John S. Burnett on the tragic consequences of appropriating unwitting relief workers as soldiers in the War on Terror: Before the killing of his colleagues, Mr. Gluck, an American, had expressed concern that the neutrality of all relief workers employed by nongovernmental organizations in the post- Sept. 11 world was being compromised: "The Americans are pretending that NGO's are with them fighting the war against terror, and they are not. That puts them in danger. We want to be relevant medically and irrelevant militarily and politically." He himself was held hostage for more than three weeks in a moldy root cellar in Chechnya because, in part, his kidnappers questioned his group's impartiality. Neutrality has never been far from the surface in relief work. When I was worked for the United Nations World Food Program in Somalia, we distributed 50-kilogram sacks of grain emblazoned with the American flag and "Gift of the People of the United States of America.'' Somalis readily accepted the aid but it was clear that our professed neutrality was suspect. James Morris, director of the World Food Program, explained, "It is important to see who cares about them, to know the genuine goodness of the United States." But at what point does the American gift to the needy in a war zone become a political weapon in the battle of influence, in the war of winning hearts and minds? Mr. Morris told me that President Bush has told him that the United States "will never use food as a political weapon." Other friends of the president seem to differ - to the horror of relief workers who increasingly are targets of those who think otherwise. The demand on relief agencies to shed that protective cloak of neutrality - despite the dangers to those in the field - has never been more aggressive than it is today. Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressing nongovernmental organizations in 2001, spelled out a revised policy on relief work: that "just as surely as our diplomats and military, American NGO's s are out there serving and sacrificing on the front lines of freedom NGO's are such a force multiplier for us, such an important part of our combat team." Those remarks sent shock waves through the relief community, which would rather not be part of the combat team in the war on terrorism. More recently, Secretary Powell's words were supported in a speech by Andrew S. Natsios, administrator of Usaid, the world's most generous food aid donor. At the Interaction Forum last year, he told relief groups that if they received American financing, they were "an arm of the U.S. government.''If aid organizations did not show a stronger link to American foreign policy he threatened, according to the forum, to tear up their contracts and find new partners.