Life in Flow
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 — 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
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-
Life in Flow
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
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 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
Life in Flow
When I packed my bags couple of years ago, I thought I was only leaving home to study. I didn’t realize I was also stepping into a journey that would change me at the deepest level. A PhD sounds like an academic title, but when you do it far
Deep Dives
The Tigris–Euphrates isn’t just a river system; it’s a pressure map. Climate stress squeezes from above, politics pulls from the sides, and everyday life (drinking water, crops, and electricity) gets caught in the vise. This piece distills a multiscale assessment we prepared for Première Urgence Internationale (PUI)
Life in Flow
The question lands like a small alarm with a smile: Who are you? Or where are you from? I’ve learned how quickly the answer can flip a room. There’s always a beat before I say it. A soft, private breath. Then I offer the word that has framed
Life in Flow
They say home is where the heart is. I’ve been trying to catch mine in the act, to see where it keeps slipping off to when I’m not looking. Some days it’s in a kitchen I no longer rent, humming above a gas stove that ticked like
Deep Dives
Syria’s most decisive reconstruction battle won’t be fought on city streets, it will be won or lost at the kitchen sink. After a decade of conflict, earthquake damage and worsening droughts, the question is no longer whether to reform water governance, but how. Two big ideas dominate the
Deep Dives
Syria’s water debate has reached a historic fork. One path calls for an independent national authority that finally untangles the clashing mandates of several ministries and scores of local councils involved in managing water. The other champions a Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus approach that forces every sector