Globe Trot: Hundreds of Christians flee Sinai attacks

EGYPT: President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is calling on his government to help hundreds of Coptic Christians resettle after fleeing northern Sinai, where ISIS-linked terrorists have targeted them, killing seven Christians in the past three weeks. My question: Why not protect these communities in the first place?

NIGERIA: The problem facing Christians in Kaduna State is similar to Sinai, where residents now must survive under a 24-hour curfew following weeks of deadly attacks, but the government appears to be granting Islamic Fulani gangs impunity in carrying out the attacks.

UNITED STATES: President Donald Trump’s first speech to a joint session of Congress (not technically a State of the Union) won good press but was striking in its failure to address pressing foreign policy issues:

“The inward-looking speech did not lay out any foreign policy vision, and unlike his predecessors, he did not reaffirm America’s role as leader of the free world. Trump’s hour-long speech contained no reference to Russia’s hacking of the U.S. election, its invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea, China’s actions in the South China Sea, or the thousands of U.S. troops deployed in wars in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.”

IRAQ: The big assault on Mosul’s central district is underway, and Iraqi army forces—from what I saw firsthand several weeks ago and what I hear from Americans on the ground—are getting high marks for months of tedious urban war fighting: going door to door, clearing neighborhoods of ISIS nests.

Today, Iraqi forces uncovered 30 feet underground the base where ISIS trained foreign fighters and teens in southern Mosul.

On Feb. 27, American-led aid group Free Burma Rangers reached (warning: graphic but real images) a family in western Mosul with food support. Moments after the family headed away on their tractor, the vehicle struck an IED, killing the family’s 3-year-old daughter and wounding others.

INDIA: Compassion International today begins closing operations in India, where it has a 48-year history and reports working with more than 280,000 children. India’s Ministry of Home Affairs last year began blocking funds sent for foreign non-governmental organizations, and the group says it has run out of funding to continue its operation for a $50 million relief program—which employs 6,000 Indian workers and partners with nearly 600 churches in the country.