Set in the middle of no man’s land, the desert village of Qoryaale had no presence of Somalia security forces, and Islamist Al Shabab militants were very close by.

Which is why Somali parliament member Malik Abdalla – driven to act by images of Al Shabab atrocities against civilians, and armed with the new Somali government’s determination to wage “total war” against the jihadis – went there in early October.

His aim: to mobilize local clans to join the most serious effort to date to take on the Islamists and end their 15-year insurgency by fighting alongside the Somali National Army (SNA) and American-trained Somali Special Forces.

Using what he says was a loud voice, Mr. Abdalla called on village residents to bring out their guns and to overcome their suspicions after decades of government neglect, in a country beset by constant conflict and multiple droughts.

It was time to embrace cooperation and to fight back, he says he told them: “We cannot accept evil people telling us, ‘We will rule over you, and if you refuse, we will blow everything up.’”

Mr. Abdalla recalls that “some came out, and some were afraid.” And there were some younger, curious onlookers. “I told the children: ‘Go tell your parents to come out,’” he says.

Carrying just an AK-47 assault rifle, and with some of the new recruits, Mr. Abdalla says he set up a defensive line on the edge of the village and vowed to wait. Overnight, some residents sneaked out to speak to him.

Putting differences aside

It wasn’t difficult to convince them that Al Shabab was the enemy, he recalls. Still fresh is an incident from a few years ago when a dozen militants came to the village, killed two men, and dragged the bodies behind their vehicles.

But it was a challenge to persuade the locals to stand up and cooperate, and to convince them that Mr. Abdalla’s promise represented genuine official support. They told him that they did not need money, food, or weapons – only ammunition.

Videos online illustrate what was his winning argument to the villagers, as he tells fellow Somalis to set aside their clan differences and champion the fight against their common enemy.

Within four days, he had mobilized a local militia force that would grow to 600 men and women, opened a new front against Al Shabab, and demonstrated why the combined strength of Somali security units and clan militias have now recaptured more territory from Al Shabab in five months than in the previous five years.

Courtesy of Malik Abdalla

Somali clan militia members line up after being mobilized by lawmaker Malik Abdalla to fight alongside Somali National Army and U.S.-trained Danab Somali Special Forces units against Al Shabab militants in early October in Qoryaale, Somalia.

“It is very motivating, because it is the first time that the Somali people can witness and see that the terrorists can be beaten, and can be defeated,” says Mr. Abdalla, a dual U.S.-Somali citizen with two degrees from The Ohio State University whose success at recruiting clan militias has become a replicated model.

“It’s a momentum that the government needs to take advantage of,” says Mr. Abdalla. “No matter if you are a big clan, or a small clan, you are a victim in your own country, you are a hostage in your own country.”

He notes increasing reports of violence by Al Shabab in south-central Somalia, including the burning of villages and destruction of water wells critical to survival after four failed rainy seasons. In response to the offensive, Al Shabab has also mounted attacks in major cities.

After a deadly hotel siege in Mogadishu in late August left more than 20 people dead, for example, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared “total war” against the Al Qaeda franchise. A double suicide car bomb in Mogadishu in late October also claimed more than 220 lives, among other complex attacks.

“They have reached their end,” says Mr. Abdalla. “They have shown that, even if you don’t fight them, they still will kill you.”

New government’s priority

The turnaround began in May, when President Mohamud took office and vowed to prioritize the fight against Al Shabab, despite looming humanitarian crises – including the worst drought in 40 years – that have left 7.8 million Somalis, nearly half the population, facing “acute food shortages,” according to the United Nations.

From July, government army units – spearheaded by the U.S.-trained Danab, or “Lightning,” Special Forces – have been joined by an ever-increasing number of mobilized clan militias, known locally as ma’awiisley, to jointly take on Al Shabab. The offensives have been backed by American and Turkish close air support and drone attacks, and African Union helicopter medical evacuations.

The speed and scale of success so far has surprised Somalis and analysts alike, but also raised questions about holding recaptured territory, maintaining momentum, and even the future potential danger of reinvigorating clan militias.

