FRANCAISNorwegian People’s Aid - History
1980-1989
-1980-1983, Norway: with an international department created in 1976 and directed by Vesla Vetlesen, NPA signs in January 1980 an agreement to receive funding from the cooperation agency NORAD. Its budget increases from 3 millions Crowns in 1980 to 11 in 1981, 40 in 1982 and 70 in 1983. The organisation can thus extend its activities abroad, especially regarding agriculture and health in Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El-Salvador, Honduras and the region of Chiapas in Mexico. Yet the economic growth of NPA causes concern amongst some volunteers who fear commercialisation and who are reluctant to participate for the first time to a telethon in Norway in 1983. To protect its values, the organisation then launches a political fund-raising campaign which brings a lot of controversy because it supports liberation movements in Southern Africa and socialist regimes in Nicaragua and Zimbabwe. As a result, the telethon of 1983 earns only 69 millions Crowns for NPA, 15 less than for a more neutral organisation like the Norwegian Red Cross in 1981.
-1981, Poland: NPA supports the trade union “Solidarity” against the Communist regime in power in Warsaw.
-Since 1982, Lebanon: in Beyrouth, NPA sends relief to the Sabra and Chatila camps where the Christian Phalanges have murdered Palestinian refugees in September 1982. The organisation strongly condemns those responsible for such crimes and denounces the military occupation of Lebanon by Israel. In Chatila, it works side by side with the “peoples committees” of the camp, which are close to Yasser Arafat’s PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation). In 1983, NPA also sets up a rehabilitation centre for Palestinian war invalids. In co-operation with the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near-East (UNRWA), it opens up two schools in Beyrouth and Sidon in 1984. Recognised and registered as a Lebanese association by the authorities in 1990, NPA then backs and hands over to local NGOs its operations for Palestinian refugees.
-From 1983, Nicaragua: NPA supports the Sandinista socialist revolution and informs against the conservative Contras guerrillas, which are trained by Washington. The organisation works closely with the authorities until 1987. But it switches the course of its operations when a democratically elected right-wing government comes to power in Managua in 1990. It then avoids working with the authorities, except at the municipal level, and focuses on social organisations like the Sandinista peasant trade union UNAG (Uníon Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos) in Esteli after 1992.
-From 1984, Ethiopia: during the famine crisis, NPA supports the relief activities of the RST (Relief Society of Tigray) and the ERA (Eritrean Relief Association), both emanations of guerrilla movements, the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) and the EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front), fighting Mengistu Hailé Mariam’s “Marxist” dictatorship in power in Addis-Abeba.
-1985, Namibia: in the refugee camp of Viana in Angola, NPA runs a health training centre for the SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation). Such a programme is clearly political as it supports a movement which fights for independence against White South African domination in Namibia. Hifikepunye Pohamba, a SWAPO Secretary of Finance and National Treasurer quoted by Tor Sellström, explains that the Norwegian “told us: we are assisting you on a humanitarian basis and we do not want to give anything that could promote the military struggle… However, when they gave us food, it went to the camps and the camps were also the reserves of the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia) cadres. It would therefore not be wrong to say that the people of the Nordic world also assisted PLAN”. If Norway did not give guns, it fed, educated, clothed and gave shelter to the fighters. As stated in the same book by another prominent SWAPO leader, Peter Katjavivi, “being in a refugee camp… was an opportunity to regroup and acquire the necessary skills and competence while we were in exile. It became a training camp”.
