Which is more important - keeping aid workers safe, or helping people who are struggling to survive?

Researchers say international aid agencies have made a bad name for themselves with Iraqis by putting their staff security above the humanitarian imperative to assist others.

And they've forfeited any sense of neutrality by subscribing to a U.S.-style black-and-white view that makes it impossible to talk to insurgents when that might well be the sensible thing to do, argues a new report for the Feinstein International Center of Tufts University in Boston.

Aid agencies working in conflict zones sometimes have a quiet preference for one side or the other, but usually they're in touch with all parties. It's the best way of making a good show of impartiality, and it helps in getting aid through safely.

But in Iraq, many aid agencies have only been in touch with one of the warring groups, if they've stayed in the country at all. They tend to have contact with the U.S. military, while rarely talking at all with insurgents.

The insurgents are generally characterised as a single unit, say the authors of "Taking Sides or Saving Lives: Existential Choices for the Humanitarian Enterprise in Iraq", despite increasingly sophisticated analysis showing there are now multiple conflicts going on in Iraq, between a whole range of players.

Many aid agencies' willingness to talk to the U.S.-led coalition, together with the fact that most international groups still in the country are bunkered down behind thick walls in Baghdad, has helped give many Iraqis the impression that aid workers are in bed with the Americans.

Even before Saddam Hussein's fall, aid agencies were often perceived as Western spies, and for some Iraqis, those suspicions are just confirmed when they see relief organisations' cars driving into army bases.

'BAGHDAD BUBBLE'

It also means that the staff who live in this parallel universe of relative safety are out of touch with what's going on outside - stuck in what's described as the "Green Zone mentality" or the "Baghdad bubble".

A seasoned aid worker told Greg Hansen and his fellow Feinstein researchers that something has to change: "At some point, individual staff need to say to their headquarters and staff associations, no, this isn't what we want. Living in our bunker doesn't help us do our job."

The alternatives to bunkering down in the Green Zone are pulling out altogether, or trying to keep safe at a distance from the U.S. military.

Before the U.S-led invasion in March 2003, there were just a handful of mostly European-based aid agencies working in Iraq. Then for a while it looked as if Iraq was going to be the next big aid scene, with a flood of newcomers on the scale of Kosovo or Bosnia.

But many agencies pulled out after attacks on the United Nations and the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement in 2003 and 2004, which shocked humanitarians around the world.

The Feinstein report says, unsurprisingly perhaps, that deep antagonism quickly set in between the coordinating body created in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion - the Joint NGO Preparedness Initiative (JNEPI), led by large U.S. agencies - and European organisations.

An alternative body, the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI), was established, with members who tried to separate themselves from the U.S. military agenda. The JNEPI fizzled into near-irrelevance, closing in 2003.

Divisions continue to run deep between those locked away in the Green Zone, and those quietly going about their business but keeping as much distance as possible from the U.S. military.

Another factor that's tarnished the reputation of aid agencies is their low profile - most people haven't seen them doing anything.

And even when they have been visible, many have accidentally rubbed Iraqis up the wrong way by flouting local rules of courtesy, or splashing money on workshops about rights when communities have more pressing daily needs.

As a result, many Iraqis perceive aid agencies as corrupt and wasteful.

Winning over Iraqis was always going to be tough when the United Nations was already associated with sanctions that crippled the economy and health system for years, well before Saddam's ousting. But now many are downright disillusioned and angry.

Nonetheless, the majority who talked to the Feinstein researchers said they judged aid workers not according to their home country, but by their organisation's affiliation. Danish agencies, for example, have become associated with cartoons in their press that were perceived to have mocked Islam.

REMOTE CONTROL

Over the last few years, there's been a rising trend for aid agencies in hostile settings to work "remotely", pulling out their international staff and leaving local workers on the frontline. In Iraq, the spectrum ranges from "remote control" - with all the important decisions made elsewhere - to "partnership", with foreign agencies passing on funds to Iraqi organisations on the ground.

Hansen and his team found increasing schisms among Iraqi colleagues in the aid world, unearthing cases where staff have ended up accusing each other of ethnic bias in their decisions over where to allocate aid and jobs.

Hansen puts a lot of the blame on donors for failing to cough up enough cash.

"There is resistance against the idea that there is a humanitarian problem in Iraq because it's seen as an admission of failure," the report says. "Couple that with the die-hard assumption that Iraq is a middle-income country that is awash in oil wealth."

Meanwhile, local organisations - some linked to various insurgents - are stepping into the breach, especially since the food distribution system that's kept many Iraqis from hunger seems to be on the verge of collapse.

The last time the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) did its sums - and that was May 2006, before the latest escalation of violence and displacement - it said more than 4 million Iraqis were food insecure, and almost one-third of the population would be at risk if they didn't receive daily rations.

Iraqis know the insurgents' charity wings are biased, and that they've got a political agenda, but they're starting to welcome any assistance that's offered, Hansen and his co-writers say.

Just last week the New York Times reported that Iraq's ministries of interior and defence were getting troops to deliver rations in some areas. In an email to AlertNet, Hansen asked: "Is this a last resort or are widely distrusted military forces getting the job by default because WFP and others who should be doing it have been caught napping?"

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