Some mornings B. walks to a farm at the edge of Jordan’s northern border town of Ramtha and looks across the Yarmuk River valley into Syria. On a clear day, he can see the mosque where he preached and the remains of his house in Daraa 7 miles away.

Although the Syrian refugee could walk to his hometown in two hours, it remains, for him, as unreachable as ever – no matter the recent reconciliation between Arab states and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the resulting promises of safe returns.

“The only guarantee that we could return safely is for Assad to go,” says B., who asked that his full name not be used and is among millions of Syrians living in the Middle East and Europe who long to return home but fear they cannot. “As long as he is present, we are permanently separated from our homeland. He cannot be trusted.”

In interviews and polls, Syrian refugees say they have seen nothing that convinces them to trust Mr. Assad in the wake of the Arab League’s early May decision to reinstate Syria.

Syria’s membership had been suspended in 2011 following Mr. Assad’s brutal crackdown on dissent in the early days of Syria’s civil war, a conflict that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced. And a few refugees had dared hope that the Arab world reconciliation would be followed by concrete measures to rebuild trust.

Aziz Taher/Reuters

Clothes are hung up to dry at a Syrian refugee camp in Marjayoun, in southern Lebanon, June 17, 2023.

But so far not even the “bare minimums” that they would expect are on the table: a general amnesty, reconciliation, transparency on the fate of the missing, and guarantees of a safe return for those who fled.

Without such measures, the vast majority of Syrians in exile say returning home is impossible: Any guarantee by Mr. Assad – regarded as a serial promise-breaker who has shown no contrition for the systematic destruction, torture, and killings under his command – cannot be trusted.

For Syrians whose lives have been upended by war, seeing Mr. Assad invited to events such as COP28, to be held in early December in Dubai, is a shock.

“It is a massive disappointment for most Syrians living in or outside Syria,” France-based Syrian journalist Samir Tawil says of the diplomatic move. “It’s like the Syrian regime won against the Syrian people, against the Arab world, and against the whole world. But the biggest loser is the Syrian people.”

Present at the beginning

B. is intimately familiar with the Assad regime’s record. Daraa’s historic Al-Omari Mosque, where he preached, was a flashpoint for the first protests that erupted in the town in March 2011 over the arrest and torture of 15 teenagers who spray-painted graffiti demanding Mr. Assad’s overthrow.

Police killings of Daraa protesters would spark nationwide peaceful demonstrations – part of the regionwide Arab Spring – that eventually escalated into civil war.

In those first days, B. worked with local officials and security services to soothe tensions and reach a peaceful solution. He preached to his flock not to protest. For his troubles, he was tortured and disfigured by regime security services, losing a kidney.

“You can’t believe this regime’s promises or reason with them because they know no way other than oppression and violence. Trust me, I’ve tried,” B. says from his Ramtha apartment.

With Arab states’ embrace of Mr. Assad, B. and many Syrians believe that the dictator feels “protected and promoted,” with no incentive to take responsibility or reconcile with opponents.

“If the Assad regime had any intention to reconcile or offer a guarantee to make us feel safe to return, it could at least tell us the fate of the thousands of our relatives missing in its prisons,” he says. “At the very least tell us who is alive and who is dead so that we can begin to mourn and heal.”

Mr. Tawil, who obtained asylum in Paris in 2016, is also well-versed in the Assad regime’s trustworthiness. 

Working for Syrian state television when the revolution erupted, he witnessed his neighborhood cemetery fill with the corpses of peaceful demonstrators while the channel claimed the security forces were battling armed terrorists.

That was one reason he left the country. Helicopter attacks on his neighborhood were another.

“We left as refugees fleeing death,” he says. “There is no guarantee possible that would return us to death. As long as the Assad and intelligence service apparatus remains in place, there is no return possible.”

Photo Courtesy of Samir Tawil

Samir Tawil, a Syrian journalist now living in Paris, says diplomatic overtures to President Bashar al-Assad are “a massive disappointment for most Syrians living in or outside Syria.”

Fear of reprisals

A large majority of Syrian refugees in neighboring states rule out returning, despite facing increasingly dire economic straits. Dwindling humanitarian aid, a shift in international assistance to Ukraine, and post-COVID global inflation complicate their survival. Yet even if they wanted, many would have no home to return to, as war has reduced many areas to rubble.

