Warming Asian Glaciers: Regional Strategy For Riskscape – Analysis

 July 11, 2024 

By Sanjay Srivastava, Soomi Hong, Shashwat Avi, Naina Tanwar and Akshaya Kumar

Scientific assessments reveal that the Third Pole (TP), encompassing the vast glaciated mountain systems of Asia, is warming at an alarming rate of over 0.3 ºC per decade, surpassing the global average. The TP hosts the largest ice mass outside the polar region, spanning the Tibetan plateau and surrounding ranges: Pamir-Hindu Kush, Hengduan, Tienshan, Qilian, and the Himalayas.

Rapid changes in the cryosphere and melting of glaciers significantly impact high-mountain ecosystems and downstream regions. As the water tower of Asia, the TP is vital for socio-economic stability through its freshwater resources. Warming has caused considerable variations in lakes, inland water bodies and the runoff into the river basins. Additionally, glacial disasters such as ice collapse and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) have become more frequent and dangerous in recent years.

Emerging Third Pole risk hotspots  

While the risks emanating from warming are quite diverse in the different geographies of the TP, glacier melting has been intensifying, with more intensive melting along the Himalayas resulting in emergence of multi-hazard risk hotspots. Recent research reveals that the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) glaciers disappeared 65 per cent faster in 2011–2020 compared with the previous decade.  

Future scenarios project that glaciers in the HKH could lose up to 80 per cent of their current volume by the end of the century, with snow cover projected to fall by up to a quarter under high emissions scenarios. This may drastically reduce freshwater for major Asian rivers including the Yangtze, Indus, Ganges, Amu Darya and Helmand. The decreasing extent of frozen ground (permafrost) will lead to more landslides and problems for infrastructure at high elevation. 

The changes observed in Asian high mountain cryosphere to date signal grave consequences for human life and nature. A recent example is a cloudburst over Lhonak Lake in North Sikkim, which triggered a devastating GLOF in the Teesta river basin. This event resulted in loss of life, the destruction of the 1,200 MW Urja Hydroelectric Chungthang dam and extensive downstream damage, illustrating how disaster risks can compound and cascade in the fragile mountainous context of the Himalayas.

GLOFs pose a threat to mountainous communities across Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan; from the Himalayas to the Caucasus, Pamir, Hindu Kush-Karakoram and Tien Shan Mountain ranges. While manifestations of warming Asian glaciers are already visible, they are going to have devastating consequences for water and food security, energy sources, ecosystems, and the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions across Asia, many of which will be beyond the limits of adaptation.

Science led TP regional co-operation mechanisms for weather and climate services  

Given the transboundary nature of climate threats confronting the Asian glaciers, a stronger regional collaboration and knowledge exchange is required to understand the changing riskscape and develop risk reduction capabilities of the countries in diverse geographies of the TP. The WMO’s Regional Climate Outlook Forums and Regional Climate Centres anchor unique regional and subregional co-operation architecture. Following this modality, the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services of the TP region have establish the Third Pole Regional Climate Centre Network (TPRCC-Network) to facilitate collaboration. To capture the specificities of riskscape across TP geographies, the TPRCC-Network comprises three geographical nodes, with thematic responsibilities for mandatory functions for the entire region. While China leads the northern and eastern nodes, India and Pakistan are leading southern and western nodes of the TP. The Beijing Climate Centre provides overall co-ordination. ESCAP along with ICIMOD, TPE, GCW, GEWEX and MRI are contributing partners of the TPRCC-Network.  

In early June, the TPRCC-Network issued its first ever seasonal outlook for the summer season June to September 2024 for a high mountain TP region. It highlights that surface air temperatures are likely to be above normal over most parts of the TP region, especially over the Karakoram. The southwestern and northwestern parts are likely to experience normal to above normal surface air temperatures. Precipitation is likely to be near or above the climatological normal over most parts of the TP region, however, it is likely to be below normal in the western and southeastern parts of the TP region.  

Impact forecasting with teleconnection approach in the TP  

Weather forecasting relies on the interconnectedness of atmospheric and ocean conditions all the way across the globe, enabling predictions weeks to months in advance. Teleconnections denote significant links between weather phenomena across distant locations, often involving climate patterns spanning thousands of miles. The TP is characterized by hazards of glaciers with their potential exposure, vulnerability and impacts zones which are thousands of kilometers aways across the different nodes. The impact assessment needs to be based on understanding the teleconnections of glaciers and their potential impact zones. With the understanding of these unique teleconnections in the TP, ESCAP is making efforts to translate the seasonal outlook in terms of impact scenarios highlighting potentially at-risk communities, sectors and systems of the TP region. ESCAP has developed automation impact-based forecasting tool to help guide risk informed decision making and fill knowledge gaps.   

Source of Diagram: ESCAP

Support to adaptation at altitude  

Several initiatives aim to accelerate adaptation actions in the mountains, including the multi-country initiative such as the Adaptation at Altitude. These initiatives enhance resilience and adaptive capacity by improving and transferring knowledge through science–policy platforms, informing decision-making in national, regional and global policy processes.  Adaptation and resilience in the Third Pole context hinge on understanding glacier dynamics and their impact on water and ecosystems. The TRCC-Network is an important initiative to support adaptation at altitude.

About the authors: 

• Sanjay Srivastava, Chief, Disaster Risk Reduction Section, ESCAP 
• Soomi Hong, Associate Economic Affairs Officer, Disaster Risk Reduction Section, ESCAP
• Shashwat Avi, Consultant, Disaster Risk Reduction Section, ESCAP
• Naina Tanwar, Consultant, Disaster Risk Reduction Section, ESCAP 
• Akshaya Kumar, Intern, Disaster Risk Reduction Section, ESCAP

Haj and climate attributions

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh 

Published July 4, 2024 

DAWN

CLIMATE change has begun to infringe on the freedom of believers to perform Haj freely and fearlessly. The world was shocked to learn that almost 1,500 individuals died of the heat during the pilgrimage. Heatwaves everywhere in the world, as in Pakistan, have become mercilessly hotter, frequent, and longer. The developments in attributive sciences are able to clearly assign the share of climatic changes to increased temperatures and precipitation. This emerging field of inquiry has begun to guide climate adaptation, risk management, commodity price hedging, insurance, and the landscape of international climate finance.

Detection and attribution of climate change has emerged as an active area of research that uses various methods to link observed changes in climate caused by human activities. This helps determine whether human influence can be distinguished from natural weather cycles, processes and variabilities. Causation, also known as detection and attribution studies, is used to attribute trends, extreme events, impacts, and sensitivity to human-caused climate change. Several attribution techniques are applied for increasingly reliable, timely, and actionable information for climate adaptation and risk management efforts.

Almost 50 studies over the last 10 years or so by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), ClimaMeter and several others have conducted studies to ascertain whether or not climate change is altering the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (EWEs), helping to determine how climatic changes affect specific trends. These studies can now be undertaken on an almost real-time basis.

Attributional science is now able to provide quantitative assessments of how climate change has affected the odds of similarly extreme weather occurring in the future. Quantifying can now provide scientific evidence on how the likelihood and intensity of specific EWEs has increased. WWA has, for example, found that heatwaves have become 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than in pre-industrial times. Likewise, a study found that the 2022 heatwave in India and Pakistan was 30 times more likely due to climate change. A recent rapid assessment by ClimaMeter on the heatwave during Haj found that, without the influence of human-caused climate change, temperatures would have been 2.5°C cooler. ClimaMeter and WWAs regularly conduct rapid assessments of the role of climate change in particular EWEs.