“Victory begets victory,” says a Western security official in Mogadishu, who asked not to be further identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

“What we are seeing here is a totally new approach” after 10 years in which the Somali federal government “tended to have more static operations” against Al Shabab, says the security official.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Somali airport staff load weapons for the security team of a regional Interior Ministry official at the airport in Baidoa, Somalia, Nov. 10, 2022. With Baidoa at the epicenter of Somalia’s humanitarian needs, surrounded by Islamist Al Shabab militants, security is tight.

A catalyst for the strategy of enlisting clans came in June, he says, when the governor of Hiraan province grew fed up with Al Shabab probing near the city of Beled Weyne and mobilized the Hawadle clan to join the SNA to fight.

Another trigger came in early September, when Al Shabab stopped a humanitarian convoy of eight or nine trucks, burned the charitable donations gathered by one town to give to another, and singled out and executed a still undetermined number of Hawadle men, women, and children.

It was images of those killings that helped galvanize Mr. Abdalla’s decision to act, strengthening the government’s response, along with many Somali clans that had had enough.

Al Shabab’s “message”

This week the government-aligned forces recaptured the strategic city of Adan Yabaal, with its Al Shabab base, 150 miles north of Mogadishu. President Mohamud praised “important victories,” noting that Al Shabab is being “defeated in direct combat.”

“The SNA are probably feeling quite empowered, because these are the first large-scale, brigade-plus type of operations that they have done, and they have clearly had some successes,” says the Western security official.

But he notes that recaptured areas are not often held and developed, so security and humanitarian access has often barely improved. And Al Shabab has responded by hitting government recruiting centers and barracks, as well as bridges and telecommunications infrastructure, making it harder to move supplies.

“It is [Al Shabab] sending a message to the clans, ‘Don’t mess with us, or we’ll get back at you. … Don’t think we are on the back foot, we’re still a threat – we can still do what we want, when we want,’” says the security official. “There is a lot of [government] momentum to be maintained.”

And that is what Somali officials say they are determined to do, by directly taking on Al Shabab after what, by all accounts, was a five-year gap in pressuring the group by the previous government, from 2017 to 2022.

The previous administration “accepted cohabitation” with Al Shabab, says Hussein Sheikh Moalim, the national security adviser to the president. The result was a richer and “much more powerful enemy,” he says.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Maj. Mohamed Nur Madhere, of the 8th Brigade of the 66th Division of the Somali National Army, greets SNA soldiers and security forces upon arrival at the airport in Baidoa, Somalia, Nov. 9, 2022. Security is tight in Baidoa, which is on the verge of famine after four failed rainy seasons and is surrounded by Islamist Al Shabab militants.

Nevertheless, he predicts, perhaps boldly, that Al Shabab will no longer hold any territory in Somalia within 18 months.

“We have studied Al Shabab and their weakness,” says Mr. Moalim. “They put all their emphasis on coercion, and not on winning hearts and minds.”

There had been some clan resistance to Al Shabab in recent years, he says, but it fizzled without government support. That is changing.

“For [the jihadist] insurgents to survive … the population has to believe in the cause they are fighting for, which has not existed for a very long time,” says Mr. Moalim.

“Our new strategy is to use the public against them, which is now working,” he says. “In a very short period, and with very little [government] resources, Al Shabab has been losing ground, day after day.”

Beyond people’s limits

The growing popular backlash could have devastating consequences for Al Shabab, which portrays its fight as a religious duty to impose their strict interpretation of Islamic law across Somalia.

“It’s very simple: Al Shabab has taken extreme measures to pressure the community; they have been squeezing, squeezing, squeezing,” says Abdisalam Guled, the former deputy director of intelligence for Somalia.

“I think they went beyond limits that people can tolerate,” he says. Local communities are now “desperate” and have weapons, after years of lawlessness. Besides ammunition, “the only thing missing was the enthusiastic moral support of the government.”

That support has created the most potent, unified anti-Shabab force ever to confront the jihadis.

“Al Shabab will fight back in Mogadishu, which is the most vulnerable,” says Mr. Guled. “They will make civilians suffer, and make the government feel it.”

Limiting that impact is the aim of Somali officials, who say they are already working on post-Shabab stabilization plans that include providing local governance and preventing a resurgence of clan rivalries that underpinned previous decades of conflict.

“There is a community uprising” against Al Shabab, says Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the president’s envoy for drought response. “This war will give us ownership of Somalia.”

