U.S. entrepreneurs want to tear up the international aid system’s rulebook

Grace was scared and hungry. The 30-year-old had fled the South Sudanese town of Nasir in March after a deadly raid on a military garrison and retaliatory bombings. As her house burned, Grace said, she grabbed her three children and ran.

She had spent her savings on a bag of sorghum, but the little ones were still hungry. Last month, Grace heard that free food was being given out in Nasir — fat white bags of beans and flour emblazoned with the South Sudanese flag. On June 16, the bags tumbled from a light-colored plane that flew low over the caramel river and green fields near her home.

But Grace refused to go back.

She didn’t know the airdrops were being coordinated by a U.S. company, Fogbow, that had been hired by officials in South Sudan’s isolated regime. But she knew the food was coming from the same government that had bombed her town — and she feared it was a scheme to lure civilians like her back under its control and bolster its own legitimacy with their return.

They “killed my neighbors and now I should trust them?” she asked over a crackly phone line. “Why?” Like other residents and aid officials in Sudan and South Sudan, she spoke on the condition she be identified by her first name, or on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from the military or armed opposition. The Washington Post was able to identify one person whose family said he had returned to the area and was killed.

The American venture capitalists who founded Fogbow want to shake up the world’s humanitarian aid system, drawing on the skills of U.S. Special Operations forces to deliver food to the world’s most desperate and inaccessible places: Gaza, Sudan and South Sudan. Fogbow says it can deliver aid faster, cheaper and farther into danger zones at a time when humanitarian donations are plummeting.

But aid groups warn that private companies working as “aid for hire” could end up harming vulnerable people. Humanitarians say that companies like Fogbow are bypassing an international system carefully built over decades, turning aid distribution into a private, for-profit venture, lacking oversight or transparency, and often driven by the agendas of combatants.

Their activities risk endangering people in need, aid officials say, eroding hard-won access for established relief groups and legitimizing bad-faith actors who use aid as a weapon of war. And most of their contracts are secret, making it difficult to confirm Fogbow’s claims that its distributions are more cost-effective.

“These for-profit companies are not working to save lives,” said Kate Almquist Knopf, a former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Africa. “They are working to make money.”

For decades, charities have delivered aid to civilians under four core humanitarian principles: humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence. In practice, this means aid must go wherever it is needed (humanity), making no distinctions between those receiving it (impartiality); humanitarian actors cannot take sides in a conflict (neutrality); and their work must be autonomous from the objectives of the warring parties (independence).

The principles, enshrined by the U.N. General Assembly, are designed to protect the most vulnerable. Critics say they can also be an excuse for inaction.

At the heart of the dispute is a fundamental and far-reaching question, and the answer could reshape the future of aid delivery: Is it better to stick to humanitarian principles, even if it means not helping, or break them to reach those in need, regardless of the potential to harm civilians or benefit to combatants?

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ former top humanitarian official, said if Fogbow and other for-profit groups can show cost savings, there could be a way to work with them. But Knopf said these companies function like “humanitarian mercenaries,” delivering aid for whoever is willing to pay, without regard for the possible consequences.

“Jettisoning the decades of hard lessons learned of humanitarian response … and compromising the most basic principle of ‘do no harm’ when more lives are at stake than ever before is immoral,” she said.

Mick Mulroy, the company’s president, rejected that. “USAID hires private companies all the time to deliver aid. That doesn’t make us moral or immoral,” he said. Fogbow founder Brook Jerue is more blunt.

“What is the solution?” he asked. “Not to provide the food?”

Fogbow staffers think the old rules need revision. A former F/A-18 pilot, Jerue formed Fogbow with ex-diplomat Steven Fox and banker Robb Fipp in May 2022. The three of them provided Fogbow’s start-up capital and funds for pilot projects, used as proof of concept to seek further funding from donors. Fogbow tapped a former Navy SEAL, a former top Pentagon official and a longtime U.N. staffer to run their operation. They persuaded a former commander in the Marine Corps, a former U.S. ambassador and the ex-head of the Nobel Prize-winning World Food Program to serve as advisers.

They began thinking about how to move aid more quickly into disaster areas, such as the Philippines during hurricane season.

Then, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. Israel went to war in Gaza.

Gaza

Within two weeks of Oct. 7, Fogbow began formulating a plan to get aid into Gaza, Mulroy said. The son of hippies, Mulroy writes essays on Stoic philosophy, worked as a CIA officer and served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East during Donald Trump’s first term as president.

“We all met up in Tel Aviv and had marathon brainstorming sessions,” Mulroy said.

