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- 05/06/09: Testimony of Dr. Dennis Carroll, Special Advisor to the Acting USAID Administrator on Pandemic Influenza, before the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health - "2009-H1N1 Influenza Outbreak"
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- 04/01/09: Statement of Dirk Dijkerman, Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, before the Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs - "Assistance for Civilian Victims of War"
- 04/01/09: Testimony of Maureen A. Shauket, Senior Procurement Executive, Director of the Office of Acquisition and Assistance, Bureau for Management, before the House Subcommittee for Oversight and Investigations - "Efforts to Ensure Accountability and Oversight for Contractors Operating in Iraq and Afghanistan"
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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Press Briefing On White House Inter-Agency Humanitarian Reconstruction Issues
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
Washington, D.C.
February 24, 2003
Participants:
Elliott Abrams - NSC Senior Director for Near East and North Africa;
Andrew Natsios - Administrator of The U.S. Agency for International Development;
Gene Dewey - Assistant Secretary of State for The Bureau of Population, Refugees
and Migration;
Ron Adams - Deputy Director of The Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian
Assistance;
Joe Collins - Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations;
Robin Cleveland - Associate Director for National Security Programs
MR. ESKEW: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Tucker Eskew, Director of the White
House Office of Global Communications; thank you for joining us this afternoon.
We've got a great panel for you -- "you" being members of the White House
press corps, the foreign press and other specialty and beat reporters are
welcome this afternoon.
As you look at, from an inter-agency perspective, the efforts underway in
the United States government and working with others outside the government
to provide for and provision for humanitarian support in Iraq in the event
of any military action. Today's briefing is on the record, pen and pad, obviously.
We've got six people up here; five will speak briefly -- and I'll tell you
who the sixth is, as well.
Elliott Abrams will open today. Elliott is Special Assistant to the President
and Senior Director for Near East and North Africa at the National Security
Council. Andrew Natsios is Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International
Development. Gene Dewey is Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of
Population Refugees and Migration. Ron Adams is Deputy Director of the Pentagon
Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. And Joe Collins is Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations. And then we're also
joined by Robin Cleveland, Associate Director for National Security Programs
at the OMB.
Elliott will open with some remarks; four of the other five will have brief
comments and then you can start asking Robin -- (laughter). And we have roughly
until about 4:20 p.m. And I ask everyone, please, to identify yourself and
your news organization so that we can make these folks understand where your
questions come from and who you work for.
Thanks a lot.
MR. ABRAMS: We go into a situation where we recognize that military action
in Iraq, if it is necessary, could have adverse humanitarian consequences.
And we've been planning, therefore, over the last several months, an inter-agency
effort to prevent or at least to mitigate any such consequences.
We're going into a situation where there are a number of humanitarian problems.
About 60 percent of Iraqis, the U.N. estimates, are completely dependent on
the food distributions of the Oil For Food program for their food supply,
and many other Iraqis are at least partly dependent. There are roughly 800,000
displaced persons inside Iraq, and 740,000, it is estimated, who are refugees
in nearby countries.
We also know that conflict can have a number of humanitarian effects. It
can increase the number of displaced persons. It can interrupt the Oil For
Food distribution of food. It can disrupt electricity supplies. It can lead
U.N. and NGO workers to evacuate. Some have already evacuated. We believe
that the International Red Cross will not evacuate, and stay during the conflict.
How much displacement will there be? How much of an impact on the humanitarian
situation would a conflict have? To a substantial degree, the answer to that
question depends on the regime. Does it use weapons of mass destruction? Are
there efforts against their own oil wells, such as they did in Kuwait, when
they set the oil wells on fire. Other efforts to cause, deliberately cause
flooding. Other efforts to encourage ethnic violence or to destroy their own
infrastructure. Those are questions we're not going to be able to answer at
this time. We'll see.
But in dealing with them, the strategy we have for humanitarian relief has
six key principles, and I think you've got those before you. The first is
to try to minimize the displacement and the damage to the infrastructure and
the disruption of services. And the military campaign planning has had --
has been tailored to try to do that, to try to minimize the impact on civilian
populations.
We have what is called the humanitarian mapping program, in which the U.S.
military has gone to very great lengths to work with humanitarian organizations,
international agencies to locate humanitarian sites, key infrastructure, cultural
and historical sites, and to protect them to extent that that's possible.
