WaPo reports that Bolivian President Evo Morales acted on a longtime threat Wednesday and expelled USAID for allegedly “seeking to undermine Bolivia’s leftist government.” He also harangued Secretary Kerry for calling the Western Hemisphere the United States’s “backyard.” Bolivia’s ABI state news agency said USAID was “accused of alleged political interference in peasant unions and other social organizations.”
Screen Capture of USAID/Bolivia
USAID Bolivia has put out a fact sheet says in part, “The United States government deeply regrets the Bolivian government’s decision to expel the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).We deny the baseless allegations made by the Bolivian government.”
The USAID fact sheet also indicates that in the last 50 years, USAID has spent nearly $2 billion in Bolivia on education, health, agriculture, food security, alternative development, economic development, and environment programs. USAID’s budget for Bolivia in FY2011 was $26.7 million from a high of over $72 million in 2008 before U.S.-Bolivia relations soured.
The most recent OIG report we could locate is dated 2008. At that time, USAID Bolivia had 16 American direct hire employees and 116 foreign national staff and a total funding for FY 2008 of $72,135,552.
President Morales expelled DEA agents from Bolivia in 2008 for alleged conspiracy. On September 10, 2008, the Bolivian Government also expelled Ambassador Philip S. Goldberg, after declaring him Persona Non Grata. It is not clear if a reduction in staffing followed the reduction of funds for Bolivia in the years following the double expulsion in 2008.
Update on 5/3/13: According to the State Dept: There are 9 Americans and 37 Foreign Service Nationals (Bolivians) working at USAID/Bolivia. After the May 1 announcement by President Morales, the Bolivian Foreign Minister called the Embassy to officially inform us of the decision to expel USAID and said USAID would be given a “reasonable” amount of time to end operations. The Embassy has not received a diplomatic note and no further details regarding a timeline were given.
This is not the first time the Bolivian president got upset over remarks made in Washington, of course. David Greenlee who was Ambassador to Bolivia in 2003-2006 spoke briefly about this as part of the ADST Oral History (Ambassador Greenlee was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in 2007. See here – http://www.adst.org/Readers/Bolivia.pdf):
On the political side, our relations quickly deteriorated. Morales couldn’t stop attacking us. Partly, I am sure, it was his personal resentment, still occasionally stoked by intemperate remarks from Washington. The problem there was not the State Department. But off-hand comments, here and there, would give him something to work with. Once Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, for example, said something sneering about Morales on a visit to Paraguay. It played to Morales’ hand, not ours.
Morales looked for anything he could use to demonstrate to his base that we were the enemy and he was “bending our arm.” Once some guy from the U.S. came into Bolivia and allegedly, I have to be careful about my language, blew up a couple of buildings, or parts of buildings. There were deaths and injuries. Morales accused the U.S. of sending him to terrorize the country. The reality was that the guy had been arrested in Argentina for blowing up an ATM machine, and then obtained a Bolivian visa on the border with Bolivia, entered the country, and went on to get a license from the police to sell dynamite. I went over this with Morales, and he even thanked me, and thanked me publicly, for the “clarification.” But within a week he was back with his accusations. “Why is the U.S. always sending us terrorists?” he would say. Morales lives in a parallel universe.
And here is what Ambassador Greenlee said about bilateral assistance back in 2007:
Relations had always been good, but very asymmetrical. The U.S. was the biggest bilateral assistance donor. Until Evo Morales was elected president at the end of 2005, the U.S. was always courted, paid deference to, because of that. But our presence was overwhelming. We were too big, the way we did things, was too big for the bilateral relationship. It was bad for Bolivia, and it was bad for us. The Bolivians were in the habit, the bad habit, of being supplicants, and we were in the position, the frankly arrogant position, of doling out assistance. The Bolivians wanted help without conditionality, while we needed to know that our aid wasn’t being squandered, that it was going to something that had a developmental purpose or an anti- drug purpose. The Bolivians resented the emphasis on drugs. They saw the cocaine trade as a U.S. problem, but it was increasingly, even on the consumption side, a Bolivian problem in equal measure.
