Tag Archives: Samaritan’s Purse

Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Minority Populations in Iraq

In a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee hearing  on October 4th, former Congressman Frank Wolf and Dr. Denise Natali from the National Defense University testified on the future of Iraq’s minorities, after the fall of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, focusing on affected minorities such as Syriac Christians and Yazidis, in the northern regions of Iraq.

Both began their opening statements by discussing the different stabilizing challenges that political and minority groups face, which are presently effecting Iraq. Some of the main points of discussion were the disputes between the central Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government as well as the proliferation of Iranian-backed militia groups.

Iraq’s ethnic minorities are fractured, and often the government and militia groups attempt to exploit the religious differences within the population. As Dr. Natali stated, “religion also overlaps with ethnicity, language, and geography” complicating the minority populations even more.

During the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing each scholar laid out their recommendations for Iraq.

Mr. Wolf suggested that a Presidential Memorandum should be issued directing the State Department and USAID to immediately address the needs of Christian and Yazidi communities in the northern regions of Iraq identified by Secretary Tillerson as having been targeted for genocide.

Wolf also urged that a position should be established for an inter-agency coordinator to ensure safety for minorities to coordinate U.S. foreign policy around the issues, and that Congress should immediately pass H.R. 390, the bipartisan Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability bill, to hold accountable for individuals who committed crimes of genocide and terrorism in the region.

Wolf also discussed how to establish security for the minorities of people returning to Iraq which were displaced by the Islamic State as well as from the fighting of Iraqi forces in the region, suggesting the need to train up local police.

Wolf  stressed the role played by religious charity organizations including Samaritans Purse, Knights of Columbus, and World Vision who are already established in the region, as the be best resource to assist minorities through their camps and by giving aid directly.

Historically Middle-Eastern Christians have feared entering United Nations refugee camps where they are often targeted.

Dr. Natali proposed that the United States needs to support local minority rights in conjunction with the Iraqi constitution, reinforce a sovereign civil state and Iraqi institutions, and mediate disputed territories.

She also suggested that the government should be structured to work from Baghdad then to administer policy to provinces, instead of going to Baghdad and then the Kurdish regional government.  Her aims to accomplish these tasks are through the support of a singular Iraqi state.

Another area of tension in the region is the Kurdish independence referendum  which was held on September 25th and voted for overwhelming support of an independent Kurdistan. With tension from the Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian governments surrounding the KRG, heightens the potential for conflict.

Potential arising conflicts for the Kurds would include the Iraqi-Shia militias which are backed by the Iranians, and the Turks and Iranians placed on the border of the KRG evoking military pressure to move tanks and other weapons tests closer to the border. This once again causes Christians and Yazidis to become caught in the cross fire of the conflict.

Senator Rubio stated that “we are not asking the KRG to abandon independence but ask to take steps to lower the rhetoric” He remarked that Baghdad also needs to take some steps to show a desire to open dialog on this topic in the future to lower tensions because there are many other issues at play currently for U.S. strategic advantage.

As Iraq faces a multitude of challenges from ethnic and religious minorities, Iran is an overarching and provocative influence on the instability of the region. As Iran promotes groups which inhibit minority populations in Iraq, it promotes groups such as Hezbollah, Shia backed militias, and others regional forces which inhibits the rights of the minorities.

Ebola Response: A Sense of Urgency is Still Needed

The president re-emphasized to the nation this Tuesday that the best way to defend the U.S. from Ebola is to stop it in West Africa and further that West Africa is “nowhere near out of the woods.”  The need for a sense of urgency to support the efforts in West Africa should continue to be stressed going forward with sustained attention.  Yet that chord, though appropriately struck by the President, has not rung loud enough.

A succinct characterization of the U.S. response at the outset of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in late 2013 is that the Administration, the CDC, and the State Department committed themselves to a false choice between acting with a sense of urgency and avoiding panic.  The choice to play it cool did indeed cost a proper sense of urgency in the initial response.  A vivid and detailed historical account quietly went on record from the testimony of Ken Isaacs of Samaritan’s Purse back in August.  With the exception of the President’s statement, this underwhelming sense of urgency is unintentionally being channeled through this week’s third wave of congressional hearings.

Isaacs testified again yesterday, this time in the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee while earlier hearings were held again in the House Foreign affairs committee.  He described a disconnect where government officials come across as if they completely understand the nature of the Ebola virus in West Africa and how to handle it when they, in fact, do not.  Further, 5% of reported Ebola cases can remain asymptomatic for up to 42 days.  This doubles the CDC’s recommended quarantine timeline for those displaying the disease.  Mr. Isaacs also noted that the CDC estimates approximately 1.5 million Ebola cases will be reached by mid-January, while the World Health Organization – the international agency responsible to contain the spread – fears that there could be up to 10,000 new cases of Ebola per week. Mr. Isaacs also pointed out to the committee the following questions have not been answered:

-How are the doctors that were properly protected with gear who are returning to the USA becoming infected?

– As with other viruses, could Ebola continue to be carried by a human who displays no symptoms but contains enough viral load to be contagious?

We do not yet know the answer to these basic questions.

The Oversight subcommittee chairman, Tim Murphy, pointed out that though there are cases where health care workers who had followed all protocols still contracted Ebola and yet there was no CDC policy to monitor movements of undiagnosed workers who followed protocols in terms of tracking there movements after they returned.  Isaacs’ group, Samaritan’s Purse enforces much more stringent protocols on it’s own workers.

Common sense still calls for a robust and urgent sense of mission in West Africa.  It is too late to wish the response had been handled differently and too soon to discuss ‘lessons learned’, which, in Washington is a short hand for telling Congress not to focus on how bad something was handled.  Yet, the weight of the President’s words have been diminished by a list of poorly calibrated responses to other crisis.  The play-it-cool response to ISIS perhaps most strongly shapes the interpretation in the American psyche of any warning that may follow perhaps seconded by the VA scandal.

There are have been two key challenges in responding to the threat that the Ebola virus strain poses to the U.S. and to West Africa.  The first is an appropriate sense of urgency at leadership levels in the U.S. at the Executive branch, CDC, and State Department.  The second is the need for better statistical data gathering on the outbreak, especially on human mobility tracking of those traveling within or from the African Continent.

Travel ban debates delayed effective action

Both sides of the travel ban debate failed to address the conflict between moving resources needed to stop the spread of the virus and limiting the travel of infected victims.   There was unity of message at an October 2nd panel at a Washington think tank where representatives from the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Army, and CDC, all agreed that the unintended consequences of a travel ban policy would hurt the effort to send response teams and medical equipment.

They were all correct except that they stopped the discussion there without a problem solving approach to inhibiting the spread of Ebola by air travel.   Another false choice entered into the debate as policy makers new to situation saw the logical appeal of travel bans on the surface.  In the November 18 testimony, Isaacs of Samaritan’s Purse advised on the topic.  He explained that he would not advise against air travel bans to countries who are not equipped to screen and contain within in their own systems; places such as Pakistan or Myanmar where hygiene standards could rapidly increase risks.  Most significantly he proposed a solution in the form of a dedicated humanitarian bridge where the government could provide a conduit for aid workers separate from public travel.  Such practical solutions and clear-eyed assessments are drowned out in the current public debate.  This gives credence to news and commentary that examines national focus and sense of urgency in the policy discussion as a factor in itself.