The Humanitarian Conscience: Caring for Others in the Age of Terror
320
The Humanitarian Conscience: Caring for Others in the Age of Terror
320eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250087973 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/16/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 614 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Humanitarian Conscience
Caring for Others in the Age of Terror
By W. R. Smyser
Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © 2003 W. R. SmyserAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-08797-3
CHAPTER 1
HUMANITARIANS AT WORK
Carlos Caceres-Collazo, an American lawyer who had hoped to save the lives of others, suddenly found his own life in danger. He and two colleagues, Samson Aregahegn from Ethiopia and Pero Simyndza from Croatia, could hear soldiers of the advancing Indonesian militia shouting for their death.
They had come to help refugees in Timor, a large island near the coast of Australia. The refugees had fled East Timor to escape the punishment that Indonesian militia were meting out to those who had dared to vote for independence from Indonesia.
The East Timorese had been promised a chance to vote freely in August, 1999, for or against independence. But when the overwhelming majority chose independence, the militia had gone on a rampage. With the support and connivance of the Indonesian military, they had slaughtered over 1,000 East Timorese and had incinerated almost every building. Within a few days, they had emptied the capital city of Dili. Many people had fled to West Timor, where they hoped to find safety.
Carlos Caceres-Collazo and his two colleagues worked for Mrs. Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She had sent them to try to arrange protection for the refugees so that they would be safe in West Timor and could later freely return to their home towns and villages.
Caceres-Collazo had come to help argue that the refugees should be left in peace on the basis of important international legal conventions and should be able to go back when they wanted. The two others had been sent to help arrange food relief for the refugees.
But the Indonesian militia wanted to kill anybody who helped refugees. And so they came after the three men.
Caceres-Collazo had time to send a quick e-mail that the militia were "on their way" and that "we sit here like bait, unarmed, waiting for the wave to hit." Those were the three men's last words to the outside world.
After they had killed the three, the militia searched every house where any United Nations or other relief worker had been staying. Fortunately, all had fled.
Nine months later, in May, 2001, an Indonesian court pronounced a verdict of guilty on the six militia members who had killed the three UNHCR humanitarians. Although the six expressed no regret, the court sentenced them to mild prison terms of only 10 to 20 months. Ogata labeled the sentences a "mockery" that was "deeply disturbing." But other militia received equally mild punishment, with many killers walking away scot-free.
The three were not the only humanitarians who had to reckon with the risk of death. Even as the lenient verdict was pronounced against their killers, six members of an International Red Cross relief team were killed in the Congo. Two were women: Rita Fox, a Swiss citizen, and Véronique Saro, a Congolese. The men were Julio Delgado from Colombia and three more Congolese, Aduwe Boboli, Jean Molokabonde and Unen Ufoirworth. They had been trying to help Congolese and Rwandan refugees caught in the middle of a civil war in northeastern Congo.
Fred Cuny, a well-known American humanitarian relief worker who had saved literally thousands of lives during various crises in Africa, the Balkans and elsewhere, also paid for his efforts. He disappeared without a trace in the snowy mountains of Chechnya on March 31, 1995. Neither he nor his remains have ever been found, despite massive search efforts by his family and others.
Cuny had been labeled "the man who tried to save the world" and had probably done more than anyone else to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Russian province fighting for freedom. He had entered Chechnya to help those trapped in the war. Russian and Chechen civilian or military officials to this day deny any knowledge of what might have happened to him.
The list goes on. The Taliban in Afghanistan had nothing but contempt for the United Nations (U.N.) and for agencies trying to bring relief and support to the citizens of Afghanistan. On July 20, 1998, Taliban members killed Muhammad Habibi, who had been helping refugees as a member of the UNHCR office in Kabul, and Mohammed Bahsaryar, another Afghan who had been bringing food on behalf of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).
The Setting; the Risks; the Purpose
Humanitarian workers risk death whenever they enter war zones to help the hungry, the homeless, the dispossessed, the wounded and the dying. And they risk it ever more frequently because they now need to go to ever more places in the midst of war. Front lines have become blurred if indeed they exist at all.
Almost 200 United Nations relief workers lost their lives during the decade of the 1990s, when the world was supposed to be safer after the end of the Cold War. Because governments take no responsibility for relief workers, no government investigates the murders closely. Only one of every ten cases involving the violent death of a U.N. relief worker is ever solved. The killers rarely suffer any punishment.
Many of the humanitarian workers who have been killed did not even work directly for the United Nations but worked for voluntary agencies that helped the United Nations. Some of those agencies, such as Catholic Relief Services and World Vision, now train their relief workers in special conflict zone survival tactics. All agencies have become more cautious. But, like soldiers, humanitarians cannot do their jobs without facing risk. And they must often go where soldiers do not.
This is the world of the humanitarian, a world both old and new, constantly changing and never at rest. A world known to most Americans and Westerners only in occasional newspaper or television photos of war, massacre or famine, but very real to those who are in it.
