The visitors enter the building on Yaroslavksa Street through a scuffed metal door and climb two flights of stairs under the weight of unwanted memories. In a gray office with blank walls, they meet attorneys with the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, who sit at desks behind laptops, poised to listen. Here the men and women and children reveal their anguish and loss. The lawyers type notes as they talk, and with each recorded narrative, the larger story of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gains another detail that history cannot erase.

Natalia Rudenko arrives at the office on an ashen February morning with her young son, Egor, to share an account of wartime terror spanning three generations. A year earlier, as Russian troops surged over the border and bombarded Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, mother and child found refuge in the basement of an apartment building near their home.

They lived underground for the next three weeks, their days and nights splintered by the ceaseless sounds of war above. Venturing outside in March, Ms. Rudenko, whose husband volunteered in the country’s territorial defense force, discovered that an artillery shell had damaged their home.

She packed two suitcases and traveled with Egor by train to the western city of Lviv to stay with a relative’s friend. The distance from the fighting eased her anxiety without subduing her concern for loved ones left behind. 

Martin Kuz

Natalia Rudenko hugs her son, Egor, outside the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group’s office on Feb. 9, 2023.

Soon after invading, the Russian military captured Ms. Rudenko’s hometown of Staryi Saltiv, a summer resort destination 25 miles from Kharkiv and half that far from Russia. Her parents, Tatiana and Yuri, who still lived in the house where she grew up, resisted her pleas to evacuate. 

In early May, facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russian forces pummeled the area with artillery to cover their retreat. Yuri and Tatiana, eager to tell their daughter about the town’s liberation, walked from their home to the top of a small rise in search of a cell signal. The call failed to connect. As the couple descended the hill, a rocket blast killed them.

Ms. Rudenko, a grocery store manager before the war, returned to Kharkiv in January and reunited with her husband. The dark circles beneath her eyes attest to an unrelieved sorrow that she attempts to conceal from Egor. 

Since the weeks underground, he trembles with fear at loud noises, and his erratic moods often eclipse his playful demeanor, suggesting a young mind traumatized. She worries the war has claimed her parents and her son in different ways. She needs the world to remember.

“My mother and father are gone forever. But I want Egor to grow up in peace in Ukraine,” she says. Her head drops as tears fall. “I want everyone to know what Russia has done.”

Martin Kuz

Natalia Rudenko (left) and her son, Egor, meet with attorney Oksana Mandryka at the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group on Feb. 9, 2023. The organization gathers testimony about potential war crimes.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group gathers testimony and evidence for referral to prosecutors investigating potential war crimes. The work represents one facet of Ukraine’s efforts to preserve memories of Russia’s unprovoked war and honor the dignity of its victims, living and dead.

The varied approaches – from formal actions of civic institutions to private vigils of everyday Ukrainians – embody a collective act of remembrance that also advances Ukraine’s ambition to pursue a future free of Moscow’s grasp. Beyond its military’s tenacity, the country has fought to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s parallel war on history, seeking to thwart him from silencing the Ukrainian idea.

“Memory is the foundation of our culture, our identity,” says Hanna Yarmish, the education director at a museum dedicated to the 18th-century philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda. A missile strike gutted the institution outside Kharkiv last May. “The memories of this war will mean that every future generation will understand what Ukraine represents, what Russia represents – and why Ukrainians will always choose freedom.”

Their resolve to never forget Moscow’s brutality exemplifies a desire to escape the Russian tyranny that for centuries stifled Ukraine’s distinct heritage, history, language, and identity. Starting in the mid-1600s, when the Russian Empire began conquering Ukrainian territory and branded its people “Little Russians,” Kremlin rulers at once dictated and disfigured the country’s future.

Vladimir Lenin codified Russia’s hegemony over Ukraine after quelling its fight for independence, absorbing the smaller nation into his newly formed Soviet Union in 1922. His successor, Josef Stalin, killed millions of Ukrainians in a decadeslong reign that brought the state-imposed famine known as the Holodomor, forced-labor camps, and mass purges, along with conscription into the Red Army.

Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Anton Krasyvyi rows passengers across the Siverskyi Donets river past a destroyed bridge on Sept. 27, 2022, so they can visit relatives in Staryi Saltiv, Ukraine, which was briefly captured by the Russians.

The depths of Russia’s oppression drew into clearer focus only after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. Less than a decade later, Mr. Putin ascended to power, and in the ensuing years, rather than redress past atrocities or build a stable alliance between the countries, he fixated on Russia reasserting control over Ukraine.

A popular uprising in 2014 ousted Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych, widely perceived as a Kremlin pawn. Mr. Putin responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and backing Russian operatives who seized portions of the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine.

The land grabs portended the full-scale war he launched 14 months ago during the centennial year of the Soviet Union’s founding and three decades after Ukraine gained its independence. In a televised address days before the invasion, Mr. Putin mythologized his nation’s imperialism, describing Ukraine as “entirely created by Russia” and “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”

Mr. Putin’s bloody crusade to elide the national narrative of a sovereign Ukraine recalls the dark methods of Stalin, Lenin, and earlier Russian leaders to inflict a forced forgetting. His strategy to weaponize memory has fortified the solidarity of Ukraine’s people, whose united defiance evokes the struggle of their forebears and illuminates an indelible new history that belongs wholly to Ukraine.

“We must talk and be heard,” says Oksana Mandryka, an attorney with the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. “Under the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, we couldn’t tell our story because we weren’t allowed to exist as a separate people. Telling stories – and remembering them – is how we will keep our spirit alive.” 

Dappled sunlight falls across a forest cemetery where snow frames hundreds of empty graves. Wooden crosses bearing numbers in black ink stand inside the dirt plots. The dead have been removed. Their absence persists for those who loved them.

Martin Kuz

Empty mass graves are shown on Feb. 8, 2023, in Izium, Ukraine. Bodies were exhumed for identification after the city was liberated last fall.

Russian troops captured Izium last April after a weekslong assault that damaged or destroyed three-fourths of the homes in the city of 46,000 people southeast of Kharkiv. A single airstrike on an apartment building killed 54 residents.

The Ukrainian army reclaimed Izium in September, exposing the horrors of the occupation. The Russians dumped some 450 bodies into the crude graves that now lay bare. Most of the dead were civilians; many showed signs of torture. A mass burial pit contained the remains of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.

Officials exhumed the victims to begin the arduous process of identifying them. Several who were congregants at Holy Ascension Cathedral, a Ukrainian Orthodox church, have received formal reburial in the same cemetery. On this cloudless afternoon, beneath a gossamer canopy of pine trees, archpriest Bogdan Dumindiak has finished a graveside service for a grandmother killed in the apartment attack.

The invasion has expanded his perspective on the symbolism of burial rites. “It is now not only personal and spiritual,” he says. “It is also historical.” He seeks to reassure bereaved survivors that their lost loved ones live forever in the national memory.

“We must remember each individual for the family and for Ukraine,” Father Dumindiak says. He wears a parka over his vestments against the cold, his manner as quiet as the woods around him. “They would be part of our future if not for Russia.”

The empty grave marked with cross No. 76 once held the body of Olena Shevchenko’s daughter, one of the 8,490 civilian deaths as of mid-April that the United Nations has recorded in Ukraine since Russia invaded.

Martin Kuz

Olena Shevchenko sits in her kitchen in Izium, Ukraine, on Feb. 10, 2023, as she recalls the death of her daughter Victoria Redko.

Victoria Redko brought a homemade meal to her mother almost every Wednesday for decades. She prepared containers of borscht, dumplings, or potato pancakes before walking the mile to her childhood home. 

As Russian forces attacked Izium last spring, Ms. Redko worried about her mother, a pensioner and widow who lives alone. Unable to contact her – the city lacked power and cell service – Ms. Redko decided to keep their weekly lunch date. She filled two tote bags with food and set out on the second Wednesday in March.

She never arrived. Ms. Shevchenko’s younger daughter later braved the Russian shelling to drive to her sister’s home and learned the worst from a neighbor. An artillery blast killed Ms. Redko as she walked to her mother’s house.

Ms. Shevchenko wipes away tears while sitting in the kitchen where she and her elder daughter had talked and laughed. An artificial rose in a vase on the table honors the memory of Ms. Redko, the mother of two adult sons. “I have a sadness that is deeper than anything I have ever felt,” she says.

A child of the Soviet Union, Ms. Shevchenko speaks Russian, the dominant language in eastern Ukraine. Before the war, the region shared a strong kinship with Russia, rooted in family, religion, culture, and history. Two of her paternal uncles served in the Red Army during WWII as the Soviet Union fought to liberate Ukraine from German occupation. Her mother recalled Soviet soldiers handing out bread to hungry families.

Three generations later, Ms. Shevchenko’s youngest grandchild – one of Ms. Redko’s sons – wears the uniform of the Ukrainian army. His unit took part in the counteroffensive that drove Russian troops from most of the Kharkiv region last fall.

“Putin calls us ‘one people.’ It was always a lie,” she says. “But in Soviet times, we thought Russia was against fascism. Now Russians are the fascists. We will always remember this aggression.”

Courtesy of Olena Shevchenko

Victoria Redko was bringing Ms. Shevchenko a home-cooked meal when artillery struck and killed her.

Ms. Shevchenko still talks with her daughter every Wednesday when she visits Ms. Redko’s grave in the forest cemetery where the family reburied her after Russian troops retreated. More than 100 bodies that officials disinterred in September remain unidentified. Father Dumindiak struggles to find meaning in the country’s torment.

“We carry this sadness in our hearts,” he says. A low rumble drifts through the woods from a nearby road as flatbed trucks haul Ukrainian tanks toward the besieged city of Bakhmut. War has taught him that the pain of memory is the price of sovereignty.  

“With God’s help, we will stay free. We will try to forgive,” he says. “But it is not possible to forget.”

The security guard stepped outside to take a call a little before 11 p.m. He knew the thick building walls would interfere with cell reception. He had no inkling the decision would save his life.

Moments later, a missile slammed through the roof of the National Literary Memorial Museum of H.S. Skovoroda. The impact blew out the windows and ignited a fire that consumed the interior. Rescue workers found the security guard pinned under debris, injured but alive.

Martin Kuz

Hanna Yarmish, education director for a museum dedicated to a Ukrainian philosopher, stands inside the ruins of the site on Feb. 9, 2023, in Skovorodynivka.

Hanna Yarmish, the museum’s education director, views his survival as a metaphor for the resilience of Ukrainian culture as epitomized by the lasting influence of Hryhorii Skovoroda. “In the same way that you cannot extinguish the memory of Skovoroda,” she says, “you cannot extinguish the Ukrainian idea.”

Snow crunches under her boots as she walks through the ruined museum on the estate grounds where the “philosopher of the heart” spent his final years before his death in 1794. Missile fragments from the attack last May dangle in tree branches above the missing roof.

“You can destroy some buildings, some monuments. But the physical is not the essence of who we are,” Ms. Yarmish says. She invokes Skovoroda’s tenet that meaning resides within human thought, spirit, and will. “The museum is still here because” – she taps her heart – “Skovoroda is here.”

Russia’s military has bombed 1,600 museums, cathedrals, memorials, and other cultural sites across Ukraine and looted tens of thousands of artworks and artifacts. As with the Skovoroda museum, located in a village of fewer than 600 people near Kharkiv, many of the strikes have occurred in isolated areas without discernible military value.

The rocket that hit the museum marks the sole attack to date on Skovorodynivka, the rural enclave named for the philosopher, whose writings explored themes of individual freedom, spiritual understanding, and the benevolent pursuit of happiness. Mr. Putin appears familiar with his work, if less so his ethos of compassion.

Martin Kuz

A Russian missile gutted the museum building in May last year.

Two years ago, the Kremlin website posted a rambling essay credited to the Russian president and titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” Denying the existence of a unique Ukrainian culture and identity, the piece argued that Russia held equal claim to the legacies of Skovoroda, Taras Shevchenko, and Ivan Kotlyarevsky, three of Ukraine’s brightest literary lights.

Ms. Yarmish considers the museum attack a microcosm of Mr. Putin’s failed effort to redact by force Ukraine’s cultural history. The staff removed almost the entire museum collection soon after Russia invaded, preserving for posterity the tangible evidence of Skovoroda’s Ukrainian heritage.

At the same time, the bombing has infused his writings with renewed relevance in Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made explicit during a Victory Day address last May.

