The Politics of Aid to Burma

A Humanitarian Struggle on the Thai-Burmese Border

Anne Decobert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317517023
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the military state also historically restricted international humanitarian access to civilian populations in unstable border areas. It was in this context that "cross-border aid" to Burma had developed, as an alternative mechanism for channelling assistance to populations denied aid through more conventional systems. Yet by the late 2000s, national and international changes had significant impacts on an aid debate, which had important political and ethical implications.

Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation working on the Thailand-Burma border, this book focuses on the political and ethical dilemmas of "humanitarian government". It explores the ways in which aid systems come to be defined as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or "un-humanitarian", in an international context that has witnessed the multiplication of often-conflicting humanitarian systems and models. It examines how an "embodied history" of violence can shape the worldviews and actions of local humanitarian actors, as well as institutions created to mitigate human suffering. It goes on to look at the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors, armed groups and other actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context – a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate are highlighted.

Exploring the history of humanitarianism from the local aid perspective of Burma, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Studies, Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid and Development Studies.

1 Humanitarianism, victims and politics

Conceptual debates and approaches

At a time of significant change in and beyond Burma, the Back Pack members had to grapple with debates concerning political neutrality, humanitarian intervention and state sovereignty, and legitimate humanitarian systems and practices. Such debates had shaped the history of humanitarianism at the international level. Yet they continued to raise complex and often unresolved political and ethical dilemmas. By the time of Burma’s elections in 2010, critiques of humanitarianism had also multiplied and the contention that aid could “do harm” had long become commonplace in both aid and academic circles. However, in the Burmese context, debates concerning humanitarian practices and the possibility that aid might have harmful consequences often seemed to be taking place in a historical “bubble”. To be understood, the debate around cross-border aid needed to be contextualised within the history of and ongoing contradictions underlying international humanitarian systems, within an evolving national and international political context, and in relation to the individual and communal histories of the men and women involved.

Critical analyses of aid systems and organisations have often paid insufficient justice to the rationalities and perspectives of those laying claim to the label of humanitarian. Yet in the politics of aid to Burma, focus on the logic of those within cross-border aid was essential to understanding what was at stake in a polarised and often emotional debate. The Back Pack medics were at the same time subjects of political violence and agents within a system that had been developed to mitigate the impacts of this violence. This system was inextricably bound up with a politico-moral vision – itself shaped by the embodied histories of men and woman whose lives and stories told of generations of state-driven suffering. Anthropological understandings of the individual and communal impacts of a history of violence and injustice could then serve to enlighten an aid debate in which a lot more was at stake than “just” money. The perspectives and actions of those involved in cross-border aid also needed to be placed within the context of an evolving international political and moral economy – one in which humanitarianism had become an authoritative discourse framing the actions of diverse players within an unequal system of “humanitarian government” (Fassin 2012).

1.1 Humanitarianism and politics: historical dilemmas and ongoing tensions

[E]very concept of humanitarianism, like every concept of what it means to be fully human, has a history and, more important, a historical context that we ignore at our peril.

(Rieff 2002: 67)

Contemporary international humanitarian systems are generally described as having originated from the provision of emergency medical aid in conflict situations and the birth of the Red Cross at the end of the nineteenth century (Fassin 2004b, 2012; Redfield 2005; Ryfman 1999, 2008). Although its philosophical underpinnings can be traced further back, “the project of nineteenth-century humanitarianism refashioned a matter of virtue into a moral and legal category focused on health care” (Redfield 2011: 57).¹ After the creation of the Red Cross in 1864, the two world wars and evolutions in the nature of conflict during the twentieth century reinforced the perceived need to institutionalise systems for providing relief to conflict-affected populations (de Senarclens 1999). The inter-war and post-World War II period saw the development of international and inter-governmental humanitarian systems, laws and practices. Yet even in these early stages, the task of relieving conflict-affected populations was often relegated to charity groups and associations, rather than government or inter-governmental systems. Moreover, as the configuration of international relations evolved, so too did definitions of effective and legitimate humanitarianism.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 created the “humanitarian space” of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in that they “established the legitimacy of a neutral third party on the battlefield – the aid givers” (Rieff 2002: 69). The medical neutrality of these aid givers theoretically entailed protection under International Humanitarian Law, as long as they demonstrated impartiality in the provision of assistance (Kalshovan 2007).² The ICRC adopted the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross, which included humanity, impartiality and neutrality (Pictet 1979). To many, these became the benchmark of humanitarianism. Yet while the definition of these principles was seemingly straightforward, their interpretation and implementation was complex and increasingly contested.³ The history of international humanitarianism could then be read through the lens of disagreements and divisions concerning these principles and their implementation, with neutrality typically being the most contentious (Curtis 2001; Redfield 2011; Rieff 2002; Slim 1997; Weiss 1999). As revealed in the following chapters, debates around cross-border aid on the Thailand–Burma border in fact often focused on the neutrality or non-neutrality of actors laying claim to the label of humanitarian. However, at the international level, such debates were far from new.

