Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

As part of our story on the ISIS connection to the Times Square bombing plot, Canadian photographer David Maurice Smith spent time in the Philippines with writer Saul Elbein. They traveled with the Filipino military to Marawi City in the Southern Philippines, a city devastated by fierce fighting with Muslim rebel groups. A siege that had begun in May 2017 and claimed more than 1,000 lives had quieted by the time of their visit in December 2017. Still, Marawi City remained mostly empty, dangerous, and largely uninhabitable. 

In the process of investigating whether the Philippines was becoming a new base for ISIS, Smith and Elbein documented the messy aftermath of every modern war: refugees displaced by the fighting, injured soldiers, mass graves, and the arduous process of clearing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), unexploded bombs, and rubble.  

The remains of a mosque in the center of Marawi David Maurice Smith/Oculi

1st Scout Ranger Special Operations Corporal Jerick Milar, 31, waits to be fitted for a prosthetic leg at the V Luna General Hospital in Manila. Milar was injured in Marawi in August by an IED after three months of active combat. David Maurice Smith/Oculi

A temporary burial site for unidentified bodies from the siege of Marawi. Each grave is marked with a code to facilitate future identification of the remains. David Maurice Smith/Oculi

The Saguiran Evacuation Centre for Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) left homeless by the fighting in Marawi. Eighty-seven families have taken up residence in what was once a community market about the size of a basketball court. David Maurice Smith/Oculi

The destroyed central core of the city as seen from a Philippines Military Special Forces boat at dusk David Maurice Smith/Oculi

A relief tent at Saguiaran Central Elementary School in Marawi. The student population doubled as the school took in children living in a nearby IDP camp. David Maurice Smith/Oculi

The view from the Jameo Dansalan mosque in Marawi shows the extent of the devastation from the five-month siege. David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Koran pages inside the destroyed Jameo Dansalan mosque David Maurice Smith/Oculi

A panoramic perspective from the Jameo Dansalan mosque

The remains of a three-story building in Marawi David Maurice Smith/Oculi

A military joint task force member works to clear the city of explosives, using a golf club to comb through debris. David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Blood splatter in a destroyed mosque in Marawi David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Joint task force members leave the main battle area for their base. David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Makeshift family quarters at the Buru-un gymnasium in Iligan City David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Abdul Wahid Rasheed, 8, behind the gym where he, his parents, and three siblings have lived since fighting broke out in their Marawi hometown in May 2017 David Maurice Smith/Oculi

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate