FRANCAISMédecins Sans Frontières - History
1980-1989
-1980, Belgium: MSF opens its first operational section out of France after having refused in 1979 to establish an office in the United States. The objective is to consolidate the movement first in Europe, so that it can not be taken over by the Americans. Other sections will follow, in the Netherlands (Artsen Zonder Grenzen) in 1984, in Spain (Médicos Sin Fronteras), Switzerland and Luxembourg in 1986, in Great Britain (Doctors Without Borders), Australia, the United States and Germany (Ärzte Ohne Grenzen) in 1991, in Japan (Kokkyonakiishidan) in 1992, in Italy (Medici Senza Frontiere) in 1993, in Denmark (Læger Unden Grænser) in 1998, as well as in Norway (Leger Uten Grenser), in Sweden (Läkare Utan Gränser), etc. The MSF movement will also launch an international office in Brussels, in 1991, and a fundraising centre in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in 1995. The whole organisation will develop on the basis of common ethical rules regarding the impartiality of aid. Vigilant, the international office of MSF, for instance, will suspend and win its trial in Athens against the Greek section, whose president Odysseus Boudouris had not hidden his support to the Serbs under the pretext of denouncing NATO’s bombings (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) in Kosovo in 1999.
-1980-1984, Chad: while the combatants of Hissène Habré and Goukuni Oueddeï fight for the control of the capital city, MSF uses a Transall of the French army to go to N’djamena in collaboration with the military doctors of EMIR in April 1980. Defeated, Goukouni Oueddeï flees to the north, where he forms a transitional government of national unity, the GUNT, with the support of the Libyan army. In January 1984, two Belgian volunteers from MSF, Christian Delzenne and Marie-Chantal Roekens, are abducted and detained during two months by Goukouni Oueddeï’s men, who accuse them of working for the government in N’djamena.
-Since 1980, Afghanistan: MSF is one of the first NGOs to cross the Pakistani border illegally and to reach areas where rebels are fighting against the Red Army’s occupation troops. Its knowledge of the country earns one of its directors, Juliette Fournot, to testify in front of the American Congress on the 4th of March 1985. In Afghanistan, however, MSF teams, who can only move under the Mujaheddin’s supervision, have to rent mules at a high price, employ the personnel imposed on them by the fighting factions, respect the separation of sexes and put up with numerous robberies. They are held hostage several times by warlords who seize food supplies and demand that their combatants be taken care of in priority. In her autobiography, a MSF nurse, Claire Constant, tells for instance how in January 1981 she was held prisoner by Hadji Nader, the Turkmen leader in Hazara controlled territory. When the city of Bamian is taken, in 1988, the organisation’s medical personnel is also attacked by the Mustazaffin, a small pro Iranian party composed of both Sunnites and Shiites. MSF decides to withdraw fully from the country after the assassination, in April 1990, of one of its logistics officers, Frédéric Galland, who was probably the victim of conflicting interests between two commanders, Yaftal-a-Payin and Yaftal-Bala, who contested Basir Khaled’s leadership in Badakhshan. With the end of the pro-Soviet government and the arrival of the Mujaheddin in Kabul in April 1992, MSF comes back to work in Afghanistan, whether in fighting areas or during emergencies like the earthquake of Rostaq, which kills more then 2,300 people in the North East on the 4th of February 1998. Once Kabul has fallen to the Taliban fundamentalists on the 26th of September 1996, the new regime imposes a strict application of the Koranic law, the Sharia, and attempts to separate men and women in medical structures. On the 6th of September 1997, an order by the minister of Health compels women to be treated in only one hospital in Kabul, Rabia Balkhi, which is not completely functional. After negotiations with the ICRC and the NGOs, the Taliban allow women into other hospitals, though genders there are still separated. But in April 1998, the authorities, trying to control the recruitment of local staff and to select the beneficiaries of relief programmes, compel the international NGOs to regroup in a district of Kabul where they will be more easily watched over. MSF expatriates are eventually expelled from the country on the 20th of July 1998, as they refuse to accept an agreement signed between the Taliban and the United Nations on the 14th of May, which discriminates against women. The American bombings against Ossama Bin Laden’s camps do not make things easier, and in August, all the NGOs expatriates have to be evacuated anyway. During the following months, the humanitarian workers who have withdrawn to Pakistan try to negotiate together their return into the country, while attempting not to compromise their free access to the beneficiaries nor the choice of their collaborators, especially regarding women personnel. Yet MSF negotiates with the Taliban alone, without using the United Nations channels. It again withdraws after the American bombings in October 2001, while a relative stabilisation of the situation in 2002 allows expatriates to be dispatched throughout Afghanistan until an ICRC delegate is shot by Islamic fundamentalists in Tirin Khot, north of Kandahar on the 27th of March 2003. For safety reasons, the expatriate staff of MSF in this region is then sent back to Herat and Kabul. And the organisation stops its programs when two locals, a Belgian co-ordinator (Hélène de Beir), a Dutch logistician (Willem Kwint) and a Norwegian doctor (Egyl Tynaes) working for MSF-Holland are ambushed and killed by bandits or Taliban in the Northwestern province of Badghis on the 2th of June 2004. As the criminals are not arrested, MSF pulls out from the country in August.
