President Joe Biden is expected to decide this month whether there will be mass student debt cancellation. And while Americans are at loggerheads over that, they are in almost full agreement about fixing the root cause: the high cost of a college education.

Asked to choose between the government forgiving student debt or making college more affordable for current and future students, an astounding 82% of respondents in a recent NPR/Ipsos poll opt for the latter. Even among those with outstanding loans, long-term affordability wins out.   

Getting there is not easy. But at Purdue University, an ambitious price freeze with tuition at just under $10,000 a year has held for a decade, offering innovative – if not always flawless or popular – cost-cutting models for holding the line on student bills.

Students taking a break in the cool, wood-paneled spaces of Purdue Memorial Union on a recent scorching summer day will pay no more than Boilermakers did 10 years ago – and many will likely get their bachelor's debt-free, as some 60% did in May.

“If an institution prioritizes affordability, you’d be surprised – we’ve been surprised – by how much progress can be made,” says Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor who announced the tuition freeze in the spring of 2013, just months after he became Purdue’s president.   

The freeze meant forfeiting some $40 million from a regular increase in price. When the university managed to absorb it just by tightening its belt, the board greenlighted a second year, then a third. As applications soared, enrollment grew, and proud alumni opened their wallets, the “freeze” itself became a large source of income. 

It started as a “gesture”

Sitting in his office by the campus bell tower, Mr. Daniels – who retires at the end of the calendar year with a résumé that includes big-business CEO and director of the Office of Management and Budget for President George W. Bush – traces the freeze idea back to his state governorship. A persistent question he heard then, he says, was, “Isn’t there someplace to get a quality education that won’t put us deeply in debt?”  

He initially proposed the freeze “as a gesture, a one-time acknowledgment that we understood.” The average cost in real dollars of a bachelor’s degree in the United States had jumped by 41% between 2000 and 2012. Even Purdue, a public, land-grant institution, had consistently raised its price for more than 30 years.

When Andy Pavlopoulos enrolled in the aviation department in 1986, in-state tuition for the year at the flagship West Lafayette campus was $1,870. With fees, room and board, books, and the like, his total bill “was like $8,000,” says the father of three who, in his second career, owns and runs a family restaurant in Saint Joseph, Michigan.

Michael Heinz/The Journal & Courier/AP/File

Purdue University President Mitch Daniels (right) speaks to reporters in March 2013, when the school's tuition freeze – now 10 years old – was started.

By the time Mr. Pavlopoulos’ eldest child was scrolling through college websites as a high school junior in 2013, prices had soared. In-state tuition reached $9,992, and the full cost of attending – commonly referred to as the sticker price – was $22,782. For out-of-state students like his son, this meant $28,794 in tuition for a total annual bill of $41,614. 

Something to remember about sticker prices is that only a minority of students nationwide actually pay them. As each of his three children enrolled at Purdue, Mr. Pavlopoulos expected them to do what he’d done: get grants and scholarships that knock down the total they owe.  

“The sticker price is damaging misinformation,” says Phillip Levine, a Wellesley College economics scholar with a specialty in higher education. It can cause “people to make decisions that are not appropriate for them.” As a result, many who would thrive in a four-year college decide it isn’t for them. 

“People have no idea what colleges cost,” he says. “They tend to cost a lot less than people think.”

Like an effective meme, Purdue holding “tuition under $10,000” broadcasts affordability. 

“There’s a nice message off of a low tuition,” Mr. Levine says. “Particularly for lower-income families, we know based on research that the ability to simplify the problem increases their likelihood of attending.”

Another way Purdue does this is by applying the freeze to the full cost of attendance. Institutions that have similarly suspended tuition hikes often increase other charges. At Purdue, on the other hand, the sticker price, too, doesn’t budge.

As the freeze entered its second year, the number of applications to the undergraduate program jumped by 28%. That has since climbed steadily by more modest percentages. By 2021, the admissions office was processing almost twice as many applications as it had in 2012.

Aditi Barla’s was among them. A resident of Illinois, she only analyzed her choices once acceptances were in. 

“Purdue is a great school for CS,” she reasoned, referring to her computer science major. “It’s a great STEM school. And, oh, it also has a tuition freeze.” Other contenders included the University of Michigan and the University of Washington in Seattle, but their sticker prices were in the $60,000-to-$70,000 range with no offers of scholarships or grants. With a younger brother in the wings and plans to go to graduate school, the choice was clear.

Today, she is a rising sophomore with no debt.

More students means more revenue 

Even after enrollments nationwide began to decline, Purdue’s freshman and transfer admissions grew on average by about 500 a year. Last fall, matriculations hit a new and unexpected high, with more than 10,000 freshmen arriving on campus. 

The number of postgraduate students has also grown, helping to raise the university’s total enrollment from 39,256 in 2012 to 49,639 in 2021. With more than half paying out-of-state or international prices, tuition revenue increased by a third during the freeze, from $629 million in 2012 to $832 million in 2021. 

But the surge in students has also posed problems. The university has had to add dorms and temporarily house students in cubicle-like lodgings created in dorm basements and study lounges.

Ms. Barla knew guys who started the year in cramped, windowless quarters: “Yeah,” she says, “not ideal, especially when you’re coming into college for the first time.” By fall break, everyone was in permanent housing, and in the spring, the university was purchasing an on-campus housing complex.

“We’re pressing up against limits,” admits Mr. Daniels. To mitigate this, the university has introduced some hybrid classes and has helped students who are so inclined to graduate in three years. 

But an important feature of Purdue’s success is that it has ensured its foundation remained solid. “We don’t run a deficit. We don’t borrow any money. We don’t raid the cookie jar,” Mr. Daniels says, referring to having reduced the spending distribution of the nearly $2.5 billion endowment from 5% to 4%. “We don’t ever let it affect quality.” 

Department of Education statistics indicate that, from 2012 through 2020 (the last year for which this data is available), Purdue kept up its spending on instruction at the same pace as peer institutions. Even as enrollment galloped, its student ratio is a very respectable 14-to-1. And it enhanced its campus. Among other improvements, it opened the $79 million, 164,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art Wilmeth Active Learning Center and, last year, renovated its iconic Memorial Union.   

As a research university, it has increasingly leveraged grants and contracts to bring students in on groundbreaking innovations and technologies at little to no cost to the university’s bottom line. This has helped it attract students without resorting to a widely used tactic. It’s not uncommon that at institutions that charge up to $60,000, says Mr. Levine, “virtually every single student’s getting a $20,000 or more merit scholarship to bring the number back to $30 or $40,000 – which, not coincidentally, happens to be in the range of what public institutions charge.” 

As for the “dos” of keeping prices down, Mr. Daniels is “bashful about ever prescribing anything we’ve done here,” he says. “The decisions, we believe, fit this place.” 

However, not a month goes by, says Chris Ruhl, the chief financial officer, without a counterpart from another school getting in touch wanting to know what worked and how the campus reacted. 

Successful but not without challenges 

Not every cost-cutting measure has proved universally popular. Some faculty, for instance, voiced discontent when the university changed employees’ benefits. In line with a prevailing trend in higher ed, it adopted health savings accounts with high deductibles. It also changed over to defined contribution retirement plans, favored mostly by private colleges. When it contracted out its food service, Purdue Student Government formally condemned its choice of corporate giant Aramark, on the grounds that the company had incurred food and safety violations at another Indiana campus. 

And when Purdue pioneered its own income share agreement – in which students pledge to share a portion of future income – as an alternative to traditional student loans, some accused the university of breaking the law. Purdue has since suspended future contracts in the program, which is similar to a federal income-based repayment loan that also ran into trouble in its implementation. *

Other steps seem not to have caused waves. Mr. Ruhl points to such things as dismantling Purdue’s transportation system and contracting with the city to extend transit routes onto campus; outsourcing printing and photocopying services; and consolidating the university’s data centers, information technology departments, and maintenance and custodial staffs. 

“As the student body has grown,” he says, “we’ve been able to maintain staffing levels” without hiring more people.

Making affordability an institution-wide mission, he says, has been crucial not just in cutting costs but in improving the quality of the institution.

