For 50 years, the Israel-Syria border on the Golan Heights was the quietest in the Middle East. But within hours of Syrian rebel forces seizing Damascus without a fight last weekend, Israeli soldiers crossed into a demilitarized zone in Syria designed as a buffer between the two countries.

Israel described the seizure of some key positions on the Golan’s rocky plateau and near the peak of snowcapped Mount Hermon as a defensive and temporary move, necessary to keep at bay the potential chaos and attendant threats inside Syria.

The action also has the proactive markings of a government and army still reeling from the colossal failure to protect its people from the Hamas massacre and mass hostage taking 14 months ago.

Yet in an even more powerful indication it is taking no chances, Israel launched hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syrian military equipment and installations this week. The goal: to minimize any threat from the replacement in Damascus of the “devil it knew,” Bashar al-Assad, with an untested coalition of rebels led by a faction with jihadist roots.

Among the targets not just hit, but entirely destroyed, according to Israel: the Syrian navy and sea-to-sea missiles with a range as far as 120 miles. Of most immediate concern, however, have been stockpiles of and production facilities for chemical weapons, which Mr. Assad had used against his own people and which Israel fears could fall into “the wrong hands.”

Following the dramatic weakening of the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah in a punishing Israeli offensive this fall, what does the sudden collapse of the Iran-allied Assad regime mean for Israel?

A victory with challenges

From a strategic and historical perspective, the crumbling of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” – its collection of proxy armies – is a victory. But it also creates a host of Israeli security problems, not least of which is Syria’s likely instability for the foreseeable future.

“The worst-case scenario in Syria is that it could become the Somalia of the Middle East,” Nitzan Nuriel, a retired brigadier general and counterterrorism expert, told journalists in a briefing.

“From the Israeli perspective, based on what happened in countries from Libya to Afghanistan, we know when regimes collapse, terror groups can take over and take advantage of weapons systems and platforms and use them against neighboring states and others,” he said. “So as a preemptive step, we decided to destroy everything those unexpected rivals might use in the future.”

Salaah Jeaar/Reuters

A drone view shows sunken boats at the Mediterranean port of Latakia in northwest Syria, Dec. 11, 2024, after Israel said it struck and destroyed Syrian military equipment and facilities once rebels seized power.

With Iran considerably weakened, the biggest question for Israel now surrounds the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, argues Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank.

“Tehran could theoretically enrich uranium to a military-grade level of 90 percent ‘as early as tomorrow’ and attempt to build a nuclear facility within a few months,” he wrote in the Maariv daily newspaper. Yet, he cautioned, “Such a move without Hezbollah’s protective umbrella, combined with Israel’s demonstrated capability to strike in Iran, and the presence of President Trump in the White House, could pose a direct threat to the regime in Tehran.”

This new reality “changes the rules of the game,” he added, and “significantly weakens Iran’s influence in the Middle East for at least the coming years.”

The buffer zone

Still, analysts say, it will be important for Israel to thwart any Iranian attempts to regain a foothold in Syria, which for years served as Tehran’s main corridor for transporting weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Also recommended: to build bridges with the country’s moderate Sunni rebels and Druze communities.

In the meantime, not everyone in Israel is convinced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government isn’t already making mistakes by engaging in tactical overreach in a bid to win domestic political points.

“When it comes to sending troops to the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, what military purpose does it serve apart from showing everyone we are there and we are strong?” says Eyal Zisser, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University and an expert on Syria. “Are we protected better if we are about a mile or two deeper into Syria? I doubt that very much.”

Matias Delacroix/AP

Israeli patrol vehicles cross the security fence in the Golan Heights near Majdal Shams, Dec. 12, 2024. Israel says its move into the military buffer zone is defensive and temporary.

Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Haaretz, a left-wing Israeli newspaper, noted Wednesday that on a tour of the Golan Heights the previous day, Mr. Netanyahu had declared the collapse of the 1974 postwar agreement that set up the Syrian buffer zone and had been honored ever since.

“If the agreement has collapsed, Israel is no longer bound by the map that accompanies it; it can change the border according to its security needs,” Mr. Benn wrote. “For most of his years in power, Netanyahu was considered risk-averse, someone who avoided wars and embraced the status quo. The current war [with Hamas and Iran’s proxies] has changed him.”

Jeremy Issacharoff, former vice director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, argues that while Israel has a duty to protect its border, it also has one to respect such a valuable agreement, one that has served as a critically stabilizing force and kept the border peaceful.

