On Moral Injury and North East Syria
There has been a lot written and said about Syria since Trump's ad-hoc policy announcement on Sunday night. I want to take a minute to write about something that affects me, this being a personal newsletter after all. That something is moral injury.
Around about two years ago, give or take, two of the men who make up 'The Beatles' were detained in north eastern Syria. El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey stand accused of being members of the four-person group of British ISIS fighters that held, tortured, and murdered friends and colleagues of mine. Their actions caused people I love and me immeasurable pain, and ended the lives of others.
For two years, the UK and the US have been battling about where and how these men will be brought to justice. The debate remains unresolved. Now, there are many reasons for this battle, which include the UK stripping them of citizenship, differing evidentiary thresholds, the possible use of the death penalty, intelligence sharing laws, and so on. These issues are real, but none are insurmountable, and some of them were entirely avoidable.
Their victims, victims families, and loved ones have advocated privately and publicly for genuine justice; a fair trial, proper evidence, and against the use of extra-judicial processes like secretive detentions in Guantanamo Bay. The latter being especially crucial due to the heavy use of War on Terror iconography in ISIS propaganda. They have conducted themselves with grace, dignity, courage, and determination, and yet, two years later, they are no closer to the justice they seek. Meanwhile, Kotey and Elsheikh give interviews to every passing journalist.
Trump's withdrawal, or a Turkish incursion, or increased instability in north eastern Syria puts the ongoing detention of these men in jeopardy. The politicians crying the loudest about the ISIS threat, now place the pursuit of justice against high profile ISIS members who committed well-documented crimes against American citizens, into question. What hope then do those pursuing justice against ISIS members who committed undocumented crimes that didn't make the evening news have?
The moral injury begins with these actions. ISIS' evil deeds create trauma and suffering, the West's response induces moral injury. I'll explain.
The immeasurable pain we, and hundreds of thousands like us, were caused by ISIS was, to an extent, shocking not surprising. ISIS said they would kill, and they did. No matter how immoral and objectionable their actions were, they were consistent. Grappling with the aftermath involved grief (complex traumatic grief to be exact) and confronting the very nature of evil. It took twists and turns through the most significant questions a person can ask themselves. Coming out the other side involved learning to live with that, to sit with a new knowing of the evil that exists within our human race.
The western reaction, however, created a different kind of pain, which Trump's actions simply compound. It created moral injury.
Moral injury exists in the space between expectation and reality. When the pain of something complicated is larger than the sum of its parts, and we try to point to where it hurts and we can't, it's often moral injury. It's debasing because it shakes core beliefs. In the West, we are raised to believe in a whole host of values that include the inherent value of democracy, human rights, and justice. Perhaps, as we grow, we see that sometimes we don't live our values as well in reality as we do when Aaron Sorkin's in charge. For some, it's cracked wide open. Soldiers return from tours in Afghanistan, wondering what it had to do with 'freedom' and become afflicted with 'moral injury.' The Parkland kids beg for gun reform only to see their community vote in the pro-gun candidates.
Those of us affected by 'The Beatles' actions saw an over-saturated microcosm of what everyone affected by ISIS saw––the gap between these values and the talk of beating ISIS, and the reality. Five years ago, we saw big headlines, coalitions, military campaigns, narratives of good and evil, vengeance, conquering.
Mohammed Emwazi, the man who was known to the world as 'Jihadi John' was extra-judicially droned on the battlefield in north eastern Syria. The world cheered. It didn't feel like justice. When ISIS killed Pete, Steve, David, Alan, Jim, and Kayla, their fans cheered. I did not want to be like them. My own community, the places filled with people that I thought shared the beliefs that set me apart from ISIS, felt alien to me. The sense of moral wounding that had begun with the failure to save our friends was compounded.
As the war on ISIS drew on, it became clear it was based on bombs and bombast and very little else. Nobody countering ISIS wanted to deal with root causes or creating communities that don't allow the ideology to grow. CVE and CT became, as they have been since 9/11, about military campaigns, counter-messaging, discriminatory policies and big headlines. As someone who would like to fight ISIS in a way that means nobody else ever goes through what I went through, I felt let down. Rather than feeling comforted by our shared aim of pursuing justice and rooting out the problem that caused my pain, the incoherent policies I saw lead to my feeling frustrated and at odds with the world around me. The moral injury grew.
When Kotey and Elsheikh were captured the stacks of evidence that allowed a decision to drone Emwazi to be made, simply didn't seem to exist. The UK stripped their citizenship, and nobody could muster the 'political will' to bring them to trial. Now, nobody may ever get the chance to do so. This is how moral wounding becomes acute.
Our friends fates, our pain, all of it, was so much a part of why the West ever got involved in Syria. It made headlines the world over, which provided kindling for a burning desire to stamp out ISIS. And, while ISIS has indeed been defeated militarily, the prisoners, IDPs, pockets of resistance, and ideology remain. We're about to throw kindling into the remnants of the so-called caliphate. We place communities that have already suffered unimaginably under ISIS at risk of it happening again. We may not even bring two of its highest-profile members to court.
I believe in the best version of ourselves. Despite the moral injury, despite everything that happened––perhaps even because of it––I still believe it's possible to live the values we espouse and promote. As Trump’s actions lead to facts on the ground in north eastern Syria changing in ways that take us all further away from that vision, I hope that we can at least start to repair the moral damage, with justice. It's not yet too late.
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Revolutionary Ghosts is a newsletter of personal writing by Emma Beals. It’s about how Syria changed the world and how reporting on it changed me, the idea of moral injury and the practice of moral repair, and the mess we're in and what we do about it. There will also be recipes.