Humanitarian Air Strikes Complemented With Humanitarian Aid

A Médecins Sans Frontières staff member inspects the damage at an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, following a US airstrike. Photograph: Najim Rahim/AFP/Getty Images

Tazeen Hasan

Non Governmental Organisation's activities and objectives have always raised questions in the past.  But for the very first time someone has addressed the issue in a bold perspective. In his book, Today We Drop Bombs, Tomorrow We Build Bridges: How Foreign Aid Became a Casualty of War Peter Gill exposes the secrets of funding agencies working in war zones. He questions the qualifying mechanism as NGO, their dependence on political institutions and their funding from belligerent military powers. Below is the excerpt of his article,  Humanitarian airstrikes': a reassuring gloss for the actions of politicians, published in Guardian. 

"The starting point for this book was the big charitable aid agencies, the good guys of a $25bn aid business, and how they handle the pressures and dilemmas of the war on terror."

Everyone is humanitarian now.

While the United States claims to target Syrian towns with airstrikes for a humanitarian purpose, President Putin claims that Russia's involvement in Ukraine and Crimea is a humanitarian mission. 

 "A word once used to describe principled civilian assistance to people suffering in natural or manmade disasters now provides a reassuring gloss for the actions of politicians and the military," says Gill.

The charitable aid agencies are giant business now with a collective of a $25bn.

"At home, they rely on public reputation and private donations to sustain their humanitarian endeavours, but in the field, many deliver aid on behalf of western governments whose military actions has yielded miserable circumstances  for the locals," says Gill.

In order to write this book on aid agencies, Gill travelled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, and he says in all four countries and he writes, "the United States is conducting a bombing offensive, using either conventional warplanes or unmanned drones."

UN agencies Driven To Get Bigger Budgets Compromise their Principle.

The big American, British aid agencies like Oxfam as well as European humanitarian institutions are largely funded by the military powers in the war zone and can't remain impartial. Similarly,  UNHCR, WFO, UNICEF who used to enjoy who once enjoyed an independent status from the UN's political institutions are now formally “integrated” into missions whose overriding task is to win wars for the security council in New York. Their drive for bigger budgets might be achieved only at the cost of their principles.

With the exception of MSF Médecins Sans Frontières(Doctors without borders) who takes none at all from belligerents in war zones,   all these agencies are largely funded by the western governments and their impartiality is questionable, Gill says. Even MSF has a massive annual income of $1.1 billion.

Charities Are Mentoring Soldiers Against Jihadists in Somalia

In Somalia,  NGO's are mentoring soldiers how to combat the Somali Jihadists and are qualifying as charitable organisations.

Aid agencies protecting themselves at the cost of locals

Humanitarian agencies with their new increasingly exposed roles  in war on terror are targeted in war zones and several casualties occurred in last two decades. Gill points out that aid agencies are outsourcing local labor to keep themselves away from danger zones.