 I'd like to welcome everyone and to our lecture of opportunity here. We had spring break last week and the first one will kick off this week. And we're really fortunate to be joined today by Gail Amon who is a New York Times best-selling author. And I recently came across her most recent book, The Daughters of Kobani. And I was blown away, I was moved. It really is a moving and inspiring story that captures an astonishing story of an all-women army that lived and fought and died to stop ISIS. And as the book portrays, it really is a story of courage, of justice and rebellion. And so I thought, you know, one, folks should definitely read it, but two, it would be great if Gail could share her story with us here at the War College. So, you know, her first book, The Dressmaker of Kara Kana, you know, introduced readers to a teenager who was an entrepreneurial spirit, who was through her living room business. And that was under the Taliban. And that, you know, when she wrote that book, she wanted readers to know that young women who were risking their lives every day to fighting for a better future. And that led to her next story, Ashley's War. And that was about a team of young soldiers recruited for an all-female special operations team at a time where women were officially banned from ground combat. And that of course led her to her third book. And that'll be the topic of our discussion today. And as I mentioned, it truly is a moving and inspiring book, one of which that it's grounded in three years of research and on-the-ground interviews across three countries. And that's over seven trips to Syria between 2017 and 2020, along with hundreds of hours of interviews. And it really does both paint a real detailed description of the accounts that she experienced, but it also really does a phenomenal job and it's grounded in history. And so I learned a ton, I hope you do too as well. And with that, I'd like to, what we'll do first is I'll, Gail and I will have a discussion. I'll pose a few questions to her. And then we'll transition and I encourage you all, if you have any questions that come up, if you wanna go ahead and drop those in the chat function, and I'll go ahead and scoop those up and present those to Gail as we proceed here. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Gail. Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure to join you and to be here today. It's been a real privilege and a journey to bring this book to readers. It is a war story. It is a story of young people who took up arms to protect their neighborhoods. It's a story of women fighting for equality. It's a story of challenge for the US seeking to find a Syria policy that worked. And this is a very live discussion going on today. And it's a military history is that, there are a lot of things that I think hadn't been shared previously that really what made me so happy to come speak to all of you today. So thank you and I'm delighted to be here. Thanks Gail, appreciate it. So tell everyone a little bit about how did you, how do you find the story? How did the story come to you? I know reading the introduction and into that, you have, you personalized it very much and what it meant to you and how you stumbled across it. But how did you find the story? Yes, and thank you Otter. I mean, that really is the discussion that becomes the opening of the prologue. In many ways of the three books, I've had the privilege of writing. This is my most personal. My father is from the region. So that was something that ran through a lot of my thought as I was traveling there. I said, as an American kid from Prince George's County, Maryland, who was, you know, had a father who very much came from that world. And I honestly think I really learned so much about him in this process. And then I think, you know, the prologue really talks about like so many of you. I think that post-911 conflicts had come to shape my world. I got married right before I went to Afghanistan to start working on Dressmaker of Fakrana. I found I was pregnant with my first child in Afghanistan. And I was exhausted from working to make Americans care about their wars. And just as I was feeling all of this, one of the soldiers from Ashley's War, the second book I wrote, which is now in the process of becoming a film at Universal with Reese Witherspoon producing and Leslie Lincoln Glatter of Homeland Directing. One of the soldiers, Cassie from Florida, called me from Syria and said, you have to come. You have to see what's happening because not only are women leading the fight against ISIS, they are also fighting for women's equality and they're leading men in battle. And they also have the full respect of the US side of the Special Operations Forces, who really also were changed and are the storyline that run through this entire history, the history of the Special Operations, it deployment to Syria, what that looked like, the quest to find a policy and to figure out who the ground force would be to fight ISIS. But all of this started with Cassie calling me and saying, you must come to Syria and see this and you have to tell the story. And my initial reaction, which I really take readers into in the prologue was, no, I am wiped out, I'm gonna do normal things that other people do. And of course, two weeks later, I called her and said, wait a minute, tell me more, who are these people? Who are these women? Because I think like so many others, and I'd seen snatches of information on social media. I'd seen a photo here or blurb there, but I had no idea, were they real? Who were they? Why were they there? What were they fighting for? The media would give a quick hit, but nothing really broke through in terms of an extended look at who these