Ghosts: creative non fiction

As a young aid worker, I always sought out the most dangerous current crisis and took pride in my ability to face scary places. I was always jones-ing to be the first on the plane to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq – you name it, I wanted to go. I thought very little about the dangers in the job and was naively focused on being where the action was until one afternoon in Norway. 

In June 2011, I was sitting in Oslo in the Grand Café preparing for a job interview in the spring sunlight when I read about the attack on the Continental hotel in Afghanistan. I had just spent three lonely weeks in Kabul at that very same hotel leading a workshop for Afghan aid workers. Every morning, I rode in an armored vehicle, jumped out in front of the hotel,  and greeted the construction crew who were refurbishing the lobby  with a cheery Salaam Alekum!  I ignored the fact that the metal detector was unplugged and trusted that the UN security advisor had assured us that the Continental was the “top safety choice” for Kabul.

In Afghanistan, I had thrown myself into work because my flaky long-distance "special friend" panicked and broke up with me while I was en route to Kabul - ruining our plans for a romantic summer meet up in Oslo after my work.  I was depressed and angry but hid it by putting all my energy into work. I showed up early, worked through the lunch hours, and focused on my work and hid my pain by being very chatty and energetic with the training participants.

One of the secrets to being a humanitarian aid worker is to never think too much about what danger you might be in. It’s a plus to be blissfully ignorant because if you took the time to actually think about what might happen to you, it would be impossible to get up and do your job. Better just to get on with it and think about it later. 

Flash forward to two days after a long grim flight from Kabul to Bangkok to Berlin to Oslo where I sat drinking a glass of white wine in the Scandinavian sunshine. I suddenly realized how dangerous that job running a training workshop in a luxury “UN approved” hotel had actually been. The hotel had been the scene of a bloodbath the night before  - those construction workers were disguised Taliban fighters who had been apparently plotting my death every morning. They had sprung their attack in the evening (when I was normally relaxing with a cup of tea) and had targeted the dining area -  shooting indiscriminately into a wedding party. There were five suicide bombers who detonated themselves and fought floor to floor as terrified guests huddled in hotel rooms until the US forces managed to secure the hotel by landing helicopters on the roof and having an extended gun battle through the night. Reports suggested that it was an inside job as the hotel ‘security personnel’ ran away as soon as the gunmen arrived. 

A chill ran through my body as I read the article - I was probably one of the ones that they had excitedly planned to kill – a red headed American woman teaching about gender equality and how to provide support to a woman in a violent relationship – the very embodiment of the principles and ideals that they detested.  I felt an uncharacteristic stillness creep over me. Minutes later my mobile phone buzzed, there was a contrite message from the "special friend" saying he had been wrong and could we still meet? Shaken, I said yes – postponing for 4 months the inevitable autumnal breakup in a Swedish Ikea cafeteria.

I didn’t realize it at the time but that’s when I subconsciously decided to take a break.  For the next two years, I hung back a bit and worked in easier places - nothing near a front line.  And I retreated from the front line of dating too – easy in Bangkok where white women are invisible. I wrapped myself in a ‘security blanket’ to avoid the ghosts that were haunting me – the ghosts of romantic rejection, my own frail human mortality, and my idea of myself as an invulnerable superwoman.  

But time heals all wounds, I guess and suddenly, I found myself bored and accepting a job in Jordan to work with the Syrian refugee crisis - a new country and I felt excited as my plane touched down in the desert turned green and lush from the winter rains. Time to confront those ghosts and to open up my heart again.

World Humanitarian Day 2016: South Sudan and Rape and Being an AidWorker

I just wrote about this in the Cassandra Complexity, a blog I help co-edit with friends but here's a rougher more personal account.

August 19 is World Humanitarian Day where humanitarian aid workers like me remember our colleagues who were killed in the line of duty. Today, I am also now thinking about the particular vulnerability that women face: being raped in the line of duty.  

A few days ago, the AP published a report about the South Sudanese army's attacks on a popular expatriate lodging, "Terrain House", in Juba, Sudan where three female expatriate aid workers were raped by multiple soldiers. The rage and sadness I felt about the UN's refusal to deploy peacekeepers to protect these civilians threw me into a sad dark place. I'm currently on sabbatical in Sarajevo, Bosnia and this sadness was compounded by all the dark European movies I had been watching at the Sarajevo Film Festival.  I cried through the movie Cameraperson because it had a lot of scenes that hit close to home - women chopping wood in Zalingei (reminded me of almost getting shot on my way to Kass in South Darfur), a baby being born and dying in Nigeria (reminded me of dying babies in Haiti post-earthquake in MSF's obstetric hospital, Afghanistan (the fear I felt there driving around at night), and scenes from Liberia (where I had my first security fright thanks to a dumbass Congolese man that I was traveling with). I was already feeling raw when I read this report. 

