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The capture of Damascus by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad last December sent shockwaves through Syria’s political landscape, heralding an unprecedented shift in power. The rise to power of HTS, formerly the Al-Nusra Front, is a litmus test for assessing whether militant Islamist organisations can evolve through state-building.

At the heart of transforming Syria must be the development and safeguarding of women’s rights. This will prove a revealing lens through which to measure the sincerity of HTS’s professed reforms.

But so far a stark disparity has emerged between their rhetoric of inclusivity and reality. This appears to involve perpetuating entrenched institutional practices of patriarchal conservatism.

After seizing Damascus, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa took pains to project an image of inclusive governance. He claimed: “Syria is a nation of many identities and beliefs, and our duty is to ensure they coexist peacefully within a just system.” He highlighted that 60% of university students in the city of Idlib are women, and portrayed HTS as a moderate force that values women’s roles in society.

Yet interviews with senior regime figures as well as policy decisions and governance practices expose these statements as hollow. Instead they suggest a deep-seated commitment to hardline religious conservatism.

The new administration’s official spokesperson, Obaida Arnaout, said recently that appointing a woman to a role in the ministry of defence would not “align with her essence, her biological and psychological nature”. This was framed as acknowledging women’s suitability for other roles, but it ultimately reflects a deeply conservative, patriarchal attitude.

Likewise, the appointment of Aisha al-Dibs to lead the office for women’s affairs initially appeared to signal progress. But her first few statements suggested a regressive agenda.

Blaming civil society organisations for “rising divorce rates”, she vowed that “the constitution will be based on Islamic Sharia”. She added that she would “not allow space for those who disagree with my ideology”.

Al-Dibs’s vision of empowerment appears to be rigidly conservative. It effectively reduces women’s roles to family, husband and domestic priorities.

These two examples highlight in HTS what appears to be a strategy of commandeering state institutions to enforce a radicalised version of Islam, a key trait of political Jihadism.

The new HTS-backed justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi epitomises this trend. In 2015, as a judge in the northern city of Idlib – at the time under the control of the Al-Nusra Front – he was recorded on video ordering women to be executed for adultery. An HTS representative has since dismissed this as “a phase we have surpassed”. But Al-Waisi still argues that since most people in Syria are Muslim, religious Sharia law should take priority.

As far as women’s role in the judiciary is concerned, a statement from Arnaout casts doubt on whether they will be allowed to continue to act as judges, a hard-won right under the Assad regime. In 2017, 30% of judicial posts were occupied by women.

But in an interview with Lebanese TV channel Al-Jadeed in December 2024, Arnaout said: “Certainly, women have the right to learn and be educated in any field, whether in education, law, the judiciary, or other fields, but the job has to suit her nature.” She added: “For a woman to assume a judicial position, this could be examined by experts, and it is too early to talk about it.”

Education policy has also become a key battleground. The new administration has introduced sweeping reforms. These include dropping evolution and big bang theory from science and changing the history curriculum to reflect a more Islamic slant.

Education minister, Nazir Al-Qadri, has downplayed these revisions as “small deletions and corrections”. But the changes reveal a deliberate effort to embed conservative radical Salafi ideology.

Beyond the classroom, HTS’s hardline policies pervade public life. Women are segregated on buses, strict dress codes are heavily propagated. Meanwhile building new mosques is taking precedence over rebuilding war-torn infrastructure.

HTS’s unwillingness to embrace genuine pluralism suggest the regime is more interested in rebranding its ideology than in reforming it.

Paris conference on Syria: delegates called an ‘inclusive transition’ to democracy.
Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs/UPI Credit: UPI/Alamy Live News

Diplomatic promises and realities on the ground

While determining how to engage with the HTS regime, other countries need to be aware of this. They must act in the knowledge that rhetoric of inclusivity appears – at present at least – to be simply that: rhetoric. Firm pressure from international stakeholders such as the United Nations will be needed to hold HTS accountable to a transition to a fully inclusive new system of government.

A conference held in Paris on February 13 and attended by representatives of a broad range of Arab and European countries underscored the international commitment to this principle. Delegates produced a joint statement that called for: “A peaceful, credible, orderly and swift inclusive transition … so that a representative and inclusive governance that represents all components of Syrian society and includes women from the onset can be formed.”

The explicit mention of women and inclusive representation in this statement stands in stark contrast to the reality of the transitional process. Just a day earlier, on February 12, the appointed preparatory committee for the upcoming National Dialogue Conference, which will thrash out a new “political identity” for Syria, revealed the limitations of this commitment.

While the seven-member committee includes two women, five members have strong ties to Islamist movements and three of the seven are directly linked to HTS.

The committee’s composition notably fails to represent Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities, with no Kurdish, Alawite, or Druze representatives. This raises questions about the genuine commitment to inclusive governance in the transition process.

The contradiction between HTS rhetoric and its actions on diversity and inclusivity, especially when it comes to respecting women’s rights, is not just a domestic issue but a critical test of its global standing.

The new regime’s treatment of women and its enforcement of conservative ideology in violation of legal and human rights expose its broader intentions. Failing to address these signs risks condemning Syria to a repressive future. Läs mer…

Ahead of the election on February 23, many German voters are deeply concerned about the economy – and for good reason. The German economy is in a recession and has been shrinking for two consecutive years. In fact, it is now about the same size as it was in 2019, even as some of its peers among the world’s advanced economies have experienced solid growth (on the left of the chart below).

This matters for voters, who have experienced stagnating real incomes and remain pessimistic – expecting real incomes to decline further.

GDP and productivity growth of Germany, UK and US:

Real economic growth in Germany, the UK and the US, 2019 to 2023 (constant prices). Sources: World Bank and OECD. Author provided.

There could be several reasons for Germany’s economic malaise. First, fiscal policy in Germany is tighter than in other countries, meaning higher taxes and lower public spending. Due to the “debt brake” enshrined in its constitution, Germany is severely restricted in running budget deficits, except when the government declares an emergency, as it did due to COVID.

The last coalition government collapsed over a dispute about whether to declare another emergency over the war in Ukraine in order to increase borrowing capacity. This did not happen, and as a result Germany’s fiscal deficit has remained relatively moderate. The argument goes that a larger deficit might have boosted economic growth.

