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Unpack humanitarian intervention.
An image of a U.S. Marine cradling an Afghan baby went viral last week (Business Insider). Alongside pictures of desperate families pressed up against razor-wire fencing, it is one of the most striking visuals of a calamitous American retreat (The Guardian). Americans saw these horrifying images alongside articles analyzing the dire prospects for Afghan women (Newsweek) and LGBTQ+ people (BBC), increasing pressure on Biden to extend an August 31 evacuation deadline (MSN). The United States harmed civilians in a 20-year occupation and then abandoned them in its evacuation. To refuse civilians and their children would be a moral catastrophe, but plunging a nation into civil war with devastating civilian casualties is already the opposite of humanitarianism.
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Support Afghans for a Better Tomorrow (Twitter) in demanding that the U.S. and NATO accept their responsibility to refugees after “20 years of failed policies that have done incredible harm.”
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Donate to Emergency Relief Afghanistan, Islamic Relief, and other organizations providing direct aid on the ground.
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By Andrew Lee (he/him)
An image of a U.S. Marine cradling an Afghan baby went viral last week (Business Insider). Alongside pictures of desperate families pressed up against razor-wire fencing, it is one of the most striking visuals of a calamitous American retreat (The Guardian). Americans saw these horrifying images alongside articles analyzing the dire prospects for Afghan women (Newsweek) and LGBTQ+ people (BBC), increasing pressure on Biden to extend an August 31 evacuation deadline (MSN). The United States harmed civilians in a 20-year occupation and then abandoned them in its evacuation. To refuse civilians and their children would be a moral catastrophe, but plunging a nation into civil war with devastating civilian casualties is already the opposite of humanitarianism.
In 2001, 80% of Americans supported invading Afghanistan (Gallup). In recent years, Afghanistan faded from front-page news. This May, Americans largely felt the war was no longer a “hot-button issue,” with a plurality in favor of withdrawing troops (Gallup). In July, only 46% of Americans felt the invasion and occupation wasn’t a mistake (Gallup). But pictures of soldiers with babies circulating along with a newfound concern for Afghan civil rights caused support for the withdrawal to plummet (Yahoo News). Though accepting adult refugees remains controversial (Media Matters), many clamor to adopt refugee children (Today). Admitting Afghan children, if not their parents, might suggest the war truly was a humanitarian intervention.
In reality, the American government had its own reasons for its invasion of Afghanistan twenty years ago (Common Dreams, Small Wars Journal) and the admittance of children today. This use of children to justify war is personal to me as someone adopted from Korea, a country which likewise started sending children to the U.S. after an American occupation and war. Countries that send children to the United States are often in tatters as a result of the American government’s actions. During the Korean War, American forces deforested nearly the entire peninsula with napalm (Truthout). Some women survived by having sexual relations with American occupying forces. Their mixed-race children were the first Korean American adoptees (USA Today).
This created “a paternal attitude between Korea and the US where white Americans rescued Asian orphans, while concealing the US responsibility in the Korean War” (University of Minnesota). Adoption from South Korea is one of the ways in which “the war lives on as a material fact” (The New Inquiry). White America has long used adoption to “civilize” “savage” children of color (Twitter) while obscuring its role in creating the conditions that force desperate parents to give up their children in the first place. Today, the Biden administration continues to maintain family separation policies (Phoenix New Times) that break up families who cross the U.S.-Mexico border while thousands of “unaccompanied minors” are incarcerated in Border Patrol jails (Fox 10). The United States government isn’t a selfless benefactor for Korean, Central American, or Afghan children.
The U.S. government justified its invasion of Afghanistan as retribution for 9/11 but also, paradoxically, a war to liberate Afghan women from gender oppression. But the United Nations estimated 100,000 Afghans (NBC News), the equivalent half the population of Salt Lake City, were injured, maimed, or killed, often by the American military (Democracy Now, New Yorker).
All of this begs the question: if the protection of Afghan women, children, and sexual and gender minorities was the reason for the occupation, where was this concern before? Where was it when U.S. airstrikes were levelling neighborhoods earlier this month? Did the CIA ask whether detainees were part of the LGBTQ+ community before torturing them in black sites (IBT)? Was the U.S. government concerned with the well-being of children as it extrajudicially murdered their parents (Human RIghts Watch)? There is no such thing as a humanitarian war. Governments wage war to protect their own interests. There is never anything humane about mass death. One does not have to endorse all — or any — of the actions of a foreign government to oppose bombing its citizens “back to the Stone Age” (History News Network). To claim that destroying a country is a charitable act on behalf of that country’s most marginalized members is depraved.