Until last week, China’s leaders and propaganda machine were using fear-provoking, militaristic language to frame the country’s strict, “zero-COVID” strategy, vowing to “annihilate” the epidemic, win the war, and save the nation from an “unimaginable” death toll. Armies of pandemic workers in white hazmat suits – party cadres, police, medical staff, and volunteers – performed heroic feats each night on television news, protecting residents and meeting their every need.

But as Beijing’s leaders this week made an abrupt shift towards relaxing COVID-19 controls amid rising popular discontent, their message has changed dramatically from one of fear to self-reliance.

“In the past three years, the virus has weakened but we have grown in strength,” the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said in a commentary on Thursday, a day after the country rolled out a new, 10-point nationwide easing policy. “We have survived the hardest period!”

Overnight, people are being advised not to worry and, essentially, to fend for themselves – a head-spinning change for a population living in a steady state of anxiety from mass testing, constant health surveillance, and the ever-present risk of draconian lockdowns. But many embrace the newfound responsibility.

“The adjustment is a bit of a sharp turn,” says Mr. Tian, a construction company worker in Beijing, which is currently facing its biggest outbreak ever. Overall, he welcomes the change as what he calls a belated acknowledgement of science and tamping down of unwarranted fear.

“This is not as scary as what [Chinese experts] exaggerated before,” he says, asking to withhold his first name to avoid political retaliation for speaking to the media. “We are probably more than a year behind [other countries].”

As China faces its biggest COVID-19 wave ever, the move toward self-sufficiency may prove vital, as experts say the country’s strained medical system must focus on a large, vulnerable, elderly population.

cnsphoto/Reuters

Staff members remove signs guiding people to scan health codes, which have been used as a COVID-19 control strategy, after the government withdrew this measure, in Guangzhou, China, Dec. 7, 2022. Every province and major city in China has its own version of the health codes, which have not been eliminated, but they no longer need to be checked for “cross-regional” movements.

Biggest shift yet

The ten measures adopted on Wednesday by the epidemic control team of China’s State Council mark the biggest nationwide easing of the “zero-COVID” strategy yet. The main thrust of the changes is to give people greater leeway to decide if and when they get tested, and to care for themselves if they become ill.

The new rules halt the use of mass testing, limiting it to high-risk areas and professions. They also lift the requirement that most businesses and public places – from grocery stores to train stations and parks – demand proof of recent tests for entry. Only some institutions such as nursing homes, schools, and medical facilities still require the tests.

In a parallel move, the measures curtail the types of entities that require scanning of the health code tracking apps that virtually every Chinese has had to install on their cell phones to move around. Every province and major city in China has its own version of the health codes, which have not been eliminated. But the rules say they do not need to be checked for “cross-regional” movements, making travel less cumbersome.

The measures limit the scope of any lockdowns to specific buildings, floors, or households, in contrast to the previous policy that saw whole cities quarantined for months at a time. 

And in a change welcomed by many Chinese, the new rules allow people who test positive with mild or no symptoms – and their close contacts – to care for themselves at home rather than go to makeshift shelters or hospitals.

“We can stay home and quarantine ourselves and take care of ourselves,” say Yu Lei, a college graduate in Beijing who is currently unemployed.

“We can’t be too afraid,” she adds. “I am not worried about getting COVID, I am worried about finding an ideal job!”

In encouraging self-reliance, China is moving closer to the approach taken by the United States, Europe, and many other countries since the beginning of the pandemic, where government health experts offer guidance and people decide how best to protect themselves.

In recent days, the state-run media has ramped up educational materials on self-care for COVID-19. In a related change, the new rules have lifted restrictions on the purchase of over-the-counter cold and flu medications, and people are rushing to buy them.

“Fighting against the new coronavirus requires a good rest, a light diet, plenty of water, more fruits and vegetables, and less or no spicy food,” the state-run newspaper Beijing Daily reported this week, citing Chinese experts.

Thomas Peter/Reuters

A woman rides past pandemic-prevention workers as COVID-19 outbreaks continue in Beijing, Dec. 8, 2022, the day after China announced the biggest nationwide easing of its "zero-COVID" strategy yet. The shift toward self-reliance is welcomed by many, but has also led to uncertainty amid record outbreaks.

“Fear of the unknown”

Yet ordinary Chinese and public health experts alike, while accepting the shift to self-reliance, say the reopening of the country is creating new worries.