The U.S. Department of State will host a screening and roundtable discussion with the producer and stars of the Oscar-nominated short film Buzkashi Boys on February 28 at 12:30 p.m. in the Marshall Center Auditorium.
The making of Buzkashi Boys was supported through a grant from U.S. Embassy Kabul to the Afghan Film Project. The goal of this project is to help revitalize the Afghan film industry, which was once a vibrant part of Afghanistan’s cultural life.
During the filming of Buzkashi Boys thirteen Afghan interns were trained in all aspects of film production. Afghan media organizations, which until recently were forced to rely on foreign expertise, will benefit from this training for years to come. Almost all of the trainees continue to work in the local media or television industry. Some are making their own films, strengthening national identity by telling their own stories.
Here are some photos of the stars of Buzkashi Boys during their visit to Foggy Bottom for a screening and Q and A on February 28, 2013.
The stars and producer of the Oscar-nominated film Buzkashi Boys visit the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., for a screening and Q and A on February 28, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain] (click image to view a slideshow)
What was not included in the announcement is the 29-minute film’s unusual distinction. Accordingto the WSJ, the film was “funded almost entirely out of a $150 million State Department campaign to combat extremism, support Afghan media and burnish the U.S. image in Afghanistan.”
As part of the public-diplomacy project, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul gave Mr. French and his Afghan Film Project more than $220,000 in 2010 to make “Buzkashi Boys” and use the production to train aspiring Afghan filmmakers.
Tara Sonenshine who currently serves as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs for State recently blogged about the BB in DipNote touting this as one of the “innovative examples of our many public diplomacy programs in support of a peaceful, prosperous, stable Afghanistan”:
In the case of “Buzkashi Boys,” we supported the Afghan Film Project — the non-profit NGO whose creation was integral to the movie. A grant from the State Department funded the training of 13 Afghan interns in all aspects of film production. Those graduates are now among the best-trained filmmakers in Afghanistan. Most of them have gone on to work in the local media or television industry, or have begun to make their own films.
While the movie didn’t win an Oscar, it sent out powerful messages about a future we can all support: an Afghanistan where ethnic and linguistic divisions can be transcended through a common love of culture, where aspirations are possible, and where the playing fields are level for everyone. On the economic side, it showed foreign movie and television investors and artists that Afghanistan is open for business and growing its people’s capacity to become a vibrant center of national self expression.
Okay, now that you’ve read that, let’s take a look at this item from El Snarkistani of the Republic of Snarkistan, who probably won’t get any invite to embassy events anytime soon:
So to review:
- US government funded film
- Filmed in Afghanistan
- Afghan streetkid star
- Total funding: around $260,000
I say again: that’s a pretty big shoestring.
By way of comparison, remember Clerks? That cost $27,000. And the first Paranormal Activity? $15,000. So why was it so expensive to make this film in a country where median monthly incomes are a few hundred dollars? Your main star’s a street kid who sells maps and “bodyguard services” to foreigners on Kabul’s Chicken Street, so I’m guessing he wasn’t that expensive. Must have been all that capacity building.
Which is what’s missing from the narrative surrounding this film: at no point are we hearing how that money went to help the Afghan film industry. In fact, in a story for the National, Lianne Gutcher reports that French and his team made choices that would virtually ensure that whatever skills were learned would not translate to the Afghan film scene once the movie was completed.
French also insisted on shooting with RED cinema cameras – an American brand that is expensive to hire and insure. That offered little benefit to Afghan filmmakers, who cannot afford RED. Afghanistan’s film and TV industry mainly uses MiniDV, a far lower standard.
Completely absent from the photos taken of the cast and crew by the media during this Oscar season are the filmcrew that French and his team were supposed to train in the first place. Any publicity photos feature French (prominently, and why not, with those eyes, that hair, and that beard?) and the two co-stars, but noticeably absent are any other Afghans. Based on how much the US Embassy in Kabul has been falling all over itself on social media to promote this thing, one would think that the goal of telling the “good news” about Afghanistan has been achieved. With…buzkashi.
