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How could nobody care? 

An Iranian exile calls for support for the revolution


13/01/2026

That’s the question I have been asking myself for my entire life, but these days it’s louder than ever. I was born in Iran, which means I was born into a fight for the most basic things you can even imagine. I grew up surrounded by violence, bloodshed, cruelty, and monstrosity. And yet the worst part has never been the inhumanity itself, but the loneliness of witnessing it all. The silence. The feeling of losing hope in the world and its so-called “humanity,” day by day, because nobody seemed to care.

After decades of oppression, decades of protests and bodies and funerals, we are finally in the last stages of this fight. We are in a revolution. But we are also in a war, lonelier than ever, while the Islamic Republic becomes more savage than ever before. They are not just oppressing anymore. They are committing mass murder and war crimes against their own people. 

So tell me: why does nobody care? Why don’t you care? How many times should Iranians go to the streets and get killed for the world to hear them? How many children should be shot and never come home? How many protesters should be executed? How many times must the regime turn off the lights, cut the internet, shut down all communication, and kill thousands in silence for you to pay attention?

It wouldn’t hurt this much if you genuinely didn’t know. But you do know. We tell you. We beg you. We spread every piece of information we can. We scream into the void hoping someone will listen. And the silence that follows is fucking unbearable. It wouldn’t hurt this much if you didn’t pretend to care about “human rights.” If you didn’t brag about your liberal ideas, your solidarity, your activism. If you didn’t give constant lectures on fascism and racism. But you do. You claim you care about human rights, so why do you ignore Iran? Why does your solidarity suddenly stop when it comes to us?

We in the diaspora are trapped. We sit in darkness, cut off from our loved ones, just as Iran is cut off from the world. We search for our families’ faces in the few videos that manage to escape the blackout. We read reports of mass casualties so overwhelming that health care professionals don’t even have time to perform CPR. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand the horror of families having to steal the corpses of their loved ones before the government gets to them? Do you understand what it means to be asked to pay “bullet money” for your murdered child? Do you understand that even our dead are not safe from these monsters?

You don’t get to claim “human rights” and ignore Iran. You don’t get to call yourselves activists when your activism stops the moment it becomes uncomfortable or “complex”. Your selective empathy, your performative solidarity, none of it saves lives. None of it means anything, when you stay silent when it matters the most. 

If you really care about human beings, then start acting like it. Every Iranian in the diaspora I know is dying of guilt. It burns through our entire existence. We feel guilty for being alive. Guilty for not being there. Guilty for not fighting in the streets and dying next to our brothers and sisters. Guilty for not even daring to hope. And I still wonder: how can you not feel any of this?

How can you see us suffering, see us being killed, see our blood spilled in the streets, and not even talk about it? How can you watch us break, lose our homes, lose our people, lose our sanity, and not even ask if we are okay? How can you live with yourselves, knowing there are people just like you, full of life, dreams, and kindness, being killed right now for fighting for the same values you claim to believe in? How can you live with yourself? Because I can’t. I’m doing everything in my power to be the voice of the silenced, and yet I’m about to lose my mind out of rage and guilt any moment now, while you don’t even ask your Iranian friends how they are doing, let alone take action to save innocent lives.

Many of us are completely alone here. Can you imagine how much it would mean to receive just one message? A check-in during a crisis. A simple: Are you okay? Anyone can congratulate us on our birthdays, but we need friends who can message us when our homes are on fire.

What you read in books, hear in podcasts, watch in documentaries, or skip because of “content warnings”, that is our reality. It is our daily life. And we never get to take a break from it, not even from another continent.

If you truly care, make these abstract ideas part of your reality too. Live them. Act on them. Solidarity means nothing if it exists only when it’s easy. Stick all your “Fuck AfD” stickers everywhere you want, shout your slogans in the streets, but when you go home to your safe, privileged lives, don’t leave your solidarity behind. Carry it with you. Get used to it. Let it become part of you. I promise you, it’s not heavier than the trauma and grief we carry every single day.

That’s all I ask: keep shouting if you must, but start talking too. Say something. To your friends. To your students. To your coworkers. Open your eyes and see what is happening, even if it makes you uncomfortable, especially if it makes you uncomfortable. If you don’t know how to help, ask. Learn. Try. Anything is better than this soul-crushing silence.

Please talk about us. Talk about the Iranian people making history. Talk about their fight, their courage, their decades of resistance. Talk about the complete internet shutdown cutting off 90 million people from their loved ones and from the world so that no one will know they are being murdered. Talk about this deliberate attempt to isolate a nation, to silence voices, to hide crimes. And don’t just talk. This is not “a local issue” or “internal politics.” This is a humanitarian crisis. This is a regime committing war crimes in real time against unarmed civilians whose only weapons are their courage and their hope for a free Iran.

If you call yourselves activists, then act now, when it matters most. As Europeans, as citizens of democratic countries, you have privileges we don’t. Use them. Contact your MPs, journalists, politicians, representatives. Ask them to hold the Islamic Republic accountable. Demand consequences. Demand that the regime’s diplomats be expelled. Demand that the world stops legitimizing murderers.

People in Iran are being killed right now. Every minute. They have already had every chance for a normal life stolen from them. They were born into a totalitarian regime that destroyed their lives before they even began. The least you can do is talk about them, honor them, refuse to let their deaths disappear in silence. Not because it is noble, not because it makes you a better person, but because none of us are free until all of us are free. Stop your selective activism. Stop looking away. Be our voice. Be the activists you claim to be.

And don’t forget: this is no longer a protest.
This is a revolution.

