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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
SEPTEMBER 2005
In this section:
New Military Office to Improve Cooperation in
Aid Delivery
First Lady Visits HIV/AIDS Clinic
Sudan Mourns Death of Vice President John Garang
Food Rushed to Niger, Other African Countries
New Military Office to Improve Cooperation in Aid Delivery
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Afghan amputees: Afghan men learn how to bicycle
in a Kabul courtyard. The Afghan Amputee Bicyclists
for Rehabilitation and Recreation (AABRAR), a small
local NGO that receives USAID support, has focused on
physical rehabilitation and socioeconomic integration
of disabled people into the community since 1992. In
Jalalabad, some 4,450 bikes have been provided to disabled
men and boys. AABRAR began operating in Kabul in January
2001. Since then, about 1,128 bikes have been given
out. All those involved in AABRAR’s month-long
bicycle training program also receive literacy, physiotherapy,
health education, first aid, and mine awareness training.
Lloyd Feinberg |
USAID has created an office to coordinate with the U.S. armed
forces on development issues, following close Agency-military
cooperation in a series of operations in Afghanistan, Iraq,
and countries affected by the Asian tsunami.
The Office of Military Affairs, created March 25, lies within
the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance
(DCHA), and addresses the need for greater understanding and
operational interaction between the two sectors.
“The creation of this office reflects the heightened
priority of the role of development within the National Security
Strategy and the increasing intersect of development and defense,”
said Gordon West, senior advisor at DCHA.
Foreign aid and the military also interact in “not
only traditional areas of natural disaster and humanitarian
responses, but also in pre- and post-conflict and fragile
states,” he said.
The office will develop training, education, and operational
programs designed to improve communications between USAID
and the U.S. military. It will develop guidance, policy, and
military doctrine to improve coordination and cooperation.
It will also build planning, operations, and evaluation links
that aim to inform and enhance field operations, addressing
areas of common interest.
In upcoming months, the Agency will hire additional personnel.
Requests for USAID liaison officers in the Pentagon, the European
Command, and the Special Operations Command have already been
approved.
“This reflects the fact that many units in USAID have
had longstanding links to the U.S. military, but the Agency
has not had any formal link for quite some time,” West
said.
Keen interest by the military in developing a strong relationship
with USAID was reported by two top Agency officials: new DCHA
chief Michael Hess, a retired Army colonel with more than
30 years of active and reserve service in the military, and
Douglas Menarchik, the assistant administrator for Policy
and Program Coordination and a retired Air Force colonel.
Both met with Department of Defense officials about the new
office.
The office was created on the heels of the successful joint
tsunami response, which may prove a model for future cooperation.
The office also may help develop common civil-military structures
proposed under the State Department Office of the Coordinator
for Stabilization and Reconstruction.
First Lady Visits HIV/AIDS Clinic
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First Lady Laura Bush sits with orphaned children at
a U.S. aid-funded clinic treating HIV/AIDS patients
in Dar es Salaam. “These children need help with
all the challenges that come with growing up—and
with the responsibilities that an adult would usually
handle,” she said.
USAID/Tanzania
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DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania—First Lady Laura Bush
and her daughter Jenna visited a clinic here in early July
that provides care and treatment to people with HIV and AIDS
and orphaned children.
U.S. aid has gone to the clinic since 1995, most recently
through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,
whose activities are frequently carried out by USAID. The
clinic is run by the Pastoral Activities and Services for
People with AIDS in Dar es Salaam Archdiocese (PASADA).
The clinic targets the urban poor, who have considerably
higher infection rates than rural residents: 11 percent compared
to 5 percent. Altogether, 7 percent of Tanzanian adults are
HIV positive, with greater prevalence among women than men.
On any given day, PASADA opens early. Women, many carrying
children, line up wearing colorful “kanga” wraparound
skirts made of locally designed cloth. Both men and women
wait to meet with clinic staff.
PASADA, thanks in part to support from the Emergency Plan,
consists of several buildings. There are three new counseling
rooms, three offices for counseling orphans, a training room,
a store room for medical supplies, and offices for staff.
The recently inaugurated buildings surround an open-air courtyard
and tropical garden that create an illusion of a quiet park
setting rather than a clinic in a capital city.
The First Lady visited the clinic with Tanzanian First Lady
Anna Mkapa. The tour included a stop at the main clinic, where
individuals are tested for HIV or treated for infections brought
on by HIV/AIDS.
Bush sat with a group of HIV/AIDS orphans and listened to
how they try to overcome the difficulties of losing their
families. She also spoke with adults who are coping with their
illness and learned of their experiences with the clinic.
“Here, people with HIV/AIDS can get the treatment they
need to fight the disease,” she said. “And they
can also get the love and support they need to live a happy
and full life.”
Sudan Mourns Death of Vice President John Garang
The sudden death of Sudanese Vice President John Garang in
a helicopter crash July 30, just months after he signed a
pact ending a 21-year civil war, has led USAID to advance
aid plans and ensure that peace efforts are not derailed.
Administrator Andrew S. Natsios led a presidential delegation
to Juba in southern Sudan for the Garang funeral on Aug. 6.
