Challenges in Aiding Iraq

Relief groups say security and profiteering cause problems

Security concerns and alleged profiteering are complicating the work of charities providing

humanitarian aid in or near Iraq, even as more of them begin to appeal for greater support from donors to help people harmed by the war.

For some groups, simply getting relief supplies to the region has proved challenging. Cargo planes are in short supply, since the Pentagon has hired many private air carriers to help transport military supplies to the Middle East. As a result, some airlines have been quoting prices much higher than normal for renting the few planes they have available.

Airlines previously had often been willing to rent a cargo plane to charities for just the cost of fuel and flight crew — about $80,000 between the West Coast and the Middle East, says Richard M. Walden, president of Operation USA, in Los Angeles. Even if relief groups were unable to rent a plane at cost, the commercial price for a Boeing 747 jumbo-jet flight was normally around $300,000, he says.

But since hostilities broke out in Iraq, some American airlines have been quoting prices of as much as $500,000 to rent even smaller planes like DC-8s or DC-10s to nongovernmental organizations. Mr. Walden adds that, after complaining to the Pentagon about such inflated prices, he was able to get a quote of $120,000 from Royal Jordanian Airlines to fly an Airbus from New York to Jordan. But the high cost of air travel had already prompted his group to send its most recent shipment of medical supplies by sea, which will delay its arrival by about a month.

Drug Companies

Profiteering may be occurring among other companies, too. One pharmaceutical corporation that normally donates products to humanitarian groups like Operation USA has suspended those donations until it learns whether the U.S. government will purchase its products at full cost for use in relief work, Mr. Walden said. Referring to reports of the billions of federal dollars expected to be spent on relief in Iraq, he added: “With all those money figures floating around, it looks like NGOs are going to get frozen out completely of the American market.”

Even in the face of mounting needs among Iraqi civilians for water, medical care, and other emergency support, many aid groups have been slow to rush in to help them because of security concerns. Indeed, Doctors Without Borders, which had had a six-member medical and surgical team working in a Baghdad hospital, pulled the remaining four members out of the country after two others went missing this month. Groups fear that their workers might be exposed to attacks even after coalition troops control much of Iraq.

“We have suspended all operations while we work to secure their safe and speedy release,” said Chris Torguson, a spokeswoman at the charity’s office in New York. “The security situation is making it very difficult for groups like ours to work there.”

What’s more, added Mr. Walden, anti-American feelings fanned by the war in Iraq have complicated relief and development work in other quarters of the globe as well. Television shots of coalition soldiers distributing relief supplies tend to reinforce suspicions in many parts of the world that American relief workers are closely allied with, or even agents of, the U.S. government.

“They’re making it damn near impossible for Americans to work in the southern Philippines, in the Muslim parts of India, in northern Nigeria, in Indonesia, in much of Saharan Africa, and in all of the Arab countries,” Mr. Walden said, “because they’ve obliterated the line between military and civilian relief.”

He added that even his organization’s name, Operation USA, emblazoned on its aid shipments, has become a liability in some places. “It’s an unfortunate time to be American,” he said. “I can’t wear our T-shirt anywhere. It has become very dangerous for us to do our work in an atmosphere that has become as hostile as it has.”

Soliciting Gifts

Aid continues to flow into the Middle East, however, and some charities have become more aggressive about raising money for their work there.

Oxfam America, for example, has raised about $900,000 so far for Iraq.

About $120,000 has come through the mail, and the remainder has been donated online in response both to an appeal on Oxfam’s own Web site and to an e-mail request sent by MoveOn.org, an organization that promotes grass-roots activism.

Catholic Relief Services to date has raised more than $230,000 for programs conducted by its partner, Caritas Iraq, which intends to help Iraqis displaced from their homes by offering food, water containers, bedding, stoves, fuel, and other emergency supplies.

The group says it hopes to raise $8.3-million to assist some 260,000 Iraqis who it expects will be displaced from their homes in the next several months.

Save the Children, which is planning to offer a similar array of services in four southern provinces of Iraq, raised about $20,000 for its Iraq Children in Crisis Fund during the first week it was promoted on the charity’s Web site. But that organization, like many others, was planning to hold off on a major fund-raising campaign until the dimensions of the humanitarian emergency became clearer. Eventually, it hopes to raise $3-million from private sources to supplement money from government and United Nations sources.

“When the focus shifts to innocent civilians in need, we expect the public to be as generous as it has been in the past,” said Mike Kiernan, a spokesman for Save the Children, which has not yet mailed any requests for support.

CARE USA has so far raised about $29,000 for Iraq — including some $7,000 donated online since it posted an appeal on its Web site after the war started. But Allen Clinton, a CARE spokesman, said the charity would not mail out appeals or do other more aggressive fund raising until it had a better idea of how it could help. CARE’s Iraqi staff members have been helping to keep hospital generators running and providing water and hygiene supplies, he said.

Mercy Corps, which has been supporting the work of Peace Winds Japan in northern Iraq for about a year, hopes to raise $2-million for such efforts over the next two months. To motivate potential donors, it is posting on its Web site daily updates of the amount it has received for that campaign.

“Being able to report human needs and donor response in real time will be a really powerful tool,” predicted Matthew De Galan, the charity’s chief resource-development officer.

Peace Groups

Relief organizations have also gotten some help from groups whose focus, before the fighting began, had been on opposing the war. For example, Working Assets, a communications company in San Francisco, raised about $200,000 this year to help organizations that opposed war in Iraq. When the war started, however, the company immediately started another appeal, this time to raise money for aid groups in the region and to help rebuild civil institutions and promote democracy in Iraq.

About $100,000 has been raised so far for the Iraqi Emergency Relief Fund, which intends to distribute the proceeds to various organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, and Unicef. Michael Kieschnick, president of Working Assets, said that, judging by similar campaigns in the past, he expected to raise an additional $250,000 in response to requests accompanying customers’ long-distance telephone bills.

“Our customers are a very compassionate bunch,” he said. “I think they feel that the United States is responsible, and that we need to do the right thing.”