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Aid Groups Oppose Pentagon Control of Aid Effort- NGOs - Global policy Forum Aid Groups Oppose Pentagon Control of Aid Effort
By Carol Giacomo
Alertnet
April 1, 2003American humanitarian aid groups complained on Wednesday that attempts to force them to operate under the Pentagon in Iraq would complicate their ability to help the Iraqi people and jeopardize aid workers. In an unusually tough statement, InterAction -- which with 160 members is the largest U.S. alliance of non-governmental relief groups -- expressed deep concern about military-driven plans for bringing humanitarian aid to Iraq.
"The Department of Defense's efforts to marginalize the State Department and force non-governmental organizations to operate under DOD jurisdiction complicates our ability to help the Iraqi people and multiplies the dangers faced by relief workers in the field," said InterAction CEO Mary McClymont. She said relief professionals at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, not the Pentagon's military establishment, know best how to conduct emergency assistance operations. "Having been deeply involved for decades with non-governmental organizations that provide humanitarian assistance around the world, U.S. AID and State are familiar with the principles of independence and impartiality under which we must operate," she said.
For months, in private meetings with senior U.S. officials and in letters to President George W. Bush, InterAction urged that civilian authorities be given responsibility for relief activities in Iraq. Instead, retired U.S. General Jay Garner was named to oversee the post-war Iraq administration through the Pentagon's new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. The Pentagon said the program was under civilian supervision since Garner and his top aides were no longer on active military duty but McClymont said her alliance rejected that assertion.
RELIEF WORKERS
Aid groups fear that close association with the U.S. military in a country where the Americans have waged war would jeopardize the safety of relief workers and compromise their freedom to decide which communities receive aid.
"People are upset. They do not want to report to the military," one agency official said. "If some of their staff gets hurt in the field they could never look themselves in the mirror again," . One problem involves Pentagon plans to require aid workers to wear military-issued identification tags. "We said we won't do it," the official said. "The military needs to have confidence that people are genuine aid workers but the answer is not to slap a military ID on them," he added.
Quickly providing humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people and beginning the arduous task of rebuilding the country have long been viewed as essential to a successful U.S. mission. But as the United States presses its war on Iraq, plans for relief aid and reconstruction are threatened by disputes within the Bush administration, according to officials and experts.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon are locked in a struggle with the State Department over who will control rebuilding the country and selecting a post-war government, they said. Secretary of State Colin Powell last week wrote Rumsfeld to make clear that AID disaster response teams coordinating the efforts of relief agencies in Iraq -- not the Pentagon -- would be in charge of humanitarian assistance, a U.S. official said.
An AID spokeswoman insisted the teams "report to (AID chief Andrew) Natsios and he reports to Secretary Powell." But asked if the dispute over military versus civilian control was resolved, she told Reuters on Tuesday: "I wouldn't go that far. There are ongoing discussions."
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