Buque Kairos de la “flota fantasma” rusa, sancionado por la Unión Europea, el Reino Unido y Suiza por el tráfico ilegal de petróleo.Todor Stoyanov-Raveo/Shutterstock
Las cifras extraídas de la base de datos LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) indican un incremento significativo en el tránsito de petróleo ruso por aguas españolas. Antes de las sanciones que la Unión Europea (UE) impuso a Rusia con motivo de la invasión de Ucrania, el puerto de Ceuta ocupaba la posición 90.ª en el ranking europeo de descargas de petróleo ruso. Hoy, está en la 11.ª posición.
Mientras Bruselas trata de bloquear este tráfico, la “flota fantasma” rusa utiliza puertos españoles para exportar crudo a Europa. El objetivo es eludir las sanciones impuestas por la UE. Las consecuencias son económicas y geopolíticas, pero también medioambientales.
El sur de Europa como vía de entrada
Las sanciones a Rusia han redefinido el mapa de flujos de petróleo y gas rusos hacia la UE. La normativa vigente prohíbe la entrada de los barcos de la “flota fantasma” en puertos europeos. Sin embargo, la realidad es otra. Aunque en diciembre de 2025 el número de buques sancionados ascendía a casi 600, la lentitud en trasponer la Directiva UE 2024/1226 y en aplicar de forma efectiva las restricciones aprobadas por la UE genera una laguna jurídica que es aprovechada por la flota rusa.
Así, se han detectado violaciones de las sanciones europeas por entradas de buques sancionados en países como Chipre, España, Estonia, Grecia, Malta y Países Bajos.
Al cerrarse el norte de Europa, la flota rusa ha encontrado una vía alternativa de entrada en los países del sur. Entre 2022 y 2025, los países con más descargas de buques con petróleo de origen ruso fueron Italia, Grecia y España. La mayoría de estos buques han sido sancionados en algún momento posterior a su atraque en puertos europeos.
Pese a las prohibiciones, el crudo ruso sigue llegando a la UE, a menudo haciendo escalas en otros países. Los cargamentos provienen principalmente de Rusia, pero también de Egipto y Turquía, que actúan como intermediarios.
Esta infraestructura operativa no surgió de la noche a la mañana. La Unión Europea no empezó a sancionar oficialmente a buques de la “flota fantasma” hasta junio de 2024. Ese retraso hizo que Rusia tuviera tiempo suficiente para reorganizar su estrategia logística para exportar petróleo a la UE.
En el sur se han dado cada vez más casos de traspase de petróleo de un barco a otro en alta mar, con los daños medioambientales que esto pueda ocasionar. Eligen el sur porque necesitan aguas tranquilas y una ubicación estratégica para conectar con Asia, algo que el mar del Norte no ofrece.
Así actúa la “flota fantasma”
Las implicaciones de la operación de la “flota fantasma” van más allá de cuestiones económicas o geopolíticas. Estos buques generan riesgos físicos y medioambientales significativos. Se trata de una flota con barcos de gran edad y una operación insegura y precaria. Los petroleros con una antigüedad de entre 16 y 22 años son los más sancionados. Según el KSE Institute ucraniano, a partir de los 15 años decae el mantenimiento y las aseguradoras de primer nivel retiran su cobertura.
Para operar sorteando las restricciones legales, los buques suelen cambiar su bandera, su nombre o el armador. Las cinco banderas más sancionadas son las de Rusia, Gambia, Sierra Leona, Camerún y Omán. Los buques más antiguos, con máximo riesgo físico y medioambiental, utilizan principalmente la bandera rusa, seguida por la de países con regulación laxa como Curazao, Benín, Comoras, Guyana y Omán.
Además, la propiedad del buque se esconde para evitar posibles sanciones: las tres compañías con el mayor número de buques sancionados tienen su sede en UAE (Emiratos Árabes Unidos).
España ha pasado a ser un enclave protagonista en la red de flujos del petróleo ruso. Entre los 20 puertos de la UE donde se han producido más atraques de buques posteriormente sancionados se encuentran Ceuta (11.º), Huelva (17.º) y Cartagena (20.º).
Principales rutas de buques sancionados (2022-2025). A la izquierda, el país de carga, a la derecha, el país de destino. Los autores, CC BY-SA
El riesgo físico y medioambiental en estos puertos derivado de la operación de la “flota fantasma” es elevado. Los buques sancionados por dos jurisdicciones (por ejemplo, UE y EE. UU.) tienen entre 15 y 30 años de antigüedad, con banderas de países variados. Por otro lado, la flota de buques sancionados por tres jurisdicciones destaca por su alto volumen de comercialización y la utilización de la bandera rusa.
Perfil de riesgo que suponen los buques en puertos españoles (2022-2025) según su antigüedad, con cada color indicando una procedencia. Los autores, CC BY-SA
El caso de Ceuta presenta el escenario más preocupante desde el punto de vista medioambiental. Se trata de un puerto con un alto volumen de descargas, la mayoría desde buques posteriormente sancionados por hasta dos y tres jurisdicciones, con antigüedad de entre 15 y 28 años y banderas como las de Sierra Leona, Camerún y Panamá. Estos buques operan con estándares de seguridad poco estrictos.
Perfil de riesgo en el puerto de Ceuta (2022-2025) según la antigüedad de los buques, con cada color indicando el país de la bandera. Los autores, CC BY-SA
Un problema creciente
Los datos revelan un caso flagrante. Se trata de un buque con bandera de Camerún, sancionado el 25 de febrero de 2025 por la UE, que descargó en Ceuta casi 900 000 barriles de crudo el 12 de septiembre de 2025. Este barco provenía del puerto de Murmansk (Rusia).
Además, la “flota fantasma” rusa busca nuevas entradas a la UE. Puertos como los de El Hierro, Motril y Vilagarcía de Arousa, que no habían recibido cargamentos antes de las sanciones a Rusia, sí lo han hecho tras el estallido de la guerra. En 2023, por ejemplo, fueron descargados en ellos más de 1 800 000 barriles por buques provenientes de Rusia con una antigüedad de entre 15 y 23 años.
El volumen de operaciones de la “flota fantasma” rusa en aguas españolas está aumentando. España importa millones de barriles de petróleo ruso transportados en buques antiguos e inseguros. Esto no solo contraviene la normativa europea sobre las sanciones a Rusia, sino que genera riesgos medioambientales y físicos que no pueden ignorarse.
La solución a este problema implica no solo aplicar las sanciones vigentes a los buques de la “flota fantasma” rusa, sino también buscar vías para impedir el atraque y las operaciones de trasvase de buques sospechosos. Si no se actúa ya, la próxima noticia podría ser una catástrofe ecológica como la ocurrida a finales de 2002 frente las costas de Galicia.