Many point out that mistrust extends beyond the Assad regime. With Syrian families and neighbors divided by rival armies, militias, and proxy groups, some fear lingering violence as well as reprisal attacks from fellow Syrians seeking to settle old scores.

Shamseh Mustafa has lived in the Jordanian border town of Mafraq with her seven children and extended family since they fled their village outside Aleppo in 2012. When a United Nations funding shortfall earlier this year caused a three-month pause in their rental assistance, her family of 12 was evicted from their apartment. Now they share a rented, bare, 12-foot-by-6-foot room.

With no money for transportation, her two eldest daughters, Baraa, 18, and Israa, 16, and her 8-year-old nephew Ahmed dropped out of school this spring.

The family is in debt and struggles to pay the electricity bill. Still, a return to Ms. Mustafa’s abandoned 2-acre farm and bombed-out house in Syria “is out of the question.”

“We can’t even say the word ‘return.’ There is no safety, no economy, no trust in Syria. There is nothing to return to,” she says. “Even if a miracle from God brought peace and turned Syria into a paradise, what will cleanse the hatred that has been planted in people’s hearts?

“Can you sleep at night knowing that a relative or stranger may come and kill you to settle an old score?” she says. “Bad blood like that cannot cleanse.”

Lebanese pressure

Syrian farmer Ahmed Abu Omar moved with his wife and six children into a plastic tent in Lebanon’s Arsal camp in 2012. The summers have been hot, winters cold. Dependent on humanitarian aid, the family can only afford meat three times a year. Their diet is heavy on rice and pickled goods. The bulk of the budget is taken up by $20 per month rent for the land beneath their tent.

“If we could go back in a dignified and safe way, we would go back,” says Abu Omar, who declined to include his last name for safety reasons.

Photo Courtesy of Ahmed Abu Omar

Ahmed Abu Omar is a Syrian refugee now living in Arsal, Lebanon.

A political transition and the reconstruction of the country are necessary conditions for his return. A personal obstacle is reclaiming his partially destroyed home – the section still standing is now occupied by fellow Syrians who refuse to vacate and falsely accuse him of rebel activity.

“We were waiting impatiently for the Arab summit in Saudi Arabia,” he shares. “We thought step-by-step things will move forward, but until now, nothing has happened. There has been no release of the detainees. ... Half of Syria is displaced. There’s been no goodwill-building measures. It’s like nothing happened. It’s as if the whole thing gave Assad power.”

Most Syrians in Lebanon feel pressure to leave the country, he says. In a country still reeling with economic crisis and looking for scapegoats, the refugees are subjected to restrictions on their economic participation as well as political rants by sectarian leaders.

But the refugees are frightened of what would await them, he says, particularly the pro-regime gunmen, or shabiha. “The shabiha do whatever they want,” he says, “they are accountable to no one.”

Soheib Ahmed el-Abdu, a chef-turned-humanitarian activist, agrees. “The [pro-Assad] militias will settle scores with any members of the opposition so the situation is not safe, even if there was a political transition,” he says.

Returning, and disappearing

Concerns for the fate of returnees are shared in northern Jordan, where reports of activists going missing as soon as they cross the border have heightened insecurity among the refugees. The border town of Ramtha is awash with stories of friends, relatives, and neighbors who voluntarily returned to Syria – and were never heard from again.

Family members tell the Monitor of missing brothers and cousins who returned to Syria, showing WhatsApp conversations with returnees that abruptly stop, mobile phones disconnected.

The disappeared include one of the first Syrians who crossed back during a grand reopening of the Jordan-Syrian border in October 2018. After he was interviewed by Syrian state television and given sweets by Syrian officials who hugged him as a “lost brother,” he disappeared. He later reemerged in a regime prison where he reportedly remains today.

Unlike Jordan, Lebanon is home to many political players close to Mr. Assad and in favor of sending Syrians back, and there are recent reports that hundreds of refugees had been forcibly repatriated. In April, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued a joint statement urging the Lebanese army to stop the summary deportations.

“There are raids and Syrians are being thrown on the other side of the border,” says Mr. Abdu, the activist. “The returns are being carried out in a militia or mafia style, not through political or diplomatic channels.

“Those who were returned, no one knows what became of them,” he says. “Were they detained? Did they get beaten? Nobody knows.”