Detection and attribution of climate change has emerged as an active area of research.

There are, however, also significant challenges and limitations. An integrated, nuanced approach is required to effectively leverage this emerging field of climate science. A careful consideration of the limitations is needed when applying attribution findings to predict and manage future climate-related risks and damage. The goal of such studies is to provide the best available science-based information to support risk management and climate adaptation. Researchers acknowledge the limitations and uncertainties in their analyses, recognising that ‘we don’t know’ or ‘no significant trend’ are valid findings, as many of the 50 studies by WWA concluded.

Some studies have used ‘source attribution’ to link climate damage to specific emitters, such as fossil fuel companies. This could potentially support liability claims and policies to hold emitters accountable. A Dutch court, for example, has recently ordered Shell to reduce emissions based on this type of attribution. As the world’s second largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia owns Aramco, which is one of the largest corporate emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. According to a report, it is reportedly responsible for more than four per cent of the world’s historical carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, the heat during this year’s Haj is directly linked to global fossil fuel burning and has affected the most vulnerable pilgrims, posing an ethical dilemma for the kingdom that is considered the home and custodian of Islam and its universal values.

Extreme event attribution can potentially be used to inform discussions around loss and damage. Attribution science can inform international policy discussions on L&D mechanisms. While researchers use rigorous methods, some uncertainty remains in precisely quantifying specific EWEs. This could limit the direct application for compensation. There are also concerns that attribution findings could be misrepresented or used for political purposes of assigning blame or liability, rather than informing constructive solutions. L&D encompasses a wide range of slow-onset changes and non-economic losses that are not always fully captured by extreme event attribution. It is argued that the slow-onset needs criteria-based approach using averages and trends, rather than relying solely on detailed singular event studies for L&D policy and finance mechanisms.

Further, uneven data quality and research infrastructure in developing countries poses challenges for applying attribution science to the L&D agenda. Attribution has played a central role in global climate negotiations since the early 1990s, but attribution science has begun to play an important role only in recent years. It is used in financing adaptation and litigation, and will underpin L&D funds. These efforts can influence the global conversation around climate justice and help integrate findings in new approaches to L&D policies and financial mechanisms. For L&D-related financing mechanisms, the methodological refinement will probably provide rapid attribution assessments, and enable a more immediate response and support in the aftermath of extreme events.

Extreme weather events are already having significant economic consequences. They damage property, critical infrastructure, impact human health and productivity, and negatively affect key economic sectors like agriculture, trade, industry, and urban planning. Indirect costs from supply chain disruptions and uncertainty are also substantial. Businesses face growing risks from damage to their facilities, supply chain disruptions and resource scarcity.

These economic impacts do not even account for non-economic losses such as biodiversity loss, or loss of cultural or religious heritage and practices. The floods in Pakistan have caused significant damage to mosques and other religious sites. The Post-Disaster Needs Assessment reported that religious sites in active use, including mosques, shrines, and dargahs were “extensively damaged” by the 2022 floods and that the “deterioration and damage to the sites will negatively affect visitor numbers”. In a similar vein, Haj is a central pillar of Islam and the pilgrimage should not become risky for our elderly parents, women and young children. ClimaMeter study should be a wake-up call, and not a harbinger of what’s to come.

The writer is an Islamabad-based climate change and sustainable development expert.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2024

Hot and dangerous

Aisha Khan 

Published July 3, 2024

DAWN

THE rise in mercury has a human cost. With each decade getting warmer since 1980, the risk of breaching critical tipping points is getting alarmingly closer. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports have repeatedly reiterated the perils of crossing the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold and issued advisories for urgent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to keep the planet safe. However thus far 1.5ºC has just been used as reference number to make strong political statements with very little to show for any measurable reduction in emissions at scale.

The heat this year is just a preview of what is likely to follow. Extreme events in past years and the health pandemic (Covid-19) are tangible proofs of the enormity of the crisis and its lingering effect on the economy. Other factors like biodiversity loss and climate-induced conflicts may not as yet be visibly relatable to people but are insidiously disrupting the social fabric of society.

Under the current patterns of emissions, it seems more than likely that the world is headed for 2.5 to 2.9ºC temperature increase from pre-industrial levels this century. The beginning of summer in four continents in the northern hemisphere has already scorched cities leaving millions to swelter as temperatures soar to new highs.

For vulnerable countries like Pakistan, this means high-risk scenarios and need for urgent adaptive action. The hidden cost of past emissions trapped in the atmosphere will add to the unfolding crisis. Even if global emissions peak before 2025, their long-term lingering impacts will continue to destabilise the climate, making it extremely difficult to cope with known threats and unknown risks. Fragility and crises will be the new norm as Earth heats up to challenge human actions and its impact on life systems.


The heat this year is just a preview of what is likely to follow.

In South Asia, the rising mercury is also a cryospheric crisis. The water towers that are a source of life to people from Bhutan to Afghanistan are under threat from the scorching heat. According to a report by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, snow levels are a fifth below normal in the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalaya (HKH) region. This can result in excessive flooding initially and end with drought and desertification. Given its geography, the effect of deadly and repeated heatwaves will hit the region in multiple ways from the mountains to the coastline. As extreme heat also traps more moisture in the air, the monsoons this year are predicted to be 33 per cent more intense, amplifying the problem.

The world is on a collision trajectory with nature and time is running out for course correction. The good news is that everyone knows what needs to be done and there is still time to reset the future.

Meanwhile, the rise in atmospheric temperature will also result in a concomitant increase in heated debates over climate justice and moral mandate. Heat stress is not limited to physical effects, nor is it only about a food, water and energy crisis. It has a psychological dimension that manifests itself in behavioural change and altered response mechanism. This chain reaction is often overlooked in planning. Historically, prolonged deprivations, inequality and injustices have resulted in social upheavals and system change. A heat-induced, drought-driven response to thirst, hunger and lack of basic amenities is likely to be even more cataclysmic.

The quantitative difference in resources between the Global North and the Global South and the qualitative difference in absorptive capacities of both will set the stage for conflict and pitched battles if two issues are not addressed quickly. The first underpins the need to address climate justice and the second calls for expediting reform in climate finance. There can be no more delays or debates on these two issues if the global community is serious about keeping its climate promise. Mitigation remains the number one responsibility of high-emitting countries to save the planet and reduce hardships for the already struggling millions around the world.

The scorching heat has an added dimension of peril for Pakistan. The country adds five million people to its population each year. Under this scenario the gap between supply and demand is going to increase beyond the state’s ability to provide food, water and energy to 380m people by 2040. The spectre of shrinking resources and a burgeoning discontented youth population is something that needs to be factored into climate and human security planning.

A hot temper is a dangerous thing to deal with at a wider community scale. It is time to cool down the planet and for responsible countries to reduce emissions rapidly.

The writer is chief executive of the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change.
aisha@csccc.org.pk

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2024

Heat the rich

Rimmel Mohydin 

Published July 6, 2024

DAWN

THE last time Karachi’s mortuaries ran out of space was in 2015, and frighteningly enough, for the same reason. Nine years ago, a merciless heatwave swept Karachi’s most vulnerable, and left behind over 2,000 corpses overwhelming the city’s morgues. Today, the same charities that run these morgues are making eerily similar statements as they did then. There is no more space for the dead, in a world that did nothing for them when they were still alive.