-February 1981, Iran: after an interview with ayatollah Ruhollâh Khomeyni, who wishes to resume diplomatic relationship with France through MSF, the organisation refuses to be embedded in the Iranian army to take care of soldiers wounded in the war against Iraq.
-April-December 1981, Turkey: two MSF-France volunteers, Luc Devineau and Manaïck Lanternier, are accused of helping Kurdish rebels. They are imprisoned for eight months before being released after diplomatic pressures on General Kenan Evren’s junta in power in Ankara.
-1982-1994, France: MSF’s new president is Rony Brauman, a former Maoist militant of the Proletarian Left Group in May 1968. The humanitarian vocation of the organisation transcends political differences. MSF’s vice-president is Alain Dubos, a royalist and a Tunisia-born Frenchman expelled from Tunis in 1961 and a former member of the OAS (Organisation of the Secret Army), which opposed independence in Algeria in 1962. As for Alain Destexhe, the general secretary of the international MSF office from 1991 onwards, he belongs to the Liberal Party (PRL) then the Reform Movement (MR) and is elected at the Belgian Senate in 1995.
-From 1983, Angola: in Luanda, the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) does not want MSF to operate in areas under its control. The hostility of the government, backed by the USSR, is probably due to the organisation’s presence on the Mujaheddin’s side against the Red Army in Afghanistan. So MSF works underground among the UNITA (Union for a Total Independence of Angola) rebels, who receive some support from Washington and Pretoria’s racist regime. Described as “new Right humanitarians” by researchers like David Sogge, MSF teams are suspected to back the guerilla while their chairman, Rony Brauman, is quoted in the Economist Development Report of July 1984 as having said that UNITA had built “the most impressive village public health programme in black Africa”. During several years, the relations between MSF and the government in Luanda thus remain very tense, even when the organisation is eventually allowed to work from the capital city. In June 2002, two months after the signature of a cease-fire with UNITA, MSF denounces the MPLA’s war strategy, which forbids humanitarian aid to starving areas controlled by the opposition. The MPLA considers expelling the organisation and the UN, criticised for the lack of response of the international community and the slow progress of the World Food Programme, complains about MSF’s “arrogance”. The organisation, which stays in Angola, is confronted with many difficulties. On the 29th of November 2002, for instance, a child and six Angolan employees are killed by a landmine on the road between Cunjamba and Mavinga, to the south east of the country.
-1984-1985, Guatemala: MSF-France is expelled, officially for “safety reasons”; French doctors return to the country a year later.
-1984-1995, Mozambique: MSF-France works in a country torn apart by a civil war since it became independent in 1975. The marxist Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Mozambique) government in Maputo forbids humanitarian aid in the areas controlled by the Renamo guerrilla, which is supported by the apartheid regime in Pretoria. Unlike the authorities, who denounce an external aggression by South Africa, MSF speaks about a civil war and is thus perceived as a rightist organisation. Relations are all the more difficult with the Mozambican government because a MSF doctor, Bernard Pécoul, writes in a Lancet article that "the food is largely blocked in the port of Maputo", this just when the United States Embassy claims that half the humanitarian aid is hijacked and does not reach the victims of the conflict. In a report released in March 1991, moreover, the organisation accuses the Mozambican army of diverting relief and forcing the civilians to gather near the garrisons to serve as human shields against the guerrilla. After the signature of peace agreements in Rome in December 1992, MSF-France leaves Mozambique in 1995.
