Fdd's overnight brief

Syria

When President Donald Trump abruptly announced plans to withdraw American troops from northern Syria last month, Nashville’s city hall and a bridge below the downtown skyline lit up in the green, yellow and red of the Kurdish flag. – Associated Press

Turkish-backed militias on Saturday attacked a Syrian refugee camp guarded by Kurdish and Arab fighters, an on-scene aid worker said. – Washington Examiner

Heavy fighting has continued despite a cease-fire deal in northern Syria after Turkey vowed to clear SDF fighters from a 20-mile-deep “safe zone” between the border cities of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn in October. A cease-fire was brokered by Russia with Turkey to end fighting in late October. But the war never stopped, according to sources on the ground. – CNBC

U.S. Central Command chief General Kenneth McKenzie said on Saturday about 500 U.S. personnel in east Syria are expected to resume operations against Islamic State in coming days and weeks. – Reuters

Syrian government forces captured Sunday a northwestern village from insurgents after clashes that left more than a dozen killed on both sides, state media and an opposition war monitor said. – Associated Press

A car bomb exploded in a Turkey-controlled northern Syrian town on the border Saturday, killing at least three people, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said. – Associated Press

Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing new political and legal challenges after being indicted on corruption charges, as Israel moves toward a likely third election in a year. – Wall Street Journal

Human Rights Watch Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir will be deported from Israel on Monday. Earlier this month, the High Court of Justice endorsed the government’s decision not to allow the activist to remain in the country because of his support for boycotting Israel. – Jerusalem Post

The 107 Democrats who sent a letter on Friday to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to immediately reverse his recent announcement that Washington no longer views settlements as illegal have taken the bait the Trump administration left dangling. – Jerusalem Post

A well-known analyst and commentator from the Gaza Strip says the popularity of Hamas, the Palestinian enclave’s ruler, has dropped since it sat out fighting this month between Islamic Jihad and Israel. – Jerusalem Post

Hamas officials on Saturday denied reports about progress concerning a possible prisoner swap with Israel. – Jerusalem Post

Palestinian factions have called for a “day of rage” on Tuesday in protest of US administration decisions, particularly US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent announcement that settlements are not inconsistent with international law. – Jerusalem Post

A few days after Operation Black Belt in the Gaza Strip, Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi ordered the distribution of a document describing the progression of the operation and its achievements to all army units. And according to him, the operation was an impressive success. – Haaretz

The top US general is visiting Israel for meetings with top military leaders, the latest in a series of high-level military meetings amid heightened tensions with Iran. – Associated Press

Yoram Ettinger writes: Israel’s control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria highlights the synergy between the national security of the US and Israel, emphasizing Israel’s military and commercial contribution as the most effective US force-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond. – Algemeiner

Maya Jacobs and Yosef I. Abramowitz write: This means Israel’s energy security will become more and more vulnerable, as Hezbollah missiles become more and more accurate. In fact, once the new gas rig off Zichron Ya’acov goes live later this year, Hezbollah can quickly decapitate the Israeli economy with a barrage of missiles that can easily overwhelm Iron Dome. – Jerusalem Post

Alex Joffe writes: Trump and his administration have made a hallmark of defying dysfunctional conventional wisdom and foreign policy inertia that elevate process over results. But while the predicted calamities of this policy have not materialized, the administration’s lack of any Grand Strategy makes the benefits difficult to aggregate. – Besa Center

Iraq

Vice President Pence and his wife made an unannounced trip to Iraq on Saturday to visit with U.S. troops ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. – Washington Post

Mr. Pence made two stops: He landed with the permission of the Iraqi government at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s western desert, where many of the American troops are billeted while they train and assist the Iraqi forces fighting the remains of the Islamic State. He then flew to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. – New York Times

Security forces opened fire on protesters in Baghdad and several cities in southern Iraq on Sunday, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens of others, police and medical sources said, the latest violence in weeks of unrest. – Reuters

Iraq’s southern border with Iran reopened to travelers on Saturday after a week-long closure during mass protests in both countries, the Iraqi border ports commission said in a statement. – Reuters

Just after midnight, Baghdad time, the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the elite and popular Counter-Terrorism Service in Iraq announced that a coup was underway[…]. Within an hour it turned out the social media accounts had apparently been hacked. – Jerusalem Post

Middle East & North Africa

Eight suspected Islamic State members were captured in this scarred city in recent weeks, Libyan commanders say. Militant sleeper cells, they say, lurk in some neighborhoods. – Washington Post

Egyptian security forces targeted one of the last remaining independent news outlets in the country on Saturday, taking a journalist from his home and detaining him in an unknown location, according to the news site. – Washington Post

An unmanned drone that was flying over Libya was lost on Thursday, according to the U.S. military.- The Hill

China

A man claiming to be a disillusioned Chinese intelligence operative has told the Australian authorities that China’s military intelligence agencies were directly intervening in politics in Hong Kong and Taiwan, buying media coverage, infiltrating universities, funneling donations to favored candidates and creating thousands of social media accounts to attack Taiwan’s governing party. – New York Times

