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The ruling elites are all dependent on oil rents for the survival of their regimes. They need the oil business to stay alive for them to stay in power. Their system is based on continued oil rent, but ultimately, the citizens’ long-term interests are with a liveable climate

The precise point oil demand will peak has been contested, and depends on a myriad of assumptions about regulation, technology and consumer behaviour. But many people say demand will peak in about 2040, and then decline.

the International Energy Association’s report Net Zero by 2050, by contrast, proposed oil demand fall from 88m barrels a day (mb/d) in 2020, to 72 mb/d in 2030 and to 24 mb/d in 2050, a fall of almost 75% between 2020 and 2050. It argued that the Gulf has all three elements needed to switch to renewables: capital, sun and large tracts of vacant land.

Opec’s own projections suggest oil demand will rise in absolute terms through to 2045, and oil’s share of world wide energy demand will fall only from 30% to 28%. Hardly a green revolution.

In the United Arab Emirates it is estimated that the climate crisis costs £6bn a year in higher health costs. The salinity of the Gulf, caused by proliferating desalination plants, has increased by 20%, with all the likely impact on marine life and biodiversity.

Aramco, the Saudi company with the largest carbon footprint in the world, is not trying to diversify at the rate of Shell or BP. Indeed, it has just announced an investment to increase crude capacity from 12m barrels a day to 13m barrels by 2027

If you see the lifestyle in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is based on endless consumption

The region is responsible for only 4.7 % of worldwide carbon emissions, dwarfed by the pollution from Europe, America and China. The oil that the Middle East exports is logged against the carbon emissions of the users, not the producers.

The Gulf’s self-proclaimed first mover, the UAE, was the first country in the region to ratify the Paris agreement and is now the least dependent on oil for government revenues. Last week it announced a “net zero initiative by 2050” to be begun with $163bn (£118bn) of investments and a new minister for climate change and the environment, Mariam Almheiri. The announcement came after the UAE ordered an 80-day brainstorming session in every government department from June. It was the first petro-state to embrace net zero in domestic consumption.

Gulf states are deeply competitive, so a flurry of news is emerging. Qatar has appointed a climate minister; Bahrain is targeting net zero by 2050; Kuwait has a new emissions plan.

Fossil fuels shipped abroad are not on the Saudi’s carbon ledger, owing to UN accounting rules, and the promised internal reduction in emissions is dependent on a heavy bet that unproven blue hydrogen and carbon capture technology will work.

Rather than undermining traditional society and the existing regime, these associations are simply an extension of them, with the most involved being those who benefit from it the most -- and who thus would stand to lose most from any revision of the political status quo. From here it is no great mystery why they tend not to have a strong appreciation -- in the sense of both normative support for and cognitive understanding of --democracy.

The Ministry of Tourism rejects the term “halal tourism” or “Islamic tourism.” Seif al-Shaalali, media adviser to the tourism minister, said that it was the hotel owner's prerogative to decide whether to serve alcohol, but he added that the ministry does not use the label "halal hotels" as an official description. 

“Azur Plaza in Hammamet was the country’s first experience in the family tourism sector back in August 2014. This initiative was launched at the prodding of our conservative friends and families, including veiled sisters who are banned from entering swimming pools because of their burkinis. The trend started with one small hotel and now there are now many of this type across the Tunisian governorates.” Qaydara stressed that this type of tourism has saved several businesses from bankruptcy and created hundreds of jobs in the tourism sector.

