Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose the syrian war has entered its fifth year and more countries are entangled in the fight against i. S. I. S. Journalist remain a key source of information from the battle it does and it remains a dangerous profession. 54 journalists were killed according to the 2015 committee to protect journalists. Joining me are four correspondents from cnn and a report from each of them from the field. Clarissa ward is based in bonden covering the syrian war and radicalization of islamists across europe. These buses are how most kurds get around listening to songs cheering on the fighters. A female fighter was just 18yearolds we were accompanied by. Many women here are uncovered and the security situation is relatively calm in towns along the turkish border. But the famous syrian hops hospitality is very much in eve. Even when we visited fighters on the front line, we were invited to share their lunch. Today goat and bread were on the enyou. You cant refuse. Rose Nick Paton Walsh covered the war in afghanistan, the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the iraq surge. Out here in the flat, open ground with i. S. I. S. In the next village, they still scorn i. S. I. S. s leaders and welcome help. The french, russian, or american fighters, if they come here to fight, well cooperate with them as were all fighting to clear the air of i. S. I. S. For humidity. I. S. I. S. Left their mark. Even the mosque littered with mines. The silence here is breathtaking. This is directly the road down to raqqa, and you can just hear the complete absence of human life. There is little in victory left to fight for. Rose arwa damon is based in istanbul and covered the iraq war, arab spring and libya. This is a very difficult decision. One father said what choice do i have . I cant live in turkey because i cant afford rent and no one will rent to me anyway. Another person people are actually in a fairly good mood. They havent quite registered potentially what this is going to mean. But as i was saying one father i was talking to said i cant afford to live in turkey, the turks wont rent to me, my house in syria aleppo has been destroyed. People are hostile to syrians everywhere. We feel this growing sense of hostility so let us go to europe where we have a chance. Rose ivan watson is based in hong kong and previously covered the syrian war and refugee crisis from istanbul. These are scenes croatia probably did not anticipate when they opened borders wednesday. Mass hysteria as people waiting for government transports. The crowd breaks through and another country so far whelmedp3 by the human flood. Months into this migrant crisis, europe still does not know what to do with all these people. Rose i am pleased to have all of these people from cnn sitting at this table. Lets start with you. Yes. Rose syria. Where are we at this moment . Well, i think, you know, every time i come back and we have this conversation and i so desperately want to have something positive to report or some sense of momentum in terms of trying to find a longerterm solution to the problem in syria, but from what i see on the ground, were essentially looking at syria breaking up into a series of smaller areas or fiefdoms. And while there is been some momentum on the diplomatic side or some efforts to get together some of the proxies in this war in these meetings in vienna, that isnt being matched on the ground by a desire to turn twanders a diplomatic or political solution because i think, right now, all the various parties feel that, with russian support, with american increased support from the kurds, with the saudis sending in more missiles for various islamists groups, every one on the ground feels they can have a decisive military advantage if they stick it out. So you have on the one hand a political effort but its not moving in tandem with what youre seeing on the ground and, of course, as everyone knows here well, in the middle you have the civilians who are now suffering on a level that i dont think many civilians anywhere have had to suffer before and they are very much desperate for an end to this. Rose how many refugees up to now . 3 and a half, 4 h million . Weve talked 4 million refugees but we dont talk about internally displaced people who are for all intents and purposes refugees. Half of the population of syria hasnt slept in their own bed. That number is whats registered. People are assuming the unregistered numbers could be doubled that. That was before the summers refugees, too. Rose what impact is russia having . The weapons being used, the geopolitical stakes involved, there is a feeling of how much worse can this possibly get. When you saw that clash on the border of turkey shooting down a russian jet, goes to exactly where this proxy war can lead if people dont begin to get a lid on it. It didnt go as bad as you could have expected, but its scary to see that level of investment because of the arms industry russia has behind it, because of their investment in assad so far and because of what they see for themselves on the world stage. Its domestic consumption. You see some state tv stuff played in russia, its a socalled tarp in the efficiency of their weapons and the music used is remarkable propaganda and its sort of compensating for the fact that ukraine didnt really go the way they actually hoped, and i think thats whats most scary is if syria becomes a place for moscow to reestablish themselves on the world stage. Rose