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TAKING
IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Civilian-Military Cooperation in Complex Emergencies
Introduction
Civilian-Military Collaboration in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
Complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs) are human-made crises and natural disasters requiring an international response that extends beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and that includes a military element for purposes of civilian safety, relief security, or logistical expertise. Owing to the interdependence among members of the international community engaged in such emergencies, information sharing has been deemed necessary for achieving successful results. Information sharing can enhance operational efficiencies, thereby saving lives and resources, as well as laying the groundwork for rapid recovery and reconstruction. Military and intelligence agencies are unaccustomed to exchanging information with international organizations (IOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and vice versa. As a result, information sharing has been a frustratingly elusive requirement in responses to humanitarian crises.
Each CHE is different in some respects, but some aspects are similar across crises. One such commonality is the need to acquire, compile, analyze, disseminate, and use information before, during, and even after the emergency. No single approach can satisfy everyone's informational needs, yet there exists in every crisis a core of key information that has wide applicability for all those responding to the crisis. However, despite occasional information sharing, this practice has not been sufficiently institutionalized. Thus, collaboration between civilian and military entities cannot be counted on and is difficult to mobilize at the appropriate time.
Recent experiences illustrate that planned information sharing in peace support and humanitarian relief operations is an idea whose time has come. Not by chance nor accident have we arrived here, but by the vision and hard work of individuals and entities that have worked since Provide Comfort in northern Iraq to overcome the complexities posed by their interaction in CHEs. There are many recent examples of the military's commitment to information sharing: the U.S. Marine Corps' renowned Emerald Express, an annual symposium designed to bring together military and civilian organizations that may interact during complex emergencies; the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Program at Carlisle Barracks; the Partnership for Peace programs; and NATO's recent efforts to streamline operations that include civilian and military entities.
The above efforts are complemented by collaborative initiatives among humanitarian agencies. In Kosovo, for example, members of the United Nations (UN) and donor agencies established an informal Geographic Information Support Team, or GIST, testing the feasibility of utilizing geographic information systems in a collaborative manner in Kosovo. The Kosovo Humanitarian Community Information Center (HCIC), established by the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and located in Pristina, facilitates coordination among all entities involved in emergency relief and reconstruction in Kosovo. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) established a shared telecommunications infrastructure, Internet Project Kosovo (IPKO), for use by NGOs, IOs, and the military with the intention of eventual turnover to local civilians. Also, NGOs created their own council in order to share information and organize projects in Kosovo. Thanks to ReliefWeb, the premier Web site for CHEs, virtually everyone has access to valuable information from the field provided by the Kosovo HCIC. Finally, a Rapid Village Assessment Form was developed for Kosovo (and in a modified version, used in East Timor) to retrieve and share statistical information about vulnerable populations.
These informal yet effective information-sharing efforts raise a number of questions:
- How interdependent are entities in peace support and humanitarian operations? Is the interdependence sufficient for all or many entities to agree that some kind of information sharing is necessary?
- On the basis of what common principle or set of principles and in the context of what set of circumstances and conditions would information sharing be considered beneficial?
- Can levels of information sharing be defined? What information can be shared? What information cannot be shared? How should individual and institutional information privacy be handled, maintained, and secured?
- What standards exist or need to be developed to collect, analyze, retrieve, and exchange information? How can information from multiple sources be validated? In short, how can data be deemed trustworthy?
- How can information sharing strengthen trust, transparency, and accountability among organizations?
- Can the concept of a lead agency be extended to information sharing? Is there a need to designate an information-sharing coordinator to promote collaboration among civilian and military entities? How would such an arrangement work, given other lines of authority and accountability?
- Ultimately, to what degree could information sharing be institutionalized? Would donors require that information-sharing arrangements be established and maintained prior to and during CHEs? Finally, who would provide the resources for such arrangements and why would those funders be willing to bear the costs?
Conference on Information Sharing in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
The United States Institute of Peace and the 353rd Civil Affairs (CA) Command organized a joint conference to discuss the obstacles and incentives to information sharing in the planning and implementation of peace support and humanitarian relief operations.
Since 1995 the United States Institute of Peace, through its Virtual Diplomacy Initiative, has been following the effects of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs) on the nature and conduct of international relations. Specifically, this initiative seeks to assist practitioners and scholars to identify and apply ICTs in preventing, managing, and resolving international conflict. From its inception, the initiative has explored how to use these new technologies to respond more effectively to humanitarian crises and international conflict. It has investigated the use of remote sensing and geographical information systems, the expansion of Internet access into the field of operations, and models of information sharing among governments, militaries, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations during CHEs.