At present, China dominates the world’s investment and innovation in renewable energy technologies.

the importance of the Gulf Arab states will be eroded not only because of the decline in global demand for oil but also because Gulf countries are not rich in the minerals required to build renewable energy technologies, and are highly dependent on technology imports rather than in-house technology innovation and research and development

all hydrocarbon producer economies will see a fall in total rent of about 40% by 2040 compared with the ‘golden years’ of 2010-14 due to rigorous policies on fuel switching and efficiency to reach net-zero emissions in the second half of this century

In 2013, R&D investment in Gulf countries averaged 0.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP), compared with 2%–3% in industrialized countries. The 0.3% figure is far less than the minimum percentage (1%) needed for an effective science and technology base specified by UNESCO.

in the new energy era, the Gulf Arab states are still advantaged by their geographical location. These countries are specially positioned for harnessing wind and solar energy

In 2016, the military and other security institutions were given exemptions in a new value-added tax (VAT) law enacted as part of IMF-inspired reforms. The law states that the military does not have to pay VAT on goods, equipment, machinery, services and raw materials needed for the purposes of armament, defense and national security.The Ministry of Defense has the right to decide which goods and services qualify. Civilian businessmen complain that this can leave the system open to abuse. Receipts for a cup of coffee at private sector hotels, for example, add 14 percent VAT. Receipts at military hotels do not. Employees at the military-owned Al-Masah Hotel in Cairo told Reuters that no VAT was charged when renting venues for weddings and conferences.

The Ministry of Military Production is projecting that operating revenues from its 20 firms will reach 15 billion Egyptian pounds in 2018/2019, five times higher than in 2013/2014, according to a ministry chart. The ministry does not disclose what happens to the revenues. The chairmen of two of the firms said profits go to the ministry or are reinvested in the business.

“I don’t want to be a local shop. I want to be a company that has the capacity to export and compete internationally.”

The chairmen of two military engineering companies, Abu Zaabal Engineering Industries Co and Helwan Engineering Industries Co, said in recent years it had become much easier to access financing through the Ministry of Military Production.

Among projects the Ministry of Military Production announced in 2017 was a plan to plant 20 million palm trees with an Emirati company and build a factory to make sugar from their dates. It agreed with a Saudi company to jointly manufacture elevators. The military inaugurated the Middle East’s biggest fish farm on the Nile Delta east of Alexandria.

The Ministry of Military Production signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s GCL Group last week to build a solar panel factory worth up to $2 billion. The military has taken over much of the construction of intercity roads from the Ministry of Transport and now controls the toll stations along most major highways.

Economists and investors say reforms tied to a $12 billion three-year IMF program signed in Nov. 2016 should lay the ground for economic expansion. But foreign investors are still shying away from Egypt, apart from those focusing on the more resilient energy sector. Non-oil foreign direct investment fell to about $3 billion in 2017 from $4.7 billion in 2016, according to Reuters calculations based on central bank statistics.  

foreign investors were reluctant to invest in sectors where the military is expanding or in one they might enter, worried that competing against the military with its special privileges could expose their investment to risk. If an investor had a business dispute with the military, the commercial officer said, there was no point in taking it to arbitration. “You just leave the country,” he said.

Egypt’s military, the biggest in the Arab world, has advantages.It enjoys financial support from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, staunch supporters of Sisi since he toppled the group they see as a threat to the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood. Western powers see Cairo as a bulwark against Islamist militancy. Egypt receives $1.3 billion in military aid annually from the United States alone.

In 2015, the defense minister issued a decree exempting nearly 600 hotels, resorts and other properties owned by the military from real estate taxes

Military companies receive an exemption from import tariffs under a 1986 law and from income taxes under a 2005 law. Cargoes sent to military companies do not have to be inspected.

At bustling Cairo squares, people line up to buy subsidized meat and other food handed out from trucks sponsored by the military. Sisi said he had instructed the military to enter the market “to supply more chicken to push down prices.”Some disagree with such measures on the grounds the military’s mission is to protect the country from external threats.“We have reached a point where they are competing even with street vendors,”

After the 2015 killings, the government once again bailed out floundering big hotel owners with money from the public budget by forgiving their debts, waiving their social security taxes, and covering their electricity bills. The justification many legislators gave at the time was that they needed to help hotel owners keep people employed at a time of crisis. Yet Karboul, the former tourism minister, says that the excuse doesn’t entirely wash. “A lot of people say it’s about jobs, but these bad hotels didn’t create jobs,” she says, noting that only a small fraction of the sector — some 20 percent — have the successful business model, high profits, and professional management needed to create value and jobs.

