UNDERSTANDING THE CONTRIBUTION OF AID AGENCIES, AND HOW MILITARY DOCTRINE NEEDS TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF THEIR CONCERNS

Task

How can the military co-ordinate its work with that of aid agencies, even if the agencies are at first reluctant to associate with them?



What do aid agencies want from the military?



What assistance can the military reasonably expect from aid agencies?



What doctrinal arrangements would incorporate aid agencies’ requirements?

Summary of points raised in discussion

115. It was noted that aid agencies, in effect, do have an approximate ‘doctrine’. They divide potential tasks into roughly six sectors: refugees/internally displaced persons, water and sanitation (WATSAN), health, education, food and nutrition, and civil society. The general practice is that each agency will define its programmes based on one or a combination of these broad areas. However, aid agencies have a fundamentally different culture and ethos from those of the military. There is therefore an ever-present potential for mutual misunderstanding arising from basic misperceptions related to these inherent differences. This need not necessarily translate into hostility between aid agencies and the military in a PSO, because they both seek the same basic purpose — to improve the lot of the people of the host nation. The friction that does arise is therefore not the result of a generically adversarial relationship. It is mainly a problem of a mutual lack of understanding, communication and co-ordination.

116. For example, aid agencies themselves sometimes have an (understandable) image of the military as having greater resources relative to their own. They feel that this ‘excess’ could quite easily be utilised in support of aid provision. This, in turn, creates unrealistic expectations about what the military can or should contribute to their own objectives. There is growing consensus among aid agencies, however, that accepting direct military assistance can backfire when the neutrality of PSO forces is compromised, leading to an improved distance from military resource requests. Military operations and aid operations also have different timeframes and different strategies imposed on them, and there is nothing that can be done about this. For instance, the military seeks an ‘end state’, while an aid operation is supposed to fit on a ‘relief to development continuum’.

117. However, the success of a PSO should be measured not just by military standards, but by the success of the operation in handing over its own functions to civilian structures: i.e. it is the civilian and not the military aspect of the operation that is in the end a more important determinant of success or failure. Nevertheless, the military tends to make political evaluations on the efficacy of humanitarian assistance during the course of PSOs. In African conditions, for instance in Angola, food deliveries by aid agencies to rebel-held areas have inadvertently directly assisted combatants. Combatants are likely to be local residents, and may return to their villages at night to eat delivered food. This is not only an issue for peacekeepers, however. Within the humanitarian sector, there is already an in-depth debate on the ‘dark side’ of humanitarian aid, and what can be done to limit the unintended negative consequences of aid provision.

118. Aid agency requirements for greater military transparency and accountability were also discussed. It was noted that the military often distrusts these concepts, seeing them as threatening to operational security. Also, a soldier is principally ‘accountable’ to his mission and its success. But if impartiality is really sought, then there should be no problem in principle with greater military transparency during PSOs. Transparency and co-operation may also be enhanced by the incorporation of some of the major donors/sponsors in the process of formulating the political-military plan for any given PSO.

119. Finally, answers to the questions posed to the syndicate for Task 7 were provided and presented in table format as follows:

Unfinished business/Recommendations for further research

120. It was felt that research is needed into the problem of developing a relevant and acceptable approach to military-humanitarian joint contingency planning for future PSOs in Africa. This may be informed by a comparative case study of good, bad and non-existent military/aid agency co-operation in three African crises — for example, in Liberia, Somalia and Guinea Bissau.