APRIL 2006
In this section:
Senate Confirms Tobias USAID Administrator
Afghan Farmers Are Switching Crops
More Food Aid Sent to Kenya
Senate Confirms Tobias USAID Administrator
The U.S. Senate confirmed Randall L. Tobias March 29 to be
14th administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
He was sworn into office two days later.
Tobias told more than 1,000 USAID employees at a town hall
gathering April 3 that he was meeting with them as his first
official act to show how “pleased and proud” he
was to head the Agency.
USAID staffers are “creative, capable, passionate,
and committed,” but the Agency often failed to get credit
for tremendous achievements over the past five decades, Tobias
said at the meeting in the Agency’s Washington headquarters.
USAID helped reduce poverty, lengthen life spans, reduce
infant mortality, defeat smallpox, reduce hunger, and increase
literacy, said Tobias, former president and CEO of Eli Lilly
pharmaceutical giant and for the past two years head of the
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
“We have to find a better way to tell that story,”
said Tobias, observing that the Agency often behaves “on
the defensive” rather than asserting its achievements.
Tobias will serve concurrently as the State Department’s
director of foreign assistance, a new position created to
coordinate all U.S. foreign aid.
He said he will spend mornings at State—as former Administrator
Andrew Natsios did three times a week to attend senior meetings
with the secretary of state—and then shift over to the
administrator’s office at USAID.
He will combine, at State, about 80 to 100 staff from both
State and USAID involved in planning, policy, monitoring,
and budgets.
In order to show Congress and the American public—who
provide foreign aid funds—that assistance is effective,
he said he will reform the way information is collected and
prepared.
Tobias said he expects to create “coherent comprehensive
plans” for countries and regions, and expects “greater
ownership” of assistance projects on the part of leaders
and citizens of developing countries.
He sought to reassure Agency staffers that “there is
no hidden agenda” for State to take over USAID. Foreign
aid has a new strengthened role in the nation’s foreign
policy and the new National Security Strategy, even if USAID
is not often mentioned by name, he said.
“This is no longer about any one agency—it is
about the whole federal government,” he said.
U.S. foreign assistance nearly tripled since 2000 to $27 billion
he said. But since it is spread among several agencies, it
is important to show effectiveness and to show agencies are
not working at cross-purposes in order to have a seat at the
table where decisions are made.
Tobias, 64, said he took the job because “it is the
honor of a lifetime.”
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
earlier in March, he said: “As the global AIDS coordinator,
I have witnessed USAID’s work and its committed employees
at their best, working tirelessly in some of the most difficult
environments in the world.”
“We cannot turn our backs on the millions of children
who succumb to starvation and disease each day, when the ability
to address it is in our hands,” he added.
Americans remain committed to feeding the world’s hungry
and relieving suffering after the Tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake,
and other disasters, he noted, but long-term development is
more than humanitarian aid or charity.
“Development must engender fundamental changes in governance
and institutions, human capacity, and economic structure,
so that countries can sustain their further economic and social
progress on their own,” he told the Senate.
Afghan Farmers Are Switching Crops
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Afghan farmer Arabab Zarin stands in front of field
that once produced opium poppies. Zarin is one of thousands
of farmers who grew poppies to escape poverty.
Ben Barber, USAID |
BADAKSHAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan—Farmer Arabab
Zarin, 59, stands in his striped green robe at the edge of
his snow-covered plot of ground, pointing to its far edge.
“All this was poppy,” he said. “Red and blue
poppies. I grew it for three years and then stopped.”
He is one of thousands of Afghan farmers who turned to poppy
in desperation during years of war and Taliban misrule. Income
from opium paid for many of the family’s basic necessities—such
as their home—and a few luxuries.
But Afghanistan’s opium quickly became the source of
more than 80 percent of the world’s heroin. President
Hamid Karzai urged farmers not to grow the illegal drug. Zarin
and other farmers listened to that appeal and to promises
made by their governor and foreign aid groups to help them
improve their legal farming.
To help Afghan farmers shift away from opium poppies, USAID
spent $150 million in 2004 and 2005 on “alternate livelihoods”
to provide other ways to earn a decent living.
As Zarin and a half-dozen of his neighbors sit in the house
that opium money built, the elderly farmer peers through his
thick eyeglasses and tells a visitor that the wheat seed and
urea fertilizer he got, through a U.S. aid project, were just
a start.
And even if he had enough seed for all his land, and the
400-year-old canal vital to wheat farming in his village were
fixed—winter flooding damaged the intake—wheat will
never bring as much cash as opium.
Badakshan province was the third largest opium producer
in recent years after Helmand and Nangahar. But it also showed
the biggest drop in production in 2004 and 2005—along
with Nangahar—after Karzai and strong provincial leaders
urged people to obey the law. But there was growing concern
in early 2006 that many farmers might either shift back to
poppy or else grow it in remote fields far from the roads.
The Afghan government was beginning to use tractors to plow
under any fresh poppy it found in the hope that farmers would
be persuaded to end its cultivation. “We really want
to stop growing poppy,” said Zarin.
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At a meeting in Faisabad, Afghanistan, officials from
the local government, business, NGOs, and USAID crafted
plans to develop Badakshan province, one of the poorest
in Asia. Four working groups each produced priorities;
this man explains his group’s list.
Ben Barber, USAID |
However, his neighbors, sitting on carpets inside an unheated
room in his new house, said that unless local officials stopped
growing poppies, poor farmers would find it hard to stop.
The Afghan villagers say they don’t want to go back to
living in damp, dark, cold houses with earthen floors, without
electricity or access to healthcare.
“If you came here 10 years ago,” said Zarin, “there
was not even a donkey to take a patient to the hospital in
Faisabad. Now we have a car to take someone to the hospital,
even at 11 at night. If there were some companies that would
set up factories, people would rather work and then no one
will plant poppy.”
Among the ways U.S. aid helps farmers shift from poppies
are:
- Some 250 kilometers of roads have been built, part of
a wide plan to link remote farms to the bustling markets
of Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif, and other cities.
- 500,000 farmers in all 34 provinces received improved
wheat and vegetable seeds along with fertilizer.
- 200,000 Afghans were hired to repair 6,000 kilometers
of irrigation channels damaged by neglect, war, or flooding.
- Livestock growers receive veterinary advice and treatment.
USAID and other aid agencies are also working with local
officials here to establish a regional development plan and
attract business investment. Items for consideration include:
- Improve mining of lapis lazuli, the speckled blue semiprecious
stone for which Badakshan is renowned.
- Augment collection of herbs and nuts growing wild in
the mountains.
- Dry vegetables and fruits for Afghan and regional markets.
- Open up formal border crossings with Pakistan, Tajikistan,
and China for trade and tourism.
- Improve the quality and quantity of local wool production
used in carpets and clothing.
“We all agree that it is a bad choice between growing
poppy and being poor,” said one of Zarin’s neighbors.
More Food Aid Sent to Kenya
USAID is providing an additional $16 million in emergency
food assistance to Kenya, where the northeastern region is
in the midst of a prolonged drought.
The aid, to go through the World Food Program, will provide
22,090 metric tons of food. This latest food, announced March
16, brings the Agency’s response to the 2006 drought
in Kenya to more than $32 million.
As many as 3.5 million people in Kenya are in need of food.
The drought this year, however, stretches across several Horn
of Africa countries, including Somalia, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.
Since the start of the year, USAID has contributed more than
$130 million for emergency relief efforts in these countries.
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