Beyond the death toll, millions of people have been injured and displaced. The United Nations said that the earthquake had affected as many as 5.3 million in Syria alone. And for Turkey, the situation is all too familiar: Turkey sits atop two major fault lines and has suffered major earthquakes before. In 1999, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake was blamed for an estimated 18,000 deaths.

Complicating the current crisis is the fact that the area of Northern Syria impacted by the earthquake has been riven by violence for the past decade due to the county’s ongoing civil war. The war, which grew out of the wider Arab Spring protests of 2011, has left northern sections of the country in the hands of rebels opposed to Bashar al-Assad, the country’s leader.

To shed light on the complexities of this ongoing catastrophe, Fordham News spoke with experts in international humanitarian aid, the Middle East, and mental health.

Politics and Aid

Anjali Dayal, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and a senior scholar in residence at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.

The aid situation in Syria is deeply dependent on United Nations Security Council politics because the region in Syria that was hardest hit has been part of complex international negotiations about the passage of aid. The U.N. is an intergovernmental organization, and under the terms of the U.N. Charter, the Syrian government has ultimate authority over the area–but the northwest part of the country remains locked in an ongoing civil war, where the Syrian government’s authority is contested on the ground. The politics of U.N. aid passing into this part of Syria have become really complicated, as a result.

Over the years, the negotiations in the Security Council, where Russia has veto power, narrowed down the number of open crossings to a single one in northwest Syria, Bab al-Hawa, which was badly hit by this earthquake.

Thankfully, after a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that the Syrian government has agreed to allow two more border crossings between Syria and Turkey to open up for three months [to allow for]  humanitarian relief to the earthquake-struck zones.

This is important because it means that the international community [including the U.N.]  can get aid to a part of Syria [run by the anti-al-Assad rebels]  where the Syrian government is more than happy to let people die. There are local organizations on the ground that cross through other crossings, but nobody really has the scale or reach that the U.N. does for the volume of aid that’s necessary at this moment in particular. That’s why this has become so contentious.

So a huge crisis like this really highlights how important it is to have concerted multilateral abilities to respond right away in the service of people who really need the best assistance that they can get.

Consequences of Corruption and Civil War

Melissa Labonte, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and a faculty affiliate of Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs

I would describe this as sort of a tale of two humanitarian crisis responses. In Turkey, you have a capable state, but it’s a state that is sclerotic and has been plagued by corruption. Anyone who has traveled to Turkey in the last few years has seen huge construction projects that have been doled out as political favors to loyalists of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP party. You have buildings that have not been built to code, in areas that are very close to the fault lines. This was a recipe for disaster.

The other is Syria, where prior decisions stemming from the Civil War mean that in an area with about 11 million people in it, more than half are internally displaced persons from other parts of Syria.
Most people understand that the Syrian Civil Defense Force, or “white helmets,” have been working in this area for a really long time with very little assistance from the outside world.

You’ve got millions of people who are now living in structures that were decimated by the war. They have no food, no shelter, no medicine, and no water. It’s that last element that is going to turn that part of the post-earthquake crisis into one where the death toll is going to start to mount catastrophically. Because what’s going to happen next is there’ll be a massive outbreak of cholera.

As an international community, we have to come to the recognition that things are so deeply interconnected. Our failure to deal with crises like Syria and our failure to cultivate a more responsive democracy in Turkey are the antecedent conditions that lead to the inability or the unwillingness of regimes to respond effectively to their populations.

‘Recovery Will Take Time’: The Importance of Ongoing Donations

Selin Gülgöz, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology who lived in Istanbul from 1993 until 2009, when she moved to the United States for graduate school. Her family still lives there today.

Istanbul wasn’t affected directly by this earthquake, but we did live through the major earthquake back in 1999, where the epicenter was a little bit outside of the city. I was very fortunate at that time that our family was unaffected, but it’s hard to remain unaffected even if your close ones are not hurt. I was 11 at the time, so it was quite traumatizing.

It’s estimated that this earthquake has impacted roughly 15 million people. Turkey as a whole country has about 80 million. So that’s a huge percentage of the population.

Most of my efforts so far have been trying to raise awareness of some of the local organizations that have been there from day one, and are often faster than governmental organizations.

There are two that have a proven record of trust and professionalism, are reliable, fast-acting, and have networks in Turkey on the ground: Turkish Philanthropy’s Turkish Earthquake Relief Effort; and Bridge to Turkiye’s Earthquake Relief Fund.

Right now, 30,000 people have died and the number is expected to rise. Even more have been displaced, including children who have lost their families, so monthly contributions are encouraged, as healing and recovery will take time.

An Event That Affects the Whole Region

Samantha Slattery, FCRH ’15, GSAS ’19, Regional Programmes Officer for Jesuit Refugee Service in Beiruit, Lebanon. Slattery earned an M.S. in humanitarian studies at Fordham.

I work with projects addressing the crisis in Lebanon, which has the highest refugee population per capita in the world. Our office supports JRS teams in Syria in Aleppo and Homs, and right now they’re helping with emergency distributions, especially winterization materials because it’s very cold here right now. Anyone who wants to help our teams can do so by donating here.

The difficulty that all organizations are experiencing right now in Syria is that a lot of aid workers and volunteers there have also already experienced multiple traumas from the war. Now they’ve survived this earthquake, and many have suffered their own personal losses.

In Lebanon, the earthquake woke us up from our sleep here, and luckily, it missed us. But people are still affected here. So many of the people we work with have lost loved ones in Aleppo. It affects the whole region.

A concern that I have is that international attention could wane. Right now there’s a big effort from the international community to respond to these crises, but once crises become protracted, the eyes of the world look away to new emergencies.

Focusing on Mental Health

Lynne Jones, child psychiatrist and course director for the program on Mental Health in Complex Emergencies at Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs

I hope that this will shake people into their senses and realize that human beings are human beings, and they need their basic needs addressed. I would add to that list the emotional need for connection. Whether somebody has died or not died, everybody has experienced loss. If it’s compounded by the loss of a loved person, of course, it’s much worse, but even if you haven’t lost a person, you’ve lost the environment in which you’ve lived. You’ve lost any sense of security, you’ve lost all your belongings.

Imagine you’re standing there and everything around you has been destroyed. What you need is to be reconnected with people that are familiar to you and reestablish as quickly as possible some kind of structure and routine in your life. And, these two things will really help you address the other issues of maintaining your physical health.

I’ve written guidelines with others for both the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine crisis on how we can support children who have suffered a bereavement. We’re adapting them now. The key points are, to tell the truth in a way that’s appropriate to a child’s developmental age and to make sure that they have continuous loving care.

News of the earthquake that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria early this morning has shocked and dismayed many of us. The magnitude 7.8 quake has taken over 3,500 lives as of this writing,* and destroyed infrastructure in a region already beset with war and a refugee crisis, to say nothing of the harsh winter weather. How may we respond to this humanitarian disaster?

*Sadly, as of Friday, February 10, more than 22,000 people in Turkey and Syria have lost their lives in the earthquake and its aftermath.

As a community of faith in action, Fordham has responded with great generosity to past crises around the world. I am writing to ask that we all do so again. This Sunday’s Gospel reminded us of our identity as “salt of the earth and light of the world” (Mt. 5:13-16). Let’s hold up the light of hope in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Turkey and Syria in their hour of darkness and unimaginable loss.

Below is a list of agencies accepting donations toward their rescue and relief efforts in the region. I ask that we all give what we can, and of course, please keep those afflicted by this tragedy in your prayers and in your hearts.

With gratitude for your generosity,

José Luis Salazar, S.J.
Executive Director of Campus Ministry

Doctors Without Borders: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

Save the Children: https://www.savethechildren.org/

UNICEF: https://www.unicefusa.org/

A Catholic Relief Services worker aids Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Not long after arriving in Lebanon last year, Sean Kenney traveled to the country’s Bekaa Valley, where an estimated 1.5 million refugees from war-torn Syria have crossed the border to live in tent settlements dotting the dirt fields.

Kenney, a program manager with Catholic Relief Services, went to distribute food and hygiene vouchers to the refugees, who endure harsh conditions. One family had lived in a tent for more than three years, and pleaded for more support—especially during the bitterly cold winter months.

“They were very grateful for the vouchers, but the aid was simply not enough,” says Kenney, who works with local partner Caritas Lebanon to provide humanitarian relief. “They had no other source of income.”

Daily life in the Bekaa Valley settlements is arduous. Unlike neighboring countries, Lebanon has established no formal refugee camps and provides no government support. Landowners charge refugees to live in their fields, and employment restrictions make it difficult for refugees to find work.

And while Caritas Lebanon supports an effort to get more Syrian kids enrolled in Lebanese schools, the majority of refugee children receive no formal education, creating what Kenney calls a “lost generation” of Syrian youth.

A Kansas native, Kenney joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in 2010. Assigned to a new high school in rural Tanzania, he taught geography and organized a program that allowed students to serve as English tutors for children in a nearby village.

But he soon realized that he needed a graduate degree to further his career. In Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development program, he gained expertise in data analysis and data management along with a strong understanding of development economics. After earning a master’s degree in 2015, he interned for Catholic Relief Services, assessing the impact of a water and sanitation program at a camp for South Sudanese refugees in Uganda. Later that year, he was sent to the Middle East, where he worked on a program that promoted cooperation among pediatric palliative care providers.

In 2016, he became a program manager and joined the team in Beirut, where his responsibilities include a new project that provides food, shelter, medical support, and trauma counseling to refugees who are survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

“This type of work can put you close to really terrible suffering,” Kenney says. “But the genuineness of the people I work with and the people I work on behalf of keeps me engaged and optimistic about my work.”

—Mariko Thompson Beck

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles.

Empowering women in refugee camps may seem a laudable goal, but it faces steep challenges among refugees in the Syrian crisis, said Kathryn Libal, Ph.D., associate professor in community organization and director of the UConn Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut.

Libal will be addressing the needs of women refugees in a lecture and panel discussion at a symposium titled, “Migration and Women’s Rights: Employment Challenges, Empowerment, and Best Practices.” Sponsored by the Graduate School of Social Service on Sat., March 18 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., the symposium, which is free and open to the public, will explore how economic empowerment is crucial to women’s rights.

Libal has researched the refugees from both the Iraq and Syrian conflicts. She said that, unlike Iraqi refugees who have settled into cities like Jordan, most Syrian refugees live in highly secured camps where the movement of goods is limited, making trade nearly impossible. Compounding the problem is the simple fact that shelter, food, and water remain a primary concern.

“[Maintaining the] basic conditions of daily life make it challenging for women to even think about work,” she said.

Libal said she will also examine how economic empowerment of refugees must be navigated alongside the host populations’ needs. Those communities may already have a high level of unemployment, as was the case in Jordan when the Iraqi refugees arrived.

“You can’t set up parallel systems of support where the newcomers have an advantage,” said Libal.

The talk represents the first time that Libal has drawn a connection between her research on the two refugee populations.

“I will be fairly critical that you can’t just economically empower women in these situations,” she said. “There’s already a large failure to fund basic things like heat and housing and to take care of the minimum needs.”

““We box ourselves in to the approaches that are tried,” she said. “[But] you can’t assume that a microcredit or handicraft project will always work. I look forward to hearing the panelists’ ideas, especially models that address getting women ready for post-resettlement.”

Syrian-born Mohamed Alsiadi’s commitment to his heritage goes beyond his position as director of Fordham’s Arabic studies program.

