Don’t blame USAID alone. At least that’s what I argue at Budget Insight.

What’s missing from this press release? It says nothing about military spending in Afghanistan even though it is about 30 times greater than foreign aid and there is massive corruption involved with it. Lowey’s continued refusal to acknowledge that military spending is a major source of the problem is really unfair to USAID.

Today’s attack on the DAI compound in Kunduz is as an excellent example of the hypocrisy Rep. Nita Lowey (D-Hypocrisyville) demonstrated in her (unsuccessful) efforts to cut USAID funding to Afghanistan, but not military funding. The attack on the compound shows that aid workers are as much on the front lines of the war as is the military. Moreover, if it were not for the war, DAI would not be working in Kunduz. Lowey’s attack on USAID was not only hypocritical, it was demeaning to all of the people who are putting their lives at risk implementing USAID projects. Perhaps Lowey can reflect on this over the long weekend.

Yeah, what she said:

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), chair of the State & Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, announced that she would cut $4 billion requested for State Department and USAID funding for Afghanistan due to concerns about corruption…While the $4 billion in the fiscal year 2011 budget that Lowey wants to cut is no small amount of money, the 2011 Defense budget includes $138 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…It’s taking the easy way out to use the money as a vehicle for criticizing the war, playing on misperceptions about the efficacy of foreign assistance, while not facing any pushback from scary Republicans who will tell them they don’t support our troops.

Freedom House has recently released its analysis of the Obama Administration’s FY 2011 budget request for D&G programs (which the US Government calls Governing Justly and Democratically). Overall, it is a pretty good picture, although there are some troubling signs. Read the rest of this entry…

Technically speaking, a plane trip. I am off to Tanzania tomorrow to do a Democracy and Governance assessment for USAID. Basically, I’ll be spending the next three weeks in Tanzania talking to politicians. I sense some good stories coming out of this.

Transparency International has just released it’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index.  When looking at the index, what immediately struck me was how much the US Government concentrates its democracy and governance funding in the most corrupt countries in the world.  The five most corrupt countries (starting with the most corrupt) are Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan, and Iraq. According to Freedom House, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan had the three largest US D&G programs in 2009, accounting for approximately one-half of total US Government D&G programs.  I am not arguing that the US Government is funding corruption in these countries (although this recent New York Times article on Blackwater’s bribes to the Iraqi Government made me wince). Rather, my point is that worthwhile as these programs may be, they are unlikely to be effective as I described in a recent post.