Sayan Kouhzad

12.01.2026

As war reaches Venezuela, we must support the Bolivarian Revolution

The year 2026 began without disguises: the international order is dead—only the size of the rifle matters now


12/01/2026

The criminal attack carried out by the United States against Venezuela, involving the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, represents not only a flagrant violation of international law, but also a clear expression of Donald Trump’s new geopolitical strategy, recently outlined in his National Security Strategy. In decline, yes, but still an empire, the United States now seeks to disengage from costly conflicts with mixed outcomes across the globe (i.e., the Middle East, Asia, Ukraine) and instead secure what it considers its “natural” sphere of influence: its backyard, Latin America.

Venezuela is merely the spearhead of a broader strategy aimed at reasserting control over the entire continent and expelling China’s expanding commercial presence, which grew precisely while Washington focused its attention elsewhere. In countries where installing a puppet government through electoral means (such as Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, and El Salvador) proves impossible, the military option becomes the preferred path.

Since Hugo Chávez’s first election, Venezuela has positioned itself as the central antagonist of US imperialism in the region. As the holder of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, it becomes an automatic target whenever a government prioritizes sovereignty and regional integration. Unsurprisingly, Chávez survived multiple US-backed coup attempts, including the emblematic 2002 coup, when he was detained for 47 hours and restored to power through mass popular mobilization.

The kidnapping of Maduro constitutes the most severe blow ever dealt to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) governments and marks the first direct US military intervention in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989. The international reaction was, predictably, accommodating. Within the region, only Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Cuba, and Uruguay forcefully condemned the operation. Most other governments, already shaped by the contemporary right-wing wave, seized the moment to reaffirm their subservience to Washington.

European “Western democracies” also took the opportunity to reaffirm subservience. With the notable exception of Spain, the blatant alignment displayed by figures such as Ursula von der Leyen, Friedrich Merz, and Emmanuel Macron made one thing clear: European governments oppose military invasions only when they occur on European soil.

This response is consistent with Europe’s long-standing discomfort with the Chavismo experience. Even the European left has rarely looked favorably upon the Bolivarian process. While Chávez advanced structural reforms under the banner of “21st-century socialism”, European progressives hastily voiced abstract concerns about democracy and liberal institutions, labeling the process authoritarian—all while drawing inspiration from it. 

The most significant innovation of the European left in this century has so far been the emergence of “party-movement” formations after the 2008 crisis, such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. The latter, alongside France Insoumise, was deeply influenced by the work of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, two “post-Marxist” theorists who developed the strategy of “left-wing populism” in which political advances would emerge from a combined strategy of popular mobilization and class struggle within liberal democracy, pushing it to its limits without breaking with its democratic institutions. Mouffe and Laclau merely translated into European language the Latin American experiences that took place during the “pink tide.” After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the global left was left tactically disoriented; openly admitting inspiration from the Bolivarianism of Chávez or Evo Morales would have been unacceptable to a deeply ingrained colonial mindset.

I am not particularly fond of “21st-century socialism”. Its limitations and contradictions are evident. Yet credit must be given where it is due. The Bolivarian Revolution understood that sovereignty in Latin America is impossible without a robust military doctrine and sustained popular mobilization. It grasped a fundamental truth: even negotiations with imperial power require drawing Bolívar’s sword.

Now that the United States once again openly wields its “big stick”—even threatening to seize European territory through Greenland—it is time for the European left to express unequivocal support for the Bolivarian Revolution. 

Criticism of Venezuela, particularly under Maduro, is legitimate. Authoritarian practices exist, electoral fraud allegations deserve scrutiny, and Maduro himself has contributed to regional instability, such as in the Essequibo dispute. But solidarity with Venezuela today is not about defending Maduro’s government; it is about defending Latin American self-determination. The current offensive seeks nothing less than continental control.

If an attack of this magnitude succeeds without meaningful international resistance, it will open a historic window for further interventions across the region. Trump’s updated Monroe Doctrine aims to reproduce a “War on Terror 2.0” in Latin America—replacing terrorists with “narco-terrorists”. The baseless accusation portraying Maduro as the leader of the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” exemplifies this logic, a claim from which even the US Department of Justice has now retreated. The next likely targets are Gustavo Petro’s Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum’s Mexico, followed, with less geopolitical urgency, by Cuba, Marco Rubio’s perennial obsession.

Both Sheinbaum and Petro have already been associated with drug trafficking by US political discourse. The stated concern with combating narcotics is transparently disingenuous. If drug trafficking were truly the priority, Ecuador—governed by a Trump ally and the main transit route for narcotics into the US—would be the primary target. Moreover, Trump recently pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted of drug trafficking, in a move designed to influence domestic elections.

Still, the narco-terrorism narrative resonates domestically throughout the region, where urban crime remains a pressing concern. Promises of “bukelization” (modeled after Nayib Bukele’s security policies in El Salvador) continue to dominate right-wing rhetoric. In Brazil, a recent police operation in Rio de Janeiro, the deadliest in the country’s history, reinforced narratives of insecurity and state impotence. Far-right opposition figures have already proposed labeling criminal factions as narco-terrorists to justify calls for US military intervention.

Despite years of economic crisis, Venezuela may be the only country capable of offering even minimal resistance to US intervention. Petro is the first left-wing and openly anti-imperialist president to govern Colombia—long a de facto US protectorate with dozens of American military bases—under uniquely precarious conditions. Mexico, under Sheinbaum, faces the structural vulnerability of sharing a land border with the empire while remaining economically dependent on it.