The ICRC was constituted “around a moral response to the suffering of wounded soldiers and a commitment to circumspect operational neutrality” (Hutchinson 1996; Redfield 2011: 56). This meant that aid workers were not to favour any party to a conflict, should not allow resources or areas under their control to be used by warring parties, and had a duty of tolerance towards all parties involved in a conflict (Abel 1998; Plattner 1996; Terry 2002). Historically, the ICRC’s neutrality also entailed a code of confidentiality – and in effect “the corollary of the authorization for it to intervene in conflict situations was an implicit secrecy clause” (Fassin 2012: 205; Leader 1998; Redfield 2006).⁴ The ethical dilemmas of this stance were first highlighted when it transpired that ICRC staff knew about the concentration camps during World War II, but had concealed this knowledge in order to preserve their access to prisoners (Rieff 2002; Terry 2002). Yet it wasn’t until the Biafran war in the late 1960s that dilemmas around neutrality as confidentiality famously led to a split in the growing international humanitarian movement, when a group of French doctors broke away from the ICRC to denounce what they saw as complicity in genocide. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was created from this movement, with the vision of making humanitarianism truly borderless as well as independent from states and their politics (Redfield 2005, 2006).

Whereas the ICRC had built itself around the evolving order of sovereign nation-states, MSF had implications of an “assertive moral vision that suggested humanitarian needs took precedence over political order” (Redfield 2011: 60). Over time, MSF also came to be associated with the figure of the humanitarian as witness. So, as Fassin put it:

Whereas silence had long been seen as the condition for gaining authorization from all parties to the conflict to bring aid to military and civilian groups, to the extent that it had become virtually synonymous with neutrality, non-governmental organizations were now on the contrary asserting not only their right but also their duty to speak publicly about abuses, crimes, and more broadly the breaches of the laws of war they were observing.

(Fassin 2012: 200)

MSF’s témoignage implied an act of witnessing that was typically presented as deriving from a universal moral obligation to denounce suffering, rather than being linked with the pursuit of specific political objectives (Redfield 2006, 2011).⁵ MSF then united the provision of medical services with the promotion of what Redfield has called a “motivated truth” – a truth that aimed to mobilise political action and that combined

assertions of universalized human sentiment and opinion with those of specific expertise, suggesting a modified relationship with traditions of objectivity and neutrality whereby truth might be proclaimed in open association with a point of view.

(Redfield 2006: 5)

For the likes of Rony Brauman, former President of MSF, the role of humanitarianism was then to identify and denounce human suffering, as well as providing assistance to those in need (Brauman 1996). However, history has demonstrated that naming and publicising suffering can raise complex political and ethical dilemmas (Fassin 2012; Redfield 2006; Truchon 2007). Moreover, the historical evolution of humanitarianism needs to be understood in relation to choices that different actors and institutions have made between the “imperative” of providing aid and that of denouncing abuses. While some have seen these as conflicting, others have considered both to be integral to their roles as humanitarians (Redfield 2011; Rieff 2002). As illustrated in the following chapters, Back Pack could be seen to fit within the second, more outspoken vein of humanitarianism, uniting witnessing with the provision of aid to conflict-affected populations. Yet in contrast to an organisation like MSF, Back Pack’s ideology, systems and practices were inextricably bound up with the history and politico-moral aims of a particular socio-political movement.

In the history of international humanitarianism, the Biafran response also came to be linked with another contentious concept – that of ingérence or the “right to intervene”. In Biafra, Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) provided aid in violation of state sovereignty and by cooperating with armed non-state actors in order to access civilians who were being denied international assistance through a state-imposed blockade. The NGO Norwegian Church Relief initially sent aid from the Portuguese island of São Tomé in planes which were also used to carry weapons to the Biafrans – thereby violating Nigerian airspace and risking accusations of arms smuggling (Pérouse de Montclos 2009). The NGO justified this action as made necessary by the blockade, which it denounced as an illegal weapon of war. By June 1969, a consortium of some thirty European and American NGOs had been joined by secular organisations such as Oxfam and Save the Children, and were together channelling aid to the Biafran enclave in violation of Nigerian sovereignty. However, analysts have contended that these organisations ignored the negative side effects of their actions, with the part played by humanitarianism being “reduced to the attempts to break the blockade and to advocate a right of intervention in order to save starving children” (Pérouse de Montclos 2009: 70).

The humanitarian response to the situation in Biafra in the late 1960s has since been argued to have legitimised the struggle for independence by Christian Igbo secessionists, who were erroneously portrayed through the international media as victims of genocide (De Waal 1997; Pérouse de Montclos 2009). The response was also claimed to have provided material and financial support to the secessionists, who were then able to perpetuate their armed struggle to the detriment of civilian populations (De Waal 2008; Pérouse de Montclos 2001, 2009; Smillie 1995). These factors led analysts such as De Waal to argue that humanitarian NGOs were misled by and reinforced the military position and political legitimacy of the armed non-state actors (De Waal 1997).

Biafra provided the first significant example of aid being provided by international NGOs – some of which had powerful government back-donors – in violation of sovereignty and in cooperation with a non-state party to the conflict.⁶ It was also the first high-profile humanitarian situation where international aid was claimed to have fed into the dynamics of an armed conflict. However, recognition of a darker side to humanitarianism only really emerged later, and subsequent international responses to conflict situations in the meantime gave increased credence to the notion of a “right to intervene” (Saillant 2006, 2007). For example, in Ethiopia in the 1980s, aid was channelled to the Eritrean Relief Association and Relief Society of Tigray, which acted under the protection and authority of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front and of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front respectively. This enabled international aid to be provided in a situation where local populations were argued to be deliberately starved as part of the Ethiopian army’s counterinsurgency campaign, and where official aid and the international media were being manipulated by the Ethiopian state (De Waal 1994, 1997; Duffield and Pendergast 1994).

Humanitarian interventions were also taking place within an evolving international context. The Biafran response took place during the Cold War, when NGOs could fill a gap left by the considerations of Realpolitik. Spurred by the rise of neoliberalism, the boom of the NGO movement in the 1970s and 1980s then contributed to a multiplication of actors who often went where more traditional humanitarian organisations like the ICRC could or would not go – and who sometimes chose to work with non-state parties to a conflict (Saillant 2007; Spearin 2008; Weiss 1999). By the 1980s, northern governments were also increasingly funnelling international development assistance to NGOs rather than states (Edwards and Hulme 1996). With the end of the Cold War, humanitarian and development NGOs were then often left to fill the vacuum left by world powers’ disengagement from “un-strategic” countries (Curtis 2001). In addition, the end of the Cold War also meant a more interventionist approach to international relations (Curtis 2001; De Waal 2007).

By the 1990s, the claim to a “right to intervene” on humanitarian grounds had migrated increasingly from the nongovernmental to the governmental terrain (Allen and Styan 2000; Redfield 2011). A different global situation had emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the blurring of inter-state and intra-state warfare. “Traditional” humanitarian models, which presumed access on the basis of authorisation from a sovereign state power, were increasingly perceived to fall short (Weiss 1999). Indeed, the Geneva Conventions and ICRC model generally presumed civilian populations caught between warring state parties, rather than conflicts involving armed non-state actors and in which civilians were often deliberate targets of military operations (Duffield 1998; Macrae 1998; Redfield 2011; Rieff 2002).

In this post-Cold War context, influential actors were increasingly promoting an interventionist humanitarianism, which could bypass sovereignty in the name of mitigating human suffering (Saillant 2006). Bernard Kouchner notably popular...