boutique hotels continued to thrive after the revolution, while hotel operators who relied on mass tourism began to have problems due to fears of political instability. “This shows that diversification of products can really help,”

industry that continues to be dominated by large, well-connected, state-subsidized hotels and tour operators. And that, in turn, has tended to encourage an extremely narrow and fragile business model: mass package tourism. In some ways this was also a logical choice in light of the country’s chronically high unemployment and the workers’ relatively low levels of skills and education. But the reliance on quantity over quality brought problems of its own. Above all, as the political scientist Robert Poirier pointed out in a 1995 analysis of Tunisia’s tourism sector, it’s an approach that is sensitive to “political instability, both regional and Tunisia-specific.”

Turkey has seen great success in recent years partly by capitalizing on unique, personalized tourism services available at all price ranges, including penny-pinching backpackers and students. Such flexibility could well pay off for Tunisia — especially at a time when competitors like Egypt are also hurting

structural challenges remain. One of the biggest, says Karboul, is access to credit, a problem that bedevils entrepreneurs in all sectors. That should serve as yet another reminder that the best way to revive the fortunes of Tunisia’s sagging tourism sector is by tackling the problems of the broader economy

This report draws on ACLED data to examine patterns of infighting and repression in Houthi-controlled Yemen from 2015 to the present. It shows that behind the purported projection of unity in the face of the ‘aggression,’ local struggles within the Houthi movement, and between the movement and the tribes, are widespread across the territories under Houthi control. This geographic diffusion, however, has not translated into a unitary front against the Houthis; it rather reflects localized resistance to Houthi domination and encroachment in tribal areas which has stood little chance against the Houthis’ machine of repression

Alongside the regular army, special military units and armed militias operate under the command of high-ranking Houthi officials, loyal tribal shaykhs, and other prominent figures capable of rallying support locally. While expected to show ideological commitment to the Houthi cause, local commanders also enjoy relative autonomy, operating as a network of militias that are involved in the extraction of levies and the recruitment of fighters in support of the war effort

violence targeting unarmed tribespeople and communal groups has substantially increased over the past two years, a reflection of growing Houthi repression.

In 2020, more than 40 distinct battles between opposing Houthi forces were recorded in 11 governorates, compared to the 15 battles distributed across six governorates in 2018 and the 31 battles across seven governorates in 2019

Rival factions are reported to exist among senior Houthi officials competing over access to positions of power and control of rents. While these are rarely — if ever — acknowledged in public, concerns over balancing their relative influence on decision-making are said to determine the allocation of regime posts and resources

Since 2015, tribes have spearheaded the military campaign against the Houthis in several battlefronts across Yemen, although intermittent or inadequate support from the armed forces of the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition has been a frequent cause of frustration. Over the past year, the Murad tribe mounted a fierce resistance against the Houthi offensive in Marib amidst a spectacular failure of the army to coordinate and lead the fighting (Nagi, 29 September 2020). Likewise, tribal fighters and shaykhs have been enlisted to join brigades associated with the government and the coalition, such as the powerful Second Giants Brigade deployed on the western front and dominated by the Al Subayha tribe (Al Masdar, 3 January 2021). Beyond mere fighting, tribal mediation has also succeeded in achieving several prison swaps between the government and the Houthis, often outperforming UN-brokered mediation efforts (Al Masdar, 9 December 2019; Al Dawsari, 10 November 2020).

a multitude of locally situated struggles among elements of the Houthi regime over land property, checkpoint control, and taxation

the enforcement of norms deemed as illegitimate by the tribes, as well as the forceful arrest of tribespeople, has led locals to take up arms against the Houthis in several northern governorates

the destruction of a house represents a physical and symbolic humiliation, which can deprive a tribal shaykh of power and respect among his community and beyond. In February 2014, the Houthis blew up the house of the Al Ahmar family in Amran, a warning sign for other tribal shaykhs planning to oppose the Houthi advance in Hashid territory (Al-Dawsari, 17 February 2020). This event was not the last one, and the use of these tactics has in fact intensified throughout the war: data collected by ACLED reveal that the Houthis blew up, burnt, or shelled houses belonging to tribal, community, and party leaders in at least 51 districts across 17 governorates

The Houthis have responded to mounting tribal opposition with severe repression, resulting in higher levels of violence targeting civilians and breeding further anxiety among the tribes. 

