The day after.  The images fresh again:  that second plane arcing into the tower, or the South Tower descending into itself, as if steel and cement suddenly atomized into smoke.  We humanitarians have a peculiar relation to the events of 9/11.  We’ve all seen disasters where 2996 lives (I’ve included the 19 perpetrators) make for a shocking chunk of “excess mortality,” but it’s somewhat molecular compared to estimates such as the feared 750,000 potential victims of the famine inside Somalia, or the millions inside Eastern DRC, etc. etc.  False comparisons.  The spectacular imagery and the ease with which we can identify with the people in NYC make it all too clear why 9/11 has such a disproportionate hold on the tragic stuff that happens trophy. 

Humanitarians including me continue to blame 9/11, or perhaps more accurately the reaction of the West, particularly the USA, and then the reaction to the reaction and then the reaction to that reaction (ad nauseum), for the erosion of humanitarian space.   Seems to me the world with the Twin Towers included all of the same elements as the one without, but it’s nonetheless true that 9/11 changed the balance between these elements.  So the West’s longstanding insistence on an “us or them” polarity finally found enough traction to eradicate the idea of neutrality.  And there are unavoidable consequences on Western NGOs when the West becomes both an overt belligerent and a covert killer on large tracts of our turf, or where counter-insurgency strategy plus national security interest have so publicly embraced the delivery of aid as its chosen methodology.   But neither the West as warrior nor COIN tactics are particularly new.

Instead of blaming 9/11 and its aftermath, we should probably look a little more closely at ourselves.  As an industry we lament the GWOT-determined directionality of aid, yet we have shown little by way of independence to resist being swept up in this orphaning of impartiality’s dictates.  As the British government so vociferously defends its foreign aid budget on grounds of national interest, we half-heartedly decry the difficulties caused by the politicization of aid, and then sign the contract.  But the existential questions we blame on the “shrinking space” may in fact veil a more serious existential question:  Considering the way GWOT has managed to supersize aid budgets in the declining days of the euro-dollar-pound empire, does the industry actually owe its existence to 9/11?