Hong Kong Burns, Baghdad Kills ISIS’s Caliph, Boris Wins Big and Trump Is Impeached

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 January 2020 | Reporting Period: 3 October – 31 December 2019

Quarterly Briefing

• Hong Kong’s protest movement enters its fifth month; the Polytechnic University siege and district council elections mark a defining period for the territory’s political future.
• Turkey launches Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria on October 9, attacking Kurdish forces after the US withdraws troops from the area.
• US special forces kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a raid in northwestern Syria on October 27.
• Boris Johnson’s Conservatives win a commanding majority in the UK general election on December 12, locking in Brexit for January 31.
• The US House of Representatives impeaches President Trump on December 18 over his conduct with Ukraine; trial will proceed in the Senate.
• The US and China announce a Phase One trade deal on December 13, pausing the tariff escalation that had unsettled global markets for eighteen months.

Prologue: A Quarter of Defining Moments

The final quarter of 2019 delivered a succession of events that will shape international politics for years to come. Hong Kong’s streets became the site of increasingly violent confrontations between protesters and police as the movement that began over an extradition bill evolved into a fundamental contest over the territory’s autonomy. In the Middle East, Turkey’s military offensive into Syria reopened questions about Kurdish statehood and American reliability as an ally. The killing of ISIS’s self-declared caliph marked a symbolic milestone in the campaign against the organisation. In Britain, a decisive election result ended years of parliamentary deadlock and settled the question of whether Brexit would happen. And in Washington, the House of Representatives voted to impeach a sitting president for only the third time in American history. As this edition is published on 3 January 2020, the Soleimani killing in Baghdad occurred in the last hours of 2 January local time — barely hours before this review’s reporting period ended. The story is breaking as we publish.

Hong Kong: The Long Siege

What began in June 2019 as opposition to a proposed extradition bill that would allow suspects to be transferred to mainland China had, by October, evolved into a broad-based movement demanding democratic accountability and an end to what protesters called Beijing’s encroachment on Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “one country, two systems” framework. The final months of 2019 saw escalating confrontations: police used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets; protesters built barricades, deployed petrol bombs and increasingly sophisticated defensive equipment. The Polytechnic University siege in mid-November, in which hundreds of protesters barricaded themselves inside the campus for days as police surrounded the perimeter, was among the most dramatic scenes. The subsequent district council elections on 24 November — held despite calls for postponement — produced a landslide for pro-democracy candidates, with the opposition winning 85 per cent of seats.

For Jamaica and the Caribbean, Hong Kong’s crisis was a reminder that China’s political stability is inseparable from its role as the world’s manufacturing hub and a major driver of global growth. Any prolonged crisis in Hong Kong, which serves as China’s principal financial gateway, risked disrupting trade flows and investment that ultimately affect commodity prices, remittance-sending economies and the US dollar stability on which Caribbean transactions depend.

Turkey in Syria and the Kurdish Question

On October 9, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring, sending ground forces and allied Syrian factions across the border into northeastern Syria to attack the Syrian Democratic Forces — the Kurdish-led militia that had been the US’s primary partner in defeating ISIS on the ground. The operation followed a decision by President Trump to withdraw US special forces from the border area, which was widely interpreted as an effective green light for Turkey. NATO allies, including Britain and France, condemned the operation. The US Congress passed a bipartisan resolution opposing the withdrawal. A ceasefire brokered by Vice-President Pence on October 17 paused the offensive; a separate US-Russia agreement formalised arrangements for joint patrols in the border zone. The Kurds, who had lost thousands of fighters defeating ISIS, found themselves abandoned and displaced by the operation.

The Turkish operation also effectively secured the release of hundreds of ISIS fighters and families held in Kurdish detention camps, as guards were redeployed to fight the Turkish advance. The security implications of that release remain unclear but are a concern for counter-terrorism agencies globally.

Al-Baghdadi Killed, ISIS Leadership Disrupted

On October 27, US special forces raided a compound in the Idlib province of northwestern Syria and killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State who had declared a caliphate in 2014 covering large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Al-Baghdadi reportedly detonated a suicide vest as US forces closed in, killing himself and several of his children. President Trump announced the operation in a White House address. The killing did not end ISIS as an organisation — the group had already lost its territorial caliphate in March 2019 and continued to operate as an insurgency — but it removed the symbolic figurehead around whom the group had cohered and disrupted its central leadership structures. A successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, was named within days.

Brexit Settled: Johnson’s Commanding Majority

The United Kingdom’s December 12 general election produced the decisive parliamentary majority that Boris Johnson’s Conservatives had sought and which the hung parliament elected in 2017 had denied. The Conservatives won 365 seats, up from 317, against Labour’s 202 — Labour’s worst result since 1935. The Scottish National Party won 48 of 59 Scottish seats, immediately reigniting calls for a second independence referendum. The result removed any parliamentary possibility of blocking or reversing Brexit: the UK is now scheduled to leave the European Union on 31 January 2020, with a transition period to run until at least December 2020 during which trade and other arrangements will be negotiated.

For Jamaica, the UK election outcome has significant practical implications. Britain is one of Jamaica’s most important diaspora destinations, the largest source of tourist arrivals among Europeans, and a major channel for remittances. The terms of any UK-Caribbean trade relationship post-Brexit — particularly any successor to the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreement arrangements that have governed trade — will require negotiation. Jamaica has been engaging the UK government on this point; the election result at least provides the stable negotiating counterpart that the deadlocked parliament could not.

Trump Impeached; Phase One Trade Deal

On 18 December 2019, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump on two articles: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, arising from his request to Ukrainian President Zelensky to investigate political rival Joe Biden in exchange for the release of congressionally approved military aid. The Senate trial, which will determine whether Trump is removed from office, is expected in January 2020. Senate Republicans appear likely to acquit. The impeachment process is the third in American history, following those of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998; both were acquitted by the Senate.

Separately, on 13 December, the US and China announced agreement on a Phase One trade deal that would see China increase its purchases of American agricultural and manufactured goods in exchange for the US pausing planned tariff escalations and reducing some existing tariffs. The deal represented a partial de-escalation of the trade war that had unsettled global markets since 2018, though the structural issues — technology transfer, intellectual property, state subsidies — were deferred to a Phase Two negotiation whose prospects remain uncertain.

Caribbean Outlook Entering 2020

For Jamaica and the broader Caribbean, the final quarter of 2019 ended on a cautiously positive note domestically even as the global environment carried significant risks. Oil prices had recovered partially from the levels that followed the Aramco attack in September and then stabilised. Tourism was performing strongly; Jamaica was on track to post record stopover arrivals for 2019. The US economy remained resilient, supporting remittance flows. The partial US-China trade truce reduced one source of uncertainty, though the deal’s durability remained unclear.

However, the breaking news from Baghdad of the killing of General Soleimani in the last hours of 2 January will define the opening of 2020 and its implications are not yet clear. The world enters a new year with that crisis unresolved.

Looking Ahead

The Senate impeachment trial will consume American political attention in January. Brexit’s formal implementation on January 31 will require the UK and its partners — including Jamaica — to clarify transitional trade arrangements. The Hong Kong situation remains deeply unresolved, with Beijing’s ultimate response to the protest movement still uncertain. And the Soleimani killing, whose implications are still emerging, has opened a period of acute risk in the Gulf that could affect oil prices, regional security and American military posture in the Middle East. 2020 has begun as it means to go on: with a crisis.

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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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