[Media-watch] NAOMI KLEIN on NGOs

[Billy Clark]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3875.htm

Bush to NGOs: Watch your mouths

By NAOMI KLEIN

06/20/03: (Globe & Mail) The Bush administration has found its next 
target
for pre-emptive war, but it's not Iran, Syria or North Korea -- not yet,
anyway.

Before launching any new foreign adventures, the Bush gang has some 
homeland
housekeeping to take care of: It is going to sweep up those pesky
non-governmental organizations that are helping to turn world opinion
against U.S. bombs and brands.

The war on NGOs is being fought on two clear fronts. One buys the silence
and complicity of mainstream humanitarian and religious groups by 
offering
lucrative reconstruction contracts. The other marginalizes and 
criminalizes
more independent-minded NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to
democracy. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is in
charge of handing out the carrots, while the American Enterprise 
Institute,
the most powerful think tank in Washington, D.C., is wielding the sticks.

On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, gave a speech
blasting U.S. NGOs for failing to play a role many of them didn't realize
they had been assigned: doing public relations for the U.S. government.
According to InterAction, the network of 160 relief and development NGOs
that hosted the conference, Mr. Natsios was "irritated" that starving and
sick Iraqi and Afghan children didn't realize that their food and 
vaccines
were coming to them courtesy of George W. Bush. From now on, NGOs had to 
do
a better job of linking their humanitarian assistance to U.S. foreign 
policy
and making it clear that they are "an arm of the U.S. government." If 
they
didn't, InterAction reported, "Natsios threatened to personally tear up
their contracts and find new partners."

For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to U.S. dollars. 
USAID
told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian contracts that they
cannot speak to the media -- all requests from reporters must go through
Washington. Mary McClymont, CEO of InterAction, calls the demands
"unprecedented," and says, "It looks like the NGOs aren't independent and
can't speak for themselves about what they see and think."

Many humanitarian leaders are shocked to hear their work described as "an
arm" of government; most see themselves as independent (that would be the
"non-governmental" part of the name).

The best NGOs are loyal to their causes, not to countries, and they 
aren't
afraid to blow the whistle on their own governments. Think of Médecins 
sans
frontières standing up to the White House and the European Union over 
AIDS
drug patents, or Human Rights Watch's campaign against the death penalty 
in
the United States. Mr. Natsios himself embraced this independence in his
previous job as vice-president of World Vision. During the North Korean
famine, he didn't hesitate to blast his own government for withholding 
food
aid, calling the Clinton administration's response "too slow" and its 
claim
that politics was not a factor "total nonsense."

Don't expect candour like that from the aid groups Mr. Natsios now 
oversees
in Iraq. These days, NGOs are supposed to do nothing more than quietly 
pass
out care packages with a big "brought to you by the U.S.A." logo 
attached --
in public-private partnerships with Bechtel and Halliburton, of course.

That is the message of NGO Watch, an initiative of the American 
Enterprise
Institute and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies,
which takes aim at the growing political influence of the non-profit 
sector.
The stated purpose of the Web site, launched on June 11, is to "bring
clarity and accountability to the burgeoning world of NGOs."

In fact, it is a McCarthyite blacklist, telling tales on any NGO that 
dares
speak against Bush administration policies or in support of international
treaties opposed by the White House.

This bizarre initiative takes as its premise the idea that there is
something sinister about "unelected" groups of citizens getting together 
to
try to influence their government. "The extraordinary growth of advocacy
NGOs in liberal democracies has the potential to undermine the 
sovereignty
of constitutional democracies," the site claims.

Coming from the AEI, this is not without irony. As Raj Patel, policy 
analyst
at the California-based NGO Food First, points out, "The American 
Enterprise
Institute is an NGO itself and it is supported by the most powerful
corporations on the planet. They are accountable only to their board, 
which
includes Motorola, American Express and ExxonMobil." As for influence, 
few
peddle it quite like the AEI, the looniest ideas of which have a way of
becoming Bush administration policy. And no wonder. Richard Perle, member
and former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, is an AEI
fellow, along with Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president; the Bush
administration is crowded with former AEI fellows.

As President Bush said at an AEI dinner in February, "At the American
Enterprise Institute, some of the finest minds in our nation are at work 
on
some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work 
that my
administration has borrowed 20 such minds." In other words, the AEI is 
more
than a think tank; it's Mr. Bush's outsourced brain.

Taken together with Mr. Natsios's statements, this attack on the 
non-profit
sector marks the emergence of a new Bush doctrine: NGOs should be nothing
more than the good-hearted charity wing of the military, silently 
mopping up
after wars and famines. Their job is not to ask how these tragedies could
have been averted, or to advocate for policy solutions. And it is 
certainly
not to join anti-war and fair-trade movements pushing for real political
change.

The control freaks in the White House have really outdone themselves this
time. First they tried to silence governments critical of their foreign
policies by buying them off with aid packages and trade deals. (Last 
month
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said that the United States 
would
only enter into new trade agreements with countries that offered
"co-operation or better on foreign policy and security issues.") Next, 
they
made sure the press didn't ask hard question during the war by trading
journalistic access for editorial control.

Now they are attempting to turn relief workers in Iraq and Afghanistan 
into
publicists for Mr. Bush's Brand U.S.A., to embed them in the Pentagon, 
like
Fox News reporters.

The U.S. government is usually described as "unilateralist," but I don't
think that's quite accurate. The Bush administration may be willing to 
go it
alone, but what it really wants is legions of self-censoring followers, 
from
foreign governments to national journalists and international NGOs.

This is not a lone wolf we are dealing with, it's a sheep-herder. The
question is: Which of the NGOs will play the sheep?

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.

© Copyright 2003 Globe & Mail
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