Mustapha is one of over 100,000 workers–mostly migrants from North and West Africa–who tend the vegetables grown under more than 32,000 hectares (320km2) of plastic-covered greenhouses in the Spanish province of Almería, nestled along the south-east coast of the Mediterranean. The region produces over 3 million tonnes of produce (tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines and more) destined for export to western Europe–Germany, France, and the UK mainly. 

Most of the 14,000 farming families have grown food in these greenhouses since Franco gave them small parcels of land in the 1940s, with the sole purpose of achieving national food security. Some are now extremely wealthy. Some struggle to make a profit. Probably, all of them employ migrant workers and the vast majority are likely to be doing so illegally–low-paid undocumented labour is the only way many of them can make ends meet. 

Food Imperialism

The Spanish government has recently announced the regularisation of almost 1 million undocumented workers–many of the workers in Almería who are given papers will try to move on from exhausting greenhouse work to better-paid jobs in restaurants and hotels. The empty jobs will soon be filled by people surviving the grueling journey on foot from Istanbul or by small wooden boat from West Africa to the Canaries. There are always people whose livelihoods have been destroyed by poor trade agreements and overfishing back home.

This is food imperialism – the way in which corporations and nations in the Global North exert control over the Global South by dictating what food is produced and exported to ensure the world’s wealthiest citizens have a constant supply of affordable, year-round produce on their supermarket shelves.

Our food system is the product of hundreds of years of unequal distribution and control of global power. The British Empire controlled the production of sugar and palm oil to feed its malnourished and tired workers back home–relying on slave labour and productive lands in the tropics to provide the expendable resources needed to continue to reap profits as they deplete these lands and waste their people. A lot has changed since the empires of old–today’s empires belong to the likes of Unilever and Cargill. Food is still treated as a commodity to generate profits, but the playbook of actions needed to keep the bloated food system functioning is less of a secret these days.

When my co-hosts and I began interviewing experts for our new podcast series, Edible Empire, we wanted to map out this modern playbook and uncover who really pays the hidden costs of our food. What we found is that today’s corporate giants rely on the exact same mechanisms of control as the empires of the past. As political economists like Professors Raj Patel and Harriet Friedmann point out, the global food system has always been structured around these regimes of power, transitioning from colonial monopolies to corporate ones. Today, as Professors Jennifer Clapp and Phil Howard warn, an unprecedented concentration of corporate power means a handful of firms now dictate global agricultural policy, market access, and ultimately, what ends up on our plates.

Palm oil is a perfect example of food imperialism–the ubiquitous, often hidden ingredient across foods and cosmetics, driving catastrophic deforestation across Southeast Asia. Researchers like Professor Jonathan Robins have documented how this versatile crop came to be embedded in global capitalism, while activists and researchers on the ground, such as Farwiza Farhan and Professor Helena Varkkey, see the direct ecological and social fallout—vital rainforests cleared and Indigenous livelihoods lost to feed Western consumerism under the guise of sustainable development.

The same pattern plays out in the intensive dairy farms half a world away in Aotearoa New Zealand, where the work of researchers like Drs Mike Joy and Milena Bojovic highlights the severe local ecological degradation caused by industrial farming. The harm extends far beyond New Zealand’s borders, however; as artist and researcher Dr Crystal Bennes notes, this intensive system relies on phosphate fertiliser extracted from the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara, where half the population has been displaced to refugee camps in Algeria. It is a textbook example of hidden externalities: wealth is accumulated in the Global North, while the geopolitical, social, and environmental damage is borne by vulnerable populations in the Global South, hidden from view from consumers.

Awareness is Everything

Neoliberalism has created extreme freedom in food markets, allowing continued profiteering as ecosystems collapse and livelihoods fail–Mustapha left his home in The Gambia because his family could no longer find enough fish to sell at the market, and no money meant no food. He stepped into a small wooden fishing boat and took the 11-day journey to Tenerife knowing that 1-in-5 people who took that journey would die. 

He was a lucky one—he made it to Spain and found a job (most days) in the greenhouses in Almería. Living in a slum made from discarded pallets and greenhouse plastic, he could save enough money to send a little home to support his sisters and parents. But as investigators like Hazel Healy and Brigitte Wear have revealed, the fish back home continue to be exploited by the Global North. Their populations have been destroyed by industrial overextraction for the production of fishmeal. These pellets have been fed for decades to carnivorous salmon in thousands of farms dotted around the fjords of Norway—salmon that are then exported to wealthy countries around the world. As West African marine ecologists and activists like Dr Aliou Ba and researchers like María Alonso Martínez have documented, this creates a bleak cycle where local food security is stolen to supply luxury seafood abroad.

This is food imperialism.

Ultimately, our damaging food system relies on a lack of public awareness to continue; the inner workings of these complex, global supply chains are too easily hidden from view. But awareness is everything, and there are alternative paths forward. Thinkers and activists like Anitra Nelson, Million Belay, Ali Thomas, and Chris Smaje offer powerful visions of hope rooted in degrowth, food sovereignty, minimising food waste, and agroecology. They show that smallholder farming and local food networks can dismantle this corporate stranglehold, replacing exploitation with equity.

To challenge this system, we first have to see it clearly. We need to understand where our food comes from, and recognize that the choices we are presented with on supermarket shelves are not really choices at all.

Neal Haddaway, Benjamin Eitelberg, and Emma Strutt are the creators of Edible Empire, a new podcast series exploring the hidden costs of the global food system. You can listen to the full interviews and subscribe to the series at www.thesalmonandthetomato.org/listen. 

The post Edible Empire: How Our Food Supply Chains are Destroying the Planet appeared first on Untold.

Growing up in a leftist household, I looked at this change in diet as a way in which companies and neoliberal governments were erasing parts of our cultural identity and social cohesion, so I became obsessed with reading the brand names, places of origin, and lists of ingredients of food in the supermarket.

One thing I started noticing in my teens, and has worsened over time, is the limited variety of options. Don’t get me wrong, long supermarket corridors are colorful and filled with over 50 kinds each of bread, cereals, canned soups, chocolate, peanut butter, cookies, ice cream, potato chips, dog food, cheese analogs, frozen meals, and infant formula, but producers are usually no more than three, and ingredients often include things I wouldn’t be able to place in nature. 

From those ingredients that sound natural, there’s one that troubles me and is present in all the food items mentioned above: palm oil, a main product from the plant called Elais guineensis Jacq.

Beyond the Package

Oil palm derived ingredients are found in food under many names: vegetable oil, vegetable fat, palmate, palmitate, palm stearine, or stearate acid. In cleaning products, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, ingredients like sodium lauryl sulfate, glyceryl, cetyl palmitate, stearic acid, or palmitoyl are often derived from it too.

Healthwise, oil palm derived products aren’t bad, and are used to create nice textures in many items. Even more, palm oil is usually recognized as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. 

So you might wonder, why does this ingredient make you so angry? Are you simply an angry woman? Well, sure, and the world really needs more of us, but I’d also say we have to take all magical ingredients with a pinch of doubt.

That’s why I decided to dig deeper. Beyond my gut feeling or political instinct, I wanted to understand who actually stands to gain from this ingredient taking over our supermarket shelves, and at what cost. Was it improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers? Was it driving local development, or merely feeding a system of industrial agriculture that thrives on cheap land, cheap labor, and even cheaper ecosystems? Those questions led me to look beyond the pretty packaging and start piecing together a bigger, messier picture that connected oil palms to deforestation and land grabbing.

Around 2018, in the spirit of making something powerful out of my anger towards the industrialization of agriculture and food production, and understanding the full chain of actors benefiting from this, I joined a group of people investigating oil palm in Mexico, on the ground and from space, using satellite imagery.

Hidden Costs

Around the world, oil palm’s high productivity and versatility have led to its rapid and consistent increase in demand and production. Plantations are productive for several decades, so they can be understood as long periods of steady, year-long income by farmers. However, this crop is also associated with high rates of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and significant social, environmental and health impacts to smallholder farmers due to the intensive use of agrochemicals and polluting oil extraction processes. 

In addition, if you’re growing oil palm and at some point decide not to do it anymore, removing the plants is quite expensive – a 2012 study on Malaysian plantations estimated the cost of removing a hectare of oil palm at RM 34,500 (over USD 10,000 at that time).

Furthermore, when we talk about biofuels we usually forget to say that soil is not a renewable resource and, for this purpose, oil palm would most likely be produced as a monocrop in an industrialized way, a practice that does not regenerate the soil.

Initiatives like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) have been trying to regulate production and reduce these impacts, but many organizations have questioned their efficacy and standards.

In Mexico, the first attempts to establish oil palm plantations began in the 1950s, but production and demand only took off in the late 1990s, when the government classified it as a strategic crop–a crop that’s highly competitive in the market and/or important for food security–and a series of policies were designed to promote its cultivation and commerce at the federal or state levels. 

In 2017, the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) published the National Agricultural Plan for the Period of 2017 to 2030, where they included the recommended market strategies to increase production and satisfy domestic needs, and maps indicating which regions were agro-ecologically suitable for each of the 38 strategic crops. 

In the case of oil palm, the suitability map indicated that 14.2 million hectares of the national territory were suitable for oil palm cultivation, an area almost the size of Nepal.

Unequal Maps

The SADER’s suitability maps were based on maps from other institutions, like the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (SAGARPA), the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research (INIFAP), and the Institute for Productive Reconversion and Tropical Agriculture (IRPAT). Such maps are typically publicly available at very low resolutions and use different mixes of data climatic and topographic data (obtained from meteorological stations), edaphic characteristics (obtained from local studies), and cultivation areas (obtained from satellite data).

Observations of the Earth from satellite data, aka remote sensing data, have been used for the identification and analysis of crops of strategic importance, with the purpose of estimating their yields, preventing risks associated with climate change, and identifying socio-environmental impacts. At the moment, commercial satellites can return imagery with a resolution of around 30 cm per pixel every few hours, and software for satellite imagery management, like EarthExplorer or Google Earth have been accessible since the early 2000s, but high-resolution data is typically very costly and affordable only to large institutions and governments. 

Although subscriptions and pay-as-you-go options are more affordable, publicly available data–more likely to be accessible to smallholder farmers–is usually provided at lower resolution, typically 5-500 m per pixel, updated from daily to every few weeks. Also, feature identification and classification can be done manually by humans or with data-driven algorithms to cover larger areas, but results should always be verified against on-the-ground data to avoid confusion between crops and ecosystems. 

For example, distinguishing primary forest from oil palm data plantations is not a simple task. Manual methodologies are typically highly accurate, but unsustainable for large studies, which might explain why SADER gathered data from multiple institutions using different methodologies.

In any case, when agricultural policies rely heavily on remote sensing data, many issues on the ground are obscured, like the full breadth of environmental impacts of a crop’s cultivation, or the desired futures of those working the land. Even more, the lack of, or unequal access to, high-resolution data, raises questions about the adequacy and power imbalances promoted by those policies.

Follow the Data

In 2019, trying to understand the impacts of SADER’s recommendation of turning such a large amount of land into oil palm cropland, we decided to dig deeper into this topic. Afterall, we were city people and maybe farmers were very happy with their job prospects, or using palm oil derived products was the least impactful thing on the environment.

We contacted people involved in oil palm production, like the women farmer organizations “Agua y Vida, Mujeres, Derechos y Ambiente” and “Casa de la Mujer Ixim Antsetic”, and people in academia and the government, and we started looking at all publicly available information about oil palm production in Mexico. Despite abundant governmental data and scientific literature, it was hard to say who was benefiting the most out of oil palm production in the country. 

We didn’t find any publicly available interactive map of oil palm plantations at the national level, which we thought crucial for smallholder farmers and other non-governmental policy-makers to contribute to the design of agricultural policies. 

So we decided to create it.

It took us two years of gathering and analyzing publicly available data on oil palm’s socio-environmental impacts, production and cropland from 2014 to 2019. We followed a semi-automatic remote sensing analysis methodology running Python scripts over publicly available Google Earth satellite images to create our publicly available high-resolution oil palm plantations map, and a report explaining our findings. 

Considering the potential of these mappings, we decided to call ourselves the Observatorio Agroindustrial en México, or OBSAM with the aim of expanding this study to all the strategic crops in the country. 

Our map showed the distribution and expansion of oil palm at the national level. The data had the potential for identifying spatial relationships with transportation and other infrastructure projects, other agricultural programs, or the coverage of governmental sustainable rural development programs.

Expansion and Deforestation

We identified 62,057 hectares (ha) of oil palm plantations, usually close to transportation infrastructure and areas of scrubland, rainfed agriculture, pastureland and secondary vegetation. 

From these, 4,022ha were inside natural protected areas, mainly in the Palenque National Park, and the Encrucijada Biosphere Reserve (EBR) both in the Southern state of Chiapas–researchers, civil society actors, farmers, and media, had long reported this and asked for controlling the crop’s expansion in these areas, but no official response had been given to these concerns. 

In addition, oil palm plantations were found in five terrestrial and seven hydrological regions of importance for biodiversity conservation, as defined by the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO). Finally, comparisons against official data for forest cover from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) for 2017 and 2018, identified a link between oil palm and deforestation in more than 5,400 ha of forests and jungle.

Our literature review also showed that there were indeed multiple opinions about oil palm’s benefits and impacts around the world, depending usually on the level of access to technology and subsidies, labor force, land ownership, social organizing, and decision-making power of those who grow it. 

In Mexico, technological requirements for its cultivation have led to the replacement of itinerant traditional agricultural methods, like roza-tumba-quema –an itinerary agricultural technique practiced in tropical regions for around 10,000 years where land is cleared (roza-tumba), burnt (quema) and then let to rest for a prolonged period of time, recently modernised to roza-tumba-pica (clear-burn-add organic matter) to prevent wildfires. 

In addition, hard labor requirements have pushed women to do less specialized and lower income jobs, and the lack of a local market has led to economic dependency on gathering and extraction centers, which are not always easily accessible and typically private. 

Even more, around half of oil palm production in the country was carried out by smallholder farmers in communal land, or ejidos, of less than 50 ha, which often exposed them to other impacts observed around the world: land concentration, foreignization and grabbing.

In 2018, the estimated revenue per hectare of oil palm was around MXN 38 (less than USD 2), but production was relatively profitable in places like southern Chiapas, where smallholder farmers are typically landowners and have created cooperatives and organizations that help them access governmental financial incentives.

Food Insecurity

So what kind of information, governmental policies and mechanisms would benefit smallholder oil palm producers, improve production, and limit social and environmental impacts?

Turns out that this was not a revolutionary question, and around the same time, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was also trying to understand this. In 2022, FAO found that around 37% of the world’s land was dedicated to agriculture and over 80% of farms around the world were under two hectares (20,000m2) in size. Such smallholder farmers produced around 35% of the entire world’s food, despite occupying only around 12% of all agricultural land. 

