Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Israeli border policemen wearing protective gear as a precaution against the coronavirus guard at an Israeli checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on the outskirts of Jerusalem, March 11, 2020.

For years, cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians has been in retreat, as peace negotiations became a remote prospect, governments focused on mutual demonization, and President Donald Trump cut support for the Palestinian Authority.

The coronavirus pandemic, however, has forced the sides to put recriminations on hold and instead work together to save lives.

Palestinian health care professionals have received training in Israeli hospitals, Israeli labs have analyzed Palestinian COVID-19 diagnostic tests, and doctors on both sides are sharing data.

Despite decades of arguing over where to draw a border, the spread of COVID-19 has highlighted how Israel and the Palestinian areas in the West Bank are in fact one unit in the battle to preserve public health. Handling the challenge requires the sides to collaborate and resist the tendency to focus first on the political.

“In the end, this isn’t something related to politics. This is something human, for the benefit of everyone,” says Mariana Alarja, chief manager of the Angel Hotel in Beit Jala, next to Bethlehem, where dozens of Palestinian coronavirus patients – including herself – are staying in quarantine.

As of Tuesday, 29 Palestinians in the West Bank have been diagnosed with the virus. An emergency was declared there last week. COVID-19 tests from Palestinians were sent to laboratories at Israel’s Sheba Hospital outside Tel Aviv for analysis because the facilities don’t exist in the West Bank. After years of Israeli military closures imposed on Bethlehem, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is enforcing its own closure to prevent the virus from spreading to other cities in the West Bank.

“A doctor should help everyone, regardless of race or nationality – whether the patient speaks English or Arabic,” says Ms. Alarja. “It doesn’t matter if you are an Israeli or a Palestinian, we all have to work on this very quickly.”

Mustafa Ganeyeh/Reuters

An entrance to the Church of the Nativity is seen locked amid coronavirus precautions, in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, March 11, 2020.

While any sign of normalization of ties with Israel carries a stigma among Palestinians, Zaher Nazzal, an epidemiologist at An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus, says the cooperation makes sense.

“This is normal. Whenever there’s a crisis that affects the people’s health, collaboration should be possible,” says Dr. Nazzal. “It doesn’t mean you put everything behind you, or that you agree with everything that’s happening on the ground.”

Intertwined populations

Since the first Israeli was diagnosed with the virus nearly three weeks ago, the outbreak in Israel is showing signs of spiking: The count stood at 77 on Wednesday, after jumping 50% Monday to Tuesday.

Israel has responded by requiring all arrivals at Ben Gurion Airport to self-quarantine for 14-days, and on Wednesday banned gatherings of more than 100 participants in closed spaces. Tens of thousands are already in isolation. The country has closed its border with Egypt, and both Israel and Jordan have restricted traffic on their border.

The Israeli and Palestinian populations, however, are far more intertwined. Yet, save for the coordination between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has all but completely eroded over the past five or so years.

The collaboration on the coronavirus includes the health ministries of both governments along with the Israeli military liaison. Israel in recent days delivered 250 virus test kits to the West Bank and held training sessions for Palestinian medical workers on how to protect themselves. Israel’s Civil Administration, the military-run authority in Palestinian areas of the West Bank, promised to supply medical equipment and training as needed.

“Viruses and epidemics don’t stop at the border, and the spread of a dangerous virus in Judea and Samaria could endanger the health of Israeli citizens,” Dr. Dalia Basa, health coordinator for the military administration, said in a statement, using the biblical terms for the West Bank. Helping the PA fight the virus “is both in the interest of Israel and of the highest humanitarian significance.”

Rami Amichay/Reuters

The departures terminal at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod, near Tel Aviv, March 8, 2020.

In practice, a border between Israel and the Palestinian territories barely exists. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian laborers from the West Bank commute daily to jobs in Israel. Palestinian residents of Jerusalem also cross Israeli checkpoints into the West Bank.

Because Israel and the Palestinian areas are effectively one territorial unit, the discrepancy between the two public health systems figures as a major challenge to containing the outbreak, say experts.

“Israel has the stronger economy and the stronger health system. It has not only a moral obligation but a self-interest to help all its neighbors. Given the seriousness of the crisis, there’s an urgent need for much greater cooperation,” says Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East.