Children cut off from their families and cultures in the wake of war are not a political symbol but a human tragedy. The U.S. is complicit in the splintering of families, not their savior. Our government has a responsibility to resolve the harm we’ve caused.
Key Takeaways
The U.S. military committed numerous human rights abuses during a fruitless occupation of Afghanistan that plunged the country into civil war.
The “humanitarian” adoption of children has long been used to whitewash brutality.
The U.S. responsibility to Afghan people comes not from its benevolence but its role in destabilizing the country.
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Support Haitian relief.
In Haiti too, grassroots organizations run by or connected to those most impacted need support. The Centre Hospitalier de Fontaine, a hospital for underserved communities, is accepting direct donations (CHF). Locally Haiti is working to “funnel aid to in the most direct and efficient way to the local people and institutions” (Locally Haiti). The Ayiti Community Trust, run by Haitians and diaspora members, is providing resources to groups on the ground (ACT).
TAKE ACTION
Boost or donate to the Centre Hospitalier de Fontaine, Locally Haiti, and Ayiti Community Trust.
If people you know want to help Haiti by donating exclusively to large NGOs, help educate them about the reasons why many on the ground oppose their practices. Encourage them to contribute to locally-rooted organizations instead.
Support local mutual aid organizations creating resilience in the face of domestic disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
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By Andrew Lee (he/him)
An earthquake Saturday killed over 1,500 people and unhoused thousands more in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas and only nation founded by the formerly enslaved (CNN, World Bank). Tennis star Naomi Osaka pledged prize money from an upcoming championship to relief efforts (Huffington Post). Communities are providing support through organizations from nonprofits to congregations (Local 10) .
But when prominent leaders promoted seemingly-credible organizations like the Red Cross, Save the Children, and UNICEF, former aid workers and Haitian citizens objected. “As a Haitian,” said one Twitter user, “Do Not Donate to these organizations” (MSN). Many of the organizations circulating online are entrusted with funds that do not reach the local communities in need.
After a 2011 earthquake, the American Red Cross received $500 million in donations. They planned to build 700 homes by 2013, and claimed by 2015 to have sheltered 130,000 Haitians (PBS). But according to ProPublica and NPR, four years after the earthquake, they had built just six houses across the entire country. According to the program director, “officials wanted to know which projects would generate the good publicity, not which projects would provide the most homes” (ProPublica). The project leaders were not Haitian and spoke neither French nor Haitian Creole. The non-Haitian manager of a failed project to build houses in the neighborhood of Campeche received $140,000 in compensation. The top local staff member received less than a third of that (ProPublica).
There’s a wide disparity in power between foreign nationals from wealthy countries who give humanitarian aid and its recipients. Save the Children covered up over fifty cases a year of staff child abuse (National News). Oxfam was accused of covering for its top staff in Haiti who illegally hired sex workers, some potentially underaged (BBC). Beyond abuse, the aid sector in Haiti is so large it deforms the national economy and democratic governance; the country is known as the Republic of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) (The Nation). “U.S food aid flooding the market has provided cheap food but driven many Haitian farmers off the land,” and as journalist Jonathan Katz says, “There was no way for Haitians to appeal an NGO decision, prosecute a bad soldier, or vote an unwanted USAID project out of a neighborhood… Two centuries of turmoil and foreign meddling had left a Haitian state so anemic it couldn’t even count how many citizens it had” (America Magazine). As one resident of Haiti said, “We cannot develop our country with international aid” (BBC).
This is not to say that every supporter or staff member of large charities are malicious or that they never get results. But the gulf in wealth and decision-making power between largely white-led aid organizations (The Guardian) and the people they’re supposed to help opens the door to mismanagement and abuse. This imbalance also appeared domestically during Hurricane Katrina relief. One county executive said Black residents were “treated like cattle” in relief centers (NBC News). Since it was donors and not residents who decided what was sent, there were “mismatches between the needs of victims and the supplies the Red Cross had lined up” like two truckloads of moldy cinnamon rolls and battery-operated radios without batteries (N.Y. Times).
