The freeing of the Ever Given on 29 March 2021 was the result of several days-worth of intensive dredging, non-stop work by a fleet of tugboats, and a favourable swell combined with unusually high tides caused by a full moon. For almost a week the 220,000-tonne ship had managed to completely block traffic in the Suez Canal where roughly 12 percent of global trade transits, creating a back-log of over 400 vessels. Billions of dollars’ worth of cargo, ranging from sheep to oil and thousands of seafarers were all stuck on both sides of this vital chokepoint that connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
The Suez Canal is one of the eight major chokepoints of world trade. Others include the Straits of Hormuz (between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman), the Straits of Malacca (dividing the Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra), as well as the Bab el-Mandab, which separates the Arabian and African continents between Djibouti and Yemen. These are sites that ‘choke’ the flow of resources, information and bodies whose circulation is critical to global commerce. As the Ever Given’s unplanned stopover showed, chokepoints are sites of considerable economic, political, and military significance. Narrow, often difficult to avoid, and heavily trafficked, chokepoints can represent potentially paralyzing vulnerabilities to vital systems and networks.
While the Suez Canal is one of the most visible global chokepoints, the Western Indian Ocean region, which includes the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula, includes many more; from ports to mountain passes, as well as narrow straits like the Bab el-Mandab. As RVI’s research has shown, Chokepoints are crucial spaces for cross-border and trans-regional mobility and, as a consequence, have become sites of political possibility and profit. Control over chokepointsis thus a crucial feature of politics and social life in this region.
Long neglected or only understood within frameworks of national and state-centric understandings of the region, chokepoints and corridors are increasingly emerging as key spaces of conflict and contestation in the Western Indian Ocean region. Crucially, they have also become locations where a range of actors from small states like Djibouti to subnational entities like Puntland seek to engage regional and international bodies. These are crucial sites of negotiation between a variety of actors and power brokers in the region. Simultaneously, there are locales where colonial histories of extraction and exploitation continue to manifest themselves, such as in battles over port access, but also crucially sites of refuge and community, for example for Yemeni migrants fleeing the war and sailing to places like Bosaso (Puntland) and Obock (Djibouti). These are places where the weak can sometimes become strong, such as when pirates captured ships transiting through the chokepoints of the Bab-el-Mandeb resulting in a global maritime response and untold losses for crew and cargo.
In addition to being a story of great power politics and new visions of regional and transregional connectivity, chokepoints demonstrate the need to better integrate maritime realms into policy analysis. More than just empty spaces or simply zones of transit, maritime realms are shaped by political, economic, and social forces on land, while also themselves shaping developments on land—from the physical impact of winds and tides in shaping rainfall patterns, to contests over offshore resources.
Understanding this dynamic can help produce analyses that treat maritime space in a similar way to the dynamics associated with borders and cross-border relations. The integration of maritime realms into policy studies of regions such as the Horn of Africa thus emphasizes the overlapping of socio-political, economic and environmental realms.
As the case of the Ever Given made briefly visible, global trade circulation is a fragile project. Chokepoints reveal both the points of tension and constriction in this system and the mix of human and non-human actors that make global trade possible.
In the past decade, the war in Syria has reshaped not only the country’s own border peripheries, but also those of its neighbors. In few places has the impact been more painfully felt than in the northern Jordanian city of Ramtha, located only 10 kilometers away from the southern Syrian city of Daraa.
Before 2011, Daraa and Ramtha were tied together through trade relations. Daraa supplies goods to Ramtha, which in turn became a hub for the sale of Syrian products in northern Jordan. A decade on the two cities have different stories to tell. Daraa has seen the Syrian war suck all economic life out of the city, while the closed or only partially reopened border with Syria has helped to impoverish Ramtha, which relies heavily on cross-border trade.
Active in the cross-border trade were Jordanian drivers who worked the route between Ramtha and Daraa. These drivers, known as bahhara, or “sailors” in Arabic, embodied the vulnerability of border communities as well as the resilience of cross-border relations. Being a bahhar is a culture unto itself, a profession that involves techniques and attitudes passed on from father to son. These include courage, sharp-wittedness, and a native ability to navigate through border crossings and deal with the border authorities.
The cross-border business of the bahhara was built on the different market, labor, and production conditions in Syria and Jordan. Most goods were cheaper in Syria and in high demand in Jordan. This provided the drivers with an ideal opportunity to profit by buying products in Syria and reselling them in Jordan.
On a normal day, a trip to Daraa and back took a few hours. Soon after passing the Ramtha-Daraa crossing, Jordanian drivers found themselves shopping in Daraa’s numerous rest stations (istirahat), which offered many goods sought by Jordanians. While the bahhara rarely ventured deeper inside Syria, goods did travel from Syria’s interior to Daraa before being transported into Jordan.
As one Jordanian trader explained, “[Before 2011] I used to go to Aleppo to buy goods. After making my selection, I would tell the producer to ship them to Daraa’s rest stations.” In essence, Daraa was not just a market, but a “port” for export to Jordan thanks to the “sailors.” Why ship directly from Aleppo to Jordan when delegating the job to the bahhara meant faster door-to-door service, and most importantly provided a cheaper option?
According to official Jordanian data, just before 2011 there were some 800 cars licensed to work on the Syria route, most of them from Ramtha. They drove legally registered cars but their business was not entirely legal. On paper, their job was to transport passengers from different Jordanian cities to Syria, which they often did. But the real profit was in transporting Syrian goods on their way back. Some played it safe and transported small amounts—sweets, cigarettes, or cleaning agents—toward which the authorities turned a blind eye.
