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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
IRAQ: Aid agencies maintain low profile
BAGHDAD, 15 March 2004 (IRIN) - Following a conflict, countries usually bustle with international aid agencies, foreigners eating in restaurants, white four-wheel-drive vehicles and high-profile aid projects. There's little of that visible in Iraq.
Seven months after 22 people, including UN Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, were killed by a truck bomb at the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, aid workers are driven around in local vehicles. They don't go out to eat much, following the New Year's Eve bombing of a restaurant popular with foreigners. In fact, many of the workers spend most of their time in neighbouring Jordan, only coming to Iraq when absolutely necessary.
At the office of the International Medical Corps (IMC) NGO, work continues at the usual pace, even though one of the agency's offices in southern Iraq was damaged last year when a bomb went off at the Italian military base across the street. Some aid workers now ask for their names not be used so as not to attract attention to their group.
"If we want to advertise what we're doing, the world community would be surprised to learn what has been achieved so far," Rabih Torbey, a vice-president of IMC, told IRIN. "But we don't want our staff to be targeted. If anyone is killed or injured, we would have no alternative but to stop the programmes."
Iraq remains an insecure environment and may become even more unstable in coming months as US-led coalition forces prepare to hand sovereignty back to Iraqis on 30 June, Torbey said. To outsiders, it appears as if things are calming down, with more traffic on the streets and businesses staying open later in the evening. But gunshots are still common around Baghdad and bombs go off with alarming frequency, mostly targeting coalition troops, he added.
At another aid office, a worker talked about the changing nature of aid work on condition that she not be named. "Aid groups usually use high visibility as a way to gain acceptance from the community," she said. "Here, the threat comes from people they cannot reach. Those people don't care if you're neutral or not."
In fact, the people willing to plant bombs in Iraq will target an aid group just because they know that killing international workers will often draw more attention than killing people from a particular country, the worker said.
"We all are changing our policies to fit what is happening to us," she added.
It's the same for UN agencies working in Iraq. Only security staff work at the various UN offices at the moment. All other local Iraq staff have been working from home since December.
Not only are humanitarian agencies facing more threats, they're also getting drawn into political discussions that they don't necessarily want to be involved in, said Pascal Marlinge, head of mission at Intersos, an Italian-based humanitarian group.
"Even though it's not our duty, we have changed a lot in our work since being in the Balkan conflicts," Marlinge told IRIN. "It's getting more political."
Kevin Noone, also at IMC, pointed out that the security threat against aid agencies has been getting tougher over a period of years. In Chechnya, for example, so many foreigners have been kidnapped in the last few years that many aid agencies never attempt to work there.
Iraq may get just as bad, Noone said. "We have never been in an environment where security has been talked about so much," Noone told IRIN. "But outsiders were always mistrusted here, too," he added.
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Other
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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