Troops train for humanitarian response at Cobra Gold
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SATTAHIP, Thailand — Right now, there’s probably no place on earth with a greater collection of people qualified to critique disaster response than at the annual Cobra Gold exercise — with the exception of Haiti.
Senior officers who have spent long careers picking up the pieces in countries devastated by floods, earthquakes and other catastrophes fill out an impressive number of the more than 6,000 people attending Cobra Gold.
However, none of the military officers and aid workers here were willing to offer up an armchair-quarterback’s view of the relief effort in that small Caribbean nation.
Instead, they said they hope to learn anything they can from the earthquake-ravaged country’s example.
While the Haitian response has borne some public criticism, officials here said it is better organized now because militaries and charities have addressed problems that slowed aid during previous Southeast Asian relief efforts.
The United Nations reports following the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people illustrated a system of overlapping efforts from host nations, aid groups and militaries that ultimately slowed down distribution.
Part of the problem was that militaries and charities weren’t very good at talking to each other.
“The first thing a general asks is: Who’s in charge?” said Bobby Ray Gordon, humanitarian operations advisor for the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance, a U.S. Pacific Command group. Gordon has worked on international aid projects in Darfur, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
“The way the humanitarian community operates is on a consensus basis,” Gordon said. “There is no vertical chain of command, which is absolutely foreign to a military officer.”
To better coordinate the myriad groups, the United Nations developed a “cluster” approach in 2005 that gave everyone involved a little more of the structure that militaries crave.
The approach appoints lead agencies for each need area; for example, UNICEF is leading the water and sanitation cluster in the Haiti relief effort. Any group contributing to that cause attends that U.N. cluster meeting and coordinates with that organization.
The system got off to a bumpy start when it launched following a 2005 Pakistan earthquake, but officers like Singaporean Lt. Col. Ng Sin Ain say it has since made a big difference.
Ain, who spoke with senior officials from five nations about the cluster system at Cobra Gold last week, said he was able to “plug in” to the big picture effort during the 2009 Indonesia earthquake in a way that wasn’t possible following the 2004 tsunami.
“It very much depends on the tactical leadership on the ground,” Ain said. “But when the leadership is good, the [cluster approach] seems to work.”
For a military to be effective under the system, it normally concentrates on what it should be best at — quick response and security — while leaving long-term efforts to the relief agencies, Ain said.
Dividing labor along those lines also means that the military’s effectiveness depends on its ability to take a back seat.
“The military is not in charge; they are in support, which is a unique role for them,” Gordon said.
From all indications at Cobra Gold, that lesson has been learned as well.
In the fictional peacekeeping exercise taking place on computer screens at Utapao Air Base, the U.S. is working with multiple nations and has humanitarian-assistance role players standing by, should they need to coordinate with aid agencies.
“We’re coming together to support a joint task force,” said Army Col. Al Neyland. “The U.N. passed a resolution, and we’re enforcing that mandate.”