While spared by the fragmentation and insurgencies that characterize much of southern Yemen (for more, see ACLED’s analysis series mapping little-known armed groups in Yemen, as well as our recent report on the wartime transformation of AQAP), infighting and repression constitute two major sources of instability in Houthi-controlled territories, and a potential challenge to the survival of the Houthi regime in the coming years.

as the unprecedented peaceful movement has been ever more harshly repressed and the oil-dependent economy has tanked on low crude prices, illegal departures have ticked up again

authorities arrested 1,433 people trying to depart illegally from Algeria’s shores in the first five months of this year — more than three times the figure for the same period of 2019

Sociologist Mohamed Mohamedi said the Hirak protest movement had offered citizens brief “hope of shaping a life” in Algeria. But, he said, “the return of the ‘harraga’ is due to the return of hopelessness”. Mahrez Bouich, a professor of philosophy and politics in Bejaia in northeastern Algeria, agreed that the lack of hoped-for changes, along with economic stagnation, were to blame. The pandemic has “exacerbated social inequalities and injustices”, Bouich said.

Aboard the boats are doctors, nurses, policemen, the unemployed and entire families, lawyer Zerguine said, arguing that the phenomenon cannot be explained by unemployment alone. Those who decide to leave “want to live with the times, they want more freedom and dignity”. Mohamed, the prospective migrant, said Algeria’s social conservatism had overlooked young people. “My grandparents are more open in spirit than my parents — it’s mad,” he said. “Society has regressed and I refuse to regress with it.”

In neighbouring Tunisia, clandestine departures towards Europe quadrupled in the first five months of the year compared to 2019, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR. And while a growing number of migrants attempting the crossings are from West Africa, Tunisians also appear to have ever more reason to leave. Many are disillusioned with the aftermath of the country’s 2011 revolution, while the coronavirus pandemic has further crushed their economic prospects, said Khaled Tababi, a sociologist specialising in migration. Many jobs have simply disappeared, especially in the tourism sector, he said.

“Living in a foreign country hit by the pandemic is easier than living here without money, without prospects and with the unemployment that strangles us,”

Although the destabilizing contradictions of this dependency have now undercut both American hegemony and the power of the North Atlantic hydrocarbon industries, the oil-for-insecurity entanglement has nonetheless created dangerously strong incentives for more conflict ahead.

In a series of studies that began in late 1980s, economists Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler charted the extent to which the world’s leading oil companies enjoyed comparatively handsome rates of returns on equity—well ahead of other dominant sectors within North Atlantic capitalism—when major wars or sustained unrest occurred in the Middle East.

When oil prices began to collapse in the mid-1980s, the major oil companies witnessed a 14-year downturn that was only briefly interrupted once, during the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

The events of September 11, 2001, the launching of the global war on terror and the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq reversed the fiscal misfortunes of the North Atlantic oil companies in the previous decade. Collectively, they achieved relative returns on equity several orders of magnitude greater than the heyday of 1979 to 1981. As oil prices soared, new methods of extraction reinvigorated oil production in Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. In effect, war in Iraq made the shale oil revolution possible

fracking—not only benefitted from sky-high oil prices, generous US government subsidies and lax regulation, but also the massive amounts of cheap credit on offer to revive the economy after 2008

In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis, the Carter Doctrine declared America’s intent to use military force to protect its interests in the Gulf. In so doing, Carter not only denounced “the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East,” but he also proposed new efforts to restrict oil imports, to impose price controls and to incentivize more fossil fuel extraction in the United States, all in conjunction with solidifying key alliances (Egypt, Israel and Pakistan) and reinforcing the US military presence in the region.[5] In effect, America would now extract geopolitical power from the Middle East by seeking to secure it.

