Humanitarian Organizations in the ‘Greater Near East’: A Shield Against the Soviet Russia

Abstract

The contested political geography of the Near East can be best illustrated as a relief and reconstruction land in the interwar period. Desperate situation of the refugees and the war-stricken people in the aftermath of the World War I (WWI) alerted the humanitarian organizations in the West. They initiated various international assistance programs and reinforced modern humanitarianism. This study probes into the post-war humanitarian organizations and their political trajectories. It is suggested that these state-sponsored agencies played a strategic role in the socio-economic colonization of the ‘Greater Near East’ stretching from the unstable Eastern Europe to the Soviet dominated Caucasus. This area is defined by the clashes between the liberal West and the Soviet Russia in the post war period. The underlying idea is that modern humanitarian organizations developed on the fault lines of the Eastern Question. As the gravity centre of this question shifted from the Ottoman Empire to the Soviet Russia in the post-WWI period, the Western liberals changed their humanitarian strategies to respond to this new challenge. The colonial engagements of the humanitarian organizations on the ex-Ottoman territories have already been revealed, however their operations on the Soviet influence area requires further examination for a world systemic analysis.