The annual holiday commemorates the Soviet Union’s defeat of Germany in WWII. Mr. Zelenskyy mentioned the museum attack from three days earlier and quoted Skovoroda in condemning Russia’s invasion: “There is nothing more dangerous than an insidious enemy, but there is nothing more poisonous than a feigned friend.”

Mr. Zelenskyy denounced the “barbarians who shell the Skovoroda museum and believe that their missiles can destroy our philosophy,” and he vowed that “we will not give anyone a single piece of our history.” Ms. Yarmish voices similar conviction as she steps out of the scorched museum and descends its front steps, a Ukrainian flag waving in the breeze above her. 

“From the first day the war is over,” she says, “the museum will be open.”

Vasily Hrushka worked the land for most of his life and the land always gave back. He trusted the rich, black soil in the fields where he sowed and harvested crops, earning the modest living that supported his family.

Courtesy of Vasily Hrushka

Vasily Hrushka stands outside his home before Russia invaded.

It was when war came to Kamianka that the earth betrayed him. Russian forces occupied the village nestled in a shallow valley outside Izium for six months starting last spring. The area marked part of the front line, and as heavy shelling damaged or destroyed every single home and residents fled, Kamianka’s population plunged from 1,000 to below 50.

Rockets twice hit Mr. Hrushka’s house. He rolls up his sweater sleeve above the elbow to reveal a scar the size of a silver dollar from a chunk of shrapnel. He points to another scar on his forehead and shares the story of a drunken Russian soldier who entered his home and struck him with the butt of a Kalashnikov rifle.

He healed from those injuries but endured a third after the Russians withdrew. The invading troops left discarded ammunition boxes, live artillery shells, incinerated tanks, and other war detritus throughout the village. In October, as he cleared debris from his fields, a mine buried in the soil exploded. His left foot was gone.

Mr. Hrushka recounts his misfortune without self-pity as he sits on a bed in his living room, crutches on the floor below him. His pale blue eyes pool with tears only when he describes the devastation of war. Homes reduced to ashes. The screams of farm animals ripped open by artillery. A neighbor sprawled dead in his yard, face turned toward the sky.

Martin Kuz

Vasily Hrushka, who lost a foot when he stepped on a Russian land mine, sits in his living room in Kamianka, Ukraine, on Feb. 10, 2023.

“This is what Russia has given us,” he says. He holds up a callused hand to correct himself. “This is what Russia has taken from us.”

The invasion has forced 14 million Ukrainians from their homes, and officials have logged more than 76,000 alleged war crimes committed by Russian soldiers. The list includes summary executions, torture, sexual violence, and destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure. In March, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Mr. Putin’s arrest, implicating him in the mass abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children.

The incalculable trauma wrought by the invasion will trail Ukrainians for generations. “Our bodies right now are clenched like a fist,” says Natalya Potseluyeva, a psychologist who treats survivors of war crimes. “Everybody in the country feels this way to different degrees.”

Ms. Potseluyeva counsels people to accept that the war lies beyond their control and to focus on finding daily purpose even with missiles falling. She tells them that defusing memories of Russia’s cruelty will require time and talking.

“We can’t simply forget this destruction being done to us. So we must learn how to speak about these things to understand our trauma,” she says. “This will allow us to think about our future again.”

The date of Feb. 24, 2022, will forever represent a watershed in Ukraine. The day Mr. Putin unleashed his wider invasion arrived 31 years after the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union on Aug. 24, 1991. His decision demarcated in blood the moment Ukrainian identity slipped free from Russian history. 

Another date from last year shadows Mr. Hrushka – Oct. 19, when the earth erupted beneath him. He has lost much to Russia, yet like his homeland, he chooses to look ahead. He expects to receive a prosthetic foot in the coming months, and in time, he plans to resume working in his fields.

In the war’s first days, as rockets rained on Kamianka, Mr. Hrushka and his wife prepared to flee. He set free the cows, goats, and pigs in his barn so they might escape slaughter by the Russians. When he checked on the house a few days later, the animals had returned. He saw in their behavior a reflection of Ukraine’s indomitable memory.

“This is home. They remember,” he says. His eyes shine as he smiles. “We remember.” 

What’s a farmer’s favorite vegetable to eat?

“The one that’s making the most money,” Craig Elmore says. 

Crops bring profit. But this year, as before, Mr. Elmore isn’t farming some fields. These more than 2,000 idled acres – roughly a quarter of his terrain, he says – could have sprouted plumes of Sudan grass or wheat.

But he’s wary of running out of water allocated to him from the drought-stressed Colorado River. California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which serves growers like him, has the single largest entitlement to the river. The Colorado is also its only source of water.

Mr. Elmore isn’t the only one worried. Seven basin states, including large metro areas like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, as well as 30 tribal nations, and part of Mexico depend on the river to sustain not only livelihoods but life itself.

Though critically low reservoirs along the river may see some relief from recent heavy snow in the West, chronic deficits are likely to persist. The federal government on Tuesday announced draft plans for revising Colorado River management through 2026, offering paths forward that could invoke major water cuts – including here in the Imperial Valley.   

“To meet this moment, we must work together through our shared values and a commitment to protecting the river. Leading with science, and with creativity, and a shared understanding that unprecedented conditions require new solutions,” said Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton.

Imperial Valley farmers wonder if that “commitment” will mean they need to fallow more land.

Mr. Elmore sees economic opportunity in short-term fallowing – like he’s doing now – if farmers are compensated for it, which could pay for further conservation on farms. For others, fallowing takes on a more bitter taste, with fears of local job loss and industry shrinkage. They call fallowing the “F word.”

Unknowns abound: what compensation could be offered for idling fields, when more water-saving deals will be announced, and who will raise hands to participate. Even the full economic effects of a previous fallowing program in the Imperial Valley are unclear.

What is known: Colorado River users are grappling with a future that calls for sacrifice. And solutions seem to snag on a century-old legal landscape that has largely benefited – justifiably, locals say – Imperial Valley farms. Yet the high level of water use has made some observers argue the district’s farms should sacrifice more.

All this raises another “F word.” Fairness.

“I don’t think there is a solution to the Colorado River that doesn’t somehow include the Imperial Valley,” says Mr. Elmore, suspenders hitched to khaki slacks. “But it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t jeopardize our industry, or our community, or the livelihood of everyone in this valley.”

Much of the current crisis appears to result from bad math and a warming climate.

