Attachments
Introduction
In May 2012, a Pakistani doctor was sentenced by his government for carrying on a fake vaccination campaign that helped the US government identify and kill Osama bin Laden. A few weeks later, gunmen opened fire on a UN vehicle in Karachi (Pakistan), wounding a Ghanaian doctor who was part of a polio campaign.Previously, some Taliban leaders had announced that they would not allow vaccinators to treat children there “unless the US halted its campaign of drone strikes against militants in the area,” and claimed that the vaccination campaign was “a cover for American espionage.”Meanwhile, in Somalia – another battlefield of the Global War on Terror – the militant group Al-Shabaab is insistently banning vaccination campaigns. Indeed, in the midst of a famine declaration, in 2011 this Islamist militia kicked out several humanitarian agencies from the areas under its control, accusing them, amongst other charges, of “collecting data under the guise of demographic surveys, vaccinations reports, demining surveys, nutrition analyses and population censuses, using field data and analyses for dishonest policies and programmes.”
Militant movements have good reasons to be suspicious of Western humanitarian agencies, even if they may be wrong on their allegations. USAID administrator Rajiv Shah has recently reaffirmed the strong links between aid and national security: “[Former Defense] Secretary Gates was right when he said development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers,” and official reports to the US Congress bluntly include USAID expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan on the costs of the Global War on Terror. The question is, what is the price of linking aid efforts with military goals?