USAID Spying In Latin America

By Nil Nikandrov
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

The ejection of USAID from Russia was a long-awaited and welcome development. Moscow has repeatedly warned its US partners via an array of channels of communication that the tendency of USAID to interfere with Russia’s domestic affairs was unacceptable and, particularly, that the radicalism of its pet NGOs in the Caucasus would not be tolerated. When, on October 1, the decision made by the Russian leadership takes effect, the Moscow-based USAID staff which has been stubbornly ignoring the signals will have to pack and relocate to other countries facing allegations of authoritarian rule…In Latin America, USAID has long earned a reputation of an organization whose offices are, in fact, intelligence centers scheming to undermine legitimate governments in a number of the continent’s countries. The truth that USAID hosts CIA and US Defense Intelligence Agency operatives is not deeply hidden, as those seem to have played a role in every Latin American coup, providing financial, technical, and ideological support to respective oppositions. USAID also typically seeks engagement with the local armed forces and law-enforcement agencies, recruiting within them agents ready to lend a hand to the opposition when the opportunity arises.

To varying extents, all of the Latin American populist leaders felt the USAID pressure. No doubt, Venezuela’s H. Chavez is the number one target on the USAID enemies list. Support for the regime’s opponents in the country shrank considerably since the massive 2002-2004 protests as the nation saw the government refocus on socioeconomic issues, health care, housing construction, and youth policies. The opposition had to start relying more on campaigns in the media, around 80% of which are run by the anti-Chavez camp. Panic-provoking rumors about imminent food supply disruptions, overstated reports about the crime level in Venezuela (where, actually, there is less crime than in most countries friendly to the US), and allegations of government incompetence in response to technological disasters which became suspiciously frequent as the elections drew closer are bestowed on the audiences as a part of the subversive scenario involving a network ofVenezuelan NGOs. In some cases, the membership of the latter can be limited to 3-4 people, but, coupled to strong media support, the opposition can prove to be an ominous force. Pro-Chavez commentators are worried that USAID agents will contest the outcome of the vote and, synchronously, paramilitary groups will plunge Venezuelan cities into chaos to give the US a pretext for a military intervention.

USAID is known to have contributed to the recent failed coup in Ecuador, during which president R. Correa narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Elite police forces heavily sponsored by the US and the media which made use of the liberal free speech legislation to smear Correa were the key actors in the outbreak. Subsequently, it took Correa serious efforts to get a revised media code approved in the parliament contrary to the USAID-lobbied resistance.

Several bids to displace the government of Evo Morales clearly employed the USAID operative potential in Bolivia. According to journalist and author Eva Golinger, USAID poured at least $85m into destabilizing the regime in the country. Initially, the US hoped to achieve the desired result by entraining the separatists from the predominantly white Santa Cruz district. When the plan collapsed, USAID switched to courting the Indian communities with which the ecology-oriented NGOs started to get in touch a few years before. Disorienting accounts were fed to the Indians that the construction of an expressway across their region would leave the communities landless, and the Indian protest marches to the capital that followed ate away at the public standing of Morales. It transpired shortly that many of the marches including those staged by the TIPNIS group, had been coordinated by the US embassy. The job was done by embassy official Eliseo Abelo, a USAID curator for the Bolivian indigenous population. His phone conversations with the march leaders were intercepted by the Bolivian counter-espionage agency and made public, so that he had to escape from the country while the US diplomatic envoy to Bolivia complained about the phone tapping.

In June 2012, foreign ministers of the ALBA bloc countries passed a resolution on USAID. It read: «Citing foreign aid planning and coordination as a pretext, USAID openly meddles in sovereign countries’ domestic affairs, sponsoring NGOs and protest activities intended to destabilize legitimate governments which are unfavorable from Washington’s perspective. Documents released from the US Department of State archives carry evidence that financial support had been provided to parties and groups oppositional to the governments of ALBA countries, a practice tantamount to undisguised and audacious interference on the US behalf. In most ALBA countries, USAID operates via its extensive NGO networks, which it runs outside of the due legal framework, and also illicitly funds media and political groups. We are convinced that our countries have no need for external financial support to maintain the democracy established by Latin American and Caribbean nations, or for externally guided organizations which try to weaken or sideline our government institutions». The ministers called the ALBA leaderships to immediately deport USAID representatives who threaten the sovereignty and political stability of the countries where they work. The resolution was signed by Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Paul J. Bonicelli was confirmed by the US Senate as the USAID Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean last May. Former USAID chief Mark Feuerstein gained such notoriety in Latin America as the brain behind the ousters of the legitimate leaders of Honduras and Paraguaythat the continent’s politicians simply had to learn to avoid him. The USAID credibility is increasingly drying up, and it is unlikely that Bonicelli, a PhD and a conservative, will be able to reverse the tendency. His record includes heading various USAID divisions and «promoting democracy» in concert with the US National Security Council.

Bonicelli’s views are reflected in his papers in the Foreign Policy journal. To Bonicelli, Chavez is not a democrat but a leader eager to get rid of all of his opponents. The new USAID boss holds that, apart from the drug threat, Chavez – having inspired populist followers in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua – poses the biggest challenge to the US interests in Latin America. Bonicelli therefore urges the US to prop up the Venezuelan opposition in every way possible, providing material support and training, so that it can maximally take part in elections and civilian activities.

Another paper by Bonicelli portrays Russia’s present-day evolution as grim regress and a slide towards «neo-Tsarism». Based on the perception, Bonicelli argues that the West should hold Russia and its leaders accountable in whatever concerns freedom and democracy – even if freedom in the country is important to just a handful of people – and cites the case of Poland where the US used to stand by Lech Wałęsa.