[...]
No, what you need is a story that’s going to make foreigners feel good about Afghanistan. And if, along the way, you hire an Afghan as your “Assistant Chef,” well, that’s all to the good, isn’t it?
Make no mistake: this film isn’t directed at Afghans. I don’t think it’s even been screened for an Afghan audience at this point, as the only publicity here in Afghanistan around the film has focused on showings at foreign embassies. When the Soviets used to do this, we called it propaganda. Since it’s the 21st century, and we’re Americans, somehow this is…capacity building. Or, as David Ensor, who headed up the US public diplomacy effort in Kabul at the time, told the Wall Street Journal,
“I was in the hope business, and we were making investments in Afghanistan and its people that were designed to make life better and create a perception of change in the right direction,” he said.
“Create a perception of change”? Perish the thought that we’d create any actual change. Whether you’re calling it public diplomacy, public affairs, information operations, or propaganda, it all boils down to the same thing: creating the perception that things are going to be just fine. What’s troubling is that telling the real stories of average Afghans would do just that. For a quarter of a million dollars, you could find a whole lot of Afghans whose lives have been directly and positively changed by the US presence here.
Coming from me that may be a surprising statement, but it hasn’t all been bad here. The problem is that the Department of State and other government organizations here are so focused on making sure everyone knows that the billions they’re dumping here is doing some good, that they forget that it’s really not that complicated, after all. Instead of making a film about how American dollars have made real change in the lives of actual Afghans, the State Department would rather dump even more money into things that “create a perception of change.”
So we funded a film that’s disconnected by and large from the country in which it’s filmed. We didn’t really build the capacity of the Afghan film industry, unless you count beefing up the resume of an American director and his non-Afghan crew. And we just cross our fingers and hope that somehow people think we’re doing some good here. Marvelous.
Buzkashi Boys actors under the Great Seal at the US Embassy Kabul with Ambassador James Cunningham. Photo via US Embassy Kabul/FB (click on image for a slideshow)
On a related note, we saw this tweet from US Embassy Kabul and we could not walk away:
@diplopundit One infamous film that comes to mind is ‘Mission to Moscow’ (1943). The War Dept during WWII had a number of others.
Which led us to dig up ‘Mission to Moscow’, a film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1943 based on a book by former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies. According to Wikipedia, this film has also been called ”unquestionably the most blatant piece of pro-Stalinist propaganda ever offered by the American mass media”.
Oh, dear!
Once you start digging into the Office of War Information (OWI), it’s almost impossible to stop – there’s an ‘um, richness of material there just so hard to ignore. Several OWI-connected films got nominated for Academy Awards and one even starred an actor who later became a U.S. president:
It’s Everybody’s War (OWI) 1942 Nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject
Mister Gardenia Jones (OWI) 1942 Nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject
A longer list of Allied propaganda films for World War II is available here.
About the OWI:
“The Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S.government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. [...] In 1943, the OWI’s appropriations were cut out of the fiscal year 1944 budget and only restored with strict restrictions on what OWI could do domestically. Many branch offices were closed and the Motion Picture Bureau was closed down. By 1944 the OWI operated mostly in the foreign field, contributing to undermining enemy morale. The agency was abolished in 1945, and its foreign functions were transferred to the Department of State. The OWI was terminated, effective September 15, 1945, by an executive order of August 31, 1945.”
Perhaps the most instructive item we found rummaging around is from Elmer Davis, the director of OWI in 1942 who said: “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”
There. Got that?
Now given all that history with Hollywood, should we really call this ‘innovative?” In the meantime, since the stated goal of the Buzkashi Boys project is “to help revitalize the Afghan film industry,” we asked over in the Twitters the following question:
@USEmbassyKabul@TOLO_TV Curious – how many of the 13 AFG interns fm BB are currently wrking in AFG film industry?
That’s not really an unreasonable question to ask, is it?
