November 13, 2003 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Since the suicide car bombing outside the Baghdad headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross last month, several international charities have evacuated their expatriate staff members from the Iraqi capital and suspended some of their humanitarian work.
The decision came after several charities and other international organizations had already cut back some operations after the August bombing of the United Nations’ headquarters in Baghdad.
Veteran relief workers who have spent their careers working in conflict and post-conflict zones say they are shaken that the Red Cross and the United Nations were deliberate targets of violence, and that the dangers now facing humanitarian workers is unprecedented.
The suicide bombing at the Red Cross, which killed two employees and wounded dozens more, was a setback not only for the charity, which is reducing the number of its non-Iraqi staff members in Baghdad, but also for Iraqis who depend on its services and those of other relief organizations.
“Let’s be clear — this bombing hit us hard,” says Florian Westphal, a Red Cross spokesman. “It’s difficult to say at the moment how the withdrawal of our expatriate staff will affect programming, but we have to look at it the other way around: This a situation of risk, and we have an obligation to protect our staff.”
The Red Cross has 600 Iraqi employees and approximately 35 non-Iraqi staff members left in Iraq. “That number will surely go down,” Mr. Westphal says.
Shortly after the bombing of the Red Cross building, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell implored the Red Cross and other humanitarian relief organizations to remain in Iraq. “They are needed. Their work is needed. And if they are driven out, then the terrorists win,” he said during a news conference. Mr. Powell also phoned the Red Cross committee’s president, Jakob Kellenberger, to reiterate the appeal.
Officials at the Red Cross are quick to assert their independence from such requests. “We’ve taken note of those messages, but the decision to remain in Iraq was taken independently by ourselves,” says Mr. Westphal. “We have a history in Iraq, and we’ve been there even when the bombs were falling this spring.”
Concerns Among Groups
Statements such as Mr. Powell’s are causing consternation among many relief organizations, which say they have become the targets of violent attacks because of the blurring of lines between occupation authorities and foreign humanitarian groups. After the bombing, Doctors Without Borders withdrew its non-Iraqi staff members to Amman, the Jordanian capital, and issued a terse press release condemning the bombing of the Red Cross headquarters.
The charity’s press release begins with a red boldface headline reading, “We are not actors in the war on terrorism.” It went on to say: “Actions and statements made by Western officials, however, have only contributed to the vulnerability of humanitarian organizations to attacks. Western officials constantly attempt to include humanitarian action as part of their ‘good’ political intentions in intervening in other people’s countries.”
The organization’s staff members say it is imperative for humanitarian groups to be as separate from Iraq’s military occupiers as possible so that Iraqis understand the differentiation between armed foreign occupiers and civilian charity workers.
“We don’t want to be used by the military or occupation entity to further their objectives,” says Koen Henckaerts, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders. “It’s important for us to be able to keep our neutrality, which is what enables us to work on both sides of a conflict.”
The organization’s Iraqi employees have assumed responsibility for ensuring the continuity of the health-care services the group provides through its three clinics in the Shiite slums of Baghdad. “What will suffer from our staff pullout is the needs assessment and monitoring,” Dr. Henckaerts says. “We need good technical data, and to get that we need to be on the ground in Baghdad.”
Save the Children, which is one of the largest private relief charities operating in Iraq, has transferred its international staff from the Iraqi capital to the northern Kurdish provinces because of the ominous security situation in Baghdad.
“We have suspended entirely our operations from Baghdad, and we’re keeping a low profile,” says Brendan Paddy, senior media officer for emergencies at Save the Children UK. “There is no doubt our work will be affected. We were looking to support the development of the health and education systems in Iraq — to turn them back into the world-class systems they were in the 1980s.”
Because of the increasingly violent and chaotic events in the capital, Save the Children UK had already made its decision to suspend operations in Baghdad even before the two bombings aimed at the United Nations this summer.
Another charity, Unicef, has reduced its non-Iraqi staff by a third because of the security concerns. About 100 of its employees have been relocated to Amman, significantly slowing the delivery of relief supplies and hampering the effectiveness of its operations.
“After the August attack we made provisions with local counterparts — the staff of NGO’s, schools, and health-care clinics — to carry on our work,” says Damien Personnaz, a Unicef spokesman. With the breakdown in security, the organization can no longer fly supplies into Baghdad but instead has to send them via overland convoys through Kuwait, Jordan, and Turkey. “It’s slowing things down, and it’s very costly with the additional security,” he says. “We have to replan all of our activities for the next year.”