Second, for decades, Germany has relied on foreign demand to sustain economic growth at home. During the first two decades of the 21st century, it benefited greatly from China’s integration into the world economy.

To build up its productive capacity, China relied heavily on machinery produced in Germany and it purchased a significant number of German cars. However, this is no longer the case. As China has moved to the technology frontier, it no longer depends as much on German cars or machinery.

However, both factors only go so far in accounting for the stagnating German economy. For if demand – domestic or foreign – is too weak to sustain growth, this should be reflected in falling prices.

Yet prices have been rising strongly. Inflation in Germany has been running high over the last couple of years.

And it has not been systematically lower than in, say, the US or the rest of the euro area. Over the next 12 months, households expect inflation to be above 3% – well above the European Central Bank’s 2% target.

Another relevant indicator also suggests that lack of demand is unlikely to be the main reason for Germany’s stagnation. Unemployment is low in Germany, lower than in most European countries and hardly higher than in 2019.

Instead, adverse supply conditions are key, as reflected in households’ expectations of falling incomes and higher inflation.

Overall, supply is simply the combination of labour and capital inputs (for example, the size of the workforce and the machinery or premises available to them) along with productivity or technology, which tells us how much output we get from the labour and capital inputs. Germany is facing a triple crisis in this regard – expensive energy, weak labour supply and low productivity growth.

First, there are energy prices, which have been pushed up everywhere by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the effect has been particularly strong in Germany due to its direct dependency on Russian gas.

The outgoing government, in which the Greens have been a key player, is widely credited with trying to accelerate Germany’s green transition. This raised the costs of the transition above those caused by the European Emissions Trading System, whereby polluters pay for their emissions.

While it is difficult to determine the exact contributions of the war and the green transition to the rise in energy prices, both clearly act as a drag on growth, particularly on the supply side (that is to say, production potential).

The productivity problem

But Germany faces more fundamental supply-side challenges. The second issue becomes apparent when comparing GDP per hour worked (a measure of a country’s productivity, as seen on the right of the chart above).

Here, the trends in Germany and the UK are quite similar, implying that Germany’s lower economic growth relative to the UK is primarily due to people working fewer hours. This, in turn, may reflect demographic changes, migration that does not contribute to the labour force or shifting preferences in the wake of COVID.

The third issue is productivity growth. Consider the increase in GDP per hour worked in the US, which has risen by more than 10% as shown in the chart above, dwarfing the developments in both Germany and the UK. Common causes of weak productivity growth include ageing infrastructure, low private sector investment, a lack of start-ups and fewer new companies growing into multinational leaders.

A turnaround requires far-reaching improvements in supply conditions. In terms of energy, Germany should avoid measures such as introducing more regulation on the heating or insulation of new and existing homes, and instead rely on the EU-wide emissions trading scheme to curb emissions.

In the labour market, increased participation or skilled migration is needed, supported by policies that encourage people to retire later and entice more women into the workforce.

Increasing defence spending could be a way to boost German productivity.
Ryan Nash Photography/Shutterstock

Productivity growth remains the most challenging issue. A good start would be increased funding for universities and reduced regulation, particularly for AI technology.

Deepening the EU’s single market, for example by removing restrictions on cross-border energy trade to allow firms to access cheaper electricity, would enhance competition and drive productivity growth. This way, companies could expand and create well-paying jobs.

Finally, an additional boost may come from higher defence spending, not only to address the much-needed improvement of Germany’s external security but also because it has been shown to increase productivity.

While immigration may be a major talking point for the German electorate in the coming vote, the economy – as ever – will be an important factor in measuring the mood of the country. Läs mer…

Talking about climate change is never easy. The issue is complex and upsetting. Headlines bring bad news way more often than good ones.

Techniques based on the extensive analysis of theories and research from social psychology, sociology, environmental and media studies can pave the way for a consistent approach to climate action commitment and citizen empowerment.

Here are five ways to communicate climate stories in a way that keeps people engaged and motivated to take positive action.

1. Give people agency

According to the seminal research published in 1974 by the Canadian-American social psychologist Albert Bandura, humans are capable creatures who can overcome fears and lead happier, motivated lives when led correctly. He conducted a famous experiment with people who were afraid of snakes.

In one scenario, an assistant was holding a snake in their hands or keeping it in a cage, while the scared person was watching. In another scenario, the person was given a snake to hold, in a controlled environment, with the assistants eager to take the snake back at any signs of the person’s discomfort. Bandura discovered that looking at someone holding a glossy, hissy reptile did not improve one’s sense of empowerment much.

However, actually handling the scary creature allowed people to feel more in control – and more likely to overcome their fear. This approach is known for boosting people’s sense of agency. By tackling the problem with one modest action at a time, a person is likely to become more reassured in their capacity to challenge larger issues.

In terms of climate communication, we need to be able to control at least small bits of the situation in order to be psychologically equipped to tackle bigger challenges. Climate communicators can give practical suggestions on lifestyle amendments, feasible activism techniques, political involvement – to nourish the sense of empowerment in the audience.

2. Localise the issue

While researching for my new book, Effective Climate Communication, I discovered that many countries with fewer resources struggle to present local stories related to climate change. They tend to rely on the western agenda of UN climate summits or global reports.

The shortage of correspondents on the ground (see studies on Sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and South Africa, countries in South America and Asia), makes many media in the developing countries ignore the very local consequences of the global heating. When people are less prepared for extreme weather, they’ll be less empowered to demand change from their governments or invest in weather-resilient crops and other prevention techniques.

By capturing perspectives from the local businesses and scientists, people can talk more easily about the direct effects of climate change on the local environment.

For instance, Greenpeace Indonesia focused on three themes on their Instagram page: the imagery of floods and humans affected, the call to switch to renewable energy, and the argument against the “omnibus” bill, which allows coal companies renew their licenses easily every ten years.

Connecting the local impact of climate change with the possible solution – reducing coal mining – brought a considerable number of clicks and comments to the stories. Although the link between Instagram and public opinion is hard to prove, the omnibus bill is still widely contested by Indonesian society.

