Epilogue

Summary

Like Jim Jarmush’s movie Night on Earth, this book narrates a tale of failed communication, in this instance between aid providers (drivers) and aid recipients (passengers). In exploring the work of Western humanitarians in the post-1918 Near East, we might be lured beyond the critical and into the cynical, but it is a temptation we must resist if we wish to offer a nuanced and balanced historical interpretation of a phenomenon that has become ubiquitous in the twenty-first century. This book’s investigation of the contours and essence of Western international humanitarianism in the Near East demonstrates that humanitarian actions, like all human actions, were (and still are) inherently imperfect. The paradox of care Bretherton refers to in the epigraph of this epilogue applies to international humanitarians, then and now. Humanitarian politics were at play during and in the aftermath of the First World War, just as war continues to shape humanitarianism today. As we have seen, whatever their official narratives, humanitarian organizations were entirely dependent on evolving conflict and diplomatic situations that they could not control. Night on Earth demonstrates that the range and scope of humanitarian actions were inversely proportional to the ability of sovereign states, societies, or communities to relieve and rehabilitate themselves. The greater the fragility of the sovereign state, the greater the room for maneuver for these institutions, a maxim that still holds today, as critical work undertaken by Mahmood Mamdani and Jessica Whyte around “the responsibility to protect” has indicated.