Q&A with Ali - PhD

(My final project for the class Art of the Interview at UCLA Extension.)

Q&A with Ali Hamdan

Ali Hamdan is a 29-year-old normal guy living in West LA. He’s a student at UCLA, he hangs out with friends, goes for brunch on the weekends. He drinks a lot of tea.

Rewind one year and he was doing the same thing, but in Gaziantep, Turkey, on the border to a warzone. Refugees from Syria were pouring into the city. “I saw a lot of people missing arms and legs, it was pretty intense.

Ali grew up in Massachusetts, in a rural area with not much to do but tipping cows. His mother comes from a family of dairy farmers, and his father is a Lebanese refugee. The family lived in Shelburne Falls, far away from everything. But that life was not for Ali. “I don’t fucking know how to milk a cow.” He left for college in Vermont and came to Los Angeles seven years ago.

Now doing his PhD in geography, his deep interest and fascination for political science took him to Amman, Jordan and Gaziantep, Turkey for more than two years. He returned to LA about six months ago.

“The trip has changed me in the way that now the Syrian conflict is personal, it’s no longer this thing I see on the news. My friends over there are directly affected by what’s happening.”

He says he loved living in Gaziantep and that he would go back there this summer if he could. “I don’t have the money to do it, and everything over there is falling apart. Lots of the activities I was studying are shutting down, either because the Turkish state is sick of it all, or the Americans are tired of funding. All the countries involved in the conflict, expect for the Syrians, are like ‘we’re done with this shit.’ ”

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What exactly was your purpose in Gaziantep, Turkey?

I was there doing a project comparing the two hubs in exile for Syrian opposition people. And that is loosely defined, so not just militants, but activists, journalists and politicians.

My goal was to try to get into peoples’ heads. Try to understand what it’s like living in this crazy situation where they try to make sense of the chaos, as well as push back against it. There were all kinds of stuff happening there.

What was happening?

A lot of journalists were going in and out, training local journalists inside. There were Syrian humanitarian organizations based in Gaziantep, and they had people who went inside to deliver aid. What was most interesting to me about Gaziantep is that the government in exile was sort of headquartered there. The Syrians living in exile don’t want anarchy in the areas they control inside Syria, so they set up local forms of governance, local councils. And the Americans and the Brits also really want this to happen, because if you stabilize rebel-held areas, it’s less likely for terrorism to flourish.

So, in Gaziantep there were all these opposition politicians, activists and militants, generals and fighters, hanging out with American and British diplomats.

What was a normal day in Gaziantep like for you?

Normally after waking up, I’d do a little reading and around eleven I’d start calling people. Sometimes I would go to events or protests or attend meetings. I would meet people for coffee, build my network. It was very similar to what a journalist does.

Part of the point of my project was to show that even places that are very quiet and boring, are very deeply connected to stuff that’s happening in a warzone.

What was it like to be an American in the middle of that?

There are lots of Americans over there. But I could kind of blend in much better than most people. I look Arabic or Turkish, so I could walk around without anyone giving me grief. Gaziantep was full of diplomats and humanitarian workers, some of them very knowledgeable, but many of them where pretending to be Indiana Jones.

What do you mean by that?

That for them it was just a big adventure. Or a way for them to advance their careers.

Wasn’t that why you were there also, to advance your career?

It was. Definitely.

But there are people who go abroad to work, and never really form any meaningful connections. And then they disappear. I made a lot of friends over there in the Syrian community.

What were you hoping to find on this trip?

It’s clear that the Syrian opposition relies on support systems in Turkey and Jordan. I wanted to learn how that works. But it’s dangerous to go in with a very specific goal when you’re doing research, because you may be overemphasized with what you want to see.

When will you have your PhD?

Probably in December next year. Then I will be doctor Hamdan. For now, I’m still working on my dissertation, which is not going to be finished for a long time still since it’s the size of a book.

Why did you choose geography?

I liked the teachers I had in college who taught it, and I had a general interest in politics in the Middle East. The way my teachers in college talked about politics was more interesting to me than the way the political science department did.

Your teachers had a deep impact on you. Your father is Lebanese. How much did his culture impact your choices?

I didn’t grow up speaking Arabic, I grew up speaking English. My father was a cook in an Italian restaurant and he was always at work already when I woke up, and he’d be there until late at night. There are some things I remember though, from a very long time ago, like when my father would say “give me a kiss” in Arabic.

I later studied Arabic in college. I learned the language because I wanted to know what I like and what I don’t like about my heritage. I just wanted to be me, but in Arabic. There are lots of things that make it a difficult coexistence in your head, being this thing and that thing, meaning being Arabic and American at the same time.

