WASHINGTON — After leaving the Marine Corps, Regan Young had a gripping story to tell. He just wasn’t sure how to tell it.

But after three years spent juggling night school for film, industry networking and fundraising —all while trying to assemble a reliable crew and hold down a day job— Young finally saw his project come to completion: his short film, “Marza,” based on his experiences serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, played at the military-themed GI Film Festival in Fairfax, Virginia.

Young, 29, served from 2004 to 2012 and left the Marine Corps as a staff sergeant.

His film is about the unlikely friendship between a hardened American Marine and a six-year-old Afghan girl. It was inspired by Young’s own time in Kabul’s Green Zone and the actions of two young girls who died trying to stop a Taliban suicide bomber from getting into the secure area. Today, Young calls those two girls heroes and says that the moment he heard of their roles in preventing the attack, he knew what he had to do.

“It was like a shotgun blast,” Young said. “I turned it into a script because that’s how I knew to channel my feelings.”

Young is one of hundreds of veterans and active service members turning to the big and small screens to tell their stories, honor their fallen comrades and heal past wounds. Many however, lack the technical skills, know-how and Los Angeles connections needed to realize their projects. For the amateur, putting together a movie is a daunting task that comes with a flood of questions: How do I light a scene? How do I get a distributional deal? How do I find actors?

Fortunately, there are more tools and resources for filmmakers —especially military filmmakers— than ever before. It’s a matter of knowing where to look.

Jon Gann, executive director of CINE, a non-profit organization that honors excellence in film, television and digital media, suggests filmmakers keep a few basic rules in mind.

“We want strong, unique and compelling stories,” Gann said. “It’s all about your story. It’s not about that cool crane shot.”

At a GI Film Festival filmmaking panel, Gann said that, while festival audiences may overlook low-quality picture, they are less forgiving about audio.

“Don’t worry about the camera. Worry about the sound,” he told the crowd.

Young, for his part, emphasizes the role of collaboration.

“Don’t try to do everything yourself,” he said. “Reach out. Assemble the right crew and listen to them.”

For Young, that meant reaching out to friends and acquaintances who would act in, light and mic his project for free.

“Find the people that share your passion,” Young added.

Those further along —with a product to show but unsure of what to do with it— face the challenging question of distribution. Online streaming may provide a small trickle of viewers, but for many amateur filmmakers, a film festival is the best bet for a launch.

The GI Film Festival, which just rolled up the carpet on its ninth year, was founded in part as a way to help first-time military filmmakers get their voices heard. The prominence of the relatively young festival was on full display last Saturday night, when screen luminaries like R. Lee Ermey and Dolph Lundgren walked the red carpet.

Besides a screen and a guaranteed audience, film festivals also provide important networking deals. Small-budget indie films like “El Mariachi” and “Clerks” were brought up to the big leagues by studio execs and scouts searching film fests for fresh, innovative voices.

Of course, knowing your audience is important.

“There is a festival for every film, but your film is not for every festival,” Gann said.

Gann, a longtime festival programmer, also rattled off the do’s and don’t’s of the festival circuit.

“We want you to help us market your film,” Gann said, sharing horror stories of filmmakers who showed up to festivals without knowing the log line —one sentence synopsis— of their films.

Gann recommends bringing merchandise and touching base with area radio stations to build a critical level of anticipation and enthusiasm around a project.

“The whole point of a film festival is to build a buzz,” Gann said.

Of course, some ideas are better told through the small screen. Many veterans have found success writing, directing, consulting for and even acting in military-themed television shows on channels like History (“Dogfights,” “Mail Call”), Spike (“Deadliest Warrior”) and Discovery (“Dual Survivor”).

Michael Sorensen, vice president of development and production at Discovery, told a GI Film Festival panel that the ever-evolving nature of TV presented a great opportunity to newcomers looking to break into the industry.

“TV doesn’t stop,” Sorensen said.

Sorenson and co-presenter Brent Hatherill of the American Heroes Channel also stressed the importance of bringing something new and different to the table when pitching to a major television network. Bringing special access or unique talent into the negotiations can only strengthen your position, they said.

And —if you choose to go the TV route— don’t assume that what you bring to the boardroom will be what viewers see on their screens.

“Be malleable,” Hatherill said, echoing the need for shows to “fit” the channel’s audience

Though filmmaking and producing are difficult jobs, the rewards at the finish are often more than worth it. With “Marza” now under his belt, Young is looking forward to new projects, bigger budgets and a new career. He wants to return —as a private citizen— to Afghanistan to see Mursal, the young Afghan girl who was the actual inspiration and “silver lining” behind the title character in “Marza.”