The FAO highlighted the need for detailed data–Earth observations included– that helped understand regional differences in agricultural practices and production, so that policy-makers could design agricultural plans that aligned to the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). These goals have the stated aim of bringing “peace and prosperity for people and the planet” by promoting sustainable production, improving the productivity and livelihood of smallholder farmers, addressing inequalities, and guaranteeing food security worldwide. 

The FAO’s data means that 35% of food was being grown in around 4.5% of the world’s land by 2022. Although this might sound like our dreams of food security are easy to achieve, we have to be careful with our steps ahead because there’s a limit to how much of the world’s land is suitable for agriculture. Developing some suitable land might carry severe social and environmental impacts, and not all current agricultural land will remain productive in the future due to climate change and impactful land use.

Elusive Answers

As our findings proved the importance of carrying out the independent monitoring of this crop’s expansion, we decided to continue gathering and analyzing data to verify some impacts reported by multiple independent organizations. This way, in 2023, OBSAM published a second mapping with data from 2016 to 2022 and created a publicly available visualizing tool.

Our improved methodology detected 7,559 ha inside natural protected areas, mainly in the EBR and the Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve in Veracruz, something that had already been reported by peasant organizations but not evidenced in existing mappings. 

This time, to address the lack of verification in situ, the mapping was compared against publicly available data for the Lacandón Jungle in Chiapas, prepared by the General Coordination of Corridors and Biological Resources (CGCRB) and oil palm producers in the municipalities of Benemérito de las Américas and Marqués de Comillas, showing a large number of errors in the CGCRB archive. Comparisons against official data on forest cover now showed oil palm driven deforestation in 7,317 ha.

OBSAM is now expecting to release a third mapping with data until 2023, to enable the comparison between the three different mappings and identify new, growing and abandoned plantations, which would allow us to understand the paths of deforestation and land use changes. 

We’ve also gathered infrastructure maps and contacted people investigating the corporate side of oil palm commercialization, so we hope to get closer to understanding its relationship with important infrastructure projects and which policies are benefiting which actors the most.

However, many questions remained unsolved and to analyze all strategic crops and offer alternatives to oil palm production we would need to develop closer ties with people in communities located in the vicinity of oil palm plantations, to understand agricultural practices and challenges, develop participatory mapping tools for verification of satellite analysis and identify other datasets to capture what is meaningful and desirable by people on the ground. 

It is still unclear which existing agricultural practices and policies are benefiting smallholder farmers the most, but supermarkets continue to have more and more products containing palm oil derived products, so somebody must be making big profits and we would prefer it if it was them.

*If you want to support our work, or if you’re doing something similar and you want to share your struggles with someone in the same boat, full access to OBSAM mappings is granted under request. We are a group of people addressing data-access inequalities, and supporting smallholder farmers, academic research, and non-commercial enterprises. You can think of this as positive action in land observations and policy-making.

The post Deforestation, Data Gaps, and Small Farmers: Mapping the True Costs of Mexico’s Palm Oil appeared first on Untold.

Since 2013, Albania has been governed by the Socialist Party under Rama, who secured a fourth consecutive term in 2025. His leadership has been marked by strong executive power and centralized decision-making. At the same time, civil society groups and international organizations have raised concerns about democratic standards, including pressure on independent media and political influence over state institutions. According to Transparency International, Albania continues to struggle with corruption, ranking 91st globally in 2025 and relatively low compared to other European countries.

Against the tide

More than two years have passed since the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza began. This first live-streamed genocide has sparked widespread popular support for Gaza, particularly in Western European countries. While academic, cultural, and tourist engagements with Israel are increasingly viewed as ethically and morally corrupt, the Albanian government has pursued the opposite trajectory. Instead of distancing itself from Israel, Albania has deepened its ties. 

Albania is cultivating closer political and economic relations, signing new bilateral agreements, and aligning itself with Israeli interests across a wide spectrum, including defense, cybersecurity, culture, and finance. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Edi Rama, now in his fourth consecutive term, this trajectory appears undeterred and indifferent to both the immense civilian suffering in Gaza and the growing pro-Palestinian sentiment within Albania.

Against the backdrop of the International Court of Justice’s assessment that a plausible case for genocide exists in Gaza, many governments have grown increasingly cautious about the optics and ethics of (openly) deepening ties with Israel. Some have recalled ambassadors, suspended arms exports, or quietly shelved bilateral agreements. Others, such as Ireland, Norway, Spain, Canada, UK, Australia and France issued formal recognitions for the state of Palestine. 

Albania has charted a strikingly different course. Not only has it continued to expand cooperation with Israel across multiple domains, but it has done so openly and without hesitation. Moreover, it has treated these partnerships as achievements to be celebrated rather than associations with a state apparatus suspected on charges of genocide with its most senior leader warranted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. 

To understand Albania’s current relations with Israel and Palestine, it is helpful to consider the long history of Albanian foreign policy. As a small, economically weak country, Albania has often aligned itself with more powerful states to protect its interests.

Making sense of an unusually close relationship 

Albania gained independence in 1912 after five centuries of Ottoman rule. From 1925 to 1939, the country was ruled by President, later King, Zog. During this time, the country became an unexpected refuge for Jews. This period has even been described as “a golden era” for Jews in Albania. Beginning in 1933, Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany and Austria began arriving, many using Albania as a temporary stop on their way to the United States or Latin America. 

The Albanian Embassy in Berlin continued to issue visas until late 1938, and King Zog personally supported efforts to protect Jewish refugees. As a result, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Jews passed through Albania before 1939.

The situation changed when Italy invaded Albania in 1939. Emigration became difficult, leaving many Jews unable to leave the country. They remained relatively safe under Italian rule until 1943, when Nazi Germany took control. Even then, Albanian authorities refused the Germans’ demands for lists of Jews. Many Jews were sheltered by officials and ordinary citizens alike. 

Albania was the only European country that had more Jews after World War II than before it. After the war, about half of the Jewish population—around 300 people—left for Israel or other countries. The rest were not permitted to leave and remained in Albania until the communist regime collapsed in 1991. 

When Albania stood with Palestine

In 1949, Albania officially recognized Israel, partly because it agreed with the Soviet view that Israel could weaken British influence in West Asia. However, this did not lead to full diplomatic relations. From 1955 to 1967, Albania ignored Israel’s repeated attempts to establish diplomatic relations, though it maintained contact with the Israeli Communist Party (MAKI). 

Following events such as the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Six-Day War in 1967, Albania adopted an anti-Israel stance. The country’s leaders portrayed Israel as a tool of imperialist Western powers, particularly the United States.

At the same time, Albania’s communist leader, Enver Hoxha, aligned the country with the Palestinian cause, viewing it as part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle. Albanian leaders viewed Palestine as resisting what they saw as an “imperialist proxy” in Israel. In turn, the PLO’s alliance with Albania was based on anti-colonial and anti-imperialist politics. 

Relations between Albania and Palestinian groups began in 1967 and were influenced in part by shared ties with China. Albania eventually recognized Fatah, partly because of its international profile and its critical stance toward both the United States and the Soviet Union.

However, relations became strained after the 1972 Munich Olympic attack, which Albania condemned as detrimental to the Palestinian cause. As Fatah developed closer ties with the Soviet Union, Albania became suspicious of the Soviet influence within the Palestinian movement. Although the PLO continued to seek closer ties, including opening an office in Tirana, Albania remained cautious. 

In the early 1980s, relations depended largely on Albania’s broader West Asia strategy and the PLO’s relationship with the Soviet Union. Following Hoxha’s death in 1985, his successor, Ramiz Alia, introduced a more flexible foreign policy, enabling closer international engagement. During this period, a PLO embassy was finally established in Tirana.

A wall fallen, a map redrawn

A few years later, following the collapse of communism, Albania shifted its focus toward the West and established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1991. That same year, most of the remaining Jewish population moved to Israel. 

Under the new Democratic Party government, Albania initially reduced its ties with the PLO. However, after joining the Organization of the Islamic Conference, now known as the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, in 1994, Albania renewed relations with Arab countries. In 1996, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat visited Albania, even as it continued to strengthen its relationship with Israel. In 1998, Albania opened its embassy in Tel Aviv.

Today, Albania recognizes the Palestinian Authority and supports a two-state solution. However, in 2011, Prime Minister Sali Berisha opposed Palestine’s bid for full UN membership, arguing that a negotiated agreement with Israel was preferable.

During his visit to Israel that same year, Berisha emphasized the historical connections between Albanians and Jews, and voiced his concerns about regional security, especially regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Israel opened its embassy in Tirana in 2012.

Deals, drones, and abstentions

Over the past two years, Albania and Israel have signed numerous agreements, covering sectors such as agriculture, education, energy, culture, tourism, defense, and drone technology. Trade between the two countries has also grown quickly. According to Albania’s Institute of Statistics, Israeli exports to Albania increased by over 150% between May 2023 and May 2024.

Israeli investment in Albania is expanding, especially in finance. In early 2025, reports indicated that investors associated with Israel’s One Zero Digital Bank were considering entering the Albanian banking market. Later that year, JET Bank, the country’s first fully digital bank, was established and is owned by British-Israeli businessman Idan Avishai. Other figures of Israeli origin in its leadership include Oliver Hemmer and Rami Solomon.

Meanwhile, Albania has come under scrutiny from human rights researchers. Reports tracking global fuel shipments to Israel during the war in Gaza list Albania as one of 11 countries supplying fuel. These exports are officially presented as commercial, not military. 

However, critics point out that fuel is essential for military operations, including for vehicles and aircraft. According to international humanitarian and criminal law, states and private actors are expected to ensure that their activities do not directly or indirectly contribute, to serious human rights violations, including genocide.

There has also been an increase in military cooperation between Albania and Israel. In late 2025, Albania signed a multimillion-euro arms deal with Israeli defense companies, including Elbit Systems. The agreement includes artillery systems, mortars, and tactical drones, as well as plans to develop domestic production in partnership with KAYO, Albania’s state-owned company. 

Since June 2023, the two countries have officially cooperated in cybersecurity and training, building on the assistance Israel offered Albania following the Iranian cyberattack in July 2022, which targeted Albanian government digital services and websites. 

On 12 May 2026 the Albania-Israel Summit was held in Tirana, for ‘strengthening cooperation in innovation, technology and cybersecurity’ and brought together 40 Israeli companies. Also in May 2026, Elbit registered its Albanian branch with the National Business Center, which will carry out the same activity as in Israel. Earlier in 2025, Elbit and KAYO agreed to reopen the Albanian aviation academy to train military and civilian pilots. 

Political ties have deepened as well. In November 2025, Albania established an “Israel Allies Caucus” in its parliament as part of an international network linked to the Israel Allies Foundation. The group is co-chaired by representatives from both major parties, reflecting broad political support for closer relations with Israel. Israeli sources described the initiative as an example of “faith-based diplomacy,” citing Albania’s history of protecting Jews during World War II as the basis for this relationship.

Between 2022 and 2023, Albania served as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. During this period, Albania’s position on Gaza received significant attention. In October and December of 2023, the UN General Assembly voted on resolutions calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Albania abstained from voting on both resolutions. 

This pattern continued into 2024 and 2025. Albania abstained from several key votes, including those on ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, advancing Palestine’s status at the UN, and a French-Saudi initiative outlining a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

The price of belonging

Albania’s growing alignment with Israel is part of a broader foreign policy pattern. Since the fall of communism in 1991, Albania has positioned itself as a close ally of Western powers. The country has sought NATO membership, achieved in 2009, as well as European Union integration and strong ties with the United States. Closer relations with Israel fit within this strategy. Some analysts argue that strengthening ties with Israel is also a way of strengthening connections with Washington.

This approach was further illustrated in February 2026 when Albania joined four other countries in committing troops to an international security force for Gaza. The initiative is part of a new organization, the “Board of Peace,” which is backed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The organization focuses on post-war governance in Gaza. Its charter was signed at the World Economic Forum in Davos and was later tied to the UN Security Council Resolution 2803 as part of the Gaza Plan. However, its structure has raised questions. Trump holds a lifetime leadership role with veto power, and permanent membership requires a $1 billion contribution. Critics argue that this “pay-to-play” model is unusual for a peace initiative and reflects U.S. political and economic interests.

Prime Minister Rama’s policies highlight a long-standing feature of Albanian foreign policy: close alignment with powerful Western states, sometimes at the expense of independent decision-making or consistent application of international law. High-profile economic deals reinforce concerns about this approach. For example, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, is leading a $1.4 billion luxury resort project on Sazan Island. Approved with limited public debate, the project aims to transform a former military base into a high-end tourism destination, according to reporting by The New York Times. Critics argue that such projects, coupled with Albania’s pro-Israel stance as a predominantly Muslim country, serve to whitewash and boost Israel’s international image while obscuring its domestic governance issues.

Rewarded for loyalty

In September 2024, Israeli President Isaac Herzog became the first Israeli head of state to visit Albania. He was warmly welcomed by Prime Minister Edi Rama and senior officials. The visit marked a clear step forward in strengthening ties between the two countries. Some analysts argue that such visits also serve Israel’s broader goal of achieving international legitimacy, particularly in regions like Southeast Europe. According to Rexhepi “[t]he Israeli president is travelling to Europe’s peripheries to exert legitimacy, showcasing at home that their leaders can still travel abroad.” Others note that engaging with a Muslim-majority country like Albania helps Israel project a more favorable image in the wider Muslim world.

Albania’s diplomatic positioning at the UN has coincided with closer political ties to Israel. In April 2025, Prime Minister Edi Rama received Israel’s Presidential Medal of Honor. He was praised for his “moral clarity” and steadfast support of Israel during what President Isaac Herzog called “our darkest hour.” This was a reference to the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing war. Rama has repeatedly condemned Hamas in public statements, at times comparing the group to the Nazis, and arguing that peace is not possible while Hamas remains active.

Cooperation has also expanded at the ministerial level. In October 2025, Albania’s foreign minister visited Israel, and both countries signed agreements to strengthen cooperation in diplomacy and culture. These agreements include training opportunities for young Albanian diplomats. The visit received significant publicity on social and mainstream media platforms, including stops at Holocaust memorial sites and locations associated with the October 2023 attacks. However, critics point out the absence of public statements addressing the high number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel.

On the road to Brussels

For countries like Albania, whose EU membership bid remains contingent on goodwill from Brussels and Washington, endorsing, or at minimum not challenging Israeli actions serves as a form of political currency. Albania’s economic, political, and diplomatic moves point to a wider foreign policy strategy characterized by coloniality by proxy. 

This is most clearly manifested through Albania’s absurd participation in the deeply problematic “Board of Peace,” which reflects its willingness to engage in frameworks shaped by larger powers. It also reflects a deeper, often implicit expectation embedded in the architecture of European integration: that aspiring members on the periphery must demonstrate their worthiness through institutional reforms, economic benchmarks, and geopolitical alignment with core Western powers. 

