Prepare for the Influx of Refugees
Prepare for the Influx of Refugees
By Ford Rowan | June 20, 2022
The slow pace of refugee settlement may be about to get busy here in the United States because of the carnage in Ukraine.
The need to help victims of the Russian attacks in Ukraine is obvious. But two other problems may complicate them.
First, the US government has been moving slowly to admit refugees from Afghanistan, many of whom are housed at or near military bases in America. Afghan refugees have a tough time getting admitted into communities, including Annapolis. Folks from several churches have been eager to help, but the pipeline for admitting them is very slow .
Right now my church, St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, is teamed with First Presbyterian Church and with Calvary United Methodist Church to support a family that is currently living in a house in downtown Annapolis. We need to prepare for more.
On June 13, I participated in a zoom call with the leadership of the Maryland VOAD (Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters). It is an umbrella group working with the US government and state and local groups active in volunteer services. It is affiliated with the Lutheran refugee service as well as numerous church groups.
The Maryland VOAD has been given $6,000 to help Afghan refugee relief. About 2,000 Afghan refugees have now been cleared for entry from military bases into American society; a process that is taking longer than many of us expected. Some are in temporary housing and do not have cars.
The leaders of VOAD also expect a large number of refugees from Ukraine will also come. The preliminary estimate is about 100,000 (of which 1,000 could be expected to settle in Maryland). These Ukrainian refugees must have sponsors in order to provide transportation and housing. VOAD is asking congregations to help by sponsoring these families.
The second complication is due to a separate migration: those migrants who have crossed the Southern border into Texas and Arizona and are now coming by busloads into DC and Maryland suburbs. This exodus is separate from the Afghan and Ukraine refugee arrivals. Here in Annapolis our St. Anne’s refugee committee had planned to help tutor Hispanic students but COVID forced us to put off this project two years ago.
In recent weeks I talked with 3 experts in Europe about the refugee challenge. One is a news reporter who has been in the front lines covering the war in Ukraine, one is an ambassador from a nation that is a NATO member, and one is a university professor who was born in Ireland and was traveling there during the time I was in Europe. They all said that the Ukrainian refugee numbers will grow a lot.
I was told that efforts by some countries — like Britain — to turn refugees away and send them to Rwanda might increase. I came away from these conversations feeling that the refugee situation is likely to get much bigger than Europe can manage by itself.
If so, we need to be ready to help. The lull that we have experienced is temporary. We have a healthy collaboration with Methodists, Presbyterans, and — I hope soon — with Catholics and Lutherans. The challenge will be to expand our sponsoring of families here in Annapolis.
Please continue to pray for those whose homes have been destroyed, whose lives have been uprooted, and are seeking to live peacefully here. Please remember that Jesus instructed us to welcome strangers and love our neighbors.
Trauma in Ukraine
Trauma in Ukraine
By Ford Rowan | March 31, 2022
Below is a transcript of Ford Rowan’s presentation of at a conference sponsored by the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies and the Potomac Institute on March 31, 2022.
I welcome the opportunity to talk about genocide and mass dislocation.
I appreciate the work of the Potomac Institute, its Center for Health Policy and Preparedness, and the Center’s leader, Dr. Donald Donahue, in seeking global solutions to the problems plaguing our health, including our mental health, and promoting “interdisciplinary training in health preparedness and resiliency.”
Resiliency is the antidote to a major challenge: the transgenerational transmission of trauma and genocide.
I look at this through several different lenses. First, when I was a news reporter and Pentagon Correspondent for NBC NEWS. I covered combat in the Middle East as well as the Watergate trials, the end of the Vietnam war, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
Years later, when I practiced law, I consulted on the problems at the Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington State, as well as advising airline executives during the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York and the Pentagon. My doctoral dissertation was on the anthrax attacks and how to respond to bioterrorism, chemical warfare, and nuclear war.
I helped establish a think tank at the National Defense University, the National Center for Critical Incident Analysis which later became an independent entity. One of our projects was to train state and local public health officials on risk communication in the H1N1 pandemic. I wish we could have trained federal public health officials during COVID.
Today, I’m a fellow at the International Dialogue Initiative, a think tank that seeks to understand and cope with the psychological barriers to peace.
In grad school at Johns Hopkins I studied applied behavioral science — organizational psychology, the behavior of large groups, the identity issues underlying violence.
I recite all this to give you a three-fold idea of where I’m coming from: 1) observer, 2) responder, 3) healer. Full disclosure: I have not been very successful in the last two.
Right now, I’m helping my church find housing and jobs for Afghan refugees. Soon we will work with refugees from Ukraine.
The genocide in Ukraine presents new opportunities to understand this humanitarian crisis. Even though my track record is not very good on prevention, here’s some comments on the challenge that Yonah Alexander posed for us to deal with – quote – “potential ethnic, racial, religious or national genocide.”
The religious aspect is fascinating. Putin invokes religion often and claims that the Orthodox Church supports his violence in Ukraine. I’m not an expert on Orthodox theology so I will withhold judgment. I do know about genocide, however.
I learned about genocide when I was as a young boy 70 years ago. My grandmother – who was born on the Choctaw reservation – told me horror stories about the Trail of Tears, about the illness and deaths after our people were forced from our ancestral home in Mississippi to a reservation in Oklahoma in the 1830s. Our numbers had already been greatly reduced by the diseases the Europeans brought from across the ocean.
