Fouad Saleh spent much of his childhood in a Syrian refugee camp. Zubair Ahmed watched his father pass away after a rocket hit his neighborhood. A little boy carrying a gun bigger then himself came to Chuku Mansery's home and demanded money – her house was burned down when her mother told the boy that she had nothing to give.

What Fouad, Zubair and Chuku have in common is not only that they have seen extreme violence. They all live in the U.S. now and they are now teenagers whose lives and personalities have been shaped by war. They, along with 13 other teens from eight countries, tell their stories on a Web site called Beyond the Fire.

Beyond the Fire, created by Sesh Kannan of Washington D.C., combines elements of both the documentary film and the online diary. The site allows teenage refugees of war to tell their stories through an interactive interface. Each story is told in words, sound and photos and visitors can post comments and navigate their way through a number of nations and time periods.

Kannan conceived of Beyond the Fire when he read a news article last year about how the youth of America don�t generally understand what happens in war. "It's not all smart bombs," Kannan says. He points out that most Amercian youth don�t see images of the ways civilians are affected by war; how they become displaced, become refugees, etc. "There is a lot more to war – it's not just a bad guy, good guy thing,� he adds.

What Kannan hoped to do was convey the human effect of war to the younger generation by giving them a place to start a dialogue with their peers, rather than simply having an adult read them text-book material. While Kannan works on film documentaries, he says that the online format gives visitors a chance to really connect with the material. "It made sense to work online," he says. "Film is passive. [A Web site] can be more of an exploration." With help from Electric Shadows, a grant program run by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and Free Range Graphics, Kannan was able to create a site that captured the visual and sound elements of film along with the dynamic benefits of the Web.

At Beyond the Fire, visitors are required to explore by virtue of the site's design. Once you "Begin your journey," as the site asks, you find yourself on a map of the world. Teenagers stand on eight countries – Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone – and you visit each teen by clicking on his or her photo. The site makes its visitors into online travelers; you can even create a passport to keep track of whom you have visited and comments you have made in an online "travelog."

When visitors to the site have to be actively involved they will better absorb the reality of these teenagers' stories, says Kannan. The site was created to work in a classroom or for individuals. Indeed, Kannan's vision is reaching both audiences: since its inception earlier this year, Beyond the Fire has been online siine April of 2004 and so far over 1,100 visitors have created passports. The reality of war, as the creators of site hope to communicate, is not just one of loss of material items, loss of home or even loss of life. What really happens in war, says Kannan, is much deeper.

Lila Farah, 17, from Somalia, was shot in the leg at seven when she went into her own backyard and saw a man with a gun. Somalia is a country that, since the UN and U.S. pulled out inn 1995, has been mired in violence between warring factions. Lila and her family escaped to Kenya when she was eight and obtained refugee status in the United States in 1996.

Telling her story on the Beyond the Fire site was helpful, Lila told WireTap, because now, "It feel's like it's OK to share with the world what happened to me. I'm proud of myself and my family – that we made it through."

Yet part of the effect of war, for many, is the inability to speak of the experience. Kannan originally contacted 25 to 30 teenagers who now live in Boston, Mass., Atlanta, Ga., Portland, Maine, and other parts of the east coast. But only around half of those stories made it to the Web. Many people who survive war end up living with a reoccurring case of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Others cannot speak out for fear of repercussions against their family members still in their home countries.

"Finding teens from Iraq took a while," says Kannan. When he began to seek out these stories, the second war in Iraq had already begun and Iraqis and foreigners were being kidnapped in Iraq. "The initial group [of Iraqi teens]," says Kannan," was hesitant because they still had family back in Iraq."

Events in the U.S. also make it difficult for refugees to speak out. For the teens he interviewed, "Coming to the U.S. has not necessarily been a brilliant experience," says Kannan. Lila, for example, says that when she arrived in the States in 1996, people made fun of the way she spoke and dressed. She wears Jijab (a Muslim head scarf) and says that some of the children in her Arizona school called her a "witch." Her family now lives in Portland, Maine, and while there are still many who do not understand Lila's culture as a Somalian and Muslim, she says, "there are some people accepting us for who we are now."

It was very hard for Kannan to get in touch with inteviewees; they are all very active in school and most of them have to work to help support their families. "When they first came here," Kannan says, "they had a hard time." Many of the families of the teenagers Kannan spoke with received just three months of federal aid. Although their parents were often educated professionals in their home countries, language barriers and cultural differences made it hard for them to find work suitable to their skills. Beserta Osmani, a 19-year-old from Serbia who now lives in the Bronx, has a life considerably different from her pre-war life in Kosovo. Her father was a journalist in Kosovo, but in New York City he works in a factory, says Kannan.