Orkestra-Instituto Vasco de Competitividad se financia en parte a través de convenios de investigación sobre temas diversos relacionados con energía y medioambiente firmados con el Ente Vasco de la Energía, Iberdrola, Petronor e Ihobe-Agencia Vasca del Medioambiente.
Antonio García-Amate no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ignazio Cabras, Professor of Regional Economic Development, Northumbria University, Newcastle
English pubs will receive a 15% discount on their business rates from April this year. The government deal, which also applies to music venues, follows a backlash from landlords who were facing a steep increase in their tax bills.
Some industry campaigners have said the support package – worth around £1,600 per pub – will allow landlords to breathe a sigh of relief. Some opposition politicians think it doesn’t go far enough.
Either way, it’s been a tough few years. High energy costs, inflation and wage increases have contributed to the serious financial difficulties facing many pubs.
The sector was also among the worst affected (alongside retail and leisure) by the social distancing and lockdowns of COVID. The government responded at the time by giving pubs significant business rate discounts in a show of support.
Then, in November 2025, it was announced that those discounts would be reduced and then phased out completely. This move, combined with big increases in the rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher bills.
But pubs are far more than cash machines for the Treasury. To many, they represent a vital part of British traditions and heritage. They also play a pivotal role in building and maintaining social relationships among the people who live near them.
Whether that’s a family meeting up for Sunday lunch, university students at their society gathering, or some elderly fans of real ale, pubs have a clear and long-standing role in creating community cohesion.
Several scientific studies have measured their positive effects on people, economies and societies.
One, for example, confirms the strong link between pubs and local community events. It has also been shown that pubs are often more effective than other organisations at stimulating a wide range of social activities. This could include everything from sports teams and quiz nights to hosting book groups, as well as charitable and volunteering initiatives.
Pubs also frequently promote community events – such as charity events and social clubs – more effectively than other places such as sport or village halls. Research has shown that in rural areas especially, pubs are very effective – more so than village shops for example – at building community cohesion and local social networks.
Overall, opportunities for communal initiatives in some areas would be extremely reduced, if not nonexistent, without pubs. This is why the loss of a pub has a much broader impact than a mere business closure.
Yet despite all of this proven positive impact, the number of UK pubs has been constantly declining since the start of the century. According to the British Beer and Pub Association, there were 60,800 in 2000, compared to about 45,000 in 2024, meaning one in four closing its doors in the past 25 years.
Life for publicans has been extremely hard for a long time. This is why the changes proposed in the last budget prompted a significant pushback from the industry.
Last orders
But other businesses probably deserve a tax break too. High street shops can also help maintain higher levels of socialisation and community cohesion.
Particularly in remote and rural areas, which suffer from a general lack of local services and public transport options compared to urban areas, these businesses are important in terms of economic development and social activity.
They are also a vital part of their local economic structure, providing employment opportunities and training for local residents. This is why the Treasury should consider a rethink about business rates across the board.
Like pubs, local businesses have value beyond the revenue they generate. A tax system which recognises their positive social impact would be a better and fairer fiscal tool all round.
In the past, Ignazio Cabras’ research work has received financial support from multiple funding bodies, including the British Academy, the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA), and the Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS).
Time feels like the most basic feature of reality. Seconds tick, days pass and everything from planetary motion to human memory seems to unfold along a single, irreversible direction. We are born and we die, in exactly that order. We plan our lives around time, measure it obsessively and experience it as an unbroken flow from past to future. It feels so obvious that time moves forward that questioning it can seem almost pointless.
And yet, for more than a century, physics has struggled to say what time actually is. This struggle is not philosophical nitpicking. It sits at the heart of some of the deepest problems in science.
Modern physics relies on different, but equally important, frameworks. One is Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes the gravity and motion of large objects such as planets. Another is quantum mechanics, which rules the microcosmos of atoms and particles. And on an even larger scale, the standard model of cosmology describes the birth and evolution of the universe as a whole. All rely on time, yet they treat it in incompatible ways.
When physicists try to combine these theories into a single framework, time often behaves in unexpected and troubling ways. Sometimes it stretches. Sometimes it slows. Sometimes it disappears entirely.
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Einstein’s theory of relativity was, in fact, the first major blow to our everyday intuition about time. Time, Einstein showed, is not universal. It runs at different speeds depending on gravity and motion. Two observers moving relative to one another will disagree about which events happened at the same time. Time became something elastic, woven together with space into a four-dimensional fabric called spacetime.
Quantum mechanics made things even stranger. In quantum theory, time is not something the theory explains. It is simply assumed. The equations of quantum mechanics describe how systems evolve with respect to time, but time itself remains an external parameter, a background clock that sits outside the theory.
This mismatch becomes acute when physicists try to describe gravity at the quantum level, which is crucial for developing the much coveted theory of everything – which links the main fundamental theories. But in many attempts to create such a theory, time vanishes as a parameter from the fundamental equations altogether. The universe appears frozen, described by equations that make no reference to change.
This puzzle is known as the problem of time, and it remains one of the most persistent obstacles to a unified theory of physics. Despite enormous progress in cosmology and particle physics, we still lack a clear explanation for why time flows at all.
Now a relatively new approach to physics, building on a mathematical framework called information theory, developed by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, has started coming up with surprising answers.
Entropy and the arrow of time
When physicists try to explain the direction of time, they often turn to a concept called entropy. The second law of thermodynamics states that disorder tends to increase. A glass can fall and shatter into a mess, but the shards never spontaneously leap back together. This asymmetry between past and future is often identified with the arrow of time.
This idea has been enormously influential. It explains why many processes are irreversible, including why we remember the past but not the future. If the universe started in a state of low entropy, and is getting messier as it evolves, that appears to explain why time moves forward. But entropy does not fully solve the problem of time.
For one thing, the fundamental quantum mechanical equations of physics do not distinguish between past and future. The arrow of time emerges only when we consider large numbers of particles and statistical behaviour. This also raises a deeper question: why did the universe start in such a low-entropy state to begin with? Statistically, there are more ways for a universe to have high entropy than low entropy, just as there are more ways for a room to be messy than tidy. So why would it start in a state that is so improbable?
The information revolution
Over the past few decades, a quiet but far-reaching revolution has taken place in physics. Information, once treated as an abstract bookkeeping tool used to track states or probabilities, has increasingly been recognised as a physical quantity in its own right, just like matter or radiation. While entropy measures how many microscopic states are possible, information measures how physical interactions limit and record those possibilities.
This shift did not happen overnight. It emerged gradually, driven by puzzles at the intersection of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and gravity, where treating information as merely mathematical began to produce contradictions.
One of the earliest cracks appeared in black hole physics. When Stephen Hawking showed that black holes emit thermal radiation, it raised a disturbing possibility: information about whatever falls into a black hole might be permanently lost as heat. That conclusion conflicted with quantum mechanics, which demands that the entirety of information be preserved.
