Coronavirus in Conflict Zones: A Sobering Landscape

Afghanistan will be hard hit by the coronavirus. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans, returning from the hot spot of Iran, face poverty, violence, weak state institutions, and a medical system lacking the tertiary care resources necessary to treat severe cases of the virus.

Unfortunately, the pandemic also endangers prospects for peace in Afghanistan, just as a long U.S.-Taliban peace process was supposed to transition into an intra-Afghan negotiation about the political future of the country. In this already fragile transition, the coronavirus could offer some political opportunities for peacemakers, but additional complications are more likely to be damaging than constructive.

International Engagement

Coronavirus will change Afghanistan’s relationship with the rest of the world. Its influential neighbors, Iran and Pakistan, are convulsed by the health crisis. Their domestic troubles may distract them from their usual interventions in Afghanistan, but that is not a safe bet. Iran is focused on the damage that U.S. sanctions have done to its public health efforts and it is likely to look for ways to impose costs on the United States, including in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s divided governing authorities are unlikely to be unified in a focus on the virus, and parts of the establishment will refuse to pass up the opportunities created by the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan.

The United States intends to continue its planned drawdown in Afghanistan and has already reduced military contact with Afghans. Washington is cutting assistance to Afghanistan to build diplomatic leverage, but as the United States is forced to spend trillions to address an enforced slowdown in economic activity, it is unlikely to muster the political will to reverse the trend in order to support an Afghan peace process or to bolster its Afghan partners if negotiations fail and they continue to fight the Taliban. Given the depth of Afghanistan’s aid dependence, it will be hard to recover from a collapse in U.S. interest.

Military Readiness

For government and Taliban military forces alike, the coronavirus will have implications for their capacity or intent to continue fighting. Specific Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) installations may become hot spots for infection, dramatically reducing readiness. Assistance declines, increases in imported food prices, and capital flight could all lead to inflation and declining purchasing power for ANSF salaries, which also would diminish readiness. Smaller groups of Taliban forces might face similar problems. In addition, one of the most consistent and important forms of support provided by Pakistan to the Taliban has been medical treatment for fighters, which might become less available or less secure as coronavirus spreads in Pakistan. Both forces also may feel compelled by public pressure to reduce their combatant activities, and perhaps to repurpose military formations to supporting public health efforts. For example, the Taliban’s regular attacks on electricity transmission could endanger patients dependent on Kabul’s limited number of ventilators.

Yet reductions in military readiness are unlikely to be, or to appear to be, equal. Both the Afghan government and the Taliban may be tempted to seek military advantages where they believe coronavirus provides a temporary local advantage. The Taliban’s April 1 announcement appears to be instrumental, offering a ceasefire if an outbreak occurred “in an area where we control the situation,” which would allow Taliban consolidation of their areas and attacks on government areas.

Negotiations

Thus far, the coronavirus may have helped initiate the intra-Afghan negotiations. The U.S.-Taliban agreement finalized in late February included an aggressive timeline to begin these negotiations within ten days, even though Kabul was locked in a postelection dispute and still had not chosen a delegation for the talks. It immediately became clear that the parties would not meet this schedule as Kabul and the Taliban had fundamentally different understandings of what each had agreed with the United States. The spread of the virus drew attention away from the sputtering talks and allowed both sides time to regroup, with some success.

Given the potential for detention facilities to serve as coronavirus incubators, the coronavirus has created worldwide demands for prisoner releases and furloughs. A large-scale prison release in Afghanistan appears to have provided Kabul and the Taliban with space to conclude an agreement on prisoner issues, involving concessions from both sides’ maximalist positions. (That said, these gestures also may fuel the spread of the virus as potentially infected prisoners return to their communities.)

Any advantages in intra-Afghan negotiations are likely to be short lived. The coronavirus creates logistical barriers to intra-Afghan negotiations. Taliban and government delegations were expected to meet at an international location, possibly outside of Oslo, with international facilitation in order to begin to frame the issues and process for negotiations. That kind of large-scale international travel is obviously no longer possible. Remote discussions are more feasible, and they appear to have been used to advance talks between Kabul and the Taliban on the details of prisoner releases agreed between the United States and Taliban. But even these technical discussions eventually needed in-person meetings to reach a conclusion. Similarly, the reduction in violence that would conclude the U.S.-Taliban agreement required a senior Taliban leader to travel from Doha to Pakistan to persuade skeptical military commanders. It is hard to imagine that the vastly more complex negotiations required to reach an agreement on the future shape of the Afghan state can succeed without developing relationships and trust face-to-face.

The most important challenge that coronavirus will pose to negotiations is the loss of international attention and leverage. As the United States draws down both troops and assistance, coronavirus will make it far less credible that either decline can be slowed or reversed, meaning that it will be harder to shape agreements within the government of Afghanistan and more difficult to either pressure or incentivize the Taliban to make concessions.

How Much Has Afghanistan Changed?

Many Afghans hope that the Taliban will be forced to wrestle with the reality of a new Afghanistan no longer susceptible to their ideological vision. The coronavirus will test that view. Afghanistan is urbanizing rapidly. Will a virus that is highly communicable in urban settings reverse that trend? Life expectancy has increased, and both maternal and infant mortality have decreased. But will local health providers be able to assist with coronavirus or, with limited protection, will they be wiped out? Girls are attending schools in large numbers. Will students return after school closures end? Will any of these or other social expenditures be prioritized or sustained as foreign aid declines? The answers will shape any negotiation and any potential return of the Taliban as part of Afghanistan’s government.

Conclusion

A public health crisis and the risk of a precipitous decline in international interest and attention could shake the assumptions of a long-standing crisis like Afghanistan’s and allow political leaders to seek solutions in the broad national interest. So far, neither the government nor the Taliban have given any indication that it is prepared to prioritize the current crisis over its preexisting agendas. Unless they do, the challenges posed by the coronavirus are likely to be deadly to efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, and of course to many Afghans.

The nature of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, within the unrecognized rebel “people’s republics” that broke away from rule by Kyiv in 2014 with military support from Moscow, is likely to change as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The change will not stem from a shift in the political positions of the two main players, Ukraine and Russia. Both countries will be severely tested domestically by the new crisis, which means that they will likely pause their efforts to pursue the conflict either by negotiations or military means.

Instead, the challenge of coronavirus governance will reshape the conflict. The flimsy government structures in these breakaway territories have limited capacity and legitimacy and are heavily reliant on orders from Moscow. The breakaway regions would also likely to suffer a severe humanitarian crisis if the virus continues to spread there. They would need external support to deal with a health crisis, which would profoundly affect the course of the conflict.

The ongoing five-year conflict has cost 13,000 lives. Up to 3 million people live in parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, which officially are called “non-government-controlled areas.” (Estimates vary widely, but this number is around half the area’s population from before the conflict.) These regions—along with parts of the “government-controlled areas,” which are in only a marginally better situation—have a cocktail of three problems that make them especially susceptible to the worst effects of the pandemic. First, around 36 percent of the population consists of pensioners, many of them with acute health problems. Second, the health system has been severely degraded by five years of conflict and the out-migration of an estimated 1,500 healthcare professionals from the region since the fighting began in 2014. Finally, governance by the de facto authorities is very weak, which could hamper any efforts to respond to a health crisis in the region.