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The Supreme Court, shown on June 27, 2023, rejected 6-3 an election theory that would have upended the way federal elections are run.

The current Supreme Court has not been shy about shaking up major aspects of American life, as shown by last year’s decision striking down federal protection of a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. But on Tuesday, a majority of justices refrained from taking a big step that could have radically reshaped a core part of U.S. politics: how presidential and congressional elections are run.

By a 6-3 vote, the high court rejected a legal theory that state legislatures have almost unlimited power to decide the rules for federal elections and draw highly partisan gerrymandered congressional district maps.

Proponents of the “independent state legislature” theory have argued that a literal reading of the U.S. Constitution gives state lawmakers the final say in regulating votes for federal office, unchecked by governors, state courts, or provisions in state constitutions.

The court’s ruling on this issue in the case of Moore v. Harper may need to be placed in the larger context of recent pressures on American democracy, say some legal experts. These include continued false claims of fraud in the 2020 and 2022 elections, threats against local election officials, and the lingering effects of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“One way of reading this opinion is the court is consciously declining to open a new front in the war upon democracy at a time in which democratic ideals are coming under a considerable amount of stress,” says Aziz Huq, professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Independent state legislature theory

The dispute that became Moore v. Harper stemmed from a map of congressional districts drawn by the North Carolina legislature following the 2020 census. The state’s Supreme Court initially rejected the map as a partisan gerrymander. As drawn it seemed likely to produce a mix of 10 Republican and four Democratic members of Congress in a state where the number of voters of each party are evenly balanced.

Republicans seeking to restore the GOP-friendly map requested that the U.S. Supreme Court intervene, arguing that the state court did not have the power to act. They pointed to the exact wording of the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the time and manner of congressional elections “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” subject to alteration by Congress.

A literal reading of this text would find that state institutions other than legislatures should have no say in federal political arrangements, argued North Carolina GOP members.

Gary D. Robertson/AP/File

Reggie Weaver speaks in Raleigh, North Carolina, Feb. 15, 2022, about a partisan gerrymandering ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that North Carolina’s top court did not overstep in striking down a congressional redistricting plan as excessively partisan. The justices also rejected a theory that could have transformed elections for Congress and president by leaving state legislatures virtually unchecked.

The case attracted wide attention because several of the most conservative justices in past rulings have expressed interest in this independent state legislature theory.

But Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, rejected that argument. 

“The Elections Clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

No two-tier system

Democrats, voting rights advocates, and some legal experts praised the decision as respectful of the status quo. Many had worried that a court approval of the more extreme interpretations of the independent state legislature theory could have played havoc with election arrangements across the country, particularly in states where either party has solid legislative control.

The theory threatened the current system of unified elections, with federal, state, and local votes conducted at the same time, says Carolyn Shapiro, professor at the University of Chicago-Kent College of Law. 

Legislators on their own could have banned ballot drop-boxes, no-excuse mail-in voting, and early voting for presidential and congressional elections in their states in the face of state governor or court opposition. A governor’s veto or a court decision in turn could have maintained those things for gubernatorial, state legislative, and municipal elections.

“We would have been left with a two-tiered system that would have been very difficult to operate,” says Professor Shapiro.

With high court approval, the independent state legislature approach also might have threatened some efforts to control the political manipulation of congressional maps, such as court oversight and state redistricting commissions.

The majority opinion took pains to document evidence that state legislatures had always been subject to oversight from governors and courts, even prior to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

This history showed that the “special status of the legislature is nonsense,” said Tom Wolf, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, in a press briefing on Tuesday.

“A majority of the court has affirmed over a century of legal precedent on which [the independent state legislature] theory would have required a reversal to move forward,” said Mr. Wolf.

What happens next?

While important in legal terms, the decision in Moore v. Harper will have little practical effect in the state that brought it to the Supreme Court. The North Carolina Supreme Court, with a new majority of Republican judges, has undone its redistricting decision. So the dispute between state lawmakers and state judges at the center of the case has been resolved. 

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch would thus have dismissed the case as moot rather than rule on the merits of the independent state legislature theory.

The decision also did suggest that there are legal limits to the power of state courts to police legislative decisions on congressional and presidential votes.

State courts “do not have free rein,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority.

The courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections,” Chief Justice Roberts continued.

The majority decision makes little effort to define what “ordinary bounds” might mean. This loophole thus might lead to further litigation on the issue for future elections.

