Jordan’s Teetering Balancing Act
FOREIGN POLICY (30/11/2023) Every Friday, the streets of downtown Amman fill with thousands of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags. “The people want the liberation of Palestine,” the crowds chant, their voices echoing across the city. For more than a month, Jordanians have demonstrated in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip and voiced […]
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As the Climate Warms, Jordan’s Worsening Water Crisis Offers a Glimpse of Future Challenges in the Middle East
OUTRIDER (3/4/2023) By the dry riverbeds of northeast Jordan, Jehad Al-Masied sat down and remembered a time when water would flow. “When we were kids, we learned to swim here,” he said as he walked to the edge of a now-empty reservoir surrounded by dark basalt ruins last December. Winter rain used to stream down […]
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King’s Highway – The ancient road that bridged kingdoms
BBC (9/1/2023) “Welcome to Jordan!” a group of kids shouted excitedly, as I stepped out of the car to admire the sun setting over the vast sandstone canyon of Wadi Mujib. While I stood on the cliff’s edge, awestruck by the mountain ranges stretching to the Dead Sea, a black-and-white hooded wheatear swooped down near […]
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In Jordan, growing U.S. aid and shrinking freedom
FOREIGN POLICY (13/11/2022) As she looked out the window of her bare, dimly lit living room in October, Mervat Hamda counted the days since the authorities took away her son Anas al-Jamal: 138. “He is more than my son—he is my closest friend,” she said as she showed me family photos in their home in […]
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Dinosaur Prints In Jordan Highlight A Largely Unexplored Region
DISCOVER MAGAZINE (2/11/2022) About 100 millions years ago, dinosaurs roamed through the coast of the ancient Tethys ocean that covered most of the modern Middle East. Recently, dozens of their footprints have been found on the arid mountain of Safaha, southwest of the city of Shobak, in the south of Jordan. In 2019, two Polish […]
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Jordan’s ‘other’ refugees stuck in limbo with frozen asylum claims
MIDDLE EAST EYE (3/7/2022) Before he fled Sudan, Ahmed was an award-winning runner. Now, as an undocumented asylum seeker in Jordan, he mostly runs away from the police. “But I’m not a criminal,” he says as he opens his backpack to show his seven medals – gold, silver and bronze – won at junior championships in three […]
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“Amman is a prison” Rise in suicides highlights mental health crisis in Jordan
THE NEW HUMANITARIAN (14/6/2022) Adam Jawad escaped Iraq with his family following the US-led invasion in 2003, living in Syria until war forced him to flee again a decade later, this time to Jordan, where he eked out a living doing odd jobs and working at a cultural centre in the capital, Amman. Jawad wrote […]
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In Jordan, a quest for the country’s resilient national flower
WASHINGTON POST (22/4/2022) Sitting beneath the branches of an ancient oak on a windswept hill in Jordan’s highlands during the first week of spring, I’m surrounded by a dazzling array of wildflowers. Purple anemones, red poppies, pink cyclamen, yellow and orange daisies. But one elegant flower stands out in the midst of all the bright […]
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Calls for Middle East food sovereignty amid looming wheat crisis
MIDDLE EAST EYE (19/3/2022) Concerns are growing across the Middle East that the war in Ukraine will cut off international shipments of wheat, spurring shortages and soaring prices of a staple food millions of people rely heavily upon. Russia and Ukraine produce about a quarter of the world’s wheat. The MENA region is particularly dependent on wheat […]
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Jordan scrambles to save rare Red Sea corals
MONGABAY (14/2/2022) Dozens of tiny, dazzlingly colorful fish swim around a maze of layer upon layer of corals. When divers approach, they hide near a dome-shaped colony. In the clear, warm waters of Aqaba, clownfish, butterflyfish and angelfish swim next to a military tank deliberately sunk in the 1990s, now one of several wrecks that […]
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