Dateline ACT

Iraq 0303

Winning hearts and minds - or ensuring impartial aid

Amman, Jordan: March 31, 2003
By Nils Carstensen

 The war in Iraq increasingly looks set to last longer than many had expected and with that realization, concerns over the situation for Iraq’s civilians are mounting. Every day the coalition forces fight for control over cities like Basra, and continue an intense bombing campaign on Baghdad, the suffering and needs of Iraqi civilians intensify.

Many of Basra’s 1.7 million inhabitants have been getting by on little food and insufficient and dirty drinking water. This is an unsustainable and unacceptable situation and if it continues for much longer, it not only puts many civilian lives at risk, but could eventually lead to a situation where the coalition forces and their governments may very well be accused of possible violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions clearly forbid warring parties from using starvation as a weapon and it insists on free passage for humanitarian aid. Even when this is not the intention, the military reality in Iraq is increasingly likely to bring the warring parties on a collision course with International Humanitarian Law.

The situation around Basra could be just a taste of what will follow if coalition forces try to encircle Baghdad. Here is a population of almost four million inhabitants already made extremely vulnerable from a decade of UN sanctions, days or weeks of so-called "shock and awe" air attacks, dwindling food stocks, a communications breakdown and a fragile water supply system. In short, a humanitarian disaster in the making.

Whatever the reputation of the Iraqi regime and its treatment of its own citizens, the US, UK and other governments in the coalition will face stern criticism at home and abroad if they are perceived to be in violation of the very corner stones of International Humanitarian Law – the Geneva Conventions.

Food riots

Recent TV-coverage of ill-prepared relief distributions in Southern Iraq brought home images of what hardly amounted to more than food riots benefiting only the youngest and the toughest. Some aid workers see these incidents as examples of what may happen when the needs of sick, thirsty or hungry civilians are dealt with as part of a military strategy of "winning hearts and minds", rather than being handled by experienced and independent relief agencies.

"What we have seen over the last days in Southern Iraq is exactly an illustration of why the military should let experienced civilian humanitarian actors plan and carry out relief work," says Rick Augsburger, director of Emergency Programs of the US-based Church World Service (CWS) and co-chair of the Humanitarian Practice and Policy Committee of Interaction, a coalition of US relief agencies.

In Amman, Jordan, UNICEF's Martin Dawes, stresses that the chaotic scenes in southern Iraq can happen when you have "a distribution carried out with no proper assessment and when you do not have experienced staff on the ground to ensure that food reach those most in need."

Rick Augsburger sees this as more than just unfortunate incidents. "When the military can shift a quarter of a million people around the globe in a short time, you would think that if the care of the Iraq people were a primary objective, they would also be able to begin the process to ensure the access and space, humanitarian agencies need to assist people in an effective and impartial manner".

Lack of respect for experience

Rick Augsburger and his colleagues at Interaction are critical of the approach and attitude of the US administration on the question of humanitarian assistance to Iraq.

"What we have seen over the last weeks, has been disrespect of experienced humanitarian structures on the part of the US," says Augsburger, with reference to the manner in which the distinction between humanitarian and military operations is being deliberately blurred. The US administration has for instance set up, within the Ministry of Defense, an Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA). This is part of a US-led structure for planning and controlling future humanitarian operations in Iraq and includes a Humanitarian Operations Center (HOC) currently based in Kuwait. The HOC office is staffed by US, Kuwaiti and British military staff.

In doing so, the coalition forces and their governments have largely by-passed existing UN agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) with decades of experience in Iraq and major emergencies across the world. Many relief agencies also fear that such a deliberate blend of military command and humanitarian aid poses a real threat to the principles of neutrality and needs based distributions of aid, considered a crucial for effective relief work.

"This may create a destructive precedence not only for Iraq but for humanitarian operations in areas of conflict all over the world," says CWS's Rick Augsburger.

Pushing for UN coordination

Most major humanitarian agencies are now indicating that they are not ready to quietly let themselves be led by the US-led coalition’s HOC and ORHA structures. Instead they have thrown their weight behind the support for, in effect, re-instating the UN and its Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as the overall coordination body for current and future humanitarian operations in Iraq.

"Not one of our members is for instance ready to take ID-cards from the HOC in Kuwait but are working for a mechanism embedded in existing UN and NGO structures," says Joel McClellan of the Geneva-based Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response. This is an alliance of nine of the world’s largest and most experienced private humanitarian agencies, including Save the Children, the Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Council of Churches/Lutheran World Federation/ACT International. In order to ensure impartiality and independence, these agencies insist on UN coordination rather than coordination by a body ultimately answerable to the US military.

Daniel Augstburger of OCHA in Iraq summed up what may be at stake at a recent press briefing in Amman, Jordan: "The distribution of aid should be carried out by civilian organizations. Only such specialized organizations, UN or NGOs, can guarantee the impartial distribution of essential supplies. Their independence and experience is exactly what permits them to assist civilians in conflict situation and do that on a base of neutrality and professional needs assessments."

With the war dragging on and a far from rosy reception of the occupying forces by the Iraqi population, insisting on a solid distinction between humanitarian and military operations is becoming increasingly important. What to the outside eye could be perceived largely as a matter of lofty humanitarian principles, essentially boils down to concrete issues of access to needy populations as well as question of real life safety for humanitarian workers during and after the war in Iraq.