This collection of potential issues makes eastern Ukraine the most extreme example of five disputed post-Soviet territories that are all the subject of protracted conflicts, all of which have declared independence but have little or no international recognition. The others are Abkhazia (as described in this Carnegie analysis), Nagorny Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria. Each is more or less stable, but all are internationally isolated and ill-prepared for external shocks. If their de jure “parent state” can find a way to provide effective assistance to them during the pandemic, it may be able to reestablish some legitimacy.

Thus far, the de facto authorities in each case have tried to use isolation to their advantage, closing borders and claiming less than ten coronavirus infections. However, most outsiders do not take these claims seriously. Unwilling to shut down their modest economy, the de facto authorities in eastern Ukraine have called for voluntary self-isolation instead.

“I’ll be totally honest,” Denis Pushilin, de facto head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, stated. “For a range of reasons, including economic ones, we can’t afford to shut down businesses or announce a period of no work, especially as, I repeat, right now we have no one suffering from COVID-19,” the disease caused by the virus. A Ukrainian minister accused the breakaway territory’s leadership of concealing the true situation from the local population, claiming that “if someone contracts a virus or dies in the occupied territories, they call it a (H1N1) flu.”

The situation is almost as critical in Ukrainian government-controlled areas. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports, “If it were to spread to areas along the contact line, COVID-19 could have a devastating impact.” It notes that of 119 settlements near the front line, 71 now have no public transport, 54 have no food shops, and very few have pharmacies or proper medical facilities.

Even if there are no or only well-contained outbreaks, the prolonged isolation caused by the coronavirus almost certainly will have a serious humanitarian impact. Even before the pandemic, eastern Ukraine had, according to the United Nations, “the largest proportion of elderly in a single country affected by a conflict in the world.” Every month, around 550,000 pensioners cross the Line of Contact—the de facto boundary dividing the two sides in the conflict—mostly to receive Ukrainian pensions. The Line of Contact is now closed, depriving those pensioners of their livelihoods and the territories they live in of a cash flow of about $50 million per month. (There have been calls for Ukraine to pay pensions to its citizens remotely, and this now looks to be an imperative.) Even the OSCE Monitoring Mission is having problems crossing the Line of Contact.

The de facto governance structures almost certainly will not be able to cope with the crisis, and people will look either to the parent state (Ukraine) or patron state (Russia), or to the international community, to fill the vacuum. A Ukrainian initiative would be welcomed internationally but would encounter resistance on the ground and be a big challenge for the government in Kyiv, which is struggling to deal with the problems of its core territory.

A major Russian intervention in the territories would be expensive for Moscow and highly controversial but is a scenario that is worth anticipating. The international community seems unlikely to muster the resources or political organization to step in, beyond some limited if much-needed humanitarian assistance from UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has already delivered cargoes of aid. Yet the status quo in Ukraine’s breakaway territories is even more unlikely to survive the coronavirus.

The domestic concerns caused by the coronavirus have reduced the U.S. public’s already modest interest in foreign policy, but it has not distracted key architects of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran from advocating for an even more muscular approach to the challenges posed by the Islamic Republic. In fact, with the advent of the pandemic, this camp—led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien—appears to view its efforts as all the more fruitful now that the Iranian regime has been weakened by a serious outbreak within its borders. Trump’s sanctions and the global pandemic have exacerbated the effects of Iran’s own incompetence and corruption, leading to significant discontent among the populace. Just weeks before the coronavirus became a household name around the world, Iranians were protesting their leadership. For Iran hawks in the Trump administration, these protests were a sign that maximum pressure was indeed yielding maximum results. Soon, the regime would be forced to change its behavior or collapse altogether—and either would be seen as a success.

Even before the pandemic, U.S.-Iran tensions were on the upswing. In December 2019, when the Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah conducted a rocket attack on U.S. forces in Iraq that killed a U.S. contractor, Americans were paying attention. News outlets covered the incident thoroughly. Just days later, the United States responded: Trump authorized the killing of one of Iran’s most important military figures, Major General Qassem Soleimani. His death in turn prompted Iran to retaliate, conducting missile attacks on two bases housing U.S. service members. These events made headlines and were covered extensively. But two months later, when the same militias launched rockets that killed two Americans, the United States was already facing the rapid spread of the coronavirus. This time, the news of the attack went virtually unnoticed by the general public.

Should Trump follow the advice of those pushing for ramping up pressure on Tehran (as he did when he made the decision to kill Soleimani), U.S.-Iran relations could further deteriorate—and deteriorate quickly—all while Americans continue to tune out foreign affairs.

For those hoping to deescalate tensions with Iran, a possibility lies in the course taken by the United States’ allies and partners. Because of their physical proximity to Iran, they cannot be flippant about the international public health crisis fueled by a poorly controlled epidemic in Iran. Amid the global pandemic and the Trump administration’s efforts to deter engagement with Tehran, the humanitarian trade channel known as the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, established by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, completed its first successful transaction on March 31. European countries whose nationals have been wrongfully detained by the Islamic Republic have increased their efforts to secure their release with some success. Even in the Middle East, some countries have placed their disagreements with Iran on the back burner to deal with a public health crisis that knows no borders.

These efforts may restrict U.S. options and help alleviate some of the challenges posed by Trump’s Iran policy—although they almost certainly will be limited in their impact. With the Trump administration having substituted obstructionism for U.S. leadership, little to no progress is likely on preexisting international concerns like the nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and regional activities. Tehran is likely to continue a reduced participation in the agreement’s implementation until November, when it will face one or the other potential U.S. administrations: a Democratic administration eager to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis or another four years of a Trump presidency.

Moreover, even as Europe seeks to diffuse tensions between the United States and Iran, the two principal players appear unwilling to change their trajectories. Even amid the coronavirus outbreak—which thus far in Iran has claimed more than 3,000 lives (at least by official accounts) and has endangered its neighbors—the United States imposed new sanctions on Iran. Meanwhile, Tehran believes that Washington is waging a “war by other means” (primarily economic means) against it, and it promises to leverage all means at its own disposal to counter the United States, including through a robust disinformation campaign blaming the United States for the coronavirus and efforts to drive U.S. forces out of Iraq using its proxies. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has not positioned the United States well to win either competition. The battle of narratives in particular is lost as many countries see the United States not as a leader in the response to the coronavirus but as an obstructionist force that is refusing to play a more positive role at home or abroad.

The upcoming months may see an even greater increase in U.S.-Iran tensions against the backdrop of the pandemic. As the U.S. presidential elections near, Iran may seek to bolster its position ahead of potential negotiations and to raise the cost for the maximum pressure campaign, thus forcing U.S. decisionmakers to dial the pressure down. Examples of actions Iran could take to strengthen its hand might well include items from the playbook the regime introduced in spring 2019 and carried on until the killing of Soleimani, such as attacks on oil facilities, shipping hubs, and other regional targets. The United States would then again face a number of unappealing options, especially as tensions are likely to continue to play out in the region writ large and now do so against the backdrop of the global pandemic.

