(The Conversation) – The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has opened a new front for geopolitical competition in the Middle East.

Now, however, instead of Iran and Russia playing the most influential roles in Syria, Israel and Turkey see an opportunity to advance their conflicting national and regional security interests.

Under their respective leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, relations between the two countries have deteriorated sharply in recent years. This sets the stage for a bitter showdown over Syria.

A new rivalry is emerging

Turkey is widely reported to have backed the offensive led by the Sunni rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to drive Assad from power, thus backstabbing Syria’s traditional allies, Iran and Russia.

Tehran has intimated that without Turkey’s support, HTS would have been unable to achieve its blistering takeover.

Now, with Assad gone, Erdoğan is believed to be positioning himself as de facto leader of the Sunni Muslim world. He also wants Turkey to be one of the dominant powers in the region.

Erdoğan has said if the Ottoman Empire had been divided in a different way following its defeat in the First World war, several Syrian cities, including Aleppo and Damascus, would have likely been part of modern-day Turkey.

Turkey immediately reopened its embassy in Damascus after Assad’s fall and offered help to HTS in shaping the country’s new Islamist order.

As part of this, Erdoğan has opposed any concession by HTS to the US-backed Kurdish minority in Syria’s northeast, which he regards as supporters of the Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

Meanwhile, Israel has taken advantage of the power vacuum in Syria to advance its territorial and security ambitions. It has launched a land incursion into the Syrian side of the strategic Golan Heights and has executed a massive bombardment of Syria’s military assets across the country.

Israel’s foreign minister said destroying these assets – which included ammunition depots, fighter jets, missiles and chemical weapons storage facilities – was necessary to ensure they didn’t fall into the “hands of extremists” that could pose a threat to the Jewish state.

Turkey sees Israel’s recent actions in Syria and the occupied Golan Heights as a land grab. Israel’s actions have also been denounced by Arab countries, who demand Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected.

Israel is clearly concerned about the rise to power of an Islamist group and the transformation of Syria into a jihadist state.

This is despite the fact that HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani) has signalled he does not want conflict with Israel. He’s also pledged not to allow any groups to use Syria for attacks on Israel.

At the same time, al-Sharaa has called for the withdrawal of Israel from Syrian territory according to a 1974 agreement that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

Bitter foes

Erdoğan, Turkey’s moderate Islamist president, has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and a fierce critic of Israel. But tensions have significantly escalated between the two sides since the start of the Gaza war.

Erdoğan has called for an Arab-Islamic front to stop what he’s called Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. He has equally berated Israel’s invasion of Lebanon earlier this year.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has lashed out at Erdoğan over the years. He has called him a “joke” and “dictator” whose jails are full journalists and political prisoners. He has also accused of Erdoğan of committing a “genocide” of the Kurdish people.

Washington, which is allied to both Turkey and Israel, has launched intense diplomatic efforts to ensure that HTS moves Syria in a favourable direction. It is keen to see a post-Assad system of governance aligned with America’s interests.

These interests include HTS’ support for America’s Kurdish allies in northeast Syria and the continued presence of 1,000 American troops in the country. The US also wants HTS to continue to prevent the Islamic State terror group from regaining strength.

“In this Corner . . .” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

The US will also have to manage the emerging geopolitical rivalry between Israel and Turkey in Syria.

Some observers have not ruled out the possibility of an Israeli-Turkish military showdown, should Israel turn what it calls its temporary occupation of the demilitarised zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights into a permanent territorial acquisition.

This is not to say a war between them is imminent. But their clashing interests and the breadth of mutual hostility has certainly reached a new level.

Iran’s loss could be costly

For Iran, Assad’s ouster means the loss of a critical ally in its predominantly Shia “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States.

The Iranian regime had worked hard to build this network over the last 45 years as a fundamental part of its national and wider security. It had propped up Assad’s minority Alawite dictatorship over the Sunni majority population in Syria at the cost of some US$30 billion (A$47 billion) since the popular uprising against Assad began in 2011.

And with Assad now gone, Iran is deprived of a vital land and air bridge to one of its key proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Assad regime’s sudden demise is now causing soul searching in Tehran about the wisdom of its regional strategy – and whether it will have any significant role at all in the new Syria. This seems unlikely, as al-Sharaa (the leader of HTS) has declared his disdain for both Iran and Hezbollah.

Al-Sharaa has prioritised the establishment of a publicly mandated Islamist government and Syria’s reconstruction and national unity over a conflict with Israel, Iran’s arch enemy. This will no doubt lead to contention with the hardliners and reformists in Iran.

Only time will tell how all of this will play out. At this stage, the future of Syria and the region hangs in the balance. And much depends on whether HTS leaders will move to set up an all-inclusive political system and unite a Balkanised Syria.

Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – Tens of thousands of minorities fearing persecution have fled Syria since its takeover by the Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham on Dec. 8, 2024.

While the group has promised to respect all ethnic and religious minorities under its rule, human rights advocates have urged caution. They cite the Islamic group’s poor history of respect for human rights in areas it has governed in recent years.

Syria’s population is predominantly Arab and Sunni Muslim, but minority communities have long been part of the region. Alawites, a Shiite sect and one of the largest minority groups, constitute about 10% to 13% of the population. The number of Christians, once another large minority group, has been dwindling since the start of the 2011 civil war. While accurate numbers are hard to come by, their population is believed to have shrunk to about 2.5% from 10%.

Druze, another religious group, constitute about 3%, while Kurds, an ethnic minority concentrated in the northeast, account for about 10% and are predominantly Sunni Muslim. Smaller groups such as Armenians, Circassians and Turkmen also contribute to Syria’s diverse mosaic.

