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Afghanistan. Karzai attacca le ONG corrotte!
by mazzetta Thursday, Apr. 21, 2005 at 1:40 PM mail:

le Ong come parte dello schema di dominazione.

Quando a dicembre il ministro della pianificazione, Dr. Ramazan Bashar Dost, denunciò le incredibili inefficienze delle oltre 3.000 Ong afghane, circa 350 delle quali straniere, segnò la sua fine politica.
Accusato da Paul Barker ( Onu) di sabotare gli aiuti e di mettere in cattiva luce i generosi aiutanti, esponendoli a possibili attacchi, venne dimissionato in tutta fretta.
Quattro mesi dopo tocca al presidente Karzai lamentare quanto Dost aveva sbagliato a rendere noto, il presidente ha per la prima volta accusato le ONG di essere -corrotte-.

Dalle analisi di Dost emerge che gran parte delle Ong presenti nel paese operano in sincronia con il governo e le forze occupanti.
Emerge anche che gran parte dei fondi vengono spesi per il sostentamento delle stesse ONG e solo una minima parte arriva al popolo afghano sotto forma di aiuti.
Non esiste, secondo Dost, una ONG capace di contenere entro il 20% di quanto ricevuto i costi della propria struttura.
Inoltre le Ong prima hanno assunto a cifre iperboliche (relativamente al paese) la scarsa manodopera qualificata locale, per poi trasferirla all'interno delle istituzioni afghane. Una moltiplicazione di figure incerte, milioni di euro spesi in "consulenze", tanto da far dire a Dost che:"In Afghanistan ormai abbiamo più consulenti che cani e mosche"

I dati relativi alle retribuzioni dei cooperanti non sono disponibili, ma di certo si sa che il personale locale riceve circa 1.000$ contro il salario normale di 200$, mentre i generosi soccorritori stranieri viaggiano sugli 800$ al giorno (USAID per esempio). Alcuni dirigenti hanno ricevuto centinaia di migliaia di dollari per periodi di permanenza inferiori all'anno. Cifre molto superiori alle retribuzioni degli stessi ministri afghani.

Un grave atto d'accusa, pronunciato dopo anni nei quali Karzai ha assistito allo spettacolo fornito da decine di ONG divenute il braccio della politica americana, e un pessimo esempio per gli afghani.
Il carosello di fuoristrada dipinti di bianco anima le strade di Kabul, ma gli aiuti non arrivano, e quando arrivano non si occupano tanto delle emergenze prioritarie, quanto di temi cari alle opinioni pubbliche occidentali; gran parte degli aiuti vengono per esempio assorbite dalle c.d. tematiche "di genere", fomentando il sospetto che tanti programmi si preoccupino più di contrastare l'Islam che di aiutare il paese; paese che è ancora nella situazione precendente all'invasione, con l'unica significativa differenza rappresentata dal fatto che il governo controlla solo Kabul ed alcune province limitrofe.
In Afghanistan si spende (in teoria) di più per affermare i diritti della donna che per nutrire la stessa ed i suoi figli.
Questo porta all'isolamento del personale umanitario, spesso criticato per lo stile di vita lussuoso e per i comportamente poco apprezzati dalla morale afghana.

Sprechi immani, nessun rendiconto contabile, ville affittate a decine di migliaia di dollari al mese per alloggiare i funzionari; lo stesso governo afghano è infiltrato dai dipendenti delle ONG che poi sono chiamati a decidere delle assegnazioni dei progetti.
L'aspetto peggiore è però quello che vede questo genere di ONG agire di concerto con l'Us. Army, abdicando ad ogni pretesa di neutralità e divenendo esse stesse armi non convenzionali nell'ennesima guerra asimmetrica.
Si consegnano gli aiuti solo alle tribù amiche, si assumono e pagano gli uomini di valore, si chiude un occhio sulle violazioni dei diritti umani.

Il tutto condito dalla estrema opacità dei conti, sovrafatturazioni ed assenza di rendiconti, rendono i rapporti sugli aiuti effettivamente consegnati delle semplici opere di fantasia contabile. I donatori vengono truffati insieme agli afghani.

