Just a rambling top of my head sort of thing. Provoked in part, certainly not in whole, by the current controversy over the fighting between Israel and HAMAS and the frequent references to the need to suspend the conflict in order to minister to the humanitarian needs of the local population. Is humanitarian aid to conflict zones, especially zones of very hot conflict, a good thing?
At first blush the answer is of course yes. What moral person could object to the idea of providing food, medicines and shelter to civilians who have been injured, displaced or otherwise disadvantaged as a result of warfare? The alternative is seemingly barbaric: to leave them to die of starvation, exposure, disease or wounds. Surely that is wrong.
As a rule the provision of humanitarian aid recognizes that the source of the problem being addressed is the actual conflict and that ending, suppressing, or otherwise suspending that conflict in some fashion is necessary if civilians are to receive the aid they need to survive. For some years now there has been a determined effort to ensure that ceasefires or temporary truces are put in place to enable aid to reach civilians in war-zones.
I wonder however if perhaps these efforts are not in fact, at least in a limited number of cases, actually making things worse by allowing the weaker party in a conflict to hang-on much longer than their own resources permit. Furthermore the ceasefires, there is usually more than one, rarely seem to involve any resolution of the issues driving the conflict in the first place meaning that sooner or later the conflict will resume. In the meantime it is difficult for people to pick up their lives in the face of an impending resumption of fighting.
The effect of these regular humanitarian pauses in conflicts and introductions of food, water, medicines, etc, might be likened to allowing fresh supplies into a besieged fortress on a regular basis. It prolongs the siege by enabling the garrison to sustain itself long past the time when it would have had to capitulate. Furthermore it has the effect of freeing the involved conflict party, usually the one that is doing less well, of responsibility for the welfare of their dependant population. Instead the outside world, or even their enemy, who may for good reason wish to prevent the introduction of external support, becomes responsible for the poor condition of the population. Indeed rather than having to consider whether to abandon the fight in order to preserve their people they are able to confine their decision-making to narrower considerations.
If this was not enough of a problem the provision of humanitarian aid can give hope to the defenders that more aid, perhaps even aid of a more directly useful sort in the ongong conflict such as intelligence, weapons or even direct military intervention will come in the future. In days gone by one of the things most calculated to prolong the resistance of a besieged garrison was the expectation, or even the hope that a relief army might be on its way. This was certain to extend the duration of the battle, making it more likely that any particular individual would come to harm and that the city and surrounding countryside would sustain greater damage.
Which highlights the point that the longer a conflict rolls on the worse it is for the civilian population. Short wars are often extremely intense, especially if all parties involved are assuming that the war will be short. In such an instance the parties throw all of their resources into the battle holding nothing back. Even when there is not an expectation that the war will be short the effect may be achieved when one of the parties is desperate and fears that they cannot sustain a long war. In contrast long wars, which tend to result from a rough equivalence of resources whether it be equal strength or equal weakness reach very deeply into societies. In such a case the needs of the civilian population may be sacrificed at the altar of military necessity, or even worse the civilian population may itself become a target in the conflict. This process seems to apply irrespective of whether we are looking at massive wars on the scale of WW2 or the never ending conflicts of sub-Saharan Africa.
So I suppose the wandering thought is, what if we denied international aid to all ongoing conflicts, instead preparing ourselves to go in immediately the conflict ends to minister to the needs of the civilian population. The suffering might indeed be severe while the conflict was underway, probably even more severe than it would be under the current system whereby the outside world provides doctors, medicines, food, shelter etc. But if this led to the fighting ending sooner than might otherwise be the case, with a clear defeat for one of the parties involved, followed by a massive international humanitarian aid effort would the balance of human suffering be less than if the conflict dragged on without end with the civilians subsisting on patchy international life-support?
To flog a dead horse just a little longer it seems that the issue may actually be one of whether we are more comfortable with accepting the deaths of 50 people this week or the deaths of 500 this year. It is not hard to arrive at the impression that public opinion, in the West, is more tolerant of a constant dribble of small numbers of foreign deaths leading to a high final total than it is of a sudden intense surge of deaths resulting in a smaller overall total.
Now having said that, I am not advocating an end to aid to conflict zones. Rather I am wondering about the balances of benefit and whether it might not be useful to give more thought to the advantages of letting conflicts run their course. Something that might be worth study. As I said a ramble.
