LONDON (AlertNet) - As aid agencies continue to evaluate their work in Iraq, many are coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that their decision to deploy was driven more by politics than local needs.

But while some NGOs are asking tough questions about the future of humanitarian action in a new environment characterised by rising risks and the complex dilemmas stemming from the fact that belligerents and funders are often one and the same, others say it’s business as usual.

"The driving consideration about the allocation of resources to Iraq was not a first-class humanitarian crisis but rather a high-profile political imperative," Larry Minear of Tufts University in Boston told AlertNet.

"There were no serious food shortages or specific health crises.”

But Minear, co-author of a recent report on the subject, said there were various factors behind the pressure to work in Iraq.

He and his colleagues surveyed some 200 people in the humanitarian world and held workshops in Boston, Geneva, London and Washington in consultations organised by the Feinstein International Famine Center at Tufts, the London-based Overseas Development Institute, Oxfam and the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Some agencies -- especially the U.S. ones -- felt they could not stand up to the U.S. government, which wanted NGOs to work in Iraq.

Many others felt they needed to be seen to be active in Iraq to access funding or please donors. And some organisations said they needed to be on the ground to give credibility to their advocacy work.

"This isn't to say that there weren't pockets of vulnerability and there weren't humanitarian needs," Minear said. "But in terms of orders of magnitude there were more serious crises elsewhere."

The debate on Iraq -- and Afghanistan and Kosovo -- has exposed a rift between the agencies, many of them American, that call themselves pragmatists and those that urge a return to a more principled approach.

'BACK TO BASICS'

The proponents of the so-called "back-to-basics" principled approach include the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Médecins sans Frontières network.

The ethical dilemmas and security concerns involved in taking funding from belligerent parties have been talked about since it became clear a U.S.-led military campaign was likely in Iraq.

But pragmatism in accepting U.S. funds has not stopped some agencies from taking strong lines in their advocacy work.

While the theoretical battle rages, other commentators such as Hugo Slim of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva argue that the diagnosis of a humanitarian world turned upside-down is overly dramatic.

"Now is not the time...to invest in yet more interminable debates that pander to a culture of complaint and seek to 're-define humanitarian action' from first principles once again," he writes in a paper, “A Call to Alms: Humanitarian Action and the Art of War”.

"Nor is it time to form a square and defend humanitarian values. They are simply not that threatened. Instead, it is time to get decisive about where we can and cannot operate and get innovative about how we do things.”

Gary Iveson, communications adviser at Oxfam, said: "It's not a particularly new paradigm. It's just inflated because of media coverage and intensity."

He added: "Is this new? Is this important? Is this unique to that situation in Iraq, or do we draw conclusions for the future of humanitarian response?

"I think it's fairly unique to Iraq and we don't have to worry too much. Will it affect responses in Sudan, Angola and Congo? I suspect not. The real underlying problems haven't changed and still exist.”

ATTACKS FUEL DEBATE

Attacks on the Baghdad offices of the United Nations and the ICRC in 2003 fuelled debate on whether humanitarian emblems had lost their protective strength, and whether aid workers could in fact remain in dangerous regions.

The U.N. was criticised for withdrawing staff before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and Minear said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was commissioning a study to look at the criteria used in making this decision.

He said it was important to balance the valid desire to protect staff with the humanitarian mandate and the need for people to be on the ground in times of crisis.

He said the U.N. was likely to revise its policies to allow select staff to stay in dangerous environments.

Florian Westphal, media relations officer for the ICRC, said: "There's been danger before, and unfortunately our colleagues have been killed before, but now we face a threat which is global and which comes from groups with whom we have no contact."

But other agencies that have not experienced attack think differently.

"I don't believe NGOs are being targeted (in Iraq)," said David Wightwick, operations director of Merlin, a London-based medical agency that continues to work in Iraq.

Dozens of civilian private contractors working for the Coalition Provisional Authority and commercial companies have been killed in Iraq.

Minear said at least 45 private contractors had died in Iraq, and another 58 wounded, among expatriate and national staff working for private contractors.

"They travel with armed guards in four-wheel drive vehicles, maintain compounds and work out of (Coalition Provisional Authority) CPA premises," he said.

Most of the largest NGOs have withdrawn from Iraq, for a combination of security reasons and concerns about working too closely with the occupying power.

Given the circumstances, some NGO staff portray the agencies still active in Iraq as unprofessional or naïve.

NORTHERN AND WESTERN

The risks for foreigners in the country have forced humanitarians to confront the truth that their work is fundamentally Northern and Western, and this is a liability as well as a moral problem.

"I would expect over the next five to 10 years to see a much more conscious reaching out to counterparts in the south and a much more conscious effort to share decision-making and accountability and in effect universalise humanitarian activities," Minear said.

He added that the larger actors in the aid world were debating the possibility of coordinating a more restrained response to high-profile crises such as Iraq, where only certified humanitarians and agencies would be allowed to act.

But he acknowledged this would be very hard to enforce.

Iveson said: "Unless it became an international law, I don't think you could control all NGOs, big and small, from all sorts of countries."

He said the same debate had emerged each time NGOs flooded into a high-profile crisis area.

"That's why standards (such as those hammered out by the Sphere Project, an initiative by the Red Cross movement and NGOs) were developed," he said.

The debate has reached high levels and has been raised at several meetings of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), which brings together the U.N. agencies as well as the ICRC, NGOs and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

If another Iraq happened now, would NGOs do things any differently?

Minear said probably not.

"While fundamental issues are under discussion, structural changes have yet to be reflected in the humanitarian sector," he said. "Nevertheless, there is potential for significant change by virtue of the issues being on the table."