“The court does leave some potential breathing room for federal court review of a state court decision that completely goes off the rails,” says Steven Schwinn, professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.

If the Supreme Court wants another chance to define what it means, another redistricting case, this one from Ohio, is pending.

Prigozhin Press Service/AP

Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin holds a Russian flag in Bakhmut, the Ukrainian city his mercenary troops captured six weeks ago. At the weekend he led a failed mutiny against the Kremlin.

Soon after Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he made a speech to Communist Party cadres, urging them to learn from the mistakes Moscow had made that led to the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

One fatal error, he concluded, were reforms that eroded the Soviet Communist Party’s control over the Russian military and security forces.

The weekend mutiny in Russia by Wagner paramilitary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin – amid rising tensions between his mercenary force and the Russian military – is likely to see Beijing double down on this takeaway from Moscow’s travails.

 “This challenge in the form of this private military company, will probably lead Xi Jinping … to reemphasize the party’s longstanding tradition of the party commanding the gun,” says Joseph Torigian, assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University.

Unlike Russia, China does not allow private military companies, although it does permit private security firms, which have grown rapidly in number since being legalized in 2009, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.    

“One lesson I am sure they have already taken, is that any steps towards private security forces outside of the control of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] should be strictly avoided,” says Camilla T.N. Sørensen, associate professor at the Institute for Strategy and War Studies at the Royal Danish Defense College.

Sergei Karpukhin/Sputnik/AP

Chinese leader Xi Jinping (left) meets Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in March. Beijing is increasingly worried about the unpredictability of its key ally, Russia.

The dramatic, though short-lived, rebellion is only the latest development in Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine to have given Beijing cause for concern.

As in past decades, China is scrutinizing the setbacks of its northern neighbor and like-minded authoritarian regime to avoid making the same mistakes. Beijing is also calculating how to best advance China’s own interests in light of Mr. Putin’s actions, as Russia becomes the increasingly junior member of the “no-limits” partnership that Beijing and Moscow forged on the eve of the Russian invasion.

Like the invasion, the recent political turmoil in Russia apparently caught Beijing by surprise, experts say.

“That it happened so suddenly and took everybody by surprise confirms the worst fear of the CCP – that they overlook some potential mobilization of … opposition somewhere in China, only realizing it too late,” says Dr. Sørensen, an expert in Chinese security strategy.      

Beijing worried by turbulence

China’s official reaction to the Wagner revolt was muted, and mirrored Beijing’s own priority – domestic political stability. “As Russia’s friendly neighbor and comprehensive strategic partner … China supports Russia in maintaining national stability,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a press conference on Monday. 

Nevertheless, China’s tightly controlled state media did publish comments voicing serious misgivings by Chinese experts on Russia. “The mutiny by the Wagner group reveals that social, economic, and political problems have been rising since the Russia-Ukraine conflict”  began, wrote Xu Wenhong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in the state-run China Daily newspaper.

Other commentaries also warned of profound and alarming divisions inside Russia. “The conflict between mercenaries and the Russian army is only the tip of the iceberg,” wrote Yu Sui, a professor at the China Center for Contemporary World Studies.

Such tensions are growing, Chinese experts believe. “The mutiny further intensified the political contradiction within Russia,” said Feng Yujun, professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and director of the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies, in an interview published by Hong Kong’s Phoenix News. “The contradiction between the grassroots groups and the establishment has become a new turbulent factor in Russian domestic politics.”

Dmitry Serebryakov/AP

Russian matryoshka dolls show portraits of the Chinese and Russian leaders. Beijing is worried about the fallout from the mercenary mutiny that shook Moscow at the weekend.

Beijing’s concerns over what it calls the “Wagner Group incident” run deeper – especially given the Mr.  Prigozhin’s scathing criticisms of the Russian military’s failures, incompetence, and corruption. China modeled its military system on that of Russia, raising questions among Chinese military experts about how the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would perform in combat.

Some Chinese military researchers acknowledge privately that “the [Ukraine] war is a disaster for the Russian military,” says a Western diplomat in Beijing. Given that the PLA has copied Russian military doctrine, the Chinese researchers are concerned that “if Russians have trouble making decisions at the lowest level, the PLA has the same problems but on steroids, due to the political commissars” who impose Communist party discipline in PLA units, the diplomat said. “They are studying what to learn from the conflict.”

