Hiba Mohammad - Hibe Mohammad

Deep Dives

Water, Sovereignty, and the Politics of Blame: Reframing Syria’s Food Security Debate

In the Syrian case, neo-colonialism operates less through direct territorial control and more through structural dependence: control over finance, technology, narratives, and access to water flows (upstream, institutional, or humanitarian). Water governance becomes a lever that constrains food sovereignty while appearing technocratic, humanitarian, or environmentally neutral. Introduction: from hydro-mission to

Life in Flow

How Hiring Systems Reproduce Geographic Hierarchies of Expertise

I keep finding myself in the same strange conversation. On paper, I am a researcher with a PhD. Years of modeling rivers that refuse to behave, climate scenarios that refuse to agree with one another, and policy frameworks that only work if politics briefly steps aside. In life, I am

Deep Dives

Old Doha Port: Water, Pearls, and Heritage

In Mina’s pastel - coloured streets, water does not just appear as horizon and reflection, it is present as inheritance and imagination. The murals that colour these waterfront walls do not merely decorate: they speak to a continuity of life that once braced itself against the tides and still

Life in Flow

Margins of January

January lived mostly in the margins this year, between things I did not have the language to name yet. These are the fragments it left behind, unpolished and honest, exactly as they were lived. Margin 1 This city taught me something I didn’t expect. You can live inside beauty…

Life in Flow

The Penguin Who Walked the Wrong Way

I am not sure whether it has appeared on your social media feed recently, but a muted, black-and-white video of a penguin has been circulating with unusual persistence. It is the kind of footage that provokes an involuntary reaction; a brief tightening of the face, a pause; drawing you into

Deep Dives

Cropland Data Uncertainty Is a Food-Security Risk: Syria as a Case Study

How much cropland does Syria actually have? At first glance, this may seem like a technical or academic question. In reality, it is a policy problem with real consequences. Governments, humanitarian agencies, and development partners rely on cropland estimates to assess food security risks, plan agricultural recovery, allocate water, and

Life in Flow

What 2025 Taught Me: What I’ll Carry, and What I’ll Leave

2025 asked more of me than I expected. Not in loud ways, and not through visible achievements, but through quiet moments of reckoning. It was a year of noticing where I was forcing myself forward without direction, and where I was staying still out of fear. Somewhere between exhaustion and

Life in Flow

We are Condemned to Hope

We Are Condemned to Hope — Saadallah Wannous This is not a passing sentence, nor a romantic slogan meant to be hung on walls and forgotten. “We are condemned to hope” feels like an existential verdict: there is no escape from hoping, even when we are depleted, even when defeats pile

Deep Dives

Reassessing the Drought–Migration–Conflict Nexus in Syria

A 2025 UNU-INWEH report entitled “The Drought-Migration-Conflict Nexus: Was the Syrian Civil War Really Caused by Climate Change?” provides a comprehensive reexamination of the commonly held narrative linking Syria’s 2007-2009 drought to the 2011 uprising. Summary of UNU - INWEH Findings The study employs a mixed-methods approach (meteorological analysis,

Life in Flow

Carrying Many Worlds at Once

2025 did not move in straight lines. It moved the way rivers do; splitting, rejoining, carving new paths when the old ones no longer held. 2025 was a threshold year. The kind you only recognize afterward, when you realize something irreversible has happened. I finished my PhD. Not as a

Life in Flow

A New Year Reading for Myself

01 January 2026 Today I pause. Not for the world, not for deadlines, not for anyone else; only for me. 2025 held so much. Uncertainty, hope, small victories, moments when I doubted myself, moments when I surprised myself. I carried responsibilities that no one fully saw. I fought for my

Life in Flow

I write my own blog for a reason

I have been asked many times why I write my own blog. Why I don’t limit myself to academic papers, project reports, or policy briefs. Why I choose to write publicly, and in my own voice, about water and environmental challenges in Syria. At first, I told myself it

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