Even before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, getting an education was tough for the young woman from Kandahar.

Ms. A. says she endured violence, street harassment, and “daily threats on the way from men” – never mind family poverty – “so that I could be someone in the future, and get freedom and independence.”

But nothing prepared her for what she witnessed in late December, when a phalanx of Taliban gunmen came to her university to halt her final exam, as they enforced a new decree that banned women from higher education.

“I could not believe my eyes that it could be true,” recalls Ms. A., who asked that her full name not be used, for fear of retribution. Scores of fighters with assault rifles blocked the university entrance and tore through classrooms, as if on a military operation, prompting male students to shout at them to permit the female students to enter.

“It was so scary,” says Ms. A, whose hands and one foot were badly bruised when the Taliban hit students with their guns and dispersed them with live fire. “I still remember their wild eyes and long hair; I can’t forget their horrible faces and actions.”

Video of the clash taken by a classmate shows one male student getting pulled to the ground by a black turban-wearing Talib, who kicks and beats him hard as gunshots sound.

Such violent episodes have played out in different forms at universities across the country, illustrating the collision between Afghan women’s expectations of contributing publicly through education, work, and greater freedoms, and the ultraconservative Taliban’s demands that they stay at home, be subservient to their husbands, and disengage from society.

The women’s expectations were raised during 20 years of American and Western military and donor presence, which sought to build civil society. Now, a year and a half after the Islamist Taliban swept to power, earlier Taliban promises of allowing girls and women to study at high school and university and to work outside the home have been snuffed out by one edict after another that activists say are driven by misogyny.

Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Mothers and babies wait to receive help with nutrition at a clinic run by the United Nations' World Food Program, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Jan. 26, 2023. A WFP spokesperson says malnutrition rates in Afghanistan are at record highs. The distribution of aid has been severely impacted by a Taliban edict banning women from working at national and international nongovernmental groups.

Yet while Afghan women say their lives have grown darker under the Taliban, they nevertheless are often still struggling to find ways to get by, and cling to their determination to get an education and to work.

Still, as Afghans cope with the toughest winter in a decade, with widespread hunger made worse by a banking and financial crisis and the cutoff of donor funds to the Taliban, there is shock at how the Taliban have prioritized their zealous shrinking of the role of women. Much United Nations and Western relief work is in limbo, for example, over a separate Taliban ruling that bans Afghan women from working for them.

Existential questions

Among many other recent and restrictive edicts, women have been banned from visiting parks and gyms.

“Is it a sin being a girl? Is it a sin to learn? Is it a sin just to exist and breathe?” asks Ms. A. Those questions, she says, have addled her and even made her suicidal, as anger grows in her family about its own sacrifices to invest in her education, which now “appear a waste of time and money.”

Her existential pondering echoes across several interviews, conducted by The Christian Science Monitor over secure messaging apps and with the promise of anonymity, with young women in three regions of Afghanistan. Two had jobs working with the U.N. or international nongovernmental organizations while also pursuing advanced studies. All of that is now on hold.

“They will marry me off and that is the end of my every dream, [but] I don’t want to stop fighting for my education. I don’t want to stay backward,” says Ms. A. Still, she acknowledges that working and applying her studies “is not possible in Afghanistan for the next several years.”

Such restrictions imposed on Afghan women have drawn widespread global rebuke.

After a late January visit to Afghanistan, for example, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the ban on women working for the U.N. and relief agencies was “a potential death blow” that could have “catastrophic” results.

“Afghanistan is going through a savage winter, the second under the Taliban,” Mr. Griffiths told reporters at a press conference. “Last winter, we managed to survive. I don’t know if we can do this indefinitely, not with these bans.”

Mr. Griffiths said the Taliban promised him that new guidelines would enable women to work in humanitarian operations, and the U.N. was “asked to be patient.” But even though the Taliban reportedly permit women to work in the health sector, officials in Kandahar ordered that those working in local clinics must be accompanied by a male guardian.

Housebound in Kabul

Taliban restrictions have confined Ms. S. to her family home in the capital, Kabul. She started school in 2005 and was at the top of her class every year until graduation, when she aced the national Kankor exam, chose advanced study, and later took a high-profile job.

She stopped work when the Taliban came to power, and was identified by the Taliban as someone who took part in protests to preserve women’s rights that took place shortly thereafter.

