What is the difference between Sphere's NGO Handbook on humanitarian response and a counter-insurgency manual? This question is not as facetious as it may sound because much enlightened counter-insurgency strategy focuses on improving people's lives through relief and development work. Indeed, the question suggests a deeper one about the contemporary relationship between Coalition counter-insurgency and humanitarian programming. Do humanitarian agencies and Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan share some of the same moral goals and employ the same means to these ends? This is a serious question today and one which has been forced upon humanitarians by each of the warring parties who both describe UN agencies and NGOs as 'collaborators' - albeit with rather different meanings. Coalition authorities have welcomed humanitarians positively as partners while resistance groups have killed humanitarians as treacherous agents of the enemy.

The purpose of this paper is to look briefly at liberal counterinsurgency doctrine and to show how, in its best form, it has much in common - morally and methodologically - with the concerns and methods of humanitarian and development work. It shows that Coalition, UN and NGO peace aims are indeed very similar. They share significant moral overlap with one another. But more than just comparing the two fields and their moral ideals, I want to suggest that UN agencies, NGOs and other humanitarian commentators may be in an interesting form of denial about the morality they have in common with Coalition authorities.