-Since 1986, Sudan: in the Southern regions controlled by the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) of John Garang, NPA starts an agricultural and nutritional programme under the direction of Egil Hagen, a former paratrooper of the Norwegian Army’s ski commandos, bodyguard of the King in Oslo and counterespionage liaison officer. The organisation, which doesn’t want to be accountable to the government of Khartoum in the North, is suspected of connivance with the rebels. Though the Norwegian government continues to finance its operations in 1987, the European community stops contracting NPA in 1986 because it directly hands out relief goods to SPLA fighters in Narus. In the same vein, the organisation refuses to join the Operation Lifeline Sudan, launched by the United Nations in 1989 in co-operation with the Islamic fundamentalist junta in power in Khartoum. It argues that this is useless because the government of Sudan is very reluctant to deliver authorisations for humanitarian organisations to fly and operate in the Southern regions. With such a position, NPA earns a reputation of being a “franc-tireur”. In September 1992, for example, it does not follow the United Nations’ instructions and the NGOs rules of solidarity when humanitarian operations are suspended in Eastern Equatoria to demand an investigation after the murder of a Norwegian photo-reporter and three aid workers (two were killed on the spot during a gun battle between John Garang’s and William Nyuon Bany’s forces; the two others, a Filipino nurse and a Kenyan driver, were executed later by the SPLA). Following the death of Egil Hagen, who dies from cancer in 1992, the NPA programme is taken over by Helge Rohn from Nairobi, where the Norwegians pay the rents of the employees of the SRRA (Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association), the “humanitarian” branch of John Garang’s movement. Thus, NPA covers some of the operating costs of the SPLA in Kenya. In order to improve the image of an authoritarian and brutal guerrilla, it also organises visits for western journalists to the zones liberated by John Garang’s men. In 1993, NPA provides a decisive aid which enables the SPLA to hold on to a few square kilometres within Sudan against an attack by the governmental forces towards the Ugandan border and the Aswa River. The relations with the rebels are so good that, contrary to other NGOs, no NPA employee is ever kidnapped by the SPLA (but a local worker, is killed when governmental airplanes bomb Yei Hospital on 24 April 1998). A report commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in November 1997 states that NPA volunteers “share logistical capabilities, supply food and medical services very close to the front-line, allow families to remain in inhospitable areas to support soldiers on the front, allow sale of relief supplies to generate resources for military procurement, allow education of young men whom the SPLA hopes to recruit as its future cadres”. The Danish magazine Aktuelt also reports on 20 May 1998 that NPA allows the SPLA to sell emergency aid in order to purchase weapons, houses and cars. For a long time, NPA denounces the war crimes of the Sudanese junta only. In an internal document dated September 1998, it eventually agrees that the rebels are also responsible for ethnic tensions, human rights violations, aid diversion and the protection of war criminals. But the terrorist attacks against the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are a turning point in August 1998. The United States accuse the Sudanese junta and retaliate by bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, while the Congress and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) decide to support the SPLA more openly. Because of its connivance with John Garang’s movement, NPA then gets financial backing from the American development aid agency (USAID) to run, amongst others, a medical training centre in Yei, an agricultural project in Akot and a hospital in Nimule. Due to lack of funds, the latter is handed over to a fundamentalist Christian organisation, “Voices of the Martyrs”, in 2001. After the September 11 attacks in New York, Washington resumes diplomatic co-operation with Khartoum on the basis of a collaboration in the war against terrorism. To press the SPLA to sign a peace agreement, the United States can use the threat of a suspension or a reduction of aid. NPA nevertheless continues to have excellent relations with John Garang. According to the Economist in an article published in London on August 31 2002, it supplies directly the guerrillas who capture the town of Torit. The organisation also extends its activities amongst the Shilluk, where Lam Akol’s fighters join the SPLA in October 2003. It is the only NGO to stay in this region when the fighting against governmental militias compel others like Tearfund and World Vision to leave rural areas and to stay in the town of Malakal in April 2004. In the same way, the former NPA secretary general, Halle Jørn Hansen, is officially asked by the SPLA to give a speech at the funeral of his friend John Garang, who died in a helicopter accident on 1st August 2005.
-Since 1987, Israel/Palestine: NPA starts to work in the occupied territories while the Palestinians wage an Intifada (“war of stones”) against the Israeli security forces. Within the framework of the peace agreements signed in Oslo in August 1993, the organisation supports the establishment of a Palestinian Authority and helps to set up an autonomous administration under the direction of Yasser Arafat. But in 2000, the renewal of the conflict and the second Intifada compel NPA to reconsider its programmes. In order to circumvent the blockade imposed on the occupied territories since 2001, the organisation helps some entrepreneurs in the Gaza strip to pay the salaries of those who can no longer go and work in Israel. In 2003, NPA also joins the Norwegian campaign against the security wall that annex some parts of the West Bank and that the Israeli build in contravention of International Law.