are they striking against i. S. I. S. At all . No. I dont think people really realize or remember, the assad regime itself never really targeted i. S. I. S. They allowed i. S. I. S. To grow and thrive, when they could have targeted i. S. I. S. , but they were too busy bombing their own population for whatever reason it was, or perhaps it was just the logic of wanting, to you know, justify their own official argument that they were fighting international terrorism, they made that a foregone conclusion. If you look at it as sort of a sickening game of chess, which essentially it is, i mean, russias place and the assad regimes place have been very strategic in furthering their own causes and arguments in all of it. Rose but he is stronger today because to have the airstrikes from much of russia . I think hes stronger than he has been in a few years, now. I think perhaps short term but longer term, if youre a country with a substantial muslim population, youve already had app passenger plane explode, youve had the turks shoot down one of your fighter planes, i think that the kremlin, much like everybody else who is involved in the proxy war in syria, is playing shortterm and there are going to be longterm, unforeseen consequences that could be awful for russia. Rose thats what obama suggests. And russia struggled for years with its own chechen insurgency and terrible, devastating terrorist acts which you covered first hand. It wont go away. The relationship is a little bit strained. At one point i think he said he wasnt going to allow any federal officials in to his territory. Rose clearly assad because of barrel bombs and other things has been a recruiting tool for i. S. I. S. The most compelling recruiting tool that i. S. I. S. Has and i think this really this gets lost. We get so focused on the tunnel vision of radical islam is the problem and we need to tackle radical islam, i. S. I. S. Is not just a product of radical islam. Its part of it. I. S. I. S. Is a product of the lack of any kind of action on behalf of the International Community and the vacuum created by assads brutalizing of his own civilians for four years. That is the vacuum i. S. I. S. Grew and thrived in. Its also a product of geopolitics, of western Foreign Policy and hangup. To mystify it under the rubric of radical islam is to miss understand the steps that need to be taken to end a group like i. S. I. S. You have Boris Johnson of london suggesting lets deal with assad and sort things out. Rose its probably what the american position is. Even some of the syrian revolutionaries who at the start of the protest movement years ago before all the killing, before syria was in ruins who were peacefully calling for assad to step down, even some of them will privately now say its better to keep this guy there than thats the only semblance of any structure left in a piece of syria. And to hear that from those meme who marched into machine gunfire in the original revolution who have been driven out of their country. When you lose everything the way a syrian civilian has, when you, first of all, put your heart and your soul into this idea of revolutionizing your own country, and youve, you know, begun to see this momentum happening elsewhere, when you have the fundamental belief that you can bring about change and you feel as if youve been abandoned on every single level, you will tend to turn toward the only thing you have to hold to in life and thats religion for many people. And then, when every step of the way, the inaction by the International Community, the barrel bombing by assad, all that does to do is drive the argument that i. S. I. S. Has and make it the perfect recruiting tool. I mean, it is a product of a global, massive, political, humanitarian failure and an inability by mostly western nations and the United States to truly understand the dynamics to have the region because its phot just syria. Its the iraq dynamic in all of this as well. Rose one thing i hear is that because of the american airstrikes and we know the french have come in and the brits have promised to come in no, theyre in now. Rose you know that the arab states have pulled back, that of course, they have yemen to focus on. But theyve pulled back and you would think its their fight too. Its been a complete strategic failure of that region to grasp the issue. They hope someone from outside will take care of it like the u. S. Has done for the past decades and the u. S. Is saying, no, this is your generational challenge to some degree. Instead theyre involved in a proxy war, funneling money and are having their own problems, iran short of cash, saudis dont have jobs, and this i think is the beginning of that broader regional change. And i think its well the lack of unity, you know, when you talk about the syrian open upcigs we talk about all the time, the lack of unity and coherent system, but that is reflected in the region. Its not like the saudis and the jordanians are all sort of on the same page. Theyre working against each other, often. The people who support the various Syrian Opposition groups have completely divergent interests. The u. S. Is backing the kurds in syria. The turks are backing jihadi arabs and bombing the kurds simultaneously. I mean, its a complete, complete mess, and nobody has i dont think anybody could imagine a way out of this. Rose strange bedfellows. Youre absolutely right. Whats so interesting to me and coming to nicks point about the narrative, is at least russia and iran