This week marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. bombing and subsequent invasion of Iraq. Our nation’s two decade entanglement there has led to both short-term reflexive events, from worldwide anti-war protests to oil market disruption, and long-lived geopolitical tremors. Many have written and spoken about the false pretext for the war and on the legacy of suffering and costs. 

We at the Charity & Security Network (C&SN), while recognizing these realities, have a different focus, one that is rarely front and center in these discussions: the numerous challenges spawned from the U.S. (and subsequent international) reaction to 9/11 in the form of overly broad counterterrorism laws, policies and practices that undermine civil society. 

These problematic counterterrorism measures include: the pervasive use of sanctions on governments that typically punish people and civil society, not regimes; the obstacles non-government organizations (NGOs) faces when trying to engage in financial transactions due to the extreme risk averse nature of financial institutions; the fundamentally broad and prohibitive material support statute that underpins the waterfront of many U.S. counterterrorism regulations; and politically motivated attacks through the use of legal means aiming to delegitimize, defund, and discredit organizations who have differing or dissenting viewpoints, a strategy known as “lawfare attacks”. 

These obstacles were greatly expanded after the Iraq invasion and the “War on Terror”, and continue to make it difficult for humanitarian, peacebuilding and human rights groups to carry out their work in the most effective ways. Delivering life-saving assistance to places like Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan in the wake of natural disasters or during ongoing conflict is, at best, a Herculean task.  This is because U.S. counterterrorism strategy perpetuates exactly the problem it is meant to solve by entrenching a cycle of violence through responding to crisis through force, rather than sustaining long-term peacebuilding and community development efforts – strategies championed by civil society. The cruel irony is both civil society and counterterrorism look to achieve the same goals: to end conflict, prevent violent extremism, and create sustained stability. 

To be sure, some recent steps have been taken by the UN and the U.S. that aim to remedy these regulatory overreaches, but the efforts are not enough. Last December the UN Security Council adopted a resolution, led by the U.S. and Ireland, that established a humanitarian carveout  across all UN sanctions regimes. Two weeks later the U.S. followed suit and issued broad new and amended “general licenses” under the auspices of the Treasury Department that are designed to greatly expand the kinds of critical aid and support that populations need to thrive. 

In 2019 U.S. lawmakers passed the Global Fragility Act, a landmark bill meant to pivot U.S. foreign policy away from responding to crises with violence and instead promote prevention and peacebuilding and address societal grievances at the grassroots level – a strategy which makes local civil society even more essential.

NGOs often struggle to access financial services, especially when working in conflict zones with terrorist presence – regions where their work is needed the most. In 2020 the U.S. government banking agencies highlighted the extensive due diligence performed by NGOs to mitigate financial risk, and noted the adverse impacts denying banking services to NGOs has on life-saving work. But, financial institutions still often prefer not to facilitate transfers to these regions in order to avoid any uncertainty. Financial institutions, after all, are not bound to honor requests for wire transfers or other transactions. 

These steps are welcome and have the potential to make a real difference in the lives of millions of people who depend on humanitarian aid, peacebuilding and basic economic support for survival. However, these changes are recent and it remains to be seen how quickly and broadly they are able to create on-the-ground improvements. 

Twenty years ago the U.S. invaded Iraq ostensibly in response to a terrorist attack. Today many find it difficult to argue that the outcomes of that war have been worth the economic costs, and they certainly have not been worth the lives lost. The U.S. took the lead, and international bodies followed, in responding by creating and expanding laws in the name of fighting terrorism, and in doing so created a complex web of counterterrorism measures that has strangled civil society. Today, if you ask NGOs seeking to aid civilians in need, bring societies out of conflict, and defend the rights of civil society if those changes have been worth it you would be hard pressed to find any that say yes. 

The Charity & Security Network will continue our efforts to raise awareness about these issues and advocate on behalf of civil society organizations and their critical work around the world.