As an expert on religious minorities, I believe that the future of these groups is central to discussions about Syria’s reconstruction. Their treatment will be a critical indicator of whether Syria can build an inclusive society, fostering trust among its diverse communities.

Syria’s complex minority landscape

The tensions surrounding Syria’s minorities are deeply rooted.

Sunni Muslims, the country’s most dominant faith group, have viewed groups such as the Alawites and Druze with suspicion for centuries. Though some Alawites consider themselves to be followers of Islam, other Muslim groups tend not to see them as part of the tradition, which exposes them to marginalization and persecution.

However, the rise of the Assad family, who are themselves Alawites, transformed the fortunes of Alawites. Under Hafez Assad – father of the ousted President Bashar Assad – who ruled Syria between 1971 and 2000, Alawites came to occupy key positions in the military and government. Concentrated primarily in Syria’s coastal regions such as Latakia and Tartus, Alawite communities viewed their alignment with the regime as a means of survival and advancement.

Photo of Latakia by Maria Turkman

At the same time, the Assad regime prioritized gaining the support of other minorities in ruling a Sunni majority country. The Druze, historically marginalized in Syria due to their beliefs that combine elements of Islam with pre-Islamic beliefs, found a degree of protection under the Assad regime in return for Druze support.

The Assad regime also developed mutually beneficial relationships with the Christian minority. Christians were provided access to government positions and economic opportunities, particularly in urban economic hubs such as Damascus and Aleppo. They were given preferential treatment in securing business licenses and trade opportunities. In return, most refrained from supporting opposition movements, contributed to the regime’s public image and cooperated with the government.

Conversely, the Kurds, with their own language and culture, faced discrimination because of their ethnic identity. The Assad regime marginalized them due to its broader nationalistic policies aimed at consolidating Arab identity and suppressing other ethnic groups.

The regime systematically undermined the Kurdish identity through measures such as banning the Kurdish language, refusal to register Kurdish names, replacing Kurdish place names with Arabic ones, and banning Kurdish books and materials.

Shifting dynamics after the civil war

The civil war that erupted in 2011 drastically changed the dynamics of relationships with minorities.

Assad’s violent crackdown on opposition groups led to the displacement of more than 13 million Syrians, including over 6.8 million refugees, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. The war resulted in almost a half-million deaths, about half of which were civilians, and a devastated economy and infrastructure.

Alawites, Christians and Druze, who had previously enjoyed relative protection under the Assad regime, faced increasingly difficult choices as the war intensified. The escalating violence left these groups with few alternatives for survival.

Islamist opposition groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist group, threatened and persecuted Christians, Druze and Alawites, often viewing them as collaborators with the Assad regime. In August 2015, IS kidnapped more than 200 Christians in a village in central Syria. In July 2018, IS militants attacked the southwestern Druze city of Sweida and killed more than 200 people.

In response, hundreds of thousands of minorities, particularly Christians, fled Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon and other countries.

Without viable alternatives guaranteeing their safety, many minorities saw the Assad regime, despite its growing unpopularity, as their protector from sectarian violence.

Yet minorities in Syria were not uniformly united in their support for the Assad regime during the civil war. Although limited in number, some Christians and Druze joined opposition movements or advocated for neutrality. The opposition figures included Christian leaders such as George Sabra, a prominent member of the Syrian National Council, a key opposition group against Assad during the early years of the war.

In August 2023, Druze in Sweida organized protests against the Assad regime.

The situation for Syria’s Kurds has evolved significantly during the civil war. The Kurds seized the opportunity presented by the regime’s weakening control over large parts of Syria to establish self-rule in the northeastern region in 2012. They gained more legitimacy after playing a critical role in combating IS, with substantial support from the U.S. military.

Kurdish autonomy has provoked concerns, however, especially from Turkey, which is against the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish entity on its border. While the new leadership in Syria welcomed a partnership with the Kurds, it remains to be seen how the Kurdish demands for autonomy will be balanced with Turkey’s security concerns and Syria’s territorial integrity.

The fall of the Assad regime marks a turning point in Syria’s history. But, I believe, it also opens a chapter fraught with peril for the country’s minorities. The fate of these minorities will offer a glimpse into how inclusive the new Syria could become.

Ramazan Kılınç, Professor of Political Science, Kennesaw State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – The lightning-fast collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has sent shock waves across the Middle East. The disposal of the dictator whose family had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than half a century has triggered a potentially seismic shift in the balance of power in the region.

But there are also important repercussions beyond Syria and its neighbourhood – with Russia one of the more significantly affected powers.

Back in 2015, Assad’s regime had been on the brink of collapse. It was saved by a Russian intervention – with support from Iran and Hezbollah. Launched in the context of a growing threat from Islamic State, Russia enabled Assad’s regime to push back other rebel forces as well.

Over the years that followed, it enabled Assad to consolidate control over the capital, other key cities, and in particular the coastal region where Russia had two military bases.

The future of these bases is now uncertain. The Russian naval base in Tartus – which dates back to Soviet times – as well as an air base at Khmeimim, established south-east of Latakia in 2015, were vital assets for Russia to project military force in the Mediterranean sea and bolster the Kremlin’s claim to Russian great-power status.

Given the importance of the bases for Russia and the significant investments made over the years in propping the regime, Assad’s fall reflects badly on Russia’s capabilities to assert credible influence on the global stage.

Even if Russia somehow manages to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers over the future of its military bases, the fact that Moscow was unable to save an important ally like Assad exposes critical weaknesses in Russia’s ability to act, rather than just talk, like a great power.