“Should the PA, Jordan, or Egypt request emergency hospital facilities to be set up,” he says, “Israel should be ready to respond like it responds to earthquakes in other parts of the world.”

Prior health cooperation

Public health threats have spurred cooperation among rivals on other maladies. A year ago, the “vaccine diplomacy” of international organizations prompted Afghanistan and Pakistan to introduce all-age polio vaccinations to travelers at their joint border to combat that virus in the violence-wracked region. And Cold War era vaccine diplomacy between the U.S. and the Soviet Union helped eradicate polio and smallpox in much of the world.

Israelis and the Palestinians have cooperated on health before. Some 15 years ago, the Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian governments established an organization to promote joint public health initiatives – the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance. The organization sponsored joint epidemiological training for doctors and nurses and promoted research collaboration and a regional network of public health professionals.

Those professional connections still exist, but Israeli-Palestinian government cooperation became nearly nonexistent as political ties eroded, says Nadav Davidovitch, director of the School of Public Health at Ben Gurion University and one of the founding members of the consortium.

“On both sides, people on the ground really want to collaborate in spite of the political situation,” says Dr. Davidovitch. “It’s part of a shared goal of public health.”

Majdi Mohammed/AP

A Palestinian policeman delivers supplies to hotel staff who tested positive to the coronavirus in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, March 6, 2020.

That goal was made more difficult to achieve after the Trump administration cut funding for joint Israeli-Palestinian research projects under a program that promotes Israeli collaboration with its Arab neighbors.

Ikram Salah, a Bethlehem resident who did doctoral studies under Dr. Davidovitch, had a joint epidemiological research project cut off by USAID under the Trump administration. She acknowledges that the public health infrastructure in the Palestinian territories is limited, but says it’s due to Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank.

“I’m always saying that disease knows no borders,” she says. “As a Palestinian, it’s hard to say, but we are not independent. We are dependent on Israel in all sectors.”

Concerns about Gaza

Despite the collaboration in the West Bank, however, there is serious uncertainty about what would happen should the pandemic spread to the Gaza Strip, where some 2 million Palestinians live under military blockade in cramped conditions with woefully inadequate infrastructure. Israel has no direct relations with Hamas, the Islamic military group that rules Gaza.  

Though there is a hard border between Israel and Gaza, there’s still traffic back and forth. Military officials reportedly consider an outbreak there a nightmare scenario that will have humanitarian and geopolitical fallout for Israel, as much of the world still holds it responsible for the situation there despite its 2005 military withdrawal.

“Gaza is not sterile. It will enter Gaza at some point. It has to,” says an Israeli health official who asked not to be named. “It’s one of the most densely populated places in the world. It will burn through Gaza very quickly, I’m afraid.”

In such a scenario, the World Health Organization would have to intervene to help coordinate efforts between Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority. For the time being, however, Israel and the Palestinians are focusing on handling the West Bank.  

“This is being done because we don’t have another choice. We have to work together,” says Dr. Itamar Grotto, associate director-general of Israel’s Health Ministry. “If you are looking for a positive effect of this event, you could point to this.”

Matt Rourke/.AP

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill, speaks to members of the press at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Tuesday, March 10, 2020.

Two weeks ago, Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy was almost dead. Today he looks like the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. What happened?

In part it was geographic. The former vice president’s core supporters were scarce in early voting states, but more prevalent from South Carolina on. He also likely benefited from a bandwagon effect, attracting support because suddenly he seemed like a winner.

But one foundational aspect of Mr. Biden’s sudden strength was almost certainly that much of the institutional Democratic Party stood up and rallied around him. After rank-and-file African American voters threw their weight behind him in South Carolina, party actors from elected officials to local activists decided within a few days to coalesce around an imperfect but broadly acceptable alternative to Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom many feared would drag them to defeat in down-ballot races this fall.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race and endorsed Mr. Biden just prior to Super Tuesday. Former rival Beto O’Rourke backed him, too. Money and more endorsements began flooding in. Suddenly, the way was clear for voters to unify around a single alternative to Senator Sanders – and they did.

Sanders supporters have complained that the playing field isn’t level and that party coordination of any sort is an undemocratic influence. But this isn’t a new conflict. Tension between pure democracy and the preferences of political elites has long been a part of America’s complicated presidential nomination system.

