BOOK - My Brother's Keeper - Refugees and Migrants - Syria and beyond

Today, regarding Syria and beyond, human rights and refugee needs suddenly have not been at the center of foreign policy decision-making. James N. Purcell, Jr., challenges the wisdom and heart of such a change. 

From his earliest years, Jim Purcell's life has connected with people often overlooked. From his parents' lives as Christians serving the poor in Appalachia and migrant workers in Florida, USA, Jim saw needs and the results of caring people reducing suffering. Personal as well as professional influences encouraged and helped him as he set up the U.S. refugee program of the 1980s.

It is a pleasure to announce this title, My Brother's Keeper, for the book about refugee help around the world that Jim Purcell has worked on during recent years. What began as a personal process to confirm memories of a significant and challenging time grew into a commitment to share, in writing, the record. It shows how civilized people respond to crises affecting "brothers and sisters" around the world - men, women, and children at risk due to persecution and/or war, from Indochina, Somalia, and other places.

However, today's failures regarding Syrian refugees and beyond show that human rights and refugee needs suddenly have not been at the center of foreign policy decision-making. Jim challenges the wisdom and heart of such a change. Even when late in doing so, the world's civilized people have always stood up for the persecuted, the defenseless--"the least of these."  

There is no more descriptive phrase about human rights than "my brother's keeper." The meaning translates in any language to say that every person has a human connection to every other, and this connection makes us mindful of our human responsibilities to each other.

My Brother's Keeper - Refugees and Migrants: A Test of Civilization
by
James N. Purcell, Jr. 

The publication date will be posted when known.

SYRIA - 21st CENTURY'S HUMANITARIAN NIGHTMARE AND NEGLECTED ASYLUM RESOURCES

REFUGEE DECADE POLICIES DEVELOPED SOLUTIONS THAT ARE UNKNOWN OR FORGOTTEN

Jim Purcell gave permission for me to write this brief post today. I am responsible for the opinions I express.

One of the many key protocols of crises--in Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, USSR and South Asia--was safe regional asylum for refugees that made it from points of danger.

SAFE ASYLUM IN THE REGION

News today indicates that there has been no American or international planning for the Syrian refugee crisis. This fact stands in dark, glaring contrast to the enlightened global planning early in the Refugee Decade of the 1980s. Today, refugee help and problem-solving happen in the worst way. Panic, fear, and frustration drive flight and the ad hoc attempts by governments pressured to help. The ad hoc attempts now include punitive or military reaction. Where is evidence of foresight and consideration of unanticipated consequences? The effects of such confusion will rebound for generations. The U.S. could lead, but follows the same European approach--indecision. At home, some congressional leaders are proposing that the U.S. take as many as we can, thinking that when all is better those helped will return home, which would be unlikely.

Such reactions without thought for rational planning completely ignore the first solutions needed: seek to save and protect refugees; then, arrange for safe asylum in their home region.

As photos above and below clearly show, one country in the region, with similar cultural and religious traditions, is Saudi Arabia, ready to provide asylum. The tents are air conditioned and clothing and other support are on stand-by. Many of the tents are being used to house refugees now, from Syria. Why are not regional asylum options being used first? There was no preparation to steer refugees to temporary help close at hand. 

What is needed, in my view, is public outcry for revival and adaptation of protocols and methods already proven to work. They were not easy to find or implement; yet, they avoided the mass confusion that continues, five years on, regarding Syrian refugees.

MILES OF ASYLUM (AIR CONDITIONED) TENTS AWAIT MILLIONS OF REFUGEES - photo Akram S. Abahre

Reaction without rational planning completely ignores the first solutions once a refugee crisis erupts: seek to protect human life and arrange safe asylum in the home region. For Syrian refugees, this would include preparations made by regional countries like Saudi Arabia. Jordan has been involved in asylum almost since the beginning of this crisis.

Respectfully,
Jean P. Purcell

The writer is a co-editor for Jim Purcell's book, Hope of the Phoenix: how three presidents saved millions of refugee lives in a conflicted world.

Break the Official Silence about Not Doing Enough for Syrian Refugees

JAMES N. PURCELL, JR.


The power of the printed word and photos about Syrian refugees graphically remind me of "the refugee decade" in which I was centrally involved. It covered Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, South Asia, and the USSR from the mid-1970s into much of the 1980s. 