Chances are slim that a reform of USAID would restore the agency’s credibility in Latin America. Sticking to a trimmed list of priorities, USAID axed a few minor programs and shut down its offices in Chile, Argentine, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Panama, with Brazil next in line. USAID believes that the above countries are already in reasonable shape and no longer need assistance, so that the agency can throw its might against its main foes – the populists and Cuba, and do its best to have the politicians unfriendly to Washington removed across the Western Hemisphere. The stated USAID budget for Latin America is $750m, but estimates show that the secret part of the funding, which is leveraged by the CIA, may total twice the amount.

Concerns In Pakistan USAID Officials Are CIA Spies

In The Wake Of Raymond Davis, Suspicion Abounds

By Jason Ditz,
April 29, 2011
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

Raymond Davis was presented to the Pakistani government as a technical support worker for the US Consulate in Lahore, so it came as quite a surprise when, in the wake of his arrest on double-murder charges, he turned out to be the de facto CIA head for Pakistan.

He wasn’t alone. The Davis fallout led Pakistani spy agencies to determine that the US indeed had hundreds of active CIA operatives working in the nation above and beyond the officially reported ones working with the government.

Now, Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau has turned its eyes toward USAID, the official US government aid agency. There is concern, according to reports, that the various USAID “corruption” scandals surrounding inefficient projects are evidence that the agency is being used as cover for CIA activities.

The US has denied the allegations, and surely a US government agency needs no ulterior motive to be monstrously inefficient. Still, it brings more unwelcome attention to the agency at a time when it is arguing that its programs are “vital” to the war effort in various nations, and a time when its funding is under growing scrutiny.

US Funnels Aid To Coptic Christians

Documents Show

By Emad Mekay,
August 17, 2007
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

The United States has quietly funneled millions of dollars of its annual aid to Egypt to groups among the country’s increasingly restless Christian Coptic community and to areas with large Christian populations as part of an effort to "empower" the religious minority in a little-noticed multi-year aid program, according to a review of several recent congressional documents.

Most of the money has gone through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is part of the US State Department. The program benefited more than 40 Christian Coptic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as of July 2006 at a cost of dozens of millions of dollars of US taxpayers’ money.

Neither the State Department nor USAID has made many public comments about the delicate program as Egyptian Christian Coptic activism has reached unprecedented levels both in Egypt and in the United States over the past few years.

Egypt is already struggling to contain tensions between its Muslim and Christian populations, simmering over a number of issues, including a spate of recent crossover conversions between Islam and Orthodox Christianity.

The news of the USAID meddling with the Christian community was initially reported in July by this reporter for America In Arabic News Agency, a US-based news service publishing in Arabic. The angry reaction among some Egyptian columnists and opinion makers, if not the Egyptian government, has confirmed long-standing suspicion that once in the open, US intervention often prompts widespread rejection among Egyptians.

The most detailed account of how the United States has silently targeted the Egyptian Christian community with both humanitarian and political assistance came in a written document submitted to Congress last year by James R. Kunder, USAID assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East, the most senior officer overseeing aid to Egypt.

During a hearing before the US House of Representatives’ Sub-Committees on Middle East and Central Asia on May 17, 2006, Kunder read an abbreviated version of the testimony and made only a few mentions of the issue.

But a copy of his full written testimony for the record, obtained in its entirety by IPS, gives a first peek into how USAID has put US government dollars into what the senior US official repeatedly called areas "with significant Coptic populations."

"USAID’s projects in health, education, infrastructure, and civil society development operate in every district with a significant Coptic population, mainly in Upper Egypt and cities such as Cairo and Alexandria," he said.

"USAID’s water programs have installed slow sand filter water treatment plants, improved wastewater collection and treatment systems, or rehabilitated and expanded water treatment plants for about 18 villages with significant Coptic populations. Funding allocated to villages with significant Coptic populations under the water treatment programs alone exceeded 200 million dollars over the last five years," Kunder said in his written testimony.

The US official said the Egyptian government didn’t have direct oversight over the money going to those areas and that the programs focused on benefiting Christians.

The funds were channeled "through direct grants to Coptic NGOs," he said.

The aid distribution has also been fine-tuned to cover religious issues in Egypt – previously untouchable.

"With more than 2.2 million dollars in grants to 40 Coptic NGOs over the past six years, USAID has helped to strengthen Coptic communities and civil society organizations," he added.

The program, he said, has bankrolled several projects designed to increase "religious tolerance and promote interfaith understanding between the Muslim and Coptic communities," according to Kunder.

He cited several examples of this endeavor including a plan, still under the direct grants program, to support a local Egyptian NGO to establish a Media Monitoring Observatory to track religious tolerance in the Egyptian media.

"That we would very much welcome, something like that," said Dwight Bashir of the quasi-governmental US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

"That to me would be something we are very supportive of and we’d look forward to more of these kinds of programs," he said.

Others include "empowering community leaders," "training, promoting the social and political inclusion of marginalized populations," and "directly linking decision-makers with the community."

Cairo has been receiving around two billion dollars annually from the United States since it signed a peace deal with Israel in 1979. Egypt remains the second largest recipient of bilateral US aid, after the Jewish state.

The USAID’s mission in Egypt is said to be among the world’s largest because of its extensive programs in that country of more than 75 million people.

For the most part of its nearly 40 years in Egypt, the US programs have often shied away from directly meddling with the sensitive sectarian issue. Yet, the new revelation represents a shift in how Washington views the role of its aid to Egypt in the regions-dominated world of post-9/11.