There are clear intelligence failures that either missed or misinterpreted the build-up of anti-Assad forces by Qatar, and Turkey’s tacit support of this. These failures were then compounded by diminished Russian military assets in Syria and an inability to reinforce them at short notice. This is, of course, due to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

The depletion of the military capabilities of two other Kremlin allies in the region — Iran and Hezbollah — further compounded the difficulties for Assad and exacerbated the effect of Russia’s overstretch. This also raises the question of whether Russia strategically misjudged the situation and underestimated its vulnerability in Syria.

But even more so, it highlights Russia’s own dependence on allies who do not simply acquiesce to Moscow’s demands — as Assad did when he provided Russia its military bases — but who actively support a wannabe great power that lacks some of the means to assert its claimed status – as Iran and Hezbollah did in 2015.

Where’s China?

Missing from this equation is China. While Beijing had sided with Assad after the start of the Syrian civil war, this support was mostly of the rhetorical kind. It was mainly aimed at preventing a UN-backed, western-led intervention akin to the one in Libya that led to the fall of Gaddafi and has plunged the country into chaos ever since.

A high-profile visit of Assad to China in September 2023 resulted in a strategic partnership agreement. This seemed to signal another step towards the rehabilitation of the Syrian regime, in Beijing’s eyes at least. But when push came to shove and Assad’s rule was under severe threat, China did nothing to save him.

This raises an important question about Chinese judgment of the Syrian regime and the evolving crisis. But there is also a broader point here regarding Russian great-power ambitions.

“Diminished,” Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

For all the talk of a limitless partnership between Moscow and Beijing, China ultimately did nothing to save Russia from an embarrassing defeat in Syria. Where Russia needed a military presence to bolster its claims to great-power status, Chinese interests in the Middle East are primarily about economic opportunity and the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

This has clearly limited Beijing’s appetite to become more involved, let alone to bail out Assad.

Putin diminished

Russia’s position in the Middle East now is in peril. Moscow has lost a key ally in Assad. Its other main allies, Iran and Hezbollah, are significantly weakened. Israel and Turkey, with whom the Kremlin has not had easy relations over the past few years, have been strengthened.

This exposes the hollowness of Russian claims to great-power status. It is also likely to further diminish Russian prestige and the standing that it has in the eyes of other partners – whether they are China or North Korea, members of the Brics, or countries in the global south that Russia has recently tried to woo.

The consequences of that for Ukraine – arguably the main source of Russia’s over-stretch – are likely to be ambivalent. On the one hand, the ease with which Assad was deposed demonstrates that Russia is not invincible and that its support of brutal dictatorships has limits. On the other hand, there should be no expectation of anything but Russia doubling down in Ukraine.

Putin needs a success that restores domestic and international confidence in him —and fast. After all, Donald Trump does not like losers.

Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – Netflix faces calls for a boycott after it removed its “Palestinian Stories” collection this October. This includes approximately 24 films.

Netflix cited the expiration of three-year licences as the reason for pulling the films from the collection.

Nonetheless, some viewers were outraged and almost 12,000 people signed a CodePink petition calling on Netflix to reinstate the films.

Why is @Netflix purging so many of its films and content regarding Palestinians and Palestine?

Look at all of the Palestinian stories that are "leaving soon."

Israel is already trying to erase the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. Why is @Netflix erasing Palestinian… pic.twitter.com/rXEmcVqvJ8

— Sunjeev Bery (@Sunjeev_Bery) October 13, 2024

At a time when Palestinians are facing what scholars, United Nations experts and Amnesty International are calling a genocide, Netflix’s move could be seen as a silencing of Palestinian narratives.

The disappearance of these films from Netflix in this moment has deeper implications. The removal of almost all films in this category represents a significant act of cultural erasure and anti-Palestinian racism.

There is a long history of the erasure of Palestine.

Cultural erasure

Since the Nakba of 1948, Zionist militias have systematically ethnically cleansed Palestinians and destroyed hundreds of cities, towns and villages, while also targeting Palestinian culture.

Palestinian visual archives and books were looted, stolen and hidden away in Israeli-controlled state archives, classified and often kept under restricted access. This targeting of visual culture is not incidental. It is a calculated act of cultural erasure aimed at severing the connection between a people, their land and history.

Another notable instance of cultural erasure includes the thefts of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) visual archives and cinematic materials. In 1982, the PLO Arts and Culture Section, Research Centre and other PLO offices were looted during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Palestinian Cinema Institutions film archives were moved during the invasion and later disappeared. Theft and looting also occured during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s and recurrent bombardments of Gaza.

This plundering of Palestinian cultural institutions, archives and libraries resulted in the loss of invaluable cultural materials, including visual archives.

To maintain Zionist colonial mythologies about the establishment of Israel, the state systematically stole, destroyed and holds captive Palestinian films and other historical and cultural materials.

Palestinian liberation cinema

By the mid-20th century, Palestinian cinema emerged as a vital component of global Third Worldism, a unifying global ideology and philosophy of anticolonial solidarity and liberation.

Palestinian cinema aligned with revolutionary filmmakers and cinema groups in Asia, Africa and Latin America, all seeking to reclaim their histories, culture and identity in the face of imperial domination.

The PLO’s revolutionary films of the 1960s and 1970s were driven by the national liberation struggle and the desire to document the Palestinian revolution. Created as part of a broader campaign against colonialism and imperialism, PLO filmmakers aimed to rally international solidarity for the Palestinian cause through Afro-Asian, Tricontinental and socialist cultural networks.