China’s military is likely closely monitoring deficiencies in Russia’s military organization, and  how its armaments are stacking up against the Western weapons in Ukraine, says Alexander Korolev, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

The PLA is “trying to learn from Russia’s mistakes in terms of responsiveness to challenges on the battlefield,” and may be reorganizing units as a result, says Dr. Korolev. Parallels between the Chinese and Russian militaries, weapons systems, and munitions have “disadvantages and advantages” he says – one benefit being that, in theory, they could more easily operate together and supply one another.

Economically, too, China’s planners are learning from the Russian experience to prepare to buttress the country against any future Western sanctions. They are striking better deals on Russian energy exports, while trying to avoid Europe’s mistake of becoming overly dependent on Russia’s oil and gas.        

Russian risk-taking

As questions linger about the implications of the recent turmoil for Mr. Putin and his leadership, Beijing is actively assessing how the mutiny's aftermath could impact China, given its growing interdependence with Russia.

Chinese military and security researchers voice “a lot of frustration, that Russian risk-taking behavior is hurting China and they have to adjust all the time,” says Dr. Sorenson. “The Chinese are saying the Russians are too unpredictable and unreliable.”

Yet while Beijing is troubled by what it views as rash actions by Moscow, it considers the partnership vital for its competition with the United States and its allies.

“China needs the Russian strategic partnership because of their long-term skepticism of Western intentions,” says Dr. Torigian. “While they’ll be worried about Russian collapse, or what they might need to do to support the Russians, I think losing Russia is … still a much larger challenge for them.”

Bathed in Thailand’s winter sun, a dollhouse-sized structure carved from bamboo sits in a forest clearing. In front of it, an older man bows his head in silent prayer to the spirit of the little house.  

For Tayae Yodchatmingboon, the land around this spot is home.

A leader of nearby Ban Sop Lan village, he has lived in the fog-shrouded mountains all his life on land that is part of Ob Khan National Forest, about two and a half hours' drive from the northern city of Chiang Mai. For more than 50 years, Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation has been working on plans to designate this area as a national park, which could mean stricter rules on how the land – and the village – is used.

“If we are not able to farm and to live off the land, our way of life will not be protected,” Mr. Yodchatmingboon says. “The spirit of the community will disappear. Our happiness will disappear.”

The villagers belong to the Karen ethnic group from Thailand and Myanmar, and have lived on this land for many generations. The government wants to expand nearby Ob Khan National Park to ensure the preservation of natural resources and the environment, while the village is fighting to preserve its livelihood and culture. Behind the debate over the park's expansion lies a deeper question about who should be trusted with the land's welfare.

"The government said they have to occupy the land and the current National Park, because if you let the Indigenous people manage their own land, they will destroy the soil or the forest,” says Indigenous rights activist Patchara Kumchumnam, “but in fact the people have lived there for hundreds of years and the national resources are still beautiful."

Luke Snow

A scenic view of the rolling mountains surrounding the village of Ban Sop Lan. The distant hills surround Chiang Mai, Thailand's second-largest city.

A controversial farming practice

Expanding the park’s jurisdiction would force the villagers to reduce their reliance on a traditional farming practice sometimes called rotational farming or slash-and-burn farming.

Rotational farming involves cycling each year among different plots of farmland, leaving five to seven years for old plots to regenerate before they are used again. The practice is often misunderstood by outsiders to mean that farmers are constantly clearing out new forest land for agriculture.

Indigenous farmers like those in Ban Sop Lan village have long used rotational farming practices, and although they do burn the bush and weeds growing on the plot whose turn it is to be cultivated, the ashes are later used as fertilizer, Mr. Yodchatmingboon explains. Villagers and volunteers from neighboring Indigenous communities also make firebreaks each summer to contain forest fires to the designated plot.

Still, critics say the practice contributes to air pollution in Chiang Mai, which is known to have some of the worst air quality in the world during the annual winter burning season. The Department of National Parks declined repeated requests to discuss its plan to expand the park – or what would happen to the villagers if those plans succeed – but the parks department has included slash-and-burn farming practices as evidence of the need for stricter preservation in similar cases. 

Environmentalists are indeed concerned that cutting down and burning oxygen-replenishing trees contributes to Chiang Mai’s air quality crisis. 

