Brown Cover OP 43 - The Watson Institute for International Studies

Lakes region, taxation extended to the salaries of locally engaged
relief workers. In the refugee camps of Goma and Bukavu,
MSF alone had appointed about 2,600 local Rwandan
workers, each of them being paid around $100 per
month. Informal reports were received that these workers
had to pay a war tax of about 30 percent to the leaders,
creating a monthly potential war bonus of $85,000 (sic)
and this was only from MSF workers. 16
A report by the Organization for the Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) stated, “The humanitarian
imperative was manipulated by the genocidal forces in de facto
control of the camps located in Zaire. As a result, the camps
unintentionally created an enormous potential as a source of
future conflict and an incentive to continued violence in the
region.” 17 In this instance, the link between humanitarian assistance
and the broadening of the conflict is quite plausible. As
Hutu military and paramilitary forces recovered strength, in part
as a result of humanitarian assistance to the camps, they began
to stage raids back into Rwanda. The Rwandan government
responded by sponsoring Laurent Kabila’s assault on the camps
at the end of 1996 that ultimately produced the overthrow of
Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko and the Congolese civil war.
Although there is substantial reason to accept the proposition
that diversion of assistance fuels conflict, there are many
plausible counter-arguments. Diversion may expand food supplies
in local markets, which in turn may “reduce levels of
violence by bringing down food prices.” 18 That is, although the
channel of delivery may be unconventional, the result may be
positive from the perspective of social stability and levels of
conflict.
More basically, while the presence of humanitarian assistance
may enhance the capacity of belligerents to sustain war, the
absence of relief (or more effective efforts to reduce leakage) would
not necessarily reduce conflict or bring people to the negotiating
table. As a senior USAID official said about conflict in southern
Sudan, “They would fight anyway. Feeding them doesn’t make
much difference. Eritrea went for 30 years with no assistance, but
they kept on fighting.” 19
18