Censorship

Censorship became one of the primary mechanisms for repressing cultural production in the Third World. Colonial and imperial powers, as well as allied governments, banned films, books, periodicals, newspapers and art that conveyed anti-colonial and anti-imperialist sentiments. Their films and cultural works were denied distribution in western and local markets.

Settler colonial states such as Israel rely on the destruction and suppression of the colonized narratives to erase historical and cultural connections to land. By doing so, they undermine Indigenous Palestinian claims to sovereignty and self-determination.

Many Palestinian cultural workers including writers, poets and filmmakers were persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, assassinated and killed.

In an essay about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacres, the late Palestinian American literature professor, Edward Said, explained how the West systematically denies Palestinians the agency to tell their own stories. He said the West’s biased coverage and suppression of Palestinian narratives distorts the region’s history and justifies Israeli aggression. For a more truthful understanding of history, Palestinians needed the right “to narrate,” he said.

Resistance

Despite the denial to narrate, generations of Palestinian filmmakers, including Elia Suleiman, Michel Khleifi, Mai Masri, Annemarie Jacir and many others, have contributed to and evolved this cinematic tradition of resistance.

Their films centre the lived experiences of Palestinians under settler colonialism, occupation, apartheid and exile.

By capturing the Palestinian struggle, freedom dreams, joy, hopes and humour, they help to humanize a population.

A scene from TIFF selection, Farha, about a girl trying to pursue her education in 1948 Palestine just before the Nakba.

After Netflix first launched the Palestinian Stories collection in 2021, the company was criticized by the Zionist organization, Im Tirtzu. They pressured Netflix to purge Palestinian films.

A year later, Netflix faced more pushback — this time from Israeli officials — when it released Farha, a film set against the backdrop of the 1948 Nakba. Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman even took steps to revoke state funding from theatres that screened the film.

The Israeli television series Fauda, produced by former IDF soldiers Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, remains on the platform. Fauda portrays an undercover Israeli military unit operating in the West Bank. The series has faced significant criticism for perpetuating racist stereotypes, glorifying Israeli military actions, and whitewashing the Israeli occupation and systemic oppression of Palestinians.

Such media helps to legitimize and normalize violent actions committed against Palestinians.

Suppression in the time of genocide

In a time of genocide, Palestinian stories, films, cultural production, media and visual culture transcend being mere cultural artifacts. They are tools of defiance, sumud (steadfastness), historical memory, documentation and preservation against erasure. They assert the fundamental right to Palestinian liberation and the right to narrate and exist even while being annihilated.

As such, in the past 400+ days, Israel has intensified its systematic silencing and erasure of Palestinian narratives.

One hundred thirty-seven journalists and media workers have been killed across the occupied Palestinian Territories and Lebanon since Israel declared war on Hamas following its Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on Oct. 7, 2023. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, there are almost no professional journalists left in northern Gaza to document Israel’s ethnic cleansing. It has been the deadliest period for journalists in the world since CPJ began collecting data in 1992.

Israel has also targeted, detained, tortured, raped and killed academics, students, health-care workers and cultural workers; many who have shared eyewitness accounts and narrated their stories of genocide on social media platforms.

Israel has censored and silenced Palestinian narratives through media manipulation, digital censorship and the destruction of journalistic infrastructure. Palestinian cultural and academic institutions, cultural heritage and archives have also been bombed and destroyed in Gaza, termed scholasticide. The aim of this destruction is to obliterate historical memory, and suppress documentation of atrocities.

The genocide and scholasticide will prevent the Palestinian people’s ability to fully preserve centuries of history, knowledge, culture and archives.

Netflix’s decision to remove the Palestinian Stories collection and not renew the licences of the films during this time makes it complicit in the erasure of Palestinian culture.

Chandni Desai, Assistant professor, Education, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Three-quarters of Earth’s land has become drier since 1990.

Droughts come and go – more often and more extreme with the incessant rise of greenhouse gas emissions over the last three decades – but burning fossil fuels is transforming our blue planet. A new report from scientists convened by the United Nations found that an area as large as India has become arid, and it’s probably permanent.

A transition from humid to dry land is underway that has shrunk the area available to grow food, costing Africa 12% of its GDP and depleting our natural buffer to rising temperatures. We have covered several consequences of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction in this newsletter. Today we turn to the loss of life-giving moisture – what is driving it, and what we are ultimately losing.

Why is the land drying out so fast? It’s partly because there is more heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases emitted from burning fossil fuels. This excess heat has exacerbated evaporation and is drawing more moisture out of soil.

‘Oil, not soil’

Climate change has also made the weather more volatile. When drought does cede to rain, more of it arrives in bruising downpours that slough the topsoil.

A stable climate would deliver a year’s rain more evenly and gently, nourishing the soil so that it can nurture microbes that hold onto water and release nutrients.

This is the kind of soil that industrial civilisation inherited. It’s disappearing.

“Soil is being lost up to 100 times faster than it is formed, and desertification is growing year on year,” says Anna Krzywoszynska, a sustainable food expert at the University of Sheffield.

“The truth is, the modern farming system is based around oil, not soil.”

Fossil fuels have unleashed agriculture from the constraints of local ecology. Once, the nutrients that were taken from the soil in the form of food had to be replaced using organic waste, Krzywoszynska says. Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, made with fossil energy at great cost to the climate, changed all that.

Next came diesel-powered machinery that brought more wilderness into cultivation. Farm vehicles as heavy as the biggest dinosaurs now churn and compact the soil, making it difficult for earthworms and assorted soil organisms to maintain it.

Tractors and chemicals served humanity for a long time, Krzywoszynska says. But soil is now so degraded that no amount of fossil help can compensate.

“Across the world, soils have been pushed beyond their capacity to recover, and humanity’s ability to feed itself is now in danger.”

Green pumps and white mirrors

The primary way that we have been making up for lost food yield is turning more forests into farms. This is accelerating our journey towards a drier, less liveable world because forests, if allowed to thrive, create their own rain.

“Water sucked up by tree roots is pumped back into the atmosphere where it forms clouds which eventually release the water as rain to be reabsorbed by trees,” say Callum Smith, Dominick Spracklen and Jess Baker, a team of biologists at the University of Leeds who study the Amazon rainforest.

“In the Amazon and Congo river basins, somewhere between a quarter and a half of all rainfall comes from moisture pumped from the forest itself.”

Image by MAMADOU TRAORE from Pixabay

Some experts have argued that the UN report understates Earth’s growing aridity by overlooking the water that is held in snow caps, ice sheets and glaciers. Climate change is melting this frozen reservoir, which also serves as a seasonal source of water.

“And as water in its bright-white solid form is much more effective at reflecting heat from the sun, its rapid loss is also accelerating global heating,” says Mark Brandon, a professor of polar oceanography at The Open University.

How do we adapt our relationship with the land to remoisturise the world? Krzywoszynska argues that there is no easy solution, but the future of food-growing “is localised and diverse”.

“To ensure that we eat well and live well in the future, we’ll need to reverse the trend towards greater homogenisation which drove food systems so far.”

The good news, according to Krzywoszynska, is that farmers are experimenting with methods that restore the soil even as they produce a diverse range of nutritious food. These innovators need rights and secure access to the land, the opportunity to share their experiences and financial and political support.

“Regenerating land is a win-win, for humans and their ecosystems, if we dare to look beyond the immediate short-term horizon,” she says.

Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – After more than a decade of brutal civil war, it took Islamist militants just 11 days to sweep through Syria and topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The offensive, which has been driven by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has forced many residents in western Syria to flee their homes in search of safety.

Meanwhile, others are celebrating the end of the Assad family’s five-decade rule. There are long queues of people and cars at Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing as displaced people return to Syria, and there is also significant congestion at the border with Turkey.

According to Ali Yerlikaya, Turkey’s interior minister, the monthly average of Syrians crossing the border nearly doubled in a single day after Assad was overthrown.

While these events have been unfolding, the situation in a de facto self-governing region in the country’s north-east called the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (also known as Rojava) has not received much attention in the international media. Emboldened by the success of the rebel offensive, the SNA is looking to gain ground in the region.

The region’s governing body has called the fall of Assad a significant moment and expressed hopes for a new chapter in Syria. And Rojava’s powerful armed groups, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have both also expressed optimism about the fall the Assad regime.

These statements reflect a shared sense of hope and a commitment to constructive dialogue and collaboration in shaping Syria’s future. But Rojava, which has been a beacon of Kurdish self-administration and democratic governance since the early 2010s when several districts declared autonomy, is under significant threat both from internal and external forces.

Internally, there are tensions between the SDF and Arab tribes over political influence and Rojava’s abundant natural resources. In Manbij, a city to the west of the Euphrates river in northern Syria, there have been heavy clashes between the SDF and the SNA since the start of the rebel offensive. The SDF reported successfully repelling multiple attacks, but eventually withdrew from the city.

Offensives have also reportedly begun in Kobane, which is seen as the birthplace of the Rojava revolution and a symbol of Kurdish resistance. The town is the site of a key battleground where Kurdish fighters defeated Islamic State (IS) in 2014.

In other cities in the region, such as Raqqa, Tabqa and the key desert city of Deir ez-Zor, Arabs are demographically more numerous than Kurds. The future of cooperation between the two groups in these Arab-dominated areas remains uncertain.

Over the past week, SDF fighters have captured Deir ez-Zor and have taken control of Syria’s main border crossing with Iraq. More recently, however, there have been reports suggesting that HTS fighters are gaining control of the city.

Externally, Turkish military operations aimed at weakening Kurdish control of the region are a constant threat to Rojava. Turkey views the SDF and YPG as extensions of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ party and acts to prevent the Kurdish autonomous region along its border from gaining political status, which Turkey views as a direct threat to its national security.

So, in cooperation with allied jihadist groups, Turkey has carried out several operations in northern Syria in recent years to establish a “safe zone” to push back Kurdish forces. Turkish forces previously seized control of the city of Afrin in the north-western reaches of Syria in 2018, which was then under Rojava’s control.

These actions have drawn international criticism, with accusations of human rights violations and war crimes. Sweden, along with several other European states, halted its arms trade with Turkey in 2019. However, Sweden later lifted the restrictions during its application process to join Nato.

Turkey plays a crucial role as an ally to Syrian opposition movements, particularly the SNA. It served as a vital support system for the rebel forces during the recent offensive, as it has done consistently in the past.

Rojava’s future hinges on its ability to navigate these complex dynamics. Maintaining US support is critical, as American military presence provides a deterrent against Turkish aggression. However, the region must also address internal divisions and work towards greater Arab-Kurdish reconciliation to ensure long-term stability.

The path forward

Syria’s opposition groups are highly fragmented, and we do not yet know how power struggles will unfold among them. One thing we do know is that HTS and its leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani have historic links to al-Qaeda and IS. The group is now presented in a more moderate light, but many uncertainties remain.

Rojava, on the other hand, has fought fiercely against IS, protected Yazidis during the genocidal campaign against them and established humanitarian corridors for their evacuation, and aspires to implement a multi-ethnic society based on the principles of direct democracy, ecology and gender equality.