For its part during the past decade, the 353rd CA Command has directly participated in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations and exercises in countries from Albania to Zimbabwe. Organized on July 14, 1952, the 353rd, a U.S. Army Reserve unit headquartered in New York City, is one of four CA commands in the U.S. Army. Based on its operational and training experiences, the 353rd CA Command recognizes the importance of including members of IOs and NGOs in its professional development activities to promote better understanding of each other's cultures and capabilities. Through these contacts, civilian and military organizations can improve their cooperation in the field.
Military CA addresses the need of commanders to consider the entire environment in which military forces operate, especially the indigenous and international civilian populations within the area of a CHE. Another example of changing mandates and roles affected by the post-Cold War world and the Information Revolution, CA personnel have become substitute civil society advisers as well as liaisons between the military units and civilians during these emergencies. CA personnel's particular professional areas of expertise in civilian life, such as economics and commerce, public health, finance, communications and information, or language, prepares them to perform military-to-host-nation advisory activities, to provide parallel government functions for a nonfunctioning state, or to interface between the military and the humanitarian organizations during an operation. It was CA personnel who helped organize the first post-Dayton elections, both general and municipal in Bosnia. Members of the 353rd worked in OSCE for four rotations. They assisted in registering voters by writing the computer programming that produced the voter rolls, then printed, and distributed the rolls to the various voting centers, as well as serving as general desk officer support and operations officers in the elections operations center during the elections.
Like the United States Institute of Peace, the 353rd CA Command is uniquely positioned to offer a diplomatic service to military and humanitarian communities by helping them to sort through the complexities involved in sharing information, identifying ways to overcome major differences but also recognizing that while some differences cannot be overcome they may be accommodated.
Based on their common interest in enhancing the effectiveness of civilian-military relations during CHEs, the United States Institute of Peace and the 353rd CA Command agreed to co-sponsor a conference focusing on improving planning and operational coordination. The goal of the joint conference -- entitled "Taking It to the Next Level" and held in San Antonio, April 6-9, 2000 -- was to develop recommendations for the establishment of information sharing mechanisms in support of advanced planning and program implementation by international entities involved in CHEs.
Advanced Planning and Program Implementation Workshops
In order to address the complicated issue of cooperation in sharing information, conference organizers identified two overarching groups: those who strategize and formulate advanced plans for a response (typically at headquarters) and those who implement the plans in the field. In smaller organizations, one person may handle both functions. Each group has a particular set of needs and objectives that are usually transmitted through their own intraorganizational communications systems. Often, however, strategists and implementers may need to consult with their counterparts in civilian or military, governmental or nongovernmental entities. For example, NGOs and IOs may need to know what kind of logistical capacity and equipment the military is bringing to the field; while the military may need to know which NGOs or IOs are distributing food to refugees and in which camps or who is allocating radio frequencies among the various organizations on the ground.
Understanding how the various organizations operate in the field is an important result of information sharing. Nonetheless, sharing information during the planning phase could lead to an equally or even more important outcome: appreciation of each other's goals and objectives, hence better cooperation as organizations prepare to deploy to the field. How individuals in these organizations communicate with people from other organizations and ultimately share information about both plans and implementing methods has yet to be established. The focus of the advanced planning and program implementation workshops was to construct that missing link at both the planning and implementation stages of a CHE.
Prior to the workshops, keynote speakers and panelists provided a common framework for discussing strategic planning and field operations.
Conference participants were divided into two groups depending on their experience and current organizational responsibilities. Three facilitators, representing the NGO, IO, and military perspectives, guided the discussions of the two groups. Facilitators used the following list of questions to frame the issues but were invited to substitute other questions as issues arose during the discussion:
- What are the incentives for sharing information in support of advanced planning and operational implementation?
- What are the disincentives for sharing information in support of advanced planning and operational implementation?
- What resources are already in place or that should be utilized? Who should use them?
- What roles and resources are required for an information-sharing regime to support advanced planning and operational coordination?
- How can information-sharing regimes be institutionalized, and how can funding occur?
- Is it possible to have a central information system that can serve both the military and civilians and satisfy their needs?
- If this were the year 2005 and a complex emergency were developing, what would an optimal information-sharing mechanism to link the entities, including the military, involved in planning and implementing the response be like (e.g., principles, guidelines, incentives, budget, data, technical capacity and support, organizational structures)?
After a day and a half of discussion, participants reconvened in plenary to report on their findings and recommendations about how to take civilian-military cooperation to the next level. This report is the result of their respective reports.