Scholars such as Piro Rexhepi argue that countries in the Balkans, shaped by a history of external imperial domination — from the Ottoman Empire to European colonial interventions — often seek security and recognition by aligning with dominant powers and navigating contemporary global hierarchies. For countries on the political fringes of the “core West,” access to the Western-backed liberal order is also conditioned by silence, oblivion, or, at worst, complicity in the genocide in Gaza. 

In this context, Albania is not merely an eager partner of Israel. It is also performing the role that Western geopolitical expectations have prescribed for it. In this role, Palestinian suffering is not treated as a moral emergency demanding a response. Rather, it is treated as an inconvenient variable to be managed, minimized, and ultimately ignored on the road to Brussels.

The post Coloniality by proxy: Albania’s road to Brussels runs through Tel Aviv appeared first on Untold.

This was not merely a rhetorical flourish. It signaled the final abandonment of a diplomatic convention that had guided Indian prime ministers for decades: the practice of visiting both Israel and Palestine on the same trip. Every previous prime minister who traveled to Tel Aviv also made the journey to Ramallah, a tangible demonstration of India’s commitment to a two-state solution. Modi broke that tradition. His lone visit to Israel, without any stop in Palestine, cast serious doubt on whether New Delhi still supports the creation of a Palestinian state.

The implications of this shift have grown only starker since the war on Iran began. While the Indian government has issued tepid calls for restraint, it has offered condemnation neither for the killing of Iranian leaders nor of the unfolding catastrophe in Iran. This silence is particularly striking given the deep ties between the two countries. Iran, a fellow BRICS member, remains one of India’s largest trading partners and has offered crucial diplomatic support on Kashmir in international forums—standing with India against Pakistan when it mattered. Indian investment in Iran grew substantially throughout the 2010s, including the development of a strategic port that promised significant benefits for both economies.

Despite its deep investments in the relationship with Iran over decades, India’s unequivocal positioning with Israel and the United States in this war signals a meta-shift in its foreign policy—one increasingly guided by the BJP’s Hindu nationalist worldview. To understand the magnitude of this shift, we must first understand what Indian foreign policy was, and where it came from.

Idealist Foreign Policy

India’s foreign policy was shaped by the crucible of anticolonial struggle, and its contours were drawn long before independence was actually achieved. The first stirrings came as early as 1927, at the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in Brussels, where Indian leaders and activists played a pivotal role. 

During the Second World War, even as Indian leaders intensified their campaign against British rule, they never wavered in their commitment against antisemitism and fascism. When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Indian volunteers traveled thousands of miles to fight for the Republicans. Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become India’s first prime minister, raised funds in Britain and India to support the Republican war effort. 

At the very moment when Modi’s ideological predecessors were delivering speeches in the streets of Bombay cheering the persecution of Jews in Europe, Nehru was facilitating the arrival of Jewish refugees in India from Europe.

This idealism—forged in anti-imperial struggle and tempered by a commitment to human dignity—shaped independent India’s foreign policy from its inception. In the postwar world, divided between two hostile camps, India joined with other newly independent states in refusing to choose sides. The Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Belgrade Conference of 1961 gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which became the most powerful foreign policy doctrine in the decolonized world. India was not merely a participant but a principal architect, both of the movement itself and of its implementation.

Anticolonial Principles

Crucially, NAM was never the “pragmatic neutrality” its critics caricatured it as. It was an idealistic stance that firmly advocated for peace, nuclear disarmament, and decolonization. This was not abstract rhetoric but lived policy. India headed the international committee that brokered a ceasefire in the Korean War. It opposed the Israeli-French-British attack on Egypt over the nationalization of the Suez Canal. It condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary. It stood against the Vietnam War. It played a mediating role in the Congo crisis. It refused all diplomatic recognition to apartheid South Africa.

The finest hour of Indian foreign policy, however, arrived in 1971. When civil war erupted in Pakistan following East Pakistan’s declaration of independence, India—then one of the poorest countries in the world—sheltered ten million refugees for nearly nine months. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi traveled across the globe, pleading for international attention to the crisis and the unfolding genocide in East Pakistan. When diplomacy failed and the threat of US intervention on behalf of its Pakistani ally loomed, the Indian army intervened alongside the Bangladeshi liberation forces. In a swift thirteen-day war, they broke the Pakistani military’s grip, and the new nation of Bangladesh was born.

But the truly remarkable feat was not the military victory—it was what came after. India withdrew its forces and left Bangladesh to its people and its chosen leaders. It made no attempt to occupy or annex its neighbor. At a moment when it could have pursued expansionist ambitions, it chose restraint. This was foreign policy as an anticolonial principle in action.

Sympathy for Palestine

India’s approach toward Israel-Palestine was not an exception to this foreign policy outlook—it was its logical extension. The anticolonial tradition expressed itself naturally in sympathy for Palestine. Mahatma Gandhi himself drew a direct colonial analogy, declaring that Palestine belonged to the Arabs just as England belonged to the English—recognizing the national sovereignty of Palestinians over their land. Nehru, the committed antifascist who understood intimately the agony of European Jewry after the Holocaust, nevertheless refused to see the occupation of Palestine as a just solution to that crisis. His sympathy for Jewish victims did not translate into support for Palestinian dispossession.

This principled stance found concrete expression at the United Nations in 1947, when India voted against the partition of Palestine—defying both the United States and the Soviet Union in the process. The vote was not merely a foreign policy calculation but a reflection of the ideological position the anticolonial leadership had staked out during the independence struggle: a principled opposition to the division of lands and peoples on the basis of religion. India opposed partition in Palestine for the same reasons it had opposed the partition of its own subcontinent.

India formally recognized Israel in 1950, but this diplomatic gesture did not signal an abandonment of its commitment to the Palestinian people. Nehru visited Gaza in 1960, over Israeli objections and despite security threats. In 1974, India became the first non-Arab state to formally recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization. Full diplomatic relations followed in 1980, and when the PLO declared independence in 1988, India extended immediate recognition. Yasser Arafat was a frequent visitor to New Delhi, received with state honors at a time when the West still designated him a terrorist.

The Unipolar World

The 1990s brought two simultaneous transformations that would strain this tradition. First, India finally opened its markets to the global economy, abandoning the democratic-socialist framework that had guided economic policy since 1947. The repercussions for foreign policy were immediate: idealism gradually gave way to the logic of economic pragmatism. Second, the fall of the Soviet Union rendered the Non-Aligned Movement seemingly obsolete in a unipolar world. 

These twin shifts found their clearest expression in the warming of India-US relations. After decades of Cold War distance, Washington began courting New Delhi as a trusted regional partner, supplanting Pakistan, which had served as the US outpost since the 1950s. China’s rise as an economic and military power only accelerated this realignment.

The Israel-Palestine issue could not remain insulated from these pressures. In 1992, India established full diplomatic relations with Israel—a step it had resisted for four decades. The Oslo Accords, which followed shortly after, seemed to vindicate this shift: the PLO itself had now agreed to a two-state solution, the very framework India had endorsed for a while. But India’s understanding of what two states might mean differed markedly from the West’s. 

Where the United States and its allies deployed the two-state formula as a mechanism to contain Palestinian aspirations—creating an appearance of movement toward justice while facilitating continued Israeli expansion in the West Bank—India continued to view it as a genuine compromise in the service of peace. This is why, even after Oslo, even after establishing relations with Israel, India remained firmly aligned with Palestine until quite recently. While the West bankrolled occupation and looked away as Gaza was bombarded, New Delhi maintained its traditional stance until 2014.

Blueprint of Ethno-Democracy

In 2014, India elected its first majority BJP government with a sweeping mandate. For the first time, a prime minister had both the ideological conviction and the political capital to fundamentally reshape Indian foreign policy according to Hindu nationalist priorities. Since the late 1980s, Hindu nationalist forces began gaining larger mass support, a trend that ultimately culminated in the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992. The rise of Hindu nationalism coincided with the neoliberalization of the Indian economy, initiated by the Indian National Congress. Inequality in Indian society increased manifold following the opening of the market, which, as in other parts of the world, fueled right-wing politics. In 2014, after a brief stint in power from 1999 to 2004 as part of a coalition with regional centrist parties, the BJP returned to power—this time with a clear majority on its own and a clear agenda to transform the political discourse and social fabric of India.

The BJP’s affinity for Israel can be understood through two interlocking factors. The first is ethnonationalism. The BJP’s longstanding project is the transformation of India into a Hindu state—a nation in which religious identity determines belonging, and minorities are rendered permanently subordinate. 

In this project, Israel serves as both inspiration and model. What the BJP admires is the architecture of what has been called an “ethno-democracy“: a state that formally guarantees the supremacy of one religious group while tolerating the presence of others only on condition of their political marginalization. Israel grants Jewish citizens superior status within a self-defined Jewish republic; the BJP wants the same for India’s Hindu majority, with Muslims relegated to second-class citizenship.

The blueprint for this vision is already visible. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 offered a path to citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from neighboring countries—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians—but pointedly excluded Muslims. The message was unmistakable: in the BJP’s India, religious persecution renders Muslims uniquely ineligible for refuge. 

More recently, the government has begun replicating elements of the Israeli settler-colonial model in Kashmir. By stripping the region of its limited autonomy and its constitutional protections, New Delhi has opened the door for Indians from outside Kashmir to settle there, acquire property, and permanently alter the region’s demographic composition. The objective, pursued systematically, is demographic transformation through internal colonization.

Empire of Islamophobia

The second factor is Islamophobia. It is no coincidence that the perceived enemies of the Israeli state and of the BJP’s India are the same: Muslims. By aligning itself overwhelmingly with Israel, the BJP sends a message to India’s own Muslim population—whose historic solidarity with the Palestinian cause is well known—about where they belong in the new Hindu nationalist order. 

The Palestinian struggle for independence, which the Indian state once supported and celebrated, is now routinely designated as terrorism. This rhetorical move aligns India with Israel’s self-perception as a victim of “Muslim terror”, creating a shared narrative of existential threat. The two states, in this telling, are not aggressors but survivors, not occupiers but the occupied.

This empire of Islamophobia extends well beyond Tel Aviv and New Delhi. It is a global network of ethnonationalist movements and governments. Modi’s bonhomie with Donald Trump and Netanyahu is not, as it is sometimes described, a pragmatic accommodation to the realities of a unipolar world. It is a deliberate ideological choice—an expression of solidarity among right-wing movements that share a common enemy and a common vision of who must be punished in the name of national renewal.

But this shared vision is not merely rhetorical. It is material and operational. Israel has become one of India’s largest suppliers of defense technology, with bilateral military trade reaching into the billions. The Indian government has allegedly deployed Israeli spyware—most notoriously the Pegasus system—to surveil political opponents, journalists, and activists, weaponizing technology supplied by Tel Aviv against domestic dissent. 

And while much of the world has grown hazardous for Israeli soldiers facing prosecution for war crimes committed in Gaza, India has remained a safe haven. Approximately 80,000 Israelis travel to India annually; a significant proportion are active-duty or former IDF soldiers, confident that they will face neither legal consequences nor public accountability on Indian soil.

A New Trinity

Today, Indian foreign policy has traded its foundational principles—anticolonialism, peace, Third World solidarity, justice—for a new trinity: ethnonationalism, Islamophobia, and opportunism. The consequences of this transformation are now visible for all to see. India has failed to take a meaningful moral or political position on any major international crisis in recent years. 

When Russia invaded Ukraine, India did not use its historic relationship with Moscow to press for peace. Instead, it enabled its capitalist duopoly of businessmen Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani to profit handsomely from buying discounted Russian oil and reselling it to European markets—effectively bankrolling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine while claiming neutrality. 

When Israel launched its assault on Gaza, eventually recognized by international jurists as a plausible case of genocide, India offered neither resistance nor even condemnation. When civil war erupted in Sudan, New Delhi’s deepening complicity with UAE elites—major players in the conflict—precluded any meaningful stance. 

When the US effectively kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, India remained silent. And now, as the United States and Israel pursue an unjustified and illegal war on Iran, the BJP-led government has offered passive support while its rank and file actively cheers the destruction on streets and social media.

For a time, it seemed the BJP could sustain this foreign policy misadventurism without consequence. The Iran war has shattered that illusion. The war has created an unprecedented energy crisis, sending oil and gas prices soaring and dealing a severe blow to an already fragile economy. The material costs of aligning with Washington and Tel Aviv against Tehran are arriving ahead of schedule.

But the deeper cost is strategic and moral. India’s foreign minister and his aides repeatedly pitched the country’s approach as a “decolonial foreign policy“—a cynical appropriation of the language of liberation to dress up what is, in practice, pure opportunism. The gap between rhetoric and reality could not be wider. India, which led the Third World in the 20th century, which spoke for anticolonial struggles everywhere, now stands virtually alone on the world stage. It has no genuine allies, no reliable friends or neighbors, no principled partners. It has only the mercy of Trump, the indulgence of Putin, and the embrace of Netanyahu. 

This is not non-alignment. This is not pragmatism. This is the foreign policy of a right-wing movement that has made its peace with empire, ethnic supremacy, the punishment of Muslims everywhere—and in doing so, has left India isolated, diminished, and morally unrecognizable.

The post From Bandung to Bibi: How Modi’s India Abandoned Non-Alignment for Ethnonationalism appeared first on Untold.

Baraka Thomas Mbalakai, 53, is the farm’s namesake––his father established this farm more than four decades ago. At present, they hire day labourers to pick ripe berries every couple of weeks during the harvest season, which runs roughly from June to October or November in East Africa.

There can be a shortage of labor at times during harvest season, he explains, since the cherries all ripen around the same time. Laizer and the other dozen or so women and an adolescent boy at Baraka Farm work from dawn to dusk––nearly 12 hours––and are paid TSh7,500 (~$3USD) a day.

Their remarkably low wages make for a heady contrast to Tanzanian peabody coffee priced at $21.99 per 12 ounce (340 gram) packet in Brooklyn, New York, or a double cappuccino containing roughly 20 grams of coffee going for at least $6 at most third-wave coffee shops in North America.

A Heavy Colonial Heritage

Ujamaa, meaning ‘fraternity’ in Kiswahili––Tanzania’s national language––was the socialist ideology that founding president Julius Nyerere adopted for his country upon independence from the British colonial administration in 1961.

Scholars have described Ujamaa as ‘the most successful [post-colonial] attempt to dismantle the structure of indirect rule; while making strides in social development such as extending life expectancy, had certain catastrophic economic consequences such as declines in food production.

While the baseline of state control of agricultural industries (which accounts for more than a quarter of Tanzania’s GDP, employing the vast majority of the population) finds its roots in colonial control, state interventions continued melding the coffee industry’s  trajectory under the Ujamaa policy’s ‘cooperative economics.’