“I had an immense fear that the Taliban will arrest me, because I was leading a women-based civil society organization,” says Ms. S. “Whenever I got home, my family was worried about me.”

Disappointed but unbowed, Ms. S. “decided to get back on my feet.” She started a master’s program in business administration.

Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Afghan female students stand outside Kabul University, Dec. 21, 2022, as Taliban security forces began upholding a higher education ban for women by blocking access to university campuses across the country.

“I had promised my parents that I would study and serve my family and my country,” she says.

But when she was about to take the final exam in December, there was instead a lesson in rough Taliban enforcement.

“The teachers were trying to prevent the Taliban from entering, but they came into our class,” recalls Ms. S. “We were very scared. We said to them, ‘Please let us pass our exam.’ But they took our books from our hands. They were very disrespectful and forced us out of the university.

“All of us women were crying, and I came home crying and disappointed. I threw away all of my books. I hate pens and notebooks,” she says. “I think that all my dreams have been lost and I have wasted my efforts.”

Undesired marriages

Similar frustration is voiced in northwest Afghanistan, where Ms. N. also describes how her final exams in Mazar-e-Sharif were blocked by the Taliban – and how one commander has now complicated her life even more.

When the Monitor first spoke to Ms. N., she described living “free like a bird” before the Taliban seized power, as an activist working for women’s and children’s rights.

But then her family’s economic situation deteriorated so far, with her father unable to keep his butcher shop open under Taliban rule, that he was forced to give away her 15-year-old sister in an underage marriage early last year – partly to pay Ms. N.’s university fees. Ms. N. said she could “never forgive herself” for that outcome.

As a personal form of resistance, Ms. N. then doubled down on her medical studies. But even that option has now evaporated.

When the Taliban banned women from higher education, her university decided to conduct all exams secretly within a week – three months early.

Yet within 10 minutes of starting the exam, “Taliban fighters entered the exam room with great aggression and started beating the professors and women,” recalls Ms. N. “They beat us ceaselessly, tore our exam papers, and violently dragged us from the exam room.”

And that is not the only Taliban problem Ms. N. has to contend with. A commander once saw her enter university, took a photograph, and forced a university administrator to give up her contact details.

The Taliban commander “calls and sends me messages, warning me, ‘If you don’t marry me, I will kill you and your father,’” says Ms. N. He goes to her house in a distant village once or twice a week, pressing her father for her hand.

“We are witnessing the Taliban in our society using women like slaves,” says Ms. N. “In our village, Taliban commanders want to marry for the second or third time. If the girl is not satisfied, the Taliban force her.”

The cumulative result for Ms. N. is that renewing hope is a challenge, compounded by not enough money to pay for her father’s medical treatment – or even to pay for much food or heat in the house.

“Our only effort was to acquire knowledge to save our nation and society from this bad misery,” says Ms. N.

“By banning women from education and work, the Taliban again want to make women’s lives dark. ... If a woman is not educated, then she will raise illiterate children to society, and we will not be able to solve our problems.”

Hidayatullah Noorzai contributed to this report.

Teenagers stand in line shivering in the snow to give blood. A few kilometers away, families stand with boxes full of winter clothes at a donation center. On social media, bank accounts are shared to send money for earthquake victims in southeast Turkey. 

People are filling the gap where the government is falling short of helping and rescuing victims of the Feb. 6 earthquake – a 7.8 magnitude temblor that is one of the deadliest ever to hit Turkey and Syria.

It’s part of a nationwide swell of unity and unconditional sympathy for the thousands of victims and their families emerging from the chaos and grief – even as Turks accuse the government of neglect in disaster response. 

Before the quake and dozens of aftershocks took more than 11,000 lives in Turkey alone, the nation was politically polarized, with resentment voiced against migrants who were blamed for an ailing economy and inflation. 

In an apparent move to curb disinformation and criticism, the government on Wednesday blocked social media – even though it’s a channel of communication for volunteers and families of victims.

But – at least for the short term – the disaster has palpably shifted the mood to one of solidarity in this deeply nationalistic country of 85 million.

Jihan Hajbakri, a Syrian journalist from Hatay on the border of Syria, says she’s grateful for the sudden unity. She lost 50 members of her family. Her husband and two children survived.

“There are many efforts to help, perhaps so far they have not reached everyone because of the disaster, but I appreciate what everyone is doing to help the victims,” says Ms. Hajbakri.