Non stupisce che in tale situazione gli attacchi alle ONG in Afghanistan si stiano moltiplicando, mentre le organizzazioni più serie tolgono le tende per non rischiare di finire schiacciate dall'insostenibile situazione.

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Fonti
by incazzato Thursday, Apr. 21, 2005 at 1:52 PM mail:

Questa è la grande truffa delle ngos in tutto il mondo...
Uno strumento solo di repressione...
Puoi dire dove hai preso i dati per Afghanistan?

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da un articolo di :
by mazzetta Thursday, Apr. 21, 2005 at 2:13 PM mail:

Ramtanu Maitra, che scrive per diversi giornali internazionali e partecipa ll'EIR e alla Indian Defense Rewiew (Dehli), comparso su Asian times.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GD21Ag01.html

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Ed ecco la dimostrazione
by mazzetta Friday, Apr. 22, 2005 at 8:20 PM mail:

La direttrice di USAID è stata nominata segretario aggiunto per l'Africa del Dipartimento di Stato.
La miglior dimostrazione che la United States Agency for International Development è in realtà uno strumento di controllo strategico, niente a che vedere con un impegno umanitario.


Bush Expected to Tap USAID Official for Top Africa Post

allAfrica.com

January 6, 2004
Posted to the web January 6, 2004

Reed Kramer
Washington, DC

The White House is expected to announce as early as this week the appointment of Constance Berry Newman as assistant secretary of State for African Affairs. Newman currently is in charge of Africa at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The assistant secretary for Africa in the State Department is considered a pivotal post for Africa policymaking, since the Department's under secretaries, who are more senior, as well as the deputy secretary and secretary of state himself, have broader global responsibilities. The assistant secretary post is currently filled on an acting basis by Charles Snyder, a veteran diplomat who served as the senior deputy assistant secretary in the Africa Bureau before Walter Kansteiner resigned as assistant secretary in October.
Subscribe to AllAfrica

The pending announcement comes amid speculation over a shift in another key African policymaking job, the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council, the body that coordinates foreign policy for the president. Jendayi Frazer, who has held the post since President Bush took office in January 2001, is believed to be in line for nomination as the next U.S. ambassador to South Africa.

If it occurs, the appointment would represent an unexpected shift, since the State Department had already settled on Katherine H. Peterson for the Pretoria post. The selection of Peterson, a career foreign service officer who currently directs the Foreign Service Institute and was formerly ambassador to Lesotho, upset Africa hands in the Department and outside who had assumed the prestigious South Africa assignment would go to Johnnie Carson, another career officer who completed a three-year term as ambassador to Kenya last year and served previously as principal deputy assistant secretary for Africa and as ambassador to Zimbabwe and Uganda. Carson is currently senior vice president of the National Defense University.

Newman, who was named to the post of USAID assistant administrator for Africa in 2001 by President Bush, held high-level posts in previous Republican administrations. She was director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1989 to 1992 during the first Bush administration and has also been assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commissioner and vice chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and director of VISTA.

From 1992 to 2000, Newman served as under secretary, the number two position, at the Smithsonian Institution. Earlier, she co-founded the Newman and Hermanson Company.

According to several of Newman's associates, she had initially been disinclined to leave her job at USAID, where she believed she had an important role in promoting African development, but was persuaded that the Africa Bureau at the State Department needed strong leadership, especially going into the final year of the president's term in office.

According to State Department officials, the leading candidate to replace Kansteiner had been Nancy Powell, the current U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Powell was the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Africa Bureau during the final months of the Clinton administration and served as acting assistant secretary before Kansteiner took over in June of 2001. While Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly wanted Powell in the Africa job, others in the administration are said to have opposed her leaving Islamabad or disagreed over who should succeed her in the highly sensitive post.

RELATED:

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la festa è finita per le Ong
by no party Tuesday, May. 17, 2005 at 9:25 AM mail:

da asian Times

The party's over for Afghan NGOs
By Ramtanu Maitra

On April 4, Afghan President Hamid Karzai finally stepped out of outgoing US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's shadow and called some of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating inside Afghanistan "corrupt".

After making known Article 8 of the new Afghan legislation that prevents NGOs from bidding for Afghan government-sponsored project contracts, Karzai called a meeting with ambassadors and representatives from the United Nations and donor countries based in Kabul.

