NLD transfers 2.55m Kyats for political prisonsers

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Wednesday, 07 July 2010 00:45 Myint Maung

New Delhi (Mizzima) – The National League for Democracy party headquarters has transferred about 2.55 million Kyats to its state and division branches yesterday for distribution to families of 605 political prisoners.

The funds donated by ordinary citizens were being distributed under the party’s social aid programme for poor family members of some political prisoners, among the more than 2,100 serving sentences across the country, party vice-chairman and leader of the programme, Tin Oo, said.

“There are more than 200 such families across the Burmese states and divisions and the rest are families in Rangoon Division,” he said. “The money will be distributed to appropriate prisoners [via their families] from their townships of origin.”

Recipients would also comprise human rights activists, those who took part in protests over fuel-price increases in 2007, political activists, students and young people, without them necessarily being affiliated with the NLD, Tin Oo said.

NLD central executive committee member Win Tin added that, “Previously headquarters managed this work but it has now been delegated to party branches in the states and divisions … We give this money not only to our party members but to other prisoners as well.”

“In the new programme, the fund-raising and distribution of money will be carried out by each branch office,” he said.

Since 1996, the party has assisted family members of political prisoners at the rate of 5,000 Kyats per month per prisoner, to enable them to visit their loved ones in jail. The party had spent more than 3 million Kyats each month, it said.

The scheme was suspended temporarily on May 6, the deadline for the party to re-register or be annulled under the junta’s electoral laws, but it has now resumed. Apart from the financial assistance for prison visits between political prisoners and their families, the NLD has since 1996 also given annual donations to students from these families towards education.

Development in the shadows : how the World Bank and the Frente Clandestina almost built a new government in Timor-Leste

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Title:	Development in the shadows : how the World Bank and the Frente Clandestina almost built a new government in Timor-Leste
Author:	Totilo, Matthew Alan
Other Contributors:	Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.
Advisor:	Judith Tendler.
Department:	Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.
Publisher:	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Issue Date:	2009
Abstract:	The failures of post-violent conflict development projects have so far outweighed the successes. In response, international aid organizations have deepened and broadened their dedication to state-building projects across all aspects of institution-building, to include economic, social and political. I chose to examine the implications of this commitment by looking at Timor-Leste's first local governance project and studying the relationship between its two main actors: the World Bank and the National Council of Timorese Resistance. While largely panned as a failure by NGOs, donor organizations and the government of Timor-Leste itself, this project brought the traditional local leadership closer to having a true role in governance than similar efforts by any other actor working in Timor-Leste. A historical analysis of the application of traditional Timorese relationships with outsiders reveals parallel stories of similar partnerships. When in Timor, local leaders described to me an interesting story in the Frente Clandestina, the resistance movement that formed the core of Timor-Leste's proto-government structure. Counterintuitively, this organization was built on a foundation of weak relationships and distrust in order to function as an effective military logistical operation fighting an occupation government. This challenges the literature on social capital, social cohesion and trust which inadequately describes its relevance to recent events. (cont.) Unfortunately, the collapse of this project demonstrates that divergent agendas, inaccurate assumptions about state-building by the international community, and the misuse of terminology such continues to be a fundamental problem. Outbreaks of violence in recent years have highlighted the problems of ineffective institutional construction. Timor-Leste was hailed as a model state "built from scratch", but those rosy predictions have not endured. Its first 10 years of independence can teach us a lot about the principles of legitimacy, democracy and dignity in the post-violent conflict development experience of building institutions.
Description:	Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2009. "June 2009." Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-101).
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50109
Keywords:	Urban Studies and Planning.

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Virginia medical team reaches Haitian city, begins to treat patients

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By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 20, 2010; A09

JACMEL, HAITI -- After 2 1/2 days of travel, over the sea, across borders, in planes so small they had to leave most of their food and water behind, the emergency relief workers from Northern Virginia had finally arrived.

They found that the hospital courtyard in Jacmel had become a village of the injured and their families, a community living under tarps, with laundry stretched out on rubble to dry and a large black pig wandering by the ruins of the maternity ward.

Jacmel, a beautiful city on the southern coast of Haiti, known for its artists, its pastel colonial houses and its carnival, had been hit hard by the earthquake and left with almost no functioning medical care. But hope remained. Residents here were still pulling out a few people from under buildings -- alive.

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The crew from Community Coalition for Haiti, with doctors and ER nurses from Inova Fairfax Hospital, was glad to finally join the effort, after a crazy, roundabout trip full of mishaps, the same kind of journey that many relief workers faced as they tried to get into the chaos of a devastated country.

The CCH group left Washington before dawn Sunday, flew to Santiago in the Dominican Republic, then got up before dawn again to catch another flight. It was a race that ended like a flat tire at the border with Haiti on Monday.

