll said.
Meanwhile, Israel’s war on Gaza has eclipsed the Russia-Ukraine war in the Western media and halls of power as aid to Ukraine has dwindled or been suspended.
The aid has been keeping Kyiv afloat since the war began in February 2022 – and will be the key factor shaping the future and stability of Ukraine’s economy, according to Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kusch.
“In theory, Ukraine can hold on for between six months and a year on its own. But that will require the freezing of a string of budget articles,” he told Al Jazeera.
Only by 2025 will Ukraine achieve a “factor of safety” if some refugees return and Kyiv gets sizable investments, he said.
More than six million people left Ukraine last year, mostly to Poland and other Eastern European nations, and another eight million have been displaced within the France-sized nation.
Another key contributor to the economic growth will be the unblocking of Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and Azov Sea to fully resume the shipment of grain and steel, a scenario that will require Kyiv to continue to assault Russia’s navy, Kusch said.
This year, Ukraine’s economy showed small signs of recovery after 2022’s freefall, when the gross domestic product shrank by a third. This year, the GDP will have grown by 2 percent – and may gain another 3.2 percent in 2024, the International Monetary Fund said in October.
It said the “stronger than expected” growth in domestic demand reflected the adaptation to the invasion and reversed the prediction of a 3 percent shrinkage for 2023.
Another source of cautious optimism is the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and the European Union – something that would safeguard the country from Russia politically and economically.
At a summit in July, NATO member states agreed to simplify Ukraine’s path to membership, although they did not say when it could join. And in mid-December, the European Union decided to open membership talks for Kyiv, despite Hungary’s objections over the “mistreatment” of ethnic Hungarians in western Ukraine.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians believe that their nation would join NATO (69 percent) and the EU (73 percent) within a decade, the Gallup poll showed.
In 2024, Ukraine is also not going to see a change of leadership. All political parties with a presence in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament, agreed in mid-November to postpone the presidential and parliamentary votes until the war is over.
They said that too many Ukrainians live in Russia-occupied areas or fled abroad to cast their ballots.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains the country’s most popular political figure with an approval rating of 62 percent, according to a poll by the Kyiv Sociology Institute released in early December. His popularity went down from a staggering 84 percent in December 2022, largely due to the counteroffensive’s failure and corruption scandals in the military.
His only possible political rival is Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, whose rating went up to a stratospheric 88 percent, the poll said.
But in extremely rare interviews, the four-star general has never indicated any political ambitions.
“The ratings are high because he is silent,” a source close to him told Al Jazeera. “Everyone sees him as this super reliable father figure, the protector, but nobody knows about his political preferences.”
TikTok is a lot like the young people on its platform – difficult to control.
Earlier this year, the fate of the short-form video app in the United States hung by a thread as several states looked to imposed restrictions on its use, and one state, Montana, legislated on a ban. And yet, TikTok seems set to enter 2024 on solid footing. After all, which political party would want to start an election year banning a platform on which 150 million mostly-young Americans spend their lives?
The app survived a year in which its CEO was subjected to a five-hour US Congressional grilling in March, the app was banned on federal government devices, and lawmakers called for a broader ban on the app, calling it “spyware” and “digital fentanyl”.
While the obstacles in its path since then may not have vanished, they seem to have diminished in size. A federal judge blocked a ban on TikTok in Montana at the end of November, a PEW survey released earlier this month showed that fewer Americans supported a federal TikTok ban than they did earlier in the year, and Congress won’t take up legislation addressing foreign-owned apps like TikTok this year.
While no astrologers were consulted for this piece, it’s fair to say the stars seem to have aligned in favour of TikTok as it enters 2024.
The new year is unprecedented, with elections in over 70 countries, including the US.
“This is the first time TikTok will be front and centre as an app for political news and views in an election year, a particularly tricky path for TikTok to walk down,” said Katie Harbath, founder and CEO of technology policy firm Anchor Change.
“The platform will have to make decisions that companies like Meta and Google have had to do in the past. Candidates will want to reach voters on the platform, the way the Biden campaign is working with TikTok influencers,” she added. Harbath was previously public policy director for global elections at Facebook, now Meta.
Harbath said Democrats won’t be the only ones forced to use TikTok to reach young voters. Republicans, including the likes of Nikki Haley, who have called for a TikTok ban, will have to do a mea culpa and use the app for their campaigns, she said. “Eventually, the place where the voters are will win,” Harbath pointed out.
While TikTok may not be going away anytime soon, it will have to navigate tricky regulatory waters, something Harbath believes the company is adept at, given that it has hired veterans from other tech platforms and has worked at winning over the broader public.
