GALLERY the underlying economic and political grievances which spawned ISIS in Iraq and Syria largely remain. A survey of public opinion in ten Arab countries in 2017 highlighted domestic economic and social factors as the key elements behind recruitment. After the Iraq war, it is abundantly clear that American Humvees, air force jets and special operators can’t fix the kinds of grievances that drive people to extremist groups. Thus, ISIS will not be able to recruit as easily as before, but it likely will remain as a residual presence. There is no perfect security from extremists; ISIS is now also embedded in west Africa and southeast Asia, and so we have to ask again what we are still doing in eastern Syria. These remaining American forces include heavier armed units whose real mission is to hold the oilfields against Syrian, Russian or Iranian-backed militia attack. In February 2018 we bombed a Syrian/Russian mercenary column trying to seize one of the oilfields, killing many Russians. This is part of an American strategy of squeezing the Syrian government into making political concessions to end the civil war on better terms. Syria, and Russia and Iran, will fight back, and we can expect them to pursue unconventional tactics like roadside bombs, assassinations and mortar and rocket attacks against our positions. In the past the Syrian intelligence services helped extremists to attack American military targets in Iraq, and they likely will do the same again. In this sense, our staying may help ISIS, not hurt it. Some Syria war hawks claim that we must keep troops in Syria as a final withdrawal would give Syria to Russia and Iran. That is absurd. President Assad, with Russian and Iranian help, has already won the horrific civil war; he isn’t leaving. It helps to remember that Syria was never in an American “sphere of influence.” It was rather always a close ally of Russia and Iran. Moreover, American control of the oilfields will be hard to justify under international law; Syrian government sovereignty is internationally recognized. Likewise, U.S. military operations in Syria come under a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force against al-Qai’da after 9/11. Assad is bad, but he’s not al-Qai’da. Those defending the indefinite deployment in Syria justify it in part by its small size, noting this is no Iraq 2003 kind of deployment. They conclude that our battle in Syria isn’t “endless” if it is smaller in scale. Moreover, the small force in Syria has cost about $2 billion annually over the past five years. Even if the annual cost drops a bit, we should ask if $1 or $1.5 billion spent in Syria is buying more benefit to American citizens than using the money back home in healthcare, education, rural development or infrastructure projects. Governing is about setting priorities for limited resources. As much as I don’t like saying it, this time I agree with President Trump about finishing with an “endless war” and focusing more of our effort at home. 1 Ambassador Robert Ford resigned from the U.S. Foreign Service in protest of U.S. policies in Syria in February, 2014, after serving as ambassador for three years. He was appointed by President Barack Obama. He had served as ambassador to Algeria for three years and held posts in Baghdad, Manama, Izmir, Cairo, Algiers and Yaoundé. As a PCV he taught English in Fquih ben Salah, Morocco from 1980 to 1982..
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W I N T E R 2 0 1 9 WO R L D V I E W
Before War Began The shape of Syria’s personal and architectural heritage PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN BUBRISKI
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ine arts photographer Kevin Bubriski went to Syria 16 years ago to photograph the nation’s architectural heritage and its people. His work was published in the new book, Legacy in Stone: Syria Before War, by powerHouse Books and was named the best photography book of the year by RPCV Writers. The book is a powerful monument in print to the long history of Syria and of cultures and empires long gone. In his book’s photographer’s notes, he begins, “It was November 2003, the rainy season, and Ramadan. The U.S. war in Iraq was six months old. The mood in Syria felt quiet and expectant. Aleppo was busy and thriving, both the modern city and the endless covered labyrinth of stalls and retailers known as the Suq. Herbal medicines, olive oil soaps, fabrics, wedding dresses, spices, hardware, rope, electrical fixtures, antiques, figs, and more were all available in the ancient market.” The civil war that devastated the nation and led to a shift in the global balance of powers in the Middle East had not yet begun and Bubriski’s brilliant photographs document what may have been altered or destroyed in an eight-year conflict that has not yet run its course. He writes about the Citadel, an ancient fortress in the commercial capital, Aleppo, “as life went on with easy uncertainty. At dusk, the city would become quiet as traffic evaporated on the wide streets and pedestrians hurried home or to restaurants to break the Ramadan fast. The Baron Hotel is practically empty of guests. At the bar, a framed unpaid bar bill left by T.E. Lawrence eight decades earlier, and a Pan-Am airline advertisement from five decades ago share a wall unpainted for almost as many years.” He carried his Hasselblad camera to many of the nation’s historic ruins such as early Christian sites of Kharrab Shams, the Mushabak basilica on a rocky hilltop where young shepherds tended their flocks of sheep, and the site of the fourth-century St. Simeon basilica he calls “a Byzantine gem of its time, outdone only by the Hagia Sophia.” In this Gallery from his book, we include the kilometer-long colonnade at Apamea with its mixture of Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian columns crowned and those of the Roman city of Palmyra. “As the ruins took shape on the ground glass lens of my Hasselblad film camera,” he writes of the “haunting beauty and profound history of these ancient monuments,” while in the nearby town merchants were hawking ancient pieces of Hittite sculpture for sale, just arrived from the war zone in Iraq. 1 Kevin Bubriski served in Nepal from 1975 to 1977. His photographs hang in the
Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bibliothéque Nationale de Paris and other collections. These images are reproduced with permission of the photographer and the publisher, powerHouse Books. N AT I O N A L P E AC E C O R P S A S S O C I AT I O N
