Features

A clamour to return to the status quo after Covid-19 would be bad news for people and the planet, argues Richard Swift. We may never get a better chance for a new normal.

Husna Rizvi rounds up some of the lesser-known pandemic stories from around the world.

Hazel Healy re-connects with communities in Sierra Leone.

Western volunteers on why they fight for Rojava.

Abdullah Öcalan’s journey to democratic confederalism.

No mercy for Iran’s mountain smugglers.

Longing for a return to Turkish Kurdistan’s shattered city centre.

Key events in recent Kurdish history.

Lorraine Mallinder gets inside the proto-petro-state of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkey wants to undo the revolution in North and East Syria. But the women of Rojava are resisting, writes Dilar Dirik.

The Kurds – the fourth-biggest ethnic group in the Middle East – are described as ‘the largest nation without a state’. (Where accurate statistics are lacking, we have gone with ‘reasonable’ estimates.)

There are scores of different Kurdish political factions, parties and movements, some of which connect with each other, others that are radically and bitterly opposed. Here, in simple form, are the key players.

Links for campaigning and more reading on Kurdistan.

Under the cover of Covid-19, Turkey is hammering the Kurds. Again. Should the world care? Vanessa Baird offers several good reasons why it should.

Popular wisdom has it that everything is speeding up, including population growth. Danny Dorling shows just how wrong that is – and argues that we are actually in a time of slowdown.

In Palestine, Futura D’Aprile meets the peaceful change-makers who want to create hope for their divided city’s future.

The state is in retreat. So guess who’s in charge? Why you, of course. At least that’s what the dominant political rhetoric from Right and Left would have us believe, argues Neil Vallelly.

The country’s political class is letting fascists off the hook and allowing history to be distorted. Jelena Prtorić asks: Whose purposes does this serve?

Agricultural air pollution seems to be a tough nut to crack. Amy Hall explores the air-pollution problem down on the farm.

India’s air pollution crisis affects millions, and not just in Delhi. Aruna Chandrasekhar meets people forced to live, and resist, at Mumbai’s toxic perimeter.