Critique of the NGOs: Follow-up

by Roni Ben Efrat
In the last Challenge I published an article called "Porcupine Tangos: The PA and the NGOs". There were two main points.
(1) After the signing of the Oslo agreement, the left-wing political parties in the Territories were in disarray. Many of the agreement's potential opponents gave up their political struggle and went to work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Here, dependent on outside funders, they were politically neutralized. "Because most funders today have no interest in rocking the PA's boat, the NGOs must toe Yasser Arafat's line, accepting 'distortions' in democracy, thus contributing to a system of dual power and dual responsibility in the provision of services. …NGOs may do excellent work in specific areas…but the broader effect of their mere existence is to inhibit change." (Challenge #57, p.8.)
(2) Whereas the needs of the people used to have first priority for NGOs, most funding nowadays comes as a result of policy decisions by foreign governments. The spearhead of this change has been The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has a record of affiliation with the CIA. USAID promotes those NGOs that are directly connected to it. Through them it attempts to infiltrate the Palestinian political process.
The article elicited strong reactions, positive and negative. Many funders and recipients sadly confirmed the analysis and expressed their disappointment over the situation. Others felt unjustly accused and expressed their anger.
In this follow-up, I wish to take up several points that our readers have raised and to introduce new facts that have come to our attention.

Is there a USAID-CIA connection?

Some American NGOs that work in Palestine were angry about the connection we drew between USAID and the CIA. One person wrote, "It is a very dangerous claim, as there is no factual base to back this up, and as far as we here on the ground are aware- it is absolutely false... US foreign policy governs the actions of both organizations, but putting USAID with the CIA is putting all us NGO workers in a category that I'm sure none of us would in any way agree with or desire (e.g., NGO worker = CIA assassin)."
In response: If the CIA has such a bad reputation among NGOs, that in itself is a good sign. I must confess, in writing "Porcupine Tangos" I took it as a matter of "common knowledge throughout the third world that USAID is the 'humanitarian' arm of the CIA." (Ibid., p. 12.) I did not draw this connection without grounds, which I shall now outline:
USAID has worked closely with the CIA in the past, both in Southeast Asia and in Latin America. During the Vietnam War, for example, USAID worked together with the CIA in "Operation Phoenix," where it was "responsible for material aid." The operation was responsible for the assassination of thousands. NOTE 1 (See also the box on Laos.)
Or again, in the Dominican Republic: "The Trujillo assassination (1961) and the 1965 intervention remain the most spectacular actions linked to general U.S. domination but involved all U.S. governmental and paragovernmental agencies: CIA, FBI, AIFLD, USAID, and the U.S. embassy in Santo Domingo." NOTE 2
Someone may object, "But none of this proves that USAID serves as a cover for the CIA in the Palestinian territories today!" True. It is in the nature of a cover that no one should be able to prove a relationship. Yet the documentation of the past connection ought to suffice to make the NGOs very wary of USAID. In addition, there are recent indicators:
A year ago, in the Balkans, the CIA made recommendations to Washington about who should receive aid and who should not. Endnote Four of "Porcupine Tangos" may have slipped the eye: "... Ibrahim Alloush of the Free Arab Voice (www.fav.net) has published a 'top secret' document from the CIA's Balkan Institute with the title, 'Promoting Democracy in Yugoslavia'. The agency recommended that its government increase the 1998 budget for this worthy purpose from $15 million to $35 million. Several of the line items are interesting. $10 million is to go to the media, whose job will be to emphasize instances of repression. The NGOs will get $5 million. Another $10 million will go to political parties, especially those that cooperate with the NGOs."
Recently, USAID decided to cancel its support for the independent Palestinian TV stations. We wonder: Does a CIA recommendation, similar to the one just quoted, lie behind this decision? The cancellation came just a few months after USAID put out a pamphlet strongly favoring independent media for countries undergoing a change in the nature of their regimes. The pamphlet singled out, with pride, the Palestinian example. What caused the change? Could it have been the extremely popular talk shows on these stations, in which people severely criticize the Oslo process? The US Embassy said No: the cancellation was due to purely budgetary considerations. (Amira Hass in Ha'aretz, Oct. 20, 1999.)
It is hard to believe, moreover, that the US would spend billions on covert CIA campaigns to intervene in the affairs of other countries, while at the same time, Washington's humanitarian arm, USAID is unconnected to such efforts, innocently promoting democracy, welfare and community development. After having tarnished itself elsewhere by working hand in glove with a covert agency, USAID cannot hope to clear its name as long as that agency continues to function in the same back yard with it - literally, in fact, out of the same building (the US Embassy) on Yarkon Street in Tel Aviv.
In short the problem remains: Whether the CIA contacts USAID directly and tells them whom to fund, or whether it makes recommendations to its government, which then relays the word to USAID, the result is the same.

What is the alternative?