Brazil, the region’s most significant actor economically, politically, and geographically, represents the final piece in securing control over South America. After an initial clash over tariffs—in which President Lula da Silva emerged strengthened as the only global leader to confront them until they were withdrawn—Trump shifted from overt support for Brazil’s opposition and the former president Jair Bolsonaro to a strategy of diplomatic neutralization. Whether this truce will last remains unclear. In any escalation, Washington relies on expanding military infrastructure in neighboring Argentina and Paraguay—while Brazil itself cannot rely on its armed forces, still haunted by the legacy of dictatorship and by the documented involvement of military sectors in Bolsonaro’s failed coup attempt in 2022.

For these reasons, a strategic military victory in Venezuela would create a dangerous window of opportunity. Yet it is premature to declare the Bolivarian Revolution defeated. The United States achieved a successful strike, but even a tactical victory remains uncertain.

If the goal was regime change, it has not (yet) been achieved. Trump sought a power vacuum to hand control to the opposition or force new elections. Instead, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assumed an interim role while affirming Maduro’s continued presidency—a move designed to preserve PSUV’s cohesion and prevent political destabilization by conducting new elections in the absence of the president.

Speculation about betrayal followed the kidnapping, including allegations against the armed forces and Rodríguez herself. While such hypotheses cannot be dismissed outright, evidence now confirms that armed resistance occurred and that the US operation relied heavily on cyber warfare to disable Venezuelan defenses. Rodríguez’s long-standing loyalty to the Bolivarian project further weakens claims that Maduro was deliberately sacrificed, although some level of betrayal from third parties, even minor information leakage, must have happened in order for this type of operation to succeed.

With that in mind, Venezuela’s immediate future will depend on how Rodríguez and the PSUV leadership manage relations with the occupying power. The fact that the United States must effectively “assume control” exposes a long-standing fiction: the Venezuelan opposition lacks sufficient political legitimacy to govern. As Trump himself acknowledged and CIA assessments reportedly confirmed, the PSUV’s political strength was significantly underestimated, while María Corina Machado’s influence was vastly exaggerated. No viable governing alternative exists outside PSUV ranks.

Machado’s role is particularly tragicomic. As a far-right activist, she has long advocated military intervention and economic sanctions against her own country. Even before receiving her shameful Nobel Peace Prize (yet another reminder of Europe’s selective moralism), she promised an aggressive privatization agenda subordinated to foreign capital. Her enthusiasm for handing Venezuela’s natural wealth to the Global North was barely concealed. Today, discarded by Trump, she scrambles for relevance, even proposing to share the Nobel Prize with the US president. Her humiliating end is a reminder of the fate reserved for the submissive, bootlicker right-wing elites in the Global South: disposable instruments of imperial strategy.

Now, if PSUV refuses cooperation and no credible puppet alternative emerges, Washington faces limited options. A second strike and intensified psychological operations remain possible. Full-scale intervention, however, would require boots on the ground, a far more complex and costly endeavor—a cost perhaps too high for Trump’s administration to take when public opinion is not favorable during an electoral year.

Although Venezuela cannot match US firepower, several factors complicate a land invasion. Any ground operation would require Colombian authorization, unlikely under Petro. An amphibious invasion would be logistically demanding. Moreover, Venezuela’s military doctrine combines guerrilla warfare, prolonged popular resistance, and armed civilian militias.

Despite its many controversies and shortcomings, PSUV remains the largest left-wing party in Latin America, and its militias are far from symbolic. Their presence deters coups by raising the cost of civil war and poses serious challenges for occupying forces unfamiliar with the terrain and unable to distinguish combatants from civilians.

Predicting outcomes amid unfolding events is difficult. What is clear is that Venezuela stands at a critical juncture. Regime change has not occurred, but the level of force required to impose it will determine the country’s fate and the scale of its humanitarian crisis. Maduro’s political survival appears uncertain, but Venezuela can still be spared from becoming a new Libya. International solidarity is crucial.

We are at a turning point. The invasion of Venezuela must be condemned unequivocally, before new victims are added to the list.

Are we really  experiencing a surge in Left Wing violence?

Why the Linke leadership’s latest statement is playing into the hands of the right wing


11/01/2026

Consider two recent incidents in Germany. The first was on 3rd January, when a fire broke out in Lichtenfelde, Berlin. Even the British Guardian reported it: “German leftwing militants protesting over the climate crisis and AI have claimed responsibility for an arson attack that cut power to tens of thousands of households in Berlin”, and “In a 2,500-word pamphlet seen by the Guardian which a police spokesperson called ‘credible’, the group said it had aimed to ‘cut the juice to the ruling class’.”

Right wing politicians and media reacted hysterically. Berlin mayor Kai Wegner (CDU), who couldn’t break off from a tennis game to visit the victims, told die Welt: “we have been struck by a left wing terrorist attack”, and “left wing extremism is at the moment a high threat to Berlin. Left extreme terror is back in Germany”. Meanwhile CSU Leader Markus Söder said: “left wing terrorism is back stronger than we could imagine, and with fundamental implications.”

Three days later, the Linke Party leaders Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken issued a statement on another incident – “An attack on one of us is an attack on us all.” The statement starts: “We are deeply concerned to see that some of our comrades are currently being massively attacked and in some cases subjected to full-blown campaigns.” It goes on to strongly imply that the Left was responsible for an arson attack on Brandenburg’s antisemitism ‘Tsar’ Andreas Büttner (a Linke member and friend of Israel).

Schwerdtner and van Aken’s statement argued: “Solidarity means engaging in debate with one another – without violence, intimidation, denigration, or insults. Instead, it means using words that strive for understanding. Even if we may hold a different position on the issue, it is our collective responsibility to reject these attacks, wherever and whenever they occur.”

What should the Left say?

Two stories of apparent “left wing terror.” One was criticised by the Right, the other by left wing leaders. Just what is going on here, and how should the radical Left react? One reaction would be to say that the Left has always criticised individual acts of terror. Lenin argued strongly with his brother, who was a Narodnik and attempted to assassinate the Tsar in 1887. 

Trotsky wrote an article “Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism” in which he argued: “the killing of an employer, a threat to set fire to a factory or a death threat to its owner, an assassination attempt, with revolver in hand, against a government minister—all these are terrorist acts in the full and authentic sense. However, anyone who has an idea of the true nature of international Social Democracy [ie socialists like Trotsky] ought to know that it has always opposed this kind of terrorism and does so in the most irreconcilable way.”

This opposition to individual terrorism is strategic, not moralistic. To gain our aims, we need a mass movement, not individuals acting on our behalf. By the very nature of their acts, terrorists need to hide their identity and are cut off from the people they want to represent. Having said all this, I think something else is going on here. A lot of people are jumping to conclusions and finding explanations which suit their political project. 

It was the Vulkangruppe, which claimed responsibility for the Lichterfelde arson attack. Nathaniel Flakin has already argued on this website: “Was this a left-wing group? As of yet, Berlin police have presented zero evidence … While the statement uses phrases from the German autonomist scene, we know that Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has written and published texts just like this.”

Nathaniel went on to argue: “If it is indeed a left-wing group, it is just as astounding that they have no periphery at all—not a single left-wing sympathizer defending their actions.” To recap, there is absolutely no evidence that the Vulkangruppe is left wing at all, and even if it is, on the Left scene it represents no-one but itself.

The case of a demonstration in Leipzig and Jule Nagel

Let’s now look more closely at the claims made by Schwerdtner and van Aken. Here, in their attempt to prove their claim that political opponents on the Left refuse to enter a political discussion, they appear to be conflating three different cases. Let’s look at them in turn.

They first raise the case of Jule Nagel, parliamentary representative for die Linke in Saxony. They say they are appalled that the group Handala “discredits the work of Jule under the motto ‘Antifa means Free Palestine’ and is calling for a demonstration on 17th January in the district of Connewitz. The focus is on Jule and also the project LinXXnet and the youth centre Conne Island in Leipzig”. 

The demonstration was called after a number of recorded attacks on Palestinians and their supporters in Connewitz by so-called Antideutsche. The call to the demonstration states: “in Conne Island, in linXXnet and in the streets of the districts, US flags celebrated the bombs which imperialism dropped on Iraq and Afghanistan which turned the population into refugees. Israel flags were omnipresent on demos”.

Jule Nagel also has a long history of support for Israel. Because she is not the main focus of this article, I’ll restrict myself to this forensic article by Jüdisch-Israelischer Dissens Leipzig (Jewish Israeli Dissense Leipzig, JID) on the inconsistencies of her thought process. 

The case of Bodo Ramelow

The second case which has given Schwerdtner and van Aken so much grief is the “massive hounding” of Bodo Ramelow. the Vice President of die Linke and former president of Thüringen. This hounding, they claim, consists of “put-downs, insults, and downright lies”.

For anyone who is unaware of Ramelow’s body of work, here are some of his Greatest Hits. When he was Thüringen president, he was deporter-in-chief. He campaigned for faster deportation procedures. Already in 2016, Fascist AfD MP Beatrix von Storch celebrated Ramelow’s attacks on migrants, tweeting: “Ramelow is right. Antifa has not understood democracy.”

That’s not all. When the president of the German parliament Julia Klöckner banned the queer rainbow flag from the Bundestag, Ramelow wrote an article saying “I stand behind Julia Klöckner’s decision”, in which he said that protests by MPs “weren’t necessary at all. Of course, we discussed her decisions in the executive committee, but she explained them very well, and we could all understand them.”

And then we come to Ramelow’s position on Palestine. In the debate on Klöckner, Ramelow said, unnecessarily: “The Bundestag can’t raise the flags of the demonstrating groups at every large demonstration in Berlin, since there’s a large demonstration here almost every week. She asked me if we should then raise the Palestinian flag at every pro-Palestinian demonstration in Neukölln in the future. I could only say no.”

This answer, at least, came as no surprise. On Nakba Day 2025, Ramelow celebrated “60 years of German-Israeli relationships.” In September of the same year, Ramelow dismissed talk of dead Palestinian children as “Hamas shit,” arguing that opposing the Israeli genocide was “on the way to saying” Nazi slogans like “Jews eat children.”

Die Linke should not be criticising demonstrations against Nagel and Ramelow – they should be actively supporting them. Any half-way left-wing party should make a clear stand against supporters of deportation and genocide, not make unconvincing arguments in their defence. 

The case of a bomb attack on Andreas Büttner

And so we come to the bomb attack on Andreas Büttner. This attack has been formulated by Schwerdtner and van Aken as just another bullet point in a list. Schwerdtner and van Aken list three cases, Two of them are peaceful protests, the third an arson attack. The inference is that these events are equivalent and that anyone who supports one bears responsibility for them all.

But what is the evidence? That when Büttner’s Summer House was attacked, it was daubed with a red “Hamas triangle” – you know, the triangle which has been banned for alleged antisemitic content. Besides this circumstantial evidence, do we know that the people who attacked Büttner were Leftists,  or indeed Hamas supporters? We do not. 

We are back in the territory of the Vulkangruppe debate. Because politicians, and the media, have deemed it useful that this attack is the result of “left wing terrorism”, whatever that means, there is no need for any further investigations.

