According to Patricia Zapor, Catholic News Service, as reported in the Gulf Pine Catholic of March 7, 2003, there's an unacknowledged elephant in the war council room: Who's going to take care of the Iraqi people if there's war? Ms. Zapor doesn't seem to know, even though she works just down the road from the Pentagon.
She claims that international aid agencies have tried to draw attention to that elephant through public statements and briefings for Congress, government planners and just about anyone else. Apparently they're talking, not listening.
For example, the British Overseas Aid Group, a consortium of aid agencies, reportedly warned in January that any major military action in Iraq "is likely to lead to a humanitarian crisis and increase civilian suffering, in addition to fueling regional instability." It is not reported whether or not BOAG has offered to work with British military forces or is willing to do anything else to resolve such a crisis other than talk.
Julian Filochowski, director of one member of that consortium, Britain's Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, is reported to have said after a visit to Iraq in October that "millions of poor Iraqis -- who will be the ones to suffer and who themselves have no weapons of mass destruction -- are seemingly left out of consideration. The report did not suggest why he came to that strange conclusion.
The United Nations and other relief agencies are likely to evacuate most, if not all, of their relief service workers in the event of war. If they are not evacuated, it is likely that they will either be interred by Iraq or deported by invading forces as third party noncombatants are removed from the combat theater. Exclusion of such people from the theater of operations would be that many less mouths to feed. In any case, anticipated destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, including power generation, transportation, and public utilities capabilities, and the allocation by Iraq of increasingly scarce resources for wartime operations, make it unlikely that such workers would be able to accomplish anything worthwhile, even if they stayed at their posts.
Fortunately, the United States military is ready, willing and able to live up to its responsibilities under international law and traditional military practice regarding administration of occupied territory, just as it did and is doing in Afghanistan. President Bush promised in a February 26 speech to the American Enterprise Institute that "we will deliver medicine to the sick, and we are now moving into place nearly 3 million emergency rations to feed the hungry. We'll make sure that Iraq's 55,000 food distribution sites, operating under the oil-for-food program, are stocked and open as soon as possible."
International protocols require an occupying force to provide emergency aid to the inhabitants where it is consistent with the military mission. The United States has traditionally exceeded the requirements of these protocols in areas it has occupied, such as Germany and Japan. US doctrine involves Civil Affairs units moving into an occupied area as soon as possible after hostilities subside to reconstitute existing indigeneous services and to augment them with military resources where necessary. The general strategy to do this is published military doctrine; specific tactical plans are classified for military reasons.
The Catholic Relief Services aren't planning to help. According to Ken Hackett, executive director of CRS, "We don't want to be part of a military operation to deliver humanitarian aid." He want on to explain that CRS is more concerned about winning the trust of the population than it is with helping people if that involves cooperating with the military, which CRS seems to despise.
Neither military force is likely to accept help from agencies such as CRS even if it is offered. Third party civilian agencies in a combat zone only complicate the military operation and are always a headache to military commanders. The tactical operation may well require that workers for such agencies be removed from the combat zone, by force if necessary, so the military people can do their jobs without interference from forces over which the military commander has no control and who may well be confused with spies and saboteurs, or who may be actively aiding them.
The point may be moot. Given the reluctance of Turkey and Saudi Arabia to allow their countries to be used as staging areas, the only way the United States may be able to provide humanitarian aid could be by air drop, which is less than satisfactory. Iraq has indicated its intention to purposely create extensive civilian casualties, further complicating the situation. Food, blankets and medical humanitarian supplies may be stolen by Iraqi military forces and used for military purposes or sold on the black market, as happened in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
International relief agencies could help by moving resources made available from Iraq to areas where the local military and civilian authorities would welcome their assistance, but their reluctance to cooperate with these authorities makes that also unlikely.
Patricia Zapor can be reached at the Catholic News Service at 1-202-541-3250.