Category Archives: May You Live In Interesting Times

How Do We Prevent Another Rwanda?

The African country of Rwanda was devastated by horrible massacres of one ethnic group by another in 1994. An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 were murdered in genocidal attacks merely for being born into a particular ethnic group.

The Nazi genocide of European Jews remains the best known example of this kind of atrocity—the attempted extermination of one group of people by another. People are hunted and murdered merely because they are born into that group.

David Rawson, the U.S. ambassador to Rwanda when the massacre occurred, discussed the need to better understand and prevent such atrocities.(“Predicting and Preventing Intrastate Violence; Lessons from Rwanda,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019)

He states: “Great powers are reluctant to intervene, especially in little countries off the radar scope of their national interests.”

After all, with the results of our now-regrettable intervention in countries like Iraq, who wants to send our troops to yet another trouble spot?

Writing in the same issue of The Foreign Service Journal (“Getting Preventive Stabilization on the Map”) , David C. Becker and Steve Lewis suggest a cheaper way: going after movements before they become conflicts.

Neither article is especially optimistic, but the idea of prevention suggests a glimmer of hope. Prevention includes the requirement to work with local partners “and a willingness to take modest risks with meager resources.”

An example was cited of a few aid agency groups in Indonesia who encouraged talks between Christian and Muslim community leaders. The talks led to the realization that outside groups were trying to encourage violence, leading the locals to repudiate such violence.

A quote based on conversation attributed to Winston Churchill says: ““Jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.”

Talking is certainly less expensive in lives and resources. And who knows? It may work.

Second Amendment? What About the First Amendment?

Leonard Pitts Jr plays on the words from one of Shakespeare’s plays: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

This Shakespearean line, spoken by the character Dick the Butcher, is a back-handed compliment to lawyers, who may impede tyranny.

Today, Pitts suggests, some are trying to kill all the journalists. (“Trump’s anti-journalism hit squad,” The Seattle Times, Sep 1 2019)

Apparently, a group is targeting journalists unfavorable to President Donald Trump’s administration, searching for any less than admirable episodes in their past lives. The goal is to blacken and render suspect any journalist who writes against the policies of the president.

Trump himself has tweeted against reputable news organizations as “enemies of the people.” He has called The New York Times, winner of over a hundred Pulitzer prizes for excellence in reporting, “an evil propaganda machine.”

Evil propaganda machines certainly exist, mostly the sort who seed the internet with unverifiable rumors. Newspapers who engage in research, who send experienced reporters to the far corners of the earth, and whose reporters sometimes have died to bring the truth to their readers, do not fall in the category of an evil propaganda machine.

Reporting on government, popular and unpopular, is, in fact, the job given the press by the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Press freedom is right up there with freedom of religion and of speech and of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition their government for wrongs done them.

If you want to see what happens to a free press as a democracy is stifled, read an article, in The Economist (“The Entanglement of Powers,” August 32, 2019) about Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban.

Orban has virtually taken over all three branches of Hungary’s government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. He has been able to do this in part because his party also controls most of the country’s newspapers, turning them into a propaganda machine for Orban.

Times of change and turmoil, as the world has been in at least since September 11, 2001, tempt people to look for simple solutions. Deep reporting on real issues may conflict with nostalgia for easy answers, but we need it all the more.

On Court Prophets and Wilderness Prophets, Christian Responses to the President

That’s the title of an article in Christianity Today (Timothy Dalrymple, July 19 2019). The author talks about those prophets who worked inside the royal court and those who didn’t.

According to the two examples given, court prophets work for a king’s repentance. Wilderness prophets cry out against sin far from any seat of power.

I invite you to read the article for its insights. I found the following passage especially thought provoking:

“As for me, I wonder if we have too many court prophets in an era when wilderness prophets are needed. I also wonder if our court prophets are willing to call out sin when they see it. Whether you view Trump as a David or an Antipas, whether you serve at the court of the resplendent king or stand over against the court from the wilderness, one thing Nathan and John the Baptist held in common was that both were willing to condemn unrighteousness in their rulers—even if it cost them everything.”

