Anguish in ICRC over Iraq

The Swiss daily Le Temps yesterday (11/24) had an
article (purchase reqd) about the dilemmas the International Committee of the Red Cross
has been facing in Iraq. The piece is by Richard Werly, one of the few
Swiss journos who have been able to work in Iraq in recent weeks.

Ominously, the piece is titled, “After two weeks of fighting, Falludjah
is still closed to the ICRC convoys”.

Alert JWN readers will of course be aware that the ICRC is not “just another”
international humanitarian aid organization, but it’s the international body
that is charged by the world’s governments with guarding the integrity of,
and supervising the implementation of, nearly the whole body of the international
“laws of war” — Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, etc etc.

So when the ICRC gets systematically stymied in its work, this is a serious development in international affairs, and could mark a continuation of the desire of many in the Pentagon to “roll back” the entire structure of the laws of war.

(My big thanks to the JWN reader who supplied the translation here.)

Here’s how Werly starts:

Can the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) still
work in Iraq? The question comes back more bluntly after the bloody battle
of Falludjah, the Sunni insurgents’ stronghold retaken by the US Marines
and their Iraqi allies. Two weeks after the assault was launched on the 8th
of November and while sporadic fightings are still going on, neither a crew
nor a humanitarian convoy of the ICRC have been able to enter in this city
of about 200 000 inhabitants…

The last attempt of the organization to convey help supplies in the field
goes back to Saturday 13th November. The ICRC delegation in Baghdad had loaded
packages of food and drugs in a convoy of humanitarian trucks[organized by]
the Iraqi Red Crescent which was never able to drive through the US military
checkpoints… [T]he freight brought by the convoy was finally distributed
[outside the city] to the families of the wounded who had been able to flee
the fighting zone by their own means. And Falludjah since then remains out
of reach.

Another convoy of the Red Crescent was turned back on Monday [Nov. 22?].
“We still haven’t obtained the needed guarantees of security from the different
parties in conflict and cannot get in under our usual conditions: without
military escort and with the freedom to distribute aid to all the population”,
acknowledges Ahmed Rawi, the ICRC spokesman in Baghdad with whom we talked
by phone. “We hope to be able to reach there in one or two days.”

We should recall that the long-time modus operandi of the ICRC as it performs
its work in conflict zones is one of extreme caution in public statements.
ICRC envoys in various war zones– called “Delegates”– have anguished
over this caution for many decades; but still, the organization as a whole
prefers to say nothing in public that might give recalcitrant power-holders
on the ground any pretext at all for blocking the organization’s ability
to deliver basic humaitarian services to people under the power-holders’
control.

“Naming and shaming” power-holders for their rights abuses may be the main
modus operandi of some of the human-rights monitoring groups. Personally,
I don’t have much faith in the idea of “shaming” people in public as being
a good tool of persuasion; but self-appointed rights monitoring groups like
Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International are big on “naming & shaming”…
But then, what they do is very different from what the ICRC does. They
do not actually provide any direct services to beleaguered populations under
stress. The ICRC, by contrast, has a responsibility, under a whole
series of international treaties and agreements, to implement its mandate
of winning humanitarian access to noncombatants in times of armed conflict
and ensuring the delivery of the urgent humanitarian aid that they need.

Werly writes about the tough conditions in which the ICRC’s remaining Delegates
inside Iraq are forced to work, and the anguish this has caused them. He
notes:

The continual degradation of [the organization’s] working conditions
in Iraq; the organization, shaken by the bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad
on the 27th October 2003, is now restricted to the role of the alarmed and
powerless spectator; it is caught between the insurgents and the US forces,
like all the other humanitarian agencies, who, incidentally, are deserting
the country one after the other.

The tone of the statement issued the 19th November by the Director of Operation,
Pierre Kräehenbühl, shows how concerned the headquarters in Geneva
are. “Every day passing in Iraq seems to bring news of yet another act of
utter contempt for the most basic tenet of humanity: the obligation to protect
human life and dignity”, he exclaimed. These words conceal a growing disheartening
of the ICRC and of its delegates in the field, delegates who are constrained
to live in quasi-secrecy (unmarked cars, secret quarters and restricted travelling)
for security reasons. “Each day, the contempt for the international humanitarian
law is increasing in Iraq. Remaining out of reach of the wounded and of the
civilian victims becomes unbearable”, confirms a well informed source in
Baghdad.

The case of Fallujah is illustrative. Even if most of the population fled
the city before the assault, the images prove the violence of the fights and
imply a much heavier number of casulties than announced by the American forces.

Even worse: the first hand account of Kevin Sites, who filmed the execution
of awounded Iraqi by a Marine, confirms that wounded Iraqi figthters were
left to their fate. In his weblog, published on the internet (www.kevinsites.net),
this experienced war reporter tells that the wounded present in the mosquee
taken by the Marines were there since the day before, lying in their blood,
having only received first aid. Yet, assistance to the victims is the fundamental
mission of the ICRC, isn