3. Make stories relatable

Unless you’re called Elon Musk, Bill Gates (the co-founder of Microsoft) or Ursula von der Leyen (president of the European Commission), you don’t have a direct control over the management of climate change at a global level. Yet, it would be amazing to hear more stories of people who may be giving up long-haul flights, rejecting meat and divesting their pension from the fossil fuel funds. There are so many stories that can be told to inspire feelings of connection and hope.

Stories must be made relatable to engage a wider audience in positive climate conversations.
fizkes/Shutterstock

According to classic “social proof” theory, if we can be sure that any new behaviour is the social norm, then we’ll be more eager to change. The moment people consider that refraining from eating meat, flying and buying unnecessary stuff are common patterns in their social circles, they will find it easier to follow suit, as shown by this study on the flying intentions of Germans, or research on the effect of social communities on pro-climate decisions in Europe.

4. Avoid ‘doomism’

Effective Climate Communication is published by Palgrave Macmillan Cham.

Watching thrillers about the end of the world on the TV screen can be escapist and weirdly soothing. But witnessing the apocalypse unfold in front of us, through multiple news notifications and social media posts, is less gratifying. The narratives that compare climate change to the end of the humanity are supposed to incite action – but more often than not they lead to freeze or withdrawal reactions.

In some newsrooms, the practice of “the three Ds” flourishes in the face of the planetary problem – denial, delay-ism and dismissal. Doomist storytelling opens the doors for fake prophets and self-proclaimed superheroes who promise to fix the problem but end up in populism and scapegoating.

Avoiding doomism allows for “stubborn optimism”, a concept endorsed by Christiana Figueres, the ex-head of the UN climate change convention from 2010 to 2016. It is the dual approach of acknowledging the severity of the issue and the cost of the delays to action, but looking at the present state of affairs as an opportunity to avoid bigger damage and focus on the near-term solutions.

5. Create a new normal

Having a special climate change section within a media publication is a nice sign that the organisation cares about the problem. But how likely are people to click on it just to discover another ambush of negative stories? Including climate references in the majority of stories, from fashion to travel, helps normalise climate change as a backdrop to all aspects of our lives.

There’s no need for preaching. Nobody wants to be patronised for their decision to take a flight to see the family that lives far away. But subtle travel listicles about local destinations, creative meat-free recipes or an imaginative reinvention of fashion advice as restyling, not buying, can offer up alternatives in creative ways.

It should not be a taboo topic at dinner parties or social events. Avoid “othering” the climate change issue and help people stay aware and committed to tackling the elements of it.

Being aware of climate change as a new norm is healthier than trying to push it away and deny it’s happening. Engagement with the biggest story of our time is the best catalyst for change that we have.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…

Jimmy Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981, considered the treaties signed in 1977 to cede control of the Panama Canal to Panama, ending over a century of strained relations, one of the crowning achievements of his administration.

Today, Panamanians are uncertain whether Donald Trump will abide by these treaties – and are nervous about what could happen next. Panamanian journalists that I have spoken with are increasingly concerned that the US will invade.

Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out using the US military to seize the Panama Canal, if necessary, despite boasting that he had an impeccable record of not starting any new wars.

While this appears to be a huge departure in US foreign policy towards Latin America, the US has had a long history of invading, meddling, supporting coups and offering clandestine support to violent non-state actors in the region.

One historian has noted that the US participated (directly and indirectly) in regime change in Latin America more than 40 times in the last century. This figure does not even take into account failed missions that didn’t result in regime change, such as the US’s orchestrated invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961.

When the US is not intervening, its approach to the region has been described as “benign neglect”. During these interludes, Latin America was mostly ignored while the US prioritised other geopolitical interests.

Return to the old ways?

But Trump’s latest threats to Panama are a return to the paternalistic era of US foreign policy towards Latin America. This arguably started with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 — a framework that aimed to protect US interests in the region from European aggression. Latin America essentially became the US’s backyard. At the time, the Monroe Doctrine received some support from Latin American countries that were hoping for independence from Europe and republican forms of government.

Read more:
US pressure has forced Panama to quit China’s Belt and Road Initiative – it could set the pattern for further superpower clashes

But this would change with the increasingly interventionist posture of US president Theodore Roosevelt during his two terms from 1901 to 1909. On November 18 1903, when Panama was just 15 days old, Roosevelt signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty , in which the US promised to support Panamanian independence from Colombia in exchange for rights to build and operate the Panama Canal. Reportedly the deal was engineered by a Frenchman, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, and no Panamanians were involved. This was the era of “big stick diplomacy” where the US would muscle its way into getting what it wanted with a series of credible threats.

Hyotographics/Shutterstock

During the cold war, Washington’s stance in Latin America became even more interventionist. The US backed authoritarian rule by right-wing military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguary and Honduras.

The US government provided organisation, financial and technical support for military regimes that were disappearing, kidnapping, torturing and murdering their political opponents, during Operation Condor in the 1970s. Democratically elected leaders Jacobo Árbenz and Salvador Allende were removed from power with the help of US covert action in Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973, respectively.

Read more:
Operation Condor: why victims of the oppression that swept 1970s South America are still fighting for justice

The US was also responsible for funding and training violent non-state groups such as the Contras, a rebel force which was set up in Nicaragua to oppose the Sandinista government. The US also supported the right-wing Arena government which was accused of setting up death squads during the bloody civil war in El Salvador) in which thousands of civilians were killed.

With the Carter administration’s human rights-focused foreign policy, the US finally did the right thing when it came to returning the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. To accomplish this, Carter had to work hard to build bipartisan support to see the long-term benefits of improving US-Panamanian relations and improving US relations with Latin America more generally.

From the US standpoint, the canal was no longer economically important. At the same time, the canal had become an issue of national pride in Panama, with mass student-led protests breaking out on January 9 1964 when Panamanians were barred from flying their national flag in the US-controlled canal zone. The day became known as Martyr’s Day after 21 Panamanians were killed by US troops.

Relations improved after the Carter-Torrijos treaties were signed. But the US returned to an interventionist strategy when it send nearly 26,000 troops to invade Panama during Operation Just Cause in 1989 – the largest US deployment since the Vietnam war.