I guess my father tried teaching me Arabic, but he was a bad teacher and he wasn’t around enough. He also tried to raise me and my siblings as Muslims, but that didn’t really work. I am an atheist, even though Ali is a Muslim name.

How did your parents meet?

My father fled Lebanon in 1975, when the civil war started. He traveled a lot and ended up working as a cook in West Berlin. My aunt was stationed there at the time, so my mother went over as a tourist in the early 80s, trying to find work at the American military base. My mother is from a small community, and she was always looking for something else. It’s not surprising that she went abroad at the first opportunity she got.

Somehow, she met my father, I don’t really know or even want to know the specifics of it. I think there is more to the story than they tell. My mother is a religious Christian and I think my older sister was conceived out of marriage, something my mother would be uncomfortable admitting.

They went to Lebanon to meet his family and they got married there. They left Lebanon as the Israelis where besieging Beirut, just barely getting out before the Israelis bombed the airport.

How close were they to any real danger?

I don’t know if the bombing of the airport was down to the minute after they left, but it was pretty close. Also, a lot of things were happening in Lebanon at the time, Americans were being kidnapped and held ransom, so my father’s family tried to keep her hidden. She’s a pale white person, so she stands out.

Could you explain a little bit more what it’s like to have this conflict of identity that you talk about?

Most of the time it’s doesn’t actually matter, but it sneaks up on you. Like when I was a kid and I would go over to a friend’s house, my dad would always tell me to bring some food. He would be cooking falafel and fold it up in a napkin for me to bring. I would be like; “Why would I do that? No one does that in America.”

Now I know that it makes perfect sense in his context, but as a kid you just want to blend in. It was very embarrassing, and I would think of my dad; “Why can’t you just be normal?”

Do you think you would have gone to the Middle East had you not been half Arabic?

Being Arab American made me interested in my heritage, I went to Lebanon and became interested in political violence in that part of the world. The thing is that once you can speak the language people stop seeming so strange, you start empathizing with people.

So, when I talk to Syrian refugees, I see that they are just dudes who got kicked out of their country because of fighting. And they’re just trying to figure out how to survive.

Once you start seeing people that way, violence in the Middle East stop seeming like a disease or earthquake that just kind of happens. Unfortunately, the Western respond tends to be that; “They are just different over there, they just do this.” Almost like it’s built into the culture. Americans are very violent as well, I don’t think there is something more violent in the Middle East than here.

The idea is to become a professor and teach about these things once I have my PhD.

Where do you see yourself working in the future?

I really do like teaching. But I don’t think I’ll stay in LA, maybe I will head back to the East Coast? I could work in government, I know people in the state department that I’ve met through my research, or I could be a diplomat.

I could work for think-tanks or private development organizations. I have a lot of contacts in those types of organizations, but I really don’t want to work with them because I just think they are evil people.

Why are they evil?

Basically, the United States government have these foreign policy goals and projects that it wants to implement - like encouraging democratic governance in territories in Syria that are controlled by opposition groups. But the State Department won’t implement them directly, so they “sell” the projects to private development organizations which claim they can do it much cheaper. What it means is that suddenly foreign policy gets privatized, and with that comes all these weird things that happen when the profit motive enters. These guys compete with one another to get the contracts on the projects, but they are also trying to save money. So, they cut corners, and do all these unethical things.

All of a sudden, we have some guy in Washington DC, who is not an elected official, who is in charge of how places inside Syria are getting governed.

Wasn’t the whole point to get rid of al-Assad so that the people could regain democracy and govern themselves?

The main answer to that is no. Whatever our government says about that is garbage, it’s total bullshit. The majority of evidence show that whenever there has been an opportunity to actually push this guy (al-Assad) out of power, America does the opposite. What I’m saying is that the United States in more interested in containing the chaos, then it is in stopping it.

How come?

American foreign policy, in the Middle East especially, is shaped by this notion of combatting violent extremism, CVE. That expression is used all the time by the State Department and the military, but it is not sold to the public as being that. So, if you’re looking at the Syrian conflict from the perspective of someone who’s primary goal is to combat violent extremism, you see al-Assad as a guy with a suit and a tie. Yeah, he’s a dictator, but at least he kept things stabile.

Then the people tried to kick him out, and you start seeing all these bearded jihadi maniacs, at least that’s what the Trump administration wants to simplify it to. And the priority becomes preventing the conflict from spreading to its neighbors, in other words, CVE.

There have been terror attacks in Paris, Nice, Stockholm, London, Manchester and all over. How is the CVE-plan working out so far?