The relief workers found themselves caught in a throng of thousands of people on market day, women weaving about with huge sacks of macaroni balancing on their heads, small boys tapping at the glass of the CCH bus, asking for food. They waited, stuck without their passports, for the trip leaders to arrive in a truck and get them through the border.

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When they finally inched across the narrow bridge to Haiti, they knew they had probably missed their chance at a flight but rushed toward the airfield at Pignon anyway. They crammed people into a pickup truck for a jolting and bruising ride over rough dirt roads through mountains, veering around goats and ditches, fording streams and rattling through small villages, with a doctor on the back clinging to the pile of medical supplies and luggage.

They missed the flight, by a long shot. The next morning, as the sun rose, a Haitian boy shooed goats off the airfield as two six-seater planes arrived to fly them to Jacmel.

Once here, they dropped their tents at the convent where they would be sleeping and headed for the hospital. They were among the first overseas medical teams to arrive.

They found patients lying on beds of bright green planks pulled from the rubble. A girl held an IV drip for her sister, who was on a bed mat, sweat pouring off of her face, which was twisted in agony.

The patients were all outside. Tarps protected them from the almonds that dropped from trees overhead. But it was unbearably hot there, with families bringing meals and living alongside the injured crammed into the small courtyard.

Close enough to reach out and touch one another, patients lay moaning as volunteers wrapped gauze around injuries.

A small boy stood, hands on his head, mouth trembling, as he watched a doctor check his sister's leg.

A woman on crutches limped up the hill toward the tarps. Another, with bandages all over her head, dropped onto a bench, whimpering softly in the midst of the crowd. Another slept on a low concrete wall covered in white dust.

And more people were waiting at the gates.

Ted Alexander, an orthopedic surgeon from Inova, stepped out from under a tarp.

"I looked at one of the guillotine amputations they did at the shoulder," he said.

He was preparing to do an amputation himself as soon as the anesthesiology equipment was hooked up. The 55-year-old woman's arm was black and necrotic, one of many injuries that had gone untreated or had been given only the crudest first aid.

Nearby, a cluster of women waited for news outside the improvised operating room. They were friends of a woman who was killed with all but one of her children when her house collapsed. One girl, her legs crushed, had survived.

Russell Seneca, chairman of the surgery department at Inova Fairfax, was with some of the doctors who had just operated on the girl. He spoke to the waiting women through a translator. "She's going to be fine," he said, and their eyes widened with amazement.

U.S. aid workers find few trained Afghan partners

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By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 20, 2010; A07

NAWA, AFGHANISTAN -- Alongside the thousands of additional U.S. troops, civilian aid workers are surging into Afghanistan to help refurbish schools, open rural health clinics, build irrigation systems, vaccinate livestock and provide fertilizer to farmers.

But like their military counterparts, the civilian technicians are finding the lack of trained Afghan partners their most difficult challenge. The problem is particularly acute in the remote rural areas, where the Afghan government's presence is virtually nonexistent.

"We're trying to create a centralized government where there's no history of it," said Lindy Cameron, the British head of the multinational provincial reconstruction team in Helmand. "The biggest challenge is the capacity of the Afghan government."

The point was illustrated during a recent day trip to Helmand by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was in Afghanistan to see how USDA expertise and technical assistance could help farmers boost production in the country's leading agricultural province.

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Vilsack learned how U.S. aid and agricultural officials had vaccinated more than a million animals, provided seed and fertilizer to 10,000 farmers and distributed thousands of tons of feed for livestock.

But when he traveled to Nawa, bringing along Helmand's governor and the agriculture minister from Kabul, he also came face to face with the Afghan government's limitations. Only two Agriculture Ministry officials were working here, and neither lived in the district. They had no office, no equipment, no cellphone -- not even a bicycle.

The many obstacles

"The government of Afghanistan is not in a position to deliver services at the local level, especially at the district level," said Mohammad Asif Rahimi, the agriculture minister. "There, we don't have a presence still -- or an effective presence."

In Helmand, as in much of the south, part of the reason is the lack of security. With the continuing Taliban attacks, provincial officials prefer to stay in the capital, Lashkar Gah, and they rarely venture to the outlying districts. And finding central government officials willing to relocate to violent areas is virtually impossible.

As one aid worker put it, "No one wants to move to Helmand and get blown up."

But Rahimi said the situation is much the same all over the country, even in northern areas, such as Mazar-e Sharif, which has been relatively peaceful since the Taliban was ousted from power in late 2001.

"Even if they go to the villages, they don't even have a cellphone to call back to the capital," Rahimi said. "That is the same for the Ministry of Education . . . the Ministry of Health . . . the Ministry of Rural Development."