and assad seem to have all agreed on a narrative and they have a very clear objective. That narrative is they are saving the world from radical islamist lunatics who want to destroy everything. Rose not fighting them all. They dont talk about that narrative. What is the u. S. s real narrative here . What is the wests real narrative . What is europes real narrative . What is the arabs world real narrative . Everyone else is struggling to find a coherent narrative they can all agree on. Rose is there a moderate syrian force that can be mounted effectively against assad . There was one guy we interviewed laughter one guy. He was part of a half Million Dollar program called caught short and he was very dedicated and smart, but that began to fall down. Then there are these loose militia who havent really quite been adequately vetted or are not quite comfortable with them to name the given uniforms or to take them to Foreign Countries or train them entirely. More ad hoc on the ground. They tier product of years and years of syrians on the scene and the influence of foreign money and radicals with a clearer creed. When youre going for a country like raqqa you need sunni syrians at the front and they dont have them. What is your definition of raqqa . Theyre not what we would call moderate, per se, but when you rose is alnusra as powerful as i. S. I. S. In syria . No. But they are players and they are parts of the opposition but a part the u. S. Doesnt like. Rose from qatar and other places. Yeah. They are pretty smart. They have leadership and funds. Theyre not trying to impose a strict law want to smoke . Smoke. They wont flog you like i. S. I. S. They understand they need to have to syrians like them, to want to be there. Theyre a much more Syrian Movement than i. S. I. S. They learned the lessons of al quaida and iraq failures where they had the population turn against them. When nusra was establishing itself in the beginning especially 2012, they were trying to position themselves as being the protectors of the people and even syrians uncomfortable with their ideology were not diswelcoming them from their neighborhood because they trusted them to distribute the bread properly and take on the assad regime because at that point in time they were the only force capable of doing it. But when i. S. I. S. Appeared they began hemorrhaging their fighters. Last year, it was remarkable, there was a preps there, and in 2012 it was still quite secular. You get a feeling of a normal, vibrant city. Totally different. Rose what do you think of what the president said in his speech as somehow making a temperatures in syria . I dont think there was anything president obama said in his speech that indicated any significant change. Rose adding some special forces exactly, adding special forces rose more weapons going in, probably. Well, yes, i think the kurds and the arabkurdish kohl coaln or whatever it is were calling it are not going to do this without getting more weapons. Rose let me go to iraq now. Yes. Rose everybody i know and everybody i interview always says, you know, whats se key in iraq is somehow convincing the sunnis to turn against i. S. I. S. , and they have been reluctant to do that because of the way the maliki government treated them in the beginning. They got burned. By the americans. Rose so my question is is that changing . I mean, if, in fact, the key in iraq is being able to have the sunnis joint the fight against join the fight against i. S. I. S. , is there any evidence of that happening . So far weve not seen signs of a second sunni awakening, a version 2. 0, we havent seen that, and thats what the kurds are hoping for and what they are plan the iraqi kurds, now, im talking about. But it hasnt happened yet. The kurds are suspicious of the sines. We were in sinjar pin the peshmerga kicked out i. S. I. S. And the response on the ground from normal kurdish fighters were and the other thing is they did get burned the first time around. How will you inspire someone to pick up a gun and risk their life and they dont know what theyre fighting for at this stage in iraq. They have been through so much as a population, so much war, killing and violence, theyve gotten to a state where psychologically they thought maybe it was over, their country was Getting Better and it all reversed back on them and they never had nine one they can have trust and faith in and you have to have that. Do you think its better with Prime Minister abadi than maliki . I think abadi has a chance. Rose he certainly thinks of himself as being different than maliki. Hes having to deal with iranianbacked hard liners and militias. Its in three different pieces. A sense of baghdad. A line they cant be bothered to fight over. It was the scenario that was predicted a decade ago that is coming its starting to exist now de facto. Rose whats the presence of iranians both in syria and in iraq . Iranians, not shia militia my iranians. Every month we hear about an iranian general getting killed in syria. Rose and a question about about there is a lot of pressure. Im sure they got propping up from their allies but theyre not themselves there was also some discussion and i cant speak to the validity of it that assad was uncomfortable with how much of a role the iranians were playing and sort ofopting this Syrian Civil War and with thousands of iranians actually fighting on the ground alongside hezbollah and other forces and thats why h he invited russia to participate more actively in the war because he wanted to offset rose iran. Exactly. I cant speak to the validity of that, this is coming from sources inside syria, but i thought it was an interesting idea that even assad was a little uncomfortable with just how many fighters there were and apparently the iran generals are suspicious of their counterparts running the show. You see them with the different shia militias, theyre there with their technology. Rose the iranians are. Yes, and youre told not to film them. No ones hiding the fact theyre there. Rose they will say put the camera away. They will say do not film over there and if you do film over there not pleasant. We do know the cost of iran in the last years in treasure and lives of propping up the assad regime and it would be interesting and probably important to know at one point, with oil at these lows, how much it truly crossed that country which has had substantially economic problems. Rose which was one of the incentives to make the iran nuclear deal. There are problems theyre having, dying in large numbers off the radar, hezbollah are struggling. Many of the young syrian men we met jumping on the dinghies from turkey were fleeing from syria. Rose the border remains open . I think its much tighter. The turks have really tried to rose but not closed it entirely . Legal or illegal crossing . Rose illegal. Its better than it was, but there is always a ba way to have get through. Turkeys argument is they have a massive border and no one can actually secure and to a certain degree no one can secure their entire bored. Theyve never succeeded in decades to close the border from the p. K. K. They were fighting, the kurdish militants. Rose whats your read on erdogan now . Ive covered the election that brought erdogans party to power. He came to power having talking about suffering persecution at the hands of the komalist military system in turkey. Rose he was in prison briefly. In prison several months for reciting an islamist poem. The irony to see him a decade later locking people up for a cartoon of him in the newspaper or such is that is not recognized by erdogans circle at all. Rose he did well in the election. Edid. He reignited the war, his critics would argue, with the p. K. K. In turkey in order to that is what his critics would argue. There was the first round of elections over the summer, then we saw things shift, and then they couldnt put together a government, then turkey went to elections again after a period of massive instability and reigniting the war with the p. K. K. And taking on i. S. I. S. Directly and the bombing and then all the of a sudden in ankara and all of a sudden hes done well in the polls because frankly a lot of, too and this might have been the strategy behind it, thats what the opponents say were terrified at the product of this instability becoming worse and more widespread. Rose suppose you guys got a message saying baghdadi wanted to see the western press. Press conference . Rose just say come in. I was in discussion to go visit them probably a year and a half ago and i had a long back and forth. Ultimately, as a woman, it was sort of a nonstarter, they were never going to let me go. But, at that time, had they decided to let me go, i probably would have gone with the right at that time. Now, i dont think so, and thats because the people who i talk to from i. S. I. S. , i can see the shift in the way they think, the way they communicate, the way they operate. Its a different ball game. Rose how is it different . I dont think you can trust them. I dont think even if you get the guarantee of amman, of security, i dont think you can trust them because they are so susceptible they can promise you this and someone on top said she just said something that quranicily is illegal. Would you interview baghdadi, hypothetically speaking . If i knew i would come back with me head. Rose im interested in what you can and cant do. These people have butchered some of our colleagues. Its wratherred selfcentered speaking from a perspective of a journalist, but they have executed fellow journalists on camera and distributed that around the world. What would you say to the memory of our colleagues to then go in i understand the journalistic reasoning for interviewing them, but thats quite a betrayal. I would say im of the school of thought that as deeply unpleasant as these people, are we need to understand them better. We need to understand them better. We need to be communicating because many, many more people are going to be executed in a similarly brutal fashion for no good reason until we can truly understand this better and start to get our arms around it. The amount of money now involved in this kidnapping trade, the numbers are insane. Yeah. Rose explain how that works. So you might get kidnapped initially. In the past you would get kidnapped by small criminal gangs, opportunists, someones broth who are thinks its a great way to make cash. The first is the sale is for a smaller amount of money, but then as time goes by you end up being contacted by i. S. I. S. , you bring larger amount of money, then you have the ransom request which could be in the frame of millions. So the incentivization and the p. R. Benefits for i. S. I. S. Having another western journalist in their captivity outweighs any kind of rationale you could expect toward a genuine guarantee. You might have security guarantees but every person in the chain just needs someone on the outside for you to disappear. Thats why its so hard