The NYT reports that the protest at the US Embassy in Cairo was a result of “outrage over a movie being promoted by an anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States, clips of which are available on YouTube and dubbed in Egyptian Arabic.” The NYT calls it a mysterious anti-Muslim movie. The CNN clip in YouTube (below) attributes the protest over a Dutch film, but that does not sound right. The controversial Dutch film was released in 2008 so that could not have been the cause for the current protests.
The protesters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo Tuesday and brought down the American flag, replacing it with a black flag with an Islamic inscription to protest a video attacking Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. Our embassies overseas have always been targets. But in this new world of persistent connections, it does not take much to trigger a protest or a mob attack. Whether it is some nutty Florida pastor threatening to burn the Quran (who called off the burning with a free car) or some obscure California filmmaker who no one has ever heard of until the embassy storming — the repercussions across the world are almost immediate and made louder by social media.
CBS/AP reports that only a few staff members were still inside the US Embassy, as embassy security apparently had sent most staff home early after learning of the upcoming protest.
Additionally, CBS/AP also reports that according to Libyan officials armed men also stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi – once the seat of the Libyan revolution – and set the building ablaze after there was a similar protest there against the film. The report cites Wanis al-Sharef, an interior ministry official in Benghazi, saying that the attackers stormed the consulate after firing in the air. He says nobody was in the consulate at the time. However, Reuters is reporting that armed gunmen and security forces clashed at the consulate office in Benghazi.
The US Embassy in Cairo released the following statement. While the statement below does not have a time stamp, salon.com says the statement below was posted at 12:18 p.m. on Sept. 11:
U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement September 11, 2012
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.
The embassy also took to Twitter about a couple hours ago amplifying its condemnation of “misguided individuals” but did not say much about the misguided mob attack.
Egypt, of course, has received an average of $2 billion in aid annually since 1979 making it the second largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel. Makes one wonder — over thirty years of aid and counting, where did that aid go? Our relationship with that country is so razon thin, anything and everything can bring on any sort of protests. The embassy’s Emergency Message #24 says that on September 11, several different groups are calling for demonstrations in both downtown and Garden City to “protest a range of issues.”
So it’s about a movie, or it’s about something else … anything … everything …
Perhaps it’s time to seriously rethink the US aid strategery?
The following figure extracted from the CRS report on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs: FY2013 Budget and Appropriations:
Extracted from CRS report
Via the CRS:
Under the FY2013 budget request, aid to Africa would decline by 10% from the current level to $6.4 billion; U.S. aid to the Near East would increase by 12% to $9.0 billion, largely due to support for the Arab Spring; and aid to South Central Asia would increase by 6% to $5.3 billion. Aid to Africa primarily supports HIV/AIDS and other health-related programs while 88% of the aid to South Central Asia is requested, largely for war-related costs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Near East region continues to be dominated by assistance to Israel ($3.1 billion), Iraq ($2.0 billion), Egypt ($1.6 billion), and Jordan ($0.7 billion). The Western Hemisphere’s projected relative decline in FY2013 is attributable to a reduction in funding of ESF and INCLE for Colombia. Europe and Eurasia’s 14% decline is largely due to progress made by many countries in the region and other more pressing global priorities. Aid to East Asia and Pacific remains relatively low and consistent with past years’ levels.
Here are the countries in the Near Eastern Affairs bureau:
Map of Countries in the Near Eastern Affairs Regional Bureau
Last Friday, Ambassador Kenneth Merten concluded his assignment as U.S. Ambassador to Haiti. They must really like him over there. The Embassy had somebody sketched him and his family over in FB; rather cute.
Via US Embassy Haiti/FB
“Today, we bid adieu to Ambassador Kenneth Merten and his family after a three-year term as U.S. Ambassador to Haiti. With his deep knowledge of the country, Ambassador Merten has strengthened Haitian-American relations and led U.S. Government assistance to the Government and people of Haiti through the good times and the bad. He has worked to support the take-off of Haiti, pou ayiti ka dekole, strongly encouraging investments and job creation in the country, particularly with the construction of the Caracol Northern Industrial Park. We salute Ambassador Merten’s commitment and dedication to Haiti. Embassy Port-au-Prince wishes all the best to the Merten family and we look forward to the arrival of our next Ambassador.”