Illiteracy is a huge obstacle. Aid workers in Lashkar Gah described how a senior provincial-level Agriculture Ministry position has remained vacant for months because no one could pass the required civil service exam.

Other aid officials said the centralization of the Afghan government presents problems as well, with all appointments made by Kabul.

There are also logistical challenges. Ministers and provincial governors largely rely on U.S. aircraft to ferry them all over the rural areas. Rahimi and Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal traveled to Nawa with Vilsack aboard a Marine tilt-rotor Osprey.

Aid workers with experience both here and in Iraq said Afghanistan is more complex. In Iraq, they said, there was an educated population and the remnants of a centralized state. In Afghanistan, they are starting from scratch, trying to build a civil service corps at the local level where none existed before.

Afghans want more say

Rahimi and other Afghans blame the problem on the international community, which, they say, has spent billions of dollars in reconstruction aid here since 2001 but funneled most of the money to foreign and nongovernmental aid agencies as well as Western companies -- with little going to build up the capacity of the Afghan government.

The international community has invested about $60 billion in Afghanistan since 2002, including $40 billion from the United States, according to the Office of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

"They never developed the government of Afghanistan with their billions of dollars," Rahimi said. "For eight years, almost all the money went to the foreign companies -- the contractors -- with their high security costs."

Some U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not dispute the assertion. But they said that course was necessary because the Afghan ministries lacked the capacity to deal with such a massive infusion of funds.

Nawa, a small, dusty outpost, has been largely secured by U.S. Marines. The Marines say they are treading a difficult line, wanting to do as much as possible to help develop this remote area, while recognizing that it is up to the Afghan government to sustain the work for the future.

Next to their base, the Marines are refurbishing an old building that will serve as a district government office, so when provincial officials do come here to visit, they can have a place to meet and even stay overnight.

"It's all about letting the Afghan government take control of what we rehabilitate," said Maj. Rudy Quiles, who is with the Washington-based 4th Civil Affairs Group. "I can build the best health clinics, but it's up to them for staffing it, maintaining it." The problem of scarce skilled personnel in dangerous or faraway areas could be solved by offering qualified Afghans increased pay to serve there -- an idea championed by U.S. officials.

"In this country, there has to be sufficient remuneration to justify the risk," Vilsack said.

He said the U.S. Agriculture Department is committing $20 million "to build that capacity, to ultimately help them get people down in the countryside."

Poor schooling slows anti-terrorism effort in Pakistan

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By Griff Witte
Sunday, January 17, 2010; A18

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- With a curriculum that glorifies violence in the name of Islam and ignores basic history, science and math, Pakistan's public education system has become a major barrier to U.S. efforts to defeat extremist groups here, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.

Western officials tend to blame Islamic schools, known as madrassas, for their role as feeders to militant groups, but Pakistani education experts say the root of the problem is the public schools in a nation in which half of adults cannot sign their own name. The United States is hoping an infusion of cash -- part of a $7.5 billion civilian aid package -- will begin to change that, and in the process alter the widespread perception that Washington's only interest in Pakistan is in bolstering its military.

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But according to education reform advocates here, any effort to improve the system faces the reality of intense institutional pressure to keep the schools exactly the way they are. They say that for different reasons, the most powerful forces in Pakistan, including the army, the religious establishment and the feudal landlords who dominate civilian politics, have worked against improving an education system that for decades has been in marked decline.

"If the people get education, the elite would be threatened," said Khadim Hussain, coordinator of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy and a professor at Islamabad's Bahria University. "If they make education available, the security establishment's ideology may be at risk."

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That ideology, Hussain said, involves the belief that non-Muslim nations are out to destroy Pakistan and that the army is the only protection Pakistanis have from certain annihilation. Those notions are emphasized at every level in the schools, with students focused on memorizing the names of Pakistan's military heroes and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, but not learning the basics of algebra or biology, he said.

The nature of the education system is reflected in popular attitudes toward the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups that in recent months have carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Pakistan, many of them targeting civilians.

Although the groups in many cases have publicly asserted responsibility for the attacks, a large percentage of the population here refuses to believe that Muslims could be responsible for such horrific crimes, choosing to believe that India, Israel or the United States is behind the violence. When Hussain challenges graduate-level students for proof, they accuse him of being part of the plot, he said.

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"Telling students they need to use evidence and logic means that you are definitely an agent of India, Israel and the CIA," he said. "They don't understand what evidence is."

The madrassas have multiplied in Pakistan as public education has deteriorated. But madrassas still educate only about 1.5 million students a year, compared with more than 20 million in public schools. If Pakistan is to improve its dismal literacy rate and provide marketable skills to more of the estimated 90 million Pakistanis under the age of 18, it will have to start in the public schools.

