Posts Tagged ‘Holbrooke’
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Earlier today, more than 40 international leaders gathered in Kabul to discuss how Afghanistan can take control of its security and reduce corruption to set the country on a sustainable path over the next five years. The conference signified renewed support from the international community — particularly support from Secretary Clinton who acknowledged the unpopularity of the war effort at home. The official communiqué following the conference sets a 2014 date for a complete transition from foreign to Afghan security, though many details are left out of the document.
The Kabul Conference highlights several reform principles: ownership, accountability, and effectiveness. Country ownership – though loosely defined – is the cornerstone of the Obama Administration’s new approach to foreign assistance. In Afghanistan, this means reducing corruption in government, transferring capacity, and empowering civil society. Oxfam International recently asked local Afghans what they want as they begin to take control of their own development, and here is what they had to say.
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Tags: accountability, Afghanistan, Clinton, country ownership, development, economic growth, foreign assistance reform, Holbrooke, Pakistan, partnership, poverty, President Obama, State Department, United States Agency for International Development, White House
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Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
This weekly posting includes key news stories and opinion pieces related to foreign assistance reform and the larger development community.
News on Haiti:
- Why Haiti Matters (Newsweek-Barack Obama, January 15) In the months and years to come, as the tremors fade and Haiti no longer tops the headlines or leads the evening news, our mission will be to help the people of Haiti to continue on their path to a brighter future. The United States will be there with the Haitian government and the United Nations every step of the way.
- To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid (Wall Street Journal-Bret Stephens, January 19) For actual Haitians, however, just about every conceivable aid scheme beyond immediate humanitarian relief will lead to more poverty, more corruption and less institutional capacity. It will benefit the well-connected at the expense of the truly needy, divert resources from where they are needed most, and crowd out local enterprise. And it will foster the very culture of dependence the country so desperately needs to break.
- If Haiti is to `build back better’ (Miami Herald-Paul Farmer, January 17) Fourth, aid should be coordinated and conceived in a way that shores up Haitian capacity to respond. Some of this emergency response can be done with longer-range views in mind. Schools must be rebuilt, but in the interim, children must be back in school soon, and rebuilding the city’s housing stock will require a different kind of urban planning and a long-term commitment to respect for the Haitian people’s wishes.
- The Underlying Tragedy (The New York Times-David Brooks, January 15) This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
Other news we’re reading:
- Clinton v. Kerry: The AID war begins (FP Blog-Josh Rogin, January 14) ”It is becoming an article of faith in the foreign policy community that development is a third pillar of U.S. national security, but in resources and stature, our assistance programs are poor cousins to diplomacy and defense,” says the Senate report. The report goes into detail about what that means — a lot more detail than the State Department has offered about how it’s thinking about these issues.
- Vilsack to evaluate Afghanistan farm aid (Agweek-Jerry Hagstrom, January 11) Vilsack, Shah and Holbrooke all avoided any mention of the concerns with the agencies or on Capitol Hill that USDA may be usurping USAID’s traditional development role and undertaking the Afghan reconstruction effort at the expense of the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service’s traditional mandate to sell U.S. products abroad. Holbrooke said USDA and USAID personnel have been asked not to identify themselves as being employed by one agency or another. He said there is a senior official in charge of the agriculture effort, but that he could not remember which agency the official is from. Both USDA and USAID leaders report to Ambassador Tony Wayne, who is “the senior director of operations,” Holbrooke said.
Tags: development, Haiti, Holbrooke, hunger, President Obama, Raj Shah, State Department, United States Agency for International Development
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
This weekly posting includes key news stories and opinion pieces related to foreign assistance reform and the larger development community.
What we’re reading:
- Troops, Taliban race to build up local governments (AP, December 21) The Marines and civilian development officials in Khan Neshin are trying to bypass the corruption and inefficiency at higher levels of government by working directly through the district governor, Massoud Balouch, a 27-year-old former pharmacist who sacrificed a comfortable life in the provincial capital to run one of Afghanistan’s impoverished areas. Without foreign aid to pay salaries, the governor said, his staff “would leave, and I wouldn’t want them to stay because they would fall into corruption.” Convincing educated and well-trained people to come work in Khan Neshin is only half the battle. Getting them to stay has proven just as difficult.