Last week, Haiti President Michel Martelly awarded the outgoing ambassador with the National Order of Honour and Merit. The award, with the grade of Grand Cross, was given to Ambassador Merten at a ceremony in Port-au-Prince’s National Palace.
You might remember that last year, Ambassador Merten was also the recipient of the 2011 Ryan C. Crocker Award for Outstanding Leadership in Expeditionary Diplomacy. “This award recognizes those U.S. diplomats who excel in the most challenging leadership positions overseas. The Selection Committee commended Ambassador Merten for his extraordinary leadership of the unprecedented U.S. government response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which involved over 22,000 US military in Haiti and thousands of civilian personnel from numerous U.S. government agencies. His capable leadership saved lives and embodies the highest virtues of public service and crisis management.”
Then less that 24 hours of his departure from Haiti, the Associated Press published a lengthy report complaining about the Haiti reconstruction (see US pledge to rebuild Haiti not being met). What’s wrong with you, AP?
The Associated Press also says that “the fruits of an ambitious, $1.8 billion U.S. reconstruction promise are hard to find.”
Further it has some more troubling details:
On July 21, Less than 12 percent of the reconstruction money sent to Haiti after the earthquake has gone toward energy, shelter, ports or other infrastructure. At least a third, $329 million, went to projects that were awarded before the 2010 catastrophe and had little to do with the recovery — such as HIV/AIDS programs.
Half of the $1.8 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding is still in the Treasury, its disbursement stymied by an understaffed U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince in the months after the quake and by a Haitian government that was barely functional for more than a year.
The AP report also cites major frustration for watchdogs of the U.S. effort for the lack of transparency over how the millions of dollars are being spent.
From interviews to records requests, efforts to track spending in Haiti by members of Congress, university researchers and news organizations have sometimes been met with resistance and even, in some cases, outright refusals.
Even when US contractors were willing to release the information on the Haiti reconstruction, apparently they become unreleasable because the information is considered “proprietary” by their funder. And who is the funder? USAID. To my last recollection, USAID is still run by the U.S. government, and funded by U.S. taxpayers.
For the AP to released this report on the 21st is just mean, that’s a weekend for goodness sake!
But you gotta do what you gotta do. Thomas C. Adams who serves as Haiti Special Coordinator at the U.S. Department of State, and Mark Feierstein who serves as Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), probably did not get much sleep trying to make sure that their blog post on Haiti makes it to DipNote on the day the AP report came out; and it did.
And — poor guy, Ambassador Merten’s luggage was barely out of the Reagan National Airport when he had to pen an op-ed for the Miami Herald saying “I am proud that the work we have done, and continue to do, helps Haitians build a stronger foundation for a prosperous future.”
Also this:
As I leave Haiti, I am encouraged. Haiti has reported a 21-percent increase in foreign direct investment since 2010. In the north, I saw the completion of the first factory buildings and modern power plant at the Caracol Industrial Park. There is palpable enthusiasm in the community for the jobs this park will bring, adding more factories over the coming months and years. Anchored by a $78 million investment from Korean apparel manufacturer Sae-A Co., Ltd., the park has the potential to create more than 60,000 jobs.
[Potential rosy picture. ].
Oh, wait, a blog friend pointed us to this piece in NYT - is he touting the same Sae-A Trading, a South Korean clothing manufacturer and major supplier to American retailers like Walmart and Gap Inc.? The company that’s been called ““one of the major labor violators”?
[T]hanks to a deal that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helped broker, Sae-A looked forward to tax exemptions, duty-free access to the United States, abundant cheap labor, factory sheds, a power plant, a new port and an expatriate residence outfitted with special kimchi refrigerators.
[...]