In 2020, it took so long it almost seemed it wouldn’t happen.

“But given the situation, I think the party has acted like it’s deciding,” says Hans Noel, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University and co-author of the seminal 2008 book “The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform.”

The results of this week’s “mini-Tuesday” of six state primaries haven’t brought an official end to the Democratic nomination contest, of course. Mr. Sanders on Wednesday vowed to stay in the race, citing the popularity of his proposals and his appeal to younger voters. He said he planned to attend a scheduled Sunday Democratic debate in Phoenix.

But barring a major unforeseen development, the Vermont senator’s path to the nomination seems all but gone. Mr. Biden won four states on Tuesday, including Michigan, the day’s biggest prize. Florida, Ohio, Illinois, and Arizona will hold primaries next week, and the former vice president is heavily favored in all.

Given that Democratic primaries award delegates proportionally, Mr. Biden will likely soon have a delegate lead that for all practical purposes is insurmountable, if he doesn’t already. On Wednesday afternoon, the data journalism site FiveThirtyEight rated Biden’s chances of winning a delegate majority at 99%. 

A stunning turnaround

It’s already hard to remember that in late February, it seemed entirely possible that Mr. Biden would drop out of the race around Super Tuesday. His turnaround was so quick that he gained about 36 points in national polls in 14 days.

“The polling swing toward Biden is probably the fastest in the history of the primaries,” tweeted FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver on March 9.

That swing was the result of changes in Democratic primary voters’ decisions. Given a one-on-one choice (the third remaining candidate, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, has attracted little support) as a whole they clearly prefer Mr. Biden over Mr. Sanders.

But many important Democratic Party figures helped those voters along by winnowing the field and signaling through endorsements and other methods that Mr. Biden was now their own clear choice.

That means that in 2020, for the Democratic field, political experts who hold that the party writ large retains a disproportionate influence on nomination choices might be right.

“It is certainly evidence in their favor. But I believe there was a lot of contingency. I don’t think it was inevitable,” says Matt Grossmann, an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University.

In the 2008 book “The Party Decides,” Dr. Noel and co-authors argued that elements of organized political parties, from officials to special interest groups, can and do organize to support their chosen nominees in the “invisible primary” period before voting actually starts.

The 2016 election produced evidence both for and against their theory. On one hand, Hillary Clinton did indeed attract much institutional party support and money prior to the Iowa caucuses, making her the establishment choice. On the other, the Republican nomination went to a candidate the party hierarchy resisted, but seemed too weak and disorganized to stop: Donald Trump.

Then the 2020 cycle began with Democrats in the same position of the GOP four years before. Candidates were numerous, party coordination seemed weak, and a consensus establishment pick did not emerge prior to Iowa. Suddenly Sen. Sanders seemed on the verge of taking over a party which, while it has drifted left in recent years, organizationally remains resistant to Sanders-style revolution.

Big endorsement from Clyburn

“One question is why it took the party so long to get their coordination together, and if that delay means they really didn’t do anything,” says Dr. Noel in an email.

Maybe it was moderate Democratic voters in general, and African American voters in South Carolina and other Super Tuesday states, who lie behind the Biden resurgence, he says.

But Dr. Noel thinks the party did have an effect. South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden prior to the South Carolina primary was huge. Representative Clyburn is renowned in his state and the highest ranking African American in Congress. The party quickly coalesced around Biden after South Carolina, sending the same sort of signal that it usually sends prior to Iowa regarding the party’s choice.   

This didn’t happen earlier because a lot of people in the party wanted someone else – Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, say, or Sen. Kamala Harris of California. It took time for these Biden alternatives to falter. Then came the flood: everyone from Mr. Buttigieg to Mr. Bloomberg ended their bids quickly, and moved to support the sudden front-runner. 

Look at things from the point of view of the party, not the ambitious candidates, says Dr. Noel.

“From that point of view, it’s clear they were not comfortable with Sanders, but they weren’t sure how best to stop him, and not sure whether Biden could really win. The South Carolina results were enough to convince them,” he says.

