Africa's World War

At the cost of other, somewhat pressing responsibilities (say, packing), I've instead starting reading Africa's World War by Gerard Prunier, and can't put it down.  The book explores how the Rwandan genocide acted as a catalyst for the devastating wars in Congo, during which millions more perished.

One of the most striking aspects of the story is how the international community, lacking a coherent political response in the immediate aftermath of the genocide - in particular a response to the huge refugee camps in Congo, effectively ruled by the genocidaires - instead tried to treat the problem solely as a humanitarian issue.

According to Prunier:

"The game was always seen, at least from the side of the heavy battalion of donors, as a number of quantitative and technical problems.  Some NGOs of course tried to remind the international community that there were many qualitative and political problems as well,and that they were probably at least as important as, if not more important than the one that were considered worthy of attention by the donors and the UN bureaucracy.  Their efforts proved largely useless."

Sometimes history repeats itself (as with recent events in the Congo), and sometimes instead it gets turned inside out.

For instance, the main problem for humanitarian agencies operating in places like Afghanistan is that - contra the Congo example above - they insist on seeing the situation in quantitative and technical terms, and sometimes (often) refuse to consider the qualitative and political impact of their work.

After all, it's far easier to insist that you're simply fulfilling a humanitarian (i.e. technical) role, than to grapple with the political ramifications of, say, supporting the Afghan government in the midst of a war, or accepting funding from donors (like the US, or the UK) who are also engaged in that same war.

(Little surprise, therefore, that the Taliban tend to view NGOs as part of the "foreign invader forces".)

Can aid agencies ignore qualitative and political issues?  If they do try and grapple with such issues, can they remain neutral?  Or is the idea of NGO neutrality itself somewhat self-delusional?

I certainly think so.