Life in Flow

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

Hiba Mohammad

19 Jan 2026 — 1 min read

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 clarity, I began sorting what truly belongs to me from what no longer does.

These are the lessons I’m carrying with me, and the ones I am consciously choosing to leave behind.

When Water Becomes a Weapon: Hydro-Social Elimination and the Erasure of Syria's Minorities

In February 2015, ISIS fighters swept through the Khabur Valley in northeastern Syria, capturing thirty-five Assyrian Christian villages in a matter of days. They kidnapped hundreds, destroyed churches, and desecrated cultural sites—acts that received international attention and condemnation. What went largely unnoticed was their systematic destruction of the irrigation

When Environment Is Rewritten as Identity: How Syria's Ecological Crisis Became an Ethnic Narrative

In the northeastern plains of Syria, the Khabour River, once a lifeline for agriculture and drinking water, has dwindled to a fraction of its former flow. Across the Jazira region, wells run dry, irrigation systems fail, and communities face acute water stress. Yet in much of the discourse surrounding this

When Media Says Drought Causes War: From Syria to Iran, a Familiar Story Repeated

In recent years, a familiar media script has re-emerged: drought triggers conflict. It was said about Syria after 2011. It is now increasingly said about Iran amid water protests and social unrest. The narrative is tidy, urgent, and emotionally persuasive. It is also deeply incomplete. This framing usually follows a

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

Read more

When Water Becomes a Weapon: Hydro-Social Elimination and the Erasure of Syria's Minorities

When Environment Is Rewritten as Identity: How Syria's Ecological Crisis Became an Ethnic Narrative

When Media Says Drought Causes War: From Syria to Iran, a Familiar Story Repeated

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