[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
U.S. AID TO PAKISTAN: PLANNING AND ACCOUNTABILITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 9, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-131
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania DARRELL E. ISSA, California
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN L. MICA, Florida
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DIANE E. WATSON, California LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia JIM JORDAN, Ohio
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah
Columbia AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois ANH ``JOSEPH'' CAO, Louisiana
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PETER WELCH, Vermont
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
JACKIE SPEIER, California
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio
JUDY CHU, California
Ron Stroman, Staff Director
Michael McCarthy, Deputy Staff Director
Carla Hultberg, Chief Clerk
Larry Brady, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island DAN BURTON, Indiana
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
PETER WELCH, Vermont LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
BILL FOSTER, Illinois PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio JIM JORDAN, Ohio
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
Andrew Wright, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on December 9, 2009................................. 1
Statement of:
Fair, Christine, Center for Peace and Security Studies,
Georgetown University; Andrew Wilder, research director for
policy process, Feinstein Center, Tufts University; and
Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director, International
Crisis Group............................................... 4
Ahmed, Samina............................................ 41
Fair, Christine.......................................... 4
Wilder, Andrew........................................... 29
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Ahmed, Samina, South Asia project director, International
Crisis Group, prepared statement of........................ 44
Fair, Christine, Center for Peace and Security Studies,
Georgetown University, prepared statement of............... 9
Wilder, Andrew, research director for policy process,
Feinstein Center, Tufts University, prepared statement of.. 32
U.S. AID TO PAKISTAN: PLANNING AND ACCOUNTABILITY
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Tierney
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tierney, Maloney, Lynch, Van
Hollen, Flake, Duncan, Fortenberry, and Luetkemeyer.
Staff present: Andy Wright, staff director; Elliot
Gillerman, clerk; Scott Lindsay, counsel; Steven Gale, fellow;
Jesse Schwartz, intern; Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk/Member
liaison; and Lt. Col. Glenn Sanders, Defense fellow.
Mr. Tierney. Good morning.
I missed you, Doctor. I think you must have been getting a
glass of water or something when I came in--nice to see you
here. Thank you.
A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National
Security and Foreign Affairs, the hearing entitled ``U.S. Aid
to Pakistan: Planning and Accountability'' will come to order.
I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and ranking
member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening
statements. And without objections, that is so ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California,
Representative George Miller, be allowed to participate in this
hearing. In accordance with the committee rules, he will only
be allowed to question the witnesses after all official members
of the subcommittee have had their turn: Without objection; so
ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept
open for 5 business days, so that all members of the
subcommittee would be allowed to submit a written statement for
the record. And, without objection, that is so ordered.
So, once again, I say good morning to all of our witnesses
that are here today. I do appreciate the written testimony. I
think I mentioned that to Dr. Wilder and Dr. Ahmed earlier, on
that, as it certainly is food for thought.
And, Mr. Flake and I were just discussing this: We are
anxious to hear your testimony. We will try to keep our opening
statements relatively brief.
On October 15, 2009, President Obama signed the Enhanced
Partnership with Pakistan Act. It has been formally known, as
everyone here knows, as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill. It triples
the U.S. civilian economic and development assistance to
Pakistan to $1.5 billion annually, until 2014.
While Kerry-Lugar-Berman was a largely bipartisan
demonstration of U.S. commitment of long-term assistance to
Pakistan, serious concerns remain regarding the ability of
USAID and the State Department to effectively and efficiently
manage and account for such a massive increase in assistance.
In November, I led a congressional delegation to Pakistan
in order to investigate, among other things, the status of U.S.
assistance programs, and the State Department and USAID's
capacity to manage and oversee Kerry-Lugar-Berman funding.
At the time, Ambassador Holbrooke's team and USAID in
Pakistan were actively searching for a new delivery model for
U.S. assistance to Pakistan. I understand that this policy
review is now almost complete. And I look forward to the
administration testifying before the subcommittee on their
plans in early 2010.
During the congressional delegation, we met with Pakistan's
civilian leadership and political opposition, and a wide
variety of civil-society members, NGO's, and international
contractors. We also traveled to Peshawar to deliver aid
supplies directly to the principal hospital that has been
receiving wounded from the many bombings there, over the
several months preceding.
No one would be surprised to hear that everyone had a
different perspective on how the United States could best
deliver aid. Prime Minister Gilani prefers more aid to be
funneled through the central government. In the provinces,
meanwhile, we heard that more money should go straight to the
provincial government.
Local NGO's are boasting that they could cut out the high
administrative fees for international contractors and build
more domestic capacity. But international NGO's and contractors
claim that the local players did not have the capacity to do
so. So, in short, our meetings helped us quickly identify all
the problems with the various aid-delivery models under
consideration, but we found no consensus regarding how to go
forward.
Clearly, there is no silver-bullet solution for delivering
aid in Pakistan. More disconcerting than the lack of consensus
regarding the best aid-delivery model was the lack of capacity
at USAID in Pakistan.
For years, USAID has been marginalized and stripped of
personnel, while, at the same time, U.S. foreign policy has
increasingly emphasized aid delivery in high-risk conflict and
post-conflict countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It is no wonder that USAID has become so dependent on
international contractors to plan, manage and even oversee
massive development projects. This challenge is only made more
difficult by the current security environment that makes it
extremely difficult for either USAID personnel or Western
expats, to actively manage or oversee many projects,
particularly those in the federally administered tribal areas
and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan.
As a result, both USAID and international contractors are
often entirely dependent on sending third-party locals to
verify and account for major development and assistance
projects. Although I understand the temporary security needs of
these oversight workarounds, I have a serious concern about
USAID's ability to provide long-term oversight and
accountability of major projects without ever even seeing them
in person.
I plan to continue to work with Congress and this
administration to bolster USAID's internal staffing and
capability. We have to reverse USAID's decline of the last
decade, if it is to serve as a central tool of U.S. foreign
policy in South Asia or the Middle East, a task that it has
been assigned, but not given the tools to fulfill.
In the meantime, however, any new plan for U.S. civilian
assistance to Pakistan must factor in USAID's limited
capacity--both limited personnel to actually manage and oversee
contracts, and for security reasons, limited visibility on many
of its projects.
For today's hearing, we have brought together three experts
with a great variety and depth of experience in both Pakistan
and U.S. assistance program. I don't expect any of them to
provide the silver-bullet solution.
But I do hope that you can give us some fresh perspectives
on this very difficult challenge. And, of course, to the extent
that you have that silver bullet, don't hesitate to share it.
Thank you.
Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I thank the witnesses.
I share the concerns that the chairman has expressed about
the pace of this aid going in. It seems to be more supply side
driven, rather than demand-side, at this point. I also share
the concern, and I understand the issues with regard to
security. But the inability to actually see where some of this
money is spent in the end, is troublesome for a committee that
provides oversight.
So I am anxious to hear the testimony. And I look forward
to the administration witnesses in the new year, to hear what
they have planned going ahead, to remedy the situation.
But thank you for coming.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Flake.
The subcommittee will now receive testimony from the panel
before us today. I would like to just briefly introduce the
entire panel, and then we will start with Dr. Fair.
Doctor Christine Fair is an assistant professor with the
Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown
University's School of Foreign Service. She previously served
as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corp., a
political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to
Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate at the
Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the U.S.
Institute for Peace.
Her current research focuses on political and military
affairs in South Asia. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago.
Dr. Andrew Wilder is the research director for policy
process at Tufts University's Feinstein Center. Prior to
joining the center, he worked in Afghanistan, where he
established and directed Afghanistan's first independent policy
research institute, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation
Unit.
Between 1986 and 2001, Dr. Wilder worked with several
international NGO's, managing humanitarian and development
programs in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His research and
publications explore the politics of civil service reform and
electoral politics and policies in Pakistan.
He holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University.
And our friend, Dr. Samina Ahmed is the International
Crisis Group's South Asia project director. She has testified
from Pakistan to here, by video, before, as I understand, Dr.
Wilder has also done, on at least one occasion, and, maybe, Dr.
Fair, for all I know.
You haven't been on the video yet? We will get you there.
But we appreciate the fact that you have traveled all the
way here today, from Pakistan, to work with us.
Based in Islamabad, Dr. Ahmed oversees ICG's work in
Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nepal. Prior to joining ICG,
she held research positions at Harvard University's Kennedy
School of Government, and the Institute of Regional Studies.
Her areas of expertise include South Asian affairs,
democratic transitions in authoritarian states, and ethnic and
religious conflict. She holds a Ph.D. from the Australian
National University.
We appreciate that all of you came here today, and that you
are going to share your testimony.
As I have said, we have read your written testimony with
great effect. I do note that if you were to deliver your
written testimony each of you would be significantly over 15 or
20 minutes. We would like to have some time for questions and
answers.
So if you could verbalize, in about 5 or so minutes--we are
not going to drop the hammer at exactly 5--but shorter than it
would be for the entire presentation of the written testimony--
that written testimony will be put on the record by unanimous
consent. And we will have that and all those that haven't a
chance to read it will read it.
So first let me swear in the witnesses. It is our practice
to do that before every hearing.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Tierney. The record will, please, reflect that all of
the witnesses have answered in the affirmative.
And, Dr. Fair, if you would be kind enough--to begin?
STATEMENTS OF CHRISTINE FAIR, CENTER FOR PEACE AND SECURITY
STUDIES, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY; ANDREW WILDER, RESEARCH
DIRECTOR FOR POLICY PROCESS, FEINSTEIN CENTER, TUFTS
UNIVERSITY; AND SAMINA AHMED, SOUTH ASIA PROJECT DIRECTOR,
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP
STATEMENT OF CHRISTINE FAIR
Ms. Fair. This isn't on? Oh, there we go. Sorry about that.