Kunder’s statements however are not the only ones to surface about targeting Christian Copts with US aid.

In a Congressional report that accompanied the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill for 2008 that came out as recently as last month, the US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations explicitly called for funding politically active Christian NGOs.

"The Committee further directs the Department of State to fund programs that advance civic participation and human rights in the Coptic Community," said the report that accompanied the bill.

The Committee, clearly eyeing the Christian Coptic community, said that no less than 50 percent of the 50 million dollars slated for "governance and democracy" in the aid to Egypt, which cover Christian Coptic activities, should be provided through NGOs.

"One of the concerns is that many reports from Egypt show Christian Copts are increasingly under pressure. They are suffering from more attacks. There’s increasing persecution of Copts in Egypt," said Paul Marshall, an expert on Islam and religion at the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, DC.

"I think this has caused concern in Congress so I believe it is for that reason they directed USAID to make sure that some of its aid in Egypt also addresses Coptic needs."

But controversial questions remain, chiefly regarding Egyptian sensitivities about the level of involvement of the US in this touchy issue – and on Egyptian soil.

An Egyptian embassy diplomat in Washington told IPS that the government objected to faith-based measures by any foreign donor.

"Any legally registered NGO in Egypt is qualified to receive foreign assistance contingent on certain procedures," said the diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous. "However, we do not support and we take issue with the disbursement of foreign assistance based on faith or ethnicity."

There is also concern in the State Department about a perception of favoritism in its aid program, and officials are reportedly trying to find out how the statements about the Christians Coptic community "slipped" into Kunder’s written testimony which is often reviewed by several staff members.

"There’s nothing wrong per se with helping the Coptic communities if they felt the Coptic communities were otherwise discriminated against or are not getting their fair share of Egyptian resources," said Sarah Lee Whitson, the Middle East director of Human Rights Watch.

"But if the only reason they are helping these communities is because they’re Christians, I think that’s a big problem… because you do not want US aid money to be seen as missionary money meant to support one religious community over another, particularly in a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim. I do not think that would sit well with the Egyptian population."

U.S. Funded TakeOvers

U.S.Using Democracy Promotion As Disguise For Regime Change

RT Interviewing Eva Golinger
Courtesy Of "RT News"

The United States used to send military aid to opposing political regimes in countries it wanted to see overthrown. These days the United States sends a different type of aid, US taxpayer money is paying for "democracy promotion", a way for the US to influence elections in other countries that will help the US agenda abroad. Lawyer and Author Eva Golinger points out there are many organizations in other countries that are open to this funding, when it comes under the disguise of democracy promotion.

The Dark Side Of America's “Friendship” with South Africa

Precipitating Chaos and Misery For The African People

By M. J. Molyneaux
November 12, 2010
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

The hidden agenda behind the humanitarian aid programs and interventions carried out by the United States in troubled parts of the world has been insightfully exposed by Dr Paul Craig Roberts:

”Most Americans believe that their government is the best on earth, that it is morally motivated to help others and to do good, that it rushes aid to countries where there is famine and natural catastrophes……The persistence of these delusions is extraordinary in the face of daily headlines that report US government bullying of, and interference with, virtually every country on earth.” [1]

One of the most significant examples of this buying off and overthrowing, is the relentless interference of the governments of the US and Great Britain in the Republic of South Africa to recover control over the vast reserves of the world’s strategic minerals in that country. [2]

Rick Rozoff explains: “An April 2009 report to Congress by the National Defence Stockpile Center made clear that ensuring access to mineral markets around the world is of vital interest to national security." [3]

British and American imperialism has been around for centuries but the recent re-colonization of South Africa is a classic case and still one of the best kept secrets, generally unrecognized by the world’s journalists and political analysts because it requires an extraordinary amount of investigation and perceptive analysis to identify and track the shadowy characters, financiers and their agents and “bought” political players in South Africa. Some of them feature in Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert’s book “The Other Side of History.” [4] The secret motive behind Anglo-American sponsorship of Nelson Mandela and his ANC party’s dramatic rise to power in South Africa was the expected payback in terms of bolstering US hegemony over strategic minerals on a global scale. [5]

Like India, Brazil, Great Britain and others, the social and economic inequalities of the class system in South Africa were very real. But in South Africa these were made more obvious by the way it was racially delineated. That made South Africa an easy target for criticism and bullying. While other more oppressive police states were ignored by the international community, corporate interests in the US and Great Britain mobilized sanctions against South Africa, supported terrorist action and whipped up internal strike actions, riots and economic chaos, driving the country to its knees. [5]

The new puppet ANC government ushered into power from 1991 to 1994 has been far more cooperative with the US and Great Britain than the previous white government but far more devastating than the old government in its mismanagement of justice, law and order and the social and economic problems in the country. [6] [7] As R. W. Johnson has documented, the only things propping up the chaotic rule of the incompetent and corrupt ANC government are the vast amounts of foreign aid that has been pouring into South Africa and the lucrative income it receives in taxation of diamond and precious metal sales. Nearly three quarters of the world’s known strategic mineral reserves are found in South Africa , [8] [9] [10] [11] And the mines are owned by?.....mainly Anglo-American corporations!

The United States is the largest bilateral donor to South Africa in terms of Development Assistance donating $98 million in 2003-03, $160 million in 2004 and $185 million in 2005. Since the ANC assumed power, the US has become the second largest source of foreign direct investment in South Africa after the United Kingdom. [12] [13] These two countries in particular had been systematically side-lined by the previous government; exactly the same way that Saddam Hussein had side-lined the British and US sponsors of his early political career and party. Many US companies in South Africa are now members of the American Chamber of Commerce.