What helps make energy security discourse real and powerful is the amount of industry money that goes into it. In a normal year, the oil industry devotes some $125 million to lobbying, carried out by an army of over 700 registered lobbyists. This annual commitment is on par with the defense industry. And like US arms makers,[9] the revolving door between government, industry and lobbying is wide open and constantly turning. Over two-thirds of oil lobbyists have spent time in both government and the private sector.[10]

A 2015 report by the Public Accountability Initiative highlights the extent to which the leading liberal and conservative foreign policy think tanks in Washington—the American Enterprise Institute, Atlantic Council, Brookings, Cato, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Council on Foreign Relations and Heritage Foundation—have all received oil industry funding, wrote reports sympathetic to industry interests or usually both

For some 50 years, the United States has been able to extract geopolitical power from Middle Eastern oil by posing as the protector of global energy security. The invention of the concept of energy security in the 1970s helped to legitimate the efforts of the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations to forge new foundations for American hegemony amid the political, economic and social crises of that decade. In the wake of the disastrous US war efforts in Korea and Southeast Asia, Henry Kissinger infamously attempted to re-forge American hegemony by outsourcing US security to proxies like Iran under what is referred to as the Nixon Doctrine. At the same time, regional hegemons would be kept in check by “balancing” competing states against each other.

The realization of Middle Eastern insecurity was also made possible by the rapid and intensive arms build-up across the region in the 1970s. As oil prices skyrocketed into the 1980s, billions of so-called petrodollars went to purchase arms, primarily from North Atlantic and Soviet manufacturers. Today, the Middle East remains one of the most militarized regions in the world. Beyond the dominance of the security sector in most Middle Eastern governments, it also boasts the world’s highest rates of military spending. Since 2010, Middle Eastern arms imports have gone from almost a quarter of the world’s share to nearly half in 2016, mainly from North Atlantic armorers.

For half a century, American policy toward the Middle East has effectively reinforced these dynamics of insecurity by promoting conflict and authoritarianism, often in the name of energy security. High profile US military interventions—Lebanon in 1983, Libya in 1986 and 2011, the Tanker Wars in the late 1980s, the wars on Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan since 2001, the anti-Islamic State campaign since 2014 and the Saudi-Emirati war on Yemen since 2015—have received the most scrutiny in this respect, alongside the post-2001 “low intensity” counterterrorism efforts worldwide

cases abound where American policy had the effect of preventing conflicts from being resolved peacefully: Trump’s shredding of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran comes to mind; the case of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara have likewise become quintessential “peace processes” that have largely functioned to prevent peace.

the myth of authoritarian stability

A year after the unexpected 2011 uprisings, the IMF’s former director Christine Lagarde admitted that the Fund had basically ignored “how the fruits of economic growth were being shared” in the region

In denouncing certain governments as “pariahs” or “rogue states,” and in calling for regime change, American policy has allowed those leaders to institute permanent states of emergency that have reinforced their grip on power, in some cases aided by expanded oil rents due to heightened global prices

From 2012 to 2018, organized violence in the Middle East accounted for two-thirds of the world’s total conflict related fatalities. Today, three wars in the region—Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan—now rank among the five deadliest since the end of the Cold War. Excluding Pakistan, the Middle East’s share of the worldwide refugee burden as of 2017 was nearly 40 percent at over 27 million, almost double what it was two decades prior.

profound political and financial incentives are accumulating to address the existing glut of oil on the market and America’s declining supremacy. A major war in the Middle East would likely fit that bill. The Trump administration’s temptation to wage war with Iran, change Venezuela’s regime and to increase tensions with Russia and China should be interpreted with these incentives in mind.

