Tag: International Aid

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Were the Dark Ages really that bad? W(h)ither Aidland?

I’ve been scanning a few articles and posts on LinkedIn about the crash&burn approach to USAID of the new Trusk administration.  There are two broad schools of thought being advocated. 

The Insider School: this is the worst possible and most unfair action taken against an agency that strives to do only good. The hardship faced by many tens of thousands employee, contractors and implementing partners down the food chain is the main objection, with many expressing solidarity with this newly and unexpectedly large cohort of jobless humanitarians.  Suddenly everyone has the green halo around their profile picture; I’m Open to Work.  

Indeed, this is a shitful way to begin a new year.  I am not directly impacted by Trusk’s actions but suddenly my already slim chances of finding employment within the sector I’ve worked in my entire career are as close to nil as they can possibly be.   

Imagine a series of ponds connected by a stream.  The one at the top is full with just a few fish in it. The middle pond has lots of water but also a huge number of fish.  The stream has been silting up for time and some fish have been struggling to breathe for years. Yet, for the most part the pond has just enough water and oxygen to maintain the status quo.  In the third pond, the water levels are really low but the fish are smaller and seem to be able to do ok though they are constantly aware that the stream from the middle pond is getting dammed and blocked.  

Overnight the top pond is drained of all its water. In a panic, the fish there move into the middle pond. But this is not a solution because the largest feeder stream is dry and the pond’s water supply has dropped by nearly 50%. But there are a huge number of new fish to accommodate. 

In the third pond, fish are dying fast.  Not to mention the many animals surrounding the ponds that depend on the water to survive.  

It’s easy to understand the solution demanded by this group school of thought. Reinstate USAID and all its funding immediately. Turn the tap back on and let the water flow once more.  

The Opportunity School of Thought: This is advocated mainly by (many) fish in the middle and lower ponds. And fisheries experts who work at think tanks and write blogs. The basic argument is: the structure of the ponds and streams was inherently unfair and broken.  The top fish have always determined the quantity and quality of the water flowing to the lower ponds and for the fish in the lower ponds and the animals who depend on the water in the pond, the emptying of the top pond is probably an opportunity to rebuild the system so that it is more equitable. 

No one has yet articulated what a new system might look. The prescriptions are finely articulated statements of principle that have been echoing around Aid-Land forever. They all appear to ignore the cruel reality that we fish, and the animals we support, need water. And if we are going to support a lot of animals and really attack the problems that the animals face, we need lots of water for a long, long time.   

Ok, enough already of this silly analogy. 

The point is that large scale development and humanitarian responses require large volumes of money. And on a steady basis. Governments are generally the only source of such largesse.  Sure, there are billionaires and rich corporations but their interests are extremely narrow and self-serving.  The private sector will never be a reliable source of base funding for humanitarian or development work. 

So, I’m sceptical of the Opportunity school. Of course, if USAID is gone for good NGOs will adjust. Many will cease to exist altogether (not bad in itself); almost all will downsize, shrink their ambition and keep their heads down even lower.  But I’m not holding my breath for a new government led aid infrastructure and financing system to emerge that will be better than the one we love to hate currently. 

And there is a lot to hate. Bureaucracy. Hypocrisy. Conditionality. Compliance over assistance. Risk transfer. Salaries. Bad CEOs with no accountability. Lack of diversity at the top. Recycled thinking. Opaque transparency. Salaries. Sexual harassment and abuse. Baked-in white middle-class privilege.  Over-weening earnestness. Commerical firms who market themselves as humanitarian but are profit making machines for shareholders. 

But the one thing, above all other things, that sucks about the aid business is the donor-implementing partner (be they big hairy international behemoths or a local disabled persons NGO in the south Pacific) relationship. Governments are not just the only viable source of sustainable financing for aid but they call the shots. Their Congresses and Parliaments put so many ridiculous conditions on the receipt of and spending of their funds that many NGOs spend as much time, if not more, filling out reports for donors to ensure they are not violating an ever-growing number of conditions, as they do actually helping actual people.  

For all our claims to be innovative and independent, we have always been beholden to what the State Department or Foreign Office wants.  

This doesn’t put me in the Insider’s camp. I sympathize with those who lost their jobs. Doing away overnight with such a major pillar of the Aidland superstructure will be nothing but disastrous.  And given how most countries take signals from the White House the impact on Aidland is going to be widespread and indefinite.  

I don’t have a solution but frankly I cannot think of any group that can replace government funded aid agencies. 100 Soros’ can’t compete.  I don’t see new scalable financing models emerging. Innovation will happen but at the local level only.  Like democracy, government funded aid is the best of many flawed systems.

The Golden Age of International NGOs and AID is well and truly over. Maybe the Dark Ages weren’t really so bad. 