John Locher/AP

A bathtub ring of light minerals shows the high water mark on the shore of Lake Mead along the border of Nevada and Arizona, March 6, 2023. Record snowfall and rain have helped to loosen drought’s grip on parts of the western U.S., but chronic water deficits are likely to persist.

How did we get here?

From the purple mountain majesties of Colorado, the river slinks southwest for some 1,450 miles toward the teal-toned Sea of Cortez. Agriculture is by far the biggest river consumer.

An acre-foot of water is roughly the size of an American football field, filled up one foot deep. Around the time of the Colorado River Compact of 1922, the river flow was expected to be up to 20 million acre-feet a year, says John Fleck, water policy researcher at the University of New Mexico School of Law’s Utton Center. Today, however, he says annual flows are estimated at around 12 to 13 million acre-feet.

A century ago, some scientists “recognized that they were making a mistake, that they were basing their numbers, allocation numbers, on an unusually wet time,” says Mr. Fleck. And yet, in negotiations, “those scientists were ignored.”

Add in overuse and a system hit by the effects of human-caused climate change, which has intensified a decades-long regional mega-drought. Today, major reservoirs on the river are about three-fourths empty – Lake Powell at 23% and Lake Mead at 28%. Those historic lows threaten water supplies and hydropower if they continue to sink.

Some help is on the way. The Department of the Interior last week announced that the Imperial Irrigation District, the public water and power agency for the valley, would receive $9.5 million for a water storage project. It comes from funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act that are meant for Colorado River conservation.

And last year, the Imperial Irrigation District submitted a proposal to the federal government for water conservation funding marked for the Lower Basin states, including California, by a November deadline.

“We’re frankly concerned, because we’re running out of time to implement programs this year,” says Tina Shields, one of the district’s water managers.

A clock on the wall of a district meeting room isn’t notched with numbers, but the words WATER and POWER. It hovers above board meetings.

Those start with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer.

Gregory Bull/AP

Tom Brundy stands among alfalfa on one of his fields near Calexico, California, on Feb. 28, 2023. “We are concerned about every drop of water that we use, and we want to better the situation,” he says. “Not make it worse. Not take advantage.”

History of a bounty

Ask Tom Brundy how he is, and he’ll answer that he’s “blessed.”

He talks of farming with patriotic pride, knowing that his fellow Americans are nurtured through melons and milk. That milk depends on the cow-munched crops like alfalfa that he grows. Water-intensive alfalfa accounts for the most acres harvested in Imperial County, which is also known for vegetables like lettuce, broccoli, and carrots.

“We are concerned about every drop of water that we use, and we want to better the situation,” he stresses over the phone, ahead of a visit. “Not make it worse. Not take advantage.”

Imperial Valley farmers like Mr. Brundy point out water conservation efforts on their fields, like drip irrigation. But growers here look back as much as they look forward, seeing history on their side.

Fields in the Imperial Valley were once stark desert. Investors, including the California Development Co., began to divert and claim water from the Colorado River into the area in the late 1800s. 

“At a time where all natural resources were being rationalized, this enabled the [California Development Co.] to basically convert the melting snow of the Rockies into units, into commodities,” says Eric Boime, professor of history at San Diego State University, Imperial Valley.

The Imperial Irrigation District, formed in 1911, acquired water rights from those previous ventures. The district is considered a senior water-rights holder and has the single largest entitlement to the Colorado River – 3.1 million acre-feet annually – though it uses less. Nearly all of its water goes to agriculture, passing through the All-American Canal and greening nearly half a million acres.

“Imperial has a tremendous responsibility – not only to their community, to their growers, as well as to their partners in the All-American Canal – but also to the basin, because of the magnitude of their water use,” says Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

Of course, Native American tribes predated the stakes of settlers, but they’ve had to press for inclusion in river negotiations. And despite tribes’ inherent rights to Colorado River water, not all have accessed their desired shares, reports the Associated Press.

The “Law of the River,” which governs use and management of the Colorado, is a bramble of contracts, decisions, and decrees, rife with disputes. Some stakeholders say that climate change has invalidated the river’s priority system, which has spared California shortage-driven cuts.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Reclamation offered three options: take no action, adhere to a water-rights priority system already in place, or distribute cuts of the same percentage among the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada. (The draft review notes that anticipated water shortages would trigger a temporary uptick in fallowing and farm production loss under all scenarios.)

The Imperial Irrigation District, which could lose the most from the third option, “continues to have concerns with any alternative that involves ‘equal cuts’ among water users,” the district said in a statement.

Following a public comment period, the federal government says it will announce its decision this summer. In the Imperial Valley, that may lead to more fallowing.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Jeff Dollente, a "zanjero," delivers water to farm fields for the Imperial Irrigation District in Imperial County, California, Feb. 15, 2023. He works "like a milkman," says Mr. Dollente, who joined the district out of high school in 1985.

The hidden costs of idling fields

Fallowing can take different forms, but it’s generally known as the idling of agricultural land. The option raises questions of equity. 

Job loss and other economic impacts of fallowing depend on what crops are taken out of production, says Josué Medellín-Azuara, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Merced.

Growing forage crops like alfalfa is “highly mechanized, and they are less reliant on labor,” he says.

Still, fears of lost local revenue and fallowing’s knock-on effects to businesses that rely on crops, like machinery and livestock, are common in the valley. Job loss tied to temporary land-use loss is another concern in Imperial County, where one in six jobs is linked to farming. Employment is shaped by migration over the Mexican border and varies widely by season. Even so, the February unemployment rate in the county stood at 15.6% – far above that of the state and the nation. 

“It’s not what is the cost to conserve an acre-foot of water, it’s what does it cost our community to lose an acre-foot of water,” emailed grower Mark McBroom, not a fan of fallowing.

“There has to be a community benefit” from fallowing, says Eric Montoya Reyes, executive director of Los Amigos de la Comunidad, an advocacy group for underserved communities in Imperial Valley. Even as poverty persists alongside an agricultural industry valued in the billions, farming generates jobs. “On-farm conservation is the best, because it keeps farmworkers working,” he adds.

Ms. Shields, the water manager, agrees. The district currently conserves around half a million acre-feet of water a year, but has proposed an additional 250,000 acre-feet. That means, however, “more than likely we’ll have some level of fallowing to achieve those goals over the next three to four years,” Ms. Shields adds. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Eric Montoya Reyes, executive director of Los Amigos de la Comunidad, stands outside an Imperial Irrigation District building following a board meeting in El Centro, California, Feb. 21, 2023. "There has to be a community benefit," he says, if compensated fallowing is renewed by the water district.

