Alternatives International

Between Tyranny and Silence: Understanding Societal Decay in the Arab World

Messaoud Romdhani — 2026-03-12T20:20:09Z

Across much of the Arab world, the absence of genuine democracy is no longer a hidden flaw but a defining political reality.

The Arab region does not merely confront isolated crises; it is caught in a profound structural collapse, the culmination of decades of cultural insularity, unchecked authority, hesitant elites, and obsolete ideologies drained of relevance.

Societies are ensnared in a self-perpetuating spiral: central power suppresses pluralism, elites oscillate between silence and complicity, and political discourse fragments into polarization, leaving almost no space for genuine dialogue or reform. The rot is systemic, the decline methodical, and the consequences, far-reaching.

Ibn Khaldun, the renowned scholar, philosopher, and sociologist, observed that injustice heralds the ruin of civilization. His dictum illuminates this reality with uncanny precision. Despotism erodes social cohesion and corrodes institutional integrity, transforming governance from guardianship of the public interest into an instrument of privilege, domination, and authoritarian perpetuation. When law loses its impartiality and institutions falter, injustice does not merely exist—it embeds itself into society, corroding bonds, eroding trust, and fostering alienation at every level.

Internalized Compliance

Unchecked authority depends not only on overt coercion but also on the quiet complicity of citizens. Those accustomed to submission—or who justify injustice in the name of security or self-interest—become unwitting collaborators, effectively legitimizing the very abuses that undermine their freedoms. Responsibility becomes diffuse, and culpability blends with victimhood, as Nobel Prize–winning writer Najib Mahfoudh observes in Al-Karnak: ‘We are all criminals, and we are all victims.' Opportunism, fear, and silence combine to normalize injustice, making what should be extraordinary seem ordinary

Elite Abdication and Capture

Historically, Elites hold the mantle of conscience and moral guidance. When they retreat, equivocate, or align rhetorically with regimes, they reinforce authoritarian structures, turning political discourses into instruments of distortion rather than illumination. Their abdication creates a moral and political vacuum: citizens adapt where they might resist, silence becomes rational, injustice, habitual. Authority expands unchecked, institutions crumble, and opportunities for reform narrow with each passing day.

Ideology as a Mechanism of Exclusion

Exclusionary ideologies thrive in constrained political spaces. Public discourse hardens into antagonistic blocs; difference is recast as threat, critique as betrayal. Authority fuses with intellectual closure, institutionalizing polarization, perpetuating authoritarian reproduction, and hollowing out civic norms. Social bonds dissolve as society fragments along fault lines of fear and ideology.

The Absence of Genuine Democracy

Across much of the Arab world, the absence of genuine democracy is no longer a hidden flaw but a defining political reality. Elections are staged as rituals of legitimacy rather than mechanisms of choice. Institutions exist, but too often without real independence, while large parts of the media speak for power instead of holding it accountable.

Unchecked authority depends not only on overt coercion but also on the quiet complicity of citizens.

In this environment, the language of rights survives mostly as performance. Accountability is endlessly postponed, and the law becomes a tool for enforcing obedience rather than delivering justice. Over time, the consequences accumulate: economies stagnate, public institutions erode, and growing numbers of young people—frustrated and disillusioned—seek their future elsewhere.

The result is a vicious cycle. Political closure feeds economic weakness: economic weakness deepens social frustration, and frustration gradually turns into resignation. What begins as a political deficit slowly hardens into a broader condition of decline, where stagnation becomes normal and hope increasingly scarce.

The Contemporary Triad of Crisis

In much of the Arab world, three forces converge to keep societies trapped: unaccountable rulers, hesitant or complicit elites, and exclusionary ideologies. Together, they quietly erode institutions, silence debate, and hollow out civic life.

Civilization cannot survive without justice, ethical responsibility, and accountability. When these pillars vanish, decline feeds itself: power escapes scrutiny, elites shrink from action, and ideology narrows the space for pluralism.

Breaking the cycle demands courage, not just reform. Societies must confront abuses openly, defend shared principles, and sustain dialogue even when inconvenient. Only then can balance be restored—and decline turned back.

Entrenchment of Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is fortified not merely by force but through the erosion of norms, the normalization of deviation, and the suppression of discourse. Societies fractured in structure and consciousness are the result of prolonged repression, silence, and intellectual paralysis. Decay appears inevitable, yet it is the product, not the destiny, of historical and social choices.

Restoring Elite Responsibility

Decay is not fate. Reform begins when elites reclaim conscience, hold power accountable, and craft feasible alternatives. The public sphere must be reconstructed on reasoned deliberation rather than pretext or conflict, and legitimacy rooted in justice rather than dominance. Only then can societies transcend crisis management, address structural dysfunctions, and forge a social contract grounded in rights, responsibility, and historical consciousness. Injustice embeds itself in every institution, so decisive reform and a renewed civic conscience are needed to restore justice and hope.

Messaoud Romdhani is a Tunisian Human Rights activist, former president of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, former vice president of the Tunisian Human Rights League.

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Respecting International Law Depends on Who Breaks It: Why Canada Backed the War Against Iran

Jeremy Wildeman — 2026-03-05T23:53:23Z

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently warned at the World at the Economic Forum in Davos that “middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu,” many saw this as a defence of international law and the multilateral order. That earned him global accolades.

At the time, Canada and Denmark were under pressure from the Donald Trump administration to surrender territory to the United States: Greenland from Denmark, and either the entirety.

Trump's demands came as a shock to a western leaders who maintain a deeply optimistic interpretation of American intentions and the immutability of their relationships. It also caused significant alarm among U.S. allies in the West, who have spent decades under the American security umbrella.

It's likely because western countries were in disarray and unable to push back forcefully against Trump's bullying that Carney's speech was so well-received.

He appeared to put words into immediate action, rebuilding Canada's fraught relationships with key Global South powers such as China and India while providing leadership on a major trade alliance among Canada, the European Union (EU) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership states to mitigate the impact of Trump's aggressive use of tariffs.

Many observers thought Canada was turning to a principled foreign policy, championing universal liberal values such as democracy, justice, human rights and the rule of law. It seemed as though Canada was coming to the defence of a rules-based order, and this was helping it regain significant international prestige.

So it came as a shock when Carney offered immediate support to an illegal U.S.-Israel war of aggression against Iran on Feb. 28.

The liberal and rules-based orders

Within days Carney was equivocating about the war and his initial statement of support. He seemed to be attempting to balance his stated support for international law with being an American ally. He has said that he supports the U.S. and Israeli war “with regret” and that Canada will stand by its allies “when it makes sense.”

What seems like hypocrisy by Carney is in fact consistent with contemporary Canadian foreign policy and its interpretation of international law.

This can be understood by exploring Canada's participation in two international systems established by the U.S. after the Second World War: the liberal international order and the rules-based order.

The liberal international order expresses some of the highest principles of liberal internationalism: anti-racism, democracy and the right to self-governance, free trade and economic interdependence, multilateral co-operation and respect for international law.

While the rules-based order draws on the liberal international order's rules and norms, it selectively interprets them for U.S. and western interests. Whereas international law is a set of rules that govern relations between states and are enforced by institutions such as the International Court of Justice, the rules-based order is a deliberately opaque concept. Its rules are vague and ill-defined, and it is unclear who has the right to define or generate them.

Crucially, the post-war international order was meant to prohibit or restrict war, as laid out in the United Nations Charter. Article 2, paragraph 4, of the charter has been a cornerstone of international law and the liberal international order, which the U.S. helped establish after the Second World War. It explicitly prohibits states from threatening or using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state.

The U.S. appears to invoke these rules primarily when confronting geopolitical rivals such as Russia or China, or when imposing its will on the rest of the world.