I then learned that the US Embassy (my Embassy!)  had also failed to do ANYTHING to protect these American citizens and had "made some phone calls." Eventually the Government of Sudan sent in someone to rescue the people but the local staff of the hotel and 3 women were left behind to be rescued the next day by a private security force. What must it have felt like to be the people "left behind"? I couldn't stop myself from instantly imagining myself as one of the three expatriate women left overnight with the rapist soldiers. It's every woman's worst nightmare. For my sanity, I had to stop. 

Aid workers started lamenting this issue and expressing our rage and sadness.  Female aid workers everywhere are deeply shaken by this event. Some are privately expressing how afraid they feel but that they feel worse for abandoning South Sudanese women who bear the brunt of the sexual violence. The most frustrating part was the false sense of security that being nearby the peacekeepers provided. Our so-called "safety and security systems" (including useless TRIP forms filled out on line) are not always going to be there. It's obvious that we, as women,  are usually alone out there sometimes, and as every woman everywhere in the world has learned since puberty, you have to take responsibility for your own safety and security.

Our "security professionals" are often ignoring women's needs or have REALLY outdated viewpoints on how women can protect themselves. In Bangkok, at the recent women's day- our security personnel at the UN told women that they should "smile more" and in Jordan, the UNHCR security personnel who was giving me a brief there said I should "dress decently" (to which I responded, since I'm a decent person anything I wear is, by definition, decent). 

I'm too angry and sad to write a more professional polished piece - so I give you instead, a piece that i wrote about this in 2012. It was inspired by events that took place in 2012 after I had finished a year working in Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan for the UN.  I took a Hostile Environment Awareness Training course before I went to Libya with the British government for the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. I was really nervous as in mid 2011, there had been an attack on the hotel where i had worked in Kabul right after I left and I realized I had never felt safe in that country. I didn't know how I would react to the simulated situation. I was most nervous about the "fake kidnapping" part - and as it turns out - I was fine, but one of my colleagues was not. She was a survivor and experienced a flashback during this section of the training. Our mostly male trainers had no psychologist on standby and were not prepared to support her so I was called in. In order to deal with it, I decided to take action and become an activist on this issue. 

Gender-based Violence and Security

This blog post was published by USAID to coincide with the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence event, “Who Takes Care of the Caregivers?  Providing Care and Safety for Staff in Gender-based Violence Settings,” taking place on Thursday, Nov. 29th 2012 in Washington DC, hosted by the Inter-Agency Gender Working Group, funded by USAID. It is no longer available online but a copy of it can be found here. The Tips that I wrote for travelers can be found here. 

Gender-based Violence (GBV) is an issue that impacts aid workers – not just beneficiaries and not just staff that works in GBV settings. This post examines agencies’ duty to care for their workers by preventing and responding to GBV. 

“Keeping International Workers Safe:  Preventing and Responding to Gender-based Violence”

Sarah Martin, Consultant and Specialist on Prevention and Response to Gender-based Violence

The sexual assault of the journalists Lara Logan, Mona Eltahawy and two unnamed British and French journalists in Egypt shocked the world and brought the issue of gender-based violence (GBV) against Westerners working in conflict areas to the forefront. Clearly GBV does not only affect the "locals" in these areas. Not only are journalists at risk but also aid workers–and not just in conflict settings or in GBV program areas.

I recently interviewed a large cross section of women travelers who work in a number of fields (including international development, human rights, humanitarian action and international business) about their experiences as women while traveling and working overseas*.  Many of them brought up their frustration that sexual harassment and sexual assault were never raised in security trainings and that agencies refused to address this as a real security concern. Increasingly, aid agencies are providing more “realistic” security trainings that simulate “hostile environments to prepare their employees for gunfire, kidnappings and other events in the field.”  While some of these trainings talk about sexual assault, there are no discussions of how to prevent sexual assault or how to react or support colleagues if they are assaulted. Sexual harassment in the workplace as a security issue is often ignored. In addition, the purveyors of these trainings are mostly male and show little awareness to the issue of sexual assault or the gender concerns of female trainees. I recently attended one such training where one of the participants relived her own sexual assault from years ago while undergoing a simulated “kidnapping.” While they took her out of the simulation, there were no psychologists or female trainers available to talk to her. 