Resolving this tension forced physicists to confront a deeper truth. Information is not optional. If we want a full description of the universe that includes quantum mechanics, information cannot simply disappear without undermining the foundations of physics. This realisation had profound consequences. It became clear that information has thermodynamic cost, that erasing it dissipates energy, and that storing it requires physical resources.
In parallel, surprising connections emerged between gravity and thermodynamics. It was shown that Einstein’s equations can be derived from thermodynamic principles that link spacetime geometry directly to entropy and information. In this view, gravity doesn’t behave exactly like a fundamental force.
Instead, gravity appears to be what physicists call “emergent” – a phenomenon describing something that’s greater than the sum of its parts, arising from more fundamental constituents. Take temperature. We can all feel it, but on a fundamental level, a single particle can’t have temperature. It’s not a fundamental feature. Instead it only emerges as a result of many molecules moving collectively.
Similarly, gravity can be described as an emergent phenomenon, arising from statistical processes. Some physicists have even suggested that gravity itself may emerge from information, reflecting how information is distributed, encoded and processed.
These ideas invite a radical shift in perspective. Instead of treating spacetime as primary, and information as something that lives inside it, information may be the more fundamental ingredient from which spacetime itself emerges. Building on this research, my colleagues and I have explored a framework in which spacetime itself acts as a storage medium for information – and it has important consequences for how we view time.
In this approach, spacetime is not perfectly smooth, as relativity suggests, but composed of discrete elements, each with a finite capacity to record quantum information from passing particles and fields. These elements are not bits in the digital sense, but physical carriers of quantum information, capable of retaining memory of past interactions.
A useful way to picture them is to think of spacetime like a material made of tiny, memory-bearing cells. Just as a crystal lattice can store defects that appeared earlier in time, these microscopic spacetime elements can retain traces of the interactions that have passed through them. They are not particles in the usual sense described by the standard model of particle physics, but a more fundamental layer of physical structure that particle physics operates on rather than explains.
This has an important implication. If spacetime records information, then its present state reflects not only what exists now, but everything that has happened before. Regions that have experienced more interactions carry a different imprint of information than regions that have experienced fewer. The universe, in this view, does not merely evolve according to timeless laws applied to changing states. It remembers.
A recording cosmos
This memory is not metaphorical. Every physical interaction leaves an informational trace. Although the basic equations of quantum mechanics can be run forwards or backwards in time, real interactions never happen in isolation. They inevitably involve surroundings, leak information outward and leave lasting records of what has occurred. Once this information has spread into the wider environment, recovering it would require undoing not just a single event, but every physical change it caused along the way. In practice, that is impossible.
This is why information cannot be erased and broken cups do not reassemble. But the implication runs deeper. Each interaction writes something permanent into the structure of the universe, whether at the scale of atoms colliding or galaxies forming.
Geometry and information turn out to be deeply connected in this view. In our work, we have showed that how spacetime curves depends not only on mass and energy, as Einstein taught us, but also on how quantum information, particularly entanglement, is distributed. Entanglement is a quantum process that mysteriously links particles in distant regions of space – it enables them to share information despite the distance. And these informational links contribute to the effective geometry experienced by matter and radiation.
From this perspective, spacetime geometry is not just a response to what exists at a given moment, but to what has happened. Regions that have recorded many interactions tend, on average, to behave as if they curve more strongly, have stronger gravity, than regions that have recorded fewer.
This reframing subtly changes the role of spacetime. Instead of being a neutral arena in which events unfold, spacetime becomes an active participant. It stores information, constrains future dynamics and shapes how new interactions can occur. This naturally raises a deeper question. If spacetime records information, could time emerge from this recording process rather than being assumed from the start?
Time arising from information
Recently, we extended this informational perspective to time itself. Rather than treating time as a fundamental background parameter, we showed that temporal order emerges from irreversible information imprinting. In this view, time is not something added to physics by hand. It arises because information is written in physical processes and, under the known laws of thermodynamics and quantum physics, cannot be globally unwritten again. The idea is simple but far-reaching.
Every interaction, such as two particles crashing, writes information into the universe. These imprints accumulate. Because they cannot be erased, they define a natural ordering of events. Earlier states are those with fewer informational records. Later states are those with more.
Quantum equations do not prefer a direction of time, but the process of information spreading does. Once information has been spread out, there is no physical path back to a state in which it was localised. Temporal order is therefore anchored in this irreversibility, not in the equations themselves.
Time, in this view, is not something that exists independently of physical processes. It is the cumulative record of what has happened. Each interaction adds a new entry, and the arrow of time reflects the fact that this record only grows.
The future differs from the past because the universe contains more information about the past than it ever can about the future. This explains why time has a direction without relying on special, low-entropy initial conditions or purely statistical arguments. As long as interactions occur and information is irreversibly recorded, time advances.
Interestingly, this accumulated imprint of information may have observable consequences. At galactic scales, the residual information imprint behaves like an additional gravitational component, shaping how galaxies rotate without invoking new particles. Indeed, the unknown substance called dark matter was introduced to explain why galaxies and galaxy clusters rotate faster than their visible mass alone would allow.
In the informational picture, this extra gravitational pull does not come from invisible dark matter, but from the fact that spacetime itself has recorded a long history of interactions. Regions that have accumulated more informational imprints respond more strongly to motion and curvature, effectively boosting their gravity. Stars orbit faster not because more mass is present, but because the spacetime they move through carries a heavier informational memory of past interactions.
From this viewpoint, dark matter, dark energy and the arrow of time may all arise from a single underlying process: the irreversible accumulation of information.
Testing time
But could we ever test this theory? Ideas about time are often accused of being philosophical rather than scientific. Because time is so deeply woven into how we describe change, it is easy to assume that any attempt to rethink it must remain abstract. An informational approach, however, makes concrete predictions and connects directly to systems we can observe, model and in some cases experimentally probe.
Black holes provide a natural testing ground, as they seems to suggest information is erased. In the informational framework, this conflict is resolved by recognising that information is not destroyed but imprinted into spacetime before crossing the horizon. The black hole records it.
This has an important implication for time. As matter falls toward a black hole, interactions intensify and information imprinting accelerates. Time continues to advance locally because information continues to be written, even as classical notions of space and time break down near the horizon and appear to slow or freeze for distant observers.
As the black hole evaporates through Hawking radiation, the accumulated informational record does not vanish. Instead, it affects how radiation is emitted. The radiation should carry subtle signs that reflect the black hole’s history. In other words, the outgoing radiation is not perfectly random. Its structure is shaped by the information previously recorded in spacetime. Detecting such signs remains beyond current technology, but they provide a clear target for future theoretical and observational work.
