• Instagram is opening its arms to long-form video again.
• Adam Mosseri, Instagram's top exec, said longer videos will help the app stay "relevant."
• Instagram is testing tools for creators making episodic content. But will it pay for them?

Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, has a plan to keep the platform "culturally relevant" — by making it more like YouTube.

Meta-owned Instagram unveiled an overhaul of long-form video features on Monday, including a test of horizontal videos called "Features." Taken together, the changes make the app feel a lot more like YouTube.

"We want to be the most culturally relevant platform," Mosseri said in an interview with content creators and founders of Press Publish, Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry. "To do that, we just need to show up where people are."

The context: YouTube has become a major hit on TV screens, and there's a growing appetite for Instagram-native shows with recurring episodes.

"Subway Takes," hosted by Kareem Rahma, is a prime example of Instagram's strengths and limits. The show started in 2023 as a short-form interview series and, as it grew, expanded with longer-form cuts on YouTube and the streaming platform Tubi. Instagram, however, is where Rahma's show still has its largest audience of 2.4 million followers.

Instagram doesn't want people to go to YouTube or Tubi to see longer versions of shows like "Subway Takes." That's leaving ad revenue and user engagement on the table. Its new tools are designed to entice creators and viewers to stay on its platform.

Here are Instagram's latest video tools and how creators can use them:

• "Features" keep viewers within the Instagram ecosystem. Instead of leaving Instagram to watch the extended version of an interview or episode, it'll be relatively seamless to stay on Instagram and watch that longer-form content. Instagram's "Features" can be as long as 90 minutes, although the new format is, for now, only available to a limited number of creators in the US and Brazil.
• Instagram is feeding more content to its TV apps. Instagram is also pushing its "Instagram for TV" app further. The app will feature various video content on TV services like Samsung, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and now Apple TV. People can now watch a feed of content their friends are also liking or resharing on TV.
• Instagram-native shows can label their episodes more clearly with "Series." Within the main Instagram feed, Instagram is testing a way for shows on the app to seamlessly connect episodic content. Eligible creators can add videos to a Series, and a label appears over the content indicating that there are additional episodes. People can then watch those episodes in order from the start. This test is expanding to more countries through the end of the year.
• Clips can directly drive engagement back to the original video. Instead of clipping content and praying that the audience will go the extra mile of clicking on an account and finding the original, longer-form video, Instagram is letting creators link up to 8 clips to one long video.

This isn't Instagram's first time dabbling in long-form content.

In 2018, it launched IGTV, a long-form video format and stand-alone app. In 2020, Instagram rolled out a program that let creators earn money from those videos on IGTV. Four years after launching, the company sunset the IGTV app and shifted its video efforts to Reels.

There are a few key elements missing from Instagram's big leap (back) into long-form video.

You can't watch the video while continuing to scroll through Instagram, or multitask by opening other apps while keeping the Instagram content in a picture-in-picture pop-up. There also aren't automated transcripts and subtitles yet. A spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider that there are plans for these features.

Will creators get a slice of the ad revenue pie?

For creators, one key question and pain point looms: Will Meta share the honeypot?

Mosseri told Rosenblum and Chaudry that Instagram is thinking about ways to test pre-roll and mid-roll ads that could lead to a revenue split. However, he said previous attempts by Instagram to build a creator monetization system comparable to YouTube's Partner Program didn't prove beneficial for the platform.

"We spend more money than we make back by a long shot," Mosseri said of Instagram's previous efforts at broad revenue-sharing programs.

Mosseri said that in its previous iterations of content monetization, creators typically didn't produce more content than they already did for free, and the content they did create tended to be lower quality.

Still, Instagram will need to "figure it out" as it tries to crack longer-form content, Mosseri said.

"I don't think of platform payments or performance-based incentives or bonuses as a revenue driver," Mosseri added. "I'd be psyched to scale them up for any of these formats — as long as we're breaking even."

Donald Trump’s seemingly endless quest to isolate the U.S. on the world stage continued last week when his secretary of state openly promoted the CIA as a tool for destabilizing foreign governments.

Here’s Marco Rubio in a post on X from Friday, encouraging Cubans — whose suffering the Trump administration has compounded with sanctions designed to fuel a national uprising — to “create the change you desire” by partnering with the CIA.

That sure sounds like “Come work with the CIA to help us topple your government,” which explains why the negative replies were replete with Bay of Pigs references and other “coup” talk.

It’s not exactly a secret that the CIA has been used by U.S. governments to undermine foreign governments and activist groups. But there’s a kind of brazen idiocy in thinking it was a good idea to offer such partnerships in such a public fashion.

Think about it: Even Cubans who might be open to such an offer would be wise to question the judgment of an administration that would so willingly broadcast it for all to see on Elon Musk’s pornography- and racism-filled platform.

And anyone not legally in the U.S. who agrees to help the administration topple Cuba’s government will need to acknowledge the harsh reality that aiding Trump’s CIA wouldn’t necessarily stop the president’s immigration officials from targeting them down the line.

And as former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul noted, Trump’s support for authoritarian figures elsewhere should give pause to any Cubans considering Rubio’s offer.

Trump does not care about upholding democratic principles in the Western Hemisphere, or anywhere for that matter. His administration has aligned itself with authoritarian-style leaders across Central America and South America. Now, it’s eyeing regime change in Cuba — and looking to draft confederates in one of the most glaring ways possible.

The post Rubio uses social media to urge Cuban turncoats to work with CIA appeared first on MS NOW.

Mississippi Republicans’ newfound objection to AI-generated ads is the latest sign that MAGA world is fretting over the state’s U.S. Senate race.

The Democratic candidate, Scott Colom, said late last week that his campaign would delete an ad created with the help of artificial intelligence tools that depicted his Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, hurrying away from reporters, as she has done before. The ad has been online for weeks, but Mississippi’s Republican attorney general demanded that Colom’s campaign take it down.

According to Mississippi Today:

Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch said Friday that Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, likely violated state law with a digital ad that featured an artificial intelligence-generated depiction of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith running away from reporters.

Colom told Mississippi Today he would delete the post because he didn’t want Fitch to launch litigation with taxpayer money. That came after Fitch sent Colom a complaint letter demanding that he remove that ad from his social media accounts. If he did not, the complaint said, the attorney general’s office could file an injunction against him.

“As violations of this election integrity law can carry criminal penalties, Attorney General Fitch has also asked Scott Colom and his campaign to preserve all records related to this matter so as not to obstruct justice,” the statement reads.

The article quotes Colom as saying Hyde-Smith is “clearly desperate” and that her allies are attempting to “weaponize the justice system to distract from the real issues, which is that she has sold out our farmers, sold out our small businesses, and sold out our families.”

You can judge for yourself whether you believe the Mississippi GOP truly cares about the scourge of AI-generated political ads, but the party’s fierce support for President Donald Trump — whose social media feeds have become cesspools of political AI slop — raises doubt in my mind.

What seems more likely to me is that Mississippi Republicans are trying to undercut Colom’s campaign, which has already garnered laughter for another ad targeting Hyde-Smith — in a midterm race the GOP didn’t think would be competitive.

Republicans have reportedly voiced concerns that Hyde-Smith’s Senate seat appears to be in play for Democrats in next week’s election, amid backlash toward Trump and the GOP. The fact that the president scheduled a rally in Mississippi one week out from Election Day reflects such concerns, despite forecasters giving Hyde-Smith the edge in their estimates of how the race will shake out. The GOP candidate has said Trump would come campaign for her “if I get in trouble,” and it looks like that’s what’s happening.

Short of a victory, one could argue that Colom improving on Democratic Senate nominee Mike Espy’s 2020 election numbers would be a remarkable feat for liberal activists in Mississippi, which boasts the largest percentage of Black eligible voters out of any state in the country but has — with help from decades of racist voter suppression — remained almost exclusively under control of white conservatives.

Colom is looking to change that. His ads prove that his campaign has the GOP’s attention — and help support Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s argument that Democrats need to invest more heavily in Southern states.

The post In Mississippi’s Senate race, GOP targets Democratic candidate’s ad appeared first on MS NOW.

Ramallah - Driving in the occupied West Bank, motorists are confronted with a barrage of campaign billboards for the Israeli elections.

The messages are geared towards Israeli settlers in the territory, not the Palestinians barred from voting.

Many of the posters express support for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Jewish Power party, as he draws his core voter base from settlers.

But there are also numerous posters for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party, including an ominous ad along the road to Jerusalem featuring Zohran Mamdani and Ayatollah Khomeini, warning against the power of Palestinian allies.

Against this radicalised backdrop, Israelis will head to the polls on Tuesday in an election that many hope will spell the end of Netanyahu’s 19-year non-consecutive rule as prime minister.

The election comes in the wake of growing domestic resentment against Netanyahu over reports of his advanced knowledge of the 7 October attacks. 

Netanyahu’s Likud is seemingly facing an uphill battle against a bloc of four Jewish opposition parties that have joined forces to defeat him: the Yashar party, the Democrats, the Yisrael Beitenu party, and the Together alliance.

After the bloc’s establishment, the parties announced their goal was to “preserve and strengthen Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”. 

The elections are projected to be a near deadlock with no bloc winning an absolute majority. That outcome would trigger a period of negotiations and coalition building, where different parties must agree to come together to form a government.

But as settler violence reaches record levels in the West Bank, many Palestinians are left wondering: will any electoral outcome change the facts on the ground?

West Bank violence surges ahead of election

Approximately 750,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem today, illegal under international law.

The settlers comprise a disproportionately powerful bloc in Israeli politics, despite accounting for around 7-8% of the total Israeli population.

Under Netanyahu’s current administration, which has brought settlers from the far-right fringes into a governing coalition, the settlers’ political influence has coincided with a rapid acceleration of settlement expansion.

But it’s unlikely that another government would slow the pace of settlement building.

“In order to ameliorate pressure from the settler lobby, the left often are tempted to expand settlements even more than the right,” Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a political commentator and former Israeli diplomat, tells The New Arab.

“It [the opposition winning] might even lead to an increase in settlement construction in order to pay them off for concessions.”

As settlements expand, so does the pressure on Palestinians living nearby. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded an average of six settler attacks per day this year thus far.

Those numbers were released before the autumnal olive harvest commenced, when violence dramatically escalates as settlers launch coordinated attacks against Palestinian farmers in their olive groves.

And after two Palestinian gunmen opened fire on an Israeli checkpoint on 23 October, Ben-Gvir suggested that Palestinians should be barred from driving on the roads in the West Bank - or the land of Judea and Samaria, as he refers to it.

