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Yeah, because we should only provide aid in places that are safe.
Silly children.
This.
Next they'll be saying people shouldn't use ovens as they put firefighters' lives at risk.
SAS rescue aid worker in Afghanistan
- Thread starter Johnnytoxic
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This.
Next they'll be saying people shouldn't use ovens as they put firefighters' lives at risk.
Exactly. The chances of being rescued successfully are a long shot anyway, so it's not like the aid workers are thinking "oh it's ok to go to this ****-hole to help save peoples' lives, because if we get captured the cavalry will be along to bail us out".
I can't believe the cynicism in this thread. Aid workers make a huge difference - the people they help happen to be real, living, breathing humans too - and who's going to help them if not aid volunteers?
People sign up to some jobs to risk their lives in order to (1) save other people and (2) make the world better. All parties should be commended, and I'm sure the soldiers who'd performed the rescue were proud to a man at having accomplished it, rather than being annoyed at the civilians for getting into trouble.
Soldato
I suggest you ask a soldier if he appreciates having to risk his life because some do gooder was in a place she shouldn't have been.
In some situations Aid Workers are a boon, especially with infiltration, target acquisition and surveillance ops, they can also facilitate communications and rudimentary diplomacy with both the enemy and third parties with which we have no formal contact.
However, on the flip side is the inherent risks involved, especially in specific situations such as Africa and Afghanistan where their is significant distrust of anyone from outside their small tribal affliations.
Who do you think does all of the 'nation building' that the West likes to harp on about? If it weren't for NGOs and aid workers, those soldiers would be completely wasting their time (and lives) in Afghanistan.
Blimey, second thread about something I know something about..doesn't hurt the non lurking I guess.
I have mixed feelings about this as I have done what would be termed 'aid work' and in countries which were 'dangerous' (for that however read pretty much anything outside Europe) and in which the risks that you would / could be kidnapped, killed etc were certainly higher than staying at home.
I have had guns shoved in my face and been threatened and I think at least a couple of times I would officially class as bowel moving / counting things you might miss before bidding farewell etc. But I don't think I was putting myself in harms way thinking a load of white Knights would come and bail me out because I am afraid in most cases they just won't.
In this case I suspect it was because it was a war zone and specifically Afghanistan that meant this operation was mounted, rather than because it was an aid worker in itself. It was also in the North of the country in an area that was never under exclusive Taliban control and in which aid workers were probably not considered to be at excessive risk. Periodically since 2010 that area of the country has been moderately dangerous and foreigners have been killed, but its not the Green Zone.
I doubt I would go to Afghanistan myself, but I am not sure how the war there can be said to make a difference to people if its not followed up with aid and assistance to the country to help it change. There have been aid workers in the country for a long time in various areas and it is more dangerous than other places but no place is entirely safe.
There appears to be a perception that aid workers are a bit up themselves with some sort of 'belief' system that draws them to war zones.
To that I'd say that its as full of variation as any other walk of life. Some people are actually moving towards having a death wish (they are ones to avoid), some think they are on a mission from God (those are the ones its hard to understand to be honest) but many just think their skills and talents can make a difference to people in countries where most people can't access those skills even if they wanted to. You are also a link to provide information to other sources and you really are expected to (some people will prefer not to do that).
There is inherent risk in doing this sort of work, but its also essential stuff. I think labelling people who do it 'do gooders' is a bit churlish if you mean it in a less than positive way and if you mean it that way what's so bad about doing good anyway..would you really prefer everyone 'did bad'?
I hope the woman in the article is entirely and very grateful to the guys who laid their lives on the line to save her but I doubt she expected them to have to. If she had thought people would have to risk their lives for her I imagine she wouldn't have gone - nutritionists with tropical medicine experience probably don't spend their nights hoping to see people practice the Mozambique drill.
I have mixed feelings about this as I have done what would be termed 'aid work' and in countries which were 'dangerous' (for that however read pretty much anything outside Europe) and in which the risks that you would / could be kidnapped, killed etc were certainly higher than staying at home.
I have had guns shoved in my face and been threatened and I think at least a couple of times I would officially class as bowel moving / counting things you might miss before bidding farewell etc. But I don't think I was putting myself in harms way thinking a load of white Knights would come and bail me out because I am afraid in most cases they just won't.
In this case I suspect it was because it was a war zone and specifically Afghanistan that meant this operation was mounted, rather than because it was an aid worker in itself. It was also in the North of the country in an area that was never under exclusive Taliban control and in which aid workers were probably not considered to be at excessive risk. Periodically since 2010 that area of the country has been moderately dangerous and foreigners have been killed, but its not the Green Zone.
I doubt I would go to Afghanistan myself, but I am not sure how the war there can be said to make a difference to people if its not followed up with aid and assistance to the country to help it change. There have been aid workers in the country for a long time in various areas and it is more dangerous than other places but no place is entirely safe.
There appears to be a perception that aid workers are a bit up themselves with some sort of 'belief' system that draws them to war zones.
To that I'd say that its as full of variation as any other walk of life. Some people are actually moving towards having a death wish (they are ones to avoid), some think they are on a mission from God (those are the ones its hard to understand to be honest) but many just think their skills and talents can make a difference to people in countries where most people can't access those skills even if they wanted to. You are also a link to provide information to other sources and you really are expected to (some people will prefer not to do that).