The United States plans to spend $200 million here this year on education, the U.S. Agency for International Development's largest education program worldwide. The money comes from the Kerry-Lugar aid bill, which was passed in late 2009 and promises Pakistan $7.5 billion in civilian assistance over the next five years.

The funds are intended to signal a substantial shift from earlier years, when U.S. assistance to Pakistan was overwhelmingly focused on helping the military, which is battling the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the nation's northwest.

U.S. officials say the money will be spent on a combination of programs, including infrastructure improvements, teacher training and updates to the curriculum. Unlike in past years, the money will not be filtered through non-governmental organizations and contractors but will be given directly to Pakistan's government, officials say.

The idea is to improve the capacity of the nation's fledgling civilian-led administration, and to promote trust between the two nations.

But there is also the risk that without adequate monitoring, much of the money will go to waste.

Pakistan's current spending on education -- less than 3 percent of its budget -- is anemic, and far lower on a relative basis than in India or even Bangladesh. Much of it never reaches students.

Pakistan's public education system includes thousands of "ghost schools," which exist on paper and receive state funding. But in reality, the schools do not function: A local landlord gets the money, and either pockets it or dispenses it to individuals who are on the books as teachers, but in fact are associates or relatives who do nothing to earn their salaries. School buildings are often used for housing farmworkers or livestock, not for education.

Those buildings that do operate lack basic facilities -- a 2006 government study found that more than half do not have electricity and 40 percent have no bathrooms. About a third of students drop out by the fifth grade. Teachers, meanwhile, earn as little as $50 a month, less in many cases than that of a domestic servant. The low pay mirrors teachers' perceived value in Pakistani society.

"The social status of teachers is low, compared with other professions," said Rehana Masrur, dean of the education department at Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad. "If someone is doing nothing and has no future, people say, 'Why doesn't he become a teacher?' "

Top government officials have little incentive to change that, experts here say. Although the vast majority of Pakistanis must choose between the public schools or madrassas for their children, Pakistan's well-to-do can send their kids to private schools, many of which are considered world-class.

Javed Ashraf Qazi, a former Pakistani education minister, said the United States has not helped by frittering away much of its assistance budget on poorly defined programs, such as conflict-resolution training, which he said leave no enduring impact. What Pakistan really needs, he said, is a network of vocational training institutes that can prepare students for the workplace.

"What would help is something that is lasting," he said. "The U.S. is spending more money, but spending it in a way that it does not leave any impact."

But Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted nuclear physicist at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University and a longtime proponent of education reform, said Pakistan needs something more fundamental.

"I don't think it's a matter of money. The more you throw at the system, the faster it leaks out," he said. "There has to be a desire to improve. The U.S. can't create that desire. When Pakistanis feel they need a different kind of education system, that's when it will improve."

Somali Money From Abroad Is a Lifeline at Home - NYTimes.com

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By MATTHEW SALTMARSH

PARIS — As Somalis struggle to survive the chaos that has overtaken their country, a network of companies that distribute money from the nation’s large diaspora has quietly expanded, providing a crucial safety net.

As in other poor countries, the main purpose of these companies is to ensure that money from those working abroad reaches family members left behind.

But in war-torn Somalia, where the government has little control of the country and is itself struggling to survive, the companies are now also helping international organizations shift money into and within Somalia, according to the World Bank, academics and aid workers.

And in Somaliland, a breakaway region where the government is more stable than in other parts of the country, the Somali diaspora has contributed money for education, health and other social programs.

“The remittance system has become the lifeline for the Somali people and the lifeblood of the economy during the last two decades of civil strife,” said Samuel Munzele Maimbo, a World Bank specialist based in Mozambique, who added that many Somalis survived only because of the money from abroad. For others, the money has been crucial to establishing or propping up businesses.

A study sponsored by the British Department for International Development from May 2008 found that 80 percent of the start-up capital for small and medium-size enterprises in Somalia benefit from money sent by the diaspora.

Dilip Ratha, a World Bank economist, said that Somalia, like Haiti, was among the countries that are the most dependent on money from abroad.

The remittance system — and its importance in Somalia — has grown as decades of political upheaval have driven many Somalis abroad and, in recent years, as Islamists have wrested control over much of the country from a weak transitional government. The government, which has international support, is trapped in a small section of the capital under the protection of African Union peacekeepers.