Consternation in Sanders’ camp

To many Sanders supporters the sudden turnaround in Biden’s fortunes seems suspicious. All those people dropping out and endorsing Biden all at once? The Republicans couldn’t manage that in 2016. Somebody on the Democratic side must have made some phone calls.

President Trump, for one, has been eager to stoke this suspicion in an effort to split his opponents.

“I think it’s rigged against Bernie,” President Trump said in an appearance after Super Tuesday.

But on the other side, there are political experts who think the nomination system has too little input from party hierarchies and elected officials, not too much.

“Yes, I do believe that people who govern with the president of the United States and run on the same ticket have the most serious stakes in the nomination process. They should have a greater role,” says Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution and author of “Primary Politics,” a history of the U.S. nomination system.

Ms. Kamarck – herself a Democratic “superdelegate” with a vote at the convention if the nomination goes beyond one ballot – says a group of senators, representatives, governors, national committee members, and other high party officials should give a collective vote of “confidence” or “no confidence” for each candidate who wants to run for president.

“What’s happened in the 21st century is there are a lot of people in both parties who have no earthly reason to run for president, but do,” she says.

On Sunday, Mexico City saw one of its largest demonstrations on record. Tens of thousands of people, mostly women, marched on International Women’s Day to draw attention to gender-based violence, inequality, and a widespread culture of machismo. A sea of purple-clad protesters clogged the streets and the vast plaza around the Monument to the Revolution, blending in with the city’s iconic jacaranda trees.

By Monday, the streets were eerily quiet. Women had all but vanished.

After protesters went home Sunday night, they were encouraged to stay there. For weeks, the hashtags #UnDíaSinNosotras (One Day Without Us) and #ElNueveNoSeMueve (The Ninth Nobody Moves) had encouraged thousands of Mexican women to sit out from work and public life for a day. 

Some news outlets stopped publishing in solidarity, and many elementary and primary schools kept their classrooms locked. Women were missing from ticket booths at metro stations, where ridership fell by 40%. Many women-led businesses remained shuttered, and traffic – nearly synonymous with Mexico City – was a trickle of cars and empty buses. Women were encouraged to stay off social media and ignore emails and phone calls.

Their absence was a reminder that roughly 10 women are killed in Mexico each day. Just over 1,000 femicides were registered last year, more than double the cases in 2015. And only 10% are solved.

Two gruesome killings last month – one of a young woman by her partner, the other a child abducted outside her elementary school – shocked the nation. The government’s tepid and at times minimizing response to rising levels of anger around women’s security contributed to high levels of participation Sunday and Monday, observers say. Participants are hopeful that enthusiasm will force Mexico to take action. 

“This is a watershed moment,” says Mariana Zaragoza, coordinator of the program on migration at IBERO University in Mexico City. “The march and the strike will serve as a before and after for Mexico.”

“Women’s rights are a theme we’re seeing around the world right now,” she says. “What sets Mexico apart is that women are mobilizing for their lives. We are literally being killed.” 

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Commuters ride in a Mexico City subway car in the section dedicated to women and children under 12, on March 5, 2020.

A half-empty city

Monday morning in Mexico City felt more like a Sunday afternoon, when families tend to congregate at home.

Marta Valdez, a public high school teacher, stood on a typically crowded corner near a metro station with her teenage daughter.

“I’m participating in the strike,” Ms. Valdez insists, despite being outside purchasing a large cup of fresh-cut fruit splashed with lime and chili. Her daughter had a medical emergency, so they traveled to see her doctor. 

“We need equality, but it’s hard to argue for that when so much of women’s work is imperceptible,” she says. “Not just in the home. There’s a lack of recognition and appreciation for what women contribute at every level.”

The doctor’s visit brought this to the fore: None of the secretaries came to work, leaving the doctors to field patient phone calls, schedule last-minute visits like hers, and tidy exam rooms between appointments.

An estimated 200,000 primary and secondary schools were affected by the strike, with at least 21,000 closing entirely – a reflection of the outsize role women play in education. BBVA Mexico, one of the country’s largest banks, said 60% of its branches closed.

A few blocks away, Viviana Martínez, a travel agent, is striking. She responded to all urgent emails Sunday night so that she could unplug Monday. She sits at her kitchen table, overlooking a living room that by noon has been lovingly terrorized by two toddlers dressed in “Frozen” costumes and pajamas. Her husband plans on coming home at lunch to take the children to the park for a few hours. Ms. Martínez will stay home.

