News out of Sri Lanka today, via the BBC:

The Sri Lankan government has attacked what it calls a “vicious coalition” of aid and humanitarian agencies for their actions over the country’s civil war.  The defence ministry said those “pretending to be humanitarian and aid agencies” were prolonging the conflict “to secure their income”. . . .

The defence ministry website said the “vicious coalition” that had “been pretending to be humanitarian agencies, aid agencies, free media, civil rights movements, etc, have made the continued bloodshed on Sri Lankan soil a lucrative business for them.”  It said the goal was “to ensure that the [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's] war would never end at any cost.”

The ministry accused the Care International group of being part of the “abominable conspiracy.”  Care last week reported that a local worker was killed by shellfire in a government-designated “no-fire” zone. The ministry said “very reliable sources” indicated the man was “a hardcore LTTE cadre.”

I detest the LTTE, which is arguably the worst terrorist organization in the world, responsible for refining and popularizing suicide bombing.  But to suggest that international relief agencies are somehow LTTE sympathizers because they’re helping  those caught in a war zone is patently absurd.

Sri Lanka is not the first government to attack CARE and other groups for such work.  Earlier this month Sudan expelled thirteen international relief agencies working in Darfur (including CARE, Oxfam, and Save the Children) in response to the International Criminal Court’s issuing of an arrest warrant for President Omar al Bashir.  And in the past few days, Eritrea — which has recently expressed solidarity with Sudan, even hosting Bashir after the warrant was issued — has started kicking out aid groups in apparent solidarity with its new friend.  And back in the 1990s, Sudan did something similar at the height of its war against the SPLA.

On one level, this looks like a major bucket of stupid.  Aid agencies are, after all, there not to take sides but to help those caught in the crossfire.  But no one really should be surprised.  If people already are condemning you for the way you’re treating civilian populations, you really have nothing to lose by kicking out those trying to help, especially if those people happen to reside in areas controlled by rebels.

As is usually the case, governments justify their actions by cloaking them in high-minded rhetoric.  In this case, Sudan and others have claimed that humanitarian relief is the latest version of colonialsim (a neo-neocolonialism?), and that aid agencies are merely a tools of the U.S.-European colonial-military-globalist hegemon.  Some on the left in the United States, most notably Noam Chomsky and David Rieff, have offered an intellectual framework to support this perspective.  Rieff for example, has suggested that most humanitarian groups are often “subcontractors to the war efforts of various NATO powers.”

Such views are not merely absurd but insulting.  CARE, Oxfam, Save the Children, and numerous other groups do extraordinary work.  They’re not trying to advance anyone’s agenda, nor are they interested in taking sides. In fact, they’d like nothing more than to make themselves unnecessary.

The Obama Administration should move quickly to express support for their work.  Appointing a new USAID Administrator certainly would be a good start, giving the US a voice on development issues.  The Administration also should support the efforts of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to define any move by a government to deliberately deny civilians the ability to survive as a war crime.

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