What color car do you drive and why it matters…

On Thursday in one of the UN meetings I attended, I saw first hand the conflict I’d been reading about in the paper. What was it about? Who gets to drive cars of which color. Silly? Sure, a bit. But, think about it a bit and you’ll realize that it is much more serious than it first appears.

For decades, since the signing of the Geneva Convention which offers us a “code of conduct” for war (bizarre concept, I know), humanitarian organizations have used white vehicles. It identified them, as non-combatants and they were rarely targeted.

An odd twist came about with the Marshall Plan following WWII. The Western countries began to feel obligated to assist the countries that they had exploited under colonial/capitalist regimes. This resulted not just in increased charitable giving, but also an “industry” emerged to focus on helping poor countries “develop”. Thus, organizations like CARE, the United States Agency for International Development, Aga Kahn, and many others came to be. These weren’t necessarily purely humanitarian organizations as they were also helping communities and countries figure out better ways to farm, govern, and educate. Obviously, these organizations aren’t combatants though and so they too began driving white vehicles so that their host counterparts would know that.

Fighting counterinsurgencies isn’t the same as your “father’s oldsmobile”. While humanitarian organizations ranging from the Red Cross to the United Nations, and international development organizations are all out in the field - so are soldiers. Here, military components from over 40 countries are engaged in this battle.

Early in the war, occasionally special operations would try to enter difficult areas under the guise of development workers. This was done to allow better access to gather intelligence and conduct operations against terrorists. The problem? Communities and terrorists no longer knew if they could trust the white vehicles. This resulted in increased suspicion of development and relief workers and jeopardized the relationships they built with those they served. Apparently, starting in 2006, more and more militaries began procuring white vehicles, for no other reason than they were generally cheaper as they were the standard factory issued color. As they proliferated, the non-combatants staffing the humanitarian and development organizations felt their security was being compromised, and indeed, if you look at their statistics, they have had increasing numbers of staff killed each year.

So, at Thursday’s meeting, the organizations were angry and insisting the military stop using white vehicles and identify themselves as combatants as is required under the Geneva convention. The military suggested if the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) were concerned, they should choose to self-identify, perhaps painting the non-combatant vehicles bright pink, or maybe blue, as they had to in Iraq, might help? But that would be proving the negative, and so the argument went round and round with a great deal of eye-rolling. Letters have been sent to the tops of organizations to no avail. I wonder if the civilians feel so strongly, if they shouldn’t just file a case in the Hague at the International Court of Justice. It would be an interesting precedent, but one I’m not sure the militaries around the world would always follow.

What is the final twist? Opposition forces, aka the Taliban, have declared that the humanitarian and development organizations are basically serving as extensions of the government and as a result are legitimate targets. Do these organizations really want vehicles that identify themselves as “soft” and therefore potentially places them in more jeopardy? Maybe it is better that there be some uncertainty as to whether or not, it is full of some do-gooders out to teach some farmers how to grow saffron or a car full of “snake-eaters” out to survey the area?

Peace...