The Israeli army subsequently launched a collective punishment operation and began home demolitions across the neighbourhood where the shooters hailed from, displacing 400 families thus far.

Netanyahu has promised the biggest military occupation in the West Bank since 1967, though many experts say he may be bluffing to bolster support for Likud ahead of the elections. 

The election will now take place against a backdrop of expanding settlements, escalating settler violence, and increasingly severe restrictions on Palestinian movement, fuelling fears that tensions across the West Bank are near boiling point.

“There are a lot of people in the Israeli security forces who want Palestinians to have a better quality of life, just so that the West Bank doesn't explode into another Intifada,” says Ben-Ephraim.

Projected electoral outcomes

Netanyahu’s main rival, Gadi Eisenkot of Yashar!, is seen as the leading centrist alternative for Prime Minister.

Eisenkot has promised to rein in settler violence while firmly opposing a two-state solution. Once the Israeli army Chief of Staff, Eisenkot was the architect of the Dahiyeh Doctrine in 2006, which advocates "disproportionate force” against Israel’s perceived enemies. 

“None of the Israeli governments that would come is going to give a Palestinian state to the Palestinians, but change may come, depending on how you define change,” Muhanned Qafesha, a Palestinian journalist from Hebron, tells The New Arab.

An Eisenkot government could mean greater restrictions on settler violence and a slight change in settlement policy, without fundamentally interfering with the settler project.

Alternatively, if Netanyahu secures another term or temporarily heads a caretaker government if a stalemate arises, the settlers in his administration may feel their time is limited and accelerate their existing plans for the annexation of the West Bank.

As it stands, neither major political bloc is projected to secure the 61 seats needed for a majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament.

While the opposition bloc has sworn not to form a coalition with either of the Palestinian parties on the ballot - the left-leaning Joint List and the United Arab List (Ra’am) - that pledge may not hold, as they could be a potential lifeline to forming a government.

“The two Arab parties can maybe win like 15 seats or something, and this will make a huge difference because if they can make a coalition with the opposition, they can kick out Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir,” Qafesha tells The New Arab.

“I do believe that the opposition in Israel is saying they won’t form a coalition with the Arabs because they want to get as many votes from the Jewish community as possible. But if they need the Arab parties to form a coalition to kick out Netanyahu, they might do it,” he adds. 

But any coalition will also depend on parties that oppose Palestinian statehood, and thus a fundamental shift in Israel’s approach to the occupation is virtually impossible.

Even if Eisenkot eventually forms a government, his fragile coalition across the ideological spectrum would struggle to agree on significant changes towards settlement policy in the West Bank. 

Will the opposition improve life in the West Bank?

The 3.4 million Palestinians living in the West Bank under military occupation cannot vote in Israeli elections, but Palestinian citizens of Israel can.

Arab voters have long boycotted Israeli elections, but there has been a recent push for their participation - with a record turnout for the group anticipated.

The vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank want Palestinian citizens of Israel to vote in the elections to improve their daily lives, explains Qafesha, who himself cannot vote.

He believes an administration without settlers at the helm may alleviate some of the daily struggles in the West Bank.

“We live in hell. We just want to breathe,” Qafesha says. 

But if Netanyahu finally goes down, some Palestinians believe Western governments may attempt to rehabilitate Israel’s image under a new administration - and lift the recent round of European sanctions against settlements that were years in the making.

“The upcoming election is between fascists and ultra-fascists. If Netanyahu loses the chance to lead the next government, his loss can be used to alleviate the pressure that is just starting to build from the international community,” Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of Palestine’s Natural History Museum in Bethlehem, tells The New Arab.

Yet Qafesha remains adamant that the reality on the ground is more important than the views of the international community, which could promote a new government as an example of Israel’s return to democracy.

“Over the past three years, Israel has killed more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza. What has the world done for us? Has anything changed in our life? I don't want the view of the world to change at the expense of the blood of Palestinian children, whether it's in Gaza, West Bank, or Jerusalem,” says Qafesha.

An opposition government less reliant on far-right parties could potentially curb some of the policies driving unchecked violence and forced displacement, ameliorating a few of the numerous obstacles to a dignified life under occupation. But any improvement would likely be limited in scope.

“If the opposition wins, the intensity of the ethnic cleansing will probably somewhat lessen, but it's only temporary,” concludes Ben-Ephraim.

“I think that the Israeli public opinion has turned so far in favour of genocide and ethnic cleansing that it will just be a respite at best.”

Kate McMahon is a freelance journalist and foreign correspondent focused on the Middle East and South Asia. She reports on environmental change, human rights, and geopolitical conflicts

Follow her on Instagram: @katemontanaa

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler has clarified that Turkey will retain its military presence in Iraq and Syria until certain conditions are met.

The original justifications for Turkey’s cross-border deployments have dwindled in recent years. Now, analysts believe Ankara is offering new justifications for its open-ended military presence in these neighbouring states.

“We are maintaining our military presence in Iraq and Syria,” Guler said in a recent interview.

“When we assess that the necessary conditions have been met in terms of regional and border security, the status of our base areas and our presence in the region will be reconsidered.”

Open-ended conditions

Turkey sent troops into Syria in 2016. Its cross-border operations primarily focused on targeting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The SDF were a coalition formed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)’s main Syria affiliate, which became an invaluable ad hoc US ally against Islamic State (IS).

Early this year, following a Turkish-backed offensive by the new Syrian government of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the SDF agreed to integrate its fighters into the new Syrian military.

Complete SDF integration could remove Turkey’s decade-long justification for retaining troops in much of northern Syria.

“Ankara conditions its decision to withdraw from Syria not only on border security and the elimination of the terrorist threat in Syria, but also on the al-Sharaa government’s ability to establish state authority throughout the country,” Suleyman Ozeren, a lecturer at the American University and senior fellow at the Orion Policy Institute, told The New Arab.

“This condition could signal Ankara’s desire to maintain a Turkish military presence and use it as leverage against, for example, Israel if tensions in southern Syria escalate into military confrontation between Syria and Israel.”

Consequently, Turkey’s military presence in Syria may continue even if there is a successful Kurdish peace process in Turkey.

“There may be mainly two minimal conditions: the total and actual disarmament of the PKK-linked groups in both Iraq and Syria, and the absence of Israeli military pressure on Syria,” Ozeren said.

In Iraq, Turkey has made repeated forays into northern Iraq’s Nineveh province and Iraqi Kurdistan as part of the conflict with the PKK. Turkey has had bases in these areas since the 1990s.

In the second half of the 2010s, it advanced deeper into the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, establishing and maintaining a vast network of outposts and forward-operating bases in strategic areas to relentlessly pressure the Kurdish fighters.

Now, with a major peace effort underway aimed at having the PKK lay down its arms for amnesties and a conclusive end to the conflict possibly on the horizon, Turkey’s justifications for these bases could become defunct.

Muaz Al-Abdullah, Middle East Research Manager at the conflict-tracking organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), specified that Guler’s remarks aren’t a withdrawal signal.

Rather, he was merely articulating the “latest version of an open-ended condition” which Ankara adjusts as events change.

“In 2024, Turkey tied any exit from Syria to a new constitution, elections and full border security. Earlier this year it said the Damascus-SDF deal was still not enough,” Abdullah told The New Arab.

“Withdrawal is possible, because the presence is costly for Turkey economically and politically, but it will be slow and conditional.”

He also outlined how the minimum conditions for withdrawal differ by country.

“In Iraq, the PKK must be disarmed and out of Sinjar and Qandil,” Abdullah said.

“Since the (Turkey-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia) Mecca alliance, Ankara’s concerns now also include the weapons of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and the threat they pose to Turkey’s ally Saudi Arabia, including PMF drone attacks on the Kingdom,” he added.

“In Syria, the minimum is a completed SDF integration, PKK cadres out of the northeast, and a Syrian army able to hold the border on its own.”

Reality on the ground

ACLED data has documented a rapid decrease in Turkish strikes in Iraqi Kurdistan in the past two years since the latest PKK peace talks began. In 2024, Turkey executed 4,861 strikes in the region. That fell rapidly to 634 in 2025, then to zero so far in 2026.

“The security case for staying is weakening, but the political conditions are not yet met,” Abdullah said.

In September, Turkey agreed to gradually withdraw from the Bashiqa base in Nineveh in tandem with Iraq’s removal of PKK-affiliated fighters from Nineveh’s Sinjar, the homeland of the Yazidi minority subjected to the 2014 IS genocide.

Abdullah described Turkey’s willingness to hand over Bashiqa as a “low-cost concession” rather than the start of any strategic withdrawal. Turkey only established its presence there a decade ago to train local forces battling IS. It is also the furthest base from Turkey’s border.

Nevertheless, it’s important since it is linked to a network of forward bases along the border that support Turkey’s broader counter-PKK mission.

“The handover is also a trade, not a gesture,” Abdullah said. “In return, Baghdad committed to establishing full state authority in Sinjar and removing PKK-linked groups."

The agreement also specifies a “gradual handover” tied to security steps taken on the Iraqi side. As a result, the withdrawal timeline is wide open to delay.

“The real test is on the ground,” Abdullah said. “An Iraqi commander expects Bashiqa to be vacated by the end of this year. If it is, that is a genuine signal. A phased withdrawal begins only when the forward bases start closing, not Bashiqa.”

Therefore, statements and agreements don’t reflect reality on the ground. What would be considered a clear signal that the Turkish withdrawal has begun, the ACLED expert added, is an “actual withdrawal on the ground rather than another statement of agreement between the two sides.”

Syria's status quo

Turkey’s support for Syrian government forces in their January offensive against the SDF proved vital. Ankara is still supporting Syrian government forces in their efforts to establish complete authority in hitherto SDF-controlled areas.

The situation remains unsettled, with ACLED’s Abdullah pointing to reports of armed groups, including the PKK-affiliated Revolutionary Youth Movement, opposed to the Damascus-SDF agreement still operating in those areas. Still, Turkey-Syria collaboration isn’t limited to the SDF. 

“Basically, while the Turkish concerns are mainly related to the SDF/PKK activities in Syria, it is also related to the IS activities in Syria,” Abdullah said.

“So yes, the nature of the Syrian-Turkish relationship has changed mostly from cross-border operations and military support on the ground to more of intelligence and training collaboration.”

In his interview last week, Guler noted that Turkey has established “close coordination in the field of security” with Syria’s post-Assad authorities and seeks to “strengthen the capacity” of the new armed forces “to ensure the security of our borders.”

