The Big Picture: Targetting Aid Workers

This week, I will be taking a break from this daily grind of politics and offer a broader look at a handful of important issues that are having a serious impact on millions of people around the world. Today's topic: the targetting of humanitarian aid workers in war zones.

The profession I admire most is that of humanitarian aid workers. These are people that could easily have remained in their air-conditioned apartments in London or Los Angeles or New York. But they voluntarily choose to leave that comfort for some of the least hospitable places in the world. Choking on the dust of Darfur. Wilting in the oppressive heat of the Western Sahara. And increasingly, they're dodging bullets too. They did so not to destroy anything or to kill anyone but to heal, feed and shelter those in desperate need. They do not take sides, except the side of humanity.

In the past, aid workers were generally considered off-limits by combattants. Tragically, this is no longer the case. Some warring parties do not accept the premise that anyone can be neutral. To echo the president of the United States, they think that if you're not in overtly in favor of their struggle/liberation/crusade/jihad, then you are against it. And in a way, aid workers are against it. They are against war because they are ones almost exclusively responsible for repairing the damage of war. They are the ones who pick up the pieces broken by the war fetishists.

This mentality is sometimes inadvertantly abetted by political rhetoric. One supporter of the Iraq aggression told me that as far as he was concerned, there was no moral distinction between the insurgents trying to kill occupying American forces and trying to kill aid workers, because they are both allegedly trying to achieve the same purpose. Such thinking clearly implies a green light for attacks on aid workers.

Like other civilians, aid workers have always been 'collateral damage' in wars. But what's different is that recently, warring parties have actively targetted these heroes. Just Google the phrase 'aid workers killed.' Some of the results"

-8 in Darfur in July.
-7 in Afghanistan in a single May day.
-17 massacred in cold blood in a single incident in northern Sri Lanka earlier this month.

And that's just in the last few months and it's only killings, not including countless kidnappings or anything else.

Violence against aid workers is done for various reasons. Some groups want to scare aid workers into leaving so they can commit their atrocities without any foreign witnesses, such as the Darfur genociders. Others may want to obstruct help for populations they consider hostile or indifferent to their cause. Aid workers are often kidnapped for ransom but other times it's just to spread fear and terror; if even the foreigners are vulnerable...

In Iraq, some aid workers are seen as an extension of foreign domination, as I alluded to in the previous paragraph. In 2003, 15 high ranking officials, including the highly respected UN Human Rights Commissioner Sergio Vieira de Mello, were murdered when terrorists blew up the United Nations' headquarters in Baghdad. (An ironic and obscene expression of anti-occupation sentiments given the well-documented tension between the US and the UN).

This plague reflects a greater trend of increased indifference or downright hostility in combat. I wish I had documentation but I've read numerous times that in the wars in history through World War I, the casuality breakdown was typically 90 percent military and 10 percent civilian. In 'modern' wars, it is reversed: typically 90 percent of casualities in wars today are civilian and 10 percent are combattants.

Improved killing technology is a major reason for this. There is also an increased reluctance to take heavy casualities because of domestic political considerations so many military operations rely heavily on air power, which is far less discriminate than ground troops (the use of which carries international political implications as well). Concerns about civilian casualities are brushed as 'unfortunate but inevitable' and 'collateral damage.' Worse yet is when warring groups use civilians or aid workers as human shields, a gross violation of international law.

It's not a big step to go from this to actively targetting aid workers. Why? All this reflects something broader, which has serious implications for aid workers.

Specifically, the line between civilian and combattant is being blurred, if not erased altogether. Some groups don't admit that they kill civilians simply because they do not recognize the concept of a 'civilian.' They don't recognize neutral parties, like aid workers, because in their mind, it's impossible to be neutral. You're either friend or enemy, nothing in between. Since aid workers usually help people on both/all sides of a war's divide, they are often seen as the enemy by all combattants.

Aid workers were once considered untouchable by combattants. And it's crucial that this become so again. Valliant id workers perform yeomen's work in the harshest conditions for the sole purpose of saving people's lives, health and well-being. All warring parties, especially those that claim to be acting with some popular mandate, must let these heroes do their jobs in safety.