Twelve years ago in August, ISIS fighters surrounded Sinjar in northern Iraq and set out to erase the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority. In its latest count, the Kurdistan Regional Government says 5,000 Yazidis were killed and 6,417 abducted. Of those taken, 3,595 have been rescued. That leaves 2,526 people whose families do not know whether they are alive.

Advocates estimate that about 1,300 of the missing were children when they were seized. A boy taken at eight is a grown man of twenty now, and a tender girl abducted at ten has spent more than half her life in someone else’s house, under conditions that can only amount to unthinkable. Researchers say there is no coordinated, systematic effort to find them, only sporadic rescues. That isn’t a plan; that is a flimsy grapple with hope.

Sadly, no one can say for certain where the missing Yazidis are. Investigators typically point to two possibilities: they are dead, or they were hidden. Some are dead. About 190 mass graves dot Sinjar, and most have never been exhumed.

One grave between Tel Afar and Mosul is said to hold seventy women whom ISIS judged too old to sell. Others may have been killed in coalition airstrikes on ISIS-held ground, and others concealed from reach.

Investigators believe captives were held in Syria, including in camps housing ISIS families, and even across Turkey. Intelligence trackers have told me that ISIS families forged passports and Arabic names, scattering abductees across the Middle East and North Africa. A child given a new name, a new language, and a heavy dose of indoctrination is very hard to find.

The cruelest possibility is that some of the missing no longer think of themselves as missing. ISIS took Yazidi boys to turn them into fighters. It gave them new names, drilled in them a new faith and, in some cases, erased even their native language, Kurmanji. A child abducted at eight is now twenty, having spent more than half his life under indoctrination and grown accustomed to a life he may not want to leave.

When I met Captain Khatoon Khider of the all-women Sun Ladies battalion eleven years ago, she was still waiting for her people to come home. She told me what frightened her most.

“We now have terrorist Yazidis, something that never used to be,” she tells me, her voice heavy.

These are children who were taken apart and rebuilt by their captors. By the time anyone comes looking, the boy in question may be a grown man who does not want to be found. Or he may not be alive to be found. Iraq hanged ten people on terrorism charges in just one week in September, and under its anti-terrorism law the offense carries the death penalty whether or not the defendant ever fired a weapon. A Yazidi boy conscripted at six and arrested at eighteen could face that same courtroom.

Women are no different. Investigative Judge al-Hussein Chfat al-Tameemi, who handles ISIS trials in Baghdad, tells me of survivors who beg authorities not to arrest their captors, even after watching those men murder their parents. Some Yazidis, once reunited with relatives in Sinjar, have fled back to ISIS-held areas, unable to live apart from the children they bore in slavery.

Rescue is not the end of the story, and that is part of why the search has gone quiet. Yazidi doctrine requires both parents to be Yazidi. Religious leaders broke with tradition and welcomed survivors home as victims, but their children by ISIS fighters are not welcome.

“The families accept the survivors, but only if they return without children,” Wansa Shamoon, a communications officer for the Coalition for Just Reparations, tells me. Some women are pressured into abortions, even in the final weeks of pregnancy. Others stay in captivity to keep their babies.

The top Yazidi spiritual leader, Baba Sheik, did not soften it.

“Our religion does not accept children unless both parents are Yazidi,” he said. “That is our law and our shame.”

Under Iraqi law, a child takes the father’s religion, which here means Islam. Yazidi mothers refuse to register their children as Muslim, so the children have no legal identity. They cannot enroll in school or see a doctor. Inside the camps, other children call them “ISIS kids.”

Imagine being a mother in that position, weighing a return home against a child she cannot bring with her. Now imagine the families who know all this and still wait by the phone.

There is some justice, even if it pales in comparison to the scale of the crimes.

France convicted a former ISIS member of crimes against Yazidi women and children this March, in absentia, and at least 18 more French nationals are under investigation. Germany was the first country to convict ISIS members of genocide against the Yazidis. Yet, the vast majority of perpetrators in Iraq have been prosecuted only under terrorism laws, not for genocide, so the crimes against the Yazidis have never been formally acknowledged in court.

Still, none of this brings anyone home. Years ago in Duhok, a survivor named Zana asked whether telling her story would make a difference.

“Yes,” I lied. I told her that because I could not bear to say what I knew, which is that atrocities do not stop because we documented the last one.

Zana’s sisters are still missing. So is the daughter of a man named Murad, whom I met in a crumbling home near Lalish, the holiest site in the Yazidi faith. ISIS held his daughter for two years. When I met her, she could not speak or sit up, and she lay folded into a fetal ball on the floor. “Her mind has gone somewhere else,” her father said, his eyes cast down.

Another anniversary statement will not move the needle. Each year, fewer cameras show up at the commemorations, fewer governments ask about the missing, and the plight of the Yazidis ever so slowly fades from our consciousness.

The window is closing. Witnesses age, memories fade, and the children who can still be found grow older and harder to identify. Rescuing them needs what the missing have always lacked: an organized, funded, international search with the same urgency we would bring to any other hostage crisis.

“The world has forgotten us,” an elderly Yazidi woman told me on a recent trip, her voice barely a whisper.

Sudan’s army stands accused of dropping chlorine on its enemies. Washington says it did and has imposed sanctions. Yet the two governments with the most sway over that army, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have not publicly backed America’s demand that inspectors be let in to check.

The war began on April 15, 2023, when the army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) exchanged fire in Khartoum. Once, the men giving the orders ruled together. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan leads the army, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, leads the paramilitary. It has been more than three years since millions of civilians fled their homes, and neither side has prevailed.

Burhan’s army presents itself as the legitimate state defending the nation against a rebel militia. Washington no longer accepts that description, and the chlorine allegations deepen the doubt.

So, who should demand proof when a military stands accused of gassing its enemies? The countries that sway it most have not publicly joined that call.

Omar al-Bashir, the dictator who had run Sudan for thirty years, fell in April 2019 after months of street protests. Generals and civilians then agreed to govern together until elections. That arrangement ended on October 25, 2021, when Burhan dissolved the ruling council and detained the civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok. Dagalo stood with him.

Since then, the army has fought alongside allies from Bashir’s old Islamist movement, which the revolution had tried to push out of politics. The largest is the Al-Bara' ibn Malik Battalion, a militia that grew out of Bashir’s Popular Defense Forces. The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the brigade last September, citing Iranian training and more than 20,000 fighters.

In March, the State Department designated the brigade and its political parent, which Washington calls the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization.

Washington’s language toward the army has also hardened. Massad Boulos, President Trump’s senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, says America does not recognize the current Sudanese government. American officials also withheld a visa Burhan needed for the United Nations General Assembly, linking it to a ceasefire proposal. He responded that Sudan cannot be blackmailed.

Let’s start with what the evidence shows.

Chlorine is a common chemical used to purify drinking water. Released as a gas from a bomb, it burns the lungs and can kill. Washington concluded in May 2025 that Sudan’s government used chemical weapons in 2024, and it has since imposed sanctions.

Two investigations published on September 5 add details. Built on leaked military material supplied by a regional intelligence service, they describe hundreds of chlorine-filled bombs, tests in the desert, chlorine apparently diverted from civilian water treatment, and efforts to scrub a storage base afterward. Intercepted messages suggest Burhan knew of the program.

Port Sudan, the Red Sea city where the army-run government has operated since the fighting reached Khartoum, denies the allegations. It says it is willing to work with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based treaty watchdog known as the OPCW, and that its own investigative committee was never meant to replace it. Outside experts call the dossier consistent with a weapons program but say only inspectors on the ground can settle the question. Washington has asked Sudan to grant access without conditions.

Neither Egypt nor Saudi Arabia has publicly joined that demand. Both belong, with America and the United Arab Emirates, to “the Quad,” the four-nation group trying to broker a ceasefire.

Egypt, which has deep military ties to the army, never joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. Saudi Arabia did, and holds a seat on the OPCW’s governing council through 2027, as Sudan itself does. Riyadh also co-hosted the 2023 Jeddah ceasefire talks, and in April Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman received Burhan there. Under the treaty, any member can request a challenge inspection of another. Blocking one takes a three-quarters vote of the council.

Several countries have asked the OPCW to seek clarification from Sudan. The OPCW has not named all of them. Former OPCW investigators warn that physical evidence fades with every month of delay.

Burhan’s recent Foreign Policy essay asks the world to trust Sudan to engineer its own peace. It calls for a single national army and treats the RSF as a rebel militia. The paramilitary grew out of the Janjaweed, the Arab militias Bashir’s government unleashed in western Sudan’s Darfur region to fight a rebellion that began in 2003. The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed.

Burhan was in Darfur then, too. He was sent there as the army’s regional commander, and researchers say he coordinated army and militia attacks on civilians. He denies wrongdoing and has never been charged.

None of this absolves the RSF. After they took the Darfur city of El Fasher last October, following an 18-month siege, United Nations investigators found hallmarks of genocide against the Zaghawa and Fur communities. Last month in Geneva, the same fact-finding mission told the Human Rights Council it has reasonable grounds to believe both sides committed serious violations that may amount to war crimes.

Washington’s refusal to confer legitimacy is welcome, but words alone change little. The Quad’s plan calls for a three-month humanitarian truce, and it needs enforcement. Washington has asked the Security Council to extend to all of Sudan the embargo on weapons shipments that has covered Darfur since 2004. That would squeeze both armies and the foreign governments supplying them. The United Nations says it is ready to investigate the chemical weapons claims if member states grant a mandate.

Civilians also need a seat at the peace table. Abdalla Hamdok, the former prime minister detained by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in 2021, now leads Sumud, a civilian coalition that says it supports neither side in the war.

Neither Burhan nor Dagalo should be allowed to trade a ceasefire for a claim to power. Sudanese took to the streets in 2019 to end rule by generals. A peace written by the men who ended that revolution would betray them.

This article was produced in partnership with the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University, where Sergio Altuna is a Senior Research Fellow.

In June 2025, al-Qaeda released a lengthy video calling for jihad over Gaza. But one of the religious authorities it turned to for support was not an al-Qaeda cleric. It was the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a Doha-based scholarly institution closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

IUMS had declared jihad an obligation for Muslim governments and armies, and al-Qaeda seized on the ruling. “Did anyone answer the call?” it asked in the video, released by its media arm, al-Saḥāb. It then took a jab at IUMS itself, describing it as the organization “located next to the American al-Udeid base in Qatar.”

Al-Qaeda did not need IUMS to make the case for jihad. It has spent decades developing its own religious arguments for armed struggle. So why was it turning to scholars associated with another Islamist movement to strengthen its own call?

This was not the first time al-Qaeda had drawn on an IUMS figure to make its case. In al-Qaeda Central’s first statement on the war, published only days after the attacks of October 7, 2023, the terrorist organization explicitly praised a fatwa from Mauritanian scholar Muhammad al-Hassan Ould al-Dedew, who serves as IUMS vice president.

Al-Qaeda introduced al-Dedew as “the distinguished Mauritanian scholar Sheikh Muhammad al-Hassan Ould al-Dedew—may God preserve him.” For a cleric outside the jihadist movement, the language was strikingly warm. It then praised his fatwa and reproduced a substantial portion of it in quotation marks. Al-Dedew argued that the whole Muslim Umma had an obligation to support Gaza and work for the liberation of al-Aqsa.

Al-Qaeda also directed readers to where the ruling had been broadcast: al-Aqsa TV, a television network the U.S. Treasury designated as being financed and controlled by Hamas. The sequence shows how the ruling traveled between the groups. The IUMS vice president issued the fatwa, a Hamas media outlet broadcast it, and al-Qaeda then cited it to support its own call for mobilization.

IUMS matters because it sits at the center of the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational scholarly infrastructure. Created in 2004 under Qaradawi’s leadership, it has developed over the years into one of the most prominent transnational platforms for religious authority associated with the Brotherhood. Its leadership has consistently included prominent Brotherhood figures, while Qaradawi himself spent decades at the center of the movement’s intellectual universe. Qatar has been central to IUMS’ rise.

IUMS has been headquartered in Doha since 2010; former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani sponsored its creation; and its senior leadership has long maintained deep ties to Qatari universities, financial institutions, and other parts of the country’s religious establishment.

The Brotherhood connection also runs directly through Hamas. Founded in late 1987, Hamas emerged as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—and its relationship with IUMS became especially visible after October 7. IUMS reacted little more than an hour after the attacks, publishing a stream of Gaza-related material that same day. Its secretary general, Ali al-Qaradaghi, prayed for God to “help our mujahideen brothers and grant them victory.”

Within twenty-four hours, IUMS organized an online event in support of “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’s name for its assault on Israel. More than a dozen scholars participated, with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh appearing as the guest of honor. Formal fatwas calling for jihad soon followed.

Against that backdrop, al-Qaeda’s June 2025 reference most likely points to a fatwa issued by IUMS just months earlier. The text explicitly declares jihad an individual obligation (fard ‘ayn) for every capable Muslim. It also makes military intervention and the provision of weapons, expertise, and intelligence a binding duty, first on Palestinians and neighboring countries and then on the wider Arab and Muslim world. Muslim governments, the fatwa reads, have an immediate obligation to intervene militarily, economically, and politically. It also declares “financial jihad” obligatory, calls on wealthy Muslims to help equip the mujahidin, and instructs scholars to pressure governments, armies, and institutions to act.

In one of its harshest provisions, the fatwa states that providing certain forms of support to Israel with the intention of weakening “the resistance” amounts to apostasy. When al-Qaeda later summarized IUMS’s position as having made jihad incumbent on armies and governments, it was closely tracking the language and substance of this ruling.

Al-Qaeda’s reliance on these rulings is striking after decades of hostility toward the Brotherhood’s political methods.

The two traditions share important parts of the same intellectual genealogy, but the Brotherhood’s gradualism, electoral politics and approach to governance, among others, have long been targets of jihadist criticism.

Gaza has opened a narrow area of overlap.

On this issue, Brotherhood-linked scholars are producing religious arguments that al-Qaeda can use directly. Hamas sits at the center of both moments. Its attack on October 7 created the immediate context; its television channel transmitted al-Dedew’s ruling; and IUMS provided a stream of religious arguments that presented the fighting as legitimate jihad, made support for it a religious duty, and placed the obligation to act on individual Muslims, governments and armies alike.

Qatar cannot be left out of this picture. IUMS issues these rulings openly within an institutional environment that Qatar helped create and has continued to support. The Union’s calls for jihad, military intervention, financial support to fighters, and pressure on Muslim armies have been public and repeated. These are formal religious rulings issued by a Doha-based institution with longstanding Qatari sponsorship and deep institutional ties to the state. The al-Udeid reference captures the contradiction al-Qaeda wants its audience to see.

So why is al-Qaeda quoting Muslim Brotherhood scholars on Gaza?

Because an al-Qaeda cleric calling for jihad is unlikely to persuade anyone who does not already accept al-Qaeda’s worldview. A fatwa from a prominent scholarly organization with an audience far beyond al-Qaeda is more useful. Al-Qaeda can hold it up and say, in effect, that this is not just our argument. Other Muslim scholars are saying it too.