We recognize the potential for Saddam Hussein to target his own civilian
population, he certainly has in the past -- and campaign planning has aimed,
to the extent possible, to deny him that capability. We hope to discourage
population displacement through -- partly through an information campaign,
and partly by efforts to provide aid rapidly and restore public services rapidly
-- for example, electricity, water supply, the Oil for Food Program, itself,
and I'll come back to that.
Second principle, to rely primarily on civilian relief agencies. And civilian
agencies and personnel are in the lead in all the coordinating and planning
that we've been doing for about -- I'd say about four months. As a kind of
offshoot of the deputies committee, Robin Cleveland and I have co-chaired
an interagency group that has been doing this relief and reconstruction planning.
We want to rely primarily on civilian international organizations, which
is the standard practice in situations like this: U.N. agencies; NGOs; other
governments and their civilian agencies. OFDA, the Office of Foreign Disaster
Assistance, and the Refugee Bureau at State, PRM, have been meeting with representatives
of the international aid community for several months now.
These organizations -- the U.N. agencies, the NGOs -- have enormous expertise
and capacity. And we're going to try to facilitate and fund their efforts
to the greatest extent possible. We welcome U.N. planning -- and there has
been a considerable amount of U.N. planning by the specialized agencies to
play a key role in Iraq, as they do generally, when there are humanitarian
crises. And we will be trying to support and facilitate their activities.
The role of the U.S. military is not to take a lead role in humanitarian
relief activities. It is to facilitate early secure access, to create a
humanitarian space, to provide information for U.S. civilian teams -- civilian
relief agencies -- to fulfill their humanitarian mandates. There will
probably be circumstances where there is no U.N. agency or NGO or civilian
capability of any kind at a very early moment if conflict happens. And there,
the military may be actually required to provide limited relief because there's
no alternative. And with the guidance and assistance of USG civilian relief
experts, they'll have to do that. We're going to anticipate that any such
period would be short, and that civilian relief agencies would be able to get
into those areas quickly.
Third principle, effective civil military coordination. We have been
training and preparing a 60-person DART team, disaster assistance response team,
which is really about the largest we've ever had. And it would enter liberated
areas of Iraq in coordination with U.S. military forces, to, first of all, make
an assessment of what are the -- what is the humanitarian situation, to
coordinate then U.S. government relief activities that try to resolve whatever
problems there are. They will be capable of immediate, in the field grant
making. And their job is also liaison with the military, other donors, NGOs,
international organizations.
The DART itself is made up of professionals in the field of humanitarian
emergencies from several U.S. civilian agencies. And we'll have -- there will
be a number of DART teams in the field. Andrew Natsios can say more about that.
There are other coordination structures, humanitarian operations centers and
civil military operation centers, being established in the region with the
cooperation of several neighboring governments.
The government of Kuwait, for example, has made available a large facility
to support a humanitarian operation center in Kuwait City. The job there is
information sharing coordination, deconflicting efforts between U.S. military
and Kuwaiti officials, U.S.-civilian representatives, U.N. agencies,
international organizations, NGOs, coalition partners. The job of the
humanitarian operation center is to gather them in one place so they can all
coordinate what they are doing.
It is not a replacement for the U.N., which has its own coordinating
structure through OCHA, the coordinator for humanitarian affairs. But it is a
supplement to that. Fourth principle, facilitating IO and NGO operations. We
will provide civilian experts to be the liaison with international organizations
and NGOs, and to support and staff these coordination centers -- the
humanitarian operation center in Kuwait and the civil military operation centers
-- so that they are -- this is a customary pattern for NGOs and international
organizations to work with the civilian side of U.S. government and they'll
continue to do that.
And one of the things that our civilians can do by their own connection
with the U.S. military is to provide information about access to particular
geographical locations, security in those areas, and information about the
populations in those areas that the U.S. military may have found. The DART
staff is the primary contact for international organizations and NGOs in the
field.
NGOs have raised the question of licensing, because due to the sanctions
regime that are in place -- the U.N. sanctions, the U.S. sanctions on Iraq --
it has been difficult in some cases for them to undertake the planning they want
to do. For example, they may want to go to Iraq. And we've had cases where
they have been slowed down, so we have been streamlining the OFAC, Office of
Foreign Asset Control, licensing procedures to expedite the issuance of licenses
to NGOs so that they can operate inside Iraq.