What can we learn from the past? 

Fallowing isn’t new to Colorado River-reliant farm regions, including the Imperial Valley. Its effects just haven’t been fully tallied here.

The controversial Quantification Settlement Agreement began in 2003 as a bundle of contracts between California water districts and state and federal agencies. It was meant to rein in California’s use of Colorado River water to 4.4 million acre-feet a year, after it had swelled to nearly a million more.

Through the QSA, the Imperial Irrigation District entered into a major water-transfer deal with districts in neighboring San Diego County and the Coachella Valley, while extending a deal with a district serving Los Angeles.  

The arrangement faced fierce resistance in the Imperial Valley. Yet through compensated fallowing of fields, the district helped serve this broader region, thereby reducing the state’s overall use of river water. And a portion of the water conserved went to the valley’s Salton Sea, whose decline has spurred environmental and health concerns.

Between 2003 and 2017, fallowing in the valley spanned around 300,000 acres, contributing to some 1.8 million acre-feet of Colorado River water conserved. Though farmers and landowners were paid the most for sacrificing water at around $161 million, some $50 million in “mitigation payments” were made to a range of local farm-related businesses, community groups, and even schools. Since 2017, Imperial Valley growers can still get reimbursed for water-efficiency programs on their fields, but not for fallowing.

Ms. Shields says the district didn’t complete research to quantify the full economic impacts of those 15 years. Limited analyses were conducted by multiple economists during the first few years. But the analysis process proved highly contentious and didn’t lead to a consensus on the net gains or losses to the region.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Kay Brockman Bishop, who hails from a farm family, visits land she's leasing to a solar power company in Imperial County, California, Feb. 16, 2023. "It was an economic decision to begin with, and it's been a good one for me,” she says.

A solar solution?

Questions of future farmland use in the valley also involve a crop that doesn’t use water at all. A crop not nourished from below, but above.

Solar arrays come into view as rows of silent soldiers, whose upturned shields tilt toward the sun. A few hundred acres belong to Kay Brockman Bishop, at least the ground beneath. 

Ms. Brockman Bishop used to farm. She inherited land from her family, who settled in the southern tip of the valley at the turn of the 20th century. 

But the ground is tough, thick with clay. Farming, she says, was “just plain hard.”

That’s why it made sense for her to begin leasing land to a solar company two decades ago. “It was an economic decision to begin with, and it’s been a good one for me,” says Ms. Brockman Bishop. She also saw water issues “getting worse.” 

The solar projects have local detractors concerned with habitat loss and job loss. Yet some growers agree that turning poor, unproductive land like hers into renewable energy is an acceptable decision. 

Federal officials appealed to a spirit of community at Tuesday’s press conference.

“Some of the commentary has depicted an us-versus-them dynamic in the basin. I don’t see that at all,” said Interior Department Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau. “I see commitment, collaboration, and problem-solving.”

Lionel Urman/ABACAPRESS.COM/Reuters

Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti attends a session of questions at the National Assembly in Paris, April 4, 2023. Mr. Dupond-Moretti wants to push AGRASC, the agency that oversees the redistribution of seized criminal assets, to do more to funnel confiscated property to charity.

On the rural outskirts of Le Moule, Guadeloupe, sits a luxurious villa. The style is modern but simple. It’s in perfect condition.

Until last year, the house was the home of a criminal convicted of fraud. Now, it is a center dedicated to protecting victims of domestic violence from their abusers, who receive supervision and counseling at the site.

Under normal circumstances, the French nonprofit Judicial Control and Investigation Service (SCJE) would have had to spend months to find such a real estate gem. But it got the keys to the villa last February for a symbolic €1, after answering a call for community projects in search of housing from the French Ministry of Justice’s Agency for the Management and Recovery of Seized and Confiscated Assets (AGRASC).

“It makes things easier for groups like us, and we know there’s a solid plan to back it up,” says Julien Delcourt, director of development and innovation at the Lille-based SCJE, which works to prevent delinquency and recidivism. “Moreover, the object goes from a confiscated asset to something that has meaning for society.”

The SCJE is one of a handful of nonprofits benefiting from a new government initiative that aims to turn crime into goodwill. Since April 2021, the state has donated four pieces of prime real estate once owned by convicted criminals to French charities, and seized millions of euros worth of cars, jewelry, and other merchandise.

Though the scheme involves a long and arduous legal process and some say it should go further, the benefits are paramount. Confiscating assets can be a deterrent to a repeat offense, as many find it even more undesirable than a prison sentence. It also offers an avenue to transform the profits of bad works into good.

“The idea is that the money goes back to the community where it was stolen from,” says Didier Rebut, a criminal law professor at the Université Paris Panthéon-Assas. “Before, the state took the money [from confiscated items] for itself. Now, it can be used for public good. Without a doubt, it’s a virtuous circle.”

Repurposing criminal possessions

While AGRASC’s latest initiative began in 2021, it was inspired by Italy, which, in 2018, offered France a Parisian apartment formerly owned by a convicted mafia boss on the condition that it be used for society’s benefit.

The 2021 law allows real estate to be transferred to charity by the state, though the infrastructure to realize it is getting off the ground. Until now, items seized by the state have instead been put up for public auction, with the earnings going toward various state-funded programs: a commission that fights against drug use; nonprofits that tackle sex trafficking; or restitution to victims post-trial.

Some confiscated goods have been directly put toward serving the public, such as luxury cars that are repainted and repurposed as official police vehicles. More than 3,000 such items were collected in 2022.

The practice has been highly lucrative for the French state, which raked in upward of €771 million ($840 million) in 2022 from bank accounts, real estate, and personal property. Today, even with the charity initiative in place, these types of seizures still account for about 95% of cases.

“We have to build this from scratch and there are a lot of limitations,” says Arnaud de Laguiche, a magistrate and head of real estate development at AGRASC in Lille. “Not all property can be donated, and it must fulfill certain criteria. We need to evaluate it, redo it, find a need for it. ... There’s also something very violent about having your personal asset confiscated. That’s why there is a very rigorous process in place, to make sure it’s done in a balanced way.”

