Is It Better to Save No One? - NYTimes.com

Is It Better to Save No One? - NYTimes.com

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Critics from left and right are jumping all over President Obama for his Libyan intervention, arguing that we don’t have an exit plan, that he hasn’t articulated a grand strategy, that our objectives are fuzzy, that Islamists could gain strength. And those critics are all right.

But let’s back up a moment and recognize a larger point: Mr. Obama and other world leaders did something truly extraordinary, wonderful and rare: they ordered a humanitarian intervention that saved thousands of lives and that even Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s closest aides seem to think will lead to his ouster.

We were all moved by Eman al-Obeidy, the woman who burst into the reporters’ hotel in Tripoli with her story of gang-rape and torture, only to be dragged away by security goons. If we had not intervened in Libya, Qaddafi forces would have reached Benghazi and there might have been thousands of Eman al-Obeidys.

It has been exceptionally rare for major powers to intervene militarily for predominantly humanitarian reasons. One rare example was the United States-led Kosovo campaign in 1999, and another was Britain’s dispatch of troops to Sierra Leone in 2000 to end the brutal civil war there. Both were successes, but came only after years of killings that gradually built up the political will to do something.

Critics argue that we are inconsistent, even hypocritical, in our military interventions. After all, we intervened promptly this time in a country with oil, while we have largely ignored Ivory Coast and Darfur — not to mention Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

We may as well plead guilty. We are inconsistent. There’s no doubt that we cherry-pick our humanitarian interventions.

But just because we allowed Rwandans or Darfuris to be massacred, does it really follow that to be consistent we should allow Libyans to be massacred as well? Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none?

If the Libya operation is successful, moreover, it may help put teeth into the emerging doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” — a landmark notion in international law that countries must intervene to prevent mass atrocities. And that might help avert the next Rwanda or the next Darfur.

After the Vietnam War, many Americans were traumatized by the very idea of using military force. As a result we were too slow to react to genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, and hundreds of thousands died as a result. Then we recovered our moxie — and unfortunately barged into Iraq. The difficulties of Iraq and Afghanistan have again made many Americans — particularly on the left — allergic to any use of military force, even to save lives in a limited operation with very few civilian casualties, like the one in Libya.

I don’t think the United States should arm Libyan rebels, partly because that would require training them to use the weaponry, and we shouldn’t have military boots on the ground, for fear of a nationalist backlash among Libyans. But we can step up the bombing of Libyan military units (arguably necessary to protect civilians), making clear to those units that unless they stand down, they will be destroyed.

Critics complain, correctly, that we don’t have a clear exit strategy. But plans made in conference rooms rarely survive the first shot anyway. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 lasted 11 weeks, entailed civilian casualties and faced constant sniping from critics — until it abruptly succeeded and largely put an end to the slaughter there.

Gulf countries could leak word of a $15 million reward for the arrest of Colonel Qaddafi. That might empower his aides and bodyguards to get greedy. The mounting defections of aides like Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa suggest that even some members of the inner circle believe the tide has turned. They’re opportunists, and they apparently believe Mr. Qaddafi is going down.

The International Criminal Court is investigating Colonel Qaddafi, with an indictment possible as soon as next month. It would be a fine step toward ending global impunity for atrocities if a SWAT team of Libyans and coalition forces swooped down one day and seized Colonel Qaddafi to face trial in The Hague. It’s the kind of thing that no one can predict, but it’s an ending that would leave this Libyan incursion remembered not only for the lives it saved, but also as a milestone in the history of humanitarianism.

I’m delighted to announce the winners of my 2011 Win-a-Trip contest. The student winner is Saumya Dave of Atlanta, who has studied writing at Columbia University and medicine at Medical College of Georgia. The winner among those 60 and over is Noreen Connolly, a teacher in Newark, N.J. I’ll travel with them later this year to the developing world, and they’ll blog for NYTimes.com and post videos as we go. Stay tuned.  

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

Related articles

• U.S. Missiles Strike Libyan Air-Defense Targets - NYTimes.com (armwoodnews.com)
• U.S. Imposes Sanctions to Deter Libya - NYTimes.com (armwoodnews.com)

Aid Workers’ Deaths in Afghanistan Stir Debate on Strategy - NYTimes.com

Aid Workers’ Deaths in Afghanistan Stir Debate on Strategy - NYTimes.com

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 100 relief workers in Afghanistan have been killed so far this year, far more than in any previous year, prompting a debate within humanitarian organizations about whether American military strategy is putting them and the Afghans they serve at unnecessary risk.

Most of the victims worked for aid contractors employed by NATO countries, with fewer victims among traditional nonprofit aid groups.

The difference in the body counts of the two groups is at the heart of a question troubling the aid community: Has American counterinsurgency strategy militarized the delivery of aid?

That doctrine calls for making civilian development aid a major adjunct to the military push. To do that there are Provincial Reconstruction Teams in 33 of 34 provinces, staffed by civilians from coalition countries to deliver aid projects. The effort is enormous, dominated by the Americans; the United States Agency for International Development alone is spending $4 billion this year, most of it through the teams.