By Aug. 11, Garang’s number two, Salva Kiir, went to
Khartoum, where he was sworn in to replace Garang as first
vice president of the new national unity government.
U.S. aid to Sudan jumped from $464 million in 2004 to $847
million in 2005. Just over half of the aid is marked for displaced
people in western Sudan’s Darfur provinces, and the rest
for development, reconstruction, and other needs in the war-torn
south and elsewhere in Africa’s largest country geographically.
U.S. aid to the south will be delivered quickly to support
the new government of southern Sudan, which is struggling
to deliver services, rebuild infrastructure, and establish
its authority and credibility, according to Africa Bureau
Deputy Assistant Administrator Kate Almquist.
Garang led the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)
in a conflict that pitted his mostly Christian and traditional
religions followers in the south against successive Islamic
regimes in the north.
Two former USAID officials were sent to Sudan after Garang’s
death: Roger Winter, recently named special representative
of the deputy secretary of state for Sudan, and former Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs Constance Newman. Winter
was the longtime chief of the U.S. Committee for Refugees
before working at USAID as head of the Bureau for Democracy,
Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance. Newman had been an
assistant administrator for the Africa Bureau.
“He was special,” said Winter of Garang, according
to the New York Times. “We came to love each other
in this manly way that comes when you have mutual respect
and common vision.
“To fail in Dr. John’s vision is to fail Dr. John.”
The United States played a major role negotiating the end
of the civil war, and has called on Sudanese officials to
end violence in Darfur by government-backed militias known
as the Jingaweit.
During the war, USAID provided humanitarian assistance and
short-term conflict mitigation in the south. Now, as the south
moves toward peace, the Agency is also focusing on implementation
of the peace agreement, responsive and participatory government,
education, health, and economic recovery. USAID is also providing
humanitarian assistance in Darfur and in vulnerable areas
in eastern Sudan.
Food Rushed to Niger, Other African Countries
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Alain Balandi (left), UNICEF’s operations manager
in Niger, and John Scicchitano, the regional advisor
for West and North Africa for USAID’s Office of
U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, talk to reporters
Aug. 5 inside a cargo plane at the airport in Niamey,
Niger. USAID chartered two jumbo planes to airlift 206
metric tons of high-energy food to feed thousands of
the country’s malnourished children.
Alexandra Riboul, USAID
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After drought and a wave of locusts left parts of Niger and
its neighbors short of food, U.S. and other aid agencies moved
supplies to the region in August to avert hunger. At the same
time, even larger aid shipments were being readied for food
crises in the Horn and southern Africa.
USAID sent a Disaster Assistance Response Team to Niger
to assess the situation there and in surrounding countries.
About $133.9 million in U.S. food aid has already been provided
in 2005 for the 65 million people in the Sahel, which extends
from West Africa to Chad and Sudan. Niger alone has already
received $18.9 million in aid.
Television news reports showing malnourished children in
Niger have led to renewed public attention on the world’s
second poorest country, which has long faced chronic poverty
and poor nutrition. The country’s harvest this year was
11 percent below the five-year average.
As early as Jan. 21, the Famine Early Warning System Network
(FEWS NET) sounded the alarm on Niger, warning that food stocks
were running out. After additional warnings in February and
March, FEWS NET declared an emergency June 15, noting deteriorating
conditions and “extreme food insecurity.” It concluded
that 2.5 million people in Niger would need emergency assistance.
The food emergency was in part heightened after a BBC report
in which the word “famine” was used. The fear of
famine, coupled with regional trade restrictions, led neighboring
countries to sharply curtail exports of food and prompted
merchants to increase prices.
At the same time, the hunger season set in earlier than
usual, forcing Niger’s rural residents to head for the
towns after their crops failed and their livestock died. There
they found shops flush with food, but at prices beyond their
means.
Emergency food shipments soon began to pour into Niger.
On Aug. 5, USAID airlifted 206 metric tons of special, high-nutrient
food supplement to Niger to treat 34,000 children through
UNICEF.
Another 16,000 tons of food had already been sent. In 2004,
to fight locusts, USAID provided $10 million to the region.
The food shortages in the Sahel region are likely to be
dwarfed by larger crises in other parts of Africa in the months
ahead.
USAID announced in August it would send an additional 73,500
tons of food to southern Africa through the U.N. World Food
Program (WFP). The bulgur wheat, cornmeal, sorghum, vegetable
oil, peas, and beans will sustain approximately 5 million
to 6 million people for one month, and is valued at $51.8
million.
“The United States is leading the world effort to prevent
a widespread humanitarian crisis from developing in southern
Africa,” Administrator Andrew S. Natsios said.
This recent donation brings U.S. food assistance to southern
Africa this year to 143,000 tons.
Poor rainfall in 2004 and 2005 reduced harvests throughout
the region, leaving over 10 million people in need of food
over the coming months. Up to a million tons of food aid may
be needed between now and next year’s harvest in Lesotho,
Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The United States has delivered more than 1 million tons
of food since 2002, including this contribution, and is the
biggest donor to WFP’s operations in southern Africa.
WFP is currently appealing to the international community
for $410 million to feed 8 million people until the spring
harvest in March 2006.
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