No surprise – approximately 28 United States agencies manage cooperative programs in South Africa including the Department of Defence and precious metals and stones account for over 30% of total imports to the US from South Africa. (12) Hillary Clinton described as “extremely helpful” a recent meeting in Durban with South African president Jacob Zuma. The president said: “The two countries have always had good relations and we are taking that relationship higher.” [14] At what price?

Foreign interference in South Africa has produced token freedom and empowerment to indigenous black people previously exploited by the system of Apartheid, but precipitated a state of permanent chaos and dependence in the country with unemployment, illegal drugs and arms trade, poverty, disease, social misery and unrest now among the highest in the world. [6]

Nearly one million South Africans are estimated to have died as a result of political violence that evolved into a horrific crime culture since the start of foreign intervention in the 70’s and an equal number have left the country due to the intolerable conditions that resulted [6] - Thanks to United States and British aid and intervention. Without realizing it, Nelson Mandela had helped the United States achieve its unrivalled position in the world today. The extent to which his organization bowed to its international patrons can be seen from the fact that his was the only government ever to voluntarily dismantle a nuclear weapons program; something established [possibly with help from Israel] as a guarantee of self-preservation by the independent-minded government of the Afrikaner legacy. His ANC party has become the key hired agency in Africa that enables the USA to totally eclipse even Great Britain, the world’s previous superpower, and become the only unchallenged international bully today.

For the United States, the so-called “good relations” means that the US now achieves unfettered [but covert] control over the vast reserves of the world’s strategic minerals in Africa – a position absolutely essential to US global dominance. This piece of the puzzle is still missing from the archives of research centres and deserves special attention because it shows how clever, complex and well camouflaged the imperialist strategy has been.

Notes

1. The War on Terror, Paul Craig Roberts, October 16 2010 ,Global Research


2. South Africa : When Liberation Means Enslavement, Finnian Cunningham March 3, 2010 Global Research


3. New Colonialism, Rick Rozoff, May 5, 2010 , Global Research


4. The Other Side of History, F.Van Zyl Slabbert, [ 2006] Jonathan Ball Publisher


5. Hidden Agenda behind Nelson Mandela’s ANC rise to power, M. J. Molyneaux, 2010 www.uncensored.co.nz


6. Neo-liberalism in South Africa : Dead in the Water. Patrick Bond, October 6 2010 Global Research


7. South Africa ’s Brave New World; R. W. Johnson, Penguin Books 2009



8. National Economies Encyclopaedia, 2005


9. SOURCE: Lisa Corathers, the Manganese Commodity Specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey, 2005


10. Ferrochrome Facts 2007 Elsevier Engineering Information. Source: Financial Times Limited. 06/29/2007

11. Kermas South Africa (Pty) Ltd and Samancor Ltd (22/LM/Mar05) [2005] ZACT 41 ( 14 June 2005 )


12. Diplomatic Mission of the United States in South Africa [website August 6, 2007]


13 British Foreign & Commonwealth Office [website May 21 2007 ],


14. The Guardian, 9 August 2009 .

Clinton Missing The Big Picture

The battle between interpretation and advocacy of 'smart power' continues to rage between the Pentagon and state.

By Steve Clemons
Last Modified: 24 Sep 2010 15:48 GMT
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

In the coming week or so, the Obama administration will release its much-anticipated Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), a new report instituted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to benchmark and frame a new approach to managing international development budgets and objectives.

Behind the scenes, a serious battle has raged between the administration’s development czars – and interestingly, while Hillary Clinton ended up prevailing in most of the key contests, she has yet to put her stamp on a more effective approach to 21st century international development and hasn’t yet upgraded her own department’s growing but mostly ignored nation-stabilizing, smart power team.

Hillary's Missed Beat

While details of the QDDR are not yet public, we know that Hillary Clinton has stymied efforts to make the US Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator cabinet rank, preempted an effort for the agency to fully break away from state department guidance, and squashed the creation of a high-ranking Development Council in the National Security Council that would have authority to run various bureaus across government on key development, stabilization, and relief missions.

But what Hillary Clinton hasn’t done is elevate the team and personnel committed to international stabilization and development within her own department.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others have been out calling for an increase in the state department’s resources and personnel because too much of the international civil society, humanitarian, and stabilization functions of the US government were increasingly flowing into Pentagon budgets and responsibilities.

In making her final decisions on the QDDR, Clinton should focus on taking the various parts of the international development universe inside the state department and create an “Under Secretary for Development.” Furthermore, she should be making her own department’s Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (CRS) as well as her Civilian Response Corps (CRC) the crown jewels of this new position.

Challenging Pentagon Primacy

Former government official and Foreign Policy blogger David Rothkopf has suggested that creating such an under secretary level position would focus the state department’s own thinking and deployment of teams and budgets in a way that would have changed the status quo in the administration’s paralyzed, mostly ineffectual development bureaucracies. Rothkopf shared with me that a move like this by Hillary Clinton would change the game and restore confidence that the state department is a viable player rather than conceding this challenge to Pentagon primacy.

During these policy skirmishes, Clinton has yet to embrace her own existing capacity as strongly as she should have rather than treat as an unwanted stepchild her own CRS office and CRC that despite getting little attention from the highest levels of the state department have been the largest growing budget item at the state department and created the largest team of trained, non-military, cohesive, US government (vs. privately contracted) civilian experts that can be quickly deployed as the front wave of US smart power where there is political or natural disaster upheaval.

However, because she herself gave CRS and CRC little attention and because these teams were ignored in assembling the core of the privately contracted teams sent to Afghanistan, Congress is planning to slash these budgets by about 50% in 2011.

Winning The 'Development War'

Secretary Clinton did prevail during the 'development wars' inside the Obama administration against efforts to have CRS – which now has more than a thousand deployable civilian experts buttressed by a global initiative of 20 major partners to perform immediate response relief, reconstruction and stabilization missions – placed within the Agency for International Development. But all she did was preserve what the department had; she has yet to upgrade the operation or figure out a way for her department to become the clear mother ship for US smart power deployed in messy international situations.

Creating an Under Secretary of State for Development and building out the state department’s own army of trained, civilians could have been “the big idea” delivered by the QDDR.

Instead, Clinton along with USAID administrator Rajiv Shah, and National Security Council staff Michael Froman and Gayle Smith among others have largely settled on a plan that gives USAID broader mandates over budget coordination in the administration’s diversely situated international development capacities.

In a well-meaning but probably ineffective effort, USAID advocates have been trying to restore the status and capacity of USAID that was gutted from it during a siege led in the 1990s by former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms. But the fact is that USAID has very few of its own people anymore. US-led AID initiatives are mostly privately contracted, and USAID has become more of a Cisco Systems or Dell Computer of international development, essentially a bundler of subcontracted componentry rather than a government enterprise that can easily hire, fire, quickly deploy or withdraw its own forces on quick, time-urgent missions.

Soft Power Failure

Last year, retired General Anthony Zinni, who acknowledged he had helped member or co-chair nearly every commission or study group on “smart power” that has mattered, declared that he had lost confidence in the “development community” and the ability of any administration – given the structure of the development bureaucracy – to succeed at smart power responses to failed or failing states.

He argued that the international development community was paralyzed and collectively incompetent, stating that only the Pentagon had the capacity to deploy credible teams with well-thought out and simulation-tested plans to try and hold up or build governments abroad that were collapsing or virtually non-existent.

Zinni continued that the only hope to turn this around was for personnel from the state department, USAID and other branches of government tasked with nation-building or post-conflict or natural disaster stabilization to co-habit in offices with Pentagon staff tasked with delivering results. Specifically, Zinni proposed that all of the civil affairs functions in each of the Pentagon’s major commands be taken out and collectively organized as a brand new command in the defense department.

Then when America decided to save failing states or clean up after conflict or deal with earthquake, flood, and tsunami relief – the state department and USAID personnel could watch how the Pentagon did their thing and learn.

Zinni’s idea mostly affirms something the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post author Dana Priest wrote in her important book, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military. Priest argued that the Pentagon was aggrandizing by design and by default most of the key powers of America’s international engagement – from diplomacy to development and that the trend would be tough to stop.

Proving Zinni Wrong

Hillary Clinton and others on President Obama’s team had an opportunity to prove General Zinni wrong – that there was indeed an appetite and capacity for a strategic leap in the way America’s non-defense agencies and departments deploy smart power. CRS is the US’s only non-military entity that can do military-like planning and execution, but with expertise that the military doesn’t have and frankly – according to Gates and his deputies – doesn’t want to have.

While creating a new under secretary slot for development can be scoffed at – understandably – for just adding another chef to an already crowded, chaotic kitchen, this would be missing the point. By not moving beyond slight adjustments in the administration’s approach to development other than coordinated budget activity for the most part, Clinton would structurally assure that the Pentagon – more than USAID or state – will continue by default to be the heavyweight political player in overseas development, stabilization, and relief.

Hopefully as the final QDDR decisions are made, the Secretary of State will do more to change the game and secure its own place in the global development equation.

Steve Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the political blog, The Washington Note.

NED's Agenda Shapes Its False Conclusions

"Most Muslims do not participate in the so called “elections” where the regime will never fully respect their vote....The only reason why the authoritarian regimes such as in Egypt and Tunisia hold elections is to legitimize themselves. Through their non-participation in a fake electoral process the Muslim masses refuse to legitimize the system imposed by Western governments."

By Maksud Djavadov
(Sunday, September 5, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

If free and fair elections were held today in Muslim majority countries, Islamic organizations/parties would dominate these elections. This eventuality on the horizon is what the US and its NATO allies use to justify their unilateral support for corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world. The strategy of portraying Islamic representatives as terrorists, extremists or haters of liberal values has worked to a certain degree. It provided a justification to the average US and EU citizens, who were constantly misinformed of the true nature of the Islamic movements, to be fearful of Islamic governments and Muslims in general. However, as more and more people become better informed of the situation in the Muslim world and about the agenda of the genuine Islamic organizations, the above presented hypothesis will no longer hold any clout amongst citizens of the Western world. The average US and EU citizens have begun objecting to their governments expenditures on some cruel puppet in a distant land.

Therefore, the imperialist powers are in the process of developing a new “intellectual” theory through which they can justify their support for despicable regimes in the Muslim world. This new theory is often developed in the West through the help of the liberal-center, which is often unaware of the political consequences of its views. One of these new theories was published in the April 2010 edition of the Journal of Democracy which is a publication of the neocon “NGO” the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The research report under the title “Do Muslims Vote Islamic?” reached the following four conclusions: 1) electoral participation by Islamic parties is far from unusual; 2) the electoral performance of Islamic parties has been generally unimpressive; 3) in those Muslim-majority countries where elections were freest Islamic parties performed worse; and

4) Islamic parties have (relative to their starting point) liberalized their stances significantly over the past several decades.

