‘The silent, good work’: Finding the roots of Mideast progress
In a region where cycles of setbacks are often seen as business as usual, reporting on heartfelt efforts to bring about change can seem quixotic. Our Middle East correspondent tells why experience has shown him that it’s still worth doing.
Credible signs of progress don’t always seem abundant on Taylor Luck’s beat.
The Amman, Jordan-based correspondent roams the Mideast and North Africa, a region whose ancient cultures can also include enduring rifts that seem to keep stealing away opportunities for what all people want: self-determination, freedom, and shared prosperity.
Discouragement doesn’t need to be the only reaction, Taylor says.
“I think because we focus too much on the loud noise by the extremists,” he says on the Monitor’s “Why We Wrote This” podcast, “we’re ignoring the kind of silent, good work that is going on.”
Even when political avenues are closed to them, “young people across all these countries are finding local issues and advocating for solutions,” Taylor says, around issues such as greater water and food access, clean energy, and women’s empowerment.
Demagogues may stir up reactive forces, he says, and sow conflict. But ultimately they face a tireless push for something better. “I definitely believe the arc bends towards progress eventually,” he says, “because people at their hearts want a better life for themselves and a better life for their community.”
“They say, where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Taylor says. “But I find, with these young people, where there’s hope, there’s a way.”
Episode transcript
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Clayton Collins: Welcome to “Why We Wrote This,” the Monitor podcast about how our journalists do their work. I’m Clay Collins.
Taylor Luck is a repeat guest. From his base in Amman, Jordan, he covers the Middle East, including the Gulf States and several countries in North Africa. He last joined us in May to talk about his reality check story on Saudi Arabia’s afforestation and green energy initiatives. He’s here today in our Boston studios to talk about how he balances reality with credible hope across a pretty complicated region. Welcome back, Taylor!
Taylor Luck: Thank you, Clay. It’s great to be back.
Collins: So, you met with the staff during this visit and you told some interesting stories. I want to open those up a little to listeners, and then after that we’ll merge into a conversation that you had in late 2019 with your editor, Ken Kaplan, about some memorable reporting experiences from that year, and about how you started your career.
First, in listening back to that 2019 interview, I was struck by how hopeful you were about Tunisia, which you had just visited. You called it “invigorating and inspiring” and “a hub of creativity.” I suspect that those cultural characteristics haven’t changed, but the situation on the ground has. There are so few promising headlines out of Tunisia. What happened?
Luck: Well, quick answer: not much and not enough. So although there was a very vibrant civil society, and there [were] all these growths in freedoms and very progressive constitutional changes, these never trickled down to kitchen-table matters for most Tunisians. And a lot of politicians spent their time at each other’s throats, rather than tackling the issues of the day. And it turns out that changing the constitution and building a democracy on paper is much easier than overhauling a corrupt and rotten economic system. And as the economic situation deteriorated, people just ran out of patience. And that opened up the space for a populist president to come in, and point at various groups of people as the scapegoats. Unfortunately today, especially due to the mismanagement of this populist president, Kais Saied, the economic situation has gone from bad to worse. People can’t find flour or sugar or eggs. People no longer afford chicken or meat. And he’s been running out of scapegoats. So what we’ve seen the last few months, he’s been pointing to African migrants who come to Tunisia either for safety or as a transit point to Europe. And desperate people look for any quick solution to make their lives better, and this president has been pushing them towards basically attacking these migrants, pushing the great replacement theory, which of course started in Europe by fascists. And we’ve seen violence.
But when we talk about hope, the only groups or people who are protecting these migrants are the very NGOs and civil society groups that proliferated after the Arab Spring. Right now there are 1,000 migrants stranded [along] the Libyan and Tunisian border. Basically, the Tunisian Army rounded [them] up and dropped them off in the desert without food or water or phones. They’re in life-threatening circumstances. And it’s these NGOs [that] are keeping people aware and trying to get help to them. We may not always see the story go where we want it to, but progress isn’t a straight line.
