In recent years many conferences have examined the involvement of third party armed forces in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations. Much of this debate has centred upon matters such as command and control arrangements, force protection, coordination with civil agencies and various doctrinal issues concerning local consent, rules of engagement and so on. Perhaps in part prompted by the debacle of Operation Restore Hope in Somalia and the controversy of France's Operation Turquoise, a conference in October 1995, organised by the Refugee Studies Programme in Oxford, opened a new line of analysis which focused upon the role of third party armed forces in humanitarian emergencies.
Of course humanitarian action, while often practically
associated with peacemaking and peacekeeping operations, is a quite
distinct function of international relations, for which International
Humanitarian Law (IHL) explicitly provides no role for third party
military contingents. Indeed, the only humanitarian organisation actually
referred to in IHL is the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
an agency that has based its own staff protection policies upon the
practice of unarmed neutrality. Thus the growing involvement of third
party armed forces in humanitarian emergencies is a new and important
phenomenon to understand.
The RSP conference was attended by a diverse group including military personnel, staff from humanitarian agencies, academics and policy makers. In a paper delivered to the conference, I advanced the proposition that the colonisation by third party military forces of 'humanitarian space', once occupied almost exclusively by the International Committee of the Red Cross, could be described as a 'creeping coup', taking place within the crisis and violence prone regions of the South. This argument was based upon the premise that the over-riding strategic objective that the rich world retains in its relationship with the South is the prevention of mass emigration into the North. This 'strategic disinterest' in the crisis regions of the South is reflected, for example, in the tightening of European Union asylum procedures, seemingly designed to circumvent treaty obligations under the Refugee Conventions. It is also manifested across the world in the new emphasis given by aid donors upon the repatriation of refugees as the only durable solution, even under conditions where the original causes of forced migration have not been resolved. One symptom of such policies aimed at containing crises and conflicts, rather than engaging in their resolution, is the rapid growth in the global numbers of internally displaced persons and a decline in refugee numbers, the former group being largely generated out of the erosion of asylum opportunities and protection for the latter group. While this shift towards a strategy of crisis containment within the South appears to be working in demographic terms, the political and humanitarian costs have been spiralling.
It was clear that my use of the term 'coup' provoked a considerable
degree of controversy, not to say hostility. In so far as my question may
have implied that the Northern military establishment had lost patience
with the civil administration of international aid, because of its obvious
failures to promote sustainable development and prevent conflict, recent
events in eastern Zaire suggest that my use of the term 'coup' was in that
case mistaken. The Northern military establishment did not take
humanitarian matters into their own hands in eastern Zaire. Their rather
farcical half-hearted deployment appears to have been driven entirely by
US and UK strategic disinterest. Had elements within the military
establishment actually wanted to project their authority into the
humanitarian crisis, it is very clear that any such ambition, even had it
existed, was over-ridden by the greater forces of political disinterest. I
return to this theme below, after re-examining some of the other arguments
that have been offered to explain why Northern armed forces have been
given an expanded role in humanitarian action.
Reasons for the expanded role of the armed forces
1. It has been suggested that in adapting to post Cold War conditions, military doctrine has adopted a humanitarian mandate.
The armed forces of many countries have a tradition of responding to major natural disasters and former colonial powers, such as Britain and France, have a long history of foreign colonial service. Therefore, as part of the 'peace dividend', why not combine these two traditions and remould the professional armed forces of the rich countries into a modern international military humanitarian response capacity?
On closer examination this proposition does not look very secure. Although the Geneva Convention legally binds its signatories to the protection of civil populations and wounded soldiers during war, the modern practice and technology of warfare demonstrates that, when in competition, strategic and tactical interests will invariably prevail over humanitarian considerations. In an era when civilians sustain some 90% of war related casualties, it is all too apparent that the Geneva Convention is widely flouted in practice. That sanctions of any kind are almost never applied to individuals, states or rebel movements responsible for such war crimes is an indication that Northern countries also contribute to a culture of impunity with regard to the proper application of the laws of war. It is now commonplace that the pursuit of military advantage takes precedence over humanitarian claims. Tellingly, the design of anti-personnel mines and the dogged opposition to the banning of them also demonstrate a willingness to employ lethal technologies that do not discriminate between civilians and military personnel. This shows very clearly that the offensive and defensive functions of armed forces continue to be their top priorities. While it may be true that the armies of NATO are under-employed, it is inconceivable that any doctrinal changes that might undermine their fighting and deterrence functions would be seriously entertained. The idea of NATO transformed into an alliance of humanitarian workers is simply not credible. At most, small detachments of professional soldiers may be deployed on humanitarian operations but only for as long as this does not in any respect compromise the war fighting capabilities of the army.
