The Unfortunate Consequence of Militarizing Aid
Sara Chayes notes the inevitable consequence of militarizing aid in Afghanistan:
Every news article I’ve read has stressed that the slain humanitarian workers’ car was “clearly marked” with their organization’s emblem - as if that should protect the passengers. But I fear humanitarian organizations are failing to recognize the transformations in this country since the 1980s and 1990s that have profoundly altered their status. These organizations take their own good intentions for granted, and expect beneficiaries to do the same. They are used to their outsider status and their declared neutrality guaranteeing safe passage across the battle lines of societies in conflict.
This conflict, however, is different. Neither the forces fighting the Afghan government, nor ordinary people, make any distinction between international humanitarian workers, the Afghan government, and international military forces. All are seen as part of the same system…
The only place as dangerous to be as a NATO military convoy is a clearly marked humanitarian vehicle.
There is a legitimate debate to have about the value of Provincial Reconstruction Teams. By being so tightly integrated with the military, they provide a certain degree of security for reconstruction work. But their very nature—dozens of military personnel with one or two agents from the State Department, USAID, or the USDA—also means the teams are difficult to distinguish from other military units. Now that the Army is also aggressively using CERP funds to accomplish basic development work (sometimes, according to my sources at some PRTs, in complete disarray with the PRT), the line between “aid worker” and “soldier” is, for a rural Afghan, practically non-existent.
While this, again, means that some areas that would be too dangerous to receive aid get some, it also means that non-military aid workers, who are normally accorded neutrality in conflict zones, become targets. It isn’t clear what can be done now to change this—the militants have pretty clearly demonstrated they are heartless, murderous bastards who don’t care one jot about justice or their own fate—and without a concerted effort to empower Afghans to assist in the securing of their own towns, the situation will continue to deteriorate. But Ms. Chayes makes an acutely reasonable point: Afghans are the victims, and it is important to remember that.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Military Affairs.
Posted by Joshua Foust on August 16th, 2008
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Comments
Time: 8/16/2008, 5:50 pm
Sorry, but that’s wrong.
Even before PRTs were created, az-Zawahiri listed NGOs and IGOs as legitimate targets in his “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner”.
To him, they are all spies or missionaries (or both). The belief that strong anti-militarism or repeatedly declared neutrality may protect humanitarian workers is (somewhat understandable) but unfortunately false. To highly ideological people, they can’t be neutral. Their work (even if only indirectly) supports the Kabul government and is done by “crusaders”. Simple as that.
Time: 8/16/2008, 5:50 pm
Sorry, but that’s wrong.
Even before PRTs were created, az-Zawahiri listed NGOs and IGOs as legitimate targets in his “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner”.
To him, they are all spies or missionaries (or both). The belief that strong anti-militarism or repeatedly declared neutrality may protect humanitarian workers is (somewhat understandable) but unfortunately false. To highly ideological people, they can’t be neutral. Their work (even if only indirectly) supports the Kabul government and is done by “crusaders”. Simple as that.
Time: 8/16/2008, 10:52 pm
Be sorry all you want, it’s not wrong. The Taliban has a troubled but not universally hostile relationship with NGOs and IGOs under Mohammed Omar. The Taliban is not al Qaeda, even if their interests happen to coincide and they happen to collaborate. Similarly, neither is Hezb-i Islami. There is a spectrum of groups operating in Afghanistan, which is why I continually argue that it is misleading and stupid to refer to the enemy there as al-Qaeda, the Talibam, or even “extremists.” A sizeable portion of the insurgency are locals working for financial, and not ideological reasons.
Viewing the country simplistically produced strategic blindness. I think we’ve had enough of that, thanks.
Time: 8/17/2008, 2:46 pm
I certainly agree Joshua that their are downsides, and at the margin I agree your point is correct. Only at the margin however.
While the Taliban is not al Qaeda, it is the Taliban, and they have never been friendly with NGO’s, if more accepting than Bin Laden’s crew. They are, as their cooperation with al Qaeda prior to our invasion demonstrated, nasty enough. If we had organized our effort differently, undoubtedly this state of affairs would have come to pass anyway, as the Taliban has repeatedly demonstrated that they will resort to extreme measures to weaken and destroy Kabul if it is to their advantage. Ideologically and strategically they view the NGO’s as a threat, and they are right.
If they were concerned about such distinctions to any large degree, it wouldn’t matter. The same goes for other insurgents as well. They are not trying to be particular about it because they don’t care. Once that is realized it becomes rather inevitable that they would, if it was felt beneficial, target them, as well as any number of noncombatants.
This isn’t new, it has happened before in many different settings. So no new theory is required to explain it, even if it may be a small contributing factor.
