NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - Aid workers are at risk of overlooking threats to their safety in Pakistan in the scramble to help millions of people hit by floods, analysts say.
With an area the size of Italy inundated and massive challenges in distributing aid, aid workers may be tempted to improvise when it comes to security, a risky strategy in the volatile country where attacks by Taliban-linked militants are frequent.
"It's reasonable to expect that some security restrictions have been loosened in a variety of cases in order to meet the
needs of the flood victims," Abby Stoddard, partner at Humanitarian Outcomes, a think-tank based in London and New
York, told AlertNet.
The floods, which began over a month ago, have inundated a fifth of the country -- from the far north to the deep south -- disrupting the lives of almost 18 million Pakistanis in one of the biggest humanitarian crisis in recent years.
Specialist staff from scores of charities, as well as from the United Nations, have been flown in to help with everything from logistics to relief distribution to health care.
AID ATTACKS
Aid groups often have to weigh the risk to their staff against the need to rush aid to survivors, said Stoddard, whose
organisation has just launched an aid worker security database.
In Pakistan, the threat to national and international relief workers is not new.
Serious violence against aid workers surged in 2008-2009, including increasingly sophisticated attacks and the use of improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.
Last year, PakistanÂ?s large humanitarian community -- which was responding to the needs of 2.5 million displaced civilians -- was targeted several times by militants, who see them as part being part of a western agenda.
Seven aid workers from World Vision were killed in Pakistan's northwest in March 2009, and three months later, nine
people, including five U.N. workers, lost their lives in a bomb attack on the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar city.
Then in October, five staff from the U.N.Â?s World Food Programme (WFP) were killed by a suicide bomber.
To minimise risks, many established international agencies already have a standard operating procedure where security is
reviewed on a daily basis.
Practical measures such as not travelling at night, avoiding certain routes and areas, moving in convoys, ensuring field
staff keep in regular radio contact with head office and using local staff to work in more sensitive areas are often employed.
INCREASED THREAT?
Even though the U.S. State Department said last week it had information of the "potential targeting of foreign relief
workers in PakistanÂ?, many aid groups have not ramped up security.
"Security is always an issue and itÂ?s not the first time organisations like the U.N. are facing it. We have measures in
place and we do tell our staff to take required precautions to make sure that they are as safe as possible," said a U.N.
official.
"Measures are the same as before the crisis, but if extra precaution is required, we will take it."
Many aid workers say the threat level has not increased, pointing out that the worst flood-hit areas, such as Sindh,
Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkwa provinces have little militant presence, unlike the areas along the Afghan border.
They added that many international aid groups also work through Pakistani charities which are from the area, reducing
the need to send foreigners into the field.
Some analysts agreed threats remained the same and questioned the credibility of the State DepartmentÂ?s remarks on
increased risk to humanitarians.
"The statement came from an anonymous U.S. source and not directly from the militant group, so I think we need to bear
that in mind," said Samir Elhawary, research fellow at the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think-tank.
"The source is also basing his information on the assumption that since the U.S. and other Western countries are giving
significant amounts of aid, which will help win "hearts and minds," militants will want to counter that by attacking aid
workers. But to what extent is that assumption actually true?"
BRIEFCASE NGOS
Even though most established foreign aid agencies in Pakistan may not need to step up security, experts warned that a
disaster of this scale did attract new and inexperienced aid groups, sometimes referred to as "briefcase NGOs", which do not have the same level of resources, training and awareness.
"In a big disaster like this, all these new NGOs come in Â? and they start doing their work without a proper security system in place and that makes them very vulnerable to attacks," said Ebe Brons, director of the Centre for Safety and Development, a Netherlands-based charity providing safety training to aid workers.
"I guess they are more focused on getting aid out and there is a time pressure, so people end up forgetting about their own safety. It happens a lot," said Brons.
Experts agree that that both international and national aid groups do need to work more closely by communicating and sharing information on security incidents, which they have been reluctant to do in the past - possibly due to embarrassing lapses that their own staff may have made.
A new mechanism for security called the PakSafe Forum, which incorporates several aid groups, has been set up, and analysts said this was a step in the right direction.
"The actions and behaviors of one organisation has ramifications for the security of all the others -- and
consequently can affect how much aid is able to securely reach the people in need,Â? said Humanitarian OutcomesÂ? Stoddard.
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