DISASTER MANAGEMENT

-- An OVERVIEW

•Military involvement in national disasters takes place only at the request, and under the control, of civilian authorities.

•The military is not in charge.

• The Armed Forces is a supporting agency in the interagency response to domestic emergencies. For example, the Home Ministry is the statutory agent responsible for countering domestic terrorism.

• They are the lead agency for crisis management activities--those measures required to anticipate, prevent, and/or resolve a hostile situation. Similarly, the Home Ministry is lead agency for consequence management activities--those services and activities designed to mitigate damage, loss, hardship, or suffering resulting from man-made or natural catastrophe.

• What makes the military particularly well suited to disaster response is:

– Speed: Capability for rapid mobilization

– Structure: Hierarchical command and discipline

– Training: Continual training and preparation

– Logistics: Material sufficient to fight two simultaneous wars!

• Disaster response provides opportunities both for training and for serving the public, which can improve unit morale and public respect for the military.

• The public often judges its government based on how quickly and effectively it responds to various disasters, deployment of the military can provide political benefits.

• However, for various reasons military intervention should be temporary and local civilian responders should take over as quickly as possible.

Emerging Issues

• The role of the military is changing in response to changes in our society, in the perceived role of the military, and because of the evolving nature of the threats that the military is expected to address.

• The downsizing of military, constrains the resources available to take on secondary missions such as disaster response.

• On the other hand, the emergence of new military threats, particularly weapons of mass destruction (chemical, nuclear and biological weapons) in the hands of terrorists, has forced the military to focus on Civil Defense in addition to ships and tanks.

The Military - Civilian Cooperation

• The main contribution the military personnel are likely to be called upon to make is to provide manpower, vehicles, equipment and radio communications, as well as military aircraft.

• In case the military intervention is needed, it is necessary that the plans will be adjusted to include disaster management based on and in accordance with the National Disaster Management Plan.

Examples of military-civilian cooperation to disaster relief include:

(1) Protecting emergency food aid registration teams, (2) Protecting and helping with logistics: transportation. storage and distribution of emergency food aid, delivery of emergency water supplies, traffic control, communications. (3) Enforcing government's water usage restrictions. (4) Undertaking search-rescue work. (5) Providing temporary shelter and heating for disaster-stricken people, and carrying out immediate repairs to make damaged facilities safe, until civilian services arrive and

(6) Taking charge at the scene of an extreme hazard by organizing, providing immediate relief assistance and helping local government restore normal life.

• At the national level, the most effective way for an efficient military - civilian cooperation is to integrate the capabilities of country's military forces with the civil authority's, together with the supporting public services, at all stages and all levels of disaster planning and preparedness.

• The potential of the armed forces to provide well organized, trained and equipped support to the civil authorities and emergency services is great and should become an element of all disaster management plans.

• The military institutions are known for their rapid deployment, organization, ethos, skills, communications logistics and coherence, which give them important advantages in disaster relief operations.

• They also present more advantages as readiness (training, equipment), availability (frequency, numbers, variety, resources), integration (coalition, military-civilian organization, mil-gov-ngo), flexibility (duration, reaction, ethos, interchange low intensity for high intensity operations), skills (variety, training, endurance), law (civil / military, international, national), culture (social responsibility, political support, history).

Stability and Support Operations (SASO)

an instrument of Disaster Management

SUPPORT OPERATIONS

Support Operations

• Provide essential supplies and services to assist designated groups.

• It relieves suffering and helps civil authorities respond to crises.

• In most cases, Armed forces achieve success by overcoming conditions created by man-made or natural disasters.

• The ultimate goal of support is to meet the immediate needs of designated groups and to transfer responsibility quickly and efficiently to appropriate civilian authorities.

• The purpose of support activities, which consist of humanitarian assistance and environmental assistance, are to save lives; reduce suffering; recover essential infrastructure; improve quality of life; and, restore situations to normal.

Support Operations• Disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, and aid to civil

authority represent practical uses of military resources in peacetime.

• The leadership, organization, training, and equipment that the military has developed for war give it great capability to aid people in need, either at home or abroad.

• Rapid response in times of crisis is an Army tradition as long as its history.

Nation assistance • Employs the capabilities of the Indian Army in political, social, and economic development as

part of a broad foreign policy program.

• The resources of the military and its foreign counterparts have great utility in the development of a country's political, social, and economic infrastructure.

• Nation assistance is directed at improving the capabilities of the civilian sector of a foreign country. Development is a sufficient end in itself, but it also serves to prevent internal and external conflicts by alleviating some of their causes.

• It also influences the participation of foreign armies in the development of their own countries by enhancing their capabilities and encouraging their sense of public service.

• This is a military program in support of the recipient nation conducted under the leadership of other agencies of the Indian government. It is important and useful, but it is not a total solution to another country's problems.

Foreign Humanitarian Assistance• Programs relieve or reduce the results of natural or man-

made disasters or other conditions such as human pain, disease, hunger, or deprivation that might present a serious threat to life or result in great property damage or loss.