Ariane M. Tabatabai is an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University and the author of the forthcoming book No Conquest, No Defeat: Iran's National Security Strategy.

At the beginning of 2020, Iraq faced domestic political crisis and an escalating conflict between the United States and Iran. To be optimistic was to hope that things would not get worse—and yet they have. Now, two new challenges have been added: a pandemic for which Iraq is one of the least prepared countries in the Middle East, and an early consequence of the pandemic in the form of a sharp decline in the price of oil, Iraq’s main source of income. Although many in Iraq likely wish that the pandemic would generate commitment among external and local players to deescalate tensions and address the crisis, that has yet to occur, unfortunately.

Years of conflict and mismanagement have contributed to the deterioration of the healthcare system in Iraq. Today, there are only 1.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people, which is among the lowest in the region, and only 0.9 medical doctors per every 1,000 people, compared to 3.4 in Jordan and 3.7 in Lebanon. However, reforming the health system has never been a priority for the ruling ethnosectarian groups that were more interested in power grabbing and rent seeking than development. In 2019, the government allocated no more than 2.5 percent of its budget to the Health Ministry, compared to 18 percent for ministries dealing with security and 13.5 percent for the Ministry of Oil.

The numbers of infections and deaths caused by the coronavirus in Iraq remain relatively low compared to Iran, with which it shares a long border and which was the source of early cases registered in the country. However, Iraq still reports a higher number of infections than most of its other neighbors, and there are indications that the actual number is much higher than the official one. Testing facilities are limited, and the country cannot process more than 4,500 tests per day as of April 1. Coronavirus response is increasingly politicized, as several factions compete with the Ministry of Health for control, including of foreign assistance funds.

Further, Iraq is still led by a caretaker government that has limited powers or legitimacy, and consequently is less capable of managing a health crisis of this magnitude. It is unclear whether or when the Iraqi parliament can convene in order to vote on a new government, after the failure of two designated prime ministers, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi and Adnan Al-Zurfi, to secure a political consensus for their nomination. On April 8, a new candidate for the position with broader political support, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, was chosen to lead the new government. In addition, the future of al-Kadhimi’s government seems increasingly contingent on the trajectory of competition between the United States and Iran. Iranian-allied factions reluctantly supported al-Kadhimi’s nomination as the less threatening choice than al-Zurfi, but they view him as pro-American. Washington has also threatened to halt the exemption given to Iraq from sanctions on Iran if the current or next government fails to distance itself from Iranian influence.

Both the United States and Iran have been hit hard by the pandemic and are still coping with its consequences, yet their domestic difficulties have not led them to deescalate their confrontation inside Iraq. Iranian-backed militias have continued their attacks on U.S. troops and have threatened to escalate their military operations until the last U.S. soldier leaves Iraq. Washington is accelerating its plans to redeploy its troops and is warning Tehran that it will face retaliation if its allied militias continue their attacks. Also, the Trump administration reportedly had considered taking military action against Kataib Hezbollah, the most hawkish pro-Iranian paramilitary group. Neither side seems to want open war, with Iran pursuing an attrition strategy of small but regular attacks and the United States entering a defensive posture and seeking to deter Iran. But neither side is abiding by formerly well-understood limits, and the uncertainty and lack of communication channels have increased the risk of a potential escalation.

Additionally, as a result of the local tensions and the fear of the spreading the coronavirus, several countries in the international coalition against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, including France and Canada, have decided to fully or partially pull out their troops from Iraq. This drawdown, along with the ongoing redeployment of U.S. forces and the shift in their priorities from fighting the Islamic State to confronting Iran, could jeopardize ongoing efforts to weed out the remaining Islamic State cells and provide a space for the group to breathe and reactivate its destabilizing actions.

The pandemic and the subsequent social distancing measures have substantially diminished the antigovernment protests that had been going on for several months. Although some activists were afraid that the protest movement would die if they left the streets, and even called for renewed protests, most others in the movement have opposed such public health risks. This pause may give the political elite room to continue their usual bickering without the rumble of popular dissent, but the looming economic disaster caused by the decline of oil prices places them under a different kind of pressure.

Ordinary Iraqis naturally will be hardest hit by the health crisis. Low-income families are concerned that the restrictions on movement intended to slow the spread of the virus will deplete their cash and food supplies. Considerable numbers of Iraqis resisted the restrictions on movement: some have chosen to continue their pilgrimages and religious gatherings, and others must leave home for economic reasons, especially those who work in the informal economy and can only provide for their families on a daily basis. Although religious and philanthropic organizations have been providing aid and food deliveries, the social safety net remains very weak. With 95 percent of government revenue coming from petroleum exports, if oil remains under $40 a barrel, the government could consume its reserves and in ten to fifteen months fail to pay full salaries, pensions, and subsidies for about 7 million people.

Iraq’s main hope is that early social distancing, and the awareness of the damage produced by the pandemic in much more prepared countries, could help contain the spread of the coronavirus to manageable levels. Economically, the Iraqi government’s only hope is for a quick recovery of oil prices, at least to a level that could prevent a humanitarian disaster. As for the long-term implications, the country may wish that the pandemic would produce a degree of restraint and urgency among external and local players, but such a beneficial response has yet to materialize.

The coronavirus has reduced some violence and forged some limited cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian authorities. But the trend lines for continued conflict are predictably grim. Indeed, the second-order consequences of the pandemic could lead to greater tensions if the healthcare situation in the Gaza Strip deteriorates, if the capacity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is challenged, and if the emerging unity government in Israel decides to move ahead with plans to officially annex parts of the West Bank. More than likely, when the pandemic eases and disappears, so will any limited Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

Less Violence, More Cooperation

Is the pandemic making peace between Israelis and Palestinians? Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called PA President Mahmoud Abbas to talk about fighting the pandemic. Israeli and Palestinian officials have confirmed the existence of a joint operations center and mechanisms to share information and coordinate actions. And Israel delivered limited numbers of test kits to Gaza and the West Bank, held training for Palestinian medical workers, and promised to supply more assistance as needed.

Still, the two sides have cooperated on joint public health initiatives in the past. And although the health crisis they now confront is unprecedented, their political and economic dynamics—driven by the relationship of occupier and occupied—leave a very narrow, restricted basis for meaningful and sustained cooperation to manage this crisis, let alone create post-pandemic openings that might ameliorate their broader conflict.

A Nightmare Scenario for Gaza

Even before the first coronavirus cases appeared in Gaza’s largely refugee population on March 21, the enclave had been declared unfit for human habitation. With its poverty, close quarters, poor sanitation, limited access to clean water and electricity, and a decimated healthcare system, it presents perfect conditions for the virus to spread. Years of living under an Israeli blockade and a permit regime are primarily responsible for Gaza’s 43 percent unemployment rate and the majority of the population living below the poverty line. Those Gazans lucky enough to have been employed before the pandemic are now at home in large, multigenerational households where the elders are at increased risk of exposure and infection. Half a million children are also idling, the majority without an internet connection for online learning. Domestic violence, already prevalent in Gaza, is expected to rise.

