PKK agrees to put down its weapons
Turkiye's Government says a peace deal with a Kurdish militant group is an historic agreement that resolves a decades-old conflict.
The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has agreed to disband after fighting the Turkish state for more than 40 years.
The deal could also help settles conflicts in Iraq and Syria, if a process of disarmament and democratic recognition succeeds.
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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Why do societies collapse and what does it mean for us?
Does every society have a use-by date? The fact that we're not bumping into Aztecs or Byzantines around the place does suggest that they all end at some point. States can slowly decline and fade, or morph into new entities, while a few simply collapse in on themselves. "This is something which has haunted even the most powerful of empires," Luke Kemp, a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, tells ABC Radio National's Late Night Live. "It's natural to look over our shoulders at the wreckages of the past and wonder if we're going to end up the same way." Human history stretches back around 300,000 years, but we only made the move from hunter-gatherer communities to states about 5,000 years ago. Dr Kemp, whose upcoming book is Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, calls a state "a set of centralised institutions that impose rules on and extract resources from a population in a territory". They appeared in Egypt and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) before spreading around the world and becoming modern day "Goliaths" like the United States and the People's Republic of China. All states across history have eventually ended and a societal collapse is perhaps the most dramatic coda. It's "when you have multiple systems of power all go down. Not just the state but also the economy and potentially the population [as well]", Dr Kemp says. And for anyone worrying about the imminent societal collapse of Australia, there's a bit of good news. "It's actually surprisingly rare for all [of a state's] systems to go down at once," Dr Kemp says. One of the best examples in history of societal collapse is perhaps one of the least known. Around the year 1000, Native Americans created a city called Cahokia on the Mississippi River near today's St Louis. This was the first proper city in the present-day United States. With 10,000 to 15,000 people, Cahokia was bigger than many European cities of the time, including London. It was a place of kings and elites overseeing a great experiment in urbanism. But when Christopher Columbus and other Europeans started arriving in the Americas from 1492, the city had disappeared and no comparable cities replaced it. "Within about 150 years, it starts to fall apart," Dr Kemp says. Coinciding with a period of drought and flood, the city was entirely abandoned. "All the key power structures you would associate with a modern state fell apart … [and] much of the culture changed as well," Dr Kemp says. "But even more interesting is that the people there seem to intentionally forget about this experiment with urbanism … There are no oral traditions, no stories about it. "It's almost like they wanted to forget about it and leave it to rot in the swamps of the Mississippi." After centuries of European domination, Rome — or the Western Roman Empire — fell in the 5th century. Rome was sacked by Germanic Visigoths in 410, and then in 476, Germanic leader Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus. It seems to fit the brief of a societal collapse. The military fragmented. The economy plummeted. Trade broke up into local levels. The elites fell apart. But Dr Kemp says it's a much more complex case than say, Cahokia. "Some power structures did continue … The ideological basis of Rome, which by that stage was the church, actually continued to grow in power. It became the connective tissue across all of Europe after Rome fell," he says. "Many of the cultures, customs and even garbs that the Romans had were carried on by the [new] Germanic rulers." And in Dr Kemp's eyes — even with Pax Romana and all those aqueducts — the collapse of Rome wasn't necessarily a tragedy. He explains the Roman model: Conquer a territory. Use the riches and resources of the new territory to conquer more territory. Repeat. And he says meanwhile, most of the benefits of the empire were channelled back to the capital. "It was a very large-scale pyramid scheme," Dr Kemp says. "Its collapse was in many ways a good thing for a lot of people. If we look at skeletons in Latin Europe after the fall of Rome, people seemed to get taller and healthier. "So I think we've been handed down a set of stories which have emphasised collapse — and probably overemphasised how bad it is." Dr Kemp and his colleagues have crunched the numbers and found the average life span of a state throughout much of history has been 326 years. But there is a big range on either side of this number. For example, the Byzantine Empire lasted for 1,000 years, while China's Qin Dynasty lasted for just 15 years. And the largest states, or "mega-empires covering over a million square kilometres", were more fragile, with an average life span of 155 years. From Rome to Cahokia to many other examples of collapse, Dr Kemp says there's one key culprit. "We tend to get a bit too preoccupied with looking at big external shocks," he says. These can be things like plagues or enemies at the gates, which can be part of, but not the whole story. "You find that different societies handle these [external