Statistics on retention and graduation rates, rankings, and fundraising support Mr. Ruhl’s claim that “all sorts of key metrics have improved substantially during this period of time.” Likewise, the percentage of undergraduates earning their bachelor’s without incurring debt marched upward. In 2012, the proportion leaving campus with the bachelor's diploma and no loan was 49.5%. Fifty-four percent did by 2016, and 60% did in 2021.

But Purdue’s performance in one metric proves cautionary in terms of students being able to afford, as Mr. Levine puts it, “the place where they belong.” In a conversation over Zoom, he crunches some numbers on the university’s net price calculator, a feature that institutions that receive money from the federal government are required to post on their website. 

He invents a young Indiana resident with a 3.5 GPA, solid SAT scores, and a family income well below $50,000. Asked how much the family can contribute, he types in $0. Within seconds, the calculator estimates that even with a $6,459 Pell Grant, various scholarships, and $5,500 in federal student loans, the family would have to “come up with $5,087 a year that they have no ability to pay for in cash,” Mr. Levine reports. The student can earn $3,000 of that through a work-study program or campus job. 

The exercise, he says, shows that for a family “that has nothing,” borrowing even $2,000 to $5,000 a year “is not affordable.” 

“Despite the fact that college costs a lot less than people think, it’s still too expensive,” he says. But not if the Pell Grant were doubled. “That would eliminate the gap completely,” in which case, Mr. Levine says he’d “be on board with low tuitions.” As it is, though, he believes freezes benefit wealthier students to the detriment of those of lower-income backgrounds. If the former paid the full sticker price, the university would have extra income to channel into financial aid.

The amount Purdue has spent on merit and need-based scholarships, fellowships, and awards has fluctuated over the course of the tuition freeze. In 2017-18, it gave 21% more aid than it had in 2012, but in 2018-19 the amount it disbursed fell below the 2012 levels. 

“We do have limited dollars,” says Heidi Carl, Purdue’s executive director of financial aid, whose office prioritizes helping Indiana families with $70,000 or less in adjusted gross income. For some with $50,000 or less, it succeeds in meeting their full need. 

“We see this pattern of public institutions increasing tuitions and then also increasing aid,” says economics professor Emily Cook of Tulane University, referring to a recent study on college pricing she co-wrote. The theory is that they are channeling the extra revenue into scholarships and grants that benefit both low-income students and middle-income families who often bear the burden of student debt. 

“Our study,” says Mrs. Cook, “is overall encouraging in that we are heading in the direction of making college affordable.” 

As Mr. Daniels packs up his office, it is anybody’s guess whether the tuition freeze will extend beyond 2023 or what that would mean for students.

But whatever happens next, freezing the sticker price has done more than hit the reset button for one institution: Its leaps as well as its stumbles offer a decade’s worth of lessons on affordability.

•Editor’s note: This story has been changed to clarify that only new contracts in Purdue's income share agreement program have been suspended. 

Nazira Lajim Hertslet recalls the day she learned that her older brother, Nazeri Lajim, had been sentenced to death for trafficking just over an ounce of heroin. Mr. Nazeri had battled with a long-term drug addiction, and his supplier had been given a life sentence. 

“For the first time in my life, from the bottom of my heart, I hated Singapore,” she says. “It is a cruel place.” 

Ms. Nazira had visited her brother in prison every month for the past five years and recently doubled down on efforts to save him from the gallows, drafting petitions, working with activists, and giving interviews. But it wasn’t enough. Mr. Nazeri was hanged at dawn on July 22. 

Five more men have been hanged since, as executions pick up speed in Singapore following a 2-year hiatus during the pandemic. Most recently, authorities executed Abdul Rahim Shapiee on Aug. 5, just hours after learning his appeal had been denied, along with co-accused Ong Seow Ping. Overall, 10 people – all on death row for drug offenses – have been hanged in less than five months this year. The killings have rekindled debate around the death penalty in Singapore, where people have long viewed capital punishment as a way to protect communities against the very real threats of drug trafficking in the region. 

