In memoriam: William Garvelink, a humanitarian in the American interest

Ambassador Bill Garvelink spent more than 40 years responding to some of the world’s most complex and devastating humanitarian crises. His tireless efforts helped to redefine the role of emergency humanitarian assistance as both a moral imperative and a pillar of American global leadership — a tool through which the U.S. could build trust, unlock diplomacy, and project its highest ideals into the world’s hardest places. I worked most closely with Bill after he joined CSIS as a senior adviser, following his tenure as U.S. ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2007 to 2010. His office was next to mine, and his stories — equal parts dramatic and illuminating — shaped how I think about fragility, disaster response, and the role of humanitarian aid in U.S. foreign policy. Despite decades spent in tough, dangerous environments, he never lost his sense of humor, his sharp clarity, or his belief in the strategic power of American leadership when it shows up with urgency and purpose. Over his career, Bill led more than two dozen major disaster responses and chaired U.S. government task forces for some of the most urgent global emergencies of the early 21st century, including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and the 2006 Lebanon war. He began his career in 1976 as one of only two human rights specialists on Capitol Hill, before joining USAID in 1979. By the late 1980s, he was leading field operations for USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, overseeing responses to famine, armed conflict, pandemics, and natural disasters across five continents. His work involved real sacrifice — he suffered a detached retina when he came to northern Iraq in May 1991 to act as the emergency response leader for Operation Provide Comfort, a relief operation to aid Kurdish refugees. He ultimately lost sight in the eye. He earned a Ph.D. in hard knocks through his years of rough travel, which invariably took him to places without electricity, running water, security, or functioning governance. But as his former colleagues will attest, he led from the front, never asking others to endure more than he would himself. At a time when the United States is rethinking how it engages with the world, Bill’s legacy is a powerful reminder of the strategic value of humanitarian response. He understood that one of America’s core advantages is its unmatched capacity to respond at scale and at speed when disaster strikes. His career coincided with the post-Cold War expansion of U.S. foreign assistance and humanitarian operations. In that world, Bill was the equivalent of a four-star general in a sprawling, global aid network that advanced American leadership and credibility. He was a central figure in some of the most consequential examples of “disaster diplomacy” in U.S. history. In 1989, Bill helped negotiate the humanitarian corridor that launched Operation Lifeline Sudan, or OLS, which brought lifesaving aid into southern Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War and pulled the region back from famine. The precedent of humanitarian ceasefires — novel at the time — also opened up diplomatic space for peace talks between the north and the south of the country, ultimately facilitating South Sudan’s independence. Bill later called OLS “one of the most remarkable relief efforts the world has ever done,” and he was right. In 2004, following the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 240,000 people and had massive geopolitical reverberations across South Asia, Bill chaired the USAID-led task force that coordinated $908 million in U.S. assistance — more than ten times what China contributed. That response flipped public opinion of the United States in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country by population and, prior to the disaster, one of the most anti-American countries on the planet. In 2003, a Pew survey found that 59% of Indonesians had confidence in Osama bin Laden, while only 15% viewed the United States favorably. Following the U.S. response, almost 80% of Indonesians said their view of the United States had improved, while support for al Qaeda dropped by half. In the northern Indonesian province of Aceh, decades of violence were also ended by the disaster, partly because humanitarian aid became the catalyst for peace. Humanitarian diplomacy opened doors in other places where formal channels were frozen. In 2003, Bill led the politically sensitive and strategically important U.S. Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART, to Bam, Iran, after a 6.6-magnitude earthquake — marking the first operational contact between the U.S. and Iran since 1979. Five years later, when Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar, his team played a pivotal role in pressing the country’s military junta to accept around $85 million in U.S. aid — an opening that prefigured Myanmar’s brief diplomatic thaw. These outcomes, Bill would say, are why we respond — not just because it’s right, but because it’s effective, strategically essential, and fundamentally American. As ambassador to the DRC, Bill supported democratic institution-building, focused on conflict-related displacement, and made efforts to ensure that essential services reached those most in need. He remained invested in the DRC’s development long after his ambassadorship ended: For 15 years, he was my first call on anything related to the country. He also helped design and launch the $3.5 billion Feed the Future initiative, and later advised International Medical Corps on pandemic readiness — years before COVID-19 brought personal protective equipment logistics into the mainstream. Garvelink spent decades improving coordination between the military and USAID on humanitarian relief operations, which eventually led to the creation of the Office of Military Affairs at USAID in 2005, a name that was later changed to the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation, which dramatically improved cooperation between the U.S. Department of Defense and USAID. Ambassador Garvelink’s impact is greater than most will ever know. He helped save hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of lives. He deserves to be remembered alongside the great American humanitarians of his generation: including Bob Gersony, Fred Cuny, Andrew Natsios, Rick Barton, and Catherine Bertini. U.S. humanitarian response still commands rare bipartisan support — a testimony to the strategic and practical returns of the kind of work Bill championed. He is survived by his wife, Linda, and by a generation of American officers and humanitarian professionals who learned from his example. His passing is a deep loss, but his legacy is unmistakable: Humanitarian response, executed swiftly, capably, and compassionately, is often the strongest diplomatic message America can send. His life and career are a testament to the kind of leadership the world still expects from us.