Female development and aid workers have the same security concerns as their male counterparts: crime and landmine accidents and armed robberies do not discriminate. Security measures, trainings, and manuals are the same for men and women, and most agencies take a ‘gender-blind’ approach to security. Most security officers are men, and many of them come from a military background. This gender-blind approach to security, however, leaves out a major issue.  Women also face another security threat that most men do not encounter – gender-based violence, namely sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Rape myths promote the false idea that women are only sexually assaulted by strangers. While this can happen, women are much more likely to be attacked by someone familiar to them – a co-worker, a driver, or a friend. Most of the women I interviewed shared stories about fending off sexual harassment by colleagues or actual cases of sexual assault in the field. 

Rarely is their organization prepared to handle these issues. While there has been some action taken on “building safe organizations” – the focus has been preventing sexual exploitation of our beneficiaries by our staff. But there is not sufficient attention paid to sexual harassment of our staff by our staff or adequate support for staff that have been sexually assaulted. There is little information in the security manuals that I have reviewed about what medical care a survivor may need or what rights a sexual assault survivor might have. Nor is there guidance on reporting to local authorities, human resources or guarantees of confidentiality. Responsible employers must be prepared to understand and deal with the fact that their employees might become victims of sexual assault [1] and should be prepared to support them. This means bringing the issue of sexual assault up in security trainings and sensitizing the trainers and security personnel on how to address the issue – but not by restricting women’s access to “dangerous areas” but by making sure female employees are informed of the dangers, provided with information on how to protect themselves, and given sensitive and adequate support by their organizations in case the worst happens.

[1] Global statistics show that 1 out of 3 women has experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault.

 * From the chapter I wrote entitled “Sexual Assault: Preventing And Responding As An International Travelers in the book Personal Security: A Guide for International Travelers, by Tanya Spencer, ISBN: 9781466559448 commissioned and published by Taylor and Francis, LLC.

Spring time in the Balkans with Syrian and Afghan Refugees

So in April, I quit my job as the Regional GBV Advisor for the global GBV Working Group in Bangkok. I wanted to work on the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe and I had a great opportunity to do so by working with the International Rescue Committee as the "Initiatives Director for Women and Children's Protection" - sadly, by the time I had resigned and got here, the EU-Turkey deal was in place and the large migration had halted so there are far fewer migrants moving through Europe. But the job is still great and super interesting.

I'm living in Belgrade, Serbia (a place I never thought I would ever go) and I'm working with a small nice team of people here. They just found me an apartment that overlooks the big park here and I can walk down to the Danube. The beer is good, the meat is heavy and tasty, and I had better find a gym immediately or I will become as wide as I am tall. My job involves going to the different countries in the Balkans and looking at the needs of women and children migrants and seeing if IRC should open up programming and how to do it to support them. So it reminds me a bit of my Refugees International life where I go someplace for a short period of time and do intensive interviews with refugees, NGOs, and government officials and taken in vast amounts of information trying to understand the situation. But I then get to help design programs to address the needs which is wonderful. 

First up: I went to Berlin for 2 weeks and met with local volunteers, the government, German NGOs, and toured many of the shelters where Syrian and Afghan refugees are living. It was both super heartening to meet the German volunteers who were devoting time and resources to helping the refugees understand the really intense bureaucracy of German life but also really depressing to see that all the same problems we see in camps in Liberia, Jordan, Sri Lanka, and Haiti are happening in a rich Western country - no segregation of vulnerable young women from the men, rape of children by "volunteers" and attacks in toilets because of lack of lighting or locks on doors. People who are interested in volunteering are also naive and soon become angry or depressed at the "ingratitude" of Syrians who are often middle class educated people who would like to just have a job, thank you, so they can buy what they need and get on with their lives rather than throwing off their veils, putting on ripped jeans, and becoming Germans. I interviewed young adolescent girls, lesbians, single mothers, and women with three children. Every single one of them discussed some aspect of groping, sexual exploitation, assault, and harassment on the journey - from the sex-starved young men of Syria and Afghanistan but also from the authorities along the route but mostly by the smugglers. The men who they had entrusted their lives with to make the dangerous journey.