The Charter of the Social Contract of Rojava safeguards these principles and ensures the representation and rights of Kurds, Arabs, Yazidis, Syriac-Assyrians, Turkmens, Armenians and others.

It is perplexing that, despite the apparent “confidence” in Jolani – a figure who was once branded “the world’s most wanted terrorist” – as a moderate revolutionary leader, there is scant recognition of the democratic model Rojava has offered since its establishment.

Instead of receiving the support it merits, Rojava is being targeted, raising questions about the international community’s priorities and the prospects for sustainable peace in the region. The Syrian people, in all their diversity and voices, must determine ways to build a truly inclusive and democratic Syria where all people can coexist in peace.

Pinar Dinc, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science & Researcher, Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Kurds caught in crossfire of Syria ‘power vacuum’ • FRANCE 24 English

(The Conversation) – When Hamas strategist Yahya Sinwar ordered the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis, he was planning to deal a mortal blow to an Israel weakened by internal divisions.

Sinwar, killed by Israeli forces in Gaza a year later, likely did not imagine that he was instead setting in motion a cascade of events that would bring down longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and weaken the Iranian “Axis of Resistance” alliance to which Hamas belongs.

Yet to understand the timing of Assad’s fall at the hands of rebels from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (the “Movement for the Liberation of the Levant,” or HTS), we need to consider the war triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel. That conflict has escalated into Israel’s invasion of Gaza, its war with Hezbollah and direct confrontations between Israel and Iran.

As we consider Syria’s future, we must also consider how it might be affected by the ongoing regional war in Gaza.

Gaza war set the HTS wheels in motion

So how is HTS’s stunning advance on Damascus linked to this regional war? HTS forces had planned their offensive six months ago and received tacit approval from Turkey, which shares a northern border with Syria.

At that time, the Lebanese Shi’a militia, Hezbollah, was still deploying thousands of troops in southern Syria to protect the Assad regime. Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, had long viewed Syria as a key link in Iran’s regional alliance because it was a crucial transfer point for Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah. Any HTS attack at this point would have faced stiff resistance.

Hezbollah, with tens of thousands of trained fighters and an arsenal of well over 100,000 missiles and rockets, was widely considered to be the world’s most powerful non-state army. But Hezbollah — whose daily rocket fire at Israel since Oct. 8, 2023, forced the evacuation of more than 60,000 Israeli citizens — overplayed its hand.

Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah would only stop firing rockets once Israel had reached a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. Suddenly, in September, Israel launched an offensive in which it killed Hezbollah’s military leadership and Nasrallah himself, followed by an invasion into southern Lebanon in which over 3,000 Hezbollah fighters were killed.

On Nov. 27, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire with Israel and began to withdraw its forces from Syria. That same day, HTS launched its invasion of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

A weakened Iran

Hezbollah was the capstone of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, a collection of militias in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria backed by Iran’s own military power. But after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Oct. 1, Israeli airstrikes a few weeks later damaged sensitive military facilities and wiped out Iranian air defences, exposing the country to further attack.

With Hezbollah weakened and Iran’s territory vulnerable, Syria’s Assad regime was the next domino to fall.

Syria fought wars against Israel in 1948, 1967, 1973 and 1982. How will its new government perceive Israel? HTS leader Mohammed al-Julani has said HTS, unlike al-Qaeda or ISIS, will not pursue anti-western violence. HTS praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks and supports the Palestinian cause, but since seizing power, HTS leadership has made no pronouncement specifically about Israel.

On Dec. 8, a group of HTS fighters in Damascus declared they will attack Israel next, but this does not necessarily represent the aims of the broader movement. Hezbollah’s recent battlefield setbacks would presumably deter other armed groups from confronting Israel, at least in the short term.

“New Flag,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Questionable Israeli, American moves

Yet recent Israeli moves risk starting off relations with a new Syrian government on the wrong foot. As Assad fled Syria on Dec. 7, Israel began waves of airstrikes targeting Syria’s remaining air force, missiles and navy, along with remnants of its chemical weapons program, to deny them to future hostile entities.

The United States similarly launched airstrikes against ISIS targets in northeast Syria. Since Dec. 8, Israel has also seized Syrian territory facing the highly strategic Golan Heights that the Israelis captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

The Israeli government claimed this capture of Syrian territory to be a “temporary defensive” move to ensure it would not fall into jihadist hands, but it was condemned by the United Nations and several Arab states.

On Dec. 10, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel does not want to “meddle in Syria’s internal affairs” or provoke war with HTS rebels, but that Israel is prepared to fight if attacked.

But the risk is real that Israel’s pre-emptive moves could spiral into a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the hostile forces Israeli authorities seek to deter could instead be provoked into attacking Israel.

And although Assad’s fall has struck a serious blow to the Axis of Resistance, it’s possible that weak governments in Lebanon and Jordan could fall next, creating a jihadist axis that would pose an entirely new security challenge to the region.

Daniel L. Douek, Faculty Lecturer, International Relations, McGill University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – In early December 2024, Hamas announced a major concession: It was prepared to cede future governance of Gaza to a unity Palestinian committee, working alongside its chief political rival, Fatah, to create the body.

Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has since expressed hesitancy about such an arrangement – which, in any event, would face stern opposition from Israel and likely the U.S., too.
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But the fact that Hamas would strike such a deal with a faction it took up arms against for the right to govern Gaza in the first place points to the militant group’s weakened position after more than a year of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza.