The Left has no need to defend Büttner who tweeted support for the Berlin police when they were attacking pro-Palestine demonstrators, and who believes that the Golan Heights are part of Israel. I, for one, understand the frustration of those watching Büttner’s political rise in a so-called “left” party – which is perfectly happy to accommodate his racism. But the accusations that we are to blame for any of the physical attacks against him are baseless.

What is die Linke leadership defending?

The statement from Schwerdtner and van Aken came on the very same day that The Left Berlin published an article which I wrote arguing “Schwerdtner’s change of heart [in which she apologised for previous mistakes made by the Party on Palestine] was the result of pressure from new members, who are serious about fighting for Palestine …. I fully support the newly formed BAG Palästinasolidarität, but here [in believing that the Party leadership has fundamentally changed its position on Palestine] I believe that they are being naive.”

Die Linke has tried to put itself at the front of a movement which it did not create. It is now trying to throw its members who built this movement under the bus. Just as it was quite prepared to expel Ramsy Kilani, it will do nothing against party members like Nagel, Ramelow, and Büttner, who vocally support imperialism and genocide.

This is not an article about political violence. Capitalism is a brutal system, and we may need to exercise some brutality to get rid of it. But here I am talking about the defamation of an entire movement with insinuations of violence, and an attempt to divide us between “good”, peaceful, demonstrators, and “bad” militants.

This divide and rule is a right wing strategy. We saw it recently when ICE forces murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Despite widespread video evidence to the contrary, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin tweeted: “rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” 

As the state resorts to increasingly violent methods to maintain control (we only need to think of the violent policing of recent Palestine demos in Berlin), it increasingly tries to shift the blame onto someone else. The question is whether we oppose them or deploy the same tactics. 

We should keep this in mind when we witness Schwerdtener’s and Van Aken’s hand wringing. It is not just the blatant hypocrisy of supporters of genocide suddenly discovering that violence is bad. By contributing to the myth of left wing terror, they strengthen the ability of the state to impose further repression. The Left deserves better than that.

THE LAST NORMAL DAY

What I was doing on October 6th, 2023 (and why it matters)


10/01/2026

Collage of Nabil and his friends and family, titled "Before the war."

I was planning a birthday party.

My daughter Leen was turning nine in two weeks, and she’d been asking for months if we could finally do “the big one”—you know, the kind with a real cake, balloons, and all her cousins. The kind of party that makes a kid feel like the center of the universe for exactly one day.

I told her yes. Of course, yes.

I was working late that night—October 6th—trying to finish a project so I’d have time to focus on party planning. My wife Doaa was already asleep. The house was quiet except for the sound of my keyboard and the occasional car passing outside.

I remember thinking: Life is finally stable.

I had no idea I was living the last normal hour of my life.

By sunrise, normal would become a word I couldn’t even remember the meaning of.

The man I was (before)

Let me tell you who I was on October 6th.

I was a 33-year-old computer engineer. I have three children: Leen, Moein, and Rima, who was born in the first week of the Gaza war. I’d built a small company called Lord Group—nothing fancy, just me and a team I’d trained myself, working from home, taking on projects, slowly building something real.

We weren’t rich. But we were comfortable. My children went to school. My wife didn’t have to worry about groceries. We had a home. We had plans.

I used to stay up late working on projects—websites, systems, automation tools—the kind of work that feels like solving puzzles. I loved it. I was good at it. And more importantly, it let me provide for my family.

That was my definition of success: being able to say “yes” to my daughter’s birthday party without checking my bank account first.

Simple, right?

That’s all I wanted. A simple, stable life where my kids could be kids and I could be the kind of father who didn’t have to disappoint them.

I had that life for exactly one more night.

October 7th, 6:47 AM

I woke up to explosions.

Not the distant kind you hear on the news. The kind that shake your walls. The kind that make your heart stop before your brain even understands what is happening.

I ran to my children’s room. They were already awake, crying, asking me what was happening.

I didn’t know.

By noon, we knew we had to leave. By evening, our home was gone. By the next week, everything I’d spent 11 years building—my company, my work, every single project, every client, every plan—was rubble.

And Leen’s birthday party?

We spent it in a tent.

No cake. No balloons. No cousins.

Just my wife, our three children, and the sound of drones overhead.

Happy birthday, sweetheart.

The questions children ask

My youngest daughter, Rima, was born six days into the war.

October 13th, 2023.

She has never lived in a house. Never had a bedroom. Never experienced falling asleep without the sound of explosions in the distance.

When she’s old enough to ask questions, what will I tell her?

How do I explain that she was born into a world where safety is a luxury we can’t afford?

But it’s my older children who break my heart the most.

Baba, when can we go back to our house?

I don’t know how to tell her there’s no house to go back to.

Baba, why did this happen to us?

I don’t have an answer that makes sense.

Rima doesn’t ask questions yet. She just cries when she’s hungry. Which is often.

And I sit there, in a tent, with three beautiful children who deserve so much more than this, and I wonder: How did this become our life?

The new math

I used to solve problems with code. Now I solve them with survival.

Here’s what a day looks like now:

6:00 AM — Wake up. Check if everyone’s still here. Relief.

7:00 AM — Start the walk to get water. 1.8 kilometers. Carry 40 liters back. My spine screams. I ignore it.

9:00 AM — Try to find food. Sometimes there’s bread. Sometimes there isn’t.

11:00 AM — Sit in the tent. Try to keep the kids entertained. Fail.

2:00 PM — Walk for water again. My neck is damaged now—herniated disc, spinal issues from months of this. I can’t afford treatment. I can’t afford to stop.

5:00 PM — Ration whatever food we have. Make it last. Pretend it’s enough.

8:00 PM — Try to get the kids to sleep. They’re scared. I’m scared. I lie and tell them everything’s okay.

