Last week, Jeremy Scahill of The Nation claimed Blackwater (Xe) contractors run covert snatch and grab missions out of Karachi for the US military. It is a great piece to read over turkey leftovers. Scahill’s claims of private black operations in AfPak has inspired comment by every pundit with a tangental relationship to national security. In addition, the article has triggered a second firestorm in the humanitarian and development communities over allegation that Blackwater employees “work undercover as aid workers”. Una Vera, a good friend in the aid community, responded to the story this way: “This is going to be ruinous. I’m so angry I’m literally at a loss for words now”.
Personally, I am amazed either of Scahill’s claims surprised people. First, PMC contracting is a common method of working under the radar. Granted, the majority of these contracts involve training and not ‘tip of the spear’ missions, but still there is little doubt they happen. Second, and relevant to this site, who else is an undercover team of burly westerners going to pose as? Tourists? Exchange students?
The truth is that posing as aid workers is a nothing new. During a daring hostage rescue of FARC hostages, Colombian special forces dressed up as members of a fake NGO, “Mision Internacional Humanitaria”. Some accounts even claim the special forces wore ICRC armbands, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. In 2006, Kruma Yaya posed as an Afghani aid worker setting up a computer science training during an attempted suicide assassination of the regional governor. Even journalist admit posing as aid workers.
This is not to say posing as aid workers is right. The practice has real dangers for humanitarians in the field. But, it is not a revolutionary tactic, or even a new one.
Update: Una Vera has more at Change.org.
Christopher Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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{ 5 comments }
Although the examples you cite Chris are all pretty recent; a broader concern is that overall the perceived autonomy of the humanitarian aid sector has been undermined by the extent of its integration into the war fighting aims (including counter insurgency) of the US and its allies when these countries are engaged in conflict. This problem is not new; arguably it could be traced back to Somalia; the actions of Blackwater are deplorable, but in many respects represent an extreme manifestation of a much more deep seated problem for many humanitarian actors.
I agree regarding the greater issue. It is a catch-22.
There are two basic options regarding the military’s involvement in humanitarian aid and development:
1) If the military has no involvement in humanitarian aid, then the only tactics they are trained to conduct and equipped to employ are kinetic, causing civilian deaths and infrastructure damage. They have a stick but no carrot.
2) If the military is strongly involved in humanitarian aid and development, then they have an additional soft-power toolkit to “win friends and influence people”. That is, they have a stick AND a carrot. But, forces using humanitarian aid and development are less distinguishable from NGOs, since they both use carrots.
Given these two hard options, I prefer the second one.
Dear Chris,
I feel a certain style of discrimination and insult in your words ‘turkey leftovers’, and ‘work undercover’.
Do not be prejudiced towards fellow humanitarian missionists from different geographies, only due to American National Security grievances.
Most well educated development experts are well westernized and aware of education, science and global economic considerations being more important than ethnicism and nationalism no matter where they had been born.
Hey Aysegul,
I see you are from Ankara Üniversitesi in Turkey. On Thursday, the US just had a big holiday where the traditional meal is turkey (the bird). ‘Turkey leftovers’ is a reference to eating poultry, not a snipe against your country.
Hey Chris,
Clearly military forces will attempt to develop the most effective toolkit possible to win wars; however, as far as NGOs go, they have a choice – whether to accept funding from belligerents during conflicts or not; accepting funding integrates the organisation into the overarching political-military strategy of the belligerent concerned undermining their ability to be perceived as neutral by other belligerents.
A second but related point: Brauman and others at MSF have argued that assistance provided by the military in a situation such as Iraq a few years ago should not be classified as humanitarian assistance; rather it is assistance required as part of their responsibilities as an occupying power. How and when and by whom the phrase “humanitarian assistance” is used is important; given that military assistance of this type essentially serves military-political objectives, there is an argument to be made for using a different term for this assistance, so as not to confuse it with impartial humanitarian assistance. Not sure what suitable name could be used, but the military are usually pretty good at coming up with suitable acronyms for this kind of thing…
Final point – this is not to exclude the possibility of military delivery of humanitarian assistance when they are not belligerents and / or where there is no conflict (eg in the case of natural disaster)…
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