Collins: Hmm. All across the region you cover, you find all of these rich, ancient cultures where the old rifts, the secular rifts, religious ones, just seem to keep stealing away opportunities for what all people want: self-determination, prosperity by some measure. What signs do you see region wide that the arc still somehow bends toward those things, eventually?
Luck: I definitely believe the arc bends towards progress, eventually. Because people at their hearts want a better life for themselves and a better life for their community. Oftentimes, it’s the dictators, it’s the far-right politicians, it’s the demagogues who are stirring up these reactive forces, trying to appeal to our worst natures. Because if there is change of progress in any sector, they see that as an eventual threat to them.
But despite this, I find across the Middle East, young people are finding a way. Politically, the avenues are closed, for now. But I’m finding young people across all these countries finding local issues and advocating for solutions. I’ve met young people who have developed rainwater catchment systems and cheap ways to dig wells to improve water availability for Jordanians. I’ve met young people who have come up with solutions to combat desertification in Tunisia. So one thing that’s kinda been fascinating, what these young people have done, they’ve said, basically: “OK. We can’t talk about democracy, because we know we will be put in jail before we finish posting our next Facebook post.” But what they’ve done is, they’ve tied these local community issues to the national strategies of these countries, to make it even harder for these regimes to shut them down. Tying something into food security, tying something into energy, tying something into women’s empowerment. And so they’re finding their own little ways to make change and biding their time until perhaps changes on the ground could eventually turn to political change. They say, where there’s a will, there’s a way. But I find, with these young people, where there’s hope, there’s a way.
Collins: You talk a lot about getting to stories on the human level, as a way past the noise. You write compellingly about food, for example, as a unifier. People breaking bread. Individuals’ behavior seems to be at the heart of solutions, but also of problems. You told the staff here the other day about a rare moment of harmony that you saw and recounted in a “letter from Jerusalem,” but then how a success-of-diplomacy story soon after had to be killed because of a, you know, what seemed like a pretty inevitable clash at the al-Aqsa Mosque, or the Temple Mount, as Israelis call it. Some of these headlines looked like ones that I saw when I was on the Middle East desk in the late 1990s. Are generations on both sides of that long-running Palestinian-Israeli conflict doing anything credible to break that cycle?
Luck: Well, I think there’s always people doing things credible to break the cycle, but oftentimes they get drowned out by the noise. And I’ve always found that when there are just those rare moments where they can corner off a space where those poisonous politics aren’t ... front and center, these initiatives can succeed even for a little bit. When I first landed in Jerusalem, during a time Passover, Ramadan, and Holy Week coincided, there was kind of a tentative peace agreement by the Palestinians and the Israelis, brokered by the U.S. and the Jordanians, the Egyptians. And on the face of it, it should have never worked, but it did for the first few days. And so when I was there, I saw people naturally congregate, Muslim and Jewish Jerusalemites cheer on the Christian processions for Palm Sunday across the old city, or Christian Palestinians coming in from the West Bank and seeing Ramadan celebrations in Jerusalem for the first time. And of course this eventually deteriorated due to the rhetoric spread from the Israeli far-right groups and by Hamas, which eventually got violence to break out. These groups, it’s their goal to have conflict. They douse the whole place in kerosene, rhetorical kerosene, and create friction until something creates the spark. And those are the ones that we hear about constantly. But on the ground, there are so many groups that I found that have been doing amazing things to bridge out to both sides.
For example, in Jerusalem, there’s the Israeli NGO Ir Amim, which is working to preserve the multi-ethnic, multi-faith communities and make up of Jerusalem by monitoring far-right settler groups and extremist groups and attempts to push people from their homes, and also teaching Israelis the importance of keeping Jerusalem as a multi-ethnic place. There’s EcoPeace, where Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians are still trying to find ways to cooperate on environmental issues, trying to find ways to get the most out of their dwindling water sources, and to benefit from solar energy, and to build on this cooperation towards something that looks like peace-building.