And now, the streets of Pakistan’s largest city are turning up dead bodies every day. Temperatures have soared to almost 50 degrees Celsius, with humidity levels that can render the human body’s cooling mechanisms almost entirely useless. On Monday this week, at least 59 heat-related fatalities were reported. Last week, figures as high as 568 bodies were also being bandied about. Most of the dead were homeless people. The youngest victim identified so far was 20 years old.

A probe has been launched by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority to investigate the deaths. A report is sought from K-Electric to determine if their load-shedding schedule could be linked to some of the deaths. While it may be of some use to see if protracted power cuts are to blame, it can only tell the picture in part.

Heatstrokes are fairly treatable, if not entirely preventable. It requires access to shade, cooling, water, electrolytes, lightweight clothing, and minimising activities during the hottest parts of the day. Instinctive, straightforward instructions. The state tried to let people know. At the beginning of summer, tips and tricks to prevent heat-related illnesses were published far and wide. It’s easy enough to let people know what they need to do. It’s easier still to believe that that’s all it takes to save lives.

There are no safety nets from the heat and there is no one really questioning that absence.

Awareness campaigns are never the end. This government, that relishes publicising the fulfilling of its most menial obligations, seems to forget that often. The most marginalised groups are rarely in a position to follow public health advice, a reality check that the state urgently needs — perhaps almost as much as the victims needed its intervention. If drinking plenty of fluids was advertised, then why is access to clean drinking water a privilege and not a right? If staying in shaded areas is advised, then why are there so many people sleeping on the roads? If medical care for heat-related symptoms is perceived as unaffordable, then is hospital treatment really an option? And if physical labour is not recommended during peak heat hours, then why is the government not making modified timings compulsory for employers?

The truth is that Pakistan’s poor are despised. This disdain is enshrined in our state budgets, our social structures, the prospects for economic mobility and even in the way we advertise our products. We tax the salaried class into oblivion, make basic utilities scarcely available and charge astronomically for when they are. We pay our domestic staff what we spend on one evening out.

We lock people out of economic opportunities because their education quality and English-language proficiency is lacking. We advertise skin whiteness as an aspirational quality because dark people work in the sun, and that’s because they don’t have the choice not to. We sneer at body odour, not realising that access to clean water is a luxury.

There are no safety nets from the heat and there is no one really questioning that absence. Proximity to a life of disease and early, preventable death is determined by real estate. Faisal Edhi, who heads the Edhi Foundation, wryly pointed out that most of the bodies they are collecting come from areas with the highest load-shedding. There would be hell, worse than the Karachi heat, for K-Electric to pay if areas like Clifton and Defence faced the same degree of power cuts.

The Sindh Climate Change Policy acknowledges that “most of the province is located in the intense heat zone, which is expected to see a 4-5°C temperature increase in the 21st century, therefore the burden on human health will be immense due to heatstrokes, diarrhoea, cholera and vector-borne diseases.” It proposes a needs-assessment to support the development of “effective district-wise health, heat and disaster management plans”. There are no given timelines for this lofty goal. It also advocates the “availability of medication and clean drinking water during climatic extremes and emergencies”. There are no measures indicated as to how either will be ensured.

The Karachi Heatwave Management Plan, a reaction to the 2015 Karachi heatwave, contains detailed guidance on surveillance systems and for issuing public alerts when extreme heat is expected. How closely that’s been followed this year is either a scathing indictment of the policy itself, or the district government responsible for implementing it.

Well-designed, thoughtful, and gender-sensitive social protection programmes aimed at protecting the poorest people from extreme heat should rank highly in our lawmakers’ priorities. Considering there is no provision in our rickety public welfare infrastructure for income support for people who are unable to work normal hours or who suffer sickness due to extreme heat, it is unlikely that Karachi has seen the last of its heat-related deaths. And with climate change taking no prisoners, it is especially likely that the same crisis will unfold next summer.

On July 1, Pakistan’s chief meteorologist Dr Sardar Sarfaraz told the press that the “sea breeze has been restored and the heatwave is over”. This is obviously a welcome development for Karachi’s homeless, daily wage earners, and people who must either brave the sweltering afternoon heat or go hungry.

While there is no expectation of the government holding any sway over the weather, to patiently wait for relief from nature is not a policy.

The writer is a human rights and public advocacy expert.
X: @Rimmel_Mohydin

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2024

Heatwaves and hormones: How climate change is taking a toll on women’s menstruation cycles

Research shows menstruation is either delayed or occurs much earlier than expected in countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Aleezeh Fatimah 

Published July 3, 2024

My sister got her first period at the tender age of seven and a half. Not prepared for the pain that comes with menstruation, the mental and physical exhaustion took the best of her. A year later, her period mysteriously stopped and never occurred again until the age of 12.

Menarche, the first menstrual period in a female adolescent, usually occurs between ages 10 and 16, with an average onset of 12.4 years. It often happens unexpectedly and is typically painless. However, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has recently found that menstruation is either delayed or occurs much earlier than expected in countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Pakistan is among the top-ranking countries that are bearing the brunt of this global crisis. Over the past 50 years, the country’s annual mean temperature has risen by about 0.5°C, with the number of heatwaves increasing nearly five-fold.

In May 2022, when temperatures across the country broke a 60-year record, 16-year-old Fariha Atiq — who started menstruating at the age of nine — witnessed possibly the worst period of her life.

“I was completely unequipped to deal with my period. Somehow I coped with it, but as time passed, the seasonal changes worsened my cramps. I remember in the summer of 2022, from April to August I couldn’t move my legs during my menstrual cycle,” she told Dawn.com.

Fariha’s mother, Mrs Atiq, took her to various gynaecologists but all of them described what the teenager was experiencing as ‘normal’, which was far from the pain she endured. Mild to moderate pain before and during menstruation is typical, but severe cramps can stem from various factors.

Mrs Atiq continued her search for a gynaecologist who could ascertain the reason for her daughter’s pain. Eventually, she found Dr Junaid Ansari, an obstetrics expert at Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi. He explained that the pain was caused by elevated levels of cortisol — a stress hormone influenced by temperature.

Cortisol increases with rising temperatures, contributing to dysmenorrhea, which nearly immobilised the teenager two years back.
Link between hormones and rising temperatures

For most women, menstruation is typically ‘painless’; some, however, experience severe cramps. This is a symptom of dysmenorrhea — pain during the menstrual cycle — and occurs due to the release of cortisol.

Cortisol is a hormone that is released during stressful situations and plays several roles in the female anatomy. It regulates blood sugar levels, metabolism, and blood pressure, and acts as an anti-inflammatory agent. Moreover, the hormone influences the menstrual cycle and prepares the body for pregnancy.

“The primary cause of a prolonged or delayed period can be the release of cortisol, which changes from season to season. For example, in winter, the release is higher, which disrupts the cycle,” Dr Ansari explained to Dawn.com.

The doctor highlighted, however, that he had observed the hormone peak during summers due to intense heat. “Very recently, I came across a 12-year-old girl with a decent body mass index, who wasn’t able to move due to extreme cramps, that too during May and July,” he shared.

“After recommending a cortisol blood test, we discovered that her cortisol level was 30 mcg/dL, significantly above the normal range of 14-20 mcg/dL for someone her age. We opted to monitor the levels and were surprised to find them returning to normal by the end of August following rainfall.

“While I continue my research, I am convinced that severe climate change is causing disruptions in menstrual cycles,” Dr Ansari added.