This petty trade became more lucrative when drivers brought in more than the tolerated amounts while paying low or no customs duties. This practice created a major informal economy before 2011. Although it cost the state in import revenues, it was tolerated because it generated economic activity in Ramtha. The bahhara took pride in earning income without relying on Jordan’s bloated public sector, while also bringing cheap goods to the market. Moreover, they made Ramtha a hub for redistributing Syrian goods throughout Jordan. Azraq, a small town near the Jordanian-Saudi border, was one such destination. The rest stations in the town offered Syrian cheese and sweets, among other goods, to those traveling to Saudi Arabia.
Decades of cross-border trade created strong commercial relations that sometimes turned into friendships and were even inherited by young bahhara. Despite the war and destruction of Daraa and closed or restricted Syrian-Jordanian borders, these relations remained resilient and allowed drivers to cope with new circumstances. For example, after traveling to Daraa became risky for the bahhara in 2011, Syrian traders would bring the requested goods into a restricted area within the customs’ premises. In that way, Jordanian drivers could pick up their goods without having to venture into Daraa.
However, resilience and creativity also had its limits. In 2013, it became very difficult, if not impossible, for Jordanians to cross into Syria, beginning a five-year interruption until the border was reopened in late 2018. In the meantime, southern Syria, especially Daraa Governorate, faced considerable physical, economic, and social destruction, as well as the displacement of capital and human resources. Syria was no longer the same place. Nonetheless, when the borders reopened—only the Nassib-Jaber crossing, as the Daraa-Ramtha crossing remained closed—trade resumed and old relations were even revived. One driver noted that “Daraa [city’s] rest stations had moved to Nassib [city]. Yet the first traders who welcomed us there in 2018 were from Daraa. We could even take goods with credit, as in the old days. Over time we made new contacts.”
If some of the old relationships survived, the business environment had radically changed. Goods still came from different parts of Syria, though the quantities were smaller and the delays longer. Entering Syria was not that difficult, coming back, however, became increasingly nightmarish. The Syrian customs were characterized by the absence of the state, as one bahhar put it. This meant that corruption and near lawlessness were rampant, as the crossing was one of the few economically active places in Syria allowing pro-regime militias to make money. As one bahhar described the new situation, “Before [2011] we gave custom officials a tip. Now those controlling the crossing want a share of our income.”
On the Jordanian side, matters were smooth at first, although the Jordanian authorities increasingly took tougher measures. Intentionally or not, this made the bahhara’s trade hardly profitable. Jordan was pressured by the United States not to facilitate trade relations with Syria. The kingdom also faced security challenges such as drug and weapons smuggling, while the customs service was working at a lower capacity. All this forced Jordan to alter its border policies, thereby creating more obstacles for the bahhara.
The consequence of these developments was that economic activity again dried up in Ramtha, eventually leading to unprecedented social unrest in August 2019, less than one year after the reopening of the Nassib crossing. The coronavirus crisis that hit the region in March 2020 compelled Jordan to close the border again, without popular objection. Ever since, the bahhara, and by extension the people of Ramtha, have waited impatiently for the day the border will reopen.
Today, Ramtha’s sailors find themselves without a sea. Yet their story shows how when given the slightest opportunity they are capable of reigniting old ties, creating new ones, and capitalizing on the market differences between Syria and Jordan.
This blog was originally published by the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
As the coronavirus spreads globally and the international community is preoccupied with the pandemic, some sides within Yemen’s ongoing war are taking advantage of the moment to reopen battlefronts. No matter how widely the virus spreads across Yemen, the fighting between the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government; the Iranian-backed Ansar Allah group, known as the Houthis; and the United Arab Emirates–backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) has continued and even escalated in some fronts in the last two months despite the recent announced ceasefires. Even more troubling, all parties are already using the pandemic as a chance to advance their own agendas.
Last month, after UN Secretary General António Guterres and others called for a global ceasefire during the coronavirus pandemic, a two-week ceasefire announced by the Saudi-led coalition was received with high optimism by the UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, and other international representatives. They viewed it as a step toward establishing a conducive environment for a lasting nationwide ceasefire. However, the Houthis did not consider it to be a ceasefire, and they said “they will continue to fight.” In the meantime, they published what they call a “comprehensive vision to end aggression,” in which they put forward several maximalist conditions.
Two weeks before Saudi’s truce announcement, the Houthis and Yemen’s government welcomed the UN’s call for a global ceasefire. But soon after releasing their statement, the Houthis launched an offensive in several districts of the northeastern governorates of Marib and Al-Jawf, erupting massive military confrontations with government forces. They also fired two ballistic missiles at the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Jizan, marking the first Houthi assaults inside the kingdom since their twin strikes on Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Saudi air defenses intercepted these new strikes; in turn, the Saudis conducted multiple airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-held capital, Sanaa. In the western city of Hodeida, clashes broke out between Houthi and government forces. Meanwhile, in the south, tensions escalated between the Saudi-backed forces and the STC fighters in Abyan and Aden. This reflects that the reality on the ground has nothing to do with those political declarations. The warring parties released official statements to improve their own images and shift the blame for the conflict onto their adversaries, and at the same time their ongoing battles on several fronts have only intensified in recent weeks. There is no indication that the warring parties are truly committed to implementing the ceasefire so far, despite the UN envoy’s “virtual” consultations with all actors. Each party is convinced that the war is still incomplete. None of them are ready to pursue peace before achieving their wartime objectives, even when the coronavirus threat is at their door.