The U.S. and other western powers began shifting their rhetorical support from the liberal toward the rules-based order in the 2000s in response to the rise of Global South powers like China. In many ways, the rules-based order is an inequitable, colour-coded system that reinforces western power, and Canada has been a strong supporter of it.

Carney acknowledged this in Davos by saying the rules-based order was never fair because the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, trade rules were enforced asymmetrically and international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This is on vivid display when comparing Canada's strong response against Russia's illegal 2022 invasion of Ukraine compared to its support for the U.S.-Israel illegal 2026 war against Iran, its reluctance in early January to condemn the U.S. government's illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and its de facto support for Israel's illegal occupation and war crimes in Palestine.

Trump and the unraveling of the western order

What changed in 2025 is the Trump government's hostility to the rules-based order, which it considers a costly obstacle to consolidating power around the world.

Its strategic approach has included an explicit disavowal of liberal internationalism's values, including multilateralism and international law. It has threatened to seize western allied territory and resources while imposing tariffs on them and pressuring them to substantially increase U.S. arms purchases.

Carney noted that western states had been fine with the inequities of the rules-based order so long as they benefited from it at the expense of the rest of the world. Their problem was when the U.S. started to treat them like it treats the Global South, through a neo-imperialism built on principles that “might makes right” and the strong should dominate the weak.

Another important factor that may have encouraged some in western capitals to accept the U.S. war against Iran was Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent Munich Security Conference speech. He lauded Europe's colonial past and encouraged them to join the U.S. in a renewed global domination, plundering the rest of the world like they did in the past.

Canada's decision to back the war with Iran was likely also based on the Carney government's courting of Jewish and Iranian diasporic constituencies and a longstanding institutional reliance on U.S. leadership. But Rubio's speech created conditions favourable for Carney to support the war under the logic of the rules-based order.

At the same time, Canada will have weakened its moral standing if the U.S. turns to territorial expansion in the Americas. The war is also deeply unpopular among Liberal voters, and support for it undermined the prestige Carney gained from Davos, causing him to begin equivocating on his initial position.

Jeremy Wildeman is Adjunct assistant professor, Carleton University; L'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Source: https://theconversation.com/respecting-international-law-depends-on-who-breaks-it-why-canada-backed-the-war-against-iran-277684

March 5, 2026

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Canadian Cleanliness is Built on Malaysian Garbage

Safi Khan — 2026-03-04T17:01:00Z

Environmental degradation is one of the most immediately visible consequences of rapid economic growth in Southeast Asia. Visitors from more developed countries will quickly notice that trash and pollution are not peripheral issues in the region but rather they are simply a major part of the everyday urban landscape. Pollution and waste management challenges are woven into daily life in many major cities in the region. But to stop there and describe the region as “dirty” risks mistaking exposure for origin. Southeast Asia is visibly burdened by the material consequences of rapid development, but what appears as disorder to Western visitors is often a manifestation of the global supply chains that structure their own lives. While air quality issues dominate headlines in places like Hanoi, solid waste presents a different problem in Kuala Lumpur. A closer examination reveals that the visibility of waste in Kuala Lumpur is not evidence of Malaysian disorder, but rather it is a geographic expression of a paradox found in Canadian cleanliness.

A country grappling with pervasive waste

In Malaysia, a first-time traveler from the developed world will have a hard time ignoring the sheer volume of garbage in the urban districts of Kuala Lumpur. Trash punctuates the city's urban infrastructure as often as the tropical vegetation upon which Kuala Lumpur was built. The rainforest's native dipterocarpaceae flora peacocks alongside shiny pastel wrappers on roadsides, waterways, and vacant lots, reflecting gaps in municipal waste collection, recycling infrastructure, and anti-littering policy enforcement. As Malaysia continues to develop and urbanize, officials lament how increased consumption has outpaced the systems designed to manage waste by-products (1). During New Year's celebrations marking the launch of the country's Visit Malaysia 2026 campaign, Tourism Minister Tiong King Sing underscored the responsibility of local communities in preserving the public spaces which maintain Malaysia's image and reputation as a top travel destination in the region and beyond (2). Minister Sing's remarks during the New Year echoed the words of the capital region's Constitutional Monarch, Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who just a month earlier exclaimed he was “fed up” of receiving complaints about the quantity of garbage clogging the country's jetties, alleys, and overflowing from public garbage bins.

My own experiences in Kuala Lumpur do little to contradict the concerns voiced by Minister Sing and Sultan Sharafuddin. At an expatriate networking event, a London-based Danish property manager confided that she was cutting her stay short because she could not adjust to what she described as the city's disorder, referring specifically to the visibility of trash along major streets. Her reaction was blunt but not uncommon among newcomers from more developed parts of the world.

It was not uncommon to see all manner of tropical insects circumambulating overflowing, unlined public garbage bins in busy tourist areas. Standing outside the Petronas Towers, watching plastic cups and food containers collect at the base of a bin, one might reasonably start to wonder: how difficult can it be to line and empty a handful of waste receptacles each day? Surely the capital city of a petro-state with advanced public transit infrastructure can spare the resources to hire public sanitation workers who will maintain the cleanliness of busy tourist areas. But reducing the problem to the absence of bin liners or municipal workers risks missing the larger structure that produces the waste littered around Kuala Lumpur in the first place. Answering the question of why garbage is visible in the city requires recognizing that waste is not simply disposed of, but rather it moves along complex global chains of production, export, and trade.

Local waste hides a global problem

The story of garbage in Malaysia does not begin nor does it end with Malaysian consumption habits. For decades, countries like Canada quietly exported their waste to East and Southeast Asia, externalizing the environmental and political costs of their own consumer economies. In 2013, “Operation Green Fence” saw China begin to enforce waste import policies that were announced in 2011. This was followed by enacting a stricter ban in 2018 under “Operation National Sword” that cited concerns about contamination in waste imports (3). These new policies resulted in containers of Canadian household waste and plastics that were originally bound for China, often mislabeled or contaminated beyond recycling viability, to be redirected to Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries. Former Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, referred to the practice as “deeply unfair” at that time (4). Entire villages in Selangor found themselves living beside illegal plastic processing sites, where foreign waste was burned in open air pits or dumped in unregulated landfills as Malaysia did not have the infrastructure in place to deal with the defective waste (5). Eventually, the country opted to enact stricter inspection protocols resulting in defective shipments being sent back to Canada (6). The Canadian response to China's tightening of waste imports was to seek remediation through the World Trade Organization rather than to address valid concerns about contaminated recycling (7).

The myth of cleanliness and waste disposal in the developed world is built on distance. The belief that waste can be solved at the scale of picking up a gum wrapper on a hike rests on immense infrastructural privilege. Reducing waste to a moral lesson about not littering ignores the global systems that manufacture, transport, and relocate it. Once a recycling or garbage bin is wheeled to the curb, the problem appears to vanish. In reality, the problem is only displaced. Framing garbage as something that moves neatly from the consumer to the bin lacks a fundamental sense of object permanence: once deposited, garbage does not vanish, rather it persists within a complex global chain of labor, infrastructure, and environmental consequence. That displacement becomes visible in Malaysia.

Major climatic and geographical differences that influence perceptions of waste accumulation

While climate shapes the tolerability of accumulated waste, it can also illustrate a hierarchy of relations in the exchange between Canada and Malaysia. A Canadian winter freezes organic waste in place; cold air suppresses odor and slows decomposition. Many Montrealers mark the season's first snowfall by moving their compost bins outside precisely because the sub-zero temperatures neutralize any odour the organic products would otherwise produce. In Kuala Lumpur's ever-present equatorial heat, decomposition does not pause. It ferments. Organic waste breaks down quickly, sweet and acrid at once, the air thickens around alleyways and junctions where bins sit too long in the sun. What might remain inert for months in a Canadian winter is an immediate olfactory offense in the tropics. The very climate that would allow Canada to store organic matter without sensory offence is instead ignored and replaced by one that accelerates decay and makes it impossible to ignore. This is more than an aesthetic difference: the ability to ignore fundamental factors such as land size or climate when it comes to designing waste policy is an immense geopolitical privilege.

