The rise of the relief--and--reconstruction complex.

• Author: Bello, Walden
• Position: COMMENTARIES on RECOVERY and RECONSTRUCTION

Massive infrastructure damage and great social dislocation have been common consequences of natural disasters and social disasters like wars. Up until a few years ago, the aims of relief and reconstruction efforts were fairly simple: immediate physical relief of victims, reduction of social dislocation, restoration of a functioning social organization and reparation of physical infrastructure. In major disasters or wars, international actors were central players--most prominently United Nations agencies and the Red Cross Movement.

In recent years, however, the objectives of both disaster relief and post-conflict reconstruction have become more complex. Strategic considerations have become more prevalent in military-led disaster relief operations. Post-disaster and post-conflict reconstruction planning and implementation are increasingly influenced by neoliberal market economics. A new militant humanitarianism infuses not only post-conflict reconstruction work but, in a number of cases, has itself helped to precipitate conflicts.

Disaster relief and post-conflict reconstruction have thus become increasingly intertwined, so that it is difficult to understand the dynamics of one arena without looking at the other. This is all the more true since the same set of actors now dominate both arenas: the U.S. military-political command, the World Bank, corporate contractors and humanitarian and development non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Humanitarian missions led by the United Nations and Red Cross are a thing of the past, though these players continue to participate in relief and reconstruction work along, of course, with national governments. The new establishment in post-disaster and post-conflict reconstruction is what will be termed here the "relief and reconstruction complex" (RRC). Power structures develop legitimating ideologies, and accompanying the rise of the RRC is a formulaic discourse that is built on appeals to national and international security, neoliberal economics and a burgeoning, militant "rights-based humanitarianism."

THE TSUNAMI AS OPPORTUNITY I: THE PENTAGON

Within hours after the massive tsunami that hit at least eleven countries bordering the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004, U.S. Navy Orion reconnaissance aircraft began flying over the affected areas to deliver emergency relief and to assess the damage. This was the prelude to a massive expedition that eventually came to encompass more than twenty-four U.S. warships, over 100 aircraft and some 16,000 military personnel--the largest U.S. military concentration in Asia since the end of the Vietnam War. (1)

It was not a disinterested peacetime military mission. One immediate sign of this was the deliberate U.S. effort to marginalize the United Nations, which was expected by many to coordinate, at least at the formal level, the relief effort. Instead, Washington sought to bypass the United Nations by setting up a separate assistance "consortium" with India, Australia, Japan, Canada and several other governments, with the U.S. military task force's Combined Coordination Center at U Tapao, Thailand, effectively serving as the axis of the whole relief operation. (2)

Showing the flag was seen by the Bush administration as an important objective in light of the low point in the relations between the United States and many communities in the Southeast Asian region owing to the War on Terror, which many Muslims, who were in the majority in the most devastated country, Indonesia, had seen as being directed against them. The War on Iraq was also universally unpopular throughout the area, yet here was an opportunity to show a different face of the U.S. military than that of a force imposing a harsh military occupation on that Middle Eastern country.

However, there were more immediate military objectives as well. The Indonesian military had been subject to a ban on U.S. arms sales as well as restrictions on U.S.-led military training for close to a decade owing to the successful campaign of human rights groups during the 1990s to expose the systematic oppression carried out by the Indonesian Army, the TNI. The tsunami relief effort became an opportunity for the Pentagon to push for dropping those restrictions. As then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz put it during a visit to Jakarta a few weeks after the disaster, "the more we can cooperate on a peaceful basis with militaries in this region in normal times [the more we can increase] our capacity to respond to disasters." He then went on to say,

Everybody loses a great deal when a long period of time goes by with severe limitations on the ability of our military ... when you cut off their contact with a military, whether it be in Pakistan ... or here, as we've done to a lesser extent but continue. I think it is not supportive of the very goals that these restrictions are meant to achieve. (3) The military-to-military cooperation during the tsunami relief became an important step in a process of the Wolfowitz-led effort to restore military aid to Indonesia. In January 2005, Washington, citing the tsunami, allowed commercial sales of "non-lethal" defense items, including spare parts for military transport planes. In February 2005, the ban on military training was lifted, followed that May by the lifting on government sale of non-lethal defense equipment. Finally, in November 2005, despite Congress voting to maintain the ban two weeks earlier, the State Department, exploiting a national security waiver provision, resumed unrestricted military and training aid, citing among other reasons, the objective of strengthening the Indonesian military's capability for "disaster relief." (4)

Dealing with two active insurgencies, in Aceh and West Papua, the TNI would find U.S. military aid very useful, especially if the tenuous post-tsunami ceasefire that it has entered into with GAM, the Acehnese independent movement, gives way again to open hostilities.

Strategic maneuvering using the tsunami as a platform was not limited to Southeast Asia. In South Asia, Pentagon relief efforts were poised to move into areas in Sri Lanka controlled by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), a group that the State Department includes in its list of terrorist organizations. Several hundred U.S. Marines from the Navy assault ship Bonhomme Richard were set to be deployed to Galle, on the west coast, to provide "limited engineering capability" for repairing roads and other damaged infrastructure. Given the fact that a few days before, the Tigers and the Sri Lankan army were on the brink of renewed hostilities, one military expert noted, the use of U.S. troops and ships for the relief effort had strategic implications:

[I]f there is a showdown, the presence of foreign troops--particularly from the U.S. and India--involved in relief work could make a world of difference ... In case of a military operation, additional airlift capability now available to Sri Lanka from the foreign helicopters employed in relief work would be formidable. These forces have also added to infrastructure restoration and repair capability. Similarly the foreign naval ships can create a strong cordon to prevent external access to the LTTE. (5) While it is doubtful that the United States had any intention to actively intervene in an open conflict, its nearby presence would serve as a strong psychological deterrent to the Tigers. Moreover, Washington was anxious to reassert influence in an area where it had been sidelined by the successful Norwegian government initiative to broker a truce between the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers.

Aware of the strategic disadvantage at which they were placed, the Tigers objected strongly to the U.S. military presence, prompting Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga to scale down her request for U.S. aid. As a result only U.S. naval helicopters were eventually involved in the relief effort. (6)

The U.S. military-led relief effort contributed to saving lives, alleviating the misery of tsunami survivors and repairing infrastructure. Nevertheless, it went hand-in-hand with strategic and propaganda objectives. While it is doubtful that it was able to repair the tattered image of the United States among Indonesian Muslims, this initiative scored a stunning success in creating the climate for the lifting of restrictions on military aid to the TNI, which the Pentagon had long considered its most strategic ally in Southeast Asia.

THE TSUNAMI AS OPPORTUNITY II: THE WORLD BANK

While the U.S. military spearheaded the immediate relief effort, the World Bank assumed the dominant role in the reconstruction arena, and here, as in the former scenario, the United Nations was placed in a subordinate role. In the first next six months after the tsunami, the World Bank committed $835 million to tsunami-devastated countries. Of equally importance, it became the manager of a Multi-Donor Trust Fund for Aceh and North Sumatra to handle some $500 million in aid from the European Commission, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and other contributors.

A cynical view might be that the World Bank needed the tsunami to refurbish its image as a disaster-management agency. At the time, it was still dogged by its record following the devastating Hurricane Mitch, when of the $8.7 billion that the World Bank and Western governments promised to raise as aid for the affected Central American countries, less than a third materialized. (7) World Bank officials were also bothered by the belief of many...