Meanwhile, five years of warfare have nearly destroyed Yemen’s public health system, compounding suffering among a desperately poor and hungry population. The World Health Organization has provided some support to medical centers in Aden, Sanaa, and Mukala to respond if a case is confirmed. Up to now, there has been just one reported case of the coronavirus; however, many health activists doubt this for two reasons. First, Yemeni medical facilities are not equipped to test suspected cases. Thousands of Yemeni travelers returned to Yemen in the past month from affected countries, including Egypt and China, without being tested at the country’s ports. Second, the warring parties are all eager to hide suspected coronavirus cases, because they hope that low numbers will show their capability to contain the pandemic in their respective areas. For example, two weeks ago, after news began to spread about the discovery of coronavirus cases in multiple countries, the minister of health in Yemen’s government-in-exile gave a televised speech reassuring his viewers that Yemen is free of the virus. However, he did not provide details on what steps his ministry is taking to curb the pandemic, and he gave no explanation about what (if any) testing procedures his ministry has followed to sustain his claim.
Even more troubling, some factions view the pandemic as an opportunity to recruit more fighters. For instance, some Houthi activists state in their media discourse that “it is better to die a martyr in heroic battles than dying at home from the coronavirus,” and suggest that “being in a battlefront is safer than being at risk in crowded towns.”
All parties are also using the pretext of pandemic prevention and response measures to make money or push their objectives. In some areas, they use the excuse of pandemic prevention to extort money from civilians hoping to be allowed to pass through local checkpoints. Another key source of revenue, aid provided by international nongovernmental organizations, has been instrumentalized in the struggle between the STC and the internationally recognized government in Aden. STC forces held essential coronavirus-related equipment, sent by the WHO, in the port to prevent government medical staff from accessing it. By compelling the international community to deal directly with the STC, the council hopes to gain recognition for its ongoing de facto rule of Aden, which it has been fighting to maintain since last August.
The current escalation during the coronavirus echoes the cholera catastrophe of the past three years, an experience that the warring parties have kept in mind. Even as that highly communicable disease affected more than 1 million people and caused thousands of deaths, the fighting continued, and armed actors exploited the crisis to make money from international aid flows. All sides will most likely use the same approach with the coronavirus, demonstrating their indifference toward victims and the gap between civilian concerns and militia interests.
As the war in Yemen enters its sixth year, hopes for peace seem elusive, and the virus will compound the already deep humanitarian crisis. The pandemic diplomacy that the UN envoy has attempted to utilize to bring the actors to the negotiating table is not being taken seriously. In previous years, hostilities continued despite the high number of casualties, caused either directly by the armed confrontation or indirectly through diseases and famine. There is little reason to expect that the warring parties will deviate from this approach. Neither external mediation nor the virus can stop this war if none of the Yemeni factions are willing to end it.
The report takes the phenomena of the monetization of land, life and work in the borderland and looks at the consequences of this system for the young people who live in this region, arguing that the decision to leave South Sudan on long-distance migrant pathways can only be understood within the context of this militarized borderland economy. The young people who do decide to leave rely on mutual support and networks of information and care to survive. Due to distance and financial stress, these systems are now increasingly under strain.
“Military Zone: No trespassing … No photos allowed!”
While such warnings are visible around military zones in Cairo and cities of the Nile Valley, all Egyptian border areas have also been declared military zones according to presidential decree No. 444—2014. For researchers working in Egypt, especially on border issues, this designation greatly hinders movement and makes research, particularly of a political or cultural nature, nearly impossible.
The restrictions also reflect a wider tendency of the Egyptian state to control all information. Egypt has an abundance of material, including legislation, that could assist decisionmakers to adopt policies benefiting the public. Yet the state has had a tendency to block access to such information by the public and researchers.
The state has also introduced measures that severely hinder the ability of researchers to function on the ground. This is especially true in Egypt’s border areas, which are regarded by the authorities as particularly sensitive. Such restrictions show an inability to understand the advantages of research in the first place. That is surprising, as Egypt has long-established reputable research institutions, such as the Information and Decision Support Center, affiliated with the Egyptian cabinet, the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, affiliated with the national Ahram Regional Institute for Journalism, and the National Population Council, an institution that specializes in conducting research on Egypt’s population and presenting recommendations to executive bodies.
The nationalizations that swept across Egypt after the revolution in 1952 have left research, along with other fields such as the arts and journalism, under the sole authority of the state. While government-associated researchers face bureaucratic obstacles that limit the scope of their research, independent researchers face even greater impediments, including lack of accreditation from the government.
The inability of independent researchers to secure accreditation, as well as the absence of a basic understanding of the value of research, perpetuates suspicion toward researchers and their projects. Indeed, researchers are often treated like journalists by the authorities. This has led the police or security forces to arrest and imprison researchers or journalists gathering information. That is what happened to journalist Basma Mostafa, who was covering protests in Luxor in October 2020, when she was detained for several days.
Another journalist, Isma‘il al-Iskandarani, was similarly arrested for his research on the political situation in a key border area, namely the Sinai. He was detained for five years and subjected to a military trial in which he was accused of spreading false news. This is an accusation that many citizens face without much evidence to prove it. At the end, Iskandarani was sentenced to ten years in prison.
In other cases, suspicion directed at researchers has led to death. Giulio Regeni, an Italian student, was conducting research on the attempts of Cairo street vendors to unionize, when he was forcibly disappeared in January 2016 and, it appears, died under torture.
The state’s pervasive security proscriptions are quite loosely defined and cover a wide array of issues. The same restrictions apply to photographic documentation, which is often more democratic and accessible thanks to smart phones. This has become dangerous as well, and can expose a photographer to police questioning and sometimes more serious consequences.
