When Hope Came to Town
NEED TO KNOW
When Hope Came to Town
SYRIA
World leaders assumed Syrian President Bashar Assad enjoyed the upper hand in the bloody civil war that erupted in 2011, and continued in fits and starts until settling into a deep freeze.
After all, with Russian and Iranian help, the Syrian regime seemed to control most of the country.
But as the world saw over the weekend, it was all an illusion, an image projected and then shattered as the curtain was pulled back.
And that feat only took 11 days.
On Nov. 27, rebel fighters led by former al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began their offensive to defeat Assad’s troops, capturing Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, then Hama, and then Homs. They faced half-hearted Russian airstrikes and some Iranian proxies – Hezbollah sent fighters no longer battling Israel. But it wasn’t enough.
HTS entered the capital Damascus facing little resistance over the weekend as government soldiers melted away along with Assad’s allies. The intransigent, brutal leader was, in a last humiliation, forced to flee to Russia.
And just like that, everything changed.
Syrians poured into the streets of Syria crying and exclaiming, “Freedom,” while hoping for a new day. After all they had gone through for the past six decades of Assad family rule and its legacy of brutality and destruction, many still couldn’t process what happened, literally overnight.
“I feel as if I am in a dream,” Fatimeh, from the opposition bastion of Idlib, told the Guardian as she made her way to Damascus. “I haven’t slept and I can’t absorb what’s happened.”
Like Fatimeh, Syrians in Lebanon and elsewhere began crossing the border to return home after years in camps and diaspora communities – about 7 million fled Syria after 2011. Other forced transplants, in Kuala Lumpur, Berlin, Cairo, and elsewhere around the globe, poured out into the streets in joyous celebrations.
In Damascus, after prison doors were shot open, videos showed freed prisoners, exhausted and stunned, stagger out into the night, unsure of what happened or what to do now. At the same time, family members began looking for their lost loved ones, the 100,000 people forcibly disappeared, some jailed for years or even decades, accused of crossing the regime.
Mayasa Marie, 40, said she was looking for her husband, Mohammed, arrested for his anti-government activism 12 years ago. “My son and his uncle went to Sednaya (prison) immediately … but still they didn’t find anything,” she told the Washington Post. “We are finally free but I need my husband with us again.”
Meanwhile, Iranian officials said that Assad was equally “stunned” at how his regime melted away. He shouldn’t have been, defense analyst Michael Clarke told Sky News, because “the army (was) in a complete state of collapse.”
However, the signs of the regime’s deterioration were there, wrote World Politics Review. The country was barely holding on.
Since 2011, more than 7 million Syrians were forced to flee their homes but remained in Syria, eking out an existence in cities and villages that have been reduced to rubble, even as the violence continued – from rebel groups, militants, and the regime.
The country’s economy has plummeted since the revolution, crippled by sanctions and war, but it worsened over the past four years, Foreign Policy wrote. Inflation has been catastrophic for families while basic necessities often became scarce. More than 90 percent of Syrians now live in poverty. Assad, his family, and members of his regime, however, have been earning an estimated $2.4 billion annually from selling a synthetic stimulant, fenethylline, under the name captagon.
And they bragged about their lavish lifestyles on social media.
Meanwhile, as many Syrians rejoiced, world leaders looked on dazed, wondering what’s to come. The US struck at Islamic State targets in Syria over the weekend, worried that the militant group might take advantage of the power vacuum to try to take over large swathes of the country again, as it started to do in 2014. Israel, worried about its security, ordered the military to seize the buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.
In the Middle East, officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates who had mended fences with Assad wondered, “What now?” as they met on Sunday to discuss the ramifications of Assad’s fall. That’s because the rebels’ success added “a new layer of unpredictability” to the civil war, the New York Times wrote.
Much of that has to do with the HTS’s past connections to al Qaeda, which have raised concerns about the group’s plans for the country’s future, France 24 said. HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani is a former member of the Islamic State in Iraq, founded the ruthless Nusra Front rebel force in 2012, and pledged allegiance to al Qaeda in 2013 before breaking with the terrorist organization in 2016.
The US has designated the group as terrorists. Now, many wonder if they will create yet another version of Islamic State in the country.
Golani, however, has promised elections and freedom and inclusivity for all Syrians – Alawite, Sunni, Shiite, and Christian. For now, many Syrians want to believe him.
Others are not so sure.
“What kind of fresh start will (Syrians) get,” the Economist wondered. “Much depends on whether Syria’s multi-pronged opposition, suddenly bereft of its common enemy, will band together to form a pluralist, federal civilian government over all of Syria, or descend into infighting that plunges the country into a new civil war.”
After all, the magazine added, “Things in Syria have a habit of getting complicated.”