Serge Tenani / Hans Lucas/Reuters/File

A Mercedes SUV, a Lamborghini, and a Land Rover sit in the courtyard of the Ministry of the Economy during a AGRASC auction in Paris, in November 2021. Luxury automobiles like these are typically either sold by the state, with the proceeds going toward state-backed programs, or repurposed as official police vehicles.

There is a legal difference between seizing an asset and confiscating it, and therein lies some of the difficulty for the Justice Ministry. An asset can be seized – i.e., removed from an individual’s possession – before a judge’s decision, but can only be confiscated definitively by the state after a formal judgment has been entered. That can take years, due to France’s underfunded justice system and a potentially lengthy appeals process.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that if a criminal’s sentence is relaxed, the state is obliged to give the seized assets back. Last year, some €103 million in such assets were returned. In fact, convicted criminals often complain more about having their personal assets confiscated than going to prison. “Criminals don’t always appeal against a prison sentence, but they always appeal against a confiscation,” says Mr. de Laguiche.

French law is clear about what can be confiscated. The state can freeze an individual’s property, objects, or money in the bank whether they have a direct or indirect link to the crime. Little consideration is given to the type of object seized – or its personal value or importance – as long as it equals the amount owed to the state.

“If we know a criminal stole €1 million, the law shows that the judge can take €1 million worth of his stuff,” says Mr. de Laguiche. “Even if his house has no relationship with the crime, it can be seized.”

Although the judge decides what is confiscated, it is not a decision taken lightly. Judges scrupulously assess a criminal’s personal wealth, economic status, and proofs of purchase before seizing belongings.

“An individual who lives in a small apartment with three children is completely different from a Russian oligarch,” says Mr. Rebut. “The confiscation must be proportionate to the crime. Where the moral question arises is if an item has a particular air of family heritage. Can the state confiscate it? So far, we haven’t had this scenario. But it leaves the door open for more discussion.”

“Confiscation works really well”

So far, four pieces of property have been donated to charity under the 2021 law, with a fifth in the works. In addition to the villa in Guadeloupe, a home worth €500,000 in Marseilles that once belonged to a drug trafficking couple is now a housing facility for victims of domestic violence. In Dunkirk, in the north of France, a squat illegally rented out for high prices has been taken over to provide affordable housing. And an apartment in the south of France has been converted into accommodation for Ukrainian refugees.

While nonprofits have sung the new law’s praises, some say there is room for improvement. Unlike in Italy, which enacted a similar law in 1996, the French version does not currently require seized property to be donated to charity – that remains up to the courts. And only a handful of large nonprofits have thus far benefited from the repurposed real estate.

“We want city halls and regional councils to be involved in the decision-making process, because they’re the ones who can then direct the state toward the appropriate charity,” says Fabrice Rizzoli, the president of Crim’Halt, a Paris-based nonprofit that tackles crime and corruption, and fought for 10 years to get the current law passed. “We see that confiscation works really well [to recuperate money earned by criminal means] and we should be doing more to support social ventures.”

French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti has seen the benefits and wants to push AGRASC to do more. The service has doubled its employee numbers in two years and it has regional offices across the country, with three new ones opening this year. That could help expand implementation of the new law or, at least, bring more money to the French state.

“Whether we confiscate their assets or not, many will commit crimes again,” says Mr. Rizzoli. “So we might as well confiscate and recuperate the money.”

Danna Harman

Volunteer Varda Keshales teaches one of her students to play the organ at the Rishonim school in Bat Yam, Israel, March 20, 2023. After a long career teaching children at a music conservatory and conducting a children’s orchestra, Ms. Keshales tried her hand at business, but "it was not that fun."

Shelly Oshri, a Canada-born grandmother of eight who lives on a flower farm north of Netanya, heard about it from a stranger in front of her in line at the social security office.

Sara Levy, a secretary back in her younger years who grew up in Tel Aviv speaking Bulgarian and Ladino to her immigrant parents, stumbled upon it while surfing the internet late one night.

And Chaim Sweet, a former bank manager with six grandkids and an encyclopedic memory, was recruited to join it while at a neighborhood party. He then turned around and brought in Esther Azran, a Moroccan immigrant who speaks seven languages and used to run the international private clients department at his bank branch.

The four are among some 3,000 and counting Israelis – retired nurses, lawyers, bankers, carpenters, teachers, CEOs, and secretaries (the list goes on) – who heard about “it” and joined up for the mission.

It feels like a secret society, except it isn’t – there’s just no budget for advertising. It also sounds like a team of superheroes – and this it sort of is, if all superheroes were pensioners who used their powers to help grade schoolers improve their spelling and practice their multiplication tables.

“It” is the Yadid Lahinuch charity, Hebrew for “Friend of Education” – the brainchild of a visionary group of philanthropists, educators, and diplomats – founded 16 years ago to meet two major needs in this young and growing country:

One, that many elementary schools in Israel, as elsewhere in the world, are failing because classrooms are too big, there aren’t enough teachers, and weaker students are being left behind. And two, that people in Israel, and around the world, are living longer and healthier lives, and that many retirees want to be and can be active and useful in society.

The retirees in the program, recruited and supervised by fellow retiree volunteer coordinators, go through a thorough intake process and are given training and backup by a bevy of professional education experts. Then, working in coordination with school principals, teachers, and municipalities around the country, they enter classrooms and other school spaces as, typically, teachers’ assistants or counselors in areas where help is needed and they can offer added value.

A retired lawyer might be put to work practicing reading and spelling with third graders. A religious woman might help with the fifth grade Friday afternoon Bible class. A bookworm might become the assistant librarian. A retired electrician could be stationed in the shop room, and a landscape architect in the school garden, or they may be asked to start a mural project. Each volunteer commits to being in the school once a week, for at least four hours, but in practice, many do double and triple shifts. The organization boasts that the value of its teachers’ tutoring exceeds $3.5 million a year.

Doing good for themselves, and others

“It is clearly a win-win-win sort of program,” says Uri Pereg, the new director of Yadid Lahinuch, who, like many of the organization’s nine staffers, is a retiree himself.

A 25-year veteran of the Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of the FBI, Mr. Pereg, a colonel, ended his security service career at the helm of one of the organization’s special units investigating Jewish terrorism, where he led a team tasked with recruiting new agents.

“There are real similarities between that job and the one I took on here,” is not the line one might expect next. But that’s a quote.

Danna Harman

Volunteer Sara Leder, a 15-year veteran of Yadid Lahinuch, helps a young student at the Rishonim school in Bat Yam, Israel, March 20, 2023. Ms. Leder says her volunteering has raised her street cred with her six grandchildren, who call her Savta. "The little ones now say: 'Savta knows. She's a teacher.'"

“In the Shabak [Shin Bet] you are in touch with lots of different kinds of people and similarly need to figure out how to best recruit and motivate them and get them to perform tasks that – without your guiding – they would not have done.

“Here at Yadid Lahinuch we want a person to do good things for themselves and for others,” says Mr. Pereg. “But it still requires skill to get them going.”

At its height, right before the pandemic’s perfect storm of disruption, with schools closed and the elderly told to stay home, Yadid Lahinuch had an army of more than 4,000 volunteers, spread out across the county, working in over 600 schools and injecting an extra 430,000 teaching hours into the system every year.

The $925,000 annual budget for the program, which comes from the Ministry of Education, municipalities, and several private sources, goes toward paying the few staff salaries, running frequent training sessions, and covering travel expenses and insurance for the volunteers.

During two years of COVID-19 lockdowns, organizers worked to keep the program going by bringing many volunteers online and into digital classrooms and also setting up a student-volunteer buddy system. A new program, with Arab-Israeli students from schools in Arab towns matched with volunteers who could teach and practice Hebrew with them, was launched during this time. Today, the overall number of volunteers is rising again, and all are back in classrooms.

For volunteers, part of the appeal of participating is quite clear. The truth, says Nimrod Ackerman, who led the organization for the first 14 years of its existence, is that retirement is more often than not a lonely experience: Suddenly you get fewer calls. Fewer people ask your opinion. Everyone starts telling you to go relax or play with your grandchildren.

“We all want to be relevant,” he says. “People want a reason to wake up in the morning. When you lose your framework, you lose connection and purpose and meaning.”

What Yadid Lahinuch did was to take the common wisdom that “old people” were a weak community in need of volunteers to help them – and turned it on its head. Yes, these retirees had time on their hands and wanted to feel more vital, but instead of having young people come entertain and boost them, the idea was to send them out to help young people. 

“And there is no doubt we need the help,” says Eti Gez, an energetic first grade teacher at the Rishonim (Bnot Sheffa) school in Bat Yam, a coastal town south of Jaffa, who moonlights as the school’s liaison with its 10 Yadid Lahinuch volunteers.

“Kids behave better”

A full third of the 540 students in the Rishonim school are new immigrants, many of them from Russia and former Soviet republics. More often than not, Ms. Gez explains, the students’ parents do not speak Hebrew well, or at all, and usually work long hours, leaving them unable to help their children with any homework. Single-parent households are common. The volunteers, Ms. Gez says, are a lifeline: academically, but also beyond that.

“Studies show that kids behave better when there is an elderly person around. It makes them calmer,” says Mr. Ackerman. “Their presence becomes important to school. Kids really want their wisdom, it turns out.”

Varda Keshales is a Romanian-born immigrant and musician who once conducted a children’s orchestra in Ramle east of Tel Aviv. She then taught generations of youngsters at the music conservatory in next-door Lod how to play the piano, accordion, and synthesizer. When she retired after close to 40 years, she decided to go into selling Tupperware. That did not last long.

“I wanted to try and do some business – not to climb the walls from boredom,” says the mother of four and grandmother of nine. “But I didn’t make any money, and it was not that fun. I’m not a businesswoman.”

And it turns out, she will admit, that she missed the messy and beautiful combination of children and music.

So, she returned, in a volunteer capacity, bringing her organ with her to the Rishonim school. There, she reigns supreme in a small music room that the school set up just for her – as first- and second-graders jockey for the chance to snag a private session with the 80-year-old.

Her next mission is to recruit her husband, a retired engineer, to join her. He would be good at, say, fifth grade math, she suggests. “We need him here,” she says, and then shoos everyone away so she can focus on her next student.

Angel del Rosario Hau Paat leans over the rainbow-colored hammock where his grandmother lies and speaks directly into her ear: “What do you think of my singing?” he shouts in Maya, the Indigenous language of Mexico’s Yucatan.

Hard of hearing, she strokes his face as she responds. “She’s happy,” he translates, with a bashful laugh. “She says my Maya is good.”

Growing up in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Mr. del Rosario says he wasn’t interested in learning Maya, the only language his grandmother speaks and which his mother grew up speaking. Spanish is what was useful for him at school and among friends.

But today he is part of a growing trend among young people – here and across the Americas, from Canada to Chile – who are rapping in Indigenous languages. It’s strengthened his connection to the language his mother raised him speaking (and to which he grew up responding in Spanish) and to his family’s traditions.

“I never imagined myself using Maya so much. I’m making more connections with my culture and with people from other countries also rapping in Indigenous languages,” says Mr. del Rosario, a pool technician in the resort town of Tulum who records music under the name ADR Maya in his free time. “It feels really good.” 

Whitney Eulich

Angel del Rosario Hau Paat speaks to his grandmother in Maya, the only language she uses, on March 4, 2023, in Tulum, Mexico. .

Mexico is home to more than 60 officially recognized Indigenous languages. Many of them, and their associated cultures, are at risk – despite a 2002 law protecting the right to use one’s Indigenous language and education reforms in recent years that require some languages be taught in public schools.

At least 40% of the world’s Indigenous languages are also in danger of disappearing, according to the United Nations. But, for young artists like Mr. del Rosario, the discovery of rap in Maya is serving as a motivation to double down on learning more.

“Despite the rhetoric around protecting Mexican culture, there is a lot of pressure put on [Indigenous] communities to give up their languages” for Spanish, says José Antonio Flores Farfán, a professor of linguistics and anthropology at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology in Mexico City. 

“Treasures that human beings have accumulated for centuries are encrypted in language,” he says of the importance of their perseverance. 

“It’s these kids, these rappers, these artists who give me hope” for the future of Indigenous languages, Dr. Farfán says, emphasizing that to be successful, the desire to keep a language in use must come from the community itself. “They are talented, doing something about it from the bottom up, and they’re inspiring younger kids and new generations to see value in the language in the process.”

“What do your songs say?”

