Govt aid must match firepower

Spare a thought for our Prime Minister. The price of “club” membership is to take New Zealand into a war not of our making, training troops who were once our enemy.

The principal and principled argument advanced for going to war is that we are morally obliged to stand up to evil. It draws from the doctrine of a “just war”, which argues that once all other avenues have been exhausted, force is sometimes morally defensible. The Prime Minister’s argument would carry far more moral legitimacy if the obligation and conversation was seen to extend beyond equipping others to better wage war, to address the human cost of war.

The human consequences of the Syrian conflict are overwhelming. More than 12 million people are displaced and 5.6 million children are in desperate need, large numbers of which have witnessed unspeakable violence and death. Many of the children are severely traumatised — waking in the middle of the night screaming or bed-wetting, unable to comprehend what they have seen.

There is an urgent need to support host nations such as Iraqi Kurdistan, Lebanon and Jordan, to provide healthcare, education and infrastructure to support the many millions already displaced as well as meet the needs of their own people. In Lebanon, one in three people is a refugee. Even the wealthiest nations would struggle to meet these demands.

It is the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet but risks becoming the forgotten crisis — too overwhelming and too complex to resolve.

So what might a government-led humanitarian response look like? For a start, a political commitment must be made to match every dollar spent on deployment and training with an equivalent dollar for the humanitarian response. To do otherwise is to accept that refugees and the displaced are unfortunate, but acceptable, collateral damage in a war not of their making.

We must also use our voice in the Security Council to shame those nations not meeting their financial pledges to UN bodies, such as the World Food Programme, into honouring their promises, and use our presence on the council to show leadership in addressing the humanitarian crisis, commit to resolutions, and push for a peaceful solution, much like we did during the Rwandan Genocide.

Then we need to look closer to home. In 2014, New Zealand committed to take 100 Syrian refugees. This compares starkly with Norway, a country with a similar population, who has agreed to take 2500. We can and should do better. Wealthier and more stable nations such as New Zealand must be willing to shoulder at least some of this increased burden, especially as our going to war, in the short-term at least, will likely add to that burden.

It is a sad fact that over the past century we have become more adept at waging war than securing peace. As we enter the fifth year of the Syrian crisis we must change that narrative.

The Middle East is a complex and daunting political landscape. Ultimately, the Syrian conflict can only be resolved at its source — in the Middle East by the political and religious leaders directly involved and by supporting those parties.

Until that day, we are reliant on the compassion of New Zealanders responding to the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time, and a government committing not only to war but also to securing peace.