Iraqi student reunion hosted at FOR headquarters

This past week, during the holiday period after Christmas and over the new year, a group of young Iraqis gathered at the headquarters of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Upper Nyack, New York. They were all university students attending U.S. colleges, whose schooling was organized by the Iraqi Student Project — an initiative modeled on FOR's Bosnian Student Project from the 1990s. An article in today's Journal News, the newspaper of New York's Rockland & Westchester Counties, profiles the hope of these young people as they seek a better future than that seen amidst the war they left behind.

Sadly, one wonders if the spiraling violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the U.S.'s central role in those conflicts, means that a few years from now another, similar initiative may be necessary — when young people trying to emerge from war and to complete their college educations come into our collective consciousness. We shall see.