“While the al-Sharaa government has been pushing to take full control of the northern border and end Turkish military control there, Ankara has been pushing for at least a measured understanding with Damascus that would allow Turkish military presence to continue,” Ozeren said.

The Orion Policy Institute’s senior fellow contends that if the present Kurdish resolution process ultimately results in the PKK’s total disarmament and the return under amnesty of ex-PKK fighters to Turkey, then Ankara’s pretext for its military presence in Iraq will become unviable.

“However, two developments could alter the security landscape across the region: an expansion of the Saudi-led conflict with Iran-backed Houthis into a regional conflict, and an escalation of the US and Israel war against Iran into ground operations,” Ozeren told The New Arab.

“Such developments would force non-state actors, including PMFs in Iraq and PKK-linked groups in Iran and even Iraq, to reconsider current arrangements.”

That possibility could especially become a reality if Turkey decides to “pursue military involvement” through its commitments under the Mecca Defence Pact.

"If, and this is a big if, Damascus establishes full governance across the country, Turkey’s security- and defence-oriented influence may diminish, as the al-Sharaa government has tried to diversify its defence and military engagements with other actors,” he said.

In September, President al-Sharaa said that his country is “now entering the stage of giving legal status to the Turkish bases in northwestern Syria,” subject to the approval of the Syrian People’s Assembly.

He clarified that Syria does not have a long-term need for such foreign bases but also wants to “maintain diplomatic relations and mutual respect with neighbouring and friendly countries.”

ACLED’s Abdullah assesses that Sharaa’s statement implies that Syria doesn’t want any long-term Turkish presence on its soil to avoid turning the country into an arena of regional conflict.

That is especially urgent considering the growing tension between Turkey and Israel, which could transform Syria into a flashpoint between these two regional heavyweights.

Israel’s repeated targeting of Syrian airbases that Turkey evaluated for potential use demonstrated how quickly Turkey’s presence could potentially draw Syria into a regional confrontation.

“At the same time, Damascus cannot yet do without Turkish support,” Abdullah said. “As-Suweida remains unresolved, and IS and other groups may expand their activity.”

“Legal status for the bases is Damascus’s way of regulating Turkey’s presence now, so it can reduce that presence later."

In early August, Syria reached a memorandum of understanding on the future conditions of Russia’s access to the coastal naval and air bases of Tartus and Hmeimim under which the bases will become joint training centres after a three-month transitional process.

While Abdullah anticipates that’s the direction Damascus is pushing regarding the Turkish presence, he stressed that any comparison with Russia has significant limits.

“Russia’s presence is two bases far from Syria’s borders, and their value to Moscow is regional reach," he said. “Turkey’s presence sits on a 900-km land border and is tied to a security concern Ankara considers existential. That makes it much harder to reduce to a residual training mission.”

“Expect a smaller footprint over several years, but not a Turkey that fully leaves northern Syria.”

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, who writes about Middle East affairs.

Follow him on Twitter: @pauliddon

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

Reports have continued to circulate about a possible deployment of Syrian fighters to Yemen despite Damascus' denials.

But analysts who spoke to The New Arab said such a move was unlikely given Syria’s own domestic security challenges, and suggested that any military support to Saudi Arabia against the Houthis could take other forms, without involving troops on Yemeni territory.

Citing unnamed Yemeni intelligence sources, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that Riyadh and Damascus had held talks on transferring up to 10,000 Syrian fighters to Yemen.

It said a Syrian military delegation had recently visited the Saudi capital and the kingdom’s southern regions to assess the proposed deployment.

According to the newspaper, Brigadier General Khaled Khattab, formerly leader of the Ansar al-Tawhid faction and now commander of the 82nd Division in the new Syrian army, spent four days in the southern Saudi regions of Asir and Najran, accompanied by Saudi officers. The delegation reportedly visited sites being prepared to receive Syrian fighters.

Meanwhile, Brigadier General Haitham al-Ali, also known as Abu Muslim, commander of the army’s Third Corps and a former Hayat Tahrir al-Sham commander, was said to have met Saudi officers at the defence ministry in Riyadh to discuss the costs of transferring around 10,000 fighters, financial arrangements, benefits and their expected military role. Al-Akhbar said the delegation had finalised logistical preparations for the transfer.

The New Arab could not independently verify Al-Akhbar’s claims.

Could Syria support Riyadh without entering Yemen?

Muaz al-Abdallah, a Syria analyst at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), told The New Arab that any Syrian military support to Saudi Arabia would not necessarily involve deploying troops inside Yemen.

He said one possibility was that Syrian forces could be sent to help protect Saudi Arabia’s southern border, rather than take part directly in the fighting against the Houthis on Yemeni territory. Al-Abdallah said this statement left open the possibility of military cooperation with Riyadh, even if Damascus maintained that it had not deployed forces inside Yemen.

"Damascus has said it has not sent forces to Yemen, while also expressing support for Saudi security and saying military cooperation would take place through official channels and bilateral agreements," Al-Abdallah said.

He added that deploying Syrian personnel to the Saudi side of the border would not necessarily contradict the government’s denial that it had sent forces to Yemen, but could instead represent another way of supporting Riyadh.

Al-Abdallah suggested that Saudi Arabia could increase its financial assistance and investments in Syria’s reconstruction in return for military support.

Syrian drone expertise could help Saudi Arabia

Al-Abdallah also pointed to the potential for Syria to offer expertise in drone operations, particularly given its forces' experience operating drones during the war against Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. He said drones had played an important role in the lightning rebel offensive that toppled Assad, giving Syrian forces considerable experience in their use.

That expertise could prove useful to Saudi Arabia amid its confrontation with the Houthis, particularly if cooperation were to involve training or the use of smaller attack drones.

Al-Akhbar also reported that Syrian drone specialists were already involved in training forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and that Syrian operators had helped establish drone units within Saudi emergency forces. However, these claims have not been independently verified.

Despite the reports, Al-Abdallah said ACLED had not documented evidence of Syrian fighters currently operating in Yemen. The organisation had found no reports of Syrian casualties, captured fighters or funerals linked to a deployment there, he said, noting that such evidence had helped establish the presence of Syrian fighters in other conflict zones, including Libya.

Al-Abdallah also questioned reports, including those published by Axios, that Syria could send its 84th Division to Yemen. He said the division was deployed around Suweida, in southern Syria, which remains largely outside the central government’s control after last year's sectarian clashes.

"Given the situation there, and reports of heavy Israeli arming of the National Guard and a possible escalation with the Syrian government, I don’t see how this division would leave Suweida," he said.

Syria's unresolved issues make deployment unlikely

The prospect of Syria deploying fighters to Yemen remains unlikely given the transitional government’s security challenges at home, according to Benjamin Schmida, a Middle East researcher at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Schmida told The New Arab that Saudi Arabia likely requested that Syria send forces to Yemen, but Damascus appears to have declined.

"It does not seem like these discussions proceeded very far beyond consulting CENTCOM," he said, adding that the Syrian government’s public rejection of the request suggested the talks had not continued.

Schmida said it remained unclear what forces Syria could realistically deploy, given the security challenges facing the country, including Kurdish areas in the northeast, Druze militia control over Suweida, sporadic Islamic State group attacks, and repeated Israeli incursions in the southwest.

He also cautioned against assuming that foreign fighters integrated into Syria’s military would be available for deployment abroad.

"Foreign fighters, such as Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party fighters that are integrated into the Syrian Defence Ministry, represent some of Syria’s most elite units," he said.

"The Syrian government likely views integrated foreign fighters, including the Uyghurs, as vital assets for Syria's defence and internal security that must remain in Syria in the event of a future crisis."

Would Syrian fighters change the balance in Yemen?

The possibility of transferring foreign fighters to Yemen was also raised in Al-Akhbar's report, which suggested that Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Afghans, and Chechens who joined Syrian opposition factions before Assad’s fall could be among those considered for deployment.

However, Schmida said the potential impact of any Syrian deployment would depend on the number of fighters sent and where they were integrated into the conflict.

Axios recently reported that Syria could send between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters. Schmida said this would represent a sizeable proportion of Syria’s total army manpower and could meaningfully bolster forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government, whose forces he estimated at around 100,000.

But he noted that the Houthis are a much larger force, while government-aligned fighters remain spread across several frontlines, including Taiz, Marib, and Jawf.

More importantly, he said, sending additional fighters would not necessarily address the divisions undermining the Yemeni government’s war effort.

"Merely sending more fighters - though they may be experienced - is unlikely to solve one of the primary challenges for the Yemeni government in its war against the Houthis: its own internal disunity," Schmida said.

He pointed to the political fragmentation and poor military coordination among government-aligned forces, warning that they could struggle to integrate Syrian fighters effectively, limiting their ability to change conditions on the battlefield.

Ultimately, Schmida said a meaningful Syrian deployment was unlikely "at this time or in the foreseeable future," as the government’s focus on domestic stability took precedence over Saudi requests.

While Riyadh could potentially use aid and investment to encourage Damascus to provide military support, he warned that doing so "could risk souring the Syrian-Saudi relationship and pushing Syria closer to Turkey or Saudi rivals like the UAE".

Louay Faour is a journalist at The New Arab focusing largely on the Levant, with a particular interest in Lebanese affairs

Follow him on X: @LouayFaour 

Serbia has achieved something that appeared improbable only months ago. Aleksandar Vučić, who dominated the country’s political institutions for more than a decade, has acknowledged electoral defeat. A movement born from student demonstrations against corruption is now preparing to take power. Yet the most consequential struggle may only be beginning.

The parliamentary election of 25 October represents more than the rejection of an increasingly centralised political leadership. It raises a fundamental question about the Serbian state: whether the institutions shaped by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) can function independently of the political organisation that controlled them.

According to preliminary figures released by Serbia’s Republic Electoral Commission, the Student List secured 52.54 per cent of the vote against 39.29 per cent for Vučić’s United Serbia coalition, with 8,077 of 8,392 polling stations counted. Projections give the students approximately 140 seats in the 250-member National Assembly, enough to govern without coalition partners.

Vučić had resigned from the presidency in September, hoping to return to power as prime minister. Instead, the election deprived him of the parliamentary majority necessary to complete that manoeuvre. His concession has substantially reduced the immediate prospect of a disputed transfer of power, although the election results still require formal certification.

But losing an election and losing control of a political system are not necessarily the same thing.

The political inheritance of the 1990s

Vučić’s political career provides important context for understanding the significance of his defeat.