Singaporeans are increasingly calling for compassion toward the convicted and their families, especially given evidence that severe punishments don’t necessarily equal safer streets. Meanwhile, activists are racing against time, trying to stop executions as well as locate and support the families of inmates, who are battling some of the world’s harshest anti-drug laws. 

“The merciless pace of executions has been a huge source of distress,” says activist and freelance journalist Kirsten Han, who’s been involved with the local anti-death penalty advocacy group Transformative Justice Collective since it formed in October 2020. “There isn’t enough time to process or grieve one hanging before another comes again. It’s horrific.”

Courtesy of Nazira Lajim Hertslet

Nazira Lajim Hertslet holds a portrait of her brother, Nazeri Lajim, at her home in Singapore on Aug. 7, 2022. Mr. Nazeri was executed on July 22. "It shattered me to lose my dearest brother this way," she says.

Who gets the death penalty in Singapore?

The vast majority of death sentences in Singapore are for drug-related offenses, and many are against low-level drug couriers.

In some cases, the death penalty is mandatory, including when a person is found to be trafficking 15 grams of heroin. (For comparison, in the United States, 100 grams triggers a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years in prison.)

A 2012 amendment allowed judges to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment and caning for couriers who are mentally disabled or have “substantively assisted” authorities. But critics claim the conditions are hard to meet and impossible to verify independently.

Some want an end to mandatory sentencing, while others are calling on Singapore to abolish the death penalty altogether. The U.N. Human Rights Office points out that Singapore’s severe drug laws disproportionately target Malays and poor communities, and do little to disrupt drug trade in and around the city-state.

Indeed, experts around the world agree there is no evidence proving death sentences are better at deterring crime than other punishments, such as life in prison. 

But so far, the Singapore government is standing firmly behind its use of the death penalty as a deterrent, ramping up the pace of executions even as other countries in the region relax their drug laws. 

Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam’s case pulled Singapore’s death penalty back in the spotlight. The Malaysian drug courier had an IQ of 69, and had been on death row for more than a decade before his execution on April 27.

In a rare show of public support, hundreds gathered twice in April to rally against the death penalty at Hong Lim Park, the only place in the country where Singaporeans can demonstrate without a police permit. More than 100,000 people had also signed an online petition calling for Mr. Nagaenthran to be pardoned, and many on social media are continuing to voice their concerns about the death penalty and Singapore’s war on drugs.

On one website, Singaporeans have been leaving messages for the families of recently executed men. “Salam to Nazeri and his family,” writes one netizen. “I am so sorry. … You don’t deserve this. You deserved compassion and a second chance.”

Persistent safety concerns

Despite this outpouring of support, many Singaporeans aren’t ready to let go of capital punishment. 

Accountant Ivan Gian believes death penalty for drug offenses remains the best available solution. 

“Do I have sympathy for the person facing the death sentence? Maybe not much,” he says, “but I do empathize with their families.”

Javier See, a polytechnic student, says the protests over Mr. Nagaenthran’s execution made him more aware of the controversies surrounding the death penalty in Singapore. But given record-high levels of synthetic drug trafficking in Southeast Asia, he also thinks the death penalty should stay on the table.

“We are very close to the Golden Triangle,” he says, referring to a mountainous region in Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos known for opioid production. “If we abolish the death penalty for drug offenses, drug lords will only recruit more desperate and poor individuals to exploit this loophole.” 

In a radio interview on July 20, Singapore’s Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam emphasized the government’s duty to “persuade our people, including young people, that we have to make the right choices for them and for society.” 

Courtesy of Nazira Lajim Hertslet

Nazeri Lajim poses during his pre-execution photoshoot at Singapore's Changi Prison a few days before his hanging. Pre-execution photoshoots are common in Singapore; inmates have their portraits taken wearing regular clothes bought by their relatives, and the photos are given to the family as mementoes after the execution.

That means executing traffickers before they destroy the lives of drug users and their families – a framing that appeals to Singapore’s communitarian values.

But for death row families and advocates, this narrative over-simplifies the issues behind drug trafficking such as intergenerational poverty, while overlooking the fact that drug traffickers are often misusing drugs themselves. Families like Mr. Nazeri’s are then forced to suffer twice: first by watching a loved one struggle with addiction, then by watching them hang.