“To take over the Syrian side of the Golan Heights is an important cautionary step,” he says, “but it’s important to say it is a temporary measure, not meant to disrupt but rather preserve the agreement.”

This, he argues, would be a central achievement for Israel, as it waits to see how things play out inside Syria – specifically, whether the leadership that emerges is moderate or extreme.

Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, whose Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham faction is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and others, has presented himself as pragmatist who wants to focus on rehabilitating Syria, not on seeking out new wars to fight.

Is there opportunity?

In 2013, during the Syrian civil war, the Israeli army launched “Operation Good Neighbor” – its answer to concerns that Islamist militants among the Syrian rebels might use the border area to launch attacks.

Atef Safadi/AP/File

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (center) and then-Defense Minister Naftali Bennett visit an Israeli army base in the Golan Heights, Nov. 24, 2019.

To encourage villages and towns to keep such forces away, and to help civilians fleeing toward the border, Israel provided humanitarian assistance in the form of food, gasoline, and medical supplies, and then began treating wounded Syrians in Israeli hospitals.

The hope was also long-term, that this kind of personal outreach would one day pay dividends.

“This is how Syrians found out that Israel is not Satan. Ties were made between people,” says Yehuda Blanga, a Syria expert who lectures in Bar Ilan University’s Middle East studies department. “I’d suggest the government try to connect now to the same people who once needed our help.”

In 13 years of civil war, which Mr. Assad sought to brutally crush – bombing civilians in opposition-held cities and torturing detainees – more than half a million people were killed and millions displaced.

Syria “could go the way of becoming an ISIS meshuggeneh state,” says Ambassador Issacharoff, using the Yiddish word for crazy, “but I have a feeling it’s too much of an opportunity for the Syrian people” to miss out on rebuilding and rehabilitating themselves.

Israel could in turn strengthen and expand its regional anti-Iranian alliance, he suggests, if it addresses Palestinian aspirations.

“It could start talking about a pathway towards a two-state solution with the Saudis that could also include the Syrians as well, and maybe Lebanon, too,” he says. “I don’t want to be overly optimistic – these are not simple things – but it would be irresponsible to exclude it.

“American involvement can help fashion a much broader opportunity if you have a Saudi or Syrian opportunity on the table,” he says. “If you want to make the deal of the century, this could be it.”

Nam Y. Huh/AP

A "For rent" sign is displayed outside an apartment building in Skokie, Illinois, April 14, 2024.

In the United States, 1 in 4 renters spends over half their income on rent, and millions of potential homebuyers can’t find a home within their price range, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Put simply, there are far more people trying to find housing than there are places to buy or rent, pushing prices beyond what many can afford.

It’s striking how universal the issue has become for renters, says Alexander Hermann, senior research associate at the center. Zillow estimates that 4.5 million fewer homes are available than the number of Americans likely to be looking to either rent or buy.

Rents are “increasing for households of every race and ethnicity,” he says. “They’re increasing for households who are employed. They’re increasing for households at every age. It’s not just any one group that’s experiencing greater affordability challenges. It’s basically everyone on the renters’ side.”

Here’s a look at how we got here.

What is affordable housing?

“Affordable housing” is a technical term used by policymakers and statisticians, as well as a harder-to-define social phenomenon. They both reflect the idea that people should not spend more than a certain proportion of their income on rent or mortgage.

The federal government defines affordable housing as costing the renter 30% or less of their income. It uses a measure called Area Median Income – the midpoint of the distribution of household incomes of a certain place. It’s used by entities from local agencies to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. For example, HUD offers Section 8 vouchers – which help people afford housing in the private market – for those who make 80%, 50%, and 30% of the median income figure where they live.

The supply shortage is worst in big cities, particularly on the coasts. But in recent years, owning a home, or even finding a good rental, has begun to feel out of reach for more and more people.

When Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, first became a housing advocate in Cambridge in 2012, he found the conversation limited to places like Boston, New York, and Washington. Now, he says, a family living on minimum wage can’t afford to live in most places, which has spurred advocacy.

“It is a national movement in a way that it wasn’t when I started doing this work,” he says.

Why are we experiencing a housing crisis right now?

More people are struggling to pay for housing because of the 2008 financial crisis and inflation brought on by the pandemic, according to Mr. Hermann.

From the 1970s until the early 2000s, housing stock grew faster than households, creating a healthy buffer, he says. Poor-quality housing stock was demolished, and some units remained vacant, allowing people to move where they wished, while prices remained reasonable for those not at the lowest end of the income spectrum.