As a non-USAID practitioner, my comments will draw off my
own experience in Pakistan since 1991 as an Urdu speaker who
has traveled throughout the country, from survey work that I
have conducted with various collaborators, as well as from
reviews of the relevant secondary literature.
As we know, since 9-11, aid has become very much a tool in
the global war on terrorism. Yet, in my interactions with
Pakistanis since 9-11, many persons have communicated a deep
awareness of and, quite frankly, discomfort with Washington's
instrumentalism of its assistance, as I note at length in my
written statement.
Pakistanis complain bitterly about the modalities of USAID,
noting the provision of large sums of cash without significant
oversight and monitoring actually fosters corruption. This has
fostered a deep cynicism that Washington explicitly seeks to
ensure that Pakistan remains weak, riddled by corruption, and
more vulnerable to international pressure, generally, and that
of the United States, in particular.
As I described in my written statement, beliefs about
corruption, in some measure, drive Pakistani popular support
for Sharia, and that draws from the survey work that I have
done recently. It is not clear that these perceptions can be
managed through a public diplomacy campaign, howsoever
sophisticated.
Arguably, if the United States wishes to move public
opinion in Pakistan, it will have to change how it works with
Pakistan, and engages its citizenry.
Moving forward, considerations for future USAID programming
in Pakistan, it is certainly, as you noted, easier to identify
the problem, than it is to offer effective solutions. Yet, I
present a number of steps and considerations that may be useful
as USAID reconsiders its future aid-delivering mechanisms in
Pakistan.
First, there is a dire need to better discern Pakistani
preferences. USAID personnel have conceded that the pressures
to execute does not allow effort to discern Pakistanis'
preferences, which is critical to generally demand-driven
programming. This results in supply driven programming that may
not address the needs and aspirations of Pakistanis, and even
engender frustration with the foreign-driven agenda. I provide
lengthy examples of current efficiency in this regard, in my
written statement.
Equally important, USAID does not collect data to inform
their branding decisions, which is absolutely strange, given
the technical expertise to do this sort of market research in
Pakistan. There is a shocking paucity of robust data about
Pakistanis, generally, the views they have on a wide range of
domestic and foreign policies, the sources of information that
Pakistanis access and which inform their views, and the
legitimacy and trustworthiness of various sources of
information.
For years, development economists have debated the vices
and virtues of community-based development programming.
Unfortunately, there is no obvious way to resolve the debate
between community-based development and those provided through
sub-national, or even national channels, because there are
really no robust studies of the relative benefits of any of
these mechanisms.
World Bank analysts Mansuri and Rao have conducted an
extensive review of community-based development projects. And
they conclude that the success of these initiatives depend
critically upon local, cultural, and social systems.
And, ``It is, therefore, best done not with wholesale
application of best practices applied from projects that were
successful in other contexts, but by careful learning by doing.
This requires a long-term horizon, and willingness to engage in
a monitoring-and-evaluation process that is not only rigorous,
but is designed to allow for learning and program
modification.''
This description is exactly what USAID seems ill-positioned
to do. Yet, the literature suggests it is not a luxury, but
rather a necessity.
It is worth reflecting upon the role of NGO's, in
particular--certainly, since you mentioned them--given that one
likely movement away from a large institutional-contractor
approach, with their high overhead, may be to increasingly rely
on Pakistan-based NGO's.
I think many people on this panel can attest that NGO's are
seen with considerable dubiety in Pakistan, ranging from, ``the
personal hobby of elite housewives,'' to, ``mechanisms to
basically take money from the U.S. tax dollars, and put them
into the pockets of those that run those NGO's.''
So it is absolutely critical that USAID discern which NGO's
are credible and, most importantly, which ones are seen as
credible. In my testimony, I suggest that it might be useful
for USAID to set up the kind of mechanism that we have here in
the states that puts transparency into NGO's--the way they use
expenditures, their service delivery and so forth.
Those sorts of systems might be able to, over time,
increase public confidence in NGO's because they can discern
more credibly which ones do their job and which ones are
basically rent-seeking organizations.
But there are other potential problems associated with
using NGO's--and I cite some studies of this in my testimony--
mainly the civil-society organizations. Sorry for the
abbreviation. Civil-society organizations that rely upon
external funders oddly enough become less capable of mobilizing
social capital in strengthening their civil societies. And that
is because their constituencies become the funders, not
memberships. So this is certainly a principal-agent problem
that USAID will have to deal with if they pursue programming
through NGO's.
One of the methods that I have advocated with my World Bank
colleagues is actually using the markets and generating demand
for change. One of the examples that I give pertains to
education. Given the pervasive problems with some important
ministries, USAID may want to consider pursuing private-sector
solutions to public-sector problems, which are better pursued,
quite frankly, by Pakistanis.
I look at the education-sector reform. And I argue that
Washington has very little scope to change either the madrassa
curriculum, or the public-school curriculum. And, in fact,
Washington's effort to do so is really seen as efforts to de-
Islamize. And this has produced a number of backlashes against
U.S. efforts, which I have written about, at least, elsewhere.
One of the things that the World Bank has actually done in
experiment is that they provide report cards for student and
teacher and school performance. And what is interesting--when
there is a cost-neutral way, parents actually shift to private
schools. There is a lot of misunderstandings about private
schools and their cost structures. As I say in my testimony,
private schools are the fastest-growing segment in Pakistan.
They are actually one of the most efficient ways of delivering
a higher-quality education, for reasons I discuss at length.
Another way forward that work suggests to me is actually
information-based programming. What USAID does, in many cases,
is it tries to supply a reform from some sort of government
agency. The example I give in my testimony is corruption. So
efforts to clean up corruption, be it in the police or in a
particular ministry, are likely to fail because Pakistanis
themselves are part of the corruption system.
So any mechanism that engages in civic education to sort of
communicate to Pakistanis that they, themselves, participate in
the corruption problem--that corruption is not simply done to
them--might be a way of buttressing the supply driven aid--so,
in other words, trying to create demand to support the supply
driven effort.
The final set of issues that I look at, given that aid has
been securitized, especially since 9-11--but one could make the
argument that aid to Pakistan has been securitized since 1947--
is that there is simply no evidence that demonstrates that
securitized aid actually meets these objectives.
I provide two examples that were conducted by a team led by
Jacob Shapiro at Stanford, and his colleagues. And he uses the
case of Iraq. And I want to note that he has to use the
Commander Emergency Response Program funds because USAID funds
were so encumbered with multilayers of contracting that it
simply made doing the analysis impossible, whereas CERP was
actually much more direct in assessing its outcomes.
What they found with the CERP funds is that delivering
community service actually resulted in a a modest decrease in
violence; but that the monitoring and the understanding
requirements of achieving this modest result were really quite
onerous.
In contrast, in a similar study that he did with his
colleagues on unemployment in Iraq, he actually found that
unemployment was negatively correlated with violence. So, in
other words, the more unemployment there was, the less violence
there was.
So if you look at the literature, you will find that there
is, ``simply not evidence,'' it says, that ``securitized aid
achieves the objectives that are specified in various
documents, putting aid as a part of the counterinsurgency
problem. I think Dr. Wilder's experience certainly buttresses
that.
So, in conclusion, a review of the literature, coupled with
my own experience in the country, does suggest that there is no
magic bullet, and there is no substitute for experimentation
and rigorous evaluation. Indeed, there is a strong argument to
be made for experimenting with different forms of aid
delivery--through NGO's, through sub-national, as well as
national, means, and different levels of involvement of local
communities, as well as oversight mechanisms.
In subjecting these pilot programs to robust assessment,
preferably with some degree of randomization to determine the
impact of these interventions on the treatment group--effective
programs should be retained and applied to other areas with
appropriate analysis and re-optimization. And ineffective
programs--and, heavens knows, there are quite a bit of those--
should be eliminated unless they can be implemented
successfully elsewhere in the country, with suitable
modification.
Admittedly, this will be difficult for USAID, given the
pressure that the Nation is under to execute programs,
permission and priorities, given the security environment, as
well as the potential ethical concerns about risks inherent in
fielding different experimental programs in different areas.
But I want to point out there is no a priori way of knowing
that the non-randomized approaches that they currently use
offer any benefit at all.
Given the frustration that Pakistanis have expressed about
U.S. intentions, and the explicit securitization of aid, it is
important to assess whether the benefits of USAID interventions
in mitigating violence and anti-Americanism are sufficiently
significant in size and scope relative to the public-relations
problems such securitized aid appears to pose. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Fair follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tierney. I note that we are one-third of the way
through, without the silver bullet. So we have to keep moving
on this.
Dr. Wilder, please.
STATEMENT OF ANDREW WILDER
Mr. Wilder. Distinguished members of the committee, thank
you for asking me to testify today. I was born in Pakistan--
lived, worked and studied there for about 30 years. So the
topic of today's hearing is something that is important to me
personally, as well as professionally.
I have firsthand seen some of the very positive effects of
U.S. aid to Pakistan. But I have also seen some of the damage
done to the U.S. image in Pakistan, as well as to development
efforts in Pakistan, of the sort of feast-and-famine approach
to development aid to Pakistan.
These feasts and famines, I argue, have both been harmful.
And they result from what I believe is a misplaced faith in the
effectiveness of aid in promoting security objectives, rather
than just development objectives.
My testimony today is based on a study I am doing at the
Feinstein Center, basically looking at the issue of: How
effective is aid in promoting security objectives? And our main
finding to date is that, while development assistance can be
very effective in promoting humanitarian and development
objectives, there is actually remarkably little evidence that
it is effective in winning hearts and minds, and promoting
security objectives.
Developing an aid program first and foremost to achieve
security objectives rather than development often fails to
achieve either. And I will argue that it, in some cases, can
actually do more harm than good.
U.S. national security interests have always have a major
influence over our foreign-aid programs, and how our foreign-
aid dollars get spent. But I think, not since Vietnam have we
seen aid so explicitly viewed as a weapons system, especially
in counterinsurgency contexts. And I think this is illustrated
by the recent publication in April of this year by the U.S.
Army of the handbook called, ``The Commander's Guide to Money
as a Weapons System,'' which provides guidance on how to use
money to ``win the hearts and minds of the indigenous
population to facilitate defeating the insurgents.''
This assumption that aid can win hearts and minds is widely
held by policymakers and practitioners alike. And it is having
a major impact on our aid policies, as well as our
counterinsurgency policies. It is resulting in a sharp increase
in aid to countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. And it has
also resulted, within those countries, in a disproportionate
amount of aid being programmed to the most insecure areas,
rather than secure areas.
So when I am doing my research in Afghanistan, in the
central and northern parts of the country, you often hear
bitter complaints from Afghans there, as to, ``Why are we being
penalized for being peaceful?'' because the lion's share of
U.S. development aid is programmed to the insecure regions of
the south and southeast.
And we see a similar thing in FATA--the $750 million over 5
years to FATA--the federally administered tribal areas--where
only 2 percent of Pakistan's population live--I, think, also
reflects that tendency.
And I think policymakers should be aware that given how
widespread this assumption is, and given its powerful impact on
our aid and our counterinsurgency policies, there is remarkably
little evidence to actually show that aid is an effective
weapons system, or is effective in winning hearts and minds in
contexts like Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I think the Pakistan earthquake response is a very good
example of this. I was personally involved in that. I saw
firsthand the tremendous response of Pakistani citizens, first
of all, the Pakistan army, and the international community, led
by the United States, to what was a very effective humanitarian
response to the earthquake.
The United States was the single largest donor to that
response--$510 million was fairly rapidly programmed, as well
as 23 helicopters--provided lifesaving assistance in the
aftermath of the earthquake.
I think the United States would have responded with
humanitarian aid to a disaster of that magnitude anywhere in
the world; however, there is no doubt that the scale of the
response in Pakistan was affected by the desire to win hearts
and minds and gain additional support from a war-on-terror
ally.
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial shortly after the
earthquake, referred to this as, ``One of America's most
significant hearts-and-minds successes so far in the Muslim
world.'' And there is a widespread perception that this
response did win hearts and minds.
I am arguing, though, that, in reality, that benefit was
actually quite minimal. A public-opinion poll done just a month
after the earthquake did show a sharp boost in Pakistani public
opinion toward the United States from--it went from 23 percent
prior to the earthquake, to 46 percent; however, the next time
that poll was done--6 months later--public opinion was back
down to 26 percent. And, then, the Pew CERP poll showed it was
down to 15 percent. And, today, I think we are around 16
percent.
So, again, there maybe was a very short-term benefit to
that $500 million in earthquake response, but not long-term.
And I think the point there is that was an incredibly
effective humanitarian response, but with limited hearts-and-
minds benefit.
My research from Afghanistan shows similar results. We have
found that Afghanistan development aid, carefully programmed,
can have very effective and positive development outcomes. But
there is very little evidence that the billions now being spent
on aid to Afghanistan is actually translating into significant
hearts-and-minds benefits or stabilization benefits.
At a time when more aid is being given to Afghanistan than
ever before in its history, the popular perception of aid in
Pakistan is nearly universally negative.
Our field research in Afghanistan not only shows that aid
is not winning hearts and minds, and having a stabilizing
effect, but the sheer volume of that aid, especially in the
insecure areas, can actually have destabilizing effects.
There are many ways in which it can do that--aid can create
winners and losers in that zero-sum society, or perceptions of
winners and losers. There is mounting evidence about how the
political economy of aid and security contracting can actually
result in significant amounts of money ending up being paid to
the Taliban by construction companies as protection money for
their road-building and other construction projects in these
insecure areas.
But the most important way in which I think aid is
destabilizing in Afghanistan is its role in fueling corruption.
And it is nearly inevitable in a highly insecure area with
limited implementation and oversight capacity that large
amounts of aid in those areas are going to fuel corruption.
This corruption, in turn, has a very corrosive, I think,
and destabilizing effect, by reducing the legitimacy of the
Afghan government. And while donors in the United States and
people are rightly criticizing the Afghan government in terms
of its not cracking down on corruption, I think we need to be
looking at ourselves, because our aid money is contributing to
that problem by, I think, providing too much with too little
oversight, in that context.
Although I have not done the research in FATA yet--but I
suspect that--and similar environment, a highly insecure area
in the border regions of Pakistan--large amounts of aid could
also have similar effects.
So, in conclusion, I believe that prioritization since the
1960's, actually, of security over development objectives has
been one of the main factors undermining the effectiveness of
U.S. development aid to Pakistan.
And with the passage of the $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar Bill,
an amount that exceeds the total U.S. aid spending since the
start of this program in 1951 through 2007, it is more
important than ever before to question how U.S. aid to Pakistan
can be spent more effectively and accountably.
With U.S. foreign aid now explicitly viewed as a weapons
system in counterinsurgency contexts, before appropriating
billions more dollars, I urge this subcommittee and Congress to
demand more evidence that it is an effective weapons system. It
is hard to imagine that the United States would go to battle
with any other weapons system whose effectiveness is based to
such a great extent on unproven assumptions and wishful
thinking. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilder follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Dr. Wilder. I appreciate that.
Dr. Ahmed.
STATEMENT OF SAMINA AHMED
Ms. Ahmed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman--a pleasure to be here
and to testify at this very important hearing.
Let me start off by saying that: Is U.S. aid desirable in
the Pakistani context? Yes, it is. Is it needed in the
Pakistani context? Yes, it is. How effective will that
assistance be? That will depend on the mechanisms that are used
to provide that assistance. That will also depend on the
oversight of that assistance by the U.S. Government, but also
by the U.S.-Pakistani counterparts.
If these counterparts are indeed representative of their
communities, are themselves accountable, and the processes that
are used are transparent, then, this assistance that has been
allocated to Pakistan--the $1.5 billion a year, under the
Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, as well as the $750
million, of which, we know, very little, as yet, has been spent
on FATA--would that be effective? I don't think there is
absolutely any doubt about it.
The problem lies in the fact that we are looking at
assistance in the Pakistani context; also, in the context of
Pakistan's relationship with the United States in particular.
Relations with the United States in the last 10 years--
Pakistani perceptions were shaped by U.S. assistance to a
military regime, which is why this still is important--which is
why, also, as this committee knows, they want a push-back by
those institutions within Pakistan that feel strengthening
civilian partners would undermine their own internal standing.
Specifically in the context of FATA, let me just say this:
Having spoken to FATA representatives, having spoken to FATA
stakeholders, folks who belong and live and will be the
recipients of this community--do they want it? Yes, they do. Do
they believe that it is going to be effective? Under the
present circumstances, no, they don't.
Is that because there is a flaw in the way assistance is
being provided? I go into great detail in the testimony on the
problems that USAID and its implementing partners face in FATA
itself. And the real problem in the fact that this assistance
cannot be delivered as effectively as it should lies in the
larger political framework that exists, the mechanisms--the
bureaucratic mechanisms that are there in place.
If there is no political reform--and we have stressed upon
that very strongly--this is a civilian government. It is an
elected government. It understands the importance of reaching
out to the communities; it also understands the importance of
winning the peace. But without that reform agenda--and the
first beginnings of that reform agenda have just been
suggested--there has been a push-back, again, by the military,
as far as this reform agenda is concerned.
Until there is political reform in FATA--USAID and its
implementing partners--it doesn't matter if they are local
NGO's, international NGO's, or beltway bandits--are going to
have to work through the FATA secretary, through the FATA
development authority, and the political agents. This entire
bureaucracy and its clients do not have any links to the
community, nor have they any interest in consulting the
communities.
Let me also say this: While we are talking about what is
happening within the FATA context, we have a very large
proportion--almost a third of the residents of FATA--who are
now internally displaced because of the conflict, because of
military operations, because they are caught between the
military and the militants.
Delivering assistance to these communities, I think, is one
way to reach the communities that are still within FATA. It is
a mechanism that can be used. What will be important is for
everybody, I think, to understand that as these operations
end--when they end and how they end--also matter. If they are
just going to see militant leaders moving from one agency to
the other to make a return, with no safety and security for
residents--it is not going to make any difference.
If there is no comprehensive relief, secure return and
reconstruction plan for the IDPs, with U.S. assistance, the
civilian government will lose whatever credibility it has. So
that need for political reform and the importance of making
sure that the political structures in FATA are, indeed,
accountable and transparent means that there needs to be,
first, support for the reform agenda, which is just the
beginnings of opening the doors to political reform in FATA--
but also an understanding that unless these--there are
mechanisms that are put in place for community and civil-
society participation, as well as--and let me emphasize this--
with the elected representatives of the Pakistani parliament in
the province--Northwest Frontier Province--and in the center--
in the national assembly--that is, I think, a mechanism that
has, of yet, not been used, and could be used to far greater
effectiveness.
These are folks who know, as indeed, Members of the
Congress do, the needs of their constituents. These are also
people who are accountable to those constituents and will win
or lose elections based on their performance.
Bringing them into the process of aid delivery in terms of
oversight would make a huge difference. Insecurity will be used
also, deliberately, to deprive even those international
humanitarian organizations and development organizations that
would want to risk going into these insecure conflict zones.
And there, I think, again, international humanitarian law is
something which is absolutely essential when we are looking at
how this conflict is playing out.
Preparing the ground for a safe and secure return for the
IDPs--and we talked about the situation after the earthquake--
let us not forget what happened after the earthquake. Right
after the earthquake, the relief and reconstruction that was
supposed to take place was taken over by a military apparatus.
There was no link to the community. There was no understanding
of the needs of the people. That is what we don't want to see
happen again in these conflict zones as people begin to return
home; and, indeed, millions already have in Malakand Division.
On the whole, as far as the entire project is concerned of
USAID assistance--there are going to be difficult choices.
There are no silver bullets, unfortunately. But what does
matter is that if they see transparency, accountability, and
the mechanisms--the democratic institutions and mechanisms that
are there now, in this nascent democracy, being utilized by the
American partners on the ground--that is, possibly, an
effective way to go. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ahmed follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tierney. Well, thank you, Doctor. I appreciate that.
And, again, you were very helpful to us when we were actually
there, getting some insight into the Northwest Frontier
Province and FATA.
I have to say, it is not entirely encouraging to listen to
what we have heard this morning, nor was it that encouraging,
frankly, during our visit--a little short of a week that we
spent there, talking to any number of parties. It made some of
us wonder--this ``securitization of aid,'' I think, is the way
that Dr. Fair put it in her testimony--this whole
counterinsurgency theory that if we somehow meld the security
aspect with the development aspect, and we are going to contain
and combat and mitigate terrorism--it doesn't seem to have a
great deal of validity in terms of studies or reports or any
evidence to support it.
It doesn't seem to promote peace. It doesn't seem to be
mitigating any conflicts. It certainly doesn't seem to be
dissuading populations from embracing extremism. And, in fact,
if I listen to Dr. Wilder and Dr. Fair, in particular, it seems
to be fomenting distrust and encouraging rampant theories of
U.S. animus toward Pakistanis, in fact. It makes us wonder
whether or not we are wrong, when we look at our approach to
counterinsurgency policy.
Do you see, Dr. Wilder--your work is directly contradicting
the counterinsurgency theories that are abounding?
Mr. Wilder. It is questioning a central tenet of the
counterinsurgency strategy. And I think there has been very
much focus, and all the debate is on troop numbers. But in the
coined mantra of ``clear, hold, build,'' the build piece
actually doesn't get much questioning.
And I want to emphasize I have been a development worker
most of my life. I am a strong believer in the importance of
development and development aid. But I think that, you know, we
shouldn't assume that development aid can defeat these--or have
a big impact on what is driving conflict in some of these
contexts.
And we are hoping to shift our research more into Pakistan
during this coming year. But if you look at what is driving
conflict in Afghanistan, but I also suspect in the border
regions, it is actually, I think, not, first and foremost,
poverty or lack of infrastructure or lack of social services.
All those things are important, and we should be trying to
address those because those are important for development's
sake.
But those are not the things fueling the conflict. So I
don't think we should assume that by spending hundreds of
millions of dollars quickly in a context like that, it is going
to change the conflict dynamic. And, as I said, what is
alarming from Afghanistan is, indeed, that actually that
assumption is exacerbating the problem by fueling corruption,
which I think is a big issue that de-legitimizes governments
and actually creates instability.
Mr. Tierney. I ask this of all three of you--would I be
misreading your collective testimony if I said that I see in
there some indication that we ought to sever the concept of
development and aid from security? We ought to make sure that
we take the time to collect the data, analyze it and implement
the best delivery model--or whether or not any particular NGO
or series of NGO's are the best people, or the government is
the best people to deliver it--and recognize sort of a need for
having quality projects with great impact, as opposed to a
large number of projects and a quick disbursement of the money.
Dr. Ahmed, is that a fair statement to----
Ms. Ahmed. There needs to be a framework within which aid
is dispersed. Let me say this: From my experience in
Afghanistan--and I have worked in Afghanistan since--actually,
for the last 25 years, but I have had a standing office in
Afghanistan since January 2002--our concern was with that big
project, that ring road, all that money put into that one high-
profile project, when the needs were quite different on the
ground. So I do think that one needs to do a little bit of a
balancing act before all the money is put in--for example, in
the Pakistani context, as is being suggested--into either
energy or water--one high-profile $200 million project, without
actually understanding the politics and more.
And I think it is going to be crucial--let me just say
about one issue--water. This is the most contentious of
resources within Pakistan. It is the Federal framework. All
four Federal units are, you know, basically, fighting over a
very scarce resource.
So doing the homework beforehand, and then determining if
this is going to be desirable, without the kind of consultation
you need on the ground--I would hesitate to go down that road.
Mr. Tierney. Doctor.
Mr. Wilder. If I could just--I would--I also wanted to
emphasize that--I am not saying that there is not going to be
an effect anywhere. I think you need to do that research, and
look at each individual context, because they differ. It could
be that conflict in some country is actually generated due to
disputes over natural resources.
And a very conflict-sensitive aid programs that looks to
try to address that, where the different competing communities
can--you can have a win-win situation. In that context, aid
could mitigate, you know, a conflict there.
My point is, though, in Pakistan-Afghanistan context, I
don't see that those are the main factors driving the
insurgency and, therefore, will not be the main factors that
mitigate them.
And just in terms of the aid effectiveness, I think when we
are trying to spend it to achieve the security objective, as
the security gets worse and worse, we try to spend more and
more. And that is what we see in Afghanistan. We see no
evidence that where we have spent most of our money the
security has gotten any better. If anything, it has gotten a
lot worse.
And I am not arguing causality there, but I think it
creates this vicious link.
Mr. Tierney. Yes, I mean, I think there is a lot of
political pressure coming from this country, and the
policymakers here or whatever, thinking that because we have
had such theories of counterinsurgency put out there now, and
the idea of tying this development into security--we have this
notion that, well, giving a large amount of money has to go to
work tomorrow; we have to see something happening tomorrow.
And, unfortunately, what we have seen happening is
spending, but not necessarily results.
Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. Go ahead. Did you have something to say? Go
ahead and----
Mr. Tierney. No, fine. Mr. Flake is going to do that. And
we will give him a little more time on the other side, so that
is good.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Thanks.
Go ahead, yes.
Ms. Fair. So, in April, with my colleagues, we conducted a
6,000-person survey which is--allows us to----
Mr. Lynch. I am sorry. Mr. Chairman, could you----
Ms. Fair [continuing]. Talk about things----
Mr. Lynch. Could you pull your mic out just a little bit?
Ms. Fair. Oh, I am sorry.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you.
Ms. Fair. So, in April, with various colleagues, I
conducted a survey of 6,000 Pakistanis, which allow us a lot of
granularity at the sub-national level. We were explicitly
looking at: Why do Pakistanis support different militant
groups?
And what we have really come--what we have drawn from that
survey--and I am happy to present different results to you, if
you are interested--it is really about the politics of the
militant groups. And they distinguish across the different
militant groups, ranging from the Kashmiri groups, all the way
down the Al Qaida, the Afghan Taliban, and the sectarian
groups.
And it is not driven by economics in any consistent way. It
is not driven by educational background in any consistent way.
In fact, those variables behave very differently when you look
at different militant groups.
So when I look at all of the policy documents that drive
USAID, using securitized aid as a part of COIN, I myself cited
the inter-agency COIN manual. Again, there is just no evidence.
It seems to be driven by the politics of these militant groups
in whether or not people support what those groups do.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
Dr. Ahmed, you had talked about, obviously, the problem in
FATA, in particular making use of the existing government
officials and institutions within government, as opposed to
international NGO's. I mean, understanding that we need to move
quickly there, how do we do it? And, then this kind of goes
into what Dr. Fair talked about in her written testimony,
about--you know, you ought to have two tests--whether somebody
is trustworthy in the eyes of the U.S. taxpayer, for example,
or the U.S. Government, and whether they are trustworthy in
terms of the target population there.
How do you balance that in FATA, recognizing although it is
a small segment of the population, it is a troublesome area
where we do want to win hearts and minds, or whatever you want
to say. But recognizing we have to move quickly, how do you
balance the need to target the population directly there, and
make use of organizations or institutions that are up and
going? Or are there sufficient NGO's that are ready to move,
that we can ignore the troublesome elected officials or
appointed officials, or whoever is within government there?
Do you want to illuminate a little, in FATA, in particular?
Ms. Ahmed. FATA is a case apart from the rest of Pakistan.
And I think that is one thing that could--should be recognized
from the outset. The bureaucracy we are talking about in FATA
is a separate bureaucracy because of the way that it is kept
apart from the rest of the country in constitutional terms.
The reason why this bureaucracy is in absolute control of
whatever happens on the ground is because of the rules of the
political, constitutional, and legal game. And that is why this
bureaucracy is such an impediment. It is the least transparent.
It is the least responsive to local community needs because it
doesn't have to be.
You know, FATA residents have no political rights, no civil
rights, no legal rights because of the structures that are
there in place. Our concern is if you want to--if the
assumption is that the government of Pakistan is who we should
be working with, yes. The government of Pakistan is actually
the provincial government. It is a Federal Government.
And, then, you have a very separate sub-sect of that
government, which is the FATA bureaucracy. Our concern is----
Mr. Flake. Does----
Ms. Ahmed [continuing]. In the specific context of FATA, is
this bureaucracy going to be an efficient way of dispersing
assistance that will reach the communities? This bureaucracy
doesn't even have any links to the communities. It works
through its own clients.
Are there NGO's, local or international, that have a track
record of working on FATA? Yes, there are. Do they have the
capacity of dealing with large amounts of money? No, they
don't.
