The present work is focused on the involuntary obstruction problem between stakeholders in humanitarian operations, specifically in search and rescue operations. The archetype of accidental adversaries is used to represent this situation. First, this works presents a brief introduction related to humanitarian logistics and collaboration or coordination problems. Then, the archetype of accidental adversaries is described and adapted for humanitarian operations. Finally, a dynamic model is presented, and the performance was evaluated in two scenarios, the first one considers operations obstruction and the second one considers resources shared between stakeholders as a collaborative strategy. As a conclusion, was found that the establishment of alliances or collaborative strategies between humanitarian organizations at the same level enhances the performance of rescue operations increasing the rescue rate. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.