Must Aid Flow from the Barrel of a Gun?

Samantha Power - erstwhile foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama currently at Harvard - has forgotten more about conflict and humanitarian relief than I will ever know. All the more disappointing, then that her op-ed on how to "protect the protectors" doesn't even mention what seems to me to be a crucial unanswered question: what relationship should aid providers have to military forces?

Power identifies a growing concern among the international aid community: UN and other aid providers are increasingly becoming the targets of insurgents and terrorists in the countries where they work. Once upon a time, a blue flag or red cross or crescent could provide real protection, marking the bearers as neutral noncombatants. But al Qaeda and a host of other violent non-state actors no longer see things that way. Last week, aid workers with the International Rescue Committee were killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban; yesterday, an employee of the World Food Program was killed in Somalia. Most famously, in an attack Power describes in detail here, the UN's mission in Iraq itself was struck by suicide bombers in 2003 and top UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello and twenty others were killed.

Power's suggestions amount to recognizing that there are times and places when aid workers simply cannot operate. She argues that "the United Nations and aid organizations must have more tangible, urgent reasons for placing unarmed civilians in the most dangerous parts of the world," that t"he 192 countries that are part of the United Nations must spend substantially more money on security for the organization's missions," and that "international organizations and aid groups get the cooperation of their host countries." Good ideas, all; I doubt many would argue.

But what do you do when there are tangible, urgent reasons for placing civilians in harm's way, but the protection that aid organizations can provide is not enough to protect them? Or when the host country isn't willing or able to provide sufficient protection, but dire humanitarian need exists? After all, in Darfur, the host government is part of the problem, while in Somalia, the government barely functions.

A debate has been raging for some time about whether aid workers can or should cooperate with peacekeepers or other military forces to get help where it needs to go; when I was in graduate school it was a particular point of discussion between students in the development and security tracks. There aren't easy answers: by cooperating with military forces, aid workers lose their neutrality and the protection it should bring, and may become unwitting parties to the conflict. By shunning them, they either leave themselves open to violence and intimidation or leave vast populations abandoned.

I don't know how to square this circle. But I'm not sure how useful any attempts to protect the protectors can be without grappling with the issue.