There is an urgent need for researchers to gain accreditation, so that research can gain its rightful place as a tool to develop and improve knowledge of the country. This is particularly pressing when Egypt’s border areas in particular are struggling with various forms of instability—from armed conflict against terrorist groups in the Sinai to disagreements with Sudan over the Halaib Triangle and Shalateen. By continuing to obstruct research, the government impedes researchers’ ability to address underlying societal issues, thereby preventing the production of knowledge that could be used to help alleviate crises and conflicts in Egypt’s borderlands.
The state should go further and protect researchers in risky settings, particularly where they operate between the hammer of terrorist groups who think they work for the Egyptian Intelligence service and the anvil of the state. Doing so would represent acknowledgement of the benefits of research, which, ironically, the authorities have done at different times in the past. That is why improving research conditions in Egypt is also an integral part of addressing many of the socioeconomic challenges the country faces today.
This blog was originally published by the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
Displaced Tastes is a collaborative research project run by the Rift Valley Institute and the Catholic University of South Sudan as part of the X-Border LocalResearch Network. The project examines how experiences of conflict, regional displacement and mobility, and the shift to an increasingly market-oriented and import-dependent economy have changed what people in South Sudan grow and eat.
For researchers studying the dynamics of borders and border regions, field observation is a necessity. However, since March, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that large swathes of the world are no longer as accessible as they were previously, because travel has been restricted.
This situation has significantly altered the way scholars have conducted research. The virus has put on hold many aspects of research plans, such as workshops, roundtables, and on-the-ground interviews. In order to compensate for this, researchers have built partnerships with journalists, other researchers, and organizations in the field, creating alternative ways of pursuing knowledge under difficult conditions. Such methods have also connected those partners with a global audience of readers. In short, research methods under Covid-19 have helped to give a voice to local actors.
Giving locals in the field a voice doesn’t necessarily mean empowering them politically. Nor does it imply that researchers are doing them a favor. Instead, it creates relationships based on acquiring quality knowledge and analysis of social events from a local perspective—in other words, a bottom-up approach. When I began working as a local researcher and publishing material for Carnegie at the beginning of 2014, the central theme of my work was centered around the question of how to grasp information coming from the field. I came to see the importance of understanding local events on their terms, rather than imposing concepts or assumptions from outside.
Working remotely isn’t something new. In Syria, for instance, the Assad regime has long taken steps to cut the country off from the outside world, out of a fear that certain information or facts might threaten its authority. The regime did so partly by impeding social research. However, such research has become increasingly necessary since Syria’s uprising began in March 2011, not only because of the urgency of understanding the mechanisms behind the violence, but also to better know how to prevent violence in the future.
Broadly speaking, building knowledge is based, ideally, on reason and rationality, whereas violence relies on emotion and impulse. Thus, the Assad regime’s hostility toward precision in the production of knowledge set the conditions for the severe violence that took place in Syria. Despite the restrictions imposed by such violence and by the regime itself, researchers nevertheless developed methods of working remotely to pursue their examination of events and keep Syria connected to the outside world. These methods largely involved working through local networks.
The Covid-19 pandemic compelled researchers to build on these previously developed methods, while also changing the logic of their research and closely interacting with actors in the field. For instance, during a recent project on the Syrian-Turkish border, I carried out a study in partnership with a journalist based in Turkey. We both conducted several interviews with local actors and residents, and later organized an online roundtable inviting those who were informed about the dynamics in the border zone. The result was not just an article about the Syrian-Turkish border, but also the achievement of a collective project on an issue that touched the lives of locals directly and provoked the interest of readers outside Syria.
As researchers have established partnerships with actors on the ground, they have also built ties with local civil society organizations. For example, I am currently writing a research paper on the Syrian-Iraqi border with a colleague that will be partly informed by our interactions with two civil society organizations based in the field. The organizations, which have generously provided us with contacts and have worked with us to analyze information and place it in its proper context, are Masarat, which focuses on minorities, collective memory, and interfaith dialogue in Iraq, and IMPACT, which focuses on topics related to civil society and policy-oriented research. In addition, context analysis is a core theme across IMPACT’s programs. Collaborations with such organizations help to guarantee the quality of information gathered through regular discussions of local events.
The restrictions imposed by Covid-19 have deprived researchers of the possibilities of ethnographic observation. However, the partnership model that has emerged has had the advantage of involving a variety of actors in a shared process of knowledge production. Such a research model is helping to connect local actors and issues to global research centers with their wide readership. In doing so, it provides readers across the world with a sharpened understanding of the events and dynamics shaping the region.
This blog was originally published by the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
This special edition of Peripheral Vision examines the short- and medium-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on cross-border conflicts in fragile and conflict-affected states in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It draws on the work of the X-Border Local Research Network, part of the broader XCEPT Program, in the borderlands of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
Published by the X-Border Local Research Network—a partnership between The Asia Foundation, the Carnegie Middle East Center, the Rift Valley Institute, and their local partners—it draws on recent research and analysis produced by the project to interpret current events from the perspective of border regions. PERIPHERAL VISION is published twice a year, as a timely update of dynamics on the ground, while also highlighting the latest news from the X-Border Local Research Network’s activities.
In those parts of Syria controlled by the Assad regime today, what is regarded as politically permissible behavior is different than what was before 2011. What has also changed during the Syrian conflict is the status and influence of intermediaries between regime and society who often played a crucial role in mediating on behalf of those who had crossed the regime’s red lines.
Many Syrians, especially those living outside regime-held areas during the war, have lost their once superb sense of operating within these treacherous red lines. At the same time, formerly influential people have lost their ability to reconcile between the state and members of their communities.