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The final nail? Trusk do away with USAID

The decision by Trump/Musk to do away with USAID should be a development we are not surprised by. But I am.  It does not bode well for millions of people and communities around the world whose American tax-payer-funded assistance will cease. But its certainly, a huge nail in the nearly completed coffin of the aid sector as we know it. 

The move to disappear stand-alone aid agencies is not new.  Canada did it. Boris Johnson did it. And it happened here in Australia in 2013 when a pugnacious let’s-move-back- to-the-past Prime Minister mandated the death of AusAID.  

Everywhere it has happened it has had a similar effect.  The quantum and impact of the ‘aid’ decreases dramatically. Experts with decades of experience and knowledge are turfed out and replaced by graduates and bland bureaucrats with no interest in the subject matter. When Australia did its downsizing over a decade ago, the budget for international aid had been growing steadily and significantly every few years. Both parties, pledged to make Australia a good global citizen and set a target of .7 GNI (gross national income) to be the annual goal.  This would have taken Australia from a medium sized supporter of community development and humanitarian response to the major leagues.   

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister of Britain in 1997, he removed the ’Aid’ office from the Foreign Office and created a separate and well-funded agency which dominated the sector for the next 15 years. DFID, as it was known (Department for International Development) was very well funded, filled with recognised technical experts and championed new ideas. It was the thought leader of the global sector, respected by all for its commitment to addressing some of the inherent problems that exist in such an agency. 

USAID was the Daddy Warbucks of the industry. The agency with the deepest pockets, largest infrastructure and a pioneer in the financing of major infrastructure projects like dams and roads that were critical for countries to building their sense of nationhood and post-colonial economies.  It had its political constraints imposed by Republicans (no support to abortion or reproductive services, for example) but it was so big these things got lost in the shuffle.

As a kid in India, one of the regular features on the landscape were American men sporting crewcuts and white shirts running around in the most remote places laying the groundwork for or directing the building of such projects.  I attended school with several kids whose parents were in India or Bangladesh or Burma or Ceylon for a few years, working for USAID or the Canadian aid agency on these massive projects. 

It seems those days are now gone forever.  I lament not the white men and crewcuts or even the massive projects, but that governments no longer consider soft power and aid to be something of value. And the implicit if unspoken belief that poverty can be defeated. And that the ‘West’ has a degree of responsibility for taking steps to reduce that poverty and vulnerability. 

DFID is no more. BJ smooshed it back into the Foreign Office and its budget was stripped to support other brilliant schemes like sending asylum seekers to imaginary camps in Rwanda. And to support other underfunded Tory projects. Where if once was a beacon, Britain’s aid program, like so much else in the UK, is flickering candle in a rainstorm.  Canada means well but has lost its importance as an aid donor.   

Australia, flying high with billions of dollars and ambitious plans to support climate change around the world, is now a sick, in-house joke.  Rather than .7% of GNI, the aid budget represents .19% GNI! The lowest level since the 1950s! It’s important presence in South Asia, Africa, and SE Asia has disappeared. It’s only significant programs are in Papua New Guinea (former colony) and a few other Pacific Island nations.  Its priority is pro-business and infrastructure. Issues like public health, agricultural support, education support or humanitarian response is as thin as the storyline the politicos spin in front of the cameras. 

For well over a decade now, Interntional non-governmental organisations (INGOS) have been struggling to find a reason to stay alive.  This is a long and inglorious story of strategic blindness, consolidation and refusal to face the reality of a changing world.   In this way, perhaps Trump’s bull-in-a-China shop approach will finally bring on the crisis that will at last bring reality crashing through the cubicle partitions. That could be good. But the damage will be massive and the chances of it leading to anything but chaos and corruption, extremely low.

More likely what we will see is the aid budget going to support Trusk designed projects (Trump hotels in Myanmar, rocket ships for Kazakstan, oil drilling in South Sudan, shopping malls and data farms in Greenland). And huge disruption to the financial viability of INGOs around the world that have built themselves into large often-bloated institutions whose main source of revenue is USAID. Which is now shuttered. 

I just tapped in “USAID.gov”  

Stay tuned for further developments on this front. 

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Letter from Dushanbe

Rudaki Square, Dushanbe

LETTER FROM DUSHANBE 
 
There are two things that could kill you in Tajikistan these days. The first is a massive earthquake. Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian republics with a population of six million, is the place where four major mountain ranges meet as the Indian subcontinent inexorably crushes and grinds northwards into Europe. You feel the earth tremor here almost every week: sometimes just a low quiver; at others a quick chiropractic snap that rattles your windows and creaks the walls. 

The second way you can be deprived of your life is to be slammed by a vehicle with tinted windows (could be a Jeep Cherokee, could be a tiny Lada 1500) whizzing dangerously through the shaded intersections of Rudaki Avenue, equally scornful of traffic signals and pedestrians as of the sour-faced militia that hang thick as bats along the main drags of the capital, Dushanbe. Not too long ago the odds on being kidnapped and then murdered, or shot in the crossfire of street fights were definitely better than the first two scenarios. 
 