He entered politics through the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, led by Vojislav Šešelj, and served as information minister in Slobodan Milošević’s government from 1998. During that period, Serbian authorities employed restrictive media legislation against independent newspapers and broadcasters, imposing substantial financial penalties and limiting critical reporting.

After Milošević’s removal in 2000, Vučić remained politically active. His subsequent association with the Serbian Progressive Party, formed in 2008 following a split within the Radical Party, allowed him to reposition himself as a politician promising economic modernisation and European integration.

This transformation proved remarkably successful.

The SNS came to power in 2012, and Vučić subsequently served as prime minister and president. Serbia attracted foreign investment, undertook major infrastructure projects and maintained its formal ambition of joining the European Union. At the same time, political authority became increasingly concentrated around Vučić and his associates.

The distinction between Serbia under Milošević and Serbia under Vučić should not be overlooked. The former governed during the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and pursued policies that brought international isolation. The latter operated through electoral institutions, international economic partnerships and a declared European orientation.

Nevertheless, Vučić’s political career illustrates a continuity in personnel and political methods that Serbia’s post-2000 democratic transition never entirely resolved.

The OSCE’s assessment of Serbia’s 2023 parliamentary elections documented advantages enjoyed by the governing party, political pressure on public employees, media bias and the misuse of state resources. These findings demonstrated how electoral competition could continue while the conditions under which parties competed became increasingly unequal.

The Student List has now broken that pattern at the ballot box. Whether it can prevent its reconstruction remains uncertain.

Why the students succeeded

The immediate origins of the political upheaval lie in the November 2024 collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people.

The disaster became a symbol of wider concerns about public procurement, construction oversight and political accountability. Demonstrations demanding responsibility subsequently developed into a nationwide movement challenging the government’s legitimacy.

As EU Today previously examined, the protests exposed a deeper conflict between Serbian society and institutions widely perceived by demonstrators as serving political interests rather than the public.

Unlike established opposition parties, the student movement did not depend on a familiar political leader or traditional party machinery. It mobilised university communities, academics, professionals and citizens who had previously remained outside organised political activity.

Its central demand was institutional accountability rather than a comprehensive ideological programme.

That distinction was crucial. By concentrating on corruption, democratic standards and the functioning of the state, the movement attracted voters with differing views on nationalism, foreign policy and European integration.

However, the same diversity that helped it win the election could complicate governing. Its candidates must now agree on economic priorities, ministerial appointments, foreign relations and the extent of institutional reform.

A protest movement can unite around opposition to a political leader. A government must reach agreement on decisions that inevitably divide its supporters.

Russia’s influence will not disappear with Vučić

One of the most important consequences of the election concerns Serbia’s relationship with Moscow.

Throughout his presidency, Vučić cultivated the image of a leader capable of maintaining productive relations with Brussels, Moscow and Beijing simultaneously.

Serbia continued its EU accession negotiations and benefited substantially from European investment and trade. Yet Belgrade consistently refused to join the principal European sanctions against Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The contradiction was particularly striking because Serbia’s economic relationship with the EU vastly outweighs its trade with Russia.

The European Commission’s assessment found that the EU accounted for 58.3 per cent of Serbia’s total trade in 2024. European markets, investment and regulatory structures have therefore become fundamental to the Serbian economy.

Vučić nevertheless preserved close political links with Moscow, benefiting domestically from nationalist sentiment and Russia’s diplomatic support for Serbia’s position on Kosovo.

He also attempted to demonstrate that relations with Russia did not preclude cooperation with Ukraine.

In June 2025, Vučić travelled to Odesa for the Ukraine–Southeast Europe Summit, where he met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and reaffirmed Serbia’s support for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Serbia provided humanitarian assistance to Ukraine but declined to sign the summit’s joint declaration. Its continuing refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow remained the most substantial distinction between Serbian policy and the EU position.

Yet a Student List government would not necessarily reverse that policy.

In September, the movement explicitly declared its opposition to imposing sanctions on Russia, referring to Serbia’s historical experience with international restrictive measures.

Vučić nevertheless predicted during his concession speech that the incoming government would introduce sanctions against Moscow by March or April. He also attributed his defeat to interference by European governments and what he called the American “deep state”, supposedly opposed to President Donald Trump.

His prediction about sanctions was therefore inconsistent with the movement’s publicly stated position.

This exposes an important misconception about Serbia’s political transformation. Opposition to Vučić does not automatically translate into support for every element of EU foreign policy. Serbian public attitudes towards Russia, Kosovo and national sovereignty extend beyond the electorate traditionally associated with the SNS.

The new government may pursue closer integration with European institutions while retaining positions that Brussels considers incompatible with membership.

The economic structures behind political influence

The challenge extends beyond diplomatic relationships.

Russia’s presence in Serbia includes strategic energy interests, notably its controlling shareholding in Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), which operates the country’s principal oil refinery.

American sanctions against the Russian-owned company have complicated its operations, while negotiations over the proposed acquisition of the Russian stake by Hungary’s MOL Group illustrate how energy security, foreign ownership and international sanctions have become interconnected.

For an incoming administration, reducing such dependencies will require commercial negotiations, regulatory oversight and alternative energy supplies. Political declarations cannot achieve these objectives on their own.

Equally important will be the examination of public contracts and relationships between political officeholders and businesses that benefited from government decisions.

The European Commission’s 2025 Serbia report identified persistent corruption concerns, insufficient transparency in major infrastructure procurement and weaknesses in institutional accountability.

Any investigation into alleged wrongdoing under Vučić must be independent, evidence-based and subject to judicial scrutiny. Allegations of corruption do not themselves establish criminal responsibility.

A government elected to restore the rule of law would undermine its own mandate if it replaced politically selective justice with prosecutions directed by a new political majority.

The central objective must be to ensure that prosecutors, courts and oversight bodies can investigate former as well as current officials without political interference.

Brussels faces a test of its own

For the European Union, the election provides an opportunity to reconsider its approach towards Belgrade.

For years, European institutions confronted a government that professed commitment to EU membership while resisting reforms considered essential to the accession process.

In July 2026, the European Parliament adopted a resolution stressing that Serbia’s negotiations should advance only when measurable improvements are achieved in the rule of law, judicial independence, media freedom and the fight against corruption. Parliament also called for alignment with EU sanctions against Russia.

The Student List’s victory may improve the prospects for domestic institutional reform, but the disagreement over sanctions remains unresolved. Brussels cannot assume that a new Serbian government will satisfy every accession requirement simply because it defeated Vučić.

Nor should it overlook the political significance of the result.

The movement’s strongest mandate concerns the restoration of public accountability. Supporting independent institutions, transparent procurement and genuinely competitive elections would address both Serbian public demands and longstanding EU concerns.

There is also the unresolved question of Kosovo. A change of government in Belgrade does not remove the political and constitutional difficulties surrounding relations with Pristina. The new leadership will inherit negotiations that have repeatedly stalled under previous administrations.

The EU will therefore need to distinguish between areas where rapid progress is possible and disputes that require more sustained diplomacy.

The difference between victory and democratic transition

Serbia has removed one of the central figures of its post-Yugoslav political order from government. It has not yet demonstrated that the system surrounding him can be dismantled through constitutional means.

The immediate tasks are substantial: forming an effective cabinet, protecting the independence of prosecutors, scrutinising public expenditure, reforming media regulation and ensuring that state institutions no longer operate as extensions of the governing party.

A separate presidential election must also follow Vučić’s September resignation, adding another important stage to the transition.

The greatest danger is not simply that the former governing party could eventually return to office. Electoral competition must allow that possibility in any democracy.

The more consequential danger is that the political methods associated with Vučić’s administration could survive under different leadership.

Serbia’s experience after Milošević demonstrated that removing a dominant political figure does not necessarily eliminate the structures, interests and habits of government accumulated during his rule.

The student movement has now been given an opportunity to confront that unfinished transition.

Its success will ultimately be measured not by the political fate of Aleksandar Vučić, but by whether Serbia develops institutions capable of investigating misconduct, restricting the arbitrary use of power and operating independently of whichever party wins the next election.

That would represent a more fundamental transformation than the defeat of any single political leader.

European leaders are considering appointing a senior representative to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine. But the search exposes a more fundamental problem: whether Europe can transform its economic strength, military resources and political influence into an independent capacity to shape its own security.

Europe is searching for someone capable of negotiating with Vladimir Putin. Yet the question confronting European capitals is considerably more difficult than identifying a politician with sufficient experience, authority and diplomatic skill. It is whether Europe possesses the political unity and strategic independence to negotiate with Moscow on equal terms.

According to diplomatic accounts published on 22nd October, five European leaders have emerged as possible representatives: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Czech President Petr Pavel, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

No appointment has been announced, and a group of negotiators may ultimately prove more acceptable than a single representative. The initiative reflects concern that Washington’s negotiations with Moscow could produce arrangements affecting European security without sufficient European influence over their terms.

The European Commission insists that the EU is already participating in diplomatic consultations, including discussions held in Oslo on 20th October. But participation in preliminary meetings is not the same as possessing the authority to determine the outcome.

The paradox of European power

Europe’s predicament contains an extraordinary contradiction. The European Union is among Ukraine’s principal financial supporters. Its governments provide military assistance, maintain sanctions against Russia and control decisions affecting Moscow’s future access to European markets. Nevertheless, European capitals remain concerned that the decisive political framework for ending the war could be negotiated principally between Washington and Moscow.

This anxiety has intensified under President Donald Trump, whose transactional approach increasingly treats diplomatic settlements as exchanges of economic concessions and strategic advantages.

As EU Today recently examined, proposals involving sanctions relief, renewed energy cooperation and commercial opportunities raise the possibility of arrangements that depend upon European consent but are negotiated elsewhere.

Washington can discuss reopening economic relations with Russia. It cannot independently reverse European sanctions, guarantee Ukraine’s accession to the EU or decide the continent’s future security arrangements. The European Council explicitly reaffirmed this distinction in its conclusions of 16th October, insisting that decisions affecting the Union’s security and responsibilities belong to Europe itself.

The central issue is therefore not whether Europe has influence, but whether it can organise that influence into a coherent negotiating position.

Why Ukraine must help choose Europe’s representative

An equally important weakness would arise if European governments selected their representative without making Kyiv an integral participant in the decision.

Ukraine is not merely the geographical subject of negotiations. Its government controls whether a proposed settlement can acquire political legitimacy, while its armed forces determine much of what can be implemented on the ground.

A negotiated agreement rejected by Kyiv could neither reliably end the war nor provide the security arrangements that Europe seeks.

