No quick fix

What to do about Aleppo? What to do about Iraq and ISIS? How can we, half a world away, help what nearly everyone acknowledges may be the worst human catastrophe of the 21st century?

These are questions I receive in emails, texts, and in question-and-answer sessions as I’ve been traveling the country speaking about this crisis and the disappearing Christians of the Middle East.

Sometimes, maybe, build a playground.

A WORLD reader who would like to remain anonymous has done just that. OK, four playgrounds. He is someone like me or you, someone unsure how to spend his resources but wanting to help truly needy people. Like Jacob when he saw Joseph’s bloodied coat, maybe like you, he’s rent some garments over all the evil in the world: “The needs are so overwhelming … everywhere,” he told me in one email.

None of us can do everything, but any of us can do one thing, or be part of one thing.

Most of us are tempted to stop there, go back to our own lives, fix our own broken things. He did not, but followed the situation in Iraq and Syria via WORLD and other news outlets, and at just the right time contacted one of the Christian-led groups listed on our home page under the header Aid for Iraqis. That began a relationship with David Eubank of Free Burma Rangers.

As with all providence, there’s a backstory: Dave is a former Army guy who in 1997 began offering relief services to Burma’s oppressed ethnic Karen people, many of whom have turned to Christ. He works with people of many faiths but freely shares his love for Jesus. Over time he’s developed teams of Karen people helping fellow Karen (we often forget the hurting have much to contribute). Some of them, seeing what was happening under ISIS, prodded Dave, even though they lived 4,000 miles away from Iraq: What can we do to help?

And that’s how Dave ended up in Iraqi Kurdistan, with a team of also-oppressed Southeast Asians, working and learning the territory already when he heard from our friend. They worked with locals to build the playgrounds—places for joy and life rebounding built with Burmese, Iraqi, and American hands on ground once fouled by ISIS.

The first two playgrounds are in the city of Sinjar (see “Where the rubble speaks,” July 23) where over 300 mostly Yazidi families have returned. A third playground is on Mount Sinjar, where about 50 families have survived harsh conditions after being chased there by ISIS in 2014. Saddam Hussein built the wall for this playground as a launchpad for Scud missiles aimed at Israel. The families are living in plywood huts built by U.S. patrols during the war.

Dave’s team installed a fourth playground in Faizalia, a town in Nineveh liberated by Kurdish forces just weeks ago. The town has lingering sorrow—ISIS killed men and raped women there, then a coalition airstrike killed a family of eight just before liberation came. Yet the playgrounds speak of life returning, filling with children and parents out in the open air after years living trapped in refugee camps or in fear of ISIS.

Work brings more work, and Free Burma Rangers also accompany the Iraqi army to bring needed food and supply deliveries into Mosul, where the battle to free that city from ISIS wears on.

The harvest is plentiful and the laborers few, but Dave’s group is just one of several worthy organizations doing the hard work on the front lines. Others provide housing, schools, needed medical services, counseling, and more. Their work is so fraught with danger, so full of pitfalls, it makes me weep. As Dave’s team helped distribute food on Nov. 28, it came under fire in Mosul. The Iraqi army traded round after round with the militants just a block away as residents scrambled to gather oil and their bag of rice, then hurry back to shelter.

None of us can do everything, but any of us can do one thing, or be part of one thing. Playgrounds, even, serve as an anchor in a war zone.

Email mbelz@wng.org