10:00 PM — Lie awake. Think about everything we lost. Everything I can’t give them. Everything I’m failing to protect them from.

Repeat.

This is my life now.

Not coding. Not building. Not planning birthday parties.

Just surviving.

What war actually steals

People think war steals your home, your safety, your possessions.

It does.

But that’s not the worst part.

The worst part is what it steals from the people you love.

It stole my daughter’s ninth birthday.

It stole my newborn’s first year in a real home.

It stole my wife’s peace of mind.

It stole my ability to be the father I promised I’d be.

I used to be able to fix things. To solve problems. To provide.

Now I can’t even give my children a decent meal.

That’s what war steals. It steals your ability to protect the people you love. And then it makes you watch them suffer anyway.

The hardest part

You know what the hardest part is?

It’s not the hunger. It’s not the fear. It’s not even the physical pain.

It’s the hope.

Every single day, I wake up and I have to choose: Do I keep hoping? Do I keep fighting? Do I keep believing that somehow, some way, we’ll get out of this?

Or do I give up?

And every single day, I look at my children, and I know I can’t give up.

Not because I’m strong. Not because I’m brave.

But because they’re watching me.

If I give up, what does that teach them? That the world is too cruel? That hope is pointless? That survival is the best we can aim for?

No.

I want them to see that even when everything falls apart, you keep fighting. You keep hoping. You keep building, even if all you’re building is one more day of survival.

That’s what fathers do.

Even when it’s impossible.

What I miss most

People ask me what I miss most about my old life.

They expect me to say my home. My company. My career.

And yes, I miss those things.

But what I miss most are the small, boring, beautiful moments that I used to take for granted.

I miss my children running through the house, laughing, making noise, being kids.

I miss my wife cooking in a real kitchen, complaining about groceries, planning dinners.

I miss bedtime stories in an actual bed, not on the floor of a tent.

I miss being able to tell my kids “yes” without calculating whether we can afford it.

I miss feeling like the future was something to plan for, not something to survive.

I miss being a father who could protect his children, not just a father who’s trying his best and failing anyway.

I miss normal.

And I’m starting to forget what normal even felt like.

What I’m fighting for

I’m not fighting to go back to who I was.

That person is gone. That life is gone. That version of normal doesn’t exist anymore.

I’m fighting for something new.

I’m fighting to get my family somewhere safe. Somewhere my children can go to school instead of hiding in a tent. Somewhere my wife doesn’t have to ration water. Somewhere I can work again, not because I need to prove anything, but because I miss feeling useful.

I’m fighting for a future where Rima’s second birthday isn’t in a tent.

Where Leen gets the birthday party she deserves—even if it’s three years late.

Where my children don’t have to ask, “Baba, why did this happen to us?” because it’ll finally be over.

That’s what I’m fighting for.

Not the life I had. But a life worth living.

What I’m asking you for

I’m not asking you to fix everything.

I’m not asking you to understand what this feels like. (I hope you never do.)

I’m asking for something simpler:

See us.

Know that we exist. Know that behind the headlines and the statistics, there’s a father who just wants his children to be safe. A wife who just wants to cook in a real kitchen again. Children who just want to be children.

We’re not asking for luxury. We’re asking for normal.

And if you can help—through our fundraising campaign, or even just by sharing our story—you’re not just helping my family.

You’re teaching my children that the world still has kindness in it. That humanity still exists. That hope isn’t stupid.

That’s worth more than you know.

The promise I made

On October 6th, 2023, I promised my daughter a birthday party.

I couldn’t keep that promise.

But I’m making a new one:

I promise to get my family out of this tent.

I promise to find a place where they’re safe.

I promise to rebuild—not what we lost, but something new.

I promise to keep fighting until my children don’t have to ask, “Baba, when will this end?”

And I promise that one day—maybe not soon, maybe not easily, but one day—Leen will get that birthday party.

With a real cake. Real balloons. All her cousins.

The kind that makes a kid feel like the center of the universe for exactly one day.

She deserves that.

And I’m going to give it to her.

Even if it takes everything I have left.

How you can help

Our fundraising campaign is here: chuffed.org/project/nabil

If you can donate, thank you. If you can’t, please share this story. Your voice might reach someone who can help.

Other ways to support:

Verified by: Aral Balkan and Molly Shah

This is real. We are real. And we’re running out of time.

One last thing

If you’re reading this, thank you.

I know your time is valuable. I know there are a million other things you could be doing right now.

But you’re here. You read this far. You saw us.

That matters.

Maybe you’ll donate. Maybe you’ll share this. Maybe you’ll just remember that somewhere in Gaza, there’s a father trying to give his children a future.

Whatever you do, it’s more than we had yesterday.

And sometimes, that’s enough to keep going.

Nabil Zaqout is a 34-year-old computer engineer, father of three, and survivor currently living in Khan Younis, Gaza. He used to build websites. Now he’s trying to build a future. He still remembers what his children’s laughter sounded like when they weren’t scared.

“I don’t need you to save us. I just need you to see us. The rest, we’ll figure out together.”

Support Nabil’s family:

Campaign: chuffed.org/project/nabil

Contact: +970 599 011 300

Links: link.me/engnab

The Iraqi Left at a crossroads: Renewal, unity, and reclaiming grassroots action.

The Iraqi Left needs unity and flexibility to transform ideals into tangible social change


09/01/2026

The Iraqi Left: A crisis of tools, not a crisis of values

This article comes at a critical moment that the Iraqi Left is experiencing. The results of the recent elections in November 2025 cannot be seen as merely a passing electoral loss or as a direct result of the unfair electoral law and the dominance of political money. While these external factors are valid and influential, they are compounded by even more grueling challenges of systemic restrictions and structural corruption. However, focusing on external influences alone overlooks the essence of the problem.