Community After the Shootings

After the horrible double shootings recently, I found comfort in the community of my church.

With all the current commentary about the decline in Christian churches, I find no other comfort as healing as this community.

We sorrow, of course, and rage, too, at the continued evil that targets innocent people. Then we find purpose in the story of a man who preached love but was himself targeted and killed. Yet, he overcame.

Indeed, two thousand years later, this man’s followers persist. They tend to refugees and feed the hungry and comfort those who mourn. Some of them are killed, too, but where their message is lived out, people regroup and stubbornly conquer by loving even one’s enemies.

Luis Velez and Trump’s Tweets

Have You Seen Luis Velez? is a beautiful story of a seventeen-year-old boy and an elderly blind woman connecting with each other and finding a way out of their loneliness.

The story is set in New York City, with its mingling of indifference and the occasional surprise of caring strangers. The story weaves a subtle tale of tribalism but also times when tribalism is overcome. Thus it is a tale of hope.

I read the novel as hate flew back and forth in news stories about four young congresswoman of color, their liberalism riling even some members of their own party.

It wasn’t the stands they took or opposition to those stands. No one has perfect knowledge. Our political system is supposed to provide a way for differences to be lived with and for solutions to be hammered out that work.

Instead, many descended to pure hatred.

I was angry, but something worse joined my anger. For the first time, I became afraid that this country I love will be lost.

I began to fear this tribalism, this unAmerican belief that one group of people is intrinsically superior to all others. It sneaks up on us in our fear of change—the belief that a few people deserve to rule all the rest. It seems so safe, so beguiling.

Are white Europeans superior? That’s the people who, after centuries of bloodshed and fighting, finally began the two worst wars the world has ever seen.

For the first time, I’m afraid too many of us may succumb to hatred.

Yet, as in Luis Velez, it may be possible to step across that fear and hatred. Possible, perhaps, to listen and search for wise and just answers, not those born of knee-jerk hatred against the stranger.

A Marshall Plan Approach to Immigration?

El Salvador is one of the so-called “Deadly Triangle” countries of Central America, along with Guatemala and Honduras. These are the countries from which many of the refugees flocking across the southern border of the United States are coming, fleeing violence and abuse.

For decades, these countries have been ruled by corrupt dictators. During the Cold War, the dictators beguiled the U.S. with fears of a communist takeover, leading Americans to turn a blind eye to horrible human rights abuses. Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in El Salvador when he stood up for the victims.

Nayib Bukele, newly elected president of El Salvador, has called for a new approach to the violence and poverty in his country.

He wants economic and social investments, like job creation and schools. He has called for working with Mexico on immigration issues and beginning a new relationship with the United States.

President Bukele is not from either of the two parties which have ruled El Salvador for decades. Instead of our dealing with immigration only as a border problem, the United States might work with President Bukele on a new approach.

Perhaps we could base it on the Marshall Plan, used so successfully to build up war-torn Europe after World War II.

If You Break It, You Own It.

Many Americans have forgotten that the United States fought, not one, but two wars against Iraq.

The first one, in 1991, may be forgotten because we chose limited aims and achieved them. As soon as the oil-rich country of Kuwait was liberated from Iraqi invaders, the United States left Kuwait and chose not to invade Iraq. We were not saddled with an endless war.

The second war against Iraq, beginning in 2003, was a war we did not need to undertake. We were already fighting in Afghanistan as a result of the 9/ll terrorist attacks.

However, some of our leaders wanted regime change in Iraq. Some possibly had economic reasons—wanting the oil from that country. Others liked the idea of getting rid of an admittedly cruel dictator.

Regardless, Iraq was accused of having nuclear weapons. On flimsy evidence, the United States invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein. As it turned out, the Iraqis had no nuclear weapons.

Too late. We had broken Iraq and now owned it. Our venture cost us lives and national treasure. We still wrestle with problems from our engineered regime change in that country.

Today, some in our current political administration want regime change in another Middle Eastern country, Iran. That Iran has a nuclear program is not in doubt. However, a diplomatic process led to a halt in programs leading to nuclear weapons. It was not perfect, but it was a start toward lessening the threat of nuclear weapons.

