ISIS Declares a Caliphate, Israel and Hamas Fight in Gaza, MH17 Is Shot Down and Ebola Spreads Across West Africa

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 October 2014 | Reporting Period: 3 July – 2 October 2014

Quarterly Briefing

• The Islamic State, which declared a caliphate on June 29, launches a sustained offensive across Iraq and Syria; the United States begins airstrikes in Iraq on August 8 and extends them to Syria on September 22, assembling a multinational coalition.
• Israel launches Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza on July 8; by the time a ceasefire takes effect in late August, more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis have been killed and vast areas of Gaza destroyed.
• Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 is shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board; the West blames Russian-backed separatists and tightens sanctions on Russia; Moscow denies responsibility.
• The World Health Organisation declares Ebola in West Africa a public health emergency of international concern on August 8; Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are at the centre of the epidemic, which is growing faster than the international response.
• ISIS beheads American journalist James Foley on August 19 and journalist Steven Sotloff on September 2, and British aid worker David Haines on September 13; the videos are released as propaganda and drive political pressure on Western governments to act.
• Scotland votes 55 per cent to 45 per cent to remain in the United Kingdom in the September 18 independence referendum; the campaign revives questions about self-determination and constitutional change in small territories globally.

Prologue: The Summer the World Accelerated

The third quarter of 2014 produced a concentration of crises that overwhelmed the capacity of the international community to manage them simultaneously. An Islamist organisation was carving a state out of two countries, beheading prisoners on video and governing millions of people. A war in a Mediterranean enclave was killing civilians at a rate that shocked even veteran observers. A civilian airliner was shot out of the sky over a European country. And a deadly haemorrhagic fever was spreading through West Africa faster than hospitals could be built and protective equipment supplied. Against this backdrop, oil prices began to soften from their long plateau above $100 per barrel — a development whose Caribbean consequences would become clear over the months that followed. For Jamaica and its neighbours, the quarter brought a world that felt newly destabilised in multiple directions at once.

ISIS: Caliphate, Conquest and American Airstrikes

Having declared an Islamic caliphate straddling the Syria-Iraq border on 29 June, the Islamic State spent the quarter extending its control and demonstrating its global ambitions. Its most shocking act was the execution of American journalist James Foley, who had been held captive since 2012, in a video released on 19 August. The execution of Steven Sotloff followed on 2 September and that of British aid worker David Haines on 13 September. The videos were addressed directly to Western governments and appeared calibrated to provoke military intervention — whether from an ideological conviction that it would hasten an apocalyptic confrontation, or from the calculation that Western airstrikes would generate recruitment and propaganda benefits.

President Obama ordered airstrikes in Iraq on 8 August, initially framed as protection for the Yazidi minority besieged on Mount Sinjar after ISIS forces swept through the Sinjar region on 3 August, killing men and enslaving women in what the UN subsequently described as genocide. Airstrikes were extended to Syria on 22–23 September with coalition partners including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar. Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, who replaced Nouri al-Maliki on 8 September, has committed to forming a more inclusive government capable of reconciling Sunni communities that ISIS has exploited. Whether that political process can succeed in time to accompany military pressure is the central unanswered question.

Gaza, MH17 and the Return of European War

Israel launched Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on 8 July, following rocket fire and a spiral of killings and reprisals. The operation, which included a ground incursion from 17 July, lasted fifty days; a ceasefire took effect on 26 August. Palestinian casualty figures exceeded 2,100, of whom the United Nations estimated roughly 70 per cent were civilians; 73 Israelis died, all but six of them soldiers. The conflict generated intense international condemnation of Israeli tactics in a densely populated urban area and renewed calls for a political resolution that has evaded the parties for decades. For the Caribbean, with its significant Jewish and Arab diaspora communities and its dependence on American and European tourism, the political resonance of the Gaza conflict was felt in tourism booking patterns during the peak summer season.

The destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on 17 July, by what Western governments and an independent Dutch investigation concluded was a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile fired from territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists, killed 298 people including 196 Dutch citizens. The European Union and United States expanded sanctions on Russia in response. Moscow denied involvement. The downing of a civilian airliner heightened European public alarm about the Ukraine conflict and reinforced pressure on governments to maintain a tough response to Russian actions, though the sanctions debate remained contested, particularly among European countries with significant energy dependencies on Russian gas.

Ebola: A Race Between the Epidemic and the Response

The WHO’s declaration of a public health emergency of international concern on 8 August was a belated acknowledgement that the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had grown beyond the capacity of national health systems to contain. By early October the disease has killed over 3,400 people and infected more than 7,400, according to WHO figures, though actual numbers are believed to be significantly higher due to underreporting. Liberia’s health infrastructure is effectively overwhelmed. The United States announced on 16 September that it would send 3,000 military personnel and $500 million in emergency funding; the UK committed to building treatment facilities in Sierra Leone; Cuba committed over 460 healthcare workers.

For the Caribbean’s tourism sector, the Ebola crisis is a reminder of how quickly infectious disease fears in major source markets translate into travel anxiety. Though West Africa is far from the Caribbean and the disease requires direct contact with bodily fluids to transmit, public risk perception rarely respects epidemiological nuance. Caribbean health ministries have been reviewing screening protocols at airports and ports of entry, and regional bodies have been coordinating preparedness plans.

Looking Ahead

The coalition airstrikes against ISIS are new and their results are uncertain. Mosul, Iraq’s second city, remains under ISIS control. Kobani, the Kurdish border town in Syria, is under siege as this edition publishes. The Ebola epidemic is not yet contained; the international response is still scaling up. Oil prices have softened to around $90–$95 per barrel, below the levels of earlier in 2014 but not yet at the levels that would create acute fiscal stress for PETROCARIBE’s architecture. OPEC meets in November; its decisions on production will influence the price trajectory and with it the economic calculations of every Caribbean government that depends on Venezuelan oil financing. The quarter ahead may well be defined by how each of these unresolved threads develops — or does not.

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Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.

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