people were and why they were taking on the Islamic State. Gotcha. Yeah, so that's, it really struck home for me too. And as I was reading that, I could tell that this story really meant a lot to you. So kind of shifting gears in terms of where, location, right? Kobani of all places. Why Kobani? What's the significance of Kobani and how did this, I guess I wouldn't say revolution in women's rights and women taking arms against ISIS? How did it start there? It is the central question. I mean, Kobani is a little town, very few people, not little, but me inside town, very few people had heard of. The People's Protection Units and the Women's Protection Units which I'll tell you a little bit about are fighting for very few people had ever heard of. And Kobani becomes the absolute center stage for the global fight against ISIS in the summer and fall of 2014. And to set the stage, it's hard to remember now, but for many of you, it will be personal history, right? ISIS was really reveling in looking unstoppable in that moment. In that moment in 2014, they had had zero battlefield losses, they had taken Mosul, they had taken Raqqa, they had gone on a tear, right? And the book really takes you into US policymakers trying to figure out and military folks, trying to figure out what are we going to do to stop the Islamic State? This was after the horrible murder of James Foley and after really the crime against humanity that was Sinjar. So that was in the summer of 2014 where ISIS came into this town, separated men from women, took the women and bought and sold them and took the men and killed them. And oh, this had already happened. And the next town up for ISIS was Kobani. And the Americans by that time are like, we need a ground force that is willing to take the fight to ISIS. And the reality was that it wasn't very clear who at that time was going to be that force. And then you have this kind of confluence of forces that comes to a head in the town of Kobani. And let me just walk for a few of them. First was the People's Protection Units and the Women's Protection Units. This is the heart of the story, right? The People's Protection Units were Syrian Kurdish militia that had formed really earlier but then came to the fore as the Syrian Civil War starts. So as the Assad regime withdraws from Kurdish regions to deal with existential threats to its future, it figures out that this group of Syrian Kurds figures out that they have the discipline and the ability to step into the vacuum. And so they come in as this truly well-organized force that surprises everyone, including there was Kurdish scholars who said to me, we just didn't see it coming. That this group of Syrian Kurds would be the ones who come to the fore. And this group, they formed the People's Protection Units to take care of their neighborhoods and their towns and institute Kurdish self-rule for the first time ever the ability to name their children, to publish in their language, to celebrate their holidays. They're focused on all of this. They get formed in 2011. In 2013, the Women's Protection Units get formed where the women who've already been fighting now by this time al-Qaeda-linked groups and the Nusra Front and others, between side, as they said, we just didn't want men taking credit for our work. They wanted the world to know that women were banding together to take care of their towns and their regions but they never thought about ISIS in 2013 when they were first being formed because there was no ISIS. I mean, this was not what they were thinking of. They were thinking about keeping the regime out, right? Maybe fighting extremists, but not a global fight that ISIS became. So the Women's Protection Units and the People's Protection Units make a stand in Kobani. And what captures the world's attention, this is now August, September, 2014, is that they have the will and they have the drive to really bring the fight to ISIS and hold terrain. And that is what the Americans are watching. And they're seeing men and they're seeing women and what they're seeing is a ground force that then captures the world's attention because the other thing that happens at Kobani is technology. Cameras that are in Turkey that mostly have missed most of the horror of Syria because people were terrified at that time ISIS was, beheading and kidnapping, right? To come into Syria to report. They could stay in Turkey and from the mountaintop capture everything that was happening. And so the world starts to watch this little fighting force that has support from Free Syrian Army and from Iraqi Kurds as time goes on. But at the beginning is really on its own, make a stand. And so Twitter gets involved and social media gets involved and everybody says, look at this force. And you have what becomes a David versus Goliath showdown in which David is also a woman. And the Americans at this point think, wait a minute, maybe we should start supporting them from the air and the pressure starts going. And there's in the book, an Obama administration official at that time says to me, we knew we had to do something. The urgency to do something was real because the public was watching this on CNN. I was watching it on camera. And as the Americans start to get involved and they're launching airstrikes and all this history starts this beginning of the history of this partnership starts to form. US officials are speaking publicly about how airpower will never be enough, right? And kind of trying to prepare the public that Kobani is likely to still fall. And for readers of this book, the town becomes the start of the US Syrian Kurdish then Syrian Arab and Christian partnership that ends the territorial hold of the Islamic State. And the title of the