There is nothing striking about seeing waste in a metropolis. What is different about waste in Kuala Lumpur is not the visibility of litter, but rather the permanence of it. Garbage constantly accumulates in ways that are harder to ignore than in most Canadian cities. In Montréal, bagged waste is visible weekly around collection day but it is quickly gathered, compacted, and transported out of sight. In Malaysia, it lingers in drains after heavy monsoon rains, collects in fences, and decorates the edges of highways where development presses against the remaining forest. The difference is not moral; it is infrastructural and geopolitical. One country exports the by-products of consumption. The other absorbs them. If anything, Malaysians may understand better than most that “throwing something away” is a fiction. There is no “away” in throwing away, only relocation. For decades that relocation has moved waste from West to East under a paradigm sometimes referred to as the global waste trade.

The economics of exporting waste from rich countries to poor countries

The empty single-use smoothie cups accumulating beneath a bin in Kuala Lumpur are not simply the product of local littering, they are artifacts of a logistics system that made distance profitable. The logic behind the shipping of waste is that it creates productive opportunities in countries that do not have other means to stimulate their economies. The economics of global trade make this system both durable and fragile. Shipping containers arrive in North America full of consumer goods and would otherwise return to Asia empty. Filling them with compressed plastic waste became a rational economic decision: labor costs were lower in importing countries and environmental enforcement was uneven. Some economic analyses defend this reasoning by arguing that hazardous waste poses comparatively lower marginal risk in poorer countries where other risks are more immediate (8). The Global Waste trade is built on that core assumption and whenever it fails or is challenged, the infrastructure built on it struggles to adjust.

In February 2026, Malaysia announced an immediate ban on imported electronic waste, a move that further signals the country's unwillingness to remain a repository for the world's discarded materials(9). The ban reflects a growing sentiment among Southeast Asian governments that waste imports of plastics, electronics, and other hard-to-process items are not an economic boon but an environmental burden that only stretches local infrastructure and harms their local communities. Canadian municipalities have treated the export of waste as a cost-effective disposal option, assuming that distant markets would always be ready to absorb whatever materials could not be processed domestically. Now, destination countries are signalling they will not be passive partners in this arrangement. By tightening import controls on certain waste streams, Malaysia is redefining the terms of the global waste trade, forcing exporting nations to rethink their reliance on overseas markets for disposal.

Back to the source: when poor countries refuse waste from the North

The Basel Convention, adopted in 1989, was created in response to the subterfuge that characterized waste trafficking scandals of the 1980s, most famously the Khian Sea incident (10). In that case, a ship carrying toxic incinerator ash from Philadelphia attempted and failed to evade scrutiny by changing names and ports as it searched for a country willing to accept its cargo for over two years. The waste cargo was eventually illegally dumped off of the coast of Haiti in the late 1980s and finally, following a diplomatic row and international outrage, returned to Florida where it was moved to a landfill in 2002 after sitting on a Florida dock for two years (11).

While Canada became a signatory to the Basel Convention in 1989, as of 2024 Parliament had not yet ratified the parts of it that would ban exporting waste (12). In the meantime, Canada has accumulated its own examples of what happens when the global waste trade fractures. Waste materials that had traditionally flowed through established export channels found themselves stranded after local municipalities were slow to react to China's ban on the import of low quality and contaminated foreign plastic and other recyclables. After being turned away by Beijing, shipments of mislabeled Canadian waste began surfacing in Southeast Asia where governments pushed back.

In 2019, the Philippines threatened diplomatic retaliation and outright war after a private company brought contaminated containers of Canadian waste to the ports of Manila where they sat for years (13 ).The cargo was largely made up of household waste. The cost of repatriating it to Vancouver for incineration cost Canadian taxpayers over $2 million in shipping and various port fees. Malaysia, now the second most popular destination for Canadian waste after the US, likewise has returned contaminated shipments to countries of origin on numerous occasions, including to Canada (14). What had long functioned as an invisible supply chain for benevolent disposal was abruptly exposed. Critics of China's “Operation Green Fence” have argued that it was a move designed to externalize sorting costs for Chinese manufacturers (15). However, if this waste was as valuable as proponents of the global waste trade insist, a policy shift in a single country should not result in a complete rupture in systems of disposal. Municipal programs built on the assumption that recyclables would always find an overseas buyer struggled to adjust when that assumption failed.

A slow process of awareness, but one that is moving in the right direction

Learning some of the minutiae of the global waste trade should not be fatalistic. It should not give individuals the impression that they are powerless in a complex web of relations that includes private shipping contracts, international treaties, and opaque commodity markets. The global waste trade is messy, diffuse, and populated by many actors like municipalities, provinces, private haulers, exporters, regulators, illegal recycling facilities, and consumers. Precisely because it is so decentralized, movement and pressure from any node in the system can matter and effect positive change. Most directly, individuals can reduce the amount of waste their household creates by using their city's organic composting program if that exists. In Montréal, organic waste is composted just north of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport, in the Saint Laurent borough, after which it gets used in the city's various parks and even made available directly to residents free of cost (16).

Canada will not be the first country forced to confront the fragility of its recycling model as a result of the Chinese import ban. Canadian tourists to Europe often comment on European bottle recycling facilities sorting amber, green, and clear glass bottles separately. In Japan, the scarcity of public bins since 1995 following an anthrax attack plot results in individuals assuming temporary custody of their waste until they are able to dispose of it properly in their own homes, reinforcing a culture of sorting and accountability. South Korea's stringent waste sorting policy saw the capital region resort to the removal of garbage receptacles from the city's subway system when private households began misusing them to circumvent the new guidelines (17). Each of these cases reflects the same lesson, the system of exporting unsorted garbage is no longer tenable.

Changes in environmental policies in Canada

Here at home, cities like Edmonton, Halifax, and Montréal have all been forced to roll out new municipal disposal programs in the last few years. Data from the Institute for Research on Public Policy gives cause for hope: just three provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, produce around 90 percent of the country's waste exports (18). While national plastic waste exports fell by roughly 30 percent between 2016 and 2022, the reduction was led by British Columbia which slashed its garbage exports by nearly 70 percent, shrinking its share of national waste exports from 15 percent to just 5 percent. Much of that decline can be attributed to the province's new ambitious recycling and waste to energy programs. Ontario and Quebec reduced exports as well, but only by about 5 percent during the same period. These reforms have not eliminated Canada's reliance on foreign markets. But they demonstrate something important: policy choices alter waste flows. Regulatory design matters. Sorting standards matter. British Columbia's example offers municipalities a model that has already proven itself capable of reducing garbage exports in a Canadian context.