The same principles can be explored in much smaller, controlled systems. In laboratory experiments with quantum computers, qubits (the quantum computer equivalent of bits) can be treated as finite-capacity information cells, just like the spacetime ones. Researchers have shown that even when the underlying quantum equations are reversible, the way information is written, spread and retrieved can generate an effective arrow of time in the lab. These experiments allow physicists to test how information storage limits affect reversibility, without needing cosmological or astrophysical systems.
Extensions of the same framework suggest that informational imprinting is not limited to gravity. It may play a role across all fundamental forces of nature, including electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. If this is correct, then time’s arrow should ultimately be traceable to how all interactions record information, not just gravitational ones. Testing this would involve looking for limits on reversibility or information recovery across different physical processes.
Taken together, these examples show that informational time is not an abstract reinterpretation. It links black holes, quantum experiments and fundamental interactions through a shared physical mechanism, one that can be explored, constrained and potentially falsified as our experimental reach continues to grow.
What time really is
Ideas about information do not replace relativity or quantum mechanics. In everyday conditions, informational time closely tracks the time measured by clocks. For most practical purposes, the familiar picture of time works extremely well. The difference appears in regimes where conventional descriptions struggle.
Near black hole horizons or during the earliest moments of the universe, the usual notion of time as a smooth, external coordinate becomes ambiguous. Informational time, by contrast, remains well defined as long as interactions occur and information is irreversibly recorded.
All this may leave you wondering what time really is. This shift reframes the longstanding debate. The question is no longer whether time must be assumed as a fundamental ingredient of the universe, but whether it reflects a deeper underlying process.
In this view, the arrow of time can emerge naturally from physical interactions that record information and cannot be undone. Time, then, is not a mysterious background parameter standing apart from physics. It is something the universe generates internally through its own dynamics. It is not ultimately a fundamental part of reality, but emerges from more basic constituents such as information.
Whether this framework turns out to be a final answer or a stepping stone remains to be seen. Like many ideas in fundamental physics, it will stand or fall based on how well it connects theory to observation. But it already suggests a striking change in perspective.
The universe does not simply exist in time. Time is something the universe continuously writes into itself.
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Florian Neukart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Government plans published earlier this month around the water sector in England and Wales were heralded as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to transform the system. However, despite the confidence of UK environment secretary Emma Reynolds, the long-awaited plans raise significant concerns. This is a reform agenda for water as a business – but not a vision for managing a vital public and environmental resource.
The fully privatised water system in England and Wales has been facing two (self-inflicted) crises in recent years. First, companies have failed to invest enough in infrastructure and have been pouring untreated sewage into rivers and seas.
Second, some companies (acting primarily in the interests of their shareholders) have hiked up debts while still paying out dividends. The largest company, Thames Water, has been teetering on the brink of financial collapse since 2023.
Occasional but serious interruptions of water supplies prove that all is not well in water service delivery, and there is growing recognition that the water system is unfit for purpose. We, as academics who helped set up a research body called the People’s Commission on the Water Sector, would have to agree.
But crucially, missing from the government’s white paper detailing the new policy is any reflection on the processes that led to this situation. It acknowledges that companies have behaved badly and that some water companies and their owners have prioritised short-term profits over long-term resilience and the environment.
This is a serious understatement. Underlying the outcomes of the past few years are the profit-seeking activities by private investors. Private companies cut back on costs and manipulated finances to benefit shareholders.
Water users and the environment suffer the consequences. And the regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, were ill-prepared for the scale of the private sector’s extractive practices.
The bottom line is that the profit motive is incompatible with treating water in a way that is socially and environmentally equitable.
Now, the government is proposing a new single regulator with dedicated teams for each company, rather than the four institutions that have been in place until now. In addition, there are plans for better regulation and enforcement for pollution, and improvements to infrastructure (the white paper reveals how little is known about water company assets).
However, the language around regulation is confused and contradictory. On the one hand there is talk of being tough: Reynolds says there will be “nowhere to hide” for errant water companies. And there could be criminal proceedings against directors, who may also be deprived of bonus payments.
But on the other, the language is remarkably accommodating in its approach to the firms that have put the whole system in jeopardy.
Those that were behind the sewage crises and the perilous state of water company finances are to be helped to improve through a “performance-improvement regime”. Considerable attention is devoted to creating an attractive climate for investors, where returns will be stable and predictable. This, despite the fact that recent unpredictability was largely due to the activities of private companies.
Power and politics
If water in England and Wales remains in private hands, the unresolvable tension between the drive for profits alongside controls to protect consumers and the environment will persist. The demands of capital tend to prevail, with considerable government attention devoted to ensuring that the sector is attractive to investors.
As an example, the government claims that the next five years will see £104 billion of private investment. But this ultimately is funded by the planned 36% rise in bills (plus inflation). And a fifth of this (£22 billion) is set aside for the costs of capital, to cover interest payments and dividends.
The focus on regulatory and management measures obscures issues of power and politics in water governance. Water is supplied by companies whose shareholders have immense political power.
Private equity investors BlackRock, the biggest asset manager in the world, has stakes in three water companies – Severn Trent, United Utilities and South West Water (via Pennon). Keir Starmer, the prime minister, entertained BlackRock’s CEO in November 2024 where an overhaul of regulation was reportedly promised.
And Hong Kong-based CKI, once a contender to take over Thames Water, is the majority owner of Northumbrian Water. It also has stakes in Britain’s gas, electricity and rail networks, as well as owning Superdrug and the discount store, Savers.
A similar story is told in other companies. These are global behemoths that have influence and huge resources, and as such may seek to shape regulation in their own interests.
The system in England and Wales is an outlier. No other country has copied this extreme privatised model. In fact, many have taken privatised water back into public hands. In Paris, the public water operator Eau de Paris is an award-winning example of transparency, accountability and integrity in public service.
It demonstrates that it is possible to create public services that are fair, sustainable and resilient. Key to this process has been the vision of water as a vital common good rather than a commodity.
The government’s plans will patch up the water system, particularly with the boost in revenue from bill payers. But the private sector has found unanticipated ways to maximise profits in the past and may well do so again. Rather than continually tweaking the failed private model, the only real route to operating water in the public interest is for it to be in public ownership.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In November 2012, during my first year as a PhD student, a 23-year-old medical student knocked on my door. Earlier that day, we had been discussing our ages in our shared kitchen. At 30, I had stayed silent, feeling a sharp sting of embarrassment next to my 20-something housemates.
But this student was determined to get an answer from me. He shoved his passport in my face and demanded to see mine. When I admitted my age, he laughed and said: “Wow, you’re so old.”
In that moment, I felt a deep sense of shame and failure. But after a decade of research tracking more than 100 young people, I want to tell my younger self: you weren’t failing. You simply hadn’t inherited the same amount of time as your peer.
