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Major events that captured the world’s attention in 2024: From Trump’s return to the fall of Bashar al-Assad…!!!

cnnnews.com By Canada Nepal

January 3, 2025
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Kathmandu. As 2024 draws to a close, the world is preparing to welcome the New Year. It is also a good time to reflect on the significant events that shaped this year. 2024 was a year of crises across the globe. Many major events and disasters occurred this year, and their effects will likely be felt for a long time.

According to the Gregorian calendar, the new year 2025 will begin at midnight on Tuesday. Although not as scientific as the popular Vikram Samvat, which is based on the coordination of the solar and lunar months, the Christian Samvat has an impact worldwide.

On the occasion of New Year 2025, there is a special buzz in places like Thamel, Durbarmarg, Bouddha in Kathmandu, and places like Pokhara outside the valley, Sauraha in Chitwan, etc. where there is a large presence of foreigners. Many will bid farewell to 2024 by waiting for midnight today. The world will welcome the English New Year on the morning of January 1. Like every year, many events took place in the world in 2024. Nothing particularly big miracle seems to have happened. This year was also normal like other years.

There was a war in the West Asian countries. The Israel-Palestine war, which began in 2023, reached its peak. The Gaza Strip was completely destroyed. In 2024, Donald Trump, who had been president for one term in the world’s most powerful country, the United States, lost another term and won again, is preparing to enter the White House in 20 days. The United States has lost former President Jimmy Carter, the man of the century, while neighboring India has lost its economic reformer, the world’s most famous economist Dr. Manmohan Singh. This loss is also for the world and humanity. Here are the major events that took place in the world in 2024:

South Asia is not peaceful.

South Asia could not remain peaceful in 2018. The incidents in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were not uncommon.

Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina, who won India’s support by holding elections without the participation of the main opposition, was ousted during her term in office after a student-led movement there turned violent.

She had reached an army camp from her residence and taken refuge in India by helicopter. She is still in India. India does not seem to want to return her to Bangladesh immediately. An interim government is in power in Bangladesh. Hasina has been accused of not only human rights violations but also extreme corruption and implementing a law that allows only families of those who fought for Bangladesh’s independence to enter all positions easily.

Indian Foreign Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan became one of the most talked about events of the year. He went to Pakistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. His visit did not bring India and Pakistan closer, which is why SAARC is still in the background.

In Nepal too, the government has been formed by two major parties. This mess was reached overnight by an agreement in the house of middlemen and traders. The coalition government of the Congress and the UML has been formed. The Congress is the first and the UML is the second largest party. There is no common ground between these two parties on any issue.

Former Indian and American executives pass away

Former Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh has passed away. The 92-year-old Singh passed away last Thursday. Singh served two terms as Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2012. On his death, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote that India has lost one of its most respected leaders, Dr. Singh.

Born in Punjab, now Pakistan, Singh’s family migrated to India after India’s independence in 1947. Rising from a humble family, Singh became a distinguished economist and studied in the UK and the US. He was Finance Minister in the P.V. Narasimha Rao government. As India’s Prime Minister, Singh is widely praised for his efforts to improve the lives of the Indian people.

Former US President Jimmy Carter died on December 29 in Georgia, USA, at the age of 100. Born on October 1, 1924, Carter was the President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. He became the 39th President of the United States by defeating Gerald R. Ford, and faced criticism from the beginning of his first term. Carter, who ran for a second term, was defeated. However, he saved the United States from an economic crisis. He played an important role in establishing peace in the Middle East. After that, he continued to work for peace and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He founded the Carter Center and worked in the fields of world peace, human rights, election observation, and health.

Middle East conflict

The events of Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023 have reverberated across the Middle East in 2024. Israel continues its war in Gaza. The number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli offensive has now exceeded 45,000. Northern Gaza is on the verge of famine. Israel has achieved several strategic victories, including the assassination of Hamas leader and chief planner Yahya Sinwar on October 7. However, its strategic objective of defeating Hamas has not been achieved.

In April, Iran launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Israel, with US and Western support, thwarted the attack. Israel responded with limited airstrikes on Iranian air defenses.

Israel assassinated senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July while he was attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president in Tehran. Two months later, Iran responded with another missile attack on Israel. In late October, Israeli airstrikes crippled Iran’s missile production and destroyed its air defenses.

In mid-September, Israel punished Hezbollah, which was launching missile and rocket attacks against northern Israel, with a covert operation in which explosive pagers were used to kill dozens of Hezbollah operatives.

Two weeks later, an Israeli airstrike killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli ground forces then invaded southern Lebanon, pushing Hezbollah back. The weakness of Hamas and Hezbollah created an opportunity for Turkish-backed forces in Syria to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad in December. After two months of fighting, a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon came into effect on November 27.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad

President Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee the country to Moscow after an 11-day surprise offensive launched by the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria on November 27. One of the symbolic moments of Damascus’ fall was the release of prisoners from the notorious Sednaya prison. The prison, located north of the capital, has been a symbol of torture and executions under the Assad dynasty’s 50-year rule, particularly since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.

The country’s Islamist-led government has sought to reassure minorities in the country and governments abroad that it will protect all Syrians. However, the international community has not immediately lifted sanctions on Syria in light of the new government’s activities, due to its links to al-Qaeda.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian military sites, claiming to prevent the country’s weapons from falling into the hands of the interim government after Assad’s ouster. Israel has also occupied the UN-controlled buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

Russia-Ukraine conflict

Ukraine launched a surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk region in August, following Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. However, Ukraine has failed in its goal of distracting Moscow’s forces from the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Russia responded with deadly attacks. Kiev’s forces are struggling to stop the steady advance of Russian forces, especially in the eastern Donbas region. In November, Ukraine used Western-supplied long-range missiles on Russian territory for the first time, after receiving approval from the United States and Britain.

Russia responded by launching a hypersonic Oresnik missile into Ukraine without a nuclear warhead. It also vowed to continue such attacks if Kiev continued to use Western weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin has even threatened to attack countries that provide weapons to the Ukrainians.

Russia launched a major attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in late November. In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up attacks in southern Ukraine, raising fears of a new Russian offensive in the region.

North Korean soldiers in the European War

The deployment of more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers this year turned the Russia-Ukraine war into a truly global conflict. The North Koreans were initially deployed to Russian bases for training to learn the language and understand the operational procedures of their new fellow soldiers.

They fought in the final weeks of the year, trying to push back Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region. According to Ukrainian and US officials, hundreds of North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded in the fighting.

Civil war in Sudan

The civil war in Sudan, which began in April 2023, continued unabated in 2024. The fighting has pitted the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the Rapid Support Force (RSF) militia led by Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemedi’ Dagalo.

The two men jointly seized power in a coup in October 2021. The notorious RSF, responsible for the Darfur genocide two decades ago, seized control of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and much of Darfur.

In late September, the SAF launched a major offensive to retake Khartoum. They recaptured parts of the city but failed to completely dislodge RSF forces.

The Sudanese people have suffered since the fighting began. The exact death toll is unknown. The death toll is estimated at 20,000, but the death toll could be as high as 60,000 or even higher when war-related diseases and starvation are included. A famine has been declared in Darfur.

The conflict has displaced about 11 million people out of a total population of about 50 million. Both the SAF and the RSF believe they will prevail, as they have powerful external supporters who enable them to continue fighting.

Trump’s comeback

Donald Trump has once again shocked the world. He defied predictions of a very close race to win the US presidential election. Trump easily defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, who had run to replace President Joe Biden, who had withdrawn from the campaign.

Trump, 78, who faces four indictments and a criminal conviction, has faced two failed assassination attempts. Trump is set to return to the White House on January 20, 2025. A Trump victory in the US is likely to revive the “America First” ideology, as well as withdraw the US from many international institutions that Trump sees as embezzling US taxpayer money.

Climate disaster

The weather is getting warmer. Scientists have been warning for decades that our addiction to fossil fuels will cause climate change. The facts have confirmed them.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising. 2024 will go down as the warmest year on record. In 2024, the average global temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. This is a dangerous sign at a time when the 2015 Paris Agreement sought to prevent the world from permanently breaching that level.

Some of the consequences of a changing climate are already visible. In the first 10 months of 2024, 24 weather-related natural disasters in the United States caused at least $1 billion in damage. Record droughts have devastated northern South America. Parts of the Amazon, the world’s largest river system, have dried up.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 1,500 people have died in an unusually heavy rainy season in West and Central Africa. In September, Hurricane Helen hit the southeastern United States. Typhoon Krathon hit Taiwan and Hurricane Boris brought flooding and destruction to central Europe.

Typhoons Yagi and Bebinka caused devastation in Asia. In October, a devastating Mediterranean storm hit eastern Spain, causing its worst flooding in decades and killing more than 230 people.

Cyclone Chido devastated the French overseas territory of Mayotte in December. COP29, the annual international climate conference, has made little progress in providing financial support to developing countries to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.

New efforts in space exploration

Some important work has been done in the field of space exploration. Japan landed a smart lander on the moon in January to investigate. It dug a hole there, stayed on the ground, and sent data back to Earth for three months, based on which further studies have been carried out.

China is also studying lunar soil. It has also sent its own mission to bring back soil samples from different parts of the moon. Japan sent two astronauts to the International Space Station in June, working on the Starliner project. Although they have been there for two months, they are expected to stay there for another few months.

179 dead in South Korea plane crash

Just two days before the 2024 deadline, a plane carrying 181 passengers crashed in South Korea. 179 people died in the crash. There were 175 passengers and six crew members on board the Jeju Air Boeing 737.

Jeju Air said there was no technical problem with the plane. The plane was returning from Bangkok, Thailand. However, the accident occurred during landing. Images of the plane skidding off the runway at Muan International Airport in southwestern Korea and crashing into a wall were released.

The refugee problem is becoming serious in the world.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported that the number of refugees worldwide has exceeded 122 million. The UN has described the refugee figures as alarming.

The UNHCR’s annual report shows that the global refugee population has now surpassed 122 million, up from an estimated 117.4 million in 2023. This increase is largely due to the civil war in Sudan. More than 12 million people were forced to flee Sudan after violence escalated in April 2023.

With the support of international news agencies AP/AFP and Xinhua

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