For my next assessment, I went to Albania - a country that I really had very little knowledge about. I hadn't seen "Taken" in which Albanian mobsters apparently play a huge role. I had vaguely read some information about their terrible communism. But mostly I knew them from a Simpson cartoon.  I was blown away by the kindness, the beauty of their country, and the cultural heritage they have. i read a fantastic book called A Chronicle in Stone by Ismael Kadare and fell in love with his hometown of Ghirokastra. However, I did not meet nor see a single refugee. I did spend 2 hours stuck on the Greek-Albanian border and driving through some seriously high mountains and eating some good food. 

Now, I've just visited the third country for my assignment - It's been very interesting in Bulgaria - we were inside all the camps. Apparently the Afghan men (and its thousands of them) have been instructed by the smugglers to destroy the lodgings for them and take photos so they can show how discriminatory everyone is against Afghans and it will "help them in their asylum cases." It won't. All it is doing is making everyone think they are animals. I keep hearing all these terrible things about them. It makes me sad. I fight back and say I've been to Afghanistan and the people there are kind, have lovely homes, and show amazing hospitality. I remind them that its not safe there and the war still rages on despite the lack of interest from Western media. 

There are SO MANY OF THESE YOUNG MEN. Young men - ages 15-17 (some younger but lying about their ages) with no future in Afghanistan, climbing through forests, swimming in rivers, and sleeping in these old Bulgarian army barracks. they only stay for one or two days and then they are off - looking for the promised land of Germany. Where Afghanistan is considered "post-conflict" and safe so they will be denied asylum status and  will probably disappear into the "illegal" sectors living in the shadows. The same "smugglers" who lie to them and bring them across the continent also move the illegal drugs and traffic people into sex work. The young men are bored and restless, there is nothing for them to do in the asylum centers so they smoke and loiter around. Still, they are children - when you talk to them about sports or games or their favorite food - you see the young boy inside. there are still girls here too - and because they are fearful of all these young men, they are trapped inside the centers - not allowed to really go outside and enjoy the spring, kept inside for their safety. I will be pushing for women's centers where we can bring them together to chat, meet each other, possibly form some friendships or alliances where they can open up and find support for the troubles they have. And trying to think of ways to reach these young men. Because we know they are also vulnerable and there is a trade in sex trafficking for young men too. Behind their bravado and their male posturing, they are also vulnerable children. Some of the nights, after spending all day in the asylum centers and processing all the information, we were so tired.  But as I drove through the countryside and saw the poppies and waving fields of grain and mountains, and elderflowers and breathed in the fresh air, I also felt pretty happy. 

Back to Belgrade tomorrow after a weekend in Sofia, Bulgaria and next up - Macedonia? Greece? Hungary? Stay tuned. 

My contract is only til July 1 but I have the opportunity to do this for a year, I'm still mulling it over but it looks like a move away from Asia may be in the books. I hope Simon Le Bon likes beef and loud Serbian music! 

xoxox

Alarm! Red Flag! Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Well - I have had a rough week... actually probably a rough six weeks. I went to Nepal for two weeks to set up a donor monitoring mission which was not so bad - the Nepalis are such lovely people and Kathmandu is an interesting and charming and chaotic city - filled with (as some Indian man i met in the airport limo told me) "Hindu Characters". I enjoy being in Nepal - greeting people by saying Namaste, casually passing shrines and stupas, and ancient beautiful buildings - flying on planes called Buddha Air or Yeti Airlines.

But then I went to Afghanistan. At first it was fun - I have a potential blog post in here to compare and contrast my law breaking NGO ways with the UN discipline I"m supposed to maintain. I was sleeping in a shipping container, seeing old friends, commuting in armored cars, training (which I love). But it wore me down eventually - the relentlessness of work, the dreariness of the place (despite some beautiful touches like the rose garden and honeysuckle in front of my little apartment), and the never ending watchfulness you develop. I flew from Kabul to Delhi to Bangkok - had a 12 hour layover where I literally changed out the contents of my suitcase from Salwar Kameezes to sundresses and headed back to the airport to Frankfurt and Oslo. I had a brief romantic interlude in Copenhagen with this man that I adore but who is extremely elusive and then back to Bangkok. In the meantime, suicide bombers blew up the hotel I had been working in while I was in Kabul.