Some of women’s invisible labor – estimated at $1.5 trillion annually in the United States – is on display. With schools closed and their domestic helper given the day off to strike, Ms. Martínez is cooking lunch, keeping her children entertained, and talking to this reporter, all while in theory “disappearing” for the day. 

“I don’t know if people outside Mexico can truly understand what it’s like to live in a machista country,” Ms. Martínez says. Growing up, it was seen as completely acceptable that her father would tell her to go on a diet, or offer her brothers jobs at the family company while telling her it would be too much responsibility. Family members ask her lovingly what she plans to do when her husband decides to leave her.

“It’s micro-machismo, but it adds up,” she says. “There’s a lot of unlearning what our parents taught us.”

“Wearing purple won’t help”

But for some, striking wasn’t an option. Nancy stood behind a stall Monday in the typically bustling public market where she sells avocados, corn, purple onions, and cactus paddles wrapped in plastic. “If I don’t work, I don’t eat,” she says with a sharp laugh. Business was at about a quarter of its normal level, she estimates, but she supports the strike. “Violence is the norm,” she says. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

Azucena Peralta Reyes came to work at a small beauty salon Monday. Over the buzz of a nearby blow dryer, she explains that she agrees violence is a problem in Mexico, and she’s suffered attempted rape and abuse by partners in the past. But she doesn’t support the vandalism that has occurred during some of the recent marches.

“Wearing purple won’t help. Staying home from work won’t help. It all has to start in the family, teaching our children values and respect,” she says.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in 2018 with sweeping support from human rights activists, has alienated the women’s rights movement in recent months. He sought to slash funding for more than 40 domestic violence shelters across Mexico, before backtracking after a public outcry. At a press conference this year he blamed the high rate of femicides on “neoliberal” policies of previous administrations. He’s questioned the motives of march and strike participants, saying they are part of a conservative conspiracy to undermine his government.

The widespread participation that cut across class lines this week is evidence that Mexico is changing, says Ms. Zaragoza, pointing to how the media covered these events – focusing more on the issues of violence against women and inequality, as opposed to the defacement of public property as they did in past protests.

“If this administration doesn’t start taking demands around gender-based violence seriously, it will be the defining theme” of the president’s six years in office, Ms. Zaragoza says. The president’s previously unflappable approval ratings have started to fall in recent weeks – though they are still higher than those of prior administrations. A recent poll by leading daily Reforma found approval had fallen from 78% last March to just shy of 60% a year later.

In western Mexico City, Berenice Noya Mendiola, who works as a housekeeper, stayed home with her three children and her husband Monday. She sat the family down on Sunday to tell them the plan: She wouldn’t be lifting a finger (although she did prepare food to be reheated for breakfast and lunch). Participating in the strike was important for her: She grew up being told that her role as a woman meant obeying her husband.

“I could never raise my voice, even if I saw something unjust,” she says. “We can’t keep living that way, or with the fear that your mother or daughter will be killed. It’s too much.”

The strike was a success, she says. One of the biggest outcomes?

“My 14-year-old son cooked for the first time,” Ms. Noya says. “There’s no turning back.”

Shogofa Noorzai fought hard to become a young, newly minted female member of the Afghan parliament.

For years she battled brothers and uncles who sometimes beat her to block her rise – never mind the cultural traditions she faced down in her conservative Helmand province that dictate marriage and public silence for women.

But now Ms. Noorzai is concerned that the social gains she exemplifies may be reversed by political paralysis in Kabul, and by a U.S. withdrawal deal that may lead again to a form of strict Taliban rule.

“As the first woman, I acted as a man and traveled to every district of Helmand,” says Ms. Noorzai, 26, speaking with confidence in her Kabul office, whose walls are painted with historical scenes of the founding of Afghanistan.

“I talked to the citizens, talked to the people, and I told them, ‘I will raise your voice.’ That was too difficult,” she says of the 2018 election. “If a girl wants to be a politician [in Helmand], it is not common. I broke this cultural tradition that it was only for men – I broke it.”