A former C.I.A. officer was sentenced to 19 years in prison on Friday for conspiring to deliver classified information to China in a case that touched on the mysterious unraveling of the agency’s informant network in China but did little to solve it. – New York Times

The United States is the world’s biggest source of instability and its politicians are going around the world baselessly smearing China, the Chinese government’s top diplomat said on Saturday in a stinging attack at a G20 meeting in Japan. – Reuters

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi on Monday told his Chinese counterpart that he is highly concerned about the Hong Kong situation and it is important that a free and open Hong Kong keeps on prospering under the “one country, two systems” model, a Japanese government official said. – Reuters

A senior Australian politician on Saturday said he was disturbed by the reported efforts of China to infiltrate politics in Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan detailed by an asylum seeker who said he was a Chinese spy. – Reuters

China, responding to allegations of interfering in Australian politics, said it had never tried to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs and wasn’t interested in doing so. – Reuters

Classified Chinese government documents made public by an international group of journalists describe the repressive inner workings of detention camps in Xinjiang, in a second rare leak in days of secret files concerning the troubled western region. – Reuters

China said on Monday the United States should stop abusing the concept of national security and abusing Chinese companies after the U.S. designated tech firms Huawei [HWT.UL] and ZTE as national security risks. – Reuters

Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, who has been in the job for four days, said on Saturday he had pressed his Chinese counterpart about the case of two Canadian citizens jailed in Beijing. – Reuters

Surging rare-earth production in China is presenting a new challenge to budding efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere to undercut the Asian giant’s dominance in a market for exotic materials used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets. – Bloomberg

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s ruling party denounced China as an “enemy of democracy” on Monday following fresh claims of Chinese interference in the island’s politics ahead of presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 11. – Reuters

China and the United States are ‘very close’ to a phase one trade deal, the Global Times, a tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said on Monday, discounting “negative” media reports. – Reuters

Josh Hawley writes: We need instead to prevent any other nation from becoming a hegemon—and that brings us to China. While American policy makers have embroiled this nation in multiple Mideast wars, China has steadily built its strength, its economy and its military—all at American expense. For years China has been stealing American jobs and intellectual property, abusing the international trade system. Now it is militarizing the South China Sea and preparing to project its power across the Asia-Pacific region. – Wall Street Journal

Kristin Tate writes: We may not be interested in the struggle for global domination, but those in Beijing are. From military to economic to technological matters, China is starting to best us on these fronts. As we focus on the less important markers of cultural survival, China is setting itself up to be an emerging superpower. Only with determined American leadership can we avoid an era under Chinese hegemony. The time for concerted effort starts now. – The Hill

Dean Cheng, Norbert Michel, and Klon Kitchen writes: The United States cannot assert significant influence over how China proceeds with its digital currency plans. It can, however, orient its own policies to create a prosperous environment for America’s financial innovations. Failing to do so heightens the risk that the U.S. will fall further behind international competitors in the evolving financial technology markets. To that end, Congress should remove barriers to entry in the market for alternative monies, and ensure that no single type of money enjoys a regulatory advantage. – Heritage Foundation

Tom Rogan writes: President Trump is right to pursue a trade deal with Beijing. But when it comes to intellectual property, Trump must be resolute. America will, he should tell Xi, continue protecting our intellectual property from Chinese theft and impose escalating costs on anyone who attempts to take what is ours. – Washington Examiner

Asia

The rising tide of young political opposition here was on full view in the dense residential neighborhood of North Point, packed with mainland Chinese immigrants loyal to Beijing, where incumbent Frankie Lo found himself in a rare fight to retain his seat on the local district council. – Wall Street Journal

U.S. legislation that could strip Hong Kong of preferential trade status if Beijing encroaches on the region’s political freedoms is dividing protesters who fought for it and business groups that fear it paves the way for economically painful measures. – Wall Street Journal

A record turnout of over 2.9 million voters delivered the pro-democracy camp control of 17 of 18 districts and over 80 percent of contested seats, the biggest electoral victory for the movement since Hong Kong’s handover from British rule in 1997. But it was also a rare chance for people within China to send their leaders a clear electoral message — that they want democracy, and were prepared to look past protesters’ violence. – Washington Post

Visiting the two Japanese cities razed by atomic bombs during World War II, Pope Francis called Sunday for a “world without nuclear weapons,” which he said are “immoral” for war or deterrence. – Washington Post

President Trump refused to commit Friday to signing legislation overwhelmingly passed by Congress to support pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, saying that he supported the protesters but that President Xi Jinping of China was “a friend of mine.” – New York Times 

Nearly two decades after a peace agreement marked the official end to a bloody civil war, residents of the island region of Bougainville will begin voting this weekend on whether it should become the world’s newest country and separate from Papua New Guinea. The vote in a small South Pacific territory of just 250,000 people is stirring the interest of larger global powers, including China, Australia and the United States. – U.S. News & World Report

US President Donald Trump said Friday he had saved Hong Kong from being destroyed by persuading Chinese President Xi Jinping to hold off on sending in troops to crush its pro-democracy movement. – Agence France-Presse