The Israeli military and Hamas have been engaging in some degree of coordination to stem the spread of the virus, but long-standing Israeli restrictions that prevent certain supplies and equipment from entering the enclave impede the delivery of healthcare. Israel is now conditioning delivery of ventilators to Gaza on the release of two prisoners held by Hamas.

In the short term, it is in the interest of both Hamas and Israel to come to some form of accommodation. Neither one has an appetite for renewed violent conflict in the midst of a pandemic. That said, other militant groups might well try to take advantage of the lull. Israel’s relatively muted response to rocket fire from Gaza last week indicates that, at least for now, it has no interest in being pulled into a conflagration.

PA Capacities: Can It Survive the Pandemic?

The PA has seen a rise in public approval as a result of its efforts to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the West Bank. This has given it some respite from mounting pressure from public sector employees who have seen repeated delays and reductions to their salary and benefits following Israel’s withholding of tax revenues collected on behalf of the PA. The PA’s announcement that its revenue will be halved as a result of the pandemic, however, calls into question whether it can survive beyond the next few months. Qatar and Kuwait have pledged funds to assist the PA, but this kind of regular support from the Gulf is likely to dwindle over time as the world heads into an economic recession. The biggest threat Palestinians face now is how to prevent a surge of cases with the reintegration into the West Bank of 35,000 to 45,000 Palestinian laborers who had temporary permission to live in Israel during the pandemic—some of whom are from virus-plagued worksites. Tanzim, the militia of the ruling party, Fatah, is now helping PA security forces enforce quarantine orders, perhaps signaling PA fears that the security situation in the West Bank might soon deteriorate.

Annexation in the Time of Coronavirus

An Israeli health ministry official recently noted that Israel might have to “medically annex” the West Bank—indicating that Israel and the West Bank were one geographic unit and that greater coordination was needed to fight the virus. Convinced that U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan has all but endorsed Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank and with U.S. elections approaching, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely want to extend Israeli sovereignty for more than just medical expediency. As Netanyahu and opposition alliance leader and Knesset Speaker Benny Gantz negotiate the terms of a rotational emergency government, the questions of what and when to annex are very much on the table. Emergency government or not, settlement expansion continues. And last week, Israel prevented Palestinians from erecting two tents as makeshift field clinics to treat virus patients.

Conclusion

A political disaster to match the pandemic—uncontrolled spread of the virus in Gaza, the PA’s fundamental weakening, some provocative Israeli move on annexation, or a resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—cannot be ruled out. Even short of that, the pandemic’s consequences almost certainly will weaken both the capacity and motivation of the parties to address it. Already immunocompromised by years of failure and weakened by Trump’s and Netanyahu’s hostility, the two-state solution may struggle to survive the virus. And Israelis and Palestinians will remain trapped in the same conflict-ridden reality that existed before the coronavirus began its cruel and merciless spread, with fewer options for resolving it.

In 2019, Kashmir was at the center of South Asia’s politics. That February, it was the site of a suicide bombing that triggered a dramatic India-Pakistan crisis; in August, the Indian government eliminated the autonomous status of the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir. In 2020, the coronavirus’s spread is the dominant story. What effects, if any, might the virus have on the politics of Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations? It is far too early to make any confident predictions, but there is little reason to expect South Asia’s growing public health crisis to substantially change the dynamics of conflict in the region.

The coronavirus poses a major threat to human well-being and economic development in South Asia. It is currently unclear what the trajectory of the virus will be, however, so only the most caveated predictions are possible. India has embarked on a major national lockdown in hopes of preventing a spread that would overwhelm its health capacity. Yet this aggressive effort to get ahead of the threat has also triggered huge migrations of laborers from urban centers and severe economic stress. The Indian-administered Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir (downgraded from state status in August 2019) has seen a growing number of coronavirus cases amid concern that the health infrastructure will not be up to the task of managing the pandemic. Pakistan, by contrast, has not embraced a full-scale lockdown for fear of the economic consequences, running the risk of a devastating spike in infections.

What are the security implications of the coronavirus’s growth? An insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir has waxed and waned since the late 1980s; insurgent and terrorist violence are now comparatively low but persist, as do recurrent reports of government human rights abuses. Indian and Pakistani forces sometimes clash along the Line of Control. Mass protests have erupted in the past, but the need for social distancing to limit the spread of infections makes such gatherings less likely in the coming months. Since August, politicians have been detained and restrictions have remained on internet usage (which many Kashmiris claim makes education about the coronavirus unnecessarily difficult), as does a heavy security footprint. If the virus continues to aggressively spread in Kashmir, the need to focus on medical care and economic survival likely will limit open political resistance in the coming months, even as low-level India-Pakistan skirmishes and clashes between Indian security forces and anti-India militants continue.

The coronavirus also will be an early test of the government’s ability to provide effective governance, a key justification New Delhi offered for the abrogation of Kashmir’s special status last year. Inadequate management of the virus would further harden the negative views many in Kashmir hold toward India, raising the political stakes of the public health crisis. A grim, militarized status quo thus seems likely to endure in Kashmir, regardless of the virus’s course.

Narendra Modi’s government has shown little interest in negotiating with Pakistan, believing that the latter, especially its politically dominant military, exploited earlier Indian outreach. India’s national lockdown has created social and economic dislocation. If the coronavirus eludes government efforts to contain it, the national government and states will face intense pressures on health infrastructure and service provision, all while dealing with a growing economic crisis. This is not a situation in which New Delhi will be able to put serious effort into either negotiating with Pakistan or deviating from the current strategy in Kashmir. One might imagine that this combination of domestic and international stressors could create incentives for the Modi government to heighten tensions with Pakistan or to highlight its hardline credentials on security; however, a seriously elevated public health crisis would be all-consuming, pushing other issues to the sidelines and straining the readiness of India’s military establishment. Instead, it would more probably create inertia in key security and foreign policy choices, as the political leadership and bureaucratic apparatus grapple with the numerous critical implications of the coronavirus.

Pakistan is seeing a growing number of reported cases of the virus, against the backdrop of a struggling economy and a political system that has not delivered dramatic improvements in governance under Prime Minister Imran Khan. The military has become more visibly involved in efforts to control the virus, and it is clear that there is potential for a disastrous public health challenge. As in India, in a spreading coronavirus crisis Pakistan is most likely to focus inward on managing the pandemic, trying to limit the economic damage, and keep core state institutions and services functioning. The Pakistan Army has shown a propensity for risk-taking in the past, so anything is possible, but a major coronavirus crisis would force the military to dedicate its primary efforts internally. Key civilian and military players in Pakistan would have few incentives to devote political energy to foreign policy.

The course of the coronavirus in South Asia remains uncertain, and it is possible that radically unexpected developments will occur. The safest bet, however, is the entrenchment of the status quo, as both state actors and mass publics overwhelmingly focus their attention and effort on getting through the pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic and its fallout will worsen the humanitarian suffering of Libya’s civil war, now entering its second year, and possibly reconfigure the tempo and geographic scope of the conflict. Early attempts to halt the hostilities in order to deal with the outbreak have faltered; so far, the warring parties and their foreign backers seem committed to escalating the fighting around Tripoli.