Part of it is that you cannot fight this effectively the way that you think you can. (George W.) Bush was all about claiming to want to bring democracy, and I think that there were some people in the administration who ignorantly believed that that was what they were doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. But anybody with a brain knows it’s more complicated than that.

The Obama administration tried to be more pragmatic. America kept getting into these dumb wars that we didn’t know enough about, so when Obama came to office he said; “Alright, we need to stop pretending that we can force democracy on these people.”

What do you think about Obama’s strategy for Syria?

Well, the red line for the Obama administration was chemical weapons. There have been repeated incidents where al-Assad has used chemical weapons on his own people. And Obama did nothing.

Why?

Because they decided it was more in Americas interest to allow this guy to stay in power, than it was to let him fall. If al-Assad fell, jihadi nut-jobs would take over the country and Syria would become another Iraq anno 2005 – 2006. The policy became; “We don’t like this guy and ideally he’ll get kicked out, but we don’t want a military victory against him.

USA will back the rebels, we’ll give them guns. It’s like a hose but when the rebels start winning victories against the regime, we’ll turn the “gun-hose” off, and hopefully the pressure already created will force the regime to peace talks.

The rebels don’t have the fire power to take down the capital of Damascus, so the regime has never been as close to falling as people think. The city is just too well defended.

So, if Damascus is at no risk of falling, why is the regime bombing the suburb of Ghouta?

For as long as this war has been taking place the regime’s main concern has been to cut off the rebels’ access to equipment. They have to sort of, “clog up the gun-hose”, and how do you do that? You take control of border areas. Now they are focusing on Ghouta.

The first flow of weapons to the rebels came across the mountains from Lebanon, that’s why the Lebanese border early on was the site of really intense fighting. By 2013 that border was basically useless to the rebels, so they had to shift to get their supplies from Jordan or Turkey.

Which is why, I went to those two countries for my research.

The rebel held areas, like Ghouta, are being bombed and starved out. But are there really terrorists there, or are there only innocent civilians in those areas?

The irritating answer is that, it’s a mix. There are both Nusra (al-Nusra Front) and the FSA (Free Syrian Army). Very simplified; “Nusra are the bad ones and FSA are great.” The problem is that they both want the same thing, which is to get rid of al-Assad. So, the FSA and the Nusra work together, even though they have major ideological differences.

That is how war works, people make pragmatic alliances.

al-Assad could go into exile. Why doesn’t he just step down?

There was a rumor in 2014 that the Iranians offered him refuge, if he wanted to go into exile in Teheran. But he turned it down. I don’t want to overstate this, but the guy does have some domestic support.

Like any good dictatorship his regime is built on a network of corruption. And a lot of these businessmen that like to see him in power, are from religious minorities. The regime can say; “Look if we fall, the bearded maniacs are going to come in and massacre all the non-Muslims, and we are really here to protect you.” And I say this, not to defend him, but to point out that not everybody wants him to leave.

What is the biggest misconception the world has about the Middle East?

The main one is that people think it’s all the same. We can’t even talk about a thing called the Middle East in a way that is meaningful. Americans have such little knowledge about something that their country is so deeply involved in, it’s astonishing to me.

People assume that Iranians and Lebanese are the same, just because they are both part of the Middle East. There is this rich variation in the region over there that people here don’t want to acknowledge because they are lazy.

Did you ever see Lawrence of Arabia? It’s an amazing story, but it makes me very grumpy watching it because so much gets simplified in the movie. In the film Lawrence befriends Prince Faisal, and they supposedly have a lot of trouble understanding each other. But I’m pretty sure (real life) Prince Faisal was educated in Britain and was more used to wearing tuxedos than Bedouin robes.

Showing that in the movie would confuse the audience though. But that’s my point, the reality is actually very confusing!

When do you think the war in Syria will be over?

I would be incredibly surprised if the war is still going a year from now, the war as we currently see it. But wars don’t really have starts and ends. In a lot of ways, the Lebanese civil war from the 80s still lives on, it’s just that they’ve traded guns for suits and ties.

In Syria the regime took over Aleppo in December 2016, and that was the beginning of the end. What we’re seeing now are just the final stages. The regime doesn’t consider this to be a civil war though. As far as they are concerned they are simple re-establishing law and order in the country.

But I think the conflict will end within a year. I also think we’ll see another flare up within the next ten years.

Why do you say that?

All we need is for the next generation to grow up. When they reach adulthood, the desperation, the destruction and the death this conflict created will resurface.

And that’s all it takes to start another conflict.