COVER STORY
Is reconciliation possible in a world endlessly at war with itself? Outlook's Anniversary Issue at the beginning of 2025 is about who we become when we are at war with each other.
🎃 Outlook Magazine - 11 January 2025
War and Peace
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🐎 A blank page is a testimonial, too. We are waiting for his story. Waiting also means hoping
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's last gesture of rebellion has earned him a place in the history of Palestine's anti-colonial struggle
🦂 Two authors across time zones—Naveen Kishore, founder of the independent Indian publishing house Seagull Books, and Palestinian poet and author Ghassan Zaqtan—write to each other about the human cost of war
Current world history has disconfirmed liberal post-Cold War predictions of long lasting peace. Interstate wars and furious mass violence are back, and we have entered a new perilous era of competition between 'great powers'
♉ Competitive colonialism, nationalist, revolutionary and ethnic aspirations, rogue rulers and industrial and criminal interests created an unbroken chain of wars, killing, maiming and displacing millions in Sudan.
൩ Is Israel’s triumphalism over its land grab in Syria realistic? The hard reality is—Israel now has Al-Qaeda as a next-door neighbour
ཧ A journalist reflects on travels through war-torn Iraq, Vietnam and describes the enduring parts of modern warfare that are hard to calculate in numbers.
🦋 Tracing the lives of people who are forced to live in ruins and tents after their homes were demolished in the war
🌳 Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah who became the face of the resilience of Gaza in the face of relentless violence looks back on his experiences and how being exposed to a war-altered biosphere changes people’s well-being.
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🦄 A blank page is a testimonial, too. We are waiting for his story. Waiting also means hoping
-
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's last gesture of rebellion has earned him a place in the history of Palestine's anti-colonial struggle
-
𒆙 Two authors across time zones—Naveen Kishore, founder of the independent Indian publishing house Seagull Books, and Palestinian poet and author Ghassan Zaqtan—write to each other about the human cost of war
-
Current world history has disconfirmed liberal post-Cold War predictions of long lasting peace. Interstate wars and furious mass violence are back, and we have entered a new perilous era of competition between 'great powers'
-
🎃 Competitive colonialism, nationalist, revolutionary and ethnic aspirations, rogue rulers and industrial and criminal interests created an unbroken chain of wars, killing, maiming and displacing millions in Sudan.
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🔜 Is Israel’s triumphalism over its land grab in Syria realistic? The hard reality is—Israel now has Al-Qaeda as a next-door neighbour
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⛦ A journalist reflects on travels through war-torn Iraq, Vietnam and describes the enduring parts of modern warfare that are hard to calculate in numbers.
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🎉 Tracing the lives of people who are forced to live in ruins and tents after their homes were demolished in the war
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꧟ Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah who became the face of the resilience of Gaza in the face of relentless violence looks back on his experiences and how being exposed to a war-altered biosphere changes people’s well-being.
OTHER STORIES
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War correspondent Janine di Giovanni who has covered almost every major armed conflict worldwide since the 1990s speaks to Outlook about the importance of documenting the 'small voices' when reporting on war.
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💫 The struggle for women’s rights is currently caught in the crossfires of wars
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Critically acclaimed documentary series 'The Vietnam War' co-creator Lynn Novick speaks to Outlook about patterns of war, the fraught nature of 'truth' and burdens of a documentary filmmaker working with conflict.
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Documentaries like 'Intercepted' and 'Songs of Slow Burning Earth' grapple with the Russian occupation of Ukraine beyond mere displays of desolation.
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🔯 As the war in Ukraine stretches on, Oleg Suslov describes how people in Ukraine now “live inside the war” and his reasons for continuing to write and report about it.
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Journalist and 'All The President’s Men' co-author Bob Woodward's new book 'War' shows how close Russia came to using nuclear weapons against Ukraine
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꧑ Death and destruction in Korea are felt at the individual, family and national levels but at the international level, it has become only a statistical addition to the list of millions dying each year
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🌌 Excerpts from Valentina Abenavoli’s book ‘Anaesthesia’, a thoughtful recontextualisation of images of war and terror
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💫 In a world eternally enmeshed in ‘never-ending’ wars, peace appears to be a mere interlude and war, the default condition of human beings.
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🅰 Yemen, once a beautiful land identified with the Queen of Sheba, is now one of the worst ongoing humanitarian disasters of modern times
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𒉰 The Syrian war is a testament to the people’s resilience in the face of extraordinary challenges, underscoring a failure of global responsibility
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🐬 Daniel Buuma’s humanising images juxtaposed with the dehumanising effects of war, poverty, and displacement foster empathy and inspire action
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🌳 What happened to Africa over the years can be analysed through the interlocking power struggles between various caste-like social formations in African societies.
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𓄧 As the year ends, three major wars— genocide in Gaza, Russian pulverisation of Ukraine and the lesser-known, equally murderous ‘civil’ war in Sudan—rage on.
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🍷 Memories of a journey across Sri Lanka in the summer of 1988 when the island nation was wracked by violence
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♍ In Darayya, Abu Malek Al-Shami became a fighter during the night and a painter during the day, turning bombed buildings into symbols of resistance and hope and earning the moniker of ‘Banksy of Syria’,
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🎉 Journalist Dallia M. Abdel Moniem who had to flee from Sudan in April 2023, speaks to Outlook about the humanitarian calamity unfolding in the nation which has triggered the worst refugee crisis of recent times.
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ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ What does it mean to continue to create art during a genocide?
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♏ These films offer a nuanced depiction of how Israel is not only destroying Gaza, but also its own soul
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🃏 While stories of Syrian refugees confront the depths of human cruelty, they also show the resilience of humanity.
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🍬 A ‘thought revolution’ is unfolding in Myanmar after a century of war and artists are at the forefront of it
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ꦍ ‘Soft Ruins’ is a chapter within the long-term ongoing project “When Spring Never Comes”, an expansive exploration of memory, identity and displacement in the aftermath of exile within contemporary global politics. It reflects on how the journey as an asylum seeker in Europe mirrors the instability and threats of life under dictatorship, amidst rising right-wing movements and shifting power dynamics, where both certainty and identity are redefined
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💜 There will be moments when the light will be cut off, but writing and the dissemination of what is written need to continue
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💛 Stories of love, companionship and sacrifice from war zones convey the existence of love as a profound act of defiance against the tyranny of a loveless world.