The developers — the Haitian government, the State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank — chose Sae-A despite its troubled labor relations in Guatemala, where the company closed its flagship factory last year after threatening to move jobs out of the country during an acrimonious dispute with its union.
Before the Haiti deal was sealed, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. urged American and international officials to reconsider, given what it described in a detailed memo as Sae-A’s egregious antiunion repression, including “acts of violence and intimidation” in Guatemala, where Homero Fuentes, who monitors factories for American retailers, calls Sae-A “one of the major labor violators.”
You think Ambassador Merten deserves a double here for touting that company in his op-ed and not mentioning the um, labor issue? Okay, here you go -
In related news, Al Kamen writes that Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book, “Little America,” apparently “has sparked a scramble in the Kabul embassy compound to compile “success stories” for publication to counter the book’s analysis.”
SO LISTEN UP!
If you’re the smarty person who leaked that nugget to Al Kamen, they better not find out who you are; or you will be compiling “success stories” until 2024.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan during on an unannounced visit to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai ahead of the Tokyo conference on Afghanistan’s reconstruction.
Additional footage here during her stop at the Kabul International Airport.
During the visit, she also announced the designation of Afghanistan as a Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA). President Obama signed the MNNA designation for Afghanistan on July 6. Afghanistan is the first country to be designated an MNNA since 2004.
According to the embassy statement “MNNA qualifies a country for certain privileges supporting defense and security cooperation but does not entail any security commitment to that country. Some of the privileges of MNNA status include eligibility for training, loans of equipment for cooperative research and development, and ultimately Foreign Military Financing for commercial leasing of certain defense articles.”
The following Presidential Determinations designated the countries listed as major non-NATO allies of the United States for purposes of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2151 et seq.) and the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2751 et seq.):
Determination No. 2004–35, June 3, 2004, 69 F.R. 34049.—Morocco.
Determination No. 2004–37, June 16, 2004, 69 F.R. 38797.—Pakistan.
Could not find the citations for this but five countries were apparently declared MNNA by President Bush I in 1989: Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. New Zealand was added to the list in 1997 by President Clinton. So Afghanistan is the 15th member of this very small club.
In the meantime, before departing for the donors’ conference in Tokyo, Secretary Clinton told reporters, “We are not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan.”
Somewhere in the air space between Kabul and Tokyo, Hamid Karzai could not keep his smiles in a single file.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent and associate editor at the Washington Post and author of the new book making waves, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan. On June 26, an exclusive excerpt from his book titled Deadwood was published by Foreign Policy. The lead question, Why did America send its C team to Afghanistan?
Our twelve take aways below:
The US Embassy in Kabul has an invisible giant reset button that gets pushed once a year, and mission life starts anew each summer.
Staff members could have done a lot more stuff (maybe answer more now emails) in Washington, DC but then they would not count as a number in the “civilian surge.”
The Baghdafication of Kabul appears complete with Kabul sounding as familiar as Chandrasekaran’s Emerald City. Rajiv needs his kevlar, incoming fire starts right about now.
An agency who clings fervently to mandatory age retirement for the proper functioning of the Foreign Service sent a 79-year-old man to the reconstruction team in Kandahar.
When a senior State Department official told the writer, “We’re at Team C” he’s either preparing for retirement or won’t mind hate mail swamping his State Department inbox.
The top State Department official in Kandahar was thrown out of the Kandahar Governor’s office and survived to order a non-disclosure agreement to protect his office’s combination lock codes from his military colleagues.
Summer Coish prominently mentioned in the article may be bound for high places, just not to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) in Foggy Bottom.
Forty percent of U.S. government civilians who were assigned to Helmand from July 2009 to June 2010 did not last six months.
By late 2010, USAID was reportedly hiring 20 new people a month to go to Afghanistan, but it was losing seventeen. The three who remained were not desperate.
A senior State Department official told the writer: “[...] there’s enough deadwood here that it’s becoming a fire hazard.” No one has ordered a firetruck, but the State Department might order that the official’s desk be foam sprayed.