According to Yustina Samwel Komba, a historian who completed a PhD at Stellenbosch University on the socio-economic history of coffee production in Tanzania, the 1930s  colonial administration promoted cooperative societies under the claimed objective of protecting African coffee growers from exploitation by private middleman traders.

However, Komba indicates how cooperatives were wielded more as a tool of colonial governance rather than a mechanism for producer protection: enabling the state to discipline African producers, regulating production and quality, controlling marketing channels, and securing export revenues.

Rather than dismantling exploitative relations, the colonial cooperative system reconfigured them under bureaucratic state control. In the post-colonial period, these structures inherited and intensified: under Ujamaa, cooperative societies functioned even more explicitly as instruments of state monopoly over coffee production and sales.

Brad Weiss, an associate professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary, argues that “The black market in coffee, then, is most effective in taking advantage of the need for ready cash.”

“Those who have access to cash are able to purchase the prospective coffee harvests of their clients who cannot wait for the state’s payments. In this way, control of the annual procedures (and proceeds) of coffee cultivation is cut short in favour of the immediate requirement of money,” he writes.

Only those like Laizer and her colleagues, who effectively hold no buying power, would take on temporary yet critical roles of seasonal coffee cherry picking.

The Birthplace of Coffee

Although Mbalaki is Maasai––one of the most internationally renowned pastoral communities from the African continent–– he has shifted from livestock herding to coffee farming, growing arabica coffee across 2 acres. He has a small green bean processing and roasting facility at his home, is in the process of building a brick and mortar shop, and intends on passing his farm and shop down to his children and grandchildren.

This part of the world is the birthplace of coffee. Around 850CE, a young Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi noticed how his flock became extra sprightly after chewing on the crop. Somali merchants transported coffee east across the Gulf of Aden, where it became a cornerstone drink in Yemeni culture, before spreading throughout West Asia and beyond.

In the east, the bustling, coastal city of Dar es Salaam––Tanzania’s financial hub and largest city in East Africa by population with nearly 9 million people––is in its nascence of coffee drinking culture. Why is it that Tanzanians—the ones who grow the beans (which are mostly exported)––drink so little coffee themselves?

33-year-old Evance Malleo is committed to changing this. The winner of the national 2024 Kahawa Festival (meaning ‘coffee’ in Kiswahili), he is also the founder of Kahawa Studio Hub, an independent coffee shop in coastal Dar es Salaam. The son of coffee farmers from the Kilimanjaro area, he has labored in coffee fields since he could walk.

Yet his parents, like most East African farmers, do not drink coffee themselves, preferring chai. “Why is this the case,” says Malleo, “When Tanzania produces some of the best coffee in the world?”

Together with his wife, Hilda, they believe that by slowly introducing locals to the art of coffee to their community, they can not only bridge the extant cultural gap between foreigners and locals, but also inject orders of magnitude more income into the Tanzanian economy––upwards of 88%, according to Utengule Roasters, which has been roasting for two decades, and growing coffee since the early 20th century.

Wishful Thinking

According to the Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB), which oversees the regulation (e.g. compliance and quality control) of the nation’s coffee production, 70,000-80,000 tons of green beans are produced annually, with local consumption averaging a mere 3% of total production.

Primus Kimaryo, the director general of TCB, is an agricultural economist and has been involved with the board since 1999. Although Tanzania contributes less than 1% of the world’s coffee, the beans are of exceptional quality, mostly exported to Japan and Europe. “We want to increase production from 1.3-1.4 million bags (60kg each) to 5 million over the next 5 years,” he says on behalf of the TCB. They have embarked on their fourth year of arabica seedlings distribution to Tanzanian coffee farmers (400,000 smallholders on plots averaging 1-2 hectares comprise 95% of Tanzanian growers) to help achieve this mission, providing 20 million seedlings.

“Consumption is directly linked to income and livelihood,” he continues. If Tanzania’s standard of living can be boosted, the culture of coffee drinking may likely also grow, Kimaryo believes.

“But besides promoting mainstream coffee consumption, we are also working to expand into niche markets such as fairtrade, organic, rainforest friendly in alignment with Voluntary Sustainability Standards”, Kimaryo explains.

Kimaryo’s optimistic beliefs that simply increasing coffee consumption may be a marker of a more equitable Tanzanian economy, hides the unavoidable colonial shadows behind coffee making that trajectory anything but straightforward.

“Colonialism was as much about making the centre as it was about making the periphery,” Weiss quotes anthropologist John Comaroff, “Just as Haya (a Bantu ethnic group in northwestern Tanzania) farming communities use coffee to negotiate their local position in a global economy in ways that have been constrained, but never simply determined, by the forces of the global market, so, too has the presence of coffee.”

Weiss writes about how colonial and neo-colonial relations in Tanzania are inextricably intertwined. “Coffee is the original therapy for the micro-management of bourgeois personality,” he argues. “Coffee further permits these attitudes, motivations, and dispositions to be objectified in the capitalist reconstruction of time, as ‘coffee breaks’ become means of temporal reckoning that are routinized in labor practices.”

“Using coffee to mark and make time in this way thereby fulfils a capitalist fantasy, providing a respite from work undertaken for the sake of work itself––and thus the direct conversation of ‘leisure’ into ‘productivity’––made possible through the medium of a highly desired, commodified stimulant,” Weiss continues.

Deforestation, Climate Crisis, and Tariffs

The messiness of US tariffs has complicated business and logistics. Coffee from Brazil, constituting 30% of the global market, was being tariffed at 50% by the United States in July 2025, which ground US purchases of Brazilian coffee to a halt.

Other coffee buyers, notably China, seized this opportunity. “This forces the bags of coffee to move via different routes,” Kimaryo explains. “We’re going to see a lot of side selling, smuggling. Brazilian coffee might be rebranded as Peruvian coffee when it’s still from Brazil, just to navigate the new constraints.”

Meanwhile, erratic rainfall patterns and temperature from rapidly accelerating climate change impacts coffee shrubs particularly hard. As the most traded commodity on earth, and a major export cash crop for Tanzania, an understanding of how to cope with drought and warming trends will be critical to sustaining production.

Climate change has also heralded an onset of higher infestation rates of snails and borer pests.

And with growing demand for coffee, both locally and globally, the need for land increases. The result is that across the continent, human activities––such as coffee cultivation––are driving the decline of forests, which in turn catalyze damages to ecosystem services and subsequent economic and social benefits from the environment, particularly for low-income communities.

The post From Tanzanian Farms to Trendy Cafés: The Unequal Cost of Coffee – A Photo Story appeared first on Untold.

***

It is a cold, rainy day, and I am hurrying over to a bus station next to the university campus where I teach to reach Berlin’s Central Train Station on time. Luckily, the bus station is close by, and after two minutes of walking, I arrive. Suddenly, a vehicle stops abruptly in front of the station.

It appears as if the van is out of fuel; it is not the city bus, but a private cleaning company service van. A man steps out in a hurry. It is unusual for a vehicle to park at a bus stop. Its unusualness and unexpectedness caught those waiting for the bus off guard, including me. The driver sharply diagnoses the station’s glass panes, turns his head up towards the time screen, and then adjusts his neck and head posture to check the ceiling as if he is looking for someone or something specific dangling from it.

It turns out that he is looking for pro-Palestinian stickers and posters. The unexpected action made me wonder why someone would want to make sure to remove Palestinian posters and erase their traces.

Graffiti writing and stickering as a game of (in)visibility

Authorities’ removing graffiti, stickers and other related forms of self- and collective expression is no exception in street art politics. It is a game, as graffiti writers and muralists describe it, where what is written, pasted or stencilled on the wall is ephemeral. If not the authorities, then ‘ordinary people’ would tear their opponents’ stickers off or cover their graffiti writings by spraying or splashing paint or stickering over them, crossing them out, adding a word or a symbol to alter the meaning to their favour.

For instance, many Israel supporters add “from Hamas” to “Free Palestine” [Fig. 3], or draw a ‘triangle’ on top of an already painted ‘flipped triangle’ to form the Star of David instead of Hamas’ inverted red triangle (IRT) icon.

Palestine supporters might also put a stickered watermelon over the word “Fuck”, leaving only “Hamas,” or merging the Star of David into the Swastika to create a parallel between Zionism and Nazism – a design of the Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi.

Zoghbi’s design is widely seen in Germany through the murals of Musa La Rage . This process of removal, covering, editing, and commenting on each other—especially on the Palestinian side, whose voice is contested in Germany—reflects broader issues of visibility and grievability. These scriptural and visual acts serve as crucial diaries for understanding resistance and solidarity at a time when pro-Palestinian voices are not only underrepresented in German and Western European media and art galleries, but also suppressed on social media by pro-Israel actors. This includes Instagram “civil watch” accounts dedicated to pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian graffiti in Berlin, whose users even tag Interpol in the comment sections of Palestinian posts.

These practices take particularity in Germany, especially in Berlin, where we see that street forms of solidarity with Palestine are not only removed by pro-Israel supporters but also by the German police, whose brutality goes beyond the dimensions of legality.

How can we understand this act of contracting a worker to “clean the station”? How does this “cleaning process” relate to Germany’s stance on Palestinian solidarity against the Israeli occupation?

Since 2008, Germany has declared unconditional support for Israel as part of its Staatsräson (the Reason of State). This political philosophy is based on the promise of “Nie Wieder” (Never Again) to address and honour the cultural memory of the six million European Jews who were killed during the Holocaust by the Nazis.

Accordingly, any debate about Jewish people, Israel and Zionism must go through this canon.

Resisting the guilt and extending griveability

Nevertheless, Palestinian street solidarity resists this reasoning. Aesthetically, the place chosen for stickers, graffiti writing, and painting is not solely a matter of visibility – a spot visible to people as they stand (bus station), enter (public toilet) or walk from one point to another, and preferably higher so that Israel supporters and the police do not remove it– but also of meaningfulness [Fig. 4].

For instance, many posters were hung on the East Side Gallery Wall from the river’s side (home to a few graffiti pieces and white canvases), while the names (and stickers) of Gaza and Palestine are displayed on the other side of the wall, facing the street (home to commissioned murals exhibited for tourists). Graffiti of “Free Gaza” can also be seen on the Berliner Mauer at Bernauer Straße, where parts of the separating wall are still standing with memorials, notices, looped short videos of patrolling soldiers, and pictures of the people who were killed by GDR guards while escaping from East to West Germany.

These official walls are for ‘learning’ about a dark part of German history as well as grieving the bodies and souls of those who passed away by seeing their pictures, reading their names and watching videos of East German Wall guards patrolling [Fig. 5].

Spraying Palestine or Gaza on the Berlin Wall challenges the scholarship that (Western) history has ended with the fall of the German wall, and it places Palestine alongside Germany’s own history of separation, remembrance and guilt.

History continues in Palestine. The graffiti of Palestine on the Wall memorial shows a parallel present-day Palestinian reality, which tourists would neither find informative signs on nor see in the various museums dedicated to human suffering and wall separation. Similar writing can also be found on parts of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamerplatz, where someone wrote “Palästina” twice below the metal sign of information, entitled “Dennkmal Mauer – The Wall as a Monument,” making the wall not solely a historical landmark of the past, but also a symbol of the actual wall of apartheid built by Israel in Palestine [Fig. 6].

These graffiti on the Wall of Berlin, and memorial sites extend “grievability” to Palestinians at a time when Israel has made trauma a weapon of war and while coverage of the Palestinian genocide in mainstream Western media coverage has been tightly policed and increasingly racialised.

The police as the new church

Pro-Palestinian expressions are often interpreted as antisemitic, pro-Hamas and terrorist, or at least aggressive. Germany’s practice of accusing Palestine supporters of antisemitism is a political move. Germany has long tried to de-Nazify its image to the world by organising the World Cup of 2006 and introducing the Erinnerungskultur (Culture of Remembrance) to address the Holocaust and the inhumane and unjustifiable killing of the Jewish population.

This culture of remembrance and political policy to acknowledge what the Nazis did to the Jews translates into the state’s reason as a guarantor of Jewish safety in Occupied Palestine (and elsewhere). This policy of guilt and remembrance has implicitly made the Palestinian statehood and right to return for refugees against the guilty German project of self-cleansing.

This double standard does not solely appear in the brutal police intervention, defamatory anti-Muslim and anti-Arab speech in newspapers (labelling pro-Palestinian students “Jewish haters” (Juden-Hasser), cancelling artists and the removal of solidarity aesthetics, but also shows in the reinterpretation of solidarity expressions in order to whitewash their Nazi legacy.

As an example, the debate on the use of the inverted red triangle by Palestinian supporters was triggered by local media and politicians, referring to the symbol as a “Nazi reference.” Also, a doctoral student who was holding a poster reading “NEVER AGAIN” was arrested by thirteen police officers and had their poster confiscated, accusing the student of another “Again,” a reference to Nazi-camps and the “extermination” of Jewish people [Fig. 7].

Another colleague had notified the student that the police might have a Nazi-focused interpretation based on reading the Palestinian Question through anti-Semitic German history. To avoid that, the student added “never again for everyone” in the margin of the poster. However, the police refused to accept any interpretation other than their own.

Policing aesthetics and criminalising symbols

What role do aesthetics play in a German context characterised by official support to Israel, its Staatsräson and Nie Wieder? How do the aesthetic forms of solidarity with Palestine interplay with Germany’s history and denounce its complicity with genocide? In other words, how does ‘wall washing’ relate to ‘self-cleansing’ and ‘whitewashing’?

Most police “interpretation” of pro-Palestinian signs do not happen on site, for it is already based on a textbook against anti-Semitic symbols and signs, titled “Leitfaden Zum Erkennen Antisemitischer Straftaten” (Guide to recognising antisemitic crimes) [1]. Among the many Palestinian signs, the textbook considers anti-Semitic, the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), Handhala (signifier of Palestinian personhood, displacement and exiled childhood), the key (the right to return), and Palestinian visual symbols of solidarity and resistance are put in a booklet next to fascist and Nazi signs.

Each symbol has a small text ideologically changing its meaning to make it “anti-Jew.” For instance, for Handhala, the textbook reads that this icon is “a comic book character meant to symbolise the supposedly defenceless Palestinians. [Instead,] The comics advocate violent action against Israel.”

In reality, Handhala was originally designed by Palestinian caricaturist Naji al-Ali (1938-1987), whom Israel assassinated in London, which the textbook does not mention. As for “Intifada until victory,” it reads that “the first (1987) and second (2000) Intifada were violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel. The slogan heard at anti-Israel demonstrations implies the annihilation of the State of Israel.”

This booklet was published in December 2021, and its captions are the same as those of the police, showing how ideological interpretations are supported and enacted by law against others.