State and USAID now have blanket licenses that cover agencies, NGOs that
have received grants from them, from State or AID. And NGOs working in areas of
Iraq that are not controlled by the Saddam Hussein regime and those who are only
conducting assessments in the country will also have an expedited registration
process.
We've given money, we have provided funding to relief agencies so that they
can plan, hire staff and pre-position supplies. The Refugee Bureau at State has
provided over $15 million to international agencies for pre-positioning and for
contingency planning. Most of that to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
AID has provided over $9 million to a variety of agencies for contingency
planning, including $2 million to UNICEF and $5 million to the World Food
Program. AID is in discussions with international organizations to provide an
additional $56 million soon.
We've also encouraged other donors. And a number of governments have come
forward to pledge millions of dollars to -- mostly to U.N. agencies and to
some NGOs.
Fifth, pre-positioning U.S. government relief supplies and response
mechanisms. We have been stockpiling blankets, water, ladders, shelter
supplies, medicines, other relief items at this point to serve about a million
people -- the material in question worth about $12 million. And we're trying
to forward-deploy those stockpiles into the region. One example, there are 46,
40-foot long containers of relief supplies en route to warehouses in the Gulf.
We are stockpiling and pre-positioning humanitarian daily rations. You may
remember those from Afghanistan and previous situations. This is a ration for
one person for one day -- the equivalent in calories of three meals. And
we're getting up to about 3 million of those pre-positioned.
And we are preparing to undertake immediate rehabilitation and
reconstruction efforts to deliver essential services to the Iraqi people. And
that means critical infrastructure, health facilities, water and sanitation
systems. And electricity is key in all of those.
Finally, sixth, support the resumption of the ration-distribution system.
That's a very important item. As I noted at the beginning, about 60 percent of
Iraqis depend on it for their food. It is an immensely complex system that is
run very competently by the U.N. and by the Iraqis. There are at the ground
level about 55,000 ration agents. Iraqis get a ration booklet which tells them
which day of the month their family should go to the distribution point, usually
a local grocer, to pick up their rations for the month. We will make an effort
to get that system up and running again if there is a conflict, and if we are in
that situation.
We want to disrupt that system as little as possible, and get it back on
its feet as soon as possible. And that is something that a lot of U.S. agencies
are thinking about. We recognize that that is a critical aspect of -- a
critical aspect of the humanitarian situation in Iraq.
Let's go down -- I've forgotten what the order is. I think -- we're
skipping you, so Andrew.
MR. NATSIOS: I'm Andrew Natsios from AID. Let me first mention that this
planning exercise has been going on now since late September. So I've been
involved in emergency response now for almost 14 years. We have never had
nearly five months advance time before a major emergency, should it happen. And
so the amount of time that has gone into this, and the amount of staff that has
gone into this has been enormous within AID, and the interagency process.
There are 60 people from the DART team, which comes out of the Office of
Foreign Disaster Assistance, which I headed in the first Bush administration.
There is staff from Gene Dewey's office and the Refugee Office in the State
Department, and the Public Health Service in HHS are on that team, as well.
There are another 140 people working in AID who are technical staff back in
Washington, on the planning exercises necessary to make sure all of this happens
the way it's supposed to. And the areas that we focus on are first those basic
humanitarian requirements that keep people alive and reduce human suffering in
any emergency. One is health and medicine, the second is water and sanitation,
which are critical issues, particularly in Iraq. Third is food and nutrition.
Fourth is shelter. And a fifth is to internally displaced people and, of
course, there could be refugee movements, as well, cross border.
And so the amount of time, the amount of preparation, the amount of
planning we've done, the amount of staff working on this has been very
substantial. I might also add that this is not new -- working with the
military in conflicts is something that the U.S. government has been doing for a
very long time, since even before the end of the Cold War. You may recall that
we had a refugee emergency with about a million Kurds up in the mountains in
northern Iraq. There was civil affairs units and military units, AID sent its
largest DART team at that time -- in 1991, of 30 people -- that was sent in
to work the relief effort there.
We've been in Bosnia and Macedonia and Kosovo, in Haiti, in Panama --
after Noriega. You can go through a list of instances where this has happened
before. So this is not a new thing. It's been done before. The mechanisms for
coordination within the international institutions have actually been
established, they've been tested and they do work, I have to tell you. They've
been refined. There are manuals on how the inter-connection between the NGOs,
U.N. agencies, the ICRC, military operations and the DART team work in these
emergencies. And that is a very important thing because, once again, we're not
testing something that's new here.
