Former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband flew from his home in New York to the Greek city of Mytilene, on the rocky east coast of Lesbos, an island in the Aegean Sea. It was the fall of 2015, and Lesbos had for months been the primary landing point for refugees fleeing wars in Syria and Iraq. Now the steady flow was becoming a deluge—as many as 3,000 refugees a day. Local officials were overwhelmed.

Missoula has a head start. Thanks in large part to the initiative of several young mothers who started an organization called Soft Landing, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) is re-establishing an office in Missoula that will serve up to 100 incoming refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the year ahead. The IRC is an officially sanctioned Voluntary Agency (VOLAG) under U.S. refugee policy. 

The International Rescue Committee is temporarily suspending its operations in Afghanistan following the brutal killing of five of its local staff members, the latest in a string of violent attacks against aid groups in the country in just about three months. The aid workers, who were in their 20s, were part of a development project in Herat province under the Afghan government’s National Solidarity Program, of which IRC is a facilitating partner.