My work with students in China shows that social inequality isn’t just about money or status. It’s also about time inheritance.
I started my PhD at 30 only after spending five years working to clear my family’s debts and move my parents out of a house where sewage regularly flooded their floors. My housemate, whose father and grandfather were doctors and Cambridge alumni, had inherited “banked time” – a cushion of security that allowed him to glide straight to the academic starting line.
Banked time v borrowed time
To make sense of this, I distinguish between two kinds of time inheritance.
Some young people receive banked time. They start life with a “full tank”: parents who can afford to support them through unpaid internships, gap years, or an extra degree, and the freedom to change course or repeat a year without financial ruin. This creates a sense of temporal security that allows them to take measured risks, explore their interests, and wait for the best opportunities to arise. They have “slack” in the system that actually generates more time in the long run.
Others live on borrowed time. They start with an “empty tank,” already owing years of labour to their families before they even begin. Because their education often relies on the extreme sacrifices of parents or the missed opportunities of siblings, these students carry a heavy debt-paying mentality.
A delay in earning feels dangerous because it isn’t just a personal setback; it is a failure to repay a moral and economic debt to those who supported them. This pressure works in two punishing ways.
Some make “self-sabotaging” choices by picking lower-tier degrees or precarious jobs just because they offer immediate income. Others find their education takes far longer as they are forced to pause their studies to work and save, trapped in a cycle of paying off “time interest” before they can finally begin their own lives.
Take Jiao, a brilliant student from a poor rural family in China. He scored high enough to enter one of the country’s top two universities: Peking or Tsinghua, the equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge. Yet he chose a second-tier university.
He felt he could not afford the “time cost” of the mandatory military training that was required at the elite universities at the time he was applying. This would have delayed his ability to earn money and support his parents. On paper, this looks like a self-sabotaging decision. In reality, it was a survival strategy shaped by time poverty: he simply did not have months to spare.
In contrast, Yi, born into a comfortable Beijing family, dropped out of university after just one year because she didn’t like the teaching. She didn’t see this as a failure, but as “cutting her losses”. With her parents’ backing, she quickly applied to an elite university in Australia. Yi had inherited banked time, which gave her the security to try again.
Both students were capable. What differed was how much time they could afford to lose.
Lost learning
Although my research focuses on China, these temporal mechanisms are not culturally unique. They show up in different forms in other countries.
We saw this during post-pandemic debates about “lost learning”. In the UK, for example, tutoring programmes and extra school hours were offered as fixes. But these only work if pupils have the spare time to use them.
For those already caring for siblings or parents, working part-time or commuting long distances, the extra provision can become another burden: deepening, rather than reducing, time debt.
In universities, the cost-of-living crisis has pushed more students into long hours of paid work during term. They get through their degrees, but at a price: less time to build networks, take internships or simply think about their next steps.
Rigid career “windows” also matter. Age-limited grants, early-career schemes that expire a few years after graduation and expectations of a seamless CV all act as a time tax on those who took longer to reach the starting line. They might have been caring for relatives, changing country, or working to stay afloat.
Making education fairer means being aware of this time disparity. This could mean designing catch-up and tutoring schemes around the actual schedules of working and caring students, not an idealised timetable.
Within academia, extending age and career-stage limits on scholarships, fellowships and early-career posts would mean that those who started “late” are not permanently penalised. And more recognition of the burden of unpaid care and emotional labour in both universities and workplaces would be a valuable step.
Ultimately, doing well in education is not just about how we spend our time. It is about who is allowed to have time in the first place, and who is quietly starting the race already in debt.
Dr Cora Lingling Xu receives funding from the Cambridge International Trust, the Sociological Review Foundation, the ESRC Social Science Festival,the British Academy and various grants from Queens’ College Cambridge, Cambridge University, Keele University and Durham University.
As winter set in across the UK, the flags strung up during 2025’s controversial Operation Raise the Colours were becoming tatty and grey. Yet, they continue to send an important message: despite increasingly digitally connected lives, neighbourhoods still matter when it comes to political views.
The strength of feeling among those putting up flags since summer 2025 and those who objected to them is proof that people filter big political issues through the places where they live and work. People measure their lives through local heritage, memories and a sense of home. So these areas are also battlegrounds for competing visions of what it means to belong.
Reform UK has clearly recognised this. It has worked hard to win council elections in England, appealing to concerns held across the political spectrum about the character and decline of neighbourhoods. But such tactics tend to to push people’s buttons on sensitive issues such as immigration and encourage resentment.
Historically, local civic institutions – pubs, working men’s clubs, trade union halls, church halls – came into their own when communities faced hard times. They acted as emergency shelters and dining halls, information points and advice services, they gave emotional and practical support, as well as being spaces for enjoyment and celebration. Some such spaces still exist, but today, much of this social infrastructure has declined or been dismantled.
Into this vacuum steps populist right and far-right parties. They generate support by offering some residents a renewed sense of community, security or hope. In Epping, a recent site of major anti-immigrant protests, some residents have established Essex Spartans, a vigilante patrol group to “protect women, children and the elderly”.
Offering help to vulnerable residents in a spirit of community and care is laudable but these groups risk exaggerating local feelings of “stranger danger” towards migrants and minorities. And with alleged connections to both Reform UK and other rightwing groups, Essex Spartans and initiatives like them could create pathways to more extreme perspectives.
Far-right groups such as Homeland are also actively seeking to enter the mainstream civic life of communities. This has included joining parish councils, church congregations and sports clubs, distributing food to homeless people, and establishing litter-picking groups.
Communities pushing back
But it is a common mistake to assume that the political winds are blowing only in the favour of the right and far right, and that working-class white communities are hotbeds of racism or xenophobia. The research I’ve conducted in two of Bristol’s poorest suburbs has revealed the huge efforts made by neighbourhood groups to show that communities targeted by far-right messaging can be inclusive, imaginative and progressive.
These communities fit the profile for an area at risk of far-right influence: working-class, peripheral, declining and predominantly white. Far-right and anti-immigrant sentiments are shared openly on local social media groups, as stickers and graffiti on walls and lampposts, and in conversations in the few pubs and cafes that remain.
So they are not unusual communities, but they are also home to impressive levels of hidden work being done by community activists who want to turn the tide.
In one community that abuts a major logistics zone, British-born and migrant job-seekers and low-waged workers are crammed into overcrowded and low-quality homes. They are drawn there by a promise of plentiful work which does not always materialise.
Instead of simply blaming immigration for negative side effects, several community groups are working together to support the residents, challenge the council and landlords to improve their conditions, and clean up the neighbourhood’s streets.
Monica, manager of the community hall, explains her approach: “Just work on the ground, and person by person.” This is how she helped a longstanding older people’s club and the migrant women learning English down the hallway to start sharing lunch together. Now this semi-regular lunch date has become an unthreatening way for these very different groups to mingle.