While conversations around TikTok being forced to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, seem to have died down for now, the proposition is not dead in the waters, she said. Irrespective of which party wins elections next year, ByteDance will be pushed to sell TikTok’s US operations to an American company, she said.
“A sale would depend on whether investors see a real challenge for TikTok to continue being associated with ByteDance. This could depend on broader geopolitical issues, like China’s actions in Taiwan,” Harbath said.
The controversy over TikTok stems from fears that it could spy on US citizens on behalf of China. FBI director Chris Wray called the app a national security risk, adding that Chinese companies were forced to do whatever the Chinese government wanted them to “in terms of sharing information or serving as a tool of the Chinese government”. He feared China could harness the app to influence users.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew, in his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March, said, “TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, US user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honour such a request if one were ever made.” He has said repeatedly that ByteDance was not owned by the Chinese government, and that 60 percent of the company was owned by global institutional investors.
Whom to believe
Chantal Winston is one of the many small business owners who find TikTok useful for finding new clients [Courtesy of Chantal Winston]
At the heart of the TikTok debate lies the question of whom to believe. “We don’t have enough information to make that call yet,” Harbath said.
Harsh Taneja, associate professor of New and Emerging Media, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who has researched audience measurement regimes across the world, pointed to the inherent difficulties with accessing data about platforms today, an issue that is not limited to TikTok.
The problem, said Taneja, is that data on tech companies is being provided by the company itself, unlike an earlier era where organisations like Nielsen collected data on television viewership and content. “The data was being collected by a third party that was neither an advertiser on the platform nor the platform itself,” he said. “We had more visibility into viewership data, whereas today data use on tech platforms is opaque.”
Taneja said the calls to ban TikTok in the US were ironic, given that, a decade ago, Hillary Clinton likened China’s internet firewall to a “new information curtain,” a Cold War reference to the “iron curtain”.
While American politicians have accused TikTok of addicting kids and polluting young minds, Taneja said some of the panic around TikTok is similar to the panic around television in the 1970s, when the adverse effects of television on children was a hot topic, and communications theories focussed on how television would cultivate violent views of the world and promote crimes.
There is also a huge generational divide between those who use TikTok and those who are legislating over the platform, Taneja said.
“Almost everybody who has the power to do something consequential about the platform is not, most likely, part of its 150 million user base in the US, and certainly not an active user,” he said.
TikTok is now an important part of the cultural fabric of a segment of the country and a place where people channel their creative talents.
Banning it would have negative consequences on the creator economy, he said.
‘Where we go to learn things’
Novelist Amy Zhang says TikTok can be a lot of work but it’s also fun [Courtesy of Amy Zhang]
Chantal Winston, a young Black woman who posts videos of herself making candles is one of five million businesses on the platform, many of which are small businesses.
“When I launched my nontoxic candle business, BLKessence, in 2020, I didn’t even think about creating a TikTok account. Once I started creating candle-making TikTok videos in 2021, I wished that I had done it a lot sooner,” she told Al Jazeera. The behind-the-scenes videos of how she makes candles have got her new business, she said.
For novelist Amy Zhang, TikTok is fun “because it is unserious”.
She writes way less in periods when she is making videos on TikTok, a lot of work in itself. “To consistently put out videos, you have to do a lot of scrolling, saving sounds and seeing what people are engaging with. So when I’m actively scrolling, I’m not so much reading or writing. When my book came out earlier this year and I was trying to post every day, it was difficult to focus on anything else. Now that the initial [book] release period is over, I’m just having fun,” she told Al Jazeera.
“It’s hard not to feel threatened by the short video format, or to compare the audience size for a video that took one hour to produce versus the reader pool for content that takes one year to write,” she added.
Not all young people on the platform use it to post videos. Yashvi Tibrewal, a 25-year-old marketing professional based in the San Francisco Bay Area, uses the app as a search engine. The majority of her friends do so, too. “It’s where we go to learn things,” she said.
News reports have repeatedly written of TikTok replacing Google as Gen Z’s search engine. Taneja, a scholar of audience behaviour, says the platform a group of people use the most is the one they use for everything, including news.
While much of the TikTok debate focuses on its ties with China, many young people in America, like Tibrewal, are more concerned about US-owned companies towing the US government line, particularly on subjects like Middle Eastern politics. For instance, Meta-owned apps have been accused of censoring Palestinian content.
“We’re sceptical about what American-owned companies are doing algorithmically,” says Tibrewal. That TikTok is not owned by the US and is not as involved in US government policy is something that has piqued the interest of her generation.
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