When I got back, I was tired. so very very very tired. Like sleeping all day on a Saturday and Sunday in a hot rather fevered state with a deep lack of energy I've never experienced. I didn't feel depressed, I literally felt like I was a completely de-charged battery. My brain was still working but my body wasn't. It was worrisome. Now of course, me being me, I immediately thought - maybe I'm depressed! Burned out! I had just been in Scandinavia and watched two Finnish and Swedish films (One of which railed on and on about the youth today who can't hold down a job without becoming burned out within six weeks). My American Capitalist work ethic kicked in and said - HEY! Because you were out sick last summer, you can't hack it anymore! You are weak! So I joined a gym, got a personal trainer and started working out. It worked! I had lifts in my energy but I still felt not right. So I went and found a therapist. Done. Probably stress! And working on sexual violence is tiring. And I had some friends going through some things that was mildly stressful. My nerves felt stretched though - I was on a phone call one day and it was all I could do not to scream and throw the phone out of the window into the pool. And nothing that bad was going on. Time for a vacation??? Then the horrible Norwegian terrorist blew up the Government building next to where I had been interviewing in Oslo. Hmm - extreme terrorist attacks following my every move.

Finally, someone pointed out to me that it might be physical... which made sense... I had struggled with an upper respiratory infection when I got here, then got some nasty intestinal thing that came to plague me in Laos and Pakistan, and I had been sick for almost a year when I moved to Europe. New continent - new antibodies needed. Plus traveling in Pakistan and Afghanistan is tiring. I heard a miraculous story of a man I know who was run down and very snappish and angry. He went to a doc, found out he had a parasite, they gave him a pill and he literally could fell it making him better. I wanted that pill. I was tired, snappish, easy to offend, and slumping into not caring about anything.

So the fantastic admin assistant at the office made me an appointment for the next day at the Bumrungrad hospital. I went in and got all the exams - stool, urine, and blood (hey - I'm a humanitarian aid worker - I like to talk about stool, urine and blood!). I couldn't give more samples though because I was leaving the next day for a training in Pakistan. I only had a 2 day window of opportunity for any treatments because then I was off to Nepal and then off to Europe for holiday. In Pakistan I felt a bit better. At least my energy and time was taken up by the demanding training participants. But my patience was thin and I was in love with my comfy Marriott bed and never wanted to leave it.

I flew home on the "red-eye" and went immediately into the hospital to get my test results. I felt haggard. I just wanted to know what parasite I had so I could get that magical pill. The lovely doctor gave me the good news first - blood tests were fine - no anemia, no cancer, no bad thyroid, no bad liver. Stool tests fine - no parasites (disappointment!) but the urine test showed I had an infection. Now my co-worker in Afghanistan had a UTI which was making her feverish so I know that they can have weird results on the body. Aha! I thought - that's it. But then the doc sent me to the Ultrasound room. I got an ultrasound - in an aside, I mentioned that I used to have kidney stones. Back when I was 24 - in both kidneys - but I gave up coca cola and now I was fine! Well guess what. I'm not fine.

The doctor sent me immediately to the urologist. They discovered an almost 2 inch kidney stone in my ureter of my right kidney that was blocking my kidney, sending urine back up into it and infecting it. How had I not felt it? Dunno. So, I thought... lithotripsy! I've had this before. No problem! Nope. The doctor said it was too big not to operate on and he wanted to do it right then and there. Cut a big incision over my hip and go in and fish out the stone. I was terrified. My closest friends in Bangkok were mostly out of town. The doctor was confident but I have never had surgery before. I texted my friends. They were shocked. I went into surgery. Right before the nurses came to get me, I was really sad and felt very alone. Then I thought of my mom. In the 60s, she was living in Taiwan with my father and had me. This was before men were in the delivery room. I channeled her energy- she was a fighter - and I thought - well if she could do it 40 years ago, I can do it now. So I just sucked it up.

So now... where am I? After surgery in a foreign land and five days in the hospital recuperating and two days in my apartment coming to terms with the fact I have a 10 inch scar on my hip, a tube in my bladder and kidney, and a postponed return to Europe... I am feeling a bit better. Unable to sleep really... and feeling vulnerable but the exhaustion is gone and hopefully my energy will return.

I don't have any lessons to share. I just feel sick and vulnerable and a bit more mortal. It's not going to be the suicide bombers of Kabul that will get me! It will be something ridiculous and human like a kidney stone.

Riding on the khlong in Bangkok

 

 

So I commute to work on the khlong (canal) in Bangkok as in the video above.

• Today I'm in a sort of depressed funk. I think its due to a number of things:
• Romantic confusion;
• Realizing I don't have much zeal for returning to Afghanistan for work after missing (by two days) a suicide bomber attack on a hotel where I was staying;
• Knowing I have six months left on this job contract but not wanting to move again;
• Missing my friends in the US since it was the 4th of July and I didn't do anything special - I didn't even make my dad's famous potato salad. (however, I plan to do it for the weekend and have a bbq with my friend Carol).

 

So I'm trying to combat it by listening to some good music to change my mood. Here is the playlist on the canal this morning:

George Harrison - Give me Love
The Beatles - The End
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Refugee
Falco - Der Kommisar
My Chemical Romance - Teenagers
Ludacris - Rollout (My Business)
Earth, Wind, and Fire- Boogie Wonderland
AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long

Between AC/DC and Ludicris - the mood lifted....

Changes in 2011

As you may have noticed - 2010 was not a great year for me as far as writing and being creative... I was on sick leave for five months due to a combination of stress from work (non stop travel, Haitian earthquakes, and human resource problems at my org) and from personal grief over the illness and death of my father in 2009 and it definitely impacted my ability to put my thoughts down on paper (or the computer!).

Although I had adventures and traveled a lot in 2010, I couldn't find it in me to write as much as I used to... for the record, I did manage to hit several new countries this year and most of them were for pleasure and fun, not work*.  It was odd not to visit Africa this year - although my time in Haiti and India were certainly memorable.  2011 should bring some big changes... I've accepted a job with the Norwegian Refugee Council and will be seconded to the United Nations as a Gender-based Violence Regional Training Manager for Asia. I'll be working on building capacity in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nepal to fight gender-based violence and I'll be moving to Bangkok, Thailand!

Its a big change - but I think I needed something. Although I have learned a lot in the big humanitarian agency where I currently work, its never really been a good fit for me - the lack of prioritization on women's issues, the reluctance to do advocacy, and the byzantine office politics and proud refusal to professionalize has undermined my own belief in my abilities and I feel stagnant.  I'm not sure that this new job will be perfect - are there any "perfect" jobs out there? And I will miss Amsterdam and Europe and my lovely colleagues from my current job but I am ready to try something new. Thai cooking classes, meeting Afghan women's organizations, and working for the Scandinavians... lets see how it goes! Wish me luck and pack your bags and come to visit in 2011!!!


*Here's my travel itinerary from 2010:
January: Kerala, Delhi, and Manipur India
February: Istanbul and Selcuk Turkey
March: Port-au-Prince, Haiti and London and Liverpool, UK
April: Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina
May: Edinburgh, Scotland, Paris, France and Texel and Verschelling in the Frisian Islands of Holland
June: Berlin, Germany and Gdansk, Poland
July: Paris, France
August: Copenhagen, Denmark
September: Tuscany, Italy and Bologna, Italy
October: Berlin, Germany and Prague, Czech Republic
November: Ghent, Belgium, Maastricht, Netherlands and Berlin, Germany
December: London and Swindon, UK

Humanitarians with Guns?

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the NYTimes that I admire, just wrote an article on "Humanitarian Workers with Guns" (It's on Times Select so you have to pay to get it but I'll illegally post it at the bottom here)

This article really bothers me because it totally blurs the role of the military with the role of humanitarian workers. Humanitarian workers must rely on maintaining neutrality in order not to be seen as supporting one side or the other. When this is confused, humanitarian workers become, in the minds of combatants, legitimate targets who 'support the other side'.

In Afghanistan, there was a huge outcry when the US army created PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) and MSF withdrew from the country after five of its workers were killed. The use of mixed military and civilian workers under the command of the military lead to accusations that humanitarian agencies were complicit with the military. MSF, which had operated in Afghanistan without incident since 1985, providing needed medical services announced "It is with outrage and bitterness that we take the decision to abandon them. But we simply cannot sacrifice the security of our volunteers while warring parties seek to target and kill humanitarian workers. Ultimately it is the sick and destitute that suffer."