Editorial: Mr. Xi isn’t a sentimental man and he’ll make a decision on trade talks in China’s cold-blooded national interest. If he thinks he needs the deal for the sake of China’s economy, he’ll agree to U.S. terms whether or not Mr. Trump signs the new Hong Kong bill. After Sunday’s demonstration of courage by Hong Kong voters, a veto by Mr. Trump would betray America’s values and be a show of weakness to China. – Wall Street Journal

Editorial: Taking on China’s unfair trade practices and imperial expansionist designs is important. But Trump’s trade war hasn’t done that in a disciplined way. Taking on China properly and smartly would require working with Congress. It would also require forming lasting partnerships with other Pacific nations like Vietnam. What we’ve gotten instead is a costly trade war that leads to limited and irregular job growth in Vietnam. – Washington Examiner

Louisa Lim writes: In a week when Hong Kong’s universities became tear-gas-scented battlegrounds, the escalating violence has been matched by an intensifying spiral of rhetoric from the governments of Beijing and Hong Kong. Words have always been weapons in conflict, but in the social media age, their potential as tools of mobilization is exponentially multiplied, and the terminology used to describe protesters seems like a signal of tough action ahead. – New York Times

Shuli Ren writes: Yet, our support for the protests is rapidly dwindling because we suspect that the anger on the streets has less and less to do with the city’s political system, and more to do with a nativist dislike of mainlanders and immigrants — not unlike the anger driving populist protests in the U.S. and Europe. […]I still love this city and want it to succeed. But, I hope my Hong Kong neighbors understand that no true democracy will emerge if people like me are too afraid to walk its jammed, noisy, exhilarating streets. – Bloomberg

Europe

Chancellor Angela Merkel was handed a damaging defeat at her party’s annual convention over her plans to allow China’s Huawei Technologies Co. to build Germany’s next-generation 5G mobile network. – Wall Street Journal

A long-delayed European Union goal of expanding to include more countries in the western Balkans is slipping further out of reach following French moves to rework how new members join the bloc. – Wall Street Journal

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was uncharacteristically furious. At a dinner to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, she huddled with President Emmanuel Macron of France, who had just given an interview in which he cited the “brain death” of NATO and wondered whether its commitment to collective defense still held. – New York Times

French President Emmanuel Macron, self-appointed champion of Europe, wants to make it harder for other countries to join his club. – Washington Post

Bidders for German 5G rollout contracts must guarantee the network will be free of foreign state influence, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats agreed on Saturday, stopping short of singling out China’s Huawei. – Reuters

The formal launch of the Conservative Party’s election pledges Sunday centered around the key plank of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s campaign: making Brexit happen. – Associated Press

However, here in Britain, an endorsement from the US President is not always a good thing. He’s very unpopular with large sections of the public — and the politicians know it. Ever since the campaign got underway, Trump has been used as a weapon by many of Johnson’s opponents — most notably the main opposition Labour Party. – CNN

George F. Will writes: Just as the Holocaust was not inevitable, neither is the triumph of enlightenment: History is not a ratchet that clicks only one way. Today, in several parts of the world, including on the dark, churned and bloody ground of Central Europe, there are various forms of political regression. These are marked by a recrudescence of the blood-and-soil tribalism of degenerate nationalism, accompanied by thinly veiled, or not at all veiled, anti-Semitism. – Washington Post

Ira Stoll writes: I suppose it’s encouraging to see the Times covering the story of antisemitism in Europe. But if the Times is going to be offering these sorts of apologies—they were just resorting to antisemitism “occasionally,” to “make their points” against Israel—it almost might be better for the Jews and maybe also for the Times if the Times ignored the story altogether. – Algemeiner

Cybersecurity

More than a dozen U.S. utilities that were targets in a recent wave of cyberattacks have been identified by The Wall Street Journal. Some of the utilities, most of which are relatively small, are located near dams, locks and other critical infrastructure. – Wall Street Journal

The U.S. national security adviser urged Canada on Saturday not to use Huawei 5G technology, saying that doing so would put in jeopardy intelligence sharing with the United States and expose Canadians to being profiled by the Chinese government. – Reuters

Andreas Kluth writes: The West and its allies must therefore come to a common position on Huawei — and ideally on both China and data security generally. 5G and its successors have an almost utopian potential to solve many human problems. They also have a dystopian potential to turn our freedoms into a surveillance hell. The democracies need to confront this reality. – Bloomberg

Long War

Several unaccompanied children have been repatriated from former Islamic State territory in Syria to Britain, as European nations grapple with questions about what to do with the potential return of citizens who joined the terrorist group. – New York Times

The Philippine military said Monday it rescued a British national and his Filipino wife who had been kidnapped by local militants linked to the Islamic State. – Washington Post

Philippine soldiers have killed a militant who had helped a local group linked to Islamic State to stage suicide bombings in the southern province of Sulu, the military said on Saturday. – Reuters 

German authorities say a 30-year-old woman who allegedly was a member of the Islamic State group has returned to Germany with her three children. – Associated Press