What Would You Take?

Salma (name changed) fled Syria with the ring her mother
gave her on her death bed more than 80 years ago.

Posted By: Jeff McKown

In March 2011 the Syrian people began to gather and demand the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled their country for forty years. After the government responded to the protests by open firing on demonstrators, the uprising grew into a full-fledged civil war.

In the two years since, more than 70,000 people have lost their lives in the civil war, and more than one million Syrians have sought refuge in other countries.

Imagine that tomorrow you were forced to flee your home. You can take almost nothing with you. What would you take?

Photographer Brian Sokol posed that question to refugees from Syria, Sudan, and other troubled spots around the globe. Some of the profound images his question generated are shown below.

Alia (name changed), fled Daraa, Syria with her wheelchair.
Image: Brian Sokol 

May (name changed), fled Damascus, Syria with her bracelets.
Image: Brian Sokol

Ahmed (name changed), fled Syria with his cane.
Image: Brian Sokol

Ahmed Sadik, fled his village in Sudan with his pet monkey.
Image: Brian Sokol

You can see Brian Sokol's complete (and stunning) photo essay here.

Afghanistan - Still Unwinnable After All These Years

Having just passed the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, we are only weeks away from the ten year anniversary of the start of our war in Afghanistan. Sadly, as this milestone date approaches, we have made far too little progress despite the best efforts of hundreds of thousands of American soliders, nearly 2,000 of whom gave their lives there.

Any real security gains that have been made notwithstanding, consider these events which have all occurred in the Afghan capitol of Kabul, and all since June.

• Today, the head of the Afghan High Peace Council (a man who was also a former President of Afghanistan) was killed at his home in a heavily guarded diplomatic area of Kabul. 
• A Taliban siege in Kabul last week, which included attacks with grenades, rockets, and suicide vests, held the city captive for two days and resulted in 11 civilian deaths and three Afghan police casualties. 
• In the prior two months, there have been attacks on the British Council cultural body and on the Intercontinental, a luxury hotel in Kabul popular with foreign visitors to Afghanistan.

Imagine if all of this happened in the last three months in our nation's capitol. Could we possibly feel safe and secure as a nation? Now, consider that this is only some of what happened this summer in Afghanistan, and that these are only events from a single city. What would our outlook as a nation be? How would we feel about our collective future? Now, consider that this chaos and destruction has reigned for decades. How scarred would our national soul be (not to mention our individual psyches)? Would there be any hope at all left in our hearts?

As we begin the process of transitioning responsibility for the nation's security to the government and people of Afghanistan, it is painfully obvious that we are handing over a nearly impossible task. After ten years, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars, Afghanistan remains unstable.

I make no judgments on our original decision to invade Afghanistan in October of 2001, and I am not criticizing any specific conduct of the war since then. I am not arguing that Americans should stay in Afghanistan longer or that they should leave quicker. In the end, I can only conclude that the war has been unwinnable since the start, and that Afghanistan is a costly and bloody puzzle that may only be figured out over a period of decades, if at all.