A recent study by the United Nations Development Program estimated the size of the Somali diaspora at more than one million and the amount of annual remittances to Somalia at up to $1 billion, equivalent to about 18 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

The system began to take off during the dictatorial rule of President Mohammed Siad Barre, who ran the country from 1969 to 1991. As the banking system weakened, according to Mohamed Waldo, a consultant who has worked with Somali remittance companies, traders stepped in with a solution: act as middlemen in the resale of consumer goods shipped home by the increasing number of Somalis working abroad, especially in the Persian Gulf region. The traders kept a small cut of the proceeds and turned the rest over to the laborers’ relatives in Somalia. The shipments got around currency restrictions.

Eventually, when the government collapsed, Somali workers abroad began to send money instead.

Mr. Waldo said that these days, there were more than 20 active Somali remittance companies, five of them large. One of the leading companies is Dahabshiil, founded in the early 1970s by Mohamed Said Duale from his general store in Burao in northwest Somalia.

In 1988, fighting between government forces and rebels with the Somali National Movement swept Burao. Mr. Duale subsequently left the country and continued his work from abroad.

In 1991, when the Barre government was overthrown, Mr. Duale returned to Somalia. He opened offices in major towns and later in remote villages that the Western money-transfer giants would struggle to serve.

“Through word of mouth we built this business,” said his son, Abdirashid Duale, now chief executive of the company.

Today, Dahabshiil says it has more than 1,000 branches and agents in 40 countries.

The United Nations Development Program uses Dahabshiil to transfer money for local programs, said Álvaro Rodríguez, the agency’s director for Somalia. Such companies provide “the only safe and efficient option to transfer funds to projects benefiting the most vulnerable people of Somalia,” he said. “Their service is fast and efficient.”

Abdirashid Duale, who gives his age as “35, but with 25 years of experience,” declined to provide profit or revenue figures, saying that would only help his competitors. The company charges commissions that vary from 1 percent to 5 percent depending on the size of the transaction; he said most Somalis he worked with abroad sent home $200 to $300 a month.

Nikos Passas, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston who researches terrorism and white-collar crime, said Dahabshiil was helped by the closing of a larger rival, Al Barakaat, at the behest of the United States authorities in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the end, F.B.I. agents found no evidence linking Al Barakaat to terrorist financing. But for Dahabshiil, gaining market share from Al Barakaat was “like shooting fish in a barrel,” Professor Passas said.

Dahabshiil’s image has been helped by its charitable works. It says it invests 5 percent of annual profit in such ventures; Abdirashid Duale said this represented around $1 million a year.

In Mogadishu — a city of pockmarked Italian architecture and rubble — Dahabshiil operates from Bakara Market, despite continued clashes in the area between the weak government and Islamist insurgents.

Its office, in an unassuming two-story building, is protected by security guards.

Looking ahead, Abdirashid Duale plans more expansion.

“One day the fighting will stop,” he said, “and we will still be here.”

Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu.

U.N. Says U.S. Delays Led to Aid Cuts in Somalia - NYTimes.com

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By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — United Nations officials said on Friday that the supply of critical food aid to Somalia had been interrupted and that rations to starving people needed to be cut, partly because the American government has delayed food contributions out of fears they would be diverted to terrorists.

Last month, American officials said that they had suspended millions of dollars of food aid because of concerns that Somali contractors working for the United Nations were funneling food and money to the Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group with growing ties to Al Qaeda. American officials played down the impact of the delays and said that the food shipments would resume soon, once the American government was assured that the United Nations was doing more to police the aid deliveries.

But on Friday, the World Food Program said, “the food supply line to Somalia is effectively broken.”

United Nations officials said that around 40 million pounds of American-donated food was being held up in warehouses in Mombasa, in neighboring Kenya, because American officials were not allowing aid workers to distribute it until a new set of tighter regulations was ironed out. United Nations officials said the American government was insisting on guarantees that were unrealistic in Somalia, like demanding that aid transporters not pay fees at roadblocks, which are ubiquitous and virtually unavoidable in a nation widely considered a case study in chaos.

American aid officials declined to comment on Friday.

In the drought stricken regions of central Somalia, where entire communities are on the brink of famine, elders said that many children who had been surviving off of the American donations were now dying from hunger.

“We are totally dependent on this food and people are now suffering,” said Ahmed Mahamoud Hassan, the chairman of the drought committee in Galkaiyo, central Somalia. “We have nothing else to eat.”

Somalia is one of the neediest nations in the world — and one of the most complex environments to deliver aid. Ever since the central government imploded in 1991, this parched country has lurched from one crisis to the next, the latest being a vicious civil war between a weak government and an extremist Islamist insurgency during one of the worst droughts in years.

The United States has played a huge role in saving lives by supplying about 40 percent of the $850 million annual aid budget for Somalia. But that aid is often only loosely monitored at best once it enters the country because of the dangers of working in Somalia and the fact that so much of it is a no-go zone for foreigners.