Several readers thought that my article failed to provide a positive alternative. What should be the role of the NGOs? Here, for example, is Issa Sarras, a Palestinian physicist working at the grass-roots level in the field of communications:
"It's a magnificent article. I greatly sense and suffer from the diminishing free space and possibilities of independent action in Palestine, and the fact that our society is gravely penetrated by people who work for foreign parties. Your analysis is spectacular and your logic is quite solid and consistent. I know it is not your responsibility, but missing are suggestions and options of breaking this death cycle (if they exist) rather than simply asking the NGOs to consider and appreciate the gravity of the period (which it doesn't look like they will do.)"
In the quest for an alternative, there is often a false assumption: that the alternative must appear somewhere for us to grasp. No. Those who hunger for an alternative are the alternative. The goal may be a general one: a viable, independent Palestinian state. But that suffices to enable us to make choices, rejecting programs (Oslo, for example) that lead away from the goal, and doing the grass-roots political work that leads toward it.
True, we are up against a massive assemblage of political power that conquered the field after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In our region this power has taken the form of the Oslo regime. Against it, mere projects will not suffice unless they are connected to a political program, implemented by an organized political force. One inhibits the creation of such a force as long as one hides behind a blurred position toward the PA. To become the alternative means, first of all, to take a stand against the PA's betrayal of the Palestinian struggle.
As a political force we must remain conscious of the global conditions within which we work. Within the American framework, we will not be able to move toward a viable and independent Palestinian state. Resisting Oslo, however, we can.
This is the principle, for example, behind the work of the Organization for Democratic Action (ODA) - work that is documented in every issue of Challenge. On the one hand, we support NGOs such as the Workers Advice Center and the Mothers Schools and Sindyanna of Galilee that function at the grass-roots level, fighting a system of ethnic discrimination that has its roots in a given political reality. On the other hand, the ODA also campaigns in the Israeli elections, national and municipal, struggling to change that political reality.
With regard to action, therefore, the alternative is already here: Do not work for NGOs that support the PA and the Oslo process. Do work for NGOs that are involved in a struggle for the necessary political change. Indeed, there is no guarantee that we shall achieve the goal. Success can only come in the course of a basic change, beyond the Palestinian arena, in the international balance of power. But the lack of a guarantee is not the same as the lack of an alternative.

The CIA/USAID connection in Laos, late 1960's

T. Hunter Wilson, who teaches at Marlboro College in Vermont, wrote a paper in 1997 called "Whose Secret War? Secret From Whom?", describing his experiences in Laos from 1969 until 1971. As an American conscientious objector, Wilson did his alternative service there with International Voluntary Services (IVS). His paper is replete with references to the ways in which the CIA and USAID worked together during this secret war. Here are two examples:
The US intensified the bombing of Laos in 1968. "Not publicly known at that point was that the CIA had within USAID a large contingent of agents, many of them military men in mufti, known cynically as the Rural Development Annex. This group provided the Royal Lao Army with everything from shoelaces to weaponry to intelligence, and maintained in addition its own small forces of 'counterinsurgency' troops." ("Whose Secret War?", p. 1.)
At the time of his service, a reporter, Jack Foisie, asked Wilson what he knew, and in response he referred him to Sanford J. Stone, who was the USAID Area Coordinator in Savannakhet, Laos. Foisie later published a piece in the Los Angeles Times, revealing "that the RD Annex was the cover for the CIA intelligence and military activities in Laos." Wilson also heard the following directly from Stone: "'USAID is in the development business, to buy loyalty from the Lao people. Not so they will resist the PL (the Pathet Lao guerrillas - RBE.). That would be too much to expect. But so they'll report where the PL are, so we can pass those reports on to the people who can take care of that kind of thing." ("Whose Secret War?", p. 6.)
For further references to the CIA/USAID connection, see Roger Warner, Back Fire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and its Link to the War in Vietnam, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995, e.g., p. 116: "…for all practical purposes the USAID and CIA programs were a joint operation."

The political neutralization of the local NGOs in the last ten years is very like what Latin American NGOs underwent two decades ago. There too, as global neoliberalism gained the upper hand, opposition parties fell into disarray, and their leaders were co-opted by non-political NGOs. James Petras ("Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America," Monthly Review December 1997) describes the result:
"NGOs emphasize projects, not movements; they 'mobilize' people to produce at the margins but not to struggle to control the basic means of production and wealth; they focus on technical financial assistance of projects, not on structural conditions that shape the everyday lives of people. The NGOs co-opt the language of the left: 'popular power,' 'empowerment,' 'gender equality,' 'sustainable development,' 'bottom-up leadership.' The problem is that this language is linked to a framework of collaboration with donors and government agencies that subordinate practical activity to nonconfrontational politics. The local nature of NGO activity means that 'empowerment' never goes beyond influencing small areas of social life, with limited resources, and within the conditions permitted by the neoliberal state and macroeconomy." (Page 11 of Petras, op. cit.)
"But, while the mass of NGOs are increasingly instruments of neoliberalism, there is a small minority which attempt to develop an alternative strategy that is supportive of anti-imperialist and class politics. None of them receive funds from the World Bank, European, or U.S. governmental agencies. They support efforts to link local power to struggles for state power." (Page 16 of Petras, op. cit.)

endnotes
NOTE 1. See Ralph McGehee, "CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam", . McGehee refers to R. Manning, ed., War in the Shadows: the Vietnam Experience, pp. 55-65 (1988). Louis Wolf, co-publisher of CovertAction Quarterly, worked from 1964-67 in Laos for an NGO that was under USAID contract. Here he resisted an attempt by the CIA to ship him out. He writes us that he does not believe that USAID is today a cover for the CIA. He confirms that it did serve thus in the past: "You are indeed correct if you are saying that there were some people working in the Phoenix program in Vietnam, (and in the CIA-created 'Office of Public Safety,' which was almost entirely under USAID cover) who were at the time working under USAID cover."
NOTE 2. Cary Hector and Alain Gilles in Latin American Perspectives, Fall 1990, Vol. 17, Issue 4, p.110, reviewing Jan Knipper Black, Dominican Republic: Politics and Development in an Unsovereign State.