Civil-Military Coordination from a
United Nations Joint Logistics Centre (UNJLC) Perspective

The military and humanitarian organizations are often seen as strange bedfellows. With their vastly different cultures and core missions–one the application of force in the pursuit of defence of national interests, the other humanitarian relief often in situations where the presence of militaries is a complicating factor–each has historically viewed the other with at least suspicion. However, with the imperative of responding effectively to humanitarian emergencies, these two vastly differing types of organisations are learning to work together, and to combine their strengths in a way that benefits all. This article will examine the key to realizing that synergy: effective co-ordination between civil humanitarian actors and the military in crisis situations.

CMCoord, CMLOG, CMAAC, CIMIC - all refer to civil-military coordination mechanisms utilized during humanitarian relief missions.1 These mechanisms embody the realization that, through circumstances, civil and military actors are frequently, simultaneously engaged in humanitarian missions; their working side by side is both a necessity and a reality. This interaction has garnered much-deserved attention, analysis, and study on the effectiveness of each separately but also collectively. Each actor brings its own value to a mission. The United Nations and other humanitarian aid agencies have mandates based on humanity and compassion and, for the UN, this is the core business.

The UN operates under a framework of principles meant to guide operations. These principles have been officially laid out under the UN General Assembly of 1991 (as cited in Guidelines on the Use
of Military and Civil Defence
Assets, 2003):

Humanity – International law recognizes that those affected are entitled to protection and assistance.

Neutrality – The UN must adopt
a neutral stance toward parties to conflicts.

Impartiality – Relief efforts must be executed without discrimination of any kind.

Transparency – The UN is held accountable to donors, observers, public, and parties to the conflict.

The United Nations Charter directs the UN to infuse international cooperation in solving international problems of humanitarian character and, thus, the above framework delineates the ways and means of UN intervention and assistance. The UN brings humanitarian expertise of beneficiary designation, needs and vulnerability assessment, relief distribution, monitoring, and evaluation. In many instances, the UN possesses previously acquired country knowledge which can prove to be invaluable after a ‘sudden onset’ emergency, as with the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 and its effects on Indonesia. However, the UN is often required to operate under insecure conditions without protection. It is less prepared than the military to face difficult field conditions and to deal with conflict, disaster, death, and destruction. Lastly, the UN lacks specialized equipment needed for response to some cases of emergency, for which special military forces are well trained and equipped.

Although military mandates are guided principally by defense interests, many military forces formally include humanitarian relief in their missions. When theses forces engage in such missions, they bring highly developed skill sets and physical assets to the field, including logistics expertise and equipment, security know-how, intelligence, and highly sophisticated communications capabilities — skill sets designed mainly for combat but which strongly complement operations during humanitarian missions. Therefore, militaries are well-equipped for the crucial immediate response as only they can mobilize the required assets rapidly for large-scale emergencies. However, these forces are not constricted by UN principles and, more importantly,
are accountable not to donors but to their own governments and auditors.

The presence of military forces in disaster relief is becoming increasingly commonplace, as witnessed with the recent emergency responses to the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004 and the South Asia earthquake on 8 October 2005. Thus, the occurrence of a simultaneous civil and military response has become commonplace. Whether thrust together purposefully or arbitrarily, the combination of the two makes both logistical and synergetic sense. However, the presence of both missions requires mutual understanding and coordination;
a forging of relationships.

The UN defines CMCoord as “The essential dialogue and interaction between civilian and military actors in humanitarian emergencies necessary to protect and promote humanitarian principles, avoid competition, minimize inconsistency, and when appropriate pursue common goals (Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets, 2003).” Therefore, humanitarian relief becomes a common mission.
Among the recognized Civil-Military coordination mechanisms, one is UN-established and must be activated by the UN Inter Agency Standing Committee during a given emergency. The mandate of the United Nations Joint Logistics Centre (UNJLC) is: ‘to complement and co-ordinate the logistics capabilities of co-operating humanitarian agencies during large-scale emergencies.’ The occurrence of a large-scale emergency means that an activated UNJLC will likely be present and be accompanied by ‘activated’ militaries. Because UNJLC’s core business involves the logistics coordination of participating agencies, CMCoord and/or CMLOG (Civil-Military Logistics) operations through the use of CMCoord or CMLOG officers become a natural UNJLC responsibility. Keeping in mind that the use of military assets should be in accordance with the formal guidelines established by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNJLC’s functions in CMCoord are addressed and defined in the UNJLC Field Operations Manual. From the first UNJLC-type mission in Zaire in 19962 to the October 2005 South Asia earthquake, the CMCoord/CMLOG function has been operable for most activated UNJLCs. The Centre’s frequent use of retired military staff, including field grade or general officers, as CMCoord or CMLOG officers also means that, in many instances, there is solid, first-hand military knowledge backed by previously-established military relationships and networks — valuable tools for coordinating two very different types of entities with very different styles of management.