Israel’s recent ceasefire agreement in Lebanon has further damaged Hamas’ prospects by curbing Hezbollah’s direct support in Gaza and by extension that of Iran – leaving it even more isolated.

Hemmed in on all sides, Hamas has, from my observations as an expert on Palestinian politics, shifted its calculus for a post-Gaza war world. That it was Egypt pushing for a Fatah-Hamas deal is also noteworthy, as what ultimately transpires in terms of Gaza’s governance will likely hinge on the wishes of the governments in Cairo and Israel, both of which sees Gaza as the backyard of its national security.

An Egyptian plan for Gaza

Egypt, with tacit support from the United States, has been focused on what a future Palestinian political arrangement in Gaza might look like. To try to address this security and governance vacuum, Egypt convened the leaders of both the Fatah movement and Hamas in early December in hopes of establishing a governing committee to take over Gaza’s governance once the war ends.

In Cairo, Egyptian mediators proposed the establishment of a community support committee to be made up of Palestinian professionals and technocrats not affiliated with Fatah or Hamas. Abbas, who as leader of the Palestinian Authority has governance powers in the West Bank, subject to Israeli approval, would need to approve the committee.

Hamas’ quick acceptance of the Egyptian formula points to a group facing a far different security and organizational environment than it did prior to the escalation of conflict with Israel.

Shifting regional dynamics

When Hamas launched its attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, it did so knowing it could rely on active military support from its Hezbollah allies in neighboring Lebanon and ongoing financial and diplomatic cover from Iran.

Fast-forward 14 months, the position of Tehran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” looks far more tenuous. Hezbollah and Israel’s months of tit-for-tat violence along the Israeli-Lebanese border escalated into full-scale warfare that saw Israel expand its brutal military campaign into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah emerged from that fight severely wounded, having lost numerous members of its leadership to Israeli bombs.

The subsequent Nov. 26 ceasefire has effectively taken Hezbollah out of the Gaza conflict.

Meanwhile, Iran, which has exchanged rounds of missile volleys with Israel, has thus far been keen to outsource direct confrontation against Israel to its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies, seeking to avoid a prolonged military engagement with Israel.

With that regional military support curtailed, Hamas also finds itself facing a changed diplomatic landscape.

Since 2012, Qatar has hosted Hamas’ political leadership under an agreement with the United States. The small Gulf nation has since acted as a mediator between Hamas and Israel and the United States, which refuse to negotiate with the group directly.

But in early November, Qatar announced it was suspending its role in mediating Gaza peace talks, citing dissatisfaction with the process, though it has since suggested talks may be regaining momentum and that it was once again mediating.

In any case, U.S. officials have recently pushed Qatar to shutter its Hamas political office, and remaining Hamas political operatives there have reportedly decamped to Turkey.

Qatar is also eyeing a changed U.S. political scene, where an incoming Republican-led Congress and President-elect Donald Trump are likely to exert an even harder line on Hamas having any kind of political base outside of Gaza.

“Gaza’s Future,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Decimated, both militarily and politically

Alongside increasing isolation, Hamas has also sustained deep operational damage in the course of the Gaza war.

The recent Israeli killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar caused a vacuum at the very top. That came after Israel had already killed much of the senior military and political Hamas leadership in Gaza, not to mention high-profile political leaders outside of Gaza such as Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in July in Iran.

It’s not even clear who makes up Hamas leadership in Gaza as of December 2024, aside from Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, who is a member of the military wing of Hamas. Nor is it clear whether Hamas members outside of Gaza can even communicate with leaders within.

For now, prominent Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya has been involved in the talks with Fatah in Egypt. However, the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization – of which Fatah is the dominant faction – rejected the Egyptian proposal.

That doesn’t mean the proposal is necessarily dead in the water – just that Egypt will have to work with Fatah leaders to address their concerns.

A depleted movement eyes the future

While Hamas has been weakened militarily and politically, there is also little chance that Hamas will not remain an ideologically potent force, capable of drawing support from the many Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the West Bank and the broader Palestinian diaspora.

But as a governing entity, Hamas appears to be a spent force for the foreseeable future – something that members of the group readily acknowledge.

The recent Egyptian-hosted Palestinian talks, however fitfully, point to how any long-term future for Gaza – or the Palestinians as a whole – requires a more cohesive Palestinian political leadership.

Indeed, one shortcoming of the latest Egyptian plan is that it does not unite the Palestinians under a unified government, because the governing entity proposed will be responsible only for overseeing the Gaza Strip.

And trust between Hamas and Fatah remains low, as it has ever since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007 following a violent confrontation with Fatah.

Yet even if Hamas and Fatah would agree on a unity government, the broader reality is that cannot happen so long as Israel and its international allies, chiefly the United States, oppose it.

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas will play any role in the day after the war.

When the war is over

Yet apart from a permanent Israeli military occupation, it’s hard to see what options exist for Palestinians going forward absent some unification in Palestinian politics.

When Hamas won a major victory in Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, it was in no small measure due to Fatah divisions, corruption, widespread dissatisfaction with what the Oslo peace process had delivered and little sign for future progress toward a Palestinian state.

Almost 20 years later, none of those realities has meaningfully changed.

The devastation in Gaza has only compounded the humanitarian crisis and the difficulty of charting a long-term solution. Yet when the war in Gaza does come to an end, there will be no option but for Arab countries, including Egypt, the U.S. and the wider international community to help Palestinians in the enclave rebuild and seek some measure of security. The Palestinians who live there cannot afford another governance failure.

Mkhaimar Abusada, Visiting Scholar of Global Affairs, Northwestern University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Millions of Syrians are feeling hope for the first time in years.

The authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad fell on Dec. 8, 2024, after a 12-day rebel offensive.

Most commentaries on this stunning reversal of a conflict seemingly frozen since 2020 emphasize shifts in geopolitics and balance of power. Some analysts trace how Assad’s main backers – Iran, Hezbollah and Russia – became too weakened or preoccupied to come to his aid as in the past. Other commentators consider how rebels prepared and professionalized, while the regime decayed, leading to the latter’s collapse.

These factors help explain the speed and timing of the collapse of one of the Middle East’s longest and most brutal dictatorships. But these factors should not overshadow the human significance of Assad’s overthrow.

Assad’s fall in its revolutionary context

During the past two weeks, Syrians have rejoiced as symbols of Assad domination came down and the revolutionary flag went up. They held their breath as rebels freed captives from the regime’s notorious prisons. They shed tears as displaced people returned and families reunited after years of separation.

And then, finally, Syrians around the world poured into the streets to celebrate the end of 54 years of tyranny.

To appreciate the magnitude of this achievement requires historical context, one that I have documented in two books based on interviews with more than 500 Syrian refugees over the past 12 years.

My first book begins with stories of the suffocating repression, surveillance and indignities that characterized everyday life in the single-party security state that Hafez al-Assad established in 1970, and his son Bashar inherited in the year 2000.

It conveys tentative optimism as uprisings spread across the Arab world in 2011, blooming into exhilaration when millions of Syrians broke the barrier of fear and risked their lives to demand political change.

Syrians described participating in protest as the first time they breathed or felt like a citizen. One man told me that it was better than his wedding day. A woman referred to it as the first time she ever heard her own voice. “And I told myself that I would never let anyone steal my voice again,” she added.

It was not only the feeling of freedom that was unprecedented but also the feelings of solidarity as strangers worked together, of pride as people cultivated the talents and capacities necessary to sustain revolution, and, most of all, of hope that Syrians could reclaim their country and determine their own fate.

“We started to get to know each other,” an activist recalled of those heady days. “People discovered that they were photographers or journalists or filmmakers. We were changing something not just in Syria but also within ourselves.”

Hope eclipsed by despair

From their start in March 2011, nonviolent demonstrations met with merciless repression. That July, oppositionists and military defectors announced the formation of a “Free Syrian Army” to defend protesters and fight the regime. As this and other armed groups pushed the regime from large swaths of territory, new forms of grassroots organization and local governance emerged, indicating what society could accomplish if permitted the chance.

Still, as years passed, hope became eclipsed by despair.

The people I met described their despair witnessing the regime escalate bombardment, starvation sieges and other war crimes to reconquer areas from opposition control. Despair when Assad killed 1,400 people in a 2013 chemical attack, violating the United States’ purported “red line” but escaping accountability. Despair as hundreds of thousands of people disappeared into regime dungeons, condemned to a fate of torture worse than death. Despair as the number killed in Syria climbed by hundreds of thousands, and in 2014 the United Nations gave up counting more. Despair as over half the population was forced to flee their homes, and the word “Syria” became stuck, in minds around the world, to the words “refugee crisis.”

And then there was the despair as an entity called the Islamic State announced itself in 2013 and trampled on Syrians’ democratic aspirations in a newly horrific way.

“We don’t know where any of this is leading,” a rebel officer told me at that time. “All we know is that we’re everyone else’s killing field.”

Searching for home

With the help of external allies and the rest of the world’s inaction, Assad clawed back about 60% of the country by 2020 and penned the opposition in an enclave in the northwest.

Syria dropped from the headlines, even as regime bombing continued to kill civilians, economic meltdown plunged 90% of the population below the poverty line and the regime rotted into a narco state sustained by drug trafficking.

A woman I met during these years of stalemate summarized things bleakly: “The most important thing at this stage is to protect the last bit of hope that people have left.”

“Dead Dictatorship,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Meanwhile, millions of Syrian refugees, the lion’s share of them in the countries neighboring Syria, suffered poverty, legal precariousness and local populations who increasingly demanded their deportation.

The stories that I recorded gradually came to center on a different theme, which I made the focus of my second book: home.

For those compelled to flee, the word “home” connoted twin challenges: First, creating new lives where they might never have imagined stepping foot; and second, mourning old homes lost, destroyed or emptied of loved ones.

Many described the agony of reconciling their attachment to Syria with the sense that they were unlikely to see it again.

“You try as hard as you can to forget the homeland, but you can’t because it’s even more painful to be without any homeland at all,” a man lamented.

Finding home in refuge, in other words, was not only a matter of integration. It also meant finding a way to move forward when the hope for freedom in Syria, it seemed, could not.

This is why it is awe-inspiring to witness hope surge again. As I messaged Syrian friends and interlocutors this week, I was struck by how their jubilation echoed with stories that I used to record about 2011, but now on an even more astonishing scale.

Again and again, people said that their emotions were “indescribable” and “beyond words.” That they were simultaneously “laughing and crying.” That they “just couldn’t believe” that it – the it that they once did not dare voice out loud – finally happened.

Since Assad’s fall, many foreign governments and analysts have voiced foreboding warnings about the future. They need not; Syrians know better than anyone that the path ahead will not be easy.

For now, however, the role of those watching from afar is not to doubt, critique or speculate, but to honor this triumph of human hope.

Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous famously said in 1996, “We are doomed by hope, and what happens today cannot be the end of history.” Those who refused to give up over the long years of violence, oppression and disappointment were right. Syrian history is just beginning.

Wendy Pearlman, Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.