In order to expose the political agenda behind these conclusions the defects in the assumptions which led to them need to examined and exposed.

The First Two Conclusions

The primary false assumption of the first two conclusions is: the report assumes that “…many Muslims have had the opportunity to vote for Islamic parties.” What goes counter to this false assumption is a legitimate question. What happens when Muslims actually do vote for an Islamic movement? The general results are of three kinds. The first scenario — recall the result in Algeria — is where the Western backed military junta resorts to massacres and annuls the voting result. In the second scenario — Palestine’s election of Hamas in a landslide victory — the entire global establishment goes to war against an Islamic movement using the media, economic and military means. The third scenario — for example, the situation in Tajikistan — is where the regime draws the movement into a political process, which is completely controlled by the authoritarian regime, and slowly squeezes it through so-called constitutional amendments and other administrative labyrinth, thereby making it next to impossible for the elected Islamic representatives to function adequately.

Therefore, as an objection to the first conclusion one can state that even though many Muslims did have the opportunity to vote for Islamic organizations, most did not because they knew their vote would be disregarded, but not because they did not support the Islamic organizations/parties.

Most Muslims do not participate in the so called “elections” where the regime will never fully respect their vote. The research report of the Journal of Democracy itself states that “…in Pakistan, for example, 62 percent of the adult population believed in 2001 that good government …should implement only the laws of the shari‘a. In Bangladesh, 44% of respondents said the same. Yet few voters supported the Islamic parties that claimed to share this goal. In Egypt, 80% of respondents favored implementation of the shari‘a in a 2000 survey; that same year, only a quarter of the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidates won election to parliament.”

Based on this data the logical counter argument to conclusions one and two is that the people in Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan understand that even if the overwhelming majority of the people vote for an Islamic organization it will never be allowed to take power. The only reason why the authoritarian regimes such as in Egypt and Tunisia hold elections is to legitimize themselves. Through their non-participation in a fake electoral process the Muslim masses refuse to legitimize the system imposed by Western governments. The highest third party estimates of voter turnout in the parliamentary elections of 2005 in Egypt were between 22–25%.

It would be idiotic to assume that even if 50% of the population votes for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the ruling regime will share power with them at an equivalent level. Therefore, many voters in Egypt make the “most” out of the “elections” and literally sell their vote. In the Parliamentary Election Preliminary Report of December 2005 the Independent Committee on Election Monitoring (ICEM) reported that it costs anywhere between 20 and 500 Egyptian pounds to purchase a vote.

Therefore, the “election” results in an authoritarian atmosphere cannot be used as a measurement of the popularity of an Islamic movement. This leads us to the political agenda behind conclusions one and two: we the free and democratic West are not preventing the Islamic movements to come to power; they are unpopular by themselves because the people do not support them; they could never come to power anyway. This gives the imperialist governments of the West more political space for justifying their support for autocratic regimes in the Muslim world. These two new theories are more sophisticated than the previous theory which claimed that if it’s not Mubarak then its Bin Laden. The first two conclusions advocated in the Journal of Democracy give more leeway to the Western governments in front of their domestic audience and the ill-informed global public.

The Last Two Conclusions

Conclusion three of the report runs as a total contradiction to the evidences in the report itself. In an analysis leading up to conclusion three the report states that “…in a number of countries with semi-free elections, Islamic parties run candidates only in a limited number of districts out of fear that running in more will make the government nervous and lead to stepped-up repression. Just before the 2003 voting in Jordan, for example, a leader in the Islamic movement noted that his party had assured the palace that they did not seek to gain a majority in the upcoming elections.” This fact shows that if elections appear to be “freer” in some of the US backed systems, they are nowhere near to being actually free. Therefore, classifying them as being “freer” is a political sham.

This brings us to the political agenda behind conclusion three: promoting the idea that Islam and freedom cannot coexist. It attempts to create an impression which would lead to an environment where the elimination of Islamic socio-political forces would be regarded as a natural course towards “freedom.” This conclusion tries to promote a more sophisticated form of suppressing Islamic forces through “free” elections that would choke out the Islamic organizations through a fake political process like in Tajikistan and Pakistan.

Conclusion four assumes that just because Islamic movements began addressing contemporary issues they have become more westernized. The research report states that “among Islamic parties that have joined national elections, there has been a trend toward the adoption of more liberal electoral platforms… recent platforms are more likely to mention democracy, the rights of women, and the rights of minorities… On the issue of democracy, three parties’ switched — and all moved toward offering secular justifications for democracy.” This assumption is a double edged sword that tries to discredit and then draw the Islamic movement into a dull and demagogic polemic.

The political agenda behind conclusion four is to present Islam and the Islamic organizations as not being able to address the issues of human rights, women’s rights, minority rights and so on without assistance from secular western ideology. It tries to create an image of Islam as though it is not concerned about the rights of others. However, this is only one side of this conclusion. The second agenda behind it is that it tries to tie the idea of being progressive and forward thinking to being secular and Western. It attempts to show that in order to be considerate of others rights and become civilized one has to adopt Western concepts.

The overall distortion of the research report under the title “Do Muslims Vote Islamic?” is that it attempts to study the power of the Islamic movement through the perspective of party politics. It is enough to note that in Iraq Ayatollah Sayed Sistani is not a member of any political party, but he has more authority, power and influence then all Iraqi secular parties put together. A similar statement would also apply to Khalid Mash‘al who while being the head of a movement in Palestine enjoys more popular support in the wider Arab world then any US-backed ruler in the region. Therefore, applying secular perspectives, derived from the Western notion of party politics, on measuring the power of the Islamic movement will never produce accurate results. Just like applying secular methods of pure party politics will never bring a desired result for an Islamic movement.