Extreme stress can disrupt the working of glands that control hormones such as cortisol and are responsible for the release of oestrogen needed for female reproductive characteristics.

Researchers at Poznan University of Medical Sciences in Poland have identified seasonal patterns in cortisol levels among female medical students. The study involved testing students twice in winter and twice in summer, with saliva samples collected every two hours over 24-hour periods to measure cortisol and inflammation markers.

Participants also completed lifestyle questionnaires detailing their sleep habits, diet, and physical activity levels. Unlike previous studies conducted in varied home environments, this research found higher cortisol levels during the summer sessions, while inflammation levels remained consistent across seasons. This further strengthens the argument that rising temperature has an impact on menstrual cycles.
(Un)common conditions

Contrary to popular opinion, dysmenorrhea is not a common condition.

“Most girls who come to me with cases of severe cramps are told by gynaecologists that cramps are normal, which is not true,” Dr Asifa Sofia of the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital told Dawn.com.

“This condition has developed in the last five years, and most patients I attend, the girls go through a painful period through winter,” she said.

Primary dysmenorrhea, the doctor explained, causes pain before and during menstruation. On the other hand, periods that become painful in the later stages could indicate secondary dysmenorrhea, which is often linked to conditions such as endometriosis or uterine fibroids that affect the uterus or pelvic organs.

“This usually occurs due to hormonal changes,” she highlighted, adding that painful periods and disruptions in blood flow were directly connected to erratic weather patterns in the region.

“I work with women from both urban and rural areas. One thing I have observed, which is a common pattern, is that with fluctuating temperatures, the sizes of follicles are affected, which in turn impacts the oestrogen levels,” Dr Sofia said.

The follicle is a small, fluid-filled sac in the ovary that contains one immature egg. Disruptions in size can alter hormones that regulate puberty, menstrual cycle, pregnancy, bone strength and other functions of the female body.

Sabiha, one of Dr Sofia’s patients from Thar, is being treated for an irregular period cycle. In May 2021, she started experiencing severe abdominal pain during menstruation. Like several other women, the 24-year-old initially brushed off the pain until one day, while working around the house, she fainted.

In Thar, May and June mark the hottest months of the year with temperatures reaching up to 122°F (50 °C).

“After that fall, my period has never been normal. I either bleed for 12 days straight or I don’t bleed at all. Irrespective of that, the pain stays the same,” she said. When asked if she had experienced such cramps before she began menstruating, Sabiha replied in the negative.

Sabiha is one such case. Dr Sofia told Dawn.com that she had treated patients after the 2022 floods whose period cycles took a hit from the massive disaster. “Today, even the slightest change in temperatures either alters their follicle size or their oestrogen levels which is alarming,” she pointed out.
Migration and displacement

“My period had always been regular until floods hit my town … suddenly, I started bleeding on random days,” Geetanjali, a resident of Balochistan’s Nasirabad district, recounted.

“I would not get periods for months, and then suddenly I would start bleeding out of nowhere,” said the 25-year-old. “Some days, the bleeding would be so bad and at other times it would just be a drop.”

These disruptions have taken a toll on Geetanjali’s physical health; she has lost 25 kilogrammes in the last three months.


Climate change triggers natural disasters, leading to mass migration which contributes to disturbance in the menstrual cycle. When Pakistan was hit by gigantic floods two years back, women went through brutal menstruation woes, the traces of which can be seen and felt even today.

Alongside poor menstrual hygiene, the affectees were also exposed to pollutants that affected the uterus. As per a systematic review published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, pollutants affect the timing of menarche differently depending on the chemicals involved.

Studies have connected exposure to lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and flame retardants with delayed periods. Conversely, some toxicants such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals and the herbicide atrazine have been linked to early menarche.

PCBs were found in floodwaters heavily polluted with human and animal waste, impacting not only the onset of periods but also the shedding of the uterine lining, resulting in irregular menstrual cycles.

According to Geetanjali’s attending doctor Tahira Kashaf, the 25-year-old’s menstrual cycle had a lot to do with her sudden displacement and the stress that came with it.

“Her follicular size was affected by a high cortisol release and low oestrogen levels, leaving her body struggling with the heavy blood flow and cramps,” She said. “I’m concerned she might develop anaemia in a few days.”

The doctor added that a majority of female patients she had treated following the floods, particularly from Sindh and Balochistan, faced a similar problem.

“During a fertility cycle, when a follicle measures between 18 and 22 millimetres in diameter, it indicates rising oestrogen levels and thickening of the uterine lining. However, in the women who I treated post floods, the follicular size ranged between 9-12 millimetres, which indicated that oestrogen levels are extremely low,” Kashaf added.
Erratic patterns

In the past five years, Pakistan has experienced both intense heat and cold. Irregular periods aren’t limited to summer when temperatures rise rapidly, but can also occur in winters.

“I experienced intense cramps last year which made me scream, especially from the end of December to the middle of January,” said Arwa, 22. “I clocked my cycle and consulted a doctor, who asked me to get my melatonin checked.

“When I took the test towards the end of January, it was very low,” she recalled. Surprisingly, Arwa’s pain vanished by February, with regular menstruation cycles until April. But the pain returned in May, much more intense this time.

Aniqa Sajid, a mother of two, narrated going through a similar ordeal on the first and second days of her period.

“This is new to me because it has been happening for the last two years and it only happens during winters. Initially, it was just pain and I was able to move around, but with time … within six months it got so bad that even a couple of painkillers couldn’t help,” she said.

According to the NIH, the absence of natural sunlight during winter can disrupt serotonin and melatonin levels — which also play a part in regulating the menstrual cycle — in the body. This hormonal imbalance can lead to heavy periods. Additionally, when the temperatures decrease, blood vessels compress, leaving a narrower pathway for blood flow and contributing to heavier menstruation.

Dr Tahira Masood, a gynaecologist at the Liaquat National Hospital, also told Dawn.com that menstrual cramps can be intensified during winter.

“Dysmenorrhea is often caused by the secretion of hormone-like substances called prostaglandins. Cold weather can trigger an increase in these substances, leading to more painful cramps.

“The constriction of blood vessels in cold weather can exacerbate menstrual cramps. Many women report more severe cramps during winter, indicating that this is a common experience,” she explained.

Until a few years ago, menstruation was a taboo topic, hardly ever discussed in public. While this has improved over time, especially in urban areas, conversations on period pain and women’s health are still minimal.

As Pakistan scrambles to tackle the climate crisis, it is important to understand that this cannot be done without addressing gender equity, especially the underlying barriers that cause women to be disproportionately affected by natural disasters.

“Most women I come across have no clue that the changes they have been enduring in their menstrual cycles occur because of climate change,” Dr Tahira said, stressing the need for awareness.

She added that women’s health could not be compromised and in the long run, sustainable changes such as temperature-dependent tampons, hormonal medicines and other natural resources that keep the body running need to be normalised.


Aleezeh Fatimah is a pharmacist turned journalist. She tweets at @dalchawalorrone

At the Edge of Apocalypse

by Robert Hunziker / June 21st, 2024

Biblical flooding, scorching heat, collapsing grid system, animals crumbling, waters rising, crops wilting, economy on the brink, and millions displaced.

Welcome to the future of climate change… Pakistan.

If one could classify a global warming beta test as a success towards an ultimate goal of apocalypse, unfortunately, it has turned Pakistan into a country populated by millions of displaced people in the early chapters of a horror story with no ending in sight because it is likely to get worse. Pakistan has been thrashed back and forth from one year (2022) of biblical flooding to years of record-setting heat. Normality has fled, chased out by an ogre of darkened apocalypse in the making.