Greg Eans/The Messenger-Inquirer/AP

Abigail Daugherty (left) and Lee Daugherty talk outside the Colonel House Motel where they live with their daughter, Nov. 21, 2024, in Owensboro, Kentucky. The motel has been sold to the city of Owensboro with plans to solicit for a private developer interested in renovating the property and turning it into affordable housing.

The 2008 financial crisis hollowed out the construction industry. Production lagged, only keeping pace with population growth. The healthy buffer disappeared. Inflation and interest rates grew during the pandemic, further depressing housing production, and supply chain disruptions drove up the cost of building materials.

More people were trying to move into new homes, as young people sought to leave their parents’ houses or live without roommates. Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, hit peak homebuying age as pandemic restrictions were being lifted, Mr. Hermann says.

Multifamily and single-family production has picked up in the last year, he says, helping to cool the rental market. Still, high costs of construction and land, as well as other barriers, remain.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

How did our legal system help create this crisis?

Local governments create rules – called land-use regulations or zoning ordinances – that define what can be built. Most residential zoning in the U.S. allows single-family homes only, according to a 2019 report in The New York Times. Often, governments require those homes be placed on lots that are a minimum of a half-acre to 2 acres.

That limits space for denser structures like duplexes or triplexes, or accessory dwelling units next to an existing home. Parking requirements as well as lengthy and uncertain review processes make projects riskier and more costly, explains Mr. Hermann.

And by definition, single-family zoning produces “a more expensive housing unit than multifamily,” says Timothy Hollister, a lawyer who has represented affordable housing developers in Connecticut for over 40 years.

In most places, a developer hoping to build anything larger than single-family homes – for example, an apartment building – must face a public meeting. In the book “Neighborhood Defenders,” Boston University political scientists found that, in Massachusetts, people at those meetings were more likely to be male, older, white homeowners, and most opposed the project.

Mr. Hollister says towns are “creating walls against perceived racial and economic integration that they did not want. The opposition to affordable housing is still very much based on stereotypes and prejudice and misperceptions and myths.”

The Joint Harvard Center for Housing Studies found, between 2015 and 2019, that 71.7% of white households owned their own homes compared with 41.7% of Black households. People of color are also more likely to need rental assistance, with 20% of Black and 18% of Indigenous households qualifying as extremely low-income renters compared with 6% of white households.

He says the Federal Fair Housing Act outlawed the most overt forms of discrimination. He traces the current crisis to the 1922 Standard State Zoning Enabling Act, which gave local governments the power to create zoning laws.

What can be done?

While economic issues – high construction costs, expensive land – pose challenges, Mr. Hermann says zoning and regulations are “in some ways more concerning because we have the most control over them.”

In her new book of essays, “On the Housing Crisis,” Atlantic magazine writer Jerusalem Demsas argues land-use regulation should be in the hands of state governments, not of local institutions. The entities “charged with land-use decisions are attuned to parochial complaints, not large-scale needs,” she writes.

With homeowners most likely to show up to local meetings, the voices most likely to support more housing – whether local renters or people who want to move from elsewhere – are just not present. She says state governments are beholden to a much larger set of voters, and are more likely to spur housing production.

Mr. Kanson-Benanav’s organization, Abundant Housing, is a founding member of the Welcoming Neighbors Network, which includes 38 pro-housing organizations across 24 states. He says they will be approaching their state legislatures and city halls next year in a concerted push for zoning and other production reforms. Already, a few states have begun to take control from municipalities, including Washington, Oregon, California, Utah, Montana, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

Mr. Kanson-Benanav pointed to Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana, who recently pushed through a law requiring municipalities to choose from a set of reforms aimed at spurring development, according to a news release. California took a similar approach starting in 2017. The Brookings Institution found, while not much yet has changed in California, a greater proportion of multifamily dwellings – and other housing suitable for people of middle incomes – were permitted between 2019 and 2022 than before.

Massachusetts’ 2021 MBTA Communities Act required towns and cities connected to Boston by train to submit plans allowing denser zoning near those transit hubs. Mr. Kanson-Benanav says it is only one part of a broader “tool kit” that includes allowing accessory dwelling units, lowering minimum lot sizes, and reducing parking requirements.

As a more immediate solution, the Harvard center suggests a $25,000 down payment assistance loan could smooth the way for 1.1 million Black or Hispanic renters to become homeowners.