The insects circling an unlined bin in Kuala Lumpur are not evidence of Malaysian failure. They are evidence of a global system that has finally run out of places to hide its waste. As Malaysia's former Prime Minister Mohamad warned, “when you pollute one part of the world, you pollute the rest of the world also,” because waste does not disappear, it circulates. (19)

Notes

Jan Zilinsky, “Malaysia to Send Back 3,000 Tonnes of Plastic Waste to Canada,” CBC News, May 28, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/sp-malaysia-canada-garbage-1.5155558.
Chad Bray, “Malaysia's Tourism Minister Urges Warmer Welcomes After Complaints,” South China Morning Post, accessed February 13, 2026, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3338392/malaysias-tourism-minister-urges-warmer-welcomes-after-less-friendly-complaints.
Will Flower, “What Operation Green Fence Has Meant for Recycling,” Waste360, accessed February 13, 2026, https://www.waste360.com/waste-management-business/what-operation-green-fence-has- meant-for-recycling.
Zilinsky, “Malaysia to Send Back 3,000 Tonnes.”
Jonathan Head, “Malaysia Cracks Down on Illegal Plastic Recycling,” BBC News, December 19, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46518747.
Katie Dangerfield, “Malaysia Ships Back More Canadian Plastic Waste,” Global News, January 20, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/6436078/malaysia-sends-back-trash-canada/.
Simon Lester, “China's Import Restrictions and the WTO,” World Trade Organization News, October 3, 2017, https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news17_e/impl_03oct17_e.htm.
Jagdish N. Bhagwati, “The Case for Free Trade in Hazardous Waste,” Cato Journal 27, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 341–346, https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2007/11/cj27n3-6.pdf.
“Malaysia Bans E-Waste Imports,” Yahoo Finance Canada, February 2026, https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/malaysia-bans-e-waste-imports-043753821.html.
Government of Canada, “The Basel Convention,” accessed February 13, 2026, https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/managing-reducing-wast e/international-commitments/basel-convention-control-transboundary-movements.html.
“The Khian Sea Waste Dumping Incident,” archived article, accessed via Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20150211000151/http://articles.philly.com/2002-06-15/news/ 25349397_1_antrim-township-mountain-view-reclamation-landfill-khian-sea.
Natasha Bulowski, “Will Malaysia Remain Canada's Plastic Dumping Ground?” FairPlanet, accessed February 13, 2026, https://www.fairplanet.org/editors-pick/will-malaysia-remain-canadas-plastic-dumping-gr ound/.
Catherine Cullen, “Duterte Threatens ‘War' Over Canadian Garbage,” CBC News, April 23, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/duterte-canada-president-1.5107539.
Dangerfield, “Malaysia Ships Back More Canadian Plastic Waste”
Flower, “What Operation Green Fence Has Meant for Recycling,”
Ville de Montréal, “Treatment Centre for Organic Waste: Locally Produced Compost,” accessed February 25, 2026, https://montreal.ca/en/articles/treatment-centre-organic-waste-locally-produced-compost- 79059.
“Lack of Trash Cans on Seoul Streets Causes Mess, Inconvenience,” The Korea Times, October 20, 2023, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20231020/lack-of-trash-cans-on-seoul-s treets-causes-mess-inconvenience.
Mia Rabson, “Plastic Waste in Canada: Exports and Policy Gaps,” Policy Options, May 2024, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2024/05/platic-waste-canada/.
Zilinsky, “Malaysia to Send Back 3,000 Tonnes.”

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"Ni Dieu Ni Maître"

Niall Clapham Ricardo — 2026-03-01T18:53:21Z

The reported killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in coordinated strikes on Iran marks a historic rupture. But history did not begin this week, and it will not end with the death of one man. What we are witnessing is the culmination of decades of militarism, sanctions, proxy wars, and Western impunity masquerading as moral clarity.

The Iranian people have endured repression under the Islamic Republic for generations. They have filled the streets demanding dignity, women's rights, workers' rights, and democratic accountability. They have paid in blood for the simple demand to live free. They deserve the fall of authoritarian rule.

But freedom has never arrived on the wings of Western bombs.

We have seen this script before: Iraq. Libya. Afghanistan. Regime change dressed up as liberation, followed by collapse, chaos, warlordism, and foreign extraction. The language of “stability” always seems to follow the destruction of sovereignty.

And before the bombs came the sanctions.

Western sanctions—imposed in the name of democracy—have devastated ordinary Iranians far more than they have weakened elites. Sanctions crush currency values, hollow out public services, restrict access to medicine, and entrench black markets controlled by the very security apparatus they claim to undermine. Collective punishment has never been a strategy for emancipation. It is a strategy for desperation that strengthens hardliners while suffocating civil society.

Here in Canada, we are told that we represent a principled alternative—a “middle power” capable of bridging divides. Yet under Mark Carney, that language of “middle powers” rings hollow. What is presented as balanced diplomacy looks increasingly like reflexive alignment with Washington. When push comes to shove, Ottawa falls in line.

A true middle power acts as a mediator, not a megaphone. It insists on international law, not selective outrage. It does not provide diplomatic cover for allies while condemning adversaries for similar conduct. What we are seeing instead is the posture of a subordinate—Canada as the polite amplifier of U.S. strategy.

That hypocrisy becomes glaring when we consider Palestine. Israel stands accused before the world of committing genocide in Gaza, yet our political leadership offers carefully worded concern without consequences. We cannot condemn repression in Tehran while rationalizing mass civilian death in Gaza. We cannot speak of human rights while shielding allies from accountability.

The destruction of international law did not happen overnight. It happened when we collectively failed to prevent and punish the genocide in Gaza. When mass civilian death became normalized. When Muslim lives became negotiable. When “security” replaced justice.

Islamophobia—inside our borders and abroad—has been the ideological engine of this descent. It has justified wars, sanctions regimes that collectively punish populations, surveillance states, and endless suspicion. It has fueled the global rise of authoritarian populism, including the politics embodied by Donald Trump. When entire populations are portrayed as civilizational threats, fascism finds fertile soil.

None of this excuses the brutality of the Islamic Republic. It does not absolve its repression, its censorship, its prisons, its violence against women and dissidents. The Iranian people deserve its end.

But what must follow cannot be a restoration of monarchy—a nostalgic return to the Shah, trading one autocrat for another draped in Western approval. Nor can it be the installation of a pliable government whose first loyalty is to foreign capitals and oil markets rather than to its own people.

The path forward must belong to the Iranian people.

The women who chanted “Woman, Life, Freedom” must define what freedom means in practice. Workers who strike must shape the economic order. Students, unions, feminists, minorities—these forces must chart the future. It will be revealing to see whether those internationally who rallied behind “Women, Life, Freedom” are prepared to support a new Iran that preserves both political freedom and sovereignty over its oil and resources—or whether their solidarity ends where Western economic interests begin.

The test will be whether freedom is understood as self-determination or merely as geopolitical realignment.

Iran's future must not be a choice between theocratic repression and neoliberal subordination. It must not be a transition from domestic tyranny to foreign tutelage.

If there is to be a new Iran, it must be built by Iranians, accountable to Iranians, and protective of both liberty and sovereignty.

Anything imposed from outside will only reproduce the cycle of domination.

And the world has had more than enough of that cycle.

March 1, 2026

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There Is No Pretext or Plan for the US-Israel War on Iran

Arron Reza Merat — 2026-03-01T18:50:02Z

Framed as a strike on “evil,” Washington and Tel Aviv's attacks leave Iran with few off-ramps. Tehran's incentives now point toward escalation as a matter of survival.

Hours after Tehran had agreed to the unprecedented concession of eliminating its nuclear stockpile, Donald Trump announced the launch of a “massive and ongoing” US and Israeli air war to topple the Islamic Republic. Trump claimed that he had launched Operation Epic Fury because Iran had refused to negotiate and “just wanted to practice evil.” The Israeli Defense Forces announced their commencement of hostilities in a tweet that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

At 9:45 a.m. local time in Tehran, Israel and the United States used high-altitude bombers, jets, and cruise missiles to strike military and civilian targets across the vast country. Both Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian were targeted in the attacks. Israeli media is filled with reports that Khamenei, who has ruled Iran for nearly thirty years, is dead, a claim rejected by Iranian media. (Sources inside Iran have reported that Khamenei's son and daughter-in-law have been killed.) Strikes also targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general Mohammad Pakpour as well as Iran's minister of defense and its chief of intelligence. A girls' school in Minab in southern Iran was also struck. The death toll now stands at fifty, with a similar number wounded. According to domestic media, the victims are as young as seven. The houses of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president from 2005 to 2013, and former prime minister Mir Hossein Moussavi, who has been under house arrest for seventeen years, were also targeted, indicating the United States and Israel wish, at best, to remove any pretenders to power outside of their control or, at worst, to create a power vacuum at the top that could precipitate a civil war.

