BIDEN'S HAITIAN DISASTER

 

[Published in Newsmax]

Once again, the Biden administration is proving incapable of protecting Americans.

As Haiti descends into violent anarchy, Biden’s State Department is telling Americans they are on their own. State Department spokespersons keep saying they are "exploring options" for bringing Americans to safety.

This is a replay of Afghanistan, where the U.S. abandoned Central Asia’s largest and most fortified military base while the embassy shuttered, leaving thousands to fight their way through mobs to the civilian airport. Thousands more were left behind or unaccounted.

This is a potentially tragic abdication of a fundamental responsibility.

The State Department’s website is filled with extensive guidance on how Americans will be evacuated during emergencies as "conditions in a country degrade."

This is a well-established moral and legal mandate.

Diplomatic and military personnel have extensive experience evacuating Americans, including just a year ago from Haiti (in July of 2023).

One of the largest evacuations, 15,000 U.S. citizens, took place in Lebanon during July 2006. A year later, the General Accountability Office (GAO) provided a detailed narrative and assessment of how things are supposed to work.

A key element in saving American lives was the requirement of the U.S. Embassy to develop and maintain an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) for evacuating U.S. citizens.

The EAP is required of every U.S. Embassy in the world.

I participated in the development and management of the EAP during my tenure as Director of the U.S. Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa during the mid-1980s.

The EAP was designed to evacuate all identified U.S. citizens within 48 hours of a crisis in the host country. In my case, this included the 75 Peace Corps Volunteers who were posted throughout Malawi.

I was required to maintain an up-to-date accounting of volunteer locations to the Embassy monthly. Contingency planning for communicating an impending crisis, notifying every volunteer of initiating the EAP, and accounting for all volunteers being safely evacuated was a critical part of my responsibility as Peace Corps Director.

Overlaying my program was the American Embassy’s EAP process.

Every month, the Embassy Team, which included top staff reporting to the Ambassador and heads of each U.S. Agency in the country (such as the Agency for International Development – USAID), were required to update the list of evacuees.

Quarterly, the Embassy Team met in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) to validate the EAP.

At these meetings, we also assessed the current situation relating to Malawi and the region.

This was important because southern Malawi was surrounded by Mozambique, which was in a civil war.

The warring factions would regularly traverse southern Malawi as a short cut and forage for food. Volunteers in the south encountered combatants, and in one case had mortar rounds explode near them.

Meetings with Mozambique and South African officials helped prevent similar incidents.

The Embassy maintained a master list of U.S. citizens working for Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), including missionaries.

The Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) and Chief Counselor Officer were responsible for managing an accurate list and conducting EAP outreach.

To further enhance in-country tracking, every U.S. Embassy began maintaining lists of all American registered under the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), established in 2011.

Americans travelling to a foreign country may register to receive alerts (including EAP initiation) and be part of the accounting of evacuees should the need arise. 

During the 1980s, every Wednesday morning, the Malawi Embassy Team tested emergency communications with a wake-up call from the Embassy’s Defense Communications Office to each home. Peace Corps Volunteers were informed about the EAP and crisis communications through ongoing site visits to their project sites.

As Chair of the Malawi Volunteer Council, I conducted quarterly meetings with leaders from the counterpart programs of Canada, Japan, Sweden, and the UK to share “best practices” on volunteer operations, including respective EAPs and emergency communications.

Thankfully, the Malawi EAP was never activated. Had such a situation arose, the thoroughness of all involved and their dedication to citizen safety would have prevailed.

The failure in evacuating Afghanistan, and now the callous disregard in Haiti, sadly displays a deterioration of the professionalism that once was the pride of America’s diplomatic operations.

AFGHAN ABANDONMENT

 

[Published on Newsmax]

America’s catastrophic retreat from Afghanistan did not need to happen.

It was not just a failure of commonsense. It was multiple violations of State and Defense Department regulations.

There are very clear and detailed procedures for evacuating embassy personnel, American citizens, and host country nationals linked to the mission. The Defense Department has its own very clear and detailed procedures. 

These evacuation procedures are institutionalized in the U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, and Executive Orders.

In July 1998, there was a clear and detailed Memorandum of Understanding signed between the DOD and State on evacuation coordination “of U.S. Citizens and Nationals and Designated Other Persons from Threatened areas overseas.” 

Those responsible for ignoring and blatantly violating these longstanding rules must be held fully accountable and punished.

The lives already lost, and the many more lives still in danger, are a terrible price to pay for their criminal incompetence and negligence.

The other outrage is how this widespread malpractice, possibly malicious, violated the norms of protecting Americans and their allies dating back to our nation’s founding.

James Monroe, as ambassador to France, embodied the noblest values of America’s Foreign Service. He established a lasting set of values for those representing America abroad.

When the horrors of the French Revolution swept over Marquis de Lafayette and his family, Monroe and his wife, risked their own lives to save them. This was dangerous.

Lafayette’s wife, Adrienne, had watched her grandmother, mother, and sister die on the guillotine. She languished in prison awaiting her own execution, while the Prussians imprisoned her husband.

Monroe’s wife, Elizabeth, braved mobs, and revolutionary guards, to enter the Hotel de La Force prison demanding to see Adrienne. Her display of resolve ended Adrienne’s two-year confinement.

Monroe’s Parisian apartment served as a sanctuary for American’s fleeing the Revolution, including Thomas Paine.

This timeless set of fundamental values was on full display during my tenure as U.S. Peace Corps Director in Malawi, East Africa.

As a member of the Embassy Executive Team, I was involved in evacuation simulations. We identified mustering points throughout Malawi for gathering evacuees and constantly refined ways to quickly move everyone from the official, and unofficial, American communities to safety.

We slept with walkie talkies by our beds, testing them every Wednesday morning.

Visits from NATO officials, and State Department physical security experts, guided us on improving site security and transportation options.

We all played a role in identifying and maintaining contact with Americans living and working throughout the country. These included Americans working with multi-national organizations, such as the World Bank, UNESCO, and WHO.

There was also an array of individuals and families tied to religious missions, NGOs and businesses.

My primary role was to keep the Peace Corps volunteers safe. In the mid-1980s landlines, radios and physical travel were the only means of communication.

This was supplemented by maintaining a seamless relationship with the American Embassy team and officials within the Malawi government at all levels. I visited all 28 districts, building relationships with district officials, mayors and tribal leaders.

This was intended to forge bonds so they would look out for my volunteers and other Americans scattered across the country.

There was also close coordination between the other volunteer networks from Japan, Sweden, Canada and the U.K. My tenure as chair of the Volunteer Council developed collaborative protocols for emergency communication and logistical support.

There were the volunteers themselves. A Peace Corps Volunteer Council served as an ongoing forum for improving the effectiveness and health of the volunteers. It also became an opportunity to coach its members on leadership, communication and problem-solving skills.

The most able became the informal regional leaders for supporting their colleagues in the field, and to serve as hubs for disseminating information, and possibly for mustering in an emergency.

Malawi was generally safe, but the lower third of the country was a peninsula surrounded by Mozambique. From 1977 until 1992 RENAMO, the Cuban and Soviet backed government, fought a vicious civil war with anti-Communist FRELIMO. On countless occasions, the competing forces would transit southern Malawi as a shortcut.

The obsession with safety and health permeated everything we did at the embassy and within the Peace Corps. This is what Americans should always expect from their overseas missions.

It is appalling and abhorrent that these time-honored, and legally binding responsibilities were so completely ignored in the rush to abandon Afghanistan.