Steve Elliott, a biology professor at Chiang Mai University, has lived in the city for decades and has seen air pollution steadily worsen over the past 15 years as smoke from the region’s annual fires – including in neighboring Myanmar and Laos – gets trapped by the surrounding mountains. And risks aren’t limited to air quality, according to Mr. Elliott.

“We are literally sucking the nutrients out of the soil with the weeds and then burning the weeds and letting those nutrients float away to heaven knows where,” he says. “It's an extremely ecologically unfriendly way to manage soil nutrients.”

Luke Snow

Tayae Yodchatmingboon and Patchara Kumchumnam inspect a plot of rotational rice paddy, currently not in use due to seasonal planting.

Difficult dialogues

Nuthamon Kongcharoen, professor of law at Chiang Mai University, describes “feelings of hardship between the government and the ethnic minorities that live in the conservation area," saying that there needs to be more public dialogue about land management overall. "This [trust debate] is ongoing,” Dr. Kongcharoen adds.

Members of the National Human Rights Commission met villagers and National Park officials in January, after village leaders filed a complaint against the Parks department charging that officials mishandled a 2022 land survey meant to gauge public opinion on the park’s expansion. The commission says it is investigating whether the government violated the villagers’ rights, including by withholding information from the communities ahead of the survey.

At least one member of the commission is sympathetic to the villagers.

“The special thing about the village is that the community network is very strong,” says commissioner Preeda Khongpaen. “They have been here since before the national park and have made use of the forest and rely on it to live.”

Mr. Kumchumnam, an Indigenous rights advocate, says that one sticking point is that park officials struggle to understand why the local Karen community wants so much land when the villagers actively use only a small part of it for farming and homes. Yet many areas of the forest hold spiritual significance.

There’s a children's cemetery, for instance, that very few can  enter, and certain trees that are considered connected to human spirits and cannot be cut down. Under the parks department’s governance, villagers worry they would lose the comfort and privacy of these spaces, as well as the freedom to manage spiritual sites as they see fit. 

Indigenous approach

Another challenge, according to Mr. Kumchumnam, is that the government refuses to acknowledge the existence of Indigenous people in Thailand, in order to sidestep the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which the Thai government has signed. Indeed, no current legislation uses the term “Indigenous,” often referring to these communities as “ethnic groups.”

Luke Snow

Village members gather to discuss the future of their land and hear community leaders present their plans to officials seeking to limit their land use in an extended national park.

Like many Indigenous communities worldwide, the Ban Sop Lan villagers believe this land cannot be owned, and instead seek to care for and protect the forest in return for using it. Many residents are also worried about opportunities for the village’s young people, who often move to cities to find work. Banning their agricultural traditions could further limit economic opportunity in the village, community leaders say. 

Wuarni Galan, Mr. Yodchatmingboon’s granddaughter, the first in the village to attend university, has returned to teach English, and now lives with her mother and three siblings. When she visits friends in Chiang Mai, she is reminded how necessary it is to preserve this forest.

“The land is very important to both our community and the city,” she says. “I was born here and have lived here, and I’d be sad without the land.”

This story was produced with support from the Round Earth Media program of the International Women’s Media Foundation. Anna Lawattanatrakul contributed reporting.

The scene and its exuberant vibe are unforgettable: A heaving sea of festivalgoers – sunburnt, tightly packed, and happy beyond measure – roar the words to the song “Rocket Man” with Elton John at the piano, as fireworks blast off from the Pyramid stage to cap a live-set finale.

Forgotten now are all the challenges of physically getting to this moment of communal joy at the Glastonbury music festival: the 150,000 public tickets that sold out months in advance, in just 11 minutes; the precision preparation for five days of tent camping, cooking, and keeping hydrated during a heatwave, after hauling everything by hand from distant car parks; and the sheer exhaustion from navigating a never-ending smorgasbord spectacle of music and culture that plays out across more than 100 stages.

I am in the crowd, hoping to find room to breathe, with my 2-year-old son in a backpack strung with fairy lights, and with my wife – who is six months pregnant – dancing with arms raised. Beside us, also reveling in the rapture of music, is my son Finn – at 21, a university student and serious DJ-in-the-making.

Sequined Elton John costumes abound, along with faux-diamond-encrusted square glasses.

“There is nowhere else on this Earth where I want to be!” one woman shouts toward me, clearly echoing the sentiments of many who made it this far. We try to keep our footing on the trampled, browned pasture grass among a growing pile of empty cans and ketchup-stained trays with a few rejected fries.

“Glasto” – formally the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts – is controlled chaos, on an overwhelming scale; the place where survivalism meets rock’n’roll. For the festival, which ended Sunday, we fitted our son with a wristband printed with our phone numbers and the words: “If lost, please call ...”

Scott Peterson/The Christian Science Monitor

Heavily laden festivalgoers make the long trek back to distant car parks with tents and other camping gear at the end of the five-day Glastonbury music festival in Pilton, in southwest England.

Most years for more than half a century, this farmland in rural southwest England is converted into a thriving city licensed to employ 63,000 workers and volunteers – for a grand total of 210,000 individuals on site – that caters to every musical taste, has a decidedly green, sustainable outlook, and a left-leaning and inclusive political bent.

Organizers take seriously the event motto: “Respect one another. Always,” and calculate that their ban on selling single-use plastic bottles has so far saved 2 million bottles from waste.

Glastonbury is also officially “family friendly,” so we prepared weeks in advance as if for a military operation, to improve our chances of getting through it with 1 1/2 children. Our packing list included a four-person “blackout” tent, which is designed for festivals and provides a dark and cool sleeping space, even when the sun rises at 4:45 a.m. and turns most tents into ovens.

We brought the most comfortable self-inflating mattress we could find, lightweight fold-up chairs, a large water bladder, camp stoves and a cook kit to make coffee and food, rubber boots in case of rain (historically justified, it’s England), a solar panel to charge cell phones (first purchased for the 2003 invasion of Iraq), and a battery-powered fan to keep the heat wave at bay.

There are virtually no showers (bless those packs of wilderness wipes). And outdoor facilities are rudimentary: 1,300 compost loos and 700 yards of urinals, along with 2,000 “long-drop” toilets – bring your own paper, please – deployed in roofless clusters. Forbidden are knives, and glass of any kind, even perfume bottles.

Scott Peterson/The Christian Science Monitor

The Boy – in a tie-dyed T-shirt and sun hat – plays along in a drumming and percussion session at Kidzfield, at the family-friendly Glastonbury music festival, in Pilton, England.

The Boy, who added the phrase “a lot of people” to his vocabulary, shook off his harlequin-colored ear defenders at one venue after another, despite powerful, body-grabbing sound systems guaranteed to leave ears ringing for hours.

We used a small foldable buggy during the day. But the baby backpack was critical at night to minimize the tripping hazard to others, as we navigated shuffling rivers of humanity moving in all directions between stages.

But we found that Glastonbury had prepared as meticulously as we had – even for families determined to share this unique experience with their young children. The family camping area included a 24-hour baby R&R, for example, which provided calm space, bath tubs to keep tots clean, and even a bottle warming and sterilizing service.

Children can lose themselves in the vast Kidzfield, which included hands-on magic performances, juggling, samba drumming, climbing and bouncy castles, puppeteering and crafts, and of course, face painting and glitter.

And what treasures await the survivors of Glastonbury? Aside from headline acts like Guns N’ Roses, the Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters, The Chicks, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, Lizzo, and Blondie, we enjoyed a host of other performances, including Max Richter, the Bristol Reggae Orchestra joined by the Windrush Choir, The Hives, Fred Again, and the Star Feminine Band – an all-women group from the small West African nation of Benin, who danced and sang with an infectious beat.

After midnight, every night, older son Finn explores a whole other side of the Glasto scene, where the music and dancing never stops at more intimate clubs and stages.

Scott Peterson/The Christian Science Monitor

A 25-foot octopus arm floats near the Croissant Neuf tented stage, beside the Green Futures and Craft Field at Glastonbury, which projects messages of sustainable living, green energy, and the value of recycling.

Besides music, the event also includes a multitude of other features such as theater, the circus, and politics. At the Left Field stage – which encourages festivalgoers with its panel discussion and gig lineup to “reenergize your activism” – we listened to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was detained in Iran for six years, until March 2022.

“Be their voice, share their story,” said Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe of political detainees still held in Iran, and around the world, to an overflow crowd that gave her a 40-second standing ovation. She described how her spirits were lifted in 2019, when a photo was smuggled into prison of a Free Nazanin banner at Glastonbury.

