operation, as cited in the article "Civil-military Relations in Natural Disasters: A
Case Study of the 2010 Pakistan Floods" and summarized below:
- Improved humanitarian outcomes? Yes, but outcomes were degraded by
attitudes of Pakistan military and government authorities. To its credit, the
Pakistan military did prevent massive loss of life through immediate actions in
evacuating people to safer locations and transporting relief supplies to isolated
populations. The Pakistan military utilized over 600 boats and a range of aircraft
to reach cut-off parts of the country – allowing 850,000 people to be moved to
new locations. Another great success was overcoming food insecurity issues for
some 8 million people and preventing the outbreak of epidemics and disease –
largely to the credit of multiple humanitarian agencies. However, although
military and civil/humanitarian actors complemented one another with regard to
immediate response capacity and longer term relief, many incidents arose
throughout relief operations in which humanitarian principles and internationally
recognized standards were disregarded. For instance, the Pakistan military was
unwilling to accept the importance of impartiality in aid distribution, allowing a
disproportionate level of aid to be delivered to the Punjab area in comparison to
other areas. Additionally, the government of Pakistan rejected the relevance of
the Sphere Standards across many sectors of relief – food, water, sanitation,
shelter, and health sectors – meaning that some recipients/communities
experienced lower than acceptable standards of relief services.
- Inconsistency and different interpretations of "last resort". In accordance
with provisions in the "Draft Guidelines for Civil-military Coordination in Pakistan,"
the UN HCT in Pakistan endorsed the World Food Programme's use of military
helicopters on the grounds of "last resort" – to transport food to areas that were
deemed inaccessible by other means, until such time that the UN Humanitarian
Air Services could bring assets to bear. The Pakistan Humanitarian Forum
(PHF), however, representing a large number of international NGOs working in
Pakistan, firmly decided against the use of military assets. The PHF did not
believe the threshold had been reached for resorting to military assets, and it
especially had concerns about using military assets to transport civilian relief
items into the areas of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Swat Valley). The
PHF feared that humanitarian agencies could be seen as operating and siding
with the Pakistan military (violating the humanitarian principle of neutrality),
because the Pakistan military was engaged in counterterrorism operations in
these areas. The humanitarian agencies did not want to risk their acceptance by
locals and the ability to sustain a long-term presence. Besides PHF, other
humanitarian organizations interpreted "last resort" (for use of military assets) as
only applying when there is a direct and immediate threat to life – i.e., that
military assets were only appropriate in the early, life-saving phase of relief
operations. Other humanitarian organizations argued that "cost" should be a
determinant of "last resort" – that civilian agencies should only coordinate for
military assets when it would be cost-prohibitive for civilian agencies to deliver
the large volumes of relief supplies.
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