And so the three fundamental things we're doing is to assemble the team,
train it -- they're going through very extensive training -- getting
everybody's job descriptions down and duties down. We've actually done some
test operations. Secondly, pre-positioning the stockpiles that Elliott
mentioned. Many of those stockpiles are actually in the region now, simply
waiting should they be necessary. And, third, establishing these coordination
mechanisms that I mentioned earlier.
The team will also do assessments, rapid assessments to determine what is
needed. We do planning based on scenario building. But the reality is on the
ground that you always have to actually see what's happened. And the
assessments are then done and then decisions are made about the disposition of
relief commodities and resources.
So I think we're in good shape, in terms of the effort that we've put into
this exercise, given the amount of time that we've had to think through it. I
might also add, we don't know what's going to happen, but contingency planning
is what this all about. Whenever we see something may happen, we try to plan
for it. Thank you.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks. Gene, I think you're next. Gene Dewey is Assistant
Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: The center of gravity of the humanitarian
effort is the multilateral system. And that's the case for several reasons.
One, the U.N. agencies have been in country for a long time, for years and
years. They have systems set up. And they have systems that are particularly
appropriate for emergency action.
For example, for the water sector, which is always the most critical
sector, the system for that which works best, which is recognized as best, is
UNICEF working with NGOs such as Oxfam-UK and other NGOs with the expertise in
water. There are other systems for immunization, systems for food distribution.
So this is another reason.
The U.N. agencies, as Elliott mentioned, have been very cooperative and
forward-leaning on this for several reasons. One, it's humanitarian that we're
talking about, as much as that can be separated from political questions.
Secondly, it's prudent planning. It's the way you have to do it. In the
possibility of a contingency, it's only prudent to do what the U.N. agencies are
doing. And then a third reason is this planning is being done without any
presumption of the inevitability of military conflict.
And so these have all contributed to a very smooth planning, preparing,
pre-positioning effort on the part of the U.N. agencies working with their NGO
implementing partners, in terms of coordination.
The principles that we're working, aside from multilateralism, include
what has already been mentioned, and I can't stress it enough, that is the need
to avoid population displacement, or to minimize it as much as possible, because
that's one of the most costly, both in material and human terms, that can occur
in any contingency, when people leave their homes and have to undergo the
expense of being at the mercy of the international community for an extended
period of time, and then the cost or maybe the impossibility of ever getting
back to their homes again.
The purposes that we're dealing with are to relieve hardship and acute
human suffering, but at the same time, prepare the way for almost immediate
movement to rehabilitation and reconstruction, and to facilitate that next step.
The populations of concern that our bureau, the Population, Refugee
Immigration Bureau is most concerned about include refugees -- those refugees
that are already the charge of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees outside
of Iraq, but those that will also be displaced outside the country in the event
of any conflict and those that will try to seek asylum outside the country but
may be clustered on the borders. Those two groups are going to be a primary
concern for us.
But we also have a concern for the internally displaced, those that are
already internally displaced -- as mentioned the 800,000 that are internally
displaced. We have an arrangement with USAID which we recently negotiated as to
how we divide up the effort for internally displaced persons. Normally those
that are dealt with unilaterally through NGOs, AID will take care of those
needs. And we coordinate on those that are serviced mainly by the international
community, and those agencies would include the International Committee of the
Red Cross.
And in the case of Iraq, since there is no U.N. agency that is specifically
tasked with the responsibility for internally displaced persons, the Office of
the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, will be playing a prominent role
in coordinating the assistance to the internally displaced.
Keep in mind, too, that other agencies, such as UNICEF, will be working on
sectors that cut across the needs of the internally displaced. UNICEF's work
with immunizations, with mother-child health care, with health needs IN general
and water and sanitation, that will be very important. We'll also be working
with World Food Program for those needs and with the International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Basically the functions of our bureau will be to help make coordination
work. Our core expertise is the multilateral system. We'll do our best to make
the humanitarian operation center and the civil military operations centers just
that, civil military and not military operations centers. And we'll be doing
our best to bridge those cultures between the civilians and the military,
planners and implementers if implementation becomes necessary.
We were first out of the box in terms of providing funding for
pre-positioning and preparedness, we gave just about all we had, the $15 million
that we've given to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and $100,000 to the
International Organization for Migration. We did it, though, also to try to
leverage as much as possible the efforts of the rest of the donor community.
This is slow going. It's heavy lifting, but it is going to be one of the major
efforts that can assure success in the humanitarian field to get as much
burden-sharing contribution as we can before the contingency is actually upon
us. Thank you.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks, Gene. We have actually done that. We have actually
sent cables out and also raised this a number of times in bilateral meetings,
requests for other governments to step forward and do whatever they could by way
of contributions to NGOs and U.N. agencies.
Ron Adams is deputy director of the new Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance.
MR. ADAMS: Thanks, Elliott. I'm Jay Garner's deputy. And we're
participating in the interagency process that Elliott outlined for you earlier.
It's our job to operationalize or to implement the plans that are being
developed by the interagency process and by our coalition partners in support of
the Commander of U.S. Central Command and the coalition forces that would be
involved.
I want to emphasize a point that's already been made a couple of times:
our organization is a civilian-military organization -- predominantly
civilian. And it's made up of representatives from federal government agencies
and departments. Some are represented right here. Many of Andrew's people and
Gene's people are involved in our organization. And these are the kinds of
people, experts that you're used to seeing being involved in these kinds of
activities. These are the people who have worked on the ground with
international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, U.N. agencies across
the gamut.
Our job then is to, we hope, facilitate and expedite the work that these
U.N. agencies, NGOs and others will be doing to best benefit the Iraqi people
and to achieve the strategy that Elliott outlined later, with emphasis on the
six key points that he made in his presentation.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks. Dr. Joseph Collins is Deputy Secretary of Defense for
Stability Operations. Joe.
DR. COLLINS: Thanks. Elliott, I came here prepared to say ten things.
All of them have been said twice, so let me repeat only about seven of them for
the third time.
If the President orders military action, the Department of Defense is
prepared for military contingencies, but it's also prepared to support
humanitarian relief during combat and to support reconstruction efforts after
combat.
Some of the key things that we are able to do in those areas have been
mentioned. The first, humanitarian mapping and careful targeting to avoid
excessive damage to the civilian population. Secondly, during the combat phase
the Department of Defense is ready to assist AID and State in providing
humanitarian relief to the people of Iraq.
Thirdly, and if necessary, DOD is ready to provide special services and
supplies, such as the famous humanitarian daily rations. Fourth, on the
reconstruction effort, DOD is prepared to assist State, AID, NGOs and the United
Nations to help the Iraqi people in reconstruction. And also -- and, perhaps,
most importantly -- to help them prepare for self-government. And I think
that's the key point to remember here. What all of us have been talking about
here is not occupation, it's liberation. And, ultimately, creating a democracy
inside of Iraq.
Among the key things that we'll be doing in the reconstruction phase are
things that also have a military flavor, and that would be the location of
weapons of mass destruction and their subsequent destruction. And, finally, the
provision of security and the ensuring the provision of security throughout the
nation. Thank you.
MR. ABRAMS: Thanks. Questions?
QUESTION: I have two questions of the briefers. How many refugees are you
planning for? How many IDPs? How many DART teams, and where will they go?
MR. NATSIOS: Well, just in terms of the number of DART teams, there is one
large team of 60 people that we'll divide into three sub-units. There will be a
core headquarters that will control all of the operations. So there will be
three teams that will be dispatched to different parts of the country.
I think we're planning for about 2 million, as I recall, internally
displaced people and refugees. What was the third question?
QUESTION: It was IDPs, refugees and how many DART teams --
MR. NATSIOS: Right.
QUESTION: And where would they go?
MR. NATSIOS: Yes.
QUESTION: The U.N. issued a report saying that casualties will be as a direct
result of U.S. bombardment and invasion, about 100,000 civilians killed; 500,000
wounded. They're talking about maybe a million and a half refugees, then a half
million malnutrition. What are you accounting for? What kind of figures do you
have in your six-point contingency plan?
MR. ABRAMS: I have not seen that U.N. report. What part of the U.N.
released it?
QUESTION: Could you repeat the question, please?