* * *
At any given moment, as many as 65,000–75,000 civilian professionals work full-time in the middle of crises on various humanitarian tasks, whether protection, relief, post-conflict reconciliation or rehabilitation. They receive headquarters support from at least an equal number of administrative, legal and logistical officials, making a total of perhaps 150,000 or more full-time civilian humanitarians. Since the end of the Cold War, tens of thousands of soldiers have been supporting humanitarian operations in peacekeeping roles. They help to bring the total of persons engaged directly or indirectly in humanitarian operations to perhaps 250,000 civilians and military operating full-time in over 100 different states. Tens of thousands of other civilians perform humanitarian tasks on a part-time basis.
The number of 65,000–75,000 civilian professionals working in humanitarian crisis zones may not seem large in a world population of billions, but it represents the equivalent of what four to six U.S. Army divisions could put on line at any given moment in a ground combat operation. Few national armies can match it with their forces.
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin once asked rhetorically and scornfully: "How many divisions has the Pope?" He might be impressed to know that the international humanitarian community has as many divisions as it does. And those divisions, unlike many current Western military forces, do not hesitate to go into danger.
Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in 2000 described the Saint Demetrius bridge between the Serb and Albanian sectors of the Kosovo city of Mitrovica as the most dangerous bridge in the world. Yet Claire Bourgeois, a French woman working for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, crossed the bridge almost every day at that time in an easily targetable white Land Rover. She was helping to shield Albanians living in Serb ethnic areas and Serbs living in Albanian ethnic areas, earning both the enmity and the gratitude of both groups. If she was afraid, she did not show it.
* * *
Humanitarians have come to recognize their world with painful familiarity:
• The barren, often empty, land, whether in Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea or Angola.
• The roofless, often charred, houses, whether in Bosnia, Chechnya or Nicaragua.
• The red clay or brown mud trails called roads, whether in Cambodia or Uganda.
• The triple canopy jungle, whether in Colombia or Rwanda.
• The snow-blocked mountain passes, whether in Bosnia, Kurdistan or Afghanistan.
• The flies, the mosquitoes, the roaches and the scorpions everywhere.
• The low-rent rooms in the big cities where asylum seekers huddle, whether in Frankfurt, London or New York.
• And, all too often, weather that is either too hot or too cold, with people suffering from drought or from freezing.
In those settings, the humanitarians can see those they have come to help:
First, they see the children, always many more than one expects. They often cry. They sometimes, but rarely, play. Mainly, they look, trying to understand what is happening to them and to their world and to their parents if those parents are still alive and around. And they try to hang on to something, anything, that might protect them.
Many children are ill, undernourished or crippled. They have stepped on mines and they walk on one leg with a makeshift crutch. They have become accustomed to sleeping within a hollow in the earth or very close together for warmth. They have also become accustomed to living by the dozen or more in a room — if there is a room.
Then, the old. They say little, if anything. They rarely look around. Instead, they look at nothing in particular. They huddle silently and move as little as possible, saving their strength, and they seem very thin and very tired.
The women, in contrast, are usually much too busy. They are often looking for their children or, if they are lucky, trying to care for them. They appear overwhelmed, as they almost always are. They look first for any medical tent that they should visit with the children. They also look for the food line or for any other line in which they should be standing to get relief or clothing. They live at the outer edge of anxiety, exhaustion and despair, often famished and cold because they give their food allotment and their warm clothes to their children.
Some men may be around as well, but not as many. Few of those in any humanitarian camp are ablebodied and healthy. For those must be elsewhere, either fighting or trying to protect whatever may be left of their land or of their possessions. They are too proud or too independent to be comfortable in camp or relief surroundings. Only the old, the sick or the lame stay in the camps for more than a few days unless they cannot go anywhere else.
One cannot help but notice the eyes. They reflect exhaustion and fear. If they meet the eyes of any humanitarian helper, they look either pleading or hopeful at any sign of attention. And the eyes are often closed. Or they appear to be turned inward, seeing nothing that they do not absolutely need to see for survival.
Then one notices the other relief workers. In the tropics, they wear shorts and light blouses, jeans that have become shapeless over time, or faded safari suits. In the highlands, they wear bulky sweaters and jackets. Nothing that will need cleaning or care. They all too often live where there are no houses, no doors, no beds, no showers, no toilets, no comforts and very little sleep.
Some, middle-aged, have seen it all before. Tanned, even in winter, from long exposure to the sun and the air, they try to get things organized. They give quiet instructions or bark out orders. They help where they can and try to straighten out the mess around them. They complain that nothing is where it should be and that supplies have not arrived on time — as indeed they never have. But they go on.
Few have become cynical, though all might well have. They act and think as if everything will work out. Like old army sergeants, they know that not everybody around them will still be alive in a week. But they do not speak of it.
