Filipino students reach for U.S. embassy stickers in the southern Philippines in 2007, where U.S. humanitarian aid projects sought to counter the influence of al Qaeda linked militants. (Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters.)

 

LA PAZ, Bolivia – Keep your money! If it comes with political conditions, we´d prefer not to have it.

 

That’s the message being sent to Washington by some countries receiving U.S. development assistance.

 

In September, Bolivian President Evo Morales ordered the U.S. Agency for International Development to end so-called “democracy” programs in the country, saying those programs — aimed at training groups in democracy and human rights — were simply an effort to undermine the country’s socialist economic and political reforms.

 

Previously, he had ordered USAID to stop its coca eradication and alternative crop development programs in a region known as the Chapare, where most of Bolivia’s coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, is cultivated. American officials say Coca production and cocaine exports have increased since 2005, when Morales was elected. Morales has also expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg for meeting with opposition leaders, and has thrown the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) out of the country.

 

The kerfuffle has put the Obama administration in the awkward position of having to negotiate the terms under which it can donate money to the country. American and Bolivian officials in La Paz and Washington are now working out a bilateral “framework” agreement that would give Bolivia a larger say in U.S. development priorities here, and allow the renewal of some suspended programs. They hope to finalize the pact early this year.

 

Foreign assistance is a messy business under the best of circumstances, with needy and often corrupt third world officials looking to get their cut, and with less-than-democratic and sometimes nasty regimes trying to undermine or destroy the civil society groups that are often the target of aid efforts.

 

Aid watchers in the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress agree that the U.S. aid program is deeply flawed. They are debating American development assistance policies and overall strategy. At stake are tens of billions of dollars, thousands of federal employees and hundreds of contracts with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — as well as America’s relationship with scores of developing countries.

 

Mission creep

 

As is the case with many government programs, budgets and mandates seem to have proliferated over the years, leaving a tangled mess of conflicting government offices.

 

In theory, the State Department and USAID are the two key players in the aid business. State traditionally has been in charge of diplomacy, and USAID has managed most bilateral foreign aid. In recent years, however, those lines have blurred as USAID has become more involved in politically-motivated programs and the Defense Department embarked on infrastructure projects such as road-building and health, especially in states such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, front-lines states in the War on Terrorism.

 

The General Accountability Office says the U.S. government directed $42.5 billion to international programs during Fiscal 2008. Of that, $36.6 billion was appropriated to the State Department and USAID, with the remainder going to other agencies and departments, including but not limited to Defense, Agriculture and Treasury.

 

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says that aid programs are characterized by “duplication, fragmentation, and conflicting purposes and objectives.” He introduced in April the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009.  “Currently, foreign assistance programs are fragmented across 12 departments, 25 different agencies, and nearly 60 government offices,” he said.

“That fragmentation,” says Noam Unger, an aid expert at the Brookings Institution “leads to incoherence.”

Even efforts to deal with the mess are duplicative. In July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review of U.S. foreign aid programs and policies. Then, in August, President Barack Obama issued a Presidential Study Directive ordering the entire federal government — led by the National Security Council — to review not just foreign aid programs but America’s global development strategy — a 120-day process to be completed in January.

 

What can be done?

 

Some foreign policy and development experts are urging the creation of a new cabinet-level position to oversee and coordinate development efforts similar to the intelligence czar appointed under George W. Bush.

 

Rep. Berman is calling for a global development strategy that will safeguard national security, confront transnational threats and stimulate global economic growth, along with a rewrite of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. Sens. John Kerry and Richard Lugar are pushing a bill to strengthen USAID and rebuild its funding.

 

Others say that the chains of command among the competing aid agencies should be clarified. According to former diplomat Alexander Watson, now a managing director of Hills & Associates in Washington, many experts think USAID’s administrator ought to report to the Secretary of State. If the agency were closely aligned with State, “it would have more political horsepower and would be able to defend itself up on [Capitol Hill] better,” he said.

 

Observers in and out of government say aid structures should be more nimble and modern to adapt to a world with cross-border and seemingly insoluble crises. USAID activities, for example, are focused on national boundaries. But today boundaries can be fluid, international actors are often multinational or bi-national, and development needs transcend old structures and legally imposed six-to-12-month aid contracts. Critics cite food aid in Africa, health assistance in South America, and democracy-promotion in some of the former Soviet republics as cases where a more flexible foreign policy apparatus would be useful.

 

For months, it was unclear whether USAID would have a seat at the table in the review process because its top administrative position had not been filled. But in November Obama nominated Rajiv Shah to the post. Shah is the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist and undersecretary for research, education and economics, worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has the ear of the president. He is a doctor and health economist and leads the Agriculture Department’s efforts under Obama’s global food security initiative. Foreign aid experts are cautiously optimistic he will be able to rebuild an agency that has lost funding and expertise in recent years. 