QUESTION: The question was, they're talking about figures -- you know, killed
and wounded civilians, the direct result of combat. And, in fact, Michael
Allen, the other day, of the Institute -- the Brookings Institute also --
MR. ABRAMS: The answer is that this is just plain speculation, as is our
number for the number of displaced persons. It is just speculation. It depends
on a number of variables, not least of them, how long does any potential
conflict continue. But one of the other key variables is not the damage that
the conflict does to the population of Iraq, it's how much additional damage the
government of Iraq does to the population of Iraq. But numbers like those, I
think one is really just pulling them out of thin air.
QUESTION: Do you have any number, any figures in mind?
MR. ABRAMS: No, no.
QUESTION: Could I follow on that? As you know, Refugees International and, I
think, the International Crisis Group has prepared numbers not too different
from the 2 million that you suggested. They suggested about a million and a
half would be put to flight beyond the borders, and about 900,000 internally
displaced.
A, is that in the ballpark of what your calculations suggest and, two --
understanding that you respect -- and two, both of these groups have
criticized you, saying that there is not nearly enough pre-positioned supply,
particularly food and medicine, to address that. Can you respond to that in any
way?
MR. NATSIOS: Let me first say, I've heard a lot of comments, and I find it
a little annoying in some cases because the people who have been making them are
sitting in the meetings with us, knowing that it's not true.
QUESTION: These folks?
MR. NATSIOS: No, I'm not going to mention individual organizations. We've
had meetings every week, for the last two or three months, with humanitarian
organizations to go over this stuff. For months, every week, and they sit
there, and we all go -- or not me, but my staff from AID goes, and the rest of
the agencies, and we go over the detail planning that we're going through. So
they know very well that there's been massive pre-positioning of supplies
already in the region, okay, in four different countries, in large warehouses
that we've rented. The stuff is there now, and more stuff is on the way.
So it's really not -- it's not the case that -- there has been
extensive conversations, extensive coordination and extensive pre-positioning of
supplies. I might also add, what we tend to do in the disaster business is plan
for the worst and hope for the best. Very few disasters -- and I've been
involved in dozens of them over the last 14 years -- have ever come out to be
the worst case scenario. And we don't know -- I mean, if Saddam does some
very terrible things, we can't predict that. But in terms of the normal course
of events that would take in these emergencies, I think we are very well
positioned.
QUESTION: On that point, to what extent does the possible use of weapons of mass
destruction factor into contingency planning that you're all doing?
MR. NATSIOS: There is some of it, but you know, you never can predict
entirely what Saddam will do. You know what he did to the Kurds, in the
infamous Anfal campaign, where he massacred 100,000 to 200,000 of them. He
displaced the Marsh Arabs, one of the richest cultures in the Middle East,
500,000 people were driven out of the marshes after they were drained. There
were execution squads sent in. The United Nations reportour on human rights
wrote a scathing report on the atrocities committed by the Iraqi government
displacing these -- these are among the poorest peoples in Iraq.
The same thing happened in Kirkuk with the Turkmen population. They purged
them out. They shut off all their food rations. And they're internally
displaced within the country now. That has nothing to do with the American
campaign; that was done by the regime in the 1990s, over the last five or six
years.
So some of the displacement we're going to have to deal with already
occurred, and it has nothing to do with the military campaign; it was the
actions of the government.
QUESTION: That's not weapons of mass destruction. That's what I asked --
MR. NATSIOS: Yes, it was weapons of mass destruction. That's the whole
point. The Kurdish -- the attacks on the Kurds were using chemical and
biological weapons. The first time any head of state or any government ever
used those weapons against their own population.
QUESTION: Yes, but the question is, what are you planning for now? Tell us what
you anticipate.
MR. NATSIOS: We are anticipating it could happen. I don't think it's
going to happen, but it could. And there is contingency planning that goes into
that.
MR. ABRAMS: Yes?
QUESTION: From where and how, first, you will start delivering the humanitarian
aid? And, two, how much the -- is preparing to allocate for this haven't aid
that's going to be spent on Iraq?
MR. ABRAMS: Two questions -- from where and how much money. I guess I
can ask Gene or Andrew.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY DEWEY: From where the humanitarian aid will be
delivered, of course, there has been stockpiling in country. The people of Iraq
have been asked to have at least a month's supply of food on hand. So there is
something already there. There are stockpiles, as Andrew mentioned, in
neighboring countries which will be drawn upon.
QUESTION: -- first spot for you deliver this humanitarian aid to Iraq?