Wherefore, Inside Climate News d/d June 8, 2024 has a remarkable series entitled “Living on Earth”, which recently interviewed Rafay Alam, who is an environmental lawyer and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council. The title of the interview: “As Temperatures in Pakistan Top 120 Degrees, There’s Nowhere to Run”. That interview is the basis for this article about a country of 240 million people at the brink of apocalypse.

Based upon Pakistan’s severe climate experience, here is what Rafay Alam concludes, a widely shared viewpoint throughout the Global South:

There is a significant denialism on climate change in places like the United States. And it angers me because I see people affected. I see animals affected. And this is a lived experience for the global majority, the Global South. It’s extremely infuriating to see people who’ve participated in this global warming deny it, deny any accountability, try and move on as if nothing’s happened and try and continue to make money and drive that bottom line.

There’s an adage of the 1950s “Ugly Americans” that lingers to this day outside of America’s borders. It pejoratively references Americans as loud, arrogant, self-absorbed, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, with ugly ethnocentric behavior, which also applies to U.S. corporate interests internationally. Regrettably, climate change is reviving this debasing dictum in a very big way, 70 years later. And people who think today’s sociopolitical atmosphere is poisoned, divided, and postured for trouble in the USA should look over their shoulders, as anger foments around the world with America a target. Trouble’s universal.

Rafay Alam resides in Lahore (pop. 13M) known as the “City of Gardens.” It is the cultural heart of Pakistan with exquisite arts, cuisine, and music festivals, known for filmmaking and the recognized home of the intelligentsia. Lahore is a sophisticated metropolis that’s a safe place to live. According to the World Crime Index, the city is safer than living in London, New York, or Melbourne.

Yet, life for millions in Pakistan has changed for the worse seemingly overnight. Today, the country experiences persistent heat waves over 120°F in some cities, and summer is just beginning. Anything approaching the normal rhythm of life of past decades has been overwhelmed by brutal severely damaging climate change. The country is still recovering from the biblical flooding of 2022 when normal rainfall turned voracious 400% to 800% beyond anything ever experienced, a torrential downpouring lasting weeks in regions of the country that do not drain into the Indus Basin. Thus, a 100-kilometer (62-mile) artificial lake formed, displacing 10 million and impacting 30 million, bringing in its wake $35B infrastructure damage, roads swept away, schools swept away, hospitals swept away. It will take a generation to rebuild. This is climate change in full blast mode.

Rafay Alam:

We’ve seen temperatures since the middle of May to the first of June currently more than 50 degrees Centigrade, which is well over 120°F. Lahore, where I live is 44°C today, which is about 111°F… I go for a walk in the evenings when the sun sets It’s not unpleasant, but I notice animals and birds collapsed to the ground looking for water, dogs on the side of the road unable to get up… Recently, it was 125°F, the hottest place on Earth, at Mohenjo-Daro, which is home to an ancient civilization.

Accordingly, Pakistan is not just experiencing a scorching heat wave, it is actively experiencing the climate crisis in all its variations on a real time basis. And according to meteorologists: “It’s going to stay hotter for longer.”

Climate change has wrought an economic nightmare, as Pakistan has sought flood relief that came as loans, not grants or aid, which has doubled Pakistan’s external debt in only two years. This is devastating for a country that is trying to regain its footing and rebuild an economy that climate change clobbered.

Nevertheless, the country is learning to live with devastating temperatures by changing life’s normal patterns. Schools are let out by 12:00 noon but shutdown entirely when temperatures rise too far, which is a common experience of late.

Of even more concern, and possibly the most dangerous scenario of all, the monsoon season is coming by the end of June, early July which will convert dry heat to extreme humid heat with deadly wet bulb temperatures. At 95°F and 70% humidity, it’ll impact the human body like 120°F. That’s deadly because at that level the human body cannot release heat by sweating. Rather, it bakes internal organs. Hmm- it’s been triple digits for some time now with daytime forecasts to remain in triple digits to the end of June, and likely beyond into the heart of the summer.

Agriculture is 20% of Pakistan GDP. And according to Alam, a leading English newspaper recently ran a headline about crops decimated in Pakistan by heat, cotton basically sizzling, maize, mangos, and other vegetables and fodder for cattle, expecting a decline of productivity. Nearly one-half of the Pakistani workforce is in agriculture and they’re being hammered down to the poverty line by unforgiving climate change.

This heat wave is a man-made event due to the greenhouse gases consumed and thrown into the atmosphere by the Global North since the industrial revolution These greenhouse gases have to stop. (Alam)

Meanwhile, he claims the country must adapt as soon as possible to an off-the-rails climate system fed by profit-motives outside of Pakistan. He suggests changes to agriculture by working on heat-resistant crops. Currently, no crops can withstand 50-plus Centigrade temperatures. And the water economy must learn to adapt as 90% of water goes to agriculture, which is 20% of GDP employing 40% of the workforce, which is at the poverty line.

Meanwhile, it is currently harvesting season. Agricultural workers are waking up when the sun rises for only a couple of hours of work before it gets too hot to work. When it’s too hot to work any longer, people congregate inside for shelter from the sun. But those who live near fields are warned that snakes and scorpions also seek cooler spaces, entering homes en masse seeking shelter.

Alam’s biggest concern is for most Pakistanis who are middle class, working class and at the poverty line, unable to withstand climate shocks much further. Moreover, there are really not many safe places for them to go to escape global heat, unless they have a rich friend.

Even heading to the Himalaya mountains for cooler terrain could be treacherous. There are over 3,000 glaciers that, due to global warming, form glacial lakes in the mountains. Over time, these blow apart in outburst of devastating unannounced floods bringing down mountainsides as roads and bridges are washed away leaving those seeking cool mountain air stranded. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, the Hindu Kush Himalaya is a “hotspot of risk” for outburst floods.

Pakistan, unfortunately, has become a proving ground for what climate change is capable of. And there’s no reason to expect it to remain confined to the borders of Pakistan.

Rafay Alam first became aware of climate change’s potential impact nearly 20 years ago when he saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, May 2006), which opened a lot of eyes. Yet, the nations of the world have failed to adequately confront the primary cause, burning fossil fuels, that fuels radical climate change that’s whiplashed Pakistan’s environment beyond limits.

Alam believes the basis of the legal systems and the international system can’t cope with an existential crisis such as climate change: “One of the worst ways to deal with something like climate change is to divide the world into 200 different countries and have them argue with each other.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -IPCC- is testament to this, 30 years later and CO2 is still increasing each year without missing a beat, targeting Pakistan. But, for certain, Pakistan is not an isolated case.

According to Alam, in conclusion:

Earth’s ecosystem has been in balance since the last ice age… That civilization is over… the way that we interact with each other- extremely heavy energy use, extremely heavy water use, incredibly consumptive of natural resources producing greenhouse gases for just about everything… It’s this behavior, this civilization, which is at risk. And yes, it is very much an apocalypse.FacebookTwitter

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Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

Low snow on the Himalayas threatens water security: study

AFP

Published June 17, 2024 

Snowmelt is the source of about a quarter of the total water flow of 12 major river basins that originate high in the Himalayan region. — AFP

Millions of people dependent on Himalayan snowmelt for water face a “very serious” risk of shortages this year after one of the lowest rates of snowfall, scientists warned on Monday.