President-elect Donald Trump says more restrictive immigration laws, and mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants, would ease housing demand. Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration, says local governments should retain control over zoning laws that affect housing issues.

Christine Cousineau, a lecturer in urban design at Tufts University, says she thinks Americans are beginning to give up on the dream of the large, single-family home with a yard they can walk around in.

“People are desperate to find housing rather than aspiring to a particular type,” she says.

Campus was closed for the second “fire day” in a row. Instead of heading to morning classes, my high school freshman watched over younger schoolmates whose parents have to work. This family normally pays her to babysit – now there’s no charge. We are forming a village.

I looked around our home with acute gratitude: nutcrackers we’ve collected; my great-grandparents’ furniture; a white cabinet that served as a changing table for my daughter who’s now in college; artwork – so much art – collected abroad, passed down through generations, made by tiny hands when my girls were younger.

I’ve recently moved to Los Angeles after three decades away – now, with one teenager at home and another in college. Our little house in the hills is perched precariously close to the Franklin Fire sweeping this week through Malibu, a canyon away. So far the fire has consumed around 4,000 acres, and is approaching my daughter’s wooded school grounds.

We watched CalFire’s live evacuation map grow throughout the night – ready to run to campus to save whatever we could. As of Day 4, the school is under an evacuation warning, but its little cabins tucked in the hillside are still standing.

LA is a city of mountains, valleys, coastline, and the canyons that connect them. It is this topography that creates LA’s microclimates – a fascination for locals who have strong opinions about which neighborhood has the best weather – and well-fueled fire corridors.

Ali Martin/The Christian Science Monitor

A visit to the Nutcracker ballet was an annual tradition for the writer’s family. Her daughters delight each year in bringing out the dolls, collected from performances and seen here on the hearth Dec. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles.

The air feels heavy. A chilly dampness brings the slightest hope of moisture. The natural haze mingles with any smoke that might hint at flames making their way up the Pacific Ocean side of the Santa Monica Mountains. We are surrounded by trees: sycamore, lemon, pomegranate, orange, cypress, elm, maple, and oak. Amid the city, we are connected to nature. This duality is as integral to LA’s makeup as its sunshine and creative spirit.

I grew up here, in the San Fernando Valley, where drought and earthquakes are part of the atmosphere. But the actual threat of fire has always floated as a low-lingering cloud of possibility that never really landed. Until now.

These moments are transformative. They awaken latent feelings – of fear, gratitude, love. Of purpose. What means the most to me? Who means the most? I realize I don’t have a go bag. We’ve always kept important papers in a fireproof case for this very occasion, but I’ve neglected to put together other essentials. I mean, who has an extra set of essentials lying around to put in a box for emergency use only?

It’s easy to fill my laundry baskets and toss them in the back of the car. Family photos and some jewelry – things easy to grab – are within reach. High value, low effort. My California work-from-home wardrobe lends itself to a quick getaway. The dog’s leash and harness are in my purse.

If I have to, I’m ready to walk away from all of it. All I really need is my daughter and our little bichon, Rocky.

This realization hits deeply. It is a relief, but the possibility of starting over, again, feels like free fall. Home is different now. Much of my childhood village has moved away or passed away, and I’ve been seeking connections to take root.

Ethan Swope/AP

Firefighters battle the Franklin Fire in Malibu, California, Dec. 10, 2024. The fire had consumed some 4,000 acres as of midweek, prompting authorities to issue evacuation orders to around 20,000 people in Los Angeles County.

Natural disasters don’t tend to rattle me. I’ve chased tornadoes in the South, hurricanes out East, whiteout blizzards in the Midwest. I know all the safety drills. But fire hits differently – it gives little notice and overpowers indiscriminately. In a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, fire wins. That’s probably why it’s not Rock, Paper, Scissors, Fire.

My daughters grew up with snowy winters and snow days. In Champaign, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska; and Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the lightest snowfall or single-digit temperatures would send us to the morning news to check for a ticker of school closings. And the closings meant joy: into their snow gear, then out to the lawn with shovels and sleds until cold caught up to the excitement and they remembered the hot chocolate in our pantry. This would all happen before 8 a.m., and the rest of the day was spent with Lego bricks, painting, or Oobleck, capped off by a movie watched from under a pile of blankets that may or may not have been a fort. Snow days had all the fun of playing hooky with zero risk.

Now we have fire days and preemptive power-outage days; five in six weeks, including one school evacuation. My youngest is unaware of the relative danger. She is delighted by the disruption.