That does not mean IUMS and al-Qaeda are the same organization, share the same political strategy, or have suddenly become allies. Their differences are real, and al-Qaeda has spent decades attacking the Brotherhood’s approach to politics.

But Gaza has created an area where some of their arguments now overlap. IUMS scholars have called jihad a religious obligation, urged Muslim governments and armies to act, called for financial support for fighters, and placed religious pressure on Muslims to support the war against Israel. Al-Qaeda does not have to invent or reinterpret those arguments. It can quote them.

That is why these fatwas matter beyond IUMS itself. Once published, they do not stay within the audience or political movement that produced them. Al-Qaeda can lift the same religious arguments, place them inside its own propaganda, and use the credibility of scholars outside the jihadist movement to strengthen its message.

The troubling part is not that al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood have become the same. They have not. It is that on Gaza, a Brotherhood-linked scholarly institution is producing religious arguments that al-Qaeda finds useful enough to quote.

Anas AlKharboutli raises his head briefly as colleagues approach shouting his name. Fogging obscures the wound sustained moments earlier when a missile strike severed his legs. He is still clutching his camera, which would reveal a blurry photograph of the aircraft that killed him on December 4, 2024, days before the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime marked the end of the Syrian civil war.

The 32-year-old photojournalist was on his way to cover the liberation of Hama with four other journalists when he sensed the danger overhead. Advising his colleagues to spread out, he raised his camera to capture evidence for the last time.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) recorded the killing of 183 journalists at the hands of the Assad regime and its allies since the start of the civil war in 2011. AlKharboutli would be the last. Almost two years later, the risks he confronted to document government violations and the suffering of displaced Syrians have receded, but journalists say new impediments still limit their freedom to report.

In an interview from March 2023, he explained: “My project is to bear witness to the events in Syria until the end of this war. I don’t know if I’ll still be alive by then, but my goal remains to document it.”

The footage appears in an RSF documentary on journalists hunted down by former President Bashar Al-Assad. Under his rule, Syria became one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters. Critics of the regime were regularly detained and interrogated by the feared mukhabarat (the Arabic term for intelligence), and the fates of dozens of journalists who disappeared are still unknown.

The rebel offensive that overthrew the former dictator on December 8, 2024 dismantled this machinery of state repression. In the chaotic aftermath of his fall, journalists began pouring back into the country, taking advantage of the unprecedented freedom to expose the horrors hidden by the Syrian state.

Iraqi photojournalist Osama Al Maqdoni took pictures of cells and interrogation rooms at Sednaya Prison, known as the “human slaughterhouse” and part of a vast network of detention facilities where torture was applied on an industrial scale. Covering the first days after the fall of the regime for international media outlets, he witnessed the extraordinary vacuum left by 53 years of Assad family rule.

“I traveled freely through different cities across Syria, but there was an underlying sense of fear, knowing that I was moving through a country where there was no real authority in place,” he said. “There was a sense of joy at his removal, but it was mixed with fear, uncertainty, and anxiety about what lay ahead.”

For journalists working under Assad’s authoritarian regime, the red lines were sharply defined. Covering government abuses and institutional failures risked imprisonment, exile, or worse. Now, the boundaries have blurred as the Syrian government recalibrates its relationship with the media, proclaiming a new era of press freedom after almost 14 years of civil war.

“The spaces for work are wider; more journalists are daring to use their names, and more are daring to do investigations…but that doesn’t mean that journalists feel safe to cover any topic that is in the public interest,” said Zaina Erhaim, a Syrian Journalist working as a consultant and journalism trainer across the region.

In a year when press freedom is at a 25-year low, RSF reported a 36-place rise in Syria’s position on its World Press Freedom Index, marking the largest improvement of any country in 2026.

Progress was identified across all five of the indicators RSF uses to gather data, boosting Syria’s standing from 177^th out of 180 countries and territories on the index to 141^st globally, above Jordan, the UAE, Egypt, and Turkey. Despite this impressive ascent, Syria remains in RSF’s “very serious” category.

“It’s a huge achievement, and it’s important to celebrate it. But the situation is still very difficult,” said Jonathan Dagher, head of the Middle East Desk at RSF. The biggest factor behind the rise was the regime change, he added, comparing the scope of work under the current government with the “no-go zones for the press” that existed under Assad.

For Syria’s transitional government, media liberalization has become a litmus test for its commitment to a more open and pluralistic Syria. Today, media freedoms unimaginable under Assad rule have been written into the country’s new Constitutional Declaration, while Interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa has promised “wide media freedom with few restrictions.”

In early September, Information Minister Khaled Zaarour announced the completion of a new draft media law that, according to the ministry, would guarantee journalists access to information, protect the confidentiality of sources, and replace imprisonment for media-law violations with financial penalties.

The world is waiting to see how far these promises translate into greater freedoms on the ground. Journalists and international organizations describe “genuine liberalization” but point out that the bar for improvement was extremely low. For media freedom to be guaranteed, they say, government promises must be backed by enforceable rights that let journalists access information and protect their sources.

“Under Assad, independent journalism was virtually impossible inside government-controlled Syria, and hundreds of journalists were killed, imprisoned, disappeared, or forced into exile over decades. Moving from that environment produces a dramatic statistical improvement even before strong institutions protecting press freedom have been established,” The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said.

Greater freedom of movement, less direct censorship, and far more room to report critically are among the improvements cited in CPJ’s December 2025 report, which balances this progress against the risks of reporting in a fragmented environment where dangers shift and rules remain unclear. “Journalists described freedoms they had not experienced for decades, while warning that the foundations of genuine press freedom were not yet secure,” CPJ told Middle East Uncovered.

Permits and accreditation are often cited as barriers to impartial reporting. Access to information and events can hinge on subject matter and location as well as a journalist’s gender or ethnicity, their affiliations, and the interests of the local authority in control.

Covering northeastern Syria, Kurdish journalist Akhtain Asaad has found that bureaucratic barriers can determine which stories are covered. His efforts to investigate oil-burning pits near the Al-Yarubiyah border crossing were blocked when he couldn’t obtain the necessary permits. “I am not free enough, though things are better than before, [but] the requirement for security clearances and approvals for media organizations in Syria remains an obstacle to a free press.”

Away from the checkpoints, obstacles also emerge when reporters request information. Pursuing a report on the Syrian Petroleum Company, Rasha Naddaf, a journalist with Al Jumhuriya, followed up on promises by its executive director to issue the company’s final organizational structure.

The paper contacted the Ministry of Information’s public-relations office, which referred them to the press office. “The press office said the questions were technical and referred us to the public-relations office at the Ministry of Energy, which then referred us to the Syrian Petroleum Company’s public-relations office,” Naddaf said. The company did not respond before the report was published.

“Press freedom begins with access to information, yet this right is not available in practice,” she said. “When no institution is responsible, when there is no deadline for a response, and when there is no effective right to access public information, journalism is obstructed without the need for a written censorship order.”

Naddaf left Syria in 2018, after her pseudonym was exposed. The last story she reported inside the country covered the attacks by ISIS on Suwayda, examining whether the Assad regime bore any political or security responsibility for the atrocities committed against the local Druze minority.

Her article held those in power to account at a time when questioning the state was extremely dangerous. For journalists from minority communities in particular, the government’s expressed commitments to press freedom have not yet translated into a feeling of safety or equal access to work.

A report by the Coalition of Women Journalists recounts the “precarious reality” faced by female Alawite reporters, whose gender and identity expose them to multiple layers of risk.

Lara describes the pressures of self-censorship for Alawite reporters as “intense,” and steers clear of some stories to avoid being perceived as “a mouthpiece for her sect.” Another reporter, Zein, says the pressure comes from within her community. “If I work on cases like Ghazal Ghazal, I might lose the people around me. “I cannot criticize anything in my community in a professional way.”

The coastal violence in March 2025 marked a turning point for some. One reporter, Doaa, felt able to “breathe again” after Assad’s fall because she no longer feared arrest. The massacres that killed over 1,000 Alawites changed that, and she was unable to write for three months. “My entire life stalled, and I experienced panic attacks.” She now uses a pseudonym to publish certain stories.

The practicalities of reporting can also prove more complicated for minority journalists, with identity shaping their freedom of movement, access to sources, personal safety, and how their work is perceived.

Naddaf had hoped to go back to Syria after Assad’s fall but said that, as a Druze journalist, the conditions required for a safe return do not yet exist. To feel secure, she said journalists of all backgrounds need equal protection under the law, regardless of sectarian identity, region or political position. She also pointed to the need for transitional justice and accountability for past abuses, without which new protections will be difficult to trust.

Uncertainty surrounding the future structure of Syria’s laws and the mechanisms to implement them remains a fundamental barrier to a free press. For now, repression has not disappeared; it has become more diffused, taking new forms that disproportionately affect certain reporters and outlets.

Radio Rozana is among several independent media outlets, alongside Enab Baladi and Al Jumhuriya, that are reestablishing a presence in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime. Their ability to report in Syria again clearly signals that space has opened up, but the parameters of that freedom are hard to define.

Co-founder Loujein Haj Youssef was frustrated when Rozana received a one-year license, despite paying fees to cover five. “Each time, a different justification was given for not granting the license for the requested period,” she said.

Meanwhile, reports have emerged of preferential treatment for government-aligned influencers and media outlets, which were given privileged access to officials and information. Three journalists were detained while trying to cover government clashes with Kurdish forces in Aleppo last January, while select outlets were afforded greater access to work.

The changes in Syria’s media landscape are part of a broader transition as the country emerges from decades of authoritarian rule and a divisive civil war. A new space has emerged for journalists to play a role in building a “healthy society,” but the institutions needed to uphold press freedom regardless of who is in power are not yet in place. For Syrian journalists, many vital questions remain unanswered.

The test, CPJ said, comes “when independent reporting becomes uncomfortable for those in authority—when journalists investigate security-force abuses, corruption, treatment of minorities, conflict operations, or failures of government policy.” For reporters such as Naddaf, that is not yet the case. “I do not see Syria today as a freer country for journalists, and I do not describe it simply as less repressive than it was under Assad. I see it as more arbitrary and less institutionalized,” she said.

Middle East Uncovered uses pseudonyms to protect our sources in Afghanistan.

Somewhere in Kabul, Afghanistan, a Hazara woman visits her community mosque, where a curtain segregates the women from the men. She prays to the 12 imams, surrounded by women who, like her, seek answers, guidance, or a stroke of luck. Every so often, she stifles a giggle when prayers evolve into desperate wails. In the end, they embrace and affirm each other’s hopes, and these small moments remind her why people go to the mosque in the first place.

This may seem like an ordinary scenario in a Muslim country. But the woman, 22-year-old Begum, is an ex-Muslim and considered a murtad, or apostate, in her home country. In Afghanistan, leaving Islam carries profound social stigma and can also be punishable by death. “I’m not a Muslim. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t practice it.” She even jokes about how far she has moved from the faith, describing herself, with deliberate exaggeration, as more “Islamophobic” than anyone she knows. Given that religion has been invoked to justify many of the restrictions governing nearly every part of her life, her bitterness toward it is not difficult to understand.

Despite this, she attended the mosque with her mom on Tuesday, an acquiescence that greatly appeased her devout parents, out of desperation. She needs a miracle to leave Afghanistan and attend college, an opportunity the Taliban robbed her and millions of other girls and women of after its 2021 takeover. She’s leaning toward studying cybersecurity and AI abroad; originally, she planned to pursue a degree in biology, but years of waiting to leave Afghanistan forced her to reconsider. The sciences appeal to her logical mind, and over the years, studying them was what slowly chipped away at her Muslim identity.

In the first few months of 2025, after countless hours spent filling out college applications, drafting essays, and saving money from teaching online Persian lessons, Begum was accepted to universities in Michigan and North Carolina. “I felt unrealistic happiness. I was over the moon; it gave me some hope that I hadn’t had for a while, and I had incredible mental stamina. Nothing bothered me anymore—I was just happy because I had my ticket out.”

She recalls paying closer attention to everything around her during this time, an intentional exercise she felt was necessary to remember everything she would be leaving behind. This vivid embedding of the most mundane details of her life was how she would keep home with her once she left: the smell of her house, the taste of familiar food, even the ordinary sights and sounds she had barely noticed before.

The high started to falter as news that President Trump was considering a travel ban on Afghan nationals percolated across the internet. Bracing herself for bad news wasn’t a new skill she had to hone, but it was one she still dreaded. Inevitably, in late 2025, the ban was made official, and her world came to a screeching halt. She recalls feeling like a ball, as if she were confined to the smallest part of her body. When discussing this period of her life, she senses her emotions getting the best of her: “I can feel my nose is telling me I’m going to cry,” she says in a WhatsApp voice note and quickly ends the recording.

In the months after the U.S. travel ban took effect, Begum struggled to find motivation to do much of anything. The work she had put into getting out was reversed by an administration that would never know her potential or drive, nor would it ever care.

It was a blow to her hopes, yet eventually she restarted the process, this time applying to schools in countries like Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Romania, Lebanon, and China. She was rejected by a school in Bangladesh: “They didn’t take me, oh my God,” she laughed sardonically.

For better or for worse, being confined to her home gave her time to navigate different countries’ college application processes and requirements, and in 2026 she was accepted into Qingdao University, one of seven Chinese schools she applied to (four of which she was accepted into). Yet getting into a school abroad is only half the battle: the hard part is getting out of Afghanistan.

Navigating the visa process is nightmarish, especially as an unmarried woman, because it essentially penalizes being single. To leave the country, Begum needs permission from the Taliban, a student and transit visa, and a visa for her mahram, the male relative required to accompany her. While no law technically forbids women from studying abroad, the mountain of near-impossible hurdles one must clear acts as its own deterrent.

Two common requirements for international students’ university applications are impossible for women to obtain in Afghanistan: a TOEFL score, which measures English-language proficiency, and a “stamped” high school diploma verifying graduation. Women can’t sit for the TOEFL exam, and the Taliban stopped stamping high school diplomas after the 2021 takeover.

According to UNESCO, roughly 90,000 women were enrolled in Afghan universities before the Taliban banned them from higher education entirely in 2022. Today, UNESCO estimates that nearly 2.4 million girls have been prevented from pursuing secondary education, a projection that Begum is, fortunately, not part of.

Begum describes the infuriating experience of having to go with her brother to request her non-criminal record, only to be treated like a criminal by the officer, who, unsurprisingly, addressed only her brother. War and humanitarian crises have further complicated the situation, and the agility with which Begum has navigated each new obstacle would exhaust most people.

She considered every country adjacent to Afghanistan at one point: Pakistan was the most common, but it was cracking down on Afghan travel; Uzbekistan would arguably be easier, but the visa cost is an exorbitant $3,000; Iran is both affordable and less complicated on paper—she could enter without a mahram if she presents her trip as a religious pilgrimage, but there are obvious risks involved with that option due to the war and Iran’s own instability; and she pursued Tajikistan, but to this day, both visa applications (one for her, one for her father) are still pending.

