arab woman, us citizen, europa resident, poli sci phd. xenophobes, racists, misogynists, fascists, & associated haters are strongly encouraged to move along.
Joined February 2011
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It’s a building next to the Supreme Court and these protests, while inspired by the Flamingo revolution aka Jared, are led by students and young people with a list of grievances more akin to the demos in France and India. It’s very different than what we saw this summer.
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Seven years into the crisis, Lebanon’s retirees are selling property, considering returning to work, or turning to their children. Their savings remain illegally trapped and their retirement plans shattered, while the state, banks and BDL wrangle over prerogatives, sectarian considerations and who should bear the financial sector’s losses.
Many saved for decades because they could not count on a regular pension. That safety net is now beyond their reach, as inflation, soaring bills and medical insurance costs eat into what little they have. The pension system adopted in 2023 has yet to take effect and will exclude those who have already reached retirement age.
“The situation has become catastrophic,” one retiree tells me. Another no longer has hope of recovering his savings in his lifetime: “The money will probably go to my children … even to my children’s children.”
My report @LOrientLeJour @lorienttoday
today.lorientlejour.com/arti…
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.@ETANA_Syria on Syrians' experiences of the country's economic transition, based on focus groups nationwide: etanasyria.org/analysis-expe…
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"Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”
Congratulations Anne Carson! So well deserved.
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Syrians, meanwhile, are using their country's newly opened public space to resist. More on this in my latest:
peoplesplanet.substack.com/p…
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The resulting spectacle sums up the state of Western Syria policy: As EU states dispatch delegations to plot the return of refugees with their counterparts in Damascus, the capital is ringed by developments that threaten new, permanent rounds of dispossession and displacement.
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Once upon a time, European states were acutely concerned about Syrians' property rights.
In 2018, the Assad regime ramped up its use of new legal frameworks to expropriate swathes of real estate around Damascus under the banner of urban revival. 🧵
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NEW: “They decide who enters."
To leave or enter the isolated villages in Israel-occupied south Lebanon – some of the only villages still populated – residents need Israel's approval, and must rely on UN-escorted civilian convoys.
But UNIFIL’s mandate ends in three months. No replacement is on the horizon. And residents are grappling with what that will mean for them.
We joined them on one of the civilian convoys to Debel. It took 35 vehicles four hours and three checkpoints to get there. This was what our journey looked like.
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Honestly, whilst I've never been more hopeful for Syria's future, I'm also terrified at this purely capitalist economic model that leaves swathes of Syria's population in poverty and despair. Now is the time to put in place strong social foundations, before the window closes.
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.@AlexGSimon on new contestation in Syria over land expropriation and development: peoplesplanet.substack.com/p…
Does everyone already know about the impressive public database on national memories of the Syrian civil war?? An amazingly rich resource for researchers * students & anyone who is curious. There are 10,000 dissertation topics hiding in there! syrianmemory.org
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Chilling press crackdown in Egypt, where authorities have arrested the entire newsroom of the country’s top investigative news outlet.
Investigative work is hard anywhere, but much respect & solidarity for colleagues pushing for transparency even when the stakes are so high
Global Call for the Release of Entire Newsroom at Egyptian Investigative Journalism Platform Matsadaash
eipr.org/en/press/2026/09/gl…
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.@HaddonBarth for @SyriaTransition on how depictions of Syria as "rubble" – that is, a blank slate – make it easier to ignore the real politics of how Syria now rebuilds and resources are redistributed: syriaintransition.com/en/hom…
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Today Israeli terrorist settlers have set fire to hundreds of olive trees in Deir Sharaf, west of Nablus in the West Bank.
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UNICEF @UNICEFLebanon statistics show dire conditions “Children in Lebanon are going hungry, missing health care and dropping out of school as 4 in 5 households struggle to meet basic needs, 22% of households surveyed said their children had gone to bed hungry
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It's just gonna be a few days. In four days, it will be over. It's finished we won. They're all dead. All their leaders are dead. Just a few more weeks. They have no navy and no air force. Six weeks. It's over. It's just a matter of them giving up. We won already it's finished. But first we're gonna wipe out their whole civilization, unless we get a deal. We have a deal. It's over. The war is finished. They have nothing. It's over. In 10 days, their pipelines will blow up. In four or five weeks, they will have to cap their oil wells. Their economy finished. Soon they won't be able to pay their soldiers. The regime is finished. Just a few more weeks. It will end. We won. We're getting the oil out. But after the midterms, the Strait will be open. Or we'll annihilate them. Just a few more weeks.
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Made few comments in this article
1- “That ideological stance was also shaped by the leadership’s experience in Idlib, where the administration was propped up mainly by revenues extracted from levies on trade and had a limited social role in the economy”
ft.com/content/5313b05e-5057…
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Remember when, a year ago to the day, I wrote that electricity consumption patterns in Syria were a problem in themselves? Power came for only an hour or two at a time, and nobody knew when it would come back. So the moment it arrived, everyone plugged everything in at once: the washing machine, the chargers, the water pump, the backup battery, and in winter the heater.
It did turn out to be a problem, as confirmed by the Minister of Energy a week ago.
As supply increased, the network load jumped, and transformers started to explode. Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir confirmed this before Parliament on September 20: when supply rose from about 2 to 8 hours a day, transformers and lines had "no time to cool", and explosions multiplied.
My recommendation back then was that "the authorities should prioritize transparency by clearly communicating supply schedules", so that households could spread their use across the day.
What did the authorities do instead? They raised tariffs and cut subsidies, using price to force a change in behavior. The minister said so himself: the new tariff was also a technical measure to curb consumption (in addition to recovering some of the production cost, sure).
I don't think it's too late to still communicate supply schedules. With 18–20 hours of power in most governorates, a clear timetable would help households spread their use across the day, and it costs far less than a new transformer.
For the full picture of what was said at the hearing, Part 1 of my series is here: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-en…
In Syria, providing a steady supply of electricity is a challenge not only because generation has collapsed, but also because of the way households consume power when it does arrive.
Let me explain. I am in Damascus right now, and the state electricity just came on for two hours. Immediately, my roommates rushed to run the washing machine, charge all their devices, switch on the water pump to fill the tanks, and recharge the main battery to be used once the power cuts again. Had this been winter, we would also have turned on the water heater and the heating.
Why? Because no one knows when the next supply will come. The result is that per capita electricity consumption spikes dramatically during those short windows of supply.
As we reported in Syria in Figures last January, this “rush consumption” means that average daily use has jumped from about 1 KWh per person before the conflict to more than 8 KWh today.
(👉 Read the article here: lnkd.in/dqdtAAar)
So, as the number of electricity hours gradually increases, the authorities should prioritize transparency by clearly communicating supply schedules. If households know when power will be available in their neighborhoods, they can smooth out their usage over time rather than overwhelming the grid in short bursts. This would reduce per capita consumption during supply windows and, in turn, allow the same level of production to translate into more reliable provision across the population.
