The Foreign Service Journal, April 2016

24 APRIL 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL and long-term care for refugees. In the immediate days after an emergency, the primary focus is on protection: providing safety, food, water, shelter, sanitation and medicine, preventing gender- based violence, and so on. But there is also a realization that the conflict in Syria will not be ending any time soon, and that to maintain that type of support for 1.6 million refugees over a decade would drain the coffers of both the Turks and the international donor community. So there are ideas about getting kids into school and getting work permits for refugees who can then earn their own keep and contribute taxes for their social services. I listen, liaise, advise and report back on these issues. The best part of the job is monitoring the programs that the United States funds. This can take place in the capital, like it did recently when Turkey’s Ministry of Education announced that it would start an honorarium, in cooperation with UNICEF, to pay Syrian teachers who are teaching refugee children. This was big news, and it had taken a lot of work weaving through the Turkish legal code and bureaucracy to bring about. So I participated in the inaugural event and congratulated the Turks and UNICEF, who also updated me about the delivery of supplies to Syrian students attending U.S.-funded schools throughout Turkey. Afterward, I traveled in our armored car to districts in Hatay province that border the Mediterranean and Syria. In Reyhanli, a Yezidi refugees recall their harrowing escape from ISIS and the plight of their loved ones at a meeting in Mardin, December 2014, with FSO Matt Johnson, at right. An ethnically Kurdish minority in the region, the Yezidi have been persecuted for ages for their ancient religion, which is linked to Zoroastrianism and animism. U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATECOURTESYOFMATTJOHNSON