I expected this article at Strategy Page (‘The growing war in Syrian refugee camps‘) to be more of the same about the crime rampant in UN refugee camps like Zaatari in Jordan.  It started out that way, but evolved into a not-so-attractive picture of “do-gooder” non-governmental agencies (NGOs) who are ripe for the picking in the Muslim world.

From Strategy Page  (Emphasis is mine, and in some cases I’ve divided paragraphs for easier reading):

Aid groups are also beginning to confront the harmful side effects of their good works. The worst side effect is how rebels and gangsters sustain themselves by stealing food and other aid supplies, as well as robbing the NGO workers themselves. At first the main UN complaint is the increasing attacks on aid workers. In the worst cases aid workers are assaulted or robbed and that eventually escalates to some getting killed. This is a trend that has been on the march upward for several decades. Islamic radicals have been particularly active in terrorizing and killing the foreigners who are there to help them. UN aid workers are usually caught between different factions within the refugee camps. All factions see the UN and other aid workers as a source of income and supplies.

In the case of Syria there are also problems with Sunni Islamic radicals keen on chasing out all non-Moslem foreigners. The refugee camps for Syrians are particularly vexed by criminal gangs that prey on everyone, especially the women.

The “humanitarian industrial complex” has grown exponentially!

NGOs are, for the most part, charitable organizations that take money from individuals, organizations, and governments and use it for charitable work in foreign countries. The Red Cross is one of the oldest and best known NGOs (dating back to the 19th century), although the Catholic Church (and many other religious organizations) had been doing similar work for centuries. In the mid-20th century the UN (and its many aid agencies) became the largest NGO. In the late 20th century the number of NGOs grew explosively. Now there are thousands of them, providing work for hundreds of thousands of people. [And, largely funded by taxpayer dollars as we have learned on these pages—ed]

“Efficiency” is the reason given for governments contracting NGOs, but I think it goes deeper than that.

NGOs are not accountable to taxpayers in the way government employees would be and I think that is one of the top reasons this monstrosity has grown.  But, I also think that the power-hungry leadership, that wants to tell everyone else how to live, has managed to increasingly raid the treasury of Western governments.

The NGO elite are well educated people from Western countries that solicit donations, or go off to disaster areas and apply money, equipment, and supplies to alleviate some natural or man-made disaster. Governments have been so impressed by the efficiency of NGOs (compared to government employees) that they have contracted them to perform foreign aid and disaster relief work that was once done by government employees.  [Nah! Again it’s my opinion that its about not having to be accountable to the taxpayers—ed]

NGOs bring in a bunch of do-gooder outsiders with unwelcome ideas on how the locals should live.

Problems, however, have developed. The employees of NGOs, while not highly paid, are infused with a certain degree of idealism. These foreign NGOs bring to disaster areas a bunch of outsiders who have a higher standard of living and different ideas. Several decades ago the main thing these outsiders brought with them was food and medical care. The people on the receiving end were pretty desperate and grateful for the help.

But NGOs have branched out into development and social programs. This has caused unexpected problems with the local leadership. Development programs disrupt the existing economic, and political, relations. The local leaders are often not happy with this, as the NGOs are not always willing to work closely with the existing power structure. While the local worthies may be exploitative, and even corrupt, they are local and they do know more about popular attitudes and ideals than the foreigners.

NGOs with social programs (education, especially educating women, new lifestyle choices, and more power for people who don’t usually have much) often run into conflict with local leaders. Naturally, the local politicians and traditional leaders have resisted or even fought back. Thus the Afghan government officials calling for all NGOs in the country to be shut down. That included Afghan NGOs, who were doing some of the same work as the foreign ones. The government officials were responding to complaints from numerous old school Afghan tribal and religious leaders who were unhappy with all these foreigners, or urban Afghans with funny ideas, upsetting the ancient ways in the countryside. Moreover, the Afghan government wanted to get the aid money direct, so they could steal more of it.

NGOs help create more warfare by calling in the military.  New UN Ambassador and “humanitarian hawk” Samantha Power has a fancy name for this called “the responsibility to protect” which basically means one can go to war if one’s intentions are pure and it is to protect the downtrodden (whoever they are, I suppose determined in each case by the PC do-gooders).

NGOs are not military organizations but they can fight back. They do this mainly through the media, because they also use favorable media coverage to propel their fund raising efforts. NGOs will also ask, or demand, that the UN or other foreign governments send in peacekeeping troops in to protect the NGOs from hostile locals.

This had disastrous effects in Somalia during the early 1990s. Some NGOs remained, or came back, to Somalia after the peacekeepers left. These NGOs learned how to cope on their own. They hired local muscle for protection, as well as cutting deals with the local warlords. But eventually the local Islamic radicals became upset at the alien ideas these Western do-gooders brought with them and began to chase all NGOs out.

NGOs in the middle of civil wars!

This move from delivering aid to delivering (often unwelcome) ideas has put all NGOs at risk. The NGOs have become players in a worldwide civil war between local traditional ideas and the more transnational concepts that trigger violent reactions in many parts of the world. Now, concerned about doing more harm (or a lot of harm) than good, NGOs are at least talking about how to deal with some of the dangerous conditions their presence creates.

Readers these are largely Muslim civil wars.  How about if we follow the Palin Doctrine—let Allah fix it!  We would save ourselves a lot of lives, money and headaches!