Ms. Noorzai’s concern about preserving such fragile progress is mirrored among women and young Afghans, especially, whose lives have changed the most since the U.S. military ousted the arch-conservative Taliban from power in 2001.

Indeed, recent events meant to bring clarity and peace have, in fact, only added to a sense of disquiet about the future, as Afghans remain mired in political infighting, and steps are taken to wind up America’s longest-ever war.

The ongoing political uncertainty was on display Monday, when Afghanistan’s top two political rivals separately and simultaneously took the presidential oath of office in Kabul.

At one ceremony, Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated president for a second time after recently being declared the official winner in a disputed vote last September. That ceremony was attended by Afghan officials and senior American diplomats and officers, including Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan. Mr. Khalilzad failed to mediate a power-sharing arrangement despite last-minute shuttling half a dozen times between the Afghan politicians.

And at an event close by, Abdullah Abdullah presented himself as the actual winner in a “fraudulent” vote and had himself sworn into office by a cleric. Official figures gave Mr. Abdullah 39.52% of the turnout, compared with Mr. Ghani’s 50.64%.

The dual inaugurations were marred by a barrage of rockets that landed nearby as Mr. Ghani gave his speech, providing a stark reminder of the peacemaking challenges ahead. As aides rushed around amid the sound of blasts, Mr. Ghani stayed at the podium, opening his jacket to show he was not wearing any body armor.

“This is for the sacrifice of the Afghan people. I am ready for sacrifice,” said Mr. Ghani. “We have seen big attacks. A couple explosions shouldn’t scare us.”

U.S. staying on schedule

But the political paralysis and continued violence is already impacting the timeline of a U.S.-Taliban deal signed in Doha, Qatar, Feb. 29. The Afghan government was not party to those talks, in U.S. acquiescence to Taliban demands not to recognize what the militants consider a “puppet” regime.

Since then, the Taliban have renewed attacks on Afghan security forces, and Mr. Ghani refused to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners as the deal required by March 10, the day intra-Afghan talks were due to begin.

Instead, Mr. Ghani signed a decree late Tuesday that he would begin releasing 1,500 prisoners on March 14 at a rate of 100 per day, then 500 every two weeks after intra-Afghan talks begin, contingent on a major reduction in violence. But no matter how the Afghan sides adjust their timeline for talks, and despite the uptick in violence, the U.S. military is keeping to its schedule, announcing Monday the start of its drawdown to 8,600 troops by May.

All the uncertainty is raising anxiety among young Afghans, many of whom were children in the late 1990s, when Taliban rule forbade women from working and girls from attending school.

The parallel presidencies of one “self-proclaimed” leader and the other “announced by the election commission” are “very confusing” and complicate peace efforts, says Zainab Azizi, a social activist and member of the Kabul Hub Global Shapers Community, a volunteer platform for youth initiated by the World Economic Forum.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A reporter for the online Kabul newspaper, Khabarnama.net, Afghan journalist Freshta Farhang, seen here in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 3, 2020, has no recollection of Taliban rule and says a return to it is “not acceptable for anyone.”

“A big light in their minds”

Another issue is the exclusion of the government – with its ability to serve as the voice of ordinary Afghans, she says – from the U.S.-Taliban talks.

“The future is very ambiguous, we really don’t know what will happen, we don’t know if the Taliban claiming they are changed and are really welcoming many new thoughts and situations” is genuine, says Ms. Azizi, who graduated from the American University of Afghanistan last year.

“I’m really proud that in Afghanistan, where conflict has been going on for more than 40 years, women are [today] really well-connected to each other, they are supporting each other, a big shoulder for each other’s improvement, and that will not stop,” says Ms. Azizi. “That’s what’s really making me hopeful, day by day.”

“What I know is there is a strong will of youths for a better Afghanistan, and they will do whatever they can to protect the values we have gained so far,” she adds. “We are a generation that struggles to make a better situation.”

Among them is Ms. Noorzai, the lawmaker, who says Afghanistan has evolved beyond the ability of the Taliban to reimpose strict rules.

“There are too many good changes, people became open-minded. There is a big light in their minds, especially in the youth,” says Ms. Noorzai. “If something went wrong, like a Taliban dark regime came, fortunately there is [this] big light in the minds, so [people] will never tolerate, never accept this kind of dark regime.” 