Then the United States unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear deal, even though international inspectors had verified Iran’s compliance with the terms of the agreement.

Now members of the administration are pushing for regime change in Iran. Again, Iran certainly has sponsored conflict in the Middle East. Before we became involved, however, it was based on a centuries old conflict between two branches of Islam. With some reason, Iran now counts us as an enemy.

Remember, if you break it, you own it. We already own the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. Do we want to own a third?

Equal Opportunity Slaughter

In the past few months, we’ve seen massacres of Muslims in New Zealand, Christians in Sri Lanka, and Jews in the United States.

We appear unable to allow men and women to practice chosen spiritual disciplines to guide them through complicated and difficult times.

Ours is an age shot through with the worship of wealth and power. Ordinary people struggle against oppression and war and famine. You would think we would welcome a little spiritual comfort and insight for them.

A spiritual pilgrimage is an acknowledgment of our weakness. If we seek help beyond the human, we are going against the dictates of the age. We are saying people matter more than things. We are saying justice matters more than wealth. We are saying humility matters more than power.

Unless we have some spiritual answers, death ends it all—everything we seek vanishes. Against this reality, you would think we would encourage spiritual seeking, not try to kill its practitioners.

Big Brother Has You in His Sights

Reading the Mueller Report side-by-side with a U.S. diplomat’s recent memoir, The Back Channel, makes frightening reading.

William Burns, author of The Back Channel, spent most of his adult life, from 1982 until his retirement in 2014, serving the United States as a diplomat. He held several top jobs, including ambassador to Russia from 2005 until 2008.

In his book, Burns goes out of his way to compliment almost all the people he has worked with in a long diplomatic life, both American and foreign. One exception is Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Putin, according to Burns, harbors something close to paranoia about the United States. Among other views, Putin doesn’t see the movement in Ukraine to topple a Russia-friendly autocrat as a people’s movement, but an effort by the United States to keep Russia down.

Burns writes: “Putin gradually shifted from testing the West in places where Russia had a greater stake . . . like Ukraine . . . to places where the West had a far greater stake, like the integrity of its democracies.”

Then read even the outlines of the Mueller Report, beginning with the section titled “Russian ‘Active Measures’ Social Media Campaign.” (The term “IRA” is the Internet Research Agency, a Russian agency used to spread disinformation on the internet.)

“The IRA Targets U.S. Elections. The IRA Ramps Up U.S. Operations As Early As 2014. U.S. Operations Through IRA-Controlled Social Media Accounts. U.S. Operations Through Facebook. U.S. Operations Through Twitter.” And so on.

The unquestionable conclusion of the Mueller Report is that the Russian government actively interfered in U.S. elections in an attempt to manipulate voters its way.

And next time?

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

A New Deal for Immigration?

Few issues divide Americans like undocumented immigrants.

Peter King, a U.S. congressional representative from New York (Democratic) and Tom Suozzi, a Republican representatives from the same state, sketched out a plan to lessen immigration problems. (“A Grand Compromise on Immigration,” The New York Times, March 24, 2019)

The plan, if carried out, might solve the status of about 5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, plus provide money for alleviating border problems.

Today’s undocumented immigrants include the Dreamers (those without documentation brought as children to the U.S.). To qualify according to the plan, they must have graduated from high school, have no record of criminal activity, and be in the military or working full time for at least three years or attending college.

In addition, the plan would be available to those in temporary protected status (TPS). Beneficiaries of TPS are those who have been allowed to stay temporarily in the United States because of natural disasters, violence, or extreme poverty in their home countries.

To start the process, each applicant would be required to pay $2,000 dollars. The funds raised would be used first of all to fund the process.

The excess would go to additional physical structures along the southern border, aid to Central American countries to discourage further immigration from those countries, and improved border technology.

One advantage for the immigrants targeted by the program is that they already are productive individuals and are familiar with American culture.

Embassy Evacuations: a Hazard of the Diplomatic Career

Log on to the website for the U.S. embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, and the phrase immediately pops up: “The embassy is only providing emergency services for U.S. citizens . . . ”

Due to the crisis in Venezuela with the Maduro government, most American staff have been withdrawn from the embassy, removing employees and their families from harm’s way.

