The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021

52 MAY 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL he urged the people he met, in their “punished state,” to speak to him—“So that your memory in men’s minds …won’t fade.” It wasn’t only the contradictions and ambiguities that made capturing Raqqa’s story challenging. As in The Inferno , there was an obscure palette of history and politics in the background. The Syrian backdrop is no less complex—whether it is the fractious, hard-to-follow histories of this or that militant group opposing the Assad regime but also expending tremendous energy killing its jihadi rivals, when not collaborating with them, as they all fought for influence after the defeat of ISIS’s physical caliphate; or whether it’s the sometimes equally hard-to-follow diplomatic clashes—in Damascus, Geneva, Washington or Astana—as we, the United Nations, Russia, Turkey and others struggled over how to end the civil war and start the real conversation on the future of Syria. Always my thoughts returned to that tough, determined citizen of Raqqa, up three stories on his fractured roof, blasting away with his jackhammer at debris that only high explosives and a wrecking ball could adequately address. He would do whatever he could to reclaim his home. I also thought of Dante’s 14th-century world, long gone except in a literary universe that we access with a combination of patience, suspension of disbelief, and appreciation for language and story—not unlike the effort a diplomat must make to report with empathy and hon- esty the devastation he sees and the suffering and concerns he hears about. The Inferno concludes on an encouraging note of sorts, with Dante and Virgil mak- ing a nocturnal climb from the underworld “back up to the shining world …Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.” It remindedme of a nighttime visit I made to Raqqa to gauge atmospherics in the troubled city. Warned ahead of time that Raqqa at night, with its desolate, destroyed neighbor- hoods and lack of security, took on a more ominous, frighten- ing note, I was surprised to discover a bustle of commercial and social activity in significant parts of the city: young men in a rustic internet café, families sitting on carpets and chatting outside their homes, amid patches of rubble, and a rickety Ferris wheel keeping kids amused in a recently refurbished park. By the sheer determination of its local inhabitants, Raqqa will continue to recover. But the road ahead, to cite Dante one final time, is likely to be “tangled and rough” at best, given the ongo- ing conflict in Syria, the meager levels of international assistance and the absence of a single, galvanizing international consensus regarding that nation’s future. n It wasn’t only the contradictions and ambiguities that made capturing Raqqa’s story challenging. As in Dante’s Inferno , there was an obscure palette of history and politics in the background. Students in class at a refurbished school in Raqqa in 2018.