Greetings, Spirit of America is working with US forces in northeast Syria to help children in areas recently liberated from ISIS control. We are providing school supplies and funding repairs so that children who have lived through the atrocities of ISIS rule and civil...
SoA has been active in Lebanon for the past two years, supporting multiple lines of effort aimed at bolstering the country's stability and security. Bordered by Syria and Israel and host to more than one million Syrian refugees, Lebanon holds a vital spot in the...
The second part of my recent trip to Syria had a more southerly focus. The US Army civil affairs team and I toured Ayn Isaa, a ghost town roughly 40 miles north of Raqqah, the capital of the Islamic State. Given the prevailing atmosphere of religious discord and...
Dear supporters, I recently traveled to Syria with a US Army team to explore ways SoA might be able to ease local suffering while furthering US objectives on the ground. I’ve been to Syria a number of times, but this trip in particular was different. I had the...
Despite the bloody conflicts roiling across both, my military flight from Iraq to northern Syria was a routine affair. I was traveling into Syria with three goals in mind: to meet with the US Army Civil Affairs teams, assess the humanitarian situation on the ground,...
Earlier this year I wrote an update about the incredibly heroic efforts of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) in the outlying areas of Mosul. CTS is a primary US partner in the coalition against ISIS and, coincidentally, a force I advised some years ago. A...
For an American, Panjakent is not an easy destination to reach, nor—to be frank—is it so simple to pinpoint on a map. As with any worthy place or thing, the remote town of 33,000 in northwest Tajikistan rightly requires the extra effort. Earlier this month, I joined a...
The migration of more than one million Syrian refugees to Lebanon, a country with a regular population of four million, is straining the fragile social fabric and tenuous political balance of the nation. Hosting this unprecedented number of refugees is pushing the...
Set in the northeast corner of Iraq, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the ancient city of Kirkuk is home to a rich mix of ethnicities, languages and historical claims. While its wealth of culture and diversity is sometimes challenged by ethnic tensions, Kirkuk has proven...
