FRANCAISAide médicale internationale - History
1979-1989
-November 1979, France: AMI is created by Doctor Michel Bonnot, a former member of MSF who will later participate in the French government as a secretary of state for humanitarian action in 1991, then as the head of the Emergency Cell (CELUR) in 1999. Opposed to both MSF’s advocacy policy and to Bernard Kouchner’s promotion through the media, AMI wants to go where the others don’t go, refusing to testify or to communicate on what it does and sees. In war-torn countries, AMI tries to respond to demands expressed by bodies considered to be “representative”, mainly guerrillas. This involvement leads AMI to place itself under the military protection of rebel movements.
-1980, Cambodia: AMI works from the Thai border in the village of Sok San, controlled by men from the Liberation National Front of the Khmer people.
-Since 1980, Afghanistan: at first AMI crosses the Pakistani border illegally and implements medical programmes on the Mujaheddin side only. During an underground mission in the Logar region in January 1983, one of its doctors, Philippe Augoyard, is arrested and accused of spying by the Red Army, which invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. He is released in June after a mock trial during which he is sentenced to eight years of prison. When Washington starts being massively involved with the Mujaheddin, from 1986 onwards, AMI receives, through the International Rescue Committee, funds from the Afghanistan Relief Committee, a structure created by former United States ambassadors in Kabul and relayed by the consul’s wife in Peshawar, with special access to the transmission systems of the American diplomats in Pakistan. For AMI, Afghanistan becomes so important a field of intervention that an ad hoc association is created (AMI-Afghanistan, integrated into AMI in 1995), and that the operations in the country represent about one quarter of the budget of the association at the end of the 1990s. After the Soviet leave in 1989, AMI is one of the only NGOs to remain uninterruptedly in Kabul until the Taliban fundamentalists take Kabul at the end of 1996. The new regime wants to separate men from women in medical structures. As they cannot choose their collaborators, nor have a free access to those in need, AMI’s teams sometimes refuse to co-operate, for instance in Bamyan, where the Taliban, with stolen equipment, want to reopen an hospital for their fighters wounded in battles with the Shiite opposition in 2000. After the September 11th attacks in New York, Washington’s reprisals and the end of the Taliban regime in 2001, the situation remains tense. In a joint release with ACF, MDM, ACTED, AFRANE, EMDH, HI, Solidarités and MADERA, AMI worries about the participation of American reservists to the Provisional Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan; such confusion is apt to make true humanitarian workers pass for soldiers in the eyes of the population.
-1980-1983, Laos: AMI acts under the surveillance of the governmental soldiers.
-1981-1991, Iran, Iraq: with Baghdad’s approval, then at war against Iran, AMI intervenes secretly in areas controlled by the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI). Taking advantage of Operation Provide Comfort and the American military intervention against Iraq in 1991, AMI is allowed by Saddam Hussein’s officials to run Ranva and Azadi’s hospitals along with the PDKI, from Jordan.
-1985-1986, Ethiopia: AMI trains doctors and nurses for the Tigrean (TPLF) and Eritrean (EPLF) People’s Liberation Fronts. AMI decides to withdraw because it cannot have a free access to civilian people in rebel-controlled areas.
-From 1986, Burma: AMI opens a mission in Kawthooli, a KNLA’s (Karen National Liberation Army) stronghold. Four years later, the organisation tries to negotiate with the political branch of the rebel movement, the KNU (Karen National Union), to avoid the control of the guerrilla, which wants their fighters to be taken care of in priority. When the Burmese army seizes the region in 1995, AMI follows the exodus of about one hundred thousand Karen refugees to the Noe Poe, Mae Ra Ma Luang and Umpien camps in the border provinces of Mae Hong Song, Umphang and Tak in Thailand. As a kind of reprisal, the Burmese military junta delays for ten months the opening by AMI of a health centre in Dala, a poor suburb of Yangon (Rangoon) in March 2002.
-1988, France: AMI, who tried to set up sister organisations in Great-Britain in 1986 and in Holland in 1987, starts to receive greater governmental and European funding, including from the health department of the French army.
-1989, Lebanon: AMI manages to get several wounded Christians onboard a hospital-ship of the French navy, the Rance, anchored off Beirut.
