Times in the book possible aspire to and try to provide. After this, well gladly take your questions and look for your insights. Well have a Panel Panel Discussion about ten or 15 minutes after. Just as a housekeeping note, please also phoned off. There will will be a book signing with the authors after at area one and no personal recordings of the session, please. Now id like to introduce the panel. Christopher phillips is a senior lecturer in the International Relations of the middle east and paid a mere university in london. He lived for several years in syria and often returns to the middle east for research. He is an associate fellow at Chatham House middle east and north africa program. His friend for many publications and has appeared on the bbc, and cnn. Hes just published a second book, the battle for syria, International Rivalry in the new middle east which will be today. Alla malek is a civil right lawyer born in baltimore. Shes her childs attorney in the department of justice. In the works in the west bank and lebanon. If you a masters in journalism from columbia university. Her books include, a country called america, a us history retold. Arab life and her new memoir, the home that was our country, about syria. We will be discussing it today. Elliott ackerman is the author of green on blue and dark at the crossing. He lives and incidental and covered the syrian wars since 2013. His writings have appeared in the new yorker, east east atlantic and the stories have been included in the best american short stories. Hes a former marine and served five tours of duty in iraq and afghanistan where he received the silver star, bronze star for valor in the purple heart. Welcome everybody. [applause] when we think about the arab spring, its this thing in 2011 that started this glorious fire and it seemed to stir into asia, 18 days of furious energy, and egypt that brought down libya and laid in. Yemen and bahrain restless a little bit of saudi arabia and on and on. Syria stands alone. 400,000 dead, millions of refugees and displaced and a tide of anguish that has seeped into europe and across the world. Still he rules. Mocking a broken revolution and defined the world that is lefts band. Well begin with elliott. In your novel, very powerful, there is a moment when one of your characters a mere is deciding and hes in turkey and deciding do i go back to syria and he doesnt want to. He describes he says he feels that theres no life for them anymore and he gives this wonderful, powerful thoughts on the ideas of the revolution being shattered and turned into a graveyard. He says this to an isis type killer or fighter. Could you give us a little context on where he came from . He seems to represent to me so much of what happened since 2011, everyone feels like everyones dream has been shattered sure. Everyones been trying to grasp what is the narrative to put in this into context. We can look at the arab spring as the event began in 2011 which is obviously we saw the first widespread protest. I started spending a lot of time in Southern Turkey where the number of activists who been extremely involved in serious on island protests and something that is evident to me early on was the conflict they felt in that experience. Any given night, you could go to dinner and Start Talking politics and i could be with one friend and they would say elliott, you dont understand. The syrian army is viable and only if the west would support them enter into is not that strong. Talk about that and whether or not the quest should be further involved in the entree would come out and we continue to talk. By the end of dinner, they might be stirring the sugar into their tea and i regret the whole thing. I wish i could take it all back so i could go home. That idea at a very personal, emotional level, how does someone rectify that the event that in some respects their most proud of is also the one thats given them the most sorrow. As a novelist, frankly, i could easily tap into was my experience in the middle east. I am extremely proud of having fought in iraq and afghanistan. At the same time, theres been a huge amount of wreckage was left by those experiences. So, if you were to say to me, elliott, elliott, think of the best days of your life and i would say, there were days that i was in combat, all right, tell me the ten worst days of your life, and its the exact same dates. What does it say about that experience . I found that present as an afghan veteran and its more and more activists who felt they were present in their experience. They felt a shell shock syndrome . Did they become disillusioned or is it deeper than that . Its like an irrefutable cause. To go out into the streets in 2011 in 2012 engaging in people protest to demand more rights democratic rights and reforms authoritarian regime and see the reciprocal and the destruction of your country and the depth of many of your family members and the fact that you can never return home, there there was a lot of shell shock in that respect. One thing that is always interesting to me, amongst the people like you to know, there was an illustrated generation by where many older syrians who had experienced the massacres of assad were not as quick to embrace the revolution of the younger syrians were. I had a number of people tell me their parents said to them, dont go out in the streets. Dont you believe what im doing . Yes, but you dont understand what that family is capable of. We do. We remember. For some of them its as simple as that their parents were proved right in that respect. Alla malek your eloquent memoir were not going to call it exactly a memoir but its a memoir left it eloquently deals with a history of a family, but but also the pain of a country. Could you tell us what it was like going back and forth unraveling that