Suhaib Salem/Reuters

Volunteers serve meals to people in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey, on Feb. 8 in the aftermath of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit cities across southeast Turkey and Syria.

Dozens of countries are sending money, rescue teams, and even rescue dogs to help. The United States is sending two search and rescue teams, each with 79 people, and Los Angeles County is sending 100 firefighters and engineers. Even Afghanistan – in the midst of a dire humanitarian crisis – is sending $166,000 to both Turkey and Syria.

The relief efforts are complicated by the freezing weather – rescue teams and aid are just arriving in some areas three days later. Ten cities are officially in a state of emergency. 

Demir Karabacak is a student at Bosphorus University and a member of the youth political group Gençlik Komiteleri, which normally lobbies for worker rights. But they are collecting tents, sleeping bags, canned and baby food, and winter clothes and shipping them by road to earthquake victims. It can take more than 20 hours to reach some of the villages in the snow.

“We had to take action. The government doesn’t reach all the places. We took responsibility, even though it’s not what we normally do,” Mr. Karabacak says in an office full of somber volunteers, much like volunteer gathering points in virtually every neighborhood.

One woman comes in with a suitcase full of winter coats, and team members pack the clothes in boxes. Young men and women talk on the phone to their group members in the southeast. 

Mr. Karabacak reaches out to Mert Batur, a paralegal, who has just arrived in Malatya from Istanbul after 26 hours of driving with food and medicine for victims. Mr. Batur says 18 aid vehicles are on the way, but it’s not enough.

“We really need proper equipment to dig. Usually, the government’s emergency teams do this, but this earthquake is beyond the government’s capacity. It’s just too big. We all need to pitch in,” Mr. Batur says, his voice shaking from the cold outside.

SOURCE:

U.S. Geological Survey

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

In Hatay and Kahramanmaraş, entire blocks have been reduced to rubble, and nowhere is safe inside because of structural damage and possible aftershocks. Roads and airports are damaged, and there are few flights to get people in and out. 

Survivors say they had to dig with their hands to find loved ones under fallen buildings. 

The journalist Ms. Hajbakri is safe with her children now in the capital, Ankara, while her husband stays behind in Hatay to search for missing relatives. She’s grateful, but also disappointed that the Turkish government wasn’t faster in sending rescue teams and aid. More lives might have been saved, she says. 

“There was no rescue team. The city was not prepared for such a catastrophe,” Ms. Hajbakri says, crying on a phone interview. “My home is leveled. The help is chaotic. Everyone is trying to rescue who they know. People now only go to the buildings where they hear people calling out.”

But the calls are fewer and fainter, as fatalities increase, people interviewed in four cities say.

For the moment, quake chaos has relieved high political tension that was mounting for upcoming elections May 14. In addition to blatant xenophobic resentment of Kurdish and Syrian migrants and immigrants, Turks on all political sides were casting blame back and forth for inflation, censorship, the high cost of housing, and security concerns. And as the nation recovers, there are already questions about what happened to funds from tax hikes for preparedness and enforcement of building codes following the major earthquake in 1999 that killed 17,000 people near Istanbul.

Courtesy of Hunadah Hariri

Hunadah Hariri (in red cap), a Syrian graduate student and activist who fled the war in Syria to live in Turkey, survived the Feb. 6 earthquake in Gaziantep and made it to a shelter with her sister, 10-year-old niece, and cat.

Hunadah Hariri, a Syrian graduate student and activist who fled the war in Syria to live in Turkey, survived the earthquake with her sister and 10-year-old niece in their four-story apartment in Gaziantep. They are staying in a shelter in an art center with their cat.

Despite the national solidarity, Ms. Hariri, no stranger to discrimination, says the poorer neighborhoods suffer disproportionately, losing more lives because of older, shoddier buildings.

Nevertheless, she’s touched by the camaraderie.  

“One very positive feeling that I was very surprised at was the overwhelming warmth of people. Honestly, it was magical,” Ms. Hariri says. “I’m in contact with people I have not been in contact with in years, and they are so genuine. And you start appreciating things. We were lucky. 

“But I feel guilty that so many others are under the rubble.”

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

From left to right: James Baker, former deputy general counsel at Twitter; Vijaya Gadde, former chief legal officer at Twitter; Yoel Roth, former global head of trust and safety at Twitter; and former Twitter employee Anika Collier Navaroli are sworn in before testifying during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing about Twitter's handling of a 2020 New York Post story on Hunter Biden and his laptop, in Washington, Feb. 8, 2023.