• Humanitarian assistance provided by Indian Armed Forces is limited in scope and duration. It is designed to supplement or complement the efforts of the host nation civil authorities or agencies that may have the primary responsibility for providing humanitarian assistance.

• Most foreign humanitarian assistance is conducted as joint or multinational operations. The most common operations are disaster relief and refugee programs.

Security Assistance• Has both peace and war-related applications.

• This is a group of programs to improve the capabilities of foreign military forces through material transfer, funding, and education and training.

• Security assistance can help the recipient stabilize the peace, ameliorate conflict, and prepare for war.

Domestic Support Operations

• To assist state and local law enforcement agencies during civil disturbances.

• The active Army and Air Force and their reserves are prohibited from law enforcement duties except as authorized by the Constitution.

Support to Civil Law Enforcement

• The military is extremely limited in the types of missions and operations it can undertake, barring a declaration of martial law.

• In its role as an institution of the Government , the primary responsibility is for providing military assistance to state and local authorities.

• When permitted by law, Military operations provide temporary support to domestic civil authorities.

Noncombatant Evacuation Operations (NEO)

• Normally relocate threatened noncombatants from a foreign country. Although principally conducted to evacuate Indian citizens, NEOs may also include selective evacuation of citizens from the host nation as well as citizens from other countries. NEO methods and timing are significantly influenced by diplomatic considerations.

• Under ideal circumstances there may be little or no opposition; however, opposition should be anticipated and operation planned like any combat operation.

• NEOs are similar to a raid in that the operation involves swift insertion of a force, temporary occupation of objectives, and ends with a planned withdrawal. It differs from a raid in that force used is normally limited to that required to protect the evacuees and the evacuation force.

• Forces penetrating foreign territory to conduct a NEO should be kept to the minimum consistent with mission accomplishment and the security of the force and the extraction and protection of evacuees.

STABILITY OPERATIONS

Stability Operations

• Apply military power to influence the political and civil environment, to facilitate diplomacy, and to interrupt specified illegal activities.

• Its purpose is to deter or thwart aggression; reassure allies, friendly governments, and agencies; encourage a weak or faltering government; stabilize a restless area; maintain or restore order; and, enforce agreements and policies.

Stability Operations

• Peace operations intend to solve political problems without resorting to war. They may take place when a breach of peace is threatened or when political violence occurs.

• Peace operations are not primarily military operations. They are political processes with military support.

• Military forces make important contributions to the process, but military personnel should never forget the essential political nature of these operations and the subordinate, supporting role of the armed forces.

• Peace operations are known by many different names, but they consist of five basic types.

Preventive Deployments

• Shows of force to demonstrate international resolve to solve the conflict by military means.

• They may be small, symbolic demonstrations or major deployments with significant combat capabilities.

• In either case, the intent is that demonstration of military power serve as an aid to diplomacy and that the forces not engage in combat.

Peace Building

• Establishes and strengthens political and social institutions for the peaceful resolution of disputes.

• Peace building may work before a conflict erupts into violence or after a cease-fire.

• These operations also include political, economic, and social infrastructure development in which the military may engage under the title nation assistance.

• Humanitarian assistance to alleviate short-term hardships may also aid in peace building.

Peacemaking

• It is the term the United Nations uses to describe the political process to resolve disputes.

• It consists of diplomacy, mediation, arbitration, judicial process, and good offices.

• The Indian military usually is not directly involved, but supportive operations contribute to the peacemaking process.

Peacekeeping

• Operations entail military forces and observers, used with the consent of the belligerent parties, to maintain a negotiated truce and promote conditions that support diplomatic efforts.

• These operations are sometimes described as "truce keeping."

• Peacekeeping forces and observers assure each party to a truce that the other is not violating its terms in preparation for resuming hostilities.

• Peacekeeping operations cannot solve the political problem; they only aid the diplomatic process.

• Consent of the belligerents is a necessary condition of peacekeeping. Consent distinguishes peacekeeping from other types of peace operations.

Peace Enforcement

• Goes beyond peacekeeping and combines coercive measures with diplomacy to compel the belligerents to stop fighting and initiate negotiations.

• In peace enforcement, the force conducting the operation does not have the consent of all the belligerents and is seeking to make them do things they do not want to do.

• This difference has important implications for the way the force must operate to accomplish its mission and provide for its own security.

CONCLUSION

• The National Disaster Management Plan should cooperate in the development of plans and protocols to be used when military resources are needed in disaster relief.

• One of the fundamental ideas is that such resources should only be called upon when the normal response planned mechanisms is insufficient.

• Military resources do not, and should not replace the humanitarian activities made by civilian bodies, but they should complement and help them.

• Military - civilian cooperation will be needed either because of the urgency or the scale of the disaster, or because special tasks have to be performed.

• It should not be assumed that civilian organizations would always, as matters of course, seek cooperation with military forces.

• While military can be justified in terms of its capability to access enormous logistical capacity and to manage local security considerations, it should be acknowledged that working with the military is an exception to normal practice.

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