Why we need a better understanding of Syria

How did we fail Jim Foley? We failed him by forgetting about his case, by letting Syria’s story fade into oblivion – reviving them only when they hit a point of unmistakable catastrophe.

In the mainstream press, we have a pesky habit of ignoring issues when they’re just plain bad. Instead, we wait until they are practically disastrous before they merit our focused attention.

Jim was in captivity for almost two years before his murder. In that time, the situation in Syria crumbled into a chaotic mess of destroyed cities and extremist fighters. The Islamic State rose in strength and prominence – all of us watching its slow-motion ascent, until it eclipsed all other forces in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq.

In the intervening months, Foley’s friends and family struggled to keep his story alive. Writing for Syria Deeply in March 2013, Clare Morgana Gillis paid him tribute by adding color and character to his case:

“If it were any of us who’d been captured, Jim would no doubt be organizing events, raising money, and trying to put together recon and rescue missions to get us out,” Gilis wrote. The two had been kidnapped before, held in captivity together in Libya while reporting on the collapse of the Gaddafi regime.

“Jim told me when to duck and when to run. If he had a sandwich, he’d offer me half; if down to one cigarette, he’d pass it back and forth,” she said. “He saved my life twice before I’d known him a full month.”

It has never been easy to keep track of Syria’s conflict. In November 2012, when Foley was kidnapped, journalists were still casually sharing cab rides to cross over the border, from the Turkish city of Gaziantep into Aleppo, Syria. For freelance reporters – often cash-strapped stringers for mainstream news outlets – it was the only cost effective way to access the story. Even the most celebrated publications, facing budget constraints and a world of news to cover, didn’t make Syria a serious spending priority. That made for a crop of journalists entering Syria without adequate protection or sufficient backing from their news outlets.

Since then it’s become close to impossible for journalists to get safe passage through rebel-held areas, or unfettered access to government strongholds. There has been a kind of access bias as a result: the stories that were most easily within reach were the ones that got told. That leaves some of the most important stories, the most consequential issues, completely uncovered.

Jim, at great personal risk, committed himself to filling in the blanks. Others like him have done the same, with the grim outcome of at least 69 reporters dead and another 20 in captivity, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Monday just one of them, Peter Theo Curtis, was released and set to be reunited with his family.

With so few Western journalists willing to make the trip – extremist fighters have turned it into a deadly calling – one alternative is to empower local journalists on the ground. At Syria Deeply we have cultivated Syrian talent, in the pool of two-dozen reporters submitting stories from their local communities, in their native language. We coach them, translate their pieces, and publish them to an audience of global readers.

Their knowledge is another way to fill in the blanks, sharing insights and developments that we can no longer access on our own. Their reporting also helps us put Foley’s death in context: his terrible ordeal is one that millions of Syrians have also come to endure every day.

As the dark episode of Foley’s killing sinks in certain realities become clear. For one, modern media is ill equipped to cover modern warfare – it is a messier game, at a time when most news outlets lack the resources and the commitment to consistently cover the conflict. As a result we are missing whole sections of the story, losing out on a broader understanding of the key dynamics and emerging threats from the theaters of war. That is how actors like ISIS ultimately emerge: they thrive in a vacuum and go largely ignored, then they surprise the world with a shocking show of violence.

Once they do there is little that can be done to stop them, short of a dramatic intervention on the ground. Finding Foley’s killer won’t undo the dynamics that created this nightmare in Syria; no single manhunt ever could. At best it can provide some comfort to his family, along with some false exoneration to us, for having ignored his case (and others in Syria) for far too long.

Author: Lara Setrakian is the Founder and Executive Editor of News Deeply. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a Member of the Global Agenda Council on the United States.

Image: A woman walks past graffiti on a wall in Erbeen, in the eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh