Interview: U.N. Undersecretary-General John Holmes

What do you do when refugees who need help live under the control of Pakistan's Taliban or Somalia's al-Shabab? Send aid, knowing that some of it might fall into the "wrong" hands -- or withdraw, leaving thousands or millions in peril? The answer, as U.N. Under-Secretary-General John Holmes told Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson today, is simple: you figure out a way to get the job done -- and it might involve talking to the bad guys (yes, that includes the Taliban).

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Holmes's words about humanitarian compromise in AfPak couldn't come at a more pertinent time. Last week's attack on the U.N. guesthouse in Kabul has sent the organization packing; at least a portion of the team's foreign employees will be relocated, possibly outside the country. Meanwhile across the border, the United Nations has been forced to pull out of northwest Pakistan for security reasons, and a suicide bombing that left five U.N. World Food Program employees dead has forced the organization to question how long it can stay on the ground. In both countries, the United Nations and other humanitarians are facing hard choices about how they will deliver aid to millions in need. In his interview, Holmes tells FP about his frustrations with NATO troops and the dangerous melding of military and humanitarian roles. And since the crises don't stop in South Asia, Holmes touches on the financial crisis, climate change, and Darfur as well.

Foreign Policy: Tell us about the current humanitarian situation in Pakistan, where millions have been displaced recently.

John Holmes: Two and a half million people [were] leaving [the Swat valley] in a very, very short space of time [earlier this summer] -- one of the biggest movements that people can remember like that. It was [also] a very unusual situation in that only about 10 percent of those people actually went into camps; most of them were in host communities, and therefore they were harder to reach. We had to be fairly quick in responding and innovative by creating hubs where people could come and collect [food and supplies]. Now, 1.5 million people have gone home but that means 1 million are still there. We [also] have a new wave of people who have come out of South Waziristan -- 200,000 or 250,000. They are coming out into an area to which we have no access, so we have to operate through local NGOs.

It is a very complicated aid operation, and now we face very significant security threats to it. The attack on the World Food Program was the Taliban saying, "We do not approve of what you are doing." We have to assume that is not the last attack of its kind we are going to see. We have to reflect carefully on what kind of footprint can we have in Pakistan under the current circumstances. There is no question of pulling out; it is more [about] how much can we still do and how do we do it?

FP: Taking the example of Pakistan, could you walk me through the logistics of an aid operation under such difficult security circumstances?

JH: What you want to do normally is have your international staff on the ground [doing the] coordinating. That is now becoming extremely difficult in Pakistan, so you have to operate more through local staff, who are not more dispensable but are able to operate in ways that are less high profile. Then, you need to find local NGOs which have capacity and independence to operate and are not either too close to the government or too close to the others. [Take for example the] World Food Program: You have stocks of foods that you will ship to various distribution points and then use a local NGO who you trust to be the distributors of that food. Then you might have another NGO who are the monitors for at least some check and a balance -- some assurance that whatever you are providing is getting to where it needs to get to and not disappearing off into the markets or into the hands of the Taliban.

But the operating standards will have to drop a bit. If you assume, and we do, that these operations are necessary to keep people alive, then you have to accept those kinds of compromises in order to keep the aid flowing.

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