2. It is frequently claimed that modern professional armed forces are faster, more effective and more efficient in the delivery of humanitarian aid than their civilian counterparts.
Ironically, with its reputation for speed out of the blocks, the international military humanitarian contingent failed even to get onto the running track during the November 1996 crisis in eastern Zaire. At the time of writing, in spite of having again 'found' some 400,000 beleaguered refugees and displaced persons, there has still been no international military humanitarian intervention in Zaire, nor is there likely to be. This surely challenges Hugo Slim's assertion that 'civilian humanitarian organisations have never shown themselves able to match the military in the speed of their initial response'. Even if, in the fullness of time, a military humanitarian intervention was mounted, the soldiers would find, as in Goma, Rwanda and Somalia previously, that MSF, ICRC, Oxfam and the usual relief agencies will be in attendance to witness their arrival, however belated this might actually be.
To be fair to the military (and to Hugo Slim's excellent review of the issues raised by the military/humanitarian complex), the habitually late arrival of humanitarian military units can be almost wholly attributed to the time that it takes for politicians to decide that a humanitarian disaster warrants a military response. Unfortunately, given the traditional opacity of the political process in matters concerning the military, we can only guess at the criteria used in reaching such a decision. However, we can reasonably assume that the majority of countries in which 'complex emergencies' occur are not deemed by the OECD nations to be of primary strategic importance. Thus, until media coverage engages a critical mass of public interest, it is highly unlikely that politicians will opt for the military option. Therefore, we can be confident that relative speed of response is not a decisive factor since, as pointed out above, the armed forces appear to be used as a device of last rather than first recourse. If not faster, can the armed forces claim to be more effective?
Oxfam's experience of working alongside military humanitarian operations in emergency public health is not very encouraging in this respect. For example, in Goma in 1994, the US military deployed inappropriate 'hi-tech' reverse osmosis water purification systems that were grossly inadequate for the scale of the task. Their equipment could purify water for thousands; what was required, however, was disinfected water for millions. A retired Los Angeles fireman with his civilian fire tender rescued the US military water 'service package' from near farce. When Oxfam staff sought to cooperate with the US operation in Goma, we were informed that this must be subject to 'orders from Mannheim'. Clearly military management styles find concepts such as inter-agency coordination very difficult to operationalise. In 1994, in the aftermath of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda, the 23rd Parachute Ambulance of the British Army mounted an immunisation and curative health care project, yet failed to prevent mortality from spiralling up to an estimated 8 deaths per 10,000 persons per day in the Gikongoro camps. This was almost certainly caused by disastrously inadequate water and sanitation facilities, which MSF and Oxfam eventually addressed. At the time, our staff reported scores of British soldiers manfully attempting to deal with this challenge by rolling up their sleeves and digging latrines. For a total camp population of 350,000, this was a highly inappropriate strategy that would have taken decades to implement. After some friendly advice from Oxfam's engineers, this approach was dropped in favour of a community based self-help sanitation and hygiene education programme that was able to mobilise the required labour. With Oxfam's emergency water systems installed in the camps and an effective sanitation programme underway, death rates fell rapidly. (As a codicil, it should be recorded that the British Army provided considerable assistance to Oxfam and other agencies in Rwanda.)
These examples are not cited in order to prove that NGOs are more professional and effective than military humanitarian actors but simply to record that the Northern military humanitarian contingents that I have observed have no greater claim to professionalism and effectiveness than the major NGOs. Obviously every serious observer of the humanitarian scene can cite numerous cases of extraordinarily bad practice perpetrated by the NGOs, the Red Cross and the United Nations agencies. However, it is important to underline the fact that military humanitarians actually get very little field practice and employ technologies and management systems that, as Slim has noted, are 'still primarily configured for war fighting'. To date, this has not produced a humanitarian emergency response capacity that can match the better NGOs for effectiveness.
If for speed and effectiveness military humanitarians are no match for the more professional NGOs, it has been argued that at least the armed forces come free of charge and that where humanitarian demand outstrips conventional civil capacity, the deployment of 'unconventional' military capacity is justified.
Unfortunately, however, experience so far suggests that where Northern military forces are deployed in humanitarian operations, they also insist upon taking a lead role. In Goma in 1994, the displacement of civilian expertise by uniformed amateurism resulted in highly inefficient resource allocation decisions, such as continuing to use an air-bridge even after land routes had been opened. The 'Multi-donor' evaluation of the Rwanda emergency response found, on the limited evidence available, that military aircraft are between 4-8 times more expensive than commercial aircraft on comparable routes. The bill for military humanitarian intervention has to be picked up somewhere and, on the available evidence, the opportunity costs are likely to be considerable.