Urinating on the US Embassy chancery wall or near the flagpole can get you sent home, unless you are the deputy Turkish ambassador, or someone with a small bladder who threatens to complain under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Alcohol purchases at the embassy convenience store was limited to two bottles of wine or one bottle of spirits per person per day. One bottle of spirits (distilled beverage) can have as high as 40% alcohol by volume (ABV), so that’s a hell of a restriction.
The State Department’s OIG recently released its Evaluation of the Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) Program for Countries Under the Bureaus of Near Eastern Affairs and South and Central Asian Affairs (Report Number AUD/MERO-12-29, April 2012).
How much and where it went?
From FYs 2002 through 2010, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Office of Antiterrorism Assistance (DS/T/ATA) and the Bureau of Counterterrorism (CT) have been provided nearly $1.4 billion for ATA programs worldwide, with approximately 65 percent of that assistance ($873.3 million) going to programs in North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia.
In FY 2011, the ATA program’s budget request was $205 million, with approximately $125 million designated for the 22 North Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia countries.
In FY 2010 (or FY2009?), the ATA program expended approximately $62 million trained nearly 2,700 participants from countries in North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia at a cost of approximately $1,800 per student per day of training.
The average training course lasted 13 days and was attended by 21 students, which equates to approximately $23,000 per student per class, or $1,800 per student per day of training.
The OIG report did not say where the training sessions were held but seriously — how do you rack up $1800 a day for training per trainee? Oops, sorry, how quickly we forget. That’s almost as bad as the GSA scandal which cost federal taxpayers nearly $2750 per person.
Something about objectives, indicators and lots of strategeries:
OIG found that for 20 of the 22 countries, CT and DS/T/ATA did not develop specific or measurable strategic or performance objectives in the Country Assistance Plans.
OIG found that for eight of the 22 countries, CT provided broad strategic objectives that were vague or included an inordinate number of goals.
OIG found that nearly all of the performance indicators and targets used to define success or failure of a country program were ambiguous, were not measurable, or lacked meaning.
Let’s have some examples:
Lebanon: The strategic objectives for Lebanon directed the ATA program to help modernize and professionalize security forces “through basic and advanced training and equipment and operation upgrades.”
India: The strategic objectives for India directed the program to emphasize critical incident response; post-incident investigation; human rights; border security; international threat finance; extradition and prosecution; and the protection of critical infrastructure, including port, rail, and airport security.
Bahrain and Morocco: A performance objective for both Bahrain and Morocco is to enhance the country’s “capability in investigating, and responding to terrorism.”
Nepal: The two program objectives for Nepal are “to enhance the capabilities of Nepalese police to utilize ATA training” and to “improve capabilities of the Nepalese police to counter and respond to terrorism.”
And the Success Measurement Award goes to ATA Bangladesh where one performance indicator for measuring the success of the increasing protection capabilities for Bangladeshi leaders was “regular updates from U.S. Embassy, ATA program visits, and feedback from Bangladesh’s law enforcement community on enhanced institutional management and procedures developed through ATA training to protect national leaders.”
If that’s a measure of success, we’d hate to see what failure is like.
So, cmon- is this program effective?
“Since 1983, DS/T/ATA has provided ATA program training to participants from North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. However, DS/T/ATA could not determine the program’s effectiveness because it had not developed specific, measurable, and outcome-oriented program objectives or implemented a mechanism for program evaluation. In addition, DS/T/ATA and CT were not consulting with DRL when selecting partner countries or when determining the assistance to be provided to those countries because DS/T/ATA and CT officials stated they were unaware of the requirement. As a result, the Department has no assurance that the ATA program is achieving its intended statutory purposes or that the overall or individual programs are successful. Further, DS/T/ATA has no basis for determining when partner countries are capable of sustaining their own ATA program without U.S. support.”
Bottom line answer is – since 1983
Who the heck knows?
But you’d be pleased to know that this has not kept State from pouring more money into a program that has not been proven to be effective since it has no idea how to measure its effectiveness.
