Quote Originally Posted by M-A Lagrange View Post
To come to Stan.
Well, it is all the problem that your pointing out. Having a discriminative approach of distributing aid in a location leads to violence among civilian. In counter insurgencies, this is counter productive. We faced the same in DRC in 2007/2008 and I spend with a couple of foes a hell of a time to explain it to the UN.
But in a military approach of relief, being discriminative may help. What you have to target is a larger range of people.
Hey MA,
In our case, the water being pumped (and the food provided by NGOs) was intended for everyone to include those who were actively part of the genocide. All told approx. 800,000 in two camps. It was however the Zairian army opposed to free drinking water and not the target population (Tutsi, Hutu, etc.). There were far worse things the FAZ did back then besides sell water.

I appreciate and understand your view on the issue. I think most of us also felt that we could have been more discriminative with the provision of relief, but that was not our choice to make at the time with over 4,000 people dying of cholera each day.

Quote Originally Posted by M-A Lagrange View Post
Targeting villages would be my advise (not saying I have the holy truth in my hands). This allows to impulse an auto regulation obligation in the community. But providing aid is limited, you have to couple it with security in a barter like: you help me and I protect you and provide aid. You try to #### me I stop every thing and even more. But that would definitively fall under unjust war and unjust humanitarian action.
Although I was talking in general about the refugee crisis in Goma, I'd like to comment on your post further.

Having lived amongst the Zairois for nearly a decade in friendlier times, I have to confess that most of the villages there were already (literally) targets of their own military and government. Any sort of pressure we could have applied would have be a waste of time, and resulted in just more dead villagers. (Unjust) Humanitarian actions should also take into account that more people will ultimately suffer from our inaction.

Honestly, much like Tom opined, I was hoping Mount Nyiragongo would have busted her seams and sent those folks to the promise land.

Regards, Stan