country history and that Family History against the context of whats happening today . Hi los angeles. Thanks for having me. Its nice to be here with my gentlemen colleagues. Yes, what was it like . Part of the difference in my work was i didnt come to the serious story just in the last six years. I always sort of wanted to tell a story about syria for the sake of syria. Telling people about a place with interesting characters, People Living their life against what has been very tumultuous experience from independence in the late 1940s until today. I did in april 2011 when things began to give in the middle east, when it looked like there was the stagnation that we had associated with the region felt like it might finally be giving way to something else, i decided to move back to damascus. I felt, i had the opportunity, having been a human a human rights lawyer and journalist these are occupations that are hazardous to your health in syria. I never had an opportunity to be me in syria once i had become an adult with professions. I had been a frequent visitor and for the first years of our life in the United States we always planned on going back so there was a lot of back and forth but there was this opportunity to go and i had a cover story. In syria, 40 years of Strong Police state that is always watching you. For me as an american as well as the syrian and someone whos been in human rights law and someone who became a journalist, theres a lot of around me. I needed to have a credible and observable reason to the people who are going, as to why i would be there. I was renovating my grandmothers house and the house is the central metaphor through the book. The house that my grandmother had moved to was a new bride in the country was new in the 1940s and it was a new building and she stayed there until 1970 when she rented it out to a man from the army, within months and the house was taken from us for 40 years until 2010 we were able to get it back. It seemed like there would be a metaphor that restoring a house at the same time the country was being restored. The metaphor crumbled. It was a very different kind of sort. It was frightening because i was working inside. , i wasnt parachuting in. You know, it was devastating because we saw all the things that were being set in motion that we would get to today and it was frustrating because there were constantly and we talk about fake news here in the United States but fake news started in syria to some extent. In 2011, thousand 11, theres always this country argument those being forced by the regime that always happy was indigenous uprising. That there wasnt peaceful, it wasnt Civil Society based in the regime was currently putting out the narrative but it was not for people being paid. The things i talk about in the book but its not big news for the sake of fitness. If the accepted narrative and what will not be accepted is if you are to contradict that narrative, either verbally or in your actions. My first chance to be back in syria as an adult and not being a visitor, not someone whos been asked when will you be leaving again. By virtue of my profession i was always the question about me. It was devastating for, while the metaphor covering, the us were in search of what do we do with this. Comes at a really interesting time in American Foreign policy under the Obama Administration there was more of a retraction of the involvement in the world or how we involve ourselves in the world. The former president drew a line and assad crossed it and then not long ago President Trump fired 80 some missiles into syria and the plane still fly in the billion still dive. Id like to get more into the talk about the larger international question. What is american facing . Or is it out of the game at this point . Its an important question. People have been asking since weve the peaceful uprising and it turned into the civil war. The problem from the United States perspective is twofold, really. First and foremost, syria has never been an important country to strategically to the United States. It just hasnt been. It doesnt have oil reserves, history of being a nice ally like egypt. Its ever been a country that the United States has been interesting. Starting point. When you look at how the United States reacted to a lot of those reactions were couched in the language of some kind of universal values like we believe in democracy or we believe in freedom of speech and so on. Actually, the reaction was often a relationship related to the utica pertinence of the United States. For example, when the uprising began in egypt thats a problem the United States. Egypt is a very important ally in the us is worried that have stability there. When people to the streets after a prolonged period of time the obama and mr. Said we need to do something about this and they literally got on the phone to egypt and said something about this. Theres a two. We have to create stability. The side of that is bahrain where theres an uprising there that is crossed by the saudi arabians and the united emirates military. The United States did not say anything. They actually wanted to lean regime to stay in power. Syria in that role didnt really hit the same buttons. It wasnt that important. It was an enemy state, enemy of israel so that the United States was not looking at syria and saying we need stability here. Actually, for many people the regime change or even a prolonged civil war that much of a problem. Thats the starting point. Syria wasnt important. The second point about the United States view was that it didnt say much about syria. Thats not always uprising. [laughter] true. But we didnt know a lot about its allies. We had people to phone and we talk to . We had a relationship with the guys in the military. There is no such relationship with the United