Many have become "ex-pats," or expatriates, who long ago left either England or Germany or Denmark or Australia or India or Japan or Minnesota or Massachusetts or California or wherever they once thought they belonged. They do go home from time to time, but many have moved almost permanently to Geneva or to wherever their organization's headquarters may be.
Humanitarians spend much of their time in what they call "the field," which can be anywhere in the world, although some work at agency headquarters in Geneva, New York, Atlanta, London, Tokyo, Islamabad, Nairobi or elsewhere. Many even prefer the field because they can help real people instead of filling out forms, wearing suits and ties, attending meetings and soliciting funds.
Some of the Western humanitarian workers are young Americans, Europeans, Canadians, Scandinavians or Australians, just out of school or college, often on their first or second job. They show enthusiasm and genuine concern. They try to help. They do not mind the heat or the cold or the vermin or the disease around them, but they do mind the tragedy of what they see.
A few suffer burnout after one or two tours in the field, having seen too much pain and too much death too early in their lives. But most are able to continue, believing that the help they offer can alleviate the suffering they witness.
Most are not Westerners. They may be African, whether Kenyan, Ethiopian or Nigerian. They may be Asian, perhaps Indian, Thai, Pakistani, Japanese or Indonesian. Many come from the Middle East, be they Jordanian, Egyptian, Israeli or Turkish. Some come from Latin America. Many are local hires or belong to a local organization. They increasingly fill the humanitarian ranks with a kind of multiculturalism that did not exist in the decades right after World War II but that has helped to make the relief organizations more understanding of what they face.
Often, in peacekeeping operations, soldiers from many countries may temporarily become humanitarians. They wear many different uniforms, be they American, British, French, Nigerian, Scandinavian, Indian, Pakistani, Jordanian or from any one of dozens of different states.
The peacekeeping forces often wear heavy armored jackets weighing up to 40 pounds to protect themselves from small-arms fire or bombs and to protect those who sent them from criticism. They try to keep order. These military humanitarians represent a new but growing category, with relatively few deployed during the Cold War but many more since its end.
All get around in the well-known four-wheel vehicles that can go wherever needed: ambulances, Land Rovers, trucks, or whatever one can find or scavenge. And in some crises, as in Bosnia, Kosovo or Afghanistan, armored personnel carriers.
The vehicles have foot-high black letters stenciled on their sides and backs, such as ICRC, INTERFET, IOM, IRC, ISAF, KFOR, MSF, SFOR, UN, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, etc. They reflect the alphabet soup of humanitarian agencies or of military commands supporting humanitarian action. Those letters once offered protection but they have recently become targets as well.
Those who have served in humanitarian crises know all those initials and many others by heart. For all the major agencies appear in any crisis, especially at the beginning. Some have symbols, like sheltering or giving hands or a large red cross or red crescent, to help show who they are and what they do.
Humanitarian Care
In all these settings, what do the humanitarians do?
More than can be asked and yet less than is needed.
Most important, they try to offer immediate help: clean water, food, shelter, medicine, safety.
As soon as possible, they try to find out who is who and where they come from, and whether they know where their families might be. They try to register everybody and to let others know where they are, perhaps by sending messages or letters or calls for help.
They also try to protect new arrivals, either from those who might attack them because they fled or from those who want to send them back. They especially try to shield them from those who want to recruit them to return and fight.
They work with local authorities, trying to arrange for land or resources for refugees and other displaced persons. They try to get the police to respect the rights of those whom the police have captured or those the police want to expel.
They try to prevent gangs from seizing food supplies and they try to get things done without paying bribes. They often need their headquarters to appeal to a central government, if that central government has any authority where they are. If not, they negotiate as best they can to save their charges from death, rape or capture. Even when the central government supports the humanitarian cause, nothing comes easy.
At the beginning, the humanitarians usually find themselves totally overwhelmed. They drive or run from place to place, from group to group, constantly behind the needs.
All too often, they have nothing to offer except their support. Food, water, clothing and building materials always seem to arrive at the wrong time or at the wrong place or in the wrong form. Lots of things are "on the way" but not yet available, especially during the rainy season or the winter months. And there is never enough money to do what needs to be done.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Humanitarian Conscience by W. R. Smyser. Copyright © 2003 W. R. Smyser. Excerpted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Preface,
Dedication,
Introduction,
1. Humanitarians at Work,
2. From Natural Rights to National Rights,
3. Humanitarian Frustration in Two World Wars,
4. Strengthening Humanitarian Protection,
5. Humanitarian Care Goes Global,
6. The Decade of the Refugee,
7. Brave New World,
8. Yugoslavia Explodes,
9. "Humanitarian War" over Kosovo,
10. Tragedies in Somalia, Rwanda and Timor,
11. The Lost Decade and the New Millenium,
12. September 11, Osama bin Laden, and Afghanistan,
13. Humanitarian Care for War in Iraq,
14. Reconnecting with the Humanitarian Conscience,
Epilogue: August 19, 2003,
Appendix,
Notes,
Index,
Also by W. R. Smyser,
Copyright,