A number of factors make Libya uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic, and its current small number of registered cases likely reflects underreporting and a lack of testing. Its medical capacity, already weak under former dictator Muammar Qaddafi, has been severely degraded by years of neglect and corruption. The outbreak of the civil war’s latest phase in April 2019 further compounded the damage to the health system. As militias led by eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar attacked the capital, Tripoli, to topple the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), Haftar’s forces chose to target medical personnel and facilities—more than sixty attacks, by one count.

To date, the combatants have ignored international calls for a ceasefire to deal with the virus; in fact, the fighting has escalated, with Haftar-aligned forces continuing to attack civilian infrastructure, most notably a hospital treating coronavirus patients. International intervention has also continued unabated, with thousands of mercenaries, including Syrians, Russians, and Sudanese, flowing into both sides and acting as potential pathogen vectors. Libya has clusters of vulnerable people who are uniquely exposed: the 200,000 displaced Libyans living in crowded improvised shelters, as well as thousands of migrants, many from sub-Saharan Africa, who languish in cramped detention centers and are already afflicted by torture, forced labor, shelling, and outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis. Aside from the catastrophic health effects of coronavirus in these centers, the migrants could be subjected to increased stigmatization and violence.

Government capacity and divisions are further obstacles to managing the pandemic. The country is split between two rival administrations, in Tripoli and in the east, though neither exerts much authority over Libya’s hyperfragmented towns and regions. In these areas, a hybrid governance holds sway, comprising local town councils, kin groups, and armed groups (which enjoy community support in some areas). A mounting fiscal crisis wrought by dwindling oil prices, a blockade of oil ports by Haftar’s forces, and a global recession will hit the country hard, as the vast majority of the population depends on state rents in the form of jobs and subsidies. Already, the closures of shops and trade have prompted a spike in the price of basic foodstuffs, which has badly hurt citizens reeling from delayed salaries; electricity and water cutoffs; and shortages of cash, gasoline, and cooking fuel. The well-being of Libyan women has been especially damaged, given their dependence on the informal economy, lack of access to health services, and an increase in domestic abuse. Political battles over control of the Tripoli-based Central Bank, armed group predation of state resources, uneven distribution of funds to municipalities, and both sides’ preference to pay fighters and mercenaries rather than civilian officials will further compound the pandemic’s deleterious economic effects.

In spite of these broader shortcomings, a modest public health mobilization to the virus has been occurring at the local level. Town governments, civil society, and trusted community leaders have begun to engage in activities like awareness and sterilization campaigns. The outbreak is a “milestone in local governance,” Libya’s former head of municipal elections, Dr. Otman Gajiji, said in a telephone interview in early April. He noted that elected municipal officials are mobilizing with a newfound sense of collective action to convey their demands to the GNA. The crisis could therefore provide an impetus for the sclerotic administration in Tripoli to finally push more fiscal authority to local governments—the passage of a recent law on local revenue generation is one step in that direction. But even in this crisis, enormous bureaucratic and cultural barriers remain to a formal decentralization of public health initiatives, both in Tripoli and in the eas. In sum, there are limits to how much local actors will be able to accomplish without financial and material support from the top.

As infections spread, the pandemic could give a boost to Libya’s militias, who are likely to channel medical aid to their fighters and favored communities while isolating others. Armed groups could also instrumentalize and weaponize the public health crisis to further their political and social influence. Already, militias have been acting as de facto police in many areas. Those adhering to the conservative Salafi current known as Madkhalism in particular have portrayed their activism as serving the public welfare by countering narcotics and other illicit activities; enforcement of public hygiene could be one more justification for their presence. Similarly, in eastern Libya, Haftar’s militia, the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), could use the pandemic as a pretext for further militarization of governance. In one remarkable instance, the LAAF arrested a Libyan doctor who publicly exposed medical shortcomings in Haftar-controlled Benghazi, and Haftar’s chief of staff has threatened the public, including health professionals.

Moving forward, the pandemic’s immediate impact will be especially punishing on displaced persons and migrants. Its second- and third-order effects will likely damage long-term prospects for peace and cohesion, further empower armed actors, and possibly open up new, more localized conflicts in a nearly ten-year power struggle that shows no signs of abating.

The international community has almost zero visibility into how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting North Korea. But there is one certainty: North Korea cannot weather a severe outbreak on its own. The pandemic may create opportunities for humanitarian cooperation in the short to midterm, but it is very unlikely to inspire the kind of change in either Pyongyang or Washington that would lead to a breakthrough in negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The current impasse in U.S. negotiations with North Korea is the result of completely incompatible demands from both countries and a total lack of trust that the other will not cheat on an agreement. North Korea wants sanctions relief. The United States wants comprehensive, unilateral surrender of North Korea’s nuclear program. Kim Jong Un has no guarantee that surrendering all or even part of his nuclear program would leave him in a better position than Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi, both of whom saw their regimes overthrown after they backed down from developing nuclear weapons. The United States has no evidence that North Korea would not simply accept sanctions relief and then conceal aspects of its nuclear program and appropriate revenue from eased sanctions to further fund the program.

The Kim regime’s current priority is to project an image of business as usual in North Korea. In March 2020, North Korea tested nine short-range missiles and continued to conduct military exercises, even as the United States and South Korea postponed their own exercises to reduce the risks of contagion. As the coronavirus pandemic strains public health systems, economies, and supply chains the world over, North Korea claims to have zero cases of the virus after it quarantined large portions of the country and sealed its borders. State news media credits the country’s highly organized response and the superiority of its free public healthcare for controlling the pandemic.

Numerous actions by North Korea already challenge the narrative of normalcy. In the next few months, a clearer picture of how the pandemic has affected North Korea may emerge. An uncontrolled outbreak in North Korea would quickly become a massive humanitarian crisis. Even in some major cities, medical facilities lack the most basic supplies necessary to combat the virus. An estimated 43 percent of the population is malnourished, and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and hepatitis B are endemic.

The Kim regime seems to understand the risks—acting quickly to close its borders on January 21 despite its economic dependency on foreign currency from tourists and trade and smuggling over its porous border with China. North Korea also has quietly reached out for international aid. Shipments of testing kits and medical supplies are slowly making their way to the China–North Korea border, though strict quarantine measures in both countries are making the distribution of aid even more cumbersome and less transparent than usual.

Each of North Korea’s foreign interlocutors may use the crisis to seek some advantage in prospective talks. For South Korean President Moon Jae-in, humanitarian aid efforts are an important aspect of engagement that can build trust and encourage Pyongyang to return to negotiations. Some inter-Korean agreements have attempted to increase the speed of negotiations by outpacing the level of cooperation supported by Washington, and Moon may use the coronavirus crisis to build cooperation with North Korea around the denuclearization issue out of lockstep with the United States. China, too, may see an opportunity to meet North Korean requirements for both medical supplies and economic support in order to tighten links with the Kim regime and wrest more control over negotiations. The United States also appears to be looking to reinvigorate the personal correspondence and relationship between President Donald Trump and Kim. On March 22, Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister and close aide, announced that Trump had sent a personal letter to her brother offering to cooperate to combat the pandemic.