While nationalizing the North Atlantic’s petroleum industries is not only an imperative in the fight against climate change, it would also remove much of the profit motive from making war in the Middle East. Nationalizing the oil industry would also help to defund those institutions most responsible for both disseminating the myths of energy security and promoting insecurity in the Middle East.

The widely reproduced claim that 2 to 3 million people were driven into extreme poverty by the 2006–2009 drought was drawn, extraordinarily, from analyses by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of pre-drought poverty levels.[4] The claim that around 1.5 million people were displaced was derived from a single humanitarian news bulletin, seemingly on the basis of a misreading of the UN’s estimate of those affected—not displaced—by the drought. Using Syrian government numbers, the UN actually reported drought-period displacement to be around 40,000–60,000 families.

A presidential decree in 2008, which tightened restrictions on land sales across the northeastern-most province of Hasakah, led to the extensive loss of land rights and was credited by some organizations as a key factor in the increased migration from northeast Syria prior to the war

during 2008–2009 rural Syria was hit by triple-digit increases in the prices of key agricultural inputs. In May 2008 fuel subsidies were halved, leading to an overnight 342 percent spike in the price of diesel. And then in May 2009 fertilizer subsidies were removed, causing prices to rise anywhere from 200 to 450 percent. The fuel subsidy cuts had particularly devastating economic consequences, especially for farmers reliant on cheap fuel for groundwater irrigation.

The fact that a number of neighboring countries experienced equivalent precipitation declines during 2006–2009—or in Iraq’s case an even larger decline—but no comparable migration crises, suggests at the very least that the migration from Syria’s northeast must have been caused more by these Syria-specific factors than by the drought.

Proponents of the climate conflict thesis typically claim that drought-induced displacement caused a “population shock” within Syria’s urban peripheries, exacerbating pre-existing socio-economic pressures. Yet Syria’s cities grew rapidly throughout the decade before the civil war, not only during the drought years. By our calculations, excess migration from the northeast during 2008–2009 amounted to just 4–12 percent of Syria’s 2003–2010 urban growth (and this excess migration was not all triggered by drought)

as Marwa Daoudy concludes in her new book on the subject, there is “little evidence” that “climate change in Syria sparked popular revolt in 2011”—but “a lot of evidence” that “suggests it did not.”

a deep and long-term structural agrarian crisis

it is evident that northeastern Syria’s agrarian troubles—and especially those in the province of Hasakah—went all the way back to 2000, and indeed earlier. Production of the two main government-designated strategic crops, wheat and cotton, was in decline in Hasakah from the early 2000s onward. Land and settlements were being abandoned there well before the drought. Net out-migration from Hasakah during this period was higher than from any other province. And the reasons for this lay not in the drought but in the contradictions of Syrian development.

an agrarian socialist development program, promoting rapid expansion of the country’s agricultural sector and deploying Soviet aid and oil income to this end. Among other elements, this program involved heavy investment in agricultural and especially water supply infrastructure, low interest loans for private well drilling, price controls on strategic crops at well above international market value, the annual wiping clean of state farm losses and, as already indicated, generous input subsidies

Environmentally, the model relied above all on the super-exploitation of water resources, especially groundwater—a problem which by the early 2000s had become critical. And economically, Syrian agriculture had become highly input dependent, reliant on continuing fuel subsidies in particular.

Within just a few short years, Syria embraced principles of economic liberalization, privatized state farms, liberalized trade and reduced price control levels. At the same time domestic oil production and exports fell rapidly, thus undermining the regime’s rentier foundations and its capacity to subsidize agriculture

Irrespective of any drought impacts, these developments essentially occurred when the props that had until then artificially maintained an over-extended agricultural production system—oil export rents, a pro-agrarian ideology and their associated price controls—were suddenly and decisively removed.