At the beginning of the war, Israel sealed Gaza’s borders and blocked all aid from entering. It partially relented under pressure from the Biden administration, allowing in some trucks carrying food and medicine, but aid groups said it was just a small fraction of what was needed. Israel claimed, without providing evidence, that supplies were being systematically stolen by Hamas and that the U.N. was to blame for the spiraling humanitarian crisis. Gazans ran out of food and hospitals ran out of medicine.

Unable or unwilling to pressure Israel into letting in more trucks — which the World Food Program said was the only way to head off mass starvation — Washington devised a series of elaborate and unsuccessful work-arounds. First came American airdrops, which were quickly abandoned when the plummeting parcels killed aid seekers. Biden officials looked next to the Mediterranean, and Fogbow saw an opening.

“We knew you could bring in a lot by sea to supplement a ground corridor,” Mulroy said.

The company designed a maritime corridor, secured $28.5 million from Qatar and rented ocean barges to ship flour from Cyprus, but abandoned the plan after Biden decided the U.S. military would construct a $230 million pier off the coast of Gaza. Fogbow sourced and moved 1,100 tons of wheat flour across the pier on behalf of Global Communities and other aid agencies, the company said. But the pier disintegrated after 20 days in operation.

Israel’s blockade tested the humanitarian principles like no previous conflict. Some argued getting a little aid in was better than nothing. Families in Gaza were subsisting on animal feed. Doctors were amputating children’s limbs without anesthetic. Babies were dying of malnutrition. But Israel refused to allow in aid, and Washington — its biggest ally — did not cut military or financial assistance.

Working closely with Israel, a group of former U.S. officials and business executives began formulating a new model for supplying humanitarian aid to the besieged strip — an effort that would culminate in the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Last month, GHF opened four aid distribution points in Gaza, outsourcing security and logistics to subcontractor Safe Reach Solutions (SRS). Gunfire has been reported in the vicinity almost every day, sometimes from Israeli military positions, witnesses have told The Post. More than 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded while trying to get food, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Asked for comment, SRS referred The Post to a statement from a GHF spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said the group had received death threats: “GHF has delivered more than 50 million meals in less than five weeks and there has not been a single incident or fatality at or [in the] surrounding vicinity of any of our sites.”

SRS, which was set up this year, has striking structural similarities with Fogbow. Both recruit retired military officers who served in U.S. Special Operations. Both have worked in Gaza. Both said they had ex-WFP chief David Beasley as an adviser, although Beasley told The Post he had never been associated with SRS.

And both are private, for-profit companies backed by recently established charitable foundations registered in the U.S. and Switzerland (SRS is funded by GHF, Fogbow by the Maritime Humanitarian Aid Foundation). Philip Grant, the director of Trial International, a Swiss nongovernmental organization that works on issues related to international justice, said his organization was concerned by the sudden proliferation of for-profit companies active in conflict zones.

“There’s very limited control over the activities of foundations in Switzerland,” he said. “For us that’s highly problematic if they could be breaking international humanitarian law.” His group has filed legal submissions asking Swiss authorities to monitor GHF.

Jerue said Fogbow isn’t large enough to handle distributions in Gaza. And it wasn’t the kind of work he wanted to do.

“We don’t have any weapons, no security,” he said. “I did that enough in the military and I’m done with that.”

So Fogbow looked elsewhere.

Sudan

Late last year, the company put together an air operation to deliver 1,185 tons of food to the mountains of Sudan’s Kordofan region, where fighting between the military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary had cut off access for aid agencies.

After coordination with the combatants, half the aid went to a town controlled by the military; half was dropped in remote rebel-held areas where famine was taking hold. The food was flown from neighboring South Sudan after being inspected by government and rebel representatives at the airport in the capital of Juba.

Fogbow funded the first two days of flights itself, founders said. Three days later, they partnered with American evangelical charity Samaritan’s Purse, which had received a $30 million grant from USAID to get aid into Kordofan.

Flights ran for three months from the end of October. Fogbow said it charged 5 percent of the grant for the first month and 8 percent for the second. Samaritan’s Purse ran the third month alone. Jerue said Fogbow lost $33,000 on the operation.

Neither Fogbow nor Samaritan’s Purse had much experience airdropping food. On the first few missions, almost all the bags exploded when they hit the ground.

“People were so hungry they combed the ground for the grains,” said Eric Oehlerich, the former Navy SEAL and Fogbow’s chief operating officer. “Later we learned to bag it up to six or seven times so that even if some of the bags split the rest would survive impact.”

Ken Isaacs, the vice president of programs at Samaritan’s Purse, said the organization distributed the food, an account corroborated by an international aid worker in the region.

“We proved it could be done and have been asked to do it in other places,” Oehlerich said.

South Sudan

The Fogbow team reconvened months later in a hotel opposite the Juba airport. South Sudan’s government had seen the Sudan airlift and proposed one of their own: dropping food to towns along the Upper Nile, where thousands had fled the fighting.