to work in syria, the constant shifting sand. Rose what can you and cant you do . Work with the kurds. Rose just stay with the kurds. I think there are other very militant Islamist Groups that have a code. I. S. I. S. Is too unpredictable. Even if they have a code you have all the other groups out there that will grab you because they see the value of your sale and some of it might be because they want to go after you and they do want to see you in pain and help i. S. I. S. Get the publicity and part of it is the sheer desperation of the circumstances. Rose whats the threat of eyes as you see it from where you work . What is the threat that they pose . Its not the its the branding, the virus, how extraordinarily attractive that is to rose san bernardino. The fact you can put that idea up on facebook and youre part of a movement. What frightens me to add on to that point is also this whole animosity theyve managed to capitalize on and create, to a certain degree. This massive fear of the other. Right now, the other is arabs and muslims, and you see this divide growing bigger and bigger, and its being amplified, and the refugees are being caught up in it and peoples at tiewtdz are all shifting and changing and i think thats going to have devastating consequences to our future if were unable to somehow and i think were all responsible in making this happen as journalists. We need to somehow be able to explain each other to one another and not forget rose explain each other to to one another. We are all fundamentally human and i think our compassion has been lost, our humanity has been lost to a certain degree and we get very wrapped up in this fear. At the height of the fear in the u. S. When 9 11 had just happened and the u. S. Was traumatized and grieving, no serious politician was calling for stopping all muslims from entering the country and, yet, more than a decade later, that is rose the combination of the chain of events and the politicians. Only one politician in america is calling for it. And i think you can argue syria, syrias politician. The death of 3,000 people in this country did not result in that kind of rhetoric. Rose at the same time, weve seen dramatic changes. Because of social media and others things, its much larger and the radicalization process that takes place. For years after 9 11, the Intelligence Services were looking at mosques where there were preachers spreading messages of hate. Rose in mosques. In a mosque. But the radicalization that weve seen in europe and other places, these are bedroom jihadis. Rose who face the radicalization process. Its not happening in a mosque. You dont have to do much to qualify. And youre being recruited by your friends. You look at theyre going from the same neighborhoods. A couple of guys go first, start skyping with them. Hey, great, fivestar jihad, all of this, and putting together cool facebook names and its very attractive and its very understandable. Its not so abstract. Jihad used to be more abstract. It went through the mosque and a bunch of men in flowing robes in caves in afghanistan who spoke arabic, it was alien on a certain level. Now its your buddies you grew up with, used to smoke dope and steal cars with and now theyre belong blowing things up and have these weapons. I. S. I. S. Capitalized on the melees of young men who probably didnt think of themselves necessarily as strongly muslim. And i. S. I. S. Gives them the sense of identity. And i. S. I. S. Says you cannot coexist with nonbelievers. And thats why there is an issue on why everyone is approaching solutions. Its so much more profound than weve been able to deal. With youre dealing with an ideology but also these different factors that have to be addressed to prevent that ideology from winning because right now they are. We dont want to admit it. Rose they are, in fact, winning . Yes. Rose and how do you measure winning . Because we havent and by we, i mean anyone who does not subscribe to i. S. I. S. s ideology, we have not been able to properly provide the counterargument to these people that would be drawn to i. S. I. S. Rose the world of ideas. Yes. Rose theyre winning the world of ideas. They are. Rose theyre offering a more romantic engagement. Theyre fulfilling something that is obviously lacking in these individuals where they dont feel as if theyre welcomed by societies in the west. They want to make their mark, matter b part of a brotherhood. Rose a compelling fartive. Exactly. Also feeding into some of the worst impulses creating the nastiest reactions in western society of racism and islamophobia. Not helping itself, either, you know, the attitude ward the refugees were seeing in some countries. Rose how does that play . It fuels this notion and this idea that i. S. I. S. Has of the west america is against islam and muslim also and th the westd america want to destroy and then when the refugees get to europes shores, theyre desperately hoping finally the nightmare will be over and they will be able to start this new life and they do in some instances being end up treated in their own words as if theyre garbage or subhuman, theyre stripped of dignity second time going through europe of all places, this feeds into i. S. I. S. s idea. Rose some say i. S. I. S. Would like to see more of an engagement in syria that they want. They want to make this into a war of muslim against the west or islam against the west. Yes. Strengthen the obama policy, actually, is to deny them that. Doesnt give us a visceral