shocks] pretty well, but then they seem to become weaker … This is largely due to the fact that inequality seems to increase over time." So Dr Kemp calls inequality "the master variable behind crisis and collapse". On the flip side, after picking through the details of states from the Hittites to the Spanish Empire, Dr Kemp has a theory about what gives a state longevity. "Democracy and inclusive institutions seem to be the big things that encourage states and societies to often last longer." He cites research from Yale University that looked at how different societies coped with the Late Antique Little Ice Age of 536–660, when three different volcanic eruptions led to cooling temperatures around the Northern Hemisphere. It found that some societies were more resilient to temperature swings than others — and that a big predictor of resilience was how democratic and inclusive their institutions were. So of the world's roughly 200 countries, which is next in line for a societal collapse? "It would be very easy for me to say one of the countries in the Horn of Africa … Or Yemen for instance, which is in a state of civil war," Dr Kemp says. "But today when we do have a collapse, such as the collapse of Somalia or Afghanistan, it tends to be very short-lived. Resources are mobilised to make sure that a new state is propped up very quickly." Instead, Dr Kemp paints a picture less about individual states collapsing, but the possibility of something far bigger. He is much more concerned about the "world as a whole", given we all live in a "global, interconnected system". "If we're really thinking about a global collapse, then the things we have to start worrying about today are things like nuclear war, climatic change and dangerous new technologies," he says. "All of those, once again, are built upon large systems of inequality." And he says, while we can't put clear numbers on the likelihood of this kind of a collapse, the possibility of a "catastrophic" global event in the coming century has him worried.
News.com.au
25-05-2025
- News.com.au
Syria to help locate missing Americans: US envoy
Syria's new authorities have agreed to help the United States locate and return Americans who went missing in the war-ravaged country, a US envoy said on Sunday, in another sign of thawing bilateral ties. The announcement came a day after the United States formally lifted sanctions on Syria, ending more than a decade of diplomatic freeze. Relations have steadily improved since former president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in an Islamist-led offensive in December. "The new Syrian government has agreed to assist the USA in locating and returning USA citizens or their remains," US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack wrote on X, describing it as a "powerful step forward". "The families of Austin Tice, Majd Kamalmaz, and Kayla Mueller must have closure," he added, referring to American citizens who had gone missing or been killed during Syria's devastating civil war that erupted in 2011. Tice was working as a freelance journalist for Agence France-Presse, The Washington Post, and other outlets when he was detained at a checkpoint in August 2012. Kamalmaz, a Syrian-American psychotherapist, was believed to have died after being detained under the Assad government in 2017. Mueller was an aid worker kidnapped by the Islamic State group, which announced her death in February 2015, saying she was killed in a Jordanian air strike, a claim disputed by US authorities. "President (Donald) Trump has made it clear that bringing home USA citizens or honoring, with dignity, their remains is a major priority everywhere," said Barrack, who also serves as the US ambassador to Turkey. "The new Syrian Government will aid us in this commitment," he added. - Americans killed by IS - A Syrian source aware of the talks between the two countries told AFP there were 11 other names on Washington's list, all of them Syrian-Americans. The source added that a Qatari delegation began this month, at Washington's request, a search mission for the remains of American hostages killed by IS. Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights meanwhile said that "the Qatari delegation is still searching in Aleppo province for the bodies of American citizens executed by IS". Two US journalists, James Foley and Stephen Sotloff, were videotaped in 2014 being beheaded by a militant who spoke on camera with a British accent. El Shafee Elsheikh, a jihadist from London, was found guilty in 2022 of hostage-taking and conspiracy to murder US citizens -- Foley and Sotloff, as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. The formal lifting of US sanctions also coincided with Syria's new authorities reshuffling their interior ministry to include fighting cross-border drug and people smuggling, as they seek to improve ties with the West. The lifting of sanctions paves the way for reconstruction efforts in the war-torn country, where authorities are relying on foreign assistance to help foot the massive cost of rebuilding. Syria's foreign ministry on Saturday welcomed the US lifting of sanctions, calling the move "a positive step in the right direction to reduce humanitarian and economic struggles in the country". The sanctions relief extends to the new government on condition that Syria does not provide safe haven for terrorist organisations and ensure security for religious and ethnic minorities, the US Treasury Department said. Trump shook hands with Syria's jihadist-turned-interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa earlier this month during a visit to Saudi Arabia.