So, on the face of it, things have improved in Tajikistan. Gangsters may be bad drivers but at least snipers aren’t drawing a bead on you when you go shopping. Tajikistan’s society fell apart the same moment the Soviet Union declared itself null and void. Seventy years of communist wall papering had done nothing but thinly cover the rifts that had been cracking across the landscape for centuries. Northern Tajiks, long the “blessed ones” of the political system began to squabble with uppity, uncouth Southerners. Democrats from Dushanbe and Islamicists from the isolated, honey producing Karategin valley joined forces against Communist party hacks. Ethnic Uzbeks, Russians and Germans were attacked, harassed and forced to quit the country. Fighting broke out in the streets of Dushanbe and carried on for five years. Tens of thousands of Tajiks fled into Afghanistan (could there be a worse place on earth to seek refuge?) as hundreds of thousands more became displaced within the country. 

Tajikistan, like many other recently independent states, is one of the lost nations of our world. Though not yet a failed state, Tajikistan is falling with increasing velocity towards the bottom of the misery stakes. It has always been a poor country and except for a couple of centuries a millennium ago, when Tajiks were the undisputed rulers of this part of the world, holding the northern borders of the first Islamic Persian empire, the Tajik people have always been lesser partners in the power arrangements of Central Asia. The fabled cities of Bukhara (ascetic and spare), and Samarkand (opulent and gregarious), are their proudest contribution to world civilization. But with the gradual loss of the northern realms to Turkic tribes the Tajiks were unequivocally usurped and subjugated to a life of cultural domination and political irrelevance. Until, that is, 1924, when the new Soviet state carved out a Tajik Autonomous Region. For the first time the Tajiks began to imagine themselves as a distinct national group. The Tajiks’ feelings toward the Soviet Union were, not unnaturally, largely positive. They were grateful for bringing them into the world. And being part of a sprawling powerful Union gave the tiny land-locked country much greater security and prosperity than it would have been able to acquire on its own. If there was any doubt about what their fate could have been without the Soviet Union, one only has to glance south of the border to the basket case called Afghanistan. Ten years ago, when Tajikistan followed the general trend and declared its independence the occasion was a cheerless event. Those once fond feelings have given way to bitterness and regret. The civil war that broke out almost immediately achieved little of positive consequence. The industry, farms and orchards of the most dependent economy of the former Soviet Union (40% of the budget had come in direct subsidy from Moscow) fell into utter neglect and disrepair. Nothing was produced and very little grown. Factories stood as empty as the revolutionary slogans that had suddenly fallen out of vogue. Bazaars were deserted. Restaurants were beyond imagination. Since an UN-brokered peace settlement four years ago Tajikistan has struggled to find its way in the big bad frightening world marketplace. It will be years before the people of this country enjoy the standard of living they had as Soviets when time extended securely into the future and holidays in Georgia were assured. 
 
Ten years after independence there remains little warm feeling for the capitalist, free market and democratic jargon their leaders mouth each day in the smudgy, thin, state-controlled newspapers. Hunger and poverty are growing in Tajikistan. The World Bank estimates that 96% of the people live on less than $28 a month. More than a third live on less than $5. Forty one percent of children under five years of age are seriously malnourished and weigh less than children their age in all except the poorest countries. Basic buying power is the issue in this country. Most Tajiks don’t have any. There is no work and what is available pays a paltry sum. Many agriculture workers working the old state and collective cotton farms have not seen a wage for three years. In most households outside of the capital (and increasingly here as well) the day’s meal is a loaf of round naan bread and tea. Russians, once the prime beneficiaries of the system, but now among the poorest, have taken to stewing dogs in some urban centers. Poverty can be measured in any number of ways. But if you calculate the degree to which a people’s standard of living has fallen (evaporated nearly overnight) then the collapse of most of the Soviet-dependent societies has produced one of the cruelest forms of privation. Recently I visited the home of a deaf pensioner who receives a small donation of American wheat flour and vegetable oil. The effects of a stroke twist his face. His flat, on the first floor of a concrete tower on the outskirts of Dushanbe, is shabby and dark. His trousers are pinned together and his shirt collar is worn; old spectacles off kilter. “I used to be a highly skilled type setter at a publishing house. Now all I can do is cry.” As I left the building I recalled what one man said to me when I asked him what he thought of the new world order. “The Russians used to say ‘We’ll screw you but then we’ll feed you.’ Now we are being fucked but there’s no food.” 

This piece appeared first on the blog Hackwriters in 2003

I lived and worked in Dushanbe, Tajikistan between 1999-2001. Dushanbe is the Tajik word for the second day of the week, (Tuesday) and was named for a historical weekly Tuesday market that had been held in the area for centuries. During the Soviet era the city was known as Stalinabad (1929-1961). With the ‘thaw’ that followed the death of Josef Stalin, the ancient historical name was reinstated.