Still, the HTS is already trying to create order – instituting a curfew, beseeching police to remain in their posts, and begging Syrians to refrain from vigilante retribution. But Syria’s new victors face obstacles far stronger than Assad’s base: The country has over the years been partitioned into fiefdoms that include the Turkish-backed Sunni HTS rebels in the northwest, Kurds in the north and east, Jordanian-backed rebels in the south, and the Alawites in the west, all of whom have their own forces and interests.
Meanwhile, the Iranians and Russians, the big losers in this equation, are shut out for now. Russia may lose its only naval base on the Mediterranean that had allowed it a powerful hand in the region, noted Deutsche Welle.
Iran, meanwhile, lost its hub to transfer aid to its proxies, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and with that much of its influence in the region. Analysts now wonder if it will regroup and rebuild.
It’s clear there is much to unpack from the dazzling events of the weekend and many questions that only time will answer, commentators say. But for a few days after this momentous change, “one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations,” as Reuters called it, it’s hope that prevails on the streets of Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo and elsewhere in the country and among Syrians around the world.
“We are exhausted, but happy,” one resident of the northern town of Qamishli, on the border with Turkey, told El País as drivers honked and crowds cheered Assad’s departure. “We are very happy, we are free.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
The Second Act
GHANA
Ghanaian Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia conceded defeat in Saturday’s presidential election and congratulated opposition candidate, former President John Mahama on his victory after voters punished the governing New Patriotic Party for its handling of the country’s worst economic crisis in a generation, the BBC reported.
Preliminary results from the opposition National Democratic Congress indicated Mahama won by a landslide, but it was Tuesday’s final results that confirmed his victory.
The election commission announced that Mahama won 56.6 percent of the vote, while Bawumia secured a little more than 41 percent. Voter turnout was nearly 61 percent.
While largely peaceful, the election saw isolated instances of violence, including two fatal shootings and the looting of warehouses in northern towns. Frustration also grew over the weekend after the commission warned that official results were delayed, citing disruptions at electoral centers caused by supporters of both parties.
Mahama, who served as Ghana’s president from 2012 to 2017, will now return to power after two failed bids in 2016 and 2020.
His victory comes at a time of deep frustration over economic challenges in the West African nation.
Ghana, Africa’s top gold producer and the world’s second-biggest cacao exporter, is grappling with soaring costs of living, a default, crisis, and currency devaluation that resulted in a $3 billion bailout by the International Monetary Fund, Agence France-Presse noted.
“The people have voted for change,” Bawumia said, acknowledging the widespread dissatisfaction with the government’s performance.
Saturday’s vote continues Ghana’s tradition of peaceful democratic transitions, with no political party winning more than two consecutive terms since the country’s return to multiparty politics in 1992.
The new president is set to be sworn in on Jan. 7.
Mahama’s campaign promised to address the economic crisis by transforming Ghana into a “24-hour economy” and creating jobs for its young.
Even so, his first tenure was marked by economic challenges, including widespread power outages, a weakening currency, and rising public debt. His administration also faced criticism over corruption allegations and struggles to stabilize the economy, despite infrastructure development efforts.
Voodoo Vendetta
HAITI
Around 200 people were killed over the weekend in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince in a massacre ordered by a powerful gang leader who targeted Voodoo practitioners and the elderly in a personal vendetta, according to the Guardian.
The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) said on Sunday that gang leader Monel “Mikano” Felix ordered the massacre in Cite Soleil, one of the capital’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods, after his son died from an illness, reported Al Jazeera.
At least 110 people were killed in Cite Soleil on Saturday and Sunday by gang members using machetes and knives, most of them over the age of 60, according to the rights group. Felix had reportedly sought advice from a Voodoo priest who told him that elderly people in the area were using witchcraft to harm his child.
Voodoo was brought to Haiti by enslaved people from Africa and is now a pillar of Haitian culture. It includes aspects of other religious beliefs, such as Catholicism, but has been villainized by other religions, noted the Guardian.
“He decided to cruelly punish all elderly people and Vodou practitioners who, in his imagination, would be capable of sending a bad spell on his son,” read a statement from the Haiti-based Committee for Peace and Development (CPD). “The gang’s soldiers were responsible for identifying victims in their homes to take them to the chief’s stronghold to be executed.”
According to the United Nations, about 5,000 people have been killed in Haiti so far this year and an estimated 700,000 people have been displaced, half of them children.
Although Haiti has suffered from decades of instability, the situation escalated in February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital to overthrow the prime minister, Ariel Henry. The interim government has been plagued by political infighting, leaving the country without a clear path to stability in the wake of gang violence and a severe humanitarian crisis.