It wasn’t the government or nonprofits who first entered New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward with support. It was a local mutual aid organization founded by a former Black Panther. “People from the community asked us to be here, and the goal for this clinic is to transition from a first-aid emergency response to a functional community-controlled primary care clinic. In other words, this is for the community in the long run and not just we're a bunch of do-gooders,” said nurse and collective member Scott Weinstein (NPR).
In Haiti too, grassroots organizations run by or connected to those most impacted need support. The Centre Hospitalier de Fontaine, a hospital for underserved communities, is accepting direct donations (CHF). Locally Haiti is working to “funnel aid to in the most direct and efficient way to the local people and institutions” (Locally Haiti). The Ayiti Community Trust, run by Haitians and diaspora members, is providing resources to groups on the ground (ACT).
In the wake of such disasters, the most important thing is to support those affected. We can’t do that responsibly unless we recognize them — not as characters in a fundraising video but actual people, many of whom are telling us that international charities are unaccountable to Haitians, that their resources are not used responsibly, and even function as an unelected government run from London or Washington. When aid directed from wealth countries marginalizes “the Haitian state, Haitian social organizations and Haitian businesses,” we are looking not at disaster relief but disaster imperialism (The Nation). We need to pay attention to communities in dire needs to find out how to truly help.
Key Takeaways
Many people want to help Haitian earthquake survivors through large organizations like the Red Cross.
Such organizations are unaccountable to the people they serve. In Haiti, they comprise a de facto government while international food aid actually harms domestic agriculture.
There are also organizations which distribute resources to local communities and put decision-making power in the hands of those directly affected.
Understand intervention.
Last month saw large demonstrations in Cuba against food and medicine shortages resulting from both “the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. sanctions” (CNN). Some participants demanded the resignation of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel in heated protests where police deployed tear gas and some demonstrators threw rocks and overturned a police car. Many in the United States have rallied behind the slogan SOS Cuba to demand the American government do something, and in late July the U.S. government increased sanctions against the island (PBS).
TAKE ACTION
Learn why Black Lives Matter opposes the embargo on Cuba and help take action to end it.
Confront irresponsible calls for military invasion as a way to “help” other nations.
When considering proposed U.S. interventions, consider: What would the impact of sanctions or military actions be on everyday people, including those protesting? How might the proposed actions align with U.S. interests? Do U.S. policies create current poor conditions in the country?
GET EDUCATED
By Andrew Lee (he/him)
Last month saw large demonstrations in Cuba against food and medicine shortages resulting from both “the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. sanctions” (CNN). Some participants demanded the resignation of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel in heated protests where police deployed tear gas and some demonstrators threw rocks and overturned a police car. Many in the United States have rallied behind the slogan SOS Cuba to demand the American government do something, and in late July the U.S. government increased sanctions against the island (PBS).
Police violence against protestors is an unacceptable tactic used by repressive governments around the world. Fighting protestors with tear gas, a weapon banned by the Geneva Conventions (USA Today), is cause for condemnation whether it’s on the streets of Havana or Portland, Oregon (NPR). It’s natural that people around the world wish to stand with the Cuban people.
But solidarity is getting twisted into something more sinister. One surefire way to release tensions on the island would be to end the U.S. embargo. U.S. law prohibits American companies from doing business with Cuba. It punishes foreign companies who do business with Cuba. The embargo prevents Cuba from importing food production equipment and medical supplies, creating the conditions that started the protests (Al Jazeera). In June, 184 U.N. member states voted to condemn the embargo. Only Israel and the U.S. voted against (U.N.). But when American journalists and leaders talk about supporting the Cuban people, ending the embargo isn’t on the agenda.
Instead, we’re told that this is a “golden opportunity” for President Biden to “preside over the liberation of Cuba” (Local 10). But the people in the streets aren’t clamoring for a military invasion. As with protest movements in the United States, protestors have a variety of goals. Some want immediate remedies. Others support more wide-ranging reforms. Some dissidents don’t want capitalism but are instead trying to push the Cuban government to the left in favor of “socialism done from below” (Dissent). But U.S. reporting focuses almost exclusively on voices in favor of capitalist reforms.