Snowmelt is the source of about a quarter of the total water flow of 12 major river basins that originate high in the region, a report said.

“This is a wake-up call for researchers, policymakers, and downstream communities,” said report author Sher Muhammad, from the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

“Lower accumulation of snow and fluctuating levels of snow pose a very serious increased risk of water shortages, particularly this year.”


Snow and ice on the Himalayas are a crucial water source for around 240 million people in the mountainous regions, as well as for another 1.65 billion people in the river valleys below, according to ICIMOD.

While snow levels fluctuate each year, scientists say climate change is driving erratic rainfall and shifting weather patterns.

The report measured “snow persistence” — the time snow remains on the ground — with levels dropping almost a fifth below normal this year across the wider Hindu Kush and Himalaya region.

“This year’s snow persistence (18.5 per cent below normal) is the second-lowest in the past 22 years, narrowly trailing the record low of 19pc set in 2018,” Muhammad told AFP.

As well as Nepal, the inter-governmental ICIMOD organisation includes member countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar and Pakistan.

The report warned that ICIMOD “observations and projections indicate significant changes in the timing and intensity of stream flows”, with snow a key part.

“Snow plays a particularly important role in ensuring seasonal water availability,” it added.

The organisation has been monitoring snow in the region for over two decades, noting that 2024 marked a “significant anomaly”.

The Ganges river basin, which flows through India, had the “lowest snow persistence” that ICIMOD has recorded, 17pc below average, worse than the 15pc in 2018.

The Helmand River basin in Afghanistan recorded its second-lowest snow persistence levels, 32pc below normal.

The Indus River basin was down 23pc below normal levels, while the Brahmaputra River basin, which ends in Bangladesh, had snow persistence “notably below normal” at 15pc.

Miriam Jackson, the senior cryosphere specialist at ICIMOD, urged authorities to “take proactive measures to address possible drought situations”.

In Germany, Liberals Lead the Authoritarian Turn

The rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland has prompted a wave of troubled reactions in Germany. But authoritarianism isn’t just a far-right creation, and today, liberals are leading the charge against basic democratic freedoms.

By Ingar Solty

May 27, 2024

Source: Jacobin

For German weekly Der Spiegel, there’s no doubt about the real meaning of the Alternative for Germany (AfD): this far-right party is, in fact, an “Alternative against Germany.” This headline referred to alleged wrongdoing by the AfD’s lead candidate for June’s elections to the European Parliament, TikTok star Maximilian Krah, who is said to have received payments from China. One of Krah’s employees was arrested on suspicion of spying for the People’s Republic; Der Spiegel raised the accusation of “treason.”

It might be observed that Germany, just like any other major power, itself extensively finances actors abroad and influences foreign countries’ internal affairs via its numerous party-affiliated foundations and NGOs. Obviously, Germany’s own secret services are also spying. But beyond that, we may well question those liberal anti-fascists who think that it is really so clever to use the term “treason” against a right-wing authoritarian party that claims to be doing “everything for Germany“ — an SA slogan used by Thuringia AfD leader Björn Höcke. One day they will wake up surprised that they themselves reestablished this illiberal and nationalist rhetoric in the Federal Republic’s political culture.

Obviously, left-wingers can already set the clock for when criminal prosecution with accusations of treason will once again be turned against them. They could, in coming years, be leveled against anyone who raises the slightest doubts and even calls for an open discussion about some of the important questions facing us. Such as whether massively expanded military spending is really such a good idea. Whether Germany’s nuclear armament — once demanded solely by hard-right warhorses such as Franz Josef Strauss, but today with a fresh, pious, cheerful, open “yes to the nuclear bomb“ from Green and liberal icons like former secretary of state Joschka Fischer — is really a good idea. Whether a new bloc confrontation against China and the deployment of the frigates Bayern and Württemberg to the South China Sea to “fly the flag“ for “our values and interests“ — as the cruiser division once did off the Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory — will really help to secure peace and tackle global problems such as social inequality and the climate catastrophe.
Turning Point

The “Zeitenwende” (turning point) was announced by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (of the Social Democratic Party, SPD) on February 27, 2022, without prior parliamentary discussion, let alone broad social debate — a democratic scandal in form alone. This is indeed a turning point also in content. It turns the clock not toward a golden future, but toward a dark German past.

The internal “Zeitenwende” is a return to a time of soldiers’ memorials, so that a “society addicted to happiness“ (as former Federal President Joachim Gauck once put it) can once again learn to honor as heroes those who died “defending Germany in the Hindu Kush.” It goes back to the time of the national service called “Pflichtjahr,” with which the same people who once put a bomb under social cohesion through the welfare-slashing “Agenda 2010” and the Hartz laws now want to “strengthen public spiritedness.” Perhaps they forgot that the “Pflichtjahr” already existed once in German history, or what its purpose was and remains. It was the Nazis who introduced it back in 1938 to ideologically repair what was broken in terms of material economic and social policy.

The internal “Zeitenwende” is also about the reintroduction of the military into public schools. According to Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (of the Free Democrats, FDP), children should practice warfare together with soldiers in the interests of a “relaxed relationship with the Bundeswehr” and for “our resilience.” Youth officers from the Bundeswehr would be let loose on pupils as “career advisors“ in order to solve the troops’ general recruitment problems with the current record numbers of teenagers in military service. But clearly, in times of tight labor markets, relying solely on the “economic draft” is no longer enough. This approach once replaced “citizens in uniform” with “precariat in uniform,” creating an “underclass army,” as Michael Wolffsohn described it. In this system, the former East Germany contributed no generals to the German army but almost two-thirds of the soldiers to the war in Afghanistan, following the motto “unemployed or Afghanistan.”

This strategy is, however, no longer adequate to reach the declared goal of a 203,000-strong army by 2031. Foreign recruits from within the European Union (EU) have also failed to materialize so far because youth unemployment in Southern Europe is no longer 50 percent or more, as it was during the euro crisis. Added to this is the drop-out rate during basic military training, which is sky-high because the reality of joining the army has little to do with the image promised by the €35 million a year Bundeswehr advertising plastered across trams, bus stops, and YouTube: camaraderie, wrenching around on cool, horsepower-packed vehicles, war as gaming (only without a reset button), globetrotting, saving the world, finding meaning in life.

And by all means, Germany needs new soldiers in view of the record numbers of reservists who subsequently refused to enlist once the Ukraine War began and whose desire to be shot up for their fatherland is obviously low. Their caution on this front is only surpassed, at least in one sense, by Green voters. In survey after survey — unlike the supporters of any other party — they call for weapons and military service for Ukrainians and other people; but only 9 percent of these Greens, according to a Forsa poll, would be willing to take up arms to defend Germany personally.

Meanwhile, the internal “Zeitenwende” is not only bringing the military back into schools, but also to universities. Here, the government and the conservative opposition, cheered on by the left-liberal media, want to violate the mandatory peace requirement in the German constitution and override the civilian clauses that, as a lesson from World War II, have so far prohibited research and science from being put at the service of private and for-profit arms manufacturers. In North Rhine–Westphalia, easily the country’s largest state, this has long since happened with the votes of the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats.