daughters of Kobani comes from the fact that you will meet in this fight, no ruse, who's the head of the women's protection units, Azima, who's fighting with the women's protection units and this kind of swashbuckling committee that many readers have written me about because they just said, you know, is she real? I'd love to meet her. Rojda, another more introverted, very effective leader who thought she'd be a pharmacist growing up for I didn't envision this as a future. And Zareen, who starts as a junior military, kind of an aide to no ruse, the head of the women's protection units and we follow her all the way to the end to liberating her own hometown from the Islamic State and having girls come up to her and seeing her as a role model. So all of this starts in Kobani. And the last thing I'd say about Kobani is the title of the daughters of Kobani comes because this group of field commanders comes out of this battle in urban combat, seeing the kind of combat that West Point is now looking at and others, the room by room, house by house, street by street kind of warfare. And even after they've down to maybe a block and a half, they keep fighting and the U.S. gets involved from the air and enters on their side. And there's a moment when they are low on food, low on fuel, low on ammunition, low on weapons and the ruse gets on the radio to her field commanders and says, listen, these men think you are worth nothing. Show them what you are made up so that even if this is your last moment, it will be worth something. And that becomes the opening to how this group of Syrian Kurds and Arabs and Christian end up plumbing to be America's partner in the fight against the Islamic State. Yeah, and you mentioned a few of the key, some of the women, Azima and Neroos, but I guess, can you talk to me a little or talk to us a little bit about some of the other military leaders that maybe from the Syrian Kurdish side that you met and then particularly Azima and Neroos, how did they come across to you and how did they impact you personally? Personally, I think anytime you meet people who are truly courageous, it's inspiring, right? And yet there was no kind of swashbacking kind of thing in the sense of swagger and they're like, oh, I've done this and you haven't. It's much more like, look what we've done together. And that is the spirit that they have. So Neroos is someone who, her mother, like most of the women in the story, their mothers were not educated, barely got to go to school, were not literate. And her mother would come in and say, make sure your life looks different than mine. And actually, my mother would say the same thing. Her family thought she would be a lawyer because she was always advocating in her family for her own position. And she ends up leading the Women's Protection Units and really being America's interlocutor from the most senior level with Muslim, the head of First of People's Protection Units and then the Syrian Democratic Forces. Then there was Azima, somebody I was at, you'll appreciate this, weeks before the book came out, I was having scholars read the book and I was at dinner and I got this WhatsApp that said, I have a problem. And I said, oh my God, you know, so I run to call the person who wrote it to me who was a scholar and he said, I think I have a crush on Azima. And I said, are you kidding me? Like, you know, you brought me out of dinner for that. And he said, no, he said, but honestly, she is this kind of large in life, but very real and very human character. You know, and you know, I say character, I mean person, but also her personal character, right? She was absolutely unwilling ever to believe that defeat was possible. And that kind of inspirational leadership that was grounded and leading from the front, I think made people want to serve with her. People who worked with her, people who bought under her command would talk to me about her for hours. There's a scene in the book where she's getting, you know, close to two dozen people who were pinned by the Islamic State out and yelling at them, don't listen to anybody else. Everybody's gonna get on the radio and tell you what they should do in their plan. No, you listen to me, I am responsible, I'm gonna get you out. It was that kind of leader, right? They were always telling her to stay back and she was always pushing forward. And there's a moment where she's been grazed by ISIS and then this fighter who might have been touching, you know, a foreign fighter for the Islamic State, hits her toward the end of the battle for Kobani and gets her. And she goes to shoot him back and realizes that she can't see through her scope because she's been hit, she's been shot. And the only thing that gives her satisfaction is that she gets him in the leg on the way off the battlefield. And she told me, yeah, you know, that was the thing I thought about that if he took me off, I was gonna take him off. You know, and she said that the thing that motivated her was that she always believed that even when the world found it impossible to believe that Kobani wouldn't fall, she always did. And there's at the very end, you know, she gets up from the school that was serving at the hospital where after she's still recovering, there's still a bullet that's close to her heart that they don't wanna operate on. And she goes to the press conference celebrating ISIS's defeat and the victory that her side had and from the People's Protection Units and the defeat of ISIS, the first defeat for the Islamic State. And she gets out of bed exhausted and still injured and says, I want the world to know that women were part of delivering this defeat to the Islamic State. And the other piece about her, before we go on to the next question, I think it's so important, is it so many times we talk about courageous women as if they're superheroes? She is deeply human, as are all of these people. And the reason, you know, the humanity amid the inhumanity of war is what I wanted to capture. And that's why, and you'll see in the opening quote for the book is Marcus Aurelius, the best revenge is not to be like your enemy. And there's a moment in the battle for Kobani when things are very, very difficult and everyone else since the moment is lost. And people are deeply worried because will they be the next center? What will another massacre happen here? And her phone rings and she thinks it's her commander and it's actually her sister. And this was the moment I really wanted readers to share because I laughed so hard when she told me in the middle of our interview and I said, I immediately knew I had to share it, which is that her sister calls and she's of course terrified, her sister. And Azima, the minute she realizes it's her sister and not her commander starts telling her, didn't I tell you we're doing important work here? We're trying to fight ISIS. You know, do you need me to come hold your hand and sit on the sofa next to you and make you feel better? We have important things to do. I told you, as soon as the fight was over, I would call you. But stop calling until then. And you know, who couldn't relate to that, right? Having that phone call, not in that moment, but certainly in other moments that are important. And it was deeply important to the story that people see them in all their marvelous complexity, that they weren't superheroes or Amazons or Valkyries. I love Thor Ragnarai, right? But they didn't belong to that. They were deeply human people who had the courage to put their convictions on the line and defend truly the rest of us from the Islamic State. Yeah, and that certainly comes through. And you also mentioned earlier about kind of the US's role and Azima's working her relationship from the senior level down to the tactical level. But give us a sense a little bit about kind of, the US's role in the story. You talk a lot about the hunt for Syria policy, but so why did the US need this ground force? And then how did the Women's Protection Unit kind of play into that? Yeah, and there's a lot in the book for those who haven't read it yet, that really goes into the US side, the diplomatic side, the military side, and really the conundrum that the Obama administration belted faced, right? So you couldn't talk about policy, and I'd written a lot about Syria policy by 2014 and 15. You couldn't talk about Syria without talking about Iraq, because the ghost of the Iraq war hangs and hum over every decision made on Syria. And the Obama administration, the book really goes through the Obama administration looking for kind of a body locks when it came to a ground force. It was absolutely politically impossible that a US ground force would be deployed to stop ISIS. The Obama administration deeply felt it had been elected to end wars in the Middle East, not to launch new ones. And it was had never planned on sending US ground forces. So then the question was, well, who? And there's a lot of discussion about NATO ally Turkey and the dialogue the Americans are having there. And then comes Kobani. And it is actually the president himself who ends up telling Erdogan and Turkey that the US is going to do an airdrop, medical supplies and swarms and ammunition in the fall of 2014, because it is seeing the fight. And the book really takes you inside some of the military side folks and the diplomatic team that's saying, wait a minute, maybe as we're watching Kobani unfold, maybe this is somebody, maybe this is a group that we can work with. And the US side goes in in 2015 after the battle is over and really encourages these folks to go well beyond the Kurdish areas, this fighting force, then it had to intend it. And so we need you to keep the fight going. And the military side, we go in on the first trip to find a base for US forces and really take readers in because you watch so many of these folks who are part of the story saying they were deeply worried about bequeathing this fight to their children. And they have a reaction as they're watching. I talked to US folks who said, you know, we slept on our bases and there's a moment in the book where you see US forces sleeping on their bases so that they can provide air power at any moment if everything happens and everything is cleared for the Syrian Kurds who are fighting ISIS. And so the US side all the way through to the very end and to from Kobani to Shadadi to Menvich which is where the foreign fighters from ISIS will come in and drop their passports, their families and then go to the front, the campaign to Menvich and then also of the final huge name fight for Raqqa. And we meet, you know, Jason Aiken and others from soldiers who have done 12, 13, 14 deployments in the post 9-11 wars and who are deeply moved by this fighting force. And also we're not quite ready to see women at the beginning, we're surprised. And then realize as we see with Jason Aiken, it's like, you know, he said at first I was really nervous and then I realized the warrior ethos is the same. And that I heard over and over again, there's a moment in the book where there's a US special operations soldier who's done, you know, more than 12 deployments in out war by this time. And he's watching this flatbed truck at a rally point of, you know, 30, 35 young women, fatigues, Timex watches, hiking boots, some with flowers in their hair, all with AK slung over, hugging each other, kind of whooping it up as they go to the front line. And he feels this mix and he captures these emotions in this