Alsiadi is helping to archive the musical arts of his birthplace of Aleppo, which has been under constant siege since the Syrian war began and has recently faced intense shelling.

“I want to spread this music to the children who are growing up far from their homes, so they can have a piece of their heritage,” he said.

Alsiadi is an accomplished lute player who began collecting music from Allepian radio stations in 2004, fearing even then for the city’s destruction. In 2011, he and composer/pianist Malek Jandali formed the Malek Jandali Trio, along with cellist Laura Metcalf.  With their mixture of expertise, they perform and post on Youtube authentic Allepian Waslah music that refugees can listen to wherever they are across the globe.

“Malek is the composer. I am the researcher. We have a good partnership,” he said. “The music we make is the music that Syrians grew up with and want to hear.”

Alsiadi was raised in Aleppo and received his bachelor’s degree from the Damascus Music Conservatory, specializing in lute performance and conducting. He moved to the United States in 1996 and joined the Fordham faculty in 2010.

In his six years at Fordham, the Arabic Language, Literature, & Culture program has flourished. Alsiadi created an Arabic minor studies program, adding courses such as Music & Nation in the Arab World; Arab Spring in Arabic Literature; and Arab Cinema: History & Cultural Identity.  He founded the Arabic Club, and he and a colleague helped design Fordham’s first Arabic study-abroad program to Morocco.

The Jandali trio is headlining a benefit concert series, “The Voice of the Free Syrian Children.”  The series is designed to bring comfort to Syrian children affected by the war’s atrocities.

“The children are suffering most,” he said. “They’re tortured and killed indiscriminately. Many are orphaned. Others flee and are displaced from their homeland, traumatized, afraid and uncertain of what comes next.”

The trio has taken its music all over the world, giving concerts in Norway, Qatar, England, and Austria. Alsiadi said he is amazed by the global impact the musicians have had.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “We never thought we’d perform on a global level because there is no political agenda behind our project.”

Alsaidi said the trio’s upcoming album, titled Jasmine, holds deep significance for him. In Arab households, jasmine trees are at the center of gatherings. While living with his Sufi family in Aleppo, all family meals and conversations took place near the jasmine tree.

The trio’s next stateside concert is scheduled for Carnegie Hall on Feb. 4.  The group’s proceeds from the albums and concerts support efforts to assist and educate Syrian refugees.

—Mary Awad

Watch the Malek Jandali Trio’s music video SoHo.

A Fordham scholar shines new light on Christianity’s formative years in Syria, where Islamic State militants are looting and seeking to destroy the country’s past.

To get a sense of how the earliest Christians approached their faith, just look at the art they left behind. In January 1932, an international team of archaeologists unearthed several frescoes in Dura-Europos, an ancient walled city along the banks of the Euphrates River in southeastern Syria, near the Iraq border. The paintings—including some of the earliest-known depictions of Jesus—had adorned the walls of what scholars soon realized was the oldest known house of Christian worship in the world.

Established around A.D. 240, when Christians were still a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire, the church didn’t thrive for long. By 256, a Sasanian army had destroyed the border city, leaving the site abandoned for centuries.

A Cultural Heritage at Risk

By the 1930s, Dura-Europos had come to be known as the “Pompeii of the Syrian desert.” In addition to the church, archaeologists found evidence of a multilingual, multicultural society. They discovered one of the world’s oldest synagogues, temples to Greek and Roman gods, shrines to Sumerian and Syrian goddesses, and many well-preserved artifacts of daily life.

Today, however, the city’s ruins lie in territory controlled by Islamic State militants, who loot archaeological sites to generate revenue and attract attention. They’ve also put Christians and others in mortal peril as Syria’s civil war drags on.