“Everyone is nervous – it’s a fear of the unknown, not necessarily of the coronavirus,” says Mr. Liu, a migrant worker in Beijing, asking to withhold his first name when speaking with foreign media.

Although China’s “zero-COVID” policy succeeded in keeping deaths and cases relatively low by world standards, the race to contain fast-spreading variants proved evermore costly in terms of lower economic growth and social constraints – and ultimately proved unsustainable.

As the outbreaks grew, Beijing was compelled for political and practical reasons to loosen up. But experts say the country failed to prepare by fully vaccinating its elderly population, importing more effective foreign vaccines, or building up its medical capacity and supply of intensive-care facilities.

In the views of many Chinese, the country is taking an approach that its leaders long warned against, known in Chinese as tangping, or “laying flat.”

“It’s basically laying flat now,” says Mr. Liu, who says he is most worried about his unvaccinated mother, whose health is weak. With less testing and tracking, official data on cases is increasingly unreliable, adding to the sense of uncertainty.

“We don’t know what will happen next,” he says.

The exposure of the Mississippi River’s dry banks makes it look vulnerable, laid bare as a result of a monthslong drought across the U.S. heartland. In normal conditions, the river’s tributaries would help feed the historically reliable flow of its water for more than 2,300 miles as the river carves its way from its headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico’s emerald-green surface.

But today, where water usually stands along the river’s banks in New Orleans, mud cracks in the sun. It’s a challenge that begins hundreds of miles north, where water levels have been recorded at 30-year lows in some parts of the lower Mississippi region that stretches from southern Illinois to the Louisiana coast.

The result is a logistical emergency for waterborne trade, but also a new impetus to better understand this massive watershed and what humans can do to safeguard and manage it in a time of flux. Nature is resilient, but the predicament here shows even the biggest of inland waterways can’t be taken for granted.

This is a time to think about making the river “more resilient,” says Clint Willson, an expert in Mississippi River hydraulics and professor at Louisiana State University. 

“I never say we control the river. We’re trying to manage the river. When you manage something, you’re using your experiences, your knowledge. That relies so much upon what experiences have you had.”

One experience recently has been the disruption of global trade. More than 500 million tons of cargo travels the Mississippi annually, according to estimates from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. That includes food grown in the Midwest for global and domestic consumption, energy byproducts, and more. And for weeks, the river’s low water levels have narrowed the shipping lanes carrying those products toward the coast. Some barges have run aground attempting to navigate its shallow waters.

Jeff Roberson/AP

A barge maneuvers its way down the normally wide Mississippi River where it has been reduced to a narrow trickle Oct. 20, 2022, at Tiptonville, Tennessee. The lack of rainfall in recent weeks has left the river approaching record-low levels in areas from Missouri south through Louisiana, making barge and other navigation along the river more difficult.

Amid AccuWeather estimates that the total economic damage could get as high as $20 billion, recent days have brought signs of improvement in water levels at key points such as Memphis, Tennessee.

Interacting with nature

The Mississippi River predicament is not solely a climate change story. It’s about continued investment in infrastructure and research, or a lack thereof. It’s also about the concept of managing water in a way that’s functional for both the river and its surrounding communities, say experts like Professor Willson.

In many ways, south Louisiana is a laboratory for that understanding.

Here, the historically low freshwater levels have allowed saltwater to encroach into the river’s Gulf mouth. At stake as a result is the drinking water supply for communities that draw from the river, like New Orleans and surrounding localities, and water treatment plants unequipped for saltwater influx, says Heath Jones, chief of emergency management at the Army Corp’s New Orleans District.

While not always as bad as this year, he says it’s a cyclical problem that this district observes about once a decade. 

In studying the impacts of channel deepening, researchers at the Army Corps realized the need to construct a sill – an underwater levee, as Mr. Jones describes it – designed to obstruct saltwater intrusion. Due to the density of saltwater, the underwater barrier essentially creates a bridge to move freshwater.

“Without the sill there, there would be a threat” to communities’ drinking water, Mr. Jones says.

But combating nature’s cycles remains a learning process, he adds. “Every time we have these events, we get more empirical data that says we’re doing this right, or we could improve on it.”

Part of that learning process is understanding historical trends.

Upmanu Lall, an engineering professor at Columbia University and the director of the university’s Water Center, worries that the race to combat climate change clouds that process.