As Syria’s pre-eminent breadbasket region—the heartland of strategic crop production—Hasakah was particularly vulnerable to economic liberalization and the withdrawal of input supports. No other region of the country was so dependent on groundwater for irrigation, a factor that made it particularly vulnerable to fuel price increases. Hasakah’s groundwater resources were also exceptionally degraded, even by Syrian standards

The region was also deeply affected by intense irrigation development and over-abstraction of groundwater resources within Turkey

It was Ba’athist state policies which had turned Hasakah into a region of wheat monoculture, failed to promote economic diversification and facilitated cultivation ever deeper into the badiya (the desert) while over-exploiting surface and groundwater resources. Moreover, these measures were taken partly for strategic and geostrategic reasons, bound up with regime interests in expanding and consolidating Hasakah’s Arab population (its project of Arabization), in controlling and excluding the province’s Kurdish population and in extending its control and presence within a strategically sensitive borderland and frontier region. During the heyday of Ba’athist agrarian development, Hasakah’s population and agricultural sector expanded like in no other area. With the collapse of this development model, rural crisis and out-migration were the inevitable result.

After an initial reluctance to acknowledge the depth of the crisis in the northeast, the government eventually embraced the climate crisis narrative with gusto. The drought was “beyond our powers,” claimed Asad. The drought was “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with,” claimed the Minister of Agriculture. “Syria could have achieved [its] goals pertaining to unemployment, poverty and growth if it was not for the drought,” proclaimed Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Dardari.[12] Indeed, as the International Crisis Group reported, the Asad regime would regularly take diplomats to the northeast and tell them, “it all has to do with global warming,” blaming what was in essence a state-induced socio-ecological crisis on climatic transformations beyond its control.[13] This shifting of blame is essentially how the Syria climate crisis narrative began.

Official UN reports on the crisis in the northeast, which were produced in collaboration with the Syrian regime, were predictably drought-centric, barely mentioning any factors other than drought, omitting any criticisms of government policy and ignoring the existence of a discriminated-against Kurdish minority

International media reports on the subject were similarly focused on  drought, no doubt partly because of media preferences for simplified and striking narratives, but also because they relied upon UN sources and took these at their word

The climate crisis narrative reached its apogee in 2015, in the run-up to the UN Paris conference on climate change, when countless politicians and commentators turned to the example of Syria to illustrate the urgency of international action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

regurgitated as a statement of fact in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and by Western liberal politicians and eco-socialist campaigners alike

climate change is also much more than a physical reality and looming environmental threat: It is simultaneously an object of discourse, debate and rhetoric, a potent meta-narrative that can be invoked for explanation, legitimation, blame avoidance and enrichment.

climate change is already regularly invoked to questionable ends across the Middle East and North Africa. It is used to explain away ecological catastrophes actually caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion, to make the case for investment in new and often unnecessary mega-projects, to obscure state mismanagement of local environmental resources and to argue against the redistribution of such resources to oppressed and minority groups

blaming climate change is often a distraction from the real causes of socio-ecological crisis

The term “power sharing” inaccurately implies an egalitarian arrangement. In reality, what is at play in Lebanon and Northern Ireland is power distribution. The political groups come together to decide how power will be divided under the agreed rules before retreating to rule their respective fiefdoms.

Political parties, with their entrenched positions, are not keen to open the Pandora’s box of an official census any time soon.

Legislative seats are divided equally between Muslim and Christian groups, despite Christians estimated to represent only about a third of the population now. By convention, the office of the prime minister is held by a Sunni Muslim, the office of the president is held by a Christian Maronite, and the office of speaker of the parliament is held by a Shiite Muslim. This is a more rigid allocation of power than in Northern Ireland where, for example, the leader of any party, whether nationalist or unionist, that achieved the highest share of the vote could become the first minister (i.e. the prime minister).

Lebanon is in the midst of one of the worst economic crises seen globally since the 1850s. Three decades of consociationalism power-sharing and yet many communities remain religiously segregated, with town officials seemingly unafraid and unashamed to introduce express bans on renting property to members of other religions.Political dynasties maintain a hold on power and, according to international watchdogs, corruption levels in Lebanon have significantly increased in recent years. The “wasta” system of personal connections continues to pervade the delivery of public services, and there is little accountability and oversight in government. No one in the government has been held responsible for the port blast that killed over 200 people and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of more than 300,000.