For months now, United Nations officials have been negotiating with American counterparts, trying to agree on language for new rules that would ensure, as much as possible, that American donated food goes to needy people and not to the Shabab. Last month, American officials said they were legally bound to do this, because the American government has listed the Shabab as a terrorist organization, a designation that means that aiding or abetting the Shabab is a serious crime.

There is increasing evidence, according to United Nations documents, that some of the United Nations contractors in Somalia have been stealing food and channeling the proceeds to the Shabab and other militant groups. United Nations officials are currently investigating some of their biggest contractors.

United Nations officials say that other donor nations have been skittish to contribute aid during these investigations, which is another reason for the aid shortages in Somalia. The global recession has also taken a toll on aid operations around the world.

That said, “the United States is traditionally WFP’s largest single donor,” said Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the World Food Program, “and other donors cannot make up the difference.”

He warned that the food supplies for Somalia were steadily dwindling each month and that by December, “we will completely run out.”

Partly because of the standoff over the new rules and the ensuing interruption in the food pipeline, the United Nations World Food Program recently halved the emergency rations to the more than 1 million displaced Somalis.

United Nations officials said they have been urging the American government to release at least some of the food from the warehouses in Kenya while they work out the new rules. United Nations officials said that even if they wanted to bypass the American government and ship in food from other countries, which would cost millions of dollars, it would be impossible to get it to Somalia in time and that the American sacks of grain sitting in Mombasa was the only solution to averting a widespread famine.

“The urgency of the situation has been communicated,” said one United Nations official in Nairobi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were continuing. “Basically, USAID,” the American government’s aid agency, “has to come through, one way or the other.”

U.S. Seeks to Ease Pakistanis' Concerns Before Obama Signs Aid Bill - washingtonpost.com

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By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 1:42 AM

President Obama will sign a bill providing Pakistan $7.5 billion in economic aid this week after Congress issues a statement designed to placate Pakistanis' objections that conditions attached to the legislation violate their sovereignty, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.

The joint House-Senate statement, negotiated over the past several days, will emphasize mutual respect between the two countries, officials said, and "clarify" provisions in the bill requiring administration reports to Congress on Pakistan's expenditures, its progress in combating Islamist insurgents and the extent of civilian control over the Pakistani military.

A White House signing ceremony scheduled for Wednesday was postponed late Tuesday night due to scheduling problems, an administration official said.

"Pakistan will not compromise on its sovereignty. I have put on the table our concerns," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said after a meeting Tuesday with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who sponsored the bill with the committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.).

Qureshi, who hailed the aid package as a "strong signal" of U.S. support on a visit to Washington just last week, was sent back from Islamabad on an emergency mission after Pakistan's military and opposition leaders criticized the bill as insulting and patronizing. Pakistani officials have suggested that military and opposition objections reflect Pakistani political maneuvering to undermine the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

The U.S. relationship with Pakistan is a critical component of Obama's evolving strategy on the Afghanistan war. The president will hold his fifth closed-door meeting about Afghanistan and Pakistan with top national security aides Wednesday. Despite growing pressure from Republican lawmakers to quickly approve a recommendation from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, to deploy tens of thousands more troops, an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said deliberations would continue into next week and possibly beyond.

"We are going through a very deliberative process," Obama said Tuesday, adding that he expected it to be completed "in the coming weeks." The White House last week deferred a scheduled personal appearance by McChrystal, saying that he would have an opportunity to "present his case" to Obama and his senior aides before a final decision was made.

Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who protested that war, said Tuesday that he was "very wary" of sending more troops to Afghanistan unless the administration can determine "what is achievable, measured against the legitimate interests of the United States, primary among which is al-Qaeda."

Departing Wednesday on a five-day trip to the region, Kerry told the Reuters news agency that after meeting with McChrystal, he "may decide that there is a doable strategy that achieves the goals I set out, that requires some additional troops." But he said that he was wary because of "past experience and . . . some of the challenges that I see."

Obama has said the U.S. goal in the region is to dismantle and defeat Pakistan-based al-Qaeda, leading a number of Democrats to question even the existing American military presence in Afghanistan, where nearly 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops are engaged in what McChrystal has called a "deteriorating" fight against the Taliban.

The president has ruled out a significant decrease in troops. Options under White House consideration range from adopting McChrystal's recommendation all or in part to a status quo troop presence with increased focus on reconciliation with some Taliban elements and escalation of missile attacks on al-Qaeda and other insurgent strongholds across the border in Pakistan.

The upheaval in Pakistan over the aid package has been an unanticipated complication in the White House deliberations. The bill, designed to bolster the position of the civilian government and quell rising anti-Americanism, was first introduced in 2008 by then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Lugar, and co-sponsored by then-Sen. Barack Obama. Like the current bill, it provided Pakistan with $1.5 billion in annual economic aid for five years. But it languished amid criticism that the Pakistan government, headed by the military until last year, had misused and failed to account for much of the $10 billion it received during the Bush administration.