Tehran has responded by launching a first wave of ballistic missiles against Israel and targeting US military assets in the region. Iran is surrounded by US air and naval bases housing some forty thousand troops. Strikes have been reported in the vicinity of the US Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait; the US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain; the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar; and the US Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. Explosions have also been reported in and around Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, home to significant US military assets. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point for a fifth of global oil supplies.

Israel has made a calling card of using the prospect of peace as a tactic to prosecute wars against its enemies. In June, during the last round of US-Iranian negotiations over the nuclear file, Israel killed Tehran's chief negotiators and tried to decapitate the civilian government on the first day of its twelve-day war against Iran, which the United States joined on the last day. In September, when diplomacy over the Gaza war was nearing a ceasefire deal, Israel attacked Hamas's political wing in Doha.

From the US perspective, negotiations with Iran have been framed by Trump's desire to win a deal more advantageous to the United States than the “terrible” deal Barack Obama finally negotiated in 2016, after over a decade of diplomacy between Tehran and the world powers. During his first term, Trump unilaterally exited the deal and has since assumed a maximalist position in negotiations with Tehran consistent with the long-standing Israeli demand that Iran must be denied its right to enrich any uranium.

In a revealing omission on February 21, Trump's chief negotiator Steve Witkoff said the president had been surprised that Tehran had not simply “capitulated” to US demands. Following this statement, both sides appeared to be nearing a deal; Iran acceded to Trump's demands to say the “secret words” that “we will never have a nuclear weapon” and agreed to enrich uranium only up to the requirements to produce medical isotopes and power its single nuclear power station.

Trump, like his predecessors, has been hamstrung in negotiations because the US option to grant significant sanctions relief — the only thing Iran wants — requires congressional approval. But Congress has strong bipartisan support for hawkish policies against Iran, not least due to the long-standing influence Israel's lobby AIPAC has had on the legislature, financially supporting the campaigns of friendly candidates if they vote in line with Israel.

For decades Khamenei has pursued a policy of so-called strategic patience designed to deter US and Israeli violence, or at least keep it within the grey zone of covert operations, sabotage, and assassinations. But since October 7, 2023, Israel has, with US support, waged a pitiless genocide against Palestine and regional wars against Iran's allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, which provided the means for Tehran to maintain strategic depth against Israel, and therefore the United States. Now that Iran is experiencing a second unprovoked attack, all incentives point to escalation, which in the current circumstances means ramping up counterattacks up to and including a full-scale war.

The problem for the United States and Israel is that while they are able to kill a lot of people and sow terror among the Iranian population, it is vanishingly unlikely that their war aim of bombing Iran into a revolution — or at best a coup d'état — will be successful. Air wars have historically never alone been successful in achieving regime change. In Germany and Kosovo, the air wars were fought in tandem with an occupying army. In 2025 the United States gave up its air war against Yemen's de facto government. Tehran will be mindful of 1983, when it supported Lebanese Shia militias during the Lebanese civil war in their attack against US troops and shipping, which resulted in Washington withdrawing its troops under fire.

Since June, Iran has also been receiving unprecedented support from Russia and China. Moscow has been working with Tehran to reconstitute its air defenses, and China is providing anti-ship missiles. A private Chinese company close to the military has made public satellite imagery on the positions of US naval assets, which observers have interpreted as a signal by China that it could support Iran with real-time intelligence to defend itself.

Contemporary US domestic politics also has little capacity to sustain significant American loss of life. Iran appears to have a short-term strategy to absorb the strikes and try to quickly exact maximum cost on the United States and Israel in the hope that regional actors, who fear wider destabilization, will successfully lobby the United States for a ceasefire. In the longer term, Iran has prepared for a sustained and bloody war. Khamenei has appointed his successor and instructed the appointment of four tiers of military officials in the case of decapitation strikes. Tehran will aim to kill enough Americans to end the war by destabilizing Trump at home.

Arron Reza Merat was a correspondent in Tehran. He now lives in London.

Source: https://jacobin.com/2026/02/iran-war-imperialism-us-israel

28 February 2026

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Four Years Later

Robert Skidelsky — 2026-02-27T23:58:31Z

Four years after the so-called full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is very hard to disentangle oneself from all the clichés, lies and reflexes in which the war is enmeshed. I have never lived through a ‘full-scale war', nor served as a soldier in any war, big or small, so perhaps it was always thus. The Nazis much admired British propaganda in WW1 and Goebbels used it as a model. The great sin in war is to be objective, and this lesson has been well learnt by the protagonists in this one – the Russians, Ukrainians and Ukraine's allies in Europe and (till recently) Washington.

The great danger in forswearing efforts at truth is that what is imagined may come to pass, with the lies leading to the truth of a ‘full-scale' war.

Our power of prediction is so slight, our knowledge of remote consequences so uncertain, that it is seldom wise to sacrifice a present benefit [i.e., peace] for a doubtful benefit in the future

In the case of Ukraine, the ‘news' points my feelings and my intellect in different directions. On the one hand, one reads almost daily about the suffering and heroism of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians – of relentless Russian bombing, of kidnapped children, of schools forced underground, and of course the testimony of Ukrainian refugees. The atrocities of the Russians, ventilated wherever possible, arouse one's moral indignation.

But I have long since learnt that courage and suffering, while rightly evoking admiration and pity, do not of themselves validate the cause for which they are incurred. An action can be brave without being good; suffering is piteous without being necessary.

We in Britain remember our war dead as having given their lives for freedom; the Germans remember theirs as victims of tragedy. Yet the soldiers on both sides fought equally bravely. Russian troops have also fought bravely in the Ukraine war, but we are never, or rarely, asked to admire their bravery, because their cause is deemed evil.

One can say a lot about ‘cause'. In legal terms, the Russians ‘caused' the Ukraine war by invading an independent country. They should not have done so; there were better, more patient ways of wooing Ukraine back into the Russian fold, where bits of it had lived for centuries.

In addition, it was a miscalculation. Supposedly started to prevent Ukraine joining NATO, it has added two new members to the Alliance and made most of Europe anti-Russian. Conceived as a ‘special operation' lasting a few weeks, it has turned into the biggest war on the European mainland since 1945.

But efforts at truth would also acknowledge that the US and NATO provoked Russia by actively working to prise Ukraine from its orbit in order to complete their victory in the Cold War.

And does the West bear no responsibility for a war lasting years, with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, dead or injured on both sides, and much of Ukraine's economy in ruins? Did it not promise Ukraine ‘all it takes' for victory over Russia? Would not the war have ended years ago but for such promises? Was the cause of what the West defines as Ukraine's independence worth the cost in lives? Will the probable outcome justify the deaths, bravery, suffering?

A few of us, in this country, as well as on the continent of Europe and in the US, have been calling for a negotiated peace almost from the day the war started. We have resisted the comparison between Putin and Hitler. We have simply been cancelled. Nothing must be allowed which will weaken the national resolve to stand by Ukraine. Press self-censorship and disinformation in this proxy war have equalled, and even exceeded, that during the ‘real' war against Hitler. Now Trump has broken up the united front. Russia, he says, was not the cause (or at least not the only cause) of this ‘unnecessary' war. And for that he has been excoriated by all right-thinking people in our part of the world.

I am driven once more to reflect on the mature wisdom of an essay by the young John Maynard Keynes when he was a student at Cambridge in 1904. War, he writes, should be approached with ‘much prudence, reverence and calculation', and that includes the propaganda which is its messenger.

