What stories was I sleeping on?
So, what stories did I definitely miss before this project? Well, Atlantic Hurricanes and the Belarussian protests, for sure. Here are some of the other news I skipped out on during the year - or my recaps.
An unusually wet 2019 led to swampy conditions across the Horn of Africa and western Asia - giving rise to a nearly biblical swarm of locusts. There are photographs where they literally seem to black-out the sun. The culprit? Climate change. The warming waters of the Indian ocean led to stormier weather - essentially more and bigger cyclones. It’s the worst outbreak of the crop-devouring pests in a quarter-century and it threatens food security across the region. The pandemic grinds international trade to a stop - obstructing many countries efforts to buy pesticides, equipment or bring in expert help to curb the infestation. Throughout the year, these swarms ballooned in size, stretching deep into Asia and across the Pacific ocean to Argentina and Brazil. An estimated 20 million people could face hunger and starvation and the UN’s World Food Program estimates that recovery could cost upwards of $9b USD in Africa alone.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
For three decades the Tigray people held the balance of political and economic power in the country, tightly controlled through the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF), a Tigray nationalist party. In 2018 the Ethiopian election People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, led by Oromo Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, won control of the country’s government.
Animosities boiled over when the Tigray province persisted with the 2020 election, despite government orders to postpone voting until 2021 due to the coronavirus. Prime Minister Abiy cut off funding to Tigray, incising local leadership. In November 2020, youth militias affiliated with the TPLF killed six hundred villagers in the border town of Mai Kadra - and allegedly attacked Ethiopian military bases.
The government responded by shelling the Tigray capital of Mekelle. Ethiopia’s armed forces quickly took control of the city and surrounding towns, with the militias retreating into the mountains where skirmishes have continued.
With Tigrayan people facing violent retaliation - they have faced furloughs from jobs, had bank accounts suspended, faced arbitrary raids on their homes, and been refused permission to board airplanes or travel overseas. Many have faced direct violence, especially from non-Tigray militias.
The conflict has seen incursions from Eritrean forces. Abiy was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his work mending the relationship with Ethiopia’s former colony-turned-neighbour. They share a common enemy now - Tigray. Eritrean forces slaughtered church-goers at a religious festival in early December, killing children and elders indiscriminately. These shadow forces of Fano militias and Eritrean soldiers have committed war crimes - including extrajudicial killings and rape. They even looted the church that allegedly houses the Ark of the Covenant.
The Tigrayan refugees have only one option: Sudan. One journalist writes: “Several [Tigrayan refugees] told me that they saw dozens of bodies along the route as they fled their shops, homes and farms and took to the long road to the border... in stifling heat.”
The New York Times series on Tigray was helpful in understanding more about the conflict and its historical and ethnic contexts. But I have to say - I feel unclear about what comes next. Will guerilla warfare between the Tigray militias and Eritrean-Ethiopian forces continue? Will the country face international consequences for their move towards genocide? I guess 2021 will decide.
A SolarWinds banner hangs outside the New York Stock Exchange on the company’s IPO day in 2018 - Brendan McDermid/Reuters
I chose to write about icebergs rather than this story for a reason. I wholly do NOT understand cyber security. Like, at all. My eyes glaze over when somebody tries to explain Wikileaks to me. I tried. I really did - I read like three articles trying to parse the details and make sense of anything and here’s what I got:
Hackers - almost certainly Russian - got into the US government secure networks. For a lot of departments. For months. It’s really, really bad. The government has a pretty blasé response to the disaster. Trump blames China. Agencies are turning directly to Microsoft for answers rather than their own cyber security people. It’s a blazing hot mess.
I’m going to continue to not understand this one, sorry.
Juan Carlos Ulate/Reuters
The expansion of civil rights in Central/South America, with the legalization of abortion in Argentina in December and the introduction of gay marriage in Costa Rica in May, gave us something to celebrate in 2020. These new rights are the result of years - and decades - of organizing by activists in these two countries.
Costa Rica is the sixth Latin-American country to legalize gay marriage. Argentina joins a short list of places in Latin America where abortion is fully legal - just Cuba, Guyana, Uruguay, and two Mexican states.
Some couples rushed to wed on the stroke of midnight - magistrates stayed up late into the night to marry couples. Marcos Castillo (L) and Rodrigo Campos (R) waited until the following morning - and celebrated with a masked kiss after their ceremony.
Other notable moments in civil rights? New Zealand officially revoked their antiquated anti-abortion laws (which they’d been effectively ignoring for years anyway), Bhutan decriminalized homosexuality, Switzerland passed legislation that will allow people to change the gender on their government IDs, and Croatia struck down laws forbidding gay couples from fostering children. Albania banned gay conversion therapy - as did the Yukon, actually - and Barbados made discrimination on the basis of sexuality illegal.
Nicky Kuautonga/The Guardian
5. Oceania crushed the pandemic
Virtually all of the countries reported to be COVID-free during 2020 were Oceanic nations and island territories. Turkmenistan says they didn’t have any cases but they’re lyin’. -Tuvalu Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Palau all ended the year with no cases, while Samoa and the Solomon Islands reported a few isolated cases in quarantine facilities as they re-opened the border to repatriate their citizens abroad.
Some combination of strict travel restrictions, new hygiene rules, curfews, and early lockdowns kept most of these countries relatively untouched. While New Zealand and Australia experienced several flare-ups throughout the year, their targeted lockdowns helped eradicate community spread quickly each time, returning them to schools, workplaces and boozy brunches quickly.
