Humanitarian aid amidst political and military conflicts (with reference to Venezuela)

Last weekend's (melo)dramatic but very serious confrontation on the Venezuelan border with Colombia involved an attempt by the US-directed coup leader Juan Guaidó to deliver humanitarian supplies at needy Venezuelans. I've blogged here more than once about the transparent cynicism of the effort. If the intent of the coup directors in Washington - in particular, Vice President and Christianist fundamentalist Mike Pence, National Security Adviser and chronic warmonger John Bolton, and Special Envoy and professional ghoul Elliott Abrams - really was to provide humantiarian aid to Veneuelans, the need for which even the real existing government of Nicolás Maduro does not dispute, they could work with the Red Cross/Red Crescent or the UN to send such aid in a politially neutral way. The Red Cross is operating inside Venezuela already, but both the Red Cross and the UN declined to participate in the Pence-Bolton-Elliott-Guaidó stunt last weekend on the grounds that it was clearly a political operation.

At the moment, the coup effort appears to be stalled, to put it mildly. And the US credibility as a responsible actor in Latin America and the world has taken a hit because of the seriously-meant but almost comically poorly-executed coup, coming as it did the same week of the very embarrssing failure of Trump's Hanoi summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

So I'm going to take this moment to look at the question of humanitarian aid in conflicts in a broader sense, drawing on David Rieff's article, "Humanitarian Aid, Blocking of", in Crimes of War 2.0 (2007), Roy Guman et al, eds.

Rieff's article is mainly focused on experiences from the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. That's one huge difference to the Venezuelan situation. In the Balkans, there were civil wars and international conflicts, ethnic cleansing and mass killings, along with serious humanitarian emergencies resulting from them. In Venezuela, there is has been a very active civil conflict for years that has included some violence. But the situation is certainly not a civil war. The humanitarian problems are the result of Venezuela's status as a petrostate which has been facing low oil prices for years now. How much the Maduro regime's policies or external sanctions against it may have contributed to the problem has been a big part of the political polemics. But that shouldn't detract us from how significant oil dependence is for Venezuela's economy. (Or from the dominant role that Venezuela's huge oil reserves plays in American policy toward the country, even when as grim a character as Elliott Abrams isn't driving it.)

Rieff notes that the need to provide humanitarian aid in conflict zones, both supplies and medical services, "was supposed to be beyond the politics of the war, beyond all questions of military or psychological advantage," "something that was unarguably good, and, as such, something that must not be interfered with." And he elaborates:

The legal bases for this view were already powerful with the passage of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. It imposed on all its parties the obligation to allow "the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores" and of "all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases" even to its military adversaries. The 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions further cemented both the obligations of belligerents and the rights of noncombatants. Article 69 imposes on occupying powers the obligation to provide relief supplies to the population of its adversary "without any adverse distinction," to ensure that population's physical survival (it also called for the provision of articles necessary for religious worship). Article 70 requires belligerents to treat offers of relief not as interference in the conflict, so long as the relief effort was "humanitarian and impartial in character," but as a duty imposed by international humanitarian law (IHL). [my emphasis]

This addresses a level of conflict that is not present in Venezuela right now, even though coup advocates would be quick to remind us of the chronically high level of everyday criminal violence in that country. But it's notable here that international law even in wartime situations specifies that allowed humanitarian aid be provided without any adverse distinction, i.e., without the aid being restricted to a particular side in the ongoing conflict. And it specifies that humanitarian aid cannot be considered as foreign interference in the military conflict if it is humanitarian and impartial in character.

Again, the Red Cross is currently operating in Venezuela and both it and the UN declined to participate in the "humanitarian aid" operation staged by the Guaidó group effort because they judged it not to be politically impartial. The Pence-Guaidó coup party made it very clear leading up to the event that they intended it specifically to provoke political changes, e.g., senior military figures joining the coup. As a political matter, partisans of Guaidó found it perfectly fine to support this move. But there is no reason for everyone else to take their propaganda claim on this at face value.

For wartime situations, Rieff provides this reminder of the ugly practical realities of war and civil war, without using it as any kind of excuse for warring parties to block humanitarian aid in violation on international law:

The bitter truth was that to stand for international laws governing the free movement of humanitarian aid was to stand against the war aims of the Bosnian Serbs and, to a lesser extent, the Bosnian Croats, and their respective masters in Belgrade and Zagreb as well. For the fighters of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) to allow a humanitarian convoy into Bosnian government-controlled East Mostar, for example, was to sanction the continued physical presence of Muslims in that part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. And all the killing and destruction had been undertaken precisely with the opposite goal in mind. ... In other words, what in IHL often constitutes a war crime was, for the fighters, the essential tactic of their fight.

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an army must be satisfied that there are no "serious reasons" for fearing that relief supplies will be diverted from their intended destination and recipients, or that control over distribution will not be effective, or that the enemy will not derive some substantial benefit to its war effort or have its economy shored up. ... The guarantee of access comes with the right of belligerents to inspect convoys to see that the aid is what it purports to be and is destined for populations that are entitled to it.

In wars that pit not armies but armed populations against each other, such guarantees are almost impossible to ensure. Fighters on all sides use humanitarian relief supplies for their own purposes, and the laws do not adequately come to grips with the problem of a war in which the distinction between soldier and civilian is unclear, if it exists at all. [my emphasis]

I'll add what should be obvious. None of this is to say that the Maduro government handled last weekend's border action in an optimal way. And it would also be naive to think that the coup leaders expected the actual government to cooperate with it. Although, given the amount of wishful thinking that has been driving this effort, who knows what they might have been assuming?