sense that something is being done to deny them what they want. Rose the president spoke to this, theyre trying to deny them territory because that feeds their narrative that theyre building something create, a caliphate, a state, and you have to by, containing and reducing, you know, youre just taking that narrative away from them. And yet they still have huge swaths of territory. Nests. And they have strategic things they cant do anymore. Rose when do you think the battle to retake mosul will take place . laughter whos going to fight it . Rose the iraqi army, for one. Strategically it would be the wiser course of action to take so you would have to move your troops toward mosul. Rose what do we know about life inside mosul . Not very much, to be honest. Rose anybody coming out . Its hard for people to get out because they make you leave 1,000 and the deed to your house as a sort of insurance policy that youre going to come back again. You need medical permission to leave, you have to have an emergency to be able to leave. Thats what people were telling us the last time we were in iraq. The fairly to move on mosul is also a function of the political divisions between Iraqi Kurdistan and the Central Government of baghdad. They just cant agree. Theyre in economic financial disputes over budgets and sharing royal money from Iraqi Kurdistan to baghdad and the kurds know they cant take mosul alone. Its a predominantly arab city, and the Iraqi Government probably needs kurdish support because half the iraqi army melted away when mosul fell. It would be disaster if they tried to move on mosul now. Rose so its at least several years off . You could just starve them out. Pmake it hard to cut off the supply lines and eventually they will run out of food. Theyre not invincible. Youre not suggesting you starve out the entire population. No, im not suggesting that. You have ramadi and fallujah which are less than an hours drive to baghdad that are still in i. S. I. S. s hands. Rose tell me about the questions you most want to answer as reporters in covering the territories and the people and the events and the conflicts you cover. What are the questions that you most wish you could find answers to . Well, the most you wish you could find answers to . The questions i think we sometimes dont focus on enough that i want more opportunity to answer, i know arwa does a because weve had this discussion so many times, sit speaks to again trying to put the kibosh on this narrative i. S. I. S. Is pushing which is humanizing the other, as arwa said. You know, i hear the discussion between politicians sometimes ability whatever it might be, Syrian Refugees or radicals and i real there is such a divorce between the discussion going on about these ideas and actual, tangible understanding of these people are human beings, they laugh, they cry, they have favorite colors, they have favorite foods, and we have not done enough, i dont believe, as journalists to really bring that home. And i think to that point, too, its not what do i want to have answered. Its what are we being asked every day by these people that we cant rose are you being asked . Why is this happening to us . Is the world not seeing what we have been suffering . And if they are seeing what we have been suffering, how can they still allow this to happen to us . Are we not human enough . Are our lives not worth saving . Are our children not worth saving . We get asked those questions every day and i cannot answer them. Arwa, heres another problem here i dont think the u. S. Has the power to come in and fix the Regional Cold war between iran and saudi arabia that is tearing the middle east apart right now. I dont think that the u. S. Is this only nip tent power that can come save all these people. I wish. But, you know, weve seen the limits of u. S. Power. Sure. Maybe there are better measures that can be taken. I feel like the priorities after 9 11 when the u. S. Was invading and embarking on military adventures in the middle east, a big responsibility was to explain, these are human beings, too. An arab, a muslim is a person, too, but there are local problems, regional problems in this part of the world and its not the wests fault, necessarily, all of that. I really would like that answered, what if in 2012 or 2013 when an intervention in syria wouldnt have been that tricky, would that have stopped it. Rose yes, i ask that all the time. When the red line was crossed if they actually had gone through rose youre talking about the u. S. Had gone through with the bombing even that. Given the experience in libya of regime change there and that syria is a much larger country with a much larger population, why would we think that would end up any better . Because you can ask the question that was being asked back then of should there be military intervention in syria, what if the question asked was, well, what does syria look like if there isnt intervention . Because iraq was falling a. Was growing in power in the last two years, there was going to be a vacuum if syria and that was going to eventually be filled. We all went in and talked to activists in the beginning warning to have the radicalization of the revolution. They warned us in 2011, 2012 in the very beginning. Rose they were saying, what, radicals are flowing in here from iraq and other places . And that the ideology, people, humans themselves were going to become more radicalized. That notion of tolerance and, you know, forgiving and keeping the nation