Category: Humanitarian Issues

Categories
Humanitarian Issues Terrorism

‘Ungoverned Space’: the Concept that Puts Humanitarian Aid in the Firing Line of the War on Terror

Syrian Hospital. Source: Syrian Hospital, courtesy of Freedom House

This article was originally published by The Conversation on 16 October, 2015.

The hospital bombed by US troops in Kunduz, Afghanistan, treated trauma patients, no matter whether they were civilians or Taliban fighters. The bombing happened as Afghan and US forces fought to drive Taliban out of the city the latter had captured just days before.

If the targeting of the hospital, which killed at least 22 people, had been an accident, it would leave no doubt about the return of war to the urban centres of Afghanistan. But knowledge of the hospital’s GPS coordinates by the US and Afghan armies and the precision of the attack suggest otherwise.

Both Afghan and US officials at one point in the aftermath suggested that they were targeting Taliban fighters on the hospital’s grounds, something that Médecins Sans Frontières‎, which runs the hospital, denies was the case. If the attack was in fact intentional, how can we make sense of such a breach of the Geneva conventions that forbid attacking humanitarian structures?

Continue reading “‘Ungoverned Space’: the Concept that Puts Humanitarian Aid in the Firing Line of the War on Terror”
Categories
Humanitarian Issues

Making Peace in a Divided World: New Roles for the United Nations?

President Obama chairing a session in the UN Security Council. Image: The White House/Wikimedia

This article was originally published by the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) on 1 October, 2015.

There is no more annoying phrase in discussions of international affairs than “If the United Nations did not exist, we would have to invent it!” It is certainly true that the world urgently needs an effective collective security organization today. But the organization it needs bears only a passing resemblance to the UN we currently have.

A genuinely “fit for purpose” UN would have the tools to manage three dangerous trends in international conflict. The first is the resurgence of major power competition in trouble spots such as the eastern Ukraine, South China Sea and Syria. The second is the proliferation of transnational violent extremism in the Middle East and North Africa. The third is the problem of chronic instability in fragile states and regions such as the two Sudans.

Continue reading “Making Peace in a Divided World: New Roles for the United Nations?”
Categories
Regional Stability Humanitarian Issues

Endurance of Shining Path Shows Peace in Latin America a Long Road

A group of Peruvian Navy Seals in training. Image: Rick Sforza, U.S. Air Force/Wikimedia

This article was originally published by IPI Global Observatory on 11 August 2015.

In late July, as millions of Peruvians prepared to celebrate their country’s Independence Day, government forces descended upon “Sector 5,” a guerrilla installment in the heart of the coca-producing region of Junín. What they found there was stunning: a “production camp” of 39 Asháninka Indians, most of them children, living in apparent captivity as prisoners of the Maoist militants Shining Path. Some of the adults had been living in the camp for 30 years. According to an internal communiqué from the Peruvian national police, the captives had been forced to work as agricultural laborers and the women were expected to breed and raise a new generation of militants.

Continue reading “Endurance of Shining Path Shows Peace in Latin America a Long Road”
Categories
Humanitarian Issues Terrorism

Could a Long-Term Solution to Boko Haram Come from the World Bank?

Muhammadu Buhari, president of Nigeria. Image: Chatham House/Wikimedia

This article was originally published by the Institute for Security Studies on 7 August 2015.

When it comes to the fight against Boko Haram, Nigeria’s new president Muhammadu Buhari has been busy. He has finally got the Multinational Joint Task Force up and running, which combines troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria into one regional force: a necessary weapon against what has always been a regional rather than national problem.

He has worked to repair frayed relations with regional leaders like Idriss Déby of Chad and, more recently, Cameroon’s Paul Biya. His visit to Cameroon in July culminated in an agreement to allow troops from both countries to engage in ‘hot pursuit’ across borders, which will make it harder for militants to skip across national boundaries to evade capture.

Continue reading “Could a Long-Term Solution to Boko Haram Come from the World Bank?”
Categories
Humanitarian Issues

The Seven Deadly Sins of the Human Terrain System: An Insider’s Perspective

A social scientist with the Human Terrain Analysis Team speaks with the displaced women of the Tagab District. Image: DVIDSHUB/Wikimedia

This article was originally published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) on 13 July, 2015.

The idea behind HTS was simple and promising: embed social scientists with military units and give them the resources to unearth operationally relevant socio-cultural data and findings. Its founders, Dr. Montgomery McFate, an anthropologist by training, and former Army officer Steve Fondacaro stood the program up and served as its leaders and missionaries for its first few years of existence. At the height of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan most ground-holding brigades and special operations units had Human Terrain Teams (HTTs) supported by Human Terrain Analysis Teams (HTATs) at the division level.

Continue reading “The Seven Deadly Sins of the Human Terrain System: An Insider’s Perspective”