Voicing his strong concern that some NGOs were responsible for squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid from the international community, Karzai told the gathering: "We have a responsibility towards the Afghan people, as well as the taxpayers in the donor countries, to stop NGOs that are corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable."

The Afghan president announced the establishment of a joint task force consisting of Minister of Economy Mohammad Amin Farhang, Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development Haneef Atmar and chief of staff of the President's Office Umer Daudzai to examine the issue and submit recommendations in no more than a month.

Bashar Dost's accusations
To many observers of Afghan developments, Karzai's denouement of the NGOs was overdue. Last November, Abdur Rasheed Saeed of the Institute for War and Peace (IWP) reported that Planning Minister Dr Ramazan Bashar Dost had told him of thousands (there are some 3,000 NGOs operating within Afghanistan, of which close to 350 are foreign-based) of NGOs that had failed to deliver effective assistance to the stressed Afghan people. In December, ostensibly under pressure from the NGOs and the countries they represent, Dost was forced to resign. It was evident that in asking Dost to step down, Karzai, whether he liked it or not, had to succumb to the external pressure.

Since becoming the planning minister in March 2004, Bashar Dost made it clear publicly that the NGOs were ineffective and had wasted money that should be being spent on the Afghan people. Pointing out that existing Afghan law "didn't clarify the responsibility of NGOs and the procedure for their control", Dost spearheaded a draft law that would regulate their operations. He noted that when an NGO received funds, either from a government or a non-governmental source, they are supposed to distribute most of those funds to the people of Afghanistan. "I have yet to see an NGO that has spent 80% of its money for the benefit of the Afghans and 20% for their own benefit," he said.

"International NGOs get big amounts of money from their own nations just by showing them sensitive pictures and videos of Afghan people, and there are even some individuals who give all their salaries to NGOs to spend it on charity here. But [the NGOs] spend all the money on themselves, and we are unable to find out how much money they originally received in charitable funds," Bashar Dost told the IWP.

Dost advocates elimination of "NGO-ism" - and not NGOs. He told the IWP that there are some so-called NGOs that operate for profit, like private companies. "I haven't seen any NGO at all which works efficiently yet," he added.

A predictable uproar
Dost's comments angered the NGOs and the United Nations. Paul Barker, country director of the aid agency CARE, declared: "These ill-founded, unsubstantiated and generalized attacks, from a government minister, are creating a climate in which the government is seen to be legitimizing attacks on NGOs." Of course Parker did not want to urge the Karzai government to investigate and substantiate Dost's charges, suggesting he is wholly aware that the planning minister was not whistling in the dark, and that evidence of a cobweb of corruption may come out if such investigations were carried out.

Instead, Barker, speaking for the NGO community, took the high road, accusing the planning minister of aiding attacks on the NGOs. Similarly, without making reference to the Afghan minister's charges, UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told a news briefing in November: "Justification of violence in general, and against NGOs in particular, is unacceptable. The government has a paramount duty to uphold law and order and it cannot be involved in legitimizing or condoning physical aggression in any way."

Missing the real issue
The UN spokesman's statement is certainly true, in general. But both Dr Parker and the UN are dodging the real issue. The fact is that NGO activity in Afghanistan raises many legitimate questions. For instance, using their foreign and donor nations' links the tax-exempt NGOs have gotten access to government contracts that tax-paying local commercial companies should have won. The NGOs, using their political muscle and their well-oiled linkages to the International Security Assistance Forces, won some contracts by developing access to government officials, including ministers, some of whom were formerly their employees. Because of the higher pay they can offer, some of these NGOs have hired qualified individuals who would otherwise be available to serve the government.

One can get a whiff of the type of "NGO-Raj" that angered Dost in an article published in Outside magazine (December 2003): "When the world community of do-gooders arrives to rescue a nation from itself, the first sign is the blinding white traffic jam. White Land Rovers stack up thick at the airport; white Nissan Pathfinders block the streets at lunch; miraculous white-on-white Toyota Land Cruisers choke the traffic circles of the lucky target country. This caravan of chariots was triple-parked outside the Mustafa Hotel in downtown Kabul on a Saturday night. Late-model 4x4s filled the avenue and circled the block, churning up dust as the chauffeurs maneuvered for parking. I threaded my way through a cluster of acronyms: UN, UNESCO, UNDP, UNHCR, FAO, UNICEF, UNICA, UNAMA, UNOPS, UNEP, MSF, ACF, MAP, MACA, IRC, WFP, IOM, IMC. Even the hotel was painted white. I could hear Shakira [Colombian singer and sex symbol] playing faintly from above."