What happened is a concentrated expression of a deeper crisis affecting the organization, methods, and discourse within the Iraqi Left. It reflects a dysfunctional relationship between valid ideas and ineffective tools, as well as between radical transformative discourse and its presentation in a complex and harsh political environment. Despite this decline, the Iraqi Left remains a genuine hope and the most serious alternative for social change.

Given this dual diagnosis, the critical question arises: Why, despite the dire conditions faced by the masses and the power of corrupt cliques, has social change not emerged as a clear and convincing popular choice? Why has the Left’s project remained fragmented and inconsistent, with similar slogans but differing approaches, preventing the masses from seeing a coherent alternative?

Do we benefit from the Capitalist Methodology?

To understand this defect, it is necessary to examine the issue from an unconventional angle. The logic of capitalism, grounded in science and measurement rather than ideology, offers a strict practical model for addressing decline and weakness. The crisis facing the Iraqi Left can be seen as a failure of a promising transformative “product,” characterized by theoretically sound policies that lack optimal methods for practical implementation and require improved management and marketing. This occurs within a political market that faces significant competition from religious, nationalist, and bourgeois forces. Capitalism treats society as a market and ideas as commodities. When a group of “companies” with similar names enters the market to sell a singular product—social change—without harmony or coordination, the quality itself becomes problematic.

This reflects what happened to the Iraqi Left in the recent elections. Not only was it organizationally scattered, but it was also politically divided between participation and boycott. There was no unified position, clear discourse, or understood collective tactic. The masses did not perceive a single “product” with distinct features, but rather a series of similar products competing against each other instead of confronting real competitors. In such a scenario, the market punishes inconsistent products. Chaotic plurality, conflicting discourse, and confusion erode mass confidence, not because they reject the idea of change, but because it reaches them in a fragmented, elitist manner that is difficult to grasp in relation to societal development and daily needs.

The Left and addressing decline and weakness

Upon facing decline and weakness, a fundamental difference emerges between the logic of capitalism and that of many forces on the Left. Capitalism does not revisit its classical theorists at every crisis to determine if their texts were fully applied. As a practical system, it treats decline as a measurable and addressable technical signal. It quickly alters tools, discourse, facades, and work mechanisms without guilt or reverence for names and history. Capitalism employs scientific research: it collects data, analyzes numbers, studies behavior, and utilizes advanced technologies and artificial intelligence to test hypotheses. It asks simply and directly: Why did the product not succeed? Based on the answers, it rebuilds its policies.

In contrast, some forces on the Left tend to return to their classical theorists for answers during periods of decline, looking back to the celebrated history of their parties. However, the real question should be: Why did our message not resonate today? The issue isn’t the return to leftist heritage as a living critical method, but when this heritage and old organizational mechanisms become rigid standards that overshadow reality.

We reclaim the Scientific Method, which was always the essence of Leftist thought

The lesson here is not to glorify capitalism or adopt its values, but to benefit from its scientific method. The fundamental challenge lies in how to “borrow the tool” (the scientific methodology) while rejecting the “spirit” (individual profit and class dominance).

The Iraqi Left now needs this type of evaluation and scientific rigor. It must conduct real surveys in popular neighborhoods and among female and male workers, not to concede its class horizon, but to understand how its message is received, how it is interpreted, and where it falters. It needs to study and measure the impact of its policies, assess its presence both on the ground and in digital spaces, and evaluate the language of its discourse. It should ask directly: Why do we not reach our audience? And why do we not influence? Only then can bold political and organizational decisions be made based on the results.

The Left in the age of the Digital Revolution

In the context of the digital revolution, this need increases in urgency and in an unprecedented way. We live in a time where ideas are no longer measured by the soundness of their theoretical starting point only, but by their ability to reach, influence, interact, and transform into a tangible collective action, which are criteria that young generations understand and deal with daily in their digital and social lives. The young generation of female and male workers of hand and thought does not receive politics through long speeches nor through heavy theoretical texts, but through digital platforms, short videos, open discussions, fast solidarity campaigns, and forms of flexible horizontal organization that allow direct participation and decision-making from the bottom to the top. Ignoring these transformations does not mean neutrality, but leaving this space entirely to the Left’s opponents who are more organized and capable of investing in digital tools.

From here, dealing with the digital space as a real arena of class struggle becomes a political and organizational necessity, not a secondary technical or media matter. For organization, mobilization, building trust, formulating discourse, and measuring impact, have all come today to pass through this space as much as they pass through the street and workplaces. And without the Left possessing the tools of organization, mobilization, and scientific evaluation in this field, it is unable to transform wide social anger into an organized force capable of continuity and influence. The contemporary Left is that which is capable of linking the justice of its social project with a conscious and systematic use of the tools of the age, allowing it to reclaim its role as a real force of change in a society that is changing rapidly.

Why do we need a broad and unified Leftist framework?

The Iraqi Left has played an important historical role in the struggle for the rights of female and male workers. However, this honorable history brings with it a greater responsibility: not to content ourselves with celebrating the past, but to confront reality as it is. The Iraqi Left is currently facing a challenging situation characterized by continuous decline, increasing popular isolation, and a notable distance from younger generations. The average age of current leadership mostly ranges between sixty and seventy, which, while acknowledging their significant contributions and sacrifices, highlights the need to create space for the energies of younger generations who navigate a different reality.

