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You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. U.S. foreign policy is being transformed under the second Trump administration. And that has meant big changes at the U.S. government department in charge of foreign policy, the State Department. The department is facing dramatic cutbacks and is also absorbing the remnants of the gutted U.S. aid agency, USAID.
In a few minutes, we'll hear what a loss of aid funding looks like in Syria. First, NPR's Michelle Kellerman tells us about what some are calling a seismic shift at the State Department, a shift that has veteran diplomats worried.
For a hundred years, the American Foreign Service Association has supported U.S. diplomats at home and around the world. The Trump administration has stripped it of its collective bargaining rights with the State Department, something AFSA President Tom Iasgardi is now fighting in court. Without collective bargaining rights, any major initiatives, say on assignments or promotions, we no longer have eyes on.
That's not only bad for our members, I think it's bad for the Foreign Service. But it's not only the union's troubles that worry Yazgardi, a veteran Foreign Service officer. He says it's important for the U.S. to have a professional, nonpartisan Foreign Service to help Americans overseas, promote American businesses, and carry out the policy of the president. But right now, he's seeing a lot of talent leaving. We have more people who have retired internationally
in the first two and a half months of this year than in all of last year. So it's on pace to be a record year. And that's unfortunate because I think we want to also maintain, you know, that senior experience and knowledge. Mentorship is a huge thing in the Foreign Service. We might be losing some of that if we just see a run for the door from our senior Foreign Service members.
The State Department has canceled summer internships. There's a hiring freeze and talk of closing a couple dozen diplomatic posts, including embassies and consulates. Retired Ambassador Ronald Newman of the American Academy of Diplomacy says these kind of cuts can be done smartly. There's an intelligent way to reduce the size of the overseas footprint, but you can also do it stupidly. And
And what he's seen so far from the Trump administration gives him pause. That includes the dismantlement of USAID and a more recent decision to put a junior Foreign Service officer in charge of the State Department's Bureau of Global Talent. This is like, say, taking a second lieutenant and saying, OK, you should be chief of staff of the Army.
The State Department would not comment on personnel matters related to Lew Alosky, a lawyer and Trump loyalist who joined the Foreign Service four years ago. He's now acting as the top official in a bureau usually run by a veteran diplomat confirmed by the Senate. Senator Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on a foreign relations subcommittee overseeing the department, is alarmed. Another very alarming proposal would be to replace Senator
experienced, knowledgeable, career foreign service officers with political hacks. Van Hollen and other Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have written to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who used to be one of their Republican colleagues on the committee. Rubio has been pretty much AWOL. I will say that the Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have not been exercising their oversight policies.
responsibilities. Republican Chairman Jim Risch has so far backed the changes the Trump administration is making, saying he did not want USAID to survive. But he says he does plan to have Rubio appear before the committee at some point to talk about the reforms. Van Hollen says things are moving too quickly and America's soft power institutions are suffering. The Trump administration is doing grave damage to America's ability
to conduct diplomacy around the world, and they are leaving the door wide open for China to rush in. And we're already seeing that in many areas where AID has been dismantled. Definitely.
Democrats say they have seen one positive sign this past weekend. The man who oversaw the dismantlement of USAID, Pete Morocco, has now left the State Department. But in a statement, the department says it expects big things for Morocco's next mission, though it didn't elaborate. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, the State Department. One of the many places facing the consequences of USAID being dismantled is Syria.
There, a civil war is over and the dictator is gone, but 130,000 people are still missing. NPR's Lauren Freyer takes us to Damascus, where the search for answers is running into the Trump administration's foreign aid freeze.
This used to be your neighborhood? It's my building. This pile of rubble. Muhammad Ali stands in the ruins of Jobar, a Damascus neighborhood famous for a historic synagogue and for some of the bloodiest battles of the Syrian civil war. In every building there is a grave.
He points to mass graves all around him when the civil war ended late last year. We...
Ali hoped to give his dead relatives and friends a proper reburial. He's a civil engineer, and he's brought a backhoe to unearth these mass graves. But an argument breaks out between the medical examiner and government officials about what procedures need to be followed. Syria needs help with stuff like this, unearthing mass graves, collecting evidence for war crimes investigations.
But many of the groups with expertise in this rely on U.S. funding and have recently lost it. So when Jobar residents called for help from the White Helmets, Syrian first responders who've been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, they got put on a wait list. We are overstretched.
We're dealing with numerous mass graves, and we need the resources. The White Helmets deputy leader Farouk Habib says the U.S. Agency for International Development was his group's biggest funder. And when the Trump administration dismantled USAID, calling it rife with waste and fraud, the White Helmets lost a $30 million contract out of its $50 million annual budget. Well...
It hinders our survival. When dictator Bashar al-Assad fled, Syrian prisons sprung open. Government archives littered the streets. One of the people collecting those documents as evidence for possible trials in the future is Fadel Abdel-Ghani. We have thousands of thousands of documents, the names of those arrested,
and the date of when those being killed or being moved to a grave, and the name of the perpetrators as well. Abdel Ghani runs the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which also lost U.S. funding this year, and thus won't be able to open a new office in Damascus or hire a new researcher to go through all these documents.
This is happening at the very moment this work needs to ramp up, says Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes who visited Syria in February. Everybody I talk to in Syria, at every detention facility or at the courtroom in Homs, you know, 100 people are crammed in the hallways with pictures of their loved ones demanding action. They want that information.
Of course, we also need to begin the process of obtaining DNA samples from survivors through swabs of saliva and beginning this long process of excavating the mass graves. The mass grave in Jobar nevertheless remains untouched. The White Helmets and others are asking the Trump administration not to renew a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign aid that expires this month and help people like Majid Akadow.
who stands in a Damascus traffic circle with a candle receiving condolences. Kado has five relatives who were disappeared by the Assad regime. Only one of their bodies has been found. There's nothing worse, she says, to be so close to justice after 14 years of war and then to have your pain prolonged. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, Damascus.
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