And selective, self-interested support of certain Cuban protestors to the exclusion of others goes beyond reporting. Since 2017, USAID, a government agency partnered with the U.S. military (USAID), has funneled over $67 million to Cuban dissidents (Cuba Money Project), continuing a long history of American interference. In 1912, U.S. soldiers suppressed Afro-Cuban protests for racial justice (BBC). In the 1950s, U.S. companies controlled 90% of Cuban mines, 80% of utilities and railroads, and almost half the nation’s sugar fields. “In return, Cuba got hedonistic tourists, organized crime, and General Fugencio Batista,” the U.S.-supported autocrat who ruled the country (Smithsonian). After the Cuban Revolution, when the government nationalized American companies profiting off of the island, the U.S. launched the current devastating blockade.
If the U.S. had a sincere commitment to human rights in Cuba, it could end the embargo that cuts off much-needed supplies. It could close the torture camp it runs on the island, the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center. The U.S. could immediately do these on its own, but unlike regime change, they would not be in the U.S. government’s interests (CODE PINK).
There are human rights abuses happening in countries around the globe, including our own. France continues to pass discriminatory laws against hijab-wearers with almost half of the country considering “Muslims a threat to national identity” (Time). The United Arab Emirates incarcerates citizens for peaceful political speech and “bans political opposition” (Amnesty International). Torture is “widespread” in Kazahsztan (Amnesty) while dozens of municipalities in Poland have declared themselves “LGBTI-free zones” (Amnesty). All of these countries are strong U.S. allies. Human rights only seem to be a frontpage story when they occur in countries the U.S. government already opposes.
Cuba, and other countries the U.S. targets, have real problems. Their citizens, like those of any nation, have legitimate reasons to protest. But when we hear that the American solution is immediately to “liberate” them, we should ask if an agenda was in place long before. We should recall what happened after “liberation” of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. There were problems and protests in all three of these countries. But it’s hard to believe that many Iraqi, Afghani, or Libyan protestors found their lives better post-invasion. The U.S. government only ever cynically deployed concern for their residents’ well-being to justify actions that made it much worse. The purpose of the State Department or Pentagon isn’t to promote solidarity. It’s to promote the interests of the U.S. government and American corporations.
When we reject their self-interested war plans, we can begin to choose real solidarity, instead.
Key Takeaways
Cuban protests have led to calls for America to “liberate” the island.
The U.S. in fact created the main reason for the protests, food and medicine shortages, through an embargo condemned by almost every nation in the world.
We hear much more about human rights abuses in countries the U.S. government opposes than countries it counts as allies.
Support #EndSARS.
Citizens in Nigeria have been protesting since early October against police brutality, gaining international attention. More people have died from police brutality than COVID-19 since the nation’s lockdown (BBC), and decades of abuse have prompted youth organizers to take to the streets and social media to demand change. Demonstrations in solidarity have been organized in cities around the world, including Atlanta, Berlin, New York, and London (NYTimes). As protests escalate in Abuja, the nation’s capital, so does the violence against the protestors in a series of organized attacks (BBC). But the movement shows no sign of slowing down.
In a letter from the Birmingham city jail in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This quote came to mind as I read about the protests against police brutality in Nigeria, which echo the same sentiment of many of us in the U.S. Today's email encourages us to draw awareness and accountability to these protests, and keep a global perspective on our anti-racism work.
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By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)
Citizens in Nigeria have been protesting since early October against police brutality, gaining international attention. More people have died from police brutality than COVID-19 since the nation’s lockdown (BBC), and decades of abuse have prompted youth organizers to take to the streets and social media to demand change. Demonstrations in solidarity have been organized in cities around the world, including Atlanta, Berlin, New York, and London (NYTimes). As protests escalate in Abuja, the nation’s capital, so does the violence against the protestors in a series of organized attacks (BBC). But the movement shows no sign of slowing down.
The Special Anti-Robbery Squad, referred to as SARS, is a unit of the Nigerian Police Force. It operates undercover, wearing plainclothes and driving unmarked vehicles. It was intentionally designed to root out corruption in stealth (Washington Post). But that anonymity has been co-opted for manipulation. Through the years, disturbing reports of violence and corruption have mounted against SARS. Amnesty International has documented at least 82 cases of “torture, ill treatment and extra-judicial execution” by SARS between January 2017 and May 2020 (Amnesty). Dare Olaitan, a 29-year-old filmmaker, reflects on being pulled over multiple times and forced to withdraw cash from the ATM (Washington Post). More damning reports of torture were found on detainees of SARS victims, often carried out by high-ranking police officers (Amnesty).