After a UNJLC is activated and its scope of operations determined, the degree to which it becomes involved in a mission is dependent upon, among other things, the type of disaster. This, in turn, will dictate the specific UNJLC mandate for a particular mission. Every disaster is different. However, broadly speaking, these mandates fall into two main categories: complex emergencies3; and sudden onset emergencies/natural disasters.
Civil-military coordination will have different implications under these two very different scenarios. During the tsunami response mission, UNJLC CMCoord officers acted as representatives of the UN to the TNI (Indonesian military); the TNI, as agent for the sovereign nation of Indonesia, were controlling flight operations and the enormous stock of military assets. Although the Indonesian military dictated where the various foreign militaries (of which there were 16 at the highest level of intensity) were to station themselves, it was UNJLC CMCoord staff carrying urgent requests for personnel and cargo transport who liaised with the Indonesian military to acquire capacity on available military assets from all participating nations. This type of humanitarian mediation during a natural disaster response resulting in UN access to military assets constitutes the foremost component of CMCoord during a natural disaster emergency.

Another practical example of mediation between humanitarian actors and military forces was in Afghanistan where, in a particular case, UNJLC CMCoord officers, on behalf of the UN, approached the U.S. military for shared usage of the airfield to which they had been assigned. The result of this appeal gave the Americans usage of the airport during the night while the UN made use of it during
the day.

It is not difficult to recognize that one body engaging a military is less conflictive than several agencies individually vying for access resulting in a barrage of appeals. It is precisely this type of deliberate coordination which forms the backbone of the UNJLC overall mandate: To identify and provide practical solutions for logistics bottlenecks. Although here we are speaking about access to the military for facilitation of logistics activity, the concept and intended outcome for UNJLC is the same: de-conflicting overlapping demand through coordination.
During humanitarian missions, humanitarian aid agencies and militaries share the common goal of getting the right amount of relief supplies to the right place at the right time. In addition to this very practical goal, CMCoord is a focal point where militaries and the UN converge in order to better comprehend the operations of each. In the case of the tsunami, a UNJLC CMCoord officer stationed at U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) Headquarters in Hawaii was able to impart information about the Indian Ocean operations of the UN and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), essentially providing a humanitarian “who’s who” and “who’s doing what and where”. PACOM was responsible for the overall command of the U.S. military presence in the Indian Ocean tsunami mission, representing approximately 20,000 troops. Thus, in the absence of this vital link to the UN (i.e. the UNJLC CMCoord officer), PACOM’s ability to offer relief assistance might have been seriously hampered and a substantial portion of military assistance might have gone underutilized or worse, unutilized. It was this UNJLC officer’s specialized knowledge of the tsunami mission and influence with PACOM that led to improved mutual understanding, engagement, and coordination of relief assistance among PACOM, the UN, and other aid agencies, and ultimately furthered their combined relief efforts.

The 30-year-long Aceh conflict involving 12,000 casualties was the source of security concerns for humanitarian response actors. Thus, the UN was required to manage a delicate balance between engaging the TNI (Indonesian Armed Forces) for humanitarian purposes and retaining neutrality in the context of the conflict, not to mention ensuring staff safety. Civil-military coordination had to reckon with an Indonesian military perceived as both “the good guy” and “the bad guy”. The UNJLC used their CMCoord expertise to facilitate the scheduled exit of foreign militaries, as mandated by the Government of Indonesia, and transition to a completely civil relief mission by the end of March 2005.

The UNJLC CMCoord mission in the Indian Ocean amassed many achievements, some of which can be attributed to the Centre’s ability to mobilize quickly. Not being an operational UN agency alleviates some of the paralysis frequently associated with UN bureaucracy. The Centre deployed CMCoord officers early-on post-tsunami, contributing immediately to the process of relationship-building with the other militaries and civil bodies. As one UNJLC CMCoord officer put it, UNJLC CMCoord officers were given prime speaking time on meeting agenda only by earning the privilege after having been relegated to an afterthought at these same meetings earlier in the tsunami response. UNJLC was also the first representative of the UN to initiate formal coordination and information-sharing with the Indonesian Armed Forces. Other successes included: coordination of the function of tasking air assets, including for medical evacuations; cargo handling on the ground via foreign militaries and the TNI; creation of CIMIC (Civil-military Cooperation Center) and CMAAC (Civil-military and Aid Coordination) cells in various locations; and administrative procedures for use of Military Civil Defense Assets (MCDA) in Indonesia and Thailand. Both having the right people and utilizing early deployment have been considered keys to success.

In complex emergencies, national authorities, where they exist, are normally not in effective control of their legal territory or control only part of their legal territory and, as a result, there is lack of security for both the civilian population and the humanitarian community. Working in complex emergencies means dealing with government authorities as well as non-state entities, i.e., rebel movements and insurgent groups. This causes a legal and political dilemma. In those situations, if and when the humanitarian community intervenes, ground rules (not agreements, which are signed only with governments) must be negotiated with non-state entities. This requirement has strong implications for CMCoord operations.