Discussions were on a "not-for-attribution" basis, which allowed for a frank give-and-take between the civilian and military personnel in each of the groups. Despite the fact that groups worked separately, each group's findings and recommendations were similar and overlapped in some areas, which were combined in this report. As we worked through the reports, we recognized that the issues, discussions, and recommendations reflected a "typical" chronology of how humanitarian and military responses unfold. A rubric arrived at by the advanced planning workshop expresses the differences: "Plan we must versus plan if we can." The military, well known for its extensive planning, had to face the reality that NGOs simply do not have advanced warning time to plan. From the implementation workshop, the rubric that captured the attitude, not to mention the reality, toward the practice of routine information sharing was "Not always; get over it."
Messages from Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute of Peace, and Brig. Gen. Sam E. Gibson, Commander, 353rd Civil Affairs Command
Dear Colleague:
The United States Institute of Peace is proud to have played a role in the April 2000 conference "Taking It to the Next Level: Civilian-Military Cooperation in Complex Emergencies." We are grateful to the 353rd Civil Affairs Command for having invited us to join them in an attempt to build mutual understanding and mechanisms for
cooperation between civilian humanitarian organizations and the U.S. Army's Civil Affairs personnel.
We have long sought to help the military and civilian sectors develop better communications systems and practices as they take on the challenges of complex humanitarian operations. Since our earliest conference on this issue, "Managing Communications: Interventions in Africa," jointly sponsored with the National Defense University in 1996, each community has progressed in its effort to overcome information isolation in the field.
Nevertheless, there is still much work to be done. Reports from the conference offer a positive picture of a more realistic approach and concrete planning to advanced cooperation as each organization and community prepares for and conducts responses to CHEs. To be sure, many obstacles still face these groups as they respond to chaotic and dangerous situations. Yet, I am convinced that recognition of the groups, mutual desire to help the victims of these crises, as well as their mutual regard for each other's professionalism in doing so, ensures that information sharing will improve.
Those of you who attended this conference are to be congratulated for your principled approach, your willingness to put everything on the table, and your tenacity. This report illustrates not only how diligently you pursued your respective goals but how open-minded you were in considering new perspectives. Thank you for your hard work.
You have helped push the issue of civilian-military cooperation to a higher level.
Sincerely,
Richard H. Solomon
President, United States Institute of Peace
Dear Colleague:
Without question, the United States Institute of Peace and the 353rd Civil Affairs Command Joint Conference succeeded in "taking it to the next level."
Frankly, I believe that this conference of diverse relief and peace support groups and Army Civil Affairs would have been impossible ten, or even five, years ago. Since that time, however, we have had many occasions to work together, and those opportunities laid the groundwork for the highly productive discussions at this conference.
During a frank and candid exchange of views, we learned so much about each other. We realized we had assumed we understood each other's objectives and capabilities much better than we actually did. Myths and misconceptions were debunked. We aired our ambivalence about cooperating. We identified both the limitations and the opportunities for cooperation, and we brainstormed ways to maximize the strengths each organization brings.
We left the conference with new knowledge, a collective understanding, and shared ideas offering great promise to improve our operations in the field. The next step in moving to the next level is to implement those ideas as policy,
creating the necessary mechanisms to enable the policies and enhance our effectiveness.
I congratulate conference participants on a truly worthwhile accomplishment, and I challenge us to press forward to realize the full value of the opportunities before us.
Sincerely,
Brig. Gen. Sam E. Gibson
Commander, 353rd Civil Affairs Command
Principles of Conduct
In a natural disaster, civilian and military goals are usually similar and uncomplicated. On the other hand, human-made disasters leading to complex emergencies often begin as an internal conflict, sometimes involving a failed state, which escalates to a humanitarian crisis, threatening the entire population as well as the security of neighboring states. At the point when external political powers, either through a UN mandate or regional agreements, intervene with a military force to stabilize the situation, the situation becomes significantly more complex, political, and precarious for international and local NGOs and IOs and for the civilian population.
Humanitarian organizations are the principal actors in a relief response during a crisis. Often they are the sole international responders. In general, humanitarian NGOs and IOs are guided by three principles as they respond to a humanitarian crisis: humanity, impartiality, and neutrality. These organizations and their members operate from the premise that human suffering should be relieved wherever it is found. In the course of providing relief, they attempt to show respect and protect the inherent dignity and other human rights of all individuals and groups, irrespective of their political side or role and without discrimination. Although the needs of all individuals and groups who are suffering -- without regard to nationality, political or ideological beliefs, race, religion, sex, or ethnicity -- are considered, needs assessments and relief activities give priority to the most urgent cases. The principle of neutrality dictates that humanitarian relief should be provided without bias toward or against one or more of the parties to the political, military, religious, ideological, or ethnic controversy that has given rise to the human-made crisis. Humanitarian actors therefore believe they must not allow themselves to become allied with, or be perceived as allied with, a party to a conflict. The degree of adherence to these principles naturally varies somewhat according to circumstances and the mandates of particular organizations.
