Defining Criteria for Handover to Civilian Officials in Relief Operations

摘要

The handoff of responsibility for relief operations from military to civilian control is a complex affair with few definitive guidelines. Department of Defense Directive (DoDD) 3000.05 directs that the military shall be prepared to accomplish 'all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians are unable to do so,' but the metrics which define success for these operations are ill-defined. Similarly, in a humanitarian relief effort, which shares many characteristics with stability operations, the criteria defining the endstate for the military s involvement and transition of responsibility to civilian control likewise remain ambiguous. This is critical because the number of relief operations, given global climate change and a burgeoning global population, will likely only increase, This paper will attempt to answer these questions by exploring several case studies from our recent past with varying degrees of inherent security issues: Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina and OPERATION UNIFIED ASSISTANCE, the 2005 Indonesian tsunami relief effort will be compared to determine what metrics were used to measure success and see if there is any correlation that can be used to draw a conclusion applicable to current and future domestic foreign relief operations.