These teenagers also have to catch up in their studies – war interrupts education, says Kannan. What he found was that, "[The teenagers] are not just resilient, but fiercely determined." Shaima Abdul, 17, from Afghanistan never had very much formal schooling. Instead, she weaved carpets to help her family survive. She came to the U.S. in 2001 and now she is in high school, catching up with the rest of the students her age.

The battles these teenage refugees fought in their home countries and fight in the U.S. give them a unique perspective on the world. "I'm really curious to see where they go in the next 15 years," says Kannan. "I think they have a lot of potential." Lila wants to return to Somalia some day and help create schools and clean up the country. "There are so many dreams – I want to change everything," she says. Although she does not remember Somalia before it was overtaken by war, she is captivated by the way her father describes the country as it was years ago. She hopes one day it will be that way again, but in the meantime her family does all they can to help their relatives back home. "Every money we're getting, we're sending it back to Somalia," says Lila. She herself works at an ice cream store after school and will attend college next fall.

Even though Lila has left war, war has not left her. She still has a scar in her leg from the bullet that hit her, and she still fears violence in an immediate way. "Looking at Iraq, right now," Lila says, "I can feel myself being there." On 9/11, Lila's family worried that they might be caught in yet another war. "9/11 – that brought my whole family to tears. We felt like we were back in Somalia."

Kannan points out that the U.S.� �War Against Terror� will continue, most likely, for a long time. He challenges young American people to defy what he calls a "10,000-year-old culture where the only way to solve things is to go to war." Kannan, and the teens he interviewed, say that there must be a better way. They also believe it is up to the younger generation to find solutions, beginning with the effort to understanding the experiences of those who have survived, first-hand.

As the academic year begins at colleges and universities across the country, new students everywhere are doing things for the first time. Even the smallest task can be like a rite of passage. Yet for over half a million international students and scholars enrolled in American universities, this time may involve more than buying textbooks and moving into a first dorm room. In fact, it might also include a considerable number of unexpected setbacks as the immigration laws enacted over the past several years are finally having an impact.

The fact that one of the 9/11 hijackers had been in the U.S. on a student visa has launched several new pieces of major immigration law surrounding international students and scholars. These laws make visa security checks more thorough, tracking of international students more constant, and America less appealing to some of the brightest minds in the world. In fact, a recent study by the Council of Graduate Schools found that the number of international students applying to the nation�s top grad programs has declined by 28 percent.

Getting Here

Because so many of the terrorists entered on visas and were not screened in personal interviews, new laws require most travelers be interviewed. Interviews take a massive amount of manpower, which manifests itself in long waits for visa interview appointments with U.S. consulars around the world. For example, the Saudi Arabia consular advises travelers that they will face a minimum six-week wait, but security checks could take several months; in Seoul, the wait is, on average, thirty days.

Once the appointment is granted, however, the wait for international students and scholars can be even longer. Two programs are currently in place that require certain types of immigrants to have additional security clearances. In these programs, called Visas Mantis and Visas Condor, the applicants� names are sent to Washington, D.C. and must receive clearance before a visa is granted. The Visas Mantis program distinguishes anyone who is studying or involved with areas on a State Department �Technology Alert List,� or TAL. The list, although it is supposed to be classified, was inadvertently posted on the State Department�s website, according to the Los Angeles Times. As expected, topics that can clearly be construed as possibly terrorism-related, such as nuclear technology, rocket systems, chemical and biotechnology, and biomedical engineering, are on TAL. The Times also reports, however, that at the end of 2003 other areas were added that are less obviously suspect; urban planning, architecture, and housing and civil engineering were added, along with microbiology and physics.

Virtually any area of study can be construed as a potential terrorist threat so activists question the utility of TAL. The level of secrecy surrounding the program, however, makes it difficult to assess its successes and failures. Visa applicants are rarely told whether or not their work falls under a Visas Mantis category. While the State Department maintains that the check usually takes thirty days, ten percent of the 200,000 names they processed in 2003 took more time than that, according to the New York Law Journal. In December 2003, 300 Mantis applicants had been pending for over three months.

International students who are male and between the ages of 16 and 45 and from certain countries face another security clearance hurdle in Visas Condor. Among these countries are those considered "state sponsors of terrorism": Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan. A student or scholar can be subject to both Mantis and Condor and thus experience incredible delays. The Los Angeles Times cites the case of an �Iranian nuclear physicist� who took seventeen months (and a much-delayed academic plan) to get his student visa to come to the United States.

An April 2004 survey conducted by the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley shows that over eighty percent of students from the Middle East and Israel reported delays in their academic plans. One Indian student commented in the survey: �A major issue for all international students is delays in getting visa renews in their home countries. At times, this process takes up to a month. This means we have to be away from [UC Berkeley] and our studies for longer periods.� Academic plans at Berkeley have also been disrupted by new laws; according to the survey, almost half of international students and scholars have altered their research plans because they do not want to be, or cannot enter the country, while on TAL.