During four years working as provincial coordinator for women and children in Helmand, and two years as a member of a local peace council, Ms. Noorzai worked on more than 190 cases of violence against women, and had half a dozen women released from prison.  

“These cases made me not afraid of dying,” says Ms. Noorzai. “After what I see at home, no risk is a risk for me.”

Eyes on the Taliban

But there are risks for the nation from a process that both legitimizes the Taliban – which has for years waged an ever-advancing insurgency against U.S. and Afghan troops – and undermines the government, says Hewad Zazai, the 23-year-old manager of an upscale Afghan restaurant in Kabul.

“Every step is better for peace, but this [U.S.-Taliban] deal is a big concern,” says Mr. Zazai. “Now our worry is more, because if the U.S. withdraws all its troops, maybe we will face civil war again.”

Still, though he doubts the Taliban have “positive change in their minds” about the role of women, Mr. Zazai says he is “optimistic for the future. Most of our generation have become educated and they know everything about politics and culture.”

The result may depend on what happens at the negotiating table. The U.S.-Taliban agreement came after a week-long reduction in violence. But the text made no mention of civil society, or the rights of women and children.

“Before the deal was signed, all Afghans were happy,” says Freshta Farhang, a reporter with the Kabul online newspaper Khabarnama.net. “But after it was signed, we became hopeless. Even me, I became hopeless.”

Now in her early 20s, Ms. Farhang has no recollection of Taliban rule, but she often writes in-depth profiles that include Afghan women and their tough experiences under the Taliban.

“When I heard there is nothing about women in the deal, I remembered all of my stories about women, and I became very afraid. I can’t live that way,” she says.

A return of Taliban rule is “not acceptable for anyone,” she adds. “My habit is that every day I should do something new. Imagine if I stay at home every day. To die at home is better than this Taliban again.”

How do you build a national archive for a country that doesn’t exist? 

The same way you build anything here. From the ground up. In this case, quite literally.  

It was 1991, and in the bombed-out ruins of Somaliland’s newly proclaimed capital city, a woman selling camel milk tea and laxoox, spongy Somali pancakes, handed a customer a piece of paper off the ground so that he could wipe the dirt off his hands.

But as Jama Musse Jama prepared to crinkle the paper in his hands, his eyes snagged on the text. These were the trial records from a famous court case a decade earlier that had sent hundreds of student activists to prison.

Mr. Jama was on his way to Italy, where he was to begin work as a mathematics professor. But in the meantime, he asked the tea seller if he could take the rest of her papers, which she had gathered off the road near her stall. And then he wandered the rest of the gutted-out city center, picking up whatever he could find.

At the time, Somaliland was mostly trying to forget. For three years, it had been bombed into submission in a brutal civil war waged by Somalia’s government in Mogadishu. Up to 90% of its capital, Hargeisa, was destroyed. It had recently declared its independence, trying to build something new from the rubble. 

But one day, Mr. Jama thought, Somaliland might want to remember.

Three decades later, the papers he gathered in 1991 have become the foundation of the library and informal national archive he is building here. Like Somaliland itself, the project is a radically DIY institution, built from the bottom up with little outside help. And also like the self-declared republic, which is not recognized by a single other nation, its very existence is an act of defiance. 

“This country is poor. Most of its budget must go to the basic needs of its citizens ,” says Mr. Jama in the melodic, Italian-inflected English he perfected during his years in Pisa. “But when you remove arts and culture from the equation of a society, you remove the thing that makes humans humane. I wanted to make sure that never happened here.” 

Bringing readers the world

“Here,” of course, is a place that technically does not exist. Not on a world map. Not in the United Nations General Assembly. Not on the roster of FIFA member states, or the Olympics’ Parade of Nations.

As far as the world is concerned, Somaliland is just a province of Somalia that has, in the words of the CIA World Factbook, “secessionist aspirations.” But on the ground, its independence hardly feels aspirational. It has its own government and its own borders. There is a Somaliland police force, a Somaliland army, a Somaliland shilling. It holds its own elections and collects its own taxes.

But the nation’s lack of recognition has left it deeply isolated. Most Somalilanders cannot travel, either because their passports aren’t recognized or because they simply don’t have the money. 