 

Those who see America’s development efforts from the field say the global review is overdue.

 

“What is missing is a unified, articulated understanding of what development is all about,” said Nancy Lindborg, president of the non-profit aid organization Mercy Corps. Even the U.S. Department of Defense often complains that it has come to be relied on too heavily for development, she told Passport.

 

Competing agendas

 

Around the world, U.S. aid and trade policies and practices often work at cross purposes.

 

In Bangladesh and Cambodia, for example, trade policies offset development aid, according to a report by Save the Children issued in October. For each dollar of U.S. aid to Bangladesh, the country paid three dollars in tariffs on its exports.

 

Here in Bolivia, trade and aid politics also have run smack into one another. Bolivia signed in 2002 a trade pact with the United States called the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Enforcement Agreement, or ATPDEA. The pact gave a burgeoning Bolivia textile sector duty-free access to the American market, creating thousands of new jobs. The U.S. has refused to renew the agreement with Bolivia because it said the government had failed to sufficiently crack down on illegal cocaine production. As a result of the ATPDEA decision, thousands of workers in Bolivia lost their jobs because of the lost export market.

 

In addition, USAID activities can conflict with the State Department’s efforts to foster friendly relations around the world by assisting groups that may be viewed as separatist or disloyal to the governing authorities. That is especially true with USAID’s so-called “transition to democracy” programs and those aimed at bolstering the rule of law and human rights, managed by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI).

 

To be sure, many of OTI’s programs appear to be both non-controversial and vital in the recipient countries. In July, the office began a $20 million Afghanistan Stabilization Initiative to “create conditions that build confidence and trust” between the central Afghan government and local Afghan communities. In Sudan, OTI helps to “promote the emergence of responsive, effective, and inclusive civil authorities.” Some foreign leaders, however, criticize the programs as the heavy hand of Uncle Sam. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, for example, characterizes them as examples of American imperialism.

 

Whether OTI’s successes outweigh the propaganda value handed to Chavez and others is an open question. Still, despite the resistance of national authorities, it´s clear that many local leaders on the ground appreciate the help they get.

 

Homer Menacho, who headed a USAID-funded program in Bolivia’s Pando department, characterized as ¨disastrous¨ Morales´s order to close the USAID programs.  ¨The cooperation is fundamental for those municipal governments that have insufficient personnel and resources,¨ he said.

 

In Bolivia, OTI spent tens of millions of dollars between February 2004 and September 2007 to help the country’s nine governors (known here as prefects) improve the effectiveness of the regional governments. During that time, many of those regional leaders were bitterly opposed to President Morales and his governing Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party. Conflicts between regional and national officials led to occasional eruptions of violence, and USAID came to be seen as supporting opponents Morales described as “enemies.” OTI’s program has now been closed in Bolivia. 

 

Unger, the Brookings expert, explains that much of America’s foreign aid structures and strategy came out of the Cold War, when aid was ideologically and politically motivated. Many critics believe it still is. Since the 1980s, Congress has funded the National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn provides funds to the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. Though the IRI and the NDI claim to be private and nonpartisan, they frequently support like-minded groups overseas, and their boards and their respective memberships read as a “Who’s Who” of Democratic and Republican party leadership. IRI is chaired by Sen. John McCain; NDI is chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

 

Both organizations have used government and private funds to conduct programs in some 100 countries, to “plant the seeds of democracy.” Many of those activities are viewed with suspicion by leaders of nationalist regimes or those critical of American capitalism.

 

Separating U.S. foreign policy goals from development and aid efforts would be a “breath of fresh air,” said Jan Knippers Black, a professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Graduate School of International Policy and Management. “Apart from the proliferation of micro-lending and micro-enterprise, serious commitment to bottom up development has almost vanished over the last three decades, as aid programs have become appendages of military and corporate operations,” she says. 

 

Whatever the perspective, observers agree that change in U.S. assistance efforts is needed and there’s a chance it will come as a result of the current global development review in Washington and inside U.S. embassies around the world.

 

“The world has changed, and we at the State Department and USAID have not done enough to change along with it,” Deputy Secretary of State Jacob (Jack) Lew recently told a public forum.  The Obama Administration’s goal is to develop “a new architecture of global cooperation.”

 

Foreign officials, meanwhile, are waiting to see whether such changes will make any difference to them. In late November, Alvaro Garcia Linera, Bolivia’s vice-president and a radical Marxist, accused the United States of continuing to meddle in the country’s politics. He blasted USAID, along with Conservation International, for issuing a report questioning the economic feasibility and potential environment damages of a sugar cane-based power generating project promoted by the government. Bolivia has its own feasibility report, prepared with Cuban and Brazilian help, Garcia Linera said, and it will move forward “even if the gringos have a report to the contrary.”

 

 

http://www.globalpost.com/passport/foreign-desk/100105/please-take-our-money