Today’s headlines include bold statements such as “White House to okay negotiating with terror groups holding U.S. hostages” (CNN). In media interviews, Representative Duncan Hunter called the White House reforms “window dressing” and “a pathetic response to a serious problem”; Representative John Delaney said he was “disappointed” and “I think it’s (the new policy) short-sighted”. Quite frankly, these self-serving political statements are short-sighted. Both the new policies, and the process that brought them into being, represent one of the most striking and comprehensive examples of how the government can work rapidly and effectively to address a critical problem.
I had a small role in this policy review as an “outside expert”, being interviewed by staff doing the review and offering recommendations to the review team. I also participated yesterday in a closed-door briefing for former hostages, families of hostages, and others who participated in the review process or will be key participants in the new US government model for response to hostage-taking. The purpose of this post is to offer an overview of these new US policies specifically as they may affect cases involving missionaries and other faith-based workers. This will be followed with a Special Advisory offering in-depth analysis and recommendations for faith-based agencies to deal with the drastically changed US position on these cases.
Let me begin by saying that past US policy on hostage taking has been unclear, inconsistent, sometimes-ignored and has been sometimes unfriendly to hostage families and their employers (sending agencies to the faith-based world). Past US policy had failed to keep up with a rapidly-changing global terrorism environment and was ill-equipped to deal with political and religious demands of groups such as the Taliban and ISIS. Change was needed – broad-based and comprehensive change was needed. As I participated in this review, read the new policies, and listened to senior government officials speak at the yesterday’s briefing; it was abundantly clear that these new policies are in fact sweeping and will reshape how all of us deal with the kidnapping of US hostages overseas. I don’t believe that all of the new policies are perfect, I am very concerned with the manner in which these new policies are being reported and described, and it remains to be seen if some of the federal agencies most-criticized during the review process can change. But those comments notwithstanding, what is being announced by the US government today is an improvement by orders of magnitude over past policy and practice.
The core of the new policy is the creation of a fusion cell that will be the lead entity for the US response to all kidnappings of American citizens abroad. The fusion cell will be hosted by the FBI. Other government agencies, such as the State and Defense Departments and the intelligence agencies, will have fulltime staff assigned to this fusion cell. The lead representative for each US agency with a role in these cases will be working full-time in the fusion cell, alongside counterparts from every other agency. This fusion cell is where all intelligence, resources, options and operations dealing with US hostages will be managed. A major part of the work of this fusion cell with be a single-point-of-contact with families of hostages, hostage employers and other key stakeholders. New procedures to increase the amount of information to be made available and the speed of access to this information are included in these new policies. A Family Engagement Unit, staffed by FBI personnel, is a part of the fusion cell and will be this single-point-of-contact for families and other stakeholders. Families and other stakeholders will no longer have to seek out contacts and appointments in numbers of federal agencies as they work to free hostages.
Under these new policies, the role of the FBI is increased and the roles of other agencies are attenuated and more narrowly-focused. For example, the State Department will no longer be a primary point-of-contact for hostage families but will instead focus on its core mission of interacting diplomatically with other states in the support of hostage recovery efforts. CCI supports the increased role of the FBI. It is true that in years past, in some cases the FBI was not as helpful in cases of missionary kidnappings as it could have been. But we have observed an evolution of progress in interaction with the FBI, and with its support of faith-based agencies and missionary hostage families. As I reported in my last post, the past two hostage negotiations I conducted were done in close partnership with the FBI, and this was a model that worked and that should be replicated in the future.
As I mentioned earlier, CCI will be offering analysis and recommendations to agencies for engaging this new policy in a Special Advisory to be issued shortly. For now, I encourage all faith-based agencies to look beyond the rhetoric and politics surrounding this issue, and even to be willing to turn the page from past experiences with the US government that were less than productive. I am persuaded that the people who conducted this review and made the policy recommendations, and the individuals from the various agencies who will make up the new fusion cell all have a deep and genuine concern for hostages and their families. They cannot change the past, but they do represent the future of US government response to these tragic events. They are asking for a chance to show us that they are committed, they are passionate and they are more than competent. I urge you to give them that chance.