Colourful rage

The Guide to Recognizing Antisemitic Crimes was published in 2021 and does not include the watermelon or the inverted red triangle, which are also treated as antisemitic by German police. Its symbolism, however, was born out of colonial artistic censorship.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour (b. 1947) explains that the idea of watermelon came from Israeli soldiers, who, in 1981, interrogated Mansour and two of his colleagues about why they were doing political art instead of painting ‘nice women,’ ‘nude figures,’ and ‘nice flowers,’ which they would buy from them, the police added.

“The flag was forbidden, and so were the colours, which is why we, as artists, were not allowed to use these colours. One of our friends, Issam, started arguing with the authority person, asking him what he would do if he made a flower but with those colours. The soldier became angry, saying that ‘even if it is a watermelon, we will take it and confiscate it. Do not do anything in these [red, black and green] colours.’”

On the one hand, the watermelon sign offers a new language of solidarity—one charged with joy rather than with the sorrow of the Nakba and other classical symbols that embody affective sadness. This fruit symbol reflects the spirit of resilience that has accompanied solidarity protests, offering, at the same time, new possibilities to express support in places where the icon of Handhala is considered antisemitic [Fig. 8].

This builds on the existing presence of the watermelon as a summer decorative motif—seen on ice creams, umbrellas, earrings, and many other objects—thereby challenging German censorship of solidarity with Palestine and embodying resistance itself.

On the other hand, the adoption of the inverted red triangle in protests and graffiti around the world, including in Germany, can be interpreted in two different ways.

First, the red triangle serves as a symbol of empowerment and a reclaimed emblem for most Palestinian supporters, who use such symbols to express solidarity and to symbolically challenge Israeli genocide and Western complicity.

Second, when a red triangle is painted on the walls of campuses or newspaper buildings, the authorities experience it as if it were written on their own bodies—turning graffiti into a physical act. If the (German) state uses law and policing to inscribe its power onto pro-Palestinians, by prohibiting some protests, banning the use of Arabic language in demonstrations and using violence against protestors, for example, then marking a “place of meaning” (memorial wall) or “place of authority” (police station)—even by simply writing a word (Free Palestine) or symbol (inverted triangle) of defiance on its walls—becomes, in turn, a way of writing back onto the body of that authority [Fig. 9].

In his book The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge, Frank Stern explains how “Germany — striving for sovereignty and integration into the West — was able to instrumentalise philosemitism in its domestic and foreign policy as well as a moral stance against local, deeply rooted antisemitic rightwing extremism.”

On the one hand, Palestinian solidarity bothers Germany because it always makes the state feel guilty twice; Palestinians are paying for what the Germans did to the Jewish people. On the other hand, the visibility of the Palestinian struggle and the existence of the Palestinian people with their claim to land make the post-Holocaust Jewish success incomplete. Therefore, being genocidal and complicit with the extermination of the Palestinians seems to be a ‘moral salvation’ for Israel and Germany.

The elimination of the Palestinian people would make the former’s guilt vanish (or evaporate) and make the Zionist project successful as a story of survival.

In this sense, Sami Khatib reminds us that the pseudo-question “Do you condemn Hamas?” becomes equivalent to “do you support the Western world order, its ruling ideology (Human Rights Discourse), and do you condemn the entire spectrum of Palestinian resistance, from peaceful boycotts to the Hamas attacks of October 7?” In other words, “Palestinians should accept their colonial subjugation, should not resist, and should, ideally, disappear and with them the annoyance of the Palestinian question.”

The aesthetics and writing of remembrance and solidarity of Palestine in Germany demonstrate the limits and double standards of German remembrance culture and solidarity. It shows how condemning genocide and the killing of civilians is manufactured in accordance with ideological motivations to justify one’s own history, where some humans and bodies are seen as not worthy of life because one decides to.

The post Palestine on Berlin’s Walls: Street Art, Censorship, and the Politics of Solidarity in Germany appeared first on Untold.

The first image etched into eleven-year-old Aya’s mind was a dark, powerless room and women screaming over her uncle’s burned body—an airstrike by the U.S. left only a burnt limb the size of a palm. From that moment, she adapted her mind to the image of a shattered, grieving woman in Baghdad. Just like Fida from Palestine, Maya and Diana from Lebanon, Oula from Syria, and Mazda and Zoya from Afghanistan—these women are activists and journalists who spoke about the experiences of women in wartime. Although foreign forces claimed to be ‘liberating’ them, what these women received instead was devastation, occupation, and deep social divisions.

Now, one of the world’s most violent military leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu, is citing Jina Mahsa Amini and the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify his attack on Iran with a cloak of justice, turning “women’s rights” into a weapon to legitimize war and occupation—the same leader responsible for killing thousands of women in Gaza over the past two years. An all-too-familiar pattern of imperialist exploitation repeated across the region.

For Aya and other Iraqi women, the US occupation was never a source of liberation. Women were arrested alongside their children, and husbands were killed in front of their families—often by soldiers who spoke of peace while carrying weapons. What occurred was not a rescue, but another form of devastation. Iraqi women were not freed; they were caught between tyranny and the foreign fire that arrived with empty promises. Today, each of these women activists who have emerged from war and destruction represents not only her personal experience but also a collective voice—the voice of women who have lived through resistance and have refused to be ‘liberated’ by bombs.

From Iraq: Fake liberation, real chains

Aya, an Iraqi journalist and women’s rights activist, once tried counting how many women she had lost over the years—but gave up quickly, fearing her heart might collapse from grief. Her childhood began with the memory of her uncle’s burned limb and the women’s cries in that powerless room. From then on, the image of the broken woman was etched in her mind: a woman forced to bear the burdens of war, execution, disappearances, and discrimination in an oppressive system.

Under Saddam Hussein, young boys might be executed in front of their mothers for having a religious or communist book. After 2003, the scene didn’t change—only the methods did. Men were executed or disappeared; many never returned, not even as bodies. What mothers received was their absence.

Aya says that after the US invasion in 2003, that violent system against women did not collapse—it grew stronger: “Saddam needed to go, but the way he left only deepened the destruction. The US decided how Iraq would ‘change,’ chose new rulers, and imposed priorities with no link to the wishes of the people. Iraq was neither liberated nor secure; it was another form of prison—and remains so.”

Aya believes that the US not only failed to free Iraqi women but handed power to men who hate women: “The laws allow child brides, men kill women in the name of ‘manhood’ and escape punishment. What we have is legalized violence against women, not reform.”

She says the rhetoric of ‘education for women’ and ‘civil society’ during occupation was simply a facade for failure: “On the surface, workshops and seminars happened, but in practice, women remained vulnerable in a patriarchal society. Women activists, translators, and journalists were all labeled as traitors or collaborators. We received neither support nor voice.”

Aya says this pattern of deception is a familiar US tactic: “The slogans remain the same: freedom, human rights, saving women. Yet behind these words always lies a political agenda. Deprived of hope, we sometimes fall into believing them.” She is certain that occupation never leads to liberation: “The only real resistance is refusing to let our suffering be exploited as a weapon. When foreign powers invoke feminist slogans, they strip them of meaning and turn them into war propaganda; this is not rescue—it’s a takeover.”

When Netanyahu speaks of “Woman, Life, Freedom,” Aya says it serves only as a façade for atrocity—the same recurring pattern, the same slogan, the same lie: “They present us as symbols rather than human beings. They showcase us at strategic moments to legitimise  a policy, only to abandon us when we cease to be of use.”

She expresses her unwavering solidarity with women in Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan: “My solidarity is unconditional. I urge the women of Iran: do not let anyone dictate your story. These narratives are our invaluable assets. But today they’re being taken from us; we are being used, without any concern for our lives.” She warns: “When we ask the international community to acknowledge our plight, the response is often ‘it’s an internal matter.’ But if it suits their interests, all of a sudden, our lives matter to them. This selective approach to our suffering is the worst form of exploitation.”

From Gaza: “We know how to resist ourselves”

Fida is a woman forged by war—a gender studies researcher born and raised in Gaza. She has lived through the horrors of war for as long as she can remember, constantly overshadowed by bombs and occupation. However, the devastation of the past two years marks a profound escalation: complete destruction, profound loss of friends and loved ones, and even erasure of her hometown. For her, women suffer the most amidst the rubble. 

When Fida heard Netanyahu invoke “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify attacks on Iran, she was not surprised—“this is what the Israeli regime has always done: instrumentalize the suffering of others to legitimize its own violence. This reflects a colonial, racist mindset that dehumanizes others,” she says.

Fida places Netanyahu alongside politicians like Donald Trump—figures who only acknowledge movements they can co-opt: “Whenever a movement can feed their war machine, economy, or geopolitical interests, they seize it. Saying ‘we bomb to free women’ is nothing new—Afghanistan, Iraq—and now Iran. This discourse is acceptable in the West because Islamophobia, white supremacy, and racism are entrenched.”

In response, she emphasizes a simple but vital truth: “Yes, women in our region are oppressed, but this is our struggle. We know how to resist, organize, and fight. No state responsible for war, occupation, or resource plunder has the moral standing to speak of freedom.”

She warns many progressive movements risk being hijacked by imperial projects, shifting focus from justice and transgression to mere token representation in corrupt institutions: “That is dangerous—because countries like the US, Israel, and Germany use moral slogans to conceal their expansionist agendas.”

Fida argues that a common tactic employed by Western powers is to depict West Asian women solely as passive victims—figures presumed to be awaiting rescue by the so-called “civilized” white man. “This portrayal is not only demeaning,” she explains, “but also strategically useful, as it allows these actors to obscure their own roles in constructing systems of occupation and domination, while shifting responsibility onto ‘culture’ or ‘religion.’”

Fida has never looked to foreign governments for support in achieving liberation, and she contends that such expectations are misplaced. “When these states invoke ‘women’s rights,’ it is often not out of genuine concern or solidarity, but rather to legitimize military interventions.”

Importantly, her critique extends beyond the context of Palestine or Gaza. Fida warns that feminist movements in Iran must likewise be vigilant against the risk of co-optation. In her words, a movement rooted in popular struggle can only retain its authenticity and strength if it is led from within, not by the intervention of foreign powers. “We must have full autonomy over our movements. No state with a legacy of colonialism, violence, and war possesses the ethical authority to dictate the terms of our emancipation.”

From Lebanon: The same old tactic

For years, Lebanese women have borne the burden of violence, crisis, and poverty—women like Maya, who are not just storytellers of war but have lived it. A journalist and feminist who lived the crisis from within, she now speaks with experience and resilience of women who became the pillars of families amid destruction.

Maya describes her home in southern Lebanon—recently bombed again by Israel—where thousands of families lost homes and land. Many cannot return: “In crisis moments, these women cared for those around them. In crowded shelters, with bare hands they built kitchens, made play and learning spaces for children. They prevented families from falling apart.”

By late 2024, more than 50% of Lebanon’s 1.2 million internally displaced were women and children, including some 12,000 pregnant women without access to basic medical services. Economic and financial collapse since 2019, the COVID pandemic, and the Beirut port blast intensified pressure—especially on women in informal, small-scale work.

Lebanon, she notes, is a “country of consecutive crises.” Since the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, five successive generations have endured at least one major security or economic crisis. “Each generation held onto the hope that the next would live in peace,” she reflects, “but we have learned to remain in a constant state of readiness—always anticipating the next blow.” These protracted crises unfold within deeply patriarchal structures and legal frameworks that systematically marginalize women.

She describes a form of latent violence—one that does not destroy the body, but gradually erodes the spirit: “If the bullets don’t kill you, war finds a way to break you from within. Many older women continue to live with psychological trauma and a persistent sense of entrapment in the city. They are unable to return to their homes, lands, and gardens in the South; their sense of belonging has been violently severed. It is as if Israel seeks to erase women’s connection to the land through hostility.”

Maya recounts that until the early 2000s when the Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon was liberated, she was not even permitted to visit her birthplace. Against this backdrop, Netanyahu’s invocation of the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify aggression toward Iran strikes her as yet another iteration of a familiar strategy: “It’s the same old tactic powerful states have used for years—washing women’s rights. They claim to champion freedom, but in reality, they instrumentalize such slogans to legitimize war, intervention, and the expansion of their [geopolitical] influence.”

She cites examples: Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, now Iran: “Whenever real decisions need to be made, these governments sideline women- unless they conform to official narratives. This selective use of women shows their real intent: they use women not to liberate them, but to advance military-political goals.”

For Maya, Netanyahu is the epitome of this hypocrisy—a politician directly responsible for killing women and children in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria: “For someone like him, responsible for so many crimes, to invoke the name of Mahsa (Jina) Amini—it’s a moral affront. If anyone still believes that Israel will liberate Iranian women, they need only look at Gaza or post-occupation Afghanistan.”

Her message to Iranian women is clear: “As long as war machines are active and driven by militarized men, women’s suffering will be instrumentalized. We must remain vigilant—liberation cannot begin with bombs.”

Diana, a Lebanese journalist, emphasizes how the layered realities of war have fundamentally reshaped women’s lives in Lebanon. Under what she refers to as “patriarchal peace,” survival has become a multi-generational struggle:: “Grandmothers managing homes amid bombardment, mothers rebuilding after displacement, daughters facing economic collapse and mass migration. Despite everything, women have held society together, yet structural transformation in laws and political representation remains elusive.”

She notes that women’s roles shifted significantly during the civil war and subsequent occupation—taking on responsibilities as caretakers, fighters, smugglers, and negotiators—often under duress. “In the occupied South, women played key roles in sustaining social life and participated in resistance networks, especially secular ones. But war left them vulnerable to violence from ‘the enemy’ and their own communities. As [Lebanese anthropologist] Souad Joseph puts it, war not only creates widows and mothers of martyrs, but deepens patriarchal norms that restrict women even after the weapons fall silent.”

Diana believes Netanyahu’s rhetoric about women in Iran mirrors Lebanon’s experience: powerful actors borrowing feminist language to conceal violence. “As some foreign institutions or politicians have used women’s rights to justify unrelated agendas. When feminism becomes propaganda, it becomes part of the war machine—not a means to peace.”

She argues that such appropriations deplete feminism, reducing struggles for justice to hollow marketing slogans and silencing the voices of real feminists on the frontlines whose language has been co-opted. Her message to women in other crisis zones, such as Iran, is clear: “You are not alone, and you are not merely victims. Your struggle is part of a broader, global movement—but its direction and meaning must be defined by you. Do not allow others to instrumentalize your suffering to justify further violence.”

From Syria: Patriarchy fights on there too

Oula, a Syrian feminist researcher, offers a one-word answer to why foreign armed forces invoke women’s rights during wartime: “Patriarchy.” 

“Whether it’s a regime, militia, or state, they all reproduce the same logic: that they know better than we do what is good for women, what rights we should have, what problems we face, and what our future ought to be.”

