Rethinking aid by force

David Rieff pitched his May 18 piece, “Save us from the rescuers,” as level-headed skepticism of the impulse to provide humanitarian assistance by force in Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military junta that usurped power) and beyond.

Rieff is correct in some regards. The estimate of those who may die as a result of Cyclone Nargis is probably a vast overestimation. The projected number of those at risk, 1.5 million, is based on a rule of thumb that multiplies the number of casualties (estimated as potentially 100,000) by 15. Therefore, it amplifies what was already probably an overestimate. Rieff is also correct that the survivors of this storm, like other natural disasters, may prove more resilient than aid organizations claim when making their appeals.

Despite starting from reasonable criticisms, Rieff goes drastically off course, missing the important questions about whether delivering aid without the ruling regime’s consent is a good idea.

First, if the estimates of potential mortality are wrong, we should certainly get them right. But suppose the regime’s refusal to allow aid in leads to “only” 50,000 more people dying than would have otherwise -- does that really mean we should stop considering non-consensual options for aid delivery?

Second, Rieff mischaracterizes calls for nonconsensual aid to make them look more unreasonable. We are talking about at minimum air-dropping aid, and at maximum, bringing in and protecting aid workers to deliver that aid. While these may be impractical for important reasons, Rieff misses these reasons entirely. Instead, he renames nonconsensual aid as “aid at the point of a gun” (echoing the title of his new book) and also uses the most extreme term, “humanitarian war.”

We are not talking about a large troop deployment intended to shoot at bad guys. It is as irresponsible for him to imply this as it would be for us not to carefully consider what intervention would mean, as Rieff correctly implores us to do. If governments do intervene to deliver aid without consent in Burma, they will want to keep it as small, nonviolent and nonpolitical as possible. In fact, aid has been delivered to civilian populations in need without the consent of their host government many times before, including in Cambodia, Nigeria, El Salvador and Guatemala, among others. Right now, governments are working to provide aid through small local organizations, going around the government.

Third, Rieff attempts to equate the desire to help Burma’s civilians with a latent imperialist impulse. Of course many of the countries wanting to deliver aid are former colonial powers -- most of the countries with the wealth and logistical ability to provide this aid in a hurry were colonial powers. How can one claim that this is indicative of some repressed colonial urge when similar statements could apply any time Britain, France, the U.S. and others try to act responsibly? This is a cheap assertion relying on the expectation that people will simply nod their heads when one invokes imperialism as an underlying motivation. Let’s get beyond this.

Finally, Rieff’s piece simply missed the point.

There remain many people in many villages of Burma, particularly ethnic minority areas, that have not yet received a single bottle of water or piece of food. The salination of their fields by flood waters will prevent food from growing for several seasons. If people do not get assistance, some portion will die from disease very soon, and some portion will die later from general damage to their livelihoods and infrastructure.

The Burmese government’s obstruction and theft of aid will almost certainly result in intentional death on a massive scale. Whether this is a crime against humanity or not, it seems sufficient justification to consider how we can deliver aid with or without the consent of the government. The major challenges to doing so should not be musings over our colonial pasts or whether excess mortality will be in the tens of thousands or low millions. Instead, we need to ask how nonconsensual aid could be provided, what impact (positive or negative) it might have and how these options compare to continuing to beg the regime for access or employing “non-Western” countries to transfer sufficient aid instead.

The degree to which air-dropping aid would benefit the right people may be decreasing -- the regime has moved troops into the delta area, and they could control aid sent there. Nevertheless, careful dropping of basic supplies, while limited in benefit, may still save many lives.

If aid workers must enter to distribute aid, on the other hand, there are three options. The relatively few workers already in the country could move to areas in need without the regime’s permission. Most aid workers are not willing to do this and would surely be arrested or worse. Alternatively, new workers could be brought in and protected by international observers and armed security. Similarly, military troops could help deliver aid, then get out. Both of these are admittedly very dangerous and perhaps impossible options, though the dangers can be minimized by keeping a light footprint on the coast while offloading aid, at least.

But the most feasible option might be to send aid through Thailand, India and perhaps even Indonesia and China. These countries are more acceptable to the regime, and working with them would allow us to provide far greater support than those countries could alone. We could also avoid the regime’s (irrational) fears that the West is coming in to topple them. This solution is limited too, as Western organizations have enormous capacity and tremendous experience in dealing with past disaster response.

While I hope there may be solutions to these logistical dilemmas, these are the challenges we face -- not those about our colonial past or the precision of mortality estimates.

Chad Hazlett is director of protection programs at the Genocide Intervention Network.

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