Similarly, a writer for the Chennai-based Indian daily The Hindu, posted in Kabul, observed: "People working in some of these NGOs lead a lavish lifestyle. A look at their offices and their houses, the way they are furnished, the air-conditioned cars they drive, all add to the resentment of the people, as it all comes out of the aid being pumped into the country."

In an article that appeared on March 26 in Der Spiegel, under the title "Afghanscam", Susanne Koelbl made a case, pointing out that in a country where the per capita income is just US$200, foreigners, or more appropriately the "$1,000 men" are jostling the streets of Kabul. Koelbl says the so-called $1,000 men were everywhere, hired by donor institutions like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank. Recently, a list of salaries surfaced, causing a medium-sized political earthquake in the government. An employee of the British consulting firm Crown Agents, for example, received $207,000 for his 180-day placement in the Aid Coordination Office, plus expenses. Another submitted a bill for $242,000 for 241 days - 10 times as much as the Afghan minister responsible for running the ministry earns in a year.

The $1,000-a-day men
In addition, hundreds of consulting firms are competing for huge projects, and the number of active consultants in Afghanistan is estimated to be at least 3,000. "Suddenly there were more consultants than flies and dogs in this city," said an employee of the US Embassy who has worked in Kabul for two years. One German diplomat estimates that at least a quarter of US relief aid is spent on foreign experts alone, Susanne Koelbl wrote.

The article discusses one such consultant, William Strong, a 67-year-old Californian who recently landed a $30 million contract. Strong has a valid background making money in almost all of the world's crisis regions. He lives together with a dozen international co-workers in a $12,000-a-month villa in the northern part of Kabul. Working for a company called Emerging Markets Group, he has been given the task by the Afghan government of surveying the country's land and clarifying property ownership. "This is a huge market," a rapturous Strong said, before complaining that it's hard to find people who are "more interested in their job than money", Koelbl reported.

Koelbl's article also looks at another successful company, Bearing Point. With its headquarters in McLean, Virginia, the global consulting firm's Afghanistan budget alone is more than $100 million. Reports indicate the company's chief executive, Ed Elrahal, has succeeded in placing 70 of his company's consultants in the government. Elrahal's employees aren't allowed to talk to the press and in the few cases where they are, they can only do so under strict supervision. Nevertheless, one of the company's employees in the Finance Ministry told Koelbl why he is working here - anonymously, of course. In Kabul, he earns the same amount he would in far more dangerous Iraq - a daily rate plus a supplement of 50% for hardship and danger pay. But he refuses to disclose the amount - "It's a company secret," he said. But those with experience here know that the daily rate for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which operates globally, is $840.

The lifestyle of the foreign NGOs is not all that draws the ire of Afghan locals. Objection has also been raised to the corruption associated with the forming of fake community organizations, delivering small credits to the rich or friends of the NGO staff, reporting fake community development schemes, sharing the funds allocated for such schemes with a few community members, conducting meaningless training just for the sake of training, and over-budgeting the same to the donors. What angers other Afghans is the exuberance of the NGOs in funding programs related to "gender and development", which the more religious types perceive as "anti-Islam."

There is also a deeper, political point. Bashar Dost is among those who point out that NGOs in Afghanistan have not always functioned the way they are now. When the Taliban were in power, most NGOs were truly involved in humanitarian activities. But now there exists a semi-functioning government that the international community - in other words, the United States - wants to strengthen.

Donors like USAID want NGOs to work hand-in-hand with the Afghan government and the US military, and to wear donor political support on their sleeves. They are reportedly being asked to subjugate their anti-poverty missions to broader, more complex political and sometimes military goals. And this raises serious issues that ought not to be swept under the rug.

Ramtanu Maitra writes for a number of international journals and is a regular contributor to the Washington-based EIR and the New Delhi-based Indian Defence Review. He also writes for Aakrosh, India's defense-tied quarterly journal.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)






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