Since those times, refugee numbers have grown beyond imagining. In recent years, Washington Post pages have focused on Syria, an on-going producer of refugees. The Post's opinion articles have included impassioned calls for heightened public awareness and international response to the dire and increasing needs of Syrian refugees. More than ever, Syrian citizens and their neighbors in the region feel overwhelmed by dangers, needs, and the rising numbers. 

In a recent (April 19, 2015) opinion column, Who Cares about Syria, Valerie Amos, then U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, reported on "ordinary Syrians who are suffering...bombed out of their homes, tortured, abused and denied food, water and health care."

Ms. Amos championed the cause of Syrian citizens that were promised protection by their government only to be abandoned to an imperiled and uncertain fate. She has visited Syrian refugees numerous times in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey, countries where they have received asylum.

"During every visit," she wrote, "I was asked the same thing: Why has the world abandoned us? Why does nobody care?"

These question are directed, wrote Valerie Amos, "at our leaders, perhaps particularly at the permanent members of the Security Council," where the U.S. is a member.

One view expressed by Ms. Amos is that "narrow national interests are overriding broader global responsibilities, despite the efforts of the U.N. secretary general’s three special envoys to chart a way out of the crisis."

The Syrian government continues to speak about citizen protection while ignoring pleas to "stop targeting civilians and discontinue the use of so-called 'barrel bombs'," according to Amos's reporting. 

The UN cites the fact of the world now feeling overwhelmed by global refugee crises in numbers never experienced before. That's according to Antonio Guterres, the deeply concerned UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

More than a year before Ms. Amos's commentary in the Washington Post, "Unattended Misery: Americans Remain Strikingly Detached from the Humanitarian Crisis in Syria" (December 6, 2013) raised another alarm. Written by revered former U.S. ambassador and foreign service officer, Morton Abramowitz, the article also appeared in West Hawaii Today with the same dateline and headlined Syrian Misery Goes Unheeded. 

Ambassador Abramowitz wrote that "...our public and government have been complacent in the face of massive human suffering. Recall Rwanda and Cambodia*. More recently the U.S. public has watched passively for well over two years the continuing destruction of a highly developed state: Syria." (*Note: Both disasters received public demands for action.) In my view, nothing changed over the next year and up to now. 

Many nations, including the U.S., face new humanitarian challenges of seemingly impossible proportions. We have risen to such challenges in the past. We have shown that dedicated people in government, foreign service and civilian life can achieve dramatic turnarounds. In spite of the current difficulties, both Morton Abramowitz and Valerie Amos have praised the work under very trying circumstances of the humanitarian organizations in Syria and the region. 

As an avowed humanitarian nation, the U.S. government and the American public need to ask and answer: Will the U.S. lead again as in the refugee decade, rising to do far more than we thought possible on humanitarian fronts? Will we put in place bold policies and strategies as we did in the past when faced with equally, though different, global humanitarian challenges?  

The executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government need to break the silence on humanitarian action regarding Syrian refugees. Along with domestic and international partner organizations, the U.S., UN and others need to "put ordinary people at the heart of decision-making," as Ms. Amos calls for in her commentary. To do would require leadership by which humanitarian actions, such as "no fly zones," are woven into the fabric of government policies and responses at home. 


You might also like to read: 
Fred Hiatt, "The Defense of Inaction," The Washington Post, April 19, 2015

For this article, Mr. Purcell drew on the epilogue draft of his book manuscript. 

Jim Purcell lives outside Washington, DC.

BIG CHANGE IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY MADE REFUGEE FUTURES BETTER

Inside Book 1-Awake and Rise: The International Geneva Conference on Boat People

For readers interested in, yet not familiar with, refugee issues of the 1970s and '80s, links are provided for some of the information below. 

A Geneva Conference
on Indochina-photo en.wikipedia.com

In the early times of World War II, President Roosevelt called for a meeting in Evian, France, to focus on refugee plight. However, the U. S. sent an unofficial representative, unlike other governments. Engagement or isolation remained two opposing principles of United States foreign policy.

Evacuations during Saigon, South Vietnam's chaos of 1975, as North Vietnam troops advanced toward Saigon and the U.S. embassy, were not the end as some hoped. A sea of refugee numbers swelled, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher proposed the Geneva Conference on Boat People for two days in July 1979.  