Time: 8/17/2008, 11:36 pm
Well, the Taliban don’t treat humanitarian agencies as neutral because humanitarian agencies are (for the most part) not neutral. Ask anyone with the experience of working in Afghanistan during the 80s and they will tell you exactly how neutral the aid was and where exactly did the sympathies of this varied pool of humanitarians lay (you name it, Afghanistan had it: Catholic charities, Baptists, Maoists, Islamists, etc). Afghans did not encounter these aid workers as neutral: most of them wanted the Afghans to defeat the Soviets. I think the various memoires written during or after this period should convince us of this point.
Still it was a pious fraud to proclaim neutrality. (Even Ms. Chayes’s previous writings leave little doubt as to exactly where her loyalties lay and she can hardly claim neutrality as an aid worker–even though that may be how she is always presented.)
To make things short, there is no such thing as a neutral aid worker, the Pentagon has made it worse. Enterprising aid workers such as Ms. Chayes further blur this line.
Time: 8/18/2008, 2:16 pm
Mary Anderson started talking about do no harm in 1994, and recognized that aid has an impact on the conflict, and is therefore never neutral. It was naive of us to ever pretend it was.
More on do no harm here: http://www.cdainc.com/cdawww/project_profile.php?pid=DNH&pname=Do%20No%20Harm
Time: 8/18/2008, 5:16 pm
(I’ll be sorry once more, this time for the double-post. Mobile Internet isn’t always up to its promises. Feel free to delete one)
Anyway, as Lance and the Ignoble Savage have already pointed out important aspects I won’t repeat them. However, rest assured that I DO know the difference between AQ and “the Taliban” and their sometimes somewhat complicated relationship.
Still, I believe that, given az-Zawahiri’s function (along with bin Ladin) as ideological mentor of a broader movement, his writings might also serve as justifications for various insurgents operating in Afghanistan. If only because they pretend to serve an ideological goal. I’m also aware that, like in other insurgencies, there’s a number of people fighting for personal gains or because they were coerced to do so.
Sometimes financial interests and ideology (real or pretended) go hand in hand.
Besides that, even if an attacker is primarily motivated by financial reasons, what’s that to do with the “militarization of aid”? Unarmed NGOs seem to be fair game for someone seeking profits. They have modern equipment and won’t be hard targets.
Time: 8/19/2008, 7:56 am
You can talk this all you want, except reality presents a rather appalling precedent: NGOs who are accustomed to working in conflict zones like Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee worked in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan in the 90s. Now they feel so unsafe in NATO-occupied Afghanistan they’ve withdrawn.
That is appalling.
Time: 8/19/2008, 12:56 pm
It’s appalling, and it’s dangerous. But what protected MSF and IRC in Afghanistan in the 90s was not some airy-fairy belief in neutrality. It was the Taliban’s belief that the NGOs were not keeping the Taliban from acheiving its goals.
Combatants in Afghanistan no longer believe that, or are not organized enough to enforce rules. Mourning the end of neutrality is a dangerous sidetrack that keeps the real issue from being addressed.
Time: 8/19/2008, 1:26 pm
Alanna, I think we’re arguing the same thing. Ignore the whole “neutral” thing for a moment — NGOs used to be seen as separate from governments or militaries. As such, if they weren’t actively opposing the Taliban or mujahideen, they could usually operate, even if under appalling restrictions.
But the way the NGO/Army line has blurred lately is just incredibly dangerous for precisely that reason: any NGO becomes an instrument of Empire.
Time: 8/19/2008, 9:18 pm
Another explanation could be that the Taliban could offer safe passage and allow aid workers when they were the government. Now that they are not the government, their views have changed.
Time: 8/21/2008, 6:56 am
NGO’s are a business.
The client is USAID.
NGO’s take money from USAID distributing it in a foreign nation.
USAID is an arm of the US strategic aim for the host nation.
Twenty plus years ago at the beginning of this business relationship neutrality could be argued, and today the participates in NGO’s can still individually argue their personal “neutrality”, but the fact is they are a business today and a big business at that.
Why would anyone be surprised “simple” people see NGO officials staying in the highest priced hotels, driving expensive vehicles, interacting with the military forces, and living a very high standard of life compared to the locals simply by the fact they arrived by plane from abroad and wear Western clothes as part of the problem rather than the answer.
Ten years in Latin America have taught me you are not welcome at the table of an NGO in a cafe as a fellow American even though you live and work in that country. There is a definite elitist form of self righteous arrogance that is blatant to the locals, even if the NGO workers would strike you in the face to voice it.
NGO’s are paternalistic at best, skim vast portions of the money dealt out by USAID, but are a structure to pass aid to that the US Government can use and is comfortable with.
It is no surprise NGO workers were targeted in Afghanistan.
Time: 8/16/2008, 12:45 pm
Sarah’s piece makes an important set of arguments. But I wish she hadn’t gotten into the patronizing language of referring to the Afghan partners with whom aid workers work as “beneficiaries.” Lady Bountiful lives! Noblesse oblige and all that…