note he shares with others that says, you know, I had this mix of guilt that I wasn't going to the front when I could actually make a difference because US policy is very clear. You could not go to the front right at that time. All at the fact that they were so positive and so ready to go into battle in that fighting spirit, envy that they were going to the front and I wasn't, and respect. And he said, and I kept thinking of the 1962 MacArthur speech at West Point duty on our country. Yeah, and, you know, the one thing that also struck struck me through the book and how you were able to so kind of marvelously integrate these stories and the stories, but ground that in history. And this book is rich in history, but it doesn't in a very, in a way that comes across so easily digestible for folks. And so, you know, can you give us a sense a little bit about, you know, kind of the military history that's discussed in the book? Yes, thank you. And I hope, you know, readers, I've done some military podcasts and actually I think we're coming up on one that we're going to do with one of the senior military leaders who was part of the campaign. So, and I actually did an event recently where there were two people who you all would know who were very much lived this from the most senior, most levels. And it was so moving to me to see that they felt the book captured the experience, you know, Admiral McRaven was one of the first people to read the book. General Votel said that in his endorsement that I had always worried that the Syrian Kurds and our partners would not receive the credit they deserved for what they did. And this book captures their valor. And, you know, that means everything to me. There are two things I think are really important for the military side that I had learned so much about. One is just this whole discussion of what the vice president, when he was vice president, now president Biden was talking about CT life, right? What would it look like to have a very light U.S. footprint plus U.S. air power of significance, right? Plus a ground force that was willing to do the real urban comment, the real house to house town by town fighting. And this book really tested, you know, sorry this history really tested that this campaign, this military campaign really tested that thesis. And the book works to capture that and show what it looked like from the lens of those on the Syrian Kurdish side who were going through this every single day. That is so interesting to see that there was never a large U.S. ground force deployment in this, not unlike Iraq, unlike Afghanistan that did not exist in Syria. This ground force lost 10,000 people in the fight against the Islamic State. Every Gold Star family is a tragedy. I've had the privilege of spending a lot of time in that community. And so I would never downplay the cost of that but I do think it's important to note that there were fewer than 10 U.S. combat deaths in the effort to rid Northeastern Syria or Northern Syria of the Islamic State. And in the very last scene of the book you see Ambassador Robeck talking about, Ambassador Robeck who was then the deputy envoy for the Global Coalition for Defeat ISIS, talking about the sacrifices of young women, young men who will never come back to their families who fought for the world to get rid of the Islamic State's territorial hold in Syria. And this book was really an effort to capture that betwixt in between that these ground force was living every day with U.S. forces deeply both connected to and I think emotionally connected to as a partner and as a partner force that it felt very great respect for as it advanced and took the objective. And then there's a scene to your last question where one of the U.S. Special Operations Soldiers first goes to Syria to establish a base. He is at the head of the People's Protecting Units and his uncle's home, his home had been destroyed. He was at his uncle's home and a young woman comes out and says, Hey, American, I bet I killed more ISIS than you. And you see this, even when the Americans would tell me the story over and over, they were still kind of taken to back by it. And he talked about to me about how it did, they had to think about it and say, well, you probably did actually. And so there were so many firsts that were happening and the second piece of history that I think the Naval War College would find particularly interesting is the Manvich Crossing. There's a full chapter about that. The Women's Protection Units crossed first. They spend days preparing to cross at night in the winds. And what I am told by military folks is they first contested what gap crossing since Korea. And there's a really funny note just to go back to the humanity of this. There were U.S. military folks who are trying to give life preservers to the young women who were gonna cross first and saying, listen, it's night, it's choppy waters, the winds are going, ISIS has to hold their mind on the other side, like, come on, give yourself an advantage. You're put on this life preserver. You know, let me say, no way. Ways more than I do. I don't know how to use it. And if I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. And the Americans are really taken back by this. But they're also just kind of watching as this history, this really historic crossing is made at night into ISIS territory to take back Manbij from the Islamic State. Yeah, that is a really good part in the book and a good case study for folks, especially at the tactical level. You know, you mentioned General Vogo, General McChrystal as two folks that have read your book, two phenomenal leaders in their own right. But what's been the reactions to the book and what does the book tell us