There were Greenpeace and “Healing” fields, and a Greencrafts Village where workshops – covering everything from bushcraft to bicycle repairs, printmaking to pottery, and even soil and earth practices – focus on sustainable living and green energy.

The Boy loved the ice cream, as he sat under a roof of solar panels and watched a 25-foot-long inflatable octopus arm, complete with tentacles, wave in the breeze.

Doing such a festival with an infant means pacing the entire family. Where else could one find oneself scrubbing dishes in the afternoon, while The Boy and his mother took a nap, with the background sound of a live set from the band Texas, wending its way up to our camp from the Pyramid stage?

But The Boy’s presence also led to unexpected happenings. He is drawn by the scooter used by Drew Hallam, for instance, a former guitarist with a tattoo of an octopus and a smear of glitter on his cheek, who is one of the youngest in the U.K. to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

Scott Peterson/The Christian Science Monitor

Vintage and painted cars are stacked at Carhenge, an installation that plays the 1970s hit song “Car Wash” at the Glastonbury music festival.

Scott Peterson/The Christian Science Monitor

Entertainers in costume walk through Glastonbury's Kidzfield, which features such activities as hands-on magic performances, juggling, climbing, and bouncy castles.

“Normally out on the street, I get laughed at every other day,” says Mr. Hallam, as The Boy climbs onto the parked scooter and plays with the Glastonbury veteran’s two kids.

“I am so impressed with how inclusive Glastonbury is,” he says. “It is like nowhere else.”

Amid wall-to-wall tents, we identify ours by two flags that have been hoisted nearby, one of Ukraine, and one with multicolored stripes and a peace sign – which is perhaps appropriate, considering my day job for the Monitor as a conflict reporter who now frequents Ukraine.

We keep The Boy up late, to marvel at “Carhenge,” an installation of 24 wrecked and painted vintage cars, set up standing on their ends, and featuring a soundtrack that plays the 1970s hit “Car Wash.”

He also appreciates the 50-foot-high metal Arcadia “Spider” that belches flames (this year, proudly run on bio-fuel) amid a laser light show, with a DJ inside the arachnid’s belly, high off the ground.

Glastonbury projects the message that “Music is Love!” And in five days, it is impossible to absorb it all.

But as attendees with children, we can attest to the uplifting power that comes from sharing so much, with so many other revelers, who for a time surely turned this place into one of happiest on Earth.

Reuters

A combination picture shows Sandra Torres, the presidential candidate for the National Unity of Hope party, and Bernardo Arevalo, the candidate for the Semilla party. The two were the top vote-getters in the first election round held June 25.

While setbacks have been common in Guatemala's pursuit of a healthy democracy, progress keeps showing up. On Sunday, the country held a multicandidate presidential election that resulted in a surprise showing for a dark horse reformer. He now heads into an Aug. 20 runoff against the highest vote-getter – a candidate favored by the political elite.

Bernardo Arévalo, the son of a revered former president and who pledges to renew anti-corruption efforts, will go up against a former first lady, Sandra Torres, who faces corruption accusations and was expected to win the election in the first round.

The stark choice for voters speaks to the enduring hope that Guatemalan voters can shape their democracy and economy. That journey has been a long one for Guatemala. In 2006, still emerging from a 36-year civil war, the government established an anti-corruption commission with help from the United Nations. The investigative body ran up an impressive tally over the succeeding 12 years: 120 cases implicating more than 1,500 people, including charges against some 200 retired and serving government officials. That work fostered deep public trust in the judiciary.

It also rattled the political, economic, and military elite. In 2019, the government refused to renew the commission’s mandate. Since then, scores of Guatemalan judges, prosecutors, and journalists have been jailed or driven into exile for pursuing corrupt officials and their patrons. In the run-up to Sunday’s election, the government disqualified the three top opposition candidates.

That deepened pessimism among critics, but it also had a galvanizing effect within civil society – encouraging, for example, more Indigenous women to seek local office. On election day, though, frustration with the election system still ran high. More than 1 million voters marred their ballots to express their discontent – more than the number who voted for any single candidate.

“Voting patterns are changing in important ways, especially among younger voters,” Claudia Méndez, an investigative reporter at Con Criterio, told Americas Quarterly. “They want disruption – but within the system – and to reject traditional politics.”

From Guatemala’s roots, new causes for confidence are emerging.