In her desperation, she has even entertained a “very, very, very, very last option”: bribing an airport official to let her fly, an approach she knows is illegal, dangerous, and could land her in prison.

For now, Begum is still waiting for her dad’s visa approval while quietly pursuing back-channel conversations about riskier ways out. She has no plans to return to the mosque, unless her mom’s insistence wears her down again. That Tuesday visit was a one-off Hail Mary, a last resort in a country where every possible way forward seems to lead to another dead end.

After years of navigating a system designed to stop her, Begum has learned that getting out may mean beating the Taliban at their own game: chipping away at the system one step at a time, searching for cracks in the barriers meant to keep her trapped until she finds one wide enough to make her escape.

Rojin spent a year and a half training in front-end programming and was preparing to start freelancing when the internet was suddenly shut down nationwide. Now, she says she feels as though a year and a half of hard work has led nowhere. She has nothing to hold on to and no longer knows how to prepare for the future.

Rojin’s story is one of thousands of accounts being circulated these days among Iranian freelancers, Instagram shop admins, and online instructors: people who, because of a single government decision, lost their means of livelihood overnight. Internet access has still not been fully restored, and for many, even getting back online will not undo the damage already done.

More than 32 million people in Iran depend on the internet, directly or indirectly, to earn a living. Ride-hailing drivers, exporters of digital services, and small businesses that in recent years found their only escape from economic stagnation online—all of them were part of an economy that was brought to a standstill by the order to cut the connection. The internet blackout amounted, for many, to being forcibly laid off.

The unstated but obvious goal of the shutdown was to silence dissent and prevent images of January’s brutal crackdown on protesters from reaching the outside world.

But the consequences struck an economy already standing on the edge of a cliff. According to field reports, in the first days of the shutdown, the volume of active projects on one of the country’s largest freelancing platforms declined by as much as 96 percent. Even weeks after connectivity partially returned, activity across the freelance market was still less than a third of what it had been before the blackout.

Jina was one of the people caught in that fallout. She managed the Instagram accounts for the digital marketing department of a company located just outside Tehran. During the first blackout, which lasted roughly 40 days from December 2025 into January 2026, she kept working part-time, relying on domestic platforms and hoping the internet would return. But during the second stint, once the war had paused and her colleagues had gone back to work, she was told not to return to the office until the internet was fully restored, since her job depended entirely on it:

“Once that blackout passed two and a half months—and relying on domestic platforms hadn’t gotten us anywhere—the company settled my accounts after five years on the job, and I was out of work.”

According to a report by Radio Zamaneh, millions of Iranians have come to depend on internet access for their livelihoods in recent years, providing a way to receive orders, get paid, find customers, coordinate with colleagues, and deliver services. When the internet stopped working, the impact was immediate but difficult to measure. Unlike a formal layoff, much of the disruption happened off the books and was initially invisible in official statistics.

But more than 8 months after the initial blackout, we have a fuller picture. In just three months following the wave of shutdowns, 450,000 people lost their jobs, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 9.1 percent. The burden fell disproportionately on young people: today 1 in every 4 young Iranians is entirely without work and more than 2.5 million people are actively searching for jobs—all while point-to-point inflation has climbed to nearly 90 percent and household purchasing power keeps eroding by the day. These figures landed on a country already grappling with capital flight, sanctions, and structural mismanagement—a body with no capacity left to absorb another blow.

And the regime has offered little to fall back on, having failed for decades to create enough jobs for Iran’s growing workforce. Foreign investment remains limited by political risk, the state and quasi-state sectors devour a large share of resources, and structural corruption in institutions like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has blocked private-sector growth. For millions of Iranians, especially young people shut out of the formal job market, the internet offered a way to make a living. With little support from the state, and often despite the obstacles it created, they built jobs for themselves online.

Hajir was one of them. After finishing his master’s degree and losing hope of finding work in his field, he taught himself web design and, together with a friend, launched an online shop with the bare minimum of stock:

“We weren’t making much money, but it wasn’t bad for a start. Still, last year’s conditions, and an internet blackout that dragged on for five months, made us give up on it completely. Now my friend is back at his father’s house, and I drive for Snapp.”

By cutting the internet, the state took away even this self-made opportunity.

The regime typically defends these restrictions as necessary for “national security” or to contain “unrest.” But the reality on the ground tells a different story. A policy purported to protect the country is, in practice, strangling an economy that the state itself has never been able—or willing—to build an alternative for.

Awat, a cosmetics importer, had stocked up for the New Year sales season and was counting on his online shop to sell the products. Then the internet was cut off. Sales stopped, but the bills didn’t. He was left with unsold inventory, checks coming due, and debts he had expected those sales to cover.

His cousin, Hiwa, is a vocal instructor with 70,000 followers on Instagram. He held his classes online for students both inside and outside Iran, and all of his income came from his Instagram page and online teaching. Now he is stuck at home, with no classes and no income. As he put it, “It feels like they took my job away from me overnight. I don’t know how long I’m supposed to go without an income. Seventy thousand people follow me, but these days I can’t even hear a single one of them; my classes are gone, and I don’t know what to do with this silence.”

Rojin, Jina, Hajir, Awat, and Hiwa are part of a generation of Iranians who found ways to make a living in an economy that offered them few opportunities. They learned new skills, found customers online, and built something of their own. And they aren’t just mourning the opportunities already taken from them. They are also confronting the possibility that the next job, client, or chance to build something for themselves may never come.

Iranians have long lived with limits on what they can say and do. Now many are being pushed into a more immediate struggle: how to make enough money to survive.

From the village of Umm al-Khair in the occupied West Bank, , a senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism, is in a prime location to witness the results of the violence carried out by extremist settlers:

“The village is under siege. Mere meters from the home in which I stand, the army has declared ‘a military zone’,” he writes on his Substack. “This means that families who’ve lived here for decades can’t enter parts of their own land, can’t reach their livestock (except 5 minutes a day to feed them) or even access their toilet. Yet the settlers hang out on that very land with impunity, and mock… Here is a whole row of new settler homes, built in one single night and connected to the grid, with all modern facilities. The Palestinian families don’t have that.”

Wittenberg’s post was in response to the United Kingdom’s (UK) Government’s decision to sanction illegal settlements in the West Bank. His intervention is significant because it illustrates that criticism of settlement expansions is not confined to Palestinian or international voices; it is also coming from within conservative Jewish communities.

The sanctions will ban settlement goods and target companies and individuals that provide services for settlement expansion, following a period in which violent settlers forcibly evicted more than 2,200 Palestinians from their homes in the first half of 2026.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said:

“For too long, we have been hesitant to act, fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel. Today we are announcing carefully judged, targeted steps that are not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the unacceptable policies of the current Israeli government.”

Over the next six to nine months, the UK will introduce “a new comprehensive sanctions regime.”

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the move marked the “beginning of a new approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which “not only calls out injustice and suffering, but acts.”

Miliband said this position, in line with a 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, should be reflected in the UK’s “economic relationship” with the occupied West Bank.

Until now, Britain has largely dealt with settlement expansion through diplomacy and public criticism. The new measures add economic consequences.

The sanctions do not necessarily represent a rejection of Israel itself. Rather, they demonstrate a growing willingness among Western governments to distinguish between support for Israel’s security and opposition to policies pursued in the occupied territories.

While some have dismissed these measures as “symbolic” and cynically timed with the upcoming parliamentary by-election in Holborn and Saint Pancras—forced by the sudden resignation of former prime minister Keir Starmer—others point to France and Canada, which have followed suit with their own import bans.

The fact that other European states are moving in the same direction suggests that the issue is shifting from individual national criticism to a broader international response.

Nine additional countries have promised to “introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements.”

A recent poll revealed that the majority of the British public overwhelmingly supports the trade restrictions, as Labour takes a tougher stance against Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank.

The sanctions and resulting countermeasures have brought UK-Israel relations to their lowest point since the creation of the Jewish state.

Israel has reacted with fury. Gideon Saar, the foreign minister, lashed out at Miliband, saying his speech was based on “outrageous lies.”

Saar promptly ordered the closing of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, and evicted British officials from an international center coordinating support for Gaza in southern Israel.

Israel’s retaliation also shows how consequential it regards the shift in British policy.

And the potential consequences of the sanctions extend beyond the Israeli government and settlement businesses.

Interviews with Palestinian workers in the West Bank highlight the real dilemma they face by opposing settlements, while also being concerned about the impact this could have on their livelihoods.

Can these policies achieve their political objective while minimizing unintended economic costs for the very population they are trying to protect?

Opinion remains divided, even among Britain’s Jews. While Ephraim Mirvis, the UK’s spiritual leader of mainstream Orthodox Jews, described the sanctions as a “dark day for British Jews,” warning that they could embolden people who “use hatred as a weapon against Jews,” those from the progressive wing of the community have backed the recent measures.

“What is happening in the West Bank is Chillul HaShem, a violation of God’s name of the worst order,” said Wittenberg. “We cannot stay silent. This is terrible for Palestinian people who want to get on with their lives in peace. It is terrible for Israel.”

Criticism is no longer coming exclusively from foreign governments or international organizations. Former senior Israeli officials themselves argue that the country’s current policies are damaging their country’s interests and require external pressure.

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister from 2006-2009, has denounced extremist settlers and their backers as a “group of murderous criminal terrorists” seeking to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

He said the perpetrators frequently receive “active assistance” from the army, law enforcement, and members of the Israeli government, such as ultranationalist ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Michael Ben Yair, Israel’s attorney-general from 1993-96, said that while he did not “relish” these actions being taken against his country, the sanctions were a “necessary move” for a two-state solution:

“...What we are witnessing today, under [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s leadership, has crossed a threshold that was previously unimaginable. Extremist Jewish settlers run amok against Palestinians while the Israeli security forces stand idly by,” he wrote in an article for the Financial Times.

“I wish for the day when the citizens of Israel will wake up and tell their government they no longer want to occupy millions of people against their will,” says Ben Yair. “But in its absence, those of us who see the true danger of this situation look to our allies in the international community to act for us.”

Perhaps more significant than Britain’s decision is Washington’s response, which was less predictable than usual.

For decades, US-Israeli relations have been central to Israel’s ability to resist diplomatic pressure from other Western states. Experts warned prior to the announcement that the US would punish Britain if it moved forward with the sanctions.

But when Burnham called the US president to inform him of the decisions, Trump “did not push back or ask Mr Burnham to change course,” according to the American news outlet Axios and the Times of Israel.

Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel and a Christian Zionist, went on to accuse Miliband (who is Jewish) and the British government of “Jew hate.”

But Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, refused to condemn the UK’s action, saying that the US and UK shared the same goals over violence in the West Bank.

Some analysts have linked this to growing tensions between Trump and Netanyahu. In recent weeks, the US president has grown frustrated with the Israeli Prime Minister over the war with Iran.

On their own, the sanctions may have limited, practical effect. Taken together with similar measures being considered or introduced by other Western states, however, the sanctions point to a wider change in Israel’s international standing.

If Israel does not act to address the expansion of illegal settlements, it risks becoming increasingly isolated and, eventually, a pariah on the global stage. When even Israel’s allies are raising concerns and taking action, the government should see that as a warning and move quickly to address the policies driving them away.

The wigs are styled, the armor is polished, and the props have been given their final coat of paint. Across Abu Dhabi, superheroes, villains, vampires, slayers, knights, dragons, and a host of other characters are preparing to come together for the city’s annual celebration of fandom.

On Friday morning, nerves will mingle with anticipation as cosplayers prepare to join the region’s largest gathering of pop culture fans. “It’s stressful at first, but once you step into the convention, the excitement kicks in,” says Anas Tamim, who is attending his fourth Middle East Film and Comic Con (MEFCC) this year.

The 39-year-old Palestinian first tried cosplay eighteen months ago and has quickly immersed himself in a scene that brings “sparkle and happiness” to his life in the UAE. He sees MEFCC as a place to meet like-minded fans and bond over shared interests. “Imagine finding someone who loves the same game, anime, or movie as you. Immediately you have something to talk about, not only for minutes, but for hours, days, or even months.”

It’s also a chance to revel in people’s reactions to his costume. Accuracy is highly prized in cosplay, and Tamim looks uncannily like his character Taro Sakamoto from the manga Sakamoto Days. Tamim says it has earned him the nickname “Sakamoto of the Middle East.” “Whenever anyone sees me, they say, ‘Oh, you’re him. YOU ARE HIM!’ or ‘You are straight out of the anime itself!’”

Recognition is part of the thrill for cosplayers. “I get genuinely excited when someone recognizes the character; it always sparks great conversations about the game,” says Paris, an Emirati influencer and model. A regular at MEFCC, she is attending this year as the love interest of the vampire Sylus from the Chinese mobile game Love and Deepspace. Dressed in a gothic gown with a laced bodice and crimson bustle, she feels “quietly powerful.”

“Wearing this, I feel like Sylus’s equal,” she says.

As a teenager growing up in the UAE, few people shared Paris’ interests. In the early 2000s, enthusiasm for gaming and anime was seen as “weird.” Now, she celebrates her pop culture passions with pride alongside thousands of fellow fans at MEFCC. “Events like this help you find your community and build lasting friendships. People feel more open about their love for anime and gaming.”

Once considered a niche community on the fringes of fandom, cosplay, where people dress as figures from anime, comic books, films and video games, is having a moment. More than fancy dress, it offers fans an opportunity to embody their favorite characters and experience the fandom in a different way.

At MEFCC, the Cosplay Competition and parade draw people from across fandom communities, showcasing extraordinary artistry. For three days a year, Abu Dhabi becomes a global destination for fans as anime favorites from popular series like Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man rub shoulders with sci-fi villains from Star Wars and classic comic book heroes like Superman and Batman.

Costumes also reflect the latest pop culture trends, with video games and anime, including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Witch Hat Atelier likely to dominate the stage this year, says Light, a judge for the Cosplay Craftsmanship category.

The 31-year-old from Kuwait is a foam smith who makes props and costumes and sells patterns for her designs online. A single costume can take months to make, with crafters striving to match the original character as closely as possible.

Light specializes in props, using foam to craft weapons, armor, and accessories that look convincingly real. “I love seeing all the different pieces of a costume finally come together, especially when I get to bring the character to life through a cosplay photoshoot,” she says.

This year, she is debuting her Lightning cosplay from Final Fantasy, a costume that makes her feel “empowered and strong.” Conventions are an opportunity to get feedback from the wider community. “I’m very excited to finally share what I’ve been working on,” she says.

The growing popularity of pop culture across the Middle East has seen crowds at MEFCC balloon as the program expands to accommodate new trends and releases each year. Originally scheduled for April 2026, the 14^th edition was pushed to September due to regional conflict. Organizers took the opportunity to expand the program and add to the line-up of stars, including WWE actor John Cena, K-pop Demon Hunters voice star Arden Cho, Marvel actress Pom Klementieff, Star Wars actor Joonas Suotamo, and One Piece actors Mackenyu and Jacob Romero.