Kerry and Lugar revived the package this year after Obama pledged to sharply increase assistance to Zardari's government, elected last year. But some lawmakers, particularly in the House, insisted that the aid be conditioned on regular administration assurances that the money was being well spent and the Pakistani military remained under civilian control.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), who sponsored a version of the bill in that chamber, said in an interview Tuesday that although "billions have gone down a rat hole in the past" in Pakistan, he did not want to "micromanage" the country's use of the new money. In what he called a "massive demonstration of self-restraint," Congress had imposed "no earmarks" on the bill but "only accountability to make sure it's getting to the Pakistani people."

The legislation requires Obama to inform Congress in detail of his Pakistan strategy and instructs Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to send reports on its implementation every six months. Some in Pakistan have taken exception to such provisions, but Berman said the bill had been "mischaracterized" there.

The president must sign the bill within 10 days of its Oct. 5 transmittal by Congress, excluding Sundays, or it automatically becomes law. The "joint explanatory statement," to be issued by Congress possibly as early as Wednesday, Berman said, will "make clear we think it is a very important relationship" and that there is "no intention of infringing the sovereignty of Pakistan."

The "joint explanatory statement" to be issued by Congress on Wednesday, he said, will "make clear we think it is a very important relationship" and that there is "no intention of infringing the sovereignty of Pakistan."

U.S. Fears Pakistan Aid Will Feed Graft - NYTimes.com

By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As the United States prepares to triple its aid package to Pakistan — to a proposed $1.5 billion over the next year — Obama administration officials are debating how much of the assistance should go directly to a government that has been widely accused of corruption, American and Pakistani officials say.

A procession of Obama administration economic experts have visited Islamabad, the capital, in recent weeks to try to ensure both that the money will not be wasted by the government and that it will be more effective in winning the good will of a public increasingly hostile to the United States, according to officials involved with the project.

As American lawmakers move toward passage of the aid legislation, the administration knows it must get quick results from the increased assistance or face potential Congressional cutbacks down the road in a program envisioned to cost $1.5 billion every year for the next five years.

“We’re struggling over how much cash to give to the government,” said a senior American official involved in the planning, who declined to be named according to diplomatic custom.

The overhaul of American assistance, led by the State Department, comes amid increased urgency about an economic crisis that is intensifying social unrest in Pakistan, and about the willingness of the government there to sustain its fight against a raging insurgency in the northwest. It follows an assessment within the Obama administration that the amount of nonmilitary aid to the country in the past few years was inadequate and favored American contractors rather than Pakistani recipients, according to several of the American officials involved.

American officials say the main goals of the new assistance will be to shore up the crumbling Pakistani state by building infrastructure like roads and power plants, and to improve the standing of the United States with the Pakistani people.

In return, the Obama administration expects Pakistan to keep up the fight against Islamic militants, though there are worries that the effort will turn out to be a short-term spurt overtaken by Pakistan’s preoccupation with its archrival, India.

President Asif Ali Zardari has insisted that Pakistan cannot afford to continue its fight against terrorism without substantial American help, a number that he has sometimes put in the tens of billions of dollars. Mr. Zardari is scheduled to meet President Obama in New York this week, and assistance is expected to be a major topic.

American officials said the need to assist the Pakistani economy directly became alarmingly clear when recent power shortages across the country contributed to Pakistan’s first year of negative industrial growth. There were widespread complaints here, including by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, that the government had solutions to improve the power output but was refusing to implement them in order to benefit a handful of power plant operators.

Another impetus came last week when 19 women were killed in a stampede for free flour in Karachi, even though Pakistan had a bumper wheat crop this year.

After a recent visit to Islamabad, the deputy secretary for management and resources at the State Department, Jacob J. Lew, expressed anxiety about how to ensure that the aid money was spent properly, saying he was concerned that “the money needed to go to the purposes for which it was intended.”

“We had to choose a method of funding that was most likely to produce results efficiently and effectively,” he said Sept. 11 at a briefing at the State Department.

Mr. Lew’s suggestions of inappropriate spending by the Pakistanis caused such a furor among government officials that the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, issued an unusual public statement on Wednesday intended to reassure the Pakistanis that the United States was “not depriving the Pakistani government any degree of direct funding as a result of lack of confidence or trust.”

Part of the Obama administration’s approach is to expand nonmilitary aid to Pakistan, after years in which almost all American assistance to the country was intended to help the military fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But some American officials said the Pakistani Army was diverting the money toward programs aimed at deterring India instead. A searing report by the Government Accountability Office last year said the Bush administration had relied too heavily on the Pakistani military to achieve its counterterrorism goals, and had paid too little attention to economic assistance.

