Describing herself as a Lebanese academic and resistance fighter, Amal Saad, writing at ‘ASG’s counter-hegemony unit,‘ has a few choice words for the “humanitarian aid and development community” (those with what she calls a “white savior complex”).
Amal Saad (emphasis is mine):
Geostrategic and political considerations aside, crude economic motives drive the imperialist campaign to prolong the war on Syria. In parallel with the mega-profits reaped by the corporate media and its army of information warlords, and the “War on Terror” military industry which thrives on the expansion of the al-Qaeda franchise, is another kind of war profiteering.
In the true spirit of capitalism, the humanitarian aid and development— a.k.a. “White Saviour Complex”— community has turned crisis into opportunity.
State and corporate funded NGOs have found in Syria’s 2.5 refugees and 6.5 million internally displaced, a veritable goldmine of collective misfortune. Every refugee represents a career opportunity for procuring project funds and extracting exorbitant fees for consultancies, training, workshops etc. And despite the colossal proportions of the refugee crisis, most aid work is driven by donors’ agendas and bureaucratic imperatives, rather than the immediate needs of the displaced and deprived.
Just as Big Business tries to whitewash its public health and environmental crimes with “Corporate Social Responsibility” schemes, western governments think they can arm and support the rebels, while sugarcoating the innumerable crimes they have committed against the Syrian people with their humanitarian interventions.
NGO-imperialism is just another way the Empire “kills the victim and walks in his funeral procession”, as goes the Arabic saying. Only in this case, he makes a profit out of the funeral as well.
I don’t agree at all with Saad’s political point of view, but I think she makes some good points here worth pondering.
However, I don’t see how Capitalism can be blamed when governments are funding the NGO’s, sounds more like Socialism to me, but that aside, there is no question that non-profits are using the Syrian “refugee crisis” to their financial advantage. Adding insult to injury, they also then get to put on their “savior” hats and the media eats it up.