Honourable mentions to Vietnam and Thailand - with 100 million and 70 million citizens apiece both have charted under 100 deaths to COVID - and Taiwan with only nine casualties.
Gulalay Amiri, a pomegranate farmer, surveys his slim haul. Fighting as worsened in many parts of Afghanistan after the United States announced they would withdraw from the country in 2021 - Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
In March the United States signed a peace-deal with the Taliban, promising to withdraw troops by May of 2021. The War in Afghanistan has lasted 19 years - the longest war in American history and the majority of my lifetime.
I don’t know how to feel about it.
During peace talks the Taliban refused to commit to recognizing the country’s elected government, disavowing Al-Qaeda or protecting women’s rights. They support limited education for girls - only up to the sixth grade.
I listened to a few podcasts by the Daily on the ground in Afghanistan with the current government’s security forces. Many of the young soldiers they interviewed were so young they’d never lived in a country governed by the Taliban - and they fiercely oppose the idea. It also appears that the Afghan government were often excluded from peace talks, finding out details of the American meetings with the Taliban through international news reports and Taliban statements on social media.
Since the Taliban’s deal with the United States, Taliban bombings and attacks have continued, targeting both security forces and civilians. The Afghan government has pointed the finger at the Taliban for mass shooting at a maternity ward in Kabul that killed 24 women and infants. “They came for the mothers”, said horrified eyewitnesses.
For almost two decades, the western world has supported the ‘new’ Afghanistan - but it feels very fragile. Will a withdrawal lead those people that assisted coalition forces vulnerable to retaliation? It feels likely. The fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government has been fierce - and come with high civilian casualties. The year is punctuated, nearly monthly, with news of new attacks in Afghanistan.
It reminds me of the end of the Vietnam war. America withdrew and two years later the south was retaken by the North. In the final days of the Vietnam war the United States evacuated around 150,000 civilians who had worked with American on the ground. Nearly a million others left the country by boat, seeking asylum at refugee camps in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people who had collaborated with the US-backed South were sent to re-education camps where they were sometimes tortured or starved. Is this what Afghanistan will look like?
There’s no 'good’ solution - and for now the future of the war in Afgahnistan feels very opaque. I think I under-reported stories in the region as a result - it feels too complex to boil down into daily recaps.
Bobi Wine, 38, was detained by police for allegedly breaking COVID-19 restrictions while campaigning in Uganda’s upcoming presidential election - Abubaker Lubowa/Reuters
8. Ugandan election protests
Western media doesn’t seem to place a lot of importance on reporting in Africa - but what little attention they had for the continent focused on the anti-SARS protests in Nigeria throughout the fall. The attention on police violence in America raised the profile of these demonstrations - and the brutality of the government’s response, shooting at dozens of peaceful marchers gathered at the Lekki toll bridge.
But they were far from the only protests in Africa.
As Uganda prepared for an election early in 2021, the government forcefully cracked down on youthful dissidents - like presidential hopefuls Bobi Wine and Patrick Amuriat who were detained by police during the final campaign pushes in November.
Wine, a young musician, has been arrested numerous times since he announced his candidacy. One occasion police beat Wine so badly he temporarily lost his vision - they also killed his driver. They raided his offices, confiscating election materials, and arrested supporters. His bodyguard will later be killed after being struck by a military truck while helping an injured reporter escape tear-gas during December protests.
Police record 56 casualties as they violently put down the large-scale protests - though human rights group have suggested the real number could be dramatically higher.
Ariana Quesada holds a photo of her father, Benito. He died after an outbreak at the Cargill meat-packing plant where he worked. She filed a complaint with the RCMP, asking them to investigate conditions at the plant - Justin Pennell/CBC
9. Meat packing plants become coronavirus hotspots
Meat processing plants become super-spreaders - these often rurally-located factories see massive outbreaks across the United States and Canada. Their floors are crowded with employees working elbow-to-elbow, forced to shout over the loud din of machinery. The refrigeration - necessary for keeping the meat unspoiled - may allow the virus to live longer in the air.
By September of 2020, nearly 500 meat-processing plants had reported at least one case of COVID in the United States. And 203 had died.
At a Tyson Foods factory in Waterloo, Iowa, staff allege that management placed bets on how many workers would become sick - and die. Supervisors began avoiding the floor, relegating their responsibilities to untrained workers.
The plant reluctantly closed - by the time they re-opened two weeks later over a third of their 2,800 workforce had tested positive. Five workers died - including Isidro Fernandez, whose family is leading a lawsuit against the company.
In Canada, Cargill faces a similar lawsuit after an enormous outbreak in their High River facility that resulted in three deaths - two employees and one staffer’s 71-year-old father. They were: Hiep Bui, Armando Sallegue, and Benito Quesada. The company offered a $500 “responsibility” bonus for workers who didn’t miss any shifts - and discouraged employees from reporting any flu-like symptoms. Many of the factory’s workers are temporary foreign workers or new Canadians.
I forgot about this and am shoehorning it in now, but Peruvian archaeologists discovered another ancient line drawing in the desert outside of Lima - this time in the shape of a kitty cat.
Of all the archaeology finds this year - remains at Pompeii, a mammoth graveyard in Mexico, and a wealth of sarcophagi in Egypt - this is my favourite.