During the past decade, military forces have been deployed in response to a number of humanitarian crises in order to ensure that the relief reaches vulnerable civilian populations or to carry out other "peace support operations." Within the military services, the CA commands, from a variety of American, British, Canadian, and other national services, have participated in humanitarian and peace support operations and exercises in many countries. In U.S. doctrine, military CA addresses the need of military commanders to consider the entire environment in which military forces operate, especially the indigenous populations, institutions, and authorities, and the wide range of international military and civilian entities and civilian populations within the area of a CHE.
CA entities are of particular significance in peace operations and humanitarian relief efforts because they serve as liaisons to and coordinate with multinational and indigenous security forces, local government agencies, IOs and NGOs, and representatives from civil society. CA members pursue professional vocations in their civilian life that prepare them to perform military-to-host-nation advisory activities; to provide parallel government functions for a nonfunctioning state or to work as liaisons between the military and the humanitarian organizations during an operation.
Although the military and international humanitarian organizations find themselves working side-by-side in these complex emergencies, they operate quite differently. As a consequence, they each tend to regard their activities and information as proprietary, believing their respective organizational integrity, and thus mission, are at stake should they appear to be "co-opted" by the military on the one hand, or subject to "mission creep" on the other. Collaboration -- even if only perceived -- with the military can spell danger for NGOs, bound by a mandate based on the principle of neutrality. Military participants, on the other hand, are concerned about operational security, particularly in the presence of hostile combatants.
Participants from both the CA and humanitarian organizations agreed that information in or from the field is often withheld or "spun" to coincide with particular objectives. NGOs have been known to inflate data to dramatize the seriousness of the crisis and their work in order to attract donors. The military, frequently accused of acting unilaterally, is said to unnecessarily classify and withhold data because of operational security risks. (Recently these risks have been exacerbated by a domestic political requirement to protect its military forces from any harm.) Often NGO-derived information becomes classified simply because the military inserts it into a report.
Participants acknowledged the value of a policy of information exchange between the two communities at both the strategic planning and field implementation phases of an operation. The two communities still have much to learn about each other. For instance, in a discussion about each other's objectives, the CA participants heard that NGOs and IOs believed that the military wants to assume responsibility for humanitarian relief operations. With the increase in complex emergencies around the world, in the NGO and IO view, the military sees an opportunity to keep "gainfully employed" by conducting humanitarian interventions. Many NGO and IO participants were surprised to learn that on the contrary, the military are generally reluctant participants in humanitarian assistance missions.
CA participants added that because they continue to be assigned to military operations other than war, they need more and better focused training for these operations. This is particularly true for military units, which train to fight wars and not to support humanitarian operations. Both military and civilian participants supported the idea of having more opportunities to learn about each other and to develop communication mechanisms supporting consensual "information transparency."
Participants observed that such a policy of information transparency could benefit national policymakers as well. Because policymakers either do not know where to find information or are content with their own information resources, they routinely underutilize existing resources, ignore key players, and act on less than the best possible information.
Civilian participants noted a specific problem for their organizations: donor-focused responses and publicity. NGOs receive their funding from donors, who then direct or target specific NGO activities and objectives. This overly directive relationship can create problems for NGOs as they respond to unfolding events. They may feel pressured to deliver the results that a donor desires or risk funding cuts. For instance, an activity that a donor may wish to publicize widely may require a degree of sensitivity and confidentiality. Donor-designated funding does not always correspond well to actual events on the ground.
At the end of a humanitarian crisis, other entities arrive to address recovery and reconstruction. Participants noted the chaos, and occasionally tragedy, that can ensue if no mechanisms, including early involvement of these organizations during planning, are in place to ensure a smooth transition between relief and recovery. They drew special attention to the need to acknowledge that their actions on the ground affect the political, social, and economic dynamics of the local communities. They saw a compelling need for all relief and recovery actors to recognize this effect and work to preempt it.
This is much easier said than done, meaning that good intentions can go awry in such politically charged operations. One participant volunteered a dramatic example from his experience in Somalia. It showed the tragic effects of not having created a mechanism for a civilian -- in this case a local civilian -- to remain or reclaim neutrality once the intervention was over. The U.S. military helped a doctor to build a medical complex to treat refugees, allowing her to care for a greater number of victims. When the military eventually pulled out, however, both the doctor's husband and son were murdered because of her presumed collusion with the U.S. military.