For much of the past five years, Michael Peppard, Ph.D., associate professor of theology at Fordham, was working on a book about the excavation and interpretation of the Dura-Europos church—a site he was unable to visit due to the ongoing war. “Until about a year ago, the main question [people asked me] was, ‘What new is there to say about such an old discovery?’” he wrote in America magazine last January, when his book, The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria, was published by Yale University Press. “But now the first question everyone asks is, ‘What has happened to the site—did they … destroy it?’”

The answer, he wrote, is “both no and yes.” Many artifacts were removed decades ago, and several panels of the church frescoes are on display at Yale. But satellite photos have shown extensive looting, “which all but destroys [the site] for future archaeological purposes.”

The Cradle of Christianity

The cultural and human tragedies of the war were never far from Peppard’s mind as he worked on the book, which he dedicated to “the people of Syria, the cradle of Christianity.” In the book, he transports readers to Christianity’s formative years, combining theology and art history to prove that there are, in fact, new things to say about “such an old discovery.” He makes the case for a completely different understanding of several images from the site, most notably the image of a woman at a well.

Since the 1930s, almost everyone has assumed that she is the Samaritan woman from the Gospel of John, and that she symbolizes baptism, as represented by the “living water” of the well. Peppard contends that the painting is actually a portrayal of the Annunciation, “when Mary is told she is going to bear a son as a virgin.” He notes that Byzantine images of that scene, though produced much later, bear “an arresting formal resemblance” to the figure from Dura-Europos.

“If the image is the Virgin Mary, then not only is it probably the earliest datable image of Mary, but it’s also going to change the way we interpret the artistic program of this church,” Peppard said. The image of women processing, wearing white veils and carrying torches, has likewise been misidentified as a funeral procession, he said, when in fact it’s a wedding procession.

The Hope of a Spiritual Rebirth

Taken together, the paintings illustrate that these Christians emphasized empowerment, healing, and marriage more than death and resurrection. This isn’t surprising, he said, because “in this earliest Christian church, we don’t have any imagery of the resurrection. I think they certainly believed in it, and that it was part of their faith in who Jesus was and what it meant to be a Christian, but it’s a matter of emphasis.” For Peppard, the frescoes are ultimately about the “hope of new spiritual birth,” particularly in light of the ongoing war in Syria.

They’re “much more than museum pieces,” he wrote last January in a New York Times article on his research. “They illuminate a people and heritage that need salvation.”

In the case of “The World’s Oldest Church,” a new book by Michael Peppard, PhD, the art can be found in a third-century house-church in Dura-Europos, a walled city along the banks of the Euphrates River that once stood in present day Syria.

For Peppard, associate professor of theology, the book, published this month by Yale University Press, is an ambitious attempt to combine theology and art history to tell a new story about the oldest known house of Christian worship.

In addition to offering an up-to-date compendium of scholarship on the building, Peppard makes the case for a completely different understanding of three images that were found there: one of David and Goliath, one of a procession of women, and one of a woman at a well. All three were excavated in the 1930s and are housed at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Peppard said he is most excited about the image of the woman at a well. Almost everyone assumes that she is the Samaritan woman from the Gospel of John and that she symbolizes baptism, as represented by the “living water” of the well. Peppard said that the painting is actually a portrayal of the annunciation, “when Mary is told she is going to bear a son as a virgin.”

“If the image is the Virgin Mary, then not only is it probably the earliest datable image of Mary, but it’s also going to change the way we interpret the artistic program of this church, and maybe change the way we think about what they thought they were doing there,” Peppard said.

The image of women processing has likewise been misidentified, he said, as a funeral procession when in fact it’s a wedding procession.

Taken together, the paintings illustrate that these Christians emphasized empowerment, healing, marriage, and incarnation more than death and resurrection. This isn’t surprising, he said, because very few images of the Crucifixion exist from this time.

“In this earliest Christian church, we don’t have any imagery of the resurrection. I think they certainly believed in it, and that it was part of their faith in who Jesus was and what it meant to be a Christian, but it’s a matter of emphasis,” he said.