A UN-backed security force, led by Kenya, has been deployed to restore order, although gangs controlling 80 percent of the capital have made it difficult for them to make progress. The mission, based on voluntary contributions, is also severely underfunded and only partially deployed, according to Al Jazeera.
Haitian leaders have called for the mission to be converted into a UN peacekeeping force to ensure it is better supplied, but the plan faces opposition from China and Russia.
Forcing Peace
MYANMAR
One of Myanmar’s largest ethnic rebel groups declared a unilateral ceasefire, becoming the second insurgent force to halt hostilities with the country’s military government following pressure from neighboring China, the Associated Press reported.
The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), representing the Kokang ethnic Chinese minority, said last week it would send a delegation for peace talks mediated by Beijing and called for dialogue to address long-standing grievances in Myanmar’s conflict-ridden northeast.
The armed group explained that its ceasefire decision was partly influenced by military airstrikes against civilians. However, it warned that it would defend its territory if its calls for autonomy were dismissed.
The MNDAA joins its ally, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), which announced late last month its readiness for peace talks with the military junta.
Both groups are members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which includes the Arakan Army. The alliance launched a major offensive in October 2023, seizing strategic territories, including Lashio, a key city in the northern Shan State.
Analysts suggested that the ceasefire calls are due to Chinese pressure rather than a genuine desire for reconciliation, raising concerns about the truce’s durability, according to Radio Free Asia.
This is not the first time ceasefires have been declared in the region. Beijing brokered a truce between the rebels and the junta in January that temporarily reduced hostilities.
However, that agreement collapsed this summer when the MNDAA and TNLA resumed attacks, capturing key military positions, including the northeast command.
The renewed fighting strained relations with China, which responded by closing border crossings, cutting off electricity, and reportedly detaining MNDAA leader Peng Daxun, though Beijing claims he was in China for medical treatment.
China, Myanmar’s largest economic partner and a key strategic ally of the military junta, has applied increasing amounts of pressure on the rebel groups to halt their offensives.
Beijing has economic interests in Myanmar, including energy pipelines and mining projects, and seeks stability in the region to safeguard these investments.
Chinese officials commended the MNDAA’s ceasefire announcement, urging all parties to de-escalate and resolve their differences through dialogue.
Myanmar has been grappling with violence and unrest since the army ousted the government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. The coup initially led to nationwide pro-democracy protests but later evolved into an armed resistance that observers now describe as a civil war.
DISCOVERIES
Ocean Gangs
Whale sharks are gentle giants, curious, friendly, and vegetarians, eating only tiny plankton with their three-foot-wide mouths. They are also hard to kill: Adults can grow up to 60 feet, with some of the thickest skin of any creature, making it difficult for predators to puncture.
However, it seems that one whale shark is no match for a pod of killer orcas. For the first time, researchers have captured video evidence of orcas hunting whale sharks, the world’s largest fish.
The groundbreaking discovery, documented in Frontiers in Marine Science, provided unprecedented insight into the predatory behavior of these marine mammals and suggested the existence of a specialized hunting pod in Mexico’s Gulf of California.
Marine biologist Erick Higuera Rivas and his team observed four separate attacks between 2018 and 2024. The footage shows a pod of orcas – dubbed the “Moctezuma pod” – working together to stun the massive fish before flipping it upside down to induce tonic immobility, rendering the shark defenseless.
“It is very impressive how orcas work together strategically and intelligently,” Higuera said in a statement, noting their efficiency in targeting the shark’s vulnerable pelvic areas.
Orcas appear to focus on the shark’s ventral side, which has less muscle and cartilage, allowing easier access to vital organs, such as the liver.
“By keeping it under control, the orcas then have greater ease and speed in approaching the pelvic area of the shark and are able to extract organs of nutritional importance for them,” Higuera explained.
A whale shark can also “crash dive” to avoid threats, sinking quickly to depths greater than 6,000 feet. But orcas seemingly know this evasive tactic and bump and hit a whale shark to bring it back to the surface during their attack.
The Moctezuma pod – named after its prominent male orca, Moctezuma – seems to have developed a specialized skill for hunting cartilaginous fish, including stingrays, devil rays, and now whale sharks.
Moctezuma has participated in three of the four recorded hunts, and the team speculates that he may have learned these techniques from a matriarch in the pod. Orca hunting behaviors are often passed down through generations, and the cooperative tactics displayed suggest a high level of social learning.
Most of the targeted whale sharks were juveniles, measuring up to 16 feet. Juveniles are common in La Paz Bay, where they feed before migrating south in spring.
Orcas likely exploit their inexperience with predators.
No one has yet seen an orca take down an adult whale shark, and such an attempt would be “an epic battle,” according to National Geographic, adding that since orcas can take down a big blue whale, it is likely they can kill the world’s largest fish, too.