together. I remember one syrian saying, if youre drowning and you can barely breathe and you are about to go down and youre reaching for someburn and no ones there and then someone leans over and gives you their hand and you look at them and think, i dont like the look of you, but are you not going to take their hand . And thats how he described it, of course, we took their hand. We dont want to. It was the only hand on offer. Became a magnet. I remember being at half the airport in 2013, kind the beginning of i. S. I. S. And people pouring, it was remarkable kissing the face of taxi driver, egyptians, two kids from the u. K. , going straight to the border. That was the beginning and didnt stop. I met libyans who fought in the libyan syrian war on forward toker and just arrived. Rose why are all of you driven to these stories . For me, it started off personal because im arabamerican, my mothers syrian, my dads american. When the war in iraq started, i fell with a foot on each side. Were talking about it now ten years later, explain people to one another. For me, thats kind of the crux of it. I feel an obligation to try to, as best as i can, you know, remind us of who we are and that others are human, too, and we owe it to each other on a very global, moral level to try to help if we can and to try to understand and to have compassion and caring, even though people might seem like theyre far away, theyre really not. I started because i was curious. I wasnt sure what else i would do if i didnt do it. I think curiosity is i remember bob simon saying this to me, he was, like, youve got to be curious. If youre not an innately curious person you will burn out on journalism so quickly. You have to have that continuous desire to see different places. I definitely feel what arwa was saying, there are plenty of people a lot smarter than me that know a lot more than i do, but its being able to combine having knowledge with a topic and having firsthand experience, taking viewers into peoples homes and humanizing them and giving them a voice. There is something incredibly exciting about that. Its a rare privilege, and to witness history on occasion. I had a dream i read about and it was an inspiration and i had a dream of being a Foreign Correspondent in a trench coat with a notebook and ended up, again, getting dragged back into these wars, which after 15plus years, im exhausted and, frankly, kind of traumatized by this. Ill keep going back, ill keep covering this stuff, but there is something about the despair of the narrative in syria. A lot of the other stories you cover, you see the end. It just feels but what i would also have liked to say in the past is this isnt a scary world where there is war. There is a great big world that is rich and beautiful and fun and exciting and tastes good and smells good. Where is that . laughter we spend all this time talking about syria. I moved in the last year and a half to east asia and koreans and japanese and chinese, they kind of watch this blood bath in the middle east and they dont understand it. They dont understand why people would want to kill each other when you can make money and build shopping malls. Why would you do that . Rose and lost opportunity, too. There are people now who come to this table and say what we need is a martial bland for the middle east to help to provide an alternative narrative. You know, i spoke to a kurdish official and i said, why have the kurds, how have they avoted the trap of the arabs and particularly obviously of the syrians and the iraqis after halabja and you lost all these People Killed in the most beautiful way . He said, clarissa, we were willing to forego our need for vengeance and instead focused on economic growth, and it was hard because its human and dont forget the iraqi kurds in the 90s fought their own civil wars and went through their own power struggles and slowly mended and theyre deeply divided to this day and feuding. I think the issue has to come from within the societies. This bizarre process we have where everyones torn apart from people doing the fighting, it would be lovely to have a solution in the box. But within the groups doing the fighting, they get tired, lose people, run out of juice. This time, someone new comes in and its, like, who else can come in in syria . From the historical perspective, what did it take to end that awful lebanese civil war . They had to realize nobody could win. There was also all the regional powers made an agreement and then the syrians were pretty much invited in to impose an occasion and be the strong man to force everybody to stop. Thats not a sustainable solution. No, but it brought an end to the fighting. Im just using that as an historical example. And lebanon was a much smaller country in conflict compared to the gaping wound that is syria. Rose let me talk about afghanistan. Are they going to negotiate between the taliban and the Afghan Government . I think it past that point, sadly. I think the talks are stalling. I think the biggest problem is fighting within the taliban. The two factions. Rose is there confirmed evidence whether hes alive or not . Theres an audio message that hes alive. I. S. I. S. Is the bigger problem. Theyre attractive. They have chunks of territory which they didnt have before and i think there is a security collapse in that country we dont want to talk about because afghanistan is so last decade in american Foreign Policy. I think pakistan as well is going to be there. Rose tell me