The Australian
24-05-2025
- The Australian
Syrian reboots interior ministry as Damascus seeks to reassure West
Syrian authorities on Saturday announced an interior ministry restructuring that includes fighting cross-border drug and people smuggling as they seek to improve ties with Western nations that have lifted sanctions. Keen to reboot and rebuild nearly 14 years after a devastating civil war broke out, the new authorities in Damascus have hailed Washington's lifting of US sanctions. The move was formalised Friday after being announced by President Donald Trump on a Gulf tour this month during which he shook hands with Syria's jihadist-turned-interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Spokesman Noureddine al-Baba said the interior ministry restructure included reforms and creating "a modern civil security institution that adopts transparency and respects international human rights standards". It includes setting up a citizens' complaints department and incorporating the police and General Security agency into an Internal Security command, he told a press conference. A border security body for Syria's land and sea frontiers will be tasked with "combating illegal activities, particularly drug and human smuggling networks", Baba said. The restructure includes "strengthening the role of the anti-drug department and further developing its importance within Syria and abroad" after the country became a major exporter of illicit stimulant captagon, he added. Another department will handle security for government facilities and foreign missions, as embassies reopen in Syria following Bashar al-Assad's ouster in December. A tourism police body will secure visitors and sites as the war-torn country -- home to renowned UNESCO World Heritage sites -- seeks to relaunch tourism. - 'Of critical importance' - Syria's foreign ministry welcomed Washington's lifting of sanctions, calling the move "a positive step in the right direction to reduce humanitarian and economic struggles in the country". Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli said the recent US and European Union steps to lift sanctions were "of critical importance in efforts to bring stability and security to Syria". The European Union announced the lifting of its economic sanctions on Syria earlier this month. Sharaa met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday on his third visit to Turkey since taking power on a visit to discuss "common issues", Syria's presidency said. Ankara is a major backer of Syria's new authorities, who are negotiating with Kurdish forces that control swathes of the northeast and that Turkey considers "terrorists". A government delegation made a first visit Saturday to the notorious Al-Hol camp in the northeast that hosts families of suspected Islamic State (IS) group jihadists. Trump said he wanted to give Syria's new rulers "a chance at greatness" after their overthrow of Assad. While in Istanbul, Sharaa met with the US ambassador to Turkey, who doubles as Washington's Syria envoy. In a statement, Tom Barrack said: "President Trump's goal is to enable the new government to create the conditions for the Syrian people to not only survive but thrive." He added that it would aid Washington's "primary objective" of ensuring the "enduring defeat" of IS. US sanctions were first imposed on Syria in 1979 under the rule of Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez. They were sharply expanded after the bloody repression of anti-government protests in 2011 triggered Syria's civil war. The new administration has been looking to build relations with the West and roll back sanctions, but some governments expressed reluctance, pointing to the Islamist past of leading figures. - 'Recovery and reconstruction' - The sanctions relief extends to the new government on condition that Syria not provide safe haven for terrorist organisations and ensure security for religious and ethnic minorities, the US Treasury Department said. Concurrently, the US State Department issued a 180-day waiver for the Caesar Act to make sure that sanctions do not obstruct foreign investment in Syria. The 2020 legislation severely sanctioned any entity or company cooperating with the now ousted government. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the waiver would "facilitate the provision of electricity, energy, water and sanitation, and enable a more effective humanitarian response across Syria". However, Rubio cautioned that Trump "has made clear his expectation that relief will be followed by prompt action by the Syrian government on important policy priorities". He said lifting the sanctions aims to promote "recovery and reconstruction efforts". Syria's 14-year civil war killed more than half a million people and ravaged its infrastructure. The interior ministry's spokesman said around a third of the population had been under suspicion by the Assad government's feared intelligence and security services. Analysts say a full lifting of sanctions may take time, as some US restrictions are acts that need to be reversed by Congress. Syrian authorities also need to ensure an attractive environment for foreign investment. bur-nad/lg/dcp/ysm