A controversial process

The methodical, by-the-book efficiency Singapore is known for also manifests in the way the death penalty is implemented, from brief, formal letters rejecting clemency petitions to the 1-week notice for upcoming executions.

However, some argue that Singapore’s treatment of death row inmates isn’t entirely callous. Siew Hong Wong, a partner at litigation firm Eldan Law LLP, sees the lack of advance notice as a blessing.

“If they tell you 6 weeks ... in advance, imagine how you will feel. You are watching the clock,” says the lawyer, who successfully secured an acquittal on appeal for a death row inmate in 2020. 

Even Singapore’s practice of staging pre-execution photoshoots – a custom often described as bizarre and inhumane – has brought comfort to some families. Ms. Nazira acknowledges the practice is cruel but admits she is also finding solace in having recent photos of her brother.

Once scheduled, hangings are difficult to stop. Of the 14 known execution notices issued this year, only four men have been granted a stay of execution. Many lawyers are reluctant to take on late-stage death row cases because they might be accused of abusing the court process if they lose. 

Mr. Abdul Rahim – who was executed on Friday – had a fellow death row inmate representing him.

Many anti-death penalty activists say they’re glad that conversations about the death penalty – once difficult discussions to start – are becoming more common, because it builds awareness of complex underlying issues surrounding capital punishment and drug trafficking. 

But when it comes to concrete change, these activists face an uphill battle. Some, Ms. Han included, are currently under investigation for organizing candlelight vigils without a permit outside Changi Prison earlier this year.

“I keep going because my peers and I see how urgent and desperate the situation is,” says Ms. Han. “People are being killed, in all our names, for a misguided drug policy that is increasingly debunked. ... There’s no way we can stop.”

Rogan Ward/Reuters

A member of the South African anti-migrant group Operation Dudula holds a sign during a march to the Diakonia Council of Churches offices demanding they cease assisting undocumented African immigrants, in Durban, South Africa, July 7, 2022.

When Petunia Sibanda came to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2003, she arrived the way most people she knew did in those days – late at night, crossing over a dry patch of the Limpopo River that slices the two countries from each other, pretending not to see the crocodiles in the distance. 

For several years, she lived her life in South Africa on the margins, constantly afraid her lack of legal status would be found out and she would be sent back home to a country where the economy was in free fall. 

Then Ms. Sibanda found a lifeline. In 2011, she heard about a special visa for Zimbabweans, which would allow them to live and work in South Africa legally. 

“I could live freely for the first time,” she says.

But the reprieve was always temporary. Last November, the South African government confirmed that it would no longer renew the 178,000 so-called Zimbabwe Exemption Permits it had issued. All ZEP holders, including Ms. Sibanda, had until the end of 2022 to get a different visa, or leave the country permanently.

Ms. Sibanda and tens of thousands of others in her position now face an existential question. Do they stay in the country where they have made their lives for the last decade, starting families and businesses, and become undocumented? Or do they return to the country they fled all those years ago, where conditions are perhaps even worse than a decade ago? How South Africa handles the issue in the coming months will set the tone in a region that, like elsewhere in the world, is grappling with growing xenophobia amid shrinking resources. 

“We love our country, but we have nothing to go back to,” says Ms. Sibanda, whose four children were all born in South Africa. 

Political points

Immigration has long been a hot-button political issue in South Africa. The country’s relative wealth, developed industries, and expansive legal rights for foreigners – at least on paper – have made it a popular destination for migrants from across Africa since the end of apartheid.

Today, it hosts more migrants than any other country in Africa. Simultaneously, though, amid high poverty and unemployment, anti-immigrant sentiment is often used by political leaders to rally working-class voters, and xenophobic violence flares regularly.

In practical terms, ZEP holders are a tiny fraction of South Africa’s migrant population, which is estimated between 3 million and 4 million people. But their case has taken on an outsize symbolic significance here, becoming a lightning rod in a wider debate about the role of migrants in the country. 