-From April 1984, Ethiopia: MSF-France denounces the deportations Colonel Mengistu Hailé Mariam’s junta is undertaking in order to empty the north of the country and to deprive the guerrillas from the peasants’ support. The French doctors witness the arson of Ibnet camp, in March 1985, where there were 50,000 displaced people, and the forced evacuations of Korem in December 1984, then in October 1985. MSF-France also condemns the use of humanitarian logistics to transfer people to the south: instead of carrying food to starving areas, trucks are requisitioned to deport farmers from the north. Disowned by MSF-Belgium, MSF-France is expelled in December 1985; its belongings are seized by the dictatorship or left to Save the Children. But as a consequence, Europe and the United States decide to make further aid conditional on the discontinuance of forced population transfers and, thus pressured, the Ethiopian government announces in 1986 that it will cease its resettlement programs. After the regime falls in 1991, MSF comes back to Ethiopia when a border war against Eritrea begins in 1999. The working conditions remain difficult and the organisation suspends its activities in the Somali region of the Ogaden when a driver is killed and an expatriate injured during an armed attack on the road between Jijiga and Degah Bur on February 7th 2000. In May 2003, the movement criticises once again the government for the way it transfers, without any preparation, 15,000 people who had fled the drought and who, expelled from the Shewe camp, are left alone in Bidre, in the Bale region. With MSF-Holland in November, the warning also concerns the Amhara region where the authorities want to resettle two million people during the next three years. The protest happens when a controversy opposes the organisation and Addis-Ababa about a new and more expensive malaria treatment. During a press conference on the 23rd of December 2003, Health Minister Kebede Tadesse thus denounces MSF “charlatans masquerading as the sole agents of medical and scientific knowledge”. Yet in July 2004, the Ethiopian Government changes its drug policy and raises money with the United Nations to buy the medicines introduced by MSF, which are more effective.
-1985-1994, Salvador: MSF-France is briefly expulsed in March 1985 but returns shortly afterwards. The association is closely watched by the army. Four of its volunteers are arrested on 3rd March of 1986, interrogated blindfolded and held in secret before being released three days later. In November 1989, again, the authorities ban MSF-France from accessing the regions held by the guerrilla, who has just led an important offensive against the governmental troops. In 1994 the association finally decides to close its mission in Salvador, the peace negotiations being well underway.
-1985-1989, France: as its public utility is recognised in June 1985, MSF creates, with Professor Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and the writer Jean-François Revel, a Libertés sans frontières Foundation (“Liberties Without Borders”) to inform against third world dictatorships, including Marxist regimes. This initiative is modelled on the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which financed Ronald Reagan’s campaign in the US, and is condemned by MSF-Belgium, which sues the head office in Paris and is allowed to keep its name. The Libertés sans frontières Foundation, presided by Claude Malhuret, is dissolved in April 1989. It is then replaced by a more neutral Foundation which takes the name of “Médecins sans frontières” and which after being recognised as of public utility in 1991 acquires a research centre in 1995.
-March 1986, France: a member of the Parti Républicain, Claude Malhuret quits MSF to become a secretary of state in charge of human rights in Jacques Chirac’s government. He takes in Jean-Christophe Rufin as an advisor, and manages to have the French ambassador in Addis-Ababa, José Paoli, leave Ethiopia. José Paoli had denigrated MSF when the organisation had been expelled by Colonel Mengistu Hailé Mariam’s junta at the end of 1985. According to Olivier Weber, a journalist at Le Point, Claude Malhuret considers resigning because of his disagreement with the minister of Home Affairs, Charles Pasqua, whose anti-riot police provoked the death of a student, Malik Oussekine, during a demonstration in Paris in December 1986. Claude Malhuret will then become Vichy’s mayor and Member of Parliament.
-From 1987, France: following MDM, MSF starts a medical mission in France. In 1999, the association takes part, along with MDM, in the implementation of the law on a universal medical cover.