In light of this reality, it is no longer sufficient to merely diagnose the crisis. If our class opponents continually rebuild themselves through analysis, experimentation, and correction, then our scattered nature and adherence to old forms diminish our chances of influence. Thus, discussing a broad and unified leftist framework becomes both a practical response to this crisis and a historical necessity.

Lessons of unity and frontal work: How did global Leftist forces reclaim their effectiveness?

In many experiences worldwide, leftist forces have shown that overcoming marginalization and decline is not achieved by clinging to old organizational forms, but rather through unity, collaboration, and building flexible frameworks capable of embracing plurality. In Portugal, the Left Bloc serves as a leading model, merging several leftist currents within a framework that respects pluralism. This approach enabled it to become a significant player in forming governments and possessing negotiating power that individual parties lacked. In Chile, the “Approve Dignity” alliance formed between the Communist Party and youth organizations led wide protests and brought Gabriel Boric to the presidency as the youngest leader in 2021. Despite setbacks in the 2025 elections, the alliance remained steadfast as an organized opposition bloc, preventing the fragmentation of the forces for change.

In Denmark, the merger of three small Marxist parties into the multi-platform Red-Green Alliance transitioned the Left from the margins to a political force that garnered 7.1% of the votes in the 2025 elections, emerging as a major municipal presence in the capital. In Colombia, the Historic Pact succeeded as a coalition that included Marxists, environmentalists, and feminists, breaking the traditional monopoly on power and bringing Gustavo Petro to the presidency in 2022 through a radical pragmatic discourse that resonated with people’s daily lives. In Germany, the unification of leftist currents from the East and West in the Die Linke party created a strong framework that represented the social and electoral Left for years, despite intellectual variations. In Spain, Podemos utilized horizontal organization and digital tools to shift the Left from protest squares to the heart of Parliament in record time, challenging traditional party structures. In Brazil, the “Front of Hope” reclaimed power in 2022 through broad alliances that transcended narrow ideological slogans, employing digital tools effectively to confront the dominance of the far-right.

What unifies these modern experiences, despite differing contexts, is the recognition that the Left can no longer operate effectively as closed individual parties; instead, it must form wide, flexible, multi-platform alliances that manage differences and link politics to immediate social demands. These lessons may not transfer directly to Iraq, but they provide a practical horizon for considering the establishment of a broad and unified Iraqi leftist framework capable of overcoming fragmentation and transforming the justice of the leftist project into an organized and effective social force.

Foundations and mechanisms of the unified Leftist framework

A roadmap can be put forward for establishing a unified Iraqi leftist framework, based on gathering all leftist and progressive forces on points of meeting and an agreed-upon minimum program, through:

  1. Holding a general conference for all factions and figures of the Iraqi and Kurdish Left, discussing the building of a unified multi-platform organizational framework, including parties, currents, unions, and syndicates, and allowing the joining of individuals from female and male activists.
  2. Formulating a unified minimum program centered on what is possible to achieve in the near term; a short, clear, and direct program focusing on the interests of female and male workers of hand and thought, and the development of basic services, social justice, and providing job opportunities. The program adopts the issues of full women’s rights, neutralizing religion from the state, and protecting freedoms. This program is formulated in a modern, understood, and practical language, away from ideological complexities.
  3. Choosing a simple name like “Bread and Freedom Alliance or Union,” away from traditional leftist naming.
  4. The framework is based on a rotational collective leadership, and on flexible organizational rules, and different and flexible forms of membership. Most importantly, the founding leftist entities must be ready to restructure their frameworks and ease traditional party centralism.
  5. Focusing on broad decentralization according to provinces and regions, so that each unit becomes capable of leading its work effectively within a unified general political line.
  6. The active use of modern sciences in leadership, management, organization, media, and digitization, and in evaluating policies periodically, with the adoption of feedback from the masses as a basic mechanism.
  7. Strengthening the role of youth in leadership through binding organizational rules, such as representation rates for youth and women in leadership bodies with real powers.
  8. Building an effective digital policy that deals with the digital space as a real arena of class struggle, including multiple media platforms, digital training programs, the use of artificial intelligence, and actual scientific measurement tools.

The decisive condition is that the unified framework be capable of working according to points of meeting and the agreed program and containing the difference positively without turning into an arena of conflicts.

Will we continue to interpret the world while our enemies continue to change It?

The pivotal question today is not about intentions but about action: Does the Left propose alternatives based on what is socially and class-wise possible and achievable within the current balances, adhering to the logic of cumulative gradual change? Or is it content with raising slogans without fostering any actual, tangible change in the lives of the masses?

In conclusion, the crisis of the Iraqi Left is not one of sincerity or history, but rather a crisis of tools and methods. Scientific advancements and digital transformations have reshaped the spaces of influence, and those who ignore them will automatically exit the equation. We need a Left that is not only new in its values but also innovative in its discourse, action, and organizational mechanisms; a Left that translates ideas into tangible changes on the ground without abandoning the essence of its socialist project.

From this perspective, the boldness required today is the courage to dismantle rigid structures and abandon narrow centralism in favor of a broad and flexible framework that accommodates everyone and reconnects organization with living reality. We face two choices and no third option: to pursue renewal and practical unity to reclaim our role as a real force for change, or to remain on our current path and risk being bypassed by the march of history. Global experiences clearly demonstrate that unity is not only possible but also feasible, even under the harshest conditions.

Additional information:

  • The Iraqi Left is composed of a group of parties and organizations, the most prominent of which are: the Iraqi Communist Party, the Kurdistan Communist Party, the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, the Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan, the Communist Alternative Organization, the Communist Left Party, in addition to other organizations.
  • All leftist and progressive lists in Iraq that participated in the elections did not obtain any seat in the Iraqi Parliament in the November 2025 elections.