War in Afghanistan and Iraq:
Aberration, or the Shape of Things to Come?

By James K. Bishop

I. The 1990s witnessed a coincidence of tactical-level viewpoints
InterAction, an alliance of U.S. based humanitarian and
development NGOs working around the world, has been actively engaged for more than a decade in assisting the U.S. military to prepare for humanitarian and peacekeeping missions overseas. InterAction's help has taken the form of educating military units on the principles that guide humanitarian action, as well as on the culture and operations of relief organizations. InterAction staff and participating members were motivated by the expectation that the U.S. military would be more likely to respect humanitarian values if they knew what they were. It has also been our hope that the U.S. military would also appreciate the role of NGOs, including the idea that there was no need for them to undertake activities for which NGO personnel were better prepared.

Coincidently during the same decade, several senior U.S. military commanders became vocal advocates of cooperation with humanitarian workers, based on their favorable experiences working alongside NGOs in northern Iraq, Somalia, and eastern Zaire during the same period. They had learned that NGOs, in responding to the needs of the civilian populations in their areas of responsibility, would facilitate the achievement of their humanitarian and peacekeeping objectives. Some came to appreciate that radical difference in dress, hairstyles, and work styles overlay significant similarities. Like members of the armed forces, NGO employees were willing to endure family separation, physical discomfort, and personal danger in pursuit of ideals.

These symbiotic interests prompted frequent requests for InterAction to provide speakers at military schools, conferences and seminars, as well as invitations to role-play NGOs in command post exercises. In addition, InterAction staff members were occasionally asked to draft or edit chapters in military publications describing the roles of humanitarian organizations in disaster response. The demand for speakers so far exceeded the number of available staff and alliance members that InterAction produced a 40-minute video/DVD to give its "cultural exchange" program even greater reach.*

II. Educational efforts and hard-won experience is eclipsed by a confusion of roles and a lack of communication
Today InterAction continues its educational programs with the U.S. military, but with less conviction that they will achieve the objectives previously described. Beginning with Kosovo, and now in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. NGOs have found themselves for the first time since the war in Vietnam dealing in a significant way with belligerent U.S. military forces, and in Iraq for the first time with U.S. servicemen and servicewomen who are participants in a military occupation of a foreign country.

Resentment has arisen over what many NGOs perceive as strategic level insensitivity to humanitarian principles and disregard for the safety of humanitarian agencies.

In the case of Kosovo, many of the refugee camps sheltering Kosovars who fled to Macedonia and Albania were constructed and, in some cases, managed by military units because several NATO members wanted to emphasize the alleged humanitarian motives for their intervention. Many NGOs objected to this politicization of humanitarian assistance. However, some U.S.-based humanitarian agencies proved more willing than their European counterparts to agree that a modicum of military assistance was needed to meet the logistics requirements of providing shelter and other live-saving services for the one million refugees who fled across their homeland's borders within just a few weeks after bombing commenced.

It is the experience in Afghanistan that has been primarily responsible for an estrangement between some U.S.-based NGOs and the U.S. military. Anxious to win Afghan hearts and minds while conducting military operations, which inevitably resulted in civilian casualties, U.S. Army Civil Affairs units undertook humanitarian projects more typically implemented by NGOs. But while trying to make friends for the U.S. military, a tactic of war, they dressed in civilian clothes to disguise themselves from their enemies, usually with handguns poking out of their pockets for use in case their opponents recognized them correctly as combatants. Special Forces units engaged in similar activities in similar dress while participating in combat and intelligence missions.

This blurring of military and humanitarian roles outraged many NGOs, who were rightly apprehensive that Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives mistaking them for soldiers in disguise would target them. Their concern extended beyond their own safety. They feared that attacks on aid workers would result in the withdrawal of NGO support, leaving many Afghans without the life-saving services the NGOs provided. Recent events, which saw eighteen Afghan national employees of NGOs killed within fourteen months, have proven the validity of this concern as numerous NGOs have curtailed their activities in the provinces involved.

Another source of NGO frustration with the U.S. military in Afghanistan has been the restriction of peacekeeping forces, known as the International Security Assistance Force, to the Kabul area. In fairness to the U.S. military, this was a strategic level political decision and therefore beyond their control. NGO angst at the absence of peacekeepers where they were working in the countryside was to be placated by assignment of U.S. military units outside the capital, which would create an "ISAF effect" in their areas of assignment by using "reach back" authority to summon coalition combat units to counter violence interrupting humanitarian operations. However, when the first of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) were deployed, they would not deal with "green on green" or intertribal violence, had no reach back authority, and started up their own humanitarian projects without consultation with the NGOs already operating in the area. Moreover, the world media was told by the Pentagon that the PRTs would have important roles in supervision and implementation of reconstruction projects in addition to their humanitarian program portfolios.

The war in Iraq further exacerbated relations between the U.S. military and relief agencies. In the run up to the war, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) refused to discuss its plans for humanitarian assistance with the NGO community. When the U.S. Department of Defense was assigned responsibility for post war humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, as opposed to U.S. civilian institutions such as the U.S. Department of State and its humanitarian and developmental agencies, NGOs felt their need to preserve their independence was being ignored by U.S. leaders at the Pentagon and in the White House. The refusal of the retired generals put in charge of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) to even meet with NGOs also waiting in Kuwait to enter Iraq heightened the alienation that NGOs felt at that time. ORHA then failed to develop contingency plans to provide protection against criminals and looters for hospitals, water treatment and waste facilities, power generating stations, etc., despite pleas by the humanitarian community for U.S. forces to be prepared to deal with protection issues. The NGOs' subsequent frustration when these facilities were put out of business by looters compounded existing resentment.

III. Where do we go from here?
The August 19, 2003 terrorist attack on United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, the subsequent terrorist attack against the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Iraq, and the murder of four NGO workers outside Mosul in March have provoked fresh concerns about the appropriate relations between military forces and humanitarian agencies when the military force is being used as a belligerent and/or an occupying authority by its government.

InterAction members are engaging both within their own coalition and with other elements of the international humanitarian community in an exploration of what relations are appropriate with military forces in these new contexts. The process will require some time, given the diversity of views characteristic of NGOs. The dialogue must include representatives of armed forces, and InterAction expects its discussions with U.S. military officers and Pentagon officials to broaden as the process unfolds in coming months.

It is our hope that agreement will be reached that NGOs and the military will respond to crises in ways that allow those affected to benefit, by both the military and NGOs engaging in activities in which they have the comparative advantage. The military will focus on security and NGOs will provide humanitarian assistance. Military participation in relief activities will be limited to situations in which this either is an obligation, i.e. when the United States occupies foreign territory and becomes responsible for the welfare of its inhabitants under the terms of the fourth Geneva Conven-tion, or only the military can reach vulnerable groups because insecurity precludes access by NGOs and other members of the humanitarian
community.

Programs undertaken by the military to win hearts and minds under the guise of humanitarianism would come to an end. These programs would be acknowledged for what they are, i.e. psychological operations in support of strategic objectives. And instead of handing out rations, the military would be constructing ball fields and courthouses.