about leadership and particularly kind of the role of women in leadership, particularly in combat moving forward. And then in what ways can U.S. policymakers, you know, what are some takeaways that they can take from that? He's interesting. So when Admiral McChrystal first read the book, he said, you know, part of what he had read and has written in his endorsement was, if anybody had doubts about women in combat, they must read this book. So I think the thing that has been most moving in the reaction to the book, I am deeply proud of it going across the political spectrum and across the media spectrum and really reaching audience, everything, good morning, America to MSNBC, to Ms. Magazine, to Military Times, Marie Claire, Fox and really reaching people where they are and giving us a common history, you know, that people can be moved by, be inspired by. Chris Colinda to some of you who study Afghanistan might know, well, Rowan said, the thing that fascinates me is the leadership piece that they're all so different. You know, some of them have this kind of, you know, Azima much more extroverted, you know, high school volleyball star, always the friend that you would call if the boys were bugging you or people were annoying you, right? She'd always get right in their faces and then Rowan says, deeply introverted, loves reading books, loves Diego Maradona and you know, would rather be home reading than dealing with CNN, which was her least favorite part of the whole rocket campaign. And yet they're both such effective leaders and that speech that Naruse gives when they're down, the head of the women's protection unit gives when they are down to almost nothing, talking about will and the importance of the will to fight and to sacrifice for your values is one that I think a lot of people have written me about because it stayed with them and it goes on to inspire. So I think the two lessons are that leadership comes in all kinds of volumes, right? You can be very loud, you can be very quiet and you can be deeply effective. We have this image of loud and of swagger and of physical strength and of a one kind of vision of what a warrior looks like. And this book really punctures so much of that because it shows the power of will and the power of being willing to go to the very end, right? For the fight and how much that means and what loyalty you engender by being a leader who leads from the front. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is about talent. We deprive ourselves of so much talent by thinking a leader looks one way. And this moment that we're in right now where people are really rewriting the rules that govern their lives that they had no hand in writing. I think it's a very fitting moment for this story. One thing that happened was to really affect me was right after the NPR, all things considered peace ran, I received a text from someone who had been part of the story who had talked to me early on who said, from the US military side, who said, I just wanted to say thank you for me and for them because I think that their values should be acknowledged. And then he told me that he had shared the book with his mom because his mom hadn't known why that deployment had meant so much to him. And that just meant everything to me, right? That people who lived this history felt themselves in it and felt that it captured their experience. And then most important, the people whose history I had the privilege of sharing here have been really honored that women's protection units have really been moved by it, which has been an honor for me. The women's protection units had put out a statement about it. People have just talked about what it has meant to see themselves captured in all their complexity and in all the policy complexity of this story. And to embrace the fact that we talk about war as if it is not personal and we talk about policy as if it is not made up of people and neither of those is correct or accurate. The final thought on this is that the theme that has animated the work I have the privilege of doing is that suffocated opportunity is the enemy of global stability. And in the end, it is about unleashing the God-given talents of more of us so that more people have more of a stake and more of the future to create more security, more stability and more prosperity for more of us. And that's why this matters. Yeah, and one of the things that I thought about as a researcher is three years of in over seven tours. Oh yeah, it's a very glamorous process, right? Yeah, just the time and effort that went into this but give us a sense a little bit about some of the, what were some of the big challenges that you endured over this process in trying to get this book to readers? The big thing is working to have access to people's lives and that is the thing you take the most personally because it's a huge responsibility to capture the most challenging moments of people's lives, the most heroic moments of people's lives, the most tragic moments of people's lives because war truly is the absolute best of humanity and the worst of humanity right up against each other colliding and to capture that and then put it in context because this is a story that everyone has a feeling about as you know, right? There's nobody who doesn't and working to make sure people feel like they have a flashlight into a world that they never entered before. It is certainly not about my politics or my views. I have very strong ones, but they're not in these pages and really working to make sure that people feel this personally while also being able to come out of it, feeling whatever that is, whatever sentiment it is, whatever reaction it is that the story provokes in that some people could read