House Republicans used their new majority today to launch long-promised hearings into the Biden family’s business dealings, kicking off with a probe into why Twitter suppressed a New York Post story that was unflattering to Joe Biden just three weeks before the presidential election. 

The Oct. 14, 2020, story suggested that the Biden family had inappropriately used its influence for financial gain, citing emails the paper said it obtained from a copy of a hard drive that had belonged to Hunter Biden, the president’s son. The Post said that Trump ally Rudy Giuliani had given them the copied data, which was reportedly recovered by a computer repair shop in Delaware after the owner failed to pick it up. The cache included indecent images and videos of the younger Mr. Biden.

No other media outlets appear to have had access to the material at the time, and the Post was not able to get the FBI or Hunter Biden’s lawyer to confirm whether the laptop belonged to him. At the time, the emails were widely dismissed as likely Russian disinformation, but forensic analyses commissioned by media outlets later indicated they were authentic.

Oversight Committee Chair James Comer brought in three former Twitter executives in a bid to establish accountability for what Republicans have characterized as an unfair collusion of government, Big Tech, and media to sway the election. 

“We’ve witnessed Big Tech autocrats wield their unchecked power to suppress the speech of Americans to promote their preferred political opinions,” said Chairman Comer in his opening statement, arguing for the importance of allowing broader social and political debate on these platforms, which he called the “virtual town square.”

Over the course of the sometimes rancorous hearing, Democrats alternated between countering GOP claims and redirecting attention to more pressing concerns. Rep. Daniel Goldman, who was the lead Democratic counsel in the first Trump impeachment, dismissed the hearing as a “fishing expedition.”

The Hunter Biden laptop controversy offers a window into a much broader disagreement over how the government, Big Tech, and the media define and address “disinformation,” a topic that has become highly polarized. Many on the right believe the left and their allies at social media companies have used the label to suppress or discredit inconvenient or politically damaging information, constricting legitimate free speech in the public arena. 

Those on the left see the right as unconcerned about the real-world harms disinformation can cause – including from foreign sources such as Russia, whose 2016 election interference was well documented in a bipartisan Senate report, or from domestic extremists, such as those behind the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

“Actors from both sides of the political spectrum see the threat of disinformation differently,” says Anthony DeAngelo, a former congressional staffer and now head of public affairs for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, whose work includes tackling polarization and disinformation. “It’s important that those concerns – of free speech and the dangers of disinformation leading to offline violence – are weighed carefully and discussed openly.”

The hearings underscored the huge social dilemma of whether and how to moderate information being disseminated online – not only in foreign disinformation campaigns, which remain an ongoing threat, but a host of other scenarios. Other issues raised by lawmakers in the hearing were (by Republicans) Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policies, which suppressed tweets from Harvard- and Stanford-educated doctors, and (by Democrats) the company’s willingness to bend policies under pressure from then-President Donald Trump and its failure to rein in violent rhetoric from him and his supporters, including ahead of the Jan. 6 attack. Yet no one, including the companies themselves, seems to have an easy answer.

“Someone will have to make choices about the governance of online spaces,” Yoel Roth, the former global head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, told the committee. “The basic job of trust and safety is to strike this balance between the harms of restricting free speech and the dangers of not getting it right.”

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

House Oversight and Accountability Committee member Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican whose Twitter account was suspended, questions former Twitter executives about allowing child pornography to spread online while suppressing dissenting views about COVID-19 policies and vaccinations.

“Bizarre political stunt”

In a statement, the White House dismissed today’s hearing as “a bizarre political stunt,” describing it as the latest effort by “extreme MAGA members” to “re-litigate the outcome of the 2020 election.”

“This is not what the American people want their leaders to work on,” said White House spokesman Ian Sims. 

Among the emails featured in the initial New York Post story was one from April 2015 in which a Ukrainian executive at the Burisma energy firm thanked the younger Mr. Biden, a highly paid Burisma board member, for the opportunity to meet his father, who was then vice president.

Trump allies have claimed that when Vice President Biden pushed to fire Ukraine’s top prosecutor later that year, his goal was to stop a probe into Burisma. But Ukrainian officials say the probe was dormant by the time the vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid in December 2015 until the prosecutor was fired, which occurred in March 2016. Biden allies have pointed out that European partners had also pushed to fire the prosecutor for his failure to investigate corrupt politicians in the country, who they said were conduits for improper Russian influence. 

