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Culture and Conflict
No. 11, Fall 1993
Armed Interventions and Humanitarian Causes
What meanings does the term humanitarian overlap ? Where does it come from ? What is its “history” ? If the author retraces the history of the concept, which takes a truly universal scope during the 18th century, his goal is to primarily show that the conventions, the practices which have concretised it at present, are not homogeneous, and answer to a wide range of different situations. They obey to logics which are, if not opposing, at least hardly reconcilable under the same term. One can therefore examine the very use of the word and ask if it has (or rather if it still has) a real meaning after having been abusively used and invoked for so many reasons foreign to its own logic.
The end of bipolarity, the essential feature of the " new international order ", has affected and transformed the nature and materiality of the military policy of the Northern States and of France in particular. The disappearance, for the professionals of war, of the " historic " Soviet enemy has as a direct consequence the redistributing of a certain number of military personnel to missions of peace or protection within humanitarian actions. Deprived of their classical targets, soldiers, " dedicate " themselves to missions obedient to logics opposed to those of battle. It is the systematisation of these " unnatural " actions which pose a threat for the " value " of military forces. Furthermore, the efficiency of humanitarian protection, the facts show it, should naturally and legitimately induce the soldier to ask for the extension of his " humanitarian contract ". The soldiers' humanitarian missions are not sufficiently clear or precise to allow for their successful accomplishment. If, for Claude Le Borgne, the UN has come to be considered as a respected courthouse, it still remains a " military thing " and one should not exalt the use of law, which sometimes reveals itself to be contradictory, while reducing the use of force to a mere sign or allusion.
The " humanitarian " operation “Provide Comfort”, which, as the author recalls, constitutes an intervention in the juridically " interior " affairs of a Member-State of the United Nations, broadly overtook the initial intentions of Westerns countries, as well as those of the Kurds, since it succeeded in creating a Kurdish territorial entity. If the operation has however failed in causing the final defeat of Saddam Hussein, or in provoking an " Iraqi partition ", nevertheless, the Kurd contestation of Iraqi power in the Kurdistan is a fact, very real, and the territorial sovereignty of Iraq is chipped. The Kurd case, in spite of its apparent geopolitical aspect, presents some shared points with other humanitarian operations since it stems from a will to suspend conflicts : a real policy of postponement or suspension of war, avoiding genocides. But it oscillates between geopolitics and humanitarian causes ! The analysis of relationships between the regional actors engaged or confronted with the Kurd problem (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, United States, etc.), enables a better understanding of the intersection between the humanitarian logic within a highly geopolitical context. It inscribes itself into the process of crisis of the Nation-State and of amplification of ethnic conflicts.
French humanitarian organisations, notably MSF (Médécins sans Frontières), MDM (Médécins du Monde) and ERM have radically changed their mode of action in Central America within the scope of ten years. The humanitarian action concept, originally based on the definition of punctual goals, pursued with a certain degree of spontaneity and concerned by the maintaining of altruistic ideals, was modified by the will to professionalise all the members of the NGO's and also in order to answer to several " imperatives " : justifying the permanence of their actions, adjusting these actions to the beliefs of the " public opinion " and notably to that of donors. The development of a human rights vocabulary, the advent of " new concepts " as, for example, " hostage populations ", create the conditions for the humanitarian actors to become the only true witnesses and even " experts " of the Third World. It is however necessary to mention that the actions of these NGO's, the new features of which inscribe themselves into the transforming relationship between the Third World and the West, have always been marked by a certain degree of, at times, disturbing ambiguity, and have sometimes adapted to very paradoxical situations.
" International public opinion " discovered, or rediscovered the Somalian drama during autumn 1992 watching those reports which strove to underline the efforts of humanitarian organisations and commented the intervention of the United Nations forces at the end of the same year. But being too optimistic about these " saving " interventions, one may easily end up by forgetting or simply hiding the, at least, ambiguous role played by the humanitarian organisations in Somalia. The presence of humanitarian organisations is not new ; they have been in the country since the war with Ethiopia. Humanitarian assistance was associated to the political and military strategy of the authoritarian regime and served it through its additional resources, notably by the embezzlement of aid. The characteristic of the Somalian example resides in the extreme indulgence of donors for the regime in power. Once the regime ousted in 1991, the role played by NGO's, although few in number, remains no less ambiguous, since they contributed, certainly unconsciously, to the political economy of the conflict. Finally, the UN military intervention and the massive return of humanitarian assistance, which completely excluded the political, military and social dimensions of the conflict, has further deteriorated the situation by giving priority only at the beginning to the struggle against famine.
The assistance to Afghanistan represents, ever since the 1950s, a politically decisive stake. The author recalls that the assistance was, even before 1978, among the most significant in the World. It constituted an important factor of destabilisation for Afghan society and could be regarded, according to the author, as one of the main reasons for the Afghan Revolution. The assistance radically varied in nature after the beginning of the civil war in 1978. The new Afghan interlocutors of the NGO's, political parties or military commanders, instrumentalised the assistance according to their own political objectives. The humanitarian organisations are certainly not puppets in the hands of the multiple local actors, but the refusal of politics to the profit of “humanitarian gestures”, and more precisely, the refusal to become acquainted with the complexities of Afghan politics, have certainly not prevented NGO's, for which the " no political commitment " was considered as essential, from becoming an active player in the political game. The UN intervention after the Soviet withdrawal makes of the international assistance a political instrument to get a diplomatic settlement that the mudjaheddins have refused until now.
The development of the humanitarian cause, which one would believe is definitive, is now increasingly confronted to the resurgence of nationalitarian mobilisations. The author evokes the different aspects of these nationalitarian mobilisations : ethno-nationalist, confessionnalo-nationalist, messianico-nationalist and explains the reasons for their confrontation with the Nation-State, their ambiguousness, and their lethal effects. He insists on the instrumentalisation of the victims, notably of the acquiescent victims, or " martyrs ", who are influenced by all kind of nationalitarian affirmation, all " polis " in arms. In a second part he retraces the evolution of the " humanitarian crusade " and its various aspects, from human rights to the collective minority right to become a nation, from the altruistic impetus to the " duty of emergency " and the " humanitarian war ", underlining the contradictions inherent to this " Utopia ", as well as its paradoxical amplifying effects on the production of victims within the frame of the new " victim market " that it contributes to create. He finally evokes the increasingly aggressive confrontations between the different actors, promoting and supporting the new passion for martyrdom and claiming, for some, their opposition to the universalist ideology promoted by humanitarian actors.