MR. NATSIOS: There are about four countries in the region that have
stockpiles, NGO staging areas and U.N. staging areas. They're there now. And
I'm not going to go through which ones have what --
MR. ABRAMS: No, and to go into further detail would take us into the area
of military planning, as well. So, money?
MS. CLEVELAND: We're in the process of developing cost estimates. We've
done our planning based on a series of tasks that we assume, regardless of what
the political management structure may be. And we've examined health,
education, water and sanitation, finance, telecommunications, and
infrastructure, and tried to sort of lay out a series of expected tasks on a
sliding scale. For example, in education, what would it cost to rebuild 2,500
schools and get all primary school children back in school?
If we don't need to rebuild 2,500 schools, we can shift it to some other
area. But we've sort of tried to lay out a series of benchmarks. And we expect
to take the overall cost by sector to the President some time in the next week
or two.
QUESTION: -- ceiling that you assumed?
MS. CLEVELAND: No, we've built from the ground up, in a series of tasks,
AID and PRM have sort of identified what they think will need to be done, and
laid out sort of what needs to be done in one -- would be the emergency
humanitarian piece, what needs to be done in six months -- just as AID plans
in any country, in any mission for reconstruction and rehabilitation.
MS. NATSIOS: We've spent $26.5 million to date, another $52 million is in
process through the procurement system right now.
MS. CLEVELAND: But that's a very preliminary --
QUESTION: That's not what the cost of the budget is, that's
the --
QUESTION: Could you repeat that?
MR. NATSIOS: The numbers?
QUESTION: Yes, repeat the numbers.
QUESTION: Please repeat the numbers that you just did.
MR. NATSIOS: The $26.6 million has already been spent. That's what bought
the commodities that are in the Gulf region now, and then another $52 million is
in the procurement system right now being spent. That's what we have to do for
the pre-positioning in the early work.
QUESTION: The cables that you sent out and the appeals that have been made in
private meetings, have they generated any money from any other countries?
MR. ABRAMS: There have been -- I can't say whether it was generated by
American cables, but there have been contributions by a number of governments,
in the millions of dollars.
MR. NATSIOS: I have been --
MS. CLEVELAND: Two international organizations, to UNHCR and those kind of
organizations.
MR. NATSIOS: Right. I've talked to at least 10 of my counterparts, the
development ministers in other governments, about what they're planning to do.
We've had conversations and decided what we would do and how much -- they've
told me how much they intend to put in. So there is coordination going on at
the donor level, government level.
Some of that money will go through NGOs, some of it will go to the U.N.
agencies and the --
QUESTION: I noticed that you say you're being very careful as you plan your
military operation to look out for infrastructure and to also look out for
cultural sites. How much of your effort to protect that is going to be
complicated by the fact that Saddam Hussein is already positioning a lot of his
equipment around these cultural sites, around these crucial points of
infrastructure? Is that going to cause you problems?
DR. COLLINS: Yes. We've had, I think, an extensive effort to map cultural
sites. And we've made tremendous progress in the last few weeks doing that.
It's a well known fact that Saddam has positioned military equipment, not just
near cultural sites, but also hospitals and other places which one would expect
wouldn't be a part of the military command.
There's an extensive effort here to separate the wheat from the chaff. And
ultimately, the burden will be on the field commander to make decisions on
critical targets where there are compromised situations. And I have to leave it
at that.
QUESTION: Could I just follow up on a budgetary question? In this process,
according to the budget of the President, how long is the time frame? And
drawing on your experience from Afghanistan, how long is a sensible time frame
for humanitarian assistance?
MS. CLEVELAND: One of the reasons that we got started five months ago was
to assure that when and if the President -- or if and when the President made
a decision, that we would, simultaneous with the initiation of conflict, not
only ask for resources for the Department of Defense, but ask for roughly a
year's worth of resources for humanitarian and reconstruction agencies.
But, as you know, AID is -- so that doesn't speak or beg the question as
to what kind of political infrastructure will be there. There's likely to be
some kind of AID support for some period of time, which shouldn't, as I said,
beg the question of what the nature of a political infrastructure would be. I
think we would be anticipate a year's worth of support for AID.
QUESTION: As we all know, the Turkish government is trying to avoid any crush of
refugees again, as we had it before during the Gulf War. My question is to Mr.
Collins. What kind of cooperation you already have with the Turkish side?
DR. COLLINS: I'd love to be able to answer you, except I couldn't give you
a good detailed, professional answer because that's really not in my lane, and I
don't know.