States. We didnt have an investor there in syria from 2,522,011. They did not know this country. Whats interesting is we made a lot of generalizations when i just didnt know the country at all. We went from one position in early 2011 when afghan started in this rebellion and when Hillary Clinton with secretary of state went on television said hes going to be fine. We trust that he wont help reform and hell start being stopping aggressive. A few months later, Barack Obama Says tend to stand aside. The announcement at the time was. [inaudible] cereal will fold. They didnt know. They didnt have any other intelligence. I was a desk officer in my entire state department in 2011, they did not focus on this country. That is a starting point. The second part of this is a country theyre not interested in and dont know much about, in terms of geopolitics on the eve of the spring United StatesUnited States wanted out of the middle east. After 2003 iraq war debacle they wanted to step back. Consciously saying, under obama we dont want to get stuck in middle east mark. Temporarily, they abandon that logic when they got involved in libya. Very quickly turned sour and it reinforced this idea that getting involved in middle Eastern Countries is a bad idea. They have these two problems in syria. Number one, they have a country they dont know much about or care about. Second time, they want to get out of the region back. Get enter donald trump. Despite the strike that he has done he was restrained by the same restraint that barack obama was. That syria is not important to the United States to see lee. It seems to be even more of a mess and it was in 2011 because 11 because the civil war has been going on a long time. Donald trump, even more than barack obama, wants to step back and on his campaign trail, at least, he took a took a isolationist and doesnt want to get involved in it. While he might fire a bomb here or there, perhaps theres less precision than the Obama Administration. I dont see him making a major shift despite. Whats striking to me is not just america but the west praise for regime change in a place they think is bad and many pieces are bad. They often seem flatfooted by what rises to the top afterward. It seems to me so often that the tail or whatever on the ground theres this lack of connection between whats happening in realtime and what your position papers back in washington tell you. Its unnerving and quite a lot. What id like each of you to do along that line is that so many hands had been reaching into syria. So many foreign hands, the various agendas, different moving point its memorizing. What would each of you say . We dont want to go down the hall because be here all day but what are one or two that you feel is most damage to the country . Start with you elliot. I think his analysis is right on. What i would add to put into context is at this moment the us disengagement in the middle east you have this ostensibly the end of the iraq war. We cant understand the Us International political position because i dont understand the other position. The iraq war was going to quote unquote end and it was very important for the november 2012 election. When we look back ostensibly all us troops had to be pulled out of iraq because he couldnt get an agreement with the iraqi government. We couldnt assure the troops had the protection to stay in iraq. We still have no sofa with the iraqis. We need to understand the political pressures to declare victory in iraq and what weve seen is the vacuum that you have in iraq during the iraq war and during the us pullout where we have a massive pseudopopulation that was disenfranchised and led to the rise of the Islamic State. I remember being on the Syrian Border with turkey, fall of 2013 in a place called tillis, and i remember we were watching the fighting going on. The question was who was fighting out there . That of the first liberated towns and the Northern Storm had held it for months and months. It was the Islamic State fighting against the free syrian army. It is a time when the Islamic State wasnt on anybodys greater and amongst us was a question why are the rebels fighting each other. Again, this is their first realization where the goals of the Islamic State were not too obviously, toppled assad but to create their own state. What we have in syria is as an over publication believe he recited for with free syrian army, the regime, an Islamic State. The Islamic State is a partner partner directly linked to the history of the iraq war. One less point i would make, when i spent time in that part of the world, we we as americans have the sense that we are very very important and we are. Whenever i am there, we have the stumbling in so much that we are not, at least not in my bleed, we are not the central actors in this. These are questions that sunni arabs in iraq in afghanistan, these are complex the us needs to figure out the correct alchemy of policy solutions, all these problem go away. This is over. Is also understanding the nuances of culture. In northern iraq, i spent a lot of time in the buildup to the iraq war and i wanted to go hang out with these kurdish fighters up in the mountains around iran and im getting packing up to go and the fixer comes out and says bring a go. Bring a goat. Why . Because its a sign of respect and theyll take you in a lot better. Its Little Things like that that go a lot away. Id like to bring the conversation back to syrians. Theres a lot of debate that the us is completely incompetent not knowing enough about thats one conversation we can have. The reality is the middle east, seriousness of, found that the worlds superpower is incompetent. Whether its true or not is another debate but a lot of people over there think it is by design. That has to be relevant to the conversation were ha