Word: moneyitis
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...getting the money is only half the battle; how well it works - and whether it helps to change strong anti-American sentiment - depends on getting it to the right people and projects on the ground. That job principally falls to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and many critics say its performance isn't very encouraging. "When you are spending large amounts of money at arm's length, operating in hostile environments, it is very easy for money to get spent corruptly and/or badly, and that is what I have seen in our health programs," says Roger Bates...
Eighteen months since the IG report, USAID has also not adequately accounted for $16 million in project spending and has hired an outside auditor to track the money, according to Dona Dinkler, the USAID IG's chief of staff. USAID declined to comment, but it has blamed high staff turnover - four different USAID employees oversaw the project successively - and security concerns, which severely limited the number of hands-on visits to the remote Sindh and Baluchistan provinces, where the project was meant to have its greatest impact. "In that case, you have to find other ways to provide oversight...
...plaguing America's aid programs. "I don't mean to be unnecessarily harsh on [US] AID, but I have spent the last eight years on the ground there in Pakistan and feel very disillusioned and extremely bitter that when American taxpayers and the public thought they were helping, their money was not put to good use. It did not reach the people - I saw it with my own eyes," says Nasim Ashraf, a Pakistani American who directs the Middle East Institute's Pakistan Studies Center in Washington. While living temporarily in Pakistan, Ashraf ran the National Commission for Human Development...
...Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistan security expert and director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, the core of USAID's shortcomings is that it has outsourced "its thinking, planning and local interactions with the recipients" to Beltway contractors who are more incentivized to keep money flowing than getting results on the ground. In one case, a firm that was contracted to provide special surgical lights and other advanced technology to hospitals and clinics in the country reportedly failed to take into account the fact that there was no source of electricity to power the new equipment...
...percentage of our government budget to development than almost any other advanced country, and too little of what we have spent has contributed to genuine and lasting progress," said Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in a July 15 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Too much of the money has never reached its intended target but stayed here in America to pay salaries or fund overhead in contracts." Ironically perhaps, one of the best things Clinton can do is to rebuild and finally install new leadership at USAID so it has a better chance of being able to handle...