There is inherent risk in doing this sort of work, but its also essential stuff. I think labelling people who do it 'do gooders' is a bit churlish if you mean it in a less than positive way and if you mean it that way what's so bad about doing good anyway..would you really prefer everyone 'did bad'?
I hope the woman in the article is entirely and very grateful to the guys who laid their lives on the line to save her but I doubt she expected them to have to. If she had thought people would have to risk their lives for her I imagine she wouldn't have gone - nutritionists with tropical medicine experience probably don't spend their nights hoping to see people practice the Mozambique drill.
Have you asked a soldier whether he'd rather risk his life on a mission rescuing a bunch of people who in turn risked their lives to help others...Or whether he'd rather risk his life fighting a random war initiated by some random government?
I have no idea tbh, but I'd rather err on the good side of human nature.
A do gooder in some place she shouldn't have been? Define 'should'. No one needs to do good, anywhere or anytime ever. So I guess no one 'should' try and help others?!!!! Talk about first world opinions.
EDIT:
Collider said:
And this, though you're putting it a lot more politely than I am. So many clueless people in this thread who have 1) never seen situations of poverty and helplessness where there is literally no-one people can turn to and 2) get their ideas about aid and charity work from scandal-mongering newspapers.
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I don't think it's easy to move out of that narrow perspective really. I can understand why people think its either pointless or silly or that they dismiss it because we have built a world with several tiers and from the top tier there isn't a whole lot of reason to look down. I thought I knew a bit about it before I worked with it and I knew just about nothing at all.
We see the world through a lens that even 24 hour news can do little to make more than continual horror like fast food. Some kids blown to bits, soon off the front page, some people massacred, make way for the next headline. Horrible stuff just flashes by and its easy to think we can't do a thing about it.
I think it's hard to explain what it is like and, scandal mongering papers notwithstanding, there isn't much a documentary or a film or the news can really show. It's a great deal more visceral watching Doctors pick who can live and who cannot be saved out of what is left of a family that has travelled 100 miles on foot than I or something in the media can convey even having watched it 10 times a day..it's the inadequacy of language vs the breadth of experience we all have I suppose. Who gets to stand there and deal with that are however the people who volunteered to go and its not a saintly, noble thing, but it does have a purpose to it.
This is not to say some people don't do it for the wrong reasons, I have seen some very suspect people, but most of the time its working to fill an absolute void that we just don't recognise because for all the riots / kids stabbing each other to death and a bit of a down turn in the economy we might have we just don't have that size of void here. I don't think we can really comprehend the hatred that leads to ethnic cleansing or civil war or economies that should be rich having people who have less of a life than we stand for in our pets. It's easy to trivialise it.
Not that we should be awarding medals for helping out but if people choose to 'do good' this isn't a bad thing and if her life was saved well perhaps she will pay that back.
^That was a good read, thanks. I've done volunteer medical work in ghana and china, but that was basically pretty easy-going rural clinics. Nothing where I was in any sort of danger, let alone in a war zone. I don't have anywhere near the balls 
.
.^That was a good read, thanks. I've done volunteer medical work in ghana and china, but that was basically pretty easy-going rural clinics. Nothing where I was in any sort of danger, let alone in a war zone. I don't have anywhere near the balls
Smaller world than you think as they say; I worked a logistics job in Northern Ghana - no danger in sight. Most danger I was ever in was forgetting to check inside my walking boots in the mornings!
Latterly and for my last job out there I worked in Chad / Darfur; a lot less fun. I also, ages before, went to Zaire, before there was no Zaire obviously, that was an eye opener.
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Do gooder did seem a bit harsh and I must admit these aid workers are 10 times braver than myself. It just seems the people of Afghanistan are a few hundred years behind in society and no matter what we can do , you can't fast forward a civilization to be westernised.
I'm not sure the type of aid that is mainly supplied ,if it was only food maybe this can be done a different way.
I'm not sure the type of aid that is mainly supplied ,if it was only food maybe this can be done a different way.
She works for Medair, who are a Swiss relief agency that are well established internationally they do a lot of work with MSF.
http://www.medair.org/en/where-we-work/afghanistan/
It's not that clear what she was doing really; visiting projects and advising on sanitation and food hygeine...its an incredibly poor and remote area with high child mortality. The area she was in is below what we would see as 'dirt poor'. It generally has nothing apart from its strategic value to various occupying forces (the Russians for example).
I think Westernising it is not what you hope you are doing..there is a bit of a line that it's important to keep an eye on between sharing values / resources and imposing a cultural standard that just can't be imposed (for moral and also logical reasons). Most of the people in these countries don't want to be Westernised, they need access to the things we take for granted and if given some help will do for themselves (healthcare, basic food provision etc) in the context of their own country and culture.
http://www.medair.org/en/where-we-work/afghanistan/
It's not that clear what she was doing really; visiting projects and advising on sanitation and food hygeine...its an incredibly poor and remote area with high child mortality. The area she was in is below what we would see as 'dirt poor'. It generally has nothing apart from its strategic value to various occupying forces (the Russians for example).
I think Westernising it is not what you hope you are doing..there is a bit of a line that it's important to keep an eye on between sharing values / resources and imposing a cultural standard that just can't be imposed (for moral and also logical reasons). Most of the people in these countries don't want to be Westernised, they need access to the things we take for granted and if given some help will do for themselves (healthcare, basic food provision etc) in the context of their own country and culture.