13 November 2004
Counter-Superpower Humanitarian Programs
The U.S. government must not lure NGOs and humanitarian idealists (humanists) into misguided interventions, such as the imposition of democracy on Iraq.
According to Global Development Briefing (12 Nov. 2004), Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced it will shut down its operations in Iraq, citing the escalation of violence in the country and the consequent danger to its staff. "It has become impossible for us, as an international humanitarian organization, to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, whether they are expatriates or Iraqis. We deeply regret that we are no longer able to bring medical aid to the Iraqi people when they need it the most," MSF-Belgium director general Gorik Ooms said in a statement. Aside from the security factor, MSF spokeswoman Eva van Beek also cited the organization's concerns over the actions of the coalition forces, which "have severely limited" their space where it can operate. Van Beek told AFP, "It generally can be said that from the very beginning the coalition forces regard humanitarian organizations as a force multiplier, in other words, to meet their political and military goals. And we cannot accept this at all."
The mission of the U.S. government’s primary non-military cross-border organ of intervention, the Agency for International Development, has been distorted from economic transformation to managing the performance by non-government organizations of the “humanitarian” tasks of superpower domination. The appropriate role for NGOs is to assist the victims of a conquest such as is occurring in Iraq. Unfortunately, in a unipolar world, there is no countervailing agency that will or can protect NGO personnel from being subsumed by the superpower or from harm by the terrorist resistance it provokes.
NGOs are partially at fault by being so easily co-opted for this purpose. They have willingly lent a veneer of respectability to the interventions of the U.S. government. One reason may be that performing that task has provided income to support their activities overseas. Perhaps MSF is less compromised because it is less dependent on U.S. government contracts for its budget. Therefore, it is freer to pull out of Iraq than other NGOs. However, the humanitarian task it can perform still needs to be fulfilled.
Finding a sponsor for counter-Superpower humanitarian programs will not be easy. However, terrorism is making that objective increasingly important. This may be attributing rational nationalist goals to terrorism that, at least in the case of fundamentalist Islam, may not be deserved. Nevertheless, if the resisters in Iraq are grounded in Arab resentment of Western mastery, their allies, the NGOs, should demand sponsorship from the hitherto obsequious governments of the Middle East.
The U.S. government must not lure NGOs and humanitarian idealists (humanists) into misguided interventions, such as the imposition of democracy on Iraq.
According to Global Development Briefing (12 Nov. 2004), Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced it will shut down its operations in Iraq, citing the escalation of violence in the country and the consequent danger to its staff. "It has become impossible for us, as an international humanitarian organization, to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, whether they are expatriates or Iraqis. We deeply regret that we are no longer able to bring medical aid to the Iraqi people when they need it the most," MSF-Belgium director general Gorik Ooms said in a statement. Aside from the security factor, MSF spokeswoman Eva van Beek also cited the organization's concerns over the actions of the coalition forces, which "have severely limited" their space where it can operate. Van Beek told AFP, "It generally can be said that from the very beginning the coalition forces regard humanitarian organizations as a force multiplier, in other words, to meet their political and military goals. And we cannot accept this at all."
The mission of the U.S. government’s primary non-military cross-border organ of intervention, the Agency for International Development, has been distorted from economic transformation to managing the performance by non-government organizations of the “humanitarian” tasks of superpower domination. The appropriate role for NGOs is to assist the victims of a conquest such as is occurring in Iraq. Unfortunately, in a unipolar world, there is no countervailing agency that will or can protect NGO personnel from being subsumed by the superpower or from harm by the terrorist resistance it provokes.
NGOs are partially at fault by being so easily co-opted for this purpose. They have willingly lent a veneer of respectability to the interventions of the U.S. government. One reason may be that performing that task has provided income to support their activities overseas. Perhaps MSF is less compromised because it is less dependent on U.S. government contracts for its budget. Therefore, it is freer to pull out of Iraq than other NGOs. However, the humanitarian task it can perform still needs to be fulfilled.
Finding a sponsor for counter-Superpower humanitarian programs will not be easy. However, terrorism is making that objective increasingly important. This may be attributing rational nationalist goals to terrorism that, at least in the case of fundamentalist Islam, may not be deserved. Nevertheless, if the resisters in Iraq are grounded in Arab resentment of Western mastery, their allies, the NGOs, should demand sponsorship from the hitherto obsequious governments of the Middle East.
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