No Dancing, No Dancing: Inside the Global Humanitarian Crisis

Author

Preface

I once bought the life of a Sudanese man with eight cows. He’d accidentally killed a friend and had been sentenced to death, so I paid the remaining blood money just weeks before he was to hang. When we first met, I was a young humanitarian aid worker living in Wau, a battered Sudanese town under siege for most of the eighteen years of civil war in that country. A judge I had met through my work had invited me to visit the town’s prisons to witness their judicial system, so I went—mostly out of curiosity.

From the outside, the jail’s crumbling façade reflected the ravages of a country at war. I stood in the courtyard among the crowd of prisoners for a moment and looked around. Children were incarcerated alongside adults, housed in barracks without bunks or beds, only the cement floor to sleep on and each other’s bodies to keep warm. Roofs had collapsed, whether neglect or war was to blame, I wasn’t sure. I had free rein to walk around, though I didn’t stray far. The prisoners seemed inactive and submissive, yet on edge, as if each was fighting his own battle for sanity. Freedom would have been an abstract thought, as discharge from the penitentiary would only release them into a city under siege. If they managed to escape from Wau they would still be prisoners, living free within the police state of the renegade Khartoum government.

Walking onto death row, I saw six latrine-sized cells smelling of faeces crowded around a lone tree. In its shade a rusted shackle was bolted to a cement block—furlough for prisoners or a restraining tool for the executioner? I didn’t ask. The judge described each of the condemned men and their crimes, one after another, as they stood in the shadows of their cells looking back at us in silence. Then we came to Marco Garang. He was chained to the floor and dressed in ragged shards that would have once resembled clothes. The judge took his time in explaining the case while Marco’s round face, missing his front two teeth and bereft of emotion, stared out at us, seemingly lost in his own world. The judge explained that Marco had come forward to the police, admitting to murdering his friend but blaming alcohol and a friendly tussle gone wrong for the terrible outcome. The judge I was with explained that, regrettably, tribal law didn’t acknowledge accidental killing. An eye for an eye prevailed in this part of the world. He had killed his friend unintentionally, but under the law he had to die for it.

A few days later I met with Sister Sarah at the Comboni compound to speak about Marco. She was a quietly spoken Italian woman with twenty years of missionary work in Sudan under her belt. She knew him well, she told me, having prayed for forgiveness and a second chance for the young man whom she believed genuinely regretted his crime. She also explained that if the sentence was carried out, his family would be compelled to seek revenge against his accusers, perpetuating a cycle of blood feuds and killing. So I paid the remaining blood money, eight cows or about three hundred dollars, settling the debt due to the family of the dead man. It seemed the right thing to do, a small act of mercy in an otherwise merciless country at war with itself.

Yet for others more deserving of compassion, such as the dozen or so slaves, young boys and women rounded up from nearby villages not far from where I paid for Marco’s life, I could only stand by and watch as their single-file shackled procession passed by. While Marco’s nightmare ended with a simple transaction, theirs was only beginning when money changed hands between the slavers and those who decided to buy the lives of other humans. Somewhat bafflingly, the judge whose humanity had brought me to Marco asserted the righteousness of the slavers. He saw them not as traffickers in human misery but benefactors who would house, educate, and provide for children otherwise left with little to live for. To him, the chains and exchange of money were simply a part of what was the first step towards a better life.

In Iraq, the first female staff member I hired, a mother of two, was shot at her home, a senseless honour killing perpetrated by her brothers-in-law in response to rumours of infidelity. We broke internal policy by hiring her husband so that the children could continue to go to school. I didn’t know those responsible, but we had heard of similar cases where brothers or fathers, perpetrators of the killings, spoke of their love for the slain woman.

Not long after, in late 2004, I was invited to step away for a moment from the improvised explosive devices and death threats in an ever-deteriorating Iraq and to slip into a tuxedo and black tie for the annual Freedom Awards dinner. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), a charity delivering humanitarian aid around the world, had been organising the award since 1957, and as the Country Director for Iraq I was invited to attend along with a few others who were posted in the field. It was a luxurious event held in the cavernous Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The IRC has a team of staff working year-round to organise the event, and it showed as guests were seated, chandeliers dimmed, and the multimedia presentation began. Heart-wrenching pictures of starving children and displaced families slowly segued into scenes of IRC staff providing aid to the needy. It tugged at the heartstrings.

