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Jordan Warns of Potential Chaos in Syria

On Tuesday, Jordan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Major General Yousef Ahmed Al-Hunaiti, received the Director of Cooperation for the US Export Control and Border Security Program (Joint Chiefs of Staff website)
On Tuesday, Jordan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Major General Yousef Ahmed Al-Hunaiti, received the Director of Cooperation for the US Export Control and Border Security Program (Joint Chiefs of Staff website)
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Jordan Warns of Potential Chaos in Syria

On Tuesday, Jordan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Major General Yousef Ahmed Al-Hunaiti, received the Director of Cooperation for the US Export Control and Border Security Program (Joint Chiefs of Staff website)
On Tuesday, Jordan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Major General Yousef Ahmed Al-Hunaiti, received the Director of Cooperation for the US Export Control and Border Security Program (Joint Chiefs of Staff website)

Jordanian security officials are worried about the return of chaos to Syria after the sudden departure of former President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow.
Security sources say instability could arise from a power struggle between factions, whose loyalties and weapons supplies remain unclear.
Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that recent events, including the movement of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Assad’s flight, are driven by regional and international forces.
The focus seems to be on “rehabilitating” Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now revealed as Ahmad al-Sharaa.
However, the loyalty of his supporters, following his shift in rhetoric, remains uncertain and will need to be tested in the short and medium term.
Jordan is concerned about the situation in Syria due to the many actors involved and conflicting interests over the country’s future.
The risk of extremism and terrorism, fueled by hidden stockpiles of weapons, is a major worry for Syria and its neighbors. The situation is also complicated by internal agendas driven by revenge and retribution.
Jordan has expressed support for the “choices and will of the Syrian people.”
However, officials are concerned about the overconfidence in figures who were once part of al-Qaeda and ISIS before founding Jabhat al-Nusra, which later became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led by Abu Muhammed al-Jolani and backed by Türkiye.
Jordan is concerned about ISIS cells in the Syrian desert and the potential return of ISIS militias.
Security sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that they are closely monitoring armed groups in southern Syria.
Ongoing communication with Syrian tribes, the army, and moderate groups in areas like Daraa is key to strengthening a defensive line along the 370 km Jordan-Syria border.
On Monday, Jordan’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Maj. Gen. Yousef Ahmed Al-Hunaiti, met with US Central Command Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla.
They discussed strengthening regional and security cooperation, recent developments in the region, and areas of joint coordination to support the armed forces of both countries.
The US general’s visit is closely tied to the ongoing US presence in Syria and the joint Jordanian-American efforts to fight various militant groups that have attacked US bases and targeted Jordan’s security.
Reports indicate airstrikes on Monday night hit areas in the Syrian desert where ISIS is believed to be hiding. The Israeli strikes aimed to destroy Syrian military stockpiles and prevent them from reaching armed groups.
Jordanian security experts believe ISIS may be using the current lull to revive its operations, expanding alliances with militias ready to join the chaos in Syria and serve the interests of external powers seeking to exploit Syria’s resources.

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Arab World

As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
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As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)

Long-horned cattle wade through flooded lands and climb a slope along a canal that has become a refuge for displaced families in South Sudan. Smoke from burning dung rises near homes of mud and grass where thousands of people now live after floods swept away their village.
“Too much suffering,” said Bichiok Hoth Chuiny, a woman in her 70s. She supported herself with a stick as she walked in the newly established community of Pajiek in Jonglei state north of the capital, Juba, The Associated Press said.
For the first time in decades, the flooding had forced her to flee. Her efforts to protect her home by building dykes failed. Her former village of Gorwai is now a swamp.
“I had to be dragged in a canoe up to here,” Chuiny said. An AP journalist was the first to visit the community.
Such flooding is becoming a yearly disaster in South Sudan, which the World Bank has described as “the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change and also the one most lacking in coping capacity."
More than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding this year, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
Seasonal flooding has long been part of the lifestyle of pastoral communities around the Sudd, the largest wetlands in Africa, in the Nile River floodplain. But since the 1960s the swamp has kept growing, submerging villages, ruining farmland and killing livestock.
“The Dinka, Nuer and Murle communities of Jonglei are losing the ability to keep cattle and do farming in that region the way they used to,” said Daniel Akech Thiong, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
South Sudan is poorly equipped to adjust. Independent since 2011, the country plunged into civil war in 2013. Despite a peace deal in 2018, the government has failed to address numerous crises. Some 2.4 million people remain internally displaced by conflict and flooding.
The latest overflowing of the Nile has been blamed on factors including the opening of dams upstream in Uganda after Lake Victoria rose to its highest levels in five years.
The century-old Jonglei Canal, which was never completed, has become a refuge for many.
“We don’t know up to where this flooding would have pushed us if the canal was not there,” said Peter Kuach Gatchang, the paramount chief of Pajiek. He was already raising a small garden of pumpkins and eggplants in his new home.
The 340-kilometer (211-mile) Jonglei Canal was first imagined in the early 1900s by Anglo-Egyptian colonial authorities to increase the Nile’s outflow towards Egypt in the north. But its development was interrupted by the long fight of southern Sudanese against the Sudanese regime in Khartoum that eventually led to the creation of a separate country.
Gatchang said the new community in Pajiek is neglected: "We have no school and no clinic here, and if you stay for a few days, you will see us carrying our patients on stretchers up to Ayod town.”
Ayod, the county headquarters, is reached by a six-hour walk through the waist-high water.
Pajiek also has no mobile network and no government presence. The area is under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, founded by President Salva Kiir’s rival turned Vice President Riek Machar.
Villagers rely on aid. On a recent day, hundreds of women lined up in a nearby field to receive some from the World Food Program.
Nyabuot Reat Kuor walked home with a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of sorghum balanced on her head.
“This flooding has destroyed our farm, killed our livestock and displaced us for good," the mother of eight said. “Our old village of Gorwai has become a river.”
When food assistance runs out, she said, they will survive on wild leaves and water lilies from the swamp. Already in recent years, food aid rations have been cut in half as international funding for such crises drops.
More than 69,000 people who have migrated to the Jonglei Canal in Ayod county are registered for food assistance, according to WFP.
“There are no passable roads at this time of the year, and the canal is too low to support boats carrying a lot of food,” said John Kimemia, a WFP airdrop coordinator.
In the neighboring Paguong village that is surrounded by flooded lands, the health center has few supplies. Medics haven’t been paid since June due to an economic crisis that has seen civil servants nationwide go unpaid for more than a year.
South Sudan’s economic woes have deepened with the disruption of oil exports after a major pipeline was damaged in Sudan during that country's ongoing civil war.
“The last time we got drugs was in September. We mobilized the women to carry them on foot from Ayod town,” said Juong Dok Tut, a clinical officer.
Patients, mostly women and children, sat on the ground as they waited to see the doctor. Panic rippled through the group when a thin green snake passed among them. It wasn't poisonous, but many others in the area are. People who venture into the water to fish or collect water lilies are at risk.
Four life-threatening snake bites cases occurred in October, Tut said. “We managed these cases with the antivenom treatments we had, but now they’re over, so we don’t know what to do if it happens again.”