In the hearing, Congressman Goldman called the New York Post’s charge that the vice president got the prosecutor fired to avoid an investigation into Burisma “categorically false.”

Five days after the Post story was published, a letter signed by dozens of former national security figures said the appearance of the purported Hunter Biden emails just before Election Day had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The signees emphasized that they did not know if the emails were genuine and that they did not have evidence of Russia’s involvement.

Twitter, after getting roundly criticized for not doing more to block Russian meddling in the 2016 election, placed warning labels on the story. It also briefly prevented users from sharing it via direct message and suspended the Post’s account. In a thread that evening, Twitter’s safety team explained that the material violated its hacked materials policy. Twitter quickly reversed course, but the Post’s refusal to delete its initial tweets resulted in its account suspension lasting for two weeks.

Internal Twitter communications released late last year by new owner Elon Musk to a handful of journalists have given Republicans new fodder for their claims of collusion.

Patrick Semansky/AP

Hunter Biden (left), son of President Joe Biden, walks to a motorcade vehicle as President Biden pauses to speak with greeters at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York, Feb. 4, 2023. The Bidens were in Syracuse to mourn the passing of a relative.

Twitter erred, witness says

The communications, which were primarily published in screenshot snippets on long tweet threads and have not been independently verified by the Monitor, indicate that Twitter executives debated whether they had reason enough to restrict the spread of the Post story based on their hacked materials policy. 

“I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe,” wrote Trenton Kennedy in a screenshot of a message shared by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.

The communications also show that throughout 2020 Twitter executives were in frequent touch with the FBI, which repeatedly cautioned Twitter of the possibility of a Russian hack-and-leak operation – particularly in October 2020, to sway the election. Michael Shellenberger, another independent writer given a cache of company emails, said it appeared that the FBI, which had subpoenaed the laptop in December 2019, was priming Mr. Roth, the former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, to interpret any upcoming news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation. In August 2020, FBI agent Elvis Chan shared information with Mr. Roth about the Russian hacking group APT28, which had been behind the 2016 election interference.

Mr. Roth said in the hearing that as the head of the Twitter team that looked into Russia’s 2016 election interference, he saw the Hunter Biden laptop story through the lens of that work, but that Twitter “erred” in suppressing the New York Post story. In an appearance at a Knight Foundation conference after leaving the company this fall, he elaborated on that, saying the story “set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells,” but didn’t rise to a level that would justify its removal from Twitter. 

In March 2022, The Washington Post engaged two outside experts to review a copy of the hard drive data, which had been given to them by a Republican operative. The experts said there was evidence that the hard drive had been repeatedly accessed and new files added, which the GOP source had forewarned them about. The experts did, however, confirm the authenticity of 22,000 of nearly 129,000 emails, including the main one featured in the original New York Post story. This, though, did not rule out the possibility of a hack into verified accounts. The experts also cautioned that the data was “a mess” and the authenticity of many other files on the copied hard drive, which included personal photos and voicemails, could not be verified. 

A subsequent CBS-commissioned forensic analysis of a “clean” copy of the hard drive, which was obtained directly from the repair shop owner’s lawyer, found no signs of tampering or fabrication.  

A tipping point for Big Tech

This Congress is likely to further probe Big Tech’s decisions about what kind of content to allow on their platforms and how to apply and enforce policies meant to thwart disinformation.

“I think right now we’re in a tipping point,” says Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst and author of “Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.” The “Twitter Files” released by Mr. Musk are part of that tipping point, shedding light on what he calls “the rudiments of censorship” in how government has influenced social media and traditional media.  

At the heart of the debate is how Big Tech can foster trust in an age when users are increasingly becoming entrenched into political camps that inherently question not only opinions but also facts put forward by the other side. And that goes far beyond the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. 

“Members should maintain their focus on the very important discussion of how platforms like Twitter make decisions in the content they promote and demote,” says Mr. DeAngelo of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “It’s bigger than one example, and advocating for transparency is something members from both parties can get behind.”

Staff writer Stephen Humphries contributed to this report. 

BRIAN INGANGA/AP

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield (center) visits the International Organization for Migration in Nairobi, Kenya, on Jan. 28, 2023. She visited to highlight the announcement of Welcome Corps, a private sponsorship program allowing ordinary Americans to welcome refugees.