The first day of the fire brought the students a thrilling break in routine. There were no online classes scheduled, so my daughter and her friends conspired to spend the afternoon at the mall. One mom agreed to cart the group around during the day. Another mom hosted them late in the afternoon. One of the dads brought them home. I couldn’t text enough heart emoji to express my thanks to the families who got my kid out of the house for the day so she could have some fun – and I could get some work done. Any parent who works during these “bonus” free days knows this gratitude.

My neighbor, an engineer who works with the city, is a wealth of helpful information. When I moved in, he showed me how to get trash piles hauled away. He told me whom to call when my power lines came down. As the fire spread, he sent me the link for Cal Fire’s live map and assured me he’d take care of my child if she’s left alone for any reason, as if the two – a map and the promise of care for a loved one – have equal weight. I exhaled for the first time that day.

My daughter’s response to Day 2 was to ask if we could put together a remote-schooling group – lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. If the lockdown taught us anything, it’s how to pivot. And how important friends are.

It’s impossible to ignore an escalating sense of disaster. In the last few weeks, we’ve had a minor earthquake – too small to trigger the warning system; my older daughter, who’s in Northern California, was affected by a tsunami warning when a large earthquake struck off the coast; and now we have this latest fire.

But now I have a plan. And my village is growing.

Atumoga Rose and three other young women are seated at sewing machines in a mud-walled shop with reams of scrap fabric strewn about the floor. They are working through basic sewing patterns under the watchful eyes of an older woman they call Auntie. As Ms. Rose slides a piece of fabric away from her machine using a pair of scissors, she flaunts her stitchwork to Auntie like a trophy. “I’ll be perfect soon,” she says with pride, while the other young women laugh in solidarity.

Afterward, Ms. Rose recounts her ordeal as a “money marriage” bride. At age 7, she was abandoned by her parents in the compound of an older man from their Becheve tribal community in southeastern Nigeria’s remote Cross River state. From that day, the two were considered married, and their sexual relationship began when Ms. Rose was about 14. She later discovered that when her mother was pregnant with her, her parents had received yams, a goat, and some money from the man.

Holding back tears, she says, “I was the payment.”

Now a widow in her mid-20s, Ms. Rose struggles to meet the basic needs of her two children with her meager income from a small plot of community land. “Every morning, I wake up worried about feeding my children and where to beg for help, but that’s about to change,” she says, her conviction accentuated by the clicking noise of her sewing machine.

Ms. Rose was among the most recent participants in the Empower Project, an initiative of Her Voice Foundation to help women who were wed in the illegal yet long-standing money marriage custom practiced by the Becheve people. Over four months, each cohort of women enrolled in the project learns skills such as tailoring or hairdressing.

“We choose in-demand skills to ensure continuous patronage and self-sufficiency,” explains Abatang Favour, who started the nonprofit foundation.

A tradition rooted in poverty

The Becheve people reside in 17 villages in the local district of Obanliku in Cross River state. Generations of Becheve girls have been used as collateral for loans or payment for debts in what are known as “money marriages.” Poverty is often cited as the primary driver behind the practice. More than 87 million Nigerians, or about 39% of the country, live below the poverty line.

Nigeria’s federal Child Rights Act of 2003 bans marriages under age 18, but not all states have adopted it or enforce it. While 44% of Nigerian girls are married before age 18, it is unknown exactly how many of them are in money marriages, because such unions don’t involve legal documentation. The prevalence of early marriage in the country overall allows money marriages among the Becheve community, often involving very young girls, to fly under the radar.

Ogar Monday

A young woman enrolled in the Empower Project tries her hand at sewing as her friends watch in Becheve, Nigeria.

Most of the girls don’t attend school and will bear children when they reach their teens. Even those who attend school usually end their studies early. Nigeria’s government estimates that 10% to 15% of the country’s 10 million out-of-school girls left school because of pregnancy.

Sunday Ichile, a traditional ruler in Becheve, says organizations such as Her Voice Foundation have guided the community to ban the arrangement of new money marriages and to impose punishments on offenders. But he adds that “Traditions take a long time to die.”

Mr. Ichile and other local rulers are revered as custodians of tribal cultures and traditions in Nigeria, and their decisions command respect in the community. Last year, with support from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, Ms. Favour and her team held a town hall meeting with such rulers to raise awareness of the harms of money marriage. Although community leaders have urged the wives to return to their parental homes, most would not be welcome there because they lack resources to contribute to the household. The young women fear starting over with nothing.

