But other relief workers applaud Washington's effort to take a more politically sophisticated approach to humanitarian aid. They say it demonstrates increasing sensitivity toward the political impact humanitarian aid has in volatile situations -- from freeing up a government to sell domestically grown goods abroad, to feeding a rebel group and enabling it to continue waging war, to influencing how aid recipients vote.

"There is no apolitical assistance," says John Fawcett, a humanitarian-aid worker who has studied international aid policy. "Any choice you make is political."

"I think it is kind of naive not to recognize that aid is by its definition political," agrees Randolph Martin, director of operations for the International Rescue Committee in New York. "If you look at modern warfare, civilian displacement is more and more not the byproduct but the purpose. If you look at war over the past 150 years, civilian casualties have gone from 5 to 10 percent of the total casualties to 85 to 90 percent of the casualties in modern war. So if you are doing something to help civilians, you are seen as a party to the conflict."

War in the former Yugoslavia has killed more than 200,000 people and turned millions into refugees in the past decade. Now postwar Serbia is a laboratory for evolving Western ideas about humanitarian aid.

There, U.S. and European policy is aimed at removing Milosevic, who was indicted for war crimes by a U.N. tribunal last year, from office. Western policymakers consider Milosevic the key source of the instability and conflict that have taken so many lives. Besides economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and financial and technical assistance to Serbian opposition groups, Western governments are looking increasingly to the strategic use of humanitarian aid as one plank in their Serbia policy.

The humanitarian sector is one of the only visible outposts of the international community left in isolated Serbia, with some 80 international aid groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground. The aid groups are one of the few channels through which the international community still pours money and commodities into Serbia -- more than $200 million worth this year alone.

As such, aid groups find themselves the focus of intense scrutiny. Serbian authorities control most aspects of their daily life, from visas to license plates to customs to the bank accounts from which staff get paid. Meanwhile, Western governments watch closely to try to make sure humanitarian aid is not going to line the pockets of the regime or buy it political support.

To their dismay, that is exactly what European Community officials found last December when they discovered that nine branches of the Yugoslav Red Cross in Belgrade had diverted E.C.-provided hygiene packs and food aid from refugees to unpaid factory workers and schoolteachers, who were not the E.C.'s authorized recipients.

The incident came after repeated complaints from some aid workers that the YRC was too close to the Milosevic regime. The head of the Serbian Red Cross, part of the YRC, is an executive member of Milosevic's political party, and Milosevic's wife is a major supporter of the organization. What's more, the Bosnian-Serbian Red Cross is led by the wife of Radovan Karadzic, a man indicted for war crimes.

Although the International Federation of the Red Cross says the aid diversion was relatively tiny (only 0.7 percent of the total volume) and that it has since helped the YRC set up better auditing mechanisms, the incident was a turning point for Western governments. It confirmed Washington's fear that Belgrade was manipulating international aid to benefit one of Milosevic's key voting constituencies -- unpaid state workers.

The U.S. government has therefore begun to pressure the aid groups it funds to bypass the YRC. But major groups such as the World Food Program and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have resisted that order and continue to work with the YRC. They say the organization has proved a reliable partner and that it is the only group in Yugoslavia that can logistically meet their needs. Meanwhile, AID has funded a $1 million pilot program to build up an alternative network of independent international and Serbian NGOs through which humanitarian relief can be channeled.

While the U.S. has tried to develop alternative aid channels, Washington's European allies have designed humanitarian programs that deliberately aim to help the inhabitants of Serbian towns controlled by the political opposition. Last winter, the E.C. sponsored a program called Fuel for Democracy, under which humanitarian shipments of heating fuel were directed to opposition-controlled Serbian towns. Opposition mayors love the program, which they say helps persuade citizens to vote for them. But some aid groups are uncomfortable with it.

"Those who have a political agenda should concentrate their activities on political tools, not on humanitarian ones," says Andrei Neacsu, information delegate for the International Federation of the Red Cross in Belgrade. "A vulnerable person living in a municipality run by the opposition -- a poor person, one who is not employed, elderly, a woman alone with children, a refugee or internally displaced person -- is equally vulnerable as one who lives in a municipality run by" Milosevic's ruling coalition.

Not so, argue Serbia's opposition politicians, who say that the tax money the Serbian government collects from citizens of their towns gets redistributed in a way that unfairly benefits regime-controlled municipalities.

Recent Stories