Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Co-Dependency in Action in the Compassion-Industrial Complex

Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have proliferated so much that they have become the logistics arm of civil wars and insurgencies. 

First of all, humanitarian aid is skimmed off to directly support violent factions operating where the NGOs work. 

Second, violent factions will demand protection money not to attack the NGOs. And even if the NGOs try to buy local muscle to protect them rather than pay protection money, the violent factions will intimidate or lure the guards into the violent faction.

Third, the humanitarian aid will be a good means of smuggling weapons into the fighting area.

And violent actors count on that societal safety net that is left after siphoning off aid to directly sustain their war to make their endless fighting tolerable by the people affected by war.  

Note how Yemen has played out for an example.

You could throw in UN peacekeeping forces in that safety net enabling low-level persistent warfare. Although the article says the benefits of peacekeeping missions are "positive and well established." Maybe. But I'm not so sure if it doesn't instead enable fighting to drag on in forever wars--or forever disorders--which inflame and entrench hatred.

Once NGOs were useful when they figuratively parachuted into a crisis and then packed up and left when the crisis was over. Now the NGOs are an industry. They exist to exist. So they never leave. Is that because the problem can't easily be solved or because the NGOs inhibit solving the problem?

NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.