- Raj Shah and America’s Development Future (Roll Call-Bill Frist, December 17) Changes like these are never easy. But we can’t let inertia drag us down at this moment in time ‹ a moment when the future of the world’s so-called bottom billion, and our own American future, hangs in the balance. Dr. Shah has what is needed to carry on President Bush’s global health legacy and fulfill President Obama’s extraordinary development vision. The Senate should confirm him, and the Obama administration should give him the political support and resources he needs to succeed. Millions of lives will be affected by this choice.
- Climate talks: Clinton promises aid to poor nations – but China may resist (Christian Science Monitor, December 18) In an effort to clear a major hurdle toward a new climate agreement in Copenhagen, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced today that the United States would take part in efforts to pull together long-term financing for developing countries to the tune of $100 billion a year by 2020. The money would come from a combination of government-to-government aid, as well as from private-sector sources. The offer is missing details that would give it credibility, according to representatives for ActionAid International, a non-government organization based in Britain that works closely with developing countries on aid and development issues.
- Exclusive: New details on Obama’s $7.5 billion aid package to Pakistan (FP Blog-Josh Rogin, December 16) The biggest chunk of the funds, $3.5 billion spread over five years, will go to “high impact, high visibility infrastructure programs,” according to the report, focusing on the energy and agricultural sectors — “programs that Pakistani citizens can see.” Another $2 billion will be directed to “focused humanitarian and social services,” which includes extending the reach of the Pakistani government to areas where extremists now operate. Of that pot, $500 million will be earmarked for immediate post-crisis and humanitarian assistance, with the rest going to improving the quality and access to health and education. The remaining $2 billion will go to building up the Pakistani government both at the national and local levels. The money will be split between funding actual government entities and improving the security and legal infrastructure overall.
- Up to 56,000 more contractors likely for Afghanistan, congressional agency says (Washington Post, December 16) The tally “could increase further if the new [administration] strategy includes a more robust construction and nation building effort,” according to the report, which was released Monday and first disclosed on the Web site Talking Points Memo. As the Pentagon contracts out activities that previously were carried out by troops in wartime, it has been forced to struggle with new management challenges. “Prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, contracting was done on an ad-hoc basis and was not adequately incorporated into the doctrine — or culture — of the military,” according to the CRS report. Today, according to Defense Department officials, “doctrine and strategy are being updated to incorporate the role of contractors in contingency operations.”
Tags: Afghanistan, Clinton, developing world, Holbrooke, Pakistan, President Obama, Raj Shah, senate foreign relations committee, USAID
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Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
This weekly posting includes key news stories and opinion pieces related to foreign assistance reform and the larger development community.
What we’re reading:
- US envoy criticizes civilian effort in Afghanistan (Reuters, December 2) - Holbrooke signaled his concerns over efforts involving the United Nations and scores of foreign aid and development agencies before a meeting at which U.S. and European ministers are expected to discuss how to improve the reconstruction drive. “We have a unified military command but we have an ‘un-unified’ international effort that involves the United Nations, individual countries, hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and other international institutions.” “We believe that we need to coordinate that civilian effort better,” he added.
- New aid chief lays out plans to fix USAID (FP Blog-Josh Rogin, December 1) - Shah will report to directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew, he wrote in the answers, obtained by The Cable. But it’s not yet determined if he will have control over the “F bureau” at State, 60 percent of which is staffed by USAID personnel, he said. “It is critical that we rebuild all types of capacity at USAID, including policy expertise,” Shah wrote to the committee. “I believe USAID must be able to inform policy decisions, develop strategies, and implement programs effectively and efficiently.” “This is part of a larger struggle over the shape and direction of our country’s global development efforts,” Kerry said. “Our aid program is in need of a course correction.”
- Money Can’t Buy America Love (Foreign Policy- Andrew Wilder and Stuart Gordon, December 1) - National security interests have always had a major influence over development assistance priorities, most notably during the Cold War. But never has aid so explicitly been viewed as a weapons system — a fact that is having a major impact on the development assistance policies and priorities of the United States and indeed of many other Western donors. The primary objective of U.S. aid to countries such as Afghanistan is also shifting — from development for its own sake to the promotion of security. The result is that funding for insecure areas takes priority over secure areas.