In the Yucatec-Maya-speaking region of southern Mexico, Jesús Cristobal Pat Chablé, more popularly known as “Pat Boy,” could be considered the Johnny Appleseed of Indigenous rap. The artist, in his early 30s, started playing music when he was 5 years old and experimented with different genres, from rancheras (Mexican ballads) to rock to reggae, launching his solo rap career in 2009. 

Today, he travels internationally, rapping in Maya; collaborates with artists who speak other Indigenous languages; and encourages young Maya speakers to write and record their own music, some of which ends up on albums he produces through his label ADN Maya. He’s currently building a recording studio in the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, about 140 miles south of Cancun. 

Themes of daily life in Maya communities – customs, education, love, and traditions – populate his lyrics. His efforts have won him international recognition, including the 2022 Linguapax Award. Last year, a song Pat Boy collaborated in writing and singing was featured on the “Wakanda Forever” soundtrack, bringing the Maya language to theaters around the world with lyrics like: “They say we disappeared from this earth, what do you think? / It isn’t true ... years passed, we became stronger. / Today I treasure the Mayan culture.”

It’s a far cry from how he started.

“It was tough. I’d try to get a spot in a public festival and people would say, ‘But what do your songs say?’” he recalls of his early years performing in Quintana Roo. “I was in my right to speak and sing in my maternal language, but there was this fear [among organizers] that I was motivating people to do things against the government, to rise up, because it was written in Maya and they didn’t understand the words,” he says.      

“People in the city say, ‘You can’t achieve things if you’re Maya, you come from the countryside. You can’t be an artist or a painter or a writer,’” he says. “When I started there wasn’t a lot of interest in what I was doing. Now, everywhere I go I meet young people dreaming of singing in Maya.”

Cuahtemoc Moreno/EFE/Newscom/File

Jesús Cristobal Pat Chablé, who raps as Pat Boy, poses during an interview in Merida, Mexico, in August 2019. The musician collaborated on a song that appears on the “Wakanda Forever” soundtrack.

Maria Marlene Ucan, who raps under the name “Ixi’im Ko’olel” (“Mujer Maiz,” or Corn Woman), remembers the day Pat Boy came to present his music at her public high school in Yucatan state five years ago. She was so inspired to hear Maya used in rap that she went home and started looking for his work online, memorizing lyrics and then writing her own. 

In August 2022, she submitted a song she’d penned to Pat Boy, which he selected to appear on his fourth album made up of original songs written and performed by young Mayan artists, expected to be released later this year.

“I always put such a priority on learning Spanish. I didn’t understand the importance of our language,” says Ms. Ucan, who works in a grocery store bakery and credits time spent with her grandparents growing up with her comfort in speaking Maya. “I felt I could go further with Spanish and sometimes felt a little embarrassed that my family spoke Maya.”

Today, she writes songs about what it’s like to be an Indigenous woman in Mexico. Traveling to record with Pat Boy was an eye-opening experience: She had never ventured far from home, and while recording, she was mostly surrounded by young male artists. It was a social situation she had never found herself in before, having grown up in a small, conservative community.

“I feel a difference when I’m expressing myself in Maya versus Spanish,” she says, explaining that the romance language feels more repetitive in its vocabulary and structure. “In Maya, I end up finding new words, little twists I can put into my verses. It’s more playful.”

It also takes longer – she has to search her memory for vocabulary or ask her parents to fill in gaps. But music has sparked a new dream for her: studying Maya at the university level next year. 

“Our language will live on”

This generation of youth – many of whom grew up exposed to Maya but never gained fluency – will be a big test for the language’s preservation, says Marlene Chuc Maldonado, head of the department of language and intercultural studies at the Mayan Intercultural University of Quintana Roo. 

She says she’s found inspiration in “what’s going on with rap,” in many communities here. “There are rap battles and all these groups arrive and perform in public squares. It really piques the interest of the young,” she says.

That’s important “but, we need to see if these teens and young adults who are rapping now or listening to this music, if they become parents, will they teach their kids the language?” Ms. Chuc asks. “If their parents already didn’t teach them and they learned from their grandparents or for the love of music, their decisions will be critical” for what happens with Maya next.

Back in Tulum, Filiberta Paat Mas, Mr. del Rosario’s mother, sits in a corner of her creamsicle-yellow home. She watches wide-eyed as her son raps lyrics written on his cellphone about Chaac, the Mayan god of rain. He’s not fluent in Maya, they both agree, but he’s making progress. 

“When I die, he’ll still speak Maya,” she says, a tinge of surprise in her voice as she describes the sense of failure she felt all those years when he insisted on only speaking Spanish.

“He’ll teach it to his children,” she says. “Our language will live on.” 

Reuters

People ride on a motorbike, as Saudi and Omani delegations hold talks with Houthis, in Sanaa, Yemen, April 9.

A few wheels of peace are turning in the war-prone Middle East. Last month, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a tentative rapprochement. Israel further cemented new ties with two Gulf states. Syria, long an outcast, is getting more attention. And then there is a country with a conflict that reflects the region’s religious and tribal tensions: Yemen, home to a long war and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Serious talks to end the conflict began last week when Houthi rebels who control the Yemeni capital met with officials from Saudi Arabia, which backs the government ousted in 2015 by the Iran-backed Houthis. All sides have reasons to end the conflict. The death toll in Yemen and the hardship to civilians, for example, have been high. Yet the real lubricant in this particular wheel of peace is Oman, a neighboring country that has been a critical mediator and facilitator.

As Oman’s foreign minister, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, explains, his country is a trusted go-between in the region because it assumes the integrity and good intentions of all participants. It avoids a blame game by seeing the world through the eyes of others. It encourages rivals to talk with each other, not at each other. It creates room for dialogue by acting with calmness, friendship, and tolerance.

In general, “The posture ‘you are with us or against us’ will not solve the problem,” he told Le Figaro newspaper last year.

Oman has a long track record of mediating between Iran and its various rivals, including the United States. It has allowed two Israeli prime ministers to visit the country. In Yemen last year, it helped bring a truce that opened the door to the current negotiations. Hopes are high that a deal will be reached soon to exchange all prisoners, fully reopen ports and airports, and design a solution to Yemen’s many political divisions.

In a region where many states use sharp elbows to gain dominance, Oman has stood for a wholly different approach. It is a friend to all and embraces dialogue. When warring parties tire of conflict, they know who to call.