UN begins huge aid drop in Iraq (largest aid operation for a decade)

[pampango]

The UN has begun what is says is its largest aid operation for a decade as it attempts to reach more than 500,000 people in northern Iraq.

A jet carrying 100 tonnes of tents and cooking equipment arrived in Irbil, with more flights expected.

There are now more than 1.2 million internally displaced people across Iraq, the UN says.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says it hopes to bring in nearly 2,500 tons of supplies to Iraqi Kurdistan in the next ten days. More aid is due to arrive by truck from Turkey, Jordan and Iran.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28868392

It is good that UNHCR handles relief and aid delivery. It takes much of the politics out of it.

[bigtree]

1. Good to see UN doing this . . . military operations and assaults often put those aid efforts at risk

from the ICRC:

___ Military force as a means of protecting or distributing humanitarian aid has been used recently during operations in places such as northern Iraq, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and Haiti. This tendency runs counter to two fundamental principles of humanitarian aid: impartiality and neutrality. Military personnel engaged in humanitarian operations should make no distinction between conflict victims on the basis of their religious faith, their membership of a political group or their race. That said, simply to assume that the military does would be to accuse it on the basis of assumption, not fact.

Combined military and humanitarian action is limited, however, to particular situations, of humanitarian concern certainly, but also of political interest. A humanitarian organization’s impartiality should be judged as well by its ability to cope with the problems being faced by the victims, including those of ‘forgotten conflicts’. It is undoubtedly the loss of neutrality that presents the greatest risk in the case of military-cum-humanitarian action. While impartiality is practiced directly vis-à-vis the victims, neutrality is shown vis-à-vis the parties to the conflict. The principle of neutrality is founded on the obligation to take no part in the hostilities, nor in the disputes underlying them. The decision to use military methods to impose humanitarian aid is thus not one to be taken lightly as it entails sacrificing one’s neutrality; or it means at least that this principle will lose much of its meaning for the parties to the conflict. More generally, this lack of clarity regarding the principle of neutrality has repercussions for all those involved in humanitarian work, which it complicates. “Certainly, enforcing the delivery of humanitarian aid is likely to turn the parties to a conflict against the aid agencies and potentially delay political settlement.”


http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jpcj.htm

[msanthrope]

2. The only reason the aid is able to come in is because of our continued strikes.

We provided air support to retake the Mosul dam, and we stepped up the bombing runs this week, protecting Kurdistan.

We will be providing air support to the trucked-in supplies, too.

[bigtree]

3. that's something I'd expect to hear from admin and military spokesmen

. . .and I'm not attuned to that kind of self-serving appeal, certainly not in this forum. It's wrapped up in an agenda, like the op.

[msanthrope]

4. It's the reality. Would you expect aid workers to go in, unprotected?

I think it's a valid use of our military.

[bigtree]

5. not in Iraq, I think its an unnecessary provocation

which has proven in MANY conflicts to actually in interfere with the delivery, receipt, and possession of the aid.

I recall backlash in Afghanistan . . .


Relief Groups Object to Militarization of US Aid to Afghanistan

from Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/3/as_troop_escalation_begins_relief_groups

{snip}

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about this, we’re joined by Lex Kassenberg. Since 2006, he’s been the director of CARE International’s efforts in Afghanistan. He’s just back in Washington, DC. Lex Kassenberg, thank you very much for joining us. Explain exactly what you mean by the militarization of humanitarian aid.

LEX KASSENBERG: Well, what we are really concerned about is that a lot of international agencies, including CARE, have been on the ground in Afghanistan for a long, long time. CARE, for example, was established in 1961 and has been in Afghanistan ever since, except for a period of ten years during the Russian occupation. During that long period of time, we have been able to build up a very good rapport, a very good understanding with the local communities. And historically that has then translated in an acceptance of CARE and other agencies working at the community level and the communities in turn providing us with a good level of safety and security that, even under very difficult circumstances that we’re facing now in Afghanistan, still enables us to, to a greater or lesser extent at least, implement our activities.

The moment that you start bringing in the military and the requirements that agencies like CARE have to be faceted or have to be closely working together with armed units, let me put it that way, because we’re not just talking about the military, we’re also talking about the provincial reconstruction team that often are linked up with agencies like CARE—the moment these armed units visit the communities, our integrity is compromised, and very often the communities also tell us that their integrity is compromised and that they are now open and prone to attacks. And that is a major concern to us. We have the feeling that it is really negatively affecting our work if we are linked with armed units.

{snip}

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to USAID, the US Agency for International Development. If William Frej, the head of the USAID mission in Afghanistan, has rejected your criticism. He said yesterday, quote, "’Militarization of aid’ is a gross mischaracterization of what actually happens on the ground. Without counterinsurgency and without the military’s support, many of the humanitarian agencies—such as Oxfam—that raise such complaints would not be able to enter the areas once controlled by insurgents.” Lex Kassenberg, your response?

LEX KASSENBERG: Well, I think it’s an argument that works in both directions. There are probably examples where indeed agencies would not have been able to work if somehow military units and international military forces had been able to free the area from insurgents. On the other hand, there are also examples where NGOs have been working on the ground and had to leave the area because of the presence or intervention of military units.

One example that I would like to give here to illustrate this is not CARE but another international organization called Afghan Aid. They were present in a rather challenging province called Nuristan and had been working there for many, many years, on and off. If the situation was insecure, they would leave the province for a period of time. If it was fine again, they would go back in and had been able that—and be able to achieve reasonable results for a long period. Now, at one night, their office was visited by insurgents, who ransacked or went through the whole office looking for evidence that Afghan Aid had been working together with either the military or provincial reconstruction teams, who are seen as very closely related to the military. They didn’t find any evidence, and they left. The next morning, the local or the close-by provincial reconstruction team, hearing about this attack on the Afghan Aid office, went and visited them and stayed there for a long time, checking what exactly the attack was about, what they wanted, etc., etc. The result was that after the visit by the provincial reconstruction team, Afghan Aid very strongly felt that their independence was compromised, because now there was very public and open proof that, for whatever reason, the PRT, the provincial reconstruction team, had been in contact with their office and had been visiting that office. So it caused them to leave the area.

So some of it is really based, I think, also on a lack of understanding what the impact can be of a visit by armed groups to an area where NGOs are working . . .

listen, watch and read: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/3/as_troop_escalation_begins_relief_groups


. . .as one of the responses to that post of mine at the time said, sarcastically:

"I'm sure there are more than a few DUers who can set them straight."

[msanthrope]

6. So...after watching a journalist being beheaded by ISIS, you think aid

workers should go into Iraq without support from our troops?