Money intended to help civilians during the Bush years was generally delivered by American contractors who administered programs like training provincial government officials.

Mr. Tarin, the Pakistani finance minister, said in an interview that the private contractors absorbed up to 45 percent of the assistance in past years.

He said he understood, based on past American experiences in Pakistan, that the United States had concerns about “transparency.” He told the officials from Washington that they should work with the Pakistani government and develop “joint oversight which both of us trust.”

“I said, ‘Your interests are mine,’ ” Mr. Tarin said of his meetings. “Aid should be delivered through transparent platforms with maximum impact on the ground.”

The United States should invest in developing vast coal reserves in the province of Sindh, and in hydroelectric, wind and solar power to bolster Pakistan’s energy supply, he said.

The administration’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard L. Holbrooke, has appointed Robin L. Raphel, an experienced American diplomat, to oversee the planning of the new aid programs. Mr. Holbrooke has also sent David Lipton, a senior member of the National Economic Council, to Islamabad twice to look at ways to fix the Pakistani economy.

One key factor in trying to find more effective ways to deliver aid to Pakistan is a recognition that big projects are likely to win more Pakistani friends because they are more visible, American and Pakistani officials said.

“It was not only an assistance issue but a public image issue, too,” the senior American official said. “People talk about the Chinese nuclear reactors and the Japanese.” The United States was searching for a “signature contract,” the official said.

One road project under consideration in the troubled North-West Frontier Province would help in both improving security and gaining friends, a senior Pakistani official said. The $25 million project is designed to repair and expand the ring road around Peshawar, the capital of the province, they said.

The road has cratered because of heavy use by trucks hauling supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan from the port of Karachi through Peshawar and over the border to Afghanistan. The repairs would ease the transit of those goods, and possibly make them less vulnerable to attack by Taliban militants.

At the same time, it is hoped that the people of Peshawar who drive trucks, pedicabs, even donkey carts on the road would appreciate the American effort.

A prominent Pakistani economist, Ashfaque H. Khan, who served until recently as a senior figure in the Finance Ministry, said he had warned visiting American officials about the difficulties of plowing large amounts of American assistance into government programs without proper oversight, particularly in the power sector.

As increased American aid money pours into Pakistan, a permanent committee of American and Pakistani officials should be formed, Mr. Khan said. The members should meet every two months to review the American-financed projects, he said.

“There are ways you can minimize the risk of corruption by close coordination between the two sides,” he said.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting.

Ireland Renews Its Support for T-L Justice Sector

Dili, 24 June 2009 - The Government of Ireland announced an additional contribution of Euro 350,000 to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Timor-Leste, out of which Euro 200,000 will be earmarked for the Justice System Programme (JSP) and Euro 150,000 will be allocated to the Provedoria for Human Rights and Justice programme (PDHJ). The signing of the agreement between the Irish AID Head of Mission, Mr. Charles Lathrop, and the UNDP Resident Representative, Mr. Finn Reske-Nielsen, took place on 24 June at the office of the Resident Representative in Dili, Timor-Leste.

“We believe that a strong judicial sector and effective rule of law are essential building blocks for the protection of human rights and for peace and development. Sound democratic governance cannot take place without independent and effective justice institutions that have the capacity to uphold the law and protect human rights,” said Mr. Charles Lathrop.

This contribution from Irish AID will support the activities of both programmes throughout 2009 and will allow the JSP and PDHJ programmes to increase the level of technical and financial support provided to build capacity within these critical judicial and human rights institutions.

“UNDP is very grateful to the Government of Ireland for its valuable contribution to the promotion of justice and human rights in Timor-Leste. By providing support to national judicial and human rights bodies the international community is able to support the Government of Timor-Leste’s efforts to put in place institutions which will effectively protect the rights of people as enshrined in the Constitution,” said the UNDP Resident Representative, Mr. Finn Reske-Nielsen.

The UNDP Justice System Programme is a comprehensive capacity development programme for the justice system and its ownership lies with the Council of Coordination, the national coordination mechanism for the justice sector. It started in 2003 and it is also supported by Australia, Brazil, Portugal, Norway, Spain, Sweden and OHCHR – United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – and UNDP Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery.

The Capacity Building for the PDHJ project, which began in 2007, is a partnership between the Provedoria, UNDP, and OHCHR and since its inception significant milestones have been achieved in regard to the strengthening of this critical human rights institution. Activities implemented vary from training, mentoring, internships, workshops, development of internal systems, and the design of human rights materials.

For further information, please contact the UNDP JSP Public Information Officer on shaila.noronha@undp.org