As the author of the study Paths of the Feminist Movement after 2011, Oula argues that speaking about women is easy—but truly listening would require relinquishing power, something patriarchy is rarely willing to do. “When Syrians rose up in 2011, they demanded dignity, freedom, and human rights. That was a revolution for dignity—and dignity without full women’s rights is meaningless.”

Despite war, displacement, and repression, feminist organizing in Syria not only persisted but flourished. Women led local initiatives, supported survivors, and created feminist spaces both within Syria and in exile—spaces rooted not in traditional institutions, but in solidarity, care, and everyday resistance.

Yet at the critical turning points, these same women were once again pushed to the margins. Oula, with a critical view of the political process in Syria after the beginning of the transitional period, says: “Despite years of activism and feminist leadership, out of 23 ministries in the transitional government, only one was assigned to a woman. These achievements are real, but fragile. These victories were not the result of the war, but were achieved in spite of it.” According to her, 14 years of war and displacement, while painful for all Syrians, brought specific forms of violence upon women: “From rape and sexual violence in detention centers to forced disappearances, public punishments by extremist groups, and the use of women’s bodies as weapons on the battlefield.” 

Despite this harsh reality, Oula’s account of Syrian women is one of resistance in the heart of the fire. In ISIS-controlled areas, women resisted forced disappearances, taught secretly, built support networks, stood against brainwashing. In areas under foreign or local militia control, documenting abuses, coordinating humanitarian aid, and creating safe spaces—even under bombardment—became everyday acts. To Oula, survival was also rebuilding, envisioning alternatives: “Resistance wasn’t always grand demonstrations—it was keeping society together and asserting women’s presence in shaping the country’s future.”

Asked whether she sees parallels between how women are used in Syria and the global portrayal of Iranian women’s struggles, Oula responds firmly: “Absolutely. War criminals and occupiers have long used our fights for their own goals. From the French in Algeria to the US Americans in Afghanistan, colonialism always posed as ‘saving women’ to legitimize violence. Today the pattern repeats—when Netanyahu uses Iranian women’s protests to justify aggression, it’s a continuation of that violent history.”

Afghanistan: Only the color of chains changed

In 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan, promising to “free Afghan women”—a slogan that became the banner of the campaign, casting Afghan women as symbols of “salvation” from Taliban darkness. But the lived experience of women during 20 years of “the republic” tells a bleaker story.

Mazda, an Afghan women’s rights activist, speaks from that experience—from shiny storefronts whose veneer couldn’t mask the stench of obsolescence and violence. She says that freedom in Afghanistan was inflated and hollow, a balloon that popped. Over those 20 years, only a limited group of urban women accessed universities and jobs, but the societal reception remained sexist: “Appearances changed; women were no longer whipped in the street for not wearing the hijab, but abuse continued—verbal harassment, groping, unwanted touching—from street to presidential palace. Laws seemingly protecting women weren’t enforced, and the underpinning structure remained misogynistic.”

As she puts it, the US removed the Taliban’s beard from the streets, but left misogynistic structures intact: “The real voices of Afghan women were never the occupiers’ priority—not in politics, not in reconstruction plans.” Mazda says that the voices of the people—whether women or men—meant nothing to the occupying powers; they only listened to themselves and silenced everyone else with bombs, bullets, and violence: “We protested, we demonstrated, but the response was always the same: violence.”

What distinguishes indigenous feminism from imported versions is agency, Mazda says: “In local feminism, women are subjects, decision-makers—not objects for international institutions and armies to decide for.” The US‑NATO package of “democracy” implemented at Bonn conferences included a definition of women’s rights—but this was symbolic window dressing to legitimize occupation.” she says, with derision: “There was no real liberation—only the color of our chains was changed.”

She speaks about personal and collective experiences of the Afghan woman’s body as a battlefield and symbol of power, where women are blamed even when assaulted: “Society blamed her for her clothing, the law didn’t protect her; the police became perpetrators. In an environment without legal mechanisms to address femicide or sexual assault, any man in the street could act as an enforcer. The republic might have removed official hijab patrols—but patriarchy permeated society, controlling women’s bodies.”

There, Mazda says, women’s bodies became banners for regimes—republicans branded them as democratic symbols, the Taliban used them for “political Islam.” In both cases, women remain symbolic objects for legitimizing regimes. She asks: “Why do states speak so much about women in wars but never listen to them? Because women are seen as ‘honor,’ not humans. Political power always seeks means to reinforce dominance, not autonomous agents who can disrupt the status quo.”

When Netanyahu wields “Woman, Life, Freedom” to justify attacking Iran, Mazda sees a continuation of the same scenario that used Afghan women to justify occupation: “It’s laughable to think bombs bring freedom—amid bodies left in our hands. It’s absurd to consider child-killers as saviors.”

She has lived the experience of “imported freedom”: “Today millions of Afghan women have gained nothing but depression, isolation, and bans from that exported democracy. The danger of exploiting women’s suffering is more than disrespect—it gives excuses to warmongers and normalizes violence against women.”

Mazda’s message to Iranian women and others whose voices may be hijacked: “Be careful not to be used as tools. Peace is born from awareness, not bombs. No country has been liberated by bombing. All that changes is just the color of our chains.”

Zoya, a member of the AfgactivistCollective—a group of first- and second-generation Afghans aligned with the Global South movement—opposes both the US occupation and the Taliban. The collective works to link Afghan struggles with broader regional movements.

Calm yet confident, Zoya speaks of the West’s invasion under the banner of “saving Afghan women,” wryly remarking: “Twenty years of war just to replace Taliban with Taliban.”

For Zoya, the rhetoric of salvation served as a cover for economic and geopolitical interests—not women’s rights, but access to natural resources and Afghanistan’s strategic position. As she puts it, the hypocrisy was plain to see: “Everything happened in front of our eyes.” The Doha Agreement, she says, confirmed that behind the veil of liberation lay nothing but self-interest.

She states: “Our land is full of resources needed for capitalist war machines. Women’s bodies were just propaganda tools.” In her narrative, Afghan women’s resistance arose from within—from houses turned into secret classrooms, hands building progress uncontested by funding or support: “With all the money that flowed into Afghanistan, what was visible was our own effort—not international NGOs.”

She describes corrupt development models that dispossessed farmers, bought homes, forced dependence on processed food—food that created health and pharmaceutical markets for international profit. “Today’s Afghan crisis is the result of this profit logic,” Zoya says.

With the Taliban’s return, new forms of suppression emerged—religiously justified but without real basis: “From closing girls’ schools after sixth grade, banning women’s baths, to even requiring covered kitchen windows—these are all pretexts to distract us from resource extraction.”

She clenches anger at the question: “Who arms the Taliban? How did they gain power during 20 years of ‘struggle’? The same forces preaching freedom also profit from Afghan suffering—through pharmaceuticals, military, electronics industries.”

She doesn’t spare “white feminism,” openly criticizing Germany’s so-called feminist foreign policy: “Afghan women are ignored, Palestinian women are nonexistent, and Iranian women must be saved.” To her, this brand of feminism is colonialism dressed in progressive language: “They offer a false feminism—one that neither dismantles patriarchy nor challenges oppressive structures.” 

Her answer? Amplify grounded, authentic voices. “Only true narratives can withstand purple-washing—the use of feminist slogans to camouflage war and domination.” Her message to Iranian women—and to any women whose movements risk being co-opted—is clear: “We in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran, Kurdistan, Congo, Somalia, Balochistan—we all share one struggle: against patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism.”

The narratives of war-affected women across the region may differ in detail, but they speak in unison: liberation does not arrive through occupation or bombs, and slogans like “Woman, Life, Freedom” must not be turned into tools by powers that are themselves among the main violators of all three.

In a world where structural violence and imperialism continue to target societies of the Global South under the mask of “rescue” or “freedom,” it is more urgent than ever to listen to the voices of real women from within these communities.

They do not need saviors.

The post The Women Not Liberated by Bombs appeared first on Untold.

The grandson of a senior Nazi whom he admired, Merz had recently explained in another interview how antisemitism in Germany was imported through Muslim migrants. The same migrants who fuel his country’s economy and pay the taxes that keep the aging population alive.

At the same meeting, the G7 issued statements parroting the now-routine defense of Israel’s “right to defend itself,” even as the state continued its live-streamed genocide in Gaza, where it is starving and systematically killing 2 million people, while occupying Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and bombing them along with Yemen and waged war on Iran. 

But who is “us” in the German Chancellor’s statement? Is it the so-called West, white people, capitalists, colonial powers, or all of the above?

What is certain is that this collective West, with its rich history of genocides across continents and scientific, obsessive destruction of the planet and its ecosystems, is addicted to war, destruction, and violent power.

Selective Humanity

There is something inherently terrifying in colonial practices and discourse. It is terrifying because it does not even see its murder as murder; it sees it as a necessity or a good. It does not even acknowledge the humanity of those it murders. In fact, it is not murder that it sees—it sees the eradication of a disease. 

This is why it is “dirty work”, a term that reminds of testimonies of Nazis when justifying their own actions: it is cleaning those undesirables off the planet in order to turn it into a clean, organized, sanitized, plastic terrain that serves their desires and feeds their power. 

This is why it is only they who have a right to defend themselves—they are the only ones who are humanized in their own discourse. They grieve and have names; they have feelings and hopes. The others are insignificant objects, microbes that need to be eradicated and sanitized.

This is why they can bomb nuclear facilities and risk a nuclear disaster that would kill millions of people and destroy rich, vital ecosystems of plants and animals. They feel nothing towards nature. In fact, they hate its uncontrolled disorder and seek to control it, discipline it.

This is how Nazis built on the colonial ideological heritage of control, classification, and racism.

This is why Israel can have nuclear weapons and refuse to have any oversight over its nuclear facilities, while bombing another country that does not have such weapons and is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty—because it accuses it of having intentions of building the very weapon it itself owns. This is why Israel’s allies do not even mention this, as they are willing to destroy populations for such bias.

The alliance of “us”, by conducting a genocide and yet another illegal, murderous war against yet another country—regardless of how horrible that country’s government is—has once and for all destroyed whatever was left of the short-lived international order that was meant to prevent the colonial powers from destroying the planet yet again.

Anyone who thinks this is only about Iran or West Asia should think again. What we are witnessing or living in this region is the future of humanity. This time the bullies are going to mass murder us; next time, it will be you. Just remember this as you watch us burn—for “you.”

Global threats

There are currently two states openly threatening other countries with war with no repercussions—launching attacks without legal justification, outside the framework of the United Nations and international law. The US threatening to invade or forcefully annex Canada, Panama, Greenland, after having invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, and attacking a dozen more countries in the past few decades while Israel, another settler colony built on genocide, is attacking half a dozen countries and threatening a few more.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the same powers hailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and attack on Iran as a right, “self sefense”, or a “pre-emtive strike”, immediately reacted, imposing sanctions and activating international institutions.

We are at a point in history where the heads of these two states—the US and Israel—can openly threaten to assassinate heads of other states or bombing their nuclear facilities, with utter and absolute silence from the international institutions or open support and approval from the states that are supposed to safeguard the planet from nuclear apocalypse or at least pay lip service to the concept of international law and diplomacy.

This is not about Iran, whose authoritarian regime has been the cause of much death and suffering both inside and outside its borders. What is happening today takes us back to a legal and moral standard that resembles colonial times and with this normalized anyone can be next and anyone will be.

Yet the so-called West and its media outlets constantly parrot the same lies: That the only threat to the world are the “evil scary Muslims”, whether they are the millions of migrants, so-called terrorist organizations, or occasional states that compete with the global hegemon—rather than the nuclear powers brandishing their arsenals and threatening the world with apocalypse and with countless recent precedents of attacking, invading, violating international law, using nuclear bombs, and openly declaring their intentions to do more.

If there was any sense of law and point to the UN, there should be a global emergency to stop the biggest threat to the planet today and to impose severe sanctions on the US, Israel, as well as on Germany, the UK and the few complicit states that are threatening the world with an earlier than expected complete destruction.

Normalized Horror

The West’s outrage is always selective. When Gaza’s hospitals were turned into execution chambers and mass graves, when Palestinian doctors, medical workers, and babies were murdered—there was silence. Or worse, justification.

Let us not forget the former German foreign minister, now president of the UN General Assembly, who defended bombing hospitals. An accomplice to war crimes presiding over what’s left of international diplomacy.

This is the world we live in: Every day, among the many reports of Israeli crimes in Gaza, a new norm emerges to be added to the vocabulary of genocide: “X number of aid seekers killed”. A news item that slips quietly into the daily news cycle. 

Like so many grotesque terms invented to describe the sadistic reality of Israel’s war machine—remember “wounded child, no surviving family,” “decomposing babies in incubators”—this phrase is yet another reminder of the horror being normalized. This is the “dirty work” that Israel is doing for “all of us”, invoked by the German Chancellor. That same “us” Trump also invoked when speaking about Israel’s attacks and later his own on Iran.

Meanwhile, the “international community”—the “us” they are referring to, the Global North, the colonial powers, the so-called West, or however we choose to describe the forces backing the settler colony’s sadistic violence and the Empire’s unchecked hegemony—tramples what little remains of international law and the post-WWII diplomatic order.

And who are the men leading this charge? Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu—both facing a litany of accusations and court cases: corruption, sexual abuse, war crimes, crimes against humanity. One even has an active ICC arrest warrant, the other has threatened and sanctioned the ICC judges.

This is the reality of colonial powers that have long presented themselves as “civilization”—even as they perfect the technologies of killing, destruction, and the gruesome erasure of all they seek to dominate.

Nuclear Hypocrisy

As bombs fell on Iran, the hypocrisy deepened. Why is Israel’s nuclear arsenal exempt from oversight? Why is there no international outcry demanding it join the Non-Proliferation Treaty or allow IAEA inspections?

Israel is the only country known to possess nuclear weapons “in secret”, outside any international framework, with zero IAEA involvement?

Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program has triggered global alarm, intrusive inspections, and massive resource deployment by the IAEA with a vastly disproportionate share of resources including under the JCPOA.

Furthermore, the IAEA itself, along with U.S. intelligence agencies, repeatedly confirmed: there is no evidence that Iran is weaponizing its nuclear technology.

In contrast, Israel—a state currently committing genocide, led by a prime minister wanted by the ICC for war crimes, engaged in wars of aggression, and occupying at least three countries—faces no comparable scrutiny. The other country leading the charge—the US—is the only one known to have used nuclear weapons as well as to have used lies about weapons of mass destruction to invade and occupy another country—Iraq—leading to the death of millions just over 20 years ago (Israel had previously bombed Iraq’s nuclear programme in 1981 and Syria’s in 2007).

If there is any state whose nuclear program demands oversight, it is Israel. A global demand to bring Israel under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and place its facilities under IAEA safeguards should be central to any regional or international negotiation. Anything less is simply about domination rather than non-proliferation. 

War not Liberation

In 2003, millions across the world stood against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The war, waged under the pretext of a lie about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction— known to be a lie back then and later confirmed as such, the brutal war was an affront on international law as was the US invasion of Afghanistan two years prior. 

Those who opposed these wars were not defending the Taliban nor Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule, but trying to prevent the devastation that followed: millions killed, entire societies shattered, and a chain reaction of violence and suffering that continues to this day.

Now, new lies and another pretext were used to justify yet another illegal war of aggression—this time against another authoritarian state: Iran. If history has taught us anything, it is that such wars bring only more death, more displacement, more destruction, and set the people affected back years. They do not liberate; they annihilate, extract, and subjugate. And each time they are allowed to happen, they further entrench a world order where violence, not reason, reigns—where the strong are above the law, and the rest of us are left to burn.

Broken Treaties

The US once again violated international law by bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, even as Iran was invited to negotiations by European states. But this is nothing new. 

Colonizers have always reneged on their promises—on treaties, agreements, and diplomacy. They conquer through violence and destruction, then invite negotiation on their own terms. They impose agreements designed to cement subjugation, only to break them whenever it suits their interests.

In the United States alone, hundreds of treaties were signed with Native American nations—every single one of them was broken or violated. The Trail of Tears, the forced relocations, and the massacres at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek are not isolated acts of cruelty but part of a systematic betrayal. 

Similarly, in Africa, colonial powers like Britain and France promised independence and self-governance in exchange for loyalty during the world wars, only to brutally suppress anti-colonial movements when those promises were called in. In Palestine, the Balfour Declaration laid the foundation for a century of dispossession based on lies and colonial arrogance.

Colonizers create rules to guarantee their victory—but if they lose, they simply change the rules or disregard them altogether. Institutions like the UN are tolerated only when they serve the interests of those powers. When they pose even a symbolic challenge, they are defunded, discredited, or ignored.

So how can anyone, in this region or anywhere else, still believe in diplomacy with colonizers? How can corrupt Arab regimes and other complicit governments across the planet continue to act as if Europe, the U.S., and the alliance defending genocide have ever been trustworthy partners?

These powers have long been the greatest threat to global peace—rampaging across continents in the name of empire, fueling genocides, launching two world wars, and willing to steer us toward a third through reckless violence, resource extraction, and endless militarization.

This is a moment of reckoning. If the global majority—especially in the Global South, those countries that are at risk of being next on the list—does not respond with clarity, courage, and unity, the whole planet will bear the cost. What we’re facing are not exceptions. It is the rule of empire which offers nothing but subjugation or death. And history has already shown us where that road leads.

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And what sounds can an international solidarity front produce? How can one exploit reverberation, exercise echo? How can all frequencies be occupied to finally make the inaudible present?

Militant, communal, and self-organised radios have always fought silencing, historically becoming platforms for advocacy and resistance, and for the dissemination of culture, music and the sound identity of peoples. Even today, through the network, some radio projects continue to narrate and denounce colonial violence in Palestine.

Radio Alhara

In June 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Radio Alhara was born between Bethlehem and Ramallah. The founders, Elias and Yousef Anastas, Saeed Abu Jaber, Mothanna Hussein, and Yazan Khalili are musicians and creatives. They think of the radio as a cultural centre, a way to produce and share their music from a distance. 

Radio Alhara is a self-managed community radio, able to be sustained thanks to a network of collaborations all over the world. The community  is made up of ‘residents’, artists who have a dedicated monthly space that they curate by projecting sounds and voices that are often muted, contributing to the streamed programme by uploading some of their mixes to the soundcloud channel.

The more political programmes began in conjunction with the Black Lives Matter movement and following the explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020. 

The first, more structured one is Fil Mishmish, which could be translated as ‘in apricot time’,  a sweet, all too brief time. This sound protest was an international collection of voices against Israel’s desire to annex more West Bank territories. Initially conceived as a continuous 24-hour broadcast, an invitation was launched on the web for participants to send in their own form of sound reaction and solidarity. In the end, the materials received filled three days of lineup, and were broadcasted on the 8th, 9th and 10th of July 2020, garnering some 17,000 listeners. 

Among the many contributions that enlivened those hours was that of Leila Moon, an Algerian DJ, musician, and resident artist at the radio station. She contributed an embroidery of sounds from the Maghreb, including raï, Arab pop, combined with electronic passages and grafted popular songs from the Palestinian liberation movement, including the closing words to the voice of Miriam Makeba who sang one of the most popular anti-war songs: ‘It’s better to stop. Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going on…’

The experiment that was Fil Mishmish  inspired many more sound actions. In 2021, Sonic Liberation Front was created as a reaction to the escalation of violence by the Israeli occupation forces  storming Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan, forcibly evicting Palestinian residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, and the bombing of Gaza for 11 days. 

‘Todas las manos, todas las voces…’ (All hands, all voices), sings Mercedes Sosa, opening and closing Nicola Jaar’s contribution for Sonic Liberation Front on 22 May 2021. The programme is  a chorus from Latin America, moving between Jaar’s songs inspired by the revolutionary protests in Chile in 2019-2020 and the uprisings in Colombia in 2021, together with popular songs of similar struggles, a gesture of solidarity and evidence of an indissoluble link between the liberation struggles of indigenous peoples. 

‘Toda la sangre puede ser canción en el viento. Canta conmigo, canta, hermano americano. Libera tu esperanza con un grito en la voz’. (All blood can become a song in the wind. Sing with me, sing, my American brother. Free your hope, with a cry, with your voice).

After 7 October 2023, Radio Alhara never stopped paying attention to the voices of the Palestinian people. In the meeting ‘Sounds and Ignitions from Palestine to the World’, in Milan, I found myself together with artists and researchers linked to Palestine by identity or by choice, discovering how much, despite the tragedy, Radio Alhara is continuing its creation and cultural production. 

Toni Cutrone, musician and author of the Mai Mai project, shared his recent experience in Palestine. The artist had been invited by Radio Alhara to the Wonder Cabinet space for the ‘Sound of Places’ residency project, held between May and June 2024. 

Together with a dozen or so artists, sound craftspeople, and researchers, he went to the Cremisan Valley, a rare natural space around Bethlehem that is constantly under threat. He listened to a range of soundscapes, from the procession to the Church of the Nativity to checkpoints and olive groves. He collaborated with musicians such as Abul3ees, a Palestinian rapper from Jerusalem, using traditional instruments such as the buzuq (Karam Fares), riq and bandir (Jihad Shouibi), and recorded funeral mournings with Maya Al Khaldi. 

Along with all this material, he mixed excerpts from the sound archive of the Popular Art Center in Ramallah, which collects recordings from the 1990s to the present.In addition to being broadcast on Radio Alhara, his creation is also filmed in Italy. 

During the same event, Noura Tafeche and Condoii presented their research work and radio creation for Radio Alhara ‘Identity and Indigenous Perspectives’. Indigenous identity is a condition and terrain of an alliance, one that reveals the traces of a colonial past common to the two artists, albeit from different contexts. The story of centuries of resistance of the peoples of Abya Yala and Falastin is told in the work starting with some musical instruments that the artists  play synchronously. Without romance or folklore, the result is out-of-tune notes, dissonances rather than harmonies, representative of exile and contemporary diasporas. 

 Learning Palestine 

This performance by Noura Tafeche recites little-known verses by Mahmoud Darwish, in which the Palestinian poet speaks from the point of view of an indigenous person from the Americas, focusing on the connection with the land, in its natural elements. One can hear the poet’s voice reading the same verses in Arabic in the Until Liberation I radio broadcast offered by Learning Palestine, a group of artists, activists, and researchers who regularly collaborate with Radio Alhara. 

The collective has created a web platform to share and disseminate knowledge about the Palestinian liberation struggle, experimenting with new ways of circulating knowledge outside of social media and their policies of censorship and control. At the same time, the site features pamphlets already paginated to be printed and distributed as fanzines. 

Learning Palestine also features two radio broadcasts, Until the Liberation I and II, each lasting twelve hours.

The first episode is a mosaic of speeches, poems, songs and sounds that reconstruct the Palestinian struggle inside and outside the land of Palestine.  

We can hear John Berger reading Letter from Gaza by Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said in a long interview from 1986, a lunge on the history of Black solidarity, Angela Davis’ disruptive speech at Oranienplatz in Berlin in 2022, Judith Butler talking about BDS and anti-Semitism, or a reconstruction by Ilan Pappe from 1948, and more recent appeals such as Fred Moten’s. 

Songs of marriage, birth and death, which is inserted among the many languages in which Palestine has been and continues to be spoken. A song in Swedish closes the release: Leve Leve Palestina (Long Live Palestine).

Until Liberation II, on the other hand, is designed to go back to the roots of the struggles, understand their history and inform the present. 

The introduction reads: ‘despite the differences in our struggles, Palestine remains an embodiment and extension of these and other struggles for life and liberation, against racism, colonialism, imperialism and rising fascism’.

Again, it represents a polyphony of struggles between South Africa, Abya Yala and Asia that have always spoken to each other. Of particular relevance is the relationship between Algeria and Palestine in the intertwining of decolonial movements. Malika Rahal, an Algerian historian, traces the assonances between the two events: Fanon’s thought is taken up by Said’s words, a lecture retraces the stages of the Algerian war of independence. The French-Algerian-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Soualem closes with a personal story and the complex relationship between a skin syndrome she suffers from, the history of her body, and her family’s migrations. 

24h Palestine

Another international solidarity action chooses the 24h format; 24h Palestine is a global radio event of anti-colonial alliances. These are independent, militant, artistic radio stations around the world broadcasting the same sounds at the same time to prove the common commitment to the Palestinian liberation cause. Since 7 October there have been three editions, each time with different content and a widening network. 

Streaming starts from Radio Alhara in Bethlehem and expands to Radio Flouka (Paris/Mena Region); Radio Blackout and Radio Onda Rossa (Italy); The Mosaic Rooms (UK); Libreria Proyeccion (Chile); La Parole Errante and Radio Galère (France); Station of Commons/Lumbung Radio (Transnational); Pan African Space Station (South Africa); Radio Tropiezo and Radio Nopal (Mexico); Radio Oroko (Ghana); Dublin Digital Radio; Ja Ja Nee Nee Radio (Netherlands); Stegi Radio (Greece); Radio Liberté (Burkina Faso); Radio Djiido (Kanaky). These were joined by broadcasting stations set up for the occasion in Beirut, Maiotta, Reunion Island and Cairo.

The third and most recent edition was broadcast on 28 and 29 September 2024, assembling sound fragments from the university occupations, from the oppositions of the autonomous dockworkers’ collective in Genoa to the departure of the ships carrying arms, the voices of Palestinian refugees in the camps in Lebanon with those of solidarity from Bangladesh, the Pacific, Finland, boycott actions and pieces of revolutionary music.

The palimpsest was dedicated to the time of struggles, to the transition from emergency to long-term, starting with the question: ‘How can we go beyond the declarative aspect of our solidarity to break the deadly imperialist and capitalist alliances? The long times of struggles deploy strategies, reconfiguring space through their resonances’. 

All these radio practices remind us of the hard-to-reach sound dimension of war. Sound can be an instrument of torture, of terror, or a form of ‘occupation of the senses’, i.e. one of the ways in which colonialism performs its domination, controlling sensory access to the world of the colonised. 

Taking back the spaces of the sensible becomes an act of everyday resistance, generating other ‘signals’ that reformulate space and time, where transmission transcends territorial boundaries and rematerialises in physical spaces and moments of aggregation, where voices reach bodies and make listening an act of witnessing. 

*This article was produced in collaboration with Orient XXI, where it was first published in Italian. 

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On one screen runs the narrative of a Syrian popular uprising brutally repressed at the expense of its mutation into a festering internecine and proxy conflict. One punctuated by untold massacres, collective punishment, urbicide and the exodus of millions of Syrians—a dislocation in the social fabric that will take generations to repair (if ever). A conflict that had (until very recently) seemingly resolved itself into a pyrrhic victory for the Assad regime which survives on the carcass of a failed state: its territory in fragments, its economy in ruins, and its society demolished.

In this narrative, Hezbollah – Hassan Nasrallah in the foreground, its fighters and broader community of supporters in the background – is undoubtedly one of the major perpetrators of this carnage. Its unequivocal support of Assad as it bulldozed through Syria’s rebellious villages, towns, and communities was a necessary condition for the survival of the Assad regime – perhaps only slightly eclipsed by the direct Russian intervention from 2015 onwards. The direct role that Hezbollah fighters played in the brutal warfare unleashed by Assad – most vividly in al-Qusayr and in the starvation siege of Madaya and Zabadani and the subsequent massacres of civilians, population transfer and the sectarian register in which they were coded – and the infamous baklava celebrations of Hezbollah supporters of that role is impossible to bracket out.

Nasrallah in this screen stands, beside Assad perhaps, drenched in Syrian blood and imperious in his small victory over a decapitated and starved society. Many, myself included – whether directly or indirectly brutalized by Hezbollah’s fighting arm – will have watched elements of this narrative race through their minds as the news broke of Nasrallah’s assassination. Some will have even celebrated Nasrallah’s ignominious end with baklava—is there anything more blood-curdling than this resignification of traditional social practices around food for our era of massacres? The most vulgar of such celebrations very quickly blended into broader narratives of hatred and schadenfreude, whether sectarian (anti-Shia) or chauvinistic (anti-Lebanese).

What is conspicuous in its absence from that narrative, of course, is the assassin.

On that second screen, is the immediate and ongoing narrative of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and beyond. A war in which we watch, blow by blow, a 21st century military unleash its vengeance on an impoverished but impudent ghetto, leaving a landscape of annihilation in its wake (whenever that might be) – truly, the stuff of genocidal colonialist nightmares as Ghassan Hage put it. A genocide perpetrated under the watchful and approving gaze of the United States, the global hegemon, and made possible only through its political, legal, and cultural shields as much as through its weapons arsenal. A narrative where the history of Israel’s emergence out of the colonial subjugation of our region, and its own colonial expansion hitherto, bleed into its attempt today to use this moment of total impunity to obliterate any resistance to its regional hegemony once and for all.

Hezbollah, in this narrative, and particularly under the leadership of Nasrallah, is undoubtedly one of the very few genuine thorns in the side of the Israeli war machine. Hezbollah’s fighters forced Israel’s withdrawal from occupied south Lebanon in 2000, and fought its combined army, navy and airforce to a standstill in 2006 at great cost to them and their families’ lives. These were unprecedented moments relative to the collective humiliation and traumatic military histories of the regular armies of Arab states (in particular, Egypt and Syria, whether in 1948, 1967 or even 1973).

Nasrallah in this second screen stands unquestionably as the face of this defiance to the colonial carnage of Israel and the concrete negation of its invulnerability. Famously telling the inhabitants of Beirut, in the midst of the 2006 July war, to look outside their windows out into the sea and watch the Israeli navy’s flagship, INS Hanit, that had been bombarding the city relentlessly, as it burns.