So one will really have to look at how you can factor in--
how do you actually consult the communities? There are elected
representatives from FATA. They don't have legal parts under
the present political setup. But they have some links to their
constituencies--not great.
There is the Northwest Frontier Province, let us not
forget. I think Dr. Wilder talked about this. Let us not forget
that, you know, there are links between these areas.
It is an artificial distinction between FATA and the rest
of the Northwest Frontier Province. And, there are no real
security issues involved in actually ensuring that you can
access the leadership of FATA civil society.
Do you know there is a FATA union of journalists, a FATA
union of lawyers. It is not as though there is no civil society
and no community that can be accessed. If you work specifically
only through this bureaucracy, you will lose that opportunity
of accessing the communities completely.
Mr. Flake. All right.
I mean, we have a problem in Pakistan, in general, with--
when aid is delivered via the government, that the target
population views that skeptically, because they don't trust,
particularly, some of the military institutions. You are saying
that is even more so in the FATA, because they don't have the
links to the target population, so it is----
Ms. Ahmed. Absolutely.
Mr. Flake [continuing]. Even more difficult.
Ms. Ahmed. And more so, let us not forget, as far as the
IDPs are concerned--and that is a huge number of FATA residents
that can be accessed today, if need be.
Mr. Flake. Right.
Ms. Ahmed. The military presents access--full humanitarian
access or access to development agencies--to these
communities--and I think that is a clear message that should be
sent from Washington--that when we give our money--our
taxpayers' money--we are not going to give it to institutions
that are not transparent, that are not accountable. And we,
certainly, have no intention of bypassing the communities that
will be the beneficiaries of this assistance.
Mr. Flake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Luetkemeyer? You are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In our paper on this, it indicates that aid to Pakistan is
divided into five different categories--economic growth,
educational, health, governance, and human assistance, as well
as major assistance with the development of the FATA areas.
Can you give me a breakdown of--any of the three of you--
whoever wants to jump in on this--with regards to these
categories--the amount of money that we are spending on each
one, the importance of that? Is one of a higher importance than
the other--you have pretty well touched on our problems with
the FATA folks--and the ability to use those funds?
Yes, Dr. Fair.
Ms. Fair. Yes, unfortunately, I don't have the numbers with
me. But one of the things--and it pertains to the FATA issue--
that I have been particularly dismayed by--and I know Dr. Ahmed
and, I think, Dr. Wilder, have remarked upon this as well--is
that the aid was never conditional upon encouraging the
Pakistani government to change the constitutional structure
that governs FATA.
And one of the things that strikes me where USAID might be
more effective is actually helping the Pakistani government
make that transition. So, for example, while there are civil-
society organizations, the judicial system hasn't been linked
to the rest of Pakistan, because there is no right of appeal.
There are no police in FATA. There are these highly
unprofessional tribal levies. And, of course, the Frontier
Corps is a paramilitary organization.
It has always struck me that the more effective way of
trying to reach FATA has actually been to incentivize the
Pakistan government to incorporate FATA into the rest of
Pakistan, as opposed to keeping it separate.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. Is that where most of the money is going
now--to the government of this area?
I mean, does any of the money go to the rest of the
Pakistani people?
Ms. Fair. Oh, there is a huge aid program----
Mr. Luetkemeyer. OK.
Ms. Fair [continuing]. Apart from----
Mr. Luetkemeyer. What percentage, then, goes to the
development of FATAs areas?
Do you have any idea, just roughly?
Ms. Fair. There is $750 million that has been going to
FATA. And that is in addition to an additional security-
assistance program that is supposed to be arming the Frontier
Corps.
So relative to the rest of the programming in Pakistan, it
is actually relatively modest. But you know, it is interesting;
when you talk to Pakistanis--you know, because USAID can't be
subtle about its aid objectives in FATA. So Pakistanis have
this belief that they are largely only operating in FATA. And
that fuels this additional conspiracy about the securitization
of aid--that if you weren't in Afghanistan, you wouldn't care
about FATA.
So, in other words, ``You don't care about Pakistan. You
care about FATA because of the insurgency.'' But----
Mr. Luetkemeyer. So what you are saying, you know, is that
most of the money goes to other areas of Pakistan, for economic
growth, health and other things like that. And my question, I
guess, is: How effective are we?
And, I mean, we--the FATA--the issue has been that--you
know, dominating the discussion, here. What about the rest of
the aid for the rest of the country, and the areas that it is
supposed to go into, such as economic growth, health,
governance, humanitarian assistance? Does it go to those areas?
Is it effective?
Ms. Fair. Well, they don't know, because they don't do
those evaluations. And that is what I find so frustrating that
you say----
Mr. Luetkemeyer. And when you say ``they don't do those
evaluations,'' who are you talking about?
Ms. Fair. Yes--USAID really doesn't evaluate the impact of
its programs. You know, they will talk about how many schools
they have built. But, for example, there is no real meaningful
measure of how the quality of education has been improved. So
there is this tendency to focus upon outputs, not outcomes.
And, in fairness to USAID, evaluations are expensive,
especially when conducted through institutional contractors.
And at the risk of, you know, projecting self-interest, I think
USAID should be partnering more with the academic community
because, A, they have more luxurious timelines. They have a
more competitive cost structure. And they actually have the
academic expertise--I am talking about quantitative analysts,
in particular--to help them isolate the impacts of their
programming upon outcomes.
And so the other alternative to think about is actually
partnering USAID with programs, for example, like what Dr.
Wilder does, as opposed to relying upon these institutional
contractors. I have seen institutional contractors grade other
institutional contractors' homework.
And when there is a limited corral of these contractors, it
is pretty easy to tell who has done what analysis. And it is
just game theory. You know, everyone is basically going to say
that every program did, more or less, a good job, because they
don't want to, then, be subjected to a negative critique by
another institutional contractor for their programming.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. So what you are saying is there are no
measurable--there has been no measurement of the outcomes of
the programs to date, with regards to the other folks here,
with regards to economic activity, health?
In other words, there is no--there has been no discussion
of how many shots have been delivered, how many more doctor
visits--how many people have been taken to the doctor----
Ms. Fair. But those are outputs, not outcomes.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. You know, whether the birth rate has
increased, or whether the cause of other diseases have gone
down? None of that has been quantitatively measured?
Ms. Fair. Well, you can measure outputs. Like, they can say
how many schools they have built and how many teachers they
have trained. But they can't talk about outcomes, which is the
quality, for example, of the education.
The other problem is that because they don't randomize
interventions--so, for example, let us--right now, they are
really focusing on particular districts that are affected by
insecurity. So since we are putting more money into more
insecure areas--and this is what Dr. Wilder talked about--we
are always going to have a causality that more insecurity is
correlated with more money being spent.
And it is very difficult to disentangle that because they
are not putting money into areas that are least secure. So, in
other words, if they were to randomize their intervention, they
could actually isolate the effect of the intervention. But for
political reasons, and for mission-driven reasons, they don't
feel that they have the luxury to do that. But, yet, it is
absolutely essential to generally determining the impact of an
intervention.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. OK. Thank you. I see my time is up.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Duncan, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I don't really have any questions, but I do have some
comments. I want to read something from a Washington Post story
of October 8th. In this story, it said, ``The Obama
administration's strategy for bolstering Pakistan's civilian
government was shaken Wednesday when political opposition and
military leaders there sharply criticized a new U.S. assistance
plan as interfering with the country's sovereignty. Although
President Obama has praised the $7.5 billion 5-year aid program
approved by Congress last week, Pakistani officials have
objected to provisions that require U.S. monitoring of this
package.'' That was in October.
Then, on November 1st, when Secretary Clinton was visiting
there, the Los Angeles Times had this in one of their stories:
``At a televised town-hall meeting in Islamabad, the capital,
on Friday, a woman in a mostly female audience characterized
U.S. drone-missile strikes on suspected terrorist targets in
Northwestern Pakistan as de facto acts of terrorism. A day
earlier, in Lahore, a college student asked Clinton why every
student who visits the United States is viewed as a terrorist.
``The opinions Clinton heard weren't the strident voices of
radical clerics or politicians with anti-U.S. agendas. Some of
the most biting criticisms came from well-mannered university
students and respected seasoned journalists, a reflection of
the breadth of dissatisfaction Pakistanis have with U.S. policy
toward their country.''
Then, December 3rd, in the Washington Post: ``President
Obama's new strategy for combating Islamist insurgents in
Afghanistan fell on skeptical ears Wednesday in next-door
Pakistan--a much larger nuclear-armed state--that Obama said
was at the core of the plan, and had even more at stake than
Afghanistan.''
What I am getting at is this: This weekend, I participated
with 14 members from the House--and there were 26 members from
various European parliaments--in New York City, at what is
called the Transatlantic Legislative Dialogue.
The chairman of the European delegation, actually, at one
point, criticized the United States--and all these people were
very nice people--but he criticized the United States for not
spending enough on foreign aid.
And, for many years, I have heard people say that, ``Well,
foreign aid is only a little over 1 percent of our entire
budget.'' Yet, they don't stop to think that about half of what
the Department of Defense does now is just pure foreign aid. We
have almost turned the Department of Defense into the
Department of Foreign Aid, particularly in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
We are spending money to do things in other countries
through every department and agency of the Federal Government.
That is foreign aid that we don't get credit for. We are
actually spending hundreds of billions in other countries,
and--or have spent hundreds of billions in, really, pure
foreign aid, over the last several years.
And I asked a few days ago for the latest figure from the
Congressional Research Service on how much aid we had given to
Pakistan over the last few years, since 2003. This wouldn't
even count all the money that has been given through all these
other departments and agencies. But people also don't realize
that, in addition to the traditional foreign-aid program, we
come up with these other bills, like the $7.5 billion one that
we just passed. And, before that, since 2003, we had given
$15.439 billion--or $15.5 billion in aid, to Pakistan.