Though the goal to remove Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega (who had formerly been on the CIA payroll) was achieved, more than 500 Panamanians were reportedly killed. Unofficial estimates suggest there may have been as many as 2,000-3,000 deaths.

Six months after the 1989 invasion, I went to Panama for the summer, and saw first-hand the destruction caused. Looting had been rampant, with millions of dollars worth of goods stolen. There were concerns that the economy in Colón (Panama’s second largest city) wouldn’t be able to recover.

The impoverished neighbourhood of El Chorillo in Panama City was overwhelmed by a massive use of firepower, including F-117 stealth bombers, Blackhawk helicopters, Apache and Cobra helicopters, 2,000-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles.

In spite of the devastation, the US could, at least, argue that it invaded in order to restore democracy in Panama. But fast forward to today and Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t care about democracy and human rights. He does care, however, about increasing Chinese economic influence in Latin America – and this high-profile pushback is actually about bullying the Panamanian government to stop doing deals with Beijing.

And while the seizure of the Panama Canal would probably make very little difference to the US economy, it would make a huge impact to the economy of Panama. The Panamanian government astutely made important investments to enlarge the canal from 2007-2016, and today the canal’s revenues are worth US$5 billion (£3.9 billion), or about 4% of Panama’s GDP.

The “America first” agenda fails to understand how long-term alliances work, how soft power works, and the importance of having credibility and a vision. In the past, the US has often been aggressive, assertive and interventionist in Latin America, with Trump it looks like all these qualities are back. Läs mer…

After months of wrangling over public debt and spending decisions, the German government collapsed in November 2024. Among the many disagreements between the parties which made up the governing coalition was how to pay for measures to combat climate change.

Seeking to take advantage of disillusioned voters (who in recent years showed record support for the Greens), populist parties have since cast doubt on the idea of tackling environmental issues at all.

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), for example, the rightwing party which denies the existence of man-made climate change, has raised concerns about energy security and the economic cost of green alternatives.

If the AfD’s broader aim was to take green issues off the political agenda, the plan appears to be working. In the run-up to the general election on February 23 2025, migration and the economy are the most important issues for voters (each on 34%), with climate change lagging far behind (13%).

Nor has the environment been a priority in the parties’ election campaigns. In the first TV debate between the chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, and his most likely successor, the conservative Friedrich Merz, the topic was ignored almost entirely. A lack of political will and fear of losing voters appear to have relegated environmental policies to the sidelines.

Others want it back at the top of the agenda. Germany’s foreign intelligence service, for example, describes the climate crisis as one of the major risks facing the country, alongside terrorism and war.

Business associations have urged the next government to address climate change mitigation for the sake of German jobs. The Federation of German Industries has demanded an increase in public spending on climate change of as much as €70 billion (£58 billion). Younger voters have called for a nationwide protest to bring the subject back into politicians’ minds.

So have German voters really become sceptical about dealing with climate change?
In a recent study, we found that people who planned to vote for the AfD and the leftwing populist BSW party are indeed sceptical of the need for far-reaching climate policies.

Among voters of these two parties, only 23% (AfD) and 41% (BSW) think that an energy transition is necessary to achieve national climate goals. For Green party voters that figure is 93%, and for SDP supporters it’s 83%.

Voters across the political spectrum have different priorities when it comes to energy supply. For populist party supporters, energy costs trump everything, with only 12% of AfD and 20% of BSW voters considering low emissions important.

These voters are also less likely to assume the energy transition would have positive effects on jobs, and are more likely to fear rising energy costs and security of supply. In short, they are afraid of the social and economic consequences of the energy transition. It is this fear that the far right appears to have been able to mobilise.

Climate costs

Our results are backed up by other research which shows that poorer voters are concerned about the potential costs associated with net zero ambitions.

There is also uncertainty about the possible effects on employment. Many people in Germany believe there will be job losses in their local community as a result of the transition to green energy, and 25% worry they will lose their job.

Climate change protest in Berlin in 2024.
D Busquets/Shutterstock

While these results may seem gloomy, we also found majority support – even among AfD voters – for climate change policies where communities benefit financially from local renewable energy projects, and where citizens feel they have more of a voice in how the energy transition comes into effect.

People want to be heard and participate in a potential transformation. Previous research in psychology has shown that participating in processes and a perception of fairness can increase acceptance.

Research also shows that people fear the effects of climate policies on their personal finances, and that these perceived costs inhibit environmentally friendly behaviour.

But the climate crisis won’t go away, no matter who governs Germany in the coming years. More “once-in-a-century” floods and droughts will hit the nation and bring the climate crisis back to the top of the political agenda.

When this happens, politicians need to ensure they have a positive and credible vision of the future ready to present to voters – where the costs are shared fairly. This will make it harder for populist parties to play on economic worries, and easier to persuade German voters to prioritise the climate crisis. Läs mer…

On entering the Saatchi Gallery’s latest exhibition, which is simply titled Flowers, you might think that you have just walked into a supersized florist’s shop, surrounded by bunches and bunches of blooms.

The aroma of dried flowers comes from Rebecca Louise Law’s monumental arrangement La Fleur Morte (2025), which was created through workshops with people from the local community. As in a flower shop, the viewer is overwhelmed by a heady mix of colour, shape and smell.

Flowers offers an overview of flora not only in contemporary art but in their wider cultural significance. Rooms are loosely organised by theme and medium, with an occasional nod to more serious subjects, such as eroticism, death, danger or decay.

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The first room, Roots, offers historical context for the show, from Van Gogh to William Morris’s floral designs. Dutch 17th-century paintings are recreated for the digital age in Bob and Nick Carter’s video work Transforming Flowers in a Vase (2016).

The irreality of their digitally revived bunch of flowers, presented in a heavy wooden frame, reminds us that those masterly paintings were themselves a construct.

Sunflowers by Jim Dine (2011).
Courtesy the artist

Painters have often arranged flowers that bloomed at different times of the year together in one image. As Bart Cornelis, curator at London’s National Gallery, explained when discussing Dutch flower paintings in 2017, these arrangements are “not realism [but] ”a construct … In a sense, that’s what makes it art”.

In the next space, In Bloom, Jim Dine’s black-and-white lithograph Sunflowers (2011) stands out amid the profusion of bright yellows, reds, greens and pinks. With the colour stripped away, the eye is drawn to the flowers’ structure and their dark-seeded heart.

Speaking about the connection between plants and people, artist and subject, Dine has said that “if my personality is revealed in a plant drawing … it would be just the emotion and the way I felt when I depicted it at that moment, that day – or as the days go on, the building up of layers like the unconscious”. This work feels deeply connected to those early Dutch paintings and their small, often-missed memento mori.

Extra-Natural (1) by Miguel Chevalier (2024).
Software by Cyrille Henry/Antoine Villeret. Courtesy The Mayor Gallery, London

In the same room, a whole wall is dedicated to an image of Jeff Koons’ two-storey sculpture Puppy (1992), a dog covered in bedding plants.

Koons’ notorious overt commercialism leads the viewer back to the sense of being in a shop – this time offering high-end floral fashion and jewellery. In one corner, glass display cases hold jewelled brooches by “curatorial partners” Buccellati. Next to them are Marimekko prints in an oversized poster display rack.

Beauty and danger

Stepping into the next room, the viewer moves from shopping arcade back into a gallery to look at flowers in photography and sculpture. Here are more decadent arrays, where visitors are drawn like pollinators to William Darrell’s trippy kinetic sculpture The Machinery of Enchantment (2025).

Passing Through by Orlanda Broom.
Courtesy the artist

By the nature of its subject, this show is full of colour and form. It is a reminder that, as art writer Patrick J. Reed explained in relation to photographer and painter Edward Steichen’s 1936 exhibition of freshly cut bouquets of Delphiniums:

The significance of flowers, then as now, is linked to traditions, tastes and class distinctions. To appreciate fine vegetation means to understand, if not possess, ‘well-bred’ decorum; to understand when and how to navigate manicured botanical refreshment.

With Flowers, the Saatchi Gallery offers visitors this opportunity in abundance.

Upstairs, the exhibition is more conceptually curated. The true symbolic power and pervasiveness of flower imagery comes to the fore in a room full of film posters, album sleeves and book covers.

Calyx by Rebecca Louise Law (2023).
Courtesy the artist

Among them are the disturbingly beautiful posters for Jonathan Glazer’s film Zone of Interest by Neil Kellerhouse. Images from the film spring to mind: the garden next to the concentration camp; the profusion of flowers fertilised by ashes from the ovens. Monstrous actions are shielded by nature.

Read more:
The Zone of Interest: new Holocaust film powerfully lays bare the mechanisms of genocide

The relationship between beauty and danger becomes more overt in one of the final rooms, Science: Life or Death. Suddenly, we are amid less decorative fare. Here, under glass domes, are Emma Witter’s exquisitely intricate sculptures of flowers – chillingly, all made of tiny bones.

Anemoia by Kasia Wozniak.
Courtesy the artist

These sculptures sit in stark visual juxtaposition to Banita Mistry’s minimal line paintings, which recall modernism yet are hand-drawn with Henna. These contrasting approaches to similar themes sit opposite historically laden botanical illustrations. Darker themes re-emerge and open up thoughts of the importance of contemporary artists engaging in debates around decolonisation.

So, among the seductive splendour of form and colour lurks the reality of depictions of flowers in the contemporary art world. A construct balanced between the need to reflect on human frailty through the relationship with delicate mutable blooms and the harsh edge of producing seductive profitable goods.

Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture is on display at London’s Saatchi Gallery until May 5 2025. Läs mer…

Three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world now knows the exact price for American military support of Ukraine. During a recent interview with Fox News, United States President Donald Trump put a $500 billion price tag on American aid to the war-torn country.

But there was a catch: the exchange should be made in the form of Ukraine’s valuable natural resources, including rare earth minerals. “We have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money,” Trump said in the interview.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has since told his aides to reject the proposal.

Given the dizzying pace of events that have unfolded since the Trump interview, it’s unclear now whether any deal with Ukraine on its rare earth minerals will ever come to pass. This is especially true given Trump’s subsequent surprise phone conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and ongoing peace talks between the U.S. and Russia that have excluded Ukrainian and European Union officials.

But there’s little doubt Ukraine’s natural resources will be an important element in future diplomatic negotiations.

Always a strategic factor

Ukraine’s rich natural resources have always been a strategic factor in the war. To some extent, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was driven by the interest to capture and control these resources — including critical minerals, fertile farmland and energy reserves.

Ukraine’s previous attempts to develop its mineral deposits and energy reserves — such as oil and gas privatization in 2013 and later attracting investments for the development of its mineral resource extraction in 2021 — were cut short first by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then by the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.

In 2021, the European Union signed a strategic partnership with Ukraine to include “activities along the entire value chain of both primary and secondary critical raw materials and batteries.”

The timing of the military campaign against Ukraine may not have been determined solely by the country’s attempts to develop its natural resources, but they have certainly been a factor. Most of these deposits, including oil and gas fields, are located in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, which are currently either under Russian occupation or near the front line.

Ukraine’s mineral wealth

Ukraine’s mineral wealth amounts to about 20,000 mineral deposits and 116 types of minerals. Most of these deposits are unexplored, with only 15 per cent of all the deposits active prior to the Russian invasion.

Rare earth minerals are among this mineral wealth as demand for them has skyrocketed in the past several years.

According to recent estimates, Ukraine has the largest titanium reserves in Europe and seven per cent of the world’s reserves, as well as the largest lithium reserves in Europe. It also has significant production capacity when it comes to rare earth minerals.

Miners extract ilmenite, a key element used to produce titanium, at an open pit mine in the central region of Kirovohrad, Ukraine, on Feb. 12, 2025.
(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Ukraine also has confirmed deposits of beryllium, uranium and manganese. Before the war, Ukraine was the world’s fifth-largest producer of gallium and is a major producer of neon gas.

In addition, Ukraine also has large reserves of nonferrous metals, including copper, zinc, silver, lead, nickel, cobalt, as well as one of the largest global reserves of graphite.

Estimates vary, but Ukrainian critical mineral deposits could be worth trillions of dollars.

These resources are important from a geopolitical perspective: China has become the major supplier of rare earth minerals on the global market. Not only has China led in the extraction of these minerals, but it also has the largest production and refinement capacity.