European security, moreover, can no longer be considered independently of Ukraine’s military capabilities. Ukrainian forces possess extensive operational experience against Russia, including in drone warfare, electronic warfare and long-range strikes.

Any future continental defence architecture that excludes this experience would disregard one of Europe’s most consequential military assets.

An effective European representative would therefore require a mandate developed jointly with Ukraine, rather than simply endorsed by European governments after the event.

The danger of negotiating without leverage

The proposed candidates illustrate the difficulty of combining political authority with negotiating credibility. Meloni possesses a working relationship with Trump and considerable influence within European conservative politics. Stubb combines experience of Russia’s immediate neighbourhood with access to Washington. Pavel brings military expertise and an understanding of NATO’s command structures. Yet none could independently commit Europe’s governments to financial, military or territorial-security obligations.

This is the fundamental weakness of the proposed office. A negotiator requires more than access to powerful leaders. The ability to make commitments, withhold concessions and impose costs is what gives diplomatic representation substance.

Europe possesses potentially significant instruments: sanctions, industrial capacity, financial assistance and growing defence expenditure. But these remain distributed across institutions and national governments with differing strategic priorities.

Poland, the Baltic states and Nordic governments approach Russian security threats differently from several Western and Southern European capitals. Reconciling those positions is not an administrative exercise. It is a prerequisite for meaningful diplomacy.

The historical shadow of Yalta

The search also reflects European concern about a return to great-power bargaining over the continent’s political geography.

The historical comparison frequently invoked is Yalta in 1945, when Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin discussed Europe’s post-war settlement. Munich in 1938 offers another warning about negotiating territorial concessions at the expense of directly affected states. Neither precedent precisely describes the present situation.

Unlike the countries subjected to Soviet domination after the Second World War, today’s European states possess established institutions, substantial economic resources and collective defence arrangements. Ukraine, meanwhile, has demonstrated that Russia cannot simply dictate its political future through military superiority.

Nevertheless, the danger lies in accepting the underlying principle that powerful states possess a privileged right to determine the sovereignty and security choices of their neighbours.

Moscow’s demands concerning NATO, Ukrainian territory and Europe’s wider security arrangements extend beyond any conventional ceasefire negotiation.

A European representative would have to challenge that premise rather than merely negotiate the geographical limits of Russian influence.

From diplomatic representation to strategic authority

The debate inevitably leads to Europe’s military dependence upon the United States. An American withdrawal from NATO is not inevitable. Indeed, US legislation restricts unilateral presidential withdrawal. But Washington could substantially reduce its military commitments without formally abandoning the alliance.

Europe must therefore consider how much independent military capacity it requires to support its diplomatic positions. That entails coordinated procurement, integrated military planning, sustainable defence production and deeper cooperation with Britain, Norway, Canada and Ukraine. Recent security challenges in the Black Sea illustrate the difficulty of converting European diplomatic commitments into effective collective action.

These developments would not automatically create a European army or replace NATO. They could, however, give European governments greater freedom to act if American priorities diverge from their own.

The relationship between military capability and diplomacy is particularly important in dealing with Moscow. European representatives cannot expect Russia to revise its demands simply because Brussels has selected a more prominent interlocutor.

Russia would have to conclude that continued aggression carries greater costs than a settlement respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty. Europe’s diplomatic standing would then derive not from the personality of its representative but from the collective resources and political commitments behind that individual.

The immediate search for a negotiator may appear a limited diplomatic initiative. Its implications are considerably larger.

For decades, European security rested upon an arrangement in which American military power compensated for Europe’s fragmented strategic authority. The present negotiations are exposing the limitations of that model. The decisive question is not whether Meloni, Stubb, Pavel or another European leader can secure a place at the negotiating table. It is whether Europe can establish a common position, backed by Ukraine’s consent and by sufficient economic and military power, that neither Washington nor Moscow can disregard.

Without those foundations, a European envoy risks becoming a participant in decisions made by others. With them, the appointment could mark the beginning of a substantially different European role in international security.

Israel is talking about the pickaxe mountain, where Iran is enriching uranium, and is making it a potential red line. Reportedly, leaders discussed a narrow 7-day window for joint military operations, and Trump’s response was a get-ready signal with no timeframe.

Ten days from the US midterm elections and three days left in the Israeli general election, Prime Minister Netanyahu broke his deafening silence and appeared at a formal military function. Netanyahu stressed the existential threat to Israel from Iran. He declared toppling Iran’s present regime as the only way in view of Mujtaba Khamenei’s ambitions for a nuclear weapon.

Abbas Iraqchi, in return, has also delivered a blunt message to the USA and Israel. He even accused Netanyahu of pushing Trump towards another War for political survival. War is likely to be used as a political lifeline. Today’s world is otherwise governed by underground forces, as stated recently by the British Prime Minister, and is being manifested from the US to Afghanistan, including my beloved country. Pakistan has recently tried to bring Tehran to the table at the highest level, but Iran remains firm on its demands of blockade lifting and asset freeze.

The US has conveyed the latest demand fornegotiation directly, also threatening the mother of all bombs shall manifestunprecedented destruction, inhalation, devastation, havoc, obliteration,demolition and wreckages for Iran and the World to see. Iran’sretort is even vicious and has threatened to bring the entire region engulfed in war even if a single attack is made. Iran warns to burn things to ashes with no limits, no hesitation or considerations. In the last 4 days, many military and diplomatic jets have flown in and out of Tehran.

America still wants to negotiate on its terms after 9 months of lingering conflict and continues to threaten with unimaginable intensity and shock. Three aircraft carriers with over200 aircraft alone claim to be burning to ashes the famous nuclear mountain of Iran. By making shallow claims, the US admits its failure that bombs used before were insufficient, while not giving any logic as to how this intensity shall guarantee success this time around.

However, Iran is confident it can survive another round of fighting if it happens. In reality, the USA has not created anything new in the technology of warfare domains in the last 9 months. Although three aircraft carriers and more troops have arrived, they are not nearby, and Iran has 24/7 surveillance with real-time satellite imagery, not static imagery.

A US victory, even if orchestrated brutally, will not be a defeat for Iran. The balance of power in the Middle East has shifted in the last 9 months. Expanding defence pacts coupled with exposed UAE-Israel-India nexuses and losing US grip over the region has left a vacuum in one of the important regions of the World.

The war in West Asia is about to escalate. Markets are already sensing the roar; oil prices are rising,stocks are falling, and crude oil has crossed 110 $ per barrel, meaning prices have effectively entered the danger zone. No short-term respite is foreseeable. European energy is being rationed, and the looming reality means Europe can no longer supply energy to its people; soon the rest of the world will face the same. US must choose wisely between sanctions, pressure and patience, bankruptcy, and bombs.

Desperation can lead to anything; Trump is desperate for a notion of victory, while Iran pledges to be ready for a doomsday scenario. Birds, animals, and even humans in the region are sensing disaster.

The post Looming Middle East Disaster appeared first on Daily Pakistan English News.

Damascus - Almost two years on from the fall of Assad’s regime in 2024, continued violence targeting Syria’s ethnic minorities is placing the country’s post-war recovery under strain as the government struggles to manage persistent sectarian tensions.

Earlier this month, pro-government demonstrators gathered in Kurdish areas of Hasakeh and Raqqa, vandalising Kurdish symbols and calling for the government to take full control of the region.

This comes amid the ongoing integration of the Kurdish-led SDF into the Syrian state.

The unrest followed a series of mob attacks and acts of vandalism targeting Christian homes, vehicles and shops in Al-Suqaylabiyah, a predominantly Greek Orthodox town in Hama province.

These are not isolated incidents. Post-Assad Syria has seen “several minority communities that have feared systemic discrimination and unfair treatment - particularly the Kurdish, Druze and Alawite communities,” Caroline Rose, a senior director at the Soufan Center, tells The New Arab.

Al-Suqaylabiyah has already experienced a previous spate of mob violence over the past year, while Syria continues to witness sectarian killings on an almost daily basis.

The country’s post-war recovery was also blighted by a series of massacres targeting Syria’s Alawite and Druze minorities in 2025.

Syria’s decade-long civil war deepened sectarian hostility. Assad sought to frame the conflict as a sectarian war between Syria’s minority communities and Sunni “Islamists” and “terrorists”.

As the revolution progressed, opposition to Assad became increasingly Islamist and sectarian in nature. During the conflict, communities on all sides were targeted, with many villages and neighbourhoods suffering killings and displacement.

The collapse of the regime saw many displaced communities return to their destroyed homes, in many cases living alongside those they believed had destroyed them in the first place.

While the government has repeatedly moved to clamp down on outbreaks of violence, two years into Syria’s “transitional period”, it has struggled to address many of the underlying grievances that allow disputes to escalate into communal violence.

Rebuilding trust in the security services 

It is this legacy of civil war grievances that allows disputes, often rooted in personal conflicts or criminal activity, to escalate into communal violence. The recent violence in Al-Suqaylabiyah began with a fight between two men, one of whom returned to his village to rally a mob.

Although Damascus has made efforts to deploy its security services to quell unrest, in many parts of Syria this does not necessarily create a greater sense of security among local communities.

“Local officials and security chiefs come mainly from the networks that toppled Assad, often recruited for their loyalty. Minority recruitment into the security forces remains limited,” explains Dr Nanar Hawach, an independent expert specialising in Syria, to The New Arab.

“The already few minority recruits mostly hold desk or traffic jobs, and the armed patrols in their areas are often drawn from elsewhere,” he adds. 

“As a result, many ethnic minority residents hesitate to report threats to the officers who patrol their streets, who they may not trust.”

Over the past two years, although the government has made significant strides in filling the security vacuum that emerged after the collapse of the regime, the Interior Ministry remains understaffed according to analysts.

One way to address this, alongside the communal sense of distrust, would be to encourage the recruitment and active deployment of security personnel from minority backgrounds, particularly in areas where minorities make up a substantial proportion of the local population.

However, Gregory Waters, an independent researcher and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, cautions against establishing a system of local communal policing on ethnic or religious lines which he believes in the long run may serve to “solidify sectarian divisions” by clearly demarcating that “this is a Christian town with Christian police, and that is a Sunni town with Sunni police”.

He argues that alongside more personnel, the local security services need to improve their coordination with local communities, in order to be quickly made aware of and pre-emptively halt sectarian mobilisations before they become violent.

However, analysts agree that establishing civil peace requires more than simply securitising the issue.