But that faint attempt at cooperation has little chance of improving long-term relations with North Korea. Even with the looming potential for a massive humanitarian crisis, Kim did not accept Trump’s offer. Instead, Kim Yo Jong’s statement made clear that “excellent” relations between the two leaders do not equate to a positive relationship between the two countries. Unless the virus begins to take a significant toll on the country, North Korea likely will accept U.S. assistance only if it is related to sanctions relief. Washington might be willing to tweak sanctions to whitelist certain goods needed to help contain the virus without forcing aid organizations to seek an exemption, but such technical adjustments are not the sanctions relief that Pyongyang insists on, and the United States does not appear willing to offer broader sanctions relief without denuclearization.

The coronavirus may change daily life in North Korea dramatically and for the worse, and create some short-term opportunities for humanitarian cooperation. It may reshuffle relationships between Washington, Beijing, and Seoul with regard to negotiations with Pyongyang, but there is little chance of it unfreezing the deadlock. Even in the midst of a pandemic, both Trump and Kim will continue to demand much more than the other is willing to contemplate and in return for much less than the other sees as minimally necessary.

Somalia has only a handful of confirmed coronavirus cases, and although the authorities’ early public health moves have been sensible, they are rightly worried that if the virus takes hold, they will be unable to cope. The pandemic has not reduced the violence being committed mainly by al-Shabab insurgents, or increased the prospects of talks between the federal government led by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (better known by his nickname Farmaajo) and the state governments, which had stalled earlier in his administration and were just starting to resume. Rather, it will delay or damage the steps the government needs to take to manage the conflict, which includes resuming the dialogues, conducting a constitutional review, and coordinating one-person, one-vote elections (which have not taken place in Somalia in more than two decades)—all of which depend upon in-person gatherings.

Medical experts warn that Somalia could be one of the worst-affected parts of the world if the virus takes hold. As of April 8, the Somali Ministry of Health & Human Services had reported twelve cases of coronavirus in the country, which is almost certainly an underestimate. The public health response has included closures of schools and other institutions, as well as limited distribution of test kits and protective gear to medical professionals, but thirty years of conflict have devastated the medical system, which cannot possibly respond to a real outbreak. Further, hundreds of thousands of Somalis, displaced by conflict, are crowded into camps, making both hygiene and social distancing difficult and potentially allowing the virus to spread further.

As a result, the government has moved aggressively to isolate the country, canceling all commercial flights on March 19. But this move also has had unintended consequences for conflict management efforts: the air closure led to an exodus of international donors, implementers, and diplomatic personnel from Somalia, since there are no secure alternatives to air transportation. As a result, Somalia will need to grapple with governance, political management, humanitarian, and security challenges with less in-person international support than at any time in its fragile government’s history.

During previous humanitarian crises such as the 2010–12 famine—and then, only after an estimated 250,0000 people had died—low-level discussions between the government and al-Shabab enabled the delivery of some food aid and other assistance. This precedent has led optimists in Somalia to believe that setting up similar talks could help contain the spread of the virus, and may even develop into more substantial negotiations. But so far, the United Nations’ call for a “global cease-fire” has not had any effect. Security incidents continued and even spiked both in frequency and intensity, with particularly damaging bombings not long after the first case of coronavirus was diagnosed and the Somali government took measures to prevent further spread. On March 19, the Risk Level Index for Somalia used by international implementers reached its highest point in six months.¹ To some extent, this violence may be fueled by the recent decline in the availability of the stimulant drug khat, which is economically important and could even increase al-Shabab fighters’ inclination to launch ad hoc attacks owing to drug withdrawal.

Meanwhile, al-Shabab is looking to use the pandemic to its benefit. It seeks a propaganda advantage, claiming that coronavirus was spread “by the crusader forces who have invaded the country and the disbelieving countries that support them.” This rhetoric indicates the group may oppose medical help from international aid agencies, much as it resisted most food aid during the 2010–12 famine. Such a move naturally would damage public health efforts, but in the medium term it would also have implications for the movement’s claims of legitimacy: a dramatic failure of pandemic response in al-Shabab areas might also erode support for the movement, as the health facilities in these areas are more basic than those in many government-controlled areas. Mainstream clerics have joined in an outreach effort to counter al-Shabab’s message, but with madrassas closed for social distancing, they may struggle to reach the population.

Throughout, the Somali government and international forces have continued military operations. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) continues to support the Somali National Army (SNA) and other security forces in their campaign. On March 10, the SNA and its international partners killed six al-Shabab extremists and three foreign militant leaders in the southern region of Lower Juba. For now, AMISOM is sticking to its phased drawdown plans for 2020, even though this reduction in forces could combine with the pandemic to increase instability.

Unlike military operations, political processes have slowed as the pandemic has spread. Dialogues between the Somalia Federal Government and states, which are necessary for the federal system in Somalia to function, stalled early during the current government’s term. Nevertheless, just before the first case in March, the president of Puntland State, Said Abdullahi Deni, hinted at a deal to ease tensions with the Somalia Federal Government with a visit to Mogadishu and engagement with other federal member states. Similarly, the virus means that the elections anticipated for 2020–21, which already were unlikely, might well be further postponed. All of these processes depend on in-person meetings, which are now impossible. Somali infrastructure does not make online communication easy—for example, on March 23 the internet service in Mogadishu was down for the entire day, a not atypical problem.

It is anyone’s guess as to whether the pandemic will bring al-Shabab to the negotiating table, as health crises sometimes do. Yet there is no doubt that the virus’s impact on essential components of the peace in Somalia—dialogues between the federal and state levels, constitutional review, and elections—will be serious, with inevitable further delays.

Tihana Bartulac Blanc is a specialist in transitional programming for Creative Associates International’s Electoral Integrity and Education Practice Area, leads Creative’s East Africa strategy, and is the director for its project, which has supported political processes in Somalia since 2016.

Note

¹ Somalia Weekly Security Report, proprietary data.

The coronavirus pandemic has become one more piece at play on the complex chessboard of the Syrian conflict. Both internal and external parties to the conflict are using the crisis to increase or consolidate their political and military gains. Simultaneously, Syria’s fragmentation is severely hampering the pandemic response; conversely, the pandemic is further compounding Syria’s fragmentation. The result is still more suffering for the Syrian people, and no progress on drafting a sustainable political settlement to end the years-long war.

Nine years of conflict have destroyed Syria’s health infrastructure, and its institutional capacity to provide necessary medical care is practically nonexistent. The country is governed by three different entities: the Syrian government, the opposition Syrian Interim Government (backed by Turkey) in the northwest, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Kurdish-held northeast. Beyond the devastating human toll, the various parties to the conflict are using measures to combat the spread of the virus for their own political and military ends.