As reliance on Chinese supply has increased, China used it as leverage during the U.S.-China trade dispute in 2019 and stopped rare earth exports to Japan in 2010.

China’s dominance in this sector means diversifying the supply of rare earth minerals has geopolitical importance, especially for the U.S. and the EU. They want to ensure the supply comes from a strategic partner — Ukraine.

Ukraine’s natural wealth

Ukraine’s natural riches go beyond critical minerals and include large deposits of hydrocarbons, particularly natural gas. Ukraine ranks second for natural gas reserves in Europe and fourth in terms of natural gas production.

Ukraine’s fertile soil — or chernozem, humus-rich grassland soils used extensively for growing cereals and raising livestock — is also economically and strategically important, making the country one of the largest exporters of food globally.

In 2021, Ukrainian wheat exports accounted for 12 per cent of the global wheat supply, 16 per cent of the global corn supply, 18 per cent of the global barley supply and almost half of the global supply of sunflower seeds, mainly to developing countries.

A mill worker shovels wheat at a granary in Sataniv in the Khmelnytskiy region of Ukraine in August 2024. The eastern and southern areas of Ukraine, where much of the country’s wheat production takes place, have been the targets of Russian bombardments.
(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Last but not least, Ukraine’s biodiversity, landscapes and ecosystems — some of which have been severely damaged due to the war — are invaluable to the country’s natural environment and essential for the health and well-being of Ukrainians.

The country’s nuclear facilities and radioactive sites are also at risk of being compromised, which would result in severe environmental and health ramifications in the region. In fact, a recent Russian drone attack reportedly damaged part of the Chernobyl nuclear facility.

What’s next for Ukraine’s natural resources

The fate of Ukraine’s mineral riches will largely depend on how the conflict and post-conflict processes unfold.

But their existence has already proven to be of strategic importance in the war — first, to Russia, and now to the U.S. as well.

Ukraine’s natural wealth and how it features in current conversations about the future of the conflict reminds us about the central role resource politics can play in shaping war and peace. Läs mer…

It’s no longer speculative to ask how the post-Second World War world order, led by the United States, will end. It’s apparently already ended.

The U.S. has snubbed its NATO partners and Ukraine itself from purported “peace talks” to end the three-year-old war in Europe in favour of direct bilateral talks between American and Russian officials hosted by Saudi Arabia.

President Donald Trump has actually described Ukraine’s widely admired wartime President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “a dictator” and falsely claimed he started the war.

These lies came directly after Vice President JD Vance’s recent broadside against NATO partners at the Munich Security Conference in which he downplayed the threat of Russia and China to the western alliance and suggested instead that liberal centrism was the real threat.

His remarks were widely regarded as an intervention on behalf of the European far right, particularly far-right political parties in Germany ahead of upcoming elections in that country.

Dreaming of a Gaza takeover

Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz and 36 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are in the midst of new crimes against humanity, new forms of ethnic cleansing and even, potentially, genocide.

In a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump mused about an American takeover of the Gaza Strip by removing its occupants to neighbouring countries and developing the region as a seaside resort. This would very likely constitute a war crime.

White House national security adviser Mike Walz and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles listen as President Donald Trump elaborates on his proposal for the U.S. to take over Gaza on Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Snubbing international law

Trump’s return to the American presidency marks a normalization of this type of threat.

Instead of embracing the international rule of law in the post-Second World War spirit of avoiding another devastating global conflict, the U.S. is building new walls rather than tearing them down while at the same time threatening to annex other sovereign nations and amass new territory.

Trump is obviously unsentimental about America’s longtime allies, including the innermost circle of English-speaking democracies — the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australian and New Zealand — that make up the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.

A group of countries that wouldn’t normally be fussed about the transition from one American president to another is now very nervous about how far Trump is going to go.

Read more:
Allies or enemies? Trump’s threats against Canada and Greenland put NATO in a tough spot

Anarchy, colonialism

During the first angry weeks of Trump’s second presidency, the U.S. appears to be signalling a return to an anarchic and explicitly colonial imagining of the world. In this regard, Trump’s disdain for the rule of law at home tracks a potentially even greater disdain for the international legal order, one that’s existed since 1945.

The only real connection between the past and contemporary times predates the American-led post-war order of the past eight decades and harkens further back to America’s imperialist and expansionist past and ideas like Manifest Destiny from more than a century ago.

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How the U.S. could in fact make Canada an American territory

Trump, not historically much of an imperialist in his rhetoric, has now doubled down on classical imperialist threats as he repeatedly proposes expanding the physical map of the U.S., musing in particular about Greenland, Panama, Canada and now Gaza.

Greenland holds a strategic interest for the U.S. — there’s already an American airbase on the island — since its location is increasingly important as the Arctic ice melts and amid greater competition from Russia and China.

Panama has been in America’s imperialistic sights more often than Greenland, and was even invaded by U.S. forces in 1989.

Protesters burn posters depicting U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally against Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Panama City on Feb. 2, 2025.
(AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Canada as a 51st state

But Canada? At least Trump agreed at a news conference before taking office that military force was off the table. Instead, Canada only had to worry about “economic force” being used to annex it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told business leaders that Trump’s talk about annexing Canada is “the real thing,” aimed at obtaining Canada’s critical minerals.

Donald Trump’s threats about annexing Canada and Greenland are causing widespread alarm among NATO allies. This is an AI-generated image Trump posted to his Truth Social account.
(Donald Trump/Truth Social)

Trump’s interactions with Denmark, Canada and Panama all demonstrate a disdain for basic principles of the rule of law at the international level, which is underpinned by the sovereignty of states.

His musings on Gaza, which led United Nations Secretary General António Guterres to warn him specifically against endorsing ethnic cleansing, demonstrate a willingness to break completely with international legal norms.

He’s not only peacocking on the global stage, he is also telegraphing that he holds international legal norms in even lower esteem than the norms of his own country, where he is a convicted felon. This situation is as alarming as it unprecedented.

Read more:
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s gift to Donald Trump, he could be barred from Canada as a convicted felon

America now a threat

Right now, cognitive dissonance in the form of status quo bias poses a real danger in terms of Trump’s dismissal of the rule of law. This means that folks are somehow convincing themselves that the undoing of the global rules-based order in real time is just a blip; things will somehow ramp down and return to normal.