-Since 1987, Somalia: while the President Siyad Barre is more and more weakened by the armed opposition movements, ten MSF employees are kidnapped in 1987 and taken to Ethiopia before being released two weeks later. The collapse of the regime and the departure of the dictator in January 1991 do not end the conflict and many NGOs leave Mogadishu. With the ICRC, MSF is one of the only humanitarian organisations to carry on its programmes. The security conditions keep deteriorating. In Mogadishu, in particular, the association is regularly the victim of robberies and when threatened with violence has to reemploy a Somali previously dismissed for unlawful behaviour. After the assassination of another local employee, killed by criminals who wanted to take his vehicle in August 1991, MSF-France decides to have armed escorts. In 1991, the association thus pays out the equivalent of $ 400,000 to Osman Ali “Ato”, the right-hand man of one of the main warlords in the capital. In April 1993, MSF-France quits Mogadishu; at the same time the peace operation led by the United Nations Mission in Somalia (UNOSOM) is in full swing. MSF-Holland also withdraws from Baidoa on May 4th 1993. Criticised for not having consulted other NGOs, the association explains its departure in a book published four months later by Rony Brauman: alongside the problem of the protection racket by the fighters, the famine of August 1992 in Baidoa had been stopped, the militarisation of relief aid was becoming problematic and the American GIs’ arrival had caused a dangerous xenophobic reaction towards foreign aid workers. The association nevertheless continues its programmes in other regions of the country and one of its doctors is murdered in 1997. In Puntland in the North-East of the country in May 2002, MSF-France is in fact the only NGO to remain in the midst of the fighting in Bosaso, when Colonel Abdullah Yussuf takes control of the town. In the Lower Juba region, in the South, the association also works in difficult conditions: not only because of insecurity, but also because of the need to permanently negotiate with neighbouring Kenya, which wants to prevent an extension of the fighting and which, for that reason, bans all flights towards Somalia on June 20th 2003, thus compelling MSF to protest and get a partial lift of the embargo two weeks later.
-November 1988, Honduras: MSF-France withdraws from Salvadorian refugee camps, where it started to work after 1980 and which are used as supply bases by the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front). People in the camps had gone on a hunger strike to demand more assistance, though they had higher standards of living than the locals. As a matter of fact, food surpluses were sent to the FMLN in El Salvador. Political neutrality was difficult to maintain. One of MSF-France doctors, a Spanish woman, had been killed by the governmental troops in El Salvador, where she had gone illegally to help the FMLN. Meanwhile, the medical authorities of Honduras had also used MSF-France cars to indoctrinate and turn the Nicaraguan refugees against the Sandinistas.
-December 1988, Armenia: for the first time, MSF is allowed by the USSR to go and rescue the victims of an earthquake that made 20,000 casualties.
-March 1989, Yemen: MSF briefly intervenes after floods and uses the relief items sent by a French military plane and the Emergency Cell of the ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris.
-June 1989-July 1991, China: because of the refusal of the authorities in Peking, MSF can’t start a relief operation to help the victims of the repression of the demonstrations in Tien-an-men Square. But in July 1991, the organisation is allowed to send medical teams during floods in Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei and Henan provinces.
-Since December 1989, Sudan: MSF-France leaves the country after the death of two volunteers in a plane of Aviation sans frontières shot by the rebels or the governmental troops who want to eliminate embarrassing witnesses. In November 1994, MSF-France is then expelled from areas controlled by the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) after satellite pictures of the guerrilla’s positions had been negotiated with the Sudanese government by the minister of Home Affairs in Paris, Charles Pasqua, in exchange for the extradition of the terrorist Illitch Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos. In July 1998 in the Western Upper Nile province, MSF-Holland has also to pull out from the hospital in Ler, which is attacked and looted by the SSUM (South Sudan United Movement), Paulino Matiep’s governement forces. In January 1999, another MSF-Holland hospital, Kajo-Keijii in Equatoria, is bombed by the army. On the 21st of August 2001, again, the SSUM kidnaps injured combatants who were treated in MSF-France’s clinic in Bentiu after they escaped from the guerrilla. On the 9th of February 2002, a MSF-Holland nurse, James Koang Mar, is also killed during the bombing of Nimne, a center for displaced persons in Western Upper Nile. Generally speaking, fights compel to stop humanitarian programmes frequently, as did the teams from the Dutch section of MSF in Thonyor and Dablual, to the south of Ler in January 2003. Aid is often diverted within Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), which organises humanitarian interventions under the supervision of the governement, and MSF-France decided to pull out from this framework after the 1998 famine, when relief never reached the victims.