QUESTION: In terms of preparing the Iraqis for self-government after the
conflict, how quickly are you going to try to get Iraqi opposition leaders into
the country? And do you intend to appoint an indigenous interim Iraqi leader
before you move to free elections?
MR. ABRAMS: The general principle is to try to establish Iraqi
responsibility for Iraq as soon as possible. This will -- this may differ in
different regions of the country. It may differ according to the nature of the
responsibility -- civilian military, for example, might be different.
But the general principle is to try to do this as soon as it is possible.
I can't really go much beyond that about what -- how long will that take. It
depends in part on questions that we don't know the answers to. What will the
security situation inside Iraq be if there's a conflict, at the end of that
conflict?
So I can't give you any time lines. But what I can tell you is that it's
our view that if the local, provincial, and national levels, the more
responsibility Iraqis who are currently free, who are soon to be free, can take,
the better off they'll be and the better off the coalition forces will be.
QUESTION: Elliott, I think this is a question for you. During the Vietnam War,
the U.S. viewed and used humanitarian assistance, not just as an end in itself,
but as having a political purpose as well. The Hearts and Minds Campaign, which
is, you know, is now viewed as tainted failure to it. That comparison is being
made now given that there is a larger political program for Iraq, winning over
people to a notion of democracy that they'll believe in and that will last. Can
you take that comparison further? Again, there are differences, but the fact
that Hearts and Minds was seen not to have worked last time around, what's the
difference this time?
MR. ABRAMS: I would not take that comparison. I would take the
comparison, really, to Afghanistan. It was the President's instruction from the
outset that we make not only a military effort, but that we make a large
humanitarian effort because the whole purpose of the involvement was to benefit
the people of Afghanistan as well as to attack terrorist bases.
The effort in Iraq, if it comes to pass, will be aimed at eliminating those
weapons of mass destruction, and the regime that built them, and freeing the
Iraqi people from one of the most monstrous regimes on the face of the earth.
Clearly, the better we can do in this humanitarian effort, the better off the
Iraqi people will be, and the more quickly they will come to see this
intervention by coalition forces as having changed and improved their lives. So
there's no way of avoiding the fact that the better we do at it, the more
positive of political impact it will have inside Iraq and in the region.
But as in Afghanistan, that's not the purpose for doing it. The purpose
for doing it is humanitarian.
QUESTION: Can I follow up on that?
MS. CLEVELAND: In answer to the question about how long we're planning --
one of the reasons that we're planning for basically a year is that we will
start the follow-on year budget cycle in December, something like that. And so
what we wanted to avoid was sort of the gaps that we felt we created by
uncertainty in Afghanistan. So it's neither a presumption about the political
structure, nor is a presumption that it's one year and it would be over in terms
of whatever support we would offer.
QUESTION: I remember a campaign pledge about nation-building. Isn't that what
this is? Maybe the Defense Department representatives can talk about that?
Isn't this nation-building?
DR. COLLINS: I've always been of the opinion that the indigenous people
build their own nations. I'm not sure what the right phrase for what we are
engaged in is. We speak about -- in two different phases, humanitarian relief
and reconstruction. And I would prefer to leave it at that.
MR. ABRAMS: I think that's right. The responsibility for turning Iraq
into a stable, peaceful democracy falls to the people of Iraq. The most we can
do is get -- if this conflict occurs, is get this monstrous regime that is
preventing them from doing that out of the way.
QUESTION: This is a question probably to Joe Collins. But others might want to
answer it. A number of the aid agencies in Iraq, or on the border at the
moment, are concerned that once a conflict starts there will be attempts by some
of the displaced people to try and regain homes or land that was taken from them
in the past campaigns you mentioned. What sort of arbitration system will be
immediately set up to deal with these conflicts, especially as Saddam Hussein's
forces have already installed people in those lands?
DR. COLLINS: I think in a combat phase, if it were to come to that, I
think most of the reconciliation and redivision would sort of fall under the
heading of reconstruction. But during the reconstruction phase, and prior to
that, during the combat phase, the local commanders have the responsibility to
maintain order in their areas. And any sort of large-scale efforts to create
civil disturbances would also interfere with the military operation. So they
would have a great incentive to ensure that that doesn't happen during the
combat phase.
MR. ABRAMS: Okay, thank you very much.
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