But the evidence is glaringly to the contrary.

Trump is plainly communicating his wishes: a new age of American imperialism. At first few took him seriously. Now we all are. Canada, due to its proximity to and reliance on the U.S., must especially face a new reality in which an American president casually and repeatedly threatens its sovereignty.

Canada, America’s closest ally in terms of shared language, culture and geography, should be the first and not the last to start believing Trump’s threats to annex it.

Read more:
Allies or enemies? Trump’s threats against Canada and Greenland put NATO in a tough spot

Even when Trump is no longer in office, neither Canadians nor any of America’s other allies can be certain someone just like him will not be returned to power by the U.S. voters. That means America’s western allies, like Canada and Denmark, must learn the lessons Latin American and Middle Eastern countries learned along time ago: America is a threat.

The Democratic Party must also figure out how it’s going to effectively resist Trump over the next four years.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Martin Heinrich hold a news conference following President Donald Trump’s announcement he was freezing all federal grants and loans on Jan. 29, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Only an American concern?

Some might ask: Aren’t these American problems for the American people? As Canadians can attest, no. Trump poses grave dangers to the rest of the world due to the unique place the U.S. occupies in the geopolitical system.

Nothing about Trump’s second presidency bodes well for America’s allies and friends, including Canada.

A kleptocrat who regards friends and allies as transactional customers and for whom everything is “just business,” including national security, Trump poses an existential threat not only to America, but to the international world order. Läs mer…

It has been an eventful and, for Ukraine and its European allies, alarming past week or so. First they heard that the US president, Donald Trump, had spent 90 minutes on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. In one stroke, Trump upended three years in which his predecessor, Joe Biden, had sought to isolate Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On the same day, February 12, Trump’s newly installed secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, told a gathering of senior defence officials in Brussels that Europe would no longer be the primary focus for US security policy, and that Ukraine could not hope to regain the territory Russia had illegally occupied since 2014, nor join Nato.

Hegseth added that not only would the US not contribute to any peacekeeping force in Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, but that any European peacekeeping operation would not be done under the protection of Nato’s Article 5.

This was soon followed by the US vice-president, J.D. Vance, telling the Munich Security Conference that it was Europe, not Russia or China, that was the main security threat – the “enemy within” that fostered anti-democratic practices and sought to curtail free speech.

This week, a US team led by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, sat down with their Russian opposite numbers led by the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to discuss peace negotiations. Ukraine was not represented. Nor was Europe. Following that, and perhaps taking his cue from Hegseth, Lavrov declared that Russia would not accept any European peacekeepers in Ukraine – deal or no deal.

Meanwhile, Trump has taken to his TruthSocial media platform to repeat several favourite Kremlin talking points. Ukraine was responsible for the war, he said. Its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a “dictator” who had cancelled elections, and whose popularity with his own people was now as low as 4% (it’s actually 57%, at least 10 points higher than Trump’s rating in the US).

Trump also mocked Zelensky’s concern at his country’s exclusion from the Riyadh talks, telling reporters: “Today I heard: ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

This leads us back to the Istanbul communique, produced at the end of March 2022 after initial peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Antalya, Turkey. Some US commentators have suggested Ukraine could now be better off had it signed this deal.

Istanbul communique

What happened in Istanbul, and how close Russia and Ukraine were to an agreement, has been hotly debated, with some arguing a deal was close and others refuting this.

Ukraine reportedly agreed to a range of concessions including future neutrality, as well as giving up its bid for membership of Nato. Russia, in turn, would apparently have accepted Ukraine’s membership of the EU. This concession, incidentally, is still on the table.

But there were sticking points, primarily over the size of Ukraine’s armed forces after a deal – Kyiv reportedly wanted 250,000 soldiers, the Kremlin just 85,000 – and the types of weaponry Ukraine could keep in its arsenal.

There were also issues about Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory, particularly Crimea – this was projected to be resolved over 15 years with Russia occupying the peninsula on a lease in the meantime. Another Kremlin demand was for Zelensky to stand down as president, with the presidency being taken up by the pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.

Negotiations continued through April 2022, only to break down when Russian atrocities were reported in Bucha, a town Ukrainian troops had retaken as part of their spring counter-offensive. But the fact is, an agreement was never really close.

The UK’s former prime minister, Boris Johnson, has taken much flack over reports that he urged Zelensky not to accept the deal. But there was never a realistic chance this deal would be acceptable to Ukraine. A neutral Ukraine with a reduced military capacity would have no way to defend itself against any future aggression.

Had Ukraine done a deal based on the Istanbul communique, it would have essentially led to the country becoming a virtual province of Russia – led by a pro-Russian government and banned from seeking alliances with western countries. As for joining the EU, it was the Kremlin’s opposition to Kyiv’s engagement with the EU in 2013 which provoked the Euromaidan protests and led to Russia’s initial annexation of Crimea the following year.

What next?

Kyiv signing the Istanbul communique may have quickly stopped the war and the killing. But the Kremlin has repeatedly shown it cannot be trusted to adhere to agreements – you only have to look at the way it repeatedly violated the Minsk accords of 2015, which attempted to end hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

Further, a deal that rewards Russian aggression by agreeing to its taking of territory and demanding the neutrality of the victim would undermine global security, and encourage other illegal foreign policy adventurism.

If the Trump administration has the blueprint of a fair peace deal, it’s hiding it well at this point. Instead, European leaders have been put in a position where they must face the prospect of having to fund Ukraine’s continued defence, while coping with a US retreat from its security guarantees for Europe as a whole.

Either that or, as my University of Bath colleague Patrick Bury wrote on X this week, accept some pretty dire consequences.

Europe is facing a crisis that it could have prepared for after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. With Trump back in power, the relationship between the US and Europe appears increasingly fractured. But Europe too is bitterly divided over how to approach this crisis.

Britain and France initially talked up the idea of providing troops as peacekeepers in Ukraine – but Germany adamantly refused to go along with that plan. Both Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer have since rethought the idea (although there is a report that the UK prime minister has considered a scheme for a 30,000-strong “monitoring force” away from the ceasefire line).