When the government announced it would no longer renew ZEPs, the move was held up by political leaders as proof that they were doing something about South Africa’s rising unemployment and overstrained public services in the shadow of two years of a global pandemic. It came as an anti-immigrant vigilante movement called Operation Dudula – Zulu for “to beat back” – has organized sometimes-violent mass rallies around the country to intimidate immigrants. 

For many Zimbabweans, making a new life in South Africa has been a halting, fraught process. Waves of xenophobic violence have swept the country several times in the past decade, targeting working-class foreigners and their businesses. Most recently, in 2021, many foreign-owned businesses were looted during widespread riots triggered by the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma on corruption charges, an issue entirely unrelated to immigration. 

Terminating the ZEP “is an easy way to score points with voters,” says Loren Landau, a senior researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “It’s a populist move.”

Ironically, the ZEP has its origins in neighborly solidarity. When an economic crisis ricocheted across Zimbabwe in the early 2000s and its agricultural economy collapsed, the government there began furiously printing more money. By November 2008, inflation hit 79.6 billion percent, and political repression from the party of President Robert Mugabe, which had ruled the country since 1980, was deepening. The result was a mass exodus. Most of those migrants ended up in South Africa.

In response, the South African government created a permit called the Dispensation of Zimbabweans Project (DZP), which it called a “gesture of support and solidarity” with Zimbabwe – and which also relieved pressure on its own systems. South Africa’s government continued to replace the permit with similar visas until November 2021, noting that Zimbabwe remained in crisis and that Zimbabweans “have made notable contributions” to South African society.

“South Africa is my home”

Farai Mukucha was one of the Zimbabweans who arrived during the more fortunate days. He left Zimbabwe in 2007, and during his first years in the country scraped together a series of informal jobs. In 2010, he applied for the DZP, which allowed him to work formally for the first time as an electrician. He now runs his own business, and two of his three children were born in South Africa.

“To be honest with you, if I go to Zimbabwe now, I’ll be like a foreigner there,” he says. “Yes, it’s my home country, but South Africa is my home.” 

Very few ZEP holders are eligible for other types of visas, says Luke Dzviti, chair of the Zimbabwe Immigration Federation, an organization formed earlier this year in order to bring a legal challenge against the government’s decision. As in countries like the United States, migrants in South Africa must prove they are critically skilled in certain professions, or that their employer could not find a South African who could do the job for which they are being hired. 

The government insists the rules are necessary to protect jobs for South Africans, given that the country’s formal unemployment rate hovers around 34%. It has also argued that it needs to regulate scarce resources within the Home Affairs Department – which also issues IDs, passports, and other documents – for citizens. But a 2021 study for the Department of Employment and Labour found migrants’ presence in the country had little effect on major issues in the labor market like unemployment and low wages.

Crises around unemployment and public spending aren’t closely linked to migration, adds Mr. Landau of the African Centre for Migration and Society. Instead, they’re easy ways to drum up political support ahead of a 2024 national election that is widely expected to be the biggest challenge to the African National Congress, which has been in power since democracy in 1994. 

Mr. Dzviti’s court challenge is one of three currently in motion challenging the legality of ending the ZEP.

“When government makes a decision with such consequences for the lives of so many people, the decision must be taken fairly, and we’ve argued that this one was not,” says Nicole Fritz, executive director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, which brought another of the court challenges. The foundation argues, among other things, that the government didn’t properly consult with those who would be affected by the change – a legal argument that has been used with success in other recent cases.

In response, South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs issued a statement calling the choice to challenge the government’s decision in courts “disturbing” and “sabotage” of South African democracy. 

“The decision of the Minister not to extend the exemptions granted to Zimbabwean nationals has been widely supported by South African citizens,” wrote Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi. 

The three court cases will be heard together in October. Meanwhile, ZEP holders like Ms. Sibanda are in limbo. 

“We are being thrown into the dark,” she says. “We don’t know what future is on the other side.” 

The axes make a thwuck, thwuck, thwuck sound as a group of Malians hacks off limbs from a thick, bushlike tree. But they’re not here to destroy nature – they’re here to save it.

