Nonprofits Seek To Prevent Terrorism At Its Roots

The NonProfit Times Nonprofits Seek To Prevent Terrorism At Its Roots

By Jeanie Stokes

When two American women entered Afghanistan with a group of religious charity workers shortly before the attack on the World Trade Center, they unwittingly made themselves hostages at a critical juncture in the battle against terrorism.

While the efforts of their German organization, Shelter Now, might seem ill-conceived in a country that outlaws non-Muslim religions, some religious and secular nonprofits believe such missions provide a valuable antidote to the scourge of terrorism.

"A world in which there is a great deal of poverty, and in which hundreds of millions of people feel excluded from the prosperity that we take for granted in the United States and Western Europe, is a world that is a fertile ground for radical ideologies of any sort," said Rudy von Bernuth, associate vice president for Westport, Conn.-based Save The Children and head of its humanitarian response division.

Foundations and international organizations can contribute significantly to reducing the threat of terrorism by working to strengthen civil societies so that neither states nor sub-national groups resort to violence to address their grievances, said Charles Curtis, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in Washington, D.C., one of two humanitarian organizations backed by billionaire media mogul Ted Turner.

"What we see in the terrorist events of September 11 is perhaps the most horrific expression to date of a grievance," said Curtis, who previously was executive vice president of the UN Foundation. He said it also should be a wake-up call for foundations to review not only how their historical mission relates to the dangers of terrorism, but also how program activities can be reshaped to be a solution.
While much of the western world only recently has focused on Afghanistan as the breeding ground and sanctuary for the al Qaeda organization led by exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, the country has been on the radar screens of the nonprofit sector for years.

Three years of drought, more than 20 years of war and the ongoing displacement of one million people, compounded by the approach of winter, have created what the United Nation has labeled the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Worries about a United States military strike in response to the September 11 bombings have only added to the fears of millions of Afghans, many of whom have fled the urban centers for rural areas in hopes of escaping war. As many as six million Afghans, most of them women and children, are believed to have been displaced within their own country.
Most of the major relief agencies withdrew their international staff workers from Afghanistan in late September after the Taliban said it could not guarantee their safety if the United States launches a military operation against terrorists. The exodus of international staff has curtailed the ability of many organizations to respond to needs, according to officials at Church World Service. The New York-based relief agency, supported by the 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations of the (U.S.) National Council of Churches, is keeping its programs open in Afghanistan with the aid of 300 national staff and volunteers.

Caught in the country when the door slammed shut were Americans Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, Australians Peter Bunch and Diana Thomas and Germans Georg Taubmann, Katrin Jelinek and Margrit Stebner, workers for Shelter Now, a German religious organization that shares its name with Oskhosh, Wisc.-based Shelter Now International. While the names of the organizations were the same, SNI in Wisconsin quickly sought to distinguish itself from the German group after the aid workers were arrested in August.

"The work of Shelter Now International is always done with the permission of the host country's government and in a manner which respects the laws and values of those countries," the U.S. organization said in a press statement. "The German organization has sometimes used the name Shelter Now without SNI's permission, thus creating the confusion surrounding this incident. The two organizations are working together to eliminate the confusion caused by the common use of the Shelter Now name."

While the international chess match over the fate of the workers continues, other organizations point out that the withdrawal of international aid workers from any country deprives the West of one of its most forceful weapons against terrorism. "What this fight is about is a fight about attitudes. We're fighting against an attitude of ostracism, of Islamic states feeling like pariah states and alienated and isolated from the West. There's a major misunderstanding," said Gerald Martone, director of emergency response for the International Rescue Committee in New York City.

Meanwhile, educated refugees living in the United States and other countries are using nonprofit organizations to mobilize support for changing the policies of the Taliban and other draconian governments around the world.

The Washington-based Womens Alliance for Peace and Human Rights (WAPHRA) in Afghanistan headed by Afghan exile Zieba Shorish-Shamley, has led the struggle to direct world attention to her former country since the Taliban took over in 1996. Under the Taliban, education for girls and women is outlawed. Before the takeover, half the students and 60 percent of the teachers at Kabul University were women, while 70 percent of school teachers, 50 percent of civilian government workers, and 40 percent of doctors in Kabul were women, said Shorish-Shamley.

As organizations such as WAPHRA seek to alleviate suffering, other charitable organizations may be fronting for al Qaeda or laundering money for terrorists. In announcing plans to freeze the assets of the terrorists, President Bush targeted several charities with "nice sounding names."

For legitimate nonprofits, on the other hand, staff and volunteers play a valuable role in overcoming prejudice just by being there, leaders said. They help reduce the sense of alienation and the misunderstandings when they expose people not only to western values, but also to westerners themselves, Martone said. In many areas, the Peace Corps volunteers and representatives of non-governmental organizations may be the only westerners the local residents ever see.

"It's interaction. It's dialogue. It's meeting with people where they are, in their homes and communities, where they can see that 'Gee, there are Americans who really care deeply about me, as a Pakistani or an Afghani'," said Catholic Relief Services Executive Director Ken Hackett. That kind of interchange, combined with education programs and economic programs that offer people hope for the future "can have a profound impact," he said.

For the past five years, Catholic Relief Services has worked to incorporate the concept of peace building into its programs worldwide, bringing peoples of different races and religions together to get to know each other.

Even in a region with as much religious conflict as central Asia, an organization's religious underpinnings can help in trying to overcome intolerance, Hackett said. "If you talk to piously Islamic people as a good Christian, there's a lot of respect that happens, if you can talk to a good Sikh as a good Muslim, you can transcend some of the distancing that happens."

Relief agencies are stockpiling supplies in neighboring countries of Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan anticipating as many as two million refugees may attempt to flee Afghanistan.

The United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has urged Afghanistan's neighboring states to keep their borders open and pledge the international community's support to assist in the humanitarian efforts. "If there is to be a military coalition, there should also be a humanitarian coalition to really share the burden," said Commissioner Rudd Lubbers in a statement.
The United Nations International Children's Fund is shipping more than $3 million worth of survival supplies, including medical supplies and water, to countries in the region, and estimates it will need $14 million above its normal budget to weather the winter crisis and the prospect of millions of Afghans fleeing their homeland.

While many relief agencies are focused on meeting the region's most basic needs for food, shelter, medical supplies and education programs for children, others have a different concern.
"The terrorists that attacked in New York and Washington demonstrated that their willingness to take innocent lives is limited only by the capacity of their weapons. There is a high urgency in doing whatever we can do to deny access" to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, said NTI's Curtis.

Jeanie Stokes is a reporter for the Denver News Bureau.