Why don’t we just add the disbursement of funds as an indicator of success and make it easy on everyone?
… it just awarded Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, a medal worth 33 years of jail time. If folks complain that the medal is such a weighty reward for helping capture the most notorious terrorist of our time, just pause and think — the reward could have been a lot bigger or swifter. No, not a bigger medal, obviously; but Dr. Afridi could have been put to death by suspension by the neck, also known as hanging, reportedly the only legal method of execution in Pakistan. So putting him in jail obviously, if you’re watching clearly, is a gesture of friendship.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden’s location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region. Along with the jail term, the court imposed a fine of $3,500. Dr. Afridi, who may appeal the verdict, was then sent to Central Prison in Peshawar.
He had been charged under a British-era regulation for frontier crimes that unlike the national criminal code does not carry the death penalty for treason. Under Pakistani penal law, Dr. Afridi almost certainly would have received the death penalty, a Pakistani lawyer said.
[...]
“The doctor was never asked to spy on Pakistan,” said a senior American official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in Pakistan. “He was asked only to help locate Al Qaeda terrorists, who threaten Pakistan and the U.S. He helped save Pakistani and American lives.”
It looks like Pakistan does not see it that way. And this is when we say — well, even “friends” occasionally disagree, correct?
English: The compound where Osama bin Laden was hiding. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As further proof of that, our “friends” would reportedly allow us to bring in supply trucks from Karachi, on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, to the Afghan border (blocked since November when two dozen Pakistani soldiers were killed in an U.S. air strike from Afghanistan) for a transit free of “upward of $5000.” Now, don’t get mad because $5,000 is really a great deal for “friends” only, especially considering that the air route cost per container through the Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan is $15,800.
Of course, these are the same “friends” who already receive top US dollars in aid. Further, under the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, Pakistan is slated to receive $1.5 billion in annual nonmilitary aid from FY2010 through FY2014. So even the senators over at the Armed Service Committee did not like the ka-ching sound of that transit fee. “I think that’s called extortion,” Senate Armed Services Committee ranking RepublicanJohn McCain(R-AZ) told The Cable yesterday. “We can’t look at aid in that light. It’s now becoming a matter of principle.”
The Congressional Research Service reported in April that “Since 1948, the United States has pledged more than $30 billion in direct aid, about half for military assistance. Two-thirds of this total was appropriated in the post-9/11 era from FY2002 to FY2011. Many observers question the gains accrued to date, viewing a lack of accountability and reform by the Pakistani government as major obstacles. Moreover, any goodwill generated by U.S. aid is offset by widespread anti-American sentiment among the Pakistani people.”
Hump! The CRS what do they know, huh?
Meanwhile, in Islamabad, the news is that a “constitutional petition” has reportedly been filed in the Supreme Court yesterday “to restrain the authorities from constructing huge building structure and secret bunkers in the basement of American Embassy’s premises.”
The Nation says that Lt Col (Retd) Inam-ul-Rehim filed the petition under Article 199 of the Constitution. “His point is that the US government is bent upon to weaken Pakistan and destroy or to take over the possession of its atomic assets.”
The complainant is asking that “a high-level commission be constituted comprising persons of high repute from retired judges of Supreme Court or High Courts, lawyers of high repute and civil engineers to visit the site of US embassy building and submit a detailed report before the apex court.”
Terracotta army in the bunker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
And here’s the lesson for the day on friendship:
Friends let friends put each others do-gooders in jail, not hang them.
On money matters, friends give each other a discount when appropriate.
Best of all — friends let friends inspect each others bunkers.
|05/17/13| "Who is going to say it? With all respect, Chris Stevens decided - he decided - to go to Benghazi. His choice. And couldn't the energy used now on the fingerpointing and fall-guying be used better to actually make some changes? Hello? We're still out here, all over the world."
![The stars and producer of the Oscar-nominated film Buzkashi Boys visit the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., for a screening and Q and A on February 28, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](http://diplopundit.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/bb_fb.jpg?w=500&h=333)
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