Achieving a sense of justice

Local disputes have long been common in many of these communities, although they have taken on a more sectarian character in post-Assad Syria because of grievances that emerged during the civil war.

“For many of those people returning home, seeing their hometowns destroyed has a very visceral impact,” says Waters.

He suggests that this sense of grievance manifests as anger stemming from the perception that “the people responsible were let off the hook”. Those affected perceive a lack of genuine transitional justice.

The Syrian government has begun the long and complicated process of trying those responsible for crimes committed during the civil war. In August, Bashar Al-Assad and several senior regime figures were sentenced to death in absentia.

Despite this, many lower-level figures have not yet been arrested. According to Waters, this gives aggrieved communities “an excuse to cause problems”, even when those targeted by retaliatory violence were not actually responsible for the original crimes.

However, many within minority communities are sensitive to perceived state overreach. Genuine arrests linked to transitional justice can also be misrepresented, with such actions “often get[ting] blown up and distorted through misinformation and fake news”, explains Waters.

The arrests “become construed as the government targeting ethnic minorities – which can aggravate these communities further”.

Waters suggests that building genuine civil peace requires more than simply imposing justice. Instead, he argues, there needs to be “a systemic whole-of-sector approach, that brings together local leadership, revolutionary figures, security chiefs, and most importantly, those who are causing the civil disturbances”.

Local governance and the economy

Governance disputes appear to be a driving force behind much of the recent violence in northeast Syria.

The integration of the SDF into the government is “sparking fears amongst Kurdish communities about the loss of Kurdish political autonomy, Kurdish language rights and security control in the region,” says Rose.

“These fears have been exacerbated by increasing fuel prices and the general cost of living, which have also contributed to public demonstrations.”

Meanwhile, Arab communities in the northeast are frustrated by the slow pace of integration. Reflecting long-standing grievances over what they perceive as corruption and discrimination under SDF rule, some want Damascus to take a more direct role in governing the region.

There is an economic dimension to this issue. The risk of violence erupting is heightened by the lack of real livelihoods for young men, and the sense that material support remains scant.

“You have unemployed young men, angry that their homes and workplaces are destroyed with nowhere else to channel their frustration,” says Waters. “These are the types that are sparking incidents.”

Alongside economics, part of the frustration is rooted in the sense that “communities have limited influence over how their areas are governed,” Hawach explains to The New Arab.

“Alongside security officials, local civilian leaders are often recruited from opposition networks. Minority candidates may be viewed with a degree of distrust, particularly Alawites, given their association with the former regime.”

Hawach suggests that the authorities could address these concerns by giving local communities more meaningful decision-making powers. He points to the Ismaili Council in the town of Salamiyah as a key example.

The Ismaili Council, which represents Syria’s Ismaili community, established contact with HTS before the fall of the regime and helped facilitate the city’s handover to advancing opposition forces.

Since then, the council has worked closely with local security chiefs and community leaders to ensure that occasional incidents of violence do not spiral into broader communal conflict.

“Syria could develop these local bodies with genuine authority over local services, public employment and disputes,” suggests Hawach.

Ultimately, ensuring civil peace in Syria will require the Syrian government to not only develop its security architecture but also address the grievances that cause local disputes to escalate.

Without meaningful accountability, economic development and greater local representation, efforts to restore stability risk leaving the underlying causes of communal tension unresolved.

Cian Ward is a journalist based in Damascus, covering conflict, migration, and humanitarian issues

Follow him on X: @CP__Ward

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

The violence accompanying France’s October protests has revealed how foreign influence networks can exploit domestic grievances to undermine governments and European support for Ukraine. New evidence suggests Russian-linked operations were active before the riots, raising questions about whether information manipulation is moving beyond propaganda towards the mobilisation of political unrest.

France’s violent protests have exposed a vulnerability in European security that conventional policing cannot easily address: the ability of foreign information networks to exploit domestic political crises, amplify social divisions and transform legitimate grievances into instruments of geopolitical pressure.

President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged foreign manipulation of information surrounding the disturbances of 17–18 October but insists there is no evidence that foreign actors organised the violence itself. His assessment reflects the evidence currently available, although new investigations indicate that Russian-linked networks were actively exploiting the protest movement weeks before the worst disorder began.

On 24 October, France deployed approximately 70,000 police officers and gendarmes to prevent further violence. Yet the security operation addresses only the physical consequences of a crisis whose online dimension extends across national borders.

Russia’s operations began before the riots

An investigation published on 22 October by Alliance4Europe provides evidence that Russian-linked information networks were exploiting French discontent well before the disturbances.

Researchers examined 547,471 posts and articles across nine languages. They identified 639 coordinated messages attributed with high confidence to Russia’s Doppelgänger operation, generating approximately 7.4 million views in the six weeks preceding 17 October.

The campaign used genuine concerns about living costs and public expenditure to promote a particular political argument: money allocated to Ukraine was being taken from European citizens.

This was not a random selection of grievances. France’s budget difficulties, public-service pressures and disagreements over defence expenditure provided material through which Moscow could seek to weaken support for Kyiv.

The researchers found that the operation targeted pro-European and pro-Ukraine politicians across the political spectrum. It praised selected proposals associated with Jean-Luc Mélenchon while also promoting nationalist narratives, illustrating a strategy driven less by ideological consistency than by opposition to existing European policies.

From manipulating opinion to encouraging mobilisation

An earlier investigation by EK Strategies, published on 8 October, identified an additional development.

Russian-linked channels were not merely commenting on existing demonstrations. They were circulating protest dates, identifying organisers and encouraging French audiences to follow the example of demonstrators in Germany.

On 28 September, the International Reporters network published an appeal urging French audiences to take to the streets. Other channels subsequently reproduced information about planned school blockades and demonstrations.

In one instance, a channel identified as Gavroche published rhetoric encouraging an attack on France’s Education Ministry.

Such activity goes beyond retrospective propaganda. It attempts to influence participation and behaviour while events are developing. Nevertheless, evidence that a network encouraged protests does not establish that it controlled the organisers or directed subsequent violence.

The original demonstrations arose from domestic grievances over schools, prices and government policy. The significance of the foreign activity lies in attempts to redirect and intensify an existing movement.

How France’s crisis was rewritten abroad

Once violence erupted, the information campaign acquired an international audience.

Alliance4Europe found that claims blaming migrants or Islam for the disturbances appeared in approximately one in 33 French-language posts, compared with nearly one in five English-language posts.

False allegations that immigrants had burned Limoges town hall circulated substantially more frequently in English than in French.

The same report identified 1,018 articles distributed through 28 websites associated with the Russian Pravda network. Their rapid republication across languages enabled a common narrative to reach audiences far beyond France.

The operation also presents a longer-term technological problem. Repeated publication of manipulated accounts can contaminate material subsequently retrieved or reproduced by artificial-intelligence systems, allowing false narratives to persist beyond the original campaign.

The political effects were visible when President Donald Trump and other foreign leaders portrayed France’s unrest principally through immigration and cultural conflict.

Speaking in Qatar on 21 October, Macron rejected these portrayals and criticised the circulation of fabricated AI-generated images. His remarks identified foreign manipulation after the riots but stopped short of alleging foreign responsibility for their organisation.

The Heritage Foundation and transatlantic networks

The transcript raises a more substantial allegation: that the American Heritage Foundation and Russia’s FSB have participated in a coordinated effort to destabilise France.

There are documented connections between the Heritage Foundation and political institutions associated with Hungary’s former prime minister Viktor Orbán.

A 2026 investigation into Hungarian-funded international influence networks established that the Danube Institute had channelled substantial public funding towards foreign researchers and commentators. The institute also maintained a formal relationship with Heritage.

Heritage has acknowledged its cooperation with Hungarian conservative institutions but denied receiving funding or direction from foreign governments.

These relationships demonstrate the development of transatlantic political networks capable of circulating common ideas about sovereignty, migration and European integration.

They do not establish operational cooperation with Russian intelligence. Nor has credible evidence emerged connecting Heritage to the organisation or financing of France’s October riots. Ideological convergence, institutional cooperation and participation in a clandestine operation require separate evidential assessments.

The implications for European security

The European Union’s response has exposed a regulatory problem.

Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, major online platforms must address systemic risks arising from their services, including the amplification of illegal content and threats to public security.

On 23 October, the French government announced enhanced cooperation with digital platforms. More than 100 priority reports had been submitted ahead of the weekend demonstrations, approximately half resulting in account suspensions.

These measures targeted unlawful online activity, particularly incitement to violence and looting. They did not constitute findings that the suspended accounts belonged to foreign intelligence networks.

The European Commission has likewise refrained from activating emergency measures under the Digital Services Act without sufficient evidence connecting foreign manipulation to the violence.

The broader security concern is that foreign operations can exploit the interval between the emergence of social unrest and the establishment of reliable information about its causes.

Russia need not organise an entire protest movement to advance its strategic interests. By amplifying domestic grievances, promoting hostility towards support for Ukraine and circulating distorted accounts internationally, it can attempt to convert France’s internal political difficulties into pressure on European policy.

With France approaching its 2027 presidential election, these operations warrant continuing scrutiny. The central investigative question is no longer simply whether foreign networks spread false information after violence occurred, but whether their activities before and during demonstrations materially influenced mobilisation, radicalisation or political responses.

The evidence currently demonstrates organised manipulation and attempts at amplification. Establishing direct responsibility for violence would require a further evidential step, involving financial records, communications, operational instructions or connections with identifiable perpetrators.

France’s experience illustrates how contemporary information warfare can operate within a democratic society without necessarily directing events on the ground. Its immediate objective may be to alter the political interpretation of a crisis; its longer-term consequence may be to influence the policies adopted in response.

• Taylor Swift's self-titled debut album celebrates its 20th anniversary this week.
• It would've been the ideal time to revisit her country roots with "Taylor Swift (Taylor's Version)."
• Instead, Swift squandered her own momentum by releasing the "Showgirl" deluxe last month.

The stage was set for Taylor Swift to sing her way back into critics' hearts — and back onto the country charts — with nostalgic twang and another picture to burn.

Instead, the curtains raised to reveal a rare strategic misstep.

This week is the 20th anniversary of Swift's debut album, "Taylor Swift." For much of this year, fans had been expecting Swift to mark the occasion by releasing "Taylor Swift (Taylor's Version)" and reclaiming her place in the country-star pantheon — especially after "I Knew It, I Knew You," her cowgirl-inspired single for the "Toy Story 5" soundtrack, became a crossover hit in June, topping the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs simultaneously and finishing at No. 2 on the Songs of the Summer chart for 2026.