‘Our power of prediction is so slight, our knowledge of remote consequences so uncertain, that it is seldom wise to sacrifice a present benefit [i.e., peace] for a doubtful benefit in the future.' Moreover, ‘it is not sufficient that the state of affairs we seek to promote should be better than the state which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition.'

Was the humiliation of Russia sufficiently bad in 2022 to justify its invasion of Ukraine? Were Russian demands on Ukraine following the invasion so intolerable as to justify Ukraine's armed resistance? Above all, was the state of affairs which the West sought to promote sufficiently better to justify its provoking Russia and prolonging this dreadful war for four years?

Source: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/four-years-later?pc=1740

27 February 2026

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Reading For Pleasure in The World's Biggest Democracy

Ravinder Kumar — 2026-02-27T23:51:44Z

I did not grow up in a house that had books – not one novel or shelf of stories was read for pleasure or kept by our beds. The only books I knew were school textbooks and competitive exam guides – to pass exams, to move to the next class and later to try for a government job, which I did not get.

I was born into a Dalit household in north India. None of my forefathers attended school. My father studied through the eighth grade before leaving to work as a daily-wage labourer to support his family of five. When he died last year from a preventable medical tragedy, he left us resilience, integrity, endurance, medical bills and debt – but not a shelf of books.

Today, I am a graduate student in the United States. I read for work and for pleasure. But for much of my life, “reading for pleasure” was not a thing I could afford.

This is why I have been struck by the recent debate over whether India “reads for pleasure”. The argument began after an essay questioned how a country that hosts hundreds of literature festivals each year could still struggle with pleasure reading. It sparked a debate online in which many well-intentioned critics called the question patronising, a misrepresentation of Indian realities or “ignorant and irritating”.

Soon after, an Indian magazine published a confident rebuttal. It painted lush scenes of book fairs, invoked the vibrancy of multilingualism and marshaled publishing statistics to argue that the question's premise was flawed. India's reading culture, the rebuttal insisted, is public, collective and not reducible to Western measures of solitary leisure.

I do not dismiss the rebuttal. It is right that the English-language trade market is only one slice of India's print ecosystem and that reading cannot be measured solely by sales charts. But it replaces one fragile assumption with another: it mistakes spectacle for substance.

A crowd at a book fair can mean many things, like curiosity, aspiration or simply a pleasant winter outing. None of that is insignificant, but conflating attendance with access is grossly problematic. Footfall is not a habit.

The International Kolkata Book Fair reports about 3.2 million visitors. Delhi's fair claims roughly two million. Add Jaipur, Pune, Bengaluru and other marquee festivals, and you might generously reach eight to ten million entries in a good year. In a country of 1.45 billion people, that is well under 1% of the population – and these include repeat visits and are not all confirmed readers, not even necessarily book buyers.

The deeper question is not whether Indians read at all. Of course, they do – students read for exams, aspirants read for competitive tests and professionals read for credentials or promotions. But reading for pleasure – as a habitual, socially normalised activity – requires time, disposable income, quiet space, libraries, bookstores and the legitimacy of being a “reader”. These conditions have never been evenly distributed in India.

A book priced at Rs 300 may seem inexpensive to the urban middle class. Yet recent household expenditure data show that the average monthly per capita consumption expenditure in rural India is just over Rs 4,000. A single book can absorb more than 7% of a rural person's monthly budget. Before we even account for the time required to read it, the purchase itself is a significant luxury.

At the same time, approximately 800 million Indians are provided with subsidised food grains through public distribution programs. That is more than half the population. In such a landscape, it is difficult to argue that pleasure reading is a mass habit simply because a few million people gather at urban fairs each winter.

India is a caste society, and caste shapes not only income and occupation but also proximity to knowledge. The higher one stands in the hierarchy, the more likely one is to inherit books, literate elders, the confidence to see oneself as a “reader” and the overall cultural capital. The lower one stands, the more likely it is that reading remains purposeful – a ladder out of poverty rather than a pleasure practice.

Educational inequalities based on caste and class remain well-documented, yet discussions of India's “reading culture” often universalise the experience of a narrow, urban elite minority. A glance at prize lists and major festival lineups suggests that the same social groups disproportionately dominate publishing houses, prize committees, festival panels and literary visibility, whether in English or regional languages.

As a result, the claim that “India reads” frequently reflects the habits of those already embedded in print networks, while vast sections of the population remain structurally distant from bookstores, libraries and the inherited legitimacy that makes reading for pleasure feel more natural than aspirational.

India is not a single republic of print. It is what economists Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen once described as “islands of California in a sea of sub-Saharan Africa”. Parts of urban India resemble global cultural capitals. Other parts still struggle for basic amenities. More than half the population lives in rural areas. For many of them, the bookstore is hours away, if it exists at all.

Despite all that, things are changing – unevenly, but undeniably. Cheap mobile data and smartphones have brought text, audio and video content to millions. Dalit and other marginalised people are gaining access to educational institutions, books and reading materials; writers from these groups have been writing and publishing on digital platforms as well as in mainstream media, despite their small numbers and as they bypass traditional gatekeepers.

Social media can expose someone to a poem or a political text who might never set foot in a bookstore. Even this exposure is crucial. If someone attends a festival for selfies but leaves with a pamphlet or a name to Google later, that is meaningful. But exposure is not the same as structural equality. Reading for pleasure remains a privilege shaped by caste, class and access. Festivals and footfalls add texture to that story, but they do not resolve it.

My father never owned a book. This was not due to a lack of curiosity, but rather because the world he inherited did not allow for leisure reading. If India wants to claim a culture of pleasure reading, it must build the conditions and break the social and economic barriers that could make it normal in homes like my father's, where books are not heirlooms of privilege but fixtures of everyday life. Because why should a small minority of Indians read for pleasure?

Ravinder Kumar is a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon's history department.

Source: The India Cable

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Exposing Foreign Involvement in Sudan's Evolving War

Husam Mahjoub — 2026-02-16T23:17:09Z

Sudan's war is far from a binary struggle; it is a conflict where a web of local, regional, and global interests and tensions have converged into a single, devastating catastrophe. What observers initially framed as a ‘war between two generals' or a domestic struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has proven to be merely the surface layer of a much more complex and shifting reality.

A Multidimensional Conflict

Initial interpretations of the war's origins framed it either as a desperate bid by the Bashir-era Islamist old guard to reclaim power, or as a preemptive coup by the RSF to seize control of the state. However, the conflict quickly revealed a sub-imperial dimension. The UAE's substantial support for the RSF is increasingly viewed as an Emirati strategic project aimed at securing hegemony over Sudan's resources and shaping its political future. Conversely, supporters of the RSF/UAE point to Egypt as the primary architect behind the SAF, arguing that Cairo is determined to install a military-aligned ruler to prevent a democratic transition that might destabilize regional autocracies.

Despite these competing narratives, a singular, counter-revolutionary thread binds them. At its core, this war serves as a mechanism to dismantle the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people, aspirations that were ignited during the December 2018 revolution and led to the ousting of Omar al-Bashir's three-decade dictatorship in April 2019.

The Saudi-Emirati Divergence: From Alignment to Rivalry

While few initially described this as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the rift between these two Gulf powers has emerged as one of the conflict's central geopolitical features. For a long period, the UAE's resources and its determination to back the RSF went unmatched, even as the RSF committed systematic and well-documented atrocities across all areas it occupied. During this phase, it seemed clear that Sudan did not hold the same priority on Riyadh's agenda as it did on Abu Dhabi's.

This dynamic shifted as the Quad group, comprising the US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, proved too divided to function shortly after its formation in September 2025. Saudi Arabia began to view the RSF's rise through the lens of national security. The prospect of a UAE-aligned militia ruling a country situated just 290 km (180 miles) across the Red Sea from Jeddah is now viewed in Riyadh as a direct threat to its domestic stability and to its envisioned regional order in the Red Sea basin.

