Pointing to a verse in the Qur’an that condemns violence, Firas explains that ISIS goes against the teachings of the religion. “They never represent Islam,” he said. Firas and Rehab don’t want photos taken that could identify them for fear of violence against family still in Syria. (Kat Lonsdorf/MEDILL)

Sitting in a modest apartment in Chicago’s northern Rogers Park neighborhood, Firas Jawish, 35, thought back on the 10 months he spent detained underground by the Assad regime in Syria.

“We had no idea if it was day or night,” he recalled. “But usually the torture was in the mornings–so then we knew.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that it would have seemed like light conversation to a passerby.

The sparsely decorated apartment is the most reliable home Firas and his wife Rehab, 29, have had in more than three years. For their 3-year-old son, Hasan, it’s the first permanent place he’s ever lived.

The young family moved to Chicago in late September, joining the more than 150 Syrian refugees that have resettled in Illinois since the start of the Syrian civil war in March 2011.

Before the war began—or at least before it came to them—the newly married couple lived near Damascus in the northern suburb of Harasta. Firas was an anesthesiologist working in two different ICUs. Rehab, then pregnant, was going to school to become a textile mechanical engineer.

In 2012, as the unrest of the civil war began to spread, the Assad regime started weekly bombings in Harasta, forcing Firas and Rehab to leave their home and all their brand-new wedding gifts behind. They moved in with family in a nearby suburb, taking only belongings they could carry.

Meanwhile, Firas coped with the bombings the only way he knew how—by helping injured civilians in his neighborhood when he wasn’t working at the hospital. It was this that eventually led to his detainment.

“Even if someone is injured and goes to the regime hospital, they will kill him there, or he will just disappear forever,” Firas recounted last week in Rogers Park, explaining that the government considered anyone trying to alleviate the situation an enemy.

The couple didn’t want any identifiable photos taken for fear of the safety of family members still in Syria, but they did allow audio. Listen below to hear Firas describe his time in detention.

On the floor nearby, Hasan sat playing with a remote control car, oblivious to the dramatic tale unfolding in the living room.

When Firas was finally released in October 2013, he had been underground for 10 months. Hasan was now walking and talking, but he didn’t recognize his father.

A few days later, the couple decided to leave, fearing that Firas would again be arrested.

With little savings left, they sold their car and got on a bus to the northern city of Aleppo. From here, they took a bus to the Turkish border and then walked across, becoming part of the now 4.6 million Syrians who have fled the war-torn country.

They rented a room in Antakya, Turkey, a city about 20 miles from the Mediterranean Sea toward Cyprus. Rehab worked for a Danish refugee organization, while Firas tried to run a clinic for other refugees out of their cramped home using the only medical equipment he brought with him: his stethoscope.

Each stop on the Jawish family’s journey from Damascus to Chicago. (Kat Lonsdorf/MEDILL)

The family applied for refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in early 2014.

“After a while they asked us, ‘Would you like to go to the United States?’” Firas smiled big remembering, laughing a little. “Well, yeah. Sure, of course. Who wouldn’t?”

The whole process took about two years. There was a medical check, and a security check. Many security checks, he said. “They don’t tell you anything about how to travel, or when to travel,” Firas remembered. “You’re just waiting.”

The family got 10-days notice that they would be moving to Chicago, a city Firas said he knew about from movies.

“But we didn’t know the weather,” he said. “No one told us that it’s very cold. And I didn’t hear about the Lake Michigan—it’s just like a sea, actually, but it’s a lake. It’s very beautiful.”

Chicago’s large immigrant population, especially in Rogers Park, made resettling relatively smooth, the couple said. Their next door neighbors are Iraqi. Their local supermarket has recognizable products.

“Chicago is traditionally a welcoming hub for refugees from all over the world,” said Suzanne Akhras, executive director of the local aid organization Syrian Community Network. She referenced the resolution passed unanimously by Chicago’s aldermen in reaction against an attempted ban on refugees by Gov. Bruce Rauner late last year.

