What It Means to Stay Awake While My Region Holds Its Breath

For activists, journalists, and reformers across the Middle East, the threat of escalation is personal. We understand what is at stake and what we stand to lose should history repeat itself.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with being overworked or burned out.

It is the kind that keeps you awake until nine in the morning, staring at the light breaking through the window, knowing you have not slept at all. Not because you were building something or celebrating. But because you were waiting—holding your breath as the rest of the world cheers on a war you know will have far-reaching implications for those you love… for the place you call home.

Mostly just waiting for messages that say, “I’m safe.”

Over the past few weeks, as the possibility of a strike by the United States against the regime in Iran has hung in the air, my nights, and the nights of countless others who have family and friends in the region, have stretched into mornings. Two a.m. becomes four. Four becomes seven. By nine, the city around me is starting its day while I am still refreshing my phone, scanning headlines, checking encrypted chats, and looking for signs that the people I care about are still intact.

This is what it means to be born in a place where geopolitical decisions carry real costs.

Family, friends, and the neighborhood you grew up in are all at risk of being swept into violent conflicts they had no hand in initiating or perpetuating.

My people are those who have started free speech book clubs in Iraq instead of joining a militia. The people working toward building a better life for themselves and their communities, despite the odds being stacked against them.

And here is the uncomfortable truth. Mixed with fear, there is also something else. A nervous, restrained sense that if something does happen, maybe this time, it will break the paralysis. Maybe it will shake structures that have calcified and obliterated innocent lives for decades. Maybe the day after could open space that the day before never allowed. But hoping for that hypothetical reality from the safety of a New York apartment feels wrong. Sure, I joined U.S. forces in the fight against Al-Qaeda in Baghdad. Have dedicated my professional career to equipping people across the Middle East with the knowledge, resources, and skills to build a freer and more prosperous future.

But it feels almost wrong to admit that. Anyone who has lived under entrenched systems understands the paradox. War is catastrophic. Economic and ideological stagnation is suffocating, most of all for the everyday man or woman simply pursuing a better life. When nothing moves and cycles seem unending, even drastic, risky moves sometimes feel like oxygen. Or the potential for it.

Still, reality intrudes quickly on romantic thinking.

When escalation in the Middle East begins, the first people exposed are not the generals, the officials with bunkers and security details, or the states with advanced air defenses.

They are the civilians who dared to think independently.

They are civil society organizers. The journalists working to document the truth without protection. The young men and women who started podcasts, small nonprofits, translation projects, and entrepreneurship networks. The people whose only weapon was an idea.

It is difficult to strike a fortified military base and intimidate a country with fighter jets and aircraft carriers. It is difficult to touch those who can retaliate immediately and decisively.

It is very easy to target someone who cannot fight back.

Very easy to accuse them of being foreign agents.

Very easy to make them disappear as collateral in the fog of a national emergency.

I work with people who are not trained for combat. They are trained to build. They build institutions slowly, create platforms for debate, and make it easier for young people to start businesses rather than join militia factions. They insist that national identity can transcend sect and ethnicity.

In moments of calm, their work feels like a light at the end of a tunnel.

In moments of escalation, it feels dangerously exposed—and those of us who have supported and encouraged them lie awake at night, remembering their names. Hoping it will pop up across our WhatsApp chats again in the morning, all the while knowing it very well may not.

That constant awareness that your community is among the least protected reshapes your sense of responsibility. I can’t afford naïveté or abstract hypotheticals. Every headline is personal. Every rumor is measured against a list of names in your head.

And yet, that vulnerability sharpens our purpose. We did not dedicate our lives only to escaping the regimes that tried to kill us, but to helping make the places we fled safer for those who come after us.

If the weakest are the easiest targets, then their survival cannot depend on chance. It must depend on visibility, networks, and international partnerships. Targeting civil society is not cost-free.

When no one is watching, people become easier to silence. When attention continues, it becomes harder to make them disappear.

So by nine in the morning, when exhaustion finally hits, I often ask myself why I continue this work. Why stay connected so closely to places that rob you of sleep? Why carry the psychological weight of two worlds at once?

The answer is simple.

Because the Middle East is not only a region of militias and missiles. It is also a region of courageous minorities. People who believe in economic opportunity over external patronage. In critical thinking over conspiracy. In sovereignty over proxy control.

They do not have air defenses. But they do have conviction.

History shows that the groups that appear weakest in moments of escalation often shape the long-term direction of their societies. Militaries win battles and armed actors dominate headlines, but ideas determine what survives when the smoke clears.

But only if the people carrying those ideas survive, too.

There is fear. Fear of retaliation. Fear that the doers will once again be squashed between larger forces. Fear that in a confrontation between states, civilians will pay the price.

But there is also hope. Hope that any rupture in the existing order could create space for reform, recalibration, even renewal.

Hope alone, however, is not a strategy.

If policymakers truly care about stability in the Middle East, they must understand that protecting regimes is not the same as protecting the people they rule. Stability built only around hard power is brittle. Stability that includes a resilient civil society can be long-lasting.

By the time nine in the morning arrives, I am reminded of something else.

The fact that I am awake is not only a symptom of anxiety, but a reminder of connection.

To stay awake worrying about people thousands of miles away means you still believe their lives matter. It means you refuse to treat them as collateral in someone else’s strategic game.

What keeps me going is not the prospect of war, but the conviction that the most vulnerable voices in the region are also the most necessary ones to safeguard. The people building alternatives to extremism, corruption, and sectarianism are not collateral to be written off in the name of strategy. They are the foundation of any future worth defending.

If policymakers claim to care about long-term stability, they must understand this: when civil society is crushed, the vacuum will not be filled by moderates. Militias, strongmen, and those who thrive in chaos will step into the gap.

If the easiest people to target are the ones trying to build something better, then protecting them is the most imperative charge.

And until that is understood in Washington, Tehran, and every capital where maps are redrawn by force, some of us will keep watching the night turn into morning. And hoping—working—toward something better.

Middle East Uncovered is powered by Ideas Beyond Borders. The views expressed in Middle East Uncovered are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ideas Beyond Borders.