In a neighbourhood on the other side of Bristol, decades of neglect, disinvestment and stigma have left the area in decline. But rather than blaming immigration, networks of residents and organisations are leading the charge on neighbourhood renewal.
By pooling resources, skills, and ingenuity, finding workarounds to divert resources where they are needed, they are rebuilding dignity and agency from below. This isn’t dramatic transformation but small changes that benefit everyone, such as reintroducing bins in the park.
Community groups are also safer spaces for difficult conversations about local identity and sense of place that acknowledge residents’ feelings of loss or injustice. Darren, a youth worker, explains that well-loved community spaces are “vital” for keeping conversations respectful.
Bristol’s identity – a vibrant and exciting city with a troubled colonial past – rarely fits their own experience of growing up at its forgotten peripheries. Instead of becoming mired in these citywide “culture wars”, groups in both areas celebrate their neighbourhood’s unique heritage in response to this desire for pride and belonging.
Looking to the future
Community activists nationwide are defying assumptions about working-class neighbourhoods as being “on benefits, uneducated, having loads of kids, racist”, as Trish, a tenants’ group member told me.
With elections around the UK in 2026, the future of the country’s neighbourhoods is up for grabs. But trust in any politician is at rock bottom in these Bristolian communities and elsewhere. One resident told me, if any party set up a stall outside the local shops, “that table’s getting flipped”.
Reform UK doesn’t have a foothold like Labour here, but its candidates could still be in contention here if they can ride their national party’s wave. For now, the hard work of community activists appears to be having some effect.
This fight won’t just play out in the halls of power or the ballot box – it will unfold in streets, parks, and community halls.
Anthony Ince has received research funding from the British Academy and the Independent Social Research Foundation.
Just weeks after the premiere of popular gay hockey romance series Heated Rivalry, star Hudson Williams’ extensive skincare routine has gone viral. In a now-viral video for The Cut, the 24-year-old walks viewers through his “five-step Korean beauty routine.”
His multi-step regimen includes a close shave, a cleanse, pore-minimizing treatments, a “super-glowing” toner and serums targeted toward “rejuvenating” the young star’s face and body.
The nearly 20-minute routine, replete with self-deprecating humour and an ironic bent against vanity, has amassed some 500,000 views (and counting), almost 2,000 comments and 36,000 likes on YouTube alone.
Williams’ routine, and its public broadcast online, is emblematic of a wider shift in our highly visual and virtual culture among men. From style guides and intensive workout routines to recommendations for skin and hair, men are investing in their appearance.
But, in a curious contortion, they’ve called their work on the face and body anything (and everything) but beauty.
I look to taken-for-granted trends online — images and advertisements as well as viral video clips — and their reception among audiences to understand how young people engage with and respond to beauty, and the various privileges and penalties it commands.
Beauty’s cultural force has long weighed upon women, who have been invited to modify their appearances in step with challenging, often contradictory, beauty norms. But in a recent and curious shift, beauty norms and appearance pressures have intensified among men.
‘Heated Rivalry’ star Hudson Williams breaks down his skincare routine for ‘The Cut’
The rise of men’s beauty habits
Men’s bodies are increasingly visible in product advertisements and mainstream campaigns, with a surfeit of cosmetics targeted toward men.
Mundane investments in skincare and grooming are not uncommon, with young men especially doubling down on their efforts to refine the face and body through multi-step routines not unlike Williams’.
Driven at least in part by social media influencers and the rise of platformed figures who dialogue around the importance of looking good, “freshening up” and keeping sharp, men are investing in their appearance as women long have.
Alongside these investments, boys and men are enjoined to bulk up to achieve a muscled and well-defined look. Widely followed influencers and celebrities alike echo the call, endorsing a range of compound exercises to improve one’s physique and “science based” changes to boost growth.
The drive toward muscularity is demanding, with many recommendations touting the importance of rigorous diets and intensive exercise regimes.
In the name of beauty
While some recommendations are innocuous enough, men have entertained more extreme, sometimes dangerous practices to modify and refine the appearance of their face and body.
Sometimes called “looksmaxxing,” a term capturing efforts that enhance men’s appearance, practices like “mewing” and the far more dangerous exercise of “bone-smashing” are often endorsed to promote facial harmony and a stronger jawline.
The preponderance and popularity of these appearance-focused practices online have produced what medical researcher Daniel Konig and his colleagues describe as an “almost pathological obsession” with attractiveness, with significant consequences for boys and men.
Public reporting on men’s relationship to their appearance indicates that a growing number of men are suffering from body insecurity and lower esteem, manifesting in the rise of muscle dysmorphia, a body-image disorder focused on a perceived lack of physical size or strength.
In a similar vein, the United Kingdom’s Sexualization of Young People report indicates that online, boys are increasingly under pressure to “display their bodies in a hyper-masculine way showing off muscles and posturing as powerful and dominant.”
Why men resist calling it beauty
In my ongoing research with young people enrolled at the University of Toronto and MacEwan University, I am documenting a similar set of pressures.
The young people I’ve spoken with insist that while appearance weighs heavily on everyone, men are increasingly subject to the demands of a culture preoccupied with looking good.
For the boys and men I speak with, social media platforms, and the celebrities and influencers who populate them, are a particularly thorny topic. They invite an intense sense of comparison between men and their physiques and, for many, a feeling of not quite being good enough.
Still, few describe these pressures in terms related to beauty per se. As a historically feminized domain, beauty has been derided as frivolous and unimportant. But as many men are coming to find, the truth is far more complex. Beauty returns rewards to those who are thought to possess it or, perhaps, to those who are willing to pay for it.
Selling beauty to the masses
Men represent a growing and lucrative ground on which to sell products and services designed to optimize their appearance.
This previously untapped market segment is ripe for commercial exploitation, with an increasing number of men making spending on beauty products and services.
In 2024, market researcher Mintel reported that more than half of men use facial skincare products, with members of Gen Z accounting for the greatest share of growth in skincare products — especially “high-end” and “clean” products.
Men’s interest in more costly and intensive beauty treatments is also on the rise. The American Academy of Plastic Surgeons reports that a growing number of men are pursuing body augmentation and cosmetic surgery, as well as non-invasive procedures like dermal filler injections and facial neurotoxins like Botox.
Under both knife and needle, beauty’s cultural force is sure to be felt.
Jordan Foster receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
For many years, co-operation between Canada and Sweden was often viewed through a narrow lens — defence procurement. Discussions about fighter aircraft, technical specifications and military benefits tended to dominate attention.
Yet focusing only on defence equipment obscures a deeper shift now under way. What began as a technical defence relationship has gradually evolved into broader strategic convergence rooted in shared geopolitical interests, mutual economic benefits and a common understanding of the North.