The Kremlin reacts to signals. While it was clearly preparing for the invasion in late 2021, Joe Biden’s statement that he would not send troops to defend Ukraine showed the limits to US involvement. A message that Europe is prepared to dispatch peacekeepers to Ukraine now would send a strong signal to Putin – and the Trump administration – that Europe is serious. Läs mer…

Captain Ibrahim Traoré is the interim leader of Burkina Faso, having taken over the position following a coup which he led against Lieutenant Colonel Paul Henri Damiba in September 2022. The 37-year-old captain had supported Damiba, his commanding officer, in a putsch earlier that year against former president Roch Marc Kaboré.

Since Traoré has been in power, Burkina Faso has played a key role in the withdrawal of three west African states from the regional body Ecowas. Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have formed an alternative, the Alliance of Sahel States. The Conversation Africa asked researcher Daniel Eizenga where the country was headed under Traoré’s leadership.

Who is Ibrahim Traoré?

Traoré was born in 1988 in Bondokuy, a small town on the route connecting Burkina Faso’s second city – Bobo Dioulasso – and its fourth largest, Ouahigouya. He completed secondary school in Bobo Dioulasso, then moved to the nation’s capital, where he studied at the University of Ouagadougou.

After completing his undergraduate education, Traoré joined the army in 2010 at the age of 22. He undertook his officer training in Pô at the Georges Namoano Military Academy, an officer school for the Burkinabe armed forces. He graduated as a second lieutenant in 2012 and served as a peacekeeper in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission to Mali (Minusma) after being promoted to lieutenant in 2014.

After his stint with Minusma, Traoré took part in missions in northern Burkina Faso as part of a special counterterrorism unit. He was promoted to captain in 2020 at the age of 32.

Damiba led a coup against Kaboré in January 2022. He then assigned Traoré as chief of an artillery regiment in the North Central region of Burkina Faso.

As it became clear that Damiba was losing popularity within the junta, Traoré and a group of junior officers organised a coup. They seized on public and military outrage around an ambush that left 11 soldiers and dozens of civilians dead.

What has been the response to his rule in Burkina Faso?

Some media reports suggest that the young captain and his junta enjoy popular support throughout the country. Some have even drawn comparisons between Traoré and Burkina Faso’s earlier leftist revolutionary military leader, Captain Thomas Sankara. It’s true that the two captains did take power at the age of 34. But the comparisons end at their rank and age.

During the 1980s and nearing the end of the cold war, Sankara came to power as ideological division split the Burkinabe armed forces. Officers supporting Sankara led a coup in 1983. Viewed as a Marxist revolutionary, Sankara attempted to enact political reforms. They included policies to boost public political participation, empower women, address environmental degradataion and reduce inequalities.

Traoré’s position is much more precarious. Most military officers did not participate in either his coup or the one led by Damiba, underscoring the fragmented state of Burkina Faso’s armed forces. Traoré’s junta has claimed there have been multiple attempts at destabilisation or coups. This highlights the arbitrary means by which power has changed hands and the inherent instability present under junta rule.

To shore up his position, Traoré has launched a restructuring drive. This has included redirecting revenues from taxes, the mining sector, and other sources of public revenues into defence coffers. He has also mobilised volunteers to fight violent extremists as part of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland, a junta-sponsored civilian militia. There are reports that forced conscription has been used to send “volunteers” to the front lines of battle. The conflict data indicate that the strategy is not working.

Traoré may not be as popular among ordinary people as he is often portrayed. This is inferred from the violent repression of critics, multiple alleged coup attempts as well as the ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis. He has cracked down hard on independent voices. Journalists, civil society leaders, political party leaders and even judges have been targeted by the junta with its forced conscription tactics and other forms of violent repression.

What about external players?

The September 2022 coup d’état got the attention of Russian foreign information manipulation and interference campaigns. The campaigns were linked to the shadowy Russian mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group. Other Russian information campaigns employed fake social media accounts that pose as Africans with a genuine interest in Burkina Faso. These accounts promote divisive rhetoric that places blame on France and other western countries for local grievances such as ongoing insecurity.

Aiming to boost support for himself immediately following the coup, Traoré trained his sights on capturing the anti-French sentiment. He blamed the French for many of the country’s woes and cast Damiba as a close French ally. Within a few months, Traoré demanded the French withdraw its security presence from Burkina Faso altogether.

Since the French withdrawal, Russian mercenaries have been seen providing protection for Traoré and reportedly supporting operations near the border with Mali. However, only some 100-300 Russian forces have gone to Burkina Faso. This suggests that the focus is on regime security for Traoré and his junta.

What does the future hold?

Traoré’s actions have not improved the security situation in the country. There have been at least 3,059 violent events linked to militant Islamist groups since he came to power in October 2022. This is a 20% increase in comparison to two years preceding the coup. The number of fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence nearly doubled from 3,621 in 2022 to 6,389 in 2024.

The violence has also spread throughout the country to affect nearly every region and increased along Burkina Faso’s southern border. It’s likely that the data is under-reported.

The junta has claimed to have foiled several coup plots since Traoré’s power grab. A foiled plot came in September 2024 only a few weeks after the deadliest massacre the country has ever suffered. Violent extremists killed hundreds of civilians outside the town of Barsalogho. Civilian fatalities linked to militant Islamist groups have increased from 721 in 2022 to 1,151 deaths in 2024.

Perhaps more worrying are the civilian fatalities linked to the military or its sponsored militia.

The violence in Burkina Faso presents an alarming outlook in which the collapse of the country cannot be ruled out. The military has reemerged as the principal political actor. By some counts the military has been directly or indirectly in power for 45 of the 65 years since Burkina Faso became independent.

All the while, the militant Islamist insurgency embroils more and more of the countryside at great human cost. Some estimates place the number of people displaced by violence as high as 3 million, though the junta will not provide an official figure. That is more than 10% of the population of some 24 million people. Another million or more students may not be in school due to conflict and ongoing insecurity.

Despite the effort to present Traoré as a bold reformer and saviour, the political, security and economic ramifications from his junta rule will reverberate through Burkina Faso for decades to come. Läs mer…