middle east podcast

As coronavirus cases grow worldwide—including in many of the places we serve—this breaking episode shares how the virus, also known as COVID-19, is impacting our displaced and refugee friends in Iraq, Syria, and Mexico.

We hear from Preemptive Love team members:

• Jessica Courtney, vice president of international programs
• Erin Wilson, senior field editor
• Ben Irwin, director of communications

The future is uncertain. No one knows how widely this disease will spread or how bad the effects will be. But we are committed to our friends.

We continue to listen to their most pressing needs. And we’re delivering the kinds of aid that reduce their vulnerability: food and warm clothes to help immunity, mobile health clinics in places where healthcare is absent, and jobs that bring stability.

We are committed to the work you’ve entrusted to us. We’re not going anywhere.

Learn more.

This breaking episode features firsthand accounts of what's happening on the ground in Syria. After our team heard updates from Erin Wilson and Jen Meyerson about what they saw displaced people facing weeks after the US troop withdrawal in northeastern Syria, we knew we had to pause our regularly-scheduled Love Anyway podcast episodes.

What they told us is too important not to share. Some of the stories you’ll hear are quite literally life-and-death scenarios.

Our team reports that the Turkish ceasefire is not over. Violence is continuing. Families are hiding in gutters and sewers as Turkish bombs fall. 

Preemptive Love has a presence throughout the vulnerable region of northeastern Syria. Despite the danger, we’re not going anywhere. Our on-the-ground teams are continuing to receive people, including young children, who have experienced serious injuries as a direct result of this violence.

Learn more.

Preemptive Love is on the ground in Northeastern Syria. This is the biggest crisis we’ve seen at one time...and it’s getting worse. In this breaking episode, hear from our colleagues in the Middle East, who share what they’re seeing unfold.

Some of our team members delivering emergency aid have been shot at. Upwards of 300,000 people are running for their lives, fleeing Turkish bombs. The situation is desperate. We need your help.

We breakdown terms like "safe zones" and "ceasefire." We examine President Trump's recent statement about the US troop withdrawal from Syria, Turkish bombings, and the  massive wave of displacement it triggered.

It’s been a difficult week across the Middle East, from protests in Iraq to the recent news that the US administration is withdrawing its presence from northeastern Syria. On this breaking episode of the Love Anyway podcast, we hear from our Preemptive Love team about how the decision by the US to pull out of northeastern Syria could have reverberations that last generations.

We can’t follow the news right now without seeing headlines about US pullout from northeastern Syria. So, what’s happening? What are the implications? Why is this withdrawal so important...and so potentially devastating, not just for our friends in Syria, but for all of us?

We speak with Preemptive Love founder Jeremy Courtney, who has lived in the Middle East, including Turkey and Iraq, for more than a decade.

We also hear from Erin Wilson, Preemptive Love's senior field editor in the Middle East, who describes the sense she is getting from her friends and neighbors in Iraq, many of whom have Kurdish friends and family in the line of fire in northern Syria.

Learn more.

Iraq is facing its biggest emergency since the rise of ISIS. Protests have erupted in Baghdad and other parts of the country, as young people, fed up with political corruption and a lack of opportunity, take to the streets.

At the time of recording, the numbers have grown to more than one hundred protesters killed in Baghdad and cities across Iraq. More than six thousand people are reported injured. Prominent religious leaders are calling for the government to step aside. And there’s a real fear that ISIS could exploit the situation to cause even more chaos.

But this crisis doesn’t just affect Iraq. It affects all of us.

In this breaking episode, Ben Irwin speaks with two members of our team in Iraq, Erin Wilson and Ihsan Ibraheem, to get the latest on the situation, why we should care, and what we can do about it.

Learn more.

What makes home feel like home? As our work has shown us, restoring homes ruined by war is a first step to bringing whole communities back to life.

Preemptive Love co-founder Jessica Courtney shares stories of her Iraqi and Syrian friends who have been displaced and are now remaking their homes. We also hear never-before-heard stories from the field, as Jessica shares her experiences of visiting homes that are being built after being destroyed by war.

Learn more.

Most of us have a very Western idea of what it means to be a millennial. But we’re all more than stereotypes.

We categorize each other into neat and tidy labels because, well, it’s easy. It’s a way to organize cultural ideas. Our social constructs act a way to help us try to understand the world.

In this episode, we set those stereotypes aside for a minute and ask: What does life look like for the roughly 7 million millennials—women and men between the ages of 23 and 38—in Iraq?

On Episode 5: The Millenials of Iraq, we find out. And if your primary picture of Iraq is what you've seen on TV, you might be in for a surprise.

Learn more.

When we’re afraid, we build walls around ourselves. We yearn for protection. To feel safe. We hem ourselves in. And keep others away.

But what happens when our felt safety comes at a cost? What happens when our fear of “the other” contributes to others not being protected...or safe? Who is “the other," anyway?

How do we start deconstructing the walls around our hearts?

Learn more.

How do we move past fear? Travel with producer Kayla Craig and her pastor husband Jonny as they visit a mosque in the middle of Iowa. Saadia Qureshi, Frontline Coordinator with Preemptive Love, shares her experience as a Muslim woman, chatting with Kayla about what to expect when visiting a mosque.

Kayla talks with Shahed, a leader from their local Islamic Center, about why the mosque decided to host an open house for their community. And Preemptive Love editor Kim Mireau visits a Friday prayer service in Indiana with other non-Muslim friends Shannan Martin and Laura Pontius. We also hear from artist Propaganda, who confides his past hesitations about visiting a mosque.

Learn more.

It’s easy to say love anyway. It’s a lot more challenging to live it.

We might not all come face-to-face with a literal enemy who wants to kill us, but we all have chances to risk something on behalf of another, by stepping out in love, every single day.In this episode, we ask the questions: Is love worth the risk? And what does it really look like to love your enemy?

In episode 1, we told you about the night our friends Sadiq and Ihsan nearly died delivering aid in the Iraq desert—one at the hands of ISIS, and the other when he was targeted by coalition air strikes, mistaken for ISIS.

In this episode, "The Enemy," we share the story-behind-the-story: What happened just days before that longest night in the desert? It’s a true story almost too hard to imagine.

Because when Sadiq stayed with the delivery trucks, it wasn’t the first time his life was affected by a close encounter with ISIS.

What happens when ISIS attacks your team’s aid delivery truck in the middle of the Iraq desert? And what do you do when, that same night, another aid vehicle bringing basic necessities to desperate people, gets shot at in the middle of a US airstrike—mistaken for the very ISIS fighters attacking your team?

Travel with us back to 2016 to experience a pivotal turning point in our organization’s history. Experience a night in Iraq that made us press into pain. A night we’ll never forget. A night that changed...well, everything.

Hear from members of our team who nearly lost their lives. Hear about us frantically tweeting coordinates to the US military, trying to get them to stop the bombing. But most of all, hear about how, even in the face of death, and in one case, even coming face-to-face with ISIS, we chose to love anyway.

Learn more here.

Jeremy Courtney, co-founder of Preemptive Love, and host Erin Wilson look ahead to episode one and share the vision behind the first season of Love Anyway.

What can you expect when listening? Creating peace between communities at odds. Remaking what was broken. Ending war. Healing hearts across enemy lines, beginning with our own. And discovering that we really do belong to each other.

Love Anyway is a brand new podcast by Preemptive Love, premiering April 17.

Learn more here.

This season, Love Anyway will push beyond a simple story. It’d be easy to paint a one-dimensional picture of people and places in the Middle East. But that’s not why we’re here.

We’re here to share where we find hope. Where we find possibility and beauty. Because we believe that all of us could use a better story right about now.

Join us for the journey. Don’t miss an episode—subscribe now.

Learn more at preemptivelove.org/podcast.