The horror stories about the Trail of Tears were so vivid, I assumed my grandmother was an eyewitness on the Trail of Tears. No, she was born 50 years after the Trail of Tears. The trauma had been inherited, transmitted across generations.
The transgenerational transmission of trauma can trigger all sorts of violence. The First Crusades are remembered in some Middle East nations NOT just as events a thousand years ago, but as the fuel for the fires of continuing atrocities. Not history, but current events.
How will the people of Ukraine – in future generations – feel about the trauma that’s happening right now? And how will the people of Russia feel?
One of the most interesting books I’ve read is Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress by Rachel MacNair.[i] Not only does violence beget violence, but warfare can cause trauma for the warrior who perpetrates violence.
I’ve talked with US Servicemen who served in Vietnam and still have nightmares about their battles. One man who was a decorated hero, was a sniper. He told me his terrifying dreams of seeing the face of someone he shot in the crosshairs, squeezing the trigger, as he woke up from his nightmare.
I can attest that many of the inmates I’ve met in my volunteer work over 20 years in 10 prisons here in the United States were victims before they became victimizers and were traumatized by perpetrating assaults on others.
This turned out to be relevant to the issues in the Ukraine. Is there any hope of interrupting the transgenerational transmission of trauma?
Having admitted shortcomings in my efforts to be a responder and a healer, let me focus briefly on my first career, as an observer, as a news reporter. I still believe that the truth can set us free.
Ukrainians carry the significant burden of sequential trauma: devastation by the Wehrmacht in the Second World War, the forced starvation of the Holodomor, and Soviet suppression. The resilience and defiance they have demonstrated over these past five weeks is nothing short of remarkable. Yet to be determined is how they fare following this latest trauma.
A sad aspect of the Ukraine combat is the Russian clampdown on the free press in Russia. The people of Russia are having to use social media to find out how badly the battle has been for their troops, how horrible the impact on citizens, how dreadful for innocent children, women, and non-combatants. Even this may have a small silver lining, though, as individual Russians are seeking information from Radio Free Europe, mirror web sites, and ZVPNs that let them access sites that have been blocked by the Russian government.
Hearing a truthful explanation and listening to the truth, can help build resilience of those who are listening with an open mind.
Neuroscientists and neuropsychologists are working at the frontier of ways to enhance brain health. The best book I can recommend on dealing with trauma is Cynda Rushton’s Moral Resilience. She examines ways to build resilience, including ways that “spiritual, religious, and humanistic traditions [make] growth possible even after traumatic events.”[ii] She’s a faculty member at Hopkins and on the Berman Institute of Bioethics.
There is work to be done to build moral resilience and cope with trauma.
The Potomac Institute is a leader in the effort to train for health preparedness and resiliency. I hope it will contribute for a peaceful future.
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[i] Rachel M. MacNair. (2002) Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing. Preager, Westport, CT.
[ii] Cynda Hylton Rushton (ed.) (2018) Moral Resilience: Transforming Moral Suffering in Healhcare. Oxford University Press, p. 105.
Ukraine Nuclear Concerns
Ukraine Nuclear Concerns
By Ford Rowan | March 6, 2022
I sympathize with the people of Ukraine. I hope they survive and defeat the aggressors from Russia. But great care is needed to avoid widening the war.
My concern has to do with nuclear war. The challenges are two-fold.
The first has to do with Russian conquests of nuclear energy facilities in Ukraine.
When I was much younger I covered the Three Mile Island nuclear emergency in Pennsylvania for NBC News. I was on site for two weeks. Later, when I was consulting, I worked at the nuclear waste site at Hanford, in Washington State, where there was major pollution into rivers in that area. Nothing was as bad as Chernobyl in Ukraine. The lesson from all of these disasters is that radioactive pollution is not only frightening, but it may also be traumatic.
My second concern is even worse. For years I have been consulting about the potential impact from nuclear combat. In addition to my work as chairperson of the National Center for Critical Incident Analysis (which was founded at the National Defense University), I have been advising on defenses against bioterrorism as well as nuclear attack.
For a dozen years I taught military officers in a program in organizational sciences at George Washington University. The officers were in the program because a postgraduate degree was crucial to advancing their careers. The course I taught was in psychological aspects of conflict resolution. Many of my students ended up in the Middle East and some told me later that my emphasis on case studies and role-playing was very helpful in the field. We spent weeks dissecting the Cuban Missile Crisis and role-playing similar situations.
More than 30 years ago I did a similar nuclear exercise co-sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security in which journalists role-played as government officials and the government officials role-played as journalists. Incredibly, 100 percent ended up lying during their role-play. The justification: prevent chaos and save lives. The nuclear danger was so great — even in a made-up exercise — that it challenged ethical norms.
My takeaway from these experiences is that nuclear combat would be the mother of all disasters and the Biden Administration is wise to do whatever is necessary to avoid triggering a Russian nuclear attack. That is why the question of a no-fly-zone in Ukraine is problematic.
We need to remember that the First World War was triggered during a series of miscalculations and botched alliances. We should also recall that the END of World War I resulted in a treaty that had the unexpected result that enabled Hitler’s takeover of the German government and launch of the Second World War. Wars rarely end nicely.
I pray the combat in Ukraine will end soon and end without a wider conflict. What have Americans learned from the stalemate in Korea? The exit from Saigon? The withdrawal from Iraq? The exodus from Afghanistan?
We must avoid creating the conditions that could lead to more combat.