From California to Connecticut, Americans have welcomed thousands of recent arrivals seeking refuge over the past two years. Building on sponsorship models for Afghans, Ukrainians, and Venezuelans, the Biden administration last month launched an initiative called Welcome Corps. 

The State Department announced the new program on Jan. 19 as the “boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.” Implemented by a consortium of six organizations, groups of volunteer “sponsors” will offer short-term financial and logistical help to refugees beginning to rebuild their lives.

Welcome Corps is “hearkening back to the historic roots of our refugee resettlement approaches in the United States, and tapping into the generosity of everyday Americans,” Julieta Valls Noyes, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, tells the Monitor. 

Refugee advocates see several gains ahead, including enhanced local support for new arrivals and more ways for the receiving communities to engage. During some 15 years of refugee resettlement work, Kit Taintor says she’s seen more people desire to help refugees than there are opportunities. 

“What Welcome Corps really allows us to do is to capitalize on that interest, that compassion, and that humanitarianism in real ways,” says Ms. Taintor, vice president of policy and practice at Welcome.US, a member of the Welcome Corps consortium. 

In its first year, Welcome Corps aims to recruit at least 10,000 private sponsors to assist at least 5,000 refugees, who could begin arriving as soon as April. 

How does this compare with typical resettlement?

Refugees have been persecuted or fear persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. They are approved for resettlement by the U.S. before they enter the country. (Asylum-seekers, by contrast, may apply for asylum once they arrive.) 

Since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.S. has primarily resettled refugees through a network of nonprofit resettlement agencies. But resettlement has historically involved some level of collaboration between the government, resettlement organizations, and private individuals. 

On the heels of World War II, the U.S. “often prioritized for admission those who had family or friends in the United States, or a faith community willing to support them, because that made them less likely to become a public charge and more likely to assimilate quickly,” writes Maria Cristina Garcia, professor of history at Cornell University, in an email. 

Today, refugees are referred to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program through designated entities like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or U.S. embassies. By mid-2023, Welcome Corps sponsors themselves may be able to identify refugees for referral, with the goal of eventually supporting those refugees stateside. The State Department says it sought advice from Canada, which, like Australia, has its own private sponsorship system.

What is driving this change?

Welcome Corps is meant to “strengthen and expand” the country’s capacity for resettlement, according to the State Department, after a downsizing of the refugee program under former President Donald Trump and pandemic challenges. Assistant Secretary Noyes says the initiative is part of the administration’s broader “modernization agenda” in refugee resettlement, which includes increasing admissions and processing cases faster.

The reforms come as President Joe Biden has set the refugee admissions “ceiling” at 125,000 for the second fiscal year in a row. That’s double the limit he set in his first year in office, and well above the historic low of 15,000 admissions originally set for 2021 by Mr. Trump near the end of his term.

The current ceiling “was an ambitious goal, with the recognition right at the outset that we wouldn’t be able to achieve it right away,” says Assistant Secretary Noyes. “[President Biden] wanted to set a standard both in order to give us something to work toward, but also to show U.S. humanitarian leadership to other countries around the world and to sort of inspire them to have similar levels of ambition.” 

Yet the U.S. has typically admitted fewer refugees than the cap allows, including the last fiscal year when 25,465 out of 125,000 available spots were filled. Within the first three months of fiscal year 2023, which began in October, 6,750 refugees were admitted. 

But support for the new program is strong. YouGov polling found that most Americans – 3 out of 5 – support Welcome Corps, though it’s more favored by Democrats (76%) than Republicans (53%) and independents (51%). More than 20,000 people signed up for email updates in the first week of the launch, with more than 11,000 registrations for information sessions.

Based on observations that people’s direct interactions with refugees can generate empathy for them, Welcome Corps is “good for garnering political support for refugee resettlement,” says Hans Van de Weerd, senior vice president of resettlement, asylum, and integration at the International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency and Welcome Corps member. 

What does sponsorship involve? 

Interested American citizens and permanent residents will need to form groups of at least five adults (older than 18), complete training, pass a background check, create a “welcome plan,” and raise at least $2,275 per refugee. Each approved “private sponsor group” will commit to aiding a refugee for at least 90 days, such as picking them up at the airport and helping secure housing and jobs. The goal is to give refugees a jump-start toward self-reliance, says Assistant Secretary Noyes, rather than “create this situation of dependency in perpetuity.”