Geopolitical Fracture: Two Strategic Visions

This divergence reflects broader Saudi-Emirati tensions that have surfaced in recent years across multiple theaters, ranging from Yemen to oil policy within OPEC+. The two Gulf powers are seen to increasingly pursue distinct strategic visions. Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has prioritized regional stability to create an environment conducive to the economic transformation envisioned under Vision 2030. In contrast, the UAE has pursued a more activist, network-based foreign policy. This approach often involves working through non-state armed actors, including militias like the RSF, to secure strategic leverage over ports, territory, and gold mines across Africa.

Furthermore, Riyadh increasingly views Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and its broader regional aggressions as a threat to overall regional stability. This shift has prompted Saudi Arabia to reconsider its regional relationships and to view the UAE's deepening ties with Israel with growing suspicion. From Riyadh's perspective, this partnership now represents a potential destabilizing axis affecting Red Sea security and complicating its delicate de-escalation process with Iran.

New Facets: Drones and Training Camps

Two recent investigative reports by The New York Times and Reuters have provided the concrete evidence that brings these international interventions into the open:

Egypt's Direct Operational Role: The New York Times report indicates that Egypt has been operating Turkish-made combat drones from a covert airbase in its Western Desert near the Sudanese border, marking a clear shift from political and logistical support to direct military intervention in Sudan's war. This escalation suggests that Cairo views the RSF's territorial advances as a strategic “red line,” particularly in relation to Nile water security and border stability. That red line appears to have been crossed when the RSF seized control of the strategic border triangle linking Egypt, Libya, and Sudan, and later occupied El-Fasher, consolidating dominance across much of the Darfur region.

Ethiopia as a New Frontier: The Reuters report reveals that Ethiopia has established a secret training camp near the Sudanese borders to prepare thousands of RSF fighters. It indicates that the UAE financed the facility and provided trainers and logistical support. This shift by Ethiopia from political and logistical backing to direct military involvement represents a troubling escalation. Such a move risks expanding the conflict and destabilizing an already fragile region. By exacerbating tensions with Tigray and Eritrea and heightening the risk of confrontation between Ethiopia and both Sudan and Egypt, it threatens to transform Sudan's war into a catalyst for wider regional crises.

The Grim Consequence: An Internationalized War

The consequence for Sudan is an increasingly entrenched and internationalized war. As external actors deepen their involvement, the prospects for a purely Sudanese political solution diminish, leaving the nation's fate at the mercy of geopolitical trade-offs and compromises that have little to do with Sudan itself. This ‘outsourcing' of the crisis often relies on deals with Sudanese elites who do not represent the people's aspirations. Such a path marginalizes Sudanese citizens, the true owners of the state and the primary victims of the violence, and threatens to relegate the 2018 revolutionary slogans of “Freedom, Peace, and Justice” to a fading memory.

Husam Mahjoub is an engineer of Sudanese origin based in Austin, Texas, USA. He is a co–founder of Sudan Bukra, an independent non-profit Sudanese TV channel.

This article first appeared on the Left Renewal Blog.

15 February 2026

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After Rojava

Alp Kayserilioglu — 2026-02-13T19:56:58Z

The ceasefire deal agreed between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) last week – hailed by the US as a ‘historic milestone in Syria's journey toward national reconciliation' – represents a major victory for Damascus. It also spells the end of Rojava as a Kurdish-run autonomous enclave in the country's northeast. Talks between the al-Sharaa government and SDF leaders to agree the integration of the political and military structures of Rojava into those of the new central state begun soon after Assad's ouster in December 2024. Yet an agreement was not reached, and after the deadline for finalizing the integration plan elapsed in December 2025, Damascus resolved to impose by force what the diplomatic process had thus far failed to deliver. On 6 January, government troops attacked Kurdish-majority neighbourhoods in Aleppo, an isolated SDF-held pocket in central Syria. The Syrian army also exploited the SDF's weak position along the Euphrates in Arab-majority areas of Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zor, which led to major Arab breakaways. Last came the full-scale offensive on Rojava, forcing an SDF retreat into the Kurdish-majority heartlands. Further violence was prevented by a temporary ceasefire. Now, under the terms of the truce, the SDF will integrate into the Syrian army in three brigades and Kurdish governing bodies will merge with state institutions. Interior Ministry security forces have reportedly begun to enter the SDF-held cities of Hasakah and Qamishli.

The existence of Rojava as a semi-autonomous space, with global symbolic resonance – for women's liberation, unprecedented in the region, and for the democratic self-rule of an oppressed people – depended on unique circumstances. The SDF – which at its height controlled over a quarter of the country, including its major oil fields – was a creation of the Syrian civil war, during which military units affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) began to take control in the predominantly Kurdish areas of northern Syria. The SDF proper emerged in 2015, after Kurdish fighters successfully defended the town of Kobane from Islamic State (IS) militants, with the help of a US airlift. This marked the beginning of a decade-long alliance with Washington. Rojava did not join the major opposition forces, which it regarded as jihadist and nationalist, and even entered negotiations with Assad, although an agreement was never reached. After the battle of Kobane, the US armed and trained the SDF, regarding the Kurdish-led force as a proxy through which it could support the fight against IS and maintain a foothold in the war-torn country.

Always ‘temporary, tactical and transactional', US sponsorship of the Kurds was hardly robust. Washington turned a blind eye to a range of Turkish military operations that reduced the territory and unity of the autonomous region. Ankara regarded Rojava as a major national security threat, fearing that gains made there would spill over the border. The shallowness of US support was starkly revealed after the fall of Assad, which radically altered the geopolitical alignments from which the Kurds had precariously benefitted. The new jihadists-turned-democrats in Damascus were immediately embraced by the US. The frail hegemonic aura of the former al-Qaeda commander's regime was however weakened by the massacres committed against the Alawites in the West and the Druze in the South in the spring and summer. Accordingly, there followed a cooling of the US's stance, not of course due to any moral epiphany, but realpolitik calculation that al-Sharaa's government might be too weak to control the country's militias and unable to guarantee stability.

In this context, juggling different actors who could balance each other out seemed to resurface as a strategy in Washington. The negotiations between the government and the SDF appeared to shift slightly in favour of the Kurds: reports in October suggested that Kurdish regional governance might be strengthened and the SDF would remain intact. But calculations had changed by December 2025. The available sources do not suggest that the US directly gave the green light to Damascus's subsequent military escalation. But neither did it stand in the way – a familiar US position: if you crash and burn, that's your problem; if you succeed, we'll cover your back. The success of the assault shifted the balance of forces decisively. After the incursion, US special envoy Tom Barrack sounded the death-knell for the ‘counter-ISIS partnership': the SDF's role has ‘largely expired', since the ‘Syrian government is ready to assume security responsibilities'. With a new central government that now appeared amenable to the US and its allies' interests, Washington no longer had a reason to back an alternative ally in the country. If this is a betrayal, it was an eminently predictable one: consistent imperialist foreign policy.

It was not only Washington that tipped the balance. Since the establishment of the transitional government, the interests of Israel, Turkey, Syria and the US – involved in a series of meetings in early 2026, which seemed to pave al-Sharaa's way to the northeast – have converged on issues where Rojava had depended on their divergence. Israel concluded a security pact with the new regime, brokered by the US, thus reducing its interest in the Kurds to keep up pressure against Damascus; Turkey signalled its intention to distance itself further from Russia, leading the US to soften on the enforcement of Turkish interests in Syria. Indeed, Turkey played an important role in emboldening Damascus and turning the tide against the SDF. From December, unconcealed military threats were being issued by Turkey's Defence Ministry and the Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, as were firm pledges to support the Syrian state should it decide to take action.