Unlike the Evian Conference in 1938, when Europe was already at war against Hitler, the Geneva conference related to aftershocks of the Vietnam War attracted big actors on the international scene, including the American vice president. A British Parliament afterward praised the meeting's success:

 "In concentrating international attention on the plight of the refugees and on the urgent need to help them and the countries in which they have sought refuge, the conference was humanitarian. But it was widely agreed that the problem could not be solved unless attention was also given to its root causes and that these have been the inhumane policies of Vietnam.
      "The conference resulted in a massive increase in offers of resettlement places, from 125,000 to 260,000, and in new pledges of additional financial support for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' activities amounting to 190 million United States dollars…." (emphasis added; 1979 dollars)

U.S. Vice-President Walter F. Mondale said that the Geneva conference was intended to "turn the heat up" on the crisis of refugee boat people. He led the American delegation and gave an emotional speech, paying attention to the fact that the Geneva conference marked the highest level government delegation ever to attend an international refugee meeting.  In Mondale's view, engagement was and should be the guiding principle of the immediate post-Vietnam War era and into the future. 

"I would have loved to be there," Jim Purcell said. He stayed in Washington, DC, under the rationale that the new U.S. refugee organization was shaky, in early stages, and he wanted to be in place, in case. An official congressional decision and State Department announcement of the new refugee program's 'home,' its capacities and roles, had only recently been made firm. As the conference met, the bureau's launch from Washington's State Department was made official. 

Historically, State had been either uninvolved in running programs or assessed as unsuccessful in their operation. The new bureau for refugees would be a test on many levels, and eyes were on it from the nation's capital, to towns where volunteer citizens lived, and across the international community. 


At home, the State Department and Capitol Hill would need to address urgent budgetary needs on behalf of refugees. The proverbial ball had finally started rolling, and Jim Purcell was to be the point person, watchman on the wall, and planner for the long haul, although he did not yet realize it. 

Well-known appointees would come and go as directors of the program, some seeming to have more commitment than others. As a deputy, manager, and acting director in an unavoidable see-saw fashion between appointees, Jim was made the official director by appointment of Secretary of State George P. Shultz in 1983, four years after the program's launch. 

In early days organizing State's refugee program, one of Jim Purcell's chief interests was the history of U.S. policy and action regarding refugees. The unsuccessful Evian-les-Bain conference seemed, to him, to be a missed opportunity for the U. S. to avoid repeating later. The Geneva Conference on Boat People formally marked a major shift in U. S. foreign and refugee policy.  As one reader has put it, "significant change in American involvement."

"Hope of the Phoenix" author hopes to reach Gen-Xers and Millennials about the Refugee Decade

Hope of the Phoenix

 The Reawakening and Rise of America's Humanitarian Spirit 
from the Ashes of Vietnam, 1975-1986

Early draft notes

James N. (Jim) Purcell, Jr.

Hope of the Phoenix is two or three weeks away from a finished  manuscript. The author's 400 pages establish a historical record about a team that saved post-Vietnam War Refugees (1975), then refugees in Cambodia and Laos, followed quickly by global refugee emergency rescues from 1979 onward. The years of the mid-1970s into the 1980s have often been referred to as "the refugee decade."

The pages show ideals, risks, and results of the leading nation in the world reawakened to its humanitarian spirit, joined under complementary policies, and a noble spirit sometimes forgotten and even avoided.

Refugee numbers exploded in an aftershock of global upheavals--the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and the USSR--that forced civilians to flee across borders. The USSR, on the other hand, ignored advocate please around the world to release any Soviet Jews and other persecuted minorities that wanted to emigrate.   

"This story needs to be told before eyewitnesses are gone." That is the energy behind the Hope of the Phoenix being finished now, decades after events. It's history largely unrecorded about brave actors around the world in different places, positions of influence, and power.

Millennials and the as-yet-unnamed generations after them should also hear of their nation's duty, and theirs, to help refugees in whatever ways possible. They need a purpose beyond themselves. They deserve a well-told, inspiring first-hand true story of how a nation combined policy and action at a critical period of its history.