He also hopes to build the short into a feature film, calling the mission a labor of love.

“Those girls were on our side,” Young said. “I wanted people to see that there’s more that goes on over there.”

As if to remind the United States —and the world— of the serious crisis still unfolding in the Horn of Africa, gunmen linked to the Islamist extremist al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab stormed a university in neighboring Kenya in early April, killing 147, after systematically determining which among the students were Christians.

It is the deadliest attack inside Kenya since the 1998 US embassy bombing carried out on the orders of Osama bin Laden, and one that has many analysts worrying about the power of Islamic extremists in this impoverished corner of the world.

Somalia has been considered a failed state since the early 1990s. Armed opposition to the rule of longtime Marxist strongman Mohamed Siad Barre eventually exploded into civil war in 1986; the situation was exacerbated by food and fuel shortages and famine, which killed hundreds of thousands. The presence of UN and African Union peacekeepers has been largely unable to quell the ongoing violence between various warlords and armed factions.

The failed nation has proved to be fertile ground for hardline Islamist groups like the Islamic Courts Union —which briefly controlled southern Somalia before being driven out by Ethiopian troops— and al-Shabaab (“The Youth”), a jihadist group founded by Soviet-Afghan War veteran Aden Hashi Farah in 2006.

Though Farah was killed by a US airstrike in 2008 —a fate shared by many of al-Shabaab’s “emirs”— the movement continues on. While no longer at the height of its power, the group continues to control wide swaths of the countryside in Somalia’s south. Recent operations —including the Westgate shopping center attack in Nairobi in 2013— indicate that even a weakened al-Shabaab is extremely dangerous.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution’s Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, sees in al-Shabaab an increasingly dangerous and insidious threat.

“Compared to 2009, yes, Shabaab is weaker. But when I look at the issues in terms of security, it’s stagnating and at worst deteriorating,” she said.

Even though al-Shabaab no longer controls many major cities, Felbab-Brown said, the group’s influence is still widely felt. They control many small villages and roads and raise money by extorting travelers. Assassinations continue daily as al-Shabaab seeks to undermine confidence in the weak central government.

Asked about any potential links or similarities between a resurgent al-Shabaab and the more visible Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Felbab-Brown is quick to highlight their differences. While al-Shabaab and ISIS may share some superficial similarities, she says, the Somali group has more in common with the Taliban than the Islamic State. Afghanistan, like Somalia, is a deeply tribal society, and tribal affiliations give al-Shabaab the resources it needs to thrive. And like the Taliban, al-Shabaab practices a “politics of exclusion” meant to disempower certain clans and religious minorities, a practice that suggests a preoccupation with local politics, not global jihad.

While both al-Shabaab and ISIS operate like Islamic armies, their aims and ideologies are different. According to Felbab-Brown, al-Shabaab seems to limit its horizons to Somalia specifically. Unlike the Nigerian Boko Haram, the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah and the Filipino Abu Sayyaf, al-Shabaab has not pledged allegiance to ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and shows little enthusiasm for a unified caliphate in their propaganda videos.

“They are struggling with the relationship they have with ISIS and al-Qaeda,” Felbab-Brown said.

Though there is some fear that foreign fighters trained by al-Shabaab may launch attacks in the West, such instances are few and far between, with most international jihadis flocking to ISIS. The real danger of al-Shabaab, Felbab-Brown said, is the possibility that the group will extend its reach. From bases inside Somalia, the jihadi group has ready access to East African countries —many of them US allies— that have so far been spared from the scourge of Islamist violence. Western embassies might also find themselves targeted.

As al-Shabaab regroups, the international community seeking to rebuild Somalia faces new challenges. Beside Islamic extremists, the UN and AU must contend with widespread corruption, an unpopular leadership, militant separatist groups, Ethiopian and Kenyan proxy forces and an unstable economy. For its part, the US has limited its involvement in Somalia as of late. Though the United States occasionally conducts drone strikes against al-Shabaab, fear of upsetting the delicate peace process and killing civilians means that drones are used less liberally there than in Yemen and Pakistan.

Experts like Felbab-Brown are urging the international community to take a new approach: hold Somalia accountable for governmental failures, even if that means confronting allies. Such steps are needed, they say, if ordinary Somalis are to see the government as a legitimate alternative to al-Shabaab.