Recommendations
Operational organizations in CHEs should
• Avoid compromising civilian organizational integrity or neutrality by promoting and supporting better information transparency from everyone.
• Increase information exchange among and between civilian and military organizations in order to reduce operational security risks and avoid duplication of efforts.
• Have the U.S. government review classification criteria with an eye toward loosening them and quickly declassifying information useful for the civilian counterparts in the field.
• Educate donors about the risks of disregarding emerging local needs, conditions, and initiatives.
• Develop policy statements that define the mechanisms and tools by which civilian and military organizations can interact before, during and after CHEs.
• Heighten awareness about successes and failures in the transition from relief to reconstruction. Consider transition initiatives for reconstruction early in the crisis planning.
Plan We Must versus Plan If We Can
Both civilian and military organizations plan; however, just as they approach their missions differently, they also plan differently for a CHE. The terminology each uses reflects this difference. For instance, military leaders refer to military action in the area of responsibility (AOR) as an "operation"; civilians refer to their action in the field as a "response." For civilians, strategic or advanced planning is a necessary part of electing to deploy to a crisis and preparing for activities to run smoothly in the field. Typically, however, once on the ground, logistical planning is the most that civilian entities may have the resources for or need to do.
Not all conference participants agreed that CHEs are conducive to strategic advanced planning prior to arriving in the field. All agreed, however, that responding to CHEs demands planning flexibility. Situations on the ground inevitably outrun or derail elaborate plans developed at headquarters. Other participants observed, on the other hand, that adequate advanced planning offers an opportunity to prepare several contingency responses to conceived exigencies and thus provides some way to approach changing circumstances. Planning and training are core military activities. The military does detailed advanced planning as a function of its organizational culture and hierarchical structure. During CHEs, however, this commitment to advanced planning can hamstring contingency-response mechanisms.
The necessarily reactive nature of humanitarian responses makes advanced planning a luxury for most NGOs and IOs, which have limited resources and staffs that are stretched thin. As such, NGO headquarters staff members generally defer to ground coordinators for decisions about the necessary responses to changing circumstances. Indeed, for many NGOs, flexible, decentralized, and local contingency planning is more appropriate than advanced planning because of the range, type, and scope of issues that arise in emergency situations. Advanced planning may overlook possibilities, while solving exigencies requires creativity on the part of operators on the ground. Many NGO representatives pointed out that advanced planning is at best hypothetical and even then dependent upon eleventh-hour funding.
However, only advanced planning can identify the levels of investment attached to policy options and allow policymakers to make those commitments. Failure to make certain "investments" at an early stage will preclude various choices later on. For example, citizen registration or a census is a necessary prerequisite for elections. If decisions to register citizens are not made early enough, elections may be delayed.
Participants believed that acknowledging these different organizational approaches to planning is an important step in identifying each organization's core capacities. Such a fundamental recognition will allow each community -- military and civilian -- to begin addressing how to resolve the tensions and complications that these differences can cause during the communities' interaction in the field.
Participants noted that good preparation should include more than just knowing about the host country and its people. There should be information about past and ongoing local and international activities; personnel, resources, and capacities already in place on the ground; as well as the condition of existing infrastructure, such as telephone lines or potable water sources. Participants further agreed that responsibility for knowing and sharing this information begins during predeployment planning and continues through mission implementation and into postconflict reconstruction. Gathering this information should be part of each organization's preparation, participants said.
Moreover, participants believed that military and civilian organizations should cross-train in anticipation of finding themselves together in the field. Appropriate opportunities and sponsoring agencies for cross-training are few. Consultative exchanges to explain organizational cultures and structures, missions, and policies would also make the organizations familiar with each other's cultures and ease differences in the field. Some NGOs, IOs, and military units are also exchanging liaisons, which they find helpful particularly during a crisis, when the liaison acts as an "interpreter." The mutual understanding afforded by these exchanges can help clarify objectives for each organization's implementers as they encounter activities in the field that may be unique to this particular mission.
Recommendations
Operational organizations in CHEs should
• Encourage familiarity with other organizations' cultures, methodologies, and missions through cross-training.
• Establish formal or informal training exchanges between and prior to deployments.
• Explore the possibility of having consultative exchanges or permanent liaisons between organizations.
• Make up-to-date information about each organization's activities, plans, and resources easily available before, during, and after the crisis.
• Provide more discretionary spending for the military in the field to offset the inconvenience and frustration of having less capacity to respond to unexpected conditions, a kind of "contingency capacity."
• Provide military units in the field with commercial off-the-shelf
(COTS) hardware and software to support internetworking with the entire
range of participants in CHEs.
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