To Gen-Xers and Millennials, the Vietnam War and its aftermath is like ancient history unless their interest is awakened to millions of refugee sagas, globally, that affected public policies and still have value for how America will lead and respond to "what's next?" questions of how and when to rescue and restore lives torn and taken by armed conflicts. 

*The U.S. Refugee Program was renamed later as Population, Refugees, and Migration within State, serving refugees and others. In these days, the world watches the another expanding critical mass of desperate victims of conflict.    

AUTHOR RECALLS HOW PRESIDENT REAGAN BUILT UPON PRESIDENT CARTER'S CRITICAL CHANGES FOR REFUGEES

Hope of the Phoenix

The Reawakening and Rise oF America's Humanitarian Spirit 
from the Ashes of Vietnam
1975-1986

Presidents Carter and Reagan (photo credit: History.com)

Author Jim (James N., Jr.) Purcell remembers when President Reagan took the torch and heartily supported the new Bureau for Refugee Programs at the State Department.  George P. Shultz was President Reagan's Secretary of State after Alexander Haig.

In 1979, President Carter's State Department geared up to establish a new bureau for refugee programs to deal with the continuing and increasingly critical flow of refugees from Southeast Asia after the Fall of Saigon, April 30, 1975--40 years ago. 

Incoming in 1981, President Reagan gave full support to State's growing Bureau for Refugee Programs, today known as Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration.  

The author has considered Secretary Shultz to be a professional mentor since 1976, when President Nixon appointed Mr. Shultz to be director of the Bureau of the Budget, now known as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the author, a young budget analyst, met him at the outset and told his own staff, "This time, we got a good one."  

In 1982, President Reagan appointed Mr. Shultz to the State Department, and he was the author's boss in the Refugee program, where the author served from 1979 to 1986.

April 28, 2015, in the finishing stages of writing Hope of the Phoenix, Jim Purcell is scheduled to visit at the Hoover Institution, not far from San Francisco, to meet with former Secretary of State George P. Shultz .

The meeting with "the boss" will set a cherished milestone for the author.

Update

  Beginning with "Awake and Rise"

It was at the U. S. Department of State (State), the summer of 1979, four years after the "Fall of Vietnam," April 30, 1975. 

Top-floor State brass summoned Jim to help with a growing crisis. Urgent appeals from foreign service officers in Southeast Asia told of thousands more former Vietnamese allies--and their families--at risk, barely surviving as refugees. 

Approval to build within State a new U.S. refugee program--almost from the bottom up--had finally come through. Work had to begin at once, or State might lose this critical foreign affairs role to a group of agencies outside State.

Jim faced serious career and personal challenges when the summons came. He did not want more problems to deal with; yet, there must have been a reason why he listened to the needs that day. 

Learning about the enormous project they wanted him to take on--to design and build this new program-- Jim's mind formed one question:

"If  I take on this role that rumor calls a 'career wrecker,' will State keep its word to back me up for what I'll need to make such a program work?"

*****

 Motivation to write this book

What do you do when you say 'yes' to a tough job that affects your country's and your life's history?

In 1969, 10 years before State's top-floor summons, Jim had been present at a White House press conference (Ron Zeigler, press secretary) when reporters' question focused on him, a "lowly budget analyst," amid rumors of  Nixon's "secret plan to end the war in Vietnam";  

...a decade later Americans woke up to reports of post-Vietnam refugees and Cambodian "killing fields" survivors and drowning 'boat people.' 

No one could have guessed that these crises were prologue in the global refugee decade. 

Old White House Press Room 

From the internet: "Until 1969, the Press Corps Offices space was occupied by the White House Gymnasium and Flower Shop. Prior to that, ...a room in the northwest corner of the West Wing."

In those days, members of the press were eager to scoop any sign of Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. 

Jim's role in preparing a military supplemental led the press to question him about its significance as a signal of the war's end. 




Disclosure: Jim Purcell, my husband, has encouraged my interest in creating and posting on JNP Book blog. 



I am thankful for people that have offered their enthusiasm and input to his efforts.

  

Book Updates and the Nightwriter's Cottage

Book Update: The full manuscript of Jim Purcell's book, The Reawakening and Rise of America's Humanitarian Spirit from the Ashes of Vietnam (subtitle), is finished.  One of my favorite chapters includes "The Things We Tell Ourselves about Our Lives"--a personal background piece about what helped shape the author for the humanitarian challenges he faced; how does a 41-year-old husband, father, and civil servant build a team and change part of the powerful foreign service environment of the U.S. State Department?