This evolution in the relationship hasn’t happened overnight. It’s developed incrementally through political dialogue, institutional trust and shared security concerns.
It also comes after Canada signed a contract in January 2023 to acquire 88 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighters from the United States and has committed funds for 16 of them.
Recent developments suggest that Canada–Sweden co-operation is no longer best understood as a transactional arrangement. Instead, it reflects a sustained effort by two northern democracies to strengthen long-term co-ordination in an increasingly unstable global environment.
The foundations of Canada–Sweden defence co-operation lie in longstanding exchanges on military aviation, joint exercises and technological collaboration. Although fighter aircraft discussions, including on the Gripens, are a visible part of this relationship, collaboration has increasingly extended beyond procurement.
Sweden’s accession to NATO in 2024 has reinforced these dynamics, creating new opportunities for co-ordination between Canada and Sweden within the organization’s planning, exercises and capability development.
Canada’s lack of a Swedish aircraft purchase hasn’t curtailed defence co-operation, but redirected it toward political alignment on shared threats, Arctic and Baltic security and the institutional frameworks required among allies in northern environments.
High-level engagement
In 2023, Canada and Sweden marked 80 years of diplomatic relations. This anniversary highlighted the depth and continuity of the bilateral relationship and served as a reminder that present day co-operation builds on decades of political trust.
High-level political contacts in recent years have further elevated the relationship.
Interactions among ministers responsible for foreign affairs, defence, industry and energy have framed co-operation around defence-related industries, technological sovereignty, innovation ecosystems and Arctic governance. This points to a maturing partnership in which security, industry and research policy are increasingly connected.
What stands out is that discussions have focused less on single contracts and more on long-term reliability, institutional compatibility and shared priorities.
These include security in the High North, collective defence within NATO and closer industrial and technological ties among advanced democracies with similar economic systems.
King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia led the visit and were accompanied by senior Swedish cabinet ministers, including Ebba Busch, deputy prime minister and industry minister, and Defence Minister Pål Jonson.
The three-day visit combined ceremonial diplomacy with strategic and economic dialogue. Several Swedish companies participated in business and innovation events.
During the visit, Canada and Sweden formalized a strategic partnership framework covering security and defence co-operation, Arctic affairs, trade, innovation and the green and digital transitions.
The visit, which included meetings in Ottawa and engagements with research and technology experts, underscored that bilateral relations were no longer limited to defence but were expanding into long-term political co-ordination.
The Rodinia metaphor
Busch has on several occasions used an unusual metaphor to describe relations between Canada and the Nordic region: Rodinia, the ancient super-continent that once linked what are now parts of North America and northern Europe.
Although geological in origin, the reference serves a political purpose. It frames present co-operation as a reconnection rather than something new. It situates Canada–Nordic relations within a longer narrative shaped by comparable northern environments, natural resources and innovation systems influenced by climate and geography.
Such historical imagery helps place industrial and strategic co-operation within a broader sense of continuity. In this perspective, partnership does not depend on a single defence decision but on structural similarities and long-term shared interests across the North Atlantic and Arctic regions.
These economies include Nordic countries in areas like clean energy, critical minerals, digital innovation and security. The argument is that countries with compatible institutions, technological capacity and a commitment to rules-based international co-operation can enhance their influence by acting together.
Seen in this light, Canada and the Nordic states are not peripheral powers but form part of a northern cluster with expertise that is highly relevant to global challenges.
Energy transition in cold climates, Arctic infrastructure, resilience in sparsely populated regions and defence in harsh environments are areas where their experience carries weight.
This reflects a broader shift in how strategic partnerships are built. Trust, institutional compatibility and shared outlooks now matter as much as contractual outcomes.
What started as talks about fighter jets has become a broader discussion about northern resilience and how democracies on the edges of great power competition can improve their security and prosperity by working together instead of relying on others.
Canada and Sweden are not simply discussing equipment. They are shaping a model of partnership based on long-term alignment, one that could prove more enduring than any single procurement decision.
Christophe Premat is director of the Centre for Canadian Studies and a professor of Francophone cultural studies at Stockholm University. He acknowledges having taken part in events organized by the Embassy of Canada in Sweden at which representatives of the Swedish Armed Forces were present. He received funding from the Nordic and Baltic Cooperation through the Nordplus educational grant for the years 2020–2022. With the support of this grant, he created an introductory online course in Canadian Studies (https://doi.org/10.17045/sthlmuni.15329100.v1) which is given each summer. He has recently participated in interviews commenting on the political situation in Canada.
White Horse in a Green Meadow by Edvard Munch (1917) and the cover for Glyph. Munch Museum/Penguin
Ali Smith’s Glyph is the companion novel to her earlier novel, Gliff (2024). Gliff was set in a surreal near-future dystopia. Glyph, meanwhile, is set in the present. But like Smith’s earlier Seasonal Quartet, it offers the reader an uncanny version of our world, haunted by ghostly voices from the past.
The novel focuses on two sisters, Petra and Patricia (aka Patch). The action moves between scenes from their childhood in the 1990s and their present-day estrangement.
Two chance family anecdotes of wartime tragedy have a shaping influence on their imaginative lives. One is the story of a first world war soldier who deserted the army, fleeing with a blinded horse he wished to save. We learn that he was eventually court-martialled and executed.
The other is the curious account of how a female agent, travelling under cover through France in the second world war, discovered a mysteriously flattened corpse on the road.
When young Patch becomes distressed by the fate of the flattened man, Petra pretends that she can communicate with him in the afterlife. Episodes from his life are presented in vivid detail, and the reader is invited to speculate that the ghost may be real.
Smith teasingly draws attention to the different levels of reality at work in the novel. The image of a flattened corpse becomes a metaphor for other kinds of flattening, including that of characters in fiction. At one point the narrating voice, with apparent authorial detachment, refers to “the flat character / literary device called Patricia”.
It is then revealed that Patricia herself is narrating this section. And the ghost of the flattened man – who may simply be Petra’s invention – remembers reading a book in which books are described as “flattened flowers at best”.
The novel also asserts a powerful link between stories and ghosts: “Story, however. It is haunting. Everything tells it.”
Glyph v Gliff
Although it can be read as a standalone work, Glyph inevitably invites the reader to explore its relationship with Gliff (2024), adding yet a further dimension to this multilayered novel.
In many ways Petra and Patch’s relationship mirrors that between Gliff’s siblings, Briar and Rose. Both younger sisters share a fondness for puns and sly malapropisms. And the soldier’s doomed escape with the horse seems to echo the mysterious disappearance of Rose on the back of a horse she rescued from being slaughtered.
Smith adds a further complication into the mix when it is revealed that the novel Gliff exists in the world of Glyph. A brief discussion of its merits (and weaknesses) between Petra and Patch offers a humorous reflection of real-world reader responses to Gliff: “A bit too dark for me. A bit too clever-clever, a bit too on the nose politically, for a novel.”