The possibility of a mission draw down or evacuation is one of the facts of diplomatic life. My two evacuations were easier for me than for some. Both were due to terrorism dangers, but my children were grown and unaffected. My husband’s job wasn’t dependent on where we were living. Within a few weeks, I was assigned to another post.

By contrast, the evacuation within seven days of sixty diplomats and their families from the U.S. embassy in Moscow last year was not due to terrorism, but nevertheless involved many people suddenly pulled out of planned lives. The United States and Russia both ordered large numbers of diplomats from their respective countries over U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Household goods packed out, health and school certificates issued, keys and radios turned in, rabies shots confirmed for pets, and seats on charter flights arranged were only some of the tasks. Children and teenagers had to deal with leaving school terms only eleven weeks before they were to end.

On arrival in Washington, they were met with balloons, welcome home signs, and hugs from former colleagues. Jet-lagged toddlers fell asleep on the floor as their parents attended information meetings.

Evacuated officers began searching for forward assignments. Other families left officers behind who continued to work in Moscow.

Yet as one embassy member wrote: “There is no pretense in the courage of its members, playing the hand they have been dealt with dignity and grace.”

The remaining staff in Moscow stepped up “determined to keep the embassy not just functioning, but moving forward.”

Some who left said it would have been easier “if they had hated Moscow. The truth is,” the article writer said, “we who live here love the city. That is also one of the strengths of the mission. We are moving forward. That is what we do.” (Anne Godfrey, wife of the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2018, “When the Going Gets Tough: Moscow”).

Old Order Dying

“A stable world order is a rare thing,” writes Richard Haass, a former U.S. diplomat who has dealt with such trouble spots as Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

Haass summarizes the history of the world order the United States helped create after World War II. (“How a World Order Ends,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2019.)

The U.S., tired of being dragged into two world wars it did not want, decided to work with allies on a new order. The new order would manage the growing Soviet threat with international organizations and treaties and cooperation between allies.

This order had its imperfections, but it staved off the totalitarian threat without another world war.

Now Haass fears a return to the end of this stable order that has worked for seventy years.

Factors influencing present instability include: the economic rise of a non democratic state, China; technological challenges; terrorist networks; drug cartels; smaller actors with the power to upend the order like North Korea; a refugee surge; climate change; greater inequality—to name a few destabilizing forces.

Haass believes the actions of the United States in leaving the world it helped create are disastrous: “It is one thing for a world order to unravel slowly; it is quite another for the country that had a large hand in building it to take the lead in dismantling it.”

He acknowledges the need for the U.S. to put its own house in order—dealing with debt, education, infrastructure, a better immigration system, the social safety net, and so on.

Concludes Haass: “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”

The Internet’s Shadow

Our information technology is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. It allows us to connect—but used without discipline it destroys connection.

It can obsess us, like a narcotic, if we let it. And corrupt minds use it to unleash hatred.

A writer, Gaymon Bennett in Sojourners (“Silicon Valley’s Original Sin,” January, 2019) complains of Silicon Valley’s lack of moral realism. “The trouble with the Valley, the trouble with the gospel of the iPhone, ubiquitous computing, and automation, is that it has been pursued as if technology doesn’t have a shadow.”

Science gets ahead of us, presents us with solutions but no understanding of shadows.

Advances in food technology freed populations in the developed world from the old scourge of famine. Who could not be grateful? Who wants starving men, women, and children? Yet freedom from famine, without discipline, led us to junk food and unhealthy lifestyles.

The widespread use of penicillin, beginning in the 1940’s, was followed by other “miracle” drugs to successfully combat the old scourge of infections. Yet, overused, the infections they fought became stronger still.

Science does not save us. It provides tools. How we discipline ourselves in the use of these tools determines their ultimate benefit. And that requires a moral compass beyond the capacity of science to provide.

Breaking that Iranian Nuclear Deal

John Limbert was head of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 when Iranian students stormed and took it over. He spent 14 months in Iranian captivity.

