A colleague of mine stumbled upon a fascinating book by Stephan Stedman and Fred Tanner on (and titled) Refugee Manipulation. The book explores the manipulation of the international refugee regime (i.e. UNHCR, NGOs, States hosting refugees, etc…) by warring parties. That is, the strategic creation and/or use of refugee camps in armed conflict:
Hence some refugee camps become a breeding ground for refugee warriors: disaffected individuals, who-with the assistance of overseas diasporas, host governments, and interested states–equip themselves for battle to retrieve an idealized, mythical lost community. Facing military defeat at home, the warring party uses the suffering of refugees for its own political purpose: to siphon off aid, establish the international legitimacy of their cause, and, by manipulating access to them, ensure that they will not repatriate. As long as armies control refugee populations, they can demand a seat in negotiations.
As the authors point out, the answer to refugee manipulation is in changing the incentives. That is, incentivizing and empowering 1) states hosting refugee camps to maintain control and security, 2) refugee leaders to reject armed groups militarizing camps, and 3) NGOs to prevent the maldistribution of their aid.
Source:
Stedman, Stephen John, and Fred Tanner. 2003. Refugee manipulation: war, politics, and the abuse of human suffering. Brookings Institution Press.
Iraqi forces swept unopposed into Baghdad’s Sadr City today after a compromise with firebrand cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Most commentary focused on the impressive showing of the Iraqi Army, which conducted the operation largely independently. However, I (and also Dr. iRack from Abu Muqawama) noticed something else:
By late Tuesday, Iraqi troops had pushed deep into the district and set up positions around hospitals and police stations, which the Iraqi government was seeking to bring under its control.
A primary target for Iraqi forces seems to have been the facilities providing health services in the area. In the recent weeks Al-Sadr’s militia has tried to use ownership of these services to gain support amongst the population. Now with Iraqi forces firmly in control of Sadr City’s hospitals, it is a race against time to expand and improve available health services to win the support and loyalty of local residents.
Dr. Irack put it well: “[counterinsurgency] is a contest to influence and control the population”. The provision of health services is a low cost, yet powerful, approach to winning that contest. Those providing health services have a significant advantage in winning hearts, minds, and legitimacy in the population. By providing services, the government is aligning itself with the population’s interest. From then on, insurgent attacks are not simply a strike by one side against another, but an attack against the providers of the population’s health. In turn, the population is more willing to cooperate with local security forces in routing out insurgents and sympathizers. If in counterinsurgency populations are the battlefields, then hospitals are part of the commanding heights.
This morning I attended a blogger’s roundtable with US Air Force Captain Trevor Hall. Capt. Hall was the pilot-in-command for the first US military humanitarian flight into Burma since the disaster. His C-130 transport aircraft carried food, water, and medical supplies into Rangoon International Airport. Since then, a number of further US Air Force and Marine flights have taken place.
Capt. Hall described the Burmese military personnel offloading the plane as “ecstatic” for US help, some even wanting to have their pictures taken with the crew and aircraft. Hearing this, I was reminded of Operation Little Vittles, when US pilots participating in the Berlin Airlift dropped candy from their aircraft while flying over the city. The actions of the pilots won the hearts and minds of a generation of Berliners, who dubbed the aircraft “Rosinenbombers” (Candy Bombers), and still remember the act today.
The operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven the power in winning a population’s hearts and minds. Modern humanitarian airlifts represent not only a chance to fulfill our responsibility to humanity, but also to create an entire generation with fond memories of American aircraft dropping American aid. In the long term, the resulting support might pay back hundreds of times over.
Update: Blackfive has a recording of the entire interview.
Academic (and blogger) Chris Blattman just published a new report on young women in one of Africa’s longest conflicts, between the Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government. The LRA is the definition of brutality: routinely targeting civilians, attacking aid convoys, practicing mutilations, and abducting adults and children to swell their ranks.
Chris’ report contains many insights and is a fascinating read, but one particular point stands out: the role of abducted women in the LRA. Male abductees are primarily used as expendable troops and it has typically been assumed captive women are used as sexual slaves and forced wives for LRA officers. However, the report finds the vast majority of female LRA abductees are used in combat support roles with almost two thirds of women employed as porters or cooks. Only 7.5% of returned abductees reported being “wives” of LRA members and 7.4% used primarily for childcare.
The statistics offer a rare glimpse of the LRA as a rational, functioning organization requiring significant human resources to perform essential combat support duties rather than their more common, but simplistic portrayal as madmen.
At approximately 10:00am on May 3rd, the United States fired three precision-guided weapons at a small building next to Sadr General Hospital in the Sadr City slum of Baghdad. The building is alleged by coalition forces to be a “criminal element command and control center“. The first munition struck the small building, the second struck the hospital’s ambulance parking lot and broke the hospital’s water line, and the third hit a generator used by the neighborhood but not the hospital.
McClatchy’s Leila Fadel and Shashank Bengali described the damage:
Sadr Hospital, one of two main hospitals serving the massive Shiite Muslim slum, is operating on a backup water supply that wasn’t expected to last longer than 48 hours. On Sunday afternoon, a main street outside the hospital was flooded as workmen tried to repair a series of underground pipes that ruptured when the missiles targeted what U.S. military officials described as a militia outpost a few yards from the hospital.
“If there are no more attacks, we might be able to fix it. We don’t know,” said a hospital security official who gave his name as Abu Sajjad. “Otherwise, in two days we will run out of water and the hospital can’t go on.”
The official said that the U.S. strike also damaged 15 ambulances and forced many hospital staff to flee. Not everyone returned to work Sunday, leaving a Spartan emergency ward nearly empty of doctors.
The airstrike betrays an understandable ignorance in coalition forces towards the nature of health care delivery. While coalition forces avoid targeting hospitals directly, this does not protect the ability of the hospital to function. The rational for not striking hospitals is to keep them operating and providing health to the local population. However, any hospital’s functions are reliant on a large network of facilities and services. This network includes ambulance facilities and water lines. Most of these network nodes exist outside the hospital’s physical perimeter and whose presence is not calculated into airstrike planning. If policy makers truly want to maintain access to healthcare during armed conflict they must consider not only the hospital’s physical facilities but also key nodes in the area’s health care network, regardless of whether or not they fly the red cross.