The old adage “no good deed goes unpunished” was proved again last week when dozens of unnamed sources in the U.S. foreign aid community attacked Vice President Mike Pence for his role in helping to provide relief to religious minorities in Iraq.
Both current and former USAID staff are — often under the cloak of anonymity — accusing the vice president and his team of directing money toward “unqualified” faith-based nonprofit organizations and potentially violating the Constitution while doing so. Their attacks show either ignorance of the laws they seek to administer or disregard for the public they claim to serve.
In late 2018, a bipartisan Congress passed into law the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018 (HR 390), which explicitly allowed funding for “faith-based entities that are providing assistance to address the humanitarian, stabilization, and recovery needs of” religious and ethnic minority groups in Iraq and Syria.
First, we must remember why we are even having this discussion. The atrocities committed by the Islamic State against the Christians and Yezidis in the Middle East were a genocide. While politicians on both sides of the aisle in 2014 agreed — Congress and Secretary of State John Kerry both called it genocide — little was done to return dignity and security to these fractured and bleeding communities.
Making their survival a priority, the Trump administration responded by providing over $340 million in aid to these faith and ethnic minority communities. This direct action helped save the fragile Christian and Yezidi communities of Iraq.
I have traveled to Iraq three times since 2015, visiting many of the Christian villages, the Yezidi communities of Mt. Sinjar and Sinjar City, and predominantly Muslim Mosul and the surrounding areas. I have been on the front lines with the Peshmerga, seeing ISIS-held territory just ahead, and I have seen Christian and Yezidi villages that ISIS had destroyed. I have seen Yezidi mass graves in the Sinjar region, and I sat with Yezidi women and heard first-hand of the atrocities and the still-missing 2,500 women and girls taken hostage by ISIS from their villages.
The Christian population has dropped from 1.5 million before the war to about 200,000 today. The Yezidi population has also decreased. Those who remain live in fear of nearby neighbors who were perpetrators of the genocide, with no hope of judgment in sight. Their fear is real.
Globally, religious minority communities are often an afterthought. It was not until the Trump administration that the issue of international religious freedom was elevated, when President Trump became the first U.S. president to host a United Nations event focused on the subject. And it was Trump who began the State Department’s Annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, elevating the subject to a new level by encouraging other nations to combat religious persecution and ensure greater respect for freedom of religion.
Religious intolerance is an age-old problem. This U.S. president is showing bold leadership to address the genocidal action that has been committed against these religious communities in Iraq.
Maybe this is why we are hearing a sudden uproar about the commissioning of faith-based organizations, because allowing them to participate in the process is nothing new. Since 2004, under President George W. Bush, the U.S. Code has required that religiously affiliated groups be welcomed on equal footing with secular aid groups to compete for USAID grants. Religious groups can often lend aid in ways that secular groups cannot.
USAID Administrator Mark Green has been outspoken about the need for faith-based groups to help in religious minority communities. At the 2018 State Department Ministerial, Green said, “Faith-based partners are often uniquely trusted in those forgotten communities. They can harness networks and resources and insights that help us reach out in ways that we otherwise could not. Religious liberty matters because it enables faith-based groups to work with USAID and others without surrendering their essential faith character.”
American foreign aid should reflect the values of the American taxpayers who are sending it. Because of the Trump administration, we are now empowering organizations that don’t have representation in Washington to help fill out their application forms.
I think what the administration is doing is inherently good in empowering groups that are directly and effectively assisting persecuted communities who have seen their homes destroyed and family and friends killed. Reporters traveling in the region will find these communities asking not why is the United States doing it this way, but rather why it took so long.
Frank Wolf, a Republican, represented Northern Virginia in the U.S. House from 1981 to 2015.
