Treating the symptoms, not the disease

Just over a week ago, I received an e-mail from Mathias Hagstrøm, graduate student from Roskilde University in Denmark writing his dissertation on the development of Afghan mine awareness programs. He wanted The Torch to take a look at a paper he wrote for The Journal of ERW and Mine Action. Obviously mines and unexploded ordnance have taken a terrible human toll in Afghanistan, especially among children. Fortunately, there are some excellent organizations and individuals looking to mitigate that damage (the following video isn't about Hagstrøm, but is one example of the positive work being done on this issue):



(By the way, that's the only Al Jazeera piece I've ever appreciated watching - BZ to them on that.)

Hagstrøm is one of those trying to improve the situation with his work on awareness and education programs to help protect the civilian population in Afghanistan, especially children. I applaud him for that effort.

But as with many well-meaning NGO causes, I wonder if the effort is directed more at the symptoms than the disease. These excerpts from Hagstrøm's piece are indicative of the problem:

When the International Security Assistance Forces approached UNMACA in 2007 about cooperating on the IED-awareness booklet, the framework for cooperation between UNMACA and the Ministry of Education was being prepared for the transition. This meant that ISAF, UNMACA and the Ministry of Education worked as semi-autonomous teams while developing the content and design of the IED booklet.

Scepticism between the civilian and the military sectors was evident from the start. Within UNMACA, as well as the Ministry of Education, there was concern that a civilian-military cooperation could blur the line between military and humanitarian operations.

ISAF began developing the booklet in the fall of 2007. Both the military and civilian sectors saw IED-awareness training among the population as an important area that was underscored by the increasing number of IED incidents and a growing number of casualties in each incident.

...

In large parts of Afghanistan, where the insurgency has a permanent presence, the number of IED incidents is at its highest, which means that the areas where IED awareness is most needed are also the most inaccessible. The number of IED casualties has greatly surpassed those of ERW since 2006.

...

Prior to creating the IED-awareness booklet, ISAF was engaged in MRE and IED-awareness independently in the field when the military provided training on an ad hoc basis. The United Nations and NGOs have criticized some of these MRE and IED-awareness initiatives for disrupting the civilian MRE system already in place by not following the guidelines UNMACA developed.

This helpful graph indicates how "In 2006, IED casualties (red) surpassed those of explosive remnants of war (blue):"



The positive work done by NGO's on ERW awareness and removal has morphed into IED awareness. While this seems like a natural progression, it's not. ERW stands for Explosive Remnants of War, and implicit in that nomenclature is that it deals with 'leftovers' of a conflict. Laying blame or doling out responsibility after the conflict has ended is a futile exercise from a harm-mitigation standpoint. IED's on the other hand, are not 'leftovers' of past wars, they are weapons of current ongoing conflict, and they are being used by only one side.

That's why when the discussion turns to "blur[ring] the line between military and humanitarian operations" or making it "difficult for the mine-action organization to be a purely neutral humanitarian agent" I shake my head.

I've written about this misguided NGO phenomenon before:

While Dr. Watson raises some troubling issues regarding the mechanics of our aid to Afghanistan, the key flaw to his overall argument rests in his remarks above. He's proud of having worked in Taliban Afghanistan. On one level, of course, he should be: individual CARE workers certainly did good work, and at significant personal danger. But on a strategic level, what did his group change? Despite their best efforts, CARE could not prevent Afghanistan from sliding further and further into state-sponsored brutality, oppressive ignorance, and abject poverty.

What the NGO's seem to have difficulty accepting is that they were a band-aid solution in Afghanistan prior to the overthrow of the Taliban. The systemic change required for fundamental improvement in the lives of ordinary Afghans necessitated a military intervention. Whether we can translate the specific military victories achieved in the early days of that intervention into a sustainable long-term victory across all of Afghan society remains to be seen. But the one certainty is that, for all the good they do, the NGO's could not have created this opportunity.

Only one side of the conflict is inflicting innocent Afghan casualties with indiscriminate IED attacks that kill and maim more civilians than coalition and Afghan soldiers. If you truly want to mitigate the harm from IED's, the most effective way is to root out those planting them. And neutrality is a counterproductive ideal in that struggle.

The perfect example of such fuzzy reasoning is this passage near the end of the piece:

How to deal with the IED problem raises many of the core issues humanitarian agents find themselves facing in when working in conflict zones. The mine-action community’s neutrality is challenged when it develops MRE materials in cooperation with the state and government. The community also needs to negotiate with other non-state actors to gain access to areas outside state control to protect the citizens there.

When precisely the 'non-state actors' the humanitarians want to negotiate with are the ones perpetrating the IED crimes, one wonders what sort of moral and ethical - not to mention logical - contortions one has to engage in to conclude this is a productive course of action. The insurgents aren't interested in IED awareness; if they were, they wouldn't be planting the damned things in the first place.

My advice to the civilian ERW awareness community: if you can't bear picking sides in this conflict where the insurgents are the only ones clearly and deliberately engaged in actions that are blatantly dismissive of civilian casualties, then you should stick to dealing with 'remnants' of past wars and let the government and ISAF forces deal with the current weapons and their consequences. Because they're the only ones trying to cure the disease, rather than put a band-aid on the symptoms.