A book proposal will be available soon for experienced book agents interested in possible representation to interested publishers; a recent lunch meeting in Washington, DC, the starting point of the story, marked another step forward.  

  Author at Nightwriter's Cottage

Jean Purcell, blogger

November 2014  Jim Purcell stayed for a week at Phyllis Theroux's Nightwriter's Cottage in Ashland, Virginia, just north of Richmond; he worked days and evenings on the final chapters of his manuscript, four books (major sections) of approximately 600 double-spaced pages for the full iteration of that time. I was there as companion and to do internet searches and to read some of his copy. 

When Jim and I first got to Ashland, we met Phyllis and her husband, Ragan Phillips; we talked briefly about the Work, what I now call "the massive manuscript." Before we parted that afternoon, a date had been set for a soiree where Jim would talk before a group about his opus. 

We enjoyed the varied group at the discussion evening; we sensed that their experience had influenced a range of political and personal opinions among them. It seemed that Jim's topic evoked interest from a broad range. I thought that the questions gave a brilliant test run for an author and his story; Jim shared some of his knowledge at the center of a revived American engagement with the world post-Vietnam, and he related some of his professional and personal conclusions, as requested.  

What can happen to an author in one week away from the familiar town, schedules, and ringing phones? More than expected, that's sure, based on our week at Nightwriter's cottage a three-hour drive from home.

About the writer's cottage: Author Phyllis Theroux has been closely affiliated with Politics and Prose bookstore and coffeehouse for many years of her writing life. In the Washington, DC, area, where she once lived, P&P is a popular bookstore where authors speak and take questions...sort of like the night her husband planned for Jim to talk about his book. I think a mutual interest in politics and public policy opened the door for a great evening. 

    

What started this adventure: I read a Washington Post article by Ron Charles in September 2014 and made a quick application for an October date. A printable reservation form is on the cottage website. I also emailed Ron Charles a thank you for his article. I continue to like the Post more than other leading newspapers due to its close proximity to where we live and to columnists like Ron Charles and other regulars of different views.      

We welcome readers of this blog to sign up using one of the options on this blog; readers can access updates moving forward.  

 

About Jim Purcell's Forthcoming Book 2015

"To the front press row I said in a low voice, “Believe me, folks, if the President and national security adviser have a secret plan, they wouldn’t use me to unveil it.  I just work here.” From Harbinger, Chapter 1, Hope of the Phoenix

James N Purcell, Jr. is Chairman of the Board of the U.S. Association for International Migration (USAIM). He is a member of the board of the Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD). His forthcoming book (2015), subtitled "The Reawakening and Rise of America's Humanitarian Spirit from the Ashes of Vietnam," is the history of the U. S. Refugee Program (RP), 1979 to 1986, the author's personal narrative.

The U.S. Department of State tasked Jim Purcell with setting up the new Bureau for Refugee Programs (now Population, Refugees, and Migration) in 1979. President Reagan appointed Mr. Purcell as Assistant Secretary of State for the Refugee Program in 1983, where Mr. Purcell served until 1986, as the longest-serving director for the Refugee Program.

Through the State Department's Refugee Program, the U.S. put into place protocols and policies relied upon today around the world.

The early U.S. post-Vietnam refugee efforts involved U. S. Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan; U. S. congressional committees and subcommittees, U. S. communities and churches, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), helping governments, and international organizations, among them: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and others.

The U. S. Refugee Program team worked to strengthen American responses to humanitarian crises around the world.

___________________________________________

Book Subtitle The Reawakening and Rise of America's Humanitarian Spirit from the Ashes of Vietnam - 1979 to 1986 -by James N. Purcell, Jr., former Assistant Secretary of State, U. S. State Department, Bureau for Refugee Programs; former Director General, International Organization for Migration


The Distinguished Honor Award from Secretary of State George P. Shultz

The Senior Executive Service Meritorious Executive Award from President Ronald R. Reagan

Forthcoming Book Genres: Refugees, Humanitarian crises, Policy, Government, International

Copyright (c) 2014 James N. Purcell, Jr. All rights reserved.