Haiti's Colonial Overlord

Clinton In Haiti

By ASHLEY SMITH
August 5, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

Amid the hoopla over Chelsea Clinton's wedding at a posh estate north of New York City, there were plenty of toasts in the media to Bill Clinton and the good works he's performed since leaving the White House.

In particular, Clinton's role in working with Haiti, both before and after the catastrophic earthquake last January, was singled out.

To the U.S. media, Clinton is a compassionate statesmen, with only the best interests of the Haitian people at heart. Particularly since this year's quake, he has been viewed as a decisive leader who can "get things done," in contrast to the country's ineffective government. Because of his role as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC), Esquire magazine called Clinton "CEO of a leaderless nation," theMiami Herald repeatedly refers to him as the "czar of the recovery effort."

Ordinary Haitians have a different view. They remember Clinton as the man who, while president, demanded Haiti follow the "Plan of Death"--the neoliberal prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank that "structurally adjusted" the Haitian economy in the interests of U.S. business, at the expense of the country's peasants and poor.

Today, Haitians know Clinton as a man who wields immense power over the country's future. Esquire's description of him as the "CEO of a leaderless nation." can only be called a political Freudian slip--a CEO, after all, is concerned with profitable investments for shareholders, not meeting people's needs.

It isn't even true that Clinton can "get things done." According to the Washington Post, only 2 percent of the more than $5 billion in aid promised by the U.S. and other countries at a UN donor conference for the first 18 months of reconstruction has materialized. Clinton's IHRC has dispensed just over $500 million so far--a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

* * *

CLINTON HAS promised to "burn up the phone lines" to get world governments to fulfill their pledges. But if and when he manages to get funds for the IHRC, no one should be under any illusion that the reconstruction aid will be used in the interests of Haitian peasants and poor.

The IHRC is a colonial body that will implement the same old neoliberal measures. The U.S. spearheaded setting up the IHRC at an international conference in June. In its original design, the 26-member executive body had a majority of foreigners representing various countries and international financial institutions. Faced with protests from Haitians, the executive was reorganized so that there is now 13 Haitians and 13 foreigners. Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive were selected as co-chairs.

But lest anyone mistakenly think Bellerive and the other 13 Haitians have any control over the commission, the World Bank was chosen as the trustee of the funds. On top of that, Haitian President René Préval was compelled to extend his decree of emergency powers to prevent any Haitians from overruling the IHRC's power in Haiti.

"Haiti's true government," wrote Berthony Depont, editor of the weekly left-wing paper Haiti Liberté, "has just been installed on June 17 with 26 members, all handsomely paid, at the Karibe Convention Center. There are 13 junior Haitians, all too happy to be nominated, but who have no credibility with the Haitian people. Then there are the real members of the Interim Haitian Reconstruction Commission: the foreigners."

Clinton, whatever his penchant for professing to feel Haitians' pain, will makes sure that the IHRC serves the interests of the U.S. and other powerful governments, in alliance with its allies in Haiti, the wealthy.

As the U.S. Agency for International Development proclaims unapologetically on its Web site: "U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free market, while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world."

In fact, the whole history of Haiti proves that "free-market economics" benefits U.S. multinationals and the Haitian elite, while impoverishing the masses--and that "expanding democracy" is restricted by who the U.S. government thinks should hold power.

Of course, not even Bill Clinton will claim that Haiti--the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere--has thrived in the neoliberal era. He's even admitted that U.S. demands during the 1990s that Haiti end trade restrictions against U.S. agricultural products had a devastating effect on the economy. "We made this devil's bargain on rice," Clinton said in March. "And it wasn't the right thing to do. We should have continued to work to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture."

In a recent Esquire article, he waxed lyrical about what he hoped to accomplish in Haiti. "Haitians...need the organizational structure and the support to get things done," he told the magazine. "That's what I'm trying to do: move things along. I want them to consider all their big alternatives. I want them to consider becoming a wireless country, consider becoming an energy-independent country. I want them to close their landfills, recycle everything and use the rest for energy. Wouldn't it be great if they became the first wireless nation in the world? They could, I'm telling you, they really could."

Clearly concerned that such projects could be easily dismissed as fantasies about a society where more than 10 percent of the population lives in refugee camps, he retreated later in the interview. "I don't want to be naïve," he told Esquire. "It's going to be a stretch. It'll be hard, but I'm excited about it. Enough so that after a couple of heart incidents and being sixty-three years old, I am prepared to spend three years on it. They want the right things for their country."

However, when you look behind Clinton's fantasizing and his dilettantish commitment of three whole years to Haiti's future, the IHRC plan is, in fact, the same old plan--with some public relations bells and whistles--that Clinton and his friend Paul Collier, an Oxford professor and former World Bank official, came up with in 2009.

Collier's blueprint for Haiti is standard neoliberalism--with emphases on pushing sweatshop industries, reorienting Haiti's desperate peasants toward producing export crops, developing the country's beaches and historical sites for tourism, and investing in infrastructure to service all these projects, none of which will benefit workers and the poor.

* * *

CLINTON'S NEOLIBERAL plans for Haiti will work out nicely for the vulture capitalists who have descended on Haiti to exploit the earthquake catastrophe. "Haiti has become the new El Dorado in terms of people seeking opportunities to make a quick buck," Jean-Robert Lafortune, president of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition, told The Miami Herald.

