Relief agencies, now and then

by George Jonas

A reader wants to know what bothers me about UN relief agencies, such as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees. “After all,” he writes, “in your memoir you mention receiving milk as a schoolboy in Europe from UNNRA, and UNRWA is just what UNRRA used to be.”

Actually, I don’t remember writing about UNRWA, only reading about it in a syndicated column by Clifford D. May. The agency is upset because a bill in Congress would challenge the refugee status of some of its clients. I had written nothing about it myself, but had I done so, I might have said that bad things don’t just come from bad things; they come from good things as well.

UNRRA was a good thing. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (b. 1943) was technically older than its parent, the United Nations (b. 1945) — something rather difficult to achieve in nature, but easy in law. I do have memories of UNRRA; not fond memories, just memories. The agency suckled me between the ages of 10 and 11. The UN’s do-gooders gained no Brownie points at my Budapest school by forcing a glass of tepid milk down our throats every morning in 1946 — we neither liked nor needed milk — but it was UNRRA’s mandate to leave no child undernourished in areas liberated by the Allies, and by golly, UNRRA, headed by former New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, wasn’t going to be deterred.

At my school the authorities put the institution’s formidable music master, a renowned organist, Zoltan Pesko, in charge of the milk program. Disgusted by his unmusical task, Dr. Pesko couldn’t resist calling himself Chief Cow, offering us, as recipients of the do-gooders lactose largesse, endless hours of side-splitting amusement, plus a ready nickname for himself.

The point is, no matter how much maestros resented being turned into milkmaids, international relief agencies, far from being mischief-makers, started out as good guys. UNRRA, set up under American tutelage as a kind of anticipatory United Nations agency even before the UN officially came into being, had, by the time it passed the do-good baton to the Marshall Plan, become synonymous with a lifeline extended by victors to the vanquished.

There was a brief period when it looked as if mankind had matured and learned its lessons. The Anglo/French allies did seek unconditional surrender from the Axis, along with war crime trials and de-Nazification, but without vengeful peace treaties of the kind that followed the First World War and helped prepare the ground for the Second.

Reduction of post-war suffering was paramount. Forty-four nations contributed $3.7-billion for Washington, D.C. and London-based UNRRA and its 12,000 bureaucrats to administer desperately needed relief to civilian victims of the war. Canada alone gave $139-million (governments may spend more before breakfast these days, but it was real money back then.) The assistance made an enormous difference in a ravaged post-war world of unimaginable shortages and transport difficulties.

UNRRA existed for about four years, functioning at peak capacity during 1945-46. It distributed about $4-billion, doing a tremendous amount of good. Perhaps because it was a quasi-military organization, under the authority of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, it attempted no empire building. Having minimized shortages, famine, epidemics, chaos, dislocation and other immediate calamities facing post-bellum Asia and Europe, it started withdrawing from the field. By 1947, under its last chief, Major-General Lowell Ward Rooks, it handed over some of its functions to various UN agencies that began to mushroom by then, transferring eventually its main relief role to the Marshall Plan in 1948.

If today’s UN agencies, hanging in colorful bunches from mother UN’s apron strings and looking like descendants of UNRRA, were cut of the same cloth as the agency they superficially resemble, there would be no refugee camps in the Middle East. But they aren’t cut of the same cloth.

UNRWA was launched just after UNRRA had ended its operations in 1948. Ostensibly, the United Nations wanted an agency to deal with the natural consequence of the Arab world’s decision to reject the 1947 partition vote in the United Nations. That’s the vote that would have divided whatever land remained of the British Mandate between Arabs and Jews, setting up a Palestinian state on one and a Jewish state on the other, so they could live happily ever after.

If the Middle East conflict had ever been about the Palestinians wanting a state, they would have said yes, and that would have been the end of it. But the Middle East conflict is about the Arab/Muslim side not wanting the Jews to have a state, so the Palestinians said no — and when Israel declared statehood in 1948, the Arab side attacked.

Wars spawn refugees. Some civilians flee, some are expelled, some have their homes and livelihoods destroyed. A relief organization like UNRRA would view them as victims; a militant or politicized organization camouflaged as a relief agency will view them as weapons. UNRRA would try to resettle such refugees; a militant organization masquerading as a relief agency, like many UN organizations today, would prolong their refugee status through several generations, entrench and embitter them, and contrive to place them wherever their presence can serve best for disruption and propaganda.

That’s the difference between relief agencies then and today. No small thing, either — wouldn’t you say?

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/02/george-jonas-relief-agencies-now-and-then/