“No circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification of torture. In many cases the victims are the poor and vulnerable, easy targets for law enforcement officers whose responsibility it is to protect them.”
Osai Ojigho, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria
Most of these victims are young men between the ages of 18 and 35, which is important to note (Amnesty). Nearly half of Nigeria’s population of 182 million is below age 30, one of the world’s largest concentrations of young people (NYTimes). This young generation has quickly swelled the protests into an international movement by organizing both online and off, using Twitter in particular to spread awareness of the growing unrest. As of Friday, October 16th, the hashtag #EndSARS was posted on Twitter over 3.3M million times, generating over 744,000 retweets.
Despite this, the Nigerian government has failed to take action. Shortly after protests swelled, Nigeria’s government announced that SARS would be disbanded. But citizens are not convinced. This is the fourth time the government has said they would dissolve SARS, aptly described by Gimba Kakand as “old wine in a new bottle” (Time). This time, they gave it a new designation: Special Weapons and Tactics Team, or SWAT, which, for what it’s worth, doesn’t exactly sound like a reassuring change of pace.
Protesters aren’t going to quit until the president takes more action not just to disband SARS, but implement more comprehensive solutions, including psychological evaluations for reassigned SARS officers, better pay for officers, and compensation for victims of police violence (NYTimes). And this movement is transforming into a broader call for accountability for other injustices, like widespread poverty and political corruption (Time). These issues are partially why 45% of Nigerian adults said they plan to move to another country sometime within the next five years – and why most of all African immigrants to the U.S. are Nigerian (Pew Research).
Does these calls for justice sound familiar? It should – they mirror the racial reckoning that’s unfolded in the U.S. over the past few months. And that’s part of why this movement is gathering so much attention here in the states, which traditionally falls silent when it comes to international issues. Nigeria is, by population, the largest Black nation in the world. Standing for justice is an act of solidarity for Black people everywhere, regardless of which country they call home. It’s also a way to act in solidarity with the tens of thousands of Nigerian Americans who face the same police brutality in the U.S. It’s no surprise that the most outspoken celebrities on this issue are Black (CNN).
“True to what's happening in the U.S. and around the world, with the pandemic, people have just been pushed until they break. They're already living paycheck to paycheck, living at the margins of society in terms of the ability to survive, and then you have police who are brutalizing them. It's like, how much can you take from us? So the fact that our lives are quite literally being taken and snuffed out and we're being brutalized and beaten, you know...it's just, "Enough." The imagery and the rallying cries are so incredibly similar, because the issues are connected; poor governance, poverty, injustice in every system, from health care to high unemployment rates to the criminalization of poor people.”
Opal Tometi, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, for Vogue.
And, there’s also a direct link between the violence inflicted by police officers in Nigeria and the U.S. In the past, our law enforcement has trained members of the Nigerian police in human rights. Prince Williams County in Virginia, the same that used tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters this summer (Prince Williams Times), provided a “hands-on, scenario-based approach” in stability restoration (U.S. Embassy). The U.S. has also sold equipment and weapons to the Nigerian army and security forces (Washington Post). As residents of the U.S., we must hold ourselves accountable. But as a nation, we must hold ourselves responsible for our contributions to this injust system.
Moreover, police brutality is a global issue. Whether you’re in Brazil or the Philippines, China, or Canada, people around the world have been reckoning with state-sanctioned violence, much of which is rooted in racial bias. When we stay silent on police brutality beyond our border, it further normalizes it everywhere, including on our home turf. So can we commit to re-investing in community services that support not just our country but the whole world?
With technology, countries are closer than ever. And what we do here reverberates around the world. We need to stand for the injustices we face here – and around the globe. More urgently, we need to listen and learn from the activists dismantling oppression in their communities as we do the same in ours. Perhaps awareness of the similarities countries around the globe are facing will drive more empathy than xenophobia, and unite us in a collective path for liberation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
#EndSars is a youth-led movement to end police brutality in Nigeria
Police brutality is a national and global issue, standing up for injustice needs to be here and everywhere
Although SARS has been "disbanded" by the government, protests are calling for more comprehensive accountability
RELATED ISSUES
6/22/2020 | Talk about our right to protest.
9/24/2020 | Demand justice for Breonna Taylor.
6/10/2020 | Defund the police.
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Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza