LONDON (AlertNet) - Aid workers say that insecurity in Iraq is now on a par with Afghanistan or the chaos of Somalia ten years ago.
Civil unrest -- which has forced many agencies to withdraw from southern Iraq -- has been fueled by frustration at the lack of basic services and uncontrollable street crime, and the humanitarian community is concerned that it is failing to get across the message that it is independent from occupying forces.
Relief officials, including the head of the U.N. mission in Baghdad killed by a truck bomb on August 19 with at least 22 of his colleagues, said that security was unlikely to improve until Iraqis felt they had control over their country and their lives.
Brendan Cox of Oxfam said: "The issue of security is a key impediment to our work and it's probably the biggest concern on a day-to-day basis for Iraqis."
In a statement on behalf of British aid agencies, Save the Children director general Mike Aaronson said: "Security and the provision of basic services are essential to create stability in Iraq."
Oddbjorn Flem, programme coordinator for southern Iraq with Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), said disturbances in and around Basra had made aid workers cautious.
"The people doing this are very much against the international community and our involvement here and they try to stir up problems in the normal public and public opinion," he said.
Guillaume Adam, who directs French Red Cross programmes in the Middle East, told AlertNet that aid workers had been subject to attacks well before last week's bomb.
"We never know if it's regular street crime against us as internationals, or if we're a target because of our work," he said.
He said that since the death of a Red Cross colleague three weeks before the bombing attack on the United Nations, the organisation had advised its staff to keep a low profile.
"Nothing really protects us. All we've got is our humanitarian symbol," said Adam.
"We know it's dangerous, but we can't stop our work," he added.
INDEPENDENT FROM OCCUPIERS
Andy Spearman of Irish NGO GOAL told AlertNet: "It's a constant balancing act of weighing up the risks against what we think we can do.
"Security is uppermost in our minds all the time....(The bomb attack has) brought it further up the agenda."
Cox of Oxfam said it was important for NGOs and the United Nations to get across the message that they were independent from the occupying coalition.
"The boundaries between the occupying force and the U.N. and the humanitarian community in Iraq is the most blurred it's ever been, anywhere we've ever worked," he said.
Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. special representative to Iraq who died in the bomb attack on his headquarters, thought that the primary issue for the country was not security but sovereignty, according to Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele, who interviewed Vieira just three weeks before his death.
"The point that dominated his thinking was that Iraqis had to recover their independence," wrote Steele.
Cox agreed: "(Iraqis) need much more control and they need to be leading rather than the occupying forces, as soon as possible.
"It could well have ramifications for the security situation if they feel they've got some ownership of what's happening."
"The situation's slowly getting worse, even if it looks on the surface of it as if things are all right," said Guillaume Adam of the French Red Cross.
He said that Afghanistan was the only other situation as delicate for aid workers at the moment.
"It's a chaotic situation, like Somalia some years ago. There's no security, no authorities, everybody is out for himself. It's hard to work in a context like that," Adam said.
Spearman of Goal pointed out that aid workers faced risks wherever they were.
"You could drive round the corner in Angola and hit a landmine," he said.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (L) walks with U.S. Army Lt. General Kenneth Hunzeker after arriving at Baghdad International Airport December 10, 2009. Secretary Gates is in Iraq following a ...