Ending up in the United States is not a typical outcome for Syrian refugees. The U.S. has only accepted 2,660 Syrian refugees since 2011, according to the most recent State Department numbers. That’s much less than one percent of the total number of Syrian refugees seeking relief from the conflict.

Illinois Syrian Refugee Resettlement 2011-2015

The number of Syrian refugees resettled in Chicago, Illinois, and the United States as a whole per year since the civil war began in 2011. (Kat Lonsdorf/MEDILL)

“It’s not sufficient,” Akhras said of the United States’ resettlement efforts. “Of course you can’t resettle everyone, we understand that, but why we’re not accepting more is beyond me.”

Instead, Congress introduced a bill late last year to make it harder for refugees from Syria and Iraq to come to the United States. The bill already passed in the House without amendment in November, after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris left many U.S. lawmakers worried that ISIS was gearing up to infiltrate the country via an influx of Syrian refugees. It headed to the Senate this week for a vote.

President Obama has said he will veto the bill if it comes across his desk.

“This legislation would introduce unnecessary and impractical requirements that would unacceptably hamper our efforts to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world,” he said in a statement shortly after the bill was introduced.

For Rehab especially, the transition to a new life has been lonely, mainly because of the language barrier. But Firas just accepted a new job in data entry at a nearby clinic, and the couple is especially looking forward to Hasan’s future in America.

“We really find that American people are very nice people, and open-minded,” Firas said. “A lot of American people here that we’ve met say, ‘We know you’ve been through very hard situations.’ We didn’t expect that.”

Julie Anne Friend, director of global safety and security at Northwestern University, said new freelance reporters generally will not have a security team to provide briefings on operating in dangerous areas, leaving reporters to have to find ways to educate themselves on how to undertake risk assessment. They also do not have a news organization to rely on for pre-travel hostile environment training, for safety checks while reporting or support if captured.

Frank Smyth, an expert on journalists’ security, knows all too well the risks of reporting in conflict countries. Smyth has covered armed conflicts, organized crime and human rights abuses in El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia, Rwanda, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Jordan and Iraq, where, in 1991, he was imprisoned for 18 days, according to his Global Journalist Security website.

Smyth started Global Journalist Security in November 2011 to provide safety information and training in conflict zones for news organizations, freelance journalists and staff at non-governmental organizations and other media personnel.

Smyth also created an online comprehensive journalist security guide that can be found at the Committee to Protect Journalists website. It contains information such as basic preparedness, assessing and responding to risk, technology security, armed conflict, and stress reactions.

In addition to using these safety measures, Friend said reporters traveling to dangerous areas should also make sure to secure health benefits.

“If you’re going to have a problem, its most likely going to be a health problem,” Friend said.

Friend said in the midst of shooting a story, accidents – such as falling down while shooting video or taking photos – are commonplace.

“The most important thing every reporter should do is make sure they have an appropriate international health insurance plan,” she said.

U.S. health insurance plans generally do not provide adequate coverage while overseas, Friend said.

The golden hour evolved over more than a decade of conflict, but only recently has the concept been verified through a long-term study conducted by the United States Army Institute of Surgical Research, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and the Center for Translational Injury Research at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. The study found that over the course of the conflict in Afghanistan, median transport time of traumatically injured patients improved from 90 to 43 minutes. The study also found that, because of this dedication to rapid transport, the fatality rate for traumatically injured troops went from 13.7 percent to 7.6 percent.

According to Brig. Gen. Kory Cornum, Air Mobility Command Surgeon of the Air Force and an orthopedic surgeon, the golden hour rules is one of a number of tools and medical practices developed during combat that have proven useful in and out of the war zone, throughout history.

During World War II, according to an analysis done by Dr. Kendall McNabney in 1981, it took roughly 10 hours to transport an injured soldier to definitive treatment. With each war, the time decreased.

McNabney credited use of helicopters as ambulances as well as better blood programs, staffing, facilities and organizational structure as factors contributing to the survival of injured troops in Vietnam.

