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There
has always been a direct link
between refugees and armed
conflict. Addressing the cause of
refugees, which I argued in the Global Refugee Regime is
incumbent upon all of us, boils
down to resolving conflicts. So
Samantha Nutt’s book, Damned Nations: Greed,
Guns, Armies & Aid,
McClelland & Stewart, 2012
(paperback) attracted my attention
for new insights. I was rewarded
by a pithy mixture of experience
and advice. Nutt convinced me that
it's time to think again about war
versus aid versus development. The
past decade suppressed critical
thinking with a presumption
that military responses are
the best. She deserves a read.
The
book introduces us to a trip to
the Congo Rwanda border zone where
conflict unexpectedly flares up
again. Nutt ends with powerful
thoughts like: “The
experience of war shatters all
assumptions about who and what we
are as human beings – the horrors
we are capable of, our ignorance
and prejudices, and our ability o
show great compassion and courage
in the face of extreme adversity.” In
chapter 1, An
Invitation to War, we get a
short account of the conflict in
Somalia to which Nutt adds her
experience of assessing the need
situation there. She offers
thoughts on the highly profitable
arms trade which allows such wars
to flourish. Not for nothing does
the Canada Pension Plan hold over
$200 million in investments in 24
of the world’s top arms-producing
companies including Lockheed
Martin, BAE and Honeywell. We are
consumers of war. She gives
thoughts: “Even
after an arms embargo … in 1992
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and others continued
to ship arms to Somalia’s warring
factions and religious zealots,
who had unfettered access to
aggrieved young men. NATO members
in turn … sent arms …[to these
shipping countries]” She
ends her chapter: “There is a cost
to every commercial transaction …
Who pays? In the end, we all do.” In
Chapter 2 Chaos
Incorporated, we get
insight into a child soldier
rehabilitation project and the
situation of chaos in the Congo to
which she adds an account of the
victim of gang rapes. The conflict
is concentrated in the Eastern
Kivu Province bordering Rwanda,
Burundi and Uganda where there are
mines for gold, diamonds, tin and
coltan – the mineral needed for
components in electronic devices.
Here is “development” by the
globalized free market resource
industry. “Rape with Extreme
Violence” is more accentuated in
this mining area where there is “a
wretched maw of sexual predators”
from youth gangs to Congolese
military to Rwandan Rebels. The
Congo government benefits from a
fraction of the mineral trade –
the rest ends up supporting the
conflicting parties. There is no
initiative on coltan comparable to
that which took on the “blood
diamonds” market in Sierra Leone
by certifying the source of all
diamonds sold. At the end of her
chapter she concludes on a child
soldier rehabilitation project:
only demobilization holds for any
length of time. With so little
investment in reintegration and
rehabilitation, disarmament is
rarely realized. Nutt’s commitment
through her agency War Child
International is remarkable given
her realism. Chapter
3
Winning
Wars, Losing Peace begins
describing Nutt’s experiences
around medical supplies in the
early days in Iraq after the
toppling of Saddam’s regime. She
reports the shock of the general
devastation, and the awe of the
untouched Ministry of Oil
building. From the date of the
August 2003 major explosive attack
on the UN headquarters in Iraq
there was a steady drop is respect
for rules of war. Nutt discusses
the trend to have the military
engaged in humanitarian work like
building schools and distributing
food – a trend with devastating
consequences for soldiers,
civilians and aid workers. Nutt
switches to Afghanistan where
troops working on such projects
along with hundreds of civilians
have been killed by insurgents.
NGOs implement similar programs
without armed guards and carefully
distinguish themselves from the
international security forces. The
military claims NGOs cannot work
on large scale projects in
insecure areas. NGOs in turn
question the military focus on
volatile Afghan provinces,
overlooking safer areas of need.
“In conflict areas the role of the
military … ought to be limited to
securing corridors that will allow
for the safe … delivery
of aid by organizations
knowledgeable in the field, and to
training local police and security
forces.” Nutt laments that
“peacekeeping” is now a pejorative
term in defense circles. The
chapter ends with a return to Iraq
and an account of the tragic death
of a friend and stalwart Iraqi
CARE leader at the hands of
kidnappers. Chapter
4
Paved
with Good Intentions contains
some
frank looks at the realities of
aid agency work. Supplies appear
in local markets. Mixed with her
story of muddy roads in Liberia
and Liberia’s history in a
nutshell, Nutt sensitively shows
us how a local official felt
forced to sell off some aid
supplies in the market. Nutt
points to the realities. Corporate
driven economic development is not
an answer. It fuels the chaotic
warfare in the Congo. Aid can
improve education and health,
strengthen governance and promote
social stability. But Nutt
captures the dangers of aid such
as letting governments off the
hook. She stresses the importance
of building up local civil society
groups. Nutt
is critical of big
international NGOs who must be P P
P (present prominent and
proprietary) to secure donations
in a competitive market back home
and who compete for the best local
partner agencies. She laments that
war zones affecting millions of
civilians over years generate less
donor interest than a natural
disaster like the earthquake in
Haiti. Nutt has harsh words for
little groups of well-intentioned
individuals who arrive with their
collections of used cloths and
shoes. It is too easy to undermine
local markets and stir up unrest.
Even with care, there is not
necessarily any connection between
good intentions and improved
lives. The
status quo favors a one-time big
response rather than long term
funding for development. When
prolonged relief activity
overshadows development
initiatives “communities become
less self-sufficient …” and
“stability remains ever more
elusive.” Transitioning from aid
to “tackling chronic deficits and
vulnerabilities” is difficult for
the “aid industry” because
agencies cannot agree how to do
this. Also, the aid model
separates the local civil society,
which must play the central role
in development from international
NGOs who remain “closeted in
Euro-American enclaves.” Aid is
critical but the humanitarian
movement must “recalibrate,
focusing more on knowledge
transference, training, and on
reducing the obstacles to local
engagement and participation.” After
a moving experience in Burundi
Nutt ends the chapter: “I live not
knowing whether I could have done
more … But only fools rush in
believing they have the answers
not realizing how quickly they
become part of the problem.” Chapter
5,
Pack
your bags we’re going on a guilt
trip, begins and ends with
an account of different but
formidable women working within
their own countries. Miriam,
formerly a university nursing
teacher in Somalia, is now
visiting villages for UNICEF. In a
particular hostile rural
environment she is trying to teach
the women about reproductive
issues and female genital
mutilation. Nutt’s point is that
this is not the helpless victim
stereotype of aid. In the middle
of the chapter she laments: “we
are inundated with images of the
poor starving African child. Her
face appears on our television
screen, her eyes searching … This
is followed by … montages of
squalor and morbid deprivation …”
Such ads are highly effective.
They manipulate ignorance and
guilt. The children are never too
old so we might question their
innocence. Donors can choose among
the forlorn. This portrays
communities suffering war as
passive receptors waiting for
outside help. Ubiquitous
inequalities are reduced to
simplistic messages which make us
feel that all that matters is
helping this one child whose
future is in our hands. The best
humanitarian programs are
respectful, consultative and
driven by the priorities of local
stakeholders. Too often the
injustices endured by the war
ravaged become the backdrop to our
quest for personal or emotional
fulfillment. Nutt
is highly critical of
“voluntourism.” A revolving door
of unskilled workers is more of a
burden than a benefit to any
community. Reputable aid agencies
select and train their overseas
volunteers with care. Nutt
acknowledges she was a young
professional exposed to overseas
situations but she had completed
her qualifications, she was not
responsible for direct services,
she was supporting local staff and
it was not mixed with tourism.
Nutt favors supporting local
crafts, buying fair trade products
and working with Amnesty
International and similar
organizations as ways to
participate in international
affairs. It is understandable that
young people would want to go and
help where the action is. But “The
best of intentions do not
guarantee the best outcomes.” Nutt
turns briefly to the failure of
governments to reach the target of
0.7% GNP for overseas aid.
Philanthropy is flexible and can
help, but it is no real substitute
for a well-conceived on-going
governmental overseas aid program.
Nutt ends her chapter with her
second formidable woman – Aquila -
a foreign affairs official in
Saddam’s former Iraqi government.
Aquila was angry at inappropriate
UNICEF aid and of corruption in
the UN sanctions and aid programs.
There were no nuclear weapons in
Saddam’s Iraq or she would have
heard about somewhere. Aquila
became one of 3 women to be
appointed to the interim
government in Iraq. Just before
the chapter’s end we learn she was
killed in an attack by insurgents.
Like Miriam, Aquila defies
the image of the helpless victim
waiting for us to help. “They seek
justice, not charity, solidarity
not pity, and opportunity not
handouts.” They ask that we find
common cause with them in their
struggles. They do not ask us to
spend our holiday building a
school somewhere to satisfy our
own emotional needs. Her
last chapter A
Just Cause begins by
recalling the introduction, the
horrors of war and the factors
sustaining it: endless arms
manufacturing; resource extraction
in unstable environments without
enforceable laws, militarism
without consequence and aid
without accountability to the
recipients. She then makes the
case for empowering women as the
best aid and development strategy
even in hostile and war torn
environments, illustrating this
with her own agency’s project with
Afghan refugee women repatriating
to Kabul. There is a fine line
between such support of local
organisations doing work on
women’s rights and subsuming them
in a foreign agenda. “When making
decisions about who and what to
give to, look for organizations
and initiatives that directly
improve women’s lives through
community based development.” Nutt
has concern about unemployed young
men. Yet Nutt has seen the impact
of carefully run development
programing in many of the world’s
combustible corners. Teenage boys
involved in armed conflict admit
they would have acted differently
had there been options. There is
resilience in situations where
that seems impossible. Young men
and women can become a resource
for their communities through
education and skills training for
a fraction of the cost of on-going
militarization. Nutt
supports legal aid and legal work
at all levels: to respond to those
who rape; and to call before
international courts those who
commit war crimes and the like.
She warns of the dangerous
ambiguity in rules authorizing
preventive war and the UN doctrine
Responsibility to Protect. These
can too easily become pretexts for
letting the genie of horrors of
war out of the bottle. Bush and
Blair had no hard evidence of
nuclear weapons yet were able to
begin a “preventive war” against
Iraq. Thoughts
on
how to respond contain a list of
“what you can do.” In my point
form:
Fittingly,
the book ends with a last story of
experience from the field.  |