“So what are they emphasizing if they’re not emphasizing the cross and resurrection in this baptistery? They are emphasizing imagery of marriage, which is very common in Syrian Christianity—that becoming a Christian was like getting married to Christ and having a covenant with God.”

The story of Dura-Europos illustrates how Christianity evolved differently in different regions, he said. In the year 300 A.D. Christians were spread as far east as Dura-Europos and as far west and north as present day Morocco, Spain, and France. The Roman emperor Constantine had not yet converted to Christianity (which would make it the mainstream faith in the Roman empire), and communication and travel were still difficult.

Peppard also wondered why the baptistery of this church would feature a fairly grim image of David and Goliath. It might be because, at the time, Dura-Europos was the last outpost before one crossed the river into Persia and the Sasanian Empire, the most fearsome empire next to the Roman Empire.

“The Goliath image is in the style of a Persian warrior, so they’re styling their enemy in the guise of their real enemy in the world. This is part of their militaristic imagination. They feel threatened by this goliath across the river, so they imagine their initiation as Christians as empowering—gaining the power of David so that they can, when they need to be, be ready for the battles in their life,” he said.

“This is an urban outpost in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Syria, in the desert perched above the Euphrates. Let’s not presume they were like Christians from 2,000 miles away who they’d never heard or talked to.”

“It’s a game changer in terms of the issues that will be bruited in the presidential election campaign,” said Steven Simon, a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth College.

Otherwise, it will likely spur only the usual reexamination of possible security weaknesses that typically follows these kinds of attacks, he said, referring to such efforts in New York City in particular.

“Everything’s a game-changer,” he said. “Everything’s a wake-up call, everything’s somebody’s 9/11. God knows after 1941 how many things were somebody’s Pearl Harbor. So I’m not inclined to think in those terms.”

He appeared with Jonathan Stevenson, professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College, to discuss the recent Foreign Affairs article they coauthored, “The End of Pax Americana: Why Washington’s Middle East Pullback Makes Sense.” The Nov. 18 event was hosted by Fordham Law’s Center on National Security and moderated by its director, Karen Greenberg, PhD.

Both men served in the Obama administration— Stevenson as the U.S. National Security Council staff’s director for post-military affairs for the Middle East and North Africa from 2011 to 2013, and Simon as director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs at the White House from 2011 through 2012.

Stevenson agreed the attacks can change things in the “limited context” of presidential politics.

Conservatives, for example, might argue that if “we’d gone into Syria harder … then we could have done more to bog down ISIS and distract its attention from out-of-area attacks,” he said.

But he offered an easy counterargument: “If we’d done that, and weakened them there, it would have been all the more reason to undertake operationally less challenging terrorist attacks … in loosely defended Western cities.”

The speakers said that the Obama administration’s pullback from the Middle East makes sense in light of “what’s going on there” as opposed to “what’s going on in Washington,” in Stevenson’s words.

Simonson said the Middle East’s civil wars “have taken on a decidedly sectarian character,” making it unlikely the United States would heed its allies’ pleas to get involved.

The conflict in Syria is a case in point.

“It would be awkward, to say the least, for us to get integrally involved, say, with some kind of ground deployment in what is at its core a sectarian war,” said Stevenson, “and very difficult for us to extricate ourselves from it once we were there.”

“It seems to me we learned this lesson with arguably an even simpler scenario, and a less complicated one, in Iraq.”

Simon noted other constraints on American action in the Middle East, like the eventual costs—on the order of $4 trillion—of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the need to prepare for China’s rising military influence.

“The Chinese are spending like there’s no tomorrow, and they’re allocating their money to technologies and capabilities that are designed specifically to impede U.S. maritime operations in the Western Pacific,” he said. “The United States needs to do a lot of investment in that domain.

“You’ve got this global picture and you’ve got this budgetary situation that have sort of bumped up against political dynamics internal to the Middle East, [and]that have made gains from intervention [there]really rather low,” he said. “I mean, vanishingly low, at this stage.”