Oversight of sponsors will include mandatory reporting to a partner organization, according to the Community Sponsorship Hub, which is leading the program in partnership with the State Department. All refugees will receive information about their rights and responsibilities, along with how they can report any concerns, says Community Sponsorship Hub Executive Director Sarah Krause.  

Others note that while private sponsors may excel at tasks like amassing donations, resettlement work is challenging, and can include connecting refugees with trauma-
informed care. 

“We just hope that the program is implemented thoughtfully to make sure that the sponsors themselves are prepared for what is really a weighty commitment,” says Timothy Young, director of public relations at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. He says his resettlement agency is not a member of Welcome Corps but supports it. 

Ideally, volunteers in private sponsor groups will represent a range of skills or expertise, says Mr. Van de Weerd of the International Rescue Committee. “If they bring their heart ... that’s the starting point.”

A short drive away from the famed Angkor Wat temple ruins in Siem Reap, Cambodia, another spectacle has been quietly attracting visitors for years. Every evening, under the big top at the Phare Circus, audiences watch mesmerized as acrobats and artists jump and somersault, dance and paint, execute midair flips and twist into pretzels. 

Forgetting the discomfort of the hard wood seats, the viewers cheer and clap at the entertainers, who work in perfect harmony as a team.

Watching them smile under the spotlight, it is difficult to imagine that these confident young men and women come from impoverished or troubled families. Celebrating its 10th anniversary on Feb. 8, Phare Circus simultaneously provides young Cambodians with a livelihood and showcases the talents of students at Phare Ponleu Selpak, a not-for-profit arts school located in Battambang, Cambodia.

Phare Ponleu Selpak – meaning “The Brightness of the Arts” – was set up in 1994 by French art teacher Véronique Decrop, who practiced art therapy at refugee camps, and a small group of refugees who returned home from Thailand after the brutal Khmer Rouge regime ended in 1979. Apart from giving children a safe space away from crowded homes and dangerous streets, the school aims to revive arts that were decimated during the Cambodian genocide. Their restoration has brought healing and joy to performers and audiences alike. 

“The Khmer Rouge left us with zero – 1,000 years of history of the Cambodian empire reduced to ash. More than 90% of the masters were killed or just disappeared,” says musician and genocide survivor Arn Chorn-Pond, who founded Cambodian Living Arts, an organization that provides arts education scholarships.

Preserving the arts “gives young Cambodians something to hold on to from their past,” he says. “It also gives them an identity; it gives them confidence; it gives them the voice to tell their own stories to the world.”

Charukesi Ramadurai

Performances at Phare Circus typically include a combination of dance, music, art, and acrobatics, along with generous doses of comedy. The artists train for several years at the Phare Ponleu Selpak school in Battambang before they get recruited to perform in front of general audiences at the Siem Reap circus.

A place of healing

Tor Vutha, one of the co-founders, says the school was their way of paying it forward, or as he puts it, “transfer the knowledge from our heart to the community.” He says that the organization started small and evolved along with the needs of locals. 

“Many children were suffering from war trauma and needed help,” he recalls. “We had received art in the refugee camp and embodied its benefits, so we wanted to share the same with the children and youth to help them overcome their traumas and help the community rebuild.”

In fact, Craig Dodge, director of sales and marketing at Phare Circus, says that it wasn’t meant to be a vocational school at all. “At the very core, it’s art therapy, and about healing and expressing yourself,” he explains. “And although it started with the art classes, they found that young kids can’t always sit still, so then they added more active things like drama and dance.”

Today, the school offers training in graphic design, animation, music, and other arts, and students are free to explore their interests. It takes in more than 1,000 children annually, many of whom have gone on to perform at Phare Circus. 

Raising the big top

The idea for the formal circus – students and teachers had always been putting on shows at the Battambang campus – came when the founders realized they needed a dedicated space to showcase the students’ hard work.

Charukesi Ramadurai

Artists get ready for the evening show in the small dressing room behind the big top in Siem Reap. Facilities are basic at the Phare Circus, costumes are hand stitched, and the performers eat, sleep, and rehearse here when their show is on.

“They knew that running a school is quite different from running a business, so they decided to do it as a separate entity,” Mr. Dodge explains. And so Phare Performing Social Enterprise came into being, with the profits going back into the same business – in this case, the salaries of the artists and upkeep of the circus.