Nation-state actors are utilizing the pandemic to push for varying vested interests. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad—which until recently denied that Syria had any coronavirus cases—is working with some of its international backers to push for “normalization.” Leading the charge are China and Russia. With six other countries, including Venezuela and North Korea, they sent a letter to the United Nations secretary general asking that all U.S. and European sanctions against Syria be lifted as part of efforts to fight the spread of the virus. If granted, this would be a first step of a normalization of diplomatic ties and could open the door for reconstruction funding, conditional thus far on a sustainable political settlement. Regional governments such as the United Arab Emirates have used the pandemic to publicly issue high-profile calls to normalize relations with the Assad regime. These actors view potential rapprochement—erroneously—as a way to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran and unlock possible reconstruction opportunities (and related economic contracts) once the time comes.

In its own response to the virus, the Syrian regime has demonstrated that a security approach is the primary tool it has left with which to govern. To combat the pandemic, it has temporarily suspended mandatory conscription and cordoned off two affected areas, Mneen and Sayyida Zainab, much as the Chinese did with the hard-hit Wuhan Province, but without China’s accompanying surge of medical support. Sayyida Zaynab in particular is densely populated and houses a large number of Iranian militias. The Syrian government has also stopped public transport, locked down all but essential services, established night and weekend curfews, and banned internal movement between its various governorates. With the help of the World Health Organization, it also has set up quarantine zones in areas under government control. However, the economically crippled regime has stopped short of giving the financial support needed to keep the economy going and provide for Syria’s poor, an estimated 80 percent of the population by 2015 figures. Syrian citizens must still stand in long queues to purchase bread and other daily necessities.

In the northwest, myriad local actors are impeding an effective pandemic response. Turkey has closed off its national border with Syria and the borders around its enclave within Syria, and announced that it would curtail troop movements in its Syrian zones of operation, thus undermining its ability to provide emergency response and enforce security. Meanwhile, in Idlib, where close to 1 million people have been displaced, the virus has exacerbated the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Overcrowding in refugee tents is so acute that in some cases people take turns sleeping outside. Bombardments have destroyed close to eighty hospitals and medical facilities. Critically, humanitarian aid movement in and out of Idlib has been restricted as well. Internal competition between groups in Idlib mean that hardline jihadis continue to breach lockdown and public safety measures issued by Idlib’s main opposition forces.

In the northeast, the SDF-led administration has seized the opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to govern and take care of their populace, all while struggling to deal with the outbreak. It has closed the region’s borders to the rest of the country and imposed an internal lockdown and a ban on public gatherings. It also has called for urgent medical assistance to combat the virus, especially in the overcrowded Al Hol camp, home to more than 70,000 refugees including former Islamic State combatants and their families. Yet Syria’s fragmentation continues to impede a proper response. The World Health Organization is operating only in regime-held areas, in spite of calls urging them to provide more support to northeastern and northwestern Syria. At the same time, the central government in Syria has refused to set up coronavirus testing facilities in opposition-held areas and only recently agreed to set up a lab in the government-controlled part of Qamishli. Tests for suspected cases within SDF territory must be transported to Turkey.

Turkey is also continuing its policy of closing access roads and weaponizing access to water in its conflict with the Kurds in northeastern Syria. Access to these areas has become more difficult, and the denial of access to water by shutting off services at Al Kok pumping station means that essential hygiene directives to combat the crisis cannot be maintained. With borders to Turkey closed and thousands of prisoners to manage, the SDF’s only hope for obtaining support to combat the virus is the Syrian regime.

Looking ahead, a key question is what will happen if the outbreak in Syria becomes widespread and severe—an unfortunately plausible scenario, given the dire state of infrastructure after nine years of conflict. Would this lead to the regime’s normalization, thereby unlocking funding for reconstruction? At present, European Union countries continue to oppose normalizing relations with a regime accused of war crimes, but Syria’s regional neighbors may take a different approach. With the Americans and the Europeans preoccupied with the pandemic’s devastation in their own societies, regional states may move toward normalization. However, any regional business opportunities for Syrian reconstruction will be hindered by the U.S. passage of the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which will come into effect at the end of June 2020. Under this legislation, entities providing support to the government of Syria, including significant engineering and construction services, would be sanctioned.

In the immediate term, an outbreak in Syria would prove disastrous for Syrians and their benefactors. And in the long term, a crumbling economy means that competition over scarce resources is likely to fuel future conflicts, opening the door for further instability in Syria.

The global pandemic caused by the coronavirus is likely to deepen the impasse at the heart of Venezuelan politics, setting off an even more extreme humanitarian disaster than the one the country has been experiencing for the past three years. For fifteen months, an implacable deadlock has seen the de facto regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which maintains tight autocratic control over the security forces but has lost recognition from most of the international community, face off against the notional government of Juan Guaidó, which enjoys international recognition and real domestic popularity but has no meaningful power on the ground.

Throughout this period, Maduro’s goal has been to force the international community to deal with him—however unpalatable they may find his regime—by creating problems for his neighbors that demand a rapid response, such as setting off massive refugee flows and harboring Colombian guerrilla groups. Guaidó, for his part, has sought to convince Maduro’s supporters to break ranks, hoping to provoke enough fissures to cause the governing coalition to collapse from within.

The coronavirus pandemic has led both sides to double down on these strategies. Maduro has deepened autocratic control over the nation, cracking down on people seen outside without a face mask and ratcheting up the frequency of police raids and intimidation tactics against opposition political activists. His message is blunt: he runs things around here, and anyone hoping to influence the course of the pandemic in Venezuela will have no choice but to acquiesce to his power. Similarly, Guaidó has turned to his strongest asset—his solid support in Washington and throughout the democratic world—to propose, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of State, a new national emergency government. In effect, this proposal would create a power-sharing executive that would exclude both himself and Maduro from a five-member Council of State to allow international sanctions to be lifted and pursue a consensual response to the crisis. In parallel, the U.S. Department of Justice has indicted Maduro and around two dozen of his top officials on drug trafficking charges, offering rewards for their capture. In effect, Guaidó and the United States are (once again) entreating Maduro’s top generals to depose him and share power with them.

Efforts to provoke fissures in Maduro’s ranks have been at the center of Guaidó’s approach all along. So far, Maduro has managed to resist these maneuvers through the power of fear. A sprawling, Cuban-backed, KGB-style state security system has pursued mass surveillance not merely of opposition figures but also of regime supporters, tracking down and eradicating any hint of dissent. Military counterintelligence prisons are bulging at the seams with both uniformed prisoners and their family members. Maduro’s forces routinely use torture to extract confessions, yielding a stream of names who can then be arrested and tortured in turn. The resulting climate of fear and mutual suspicion inside the security services has proven strong enough to forestall the kinds of defections that Washington and Guaidó alike had been hoping for.

Could this time be different? It is imaginable. In March, Saudi Arabia’s oil price war with Russia managed to do in two weeks what the United States had been trying unsuccessfully to do for two years: shut down the Venezuelan oil industry. For the first time since the 1920s, Venezuela’s leaders are piecing together a fiscal strategy without significant oil income. Meanwhile, U.S. sanctions have crippled Venezuela’s ability to produce or import gasoline, leading to unprecedented fuel shortages that wreak havoc with internal distribution efforts of food, medicine, personal protective equipment, or anything else. The regime is, in other words, under unprecedented and extreme levels of pressure. It is not unthinkable that it will buckle. But that is not the most likely outcome.

The Maduro regime has faced steadily mounting pressure since oil prices first began to fall in 2014. Its demise has been wrongly forecast with each increase of the pressure gauge. In that time, it has developed strong capabilities to defend itself through the use of state violence. The regime has learned to match each tightened notch of the fiscal belt with new repressive measures that raise the cost of dissent ever higher for those in a position to overthrow it: the men in uniform. It will certainly redouble its repressive violence, and it likely will succeed in keeping control.

That the cost of success will be a public health catastrophe does not seem to faze Maduro or his cronies. Venezuela’s vulnerability to the coronavirus is hard to overstate: the country’s public health system already effectively collapsed years ago. Thousands of doctors and nurses have fled the country in recent years, escaping starvation wages. Chronic malnutrition leaves huge swaths of the population at risk for fatal complications. By one recent estimate, the entire country of 28 million has just seventy-two working intensive care beds, most of which are in military facilities or private clinics catering to the state-connected elite.¹ Overcrowded detention facilities are all potential hot spots for infection. A runaway coronavirus pandemic in Venezuela would be a uniquely grisly affair.

The consequences will travel. Both Colombia and Brazil have closed their official border crossings in response to the pandemic, but neither can effectively patrol their long and remote Venezuelan borders. The Colombian government faces a thriving business along remote illegal border crossings (trochas) whose profitability is only enhanced by the official closures. Venezuelans will continue to pour across the border to the northern Colombian department of Norte de Santander, undermining Bogota’s efforts to suppress the virus.

The impact will be measured in body bags on both sides of the border. Maduro has made it clear that he does not mind ruling over a pile of corpses. Indeed, he has turned his indifference toward the suffering of Venezuelans into a key strategic asset in his approach to retaining power. There is no reason to expect him to change tactics now.

Francisco Toro is the chief content officer of the Group of 50 and a global opinion columnist for the Washington Post.

Notes

¹ According to a source in the healthcare sector.

As the coronavirus spreads globally and the international community is preoccupied with the pandemic, some sides within Yemen’s ongoing war are taking advantage of the moment to reopen battlefronts. No matter how widely the virus spreads across Yemen, the fighting between the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government; the Iranian-backed Ansar Allah group, known as the Houthis; and the United Arab Emirates–backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) has continued and even escalated in some fronts in the last two months despite the recent announced ceasefires. Even more troubling, all parties are already using the pandemic as a chance to advance their own agendas.

Last month, after UN Secretary General António Guterres and others called for a global ceasefire during the coronavirus pandemic, a two-week ceasefire announced by the Saudi-led coalition was received with high optimism by the UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, and other international representatives. They viewed it as a step toward establishing a conducive environment for a lasting nationwide ceasefire. However, the Houthis did not consider it to be a ceasefire, and they said “they will continue to fight.” In the meantime, they published what they call a “comprehensive vision to end aggression,” in which they put forward several maximalist conditions.   

Two weeks before Saudi’s truce announcement, the Houthis and Yemen’s government welcomed the UN’s call for a global ceasefire. But soon after releasing their statement, the Houthis launched an offensive in several districts of the northeastern governorates of Marib and Al-Jawf, erupting massive military confrontations with government forces. They also fired two ballistic missiles at the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Jizan, marking the first Houthi assaults inside the kingdom since their twin strikes on Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Saudi air defenses intercepted these new strikes; in turn, the Saudis conducted multiple airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-held capital, Sanaa. In the western city of Hodeida, clashes broke out between Houthi and government forces. Meanwhile, in the south, tensions escalated between the Saudi-backed forces and the STC fighters in Abyan and Aden. This reflects that the reality on the ground has nothing to do with those political declarations. The warring parties released official statements to improve their own images and shift the blame for the conflict onto their adversaries, and at the same time their ongoing battles on several fronts have only intensified in recent weeks. There is no indication that the warring parties are truly committed to implementing the ceasefire so far, despite the UN envoy’s “virtual” consultations with all actors. Each party is convinced that the war is still incomplete. None of them are ready to pursue peace before achieving their wartime objectives, even when the coronavirus threat is at their door.

Meanwhile, five years of warfare have nearly destroyed Yemen’s public health system, compounding suffering among a desperately poor and hungry population. The World Health Organization has provided some support to medical centers in Aden, Sanaa, and Mukala to respond if a case is confirmed. Up to now, there has been just one reported case of the coronavirus; however, many health activists doubt this for two reasons. First, Yemeni medical facilities are not equipped to test suspected cases. Thousands of Yemeni travelers returned to Yemen in the past month from affected countries, including Egypt and China, without being tested at the country’s ports. Second, the warring parties are all eager to hide suspected coronavirus cases, because they hope that low numbers will show their capability to contain the pandemic in their respective areas. For example, two weeks ago, after news began to spread about the discovery of coronavirus cases in multiple countries, the minister of health in Yemen’s government-in-exile gave a televised speech reassuring his viewers that Yemen is free of the virus. However, he did not provide details on what steps his ministry is taking to curb the pandemic, and he gave no explanation about what (if any) testing procedures his ministry has followed to sustain his claim.

Even more troubling, some factions view the pandemic as an opportunity to recruit more fighters. For instance, some Houthi activists state in their media discourse that “it is better to die a martyr in heroic battles than dying at home from the coronavirus,” and suggest that “being in a battlefront is safer than being at risk in crowded towns.”

All parties are also using the pretext of pandemic prevention and response measures to make money or push their objectives. In some areas, they use the excuse of pandemic prevention to extort money from civilians hoping to be allowed to pass through local checkpoints. Another key source of revenue, aid provided by international nongovernmental organizations, has been instrumentalized in the struggle between the STC and the internationally recognized government in Aden. STC forces held essential coronavirus-related equipment, sent by the WHO, in the port to prevent government medical staff from accessing it. By compelling the international community to deal directly with the STC, the council hopes to gain recognition for its ongoing de facto rule of Aden, which it has been fighting to maintain since last August.

The current escalation during the coronavirus echoes the cholera catastrophe of the past three years, an experience that the warring parties have kept in mind. Even as that highly communicable disease affected more than 1 million people and caused thousands of deaths, the fighting continued, and armed actors exploited the crisis to make money from international aid flows. All sides will most likely use the same approach with the coronavirus, demonstrating their indifference toward victims and the gap between civilian concerns and militia interests.

As the war in Yemen enters its sixth year, hopes for peace seem elusive, and the virus will compound the already deep humanitarian crisis. The pandemic diplomacy that the UN envoy has attempted to utilize to bring the actors to the negotiating table is not being taken seriously. In previous years, hostilities continued despite the high number of casualties, caused either directly by the armed confrontation or indirectly through diseases and famine. There is little reason to expect that the warring parties will deviate from this approach. Neither external mediation nor the virus can stop this war if none of the Yemeni factions are willing to end it.