For UNJLC, the complex 2001/2002 and 2003/2004 emergencies in Afghanistan and in Iraq were two clear examples of this, contrasting the CMCoord role with that which would be found in sudden onset natural disasters. In Iraq, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, assisted by OCHA CMCOORD officers, drew up the Terms of Reference: The General Guidance for Interaction between United Nations Personnel and Military and Civilian Representatives of the Occupying Power. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, too close of an engagement with, respectively, the coalition forces and ‘occupying power’, or even visual or perceived engagement, would put the safety of humanitarian workers at risk. With both conflicts, CMCoord, the UN’s engagement with the military, was necessary but had to be acted out more delicately and under very specific situations and guidelines than in a situation such as in Indonesia, post-tsunami. Included in the Iraq Terms were specific lists of permissible and non-permissible acts on the part of humanitarian staff. Among the numerous situations addressed, use of military assets for humanitarian ends was permissible only as a last resort. This was a far cry from the intense and purposeful sharing of assets among civil and military actors that occurred in Indonesia. CMCoord or CMLOG officers must be well aware of these differences and essentially be able to carry out very similar coordination functions but under much stricter constraints. In Afghanistan, UNJLC had the additional pressure of having to collaborate and coordinate with the U.S.-led coalition and the UN peacekeeping force, as well as civil actors. This involved negotiating the opening of Afghan air space for humanitarian operations and establishing practical means of distinguishing humanitarian aircraft from those of the combatant coalition forces.

In all types of emergencies, nations dictate to whom they will offer assistance with military assets. As occurred in the Indian Ocean relief mission, most use bilateral arrangements with a host country, which implies that they address their assistance to the host country authorities. A smaller number of nations prefers to entrust use of assets directly to the UN. The inventory mix of assets among foreign militaries, the host country military, and civil players will vary according to these bilateral arrangements.
According to UNJLC CMCoord/CMLOG officers and military participants, lessons learned from the tsunami include: Purposeful and improved relationship-building between civil and military players; development and/or identification of information-sharing tools and communications systems; and development of CMCoord/CMLOG sites to establish and sustain cooperation and creation of registries of participants. It has been observed that knowledge of the UN and its operations by military actors is sometimes limited, as exemplified by the above-noted PACOM example. As a means of improvement, relationship-building through social networks to support participant registries has been deemed by some to be the foremost element for future successful civil-military collaboration in the field.

These observations and lessons from Asia have prompted the UN to take a closer look at participation in setting up contingency arrangements, including those of a more lasting and permanent nature such as emergency response centers in Southeast Asia. UNJLC continues to participate in civil-military forums and workshops organized by regional militaries and bodies in Southeast Asia, such as Cobra Gold4 and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)5. Additionally, UNJLC will continue to rely on and draw from a rich roster of ex-military professionals to foster valuable civil-military relations for the success of future missions.
(UNJLC, 31 October 2005)

References
Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets to Support United Nations Humanitarian Activities in Complex Emergencies. (2003, March). Retrieved October 2005 from http://ochaonline.un.org/DocView.asp?DocID=426.

General Guidance for Interaction between United Nations Personnel and Military and Civilian Representatives of the Occupying Power in Iraq. (2003, May 8). Retrieved October 2005 from www.unjlc.org/ImportedObjects/15658/view?
searchterm=General%20Guidance%20Iraq.
INSEAD. (2003). The United Nations Joint Logistics Centre (UNJLC): The Afghan Crisis. Retrieved October 2005 from http://www.unjlc.org/ImportedObjects/13245/view.

Endnotes
1 “CMCoord” is the acronym for “Civil-military Coordination”. “CIMIC” means “Civil-military Cooperation”. The UN humanitarian system utilizes CMCoord to differentiate itself from military entities (both UN peacekeeping and national armies), which use CIMIC. Within the UN humanitarian system, CMCoord is further differentiated from “CMLOG”, which stands for “Civil-Military Logistics”: A CMCoord officer will look into UN policies and strategies of collaboration with military entities, safeguards UN principles, and sets a framework for this as required; CMLOG deals with operational aspects of coordination and collaboration with military entities. “CMAAC” is the abbreviation for “Civil-military and Aid Co-ordination”.
2 UNJLC was not instituted until 2002, so the Zaire operation, while serving as the genesis of the UNJLC, was not actually UNJLC.
3 A complex emergency is a man-made disaster including a breakdown of national authority, a state-instigated crisis or terrorism/guerrilla warfare, and where a sovereign country’s military is not necessarily in control or not one with whom the UN can actively engage. In a sudden onset natural disaster, the emergency is managed by the affected country’s authorities, and in some cases, the military take the lead role in coordination of the other participating militaries. The latter was the case in Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami as well as in Pakistan in 2005, following the large earthquake.
4 Cobra Gold is a regularly scheduled combined, joint multilateral training exercise designed to improve multinational interoperability and strengthen national relationships. (Asia-Pacific Area Network [APAN]. [Website]. Retrieved November 2005 from http://www.apan-info.net/cobragold/
fullstory.asp?id=109).
5 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), established in 1967, currently has ten member nations working together to accelerate the economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region and to promote regional peace and stability. (ASEAN. [Website]. Retrieved November 2005 from http://www.aseansec.org/).