For decades, Syrians skillfully navigated the invisible boundaries of the politically acceptable. Complaining about corruption and nepotism was permissible; criticizing the president was not. Confronting a civil servant who wouldn’t process papers without a bribe was permissible; doing this to a security official was far riskier. Syrians, many of whom spent their lives living in a police state, developed a keen sense of such subtleties, allowing them to go on with their lives without crossing the invisible boundaries.
These lines, however, were sometimes breached, at times deliberately to challenge what the regime determined was not permissible. Despite the regime’s record of not tolerating perceived threats, these breaches didn’t always end in violence. That is because intermediaries who had good connections with the regime intervened on behalf of those who had transgressed the red lines and helped undo the harm. The beginnings of Syria’s two civil wars—one with the Muslim Brotherhood that culminated in the 1982 Hama massacre and the uprising that started in 2011—provided many such examples.
Today, the boundaries in regime areas are vaguer and constantly shifting, while the role of the old intermediaries has declined. Two stories from Deir Hafer near Aleppo—one involving a shepherd and the other a tribal notable—illustrate this transformation in state-society relations.
The story of an unfortunate man who recently returned from opposition-held areas to Deir Hafer illustrates how vague and decentralized the regime’s red lines have become. A shepherd by profession and a singer by passion, the man in his fifties had never engaged in any political activity. Confident of his “clean record,” he decided to come home after being internally displaced. The man successfully crossed into regime-held areas near Al-Bab, suggesting he was not on the regime’s wanted list, and returned to his hometown. However, a few days later he was called in by the local security forces and has not been heard from since.
It is not known why he was targeted. Did he cross a red line? Did the local security agent act on his own? Did someone report on him to settle a personal score? It is exactly this kind of uncertainty that makes the boundaries drawn by the regime and its local affiliates indeterminable. That is especially true for those who left regime areas during the conflict, therefore did not have to continuously adapt to the new limitations on what could be said and done.
Might an intermediary who has good contacts with the local authorities and knowledge of the shepherd save him? Possibly. The politics of informal intermediation remain a defining characteristic of Syria, though many such mediators now have new faces. Someone who felt this change most personally is a notable from the same city. The leader, or sheikh, of his clan, with a long history of pro-regime activity, this notable used to be an important figure in Deir Hafer before 2011. Today, however, he no longer appears to be.
After the regime recaptured Deir Hafer from the Islamic State* in 2017, the sheikh mediated with the authorities for the return of his brother from opposition-held areas. The plan was that his brother would come back, settle his security issues with the local security authorities, and return to normal life. Such a process was very much possible in pre-2011 Syria, especially after the intervention of an influential intermediary. The plan, however, took a horrifying turn. The notable’s brother was detained upon his return, severely tortured, and soon thereafter succumbed from his wounds in a local hospital.
Very little can be taken for granted in today’s Syria. State violence in pre-2011 Syria was an ugly phenomenon and shaped every citizen’s behavior in one way or another. But it also had a certain logic to it, and most ordinary people understood the limits. Today’s state violence has become uglier and multifaceted. It is often decentralized, uncontrolled, and sometimes applied without any logic that could help Syrians adapt their behavior accordingly.
This blog was originally published by the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
The American withdrawal from areas east of the Euphrates in October 2019 was a turning point in the conflict in northeastern Syria. It allowed Turkey to expand into the area, effectively moving its border deeper inside Syria to create a buffer zone with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is a heterogeneous alliance of multiethnic armed groups led by the People’s Protection Units, which Turkey sees as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an organization it accuses of engaging in terrorist activities.
This expansion has fundamentally altered the nature of Turkey’s border areas with Syria, linking them politically, socially, economically, and in security terms to Turkish provinces just over the frontier. While stopping short of outright annexation, such integration has reshaped the social and economic framework of these regions. It also may lay the groundwork for future, more far-reaching, steps by Ankara in the area.
The U.S. withdrawal was followed by a Turkish military operation known as Peace Spring, which resulted in Turkey’s military taking control over a strip of land between Ras al-‘Ayn and Tell Abyad. This established a new border zone, much as Turkey’s Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations had done in other parts of northern Syria. The Peace Spring area is closely connected to Sanliurfa Province in Turkey in terms of administration, services, and trade. However, it is also isolated from surrounding areas inside Syria. The area has strategic importance for Turkey in that it intervened to prevent the emergence there of an entity effectively controlled by the PKK. That is why the expanse between Ras al-‘Ayn and Tell Abyad is highly securitized and is not one to which Syrians can easily return today.
Turkish involvement in the area runs deep. Every local council has a coordinator who is affiliated with the province of Sanliurfa. These coordinators help local councils secure the logistical support and funding necessary to carry out service projects. They also help coordinate the delivery of Turkish assistance to local bodies through the Syrian opposition’s interim government. This includes such things as healthcare, property and civil status registration, and education.
The depth of this involvement is illustrated by the fact that when the interim government declared the formation of a local council in Tell Abyad on October 28, 2019, the governor of Sanliurfa, ‘Abdullah Erin, visited the city and expressed his support for the new council. When the local council for Ras al-‘Ayn was formed on November 7, 2019, Erin visited this city as well, stressing that Turkey would continue to rebuild the area and encourage a Syrian refugee return.
In the education sector, the Turks have reopened 146 schools operating in the Ras al-‘Ayn area, enrolling more than 15,000 students. Harran University has also signed a memorandum of understanding to open a branch there soon. Scholarships are given out to a number of students who have achieved high scores on the YÖS Turkish-language exams, especially for universities located in Harran, Mardin, and Hatay.