A decade and a half ago, that isolation led Mr. Jama to an idea many considered outlandish.

“You want to give people access to the world,” he remembers thinking. “And since most people here cannot travel, the world must come to them, and what better way than through books.”

Not everyone agreed.

“People said, this isn’t the right place, this isn’t the right time,” he says. But he tuned out those voices, and in 2008, he organized the first Hargeisa International Book Fair.

That year, 200 people came to the event. By the 2010s, that number had soared to nearly 10,000.  

Not just any books

But Mr. Jama worried about what would happen to that enthusiasm the other 360 days of the year. There were few bookshops in Somaliland, and even fewer libraries. What was there left much to be desired. He remembers browsing a library in the coastal city of Berbera that had been stocked with books from overseas donors. On the shelves he found five dozen pristine, unread copies of a text called “Coping With Alcoholism” – awaiting readers in a place where alcohol is illegal and “you can probably count on one hand the number of people with a drinking problem,” he says.

So when he founded the Hargeisa Cultural Center in 2014 and began building its library, he had one strict rule: No donated books, unless the title was one he and his librarians had specifically requested.

“We didn’t want castoffs,” he says.

For librarian Moustafa Ali Ahmad, that rule is important. Africans, he says, shouldn’t see their libraries as charity projects where Westerners’ well-thumbed beach reads and self-help books go to retire. Instead, he says, he tries to build the kind of library he wishes he had access to as a child – full of African fiction and thick reference books.

“I believe deeply in the idea of traveling through books,” he says.

Today, the library builds its collection through a wish list compiled by center librarians and patrons, which prospective donors can buy from. When he travels back and forth from Europe, Mr. Jama lugs home a suitcase full of new books for the library.

But perhaps the most important element of his collection, and the centerpiece of the archive he began compiling three decades ago, is a collection of 14,000 cassette tapes.

Their contents capture the deep orality of Somaliland society. Some contain underground pop music banned under Somalia’s Siad Barre regime of the 1970s and ’80s. Others are poems, radio plays, or recordings of news broadcasts. And many are simply oral “notes,” recorded and mailed back and forth between families in Somaliland and their relatives in the diaspora.

“This is the heart of our society,” Mr. Jama says. “And this is the heart of our archive.”

Reuters

During a campaign stop in Iowa, former Vice President Joe Biden points at an old campaign pin showing him in a much-earlier election race.

The so-called greatest generation that reached adulthood in time to serve in World War II produced U.S. presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The mantle then passed to postwar baby boomers: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Maybe – belatedly – it is the silent generation, sandwiched in between those two cohorts, that now may have its turn.

Both of the final major candidates in the Democratic primary, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, fall into this generational no man’s land. They were born during World War II. President Donald Trump, born just after the war, is officially a boomer.

In recent years the United States elected its first African American president and nearly elected its first woman, Hillary Clinton (although she took the popular vote). During this latest Democratic primary, with its unprecedented diversity of candidates, voters whittled down the choice to Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders in the end. By the current standards of diversity, they are widely perceived as simply old white men.

Indeed, all three candidates are older than the three most recently retired presidents: Messrs. Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And whoever wins the election in November, he will be the oldest person to hold the office.

Yet that should not be the focus. Life expectancy charts show Americans in their mid-to-late 70s can, on average, live another decade or more – plenty of time to serve a term as president. The real question is not about age but competence. Does a candidate have the energy and acumen to do the job regardless of age?

Those who study aging say common beliefs about older people have radically changed. Yet we are still in unexplored territory. Having the oldest president will be both a sign of the times and a signal for a more expansive view of aging.

“We do know plenty of people are doing all kinds of other stressful work into their 80s,” Louise Aronson, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, told The New Yorker, “and also that being president should be a team sport. It’s about the ability to use good judgment to surround yourself with really good, competent people and manage them.”

Concern about the age of the current candidates will put a magnifying glass on their choice of running mates, notably their youth and qualifications. Mr. Biden has openly talked about serving only one term. Mr. Trump, if he wins, cannot run again.

With so many seniors breaking mental and physical barriers these days, the U.S. is ripe for a test of its presumed limitations about the age of a president. Even as this year’s candidates are showing youthful vigor, voters can show some rigor in updating views about aging.