Al-Sharaa has long enjoyed Ankara's backing, and openly so since their Blitzkrieg on the ailing Assad at the end of 2024. Turkey's relations with the PKK – with which it has been in a decades-long conflict – are a significant context for what has now unfolded across the border in Syria. Negotiations between the two sides have been underway for over a year – an initiative by the Turkish state, perhaps in part hoping to capitalize on the new dynamics in Syria, aiming to force the PKK and the SDF – which it regards as an extension of the PKK – to disarm and disband. Erdogan himself may have narrower interests: to win over Kurdish voters and MPs through symbolic recognition in order to prolong his own rule. The PKK, for its part, evidently entered the peace process because of a realistic calculus of the regional balance of forces – diplomacy perhaps presenting the most propitious means to secure the rights that would legitimize it as a social and political actor. Meanwhile, dismantling Rojava – a vital asset for the broader Kurdish movement as well as crucial extra-territorial leverage for the PKK – has been a key part of Turkish ambitions for a ‘terror-free Turkey'. What effects developments in Syria will have on the negotiations is hard to gauge. Some see it as a final blow to the PKK. But do not forget that it has gone through worse setbacks in its history, in particular the period of organisational and military defeat and disorientation in the 2000s after the imprisonment of its leader Abdullah Öcalan.

What – if anything – could Rojava have done differently? It was clear from the outset that the window of opportunity for self-rule would not remain open forever and that Rojava never had the potential to become a full-fledged regional player itself. Could the SDF have compromised with Assad, opting to fight for more within an integrated Syria, thus decreasing the possibility of the jihadist power grab? Or, once Assad was gone, could they have come to some agreement with the new rulers in Damascus without insisting on constitutional change, accepting the status quo reached in December 2025, thus taking away the pretext for military escalation and the subsequent agreement made from a severely weakened position? PKK leaders were aware of Washington's instrumental approach. Were they insufficiently proactive in cultivating alternative strategic alliances? And why could Rojava apparently hold no hegemonic sway at all over Arab-majority areas? Debating these and similar questions self-critically is imperative, not to get lost in counterfactuals and recriminations, but to draw lessons for the challenges ahead.

Source: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/after-rojava?pc=1739

06 February 2026

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Beyond the Ballot: The Struggle Begins Now

Sohul Ahmed — 2026-02-13T18:45:15Z

The election is not the finish line; it is merely the entrance—a gateway to a broader transition.

After fifteen years of autocratic rule, Bangladesh is re-entering an electoral phase. This election is significant for two primary reasons: first, it reactivates a stagnant electoral process and initiates a transition toward a competitive system; and second, it seeks to establish a sustainable political settlement that institutionalizes this process.

The upcoming election serves as both a national vote and a referendum. Far more than a simple contest for power, it is a fight to reclaim the essential democratic entry points lost over the past fifteen years. By functioning as a referendum, this process seeks a mandate for the structural reforms and political settlements necessary to build a truly democratic foundation for the country.

The most tragic chapter of our political history is that a fundamental right—the right to vote—has become a rarity. To this day, we have failed to establish a recognized mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. Consequently, those who ascend to power exploit legal loopholes and machinations to entrench themselves so deeply that their removal is often achieved only through force or by staining the streets with the blood of citizens. The old political settlement rendered peaceful transitions nearly impossible.

This cycle is precisely what the post-July Uprising process aims to break. Through reform commissions and the National Consensus Commission, an effort is underway to chart a path for democratic transformation. This attempt to facilitate peaceful power transfer has created an exemplary situation where political society prioritizes dialogue and constant negotiation. This shift symbolizes growing political maturity; however, this process is merely a step in the journey—not the final destination.

The ‘Anti-Election' rhetoric

An ‘anti-election' rhetoric is highly prevalent within Bangladesh's civil society, often voiced under the guise of seeking ‘true democracy.' This discourse typically emerges from two distinct camps. One camp maintains that elections are futile rituals that fail to alter the material fate of the people or bring true liberation. They dismiss parliament as a ‘pigsty'—a corrupt institution incapable of reform. The second camp argues that elections alone cannot sustain a democracy. They prioritize the establishment of ‘strong institutions' and the rule of law as prerequisites, suggesting that holding a vote in a vacuum of institutional integrity is meaningless.

Both sides utilize standard critiques of ‘liberal democracy' to justify their anti-election stance. While their theoretical arguments are understandable, in a country where the electoral process has been systematically dismantled, such rhetoric is frequently weaponized by autocracy.

We witnessed the frequent manipulation of these arguments during the fifteen-year tenure of the Awami League. Following the electoral farces of 2014, 2018, and 2024, the regime often posed the cynical question: ‘Is an election the only component of democracy?' This logic was used to diminish the importance of the ballot and render the fundamental right to vote irrelevant. During those ‘dreadful electoral games,' the true intent behind these philosophical arguments—to provide intellectual cover for disenfranchisement—was clear.

Even if we acknowledge the cynical truth that an election may change nothing but the face of the ruler, we must insist: we need the election. It is the indispensable gateway to democracy. When this door is slammed shut, it paves the way for systemic state violence and long-term political instability. Thus, despite a thousand limitations, we must maintain that the process itself is vital. Even if the immediate results lead some to claim that ‘nothing has changed,' the electoral mechanism must be kept alive to preserve the possibility of future transformation.

The Post-Election Challenges

This election marks only the inception of our democratic journey. Following the vote, two formidable challenges will emerge. First is the implementation of the July Charter. Despite its significance, a consensus among political parties on several critical provisions remains elusive. For the past eighteen months, a ‘neutral' interim government acted as a mediator to facilitate dialogue; however, once the election concludes, the newly elected government will become a direct stakeholder.

Consequently, the path toward constitutional compromise will be fraught with difficulty. The struggle over the Charter's reform is likely to spill over from Parliament into the streets. While the opposition may allege Charter violations, the government will likely pivot to its ‘popular mandate' to justify its stance. This 180-day implementation period will be the litmus test: it will determine whether our transition is seamless or if we slide back into a cycle of conflict. We must remember that globally, democratic transitions following mass uprisings are notoriously difficult; history is replete with examples where such movements were stalled or reversed.

The second challenge is the profound vacuum within our civil society and the obsolescence of our political language. Bangladesh's traditional civil society has largely withered; the ‘old guard' organizations either became polarized or fell dormant during the previous regime. Meanwhile, the vibrant new generation of activists—the architects of the uprising—has largely been absorbed into the interim government or the various political parties. To ensure democratic accountability, we must now rebuild an independent civil society from the ground up, one that remains separate from the machinery of the state.

Crucially, we must also reinvent our political vocabulary. My generation came of age under an autocracy; as a result, our entire political lexicon is rooted in resistance, confrontation, and survival. While that language served us well on the barricades, it is fundamentally ill-suited for a functioning democratic regime. We face a crossroads: do we remain trapped in the exclusionary rhetoric of us vs. them, or can we cultivate a language fit for pluralism, negotiation, and compromise? Our choice of language will ultimately determine whether we build a democracy or merely a different version of the past.

The Struggle Begins After the Vote

We are entering a pivotal new phase—a struggle not just for the ballot, but for the very soul of our democratic process. While we must secure our right to a peaceful transfer of power every five years, the deeper work lies in the long-term activism required to turn political rhetoric into tangible reform.

In this context, we should look to the historian Howard Zinn. When asked about his voting habits, Zinn remarked that he supported a candidate for only the single minute he spent inside the voting booth; his “real work” of organizing began the moment he stepped out. For Zinn, the strength of a social movement matters far more than the individual occupying the office.

We must embrace this urgency of post-election activism. The election is not the finish line; it is merely the entrance—a gateway to a broader transition. To ensure a smooth journey toward true democracy, we must maintain continuous civic engagement. Our real struggle does not end at the ballot box; it begins the moment we leave it.

* This article was originally published in Prothom Alo.

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February 12, 2026

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