The UAE government has quickly recognized the potential of fandoms, which have evolved from internet subcultures into mainstream drivers of cultural and economic growth. MEFCC is now seen as integral to Abu Dhabi’s tourism and culture strategy, with the event’s success cited as evidence of the government’s “commitment to fostering a vibrant and diverse cultural landscape.”

The event, which drew more than 38,000 visitors in 2025, “solidifies Abu Dhabi’s position as a leading destination for entertainment and cultural experiences,” His Excellency Saleh Mohamed Al Geziry, Director General for Tourism, DCT Abu Dhabi, said last year.

The UAE’s pivot towards pop culture is part of a broader push across the Gulf to turn gaming and fan culture into economic assets. In a region with a young and digitally connected population, governments are investing heavily in infrastructure and industries to support the sector.

In August, Saudi Arabia’s $55 billion acquisition of gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA) was the latest high-value demonstration of the Gulf’s ambition to become a global force in gaming. The deal is part of a wider drive to build gaming ecosystems that shift the region from consumer to creator, fostering a homegrown industry with global reach.

At MEFCC, Artists Alley and the Comic Creators Club give local talent space to connect with professionals and showcase their work to large audiences. Fans can meet the people behind pop culture and watch live illustrations, pitch concepts to publishers, get professional critiques, buy exclusive cover art, and collaborate on indie zines.

Aokiji, a professional cosplayer who attends conventions around the world, welcomes the “more global and connected cosplay culture developing in the region.”

“Sometimes you don’t even need to speak the same language perfectly. A costume, a pose or simply recognizing a character can be enough to start a friendship. That’s what I find so beautiful about fandom. It creates a common language between people who might otherwise never have met,” he says.

Invited to be a judge in the Cosplay Competition, Aokiji is attending MEFCC for the first time this year. “Cosplay is no longer just a hobby happening in isolated communities. It has become a real international creative industry, and seeing the Middle East becoming such an important part of that evolution is really inspiring.”

For Fahd Bahaj, who grew up in the UAE and is attending his tenth MEFCC, the annual Cosplay Competition is always the highlight of the show. Participants compete in different categories for a prize pool worth AED 60,000. But it’s about more than the money. Appearing in costume is like a “sugar rush” for Bahaj, who relishes the feeling of connection with like-minded cosplayers.

“It makes us feel free. People can judge, of course, but you are surrounded by people who enjoy the thing you do.”

At MEFCC, Cosplay Central caters to what organizers describe as the most “passionate, expressive and energetic fans” at the event. Professional cosplayers and stars of the international scene join everyday enthusiasts for a spectacle that resembles a who’s who of international fandom. “The heartbeat of this convention has always been the community that gathers under one roof to celebrate their passions without limits,” Loy Pinheiro, show director of MEFCC, told The National.

While cosplay is celebrated as a space for uninhibited expression, festival guidelines are explicit on the need to respect UAE cultural norms. Offensive or revealing attire is discouraged, while costumes that veer into religious, political, or culturally sensitive territory are banned. Rather than avoid certain characters, cosplayers swap tips on ways to adapt costumes by adding armor or layering clothing.

“It’s about finding the right balance between expressing yourself and being respectful of the place you’re in,” says Tamim. “As a cosplayer, I feel I can be myself and enjoy what I love while still respecting the local culture.”

He believes that cosplay shows a different side to Abu Dhabi, brushing aside the conservative past of a city that is repositioning itself at the cutting edge of contemporary culture. “I think the UAE has grown a lot over the past 15 years. It’s become more diverse, welcoming, and actively participating on a global level. There’s a much stronger sense of community now.”

While the UAE’s pop culture scene is certainly growing, the country has yet to develop a distinct fandom identity, with most of the dominant trends still drawn from global pop culture. UAE comic book studio Sandstorm Comics platforms local artists, but more institutional backing is needed to bolster recognition for regional and Emirati talent, says Paris, an ambassador for MEFCC.

The 2026 event features a stronger focus on local and regional creators, with Artist Alley offering exposure to up-and-coming artists, alongside the big brand names that typically dominate the convention circuit. But while the local presence is growing, “it hasn’t yet reached the level of dominating the international lineup,” Paris says.

“I’d love to see broader government support, specifically funding for Emirati cosplayers to compete internationally.”

This year, her whole family is visiting MEFCC for the first time, including her nephews who are inspired by her cosplay. Two decades on, the teenager who felt othered by her niche interests is now a model and influencer for a community at the forefront of a national drive to elevate her country’s cultural status. “I really appreciate how the government supports these events,” she says. “It shows the younger generation that pop culture has real potential.”

Four years ago, I sat in a Baghdad living room and watched a young girl named Layla, then about seven, glide around in a bright pink T-shirt, showing me a painting in a flimsy sketchbook. An elderly Iraqi-Christian activist had helped shield her identity as the daughter of a fallen ISIS fighter so she could start school. On paper, she did not officially exist, and her education could have been taken from her at any moment.

She is not a little girl anymore. Layla would be entering her early teens now. I don’t know what happened to her. I do not know whether she got her documents, whether she is still in school, or whether the stigma of her father’s ISIS affiliation eventually caught up with her, as it does for so many of her generation. An entire cohort of children who were infants and toddlers when I first wrote about them are now old enough to remember being stateless.

The core problem is the same one I encountered in 2022. There are thousands of children without a country to call home. What happens to them? And to the next iteration of terrorists?

When I first reported this story, the crisis was largely deadlocked, with Iraqi politicians telling me across the board that they had “more important” issues to address. At the same time, scores of women and children, to the tune of tens of thousands, were being held indefinitely in the battered al-Hol camp in Syria’s northeast, their governments of origin refusing to allow them back.

That standoff, or policy of ignorance, came to a head when Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell in December 2024. This year, it shattered completely with a forced reckoning.

On January 20, 2026, Kurdish-led forces handed control of al-Hol to Syria’s new government. Within a month, authorities announced the camp would close, and by the end of February, they said the mission was complete. Until mid-January, al-Hol and Roj combined had held around 28,000 people; most residents of al-Hol reportedly left in a largely unplanned and chaotic scramble once Damascus took over.

About 12,500 of those held across both camps were foreign nationals from more than 60 countries. Roughly 4,000 were Iraqi. Hundreds are children who know little beyond struggle, indoctrination and statelessness, and all with a questionable future ahead.

To its credit, Iraq did what it spent years being criticized for not doing. Baghdad accelerated repatriations after Assad’s fall, and by early February 2026 its national security adviser said the country had brought home all but 300 to 350 of the families who had been held at al-Hol. At its 2019 peak, the camp held roughly 31,000 Iraqis alone. Returnees are sent to a screening and rehabilitation site in Ninewa Governorate, not far from Mosul, the city which ISIS deemed its ideological capital.

Separately, American forces have been transferring thousands of male detainees out of northeastern Syria for trial in Iraq—some 5,700 as of this year. This includes at least 157 boys under 18, according to Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council. A few hundred more boys are held in so-called rehabilitation centers, many after being forcibly separated from their mothers in the camps years ago, a practice human rights monitors have flagrantly called unlawful.

Meanwhile, the countries that could take their citizens home continue, in many cases, to look away. Britain and Denmark have stripped citizenship from some of their nationals in the camps, manufacturing statelessness rather than confronting it. Australia announced this year it will offer “absolutely no support” to the repatriation of 34 Australian women and children still linked to the camps and has issued at least one exclusion order effectively barring a citizen from returning home.

For years, governments said they couldn’t repatriate their own citizens because a non-state militia ran the camps they wouldn’t negotiate with. That excuse has dissipated now that Syria’s government controls them.

Iraqi nationality law technically allows nationality to pass from an Iraqi mother to her child, but the civil-registration system can make that right extremely difficult to exercise in practice. To register a birth, parents need a valid marriage certificate, something ISIS never provided in a form Baghdad accepts, and something a Yazidi woman held captive by the group never had. On top of that, any child with a Muslim or unknown father is automatically registered as Muslim, whether the mother agrees or not. So, a Yazidi mother, for example, can be left unable to register the child under her own lineage; thus, her child is considered a Muslim rather than Yazidi.

Since 2022, courts have also required DNA tests from up to three male relatives on the father’s side before they’ll issue a birth certificate to a child with suspected ISIS ties. For children whose fathers are dead, missing, or foreign, that’s often impossible to produce. A new registration law took effect in 2024, but it only changed fees and deadlines, not the root of the problem.

Activists have a fix in mind, only it hasn’t gone anywhere. In 2018, more than 30 women-led Iraqi and Kurdish groups launched a campaign called “My Name is My Mother’s,” pushing to let kids be registered under their mother’s name when the father is absent, unknown, or an ISIS fighter. Years on, it’s still a concept that has gone nowhere.

Today, ISIS remains a deadly force in the region. It no longer governs territory, yet it functions as a violent, decentralized network across Iraq and Syria, with a chillingly fast-growing footprint in Africa. Every year a child grows up without a nationality, without school, without a legal identity, is a year that child has more reason to look for belonging somewhere else. This is not automatically because these kids are dangerous, but because a country that won’t claim you leaves you very few places to turn, and this is precisely what ISIS propaganda thrives on.

Yes, the camps that once defined this crisis are finally shuttering. Still, a camp closing is not the same as a child being claimed. Until these kids have a name the state will recognize, they will keep growing up belonging to no one, and that peril will almost certainly come back to haunt.

Some exhibitions make sense before you have even read the text on the wall. You walk in, look around, and understand why these works have been brought together. At “Under One Sky,” that connection becomes clearest at the back of the gallery.

Hanging against a curtain is Hussein Hussein’s “What Land Retains,” a mixed-media work measuring 150 x 250 cm. It takes up almost the entire wall, with layers of red, green, blue, orange, and earthy tones that pull you toward it, refusing to be passed by quickly.

The painting takes on a deeper meaning once you learn the conditions under which it was made.

Hussein created it inside the gallery itself during the war, when the space became an open studio for artists displaced from their homes in the south. The canvas gave him the opportunity to return to larger works after months of being limited to smaller pieces.

It was difficult trying to paint while the crisis unfolded around him.

“What affected me most was the constant uncertainty and movement, the possibility of having to leave, return, and relocate again, which weighed heavily on my state of mind and changed my relationship with painting,” he told Middle East Uncovered.

Inside No Chef in the Kitchen, painting offered Hussein an escape from the chaos unfolding around him. He says that knowing he was there for one purpose, to paint, gave him “a sense of stability and peace,” turning the studio into “a temporary space of calm and concentration, even in the middle of uncertainty.”

Hussein describes his work through memories of Lebanon, bringing together war, nature, mythology, and the long history of the land. Among its references are Sour, the Arabic name for the ancient city of Tyre, and Alisar, the Phoenician princess who, according to legend, left Tyre and founded Carthage. “What does the land remember? I was trying to remember everything,” he says.

The exhibition grew from the need to give displaced artists somewhere to return to their practice. As curator Bahjat Darwish explains, “The first criterion was we wanted some of the artists who were displaced to have a space to come and work.”

From there, the exhibition expanded. “Many other friends and artists who are not from the south showed a lot of support and appreciation and also offered to exhibit with the artists from the south,” he says. Artists from the Beqaa and Beirut soon joined.

Project coordinator Mowie Aoun was involved in shaping the project’s first stage. “The idea was to give them a space to come back and practice their art, meet other people, and give them a spark again,” he says.

For Ali Houssein, coming together is exactly what the title represents. “‘Under One Sky’ is a beautiful thing. It connects Lebanon from south to north and the Beqaa. Artists gather in one hall.” Many of the artists did not know each other before working together in the space.

His own work comes from the landscape around him. “I’m a son of the south. I’m a son of nature,” he says. He paints houses, the sea, and the environment he knows, describing the eye as a mirror through which he reflects his surroundings.

The war disrupted that relationship. Ali left his village during the conflict and returned to find himself overwhelmed by what had happened. “Now, if I laugh, I laugh maybe in the face, but inside us, there’s sadness. A lot of sadness,” he says. “Sadness inside us lives in us. We can’t get rid of it.”

“War is on everything, on stones, on houses. Houses are a cultural image, on olives, on trees,” he added.

For Hussein, the exhibition also offered a way of placing southern artists within a wider artistic landscape. “[Bahjat] is doing a very important work trying to show that we in the south have important artists who are not visible,” Hussein says.

The exhibition’s diversity is impossible to miss. Aida Halloum has been painting for 30 years, yet doesn’t paint for any one purpose. “I’m not working for an exhibition or for a subject. I work because I love my work,” she says.

What she wants from the viewer is just as direct: “I want them to enjoy the work. It’s like when you hear Fayrouz sing.” For Halloum, painting is its own form of communication. “It’s a language; it’s not a story, it’s a language that is seen by the public. The painting is a language that is seen by the public.”

Her understanding of the exhibition comes down to what happens when those different languages finally come together. “When you have 17 artists working at the same time on something they love, as a viewer, you see the 17 differences,” she explains. “This is what diversity is all about.”

Kawthar Ballouk’s work comes from a more immediate place. She chose her painting because “it reflects the displacement and exhaustion in Lebanon, especially in the south, but also the hope of finding safety in our homeland.” She hopes visitors will “pause for a moment to reflect on what we are going through.”

For Ballouk, those emotions are also what allow people to connect through art. “My work reflects universal emotions like fear, pain, loss, and hope, feelings that anyone can understand, regardless of their background,” she says.

Hussein sees the same connection, but views it differently. A painting can cross a language barrier and still be understood: “I can be from a country in Lebanon and draw something that has nothing to do with someone in Siberia. But they feel the same feeling.”

That is how the works begin to connect with one another. Ali brings the south through houses, sea, and nature. Halloum wants the painting to be experienced like music. Ballouk brings displacement, fear, loss and hope. Hussein turns the land’s history into colors and symbols.

Darwish sees that variety as part of what happened naturally around the exhibition. “It was a true act of coming together that brought the artists,” he says. “There was a snowball effect where a number of things came together.”

During the residency, young aspiring artists came into the space to paint alongside them, and students from AUB’s Next Step program worked with Mirna Mshantas on a collaborative piece that later became part of the exhibition.

“Art is the softest form of power,” Darwish says. “It influences people, it inspires people, and this is how people can come together.”

The exhibition hosted a panel on August 21. Darwish opened the discussion before allowing several artists to take over. They discussed their work, how they got here, and what it felt like to collaborate.

Hussein spoke about his path from electronics to art and the uncertainty that changed his relationship with painting. Other artists shared personal stories behind their works, bringing the conversations that had taken place inside the studio into the room with the audience.

“In times of war, in times of destruction, in times of displacement, what brings us together?” he questioned.

“To get together is our first instinct,” he added. “And sometimes we forget this.”

17 artists arrived at No Chef in the Kitchen with different histories, places, and styles of painting. For a few weeks, they shared the same studio. Now, their works are on display in the room where they found solace in the midst of conflict.

Any American paying at the gas station today can see the effect the war on Iran is having on their wallet. The national average price of regular gasoline is now around $4.10 a gallon, up from less than $3 before the war broke out. Crude oil is up well above its pre-war levels, while the Strait of Hormuz, through which a huge share of the world’s oil and gas passes, continues to see severely disrupted shipping.

And despite President Trump claiming more than 38 times since the war began that a deal is near, it doesn’t seem to be coming to a close any time soon.

Now, the administration is trying another way to squeeze Iran through an effort dubbed Operation Economic Outcast, a name that leaves little to the imagination.

On Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new round of sanctions on 60 individuals and entities.

Bessent described it as an “economic onslaught” against Iran’s financial connections around the world and said the goal was to cut off every source of revenue still available to the country.

Iran has claimed the new measures will fail. But this time, the US is also grappling with a problem it has faced for years: China.

The latest wave of sanctions against Iran and its trading partners includes Beijing.

China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, although the trade has declined under the US blockade of Iran’s ports.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, said the country was firmly opposed to what it called “illegal unilateral sanctions” and would take “all necessary measures” to safeguard its rights.

The timing is precarious, not least because President Donald Trump is preparing to host Chinese leader Xi Jinping in September to maintain an already strained trade truce.

However, no Chinese financial institutions were on the US list. Asked why the Trump administration had not declared immediate sanctions, Bessent replied: “Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?”

“Ultimately, China needs to be part of any sanctions regime against Iran,” says Jonathan Hackett, a US Marine Corps veteran specializing in counterintelligence and the author of Iran’s Shadow Weapons: Covert Action, Intelligence Operations, and Unconventional Warfare.

Around 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports are believed to end up in China, making Beijing Tehran’s most important customer by far.

China has been a steadfast economic ally of Iran since the US pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal in 2018 under the first Trump administration. It is a crucial part of the network Iran uses to subvert US sanctions.

That means the success of Operation Economic Outcast may depend as much on what Beijing does as on what happens in Tehran.

Hundreds of Chinese entities have already been sanctioned by the US. The difficulty has been enforcing those sanctions without triggering a much bigger confrontation.

Hackett argues that China has always been the missing piece in the US sanctions strategy. But going after Chinese companies more aggressively would come at a price for Americans too. Rising gas prices and mounting pressure ahead of the midterm elections means the administration has to tread carefully. His concern is that the US could succeed in hurting Iran’s economy without actually forcing its leaders to change course.

The US can target Chinese refiners, banks, shipping companies, and other businesses helping Iran sell its oil. But the further it goes, the harder it becomes to pretend this is only about Iran.

Ahmed Khuzaie, a Bahrain-based analyst, sees it that way:

“By targeting Chinese refiners, banks, and shipping firms that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, the US is not only trying to choke off Tehran’s revenue but also challenging China’s role in global commerce,” he says.

China needs energy, and Iran sells it cheaply. For Beijing, simply cutting Iran off is unlikely to be an attractive option. It has spent years building a relationship with Iran that gives it influence in the Gulf.

China has also consistently rejected unilateral US sanctions, so it is unlikely to suddenly accept the argument that it should help enforce them.

Instead, it is likely to look for ways to keep the relationship going without putting its biggest companies directly in the firing line.

Iran has plenty of experience doing the same thing. Its oil trade has increasingly relied on small refiners, front companies, intermediaries, and a shadow fleet of tankers. Payments can be moved through less visible channels or settled in currencies other than the dollar.

As a result, sanctions can make Iranian trade more difficult and more expensive without necessarily stopping it.

Khuzaie expects China to continue toeing that line:

“Compliance, therefore, tends to be partial and tactical,” he continues. “Enough to ease diplomatic friction with Washington when necessary, but never to the point of cutting off Iran entirely.

“In effect, China balances between energy needs, geopolitical rivalry, and sanctions evasion, ensuring it keeps leverage over both Iran and the United States.”

And the harder the US tries to isolate Iran, the more dependent it can become on China:

“The paradox is that while US sanctions aim to isolate Tehran, they can instead consolidate a tighter Iran-China axis, reducing Western influence and embedding China more firmly in Gulf energy and security dynamics,” Khuzaie says.

That brings us to the other reason Beijing may be uncomfortable with the direction of the war—it has major economic interests across the Gulf.

China buys energy from the region, has invested heavily in infrastructure and trade, and needs shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to be reliable.

That gives it an interest in seeing Iran de-escalate, and the Gulf monarchies have already looked to China to use its relationship with Tehran to encourage restraint.

For kingdoms like Bahrain, the hope is that China can use its influence with Iran without dragging the Gulf into any further confrontation. Bahrain is particularly interested in whether the sanctions actually reduce Iran’s ability to threaten its neighbors.

Khuzaie says Gulf governments will be watching for signs that Tehran has fewer resources to support regional proxies, less capacity to threaten shipping, and a diminished appetite to pressure Gulf states.

If that happens, the sanctions may begin to look like they are achieving something beyond simply hurting the Iranian economy.

But Hackett is less convinced that economic pain will change the behavior of Iran’s leadership.

“The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will probably not behave much differently given the new sanctions. They are more of the same,” he says.

His concern is that the Iranian leadership has shown before that it’s prepared to let ordinary people absorb the economic pain while protecting its own grip on power.

And Iran is not without options.

Hackett expects Tehran to continue looking for ways to retaliate, including through military activity, while also trying to influence American public opinion through social media and other information campaigns.

He says US officials should be on the lookout for signs such as increased movement of ballistic missiles, the dispersal of military equipment, changes in the leadership of the IRGC’s Aerospace Force, and the decentralization of military command.

None of that necessarily means Iran is preparing for an immediate escalation. But it would show that it is preparing for a long fight.

And that is perhaps the biggest lesson from the past six months.

Iran has taken enormous damage. Its economy is under severe pressure—the currency has depreciated to roughly two million rials per US dollar—and its ability to operate normally in international markets has been badly constrained.

But damaging an economy is not the same thing as changing a regime.

The Trump administration now has to prove that the pain it is inflicting can translate into political results. That is particularly difficult when the economic consequences are being felt at home in the United States.

The US can increase pressure on Iran by going after the Chinese companies that keep its oil trade alive. But if Beijing retaliates, American businesses and consumers could feel some of the consequences.

If the administration backs off, leadership in Iran may conclude that its most important economic lifeline is safe—something Beijing is well aware of.

“China is highly unlikely to fully comply with US sanctions on Iran,” says Khuzaie. “Doing so would mean sacrificing both its energy security and its broader strategic posture.”

For now, China has little reason to choose a side. It can condemn the sanctions publicly, maintain its relationship with Iran, and try to ensure its own companies are not caught in the crossfire all at the same time.

The Gulf states would welcome a weaker Iran. But a direct US-China confrontation in the Middle East is the last thing anyone wants.

Khuzaie says the real test will be whether the sanctions change Iran’s behavior, not just hurt its economy. The regime has not only survived sanctions before, but also isolation and periods of enormous economic hardship.

While American politicians are beholden to their voters, the IRGC doesn’t really have the same dilemma:

“If the sanctions succeed economically but fail politically, the US may end up with a more extreme Islamic regime than even the worse one that popped up after February 28,” says Hackett. “If anything, the IRGC will become wealthier as the Iranian people suffer.”

That is the crux of the matter. World leaders may talk a big game, but it’s the people who ultimately pay the price—whether inside Iran or at the gas pump in America.

A strange calm hangs over Iran today. The government has claimed victory and is feverishly projecting propaganda painting the regime as an indomitable military force incapable of defeat. But inside Iranian homes, families are beginning to panic. Their savings are rapidly depleting, and many can’t find jobs to replenish what they’ve lost over the last six months. While the regime touts its strength, its people are barely getting by.

But you wouldn’t necessarily notice this walking through the streets of Tehran or Isfahan. Many shops are still open, and those lucky enough to still have jobs go to work every day as usual. The economy is functioning even as its population grows progressively poorer. Despite existing sanctions, whose burden falls most heavily on ordinary Iranians while regime officials continue to enrich themselves, the country is surviving.

Iran’s official labor-force participation rate was just 39.7 percent in the winter of 2025–26, with more than 40 million people classified as “economically inactive.” The official unemployment rate was 7.6 percent, but that figure applies only to the economically active population. It does not include those who have been forced out of the labor market altogether.

Official figures for July 2026 put annual inflation at around 66 percent, while food, beverages, and tobacco prices were considerably higher. Point-to-point food inflation reached 128.1 percent, with oils and fats, dairy products, eggs, and meat seeing the most severe increases.

Having a source of income no longer guarantees financial security; even those with a regular salary are struggling. As soon as the money hits the bank, it loses purchasing power almost immediately. Young people who earn their salaries in Rials (with approximately 2 million Iranian Rials now equaling one U.S. dollar) have little to no ability to save in the national currency. By the time the next paycheck arrives, the money they earned previously already buys less than it did when they received it.

In response, the Iranian government is calling on people to be frugal and make sacrifices as it continues to spend enormous resources maintaining itself and its regional proxy networks. Not to mention sustaining an enormous propaganda apparatus.

This is not new to Iranians. Ordinary people are repeatedly told they must accept less while the state keeps magically finding resources for the priorities it considers essential.

Education doesn’t guarantee financial independence anymore, either. As young adults watch their savings depreciate, homeownership has become an impossibility.

Iran’s fertility rate is in free fall. In the 1980s, the average Iranian woman would give birth to six or more children. Today, it’s closer to 1.35, well below the stable population replacement level of 2.1. Iranians aren’t rejecting family life. They are understandably hesitant to bring children into an economically volatile environment ruled by a hostile government—in a region engulfed in war.

In December 2025 and again in January 2026, Iranians took to the streets in protest, at least in part over economic dissatisfaction. Thousands were gunned down and arrested by regime forces, and then the war broke out. There is little appetite left for uprising. Most people are focused on surviving. Hardship that might otherwise be a driving force for political change has happened upon an exhausted population.

Iran is facing serious pressure on its gasoline supply, with daily consumption of roughly 135 million liters outpacing domestic refinery production. The government is considering restricting supply, raising prices for consumption above the subsidized quota, or changing how it allocates fuel. On August 24, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s chief of staff said government intervention was unavoidable, arguing that wartime production losses meant consumption also had to fall.

For decades, the Iranian state has relied heavily on restrictions imposed on people’s daily lives to solve its problems. People must sacrifice fuel, electricity, currency, food, and other basic necessities—yet the propaganda machine will keep churning out messages of victory and success.

Power cuts have made matters worse. Some cities are losing electricity for hours at a time in the summer heat. The war has damaged an already strained power system, leaving homes and businesses to deal with rolling blackouts.

And all the while, the government prioritizes finding convenient scapegoats over fixing the problems facing its population.

Petty theft has even become part of the regime’s excuse for why Iranians are suffering. Videos of people stealing electricity and telecommunications cables have circulated online, and the theft is real. But stolen cables hardly explain a nationwide electricity crisis.

I have experienced this cycle myself. The Islamic Republic has refined its two-step process to avoid accountability. First, it dismantles social cohesion and creates an environment in which citizens become suspicious of each other. Then, at the peak of the chaos it intentionally caused, the same state presents itself as the force protecting people from it.

Distinguishing truth from propaganda is sometimes easier than it sounds. Just look at who benefits in the end. Ask who stands to gain from the proposed explanation, what responsibility disappears when people accept it, and what new powers are granted to the government once they do.

But state broadcasts aren’t enough this time to bridge the gap between regime rhetoric and daily reality. The primary threat is not just economic recession, but the gradual loss of the people’s expectation that life will improve.

Societies can tolerate hardship for a long time; they can adapt to inflation, shortages, blackouts, and declining living standards. Patience runs out when people start to feel there is no way forward.

The adaptations seen today—postponed marriages, talent drain, reduced consumption, disappearing savings, and young people who can no longer imagine building an independent life—are the calm before the next storm.

And that storm may be fast approaching from both directions. As the regime focuses on psychological warfare against an increasingly impoverished and desperate population, the United States has announced Operation Economic Outcast in another effort to tighten the financial pressure on Tehran. For ordinary Iranians caught between a government that shows little concern for their well-being and mounting pressure from abroad, it looks like a perfect storm. Once again, they will be the ones forced to weather it.

Nine years ago, I started Shezomedia to create a space where people in Jordan and across the Arab world could question the ideas and assumptions limiting our lives.

I grew up in a conservative family where there were rules about what you could say, what you could question, and how you were expected to live. As the eldest of six siblings, I was supposed to help carry those expectations forward. Instead, I became increasingly interested in interrogating them.

In 2017, that instinct inspired a YouTube show called Schizophrenia. We used satire to talk about the contradictions and double standards I saw around me. We discussed religion, women’s rights, refugees, extremism, sex education, and individual freedom, often touching subjects people preferred to avoid.

To my surprise, people tuned in.

The show eventually grew into Shezomedia. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of people have followed our Arabic platforms, and millions have interacted with our work.

But building it came at a steep cost.

I left Jordan for the Netherlands in 2019 after receiving death threats. When I returned months later, I changed how we approached our journalism. Rather than confronting ideas head-on, I started thinking more about what happens when people are simply given room to speak for themselves.

That approach has guided much of our work since.

When Mahsa Amini was killed in Iran after being detained by the morality police, we covered the reaction her death sparked across the region. We have reported on what life is like for women and girls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan and spoken to young people about their views on the conflicts devastating the region. Those conversations often complicate what appears in the media. Young Arabs are sometimes portrayed as broadly supportive of Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis because they see them as “resistance” movements. What we hear on the ground is far less straightforward. Dig deeper, and you find young people questioning these groups and the idea that they speak for them.

These are the stories I rarely come across in the version of the Middle East presented abroad.

Much of the international coverage of this region focuses on war and authoritarianism, and those stories deserve attention. I have covered many of them myself.

But I also live here.

I see young people starting businesses and questioning ideas their parents took for granted. Women are making choices that would have caused enormous controversy in their families a generation ago. Filmmakers, journalists, artists, and activists are testing what can be said and what is possible.

I have witnessed some of those changes happen inside my own family.

Ideas that once seemed too taboo to discuss eventually became ordinary conversations. My own thinking changed too. That experience has stayed with me because it showed me how much can happen when people encounter an idea they had never seriously considered before.

For years, these conversations have happened largely in Arabic. I recently found myself troubled that so few of them traveled any further.

People outside the region want to understand what is happening here. Researchers, journalists, diplomats, nonprofits, and ordinary readers all look for insight into the Middle East. Yet many of the people actually having these conversations are separated from that audience by language.

That is why we are launching Shezomedia English alongside our friends at Middle East Uncovered.

I want people interested in the region to hear directly from those living there. Debates happening in Amman or Baghdad can reach someone who otherwise might never know they’re happening.

Our team encounters these stories every day. We hear young people talk about what they want from their futures—arguments about politics, religion, gender, work, and personal freedom. Some are heated and others surprisingly ordinary. Together, they tell you much more about where our societies may be heading than another distant description of the region ever could.