Now, we have passed another $7.5 billion. This is money
that we can't afford. We are over $12 trillion in debt. We have
almost $60 trillion in unfunded future pension liabilities.
And, then, we come along, and we give all this money to
Pakistan. And, then, what do they do? They criticize us. It
seems to me that it takes an extreme amount of gall for a
country to accept $15.5 billion in aid from us, and, now, $7.5
billion coming on top of that, in addition to all the other
things, and, then, come out with just one anti-American
statement after another.
It just really bothers me. And I would say to the
leadership in Pakistan: If they don't like what we are doing,
please turn down this money. The problem is all these
countries--Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, all of them--they all
want our money. It is about money and power. And it is not
doing us any good at all. It just seems to be increasing anti-
American feelings.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Fortenberry, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you to you all for joining us today. I am sorry I
didn't have the benefit of your earlier testimony. Some of what
I may ask you may appear redundant, given what you talked about
earlier, in my cursory review of some of your written comments.
But it seems to me that the outcome here is that this is a
big mess, if I could summarize it succinctly.
Dr. Wilder, I picked up on a statistic in your written
testimony that, basically, 75 percent of the aid is going to 2
percent of the population. Is that a key finding? Is that
correct?
Mr. Wilder. No. I think that was the--$750 million of U.S.
assistance is going to the federally administered tribal areas,
FATA, which is--make up 2 percent of the population. But there
is a much larger USAID program as well, which is also going to
other parts of the country.
Mr. Fortenberry. OK. It is my understanding the total
contribution is $1.5 billion.
Mr. Wilder. With the new Kerry-Lugar Bill, that is the
proposal--is $1.5 billion per year, over a 5-year period. That
has not been appropriated yet.
Mr. Fortenberry. Yes, so framing it simply, then, half of
the money is going to a very narrow--narrowly targeted area.
And that is correct. And you have made the suggestion that the
linkages between poverty mitigation and social services are not
achieving--the hearts-and-minds strategy there is not achieving
security outcomes that you would hope to be an intended
consequence of capacity-building.
I am very much for cups-of-tea strategy, where you
relationship-build and establish communications, establish
trust--partnerships that can lead, then, to mutual
understanding and long-term continuity and capacity-building.
But given some of the complexities as to how this is
targeted, as to how it is institutionalized--it seems to me you
are raising very critical points that we may have to rethink
some of this, with the intended outcome of strengthening the
partnership and alliance for the long-term security situation
of the region, not to mention the social-justice outcomes we
want to see for impoverished people around the world.
Is that a pretty correct summary of what I have gleaned
this for?
Mr. Wilder. Yes. The point I was trying to make is that
there is evidence that our development aid actually can have
very positive development outcomes. I think where we don't have
the evidence is the positive security outcomes. And that is
where I am arguing we probably need, in some of these contexts,
to de-link those two, and value development as a good, in and
of itself, even if it doesn't end up making people like us.
Because FATA--the needs are tremendous. Although, I would
like to point out, it is actually not the poorest region in
Pakistan. There is things that can be done there. I personally,
though, don't think that we can spend $750 million effectively
in a 5-year timeframe in a highly insecure environment like
FATA.
So I think, then, you can end up fueling corruption, and
some of your aid can end up having perverse and negative
consequences. It is not to say we shouldn't be doing anything
in FATA. It is certainly not that we shouldn't be doing--trying
to do lots in Pakistan. But we should be very aware that where
our aid--development is good for achieving--promoting
development objectives. There is not evidence that it is really
good for promoting our security objectives in Pakistan.
Mr. Fortenberry. All right. Yes, maybe I misstated that
earlier. Maybe I said 75 percent of our aid is going to 2
percent. I meant $750 million of the aid is going to the 2
percent of it.
Mr. Wilder. Right.
Mr. Fortenberry. Let us unpack this a little bit further--
the other bilateral relationships that Pakistan enjoys, and,
then, the collective or cumulative effect of the aid that is
pouring in there to either further complicate your findings,
assuming their objectives are the same in terms of long-term
security stabilization, as well as social-justice outcomes--can
you--can any of you give me any insight into the other donor
countries and the approaches there?
And I want to say this as well--and this dovetails with the
question--it seems to me there is this raging dualism in
Pakistan with regard to the United States: ``We want the money.
We like your money. But we don't want to be your friend--
maybe--except behind closed doors.''
And so is that a distinction in terms of other bilateral
relationships that the country enjoys?
Yes, Dr. Fair.
Ms. Fair. Well, there are a couple of programs I am
familiar with.
DFID has an interesting approach. So DFID does the same
kinds of programs that we do. I believe there is coordination
with DFID, for example, taking the lead in Baluchistan. I am
sorry--the British aid organization, DFID.
But they are also very interested in doing what I had
suggested in my written testimony, which is supporting their
supply driven efforts. So, for example, whatever intervention
they are trying to do, they are trying to support it with a
civil-society outreach to create demand.
So the example I gave was corruption. So it is one thing to
try to clean up a particular bureaucracy or a particular
service delivery. But unless you also engage in civil society
to educate people that, ``Actually, while it may be efficient
to pay a bribe to get a phone line,'' that, ``in fact, it makes
everyone's lives more difficult.'' They are really interested
in trying to build this demand for change, even while they try
to supply it.
The Canadian agency CIDA is much smaller in profile. They
work primarily through NGO's. And they seem to have a very
different aid-delivery model. So one thing that USAID might
want to do is look at these different organizations.
The Japanese are also heavy investors. They have also
heavily securitized their aid. And when I have seen analysis of
the Japanese aid program, there are very similar critiques to
those of USAID.
Now, Pakistan has a lot of other partners, which they tend
to use to bribe us. So, ``If you don't do XYZ for us, we will
go to China.'' Of course, they have a very important
relationship with Saudi Arabia.
And it is pretty hard to discern--a lot of money through--
we can't say that they get money from Saudi Arabia per se. They
get money from remittances; they get money from religious
organizations. So there is actually quite a bit of money going
in.
You know, I have actually--one of the things that is so
frustrating in dealing with the Pakistanis is that they tend to
view our aid as an entitlement. So when we cut the aid back, it
is viewed as a penalty. And because they view it as an
entitlement, this issue of sovereignty--you know, ``How dare
you? You say that we are your important ally, but now you want
to actually subject the way we deal with your money to
scrutiny.''
And this has been a very longstanding problem. And it is
pervasive not only in USAID. It is pervasive--we saw this with
the coalition support funds--virtually any program that we have
with the Pakistanis, it is subjected to these problems.
Mr. Fortenberry. Mr. Chairman, if you could indulge me just
one more moment--is this a kind of a purposeful dualism, in
order to, again--because of the internal political dynamics--
create a position of authority and power and legitimacy in the
country, versus, again, behind closed doors needing--actually
needing the aid for long-term governmental stability
objectives?
Ms. Fair. I actually do believe that to be the case. A
really good example of that is the drones. The reality is the
drones do not kill that many civilians. I have this from very
well-placed Pakistani sources. Their administration knows this.
The drones are run from Pakistani territory. It is done
with their permission. We are not, obviously, running drone
operations in a rogue way.
And, in fact, in Pakistan, the drone discourse has changed.
During Swat, when 4 million people were being displaced--if you
read some of the op-eds, they were saying, ``Why don't we have
drones, because drones don't displace millions of people?''
But the civilian government, rather than taking advantage
of this, has continued to whip up anti-American sentiment over
drones. Yet, I assure you, if we stop the drone attacks, their
security would be worse, not better, in my opinion.
So I think they do try to create this wedge, because it,
then, gives them an out to do less when we are asking them to
do more. And I particularly see this on the security side of
things. They are constantly asking for more. They are
constantly talking about their sacrifices, which is reasonably
fair. But I think that we have not struck a good bargain.
You know, on the main--you know, they have been marginally
satisfiers. And this is true across the board, in many of our
engagements with them.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
I want to give Dr. Ahmed a chance to talk about something
here. I think it would be helpful or--hopefully, helpful to all
of us.
But when we were doing the so-called Kerry-Lugar-Berman
Bill, a number of us were adamant that there be conditions in
that bill. There was some sensitivity to try to give the
civilian government more authority, because we wanted them to
extend their writ throughout the entire country in a non-
discriminatory way, and sort of gain some ability to deal with
the budget of the military, and to take some control over that,
as most civil democracies would have. So the conditions were
put on the military money, all right?
And, basically, one of the conditions that must be met is
that they do extend their writ over the entire country if they
are going to continue to get the military assistance.
And, Dr. Ahmed, I would like you to talk a little bit about
the relationship between the military establishment and the
civilian government. Because it has been my distinct view as--
and I think you well know, and others--is that the recalcitrant
here--be all sorts of corruption issues and incompetence issues
on the civilian side. But we have some very serious issues on
the military side about just how much they want to impact all
the policy decisions, as well as the strategic and implementing
decisions, and how much control they have over it. And the
push-back that you get, and how they utilize this sort of
narrative that, ``Oh, you can't put conditions on us. You are
interfering with our sovereignty. You are treating us like a
step-child,'' and all of that--to get their way of not
relinquishing authority that--in most democracies would be
shared, or primarily come from the civilian government.
Would you speak to that?
Ms. Ahmed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, in all of the Q&A, the one thing that seems to
have been ignored so far is that this is a very young
democratic transition. After almost a decade of military rule,
you have an elected government. And civilians might not be
the--might not be the most efficient of factors. But let us not
forget they are also in government, after a very long time.
When we say ``Pakistanis,'' I think we also need to make a
very clear distinction here: Who are we talking about? Are we
talking about the elected civilian representatives, the
Pakistani people, or the military establishment?