The so-called P.R.T.’s work from heavily guarded military compounds and are generally escorted by troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Traditional aid workers worry that the P.R.T.’s and the development companies working for them are compromising their neutrality. Oxfam and 28 other charitable groups signed a report last month, “Nowhere to Turn,” that contends the practice puts civilians at greater risk.

“In many instances, where P.R.T. projects have been implemented in insecure areas in an effort to win ‘hearts and minds,’ they put individuals and communities at risk,” the report said.

Michiel Hofman, the head of Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan, said, “This assistance forces the beneficiaries to choose sides, and many people in the disputed areas do not want to choose sides.”

The military and its NATO civilian partners disagree. Earl Gast, the mission director for U.S.A.I.D. in Afghanistan, said the United Nations and the International Security Assistance Force had agreed on a clear distinction and clear rules regarding humanitarian aid — “that it can’t be militarized and it can’t be politicized.”

“Those are rules that we follow,” Mr. Gast said.

Part of the problem is the definition of humanitarian aid. Traditionally it means life-saving emergency assistance, but the distinction is often unclear. Providing medical care for disaster victims, for instance, is clearly humanitarian, but building a medical clinic for war victims could be considered either humanitarian or developmental aid, properly within the scope of the civil-military effort.

Further complicating matters, many traditional relief groups have expanded their efforts into development work, although they take pains to ensure that their projects are not connected to the government or the military.

The military and its supporters say, however, that traditional aid groups have neither the capacity nor the willingness to bring large-scale aid programs to conflict areas. This has resulted in a reliance on private development companies, most of them profit-making, to deliver the aid programs paid for by NATO countries.

“Someone has to go into the areas where the war is being fought,” Mr. Gast said. “We recognize that some N.G.O.’s don’t have the capacity and some of them don’t want to, but there are other willing partners who can go,” he said, using the abbreviation for nongovernmental organizations.

A Dec. 1 report by Refugees International was highly critical. “U.S.A.I.D.’s use of development contractors and frequent embeds with the military have dangerously blurred humanitarian principles by associating such programs with a party to the conflict,” the group wrote.

Among the contracted aid groups working for coalition government programs, which nearly always employ armed guards and work in fortified compounds or from military bases, the body count has been particularly severe. Eighty aid contractors employed by the United States Agency for International Development were killed and 220 wounded from January through early November of this year. (In the same period, 410 American soldiers and Marines died.)

The aid contractors were attacked on average 55 times a month — a sevenfold increase over 2009, Mr. Gast said. By contrast, 20 people employed by charitable and humanitarian groups, which refuse to use armed guards or work with the military, were killed during the first nine months of this year.

Sixty-four charitable aid workers were kidnapped by insurgents this year. All were released unharmed, usually after negotiations involving local community leaders who vouched for them, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.

One U.S.A.I.D. contractor who was kidnapped, Linda Norgrove, was killed during a botched rescue attempt by American Special Forces troops.

The military and its supporters say the difference in body counts only reflects the fact that the aid contractors work in dangerous areas where many nongovernmental organizations are unwilling to operate.

Nongovernmental organizations vigorously disagree. “We are in 26 provinces,” said Ashley Jackson of Oxfam, “and in Arghandab there are four N.G.O.’s working on health care and education.” Arghandab is one of the most dangerous areas in Kandahar, with a district-level team from the Provincial Reconstruction Team running more than 50 aid projects. “The P.R.T.’s’ presence makes it more dangerous to work there,” Ms. Jackson said.

NATO officials contend that insurgents do not distinguish between aid workers. “Insurgents have made clear both in their rhetoric and their actions that they target N.G.O.’s and aid workers,” said Mark Jacobson, the deputy senior civilian representative of NATO in Afghanistan.

But aid officials counter that the very difference in casualties between private contractors and charitable ones shows that the Taliban do make a distinction.

“It’s quite easy,” said Mr. Hofman of Doctors Without Borders. “We don’t use armed guards, we don’t have barbed wire on our gates, there’s a clear logo on our cars, and we are not associated with any program strengthening government. The government is just one of many warring parties.”

Doctors Without Borders has offices in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, where it runs a hospital. Those offices have never been attacked, while a private development company, DAI, just down the same street, has a fortified compound that has been attacked twice by insurgents, Mr. Hofman said.

Many of the traditional aid groups are particularly critical of the United Nations, which they accuse of failing in its responsibility to make sure aid efforts are not militarized. The United Nations recognizes the Afghan government and is politically committed to it, but many of its agencies, including Unicef and the World Food Program, are expected to deliver humanitarian aid.

The conflict inherent in those two roles is typified by Robert Watson, who serves both as the deputy special representative of the secretary general, a political role, and as the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kabul.

Mr. Watson agrees that the lines are often blurred. “It makes it difficult for us in the humanitarian community to demonstrate to those on the other side of the conflict that we strive to be neutral intermediaries,” he said.