“It’s like being lost in the bush,” says Akem Augustina, who trained with the Empower Project to become a hairstylist. “You must learn to do everything yourself.”

“I cannot remarry in the community, and I am seen as the property of my husband’s family,” she adds. After her husband died three years ago, Ms. Augustina became dependent on her brother-in-law for survival.

An activist by chance

In 2020, Ms. Favour was a university undergraduate on a holiday visit to her home district of Obanliku, which includes Becheve. She noticed many teen mothers at the clinic where her aunt, a nurse, worked.

“I asked questions, went to schools in the community, asked what was happening to girls,” Ms. Favour says. She found that not only were many girls dropping out because of pregnancy, but also “There was a poverty cycle that was being perpetrated due to this.”

Back on her university campus, Ms. Favour assembled five volunteers. “I told myself that even if it was just one girl I helped get back on track, that it would mean something,” she says.

The group supported teen mothers with counseling after receiving buy-in from community leaders in Obanliku. The team also spread its campaigns to high schools, educating students about the challenges of teen pregnancy. Ms. Favour leveraged social media to raise support for about 50 teen girls to go back to school.

While talking more with the teen mothers, Ms. Favour discovered that some of the pregnant girls, even those as young as 14 years old, had been sold off to older men for marriage. Ms. Favour’s group again promptly began campaigns within the community, winning the support of traditional rulers.

The team presented arguments for keeping girls in school, highlighting how money marriages hinder community progress. With the rulers’ support secured, the team did interviews with money marriage wives to assess their needs. To date, Her Voice Foundation has trained about 150 women.

The organization also provides crucial psychosocial support. “We understand the discrimination these girls face, and mental strength is essential for their success,” Ms. Favour says. To amplify the young women’s voices, Her Voice Foundation hosts a radio program in which teen mothers share their experiences and challenges.

A sense of achievement

Money marriage “has had a devastating impact on young girls, as many of them are depressed and suffer from low self-esteem,” says Moses Bassey, an official at the Cross River State Ministry of Women Affairs.

But he emphasizes that “The intervention of Her Voice Foundation is changing things.” He says the vocational training it provides can give young women a sense of achievement and allow them to take care of themselves and their children. He adds, “There is the need to remind the traditional leaders that the times are changing and they need to get on board or be left behind.”

Ms. Rose hopes for a fresh start because of her training in sewing. “I never had the opportunity of going to school,” she says. “I am going to learn this skill, make money from it, and send my children to school.”

REUTERS

A woman takes a selfie with a fighter of the rebel group that ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Dec. 12.

Just a day after capturing Syria’s capital Dec. 8, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) felt compelled to issue a rule for its fighters: Do not interfere with “the right” of women “to choose their attire or appearance.”

Whether the Islamist group – with roots in Al Qaeda – sticks to the rule remains in doubt. In areas long under its control in northwest Syria, HTS has not put any women in high government positions.

Yet the timing was telling. To quickly unify a shattered nation after a half-century of dictatorship, HTS will need the support of Syrian women, whose views on gender equality have risen since the 2011 Arab Spring, the spread of social media, and 13 years of conflict and mass displacement.

“We’re not afraid of them,” a nurse named Noor told the BBC. “I don’t think they will force us to cover ourselves from head to toe.” And, she added, “They are from our country, they are not Islamic State.”

Another woman said, “I believe that the women and men are going to rebuild our country together and Syria will improve.”

Syrian women have always been fighting for a space for themselves and won’t accept being pushed back, says Rim Turkmani, a researcher of the Syrian conflict at the London School of Economics. “And they’re not going to accept just lip service for representation,” she told CNN.

In a 2021 PBS interview, the HTS leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said his style of rule will be Islamic, “but not according to the standards of [the Islamic State] or even Saudi Arabia.” Perhaps he has been following the women’s protests in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a few other Muslim nations.

In a 2024 opinion survey of the Middle East and North Africa, Arab Barometer found most people believe “having women in positions of political power advances women’s rights.” Despite some backsliding, citizens across the region “are still largely supportive of moves towards gender equality.”

After the fall of the Assad regime Sunday, one Syrian woman, Shifaa Sawan, walked the streets of Damascus singing a famous protest song, “Janna, Janna Ya Watana” (“Heaven, Heaven, Our Country Is Heaven”). She told the news site Syria Direct that Syria is no longer a “republic of fear.”

“I hope that, in the new Syria, there will be freedom, dignity, justice and development.”