Diners parted with US $1,000 to enjoy an ordinary meal but extraordinary company. I sat a few tables from where Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, took centre stage. The Freedom Award was not given that year; instead, a Distinguished Humanitarian Award was presented to Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire, the former Head of Peacekeeping Operations in Rwanda. In 1994 he had become a symbol of the world’s conscience after he asked for and was refused the right to intervene to stop the genocide. Instead, he watched along with millions of others throughout the world as the killing unfolded. Many subsequently asked: how could the West stand by and watch first hundreds, then thousands and then hundreds of thousands of people being slaughtered? As General Dallaire pleaded for support, the international community evaded calling the rolling massacre a genocide for fear of being compelled to act. As the days rolled into weeks, there were no street protests in Western capitals, no high-level resignations or damaging exposés of cover-ups. But on the streets of Africa, the West’s inaction became a stain that left many questioning our humanity.

Recalling these memories—of Marco, the slave traders, the Iraqi honour killings and General Dallaire—is more than what is commonly referred to as poverty porn. Their stories leave questions. Is honour killing or slavery justified within the cultural norms of another society? If it isn’t, then what is the right balance between a well-intentioned effort to change traditions and cultural imperialism? And even if we find that Goldilocks sweet spot and act appropriately to stop slavery, honour killings or genocide, but leave the job incomplete, have we done more harm than good? Maybe it took the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi or the young Yazidi girls forced into slavery to take these issues from being dilemmas faced by a few into signs of an emerging global humanitarian crisis.

My parents moved to Australia in 1968, leaving behind not only their family but a future shaped by the politics of ethnicity. The civil war that spread through the former Yugoslavia in the nineties managed to overcome the tyranny of distance that protects Australians from such other-world events and changed our lives in the process, from our family and friends to the church we attended.

During those years, I would hear stories of threats to lives, houses burned, property stolen, and of escape. Sometimes the escape was psychological, compartmentalising life into neat boxes that separate the war from daily life as if the two could co-exist—by day fighting on the front lines, by night reading bedtime stories to children. For others, it was an escape into isolation that bred a raging anger, or a fear that couldn’t be shaken, or worse still a deep melancholy that drained the will to live. Then there were those who escaped, fleeing their community or country. My maternal grandparents were forced to flee their homes becoming, in the industry lingo, IDPs, or internally displaced persons, while my paternal grandparents became refugees. I knew the facts of the war, read the news reports, heard the stories, but understood very little about its reality on the ground.

Two decades later, images of over a million people pushing through the borders of Europe, many through the familiar landscapes of Croatia and Serbia, reminded me of the Balkans wars. This time a decade of working in conflict zones provided a new perspective on war.

Widely reported as refugees fleeing Syria, the mass of humanity included people from countries as diverse as Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and even the neighbouring Balkans. The human tsunami hit Europe four years after the Syrian conflict began, years after camps in the Middle East were filled to the brim, and more than a year after the rise of the fanatical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS). This was the humanitarian crisis that gripped the world and divided European leaders. While much was said on what should be done, few asked the more important question. Not what had driven the people to flee, but why then and not earlier? What drove the people out of Syria was the civil war, a simple answer that offers an easy solution, an opportunity for politicians to act decisively by deploying military force. Discussing why at that point in time and not earlier is a much more complex but critical conversation.

For the European migration crisis, as with other humanitarian crises around the world, the background begins with local dynamics and power politics that are in turn shaped by tradition, religion, and culture. The West becomes involved through its diplomatic and military forays that together with an aid response shape the humanitarian situation on the ground, either successfully averting a crisis or adding fuel to the fire. In this case, the tinder was quickly drying as millions of people found themselves in a limbo living in camps and urban settlements throughout Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. They were living in temporary accommodation, drinking from temporary wells, working temporary jobs, and sending their children to temporary schools. The ground for a crisis had been laid through our reputation of being unable to see through a crisis, a condition known as donor fatigue.

What had begun as a fight of freedom against Bashar al-Assad became an existential conflict for many Syrians. Four million had fled across borders into camps and the community where Western donors provided support. Another eight million became internally displaced within Syria. For the first few years billions of dollars were channelled to humanitarian assistance supporting the refugees fleeing Syria, but donor fatigue set in and international attention shifted. In 2015, the year when the European migration crisis began, the United Nations’ humanitarian appeal for Syria was only 35% funded. Which meant that food distribution in camps had to be cut in half, cash distribution to those living in the community dropped from $28 per month to $14, schools struggled to find funding, and health clinics had to be closed. Parents saw the writing on the wall. Stay in the camps and face a bleak future or with the meagre savings that remained buy passage to Europe. This was the dry tinder that was waiting for a spark to set alight the migration crisis.

I had experienced this before. Just as quickly as the international community’s attention had focused upon Iraq in the years following the 2003 invasion, it shifted gears to George Clooney’s Darfur and then the Indian Ocean tsunami, with each drawing press coverage and humanitarian dollars away from the one before. Yet, for the people left behind their catastrophe continued. Their future could not remain on hold. Their lives were not temporary. I often wonder what happened to these people.