In another example of what Turkey is doing, last May it allowed 85 combined harvesters to pass through its territory from areas captured in the Euphrates Shield operation to the area of Ras al-‘Ayn and Tell Abyad in order to harvest wheat and barley. This was necessary as there is no direct connection between the two areas under Turkish control. According to sources on the ground, the Turkish authorities also granted entry permits to 1,500 farmers during the harvest season so that they could move through Turkey to harvest their land in Syria. After the end of the harvest, transit procedures will be eased in order to move seeds to the Euphrates Shield areas. The Turkish aid groups IHH and the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, as well as the Turkish Red Crescent, are also involved in the area, filling the gap left by U.S. and European aid agencies no longer active there.
The Ras al-‘Ayn and Tell Abyad area is highly connected to Turkey but has closed its boundaries with the rest of Syria. This has encouraged smuggling. According to people on the ground, building materials are cheaper in the Peace Spring areas, where they are stored. Steel costs $500 per ton in these areas, but $650 per ton in Raqqa, controlled by the SDF. A ton of cement costs $42 in Peace Spring areas and $100 in Raqqa. The opposite is true for fuel products, because SDF-controlled areas produce oil. A barrel of fuel oil costs $37 in Peace Spring areas but just $15 in Raqqa, while gasoline costs $84 per barrel in Peace Spring areas and $40 per barrel in Raqqa.
This indicates that while the area is technically in a border zone with Turkey, it also acts as a border between Turkey and the rest of Syria. The fact that it is closely connected to Turkey yet remains isolated from Syria makes an imminent large-scale refugee return unlikely. Asked about the prospect of refugees returning, a local commander stressed the deficiencies in local infrastructure and the difficulties in procuring sufficient resources. “The electricity, water, and food are just enough for us. We don’t want anyone to come back,” he said.
The idea behind Turkey’s reshaping of Syria’s northern border areas is not to seize these territories for Turkey, but to create a buffer zone with the SDF to absorb the impact of any confrontation with the group. These parts of Syria will likely remain Syrian, but under Ankara’s heavy influence. That said, the situation could create more options for Turkey in the future. But for now, as its administration of these areas has in many ways been successful, Turkey may be encouraged to replicate such a model east of the Euphrates.
Pakistan is neither the worst-affected nor the worst-performing coronavirus case in the neighborhood. In fact, the country experienced a sharp decline in infection and fatality rates after an early surge. Many bright spots of good crisis leadership have emerged in a number of cities and provinces. But in early March, a remote border crossing called Taftaan on the Pakistan-Iran border became a flashpoint. The experience delivered some important lessons on preexisting fragility, as cracks emerged between the national and provincial governments, between the provincial center and the deprived peripheries, and between citizens and the state. Based on accounts of first-hand experiences, and using Pakistan as a case study, this essay examines how Covid-19 exacerbated fragility where grievance and inequality were already rife.
When the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, the provenance of Pakistan’s pandemic experience had already been established by nationals streaming home from Iran, where there was a severe outbreak of the disease. On February 26, a Karachi student returning from pilgrimage in Iran became Pakistan’s first documented case of Covid-19. Pakistan closed the border in late February, seeking to delay the arrival of approximately 6,000 Pakistani pilgrims at the Taftaan crossing, 630km from the nearest major city, in the province of Balochistan. The Zaireen, predominantly Shias from communities across Pakistan, were returning home from holy sites in the Iranian cities of Qom and Mashhad, which were already heavily afflicted by the coronavirus. Facing an urgent situation, the government launched plans to quarantine the Zaireen in the stark, primitive landscape of Taftaan.
The federal government made major pandemic decisions through an emergency commission that became the National Command and Operation Center. Compared to other provinces, Balochistan is historically neglected and under-resourced, and it is also perhaps more dependent on direct guidance from the center. According to Pakistan’s constitution, “health” as an area of governance is the domain of the province, but an infrastructure exists for cooperation and coordination between the center and the provinces, and to deal with Covid-19 all hands were needed on deck.
By February 27, the special assistant to the prime minister for health had made a well-documented trip to Taftaan to arrange the pandemic response. There was concern that the burden had fallen to the most impoverished and ill-equipped province, and that additional resources would be needed. The minister designated Pakistan House, the main federal government building at Taftaan, as a quarantine facility, and pledged that a special team from the National Disaster Management Authority would aid the effort, but people we interviewed told us that supplies were dispatched late or were never manufactured in sufficient quantities. Hobbled by its preexisting deprivation, the border remained a poorly defended front line of the crisis.
In the first few days of March, as returnees poured in across the border, they were shocked and dismayed by the conditions of their confinement: the absence of medical personnel, the lack of sanitation or clear guidelines, and the unregulated movement of people inside the camp. “Inside the compound there were no standard operating procedures and no communications from the government,” said one witness. Provincial officials used thermometer guns to check temperatures once a day, but there were few standard measures for pandemic containment, like testing, isolation, or social distancing.
Alarm grew among the residents of the camp, many of whom had fallen ill. “I didn’t see any doctors,” said one of the quarantined, a tour guide. “The compound had Panadol and a few other tablets, but not even enough masks. Later, a container with a few medical supplies, manned by a pharmacist, was installed, but it was outside the compound.” As the days went by, the camp began to resemble, to this researcher, a holding area for displaced persons more than a quarantine facility.
We often see a national-security reflex as states rely on “muscle memory” to confront a crisis, simply replicating conditioned behaviors instead of adapting to new circumstances. Pakistan’s institutions have extensive experience managing refugees and displaced populations, but none managing contagion. At Taftaan, the Zaireen were subjected to a policy of vector containment without treatment or basic health, safety, or sanitation facilities. This response unfortunately created a petri dish for virus contamination, which then spread through the country.