If anyone has a reason to see Iranians as evil, it would be Limbert. Instead, he believes the chief obstacle to better relations between Iranians and the rest of the world is the blame both the U.S. and Iran keep heaping on each other.

Targeting the Iranians’ support of militant groups in Lebanon is valid. Bending facts to categorize Iran as the source of all evil in the Middle East and elsewhere, however, is not only wrong but counterproductive.

It pushes Iran further away from any dialog with the rest of the world. If isolated long enough, Iran may indeed become a more militant player on the world stage.

We’ve Been Here Before

Gary Sick, an American academic, worked under President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. He wrote an insightful book about the American/Iranian tragedy, All Fall Down; America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran. I used his book as a reference for the time lines of the crisis when writing my novel If Winter Comes.

Sick has written a thoughtful criticism of President Trump’s response to the Khashoggi murder. As might be expected, he faults Trump’s embrace of Mohammad bin Salman.

Trump, Sick writes, “while careless and ill-informed about every aspect of government, ultimately comes back to his few fundamental convictions: governing is a business, it’s all about profit, and he is the sole stable genius who knows how to make it work.”

Sick faults Trump for treating the U.S./Saudi relationship as merely a business deal to bring in money. The moral dimensions of the relationship escape the president.

Sick reminds us of a similar deal in the 1970s.

“We have done this before. In the 1970s our man was the shah of Iran.

“How did that work out?”

Power Off Here; Children Dying There

A windstorm blew through our island community this week. The power flickered off about ten in the evening. We went to bed under our quilts. By next morning, power was restored, as we expected. Safe in a peaceful community, we had never doubted we would again have heat and food and hot water.

But even as we waited, securely, for normality, recent scenes haunted me from Yemen, in the Middle East, where nothing is ever normal and children die a slow death from starvation.

We have taken the side of Saudi Arabia against Yemen, war ravaged for years, though few Americans have any idea about what is going on there.

The bloodletting is part of an ancient struggle, begun in the seventh century, between different branches of Islam—Sunni and Shia. Saudi Arabia is the Sunni leader. Iran, descendant of ancient Persia, is the Shia leader.

We’re mainly interested in the oil pumped from Saudi Arabia. That and the money we make from selling arms to them. Oh, yes, also, Iran has become public enemy number one, and we want Saudi Arabia’s backing against them.

Neither side is pure, of course.

Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and imprisoned our diplomats for 444 days. They also sponsor Hezbollah, a political and militant group in Lebanon.

On the other hand, fifteen of the nineteen terrorists who attacked our country on September 11, 2001,were from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia sponsors that war against Yemen.

You can blame either side, if you like.

For me, though, taking sides becomes irrelevant next to children slowly dying from starvation as helpless parents watch. Others have been bombed by weapons we sold to the Saudis.

I don’t care who you choose as your enemy, but what we have abetted and allowed is a sin against God.

What Tribe Do You Hang With?

Are you a millennial, a Christian evangelical, a Trumper, a liberal, an atheist, a Roman Catholic, a worker, a college graduate, a libertarian, a senior citizen, or perhaps you claim the label “unaffiliated”? None of these? More than one of these?

Amy Chua suggests our lack of attention to tribes is one reason for U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.(“Tribal World: Group Identity Is All,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018.) She writes: “Once people connect with a group, their identities can become powerfully bound to it. . . They will penalize outsiders . . . . They will sacrifice, and even kill and die, for their group.”

Tribal identity is alive and well in developed countries also. Much of our civil unrest and some of our mass shootings are due to tribal identity turned violent.

Yet, at their best, groups nurture. They provide the love and acceptance we all need. Like other forces, they become dangerous only in their extreme forms.

Ironically, those likely to be captured by tribal extremes often are those who lacked a nurturing tribe as children.

Nurturing a child requires parental responsibility, but nurturing needs a community—a tribe, if you will— prepared to help the least ones: children who need medical care, parents who need job training, families who need secure housing.

We need tribal protection without disrespect for those in another tribe. Above all, we need nurturing tribalism, not destructive tribalism.

Twenty-nine school children were killed in a bombing raid in Yemen on August 9

Twenty-nine school children were killed in a bombing raid in Yemen on August 9. Do we care?

In between our fascination with Trump’s latest tweets and discussions about who goes to the next Super Bowl, did we even notice the tragedy?

Probably nine out of ten Americans don’t know Yemen exists. Fewer don’t know that we sell aircraft and munitions to our ally Saudi Arabia who uses them to bomb people there.

A bloody war has raged for years in Yemen between one regime supported by Iran and one supported by Saudi Arabia and its ally, the United Arab Emirates. Mass starvation and bombings of school busses and wedding parties are part of the conflict.

Why are Saudi Arabia and Iran fighting? Because these two countries have been locked in a power struggle for years for control of the Middle East.

The two countries adhere to different interpretations of Islam, whose advocates have fought each other for well over a millennia.

Dan Simpson, a former U.S. diplomat, writes: “I don’t care what Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may have done for President Donald J. Trump or Israel; this time what the Saudis are doing in Yemen is way beyond what the United States should tolerate.

“The two Sunni Muslim states have, first, added U.S. 9/ 11-vintage enemy al-Qaida to their and our allies in the war in Yemen, putting us and the terrorists who attacked us at home on the same side in the war against the Shiite Houthis there. The war in Yemen has basically nothing to do with us in any case. Second, the Saudis and their allies carried out yet another brutal air attack in Saada in the north of Yemen on Aug. 9 that killed among others at least 29 children in a school bus in a marketplace.” (“Dan Simpson: Beyond the pale in Yemen,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 14, 2018)

At the very least, we can keep the weapons we sell to Saudi Arabia from being used in the conflict. As Simpson says, “The war in Yemen has basically nothing to do with us in any case.”

The Case of the Missing Statement on MH17

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), passing over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, was downed by a Russian missile. All passengers and crew died. On the anniversary of that downing, in 2015, 2016, and 2017, the U.S. State Department has issued a statement to mark the anniversary.

Not this year.

According to ForeignPolicy.com, a statement was prepared but never issued. (Robbie Gramer, Amy Mackinnon. July 18, 2018)

Some speculated it might have to do with the private meeting on July 16 between U.S. President Trump and Russian President Putin.

A few days later, Australia and the United States held their annual meeting to discuss mutual security interests of the two countries (AUSMIN). The participants held a press conference following the meeting.

One reporter relayed a question from an Australian citizen whose three young children, along with their grandfather, were among those who died when MH17 was shot down. “Secretary Pompeo, will the United States, our friend and ally, help Australia hold Russia to account, and how? “

Secretary Pompeo expressed condolences, and said, “We . . . continue to support every effort through the Joint Investigative Team to hold the perpetrators for this heinous activity accountable.”

Several relatives of the children and grandfather have, nevertheless, criticized Trump for not holding Putin accountable for the MH17 downing.

Tattoos and Bibles

“Many people in El Salvador [a Central American country] say that the only way to quit a gang is in a body bag. But . . . Pentecostal churches offer a way out alive.” (The Economist 1848 Magazine, April/May 2018, “Salvation,” Sarah Esther Maslin)

The violence in El Salvador’s gang ridden culture is horrific. Tattooed gang members and police fight daily battles. A church in that country’s capital, San Salvador, the Eben-Ezer, attempts to make a difference. Besides religious meetings, members bake bread, which they sell for support.

The work offers no quick fix. Members sometimes revert to past ways, unable to quit drugs or drawn back to the former way of survival. A couple of pastors “acknowledge that they’re trying to do what many consider impossible: spirit away members of El Salvador’s powerful gangs. But they believe this is the country’s only hope.”

El Salvador is one of the most dangerous places on earth in terms of homicides, The gangs appear to meet the needs of young men from dysfunctional families searching for community and a place to belong.

Gangs offer protection and a kind of family. Serving a gang gives at least some sense of purpose.

Thus, the church as community is not a mere slogan. A refuge for former gang members must be powerful enough to overcome the expectation from police and the gangs themselves that this new life will fail.

Indeed, the struggle to survive in El Salvador is intense. One can only hope and pray for divine deliverance, even one person at a time.