According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, R. Adams Cowley was the first to popularize the term “golden hour.”

During the Vietnam War, the Army sponsored Cowley to study shock trauma in patients. Through his study, the idea of the golden hour became a theme in successfully treating trauma patients.

The Medical Center quoted Cowley as saying, “There is a golden hour between life and death. If you are critically injured you have less than 60 minutes to survive. You might not die right then; it may be three days or two weeks later — but something has happened in your body that is irreparable.”

According to Cornum, tourniquets and blood therapy are two other tools that started with the military but moved to civilian medicine.

According to Cornum, massive bleeding – known as hemorrhage – kills most people with traumatic injuries. However, tourniquets – used to limit blood flow to an injured and bleeding limb, for example – were not routinely used in civilian or military trauma centers until about two decades ago.

“Twenty-five years ago, we all were taught – in Girls Scouts and Boys Scouts and in first aid training in the military and you name it — that a tourniquet was only to be used as a last resort,” Cornum said.

Tourniquets were a last resort when medical transport was less efficient because applying a tourniquet for a long period means no blood, and with it oxygen, is being delivered to tissues below the tourniqut. This eventually kills all tissue below where it is applied; in the past, amputations were the result.

“Now everybody in their combat lifesaving kit…  there’s a couple of tourniquets in there,” Cornum said.

The Medal of Honor began in 1861. The majority of the medals awarded are to Civil War military men according to the Congressional Medal of Honor official website.

This year, President Barack Obama awarded the medal to Capt. Florent Groberg. He moved a suicide bomber away from military personnel in Afghanistan by grabbing him and throwing himself on the man seconds before the explosion.

While on a mission with Afghans, Groberg noticed a man walking backwards towards his group. He approached the man and discovered that he was wearing a vest with explosives. That is when Groberg took the man away from the soldiers and threw him on the ground. The bomb detonated and Groberg was severely injured.

“Flo was thrown some 15 or 20 feet and was knocked unconscious,” Obama said.

Groberg’s family and friends accompanied him at the ceremony. Among those present were the families of two of his friends who were killed in another attack in the Middle East.

Groberg stood in front of the crowd and fought back tears as the president shared his story.

“Flo says that was the worst day of his life,” Obama said.

Groberg is the 10th living recipient who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

House Speaker Paul Ryan orders flag to be lowered to half-staff in light of Paris attacks. (Sara Shouhayib/Medill NSJI)

But Beirut, nicknamed the “Paris of the Middle East,” didn’t receive nearly as much attention the previous day when more than 40 people were killed and hundreds were injured in twin bombings in the Burj el-Barajneh area, located off a main highway leading to Beirut’s airport, for which the Islamic State also took credit.

This was also the case in Baghdad on Friday, the same day as the Paris attacks, when 26 people died in a roadside bombing and a suicide bombing carried out by ISIS, another name for the Islamic State.

“I think Western media are naturally inclined to cover events in the West more than events outside the West,” said J.M. Berger, a fellow in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the new book, “ISIS: The State of Terror.”

“The Paris attack was obviously more deadly, and more unusual than the attack in Beirut, but in my opinion, the Beirut bombing deserves more attention than it has received,” he said. “That said, many Western news outlets have been covering it.”

As a Vox.com article by Max Fisher noted, “The New York Times covered it. The Washington Post, in addition to running an Associated Press story on it, sent reporter Hugh Naylor to cover the blasts and then write a lengthy piece on their aftermath. The Economist had a thoughtful piece reflecting on the attack’s significance. CNN, which rightly or wrongly has a reputation for least-common-denominator news judgment, aired one segment after another on the Beirut bombings. Even the Daily Mail, a British tabloid most known for its gossipy royals coverage, was on the story.”

However, the widespread coverage of Beirut was delayed. It wasn’t until bloggers and independent social media users started noting that Beirut wasn’t getting enough attention that news media increased their coverage.