Peripheral populations in Pakistan, particularly those in challenging topographies, struggle to obtain proper health services. Chaghi, where Taftaan is situated, is the largest district in the province, but it performs poorly on human-development indicators. As a border district, Chaghi hosts a scattered, rural population, including many Afghan refugees. With few functioning mechanisms for relief or containment, Chaghi was the least likely candidate for frontline crisis response. “I spent 22 days in the camp,” a resident told us. “For 18 days there was no testing. On the 19th day they did a swab test, and I tested positive.”
There were difficulties in finding and dispatching medical personnel. Staffing state health facilities in Pakistan’s peripheries is a challenge in the best of times, but in this case the prospective staff did not have confidence in their employers’ care for their safety. “There was too much fear about the pandemic,” said one, “and we knew there was no protective gear available.” The Young Doctors Association of Balochistan resisted deployment to Taftaan, and protests demanding protective equipment resulted in unsavory images of doctors facing a baton charge and being arrested for insubordination and agitation. The Lady Medical Officers also refused a Health Department order to go to Taftaan, and were then directed to file a formal explanation.
To add to a complicated scenario, Covid-19 inflamed an old sectarian faultline. Evidence from 2016 to 2019 suggests that trouble for Shia pilgrims at the Pakistan border has been a regular feature of their annual pilgrimages to Iran. The history of terrorist incidents in Balochistan requires security screenings that the border checkpoint is ill-equipped to process at speed. Border economies and trading systems are rudimentary on the Pakistan side, and the rough experience of traversing this terrain can sap a traveler’s confidence in the state.
For the minority Shia pilgrims who must navigate this passage, the difficult experiences at the Taftaan Gate have given rise to a somewhat “othered” sentiment. Returning pilgrims complain of being detained for long periods, which sometimes sparks protests, often in a sectarian vernacular. “I once spent three days in the crowd at Taftaan trying to get into Iran,” said a journalist who travels frequently in the border region. “There was a scuffle with the Frontier Constabulary—they used batons, and I even fell in the melee.” These narratives of alienated citizenship indicate a fragile social contract frayed by rankling grievance.
With this baggage, the Taftaan camp crisis also acquired sectarian trappings, as the media began to report that the Zaireen were “responsible for the spread of coronavirus in Pakistan.” When the angry and exhausted pilgrims were finally released from Taftaan, their onward journeys were beset by conflict and incident that led to openly sectarian blame and antagonism on social media. Independent media sources and government officials responded with warnings against a “Shia media trial.” Fortunately, the social media campaigns were effectively countered and did not progress to vigilante attacks, but the brief flare-up is a warning as we continue to see more virulent manifestations of Covid-fueled identity conflict in South Asia.
The coronavirus struck Pakistan at its most vulnerable points, clothing old problems in the new garments of the pandemic. On the one hand, longstanding structural inequalities and resource constraints hampered cooperation between the national government and the provinces. On the other hand, the government’s ineffective quarantine of the travelers reawakened old sectarian identities and resentments. Most important, though, is the outcome: in the underserved periphery of the borderland, the status quo remained unchanged in the hour of greatest need.
Ultimately, Pakistan’s Covid-19 story is one of good intentions, sincere efforts, and some success, but also one where cracks in an already fragile system derailed the best-laid plans. Covid-19 has shown that structural inequality is a problem in any context—one that defines who are the most vulnerable, where are the cracks, and where the crisis will seep through.
If one battle in Yemen’s war seems designed to kill as many fighters as possible, it is the one currently taking place in Ma’rib Governorate. Five years of fighting between Ansar Allah, usually referred to as the Houthis, and armed groups loyal to the internationally recognized Yemeni government have killed thousands on both sides, and the battle has been escalating. Neither side has suffered a full defeat or won a convincing victory. Both are fighting in terrain that makes it difficult to advance. What is taking place in Yemen is a largescale war of attrition, the main consequence of which has been the exhaustion of all sides. Even if one of the parties is victorious, this is usually followed by subsequent battles of attrition.
The western governorate of Ma’rib first saw fighting in January 2015, shortly after the Houthis seized the capital San‘a, some 170 kilometers west of the city of Ma’rib. The Houthis then tried to seize cities across Yemen’s north, prompting many anti-Houthi residents to flee to Ma’rib Governorate, where local tribes mounted strong resistance to the new rulers in San‘a.
In March 2015, when the Saudi-led military coalition launched operations against the Houthis, it began sending military support to the Ma’rib front, strengthening it as a center of resistance to the Houthis and attracting many of their opponents. The government created a battalion called the National Army, made up of soldiers who refused to submit to the Houthis, along with tribesmen and fighters from the Yemeni Congregation for Reform Party, known as Islah. These forces have since recaptured some areas from the Houthis.
Despite three years of relative calm, fighting resumed with a vengeance at the beginning of 2020. The Houthis seized some areas that had been under government and loyalist tribal control, notably in neighboring Jawf Governorate and the Nahem district, close to San‘a. Today, fighting on various fronts along the northern and northwestern boundaries of Ma’rib Governorate is killing dozens of combatants almost every day.
The Houthis have launched several major offensives to seize Ma’rib, which is rich in oil and is the largest stronghold of their foes, paying little attention to the casualties. They see control of Ma’rib as a strategically vital military and economic prize. Taking the sprawling desert governorate would neutralize the biggest threat to their control over San‘a, namely the presence of pro-government forces controlling large mountainous areas within San‘a Governorate. Economically, controlling Ma’rib also means taking over the Safer oil refinery that provides many parts of Yemen with their fuel needs.
But the Houthis have faced determined opposition from pro-government forces in Ma’rib. For them, defending the governorate has become a matter of life or death. This can be seen in the intensity of the current fighting and the Houthis’ failure to make decisive advances (in contrast to their fortunes in other governorates), despite having launched blistering offensives.