There has been a rise in attacks on humanitarian workers in the last few years. In January in Darfur, there was an attack on Accion contre le faim - a well respected french aid group. One of the international women was raped. This was shocking to the humanitarian community because in general - internationals are spared. It's the local hires who take the brunt of the violence. (For more info - see this article on the killing of Sri Lankan assistance workers).

There is a legitimate role for the military in a post-conflict countries. They should take on the work that humanitarian agencies cannot - such as disarming and demobilizing armed forces and training national police and armies. The US has not done a lot of work in these areas in the countries that I'm most familiar with - DR Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Why don't they focus on the areas they are needed?

Article: Aid Workers With Guns By NICHOLAS
D. KRISTOF
Published: March 4, 2007
CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti

The U.S. has built a little-known military
base here that represents one of our best strategies to fight terrorism in the
coming years: The aim is to build things rather than blow them up.

This base in Africa, established in 2003, sits at the entrance to the Red Sea in the small Muslim country of Djibouti, next to Somalia. Security is as tight as the sun is
hot, with lots of bomb shelters, but the most apparent threats are distinctly,
well, African.

“We’ve got two hyenas out there,” said Cmdr. Darryl Centanni of the Navy,
executive officer of Camp Lemonier, pointing to a jogging trail on which troops
were running through the semidesert. “So the running gets pretty
interesting.”

He added that a pack of wild dogs also speeds up joggers but that the dogs
mostly get food by catching fish in the sea. (I’m not sure I trust military
intelligence on that one.)

After 9/11, the focus of America’s response to terrorism has been mostly on
using military force to destroy possible threats in places like Iraq and
intimidate just about everyone. The ethos was borrowed from the ancient Romans:
“Oderint, dum metuant” — “Let them hate, so long as they fear.”

Yet all in all, that strategy has backfired catastrophically, particularly
in Iraq, and turned us into Al Qaeda’s best recruiter.

So that’s why the softer touch in Centcom’s strategy here is so welcome. It
aims to help bring stability to northeastern Africa and to address humanitarian
needs — knowing that humanitarian involvement will make us safer as
well.

“The U.S. started to realize that there’s more to counterterrorism than
capture-kill kinetics,” said Capt. Patrick Myers of the Navy, director of plans
and policy here. “Our mission is 95 percent at least civil affairs. ... It’s
trying to get at the root causes of why people want to take on the
U.S.”

One humanitarian mission for which the U.S. military is superbly prepared
is responding to natural disasters. While the U.S. has spent vast sums
broadcasting propaganda to the Muslim world, the two most successful efforts at
winning good will both involved the military. One was the dispatch of soldiers
to help Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami, and the other was the use of U.S.
forces to help Pakistan after the Kashmir earthquake.

The 1,800 troops here do serve a traditional military purpose, for the base
was used to support operations against terrorists in Somalia recently and is
available to reach Sudan, Yemen or other hot spots. But the forces here spend
much of their time drilling wells or building hospitals; they rushed to respond
when a building collapsed in Kenya and when a passenger ferry capsized in
Djibouti.

Rear Adm. James Hart, commander of the task force at Camp Lemonier,
suggested that if people in nearby countries feel they have opportunities to
improve their lives, then “the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if
not completely, diminishes.”

The U.S. announced last month that it would form a new Africa Command,
aimed partly at blocking the rise of ungoverned spaces that nurture terrorism.
The new command offers tremendous humanitarian potential as well, for in some
poor countries the most useful “aid workers” are the ones in camouflage carrying
guns.

In the Central African Republic in September I visited a town with a lovely
new hospital built as a foreign aid project. But the hospital was an empty
shell, gutted by militias rampaging through the area. In places like that,
there’s no point in building schools or clinics unless you also help with
security.

Some of the most successful aid projects in Africa have been the dispatch
of armed peacekeepers to Mozambique and British troops to Sierra Leone. In both
places, troops brought what the besieged population most desperately needed —
order — and laid the groundwork for recovery. We should be far more aggressive
about dispatching small numbers of troops to impose a no-fly zone over Darfur or
to destroy Sudanese militias that invade Chad and the Central African
Republic.

We can also do far more to train armies in Africa. The deal we offer
African presidents should be along these lines: You run a country cleanly and
tolerate dissent, and we’ll help ensure that no brutal rebel force comes out of
the jungle to create chaos and overthrow you.

Helping fragile countries with security is just as important as helping them with education and medical care. So let’s hope that this new base in Africa is the start of a broad new policy that doesn’t aim to make us hated or feared, but respected.