13 July 2006

U.S. Military Humanitarian Efforts Planned for 99 Nations

Forces respond to disasters and deliver longer-term aid overseas

 

Petty Officer Patrick Nardulli cradles an Indonesian child being prepared for medical evacuation from Nias, Indonesia, to the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy on April 7, 2005. Mercy and USNS Niagara Falls were operating off the coast of Nias, providing medical and humanitarian assistance to victims of the March 28, 2005, 8.7-magnitude earthquake. (DoD photo)

Petty Officer Patrick Nardulli cradles a child being prepared for medical evacuation aboard the U.S. Navy Hospital, Mercy. (DOD photo)

By Elizabeth Kelleher
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – In 2006, U.S. military commands plan 556 humanitarian projects in 99 countries.

U.S. forces are improving water supplies in Ecuador, flood barriers in Bangladesh, a medical clinic in Uganda and schools in Kyrgyzstan.  Military experts train local residents to remove land mines in Nicaragua and Vietnam.

By year-end, the U.S. military will have delivered 300,000 daily-rations packages overseas.  Soldiers will have dug wells, built schools, and transported hospital equipment to villages from Croatia to Colombia.  The Army will have trained officials from 11 African countries – Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Eritrea, Djibouti, Seychelles, Burundi, Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania – to respond to disasters and deliver medical care. 

The U.S. military has the capability to help after natural disasters and can promote the health and economic well-being of suffering populations. That capability and that commitment are fueling military humanitarian aid in places where U.S. forces have had no historic role. 

The October 8, 2005, earthquake near Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, killed 87,000 people and stranded thousands in remote mountainous villages. The next day, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Bradley, commander of an Army aviation company preparing for training in Oklahoma, received a call – “could you fly rescue missions in Pakistan, instead?”

“None of us has ever seen this nation,” Bradley told the Washington File.  “But we had to make a decision -- right now, and out the door.”  In three days, they took apart a dozen Chinook helicopters and loaded them on airplanes headed to the region.  “We were flying in the Himalayan Mountains in winter with no weather reports or radio communications,” said Bradley.  The company stayed five months and logged 3,000 flight hours, moved 5,000 refugees and delivered 18 million pounds of supplies. (See related article.)

The military is called on repeatedly to move equipment and people quickly:  It was among the “first responders” in 2004, after the tsunami in South Asia, and in 2005, after the mudslide in Guatemala.  According to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Pentagon spends roughly $58 million a year on humanitarian aidoverseas; in 2005, it spent an additional $117 million.

The U.S. military’s Quadrennial Defense Review, a strategy document, says the War on Terror requires humanitarian aid.  It ranks diplomacy and development as tools as important as defense. (See related article.)

The military increasingly is working with traditional aid-giving agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). 

It delivers 10,000 wheelchairs donated by an NGO called the Wheelchair Foundation to children in mine-affected countries.  And in Iraq and Afghanistan, “provincial reconstruction teams” include military personnel and representatives from USAID and the departments of State and Agriculture.

 

Operation Smile volunteers Janet Casabon Benowitz and Dr. Bill Pond anesthetize a young child before undergoing corrective plastic surgery on his cleft lip aboard U.S. Naval hospital ship USNS Mercy in Chittagong, Bangladesh, July 2. (Dept. of Defense photo)

Operation Smile volunteers Janet Casabon Benowitz and Dr. Bill Pond help a child in Chittagong, Bangladesh. (Dept. of Defense photo)

“It used to be that the military would just go out and knock things down,” Nicholas Eberstadt, defense expert and former Harvard University professor, said in an interview.  But after the Cold War, it expanded beyond combat.  Since September 11, Eberstadt said, there has been a rapid blurring between combat and disaster-relief missions. 

“If we don’t do this, we leave an opening to al-Qaida,” said Thomas Henriksen, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Stanford University research center.

OPINION POLLS SHOW CHANGED ATTITUDES

Pakistan, the world’s second-most populous Muslim nation that is battling extremism, is important to U.S. efforts to win the hearts and minds of Muslims, according to Henriksen.  So it is notable that by December 2005, two months after Bradley’s company began its mission, a poll by ACNielsen Pakistan showed that the share of Pakistanis with favorable opinions of the United States had doubled, to 46 percent from 23 percent six months earlier.

A subsequent June 2006 survey by Pew Research Center found a less dramatic, but still positive, change in the approval rating of the United States by Pakistanis.

Both polls showed upswings in opinions in India and Indonesia toward the United States after the December 2004 Indonesia tsunami.  At the peak of that disaster, 16,000 military personnel were helping.

Bradley does not need polls.  Before leaving Pakistan, he bought one of its hottest-selling toys -- a plastic replica of the Chinook helicopters his unit flies.  It cost only 59 cents, but to Bradley it is a priceless reminder that Pakistani children look up to the men and women in his unit. 

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the military delivers humanitarian aid under the “Command Emergency Response Program,” which allocates money for projects commanders suggest.

But as the military humanitarian role grows, some interest groups worry about the trend.  Kevin Phelan, a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders, said that his organization is concerned about confusion caused by military personnel presenting themselves as humanitarian-aid workers.  Five staff members of Doctors Without Borders were killed in 2004 in Afghanistan.  “It creates real concerns for us if [locals] see us as part of an occupying army,” Phelan said.  “Delivering aid impartially is an important aspect of humanitarian action.”

“We want to add to, not detract from, what NGOs are doing,” Army Major Philip Spangler told the Washington File.  He recently worked on water sanitation problems in Chad, Niger and Mali, where he said NGOs have put in wells but not always maintained them.  He said his command could fix water pumps, ambulances and other donated equipment.  “A maintenance team with O-rings and hand tools can take [things] apart, fix them, show folks how to do repairs, and give them a kit.  A $100 Craftsman tool set goes a long way.”

Spangler sees his work as part of a long and worthwhile military tradition.  He said that when he visits African villages, children flock to hold his hands, each grabbing a finger.  “They know that you are an American, and you are a soldier.  America has done a lot of good things in a lot of parts of the world,” he said, “and those things are not forgotten.”

For more information on U.S. aid, see U.S. Response to the Earthquake in South Asia and Humanitarian Assistance and Refugees.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)