Jordan’s environmental crisis is often framed as a simple case of scarcity: too many people, too little water. It is that, but it’s also more: It’s privatization, profit, state decay. My latest tells this story, and asks what we all can learn from it.

The question now is whether the authorities can take the lesson that stabilizing Syria means finding ways to build institutions that fold in Syria’s disparate parts – or, instead, keep racing toward the dead-end of unaccountable, unilateral rule.

No Western or regional power will protect Syria from Israel. Nor can they solve the simple, structural problem that Damascus cannot impose control even on its own forces, let alone in Sweida or the northeast.

This is a trap. Economic recovery will be stillborn if Syria remains territorially fragmented, riven by violence, and devoid of basic economic governance.

Granted: If Damascus has failed to build bridges inside Syria, it has succeeded admirably in doing so internationally. Perhaps there’s an assumption that domestic problems can be solved after gaining sanctions relief and some investment.

This leaves affected communities convinced that they cannot be equal citizens in a new, Sunni Arab order – a premise that the authorities refute, even as many of their supporters expressly endorse it.

Instead, we see deflection and denial: Bloodshed is alternately blamed on fulul (remnants) or munfaliteen (unaffiliated, out-of-control fighters). Crimes are too often justified as the venting of grievances by Sunnis who indeed bore the brunt of Assad’s brutality.

True, some amount of score-settling is to be expected after 14 years of awful, intimate violence. But the authorities’ response to it has become part of the problem. Swift accountability and high-profile affirmations of solidarity would go a long way.

What happened?. A central factor is the void of accountability for crimes committed both before and after December 8. This vacuum is being filled with fear, and with blood: pogroms, public lynchings, summary executions, tit-for-tat kidnappings and enforced disappearance.

Revolutionary activists speak of an emerging dictatorship that looks far too much like the old one. Islamist hardliners attack Damascus from the right, for not going far enough in imposing Sunni dominance – and too far in speaking to Israel.

Today, their enemies are multiplying—and hardening in their positions. Minorities are justifiably afraid. Some can’t do much about it. But Druze and Kurds are well-armed, well-organized, and well-prepared to fight what many see as an extremist force encroaching from Damascus.

Early in the transition, they enjoyed vast room for maneuver. Many who viewed them with suspicion gave them the benefit of the doubt. Almost everyone hated the Assad regime, even those embedded within it. Hence there was no organized resistance or opposition.

A grim irony of Syria’s current spiral is that the authorities—in their quest to project strength and consolidate power—are putting themselves in a position of untenable weakness.🧵.

Amid all the hype about Saudi investment in Syria, this by @timourazhari & @FerasDalatey is a reality check. Syria's economy is being remade in the shadows, far from legal frameworks or institutions. There can be no true recovery in such an environment.

In Syria, as in Palestine, the fiction of good-faith American mediation has done more harm than good. It has fueled Damascus' overconfidence and complacency, and created the illusion of an adult in the room restraining Israel's expansionist impulses.

Ironically, UNHCR is the one tallying these explosive new waves of displacement. while also propagating the dangerous narrative of mass, imminent refugee returns.

As EU and regional states pressure refugees to return to Syria, violence is uprooting Syrians by the tens of thousands. The UN estimates ~90k displaced by violence in Sweida; tens of thousands were displaced by the coastal massacres in March.

Really good explainer. Key points:. - Druze mobilization broader, more fragmented than focus on Hijri suggests.- Narrative of "separatism" is baseless & inflammatory.- Onus on Damascus to prove it can impose order.- External pundits are "echoing crude social media talking points".

Some accounts to follow for analysis, fact-checking, and general sanity amid Syria's fast-moving crisis and toxic stew of disinformation:. @OAjjoub.@putintintin1.@aljumhuriya_eng.@RamiJarrah.@Samy_Akil.@ETANA_Syria.@ajaltamimi.@GregoryPWaters.@VeSyriaE .@CdricLabrousse.

RT @Linaagho: The politicization of wildfires in Syria isn’t new. Accusations about perpetrators have circulated, but many fires stem from….

The stakes are very high: UNHCR is entrusted as the main point of reference for a vulnerable population that is being scapegoated from Beirut to Berlin. The agency must do better, and its donors must demand it does so.