The internal “Zeitenwende” also means the return of the distinction between “good” (us, of course!) and “evil” (the others, who else?), between (Western) “civilization” and (Eastern) “barbarism.” What has changed is that the frontier of the “Eastern Problem” has been shifted further east and the barbarism no longer begins at the Polish border. We see the return of “hereditary enemies“ (once France, now Russia and China) and the “white man’s burden“ to civilize the barbarians, who are once again supposed to “heal from the German soul.” As former Maoist Reinhard Bütikofer, the Greens’ foreign policy spokesman in the European Parliament, recently put it, the Chinese must “simply let us transform them“ in such a way “that in the end something comes out that simply corresponds to the ideas we had about the country and about how the world as a whole should be organized.”
Enemies Within

The internal “Zeitenwende” is also the return of an ostentatious unwillingness to think about historical context or to take the “enemy” perspective (if not to promote international understanding, then at least to prevent the escalation of war). A knock-on-effect media ostracism punishes the mere attempt to think in such terms. Leftists are again called a “fifth column“ and prevented from exercising their freedom of assembly by illiberal justice and police violence — as recently happened during the suppressed Palestine Conference in Berlin. Alleged enemies from outside are banned by authoritarian means from entering Germany or speaking, as recently happened to the renowned American philosopher Nancy Fraser and the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

It is a symptom of the internal “Zeitenwende” when a federal minister of science and higher education justifies massive police violence against peacefully protesting students by referring to a muck-spreading article in the tabloid Bild. This authoritarian liberalism places its critics and those who merely exercise their civil rights under blanket suspicion of being enemies of the constitution. We see the internal “Zeitenwende” when the Bundestag passes laws overnight that chill scholarly debate and produce conformity of opinion, using penal measures where historians once debated openly. This was what happened two years ago with the tightening of the German Criminal Code and the German Bundestag’s “Holodomor resolution.”

Blacklists have long been back in force for “internal enemies” kept out of public service through tests of political conviction, as with the “extremism check“ in the state of Brandenburg. This is the newest incarnation of the old “Radikalenerlass“ that sought to keep leftists and other radicals from finding public employment. The Bundestag decided this January — with the votes of Social Democrats, Greens, and supposed Free Democrats — that migrants should only be granted citizenship if they are committed to the “liberal-democratic basic order” and the raison d’état of unconditional support for the Israeli state, regardless of which far-right extremist forces are currently governing it and which AI-controlled war crimes it is currently committing. But more than that, migrants are even to be deprived of their citizenship retroactively, for up to ten years, for failing to obey this standard. Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (Free Democrats) and the Social Democrats, among others, demanded this for dual citizens.

It was quite preposterous for these same people to solemnly warn against the far right’s plans for mass deportations — after the AfD’s so-called “Wannsee Conference 2.0“ with the far-right Identitarian Movement leader Martin Sellner became known — and raise scandal over the fact that AfD MP Gerrit Huy advocated dual citizenship at this meeting, in order to make it easier to remove German passports from people with a migration background. In any case, problems of credibility surely arise when the same people who call these plans a red line, because the withdrawal of citizenship was ultimately the Nazis’ means of driving out their opponents, now flirt with it themselves. The same could be said about the outrage over the AfD’s “remigration” dreams, which were already — without question — “an unvarnished plan of state terror” when AfD leader laid them out in his 2018 book. Such outrage looked rather implausible just a few weeks after the current government had itself torn up European asylum law and Scholz had called for “deportations on a grand scale” as part of the “new toughness in refugee policy“ welcomed by Der Spiegel.
Manufacturing Consent

The internal “Zeitenwende” also includes the return of agitation and propaganda in state and private media, which has little to do with the fourth estate and much to do with “manufacturing consent” — spreading images of the enemy, certainty of victory, and slogans of perseverance. This is partly an effect of the fact that for long stretches of postwar history the population was not prepared to follow its elites into rearmament and war operations.

The new propaganda includes the creation of a “Schicksalsgemeinschaft” (community of fate) with an external enemy, national myths, and a “dominant culture“ meant to hold together a country torn apart by social inequality and neoliberal politics, a general renationalization and militarization of language, and the promotion of emotional coldness. We see this internal “Zeitenwende,” for example, when the single highest-circulation newspaper has the largest German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall — share price since the Ukraine war: up 523 percent — call for a return to compulsory military service because “the Zeitenwende . . . is a task for society as a whole“ and “liberal societies . . . must be able to stand up for their values.”

If things continue at this pace, initiatives such as the “Federal Program for Patriotism“ called for by the Christian Democrats will inevitably lead to the celebration of a reincarnated “Sedan Day,” used in the German Empire to celebrate the victory over the hereditary enemy of the time, France. Some planners are surely already considering how a military victory over Russia — which was never likely and is now increasingly unlikely — could be appropriately anchored in the collective memory of the masses.

The many articles from bourgeois-liberal media that warn against the AfD in the spirit of an “impotent“ anti-fascism or accuse the right-wing authoritarian nationalists of “treason” apparently do not notice that every text they write with a morally upraised index finger is driving at least a few hundred new supporters to the right-wing extremists. Their voters are led to believe that by voting for the AfD they are sticking it to the man. Surely these AfD voting masses fail to recognize that — to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht — they are actually just like the calves that trot behind the drum for which they themselves provide the drumhead. But the liberals fail to recognize one thing above all: it doesn’t take the far right itself to bring back the ghosts of the dark past. It is they themselves, the liberals, who conjure them up.
Heroic Thinking?

The “internal Zeitenwende” promoted by left liberals is already rehabilitating the concepts, language, political styles, and means of the German nationalist and authoritarian right of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “National security” is back, in the name of which the otherwise sometimes-invoked international law can be trampled upon. Also back are “raison d’état,” “autarchy,” which is now called “derisking,” massive military spending, and the call to be “ready for war“ — because otherwise, of course, “in five to eight years“ the Russians will be knocking on your front door. Once again, there are warnings of “war fatigue“ among the people, public pledges and military parades in front of state parliaments, and the “new desire for heroes“ that marks a return of “heroic thinking,” which tells us that in the bloody “unwinnable war“ of position and attrition in Ukraine — reminiscent of Verdun and World War I — “the slaughter is necessary.”

Moreover, a new cult of violence has emerged. The same politicians who bewail the “violence” supposedly committed by youths who set off fireworks on New Year’s Eve have established a political culture whose slogan is “weapons, weapons, and more weapons.” Liberal journalists and a federal Green Economics minister rave about the technical data of the latest weapons systems from the military-industrial complex like the pimps from the German Jungvolk of old, only to then act like first-person shooters in front of the screen celebrating kill counts against enemy soldiers dehumanized as “orcs“ and gloating over the killing of Russians from “world-record distances.” In short: all of this is returning in the words and deeds of the “liberal” middle classes, for which no Nazis are needed.

Fascists are not needed in order to introduce “Veterans’ Day“ and memorials to fallen soldiers or to demand “military education in schools.” They are not needed in order to declare Holocaust enablers like Stepan Bandera as freedom fighters. And they are not needed for there to arise an unprecedented historical revisionism — and the monstrous Holocaust relativization that equates Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler and Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine with Nazi Germany’s war of extermination in the East. Did these people perhaps forget that the aim of that war was the enslavement of the Eastern peoples and the liquidation of their entire social elite — at least 30 million people — through systematic massacres of the unarmed (“Kommissarbefehl“) and systematic starvation (as during the siege of Leningrad, with more than one million civilian deaths)? That this was all part of the “General Plan East,” from which the “Final Solution” plan for the systematic murder of the European Jewry also emerged?