On the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Bill--and I know
that this has been taken--taken a number of folks on the Hill
by surprise--``Why is it that there was such an outcry on the
military conditionalities and, actually, certification
requirements placed by Congress?''
It was a push-back. It should have been expected. You have
a military that is not either interested in sharing power, or
in seeing the United States actually engage with the civil, as
opposed to only the military, as an actor.
One of the reasons why you have an anti-American perception
amongst the Pakistani people is there was no engagement with
the Pakistani people for almost a decade. Why, then, is there,
again, surprise here, that there is neither any knowledge of,
or any understanding, that the United States is a partner?
Because they--the Pakistani people, Pakistani civil society--
have only seen U.S. Government partnered with the Pakistani
military.
Here is, now, an opportunity, with a young democratic
transition, to change that equation, and to truly win hearts
and minds in the real sense of the word. And I do think
Secretary Clinton's visit to Pakistan--yes, she faced some very
difficult questioning.
And it was good because she, I think, began to understand
that a public outreach needed to have been done on an emergency
basis. And I think there will be a focus now in reaching out to
the Pakistani people, to an elected government, to elected
institutions, as opposed to only partnering in what was the war
on terror with the Pakistani military.
The conditionalities issue, again--you know, I personally
believe that there was not a sufficient attempt made in terms
of public outreach to inform the Pakistani public and opinion-
makers that there were no conditionalities on economic
assistance.
Mr. Tierney. Can I just interject?
First of all, I would contest that a little bit, I think,
because I took several trips there and had a number of
conversations with those people directly. Any upset nature on
that was perfectly willful on people not wanting to at that
time.
But there is great control of the military--at least
influence of the military--on the media. And that was there.
The media almost exclusively sang the song of the military, and
that drove public opinion considerably on that whole notion as
well. That was a large part of the problem.
But here, we still have a problem with--and I listened to
Mr. Duncan's comments--and they are always enlightening. You
know, he has zeroed in on some of the issues here. But people
in this country see a balance right now between what their own
needs are in terms of our economy--and they do see foreign aid
as something that, in one sense, they want to do, and they
understand the implications of that--but almost a need to
justify it.
And the easiest or most available way to justify it
sometimes is the security aspect of it. So I think that is
where it gets tied in. And we need to break that out and
rationalize it better.
The whole idea of the--USAID's capacity, Dr. Fair, is this:
Look, they don't spend a lot of their money on monitoring and
evaluation. They spend a very small portion of their budget,
unfortunately, vis-a-vis other agencies. And I think you would
agree they have to ramp them up. Am I correct?
And so we need to do that. But as long as they don't have
the capacity--and we talked about education programs where, as
you said, they could tell the number of teachers that were in a
classroom. But they had four people on their staff for the
entire country of Pakistan, to go around and evaluate the
quality of the program--whether or not the teachers are
actually teaching anything worth learning, or even whether they
were showing up every day.
Tell us a little bit about your remarks that you made in
your written testimony about education, and whether we ought
not just think about pulling back on education and redirecting
our resources a little differently there. And I think that
would be helpful for us.
Ms. Fair. Well, I have sort of become a fatalist on this
education issue. One, since 9-11, there was so much focus on
this madrassa stuff. Now, to be very clear, full-time madrassa
utilization is actually quite rare in Pakistan. There have been
a number of very interesting estimates that they aren't
supported by robust estimates, using a variety of survey
instruments.
And this has caused--well, in the madrassas, for example,
that are involved in terrorism--I view them as a law-
enforcement and intelligence problem. And they are well known
to Pakistan's intelligence agency, because they have been using
them to create militants for quite some time.
I have been, in principle, opposed to the United States
trying to get into the madrassa reform. It also undercuts those
people who are important that are seeking madrassa reform on
their own, because it kind of makes them look like American,
you know, lackeys.
On the public-education sector, which is a provincial
subject, you have--because of the capacity issue, trying to
shove large sums of money down a small pipe results in this
outcome-driven stuff, you know--``How many teachers can we
churn out?'' There is no impact assessment--``Was there any
impact on the training?'' It is just, ``How many teachers have
we trained?''
That is why I focus--I find a more interesting approach is
an information-driven approach. The World Bank has done some
really interesting stuff reporting teacher absenteeism,
reporting student performance, school performance. And when
there are cost-neutral ways, parents actually shift as a result
of this information.
I have also become a fan of doing what we do best. And that
is encouraging competition. The World Bank found that when
there are private schools in the mix, and when there is
information about school performance, it compels the public
sector to also improve.
So I think we should probably be looking at doing what we
do best. And that is improving quality through competition.
Now, this does not mean that we should not be working with the
ministries to improve their effectiveness to deliver services.
But simply relying upon those, given the pervasive problems--
and, quite frankly, they don't want us interfering.
As you said yourself, they have resisted all sorts of
monitoring. And I think there are a number of reasons for it.
I am also somewhat skeptical of relying upon elected
officials as the silver bullet, in part because of Pakistan's
young democratic transition, but also, in larger measure, due
to the way legislators are oriented vis-a-vis their
constituents. They don't deliver policy. They deliver
patronage.
So when you look at local governance initiatives, for
example, we supported that; although, it was really to support
Musharraf, because he wanted local governance because it was a
new way of patronage to create a series of supporters for his
initiatives. But the execution of aid, from what I can tell
there--it really becomes--contracts are given out to friends of
the local administrators.
Again, this kind of goes back to--we really have to try a
variety of different mechanisms. All of the available
mechanisms have a number of various serious problems. And I
suspect each of those mechanisms have their own particular
monitoring requirements that would actually help them to be
effective.
But the capacity at USAID--if you don't have the capacity,
it is simply irresponsible to shove all this money down this
system, because of the corruption. I have heard people complain
about the generosity of our aid because of the corruption.
Whether I go to some shopkeeper in Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore,
or a newspaper editor, they are all saying the same thing:
``When you give money on this scale to these ministries, you
make things worse for us, not better.''
Mr. Flake. Let us follow on that talk of corruption for a
bit.
In Afghanistan, we have seen a couple of types of
corruption on a large scale--both individual Governors or
provincial authorities pocketing money that is given, or NGO's
and others having to pay people to get a load of freight from
one city to another.
What type of corruption are we more likely to see in FATA,
or elsewhere in Pakistan? Is it the former or the latter, or
all kinds? Or what should we be more concerned about, given the
pace at which this aid is being distributed?
Dr. Wilder.
Mr. Wilder. I think in any country in the world, if you
give vast amounts of money with little oversight, you are going
to end up fueling corruption. And I think that is where I think
we need to be committed for the long term, in terms of our
development programs, to building capacity so that, over time,
we can spend more money. But we need to link our funding levels
not to the need, which is great, but to the capacity to spend
money accountably and effectively. And I think that is what we
are not seeing in the Afghanistan context and, I fear, is going
to be the problem in Pakistan.
I am a firm believer that we need a long-term commitment in
our aid program to Pakistan. But I think we will be fueling
corruption if we try to give too much money too quickly, if it
is not linked to local capacities.
And I think, there, it will be across the board. In terms
of implementation, who should be doing the implementing? The
chairman raised that in the opening remarks. I think we
should--it is not an either-or question.
We need to be working with NGO's. We need to be working
with the government. We need to be looking at local actors and
international actors, because capacity is limited. We need all
of the capacity that we have. But, again, all of those will be
problematic if you try to push too much money through the
system.
And I think that is what we are seeing. I mean, the idea
that we should do aid--only through local actors--I mean, I
think that is a problem. In Afghanistan, we are seeing that
many of the local actors don't have a good face. I mean, they
are all linked to the key ministers and relatives. And it is
creating, again, I think, very perverse negative consequences.
I also wanted to just touch on one thing related to
Congressman Fortenberry's dualism point in terms of how
different other donors handle their aid programs. I think most
of the European donors do tend to securitize their aid to a
lesser degree than the United States. There is more distinction
between their aid programs, which have development budgets, and
then there are more political resources.
And I think that is, in a way, where I think we need to go
in the United States, precisely for the reason that it is
easier to get money if you justify that it is going to have
security benefits. It is also, then, very easy--and I think we
heard that from Congressman Duncan--to de-legitimize foreign
aid when it ends up not making people like us. And if they
don't--if our money isn't going to make them like us, let us,
then, stop giving them money.
And I think that is a danger I see with our current
securitized aid; whereas, in Pakistan, if we could distinguish
our development objectives, we could, then, be very happy that
our health programs have had a significant impact in Pakistan
over decades in terms of improved health indicators, reductions
in maternal-infant mortality rates.
USAID, in the past, contributed to a very effective
development of a health-management information system, which
has been important; like support to the Lady Health Worker
programs.
We need to be cautious not to assume that all the USAID
programs have had no impact. There have been positive
development impacts over time. But I think if we are looking
for them to like us as a result of our aid program, then we are
going to be disappointed. And I fear that is going to, then,
over time, reduce U.S. public support for our foreign aid
programs.
So, again, I would argue for a greater dualism in our
foreign aid funding to Pakistan--between our development
objectives and our more political and security objectives.
And, last, in terms of local perceptions of conditionality,
I don't think you will have any Pakistani, again, objecting to
conditionalities on how our aid money can be spent in a more
transparent and less corrupt way, so that we demand
accountability for how that money is spent.
I think the problems are in the conditionalities in the
political realm, relating to the civil-military relations, the
nuclear program--various programs like that. That is what
generates a lot of unhappiness in Pakistan. Thanks.
Mr. Flake. In my short remaining time, just--we are going
to be questioning administration witnesses coming up here
soon--hopefully, early next year.