Publishing in English feels like a natural continuation of why my team and I started Shezomedia in the first place. I have spent much of my life questioning assumptions about how people in this region are supposed to think and live. Now I want to question some of the assumptions people outside the region carry about us too.

I am not interested in telling English-speaking audiences that everything they understand about the Middle East is wrong. I just want them to see a more honest, nuanced version.

For nine years, we have been having these challenging and rewarding conversations in Arabic. Now, we want more people to hear those voices and see the region through their eyes.

The Iran Freedom Congress (IFC) was founded in London in March 2026 to bring together opponents of the Islamic Republic around two goals: increasing political and economic pressure on the regime and preparing for a democratic transition if it falls. Its members have engaged with European lawmakers to push for measures including limiting financial ties with Tehran and pressuring the regime over executions, while also confronting the question of what should replace it and how a transition should be managed.

The Congress is not a government-in-exile, and participation does not require its members to agree on every political issue. It is an Iran-wide opposition platform that brings together political parties, civic groups, and individual figures to develop common positions on Iran’s future. Among its participants are three parties from Iran’s Kurdish region, known among Kurds as Rojhelat, or Eastern Kurdistan.

Those Kurdish parties are simultaneously part of another, narrower political project. In February, most of the major parties from Rojhelat formed their own coalition in an attempt to coordinate Kurdish political strategy after decades of rivalry.

The coalition includes the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the Khabat Organization of Iranian Kurdistan (Khabat), Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan (Komala), and the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KPIK). Most are long-standing organizations that have opposed the Islamic Republic for decades. Several maintain armed wings, while much of their leadership and many of their bases are located across the border in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The two projects therefore overlap but serve different purposes. The Kurdish coalition is meant to coordinate the various Rojhelati parties, while the Iran Freedom Congress brings some of those same parties into a broader Iranian opposition framework.

That overlap has now raised a difficult question. When a Kurdish party participates in an Iran-wide organization such as the IFC, is it acting independently, or is it expected to coordinate its position with the other members of the Kurdish coalition first?

A dispute over an IFC declaration in July brought that unresolved question to the surface. In it, the declaration addressed the war, foreign intervention, and the Iranian people’s right to determine their own political future. It also held the Islamic Republic responsible for the policies that led to the war, rejected foreign military intervention, and argued that opposition to war should not become a justification for preserving the regime. Its central position was that Iran’s political future must be determined by the people of Iran, not external forces.

Three Kurdish parties participating in the Congress subsequently made clear that the declaration should not automatically be read as their position. The PDKI said it had neither drafted nor approved the text. Komala also distanced itself from the declaration. PJAK later explained that participation in the Congress did not mean accepting every IFC position.

The disagreement quickly escalated into a debate about Kurdish unity (or lack thereof). But the IFC is not responsible for the political differences among these parties. They have disagreed for years over whether or not having armed wings is a good idea, relations with other Iranian opposition groups, international alliances, and the future political status of Kurdistan. Some regard participation in Iran-wide opposition platforms as a way to strengthen Kurdish influence over any potential future transition. Others worry that joining such organizations without clear guarantees could weaken Kurdish standing.

The July controversy exposed that the new Kurdish coalition is not at all prepared for how members are supposed to manage those differences. That might seem like an internal political dispute, but the stakes are much higher. If the Islamic Republic begins to unravel, these parties could suddenly face far bigger decisions to make together, with little time to do so.

The parties entered their new alliance at an unusually dangerous moment. Only days after the coalition was announced, war broke out, and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq came under sustained missile and drone attacks. Iranian Kurdish opposition bases, camps, and residential areas were among the targets. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) documented hundreds of attacks within the first weeks of the war, while human rights monitors reported repeated strikes against Iranian Kurdish parties and camps housing their members and families.

By early August, more than 950 drone and missile attacks had struck the Kurdistan Region since February 28, killing 32 people and wounding 154. Not all targeted Rojhelati parties, but their facilities were repeatedly hit. By mid-July, attacks had killed at least 17 members of Rojhelati parties. After a July 19 strike on a PAK base, the party alleged that white phosphorus or another incendiary munition had been used. That claim has not been independently verified.

The coalition has responded politically. On March 20, it issued a joint statement condemning attacks on Kurdish parties and refugee camps. After another coalition meeting on July 23, it described casualties suffered by individual parties as losses for the wider Kurdish movement, and called for an investigation into the reported use of prohibited weapons. The statement publicly presented attacks against individual members as a concern for the alliance as a whole.

But there is much the public still does not know.

Has the coalition established a joint emergency mechanism? Does it have a common system for documenting attacks and casualties? Have the parties agreed on procedures for protecting residential camps? Who coordinates their response when one member is attacked?

These are practical questions for an alliance whose members and their families are living under repeated military attacks. Statements issued afterward are important, but they reveal little about what, if any, systems are in place to prepare for the next strike.

The coalition has shown at least some capacity to cooperate abroad.

On June 22, representatives of five member parties met in the British Parliament and called for a shared Kurdish political position. Other international appearances, however, have been party-based, including Abdullah Mohtadi’s separate address to the Dutch Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

There is nothing inherently contradictory about that. Political parties in a coalition can maintain independent diplomatic relationships.

The lingering question is how those relationships fit into the coalition. Do parties consult one another before major international meetings? Are there positions that representatives are expected to carry collectively? Do they brief other members afterward? Are some countries or institutions assigned to particular parties?

Without a clear set of public rules, it is difficult to distinguish a coordinated division of labor from six parties conducting parallel foreign policies.

The Iran Freedom Congress has its own issues to address.

If political parties participate in the Congress without endorsing every declaration it publishes, the distinction needs to be clear. The Congress should explain how it consults political parties, how it drafts and approves declarations, and what participation signifies when members disagree with a position issued in the IFC’s name.

As a member of the IFC Central Council, I do not think the organization should be shielded from that criticism. An organization presenting itself as part of a democratic alternative to the Islamic Republic should be able to clearly articulate its democratic procedures.

But criticism of the Congress alone won’t fix its problems.

The Rojhelati parties created their alliance precisely because internal divisions had weakened their ability to act cohesively. Its founding framework identified overthrowing the Islamic Republic, Kurdish self-determination, and establishing democratic governance in Rojhelat as central objectives.

Those ambitions require the parties to make decisions together when they disagree. So far, the public has little information about how that will work.

Can coalition members join outside political platforms independently, or must they consult the coalition first? Can one member sign a declaration that others oppose? Who speaks for the coalition? How are disagreements resolved? Does a leadership structure have the authority to make urgent decisions?

The same questions become more consequential in the event of political upheaval inside Iran.

If state authority weakens or implodes in parts of Rojhelat, who would coordinate security? What happens if two coalition parties disagree about armed deployments? Is there a common plan for administering territory? How would local political authority be established? What relationship would such an administration have with a transitional government elsewhere in Iran?

These are not hypothetical questions invented after the coalition was formed. The political environment in which the parties created the alliance was already defined by instability and the possibility of rapid change. Contemporary accounts of its formation described preparations for both political transition and democratic governance in Rojhelat as central to the project.

The creation of the coalition was significant precisely because these parties have spent decades divided by ideological, strategic, and competitive differences. Bringing six of them under one framework is an achievement in and of itself. But signing a common political agreement is different from building an institution that can survive disagreement.

The first months of the coalition’s existence have already tested its durability. The military attacks, international diplomacy, and participation in the wider Iranian opposition have exposed the same uncertainty about how collective decisions are made and how much freedom individual members retain.

It has been five months since the coalition was announced; its members should publish the procedures they intend to use to work together. Regular reports on meetings and decisions would also let the public judge what the coalition has actually accomplished and where it can improve.

None of this requires the six parties to ignore their political differences. A functioning coalition should not depend on agreement about everything, but on knowing what happens when compromise cannot be reached.

Until those rules are clear, every new military attack, diplomatic invitation, or Iranian opposition initiative risks reopening the same dispute: whether a party is speaking for itself, for the Kurdish coalition, or for a broader alliance of which it is a part.

There may come a moment when Iranians have a genuine opportunity to free themselves from the Islamic Republic, and political movements that hope to shape what follows need to be ready before that moment arrives. For the Kurdish coalition, that means resolving these questions now, not in the middle of a crisis. If an opening for political change comes and the parties are too divided or disorganized to act together, they will have squandered an opportunity the community may not get again for a generation.

On the morning of July 17, 2026, residents of Yaftal-e-Sufla district of Badakhshan woke up to unexpected yet welcome news. In the dead of night, a group of 20 to 25 armed men carried out a surprise attack by storming into the district headquarters, capturing the building, and disarming Taliban personnel there. The group withdrew several hours later before the Taliban could retake the district.

The group behind this surprise attack is a newly formed armed opposition calling themselves “Sepahiyan-e Mihan” (Soldiers of the Homeland or Patriotic Soldiers Front), whose swift and sudden blow to the Taliban resulted in its army chief being dragged to Badakhshan in hopes of quelling any further uprising. In videos circulated on social media, the group’s leader, Abdul Qayum Malang, is seen dressed in camo over the rooftop of the district headquarters, victoriously hoisting their flag. They eventually retreated to the mountains, having successfully stolen weapon caches and Taliban personnel vehicles.

This past Saturday was the fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. They commemorated the occasion by crusing through the streets in tanks, Humvees, and motorcycles, firing celebratory shots into the air as they went.

Five years in, the Taliban continue to downplay and deny any internal strife. The group’s Chief of Army Staff Fasihuddin Fitrat, in an interview with local news, said, “Whether it is the National Resistance Front, the Freedom Front or Sepahiyan-e Mihan, they merely want to make their name heard. They cannot confront our security forces.”

But reports on the ground paint a messier picture. The Taliban have responded with apparent alarm to the mutiny of Juma Khan Fateh, one of their prominent commanders in Badakhshan, and sporadic attacks by opposition forces in the north. This suggests they are taking the threats to their rule quite seriously. Fighting broke out between Fateh and Taliban special forces over what analysts believe to be internal disputes rooted in power distribution and mineral rights. During these intense clashes, a helicopter that was transporting the deceased and the injured was also believed to have been downed in Badakhshan by Fateh’s forces. Eventually, as more reinforcements arrived, Fateh surrendered to the Taliban on August 17th and has since been transported to Kabul. But their response suggests they are seriously concerned about festering dissent within their ranks—in addition to the growing external opposition they are facing.

Since 2021, hundreds of the Afghan National Defense Forces were forced into exile or relocation. Special forces units were airlifted to the US and UK while the rest dispersed to neighboring Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan. Those who remained in the country faced two difficult choices: either go home and do nothing, expecting prejudice from the new rulers, or join resistance movements and fight back. Many chose to stay home, but some decided to fight back.

The Taliban have persistently said that they have absolute and total control over Afghanistan, including the north where historically most resistance to their rule has been mobilized. Yet following the collapse of the republic, several prominent armed opposition groups emerged and have since regrouped, mobilized, and carried out regular guerrilla attacks. The clashes between the Taliban and other anti-Taliban groups around the country not only contradict their claim of territorial sovereignty, but also give hope to those who thought that the Taliban’s rule was solidified and indefinite.

So who are the armed groups challenging the Taliban at a moment when it is celebrating five years in power?

Not much is known about Sepahiyan-e Mihan, as they surfaced only after their recent attack on Yaftal-e-Sufla in Badakhshan. The group’s leader, however, is believed to have served in Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces and previously with the US Delta Force. He was also seen in photographs with another prominent anti-Taliban commander, Khalid Amiri, who has a background in the former Afghan military. Amiri is a key commander in the National Resistance Front (NRF), playing a vital role in organizing and leading resistance operations. Abdul Qayum Malang reportedly broke away from the NRF due to differences with its leadership and subsequently formed Sepahiyan-e Mihan.

The NRF was formed immediately after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, with members comprised mostly of ethnic Tajiks and former military personnel. They initially retreated to Panjshir Valley along with military personnel and helicopters, hoping to form an armed opposition movement there and creating a frontline of defense against the Taliban. Their efforts to hold onto the Panjshir Valley quickly failed because the groups had no tactical preparations whatsoever prior to the Taliban taking Kabul. The group lost its foothold in the Panjshir Valley in September 2021, and its leaders moved to Tajikistan, where they have maintained a political office ever since.

While the NRF was more of a reaction to the Taliban’s takeover than a calculated or strategically planned initiative, other groups learned their lesson and stayed in the shadows, quietly waiting for the right opportunity. One such group making headlines lately is the Afghanistan United Front (AUF), established in October 2023 by Lieutenant General Sami Sadat, with its political office in Virginia. In an exclusive interview with Middle East Uncovered, the 41-year-old army veteran shared why he ordered his forces to begin combat operations on August 1, 2026:

“In Afghanistan, we have a habit where we fight first and then politicize after, when it should be the other way round,” said the confident general over a phone call from his office in Virginia. “Initially, we started with team building to survey our available assets.” According to him, after the initial team-building phase, the AUF established its structure and eventually built its political capital both in the US and elsewhere around the world. Now, he says “We have entered phase 4, which is the start of combat operations,” with a 5-month delay from their initial planned start date of March 2026. He says Pakistan was keeping the Taliban busy, and it would have been a “tactical advantage to attack then, but strategically we decided to wait until they have expended their firepower and depleted their morale.”

Opposition forces today are scattered, segregated, and appear to be acting ad hoc, with the only commonality between them being opposition to the Taliban and their willingness to take action against them. Each group comes from different backgrounds and has its own unique political agenda. General Sadat, however, believes in cooperation regarding other opposition forces; he says, “Our intentions are aligned despite our political differences; however, for the sake of the country I am more than willing to join forces with anyone who shares the same principles as AUF’s.” Those principles, according to him, are based on the 2004 Afghan constitution, which was ratified and adopted by the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban immediately abolished it when they took over the country.

While General Sadat firmly believes in the constitution’s principles, he warns that he does not want to see the previous ruling class back in power under any circumstances. “We want a new republic to be born, one that is free and comprised of the younger generation of Afghans,” he says.

He already has a plan for the new order, even if it is still too early. “We have created a roadmap to guide us in navigating Afghanistan post-Taliban,” he says. But first they have to defeat them. “We have to go to war and fight the Taliban; only after they are gone can we move to a transitional government, peacebuilding, and reconciliation.”

So how effective have General Sadat and his men been so far? It’s hard to tell. The Taliban continues to deny the activities of any armed opposition group and dismiss them as thugs or insurrectionists, while the resistance forces often inflate the number of attacks or casualties they inflict. Without proper channels to verify these events, most of these claims cannot be confirmed. However, the Secretary-General’s office verified the existence of these armed groups in a 2024 UN report. Of more than 160 claimed attacks, 29 were confirmed to have taken place. More recently, since the start of AUF combat operations, dozens of attacks have been reported across the country.

While General Sadat refrained from sharing some of the confidential aspects of his operations, he did reveal that throughout the years, his forces have been identifying targets within Taliban ranks, especially figures who have actively participated in the arbitrary killings of former Afghan military personnel. “I obviously can’t discuss details, but our operatives have conducted an assessment of Taliban intelligence members, those who have targeted and killed former Afghan military forces, and prominent political figures,” he says.