While liberals love to talk about the “Putler” on X (formerly Twitter), it was an influential editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berthold Kohler, who even before the Russian war crime in Bucha became known, used the term “war of extermination” for the Ukraine invasion. He was, of course, fully aware that he was equating Russia’s war against Ukraine, which according to United Nations figures has claimed at least 10,810 civilian lives in more than two years, with the “Russian campaign” of the Nazis, who killed 27 million Soviet citizens from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia in this “crusade against communism” in less than four years, about half of them civilians.

It was not Nazis but the European Parliament that four years ago, with the votes of the liberals and in the spirit of the historical revisionism of Ernst Nolte, blamed the Soviet Union for World War II. The liberal-left newspaper taz and the Green Youth already on their own initiative performed AfD’s fascist Björn Höcke’s hoped-for “180-degree turnaround in remembrance politics.” Hence the Berlin daily, under the title “Putin is the new Stalin,” explained to its green-alternative readership that “the real history of World War II” was “that Stalin had planned this war . . . long before Hitler came to power.” The Green Youth declared Operation Barbarossa the climax of a war of “settlement-conquest“ by a Russian “colonial state” which today needs decolonizing — thus giving retroactive legitimacy to the Nazis and their claimed “European mission“ to liberate the “Eastern peoples” from the Russian Hun.

Incidentally, an anti-feminist rollback does not require an extreme right-wing incel and “men’s rights movement,” either. Seven years ago, when AfD man Höcke called for an unwavering “masculinity” as a prerequisite for military prowess at the rally for anti-immigration movement Pegida in Dresden, he was scolded for being old fashioned. In the course of the internal Zeitenwende, the same demands are now coming from the so-called bourgeois center, for example when the award-winning literary scholar Tobias Haberl explained in Der Spiegel that the “German city-dwelling man” with his “polka-dot socks” who “is capable of cooking” is “too soft for the new reality,” which is why we need a return to the “necessary toughness” and the “conflict orientation of his fathers,” who — but only for our own good! — regularly beat us with their belts because they still knew that “not every problem can be discussed away.”
Hurtling Toward the Past

For liberals, it is part of the new normal to label their opponents and critics of (one-sided) arms deliveries as “lumpen pacifists,” “Putin’s willing executioners,” and “second-hand war criminals.” It is liberals who are already preparing for the time after the war in Ukraine and demanding that “pacifism must not be allowed to rise again.” It was the liberal newspaper ZEIT that, on the exact day of the eightieth anniversary of Joseph Goebbels’s “Do you want total war?“ speech, entitled the interview with a left-wing liberal, Eva Illouz, “I wish for total victory,” explaining that she wished for this “total and annihilating victory” because “the Russians are committing crimes against humanity every day that must not go unpunished” and because “Putin is threatening the ideal values of Europe.” (Illouz later had the audacity to publicly excommunicate her academic colleague Judith Butler from the Left, because, even though they are Jewish, they do not follow Illouz’s pro–Gaza War position.)

In short, none of all this requires the far right. The same people who today warn conservatives not to tear down the “fire wall” to the AfD, as a lesson from the history of 1933 — while they, like former health minister Jens Spahn declare that fire wall to, run to the right of Giorgia Meloni in Europe, and while they, like multiple corruption scandal suspect European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, kiss the “post-fascist” Italian leader wherever they meet her — do not even notice the flamethrower in their own hands, with which they have long since set the country on fire.

It should be noted that it is not only the die-hard conservatives of the “Stahlhelm faction” but also the “left” wing of the bourgeois class who are particularly committed to the internal Zeitenwende. Sure, it was the Christian Democratic foreign minister in waiting, Roderich Kiesewetter, who demanded a few weeks ago that the “war must be taken to Russia” and that “everything should be done” to “destroy” not only “Russian military facilities and headquarters” or “oil refineries,” but also central government offices like “ministries.” It was Kiesewetter who recently suggested that Ukrainian refugees in Germany should be stripped of their income as an incentive for them to let themselves be shipped off to war.

Liberal extremism, however, does not need die-hard conservatives. This approach — typified by the fact that it takes no account of the true circumstances, risks, and realistic goals, that crusades against “totalitarianism” with a somehow totalitarian fanaticism of its own, with a self-righteous moralism that is to be sated by all available means — has its ultimate origins elsewhere. We see this in the former Maoists in the German Green Party, for whom the “West” and NATO replaced Maoist sects and China as the vanguard of history. Then again, it was a Social Democratic defense minister who called for German “war capability.” And when the Christian Democrat Kiesewetter demanded a further 100, 200, 300 billion euros for the German armed forces — even as austerity measures are imposed on the working class — his demands were, of course, merely an echo of the SPD politicians Scholz, Eva Högl, parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

The warning of “war fatigue” came from a Green foreign minister, who would have liked to dress up as a Leopard tank for carnival and who, as a result of a profound Freudian slip, has long seen herself as “at war with Russia.” It was the Green economic minister who went into raptures about the Panzerhaubitze 2000 armored howitzer on a TV talk show: “It can really do something!” It was Free Democrat Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairwoman of the defense committee, who answered a talk show question as to whether she had served by saying that she was “good for the Volkssturm.” And the call for “weapons, weapons, and more weapons” also came from a Green federal politician, in this case Anton Hofreiter, who also wants to make systematic starvation a principle of German power politics again, just like in the good old days of the siege of Leningrad. As an example of the foreign policy he called for, which would finally return to “negotiating with the colt on the table,” he suggested in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung in December 2022 that, with the European breadbasket of Ukraine on the leash, 1.4 billion Chinese should — because one of them might once again “dare” to “look cross-eyed at a German“! — be openly threatened with death by starvation: “If a country were to withhold rare earths from us, we could reply, ‘What do you actually want to eat?’”

It should thus come as no surprise that it is the left-liberal bourgeois class who are now publicly correcting their attitudes and proving their loyalty to the fatherland through symbolic vows, as if it were August 1914 all over again. A long list of figures have felt it necessary to symbolically withdraw their objection to military service and swear an oath of allegiance to the nation in arms. It ranges from Scholz and the “green-alternative” economics minister Habeck to aged intellectuals, journalists, and writers such as Ralf Bönt, Stern editor Thomas Krause, and taz editor Tobias Rapp to other public figures such as the Protestant bishop Ernst-Wilhelm Gohl, the comedian Wigald Boning, and the “eternal court jester“ Campino from “punk” band Die Toten Hosen. It was then only logical that Rapp — coeditor of the war-loving “radical left” organ Jungle World — recently welcomed Veterans’ Day in Der Spiegel as a “big step away from old lies”: “A society” can now “say: we can’t take the burden off your shoulders of having fought and possibly killed. But we can give you a stage once a year and remind you of this burden. It was not pointless.”

Theodor W. Adorno repeatedly expressed the feeling that even more dangerous than the traditional far right was the right-wing radicalization of the “center” — of the return of nationalism, authoritarianism, and fascism in the language of democracy. Those who believe they can best beat the AfD by taking their own migration policy, culture war, and political tools from the “age of catastrophes” are doing the far right’s business for them. In the short term, the AfD’s poll ratings may fall as a result of the scandal raising over its lead candidate for the European elections. In a recent interview for Italy’s La Repubblica he announced that “he would never say that anyone who wore a SS uniform was automatically a criminal” — prompting even French far-right leader Marine Le Pen to break off collaboration with the party. In the long term, however, the AfD may lean back and take a rest, for they know that their politics are winning. Germany is hurtling toward a right-wing past at breathtaking speed; however, it is not the AfD in the driver’s seat, but the liberals themselves.