The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

50 MARCH 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL What started as highly complex planning under State Depart- ment direction for a limited number of Special Immigrant Visa applicants at Fort Lee, quickly morphed into a historic evacu- ation as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, and DHS became the lead federal agency. So-called lily pads were established overseas to temporar- ily house evacuated Afghans. Meanwhile, State and Defense worked to overcome early systems integration challenges to track arriving passengers. USNORTHCOM, originally tasked to house 20,000 Afghan evacuees, was quickly responsible for 50,000. Housing turned into wraparound services for our guests, and capacity grew closer to 65,000 across eight DoD task forces, known as safe havens. Impressively, planning for resettlement of evacuees started before operations had even stabilized, as DoD supported DHS’ overall effort. And, of course, there is a DoD plan for everything—including a nascent USNORTHCOM plan for gender advisory support to the lead federal agency in such missions. Given the accelerated pace of evacuation, USNORTHCOM’s Women, Peace and Security team did not initially have biodata to review sex and gender disaggregated data. But that did not stop us from drafting an initial concept of operations to protect vulnerable populations. Across the DoD there is an emerging cadre of Joint Staff–trained professionals working on gen- der issues (including this deputy POLAD). For the first time, USNORTHCOM piloted voluntary gender advisory support by DoD personnel to all eight Operation Allies Welcome task forces (along with interpretation support). The USNORTHCOM lead team provided onsite expertise on integrating gender-based considerations into DoD support to the welcome effort. Some safe havens, such as Task Force Liberty at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, where I had the honor of serving, formed interagency female engagement and community outreach teams (FETs) to ensure equal access to information and services and protection of vulnerable popula- tions—be it ensuring equal access to winter clothes, appropri- ate maternity care and nutrition, or English classes and educa- tion on U.S. cultural norms and expectations. I feel privileged to have participated in this onsite imple- mentation firsthand after working on Operation Allies Wel- come at the headquarters level for months. Both DHS and the interagency now recognize the value of gender advisory support and have requested its continuation for current opera- tions. DHS also included a gender advisory role in the Gender and Vulnerable Population Protection Standard Operating Procedures. On Dec. 29, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the appointment of two senior officials at the State Department focused on supporting the civil and human rights of Afghan women and girls—both those remaining in Afghani- stan and resettling in the United States. With these initiatives, we now have the opportunity to trans- late informal feedback from those on the ground into formal and more permanent lessons learned across the interagency. This will help us to operationalize interagency gender support for future domestic and overseas humanitarian assistance responses, so that it is routinely incorporated into guidance for defense planning and deployments. Holly Peirce, a State Department management officer, is currently the J5 (Policy, Plans and Strategy) deputy foreign policy adviser (POLAD) at NORAD and USNORTHCOM. In addition to defense of the home- lands and theater security cooperation with Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas, USNORTHCOM provides defense support of civil authori- ties via the lead federal agency in most disasters—such as hurricanes, fires, COVID-19 vaccination, COVID-19 medical and Southwest border operations. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect official policy or position of the Department of Defense, Department of State, or the U.S. government. “Beautifully Human”Work JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, NEW JERSEY Rick Matton Beautifully human are the two words that come to mind when thinking about how to describe the resettlement efforts that were ongoing at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (JBMDL) when I arrived in November 2021. At the time, there were more than 12,000 Afghan guests temporarily residing on this large military base. To support them, an interagency task force comprising more than 25 federal agencies and NGOs had been established in August to perform a mission that was unprecedented in our nation’s history. I joined the task force as part of a small State Department team sent to assist with the resettlement of these guests. On arriving, I was placed on a smaller team whose stated mission was to assist the hundreds of locally engaged (LE) staff, who had previously worked at U.S. Embassy Kabul, get in-processed to the base and then resettled into communities across the United States as quickly as possible.