I found that Jordanian and Palestinian officials and people who work at al-Aqsa, they started to have a little bit more faith in Israel’s ability to keep security. Once you remove the politics and the noise, people naturally gravitate towards the center. And I think because we focused too much on the loud noise by the extremists, we’re ignoring the kind of silent good work that is going on.
Collins: You spoke to staff about two other places, and specifically about the Monitor’s “values” lens or values orientation. You framed a recent story about the West Bank city of Jenin as being a story about safety, even though what was present was really the lack of safety and the yearning for it. I wonder if you could take us first there to Jenin, and then to Farkha, a Palestinian village from which you reported that actually does seem to be another place that’s showcasing actual progress.
Luck: Jenin is a town in the northern West Bank and it’s home to a refugee camp, home to Palestinians who are displaced by the 1948 war from land that is currently the state of Israel. And in this camp, there are 24,000 people living in an area that’s roughly about the size of a quarter mile [square]. People live on top of each other, very basic buildings. They rely on the UN for schools, for health, for food and cash assistance. So this camp has been home to militant movements in the past, but particularly the last couple years, as there’s been no hope for a peace process or any type of progress in their lives, with an increase of far-right Israeli settler attacks and a corrupt leader in the Palestinian Authority, there have been a rise in new militant groups, and Jenin has been essentially ground zero for these militant movements. And there’s a sense of almost inevitable futility about the violence that happens in Jenin.
So when we did a story there most recently, it was about an Israeli raid [in early July] in which Israel engaged in its largest ground operation in the West Bank in 20 years. And even before it started, everyone knew how it was going to end. Thousands of people were displaced. Only a handful of the hundreds of militants were killed. Israel did not really secure its security or safety. Palestinians remained insecure. And it sparked another round of violence. So we wrote a story about the lack of safety. So that’s an example of a lack of a value story.
Collins: Mm-hmm.
Luck: Sometimes we have to report on the darkness, places where progress is not emerging.
But then there’s another town, 40 miles due south of Jenin. There’s a village called Farkha. It’s a small village of 1,500 people on a hilltop, very idyllic, full of olive groves and farms and Ottoman stone buildings. And residents there had a different response to the Israeli occupation and to their own lack of leadership in an autocratic regime in Ramallah. They looked inwards for solutions. They reintroduced an Indigenous concept known as al Ouneh, which is essentially community philanthropy. Everyone rolls up their sleeves and pitches in. So they have community farms. Everyone comes together to build schools and roads. They do not accept any assistance from the Palestinian Authority. They’ve dug wells, so they’re more sufficient on their water. They’re going solar, so they’re completely off-grid. And they’re finding ways to encourage people to stay, live off the land and rely on each other. They become completely independent from the Palestinian Authority and Israel. So this was a case of not only progress, but of people finding hope and ways to create a better life, even in the direst of circumstances.
And both stories, Farkha and Jenin, were valid. Both of them are in the West Bank, and our story in Farkha does not make the West Bank less violent. But the opposite is also true: Our story in Jenin does not make the West Bank less hopeful.
Collins: Remarkable juxtaposition that you just described of two places. Thanks so much, Taylor. At this point, I’m gonna throw it to your December 2019 appearance on our “Meet the Monitor” series of interviews, with our mutual friend Ken Kaplan as interviewer. But it’s been great having you back and so nice seeing you in person again.
Luck: It’s great to be seeing you in person. We should do this again.
Collins: Yes. Thanks, Taylor.
Luck: Thank you so much.
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Ken Kaplan: So my first question, Taylor: How did a nice Chicago boy like you come to be a foreign correspondent, with a finger on the pulse of the Arab world?
Luck: Well, I mean, in short, completely by accident. I didn’t set out to be a journalist. I didn’t even study journalism, but I studied international relations in college. I knew I wanted to do something either in diplomacy or something in international relations. I wanted to learn Arabic. We didn’t have Arabic at my school. And on graduation I was like: “Okay, well let me go try to learn some Arabic.” And basically, as silly as this sounds, I looked at a map and looked at the region. And Jordan made the most sense geographically, ’cause it’s right in the middle, and linguistically, it’s kind of right in the middle.
I went out to Jordan and I got a job at the English newspaper there called the Jordan Times. And what made it perfect was the fact that it was all Jordanians. So literally all our conversations were in Arabic. All our editorial discussions were in Arabic. The interviews were in Arabic. I was there to learn and listen. And more than just learning from the people, I was living with the people. You know, they have a saying in Arabic [that] means we have broken bread or salt. So you know, when the important daily rituals are just sitting around having meals, relaxing and talking. So for me, literally, I just hopped out from the Midwest to the Mideast, with an open heart and open mind.
Kaplan: That’s a pretty amazing story. But I have to say that your understanding of the area from the ground up, I guess, is what makes your reporting so rich. In the past year, you had two amazing reporting trips to Tunisia. You planned some stories, and you stumbled upon others. And after your first trip, I was really struck by your enthusiasm for the country and its people, and your eagerness to get back. So please talk a little bit about why you felt that way.
Luck: I think Tunisia, you know, it’s funny because it doesn’t really come to people’s minds. I mean, it started the Arab Spring. It was the first protest that pressured a dictator, eventually brought down the dictator, but it’s very rarely in the news. But you go to Tunisia, and I find it invigorating and inspiring every single time, for one simple reason: people have the right to self-determination, they have the right to speak as they wish, and they have the freedom to choose what they want, which you don’t see in any other Arab country. So for the rest of my reporting in these other countries, people are always self-censoring. They’re always filtering what they say, what they do, and even what they study, by either government pressures, cultural pressures, or family pressures. Tunisia doesn’t have any of that. So you go there and it’s like this hub of creativity, of thought, of philosophy, of art, of language. I mean, you just see all this potential, and ingenuity, and really, genius, unlocked because a dictatorship at the top is no longer there. You kind of see the hope of what it would be like if the rest of the Arab world had this freedom.
Kaplan: I know one of your favorite articles that you wrote was one you stumbled upon in Tunisia and Morocco about these still existing Jewish communities there. How did you find this story and why did you like it so much?
Luck: Well, I mean, I, I found at first, you know, like everything with Tunisia, just by talking. But I found out that the Islamist party was running a Jewish candidate for the municipal elections one year. And then I found out that the Ministry of Tourism recently appointed was of the Tunisian Jewish origins. That intrigued me, because I mean, I don’t know about you, but you don’t really hear much about Tunisian Jews or Moroccan Jews in Morocco. It ended up being so rewarding because it’s just the community is completely open and very much intertwined with the rest of the society. They eat the same foods, they use the same words and dialect, literally you couldn’t differentiate between them and non-Jewish Tunisian and Moroccans.
I don’t know about you, but for me, you hear the stories of pre 1948: how Jewish neighbors and, and Muslim neighbors and Christian neighbors live together, celebrated holidays together, worked together in the harvest. I felt almost like I was traveling back through time. Because I hear all these stories. For example, Jordanian or Syrian, you don’t go to the Arab doctor, you go to the Jewish doctor in the old quarter back in the old days, and how people would celebrate the harvest together, and holidays. You hear that, but when you actually see it in Morocco and in Tunisia, where it’s just: “Yeah, of course we have the same identity, same shared history.” And people even say even in terms of religion that: “There’s a lot more that unites us than divides us.”
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Collins: Thanks for listening. You can find show notes with links to all of Taylor’s work at csmonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. Also find a gateway to our news and values hub, where you can sift stories by the values that underpin them. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Jingnan Peng. Our sound engineers were Alyssa Britton and Jeff Turton. The 2019 episode from which some of this audio was taken was sound designed by Noel Flatt, who also composed our original theme music. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.