Lawrence Gower, director of the Office of International Students and Scholars at UCLA, says that the best his University can do for students is advise them that they might be on a security checklist – if they are studying a subject on TAL or if they are from a predominantly Muslim country, Korea, or Cuba – and tell them to start their application process early. "Expect the delays because that's the reality that we have," says Gower.

Staying Here

Recent University of California, Berkeley graduate, Imad Ahmed, is an English citizen who left Pakistan before his first birthday. Last December, at the advice of UC Berkeley counselors, he registered with the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration in a program called NSEERS. The program required non-citizen males from twenty-five countries to come forward under the threat of deportation for noncompliance. Any male between 16 and 45 whose nationalities were from any of these countries had to register by May and April deadlines. Ahmed says that the experience was humiliating; officials took his photograph, fingerprinted him, and requested contact information for his friends and family in the U.S. He recalls a woman who was processing registrants; she said that if he missed a single deadline, �We�ll come get you.�

Yet NSEERS made Ahmed more fearful than embarrassed. He said that when special registration began, he �was waking up in cold sweats� and had many sleepless nights wondering about what would happen to him. His parents in England told him to keep a low profile; Ahmed did not really know how to do that. He was not speaking out about registration, but he says, �I was afraid to be on my own computer to look at [alternative news] websites. I was afraid that just by default, by being a Muslim and being an international student, I would be blacklisted.� Of course, Ahmed was not referring to any specific list � there are so many lists (Visas Condor and Mantis, TAL, no-fly lists, etc.) � but of an overall fear of the FBI and of a country that seemed to fear him.

Ahmed explains how he was very wary about minor violations that other students took for granted. He was careful not to get a speeding ticket, and to file his taxes on time. He spoke about a friend who was even terrified of getting a parking ticket (in Berkeley, where parking tickets are very common). �Small errors,� Ahmed says, �cause big trouble�; the trouble being fines or, even worse, deportation and an interrupted education.

Although NSEERS was called to halt last December, in the fall of 2004 a new program called SEVIS, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, was initiated. Part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), SEVIS is an online database that tracks international students� and scholars� eligibility to be in the country. The system requires that every institution hosting internationals keep up-to-date records of those students� registration information, local addresses, progression in their academic courses, and of the entries and exits of their children and spouses. If a student falls below twelve units (full time status), completes his or her academic program, or changes his or her address without notifying their host institution, the institution must inform the DHS via SEVIS. The student could then be put into deportation hearings or face fines. Furthermore, if a student arrives in the U.S. and is not properly registered, he or she will be denied entry.

It is for this reason that Ahmed, and many other students like him have decided not to leave the U.S. Although he is legally allowed to leave the country and return, Ahmed cancelled a trip to Pakistan. Instead, he has been working for the Democratic National Committee and waiting for his work permit to come through so that he can be paid. Until that permit comes through, Ahmed will not go home to England to visit his family, whom he has not seen since January. With so many students and so much information going to the DHS, Ahmed worries that something might be incorrect about his registration and cannot risk finding out while re-entering the country.

This year, for example, Director Ivor Emmanuel says that SISS keeps track of about 6,000 students and scholars and entered the names of their 9,000 dependents. The implementation of SEVIS is required but not funded by the government; with scarce resources in a time of budget crisis in California, UC Berkeley did not allocate any extra funds to SISS to implement the system or hire new staff. The change in workload and job description affects the way that international students and scholars interact with their hosts, turning advisory bodies, such as SISS, into government watchdogs. Emmanuel explains, "The nature of our work is not something we choose to do – these are mandated services. But right now, we are not adequately staffed."

Emmanuel says that, as the fall semester began, he has not seen delays as significant as last year's. He points out, however, that this could mean some international students are just giving up by comprising their educational goals or even by choosing not to come to America.

Even at UCLA, where a $40 fee charged to each international student is helping to cover the cost of implementing SEVIS, services are in jeopardy. Director Lawrence Gower says that while students are still receiving the counseling and service they need, "What has changed is the relative amount of time we have to counsel students." That counseling-time has been taken over by the effort it takes to continually update the SEVIS database.

The role of universities in the lives of international students has changed; as Ahmed puts it, international services are now, "a friend, and watchdog, as opposed to just a friend before." If international students drop below full-time because of health problems or family emergencies, for example, universities can no longer use their own discretion and must report them to the Department of Homeland Security.

It is not the time or money required by SEVIS that is making the biggest impact on international students, though. Emmanuel points out the psychological toll of SEVIS and other immigration laws specifically targeting international students. These students, he says, "feel monitored. And it�s not comforting." He says, "I think that the post-9/11 environment in the U.S. has created the overall impression that you're [international students] not to be trusted – in fact, you're not even welcome."