The presence of Gliff within Glyph also complicates the meaning of some of the links between the two novels. Petra is sure she is being haunted by the blind horse of family legend. But Patch suggests that this is a delusion sparked by reading Gliff. The duology forms a kind of textual Möbius strip – a mind-bending twisted loop with just one side – perhaps nodding back to the double strands of Smith’s 2014 novel How to be Both.
Alongside all this playful twistiness sits a passionate commitment to a more just society. Billie, Patch’s teenage daughter, is central to this element of the novel. She resembles young Florence in Ali Smith’s earlier novel Spring (2019). Both are charismatically exuberant Greta Thunberg-style campaigners for social justice.
The future world of the earlier novel Gliff seemed horrifyingly absurd in its unfairness. Viewed through Smith’s bitterly satirical lens in Glyph, our own present world seems little less surreal in its destructiveness, its attacks on creativity, freedom and the environment, and its addiction to war and violence.
Like all of Smith’s works, Glyph is multifaceted. She is equally adroit at capturing the emotional nuances of family life, mapping out the larger political landscape, or beguiling the reader with joyfully witty metafictional and linguistic games.
Readers often feel pulled in two directions when reading her novels. There is so much to pause on, so many startling turns of phrase or clues to hidden mysteries. Yet there is also an irresistible compulsion to turn the pages, to find out what happens next.
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Sarah Annes Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Many Kurdish people will be feeling betrayed by the US after the Syrian army, backed by the US and armed by Turkey, launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in early January. The SDF has long been hailed as the west’s most effective partner against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation.
Led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the Syrian president who was formerly an al-Qaeda commander, the army initially targeted two Kurdish neighbourhoods in the city of Aleppo. Government forces then captured the SDF-held provinces of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa further east before advancing on the Kurdish-majority regions of Hasakah and Kobani in the north-east corner of the country.
The Syrian army and the SDF are currently observing a fragile 15-day ceasefire, brokered by the US. But according to the UN, at least 134,000 Kurds have already been displaced. And many Kurdish civilians fear a repeat of the 2025 sectarian mass killings and widespread abuse against Syria’s Alevi and Druze communities.
Kobani, a city famous as the site of heroic Kurdish resistance against IS in 2014, is under siege with its water and electricity supplies cut off. And Elham Ahmad, a senior Kurdish official, claims the Syrian army has already executed hundreds of captured Kurdish fighters and civilians. She has characterised the actions of the state as a “war of extermination” against the Kurds.
Abandoning Kurdish allies
The geopolitical fulcrum of this upheaval is US regional strategy. Shortly after becoming Nato’s first secretary general in 1952, Lord Hastings Ismay said the organisation’s purpose was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans down”. In a similar vein, the US strategy in Syria arguably seeks to keep America afar, Iran out and Israel and Turkey apart.
In line with the Trump administration’s 2025 national security strategy, Washington has sought to block Iranian influence in the Middle East. Keen to shift the burden for overseeing the region’s security away from the US, it has also looked to withdraw US forces from Syria after al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) coalition of Turkey-backed Islamist groups toppled longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
A strong HTS-led Sunni Muslim state that is hostile to Iran and its Shia proxies in Iraq and Lebanon, under Turkish tutelage and supported by the Gulf states, was deemed the best option. Yet diverging Israeli and Turkish priorities have complicated this approach.
Israel viewed al-Sharaa’s al-Qaeda past and the inclusion of foreign jihadist fighters in the Syrian military as grave security threats. This helps explain why, immediately after Assad’s fall, Israel destroyed much of Syria’s strategic military infrastructure to prevent it from falling into Islamist hands.
Turkey, meanwhile, has long regarded the autonomy of Syrian Kurds (effective since 2012) as a threat, given the decades-long struggle of its own large Kurdish population for political and cultural rights. Washington sought to square these competing interests through a two-pronged approach.
First, it pushed Syria and Israel towards negotiating a security-economic deal, addressing Israeli concerns in return for sanctions relief and reconstruction aid for Syria. Seeking state consolidation, al-Sharaa accepted the de facto demilitarisation of Syria’s southern regions. He also signalled Syria’s readiness to join the Abraham accords, a series of agreements to normalise relations between Israel and Middle Eastern countries.
Second, the US pressured the Kurds to integrate their military and administrative institutions into the new Syrian state to address Turkish concerns. This led to an agreement between the SDF and Damascus in March 2025, with precise details left to be worked out by joint special working committees.
However, implementation soon stalled over Kurdish demands for local autonomy and integrating the SDF into the national army as a bloc to preserve its organisational coherence, akin to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq. Spurred by Ankara, Damascus rejected Kurdish demands, producing a deadlock.
During US-mediated talks in Paris in early January 2026, the security-economic deal between Israel and Syria was agreed and will soon be finalised. At the same meeting, a Syrian government proposal for a limited operation to recapture SDF-held territory reportedly met no objections. And almost immediately thereafter, the Syrian army launched its offensive.
Another blowback in the making?
US policy in west Asia has repeatedly generated blowback – from support for the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad of the 1980s to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the chaotic 2022 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Abandoning the Kurds in favour of an anti-Iranian government in Syria risks repeating this pattern.
Domestically, it could embolden al-Sharaa to forcibly subordinate Druze, Alawite, Assyrian and other minority groups. This would reproduce a centralised state sustained by repression, like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Iraq, and risks renewed civil war.
Regionally, it destabilises neighbouring Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki, an influential politician who has been nominated for prime minister by dominant Shia factions in the Iraqi parliament following the October 2025 elections, has described al-Sharaa’s Syria as being governed by terrorists.
Indeed, alarmed by the handover of camps holding former IS fighters from the SDF to Damascus, the Iraqi government asked Washington to relocate thousands of IS detainees to Iraq. The US has accepted this request, despite having admitted Syria into the global anti-IS coalition only two months earlier.
Maliki is also closely aligned with Iran. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Shia militia groups in Iraq are concerned about the deployment of Syrian government forces on border crossings previously held by the SDF. Any US attack on Iran, as Donald Trump has threatened recently, could thus draw in Iraq.
Internationally, the danger of abandoning the Kurds is the return of IS terrorism to cities in the west. Reports suggest many IS detainees escaped from detention camps as SDF forces guarding them came under attack. And videos released by the SDF show what it claimed were IS members being broken out of a prison by armed “Damascus factions”.
Washington must honour its own conditions: support for Syria’s transitional government must be contingent on the creation of a genuinely democratic, plural and inclusive political order that constitutionally enshrines and protects minority rights – including those of the Kurds.
Kamran Matin is affiliated with Kurdish Peace Institute.