The series of attacks in Paris at a soccer stadium, concert venue, restaurants and a bar, although not independently confirmed, have been claimed by the Islamic State, just like the attacks in Baghdad and Beirut.

Berger noted that Friday’s carnage in Paris “ is the first such attack of this type and scale we’ve seen in Europe since the Madrid bombings in 2004, and of course, the first such attack from ISIS,” which did argue for major media attention.

Earlier this year, al Shabab, an al-Qaida offshoot based in Somalia, staged an attack at Garissa University in Kenya, killing 147, but the social media reaction was not nearly as widespread.

Profile pictures on Facebook were not widely stained in the colors of Kenya’s flag as they have been for France.

Many took to Twitter when House Speaker Paul Ryan had the Capitol flag flown at half-staff “out of respect and solidarity … in honor of the victims of the Paris attacks” to ask why the Baghdad and Beirut victims were not being recognized as well.

However Monday, the UN Security Council did observe a minute of silence in tribute to all terrorism victims.

The most popular trends on Facebook in regard to Paris in addition to the tri color photo stain of the French flag, are the Eiffel tower peace sign and statuses reflecting sympathy while using hash tags such as “#parisattacks” and “#prayforparis.”

President Barack Obama, during a joint White House news conference with French President Francois, Hollande, noted that refugees entering the United States go through a rigorous screening process, a reference to claims that at least one of the terrorists involved in the recent Paris attacks entered that country hidden among Syrian refugees.

“Nobody who sets foot in America goes through more screening than refugees,” Obama said. “As Francois has said, our humanitarian duty to help desperate refugees and our duty to our security—those duties go hand in hand.”

Keeping Syrian refugees out of the U.S., on grounds that they could be ISIS terrorists, has been a big subject for 2016 presidential candidates. However a House bill that passed last Thursday to suspend a refugee program for Syrian and Iraqi refugees garnered 47 Democrat votes as well. Many are concerned about the vetting process, while others cite the need to prioritize which refugees to admit, such as persecuted Christians in the Syrian region.

“We have to be concerned about the safety of the people of the United States,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher , R-Calif.,, during a recent joint Homeland Security Committee hearing. “If it means prioritizing and making sure that we do differentiate and say the Christians that are now the most vulnerable are the ones that are going to have the most priority, let’s go for it.”

Obama has said he would veto the bill.

The New York Times recently released an easy-to-read infographic detailing the vetting process for refugees into 20 steps. It consists of multiple security checks, interviews, referrals and fingerprint screenings.

Syrian refugees undergo additional steps, including review by a Citizenship and Immigration Services refugee specialist. While France is preparing to take in 30,000 Syrian refugees, it is widely reported that the United States has taken no more than 2,000 Syrian migrants since the civil war started in 2011.

A visual explanation of the process can provide sound information and clarity to Americans who have opinions on allowing refugees into the country but who don’t know what current restrictions are.

White House Press Secretary discusses national security after Islamic State attacks. (Sean Froelich/Medill).

WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that no amount of U.S. military power will solve the chaos in Syria.

Earnest answered questions regarding President Barack Obama’s recent and upcoming meetings with world leaders to discuss how the Syrian civil war and threats posed by the Islamic State are being confronted.

Earnest assured reporters that international resources are being funneled together in order to meet the current U.S. plan of “degrading and defeating ISIL.”

“The success of this mission is dependent on 65 nations coming together, recognizing the common interest they have here and dedicating significant resources,” Earnest said.

Obama meets with French President Francois Hollande Tuesday as part of the international outreach.

Reporters asked Earnest about the ongoing efforts to snuff out terrorist threats in Belgium, which is currently on high alert against potential attacks following the massacre in Paris.

Earnest was mum on safety procedures in Belgium to ensure their secrecy, but suggested that security improvements Europe can make it easier for those allies to better defend their own national security.

Earnest said it is important to expand intelligence sharing within the European Union and with the U.S.

“That is certainly something we are committed to,” Earnest said. “And we are committed to helping our allies in Europe deal with this rather urgent threat.”