Many, myself included, will have seen Nasrallah’s martyrdom – coming on the heels of an unrelenting genocide in Gaza, and signaling the intensification of the urbicide of Lebanon’s south, Bekaa, and Beirut’s southern suburbs – as a crushing blow for regional anti-colonial struggles at a moment of great peril. Some will have mourned him as an epoch-defining leader of Arab stature – as a Nasser, or an even more successful Nasser – in the cause of Arab resistance to, and liberation from, Israeli colonialism. The most vulgar of such outpours of mourning quickly blended into blanket silencing of the Syrian catastrophe in this narrative, and even tried to turn its wrath on Syrian refugees in Lebanon as immediate scapegoats.

Narratives as antagonisms

If you are to look at these two screens then a simple superimposition of one over the other, or of watching them simultaneously, is a practical impossibility. One is reduced to oscillating between these two projections in real time, producing a sort of existential nausea, intellectual muteness, and political paralysis – one is in effect reduced to the simple act of sobbing uncontrollably. The tension at the heart of the act of conjuring these two screens is beyond any cognitive dissonance that they provoke, or the contradictory reality that they describe – indeed, reality per se is not contradictory, it is what it is, as the smoking ruins of Gaza, Beirut and Madaya demonstrate. The unbearable tension is at the level of where one is positioned and fixed in relation to these two narratives.

Stripped to their bare skeletons — and without suggesting an equivalence at the level of their content — the two narratives describe two ineradicable and homologous antagonisms:

a)   an antagonism vis-à-vis Assad’s authoritarian regime, and particularly its rule-of-violence [1] since 2011 and the broader (regional and international) coercive apparatus propping up that rule and where Hezbollah features prominently.

b)   an antagonism vis-à-vis Israel’s colonial regime, and particularly its genocidal rule since October 2023, and the broader colonial structure that props it up centered on the US.

The logic of these two antagonisms is as inescapable, as brutal and as nuanced as the barrel bombs and the bunker busters that punctuate and reproduce them on a daily basis. By themselves, the two antagonisms do not need to be contradictory. However, where Hezbollah is concerned, the logics of these two antagonisms interpellate you simultaneously into two contradictory and completely incompatible subject positions:

B places you behind Nasrallah loading his gun, while A stations you in front of him staring at the barrel of that gun.

That is the unbearable tension one feels: the sensation of being torn asunder by these two subject positions.

Now, an analytical redescription as the above is helpful insofar as understanding the quasi-impossibility of making sense of these two antagonisms together or simply next to each other. This, I would argue, can be extended (in different intensities) to any number of cleavages that structure our current Mashreqi, Arab, WANA moment — criss-crossing axes of class, gender, religion, ethnicity, nation, etc. However, to move beyond the political paralysis, we need to come up with a larger screen that can combine these two (and many other) antagonisms in some coherent relationship.

Resolving contradictory antagonisms

I suggest that there are at least two analytically distinct and dominant models that have attempted to provide a way out of this conundrum [2]. Both of which, I would argue, are not only analytically deficient but have also wreaked havoc in our region through the political projects they prescribed:

The first tells us that it is simple. It proposes an essentialist understanding of antagonism: a simple, clear and static cleavage — an opposition to a central node — that can a priori determine and subsume all other antagonisms and cleavages (a form of “in-the-last-instance analysis”). Such essentialist understanding of antagonism can be as broadly conceived as (vulgar) forms of anti-imperialism (where the central antagonism is vis-à-vis the US empire and all other phenomena are an “effect” of that antagonism) or as narrowly as the Syrian antagonism vis-à-vis the Assad regime. In its normative disposition (if not necessarily in praxis) it can be as emancipatory, humanist, and progressive as anti-imperialism or as conservative, anti-humanist, and reactionary as Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations.

Such a conception admits no space for contradictions in the first place — and thus admits no space for the very possibility of politics — in favor of facile inferences from that ur-antagonism. Indeed, its political projects — built as they are solely through a narrow logic of opposition to that central node (US empire, Assad regime) — are unable/unwilling to integrate and articulate struggles that do not fully assimilate into that logic, and are thus emptied of any positive content of their own so as to become meaningless. The empty container of the political arm of Syrian revolution is a case in point [3]; or, indeed, an anti-imperialism that is reduced to the defense of a revanchist, ultra-nationalist and reactionary Russian regime.

The second tells us that it’s complicated. It proposes a pluralist understanding of antagonism; an endless multiplication of such antagonisms but eschewing any hierarchy between them, or any normative discrimination (Shia-Sunni, Arab-Kurd, Palestinian-Israeli: all are potentially equally legitimate and equally flattened). Uninterested and unwilling to engage in the interrogation of their interrelations, it also forgoes any question of determination or causality between them. At its best, it is no more than a descriptive catalogue of many different antagonisms without prescribing a project to navigate them. At its worst, and in its concrete political manifestations in our region, it tends towards narrow and opportunistic political projects of the day (anti-Iran today, anti-Shia, anti-fundamentalism, anti-Saddam Hussein, etc…)

Reconstructing contradictory antagonisms

What is needed is a very different sort of screen. One that allows us to see these different antagonisms and to recognise the conditions in which they become contradictory. In essence, what is needed is a screen that opens up — rather than foreclosing — the possibility of reconstructing these different antagonisms (through political and analytical work) within a progressive project.

Needless to say, there is not one simple answer to this — even for a seemingly rudimentary system with two pared-down antagonisms as the two described here. But I would venture a number of (very broad) working principles — hardly comprehensive nor sufficient, a mere starting point — in how we might go about it.

• The colonial context of the region — in its historical formations, their legacies, as well as their multiple contemporary manifestations, uneven and contradictory as they are — is a necessary starting point for any such effort. It was, and remains, the single most detrimental factor in structuring, maintaining, and reproducing seemingly never-ending cleavages along national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other fault lines. Without taking into account that context, it would be impossible to understand how and why we are continuously compelled to stand in these interminably contradictory subject positions. But it can only ever be a starting point. For, colonial hegemony, by itself, cannot determine the content nor outcomes of these antagonisms that proliferate in its wake, nor does it determine how they are articulated relative to each other in specific moments [4]. Colonial legacies and interests can help draw the outlines of the political and ideological (e.g., sectarian, national, regional) structures in which the strategies of the Assad regime and the anti-Assad opposition in the Syrian uprising were/are enacted. However, these structures do not (on their own) determine the strategies themselves, the alliances that are forged, how they are coded (and/or decoded) ideologically, and how they are (dis)articulated with/from other struggles (e.g., Kurdish struggle for autonomy or independence; Palestinian struggle for independence). These questions, among others, constitute the (relatively) open space of political work and analysis.
• The empirical answers to the questions above can help us understand and describe the array of different antagonisms that structure our politics and position us differently, i.e., by recourse to the past. But any political project that aims at transforming that state (i.e., by, inter alia, rearranging, reinterpreting, and re-articulating these antagonisms) needs a future temporality. That is to say, a future-oriented political vision that guides us in the political work of the present, in constructing relations between these different antagonisms and struggles in ways that can move us closer to that future. This, of course, opens up a panoply of difficult questions around immediate tactics and future-oriented strategies. But all in function of some sort of an answer to the question: where do we want to be in 20 years?
• Any such future-oriented project, I believe, requires a radical, concerted and consistent re-alignment of our scope of thinking and action to encompass the whole region again. The postcolonial nation-state system of the region (and the Mashreq in particular, in all its different permutations) has failed to deliver either stability, security or prosperity for the vast majority of the region’s peoples – in effect, its only rationale has been to buttress the political elites of these different polities and fragment any opposition to (neo)colonial hegemony.

The decade of uprisings from 2011 as a moment of dislocation is instructive in this regard. Even if the uprisings did not directly and explicitly challenge the foundation of that nation-state system, their cascading dynamics, repertoires of contention, and transnational solidarities implicitly did. In response, the counter-revolutionary reaction has been one long attempt to invariably re-nationalise the crises of 2011 (ironically, only possible through a network of repression that is itself transnational).

Such a realignment also opens up difficult but necessary questions: What is “the region”? How do we blur the hardened material and discursive boundaries of what we understand as “the region” (within and without) whether at the level of geography or identity? How do we re-imagine broader collective political identities that do not erase the specificities of their constituent, and necessarily plural, national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other identities? Who sits outside of these collective formations, and what are their logics of inclusion and exclusion? How can we re-imagine notions of collective living and political organising on the basis of such broader and blurred lines — what forms of sovereignties, states, communities, emerge out of this?

***

The outcome is not a contrived framework where these antagonisms can be explained away, but rather a condition in which they are actively naturalised as co-determining to each other. So that a struggle against Assad’s violence comes to presuppose and to prescribe a struggle against Israel’s genocide and vice versa.

It needs to be stressed that such outcomes are not a forgone/objective/natural conclusion. There is no reason why the antagonism first outlined in the early months of the Syrian uprisings should find itself 13 years later in an impossible impasse vis-a-vis the anti-colonial struggle against Israeli genocide. It is the result of concrete choices and alliances, of the construction of dominant discourses and narratives by actors within the movement and by its enemies (including sections of the anti-imperialist left, lest we forget). Nor is it a question that we can afford to ignore. Is there any doubt about the deleterious effect that the embrace of Assad by a variety of anti-imperialist groups, and regional anti-colonial actors had on the trajectory of the Syrian uprising? Or about the disastrous impact that the current sidelining and demobilisation of Syria as a regional actor and its exhausted and fragmented populace, has had on the prospects of regional resistance to Israeli hegemony?

Constructing a relationship of co-determination between different (and thus, relatively autonomous) struggles requires both the intellectual work to understand, analyse, critique and theorize (and by definition, to listen), and the groundwork to establish the modalities, movements, spaces, and conditions through which that co-determination becomes a natural outcome. A critical understanding, for instance, of the deep embeddedness of Assad’s brutal repression within a broader colonial/civilisational discourse and modalities of the “war on terror” (in its most islamophobic and urbicidal renditions) can help us begin to re-articulate resistance to that logic as a shared project. A critical understanding of sectarian antagonisms and how they are mobilised to stand for debased political identities in different contexts can also help us complicate the sectarian cleavages that undercut both the opposition to the Assad regime and the resistance axis, and to begin the necessary work of re-articulating both these projects. A critical understanding of the concurrent struggles within different regional contexts (e.g., Turkey, Iran, Egypt and beyond; around issues from gender rights, to social, political and cultural rights) and how they interact with these actors’ regional politics, can help us begin a process of re-articulating diverse struggles together in ways that go beyond narrow and short-term opportunistic alliances and/or regressive political logics (e.g., jingoism, sectarianism).

This is not to pretend that it is a simple process, nor to suggest that there are any guarantees for any eventual success — for we are struggling with structures and actors whose very existence rests on denying such conditions, and on creating conditions in which these articulations are a theoretical as well as a practical impossibility.

***

Addendum

In the days since I finished writing this text, the empty husk of the Assad regime finally imploded in response to one well-timed blow from the Islamist rebels forces in Idlib — after a 54-year reign of iron and blood. It is patently clear that this implosion is in no small part a consequence (and a clear signal) of the near-fatal blow received by Hezbollah over the past months and the weakening of Iran’s axis in the region. It remains far too early to ascertain the nature and prospects of the new regime in Damascus. In the best case scenario (i.e., barring further conflict and chaos) whatever Syrian state emerges from the rubble will face an uphill battle to establish any semblance of sovereignty or autonomy: its civic infrastructure in tatters, its economy broken, its political class inexistent, and its military hollowed out (indeed, essentially demilitarised by a triumphant and raging Israel). It will be completely dependent on international and regional deep pockets for reconstruction, and on neighbouring countries’ “goodwill” for its security for the foreseeable future. Its political orientation will be deeply inflected by these demands: i.e. moving primarily within the strategic orbit of a Turkish-Qatari axis (and thus creating a direct frontier between this axis and Israel), while Saudi Arabia and other regional and international actors would compete for a secondary position.

This profound dislocation entails a new proposition in terms of the strategic map of the region as well as new and emerging questions that we have to contend with. The project of Syria’s reconstruction and of rebuilding its economic, political, and civic institutions (not to mention mending its broken social fabric) will be the most immediate and most important space of contestation. Early signs indicate that Syria’s direction will be buttressed by a power bloc of socially conservative and economically (neo)liberal forces. The first and immediate challenge then will be to organise and enlarge the political space in which other forces in society can participate in and influence this project and resist its most pernicious tendencies. Our work there has to also articulate emerging (strategic) questions that will have to be asked at a regional level once the dust settles on the longtail aftermath of October 7. Where does the emerging Turkey-Qatar axis sit vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinian question? What tools can we start developing within this new context to contain Israel’s impunity and to re-articulate a new regional resistance paradigm in the face of its genocidal ethno-nationalist paradigm?

In other words, how can we arrive at a condition in which a struggle for a democratic, inclusive and open Syrian polity and society comes to presuppose and to prescribe a struggle against Israel’s genocidal ethno-nationalism and vice versa.

Acknowledgments:

This essay originates in a number of recent short interactions with the always thoughtful, if ever provocative, friend Amr Saed Eddin. I am also grateful to friends and colleagues, Benjamin De Cleen, Enrico De Angelis, and Rasha Chatta for their generous feedback and contributions to the reflections here.

Notes: 

[1] See, Salwa Ismail, 2018, Rule of Violence. Cambridge University Press.

[2] I am following here Stuart Hall’s heuristic in critiquing dominant understandings, at the time, of class and race in colonial societies which also closely correspond to (particularly as political strategies) what Laclau and Mouffe later identify as “logics of equivalence and difference”. See, Stuart Hall, 1980, Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance; Ernesto Laclau & Chantal Mouffe, 1985, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.

[3] The memoires of Bourhan Ghalioun, the first president of the Syrian National Council, is a good indicator of both the unimaginative rigidity as well as emptiness of the political organs that represented the Syrian opposition including the SNC, the Syrian Coalition and the Coordination Committee. See, برهان غليون، ٢٠١٩، عطب الذات: وقائع ثورة لم تكتمل. الشبكة العربية للأبحاث والنشر، بيروت.

[4] An (admittedly imperfect) analogy is to consider Hall’s inversion of “economic determinancy” over ideology into one that operates “in the first instance” rather than “in the last instance”: “The economic provides the repertoire of categories which will be used, in thought. What the economic cannot do is (a) to provide the contents of the particular thoughts of particular social classes or groups at any specific time; (b) to fix or guarantee for all time which ideas will be made use of by which classes. The determinancy of the economic for the ideological can, therefore, be only in terms of the former setting the limits for defining the terrain of operations, establishing the ‘raw materials’ of thought.” See, Stuart Hall, 1986, The Problem of Ideology-Marxism without Guarantees, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2).

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