Editorial
The UN secretary-general owes Bangladesh a clarification
We are happy that the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has travelled to Dhaka on a two-day visit to take stock of the political and economic situation in our country as we enter a critical phase that will, we hope, culminate in a peaceful transfer of power from an unelected government to an elected one following credible and participatory parliamentary polls. It is only natural and right, in our view, that the chief of the association of sovereign states, assembled under the United Nations, should want to learn first-hand of the troubled political situation of a member-state that holds the world’s 8th largest population, and goes above and beyond the call of duty in fulfilling its obligations as a member of the international community. Ban Ki-moon, we are sure, is more than aware that Bangladesh consistently tops the list of countries which contribute the most number of troops to United Nations peacekeeping missions around the world and that many Bangladeshi peacekeepers have sacrificed their lives in support of UN peacekeeping efforts.
What the secretary-general may not be aware of, however, is the direct role played by the office of his principal representative in Bangladesh in prompting the current period of emergency and the confiscation of the fundamental rights of the people, which has now lasted for nearly 22 months. On January 10, 2007, the day prior to the declaration of emergency, an official statement was issued from New York by the secretary-general’s spokesperson on Bangladesh, which expressed deep concern at the deteriorating political situation in the country and urged all concerned to ‘seek a compromise that will serve the interest of peace, democracy and the country’s overall well-being.’ The statement from New York made no mention of Bangladesh’s peacekeeping activities, and thus did not relate the local political situation to the country’s contribution to international peacekeeping
efforts.
But, as a follow up to that statement, the resident coordinator of the United Nations in Dhaka issued a controversial press statement, in the name of the local office of the United Nations, the following day, January 11. Unfortunately, however, the statement in question bore little resemblance to the original statement from New York. The Dhaka statement did mention the one issued from New York by the secretary-general the previous day, but added that while the UN appreciated the role played by our armed forces in previous contested elections, its continued support of the elections scheduled for January 22, which would not be participatory, raised questions. The statement then went on to make a highly sensitive suggestion, claiming that ‘this may have implications for Bangladesh’s future role in UN peacekeeping operations’.
While we know fully well that the office of the UN resident coordinator in Dhaka has no authority to deliberate on our participation in international peacekeeping operations, which is handled by higher-level forums including the security council, we have genuine reasons to believe that the not-so-subtle threat issued by the resident coordinator played a significant role in prompting the powers that be to impose a ‘state of emergency’ the same evening and thereby to suspend the fundamental rights of the citizens. Hence, we would like a clarification from the secretary-general during his Dhaka visit whether he takes ownership of that controversial statement issued from Dhaka, or, if indeed, as we suspect, the office of the resident coordinator in Dhaka went ‘rogue’ on that January day in prompting the prolonged confiscation of the fundamental rights of the people. If it is the former then we have to say that the UN has done a terrible injustice on 150 million people of Bangladesh. If it is the latter, then we would naturally expect that the resident coordinator will be immediately recalled, for the sake of the UN’s reputation, and we would urge the secretary-general to take her back with him when he departs tonight.
Cultural activists need to unite
The time has come for the cultural activists to unite and last Friday’s procession by artists and art lovers at the fine arts faculty of Dhaka University has been a continuation of the fortnight-long protest against the forces of bigotry and darkness. Once again artists, singers, fine arts students and cultural personalities held a rally against the removal of the Baul monument from in front of the Dhaka airport, as reported in yesterday’s New Age. The whole country must unite to save the nation’s cultural legacy from bigots who are out to erase our centuries of heritage. These obscurantists must be resisted with a firmness that is expressive of the nation’s best resolve to protect and preserve what gives meaning to and defines its independence.
Unfortunately, that national resolve has not yet been expressed with the same firmness that emboldens the fanatical, anti-cultural forces to issue new threats. The mainline political parties have not yet come out in open condemnation of the bigots. A united resistance is made more difficult because the present interim government is meeting the fanatics half-way and leans heavily towards their side. Thus, the progressive, secular protestors who are giving leadership to the nation on the cultural front have not yet muster support from the country’s main power centres while the government’s role is at best ambiguous and at worst accessorial. The question is not merely one of a particular piece of sculpture at a particular place but it represents a critical choice between obscurantism and enlightenment that the nation is facing, thanks to the new-fangled striking power of the newly empowered groups of obscurantists.
The sculpture must be re-installed as a primary move to salve the cultural injury dealt to the nation, as well as to give a clear message to the errant mullahs that to force a wrong concept upon the nation and that too through vandalism is not acceptable. This aim should be pursued single-mindedly. The demand raised by the Conscious Artists’ Society to name the airport crossing where the sculpture had been erected as Lalon Square is in itself a well-reasoned and patriotic demand but at this time such demands may prove diversionary. This will also provide the government an opportunity to strike an ignoble compromise — sculpture has been removed but the name of Lalon is being preserved. Similarly, the demand for formation of a national committee to formulate a policy on placement of sculptures can only be considered if it is comprised mostly of well-meaning cultural personalities working in different mediums. One, after all, needs to understand, the artists who need full freedom for fostering their creativity cannot labour under government censorship. In the recent past, when the government was facing two-sided pressure from fundamentalists and women’s rights activists over women development policy, it set up a committee with representation from the very fundamentalists. To form a national committee is the easiest escape chute for a government unable or unwilling to take a hard decision.
All that’s wrong with the best of intentions
A US National Security Council memo from 1965 reads: ‘USAID should be used as a political weapon with major assistance going to African friends of the US.’ Another USAID brochure states, ‘The principal beneficiary of American foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States,’ writes Mahtab Haider
In a paper published by the Humanitarian Policy Group in July 2007 titled Corruption perceptions and risks in humanitarian assistance: an Afghanistan case study, Kevin Savage, and his colleagues have identified complaints about aid agencies working in that country that ring familiar across the least developed world.
Since the Taliban regime was dismantled in Afghanistan in 2001, the number of NGOs operating in that country had increased dramatically, largely because of the humanitarian assistance available for the cause of endemic poverty and hunger in Afghanistan but also because the US was keen to present Afghanistan as a model of success as the Iraq invasion turned sour. According to an the organisation Integrity Watch Afghanistan, in four years since the US invasion of Afghanistan the number of registered NGOs increased ten-fold, many of them lacking the skills and capacities necessary to implement the flood of development assistance that was pouring into the country. In this context Savage and his colleagues refer to a ‘spending imperative’ that is commonly seen in humanitarian emergencies in disasters across the world, meaning NGOs viewed being able to spend money in great quantities as a greater measure of success than the qualitative value of their spending. ‘This often leads to an acceptance of leakage, the bending of rules and the awarding of contracts without any competitive or transparent tendering,’ wrote Savage. And since most of the development assistance was flowing through international humanitarian agencies who in turn sub-contracted the work, a chain of sub-contracts were created which made monitoring and evaluation difficult at the best of times.
What resulted is not unfamiliar to those with a context and knowledge of history of humanitarian and development assistance. So for instance, the USAID-funded Kabul-to-Kandahar highway, a campaign promise by president Hamid Karzai before the 2004 elections was built in less than two years. Similarly, the USAID launched its ‘Accelerating Success Initiative’ under which the US construction firm Louis Berger built and renovated 533 schools and clinics at a cost of $226,000 each. Less than four years on, that highway is disintegrating because of poor quality materials and even worse workmanship, while it has emerged that the ‘Afghan government could apparently have carried out the work for $50,000 per building’. Many of these buildings too have started disintegrating because of design flaws. In 2004, the World Bank director of Afghanistan noted that an estimated 35 per cent to 40 per cent of aid flowing into Afghanistan is being wasted.
What Savage et al conclude is that the ‘spending imperative’ has caused large volumes of spending to flow through and benefit the existing power elite in rural Afghanistan, strengthening the tribal warlord structure, undermining central government and inciting public suspicion and animosity towards the aid agencies themselves. There is little pretence why some aid agencies will often do things the way that they do. A US National Security Council memo from 1965 reads: ‘USAID should be used as a political weapon with major assistance going to African friends of the US.’ Another USAID brochure states, ‘The principal beneficiary of American foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States. Close to 80 per cent of USAID’s contracts and grants flow back to American firms,’ as quoted in the book Contracting for Development.
One of the most striking examples of the corruption that is embedded in the existing structures of humanitarian and development assistance is a speech by journalist Michael Maren to students at Cornel University who intended to take jobs in international development. Published in Harper’s magazine in 1993, in his speech Maren — who had worked for the USAID and projects that it funded for half a decade — warned students that they were about to enter what was essentially a destructive and money-spinning industry sustained by large government contracts to advance political interests that countries like the US have outside its borders.
Maren describes how he was responsible for coordinating food aid delivery to parts of Kenya where there was no shortage of food, with roughly a million dollars to spend in administrative and logistical expenses. The aim was simple: the US government was dumping excess foodgrain produced by its highly subsidised farmers that it had procured but could not sell within its own borders for fear of driving agricultural prices down.
‘Harmless as this might at first sound, sending food to areas where there is already food creates serious problems,’ says Maren in his speech. ‘It decreases demand for locally produced commodities, subsidises the production of cash crops, and fosters dependence among those who receive the aid. Since PVOs (private voluntary organisations) can only operate with the approval of the host government, they typically end up supporting the government leaders’ political goals, rewarding the government’s friends, punishing its enemies, and providing fodder for a vast system of political patronage.’
According to Maren, ‘That’s exactly what happened in Somalia, where the government and the generals had been playing games with food aid for more than a decade before the Marines arrived. In 1987 a World Food Program report stated that Somalia had actually produced a surplus of food that year, yet PVOs continue to distribute free food and collect US government money for administering the delivery. Inevitably, indigenous food-distribution networks withered and died. The country’s economy adapted to foreign aid — not to production. Meanwhile, the PVOs and corrupt government officials got fat and rich.’
These are among a broad spectrum of concerns that have been voiced in the paper Need and greed: corruption risks, perceptions and prevention in humanitarian assistance published by the Humanitarian Policy Group in September this year. According to the authors, while the problems of corruption and mismanagement are endemic to humanitarian assistance, their effects spill over into developed countries as well. According to the paper, contracts worth an estimated $8.75billion were plagued by ‘waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement’ in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the US in 2005. And the problems of corruption extend beyond just financial pilferage. In Liberian refugee camps, camp staff and UN peacekeepers have been accused of registering aid beneficiaries in exchange for sexual favours. In most countries there is also an established system of the local administration or power elite influencing which areas get first choice in access to aid in the wake of a natural disaster.
What makes matters worse is that the international media, which in the past, was often a watchdog in reporting inconsistencies and corruption in humanitarian assistance have also become dangerously reliant on NGOs for logistical arrangements in reporting disasters. As newspaper and television networks cut back on the funds they are willing to commit to cover disasters that often have a shelf-life of less than a couple of days, they have discovered that embedding journalists with aid workers is a cheap option for thrift and analysis of the ongoing crisis. As a result, many journalists only end up seeing what they are shown by the aid agency that is arranging their field visits, while local staff for national media is often too embedded in the local power structure to report such corruption, or even recognise it as being anything other than an undesirable reality.
mahtabhaider@gmail.com
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