Congress voted last week to increase the security measures for Syrian refugees coming into the U.S. due to GOP fears that Islamic State operatives would sneak into the country.

“I think those who voted to further encumber the refugee process are accountable for their vote…it’s not likely to do much to improve the national security of the United States.”

Vimeo / Medill Reports – via Iframely

Video: Askar and Asef Askar talk about how they got into MMA and how they hope to destroy the negative stereotypes cast on Arabs and Muslims (Michael Bacos/Medill)

CHICAGO — Askar Askar and his brother Asef were teenagers when they came to the United States from Palestine in 2001 to reunite with their father.

They were bullied in school because of their ethnicity. So Askar’s dad enrolled him in tae kwon do in Chicago, while Asef decided to bulk up by lifting weights until he decided to take a tae kwon do class, too.

Then one day, when walking home from the class, they stumbled across an LA Boxing gym and decided to take up MMA.

“We went in and got our asses whooped the first day,” said Askar. “It was a straight-six-month period of getting destroyed.”
The brothers decided to quit, but one of the coaches berated them, inspiring them to give it another shot.

Years later, they have moved on from beating bullies.

Now, they are moving into the professional ranks.

Askar racked up a 7-2 record in the amateur MMA ranks and won his first professional fight Saturday in Michigan City, Indiana. On the same card, Asef improved to 4-0 as an amateur and retained his Hoosier Fight Club featherweight title.

Being Palestinian, Asef said, is great preparation for MMA.

“Palestinians go through wars everyday,” he said. “We’re some of the toughest people out there.”

Askar has experienced his share of racism during his first few fights for Hoosier Fight Club.

“Every time I walked out, I got booed,” said Askar. “You get that one guy that’s pretty racist and starts yelling, spitting and being judgmental against us. The biggest thing is, you ignore it and prove them wrong in the cage.

“Just because you think a guy with a long beard, long hair and a turban blows up stuff doesn’t mean it’s all of them. I want to prove everyone who thinks we’re a terrorist wrong.”

The Palestinian community in Chicago has thrown its support behind the Askar brothers –including an estimated 500-1,000  fans at their fights in Indiana.

They hope to become so popular that Palestinians will fly to the States to watch them fight.

“Sports helps you fit into American culture,” says Asef. “It shows that just because we’re Arab, we’re doing what everyone else is doing. It’s not like we stick to one thing because we’re from a certain culture or background.”

WASHINGTON – Nineteen Medill graduate students and four alums, all part of the school’s National Security Journalism Specialization Program, embedded at the National War College for two days in early November, attending lectures and seminars with senior military and government officials who both inspired and challenged the students.

Our visit began Nov. 5 at the gates of Ft. McNair at 0715 (military time), an historic post that now houses the War College and other graduate programs that are part of National Defense University. War college Dean David Tretler explained the rigorous one-year graduate program, saying those nominated by their service or government agency were tapped based on future leadership potential. Among the college’s graduates are Colin Powell and Dwight Eisenhower.

The speaker for that day’s lecture was Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command; he also is a National War College alum. Afterward, we participated in small group seminars with the college’s students to discuss issues of cybersecurity and military strategy.

A campus tour and lunch buffet afforded us even more quality time with the senior military and government officials, where we engaged in deep discussions regarding global politics, economics and security. I had the opportunity to meet a female Army officer who has had four deployments to Afghanistan; we discussed topics ranging from her experience serving overseas, to health crises facing India’s population, to my aspirations as a journalist interested in social justice, security and health issues.

Our first day at the college ended with a panel discussion covering issues between media and military to better inform our stories. Defense reporter Kristina Wong of The Hill noted the difficulty of reaching sources and accessing necessary information, while Col. Edward W. Thomas, Jr. noted the potential security problems facing the nation should the wrong information be reported.

The second day of our visit included a lecture on defense diplomacy by Col.l Robert Timm and additional time in our seminar groups. The visit concluded after a working lunch where expert professors and military personnel touched upon issues of energy and oil, Europe’s impending economic decline and China’s growing naval strength as part of a strategy to assert power and territorial dominance in the region.