Critics of General Sadat and other armed opposition groups warn of the endless cycle of bloodshed that will ensue if they are supported and financed. The General, however, is firm in his belief that the Taliban are not going to change; they must be replaced. He rejects the claim that Afghanistan will spiral into a civil war because, in his eyes, his fight is one for the liberation of the people. “We have the people’s will behind us; the Taliban doesn’t have legitimacy exactly because they lack the people’s support since 70% of the population lives in poverty,” he says.

There is a lot of uncertainty about what General Sadat is promising the people of Afghanistan, as it depends on factors beyond the operational capabilities of a group of patriots willing to go all in. For one, logistical and financial support is crucial to sustained and prolonged warfare. One where equipment and weapons can easily flow into the hands of the people fed up and willing to take the fight to the Taliban. This kind of support has historically been provided to the Afghan Mujahideen by the US government to fight against the Soviet Union, and later to the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban the first time around. Pakistan was crucial to executing this deal, serving as both a middleman in arms dealing and a training ground for Mujahideen militias, while Tajikistan served as the staging ground for the Northern Alliance.

Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban is strained and does not resemble that of the olden days. The Taliban are aware of that and have already accused the armed opposition groups of being proxies of Pakistan who are tasked with disrupting the “peace” in Afghanistan. General Sadat, however, claims, “We are a citizen- and private-funded organization thanks to our generous donors who are patriots and care deeply about Afghanistan; we have no ties with any government,” he said.

When asked about whether he was willing to accept support from Pakistan, General Sadat said, “We are willing to work with Pakistan if they truly cut off their ties with the Taliban and take decisive measures to ensure they are eradicated,” he added, “I believe at some point our animosity with Pakistan must stop; no legitimate state in Afghanistan had ever clashed with Pakistan directly except the Taliban.”

General Sadat has a long road ahead of him, and he acknowledges and accepts it. So do the rest of his forces. They understand that the help they seek might not come anytime soon, with the world plunged into crisis after crisis. Yet, they are not going to stop trying. He is actively engaged in political discussions in the US and elsewhere, raising awareness in an attempt to put Afghanistan back on the international community’s priority list.

But he wants to make one thing perfectly clear: he does not want to see foreign troops in Afghanistan again. He truly believes that Afghans are more than capable of liberating their country themselves if given the opportunity—and that the fight against the Taliban must ultimately be won by the people of Afghanistan.

This essay is republished from Maternal Dispatches With Hollie McKay. McKay is a distinguished foreign policy expert, war crimes investigator, and bestselling author renowned for her work, particularly the book "Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield."

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, August 2021— On August 14, 2021, I wake before my alarm on a Saturday morning, a sobbing mess, hungover with anxiety. The body, I quickly learn, never lies. My photographer, Jake Simkin, and I meander through the oddly empty Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The city’s dynamism has been stripped into shuttered stalls as hundreds line up outside the banks, a last-ditch bid to withdraw whatever cash they can to head somewhere else.

There is no longer a way out for us. A rare breeze wafts through the typically static air, carrying something ominous. Frightened families stuff themselves and their belongings into tiny, intricately colored rickshaws, retreating into the city center as their homes on the periphery come under threat. Under a scorching sun, shops are closed, and cars and construction equipment lie abandoned.

Around midday, Jake and I jump into a cab and drive toward what we presume to be the sandbagged front lines, where Afghan and resistance forces are putting up the fight of their lives. There are no signs of fighting.

“I’m scared,” the cab driver unexpectedly croaks. “I don’t want to go any further.”

Our interpreter, Hami, still on his Nokia flip phone, turns to us in the backseat.

“The Taliban has just broken through the first of the three front lines,” he blurts out with a bizarre smile, either out of secret pleasure or to appease my unease. “We are surrounded.”

I return to my hotel room, making call after call. I lie and tell my worried parents I am not near Mazar, which they hear on the news is on the verge of Taliban control. Still, every Afghan government and military official I speak to tells me the city will not fall, at least not for many more days.

The clock ticks, each second stretched thin, refusing to move fast enough toward whatever comes next. We venture out for Afghan street kebabs. After all, it is a Saturday night. Upon leaving our hotel, we are met by pitch-black skies and barren streets illuminated only by a faint crescent moon. We eat quickly, pulling hunks of fatty beef and liver off long metal skewers, noting that the kebab café down a dozen crooked steps is silent, empty, and unusual. Our favorite basement kebab café has never been silent before.

“That Spidey sense,” Jake utters, his voice trailing off.

We forgo our food, throw some money on the table, and head toward the hotel as quickly as possible. In the stifling summer night air, gunfire crackles. My fast walk becomes a run as motorbikes roar closer and closer behind. With my fingers gripping the back of Jake’s shirt, I thrust my body through the blast-proof doors of the ornate, towering hotel overlooking Mazar-e-Sharif.

Everything I think I know about war disappears from my graveyard of memories. I don’t know anything. I do not know what will come. I text a friend in Southern California.

“It’s falling,” I write, my hands shaking as I hurry to the roof in time to watch the Taliban swarm what was supposed to be the bulwark of resistance below. “It’s fallen.”

When I ask him if I will make it out, seeking any semblance of reassurance from a world far away, he says he does not know.

The Taliban’s celebratory gunfire intensifies. Jake and I move away from the glass windows. As a precaution, the hotel staff asks that we avoid taking pictures out of caution that our phones and cameras might be mistaken for weapons. These young staffers bring me warm green tea and assure me I am safe, despite their pinched faces and listless eyes. They’re lying. They don’t know. Nevertheless, I trust these staffers whose names I do not know, in a place where it is hard to find trust.

A message flashes across my phone announcing the cancellation of my flight back to Kabul, scheduled for two days later. The vibration on my phone will not stop. Media outlets are looking for stories. I am now the story, and I do not want to be the story. In this confusing moment, it feels as though the outside world knows more about what is happening in the clouded streets below than I do. I’m trapped inside an isolated, burning bubble. Far away in Australia, my father leaves another voicemail. In the wake of news reports stating Mazar has fallen, he nervously asks again where I am.

Subconsciously wishing I could return to the infantile state of having someone else take care of me, I curl into a fetal position on the wooden floor. It is the color of walnuts, and I fixate on whether I will crack walnuts at Christmas. I always crack walnuts at Christmas. Will I be able to this Christmas? Just for a moment, I am a child who wants someone else, someone older and stronger, to take her out of this unforeseen mess. We are never too old to miss our parents. How had I not comprehended that the city would fall so quickly? I should have known better than to be here. Why was I even here?

I came to Afghanistan again to forget the American life with Uber, air-conditioning, and Sprite Zero, the cozy American life that did not feel like mine, the life once stuffed with celebrities and Hollywood heavyweights and Malibu soirees, Oscars, Grammys, cigar bars with Wall Street powerplayers and egos that could not be deflated. I returned for the forgotten. The small voices. To not forget the small voices. Is anybody there? Could anybody hear them? The ones wrapped in war after war after war? That is why I am here. Some say you should travel only to return home and find your center again. Home, at this point of my life, doesn’t really exist. It is here, in the core of bedlam, that I feel most like myself.

Just like that, in an ordinary moment, the extraordinary city inside a country I had come to love plunges into a medieval, concrete morass I no longer recognize. The takeover is complete, but the earth continues. I snap my eyes open. I’m still on the glass-encased rooftop, and the Taliban is still below. I bounce up and onto wobbly feet.

In a calm and collected manner, Jake and I creep back down to the seventh floor. We lock the blast-proof door behind us. And we wait.

Iram Ramzan

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When I visited Benghazi last November, a coffee shop perched above the Mediterranean had become one of the main attractions along the city's newly renovated corniche. Yet beyond its mesmerizing view, the war's wreckage still spanned the city. Streets that were once teeming with life had fallen eerily quiet. Buildings that once stood tall were damaged or destroyed. As residents fled, stray dogs gradually took their place. The ruins became their home, and the bodies of fallen fighters their means of sustenance.

To understand how Benghazi reached this point, you have to go back more than a decade. After Gaddafi’s downfall in 2011, Libya descended into conflict. Benghazi became one of its fiercest battlegrounds as Islamist armed groups, including Ansar al-Sharia and later ISIS, established a presence in the city. In 2014, Khalifa Haftar launched a military campaign dubbed “Operation Dignity” to drive them out. In a span of three years, Haftar succeeded in his mission, but the war’s toll on Benghazi’s infrastructure was severe. Despite the reconstruction projects, remnants of the war, whether damaged buildings or stray dogs, continue to haunt the city.

Benghazi is not alone. Across the Middle East, wars have produced growing populations of stray dogs. During the war in Gaza, efforts to identify bodies of certain Palestinians were difficult, given that some of them were scavenged by dogs. Graves in Rafah, the southernmost part of Gaza, were also pillaged by the same animals. Even Palestinian children were not spared the sight of dead bodies being torn apart by stray dogs.

Similar incidents were witnessed by American soldiers during the war in Iraq. One serviceman was traumatized after seeing dogs feeding off bodies in mass graves. Another retired serviceman, Cody Alford, described a similar experience in an interview about his time in Fallujah.

Today, stray dogs have become a grave concern for Benghazi’s residents. On multiple occasions, children have been either wounded or killed.

Mecca Al Magribi, a 3-year-old girl who regularly played with the neighbors’ kids, disappeared on the morning of January 3rd. She went out to play but never returned home. Her family was concerned and publicized her disappearance on social media. Eventually, she was found after being mauled by a pack of stray dogs. She later died from her injuries.

The incident involving Al Magribi triggered a massive outcry. The government was criticized for failing to regulate or curb the spread of the dogs, and many residents called for a solution, citing the devastation they were causing.

In response, internal security forces launched a campaign to cleanse the city by exterminating them. The campaign was not well received by segments of the population, who believed there were better alternatives.

To date, there is no concrete data on the number of stray dogs roaming the streets of Benghazi or how many have been eliminated. However, in 2020, a similar campaign was launched by the same unit of Benghazi’s internal security forces. It was in response to another incident when a child was attacked, barely surviving after being severely wounded. The campaign reportedly eliminated 2 percent of the entire population.

Even though another campaign was launched in 2022, stray dogs continue to encroach on Benghazi’s neighborhoods.

Hind Salameh* is a Benghazi resident who spoke to Middle East Uncovered about the impact of stray dogs on her daily activities. Salameh lives in Al Keesh, an old neighborhood affected by the proliferation of the dogs. Both Salameh and her mother were bothered by the increasing number of these animals, blaming the municipality for failing to implement containment programs.

“I often joined my mother during her walk around the neighborhood,” said Salameh. “However, we tended to carry sticks or a brick to fend off the dogs in case they attacked us. When we heard the tragic story [of Mecca Al Maghbribi], we gave up on walking. After a full day of work, you need a bit of fresh air. However, killing the dogs is not the best way to tackle this issue.”

The head of the stray dog ​​unit, Deputy Officer Abdul Rabah Al-Faydi, said the extermination campaigns are necessary to protect residents from attacks and reduce the risk of disease. It was the same method adopted by the municipality in Baghdad, which eliminated more than 19,000 dogs in 2025.

Without a sustainable government program, the stray dogs of Benghazi will likely encroach even deeper into different neighborhoods. From Benghazi to Baghdad, advocates have argued that shelters and humane population control offer a more sustainable solution than mass extermination. Advocates point to neighboring Erbil as evidence that another approach is possible. There, authorities say a three-year program of collecting, sheltering, and sterilizing stray dogs has brought attacks in the city center under control.

Along the corniche, Benghazi’s cafés are busy again, and the city is slowly rebuilding. But a few streets over, residents still carry sticks and bricks when they leave home. As the city recovers, the challenge is not just repairing what the war destroyed, but confronting four-legged scavengers it left behind. How the city chooses to respond will shape the future of both the stray dogs and the residents who are forced to share the city with them.

The high-pitched whine of a low-flying drone hangs over Beirut’s southern suburbs. Below it, excavators chew through mountains of concrete. Between the shattered bricks lie fragments of ordinary lives. A child’s toy, family photographs, a soot-blackened sofa, a single Christmas stocking. On top of one pile of rubble, a fresh yellow flag flutters in the summer wind.

As Dahiyeh slowly begins to rebuild, the symbols of Hezbollah remain just as visible as the destruction.

To many outsiders, the flag is a symbol of what is often called a “Hezbollah stronghold.” To the people who live here, it tells only a fraction of the story.

The citrusy, earthy aroma of za’atar and the fatty, nutty smell of melted cheese drifts into the street from a small bakery where Ali Jaber is tossing one piece of dough after another into the blazing oven. As he replaces the baked manakish (or manouche, a popular Lebanese flatbread akin to pizza) with raw ones, customers wander in and out.

During the war, the oven stayed lit.

“We kept making manouche,” he says. “It’s our land. If we didn’t stay, who would?”

Some days the strikes hit the buildings right outside the bakery. Other days they just made the shelves next to Ali Jaber shake.

“We don’t know the word fear. We have been through so much.”

On the wall behind him hangs a portrait of Hassan Nasrallah, the deceased secretary-general of Hezbollah.

Ali Jaber notices me looking at it.

“In the West, you see Hezbollah as terrorists,” he says.

“But that’s not the only truth. We are people. We are families. It’s my mother, my father, my sister, my brother and the child in my wife’s stomach. We were born and raised here. We are people of this land. You are the ones who don’t understand us. So how will we ever get our point across to the world?”

He takes out a manouche, steaming with melted cheese, and places it on the counter.

“I want peace. And I want to be able to defend myself.”

Support for Hezbollah remains strongest among Lebanon’s Shiite community, although opinions have become more divided since the latest war, according to experts. Even in Dahiyeh, residents disagree over many of the movement’s decisions, but many also feel outsiders rarely ask how their views were shaped.

From the tenth-floor balcony of his apartment, Ahmad lights a cigarette while he looks out on what used to be a display of the neighborhood’s many apartment blocks.

Now, the view is one of destruction.

His family’s apartment survived with only minor damage.

The dust of war has been wiped from the blankets, but two months after they returned, the backseat of their car is still packed with clothes, documents, and flip-flops. They’re ready to leave again. Not because they plan to, but because experience has taught them that they might have to.

“Since I was a child, there has always been a war. I don’t even know what life without one looks like. What would I even talk about? Cats and dogs?”

Thirty-year-old Ahmad has spent much of his life fleeing from one crisis to the next. Over the past two years alone, he has been displaced repeatedly from both Beirut and his hometown of Markaba near the Israeli border. In the recent war, an estimated one million people were internally displaced.

Many Lebanese blame Hezbollah for drawing the country into repeated wars with Israel. Asked if he understands them, he pauses for a second while the whine from the drone takes over the silence.

“I see myself as neutral. I am not a supporter. I am not against them. I think both Hezbollah and Israel are wrong for this,” he says and expresses what people in Dahiyeh are often hesitant to—despite thinking it. That is why Ahmad prefers not to have his last name used.