Mr. Dodge, who has been with Phare Circus from the beginning, remembers it starting back in 2013 with an “outdoor stage, plastic chairs, rain.” It has since come a long way.

In addition to the main circus tent, the Phare campus in Siem Reap hosts local musicians, food stalls, and a small crafts shop. Families are welcomed at the main gate by jugglers and acrobats, who give them a taste of what awaits inside. Phare Circus has produced 23 different shows over the past decade, with more than 5,000 performances in front of over a million spectators, including foreign tours in countries such as the United States, Australia, Japan, France, Italy, and Singapore.

All shows are strongly rooted in Cambodian culture, from dances depicting rural life, to a juggling act that pokes fun at tourists, to acrobatic routines inspired by Cambodian mythology and folklore. One show, “White Gold,” explores the significance of rice for Cambodian people. Others deal with healing after war and draw from the founders’ memories of the Khmer Rouge era. 

Wendell Johnson, an American retiree in Siem Reap, has been a regular visitor to Phare Circus since its first year of production. He says what keeps him coming back are “the smiles, the incredible athletic abilities, and the storylines” that vividly connect Cambodia’s past to the present. He also praises the artists’ grit and determination, noting that he’s seen performers immediately redo failed stunts and succeed. 

Transforming lives

The Phare Circus performers train for several years at the school, building both their skills and self-esteem, before they’re eligible to work at the circus. Almost all come from large families with limited resources, and being at school keeps them away from hunger, drugs, abuse, and trafficking. The circus is also an opportunity to travel the world, and pays well. 

The steady work has been particularly transformative for the handful of female performers, whom young girls back in Battambang look up to as inspirations. 

Charukesi Ramadurai

A juggler welcomes visitors as they start arriving for the evening show at Phare Circus. Like other performers, he is a student of the Phare Ponleu Selpak school in Battambang, three hours away from Siem Reap.

Srey Chanrachana started training at Phare Ponleu Selpak in 2007 at the age of 11. Back then, her family of five depended on the irregular income of her taxi driver father.

“We used to live in a very small house where we would all sleep together, and our roof would always leak whenever there was rain,” she recalls. Now they live in a larger, more comfortable home. 

With her earnings, she has also enrolled in English and computer classes to further her education, and she says working at the circus has made her more confident.

Like everything else, the Phare Circus took a hit during the pandemic, with the country closed to tourists and the circus shut for nearly two years, but is now back in action with regular, packed shows. Mr. Johnson and other fans welcome its return.

“While I have seen some changes in the shows as they add a new stunt or two, what I have not seen change is the enthusiasm, and the sense of pride and joy among the artists,” he says.

Reuters/file

Representations of cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum and DogeCoin.

For those planning to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday – if only for the ads – don’t expect to see commercials for cryptocurrencies. During last year’s game, such ads were so common – featuring LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Larry David – it was dubbed “Crypto Bowl.” On Monday, Fox announced the show will not feature any crypto ads. Last November the cryptoverse nearly collapsed after the fall of FTX and similar companies. Their Ponzi-like demise left a dust cloud of distrust in digital assets.

The ad silence may be welcome. The industry is using 2023 as a time of reflection and rebuilding, learning what trust exactly entails for the moatlike, internet-only currencies. As Sandra Ro, CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council, advised the remaining crypto chieftains in the news site CoinDesk: “Regroup with humility, rebuild with integrity, regain trust, rise again.”

The era of virtual, decentralized finance was built on a promise of transparency, or the idea that blockchain technology could replace trust in the integrity of humans. Yet it was the opaqueness and secret self-dealing of companies like FTX that led to their undoing.

The surviving crypto companies now promise more openness and honesty, such as showing proof of capital reserves. Traditional finance companies are also moving into the industry, while regulators hint at guardrails for crypto users and investors. “Preventing risk and discouraging harmful behaviors and bad actors requires communication, cooperation, accountability, transparency, and reliance on relationships,” said Rostin Behnam, chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in a speech this week about the industry.

Worldwide, business is trusted more than other institutions. The latest index of trust, released last month by the communications giant Edelman, finds 62% of people in 28 countries see business as both competent and ethical. That compares with 51% for governments and 50% for the media.

Businesses may know better than most that trust is a valuable currency, difficult to earn and very easy to lose. When an industry like cryptocurrency falters, the search begins for qualities to rebuild trust. Actions speak louder than a Super Bowl ad.