- Addicted to Contractors (Foreign Policy-Allison Stanger, December 1) - Waging war through contractors also means a lot of waste. Money must change hands multiple times in a foreign country — a standing invitation for corruption. The contracting apparatus spawns a web of complex financial transactions that the U.S. Congress cannot effectively oversee. Funding it is equally problematic; Washington continues to finance the struggle against terrorism through supplemental appropriations as though they were emergency operations.
- The Downside of ‘Smart Power’ (New Republic-Jesse Zwick, November 30) - But there was a catch: Emphasizing aid’s strategic rationale also meant changing its very nature. Several months ago, I spoke to Brian Atwood, who ran USAID from 1993 to 1999 during the Clinton administration. USAID’s underlying philosophy, he pointed out, had traditionally hinged on a very long-term vision of American interests–a faith that alleviating poverty and other social ills would somehow ultimately benefit the United States. It wasn’t pure altruism, but, in practice, it was certainly closer to altruism than the vision of aid as a strategic tool put forth by “smart power” proponents. “You need an aid administrator who can think long term and work on preventing crises,” he told me–as opposed to simply responding to crises, a task that occupies much, if not most, of the secretary of state’s time.
Tags: Afghanistan, development, foreign assistance reform, Holbrooke, Raj Shah, USAID
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Monday, October 12th, 2009
This weekly posting includes key news stories and opinion pieces related to foreign assistance reform and the larger development community.
What we’re reading today: Dissent over aid for AfPak
- State Dept. split over Pakistan aid (USA Today, October 12) - The problem — according to the memo by C. Stuart Callison, an economist with the U.S. Agency for International Development — is that Holbrooke is canceling successful programs run by U.S. contractors and preparing to bypass them by giving large sums to local organizations with shaky financial track records. The memo reflects larger frustrations within USAID, which has gone leaderless for eight months as it waits for Obama to appoint an administrator, said Carol Lancaster, interim dean of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, who served as deputy administrator of the agency under President Bill Clinton. The agency “is hugely frustrated and pretty demoralized,” she said. Shifting aid from U.S. to local entities is a good thing, “but it has to be done at in the right sequence,” said Paul O’Brien, Oxfam’s director of aid effectiveness. If we see whole development programs come to an immediate halt, and people not going to school or the health clinic, that’s a huge cost right now.”
- Civilian Goals Largely Unmet in Afghanistan (The New York Times, October 11) - Since 2001, the United States has allocated nearly $13 billion for civilian aid to Afghanistan, officials at the State Department said, and other countries have given or promised billions more. But in a sign of the difficulties of working with one of the poorest countries in the world, the Defense Department report in January noted that although the Afghan Ministry of Finance is responsible for tracking international aid, there is “no reliable data on the total amount of international assistance that has been pledged or dispersed to the country.”
- The strings that threaten to shackle Pakistan (The National, October 11) - The new aid package, the Kerry-Lugar bill, seems to put a stamp of approval on that shift of resources: the United States plans to triple non-military aid to Pakistan while keeping military support options open based on developments on the ground. The bill’s fatal flaw, however, is the cobweb of strings attached. As it is currently formulated, it requires Islamabad to allow US oversight of its nuclear programme, to commit to fighting a basket of various militant groups and to keep the military from intervening in politics. Those are laudable goals in theory, but the bill is a tactical blunder that will worsen the US position if it is forced down Islamabad’s throat.
- Interagency Debate Over FAS Role Heats Up (CongressDaily PM, October 9) - Clinton responded Monday that the Obama administration has a “one government approach” to efforts in Afghanistan and appreciates USDA’s expertise. But Clinton, who is playing an unusually large role in managing USAID because no administrator has been nominated, said that she is “fully committed to rebuilding USAID as the U.S. government’s lead for international development.” She added USAID is hiring 300 Foreign Service officers, including agricultural development specialists. “I will not support any expansion of USDA’s international development function beyond Afghanistan without full engagement with the Congress first,” Clinton wrote. “We fully share your concern that FAS’ capacity to fulfill its primary mission to represent and promote U.S. farmers and exporters overseas not be hindered or diminished in any way as USDA engages in supporting U.S. objectives in Afghanistan.”
Tags: Afghanistan, development, Holbrooke, Pakistan, United States Agency for International Development
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