Stephen Smith/AP

A Carrollton gauge shows abnormally low water levels along the Mississippi River, Oct. 27, 2022, in New Orleans.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” he says.

On one hand, the urgency around climate change is vital for the public’s future. On the other, climate alarmism has the potential to distract from basic preparation activities.

“If you look at the spending on climate change, it’s all directed toward decarbonization, which is important,” Dr. Lall says. “But even if we successfully decarbonize, these extreme climate events happen – and we still do not have enough of a strategy to do something about them.”

Dr. Lall points to the drinking water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, as an example of how underinvesting in infrastructure exacerbates the impacts of extreme weather that scientists attribute partly to the effects of human-caused climate change.

For decades Jackson’s tax base withered, and chronic underinvestment allowed the city’s public drinking water system to fall into disrepair. In recent years, boil water notices became a norm for residents. This past summer, severe flooding impacted Jackson’s water system’s pumps. The pumps failed, leaving Jackson residents without safe drinking water for weeks.  

In the end, Dr. Lall, whose academic research on the impacts of global warming dates back more than four decades, worries climate change took more blame than the city’s aging infrastructure.

“The reason this becomes a problem is that we lose sight of the fact that there’s a bunch of things that we need to be paying attention to that are not necessarily climate related,” he says.

“We are not doing that.”

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department won a federal judge’s approval for a third-party manager to oversee reforms to Jackson’s water system.

“Hopefully that helps raise awareness”

There are only so many ways technology can control the Mississippi River, researchers admit.

To combat traffic jams along the river’s shipping lanes, the Army Corp of Engineers has begun dredging parts of the river, effectively deepening sections to allow for barges to travel through.

However, the options for how to alleviate the situation largely end there. Without rain, that is. The good news is that in recent days some replenishment from rainfall has occurred, notably in the key area around Memphis. While water levels are still far from typical, they are now more than 10 feet higher than in mid-October – which saw lows not seen since 1988.

If there’s anything to be gained, Professor Willson hopes it’s clarity for the public on what the Mississippi River means for a functioning society. He hopes that the river’s recent struggles allow the opportunity for more to understand the river’s power. Not just from an extreme weather point of view, such as those who venture out to its banks after heavy rainfall to witness the mighty river’s flow. But from the understanding that the river is a binding force globally.

“Hopefully that helps raise awareness and people’s understanding of the importance of the river,” Professor Willson says.

AP

Camping lights and candles illuminate a market fruit stall during a power outage in Kyiv, Ukraine, Nov. 9.

End-of-the-year picks for “best person of 2022” are rolling in – Time magazine chose Ukraine’s president – but something other than a person may signify the year in history. It is a unifying symbol seen in the most headline-grabbing events – the war in Ukraine and mass protests in Iran and China.

It is the use of light, a metaphor for freedom, to remind the oppressed that darkness is not a predetermined reality.

In Ukraine, where Russian missiles have knocked out power for millions, lighted candles have become the beacon of a victorious future. Ukrainians have also taken to writing poems, many with a theme of light. “The Russians can turn out the lights in our cities, but, right now, every person in Ukraine is a light,” Oleksandr Usyk, famed heavyweight boxer, told The Independent.

“We are like candles burning in the darkness,” Mr. Usyk said. He is part of a donation campaign to buy 1,000 power generators for hospitals. 

In China, protests against strict “zero-COVID” policies and the grim rule of Xi Jinping took off in November during candlelight vigils for the victims of a lethal fire – one that was left to blaze because of an enforced lockdown.

Mourning for the fire’s victims led to large-scale demonstrations against censorship and other types of oppression. Fueled by a desire for “spiritual freedom,” one Chinese protester told CNN, “I feel like I can see a glimmer of light coming through ahead.” (Another protest symbol is a blank piece of white paper, held aloft during protests to signify that everyone knows what the censors try to suppress.)

In Iran, a common sight during the protests has been the light of street bonfires, in which women burn their hijabs. The most popular protest song, “Baraye” (For), winds up its list of complaints with these uplifting words: “For the feeling of serenity and peace / For the sun after a long night.”

By its own light, truth has shone brightly during these big events of 2022. The use of light is inclusive and connective among people, banishing despair. For many in the countries of Ukraine, Iran, and China, to see the light is to be the light.