about pakistan, there is a lot of nuclear weapons. Its a bad neighborhood, but pakistan is back from the mess it was in a while back and we have to be so cautious not to wash our hands of the afghans. So much was created about us. We gave them a lot more weapons and money than before we turned up and said its about time you turned on. Ashraf ghani speaks nicely but hes still not running the machine and the fighting the guy he ran the election against. I worry about where that country is headed and i worry about our appetite for assistance and its already now looking like a very pale version of what we even tried to convince ourselves were leaving behind. Rose whats the status . Libya . Labias i would say oneplace you might have more luck squeezing i. S. I. S. In that there are more focused militias. But theyre in huge areas where theyre running training examples with impunity, fighting amongst themselves, and extremists groups are instead there is no real government to speak of. Its too divided. There is two governments, in fact. Rose how about yemen . I was in yemen in july, and its amazing how much its changed since then. I mean, i think this sort of saudi coalitionled effort has definitely started to take a toll on the houthis and theyre gaining more territory, but as they gain more territory, it appears that al quaida also gains more territory. I think that yemen, aside from being an abject humanitarian disaster is the sort of i think that its the perfect microcosm for all of the various regional players who are meddling in this kind of incoherent way that doesnt seem to have an obvious you know, like, there is no clear objective or outcome where anyone really seems to benefit. I think its hurting the gulf as well supporting it. Everyones lost at this stage, everybody. Yeah. Its amazing how yemen is so off the radar. The level of u. S. Assistance to the saudis initially, the level of saudi weaponry used there, the humanitarian catastrophe and it seems to be the war people are happy not to spend much time talking about. Theyll let the saudis do what they like and influence wont have much impact. And who has the band width for all the war . You want to stick your head in the sand. A happier story, burma, myanmar oh, yes. Which i had the good fortune to cover an election there and a possibly peaceful transition of power from decades of military rose someone in the military who said, you know, we need a change. I think it sounds like the generals that ran the show in myanmar wanted an alternative and have appeared to be willing to take a step back and allow somebody they locked up for years to and her party to take over. Rose heres whats interesting. Weve had this conversation. In this country, there was a pivot to asia which really didnt happen that the Obama Administration and there was also supposed to be a reset with russia which didnt happen either, but the interesting thing about, you know, china with the second largest economy at some point soon will have the largest economy, becoming more aggressively in terms of the region, certainly, and having global ambitions both economically and i think infliewngsly, you know, wanting their currency to be part of our reserve currency, all those kinds of things, theyre not a player at all in the middle east arent they smart they mind their own business whats the advantage to sinking money and treasure into this sinkhole . But as you mention china, china has worried many of its neighbors with, you know, building islands in the South China Sea and making territorial claims to the point that a number of the countries that arent necessarily ideologically or strategically aligned, asia, japan, korea, and countries with serious differences amongst themselves are all worried by the behavior of the chinese in that part of the world, a and the japanese even changed their constitution to remove some of the pacifism from it recently. Rose when you think about the world today, and this is what makes what you do so exciting, south korea is an ally, vietnam is an ally in terms of they dont want to use the word containment, but providing an american alternative in asia. That shows you who ur friends are and who i would have imagined at the end of the veem vietnam war. What we see today when i look at historical cycles and i see the agony of the middle east, i think a little bit back decades, it was Southeast Asia that was burning, it was Southeast Asia that was slaughtering itself and being invaded by foreign governments where you had genocide committed in cambodia, and its almost hard to imagine today that that was happening only a few short decades ago, and that is perhaps my only hope for the middle east is that maybe they can go through that transition. One day it will all be over. But at what cost. And perhaps in 1970, it was hard to imagine that tourists would be traveling to vietnam or to cambodia and staying in nice hotels. I was traveling there in the 60s. Rose thank you all for coming. Thank you for having us. Rose thank you for joining us. See you next time. Rose for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org captioning by vitac, underwritten by Firemans Fund announcer the following kqed production was produced in hidefinition. Its all about licking your plate. The food is just fabulous. I should be a psychoanalyst for the amount of money i spend in restaurants. I had a horrible experience. I dont even think we were at the same restaurant and everybody, im sure, saved room for those desserts