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270 There is a tendency, in a world of increasingly ephemeral attention spans, to pay greater attention to the “latest and greatest” developments to generalize about current topics. Behavioral psychologists and economists call this the “availability heuristic.” The well-publicized tensions between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and particularly the U.S. military at various times would suggest that civilmilitary coordination in humanitarian crises has been perpetually poor. However, when the span of these relations is examined both horizontally across the globe and vertically through time, a more assuring picture comes into view. By and large, the humanitarian civil-military relationship has had more stories of success than failure, suggesting it is not doomed from the start. Even amidst the most contentious moments in the humanitarian civil-military relationship, in 2005, the U.S. Institute of Peace noted that “interaction between humanitarians and militaries had deepened over the last decade to include formalized exchanges, coordination, and institutional development of centers and institutes. Indeed, an emergent consensus on coherence—coordination of intervention and humanitarian action—was emerging by the turn of the millennium.”1 Nonetheless, the difficulties experienced in post-9/11 international interventions such as in Afghanistan and Iraq evinced serious ongoing challenges. An overview of how these relations have evolved would not only provide some perspective, but point to some ways ahead. After the Cold War, the relationship between the military and civilian organizations providing relief services in the wake of natural or man-made disasters or conflicts was maturing. While the 1990s were by no means a halcyon era, demand for the services of both civilian and military providers of humanitarian services grew exponentially. During that time, some clear trends with impact on this relationship emerged. A report by The Challenges Project noted: Oneobviouschangeinpeaceoperationsoverthelastdecadehasbeenanincrease in the numbers and disciplines of contributors: international and national,govHumanitarian Civil-Military Coordination Looking Beyond the“Latest and Greatest” Christopher Holshek CH21_2012_016_FUP_Cahill_p270-286.indd 270 CH21_2012_016_FUP_Cahill_p270-286.indd 270 2/14/13 12:51 PM 2/14/13 12:51 PM HUMANITARIAN CIVIL-MILITARY COORDINATION 271 ernmental and nongovernmental, and military and non-military. The inability, however, of this broad, diverse and complex set of layers to conceive, plan and work together in managing a crisis and implementing a peace plan, despite the massive commitment of financial and human resources, is a major challenge in crisis management and modern peace operations today. On some occasions, civil and military elements have worked together constructively and harmoniously , but on others the inability to achieve an appropriate level of cooperation has seriously weakened the overall effectiveness of the mission. The reasons are many and, although experience varies, the all-too-frequent instances of inability to cooperate willingly, to coordinate effectively and efficiently and to pursue common objectives collectively and professionally are sometimes referred to as the “Civil-Military Cooperation Issue (CIMIC) issue.”2 Beyond the mere proliferation of players, however, civilian relief organizations grew increasingly more capable of taking on a greater role—indeed, the lead—in humanitarian assistance operations. The United Nations has steadily improved since the initial implementation of the 2001 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, better known as the “Brahimi Report,” in the wake of the peacekeeping disasters of the 1990s. Better resourced, more professionally staffed, and more operationally adept, the UN, NGOs, and (as of late) regional organizations and even private industry have been taking on roles and tasks that the military had been performing, more or less, by default since before the Second World War. With its own maturation, the “humanitarian community” eventually developed a universal set of principles and guidelines for the conduct of humanitarian assistance—what the military calls “doctrine”—beginning with the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Disaster Relief in 1994 as well as the first humanitarian civil-military guidelines: UNHCR’s UNHCR and the Military—A Field Guide, now in its second edition. By the middle of the first decade of the new century, the maturation of the UN’s Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), which has become an authority on humanitarian civil-military coordination , resulted in additional guidelines, the most important of these being The Use of Foreign Military and Civil Defense Assets in Disaster Relief, better known as the “Oslo Guidelines.” This is the preeminent document codifying what is known as “humanitarian space” defined by the principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality —for many humanitarian organizations a...

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