The battle for Ma’rib, therefore, appears to be a zero-sum game in which neither side has any option but to continue fighting, regardless of the human and material costs. Both sides realize that the battle’s outcome will decide much of the future political landscape of the country and its alliances. It is not a marginal battle but a delayed confrontation that has lasted since 2014 and has become a seemingly permanent feature of the hills and deserts of Ma’rib.
But what is behind the recent Saudi reluctance to deal seriously with the Ma’rib battle? And what is the reason for the Houthis’ growing determination to seize the governorate now? The answers to these questions reveal important factors in the dynamics of the clashes as well as underline the Saudi-led coalition’s changing policy toward its allies on the ground.
Since the launch of the intervention in 2015, Saudi Arabia has been allied with Islah and has depended on the party’s ground forces in the fight against the Houthis. But Riyadh and Islah are little more than allies of military convenience fighting a common enemy. As Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy priorities have changed over the past two years, Turkey has emerged as a key regional rival, even ahead of Iran, which unlike Turkey does not pose a challenge to Saudi Arabia’s claims to lead the worldwide Sunni community. This has made Riyadh suspicious of groups and movements that are sympathetic toward Turkish policy. Islah is one such group, as it has ideological ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, Ankara’s most prominent ally in the Arab world and which is opposed by Riyadh.
Despite the presence of other military and tribal entities, Saudi Arabia doesn’t see Ma’rib as something other than an Islah power base. This view is reflected on the ground, with many fighters on the front lines not receiving their salaries from Saudi Arabia, a reduction in Saudi military and logistical support, and attacks against Islah by pro-Saudi newspapers and websites that accuse the party of inaction in the fight against the Houthis, or even of making secret deals with them. Saudi Arabia has also imposed restrictions on the movement of some leading Islah commanders, sidelining them and relying instead on Salafis and pro-Saudi tribal commanders. This aligns with the view of the United Arab Emirates, Riyadh’s main coalition partner, which regards Islah as a threat whose elimination is a priority.
Riyadh sees weakening Islah politically and militarily as an essential step toward preventing the movement from opposing Saudi policies. For the Saudis, weakening Islah will silence the demands of some of its commanders for an equal say, forcing them into full compliance with the goals of the kingdom. Riyadh has already imposed its decisions on the Yemeni government, which has become entirely powerless to influence events in the country. But the kingdom also realizes that it needs to continue providing some support to Ma’rib’s defenders in order to prevent it from falling to the Houthis.
Saudi efforts to weaken Islah do not mean that it favors the Houthis. Rather, Riyadh sees the battle on the Ma’rib front as chipping away at the capacities of both sides, diverting their attention away from fronts along the border with Saudi Arabia. Thus, the Houthis’ attacks on Ma’rib have been accompanied by the loss of certain positions they had seized months ago in Jawf Governorate. Saudi Arabia regards moving the Houthis away from its own borders as a priority, and has thus boosted its military supplies to fronts near the borders while cutting its support for forces deeper inside Yemen. Meanwhile, it has become clear that the Houthis’ weak point is fighting in open areas, given their lack of an air force similar to the Royal Saudi Air Force, a key asset the kingdom can control without needing a local ally.
On the other hand, the Houthis’ ability to recruit fighters has enabled them to step up their attacks on Ma’rib, taking advantage of Riyadh’s changing policy toward its allies on the ground. This has been accentuated further by the dismissal in late August of the former commander of coalition forces, Prince Fahd bin Turki, and his replacement by Lieutenant General Mutlaq bin Salem al-Uzayma‘. While these steps may not change the thrust of Saudi policy, they could alter some deployments on the ground. The Houthis appear to be carrying out preemptive attacks to exploit this transition.
Against this background, events in Ma’rib could well change course in the coming months. There are three possible scenarios in this regard. First, and most likely, loyalist forces will continue to fend off Houthi attacks and the current stalemate will persist. This is probable in light of the fierce defense these forces have mounted, along with Saudi Arabia’s determination to prevent Ma’rib from falling for the time being. Such a scenario would largely resemble the situation in the city of Ta‘ez, where fighting has taken place since the beginning of the war without the Houthis being able to seize it. This would prolong the current war of attrition. But the situation may not last, especially if there is a breakthrough in talks between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia that would enable the latter to secure its southern border. Things could also change if the kingdom stepped up its support for anti-Houthi forces and raised the pressure on them on other fronts.
The second scenario would see Ma’rib falling to the Houthis. This is unlikely to happen and would only come with major human cost for both sides. Yet if the Houthis were indeed to win, it would open the door to further battles in Yemen’s southeastern governorates, especially Hadhramawt and Mahra, which the Houthis would not hesitate to attack. That would mean Saudi Arabia would lose its influence on the ground inside Yemen, but would begin a wider war of attrition against the Houthis. Controlling a large swathe of territory could be a point of weakness rather than an asset for Houthi forces, especially as the areas in question are outside their main constituency.
There is a third scenario, which is also unlikely at present, namely that agreements will be signed between local forces to pause the fighting and reorganize the situation in Ma’rib in light of the latest military developments. Making this situation more improbable is the deep enmity between the two sides, accentuated by the terrible losses caused by the recent fighting. On top of this, neither side has much faith in battlefield agreements, which can quickly collapse. Moreover, Saudi Arabia would never accept such a violation of its wishes, and loyalist forces are not in a position to persuade it to acquiesce.
As the fighting continues, Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe continues to be ignored. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in camps in Ma’rib in terrible conditions, made worse by the fighting that is approaching them. Despite this, the global powers have done little to bring an end to the disaster.
This blog was originally published by the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