The Medill National Security Specialization students, most in their first quarter of the graduate program, had the rare chance to not only learn about our nation’s security challenges and threats from top experts, but to witness first-hand how senior military and government leaders learn to think strategically about the U.S. role in dealing with those issues. That understanding will certainly inform our reporting as we move forward through Medill and into the professional journalism world.

by PresidenciaRD/Flickr
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

WASHINGTON — Whether the historic meeting between the presidents of China and Taiwan earlier this month will have a lasting impact depends on whether Taiwan’s next president is willing to accept the “One China” concept, according to a leading political science expert in Taiwan.

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, a pro-china leader who will leave office after the next election in January, met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore 66 years after the civil war in China separated the two sides.

“The Ma-Xi meeting is only the first step to establish the dialogue platform between the leaders of Taiwan and China,” Chien-wen Kou, a politics professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, wrote in an email.

During his presidency, Ma pushed for closer ties with the mainland, including expanding trade and allowing more Chinese tourists and students to visit and study in Taiwan. In 2010, the two governments signed an economic pact to reduce tariffs.

“If the new president of Taiwan does not follow Ma’s footsteps and China shows no more goodwill in many issues, then the Ma-Xi meeting will be only a historical event without lasting impact on cross-straits relations,” said Kou, who regularly is interviewed about relations between the two sides.

However, opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen, the leading presidential candidate in the 2016 election in Taiwan, is more hostile to China.

She said the only result of the Ma-Xi meeting was “the use of politics to limit the choices of the Taiwanese public regarding cross-strait relations on an international stage,” according to Taipei Times.

She blamed Ma for not achieving any of the three goals she had hoped for: “Confirming the ability of the 23 million people of Taiwan to make their own choices, establishing that there would be no political preconditions in the development of cross-strait relations and ensuring equal footing and dignity in cross-strait relations,” Taipei Times reported.

The political preconditions she referred to are in the 1992 Consensus or the “One China principle,” which was the term used after a 1992 meeting between representatives of China and Taiwan. Ma’s Nationalist party and the Communist Party recognize the “One “hina” consensus, but Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party denies the consensus defining China exists.

“The meeting sends a strong message to the next president of Taiwan (most likely Tsai Ing-wen,), not the incumbent president, that the meetings of the leaders of Taiwan and China are all right if he or she accepts the 1992 Consensus,” Kou said.

Ma has advocated a meeting between leaders of Taiwan and mainland China for several years, ut Xi did not accept the proposal till now, probably in reaction to the likely victory of Tsai’s DPP in January, according to Kou.

“Xi wanted to stabilize cross-straits relations so that he could concentrate on other domestic and international challenges,” Kou explained.

“The stabilization of cross-straits relations is consistent with the U.S.’s national interests,” Kou wrote, “However, I do not think that the U.S. wants to see a situation in which Taiwan stands too close to China.”

Jerome A. Cohen, adjunct senior fellow for Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an article that ”the U.S. government will undoubtedly want to push back at Xi’s attempt to exclude Washington from the Taiwan puzzle, as part of Beijing’s effort to reduce American influence in Asia generally.”

China-Taiwan timeline

1949 – Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party of China forms its own government in Taiwan after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists

1971 – Taiwan loses its seat at the UN to China

1979 – United States develops diplomatic relations with China and moves its embassy from Taiwan to Beijing

1987 – Taiwan allows soldiers to visit their families in mainland China

1993 – First talk between China and Taiwan is held in Singapore

2005 – China passes anti-secession law authorizing use of force if Taiwan declares independence

2008 – Taiwan’s vice president-elect and China’s commerce minister hold talks on economic cooperation

2010 – China and Taiwan sign an economic pact to reduce tariffs and commercial barriers between them 2014 – Students and civic groups protest the trade pact with China, arguing it would hurt Taiwan’s economy and leave it vulnerable to political pressure from Beijing