In March, the International Peace Operations Association held a conference for private security firms like Triple Canopy to contract their services to Haiti's corporate elite. As Patrick Elie, former minister of defense in Haiti, told the Inter Press Service: "[T]hese guys are like vultures coming to grab the loot over this disaster...[M]oney that might have been injected into the Haitian economy is just going to be grabbed by these companies, and I'm sure they're not the only mercenary companies."

Meanwhile, textile manufacturers are lining up to take advantage of IHRC's commitment to sweatshop labor--and palm off the exploitation of impoverished workers as humanitarianism.

As Time magazine reported, "Gap is planning to roll out its own made-in-Haiti line. The company, which owns Old Navy and is already responsible for 4,000 Haitian textile jobs, may even set up special Haiti sections in some stores. 'Customers generally don't care about country of origins,' says Art Peck, a senior Gap executive. 'We think they will with Haiti.'"

In the agricultural sector, USAID and Monsanto are collaborating on the misnamed project WINNER--a "benevolent" program that will, in fact, further erode Haiti's food sovereignty.

Monsanto--in what one of their executives calls a "fabulous Easter gift"--donated 475 tons of hybrid seeds at a cost to itself of $4 million. The seeds are supposed to be distributed to Haitian peasant farmers, but the country's social movements have long opposed the use of Monsanto's genetically modified products. Farmers are vowing to burn the Monsanto seeds, which are coated with pesticides and likely not adapted to Haitian diverse soil conditions.

In protest against WINNER, thousands of peasants marched in Hinche on July 4 and burned Monsanto seeds. "With friends like Monsanto and its governmental allies, who needs enemies," said Benoit Griouard of Union Paysanne. "This so-called donation is an attack on Haitian farmers and the future of their local seeds." Another leader, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste from the Mouvman Peyizan Papay declared Monsanto's seeds "a gift of death. It's an attack on peasant agriculture, on the farmers, on biodiversity, on native seeds, on what remains of our environment in Haiti."

In perhaps the most bizarre example of disaster capitalism, the Vietnamese Army's telecommunications company Viettel bought Haiti's last state-owned company, Teleco, for $59 million.

Before he sold it, Préval fired hundreds of workers and invested precious funds that could have been used for the benefit of Haitians in projects that would make Teleco fit for privatization.

* * *

MEANWHILE, forces that claim to be a voice for the Haitian people against business and governments are getting a piece of the pie in the aftermath of the quake.

With the exception of a few, like Partners in Health, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have used the Haitian tragedy to accumulate vast sums of money that they haven't spent to aid the Haitian masses. And when they have, their efforts have been haphazard, uncoordinated and unaccountable to the Haitian people or government.

The Philanthropy News Digest reported in May that "roughly $14.9 billion, or $37,000 per displaced family, has been donated for Haiti earthquake relief efforts to date, much of it raised by the American Red Cross, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund.

"The Red Cross, for example, has raised $444 million and spent about 25% of that amount; CARE has raised $34.4 million and spent about 16 percent of that; CRS has raised $165 million and spent 8 percent; and the Clinton Bush Fund and the Clinton Foundation have raised $52 million combined, of which 13% has been spent."

Not only have many NGOs and charities spent only a fraction of what they raised off Haiti, but they also display what the Disaster Accountability Project calls a "shocking lack of transparency." According to the project's study of 197 organization that received donations for Haiti, only six provided factual situation reports, while 128 others, had no reports but only emotional appeals and anecdotes.

The Red Cross has come under particular fire. Outraged after a fact-finding trip to Haiti, Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz attacked the Red Cross, saying, "We were actually pretty struck by the fact that we didn't see the Red Cross anywhere at all."

After hearing the Red Cross' claim that it was holding onto the bulk of donations around Haiti for long-term projects, Wasserman Schultz later softened her criticisms. But the truth is that NGOs like the Red Cross shouldn't be rationing funds in such an emergency; Haitians need money for reconstruction right now.

The stinginess of the NGOs has angered Haitians. Ruth Derilus, who worked for an NGO with a multimillion-dollar budget after the 2008 floods in Gonaïves, told theNation magazine she would never work for one again because "of all the money they send here, only 10 percent actually makes it to the ground. The rest is spent on foreign experts, hotels, car rentals and hotel conferences."

Instead of helping to solve the crisis, the NGOs are making money off Haiti and restricting aid. Meanwhile, the U.S. and other powerful governments use the NGOs to effectively bypass the Haitian state, further weakening its role in the country. Thus, the IHRC will only spend 6.6 percent of its budget through the Haitian state--the rest will go to private corporations and NGOs.

This is why many Haitians, as well as others in the Caribbean who have had similar experiences, have denounced the NGOs for undermining Haitian democracy.

After a meeting of the Caribbean Community, Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of Dominica, stated, "With respect to the NGOs operating out of Haiti, we called on the UN secretary general to do all that he can to bring some level of order to the situation, because while we speak about maintaining democracy in Haiti, we can't at the same time be affording NGOs to undermine the democratic institutions in Haiti...We call on the international institutions and government to cease and desist from putting resources into the NGOs.

From celebrity political figures like Bill Clinton, to the U.S. and other powerful governments, to corporations and NGOs, the forces and institutions that could make a difference in the lives of poor Haitians are putting other interests first. Haitians endured the disaster of the earthquake. Now they are facing the man-made disaster of neoliberalism.

Ashley Smith writes for the Socialist Worker, where this originally appeared. He can be reached at: ashley05401@yahoo.com