"I Knew It, I Knew You" suggested an imminent return to Swift's country beginnings, one that would be welcomed with open arms by longtime listeners and Nashville gatekeepers alike. The charm offensive was well underway: Swift gave interviews and exclusive snippets to country radio stations and publicly gushed about honoring her "country roots." Even the song's lyrics seemed to play like a sly Swiftian in-joke, the kind of marketing wink that she's famous for weaving into her work: "I remembered I loved you / Came back when it mattered."

But the "Taylor Swift" 20th anniversary celebration has been interrupted by a flashier, less prudent version of its titular author.

In late September, Swift surprised fans by unveiling the deluxe edition of her 12th album. "The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore" features four new songs Swift said she wrote in an excitable creative burst last year, shortly after the original album's release.

Commercially, this unexpected move has paid off. One of the new "Showgirl" tracks, "Patient Zero," has been No. 1 on the Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks, making "Showgirl" one of just a handful of albums throughout history to yield three chart-topping hits. The album also returned to No. 1, adding hundreds of thousands of additional sales to its already eye-popping total.

Strategically, however, revisiting "Showgirl" in lieu of "Taylor Swift" is far from savvy — especially for a self-described mastermind who is seldom caught in the middle of a PR campaign with a domino out of place. Swift had seemingly arranged her country-music homecoming with care, precision, and pitch-perfect anticipation. Now, that momentum is gone.

'The Encore' disrupted what could have been a perfect rollout to revisit 'Taylor Swift'

After two decades of Swift's solo-written anthems and high-pressure reinventions, the 2025 arrival of "Showgirl" was uniquely disenchanting. Swift had recently wrapped the highest-grossing tour in history, reunited with two of the music industry's most revered producers, and promised the album would contain "the best ideas we've ever had." This was positioned to be her pop opus.

Alas, "Showgirl" was overhyped and underbaked, peppered with ham-handed imagery and corny puns. Critics tempered their disappointment with justifications: Swift is too famous and too successful to disappear into her work; her public persona has grown too distracting and unwieldy; she's likely experiencing professional burnout.

This year's deluxe album was received with much less mercy, earning a 39 out of 100 on Metacritic, a 40-point drop from the original's score. When Swift brought "Showgirl" back to the fore, its shortcomings shifted focus away from the goodwill she'd spent all summer cultivating with "I Knew It, I Knew You."

Even worse, the new batch of "Showgirl" tracks included "Cleveland!" — an egregious attempted kiss-off that indulges all of Swift's worst impulses. Social media exploded with derisive glee, with some going so far as to say Swift had ruined her own songwriting legacy. Even fans who defended the song called it "rage bait" and "not that deep."

Even if the other deluxe tracks are catchy, polished, and well-structured, they were unleashed at a far too precarious time to receive the general public's benefit of the doubt.

Indeed, many assumed that Swift, ever the tactician, would move on from the "Showgirl" era with haste — and what better way to course-correct than by reminding us how she became a household name?

A reminder of Swift's country prowess is long overdue

Back in 2006, critics were charmed by the precocious lyrics and banjo-laden hooks that populate Swift's debut, from "Tim McGraw" and "Our Song" to "Should've Said No" and "Picture to Burn." At 16, Swift had already penned indelible zingers like "You said the way my blue eyes shine put those Georgia stars to shame that night / I said, 'That's a lie.'"

Twenty years later, the highlights on "Taylor Swift" stand as peak examples of Nashville-honed storytelling — the kind that helped pave the way for a new wave of country stars like Ella Langley to dominate the charts.

Of course, Swift may still release "Taylor Swift (Taylor's Version)." It could arrive tomorrow, next week, or years from now. While the "Taylor's Version" project was made redundant when Swift bought back her masters last year, she had already rerecorded her debut by the time the purchase went through. "I really love how it sounds now," she told fans, saying it would be released "when the time is right."

But it's hard to imagine a better window than the one Swift just squandered. If "Taylor Swift (Taylor's Version)" does end up closely following "The Encore," it will no longer live in its own moment, but in the shadow of a critical flop. The triumphant return-to-country narrative has been muddled. Plus, with "Patient Zero" still performing well on the charts, it doesn't make economic sense to release another album that would siphon away attention and streams.

So why did Swift decide this time wasn't right for her debut to reemerge? We can only speculate, though it's possible that Swift's talent for brand management has distracted us from her primary drive, the very thing that made "Taylor Swift" a sensation in the first place: She's a creative, an artist, a songwriter with something to say. Perhaps this was not a calculated choice, but a personal one. Perhaps she simply wrote new songs and decided to share them. Perhaps she anticipated "The Encore" would face more pushback than "Taylor Swift (Taylor's Version)" and decided to do it anyway.

Swift's lyrics offer clues to this effect. "Babylon," the final deluxe track on "The Encore," warns against "using nostalgia as a weapon to hurt yourself" and "missing all the best parts" of the present day. The story is not told from Swift's first-person perspective, but, when read as a meta-narrative, it seems to forestall critiques just like this one — asking listeners not to romanticize the past precisely as she declines the most obvious opportunity to monetize her own.

"Babylon" doubles as a preemptive epilogue to the embattled "Showgirl" era. Swift has recently been accused of devolving, of failing to live up to the heights of her past work — as if her now-beloved albums like "Red" and "Reputation" were never dismissed or ridiculed upon release.

Will "Showgirl" receive the same revaluation? Only time will tell, but it sounds like Swift is feeling optimistic.

"You hate this song," she sings, "but you wake up on the train with your headphones gone / Now that melody is all you want."

Sixteen days before Election Day, Abdul El-Sayed is sitting at the dinette of a bus that has his face plastered all over it.

I had just played him a clip on my iPad. It was of Tashawna Gill, a Detroit organizer he knows well and who was one of his earliest supporters, describing an alarming trend in what she and her canvassers were hearing from Black voters in the city’s retirement communities.

“They’re skipping that part of the ballot,” Gill said. “We do the senior home tour, and they’re not interested. They skipped that on the ballot. They have returned their absentees, and some of them have shared that they’ve returned their absentees without checking the box for anything for the Senate race.”

In the tight space on the bus, the clip finishes, and El-Sayed says: “I hope more folks will fill out that part of the ballot. This one’s for all the marbles.”

How did it feel, I asked? Hearing that his story, his message isn’t landing with people in a community he has long served, people he needs if he wants to become Michigan’s next senator?

El-Sayed has a reputation of being pretty sure of himself. Unflappable, quick on his feet, someone who leans into the “don’t let ’em see you sweat” brand of politics.

For a second, that drops.

”Obviously, it’s heartbreaking. I’ve spent most of my career serving exactly those communities,” he says. “But I also get that campaigns are complicated.”

He blames the tens of millions of dollars in PAC money for the tepidness within the Black community toward his attempt to hold Michigan’s open Senate seat for Democrats, and for “destroying trust” he built with the Black community in his time as a public health official in Detroit.

“Rebuilding it takes a long time, so I’ve got work to do to rebuild trust, but I’ve been serving those communities for a long time,” he said. “I’m confident in the work I have done and confident in the work that I will do. And I hope I get the opportunity to do it.”

He notes that he’s not sure, either, just how widespread the sentiment Gill related is among his would-be constituents.

And just like that, the self-assuredness is back.

It’s clear, though, that he’s hurt that the work he has done in Detroit is being misconstrued or discounted, or that folks just don’t know about it. And he’s running out of time to spread the word.

Empty yards

The clip that I had El-Sayed respond to was from a walk I took with Gill on a quiet street back in Detroit.

She wanted me to see the lawns on Greenview Avenue in North Rosedale Park. It’s a neighborhood of brick houses on Detroit’s northwest side that she calls one of the most educated, highest-turnout precincts in the city. And she would know — her office is one block over.

Gill is a well-known organizer who chairs the Michigan Democratic Party’s Grassroots caucus, founded the African American Leadership Institute, helped get Gretchen Whitmer elected governor and was an early endorser of El-Sayed’s Senate campaign when most of the party establishment — including Whitmer — was behind U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. Every day, Gill’s office sends out about 70 canvassers across Wayne County.

She knows of what she speaks, especially when it comes to Black voters.

“If you look down here, do you see any yard signs? Look left and right,” she says. I do, and it’s … empty. “It doesn’t even look like it’s an election going on anywhere,” she said.

Typically, Gill said, the streets are pretty lined with them. That they aren’t now, so close to the election, “is scary to me.”

Yard signs are not votes, but they are a sign of enthusiasm and of a campaign that is working hard to get those signs stuck in lawns.

Detroit is 75% Black, according to census data, the largest majority-Black big city in the country. And the Democratic playbook for winning statewide has not changed in a lifetime: run up the score in Wayne and Genesee counties, then hang on everywhere else.

When Detroit doesn’t turn out, Democrats lose. Two years ago, when Elissa Slotkin narrowly held Michigan’s other Senate seat, she won 86% of the Black vote compared with Republican Mike Rogers’ 12%. Recent polling shows El-Sayed hovering below 80% of the Black vote.

The concerns aren’t new. Back in the primary in August, El-Sayed eked out a 1-point win against Stevens. He won the college towns and progressive strongholds. He lost Detroit by 28 points.

El-Sayed seems well aware that the tepidness exists. The campaign says it and party entities have spent nearly $14.3 million in paid media specifically for the Detroit and Flint markets.

They’ve invited the equivalent of the Black political Avengers to endorse and campaign with him in the state, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. Former President Barack Obama is stumping with El-Sayed in Detroit this weekend.

The campaign says it has been to 45 Black churches and had more than 125 meetings and roundtables with Black elected officials, faith leaders and community organizations.

It’s not something that’s been lost on his opponent either; they see an opening. The Rogers campaign opened a storefront office on Livernois Avenue in Detroit while we were there, and a group calling itself Democrats for Mike Rogers has been campaigning for him. A recent ad features Black voters saying they felt El-Sayed cared more about Palestine than Detroit.

“If you’re from Detroit, you know no Republican will be going through Detroit like they’re going through Detroit. They are in places a Republican would never be,” Gill said. “So I’m scared that a slice of that, just a little bit, will go to them.”

A Rogers campaign spokesperson touted their outreach, saying they are the first Republican to open a Detroit office, have visited a dozen Black churches and visited Flint and Pontiac “multiple times.” And multiple Democrats in Michigan have told me that Rogers is showing up in places in Detroit that haven’t seen a statewide GOP candidate in years.