Whooping, yelling, and letting out an errant “Allahu akbar!” they rush into formation, using the branches to bat and sweep away the wildfires that pop up in this harsh, arid strip of scrubland in Mauritania just below the Sahara desert. 

Fortunately, this time there’s not an actual fire – though the temperatures, climbing past 110 degrees Fahrenheit, might make one think otherwise. Today is just a practice run.

Last fire season, which generally runs from October to February, volunteers with the Brigade Anti-Feu (“anti-fire brigade”) helped put out 36 fires across this stretch of rural Mauritania, says founder Ahmedou Ould Boukhary. The year before, 58. But while they know this patch of lightly rolling hinterland well, they aren’t from here. The brigade is composed of Malian refugees, who’ve fled the decadelong conflict in their homeland. 

Guy Peterson

Two Malian herdsmen watch over cattle. The increase in livestock as more people flee violence in Mali for safety in Mauritania has meant vegetation in the surrounding area is eaten and there is less fuel for bush fires.

“The Mauritanians ... came; they welcomed us,” says Mine Hamada, one of the brigade leaders. “What can we do [to pay back] Mauritania? What’s needed to protect the environment? That’s where we had the idea to create this initiative.”

The group was started in 2013 and has grown into a well-oiled machine of 500 volunteers who regularly field calls for help from Mauritanian towns – sometimes 20 miles away. Local Mauritanian volunteers often join them, creating a bond between the hosts and their guests.

Last season’s fires were fewer partly because of a shorter season caused by an influx of 800,000 heads of livestock brought by refugees fleeing Mali. The animals snacked on trees and shrubs along the way, reducing the amount of available fuel.

The last fire that Malian volunteer Moha Ag Assadeck fought was Feb. 4, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. under the Sahelian sun.

Was it hot? 

He simply laughs.

Guy Peterson

A view from a plane shows the Sahara close to the town of Bassikonou and the Mbera refugee camp.

Guy Peterson

A man cuts branches from one of the many shrubs that litter the Sahelian landscape.

Guy Peterson

Ahmedou Ould Boukhary, one of the founders of the Brigade Anti-Feu, stands in a tree nursery in the Mbera camp. Malian volunteers run a tree-planting program to support the environment and feed their livestock.

Karen Norris/Staff

AP

Maria Kolesnikova, one of Belarus' pro-democracy leaders, gestures a love symbol in 2020 after protests against pro-Russia authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

One reason Ukraine has stood up well against Russia is the example set in neighboring Belarus. Two years ago this month, millions of pro-democracy Belarusians protested against a rigged election by a longtime dictator under Moscow’s thumb. After a brutal crackdown, many have built a digital underground movement, keeping alive the vision of a sovereign and democratic country – especially among the regime’s soldiers.

As the Russian military soon discovered last February after using Belarus as a bridgehead to invade northern Ukraine, that spirit of democratic resistance was as much a foe as any weapon.

The initial Russian assault on the capital, Kyiv, faltered in part because of acts of nonviolent sabotage inside Belarus by a society transformed by the 2020 democratic uprising.

Belarusian activists slowed down Russia’s military transport, says Svetlana Tichanovskaya, leader of the Belarusian democratic movement. They also gave information to Ukrainian armed forces about the bases from which Russian missiles were being fired.

In addition, an estimated 1,500 people from Belarus have volunteered as soldiers in Ukraine to fight Russia. Belarusians know that if Ukraine triumphs over Moscow, that will weaken Moscow’s control over their ruler, Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarusians have kept up a nonviolent fight for their own freedom even as the war in Ukraine rages on. Despite the harsh repression, for example, groups of mothers place their children’s toys around the streets as symbols of defiance. The struggle, says Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, is “defined by small acts of humanity and courage.”

One of her co-activists, Maria Kolesnikova – who is now in prison as one of more than 1,200 political prisoners – said last year that the movement operates at a deeper level than street protests. “The most important thing is that we never deviated from our principles and values – the fairness of the law, kindness, respect and love,” she told the British think tank Chatham House.

No wonder few experts see Russia using Belarus again as a major military launchpad. The mental defenses are too strong.