“They [al-Shabaab] are not good governors. But Somalis often choose between the lesser of two evils,” Felbab-Brown said.

And while all of this rhetoric plays well with non-interventionists and probably is the wisest policy route, that doesn’t mean that the decision to stand by is easy, especially when one considers the probable fate of one of the region’s oldest peoples, the Christians. Also known as Assyrians or, in some contexts, Chaldeans, many of them have been expelled from their homes in Mosul and northern Iraq.

Assyrians are a Semitic Christian people whose ancient homeland reaches from Turkey to Iran. Their mother tongue is Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. Because their presence in the Near East predates the Arab settlement of the region, most Assyrians will, with irrepressible pride, tell you that they are the indigenous people of ancient Mesopotamia.

“It goes back a very long time. Assyrians were at the very center of the cradle of civilization,” said Peter Bityou, director of the Assyrian Aid Society of America.

Bityou was born in Iraq and left for the United States in 1982 to look for work as an engineer. Many of his relatives —including his brother— remain in Iraq to this day and have been displaced by ISIS’s ongoing campaign. Since early 2014, Bityou and the AASA have been instrumental in delivering food, water, kerosene, clothing, medicine, gas stoves, generators, mattresses, blankets and other essentials to the refugees struggling to rebuild their lives.

The AASA and other aid groups must help, Bityou said, because no one else will. Assyrians in Iraq have been abandoned by the central Iraqi government and, in general, are not treated well by the Kurdish Regional Government in the north, he said. While the Kurdish peshmerga, or military force, allows Assyrian refugees to cross into their territory, those fleeing violence are not provided with food or other essentials.

“No one is looking out for the Assyrians. That’s why we have to do for ourselves,” Bityou said.

Martin Youmaran, an executive director of the Assyrian American National Federation, sees ISIS’s persecution of Assyrians as part of a larger pattern of racist oppression and disenfranchisement that goes back many hundreds of years.

“In Iraq, the Assyrian people have faced continuous persecution,” Youmaran said.

Historical fact largely supports that narrative. While Assyrians have peacefully coexisted with their Muslim Arab neighbors for centuries, to say that they were treated well would be a conceptual stretch. Under the Seljuqs and the Ottomans, Assyrians were given three options: convert to Sunni Islam, pay a tax (known as jizia) or face expulsion and possible death. Ottoman discrimination against Christians became so severe that, during World War I, the nationalist government killed 1.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians —all Christian subjects of the empire.

The treatment of Assyrians during the 1960s and 1970s under the Iraqi Ba’ath Party varied widely. Ba’athist ideology stressed secularism and sought to brush aside religious differences in the service of national unity; Islamic extremism was largely kept at bay. Many Assyrians ascended to high levels of power within the Iraqi government, including Tariq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister who was also one of Saddam Hussein’s closest advisors.

Assyrian expressions of ethnic pride however, met with severe repression.

“People will say that under Saddam, Assyrians were not persecuted. But Saddam hanged three Assyrian nationalists,” said Bityou, referring to the executions of Youbert Shlimon, Youkhana Esho Jajo and Yousip Hermis, who were put to death without trials in 1985.

“What can you call that other than persecution?” Bityou asked.

Saddam’s relationship with Iraq’s many ethnic and religious minorities worsened in the late 1980s, when Kurdish peshmerga forces rebelled against the government. Faced with a secession campaign, the government used conventional weapons alongside unidentified chemical agents —most likely the nerve gas sarin mixed with mustard gas— to eradicate entire villages; according to Human Rights Watch, nearly 2,000 Assyrians perished from gas alone.

Iraqi Assyrians fared even worse after the 2003 American invasion. By 2004, Islamic terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda in Iraq were blowing up Assyrian churches and enforcing hardline sharia law on Assyrian Christian communities. Many Assyrians sought refuge in Turkey, Europe, Syria and the United States.

“In 2003, there were 1.2 million Assyrians in Iraq. Today, less than 300,000,” Bityou said.

ISIS has continued the violence instigated by its predecessors, expelling and in some cases kidnapping Assyrians along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Due to the escalating violence, Youmaran and the AANF are more insistent than ever. Among their most pressing concerns: military intervention against ISIS.

“We want intervention not only from the US but from the UN under Chapter Seven,” Youmaran said, referring to the section of the United Nations Charter that gives the UN Security Council the power to intervene to stop crimes against humanity.

Beyond a foreign offensive against ISIS, Assyrian groups have renewed calls for an autonomous Christian homeland in Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate, known as Nīnwē to the Assyrians.

“We need an internationally protected homeland,” Youmaran said. “We demand that the international community preserve it [the Assyrian homeland in Nineveh], because the Iraqi government cannot.”

WASHINGTON — The embattled Drug Enforcement Administration came under fire Tuesday as senators dug into the agency’s controlled substances quota program, questioning whether it contributes to shortages of certain medications.

A Government Accountability Office report stops short of explicitly linking DEA mismanagement to the shortages, but that caution has not stopped some on Capitol Hill from assigning blame.

The DEA, long criticized for internal dysfunction by the GAO and some lawmakers, is still reeling from a sex scandal involving several agents. A Justice Department report in March alleged that DEA officers in Colombia attended parties with prostitutes paid for with drug cartel money.

The charges have not improved the agency’s stock in Congress, where members of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control grilled the DEA’s Joseph Rannazzisi, a 28-year veteran of the agency who serves as deputy assistant administrator for drug diversion.

“DEA refused to comply with GAO’s requests for information from a particular DEA database for over a year,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the caucus’s chairman as well as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I had to get personally involved in the process to make sure GAO had the information it needed,” Grassley said.

Some caucus members worried that DEA delays in processing supplier applications and setting quotas have contributed to the problem.

Between January 2001 and June 2013, 168 drug shortages —instances where needed drugs were unavailable to patients— were reported, according to the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress. Many were controlled prescription medications, including pain relievers, anxiolytics and stimulants.

Rannazzisi and Capt. Valerie Jensen, associate director of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug shortages program, insisted that drug manufacturers bear most of the responsibility.

“Shortages are usually preceded by a production disruption,” Jensen said, referring to the quality control issues that sometimes force drug companies to recall certain medications.

GAO Health Care Team Director Marcia Crosse however, painted a different picture. According to Crosse, the GAO’s ultimate inability to establish a relationship between shortages and quotas stems from inaccurate and incomplete data provided by the DEA.

“[DEA] did not have performance measures related to setting quotas or insuring an adequate and uninterrupted supply of controlled substances,” Crosse said.

The shortages issue has come to light at a time when the DEA is facing criticism on multiple fronts. Liberal activists have faulted the agency for holding fast to marijuana scheduling regulations that they say are outdated. Attempted collaborations with and investigations by other government agencies, like the FDA and GAO, routinely expose an agency where dysfunction and secrecy are the norm, some lawmakers say.

One of the most damning indictments however, has come from the DEA’s detention of UC San Diego student Daniel Chung.

In 2012, Chung was arrested by DEA agents after going over a friend’s house to smoke marijuana. Despite promises that he would be processed and released, Chung was left in a holding cell for five days without food or water with his hands cuffed behind his back. When he was discovered, Chung was suffering from dehydration and kidney failure. He was later paid a $4.1 million settlement.

Sen. Grassley, asked Rannazzisi why Grassley had not received an answer from the DEA after sending a letter asking about Chung’s ordeal.

“It’s been eight months and I still don’t have a response,” said Grassley. “There’s no ongoing investigation to hide behind now.”

Rannazzisi said that he could not guarantee a response before the end of the month.

Referring specifically to the Chung case, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that the reputation of the DEA has taken a huge blow.

“I hope this is not the DEA of today, because if it is, you won’t have any support up here,” Feinstein said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he had reached the point “where it’s starting to look to me like DEA is an agency that cannot manage administrative and regulatory responsibilities, and maybe they should be moved elsewhere and it should just purely become an investigative agency with no more administrative responsibilities.”

Though the unrest stopped well short of the rioting and arson that swept through some sections of the city on Monday, the situation remained tense as authorities sought to clear the streets and enforce the 10 p.m. – 5 a.m. curfew.

For most of the day, demonstrators had massed in front of a police barricade near the intersection of Pennsylvania and West North avenues, where crowds had looted and torched a CVS drugstore the day before. The protests were peaceful and even took on a festive character as demonstrators of all ages played drums and danced in an impromptu parade.

Demonstrators protesting the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray occupied the intersection of Pennsylvania and West North avenues Tuesday night. Photo by Matthew Schehl.

By nightfall however, the crowd near the barricade at Pennsylvania Avenue had thickened. But many on the scene vocally denounced violence and provocation. Pastors, church groups and representatives from the Nation of Islam pleaded with the crowd to remain peaceful.

A group of area residents even attempted to clear the intersection by forming a human chain between protesters and police in riot gear.

