Sunday, May 11, 2003
This one's a must-read regarding what's going on with the NGO's and the clean-up in Iraq.
(Via LGF) New York Post Online Edition: postopinion
THEY come from all over the world. Their supposed mission is to help the people of Iraq. Their concerned frowns and even their clothes all proclaim the message: "We're the good, caring people . . . and you're not."
But if actions speak louder than words, then many of the international charitable organizations called NGOs (non-governmental organizations) here are less interested in doing good works than in moral posturing and haranguing the army that won a war most of them opposed.
Ask any soldier who patrols this city, and you'll hear the same thing: The NGOs have been here for weeks, but they're not out in the streets. They cite "security concerns" - though journalists and soldiers alike move around the city, using common sense and taking precautions.
(This absence is also true of the United Nations, which has a fleet of $65,000 SUVs sitting uselessly in the sun outside its headquarters at the Canal Hotel. One U.N. program is active - the food program - but on its first day on the job, one of its workers was caught looting and arrested by the U.S. Army.)
TO catch the NGOs in "action," you must go to the daily meeting at 1700 hours at the palazzo occupied by CMCC - that's the Civilian Military Coordination Center. (It used to be CMOC - the civilian military operations center - but the NGOs complained that the name implied that they were operating together with the military!)
At the meeting are NGO representatives, officials from the U.S. Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid (ORHA) and Army officers from headquarters around Baghdad.
At the head of a long table in the middle of the room sits an army "facilitator," Maj. Tony Coleman - a man with the patience of Job. On rows of gilt chairs on all sides of the table sit about 30 civilians and a sprinkling of soldiers.
A few of the civilians are Iraqis. The rest are international bureaucrats, most of them shiny with privilege, all of them bursting with self-righteousness.
Army officers stand all along the walls. Compared to the aid workers (with their new clothes and expensive haircuts), they look dirty and tired.
The soldiers must doff their rifles and sidearms before they enter the area because the NGO folk - who depend on these men and women for their protection - object to the presence of firearms.
Many other complaints follow the lines of: I was over there yesterday. You said it was safe but I heard a shot. [...]
This article struck me too. These NGO people are emblematic of every hypocricy I can think of in those who opposed the liberation of the Iraqi people.
Yeah, they're almost getting to be like a nasty stereotype. People with a narrow focus of responsibility (who often don't even perform well in that), who's main task in life seems to be to nit-pick the "doers."
It's like...someone running a one-man street sweeper who follows road-builders around complaining about all the dust they keep stirring up.
Eh, that's probably a pretty crappy metaphor, but hopefully there's a point in there someplace. :)
Was looking in google for an online version of this article and stumbled upon your blog. It's funny how people believe everything they read in the media. I work for the NGO community and I am quite honestly appalled at the numerous number of inaccuracies in this article. You would think that the journalist would actually do his research before writing this. For example, go to this website written by our own US Dept of State:
More Americans Permitted to Travel to Iraq for Humanitarian Purposes - Washington File 5/20/03
http://usinfo.state.gov/cgi-bin/washfile/display.pl?p=/products/washfile/latest&f=03052005.nlt&t=/products/washfile/newsitem.shtml
Do people actually realize that our very own US government PROHIBITED humanitarian organizations to work inside Iraq until only recently? The whole irony of it all is that they have made it legal for American journalists to go in there, but illegal for our own US NGOs to go in there to HELP THE IRAQI PEOPLE until only recently? Where are our priorities (is making sure we get AMERICAN journalists in there to write stories that reveal how great the US is more important to us than actually PROVIDING HUMANITARIAN AID TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE whose lives we've disrupted through war)? It's interesting how all these "minor" details are covered up in the press...
I'm not going to go through the rest of the article you posted and point out all the other inaccuracies but I do hope that as you continue to read other articles, you DO realize that not everything you read is going to be true. And how silly it is that NGOs are and were, trying their best to provide humanitarian aid to Iraqis despite all the roadblocks our own government put up, and rather than trying to do something constructive and figure out ways to help the situation (esp for the Iraqis!), people are just sitting here playing blaming games on each other...
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment.
I don't think the point of the article is that people don't want to do what they can. The point the article, written by Jonathan Foreman, who is in Baghdad, makes - to me - is the overall attitude of the groups in question. They interpret their mission as partly political. They didn't like the war, don't like the military, and in many cases don't like the USA. Rather than making the best of the hand they have, they pester, stomp their feet and make everyone's job more difficult.
That's what it sounds like to me. The article you point to indicates that there are NGO's opperating there, including UN groups. "Until recently" seems to mean April. The article came out in May, so NGO's have had about as much time as the US Army has to get things into gear, and they're supposed to be experts each with a narrow range of responsibilities.
I don't mean to trash NGO's for trying to do the best they can, but having the best of intentions doesn't exempt them from the criticism they themselves are ready to dish out.
So as far as "playing the blame game," again, I think that's the point. Let's all stop blaming each other (OK, easy for me to say) and just do what needs to be done, and that includes not blaming the US Government for doing the best it can - even if its reasons for what it does may not always be apparent.