it as an anti-war story or a story about the importance of women's rights as a military history, as a history of the US involvement in Northeastern Syria, all of those are correct. And so working to gain the trust of those who put their faith in me to capture the story was deeply important. And the second thing that I think was challenging was just the logistics. It's not even about the safety because I have to tell you, yes, of course there's a risk but they've done a tremendous job in this partner force in creating a very fragile, a really endangered but a very real stability that you feel in the ground and you never see the Americans. The Americans are like the Oz-like presence that hang over this. And I know so many of us have been shaped by Iraq or shaped by Afghanistan. And I love Afghanistan very deeply as a country. And this is an entirely different story and context. And I really have concerns that we put all of these stories together. And one, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and of post-911 conflicts and we aren't differentiating. So I really based the challenge from a narrative standpoint of giving people the context and the background while also just introducing them to these amazing people so that people who didn't ever read a book about Syria would feel perfectly comfortable just to pick up this story because they wanted to be Dezema or to be Rojda or to meet Snarri, right? And here's a young woman who her parents told her you couldn't go to university because that's not what women in our family do. You can't go marry the person you love because that's not what women in our family do. And then she becomes a military leader who frees her towns from the men who buy and sell women essential to who they are. So it was the journey that I worked to capture in a way that moved people and that felt personal. And that can only be achieved if you build trust by showing up and up and up and the logistics of showing up. We're not easy because it takes two days just to get to Northern Iraq and then to cross over and then to get all your permission. So yes, it was really your biggest challenge is sitting on your backside long enough from the border to the next set of towns, right? But it's a huge testament to this partner that they've been able to build a fragile but enduring stability. Yeah. And I'm sensitive to your time and everyone else's time who are the folks who have to run back to class. I just do have one more question for you and then we can, if there's any questions out from the crowd, but today, right? So you spent three years, but then when you look at the kind of the state of play today and the conditions on the ground in Syria and to what extent, what does it look like now? And then have you kind of circled back with some of the key characters like Azima and Neroos and others? Yeah, so I have talked to Neroos and others because they were so moved by watching, did Tamron Hall's show and watching book clubs really get involved in the story is so moving, right? And that is always what I hoped this book would do because national security is everybody's work. We do not talk about it enough that foreign policy and national security really matter to us all. And people think, oh, I need a specialized degree or I need a specialized knowledge to understand it. No, it is deeply important that we who tell these stories and engage in policy, I'm still adjunct to CFR, talk about a council on foreign relations, talk about this in deeply digestible terms. Opacity is not a synonym for intelligence. And we really run the risk of helping people disengage from their foreign policy and their national security question by making it easy to tune out, to obtuse language that means nothing. And so I really wanted this story to connect. So if you look at what's happening, so I talked to Neroos and this was all underway. The state of play on the ground right now is that there is a question of the and then what that has hung over the story from the start. And I think the epilogue of the book writes that the future of Northeastern Syria is written in invisible ink that no one can yet decipher. And that remains the case. They continue to not only fight ISIS, but to hold more than 2000 ISIS foreign fighters that their own countries will not take back. So the same people who defeated ISIS militarily now hold for the world, the basically the aftermath and the consequences of the aftermath including children who we must serve better because even though their parents joined ISIS does not mean that they should face the consequences for their parents decisions. And the world has wanted to look away from this challenge and let a non-state actor with very real state problems deal with it in the form of the SDF that is not going to provide security or stability for us in the long term. So all of this is very real and playing out right now and it will be up to the Biden administration what comes next. I believe deeply there's a moment for diplomatic opening in terms of both Syrian side and the Turkey Kurdish side. And I really hope that this will happen. But the thing that strikes you all the time is that there's much more hope on the ground in Northeast Syria than in Northwest Washington because they're, you know people just have the spirit of can do and getting all with it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much Gail for the conversation. We really appreciate it. And I like to now offer the floor to anyone who is on with us at the moment. This conversation will be recorded, is recording. It will be posted to the Naval War College YouTube page. So if you didn't have a chance to hear from Gail directly you'll be able to do so here in the next couple of days.