Diego Cupolo’s short collection Seven Syrians: War Accounts from Syrian Refugees is a testimony to the innumerable voices often excluded from conventional coverage of war and conflict. Faces of presidents, generals, and world leaders flash across television screens as Cupolo quietly assembles a collection of flowing narratives of just seven of the estimated 2 million people that have fled the Syrian civil war.
More than three years have passed since protesters took the streets in Syria. What began as a call for democracy, a mass movement to end Bashar al-Assad’s 43 years of family rule, has turned into a foreign-funded proxy war without a foreseeable end. So far, the war in Syria has produced an estimated 150,000 casualties, and displaced about 9 million people.
The United States and Iran are in the midst of difficult negotiations about the possible acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons. The likelihood that these negotiations will result in an agreed-upon formula seems relatively low, since there are powerful forces in both countries that are strongly opposed to an accord, and are working very hard to sabotage any agreement.
The state of US foreign policy in the Middle East, but also around the world, cannot be described with any buoyant language. In some instances, as in Syria, Libya, Egypt, the Ukraine, and most recently in Palestine and Israel, too many calamitous scenarios have exposed the fault lines of US foreign policy.
When late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was confined by Israeli soldiers to his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Mohammed Dahlan reigned supreme.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Iran President Hassan Rouhani both seem to want an arrangement that will avoid armed conflict. This is because each believes that armed conflict would have very negative consequences for both their countries and them personally.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019