South Sudan had erupted into civil war in 2013, only two years after it became the world’s newest nation. A partial peace deal was signed in 2018, but the war never completely ended, and violence has surged again this year.

The government in Juba is an international pariah. Corruption is entrenched. A U.N. arms embargo has been in place since 2018. During Trump’s first term, the U.S. imposed sanctions on current and former officials for undermining the peace process.

“I’ve talked to the Houthis, I’ve talked to the Taliban. I’ve talked to bad guys all over the world,” said Beasley, the former WFP head. “You have to if you are feeding millions of people.”

The area targeted for Fogbow’s airdrops had been tense for years. Residents said the military mistreated locals, and they demanded the government soldiers be replaced by a force that included some of their own. Instead, the government sent militias from a rival ethnic group. Anger built.

On March 4, local youths — known as the White Army because they cover their bodies in ash — overran the Nasir garrison, shooting captured soldiers and firing on a U.N. helicopter that came to rescue them, killing a peacekeeper. The government retaliated with incendiary bombs, which killed at least 58 people and horrifically burned dozens more, according to Human Rights Watch.

Ambassador Chol Anjongo, South Sudan’s minister of presidential affairs, denied the use of incendiary bombs. But he conceded that after decades of conflict the government too often turned to force.

“Things that we should have solved amicably or through negotiations, we would always resort to violence,” he said.

South Sudan’s government said the food aid was intended as a peace offering. Officials hired Fogbow and Bar Aviation, a Ugandan company, to drop two sachets of salt, 37 pounds of beans and 26 pounds of maize flour per family into three deserted towns: Nasir, Torbar and Ulang. Aid agencies active in the area had fled during the attacks, along with almost all civilians. Requests that the aid be dropped closer to where people had sought refuge was ignored, a community elder told The Post.

A 15-year-old recounted how his family of eight ran into the bush and had been surviving on rations from the last U.N. distribution. The family ate once a day, he said. The rations ran out two weeks ago. His 5-year-old sister cried with hunger, he said. When she stopped crying and lay down silently, his mother went to get the airdropped food in secret, he said.

But the family told no one. “I’m afraid my neighbors might find out and attack us,” the boy said. “They do not want to receive the food.”

Albino Akol Atak, South Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs, insisted that “people have to come back. And for them to come back, we must provide this life assistance.”

But those who fled said there was good reason to stay away. Gatdet Tor, a fisherman in Nasir, went back to the area a couple of weeks ago to search for his missing father, a relative told The Post. He said soldiers arrested Tor and two others, accused them of being rebels, then tortured them for three nights. Tor died, the relative said, citing an account from one of the men who was later released. Villagers fished Tor’s body from the river and shared a picture with the family, according to the relative.

South Sudan’s military spokesman said he was unaware of the incident.

Satellite imagery of Nasir showed big burn scars appearing twice in March, coinciding with the government’s bombing campaign, and then a growing cluster of dwellings in April and May near a military outpost in the old U.N. facility, suggesting that residents who felt comfortable with the military came back. Elsewhere in the town, dwellings appear to have been damaged, destroyed or removed, the satellite imagery showed.

During the recent Fogbow drop over Nasir, few people could be seen.

“When we first started dropping, there was no one here,” Oehlerich shouted above the engines. “But now the people are starting to come back.”

Griffiths, the former U.N. official, said fearful families should not have to choose between safety and food.

“This is a weaponization of aid,” he said. “You cannot use aid as a lure.”

“Do I want to bring people back into harm’s way?” Jerue said when asked about the operation. “No. Of course not.”

He sighed. “We did what we thought was helpful,” he said. “We made our best-faith effort.”

Value for money

Fogbow markets itself as more nimble and cost-effective than traditional aid organizations.

Massive cuts to USAID and reductions in the aid budgets of other nations are forcing the humanitarian system to evolve, Beasley said, and if services cannot be delivered more cheaply, “people are going to starve to death.”

Fogbow’s contracts are not public. Neither company executives, the South Sudanese government nor Bar Aviation would confirm the value of the airdrop agreement.

So The Post called warehouses, aviation and trucking companies and commodities traders to get price estimates for the food and services provided in South Sudan, arriving at a minimum cost of $3.3 million. Fogbow said their fee was 6 percent of the total contract value and that they paid their own expenses.

Larger, established organizations benefit from economies of scale and longtime relationships with transport providers. Officials at the World Food Program said it would cost them an estimated $1.3 million to buy, transport and airdrop the same amount of food in the same place.

Fogbow is shopping for its own plane now. Mulroy said they will keep looking for partners.

“We want to be part of” the humanitarian community, he said, “not replace it.”

Brian Perlman in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/08/fogbow-aid-delivery-gaza-sudan/