Unlike Northern Ireland, Lebanon is — at least technically — a sovereign state; there is no outside power that can formally step in when parties refuse to form a government. Instead, the previous technocratic government led by Hassan Diab has remained in place as a caretaker but lacks the power to enact the reforms required to unlock international aid

In Lebanon, a combination of constitutional documents and unwritten conventions guide the power-sharing arrangement. The confessional model that grants power along sectarian lines was introduced by the National Pact in 1943 and was resurrected again by the Taif Accord in 1989. The Taif Accord brokered the end of the civil war and granted the Muslim community a greater share of political power. In 2008, the Doha Agreement was negotiated to prevent another sectarian war. Power was rebalanced to reflect the growing influence of the Shiite Muslim community in Lebanon, represented politically by the Amal Movement and Hezbollah.

control of the prized ministries of economy, finance and education have almost entirely swung between the DUP and Sinn Féin since the first government was formed under the Good Friday Agreement. It’s no accident that less than 10% of children in Northern Ireland attend integrated schools when control of the Department of Education swings between the two parties who benefit the most from polarized communities.

The way power is distributed in Northern Ireland and Lebanon makes it relatively easy for one political party or group to bring down or stall a government or policy for their own benefit, but it’s nearly impossible for the public to achieve the same.

When al-Hariri resigned as prime minister in 2019, protesters knew that his resignation alone would never be enough to disrupt the system of power while the rest of the political establishment remained in place. “All of them means all of them” was a common refrain at marches.

In Northern Ireland and Lebanon, anyone who thinks change might come when a politician leaves office often finds that a son or a spouse appears in his place instead (and it is almost always his). The names Robinson, Poots and Dodds have frequently appeared on the ballot in Northern Ireland while al-Hariri, Jumblatt and Frangieh similarly repeat in Lebanon. The situation brings to mind Greek mythology’s Hydra, a snakelike monster with nine heads. When one head is cut off, two more emerge.

The fact that voters in Lebanon are registered in their family town rather than where they live entrenches the power of political dynasties

Former militia members also inevitably form part of the political establishment after a conflict. Why else would they give up their arms? But the continued presence of paramilitary groups long after a conflict reinforces distrust and puts peace out of reach.

Conflict-era divisions have become entrenched in the political systems of Northern Ireland and Lebanon and are now protecting political parties more than they’re promoting peace

The democratic trade-off in power-sharing arrangements is always explained by the lives saved from conflicts ending. But lives are lost to poverty, corruption and negligence too, as viscerally seen with the port explosion in Beirut last August

In Lebanon, the transition out of war in 1990 only perpetuated what had existed during the conflict. The main sponsor of the postwar order was not the Lebanese state, as it had been the state in Italy, but the Syrian regime. This allowed most of the sectarian militia leaders to shape the peacetime republic around their political and financial interests and patronage networks, which the Syrians were more than happy to endorse, as they too extracted tremendous rent from the corruption of Lebanon’s reconstruction period. Rather than resting on an understanding between the state and a criminal element, postwar Lebanon was entirely dominated by a sectarian political leadership that had sustained itself financially during the war years through criminal economic behavior.

at the heart of successful criminal commonwealths is a pact between those who govern and those who commit crimes, so that the criminals take on certain responsibilities of the state, and the state relies on assistance from the criminals for what is legally prohibited

In Lebanon, however, we approximate a more perfect criminal republic. Here, the ones committing the crimes are those actually in senior positions of authority. They have infiltrated all state bodies, the security and national defense institutions, the judiciary, educational establishments, even sporting federations. So perfect are their crimes, in fact, that many of their actions are not regarded as criminal by most people in society. The Lebanese will blandly mention the politicians’ “patronage networks,” but under any lawful political system plundering the state to bolster one’s own political fortunes would be considered illegal.