There is destruction all around us. Critics will say that without Hezbollah it wouldn’t be here. Why don’t you and the people here see it like that?

“People stick to the people who defend them. That’s why people follow them. They want someone to save their houses. They want to live there. Eat there. They don’t want to be displaced from their lands,” he says.

“In the headlines, it’s always about Hezbollah going against Israel and trying to protect the Lebanese. Not the government.”

That perception is rooted in history. For decades, southern Lebanon was among the country’s poorest regions with limited public investment and weak state services. Hezbollah emerged during that period, combining armed resistance with schools, clinics, and welfare programs that became deeply rooted in many Shiite communities.

The movement has also consistently portrayed itself as the “defender” of southern Lebanon. Over time, critics and experts have argued that this has reinforced the belief that the movement alone can protect the south, while supporters point to repeated conflicts with Israel as evidence that the threat is real.

A few kilometers from Ahmad, Zeinab Jawad is looking through a photo album. She gently flips the page and points to a picture of a small boy smiling.

“It’s Hadi,” she says with a tight smile.

Next to her is a painting more than a meter tall. The background is bright yellow. On it is her son, Hadi.

He was killed in April while fighting for Hezbollah. Traditionally, he is supposed to be buried in their hometown. But even despite the ceasefire, they still can’t go there. So, while she is waiting to bury him, his body has been placed in a temporary grave.

She speaks softly. Not about politics, but about her son.

“He was gentle, caring and educated, with a university degree. He loved the south. He adored the plants in the south and the olive trees,” she says.

She smiles as her eyes redden and grow glossy.

I ask why, after losing her son, she still supports Hezbollah.

“No mother can take the pain from losing her son. But we are offering our most precious thing for safety. I want safety. I want to live.”

She speaks about growing up under Israeli occupation. About hearing of torture from the Khiam prison in the South. About stories passed down through her family. About a childhood shaped by conflict and believing that someone had to defend the south.

“It’s our right to fight for what is ours. It’s my land. My home,” she says.

Those experiences are the lens through which she and many Shiites see the movement.

Back in the bakery, customers continue to arrive.

Outside, another excavator tears into what remains of a collapsed building. Above it, the drone is still circling. The yellow flags are still waving in the wind too.

To many outside Lebanon, they symbolize a militant terrorist movement. To many people here, they represent memories, belonging, and survival.

Ali Jaber points towards photographs of young men hanging on the bakery wall.

“We have lost a lot. Friends, family. But it’s because of them that we are here now,” he says.

Some people believe that Lebanon could have been spared the suffering if Hezbollah had given up their weapons. Why don’t you agree?

He answers without hesitation.

“If they didn’t fight, we would all have been wiped out. We never really had a choice to begin with. For us, the only option was to defend ourselves, to go through wars and keep going. It’s not like we enjoy this. We have no choice.”

It is easy to reduce places like Dahiyeh to its yellow flags, but harder to sit with and really listen to the people who live under them. Their stories do not settle the issue of Hezbollah, and they don’t ask anyone to. But they do remind us that movements don’t often survive for decades on ideology alone. They endure because they become woven into the lives of people who believe they have few other places to turn.

Long after the cameras leave, those people will still be here, rebuilding homes, burying loved ones, baking bread, and hoping their children inherit something other than the next war. They are part of Lebanon’s story too.

Another week in Iraqi politics, and Murad Ismael is frustrated. Some days, he feels “sickened” by a political system that enriches a small elite. Other days, it seems impossible to get anything done. Entering office on a wave of support in November 2025, the engineer-activist believed his win would mark a turning point for the Yazidi people. “I thought I would be that person who gets things done; I’ll be the politician who makes change.”

Six months into his first term in Parliament, he has adjusted his expectations, but not his goals. The community he represents has slipped down the agenda, supplanted by wars in Iran, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. “The international community helped initially, but then they dropped the ball before we had resolutions... Yazidi cases are really on the back burner now,” Ismael said.

Twelve years after the ISIS genocide, few reparations that would allow families to heal have materialized. Approximately 190,000 Yazidis are still displaced, unable to return to Sinjar where the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, and other vital infrastructure has been painfully slow. Many cannot go back because their homes have been destroyed. Others fear returning to a volatile environment where different armed groups vie for control.

“I am representing a population that needs support, employment, reparations, IPD [Internally Displaced Person] returns, and reconstruction. I think people are starting to wonder after six months what Murad is doing,” he said.

These issues loom large for an entire generation that has grown up in refugee camps, where Yazidi families fear lost loved ones have been forgotten as mass graves await excavation and investigations into trafficked children stall. But in Baghdad, where Ismael advocates daily for the Yazidi cause, politicians look surprised when he describes squalid conditions and food shortages. “They don’t even know that the IDPs exist. That really hurts,” he said.

After years of campaigning, Ismael believed politics would provide a platform for policy change. Now he fears it might be too late. “I wish I was in parliament in 2017 and 2018 when the Yazidi issue was at the forefront internationally. It takes a lot of energy to bring anything related to Yazidis [before parliament] now.”

A few months after Ismael began his term in office, a period of relative stability in Iraq came to an abrupt close. In March 2026, the US-Israeli conflict with Iran spilled into Iraq, turning it into a proxy battleground.

The ensuing months saw politicians grappling with the economic devastation caused by plummeting oil exports, while civilians faced soaring food prices as attacks on Iraqi soil dragged the country into another war. “Iraq is not a functioning country…the whole system is cracking,” he said.

Ismael began his term charged with ambition. He had no intention of being another Yazidi politician who enters parliament with a “heavily Kurdish agenda.” His vision remains broader and more inclusive, “to build a balanced Yazidi policy that’s not based on hate.”

So far, this has proved difficult in the context of a regional war that is exacerbating divisions in Iraq’s political system. Modest progress becomes arduous when confronted by the fault lines between parliament’s competing parties and sects. “Sometimes even the like-minded people can’t unite because of the way Iraq’s political system works,” he said.

Ismael never intended to run for office. After co-founding the Yazidi advocacy group Yazda and leading the fight for justice in courts abroad, he was already a leading voice for survivors. His work helped to secure recognition for the genocide in more than a dozen countries and drew attention to the testimonies of survivors like Nadia Murad. In 2020, he drew on his background in the non-profit sector to launch Sinjar Academy and create opportunities for Yazidi youth unable to find work.

Then, last year, he made a last-minute decision to join the first Yazidi unified electoral coalition and the votes flooded in. He received one of the highest vote counts in Nineveh, a victory made all the more remarkable by sidestepping the traditional party machinery, patronage networks, and hefty campaign budgets that bankroll many mainstream candidates in Iraq.

Iraqi politicians backed by the major parties typically spend tens of thousands, even millions, to secure their seat in the Council of Representatives. Ismael was elected outside the quota system, which reserves seats for minority candidates, after spending less than $20,000 on his campaign. “Yazidis have waited a long time for a person to give them hope, and power, and strength,” he said.

When the results were announced in mid-November, it felt like something had finally shifted. A community that has spent more than a decade struggling to be heard had a voice they trusted in a position of power. Celebrations erupted as fireworks lit up the streets. A convoy, hundreds of cars long, blared their horns until 3am. “It felt strong,” Ismael said.

That night, he saw the faith his constituents had placed in him. Six months later, he understands what it means to carry the hopes of a bereaved community on his shoulders. “It’s an honor, but also an unbelievably heavy burden.”

Ismael is using his time in office to explore all possible avenues for justice. He is part of the working group behind the new international crimes law, which will bring genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity into Iraq’s legal system. The law has been slow to materialize, and he is keen to accelerate progress on legislation that will afford greater protections to minorities in Iraq. It will also afford a degree of recognition for the suffering Yazidis have endured. “Genocide is a lot of open wounds that you need to close as much as possible,” he said.

While wider reform grinds on, he keeps WhatsApp open for day-to-day demands. He wants to counter the aloof image of Iraqi MPs and moves between two offices where he is accessible to voters. “As a politician you are a member of the community that sent you here. You have to be available when they need you.”

There are days when Ismael wonders what can be achieved with “just one seat.” Other times, he believes that one man, one voice in Parliament, does matter.

This means responding to a cry for help at 1am when someone’s family member is being held at a checkpoint, or stepping in when an employee needs six months off work to recover from illness. These are the differences he can make on a daily basis, while harnessing his access and building alliances to address broader challenges affecting Yazidis as a whole.

Looking ahead, he is clear in his goals. The challenge will be finding routes to achieve them in a system that safeguards power for a well-connected elite. He is encouraged by the new Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s anti-corruption crackdown, which has recovered more than $100 million in missing state funds and resulted in the arrest of senior officials, including MPs. But the corruption cases and patronage networks will not evaporate overnight, nor in the three and a half years left of his term. New to politics, he is learning how to work within a broken system, “adhering to my values while trying to get something done.”

Ismael doesn’t know whether he will run again when his term is complete. He won’t be distracted by campaigns and bids for power. His focus is on tangible change for a community that has been “let down by everybody,” while closing the gap between ordinary people and the politicians that speak for them. “A lot of the issues that Yazidis face are political issues, so they need to have strong political representation,” he said.

Six months after Yazidis chose him to “change the wave of injustice to justice,” Ismael knows the difficulties ahead. The obstacles are daunting, but he refuses to waver. “I will be the voice of my people in every instance,” he said.

Nearly 20 years ago, a group of Holocaust deniers and anti-Israel activists were invited to Iran to support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supposition that the murder of six million Jews in Europe was a “myth.”

The anti-Zionist hardliner, then president of Iran, also called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

An unlikely candidate, one might think, to become a spy for a country the Islamic Republic has consistently labeled “Little Satan.”

And yet, if reports are to be believed, Ahmadinejad was allegedly groomed and recruited as an intelligence asset by Mossad, which even considered him for a role leading Iran if the Islamic Republic was toppled.

According to a report in The New York Times (NYT), Israel’s most feared intelligence service sent its top spy to Budapest to meet with the anti-Zionist former president. The mission continued even after Israel’s devastating war in Gaza against Hamas after October 7.

The terrorist group has received millions of dollars in funding from its staunch ally, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It may read like a far-fetched Hollywood movie plot. That’s certainly the line Ahmadinejad’s office is putting out there, which has dismissed the “Hollywood-style claims” that were “not worthy of denial,” before accusing the NYT of publishing “fabricated” material.

The paper also reported that Ahmadinejad is now under house arrest after Iranian authorities uncovered much of his alleged interaction with Israel. His office denies this.

For those who have followed Ahmadinejad’s career after he left office in 2013, the decisions that may have led him down this path are not so incredulous.

“Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been ostracized out of the political sphere. And his ambitions remain unfulfilled. This motivation could be manipulated to get him on board with Mossad’s tasking. Israel gets control of domestic politics in Iran, and Ahmadinejad gets his old job back, something he believes he deserves,” says Jonathan Hackett, a US Marine Corps veteran specializing in counterintelligence and the author of Iran’s Shadow Weapons: Covert Action, Intelligence Operations, and Unconventional Warfare.

Such an operation is “High-risk, low probability of success,” one which most states would not undertake. But, Hackett goes on to say, “Mossad has an interest in influencing and directing Iran’s domestic politics. If Mahmood Ahmadinejad can achieve this for them, it would make sense.”

Ahmadinejad rose to power with the direct backing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, serving as Iran’s president from 2005 to 2013.

He soon became one of the Islamic Republic’s most recognizable figures—not only down to his appalling views on the holocaust, but the violent crackdown that followed his disputed “landslide” re-election in 2009.

Many Iranians believed he didn’t win the election fairly, leading to mass protests on the streets, which became known as the Green Movement.

But it was Ahmadinejad’s relationship with the ruling establishment that was a bigger thorn in his side. The regime which brought him to power steadily deteriorated, and he was repeatedly barred from returning to the presidential race. That frustration would have turned into anger towards the regime, making him easy fodder for recruitment.

“Whilst he is not the most desirable asset from a handling perspective, the placement and access he has may outweigh the costs of difficult handling,” said Hackett, when asked why Mossad would recruit him.

In recent years, Ahmadinejad became a critic of the Islamic Republic, accusing senior officials of corruption and poor governance. His views became more moderate, and he worked on improving his English and getting a makeover. He trimmed his beard and reportedly had Botox.

Iranian-born historian Dr. Arash Azizi recalled arranging an interview between Ahmadinejad and an Israeli journalist, claiming that the former president repeatedly expressed an interest in discussing Jewish history and Israel.

“He seemed to be open to normalization with Israel,” Dr. Azizi told Iran International, a Persian-language satellite channel based in London.

It’s not clear when Israeli intelligence first approached the former president, but the NYT reported that the Islamic Republic traced at least some of Ahmadinejad’s contacts with Israeli intelligence to a 2023 trip to Guatemala.

According to the newspaper, David Barnea—then head of the Mossad—also traveled to Hungary to meet Ahmadinejad, after he had been invited to speak at Ludovika University at a climate conference the year before.

The story was corroborated in the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which suggested that the former Mossad director even skipped a security consultation about Gaza with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to focus on Ahmadinejad.

Israeli officials reportedly paid him for housing and travel, with Mossad operatives meeting him several times.

Naturally, Ahmadinejad’s behavior started to arouse the Iranian regime’s suspicions. He twice slipped his security detail during a 2025 trip to Budapest—shortly before that summer’s 12-day war between Israel and the US—and confronted him about his disappearances.

The operation reached its most dramatic moment on February 28, according to the NYT, when the US and Israel began military strikes against Iran, killing several Iranian figures including Ayatollah Khamenei.

An Israeli strike also hit Ahmadinejad’s compound, targeting a building used by his bodyguards. But the former president, according to the NYT, had been driven away by four Mossad agents, who then kept him at a safe house in Tehran.

Ahmadinejad had not been seen in public for months, sparking widespread speculation. But then he appeared among mourners at Khamenei’s funeral in July. In video footage, Ahmadinejad looked weary but raised a hand, perhaps to reassure someone off-camera, before nodding and smiling.

If the regime thought there was any truth to the spying allegations, why would he be seen at such a high-profile event?

“The regime is very weak and fractured,” Hackett explains. “They may be prioritizing the show of a unified front in the face of adversity for the time being. This does not mean Ahmadinejad is eternally safe. This is probably a temporary situation. The major figures both present and absent from the funeral were likely chosen deliberately, so having him there was a choice.”

So why reveal this alleged relationship now?

Such details would only have been released by Israel if there were compelling narrative benefits to doing so, according to an intelligence source. It would signal Mossad’s ability to recruit and handle agents who previously operated at the highest levels of a hostile state’s government.

Even then, exposing an alleged agent would carry enormous risks. Perhaps Ahmadinejad became troublesome or threatened Israeli interests.

If these details were authorized for publication, it suggests Israeli officials believed the strategic benefits of the disclosure outweighed the operational cost.

Unless Mahmood Ahmadinejad speaks out, we may never know whether any of it is true. However, if the allegations are accurate, they point to a far broader objective than simply removing Iran’s leadership.

Hackett concludes: “Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Israel is not so much interested in regime change in Iran, as it is in regime control.”