It seems that, on the grounds of cost, speed and technical competence in
humanitarian action, the armed forces enjoy no compelling comparative
advantages. Any special competence in logistics that they do possess is
probably offset by the disadvantage of being managed directly by
politicians who will, as a rule, respond to humanitarian crises in the
aftermath of pressure from the NGO lobby and the mass media. Typically,
the military humanitarian contingent costs more, arrives late and deploys
relatively inexperienced staff and sometimes inappropriate technology too.
So why deploy them at all?
Arguments in favour
There seem to be two main arguments in favour. First, they are a government's public relations dream come true. Second, and oddly often forgotten in this debate, they have a comparative advantage over civilian agencies through their capacity to deploy force.
1. Military humanitarians are far more 'televisual' than their civilian counterparts.
Reflecting a highly sophisticated and practised approach to the use of information (and misinformation), Northern armed forces can deliver positive political visibility on their home front in a way that NGOs can only dream of. It may be that an important reason for the deployment of military humanitarian contingents is their reliability in projecting an image of no-nonsense, macho, mission-oriented professionalism. Military liaison officers invariably perform brilliantly on television and, from the politician's point of view, offer the enormous advantage over unpredictable (and sometimes ungracious) NGOs in adhering to the strict taboo on any public criticism of their own government. Although the informed tax-payer would surely spurn the relatively high costs of humanitarian interventions by their army in foreign countries, the continued ability of the military to earn credit for politicians is probably still unrivalled, provided, that is, that they do not come home in body bags.
2. Neutrality and impartiality are no longer able to guarantee the security of humanitarian staff and therefore militarization of humanitarian aid is now often the only option if aid is to be delivered.
It is certainly true that more humanitarian workers are being killed 'in action' than ever before. It is also clear that in the theatre of classical guerrilla warfare, humanitarian aid is bound to be considered by the warring parties either as a direct threat or as a benefit in their campaign. In this respect, 'humanitarian neutrality' is a confidence trick, now rarely pulled off. With the proliferation of guerrilla style warfare, the delivery of humanitarian aid has therefore become more dangerous and therefore third party military participation in the protection of humanitarian aid is perhaps justified. The strongest of all claims for the deployment of military humanitarian capacity is to be found in their ability to combine humanitarian response with armed and armoured defence. While the traditional strategy for delivering emergency relief centred upon the neutrality and impartiality of the humanitarian agency, the critical factor in the success of the operation hinged upon gaining consent from the warring parties. Theoretically, this obviates the need for armed protection. However, in recent years, consent has not always been available when required (as indeed is the case right now in eastern Zaire) and under such circumstances the military humanitarian may perhaps enjoy a special advantage. Humanitarians in armed personnel carriers may be able to travel in areas of greater risk than their civilian counterparts and, arguably, this may enable the military humanitarian to extend the range and scope of 'traditional' humanitarian space. The 'creative' use of an overwhelming offensive capability both to deter aggression and to 'encourage' consent (as Colonel Bob Stewart described his approach in Bosnia during the RSP Conference) may help to transform a situation from active armed aggression to passive resistance, thereby allowing a humanitarian relief operation to proceed. It is in these sort of circumstances where the interface between civil and military humanitarian operations is likely to be most complex, yet potentially synergistic. However, there are also major risks to be considered.
To examine some of these, it is necessary to consider briefly the underlying causes of insecurity and violent conflict in the contemporary global political economy, where intra-state conflicts are now reported in some 50 countries. These have produced 15 million refugees and perhaps 20 million internally displaced persons. The massive growth in emergency aid spending in the last decade is generally assumed to reflect this post Cold War proliferation of 'complex emergencies'. To what can we attribute this frightening trend?
Underlying causes of insecurity and conflict
Although often labelled as 'ethnic conflict', most modern civil wars seem to be linked to economic crisis, state retrenchment and mounting ecological pressures. As people see that the post-modern role of the state does not seem to include advancing and protecting their material security, the costs of citizenship no longer appear to be compensated for by any obvious benefits. Education and health care have to be paid for and public welfare provision is minimal or non-existent. In countries where the residual functions of the state are monopolised by narrow interests, citizenship is often experienced as victimisation, where access to land and employment are controlled by hostile forces. In such circumstances, national cohesion breaks down, opening the way for new anti-state political formations. The protection afforded by the solidarity of ethnic identity may often be seen to be the next best guarantor for the protection of private assets.
At the same time, the very meaning of the term 'development' has been transformed and it has acquired new and rather woolly objectives, which variously include the pursuit of political and cultural pluralism, good governance, civil society, empowerment and so on. However, from a materialist point of view, 'development' in its more recent forms has become essentially ideological in nature, offering social transformation and the creation of civil society but with no promise of actual economic advancement. The traditional objective of development, that implicitly assumed convergence between the developed and the developing world, has been quietly abandoned.
Instead, over huge areas of Africa, parts of Asia and the former Soviet Union, millions are experiencing deteriorating life chances in terms of morbidity, life expectancy, literacy, employment, food security, freedom from tyranny and so on. Indeed many observers have argued that poverty, which these figures represent, constitutes a massive silent emergency. Life for many is getting worse and getting shorter. Thus the growth in violent intra-state conflict is a function of failed development and welfare policies, of falling GDPs and growing livelihood insecurity, rather than the ending of the Cold War itself. Arguably, it would have happened anyway.
If these are the causes, both of the growing demand for humanitarian aid
and for the difficulty in delivering it, the deployment of third party
Northern military forces in emergency relief operations begins to look
more like an exercise in global pacification than of humanitarian action
per se. This does not imply that the quality of relief will
necessarily be transformed by using armed forces to deliver it but rather
that emergency relief is perhaps being applied as a political opiate of
'conflict handling'(1), designed to
soothe a troubled global political economy where the pressures of
inequality can no longer be peacefully contained. To help gauge what an
enormous task this may turn out to be, it is perhaps worth closing this
essay by looking at a real situation.
Paradox: the humanitarian emergency response - Goma 1994
An examination of the commentary upon the 1994 Goma humanitarian emergency response reveals an important paradox. While the Overseas Development Institute in the Multi-donor evaluation catalogued its manifest failings and estimated the preventable dead at about 50,000, many others criticised the international relief system for attaining standards of service provision for refugees that greatly outstripped the quality of the public services available for the host Zairean population. For example, in the public health sector, the camp water systems gave refugees cleaner, safer and more conveniently distributed supplies than those available for most Zairean citizens. This contrast, also to be found in the curative health services, sanitation and other sectors, resulted in what could reasonably be described as the politics of envy. In October 1995 there were violent manifestations of this, as the refugee camp infrastructure was attacked and refugees were banned from commercial activities. And yet, paradoxically, the per capita water supplies for refugees actually fell far below the 20 litres per person per day judged by the World Health Organisation to be the minimum requirement. Indeed, senior officials in UNHCR privately acknowledge that the Rwandese refugee population in Zaire were subjected to one of the most Spartan care and maintenance regimes in modern refugee assistance history.
In the Goma case, the operationalisation of the 'relief to development' paradigm (or the 'cross mandate') would have required heavy investment in Zairean public service provision to achieve equity for local citizens, even to attain the minimal standards of the refugee emergency response. However, this option was impossible given the level of donor support for development work in Zaire. To achieve equity across the >relief to development continuum=, the humanitarian programme was thus left with the rather perverse option of down-grading already sub-standard services to attain consistency with ambient 'developmental' standards.
Conclusions
This story offers a window onto an existential reality where 'normal' poverty disposes of many more victims than the number that die in the theatres of humanitarian emergencies, and where 'development', when conceived of as incremental improvements in life chances, is actually in reverse for many millions of people. It also illustrates some of the dilemmas and intense political pressures upon the agencies, including the military, that choose to operate in the humanitarian zone. Perhaps most importantly, it suggests that, because much modern conflict is born out of absolute deprivation, the very practice of distributing humanitarian aid is liable to trigger yet more conflict. The cases of Liberia, Sudan, Somalia, Zaire and Bosnia seem to bear this out. Parcelling up forms of aid and labelling them as 'humanitarian' will obviously not protect the beneficiaries from being preyed upon by those whose material position is as bad but whose status excludes them from being granted external assistance. The case of 'returnees' having stronger legal claims for international assistance in Rwanda than the 'survivors' is liable to generate further conflict in that country.
It is clearly inconceivable for northern armed forces to take on the
management of all international aid that is subject to threats of
violence. In this sense, the war on poverty and the war of poverty are far
too big for even the most powerful of northern military forces. Ultimately
it will become clear that most intra-state violence is a symptom of
injustice and unequal development and that there is, logically, no
long-term military solution to be found. This logic applies as much to
international military intervention as it does to local armed actions.
Attempts to control the symptoms through military humanitarian action will
face extremely difficult choices, if only because the scale of
humanitarian demand will outstrip response capacity. And the ability to
distinguish relief from development needs will tax the military just as it
has so unprofitably bedevilled the civilian aid agencies. Although
offering undoubted short-term advantages for humanitarian aid which should
not be dismissed, it is the absence of real development which has to be
addressed and for this there is no military solution.
Nicholas Stockton is the Emergencies Director of Oxfam UK & Ireland. However, the views expressed here are personal and do not constitute an official Oxfam position.
Notes
1. I use the terms South and North metaphorically, representing groups of poor and rich respectively, wherever their goegraphical location.
2.
April 1997
1. . A phrase drawn from British aid policy.