Understanding a conflict and the accompanying humanitarian crisis requires taking a step back from the regular press reporting on political machinations and the speeches of statesmen that see events as if they are planned and then coordinated by a deliberate hand. Scratch a little deeper and we see that often they are instead consequences of a spur of the moment decision driven by an individual’s hopes, fears, or even simply ignorance. A single act creates a myth whose message spreads like wildfire, rippling through society and gaining momentum before turning into a movement—the anger of the street vendor in Tunisia that raised a revolution, or the courage of the first Syrian family to take the boat across the Aegean—setting the course for a million others to follow.

To understand the humanitarian consequences of war and better prepare a response, we need to engage with the stories of people before they become the news, we need to work outside the neat boxes that academia creates and instead embrace the interconnectedness that is the chaos of war. This book attempts to do that by following a journey I took travelling back to the places where I had worked between 2000 and 2010 as a humanitarian aid worker—Sudan, Iraq and East Timor. People are at the centre of this book, including those who depended upon the aid to survive, community leaders who advised on its disbursement, or the local aid workers lending their insights and skills to the endeavour. They are also the ones who tell the story of what worked and what didn’t. By returning to these countries to see what happened to the aid projects, this book sheds light on how we can better respond to the emerging global humanitarian crisis.

Part I

South Sudan

1

Rough neighbourhoods

There are a handful of places that manage to consistently appear at the bottom of country development lists, those that face the trifecta of war, disease and isolation. Many of these are in Sub-Saharan Africa. A rough historical guide to some of these countries’ past would read: slavers raid villages, plundering and pillaging. Colonisation stops the slavery but continues the plunder. White man’s burden grows too heavy as nationalistic sentiment develops. Independence struggle leads to nationhood, but with some very heavy strings attached. Charismatic freedom fighter turns into demagogic messiah-complex strongman who takes charge as the dreams of a new dawn fade. Resources continue to be pillaged, millions appropriated. War inevitably returns.

If the people are lucky the war will be a coup that comes and goes, fought mainly by soldiers and loyalists, rarely touching upon the lives of the civilians. But sometimes a nation’s limited resources or its people’s will are not enough to match a leader’s ambitions. At the pronouncement of a politician’s speech (Milosevic in the Balkans) or a disk jockey’s vitriol (Radio Rwanda), previously contained undercurrents of resentment and disenfranchisement are co-opted into a fabricated historic struggle that reaches deep into the people’s psyche and stokes the embers of ancient hatred.

These wars are the most devastating as they destroy the social fabric of a society. The wealthiest flee at the outbreak, saving themselves and their relatives, transferring cash, selling assets, and moving to neighbouring countries or the West. As the war continues and shows no respite, the middle class follow in their footsteps, selling what little they have remaining, moving to neighbouring countries, paying people smugglers or waiting out the long bureaucratic process of asylum applications. The poorest tend to leave last, if at all, as they have fewer resources with which to start anew, so they remain behind, buffeted by the winds of war.

Infrastructure and valuable assets including machinery and industrial equipment, essential to any economic recovery, are stripped bare by the owners as the conflict nears, during the war by soldiers and profiteers, or immediately after by the newly anointed ‘legitimate owners’.

The young, having missed years of education, are shell-shocked and traumatised, a generation or two or even three, lost. In some cases, where the war rages for years, even cleared farmland disappears as nature follows in the soldiers’ footsteps, obliterating the last remaining signs of civilisation.

South Sudan is one such place.

2

Revolutionary bureaucrats

I looked down at the lush landscape of northern Kenya as I flew from Nairobi to what was then the capital of the autonomous region of South Sudan, Juba. My hope was to spend as much face-to-face time with the local people, engaging with them and seeing how their daily lives had changed since the last time I had been there. Cars and buses were in and planes and helicopters were out. That’s how I found myself stranded on a dirt road surrounded by high grass, scattered trees and a few low-lying hills as far as the eye could see. Mundri, the location of a former aid program that I was involved in, was still another hundred and sixty kilometres away.

As soon as I had landed in Juba, James Amule, a former colleague during my time with CHF International, a US-based humanitarian organisation (since renamed Global Communities), had arranged a vehicle for my journey into the hinterland. I told him that I didn’t have a lot of money to spend so he found a car that met my budget. It had already broken down once earlier in the day. At that stop Abdi, my hired driver, had caught a ride back into town to buy a new fan belt, but he didn’t take the old one with him so two hours later he returned with a wrong-sized replacement. After another two-hour wait for a second trip into town we were on our way again, only to break down once more.

Abdi assured me in Arabic that it wasn’t a problem, though I couldn’t get more out of him as my Arabic was limited