The humanitarian operations centre, Kuwait: operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgement

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of the Ministry of Defence or other organisations with which he has been associated.

Notes

Norman Sheehan, Chief Executive Officer, War Child, email to the author 20 Jan. 2004.

Operation Iraqi Freedom is the codename for the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the Untied States and its coalition partners. Operation Telic is the UK codename for British operations.

Lewis Lucke email to Maj. J.B. Brown, US Army, HOC Assistant Director, 30 July 2003 [reproduced with permission].

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), ‘General Guidance for Interaction between United Nations Personnel and Military Actors in the context of the crisis in Iraq’, New York, 21 Mar. 2003.

Quoted in Greg Barrow, ‘UN Sidelined’, BBCi [British Broadcasting Corporation interactive] report,12 Apr. 2003.

Charlotte Denny, ‘Blow for Short in battle for Pentagon’, The Guardian, 22 Mar. 2003.

Mike Aaaronson, Save the Children UK, ‘We will never be silenced’, The Guardian, 2 Dec. 2003.

‘Iraq: Civilian Control Needed for Aid’, press release, Refugees International, 16 Apr. 2003.

OCHA (see n.4 above).

The notable absence was the World Health Organization, with no permanent representative in Kuwait. UNOCHA was responsible for the Humanitarian Information Center for Iraq which provided an excellent internet database.

INTERACTION wrote to US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, 26 Nov. 2002, complaining that its members were being blocked by the US government from undertaking assessment missions in northern Iraq and Iran. The US government streamlined the process of obtaining the necessary licenses in February 2003, accessed at www.interaction.org/iraq.

The key planning assumptions which shaped the development and role of the HOC were that: the humanitarian community required a coordination facility and information from the military; the Center would be established outside any military compound and readily accessible to the humanitarian community; the HOC would maintain a low military profile; the HOC would be a Kuwaiti government facility drawing upon Kuwaiti and Coalition personnel; and the Coalition Forces Land Component Command would release military personnel.

Precise Kuwait funding for the HOC and its larger aid donor support to Iraq has not been released. For the HOC the commitment must have been at least US$1 million to permit infrastructure support that included office and living accommodation, a daily briefing room, catering, 17 leased vehicles to supplement a limited military fleet and a 9-man civilian guard.

The plight of the ‘missing’ is arguably the main political issue in the Emirate. Within days of the fall of Baghdad, Kuwaiti officers from the HOC left their desks to search for family members.

Refugees International, press release, 16 Apr. 2003.

Oxfam Press Release, 4 Mar. 2003.

The Guardian, 26 Mar. 2003.

ORHA's head, Lt-Gen. T.G. Garner (ret.) had three deputies: Lewis Lucke, a veteran of USAID, for reconstruction, Ambassador George Ward for humanitarian assistance and Michael Mobbs for civil administration.

Garner later stated, ‘The State Department never briefed myself or anybody on my team that they had a [Future of Iraq Project] plan’, cited in, ‘US General blames political war for early failure in Iraq’, The Times (London), 27 Nov. 2003.

‘Umm Qasr aid effort a shambles’, BBCi Report, 3 Apr. 2003, citing a representative of the Catholic Agency for Oversees Development. Of specific concern were the independent and premature actions of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society but the HOC was the focal point for wider, justified complaints about poorly organized aid convoys, inadequate distribution systems and the slow passage of military Civil Affairs assessments to agencies.

E.g., the author's statement that: ‘Coalition Forces are fully aware that they are responsible for providing security and ensuring that the civilian population has access to food and medical care’, HOC daily update, 17 Apr. 2004.

David E. Sanger, ‘Plans for Postwar Iraq are Re-evaluated’, The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2003. See also Katherine Butler and Donald Macintyre, ‘The Iraqi Confict: General Franks Strides into His Baghdad Palace’, The Independent (London), 17 Apr. 2003, quoting Franks: ‘this has been about liberation, not about occupation’.

HRW Request For Information, HOC, 29 Apr. 2003. The United States ratified the 1949 Geneva Conventions in 1955, Iraq in 1956, the UK in 1957. Unlike the UK, the United States has not ratified the 1977 Additional Protocols.

‘British Aid Plane Prevented from entering Iraq’, press statement, Save the Children (UK), 17 Apr. 2003. The obligation of the coalition forces to provide humanitarian assistance ‘to the fullest extent of the means available to it’ provided the background for a suggestion that troops should create ‘humanitarian corridors’ to help relief workers do their job in Iraq. Iraqi airspace was closed, and prior authorization of USCENTCOM and slot times from the Regional Air Movement Control Center were required before entering Iraqi airspace.

A World Health Organization (WHO) audit of humanitarian medicine donations received in Albania in May 1999 revealed that about 50 per cent were inappropriate or useless and would have to be destroyed, accessed at www.drugdonations.org. It is likely that a similar problem occurred in Iraq in 2003.

Refugees International assessment, ‘Iraq: Appropriate and swift aid is crucial’, 12 May 2003.

Ibid.

Kenzo Oshima (UN Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs) to General Al-Mu'Min, 2 June 2003 [letter published with permission].

NGO staff member, letter to the author, 13 Jan. 2004 (anonymity requested).