Nearly every person I talked to on the ground in Detroit pointed to three reasons why El-Sayed is underperforming with Black voters.

Community conflict

The first one is uncomfortable to talk about: historic tensions between Black and Arab Michiganders. Dearborn sits right on the edge of Detroit, and today Arab Americans are estimated to make up the majority of that city’s 105,000 residents. Older Black voters know the long, violent history between the two communities. In 1980 an Iraqi immigrant store owner shot a Black customer he suspected of stealing soda. In 2023 a clerk at a gas station locked customers inside with an armed man after a card used to purchase less than $4 was declined. One of them was killed. A crash this fall reignited the fight.

Gill puts it in plain terms: “African Americans, especially seniors, feel like they were treated disrespectful, targeted, kicked out of the stores in Dearborn. So our seniors and our parents, when they see Abdul, they blame him for all of that.”

He wasn’t there, I point out. She knows that but says that trauma is unfairly being taken out on his candidacy.

Former Obama administration official Portia Roberson is CEO of Focus: HOPE, a civil rights organization in Detroit founded in 1968. She put those tensions this way:

“It has seemingly been that Arab people have been able to move to Detroit in this area and find ways to be successful, whether that is owning gas stations, whether that is owning party stores, and that Blacks who have been here have been locked out of those places,” she said.

I asked El-Sayed about the tension.

“I’ll be honest with you, I understand. I’ve worked in the city of Detroit. You walk into one of these party stores, you walk into a gas station and you’ve got somebody that looks like me behind bulletproof glass, and you look at the way that they’re treating customers. The number of times that people have been denied a bathroom or their kid gets sold a loosie cigarette out of the back or they’re catcalling a woman in the community. That’s deeply inappropriate. It’s wrong and I’ve never been one of those guys,” he said, “even if I look like one of those guys.”

While he was health director in Wayne County, he said, he led a conversation with “those guys” about why that behavior was inappropriate, adding, “You can’t just take money out and not invest in the local community. You can’t just deny local contractors opportunities to service your business and think that’s OK.”

A fateful stance

That second reason? The Uncommitted movement in 2024. In February of that year, more than 101,000 Michigan Democrats, about 13%, voted “uncommitted” in the presidential primary to protest President Joe Biden’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza. El-Sayed publicly announced that he was one of them. Nine months later, Harris lost the state as Black voters watched a party they had carried for decades fail to show up for the first Black woman at the top of the presidential ticket.

When it comes to the Black community, El-Sayed leans hard on his track record. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s mandate to him when he hired him back in 2015 to run a health department that had been gutted: “rebuild it.” In his first year, the department restarted lead screenings for children and helped pay for them in Detroit schools. The department also partnered with a nonprofit to offer free eye exams and glasses to thousands of students. After his failed run for governor in 2018, El-Sayed became director of Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services.

His stance on Uncommitted is overshadowing all of that.

Roberson has voted consistently her entire adult life, and that movement still stings.

“As a Black woman, I’ve never had the luxury of voting on one issue. I’ve never had that luxury. I’ve never been able to walk into a polling booth and say, this is my one issue and if it doesn’t correlate with my one issue, I’m willing to throw the rest of it away,” she said. “We knew all of the things that have now happened to us, and you still decided to be uncommitted because of your issue.”

El-Sayed endorsed Harris the day after she became the nominee; Uncommitted largely was about the primary for him. And Harris came to Detroit just last month to endorse and campaign with El-Sayed. She has gotten over his criticism of the Biden-Harris policies.

“But a lot of folks haven’t,” Roberson said, laying out the very kind of single-issue objections she had just disavowed. “And I have friends who are very politically astute, and they have said, ‘I will never forgive that.’ It got so big so quickly that they couldn’t pull it back when it was time to coalesce around Kamala Harris, and now we are here.”

At the doors Gill’s team knocks on, the version that seniors are sharing is harsher than what actually happened and full of wrong information, she said.

They tell her teams, “‘He didn’t vote for Kamala. He didn’t help her get in.’ That’s the No. 1 thing,” she said. So the message from his campaign to set the record straight “needs to be louder.”

Democrats’ dilemma

The third reason is largely ideology, and in some ways reflects the maneuvering between progressives and mainstream Democrats within the larger party. Older Black voters in Detroit are more likely to be politically moderate. El-Sayed is running on Medicare for All, and Rogers has spent the fall telling anyone who will listen that Detroit is about to elect a socialist. For the record, El-Sayed says he is a capitalist.

The campaign’s answer to older Black voters has largely been to head to the Black church, the Old Faithful of politics. His team says he has been to 45 Black churches during this election season.

Last Sunday he visited two churches in Flint. His message was, yes, political and full of references to a shared God between his Muslim and their Christian faith. But one of his biggest applause lines was his promise to be back as Sen. El-Sayed.

“This is not my first time in communities like these,” he said from the front of the stage. “I’ve been showing up to do this work for the better part of a decade, and I hope that I can show up for you in the United States Senate. If you give me that honor, I promise you this will not be the last time you see me, and the next time I come, God willing, I’m bringing resources and I’m taking your pain and your purpose with me to the halls of power.”

The bridge he’s trying to build is a difficult one. A 2024 poll from AARP found that among Black Michaganders, only 29% called themselves “liberal.”

El-Sayed’s bet is that a different Black voter can come and make up the difference. “There’s a generational divide, and even if there are some seniors who might say, ‘You know what, we’re going to leave this blank because we’ve seen all the ads,’ there are a lot of young Black voters who are like, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever voted,’” he said.

The candidate isn’t blind to the tensions. On the contrary, he seems very aware of them and how hard they may be to overcome. But he’s also running out of time.

I asked Roberson if she thinks he has done enough in the short period he has been the nominee to get the Black vote where it really needs to be.

“That’s tough. Probably not,” she said. “I think there’s more he could have done. And listen, I’m giving grace to the fact that he had a contentious primary. But I do think there were more voters out there, and there are still more voters out there that he could be talking to.”

Her larger point is that it’s less about effort and more about translation. That in a lot of his ads, his platform sound great to the voters who follow politics closely, and who maybe aren’t affected by those three points of tension.

She’s also pretty hopeful. That when Detroit’s most reliable voters wake up on Election Day, they will do what they’ve always done.

”We know what we’re going to get if he doesn’t win,” she said. “So what are we so afraid of that we’re going to get if he does win?”

Nobody on Greenview Avenue has answered that yet. The lawns are still empty.

“Detroit just needs to be waking up. It needs to be waking up because it is asleep,” Gill said. “That is my fear, that Detroit has not woken up.”

El-Sayed says he’ll keep coming back either way.

“At the end of the day, whether folks vote for me or they don’t vote for me, I intend to serve in the same way that I showed up to serve back in 2015 when I came to Detroit to rebuild the health department.”

MS NOW producer Alexander Trowbridge contributed to this report.

The post The signs for El-Sayed in Detroit — and the lack of them — are setting off alarm bells appeared first on MS NOW.

MS NOW’s Michael Steele slammed Donald Trump’s “11th-hour move” ahead of the midterm election, as the Department of Justice sued Alaska, seeking to delay certification of the state’s Senate election in the event the Republican incumbent loses.

On Thursday, the department asked a federal court to block certification of the results if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses by fewer votes than another candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan, receives. Alaska courts have allowed the other Sullivan to remain on the ballot. The Justice Department is arguing that voters could confuse the two candidates, and that such confusion could potentially affect the outcome of what is expected to be a close race against Democratic nominee Mary Peltola.

“Every step this administration is taking, all the lies that they have told the American people about their sense of making sure elections are fair and free, have just all led to this,” Steele said Friday, shortly after the lawsuit became public.

“The Weeknight” co-host called Attorney General Todd Blanche “the worst of the worst” and said the Justice Department was doing the president’s bidding. Steele argued that the Constitution leaves election administration to the states and that “the federal government and the Department of Justice have absolutely zero role here.”

Trump has previously criticized Alaska’s “crazy voting system.” The state uses a ranked-choice system, in which voters list their candidates in order of preference. If no one wins a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those votes go to voters’ next choices until one candidate wins.

Steele said the lawsuit shows that Republicans are “afraid” because they have “done jack to give the voters a reason to vote for them.”

“So now, in the 11th hour, they’re going to go and try to manipulate an outcome that’s already foretold by the voters who started early voting, who are already in the game,” he added.

Steele predicted that voters would see through Republican efforts and that the party would get “their you-know-what’s handed to them” on Election Day.

“They have sown and built mistrust in the system that’s coming back to bite them, because we do not trust them. We do not trust their word. We know you’re lying to us,” he said. “And now you’re going to have to reap what you sowed.”

You can watch Steele’s comments in the clip at the top of the page.

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The CEO of Turning Point USA’s independent offshoot in the United Kingdom is facing scrutiny after he was recorded discussing murder-for-hire abilities.

The scandal surrounding Jack Ross is inconvenient, to put it mildly, for a conservative movement that has sought to portray liberals as the primary culprits for sowing deadly violence. After TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year, the MAGA movement shamelessly used the killing to encourage a federal crackdown on liberals and to demonize liberalism itself as a vector for political violence.

According to a new report from Al Jazeera, part of an investigation called “Contract Killers and the Far Right,” Ross was shown on camera discussing his ability to coordinate paid acts of violence with a right-wing extremist named Allan Nesbitt.

According to the report:

Ross made clear that he and Nesbitt had a long history together. Ross was filmed by our undercover reporter agreeing to pay Nesbitt thousands of pounds to stage a fake political rally designed to show support for the lifting of UK sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Ross also told Al Jazeera’s undercover operative that for “a certain amount,” Nesbitt and his contacts could arrange physical attacks, saying they could “kick the f*** out of someone. They can start cutting people’s faces up. That’s another amount. They can stab someone,” Ross said. “They can shoot someone. They could kill someone.”

Al Jazeera reported that Ross “denied our findings ‘completely,’ telling us that everything he said to our undercover reporter was not meant seriously.” Turning Point UK, which was launched by Kirk and operates independently of its U.S. affiliate, and TPUSA didn’t immediately respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.

Despite the “I was just joking about murder” defense, Ross has already been suspended from the U.K.’s Conservative Party. And according to The Guardian, police in Scotland are looking into the matter.

The silence from Republicans on this is telling. It almost goes without saying that if the CEO for an offshoot of, say, the NAACP or the activist group Indivisible were recorded discussing paid opportunities for murder and other violence, conservatives would be airing the footage constantly.

Yet it seems this macabre story is of little interest to MAGA world. The hypocrisy here is clear as day.

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