“It’s a tragedy to see the community being destroyed,” said David Morrison, one of those who helped link up the human chain.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake addressed the crowd multiple times via loudspeaker. As the 10 p.m. curfew neared, Rawlings-Blake implored protesters to return to their homes.

And while many heeded that call, others seemed emboldened by it.

A number of young men climbed atop the Penn/North Metro stop elevator holding signs and chanting “We don’t get tired.” Others wearing gas masks and bandanas rushed forward and gave the middle finger to police.

Shortly after 10, the police advanced to clear people from the intersection, prompting several protesters to throw bottles —some of them glass— at the police. In return, police set off smoke grenades and tear gas and were seen shooting pepper-spray projectiles. The crowd dispersed as police gradually moved through the intersection and also cleared side streets.

Police later dispatched vans, Humvees and helicopters to enforce the week-long curfew.

The late-night standoff was a departure from the scenes of calm and cooperation across Baltimore earlier Tuesday.

Baltimore police in full riot gear prepare to clear the intersection of Pennsylvania and West North avenues as the curfew approaches. Photo by Matthew Schehl.

Hundreds of Maryland National Guardsmen arrived to keep the peace in the city’s downtown and Inner Harbor neighborhoods. Soldiers carrying gas masks and assault rifles patrolled the quiet waterfront, where most businesses were closed early.

Crisis was also averted in the city’s northwestern suburbs. Rumors suggested that teenagers planned to target the Security Square Mall in Windsor Mill, Md., in a “purge,” apparently a reference to a 2013 dystopian film of the same name in which all crime is made legal for 24 hours.

Among those seeking to defuse the tension at the shopping center were self-described gang members who said they did not want to see their city suffer.

Gang member and rapper Orlando “Magik” Gilyard voiced his frustration with area youth, who he said had taken advantage of Gray’s death.

“I’d rather see us —BGF (Black Guerrilla Family), Bloods, Crips, blacks, whites— stop these kids from making the wrong decisions,” Gilyard said.

Gilyard and a number of his friends turned away one group of high schoolers who approached the shopping area.

“Stealing a pair of shoes, that’s not worth dying for,” said Christopher Johnson, another self-identified gang member. “This is not a movie, this is real life.”

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WASHINGTON — The Philadelphia branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs has already fixed some of the problems noted by federal inspectors who said the office altered quality reviews, violated claim policies and had stacks of unopened mail, a top VA official said Monday.

Last week’s report by the VA inspector general’s office is the latest blow to an organization routinely accused of chronic mismanagement, cooked books and retaliation against whistleblowers. The investigation began in June when the inspector general’s hotline received numerous complaints about the Philadelphia VA regional office. According to the report, many of those callers were VA staff concerned with reprisals against employees who raised problematic issues with management.

VA Under Secretary of Benefits Allison Hickey told reporters in a conference call that while she agrees with the findings in the VA inspector general’s report, recent restructuring has already solved most of the regional office’s problems.

“The report that was released by the IG, from my perspective, reflects conditions as they were over a year ago, and we knew that,” Hickey said.

The VA inspector general’s report was released last Wednesday. It documents numerous problems in the way the office operates. They include confirmed cases in which the Philadelphia VA violated claim processing protocol and, in at least one instance, concealed bins of unprocessed mail. The report also expressed concern for employees at a VA call center, who routinely complained about a lack of bathrooms, leaking roofs and insect and vermin infestations.

Hickey claims that the report does not reflect changes made last summer, including improved claim dating procedures, new call center facilities and mass retraining of VA staff. She also noted that the VA encourages employees to report problems without fearing reprisal.

“We are inviting our employees to tell us when they see something that causes them concern,” said Hickey when asked what will happen to those employees who reported the Philadelphia and National Call Center problems.

“The majority of [problems raised by the report] have already been fixed,” she said.

Hickey is overseeing a parallel internal investigation of the Philadelphia VA that will be completed at the end of June.

Many veterans’ groups were unimpressed with Hickey’s assurances.

Joe Davis, director of public affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, viewed the Philadelphia VA’s story with skepticism.

“When the VA says they’ve fixed everything, you better make sure somebody goes in there and does fix everything. And that’s a trust problem that the VA has,” Davis said.

Davis also pointed to the culture of the VA, which he believes is out of sync with the military it serves.

“The problem with the VA is they forgot who they work for,” said Davis. “They don’t work for the next line supervisor, director, hospital manager or regional office director. They work for the veterans.”