Episode 22: The road to Drogheda – from Damascus

In this episode, I speak with Adam Jazi who grew up in Damascus and lived there until 2015, when he fled the Syrian civil war. We talk culture, politics and life in Syria and his journey from Damascus to Drogheda.

In the last episode, I discussed the role of the Gormanston Army Camp. It is to have a future has the induction centre for all defence forces recruits. For decades, there has been Irish troops on peace keeping missions in Lebanon , with 389 currently in place.

In this episode, I open the discussion with Adam to reflect on the current situation in Lebanon, as it is so close to Syria. In fact, in Lebanon, there are over 1million Syrian refugees.

On coming to Ireland, Adam has built a life for himself and his family and he has a dream to establish an arts cafe in the Drogheda area. He has also worked to assist other Syrians to resettle in Ireland. We discuss this work its impact and the circumstances for Syrian refugees in Ireland.

We also reflect on what has happened since 2011, with the emergence of the Arab Spring protest movement, the regime response and descent into civil war and the Russian intervention and we discuss how Syrians are getting on in Ireland.

While most Syrians wanted to go to Germany, he chose to come to Ireland. He had heard about Ireland through watching the news of the conflict in Ireland in the 1980s and says Syrians identify with Ireland. We discuss the extreme challenges Syrian refugees have living in Ireland. Adam says ‘the people of Ireland are the kindest people of Europe. I have had a very good experience living here’.

We know the road to Damascus has an important place in the history of Christianity. Today, we talk about the road from Damascus and the road to Drogheda, in particular. I discuss with Adam Jazi his journey as a refugee from Syria and the experience for Syrians in Ireland. However, we start out discussion reflecting on what is going on in Lebanon. In the last episode, we talked of the future role of Gormanston Army Camp as the induction centre for all defence forces recruits. Currently there are 389 Irish soldiers based in Lebanon. And in discussing the road from Damascus and Syria more generally, it is important to discuss the situation there as well because Syria neighbours both Israel and Lebanon and Iraq on the other.

We cover a lot of ground from the current situation in Lebanon and its history and the perspective of what might be, and it looks like what might be is more war and conflict. We explore what happened in Syria from the hopes and early democratic years following WW2 to the takeover by military through to the dictatorship of Assad and further explored what happened in the Arab Spring and afterwards. I hope you found it of interest. I certainly did. If you like what we do at the M1 podcast, please do like and subscribe.