What is the one question--the most important question--we
need to ask in terms of their capacity to monitor this aid? I
mean, is it ramping up significantly the personnel, or the
areas in which they do oversight among themselves, or what?
What is the most important thing for us to ask, and to have
them answer?
Dr. Fair.
Ms. Fair. Well, you have kind of said it in your question:
``Do they have the capacity to execute this money
responsibly?''
This civilian surge--I mean I am wondering where these
civilians are coming from. Yes, exactly. Many of them have no
experience in South Asia. They are there for short-term
contracts. So even if they plus-up the numbers, this does not
in any way, shape, or form, make me confident that they are
going to be able to execute this funding program responsibly.
Mr. Flake. Dr. Wilder, did you have anything to add to
that? The same----
Mr. Wilder. No. I just share the same concerns, again, that
we need that long-term commitment to support for Pakistan, but
linked to our capacity.
And I think if the security situation continues to
deteriorate in Pakistan--and yesterday's news was not, you
know, positive in that regard--the capacity of USAID staff to
actually do monitoring and oversight is going to be limited.
So just more numbers of people sitting in the embassy
compound, with very severe constraints on their mobility is not
necessarily, I think, going to increase the capacity. I mean, I
think--oh, in general, globally, I would argue we need to be
investing a lot more in rebuilding USAID's capacity to program
and implement projects so that they don't have to subcontract
it all out.
But right now, in the short term, in Pakistan, I think
that--and similarly in Afghanistan--civilian surges--there are
big questions about what all these civilians are going to be
able to do, in terms of what capacities they bring to the
table. But, also, even those who would be effective are going
to be so constrained in that insecure environment that, you
know, I don't see that, in itself, is going to increase
capacity sufficient to monitor the sheer volume of money we are
talking about trying to spend within a fairly limited 5-year
timeframe in Pakistan.
Mr. Flake. Thank you. Thank you----
Mr. Tierney. No. No, thank you.
Yes, we have the capacity problem. Excuse me a second.
Oh, you are back. Excuse me.
Mr. Fortenberry--5 minutes.
Doing the disappearing act--the Houdini thing again, is it?
Mr. Fortenberry. It is life as a public official.
Let me go back to some of my earlier comments. They were
not intended--and I don't think they came across this way, but
let me clarify--to disparage USAID outreach for capacity-
building.
But I think as you further discuss the points--your
comments were very germane, Dr. Ahmed, in that this is a
fledgling democracy. We work off of certain operational
assumptions--premises--that there is going to be capacity to
absorb this type of aid quickly. And whenever you are not
dealing with well-defined institutions--institutions that
aren't necessarily fully reflective of the principles of self-
determination and, therefore, are not going to be more
transparent, and have power consolidated into the hands of
fewer institutions, fewer people who may be in a situation to
manipulate--your outcomes are going to be messy and difficult.
The benefit, though, of this hearing is actually staring
that in the face under the very real constraints, though, of
the geopolitical urgency in the area, and the new evolving U.S.
strategy of security, capacity and stability, based upon a
wedding of military operations, as well as social outreach and
institutional civil-society-building.
We have had other hearings when we have just directly
talked about whether or not the military itself, as they had to
learn quickly how to do in Iraq, is better positioned, in some
ways, to deliver the types of social-service inputs for
capacity-building in a very insecure situation, versus a
civilian component, which may not have the ability to deal with
the security situation adequately.
So we are in a very constrained situation. I think that is
the point. The institutions simply aren't sufficiently
developed. We have a policy based upon the nature of our
government, where we have to do things quickly based on
changing policy dynamics but the urgency of the security
situation, as well, is compelling us to make this move, as
difficult as it is.
And I understand the intention that--what you are talking
about--to separate the outcome measures of how you might be
implementing a health-care clinic and what the outcome of that
is, versus did it stabilize the institutional capacities for,
again, governance and security for the people over the long
term.
We just don't have strategic long-term thinking. Everybody
recognizes that. But it is very hard to have that with the
nature of our political system; with the nature of the, again,
geopolitical movements in the arena; and with nuclear weapons
sitting over the horizon, potentially falling into hands of
people with very twisted ideologies, who want to do us grave
harm.
That might be beyond the realm of what your expertise is,
given the very good comments you had in terms of making our
efforts more effective. But that is the constraints that we are
operating under.
And I guess your recommendations, short of--I heard what
you said--``separating the objectives of security and social-
capacity building, and measuring those distinctly.''
I think, if we had time, the investment in social-justice
outcomes does pay security dividends. I think it is a matter of
time. The truncated allocation, though, of time, compresses
this into an artificial period without the capacities to absorb
it quickly, without the experiential level, perhaps, on our
side, as you were just suggesting.
The last thing we need is people holed up in an embassy,
who are spending a lot of money, who can't get out and do good
things, or are doing good things, empowering the wrong people,
that actually undermine the stability of the society over the
long term.
So that is a long editorial comment on just how, I think,
complex this is. And if you want to talk about any other
recommendations--given, again, the constraints of time and the
nature of the political system there, as well as ours--that we
improve the chances of meeting the dual goals of social
justice, but also security.
Yes?
Ms. Fair. Mostly, my work is on security issues. So
counterinsurgency--and it is very--I understand what you are
saying. But when there is no data that justifies that what we
are doing has any impact, and it seems to be having a negative
impact upon our strategic relationship with the country--I
think that justifies calming down this faux timeline of
urgency.
Let me give you a really good example of what is going on
in Pakistan. I don't like to call it counterinsurgency, because
what they are doing is not population-centric COIN. It is
actually low-intensity conflict, which is resulting in massive
damage and huge displacements of persons.
But even if they can clear an area, they have traditionally
had problems with holding. And this is because, for example,
they have inadequate police that are able to do this holding.
And in counterinsurgency, that is exactly the agency that
should be doing holding.
I know that Dr. Ahmed has done a lot of work on police
reform in Pakistan. We would like to bring DynCorp in there,
and churn out police in large numbers, over a week. That is not
how you make police. So if you want to do clear, hold, and
build, you can't get to the ``build'' part if there is no
security.
The Pakistanis have not shared with us their operational
plans. After they conduct an operation----
Mr. Fortenberry. Do they have them?
Ms. Fair. They don't, for example, in Swat.
If you are going to think about ``build,'' you need to
have, as a part of your planning, the civilian component--for
example, the relief to the IDPs. If they had coordinated with
us their operational plans, we could have helped them put into
place the civilian relief.
Now, the army says that they are holding, and they are
waiting for the ``inept civilians'' to come in. That is their
narrative. It is the ``inept civilians.'' Of course, the
civilians are inept because they have been hollowed out for 10
years. But if they had actually been genuine partners with us,
we could have helped them think through what would be the
civilian requirement.
So another concern that I have, other than this fake
urgency--and I say ``fake urgency'' because we imposed this
upon ourselves, when, in fact, I don't believe we can execute
this aid program effectively in the time constraints and in the
quantity--with the quality, and given the security
environment--this is--just seems an impossible task.
But we certainly can't do it without Pakistani partners.
And when I look at different sectors--another good example that
has immediate security implications is justice sector. One of
the things that the Taliban do well is actually justice
provision.
They go around. They can resolve disputes expeditiously--
not complicated things--family disputes, land disputes. There
is no recidivism. Justice is really key. Yet, the Asian
Development Bank--and I believe Dr. Wilder is more
knowledgeable about this than I am--has spent millions of
dollars doing justice-sector reform. What they want is the
computerized case management. They want the courthouses to be
redone. But what they don't want is actual human-capital
development.
So I will make the other argument that it is not only the
limitations of USAID numbers--their security environment--but
it is also the political system in which our partners are
embedded. And this comes to a much larger issue, which I think
Dr. Wilder knows a lot more about than I do--and that is civil
service reform.
So you keep rolling back the things that have to happen
before we can effectively spend these sums of money
effectively, and you realize there is no substitute to anything
but a long-term commitment to capacity-building.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
The point that was made earlier about USAID, in terms of
the numbers of personnel, the capacity, is well taken. And we
have spent some time.
I think as disturbing to those of us that were visiting
there just a little bit ago was they have those 6-month
rotations--6-month rotations. If you are a USAID worker, how
much oversight can you do for a project that is 2, 3, or 5
years in a contract length? So I think that is just another
impediment--looking at the whole structure of how we--how we do
staff-up USAID, and what their appointments are on that basis.
Do we run any risk--let me ask you this--in terms of
security, if we were to slow down the distribution of aid in
the Northwest Frontier Province and in FATA, until we had in
place a system and a mechanism for compiling the data that
would tell us where best to allocate the resources, to
prioritizing them, putting together an implementation plan,
putting together an effective monitoring plan, an evaluation
plan, and moving at a much slower pace than is anticipated?
Sometimes when we talk about this kind of insurgency, ``We
are going to do it all at once. We are going to go in and
secure, hold, build the world again, and move on.'' What
security risk, if any, do we run in slowing things down and
doing it as I have described?
Doctor.
Ms. Ahmed. One of the things we have to recognize--and I
agree with you, Congressman, is that these are staff choices--
staff choices for regional security and for global security--
emerging out of a very ugly conflict. So I don't think we have
the luxury of time, frankly speaking, to sit around and look at
the data--assess it, look at the mechanisms, do all these
studies, and then decide what kinds of interventions are
possible at all.
Let me also say this: Afghanistan and Pakistan are two
different countries. There is a different level of capacity in
Pakistan from that of Afghanistan.
What you need in Afghanistan is to build the institutions.
What you need in Pakistan is to reform the institutions. And,
there, I think you can actually use aid quite effectively to
ensure that you are building the capacity of the institutions
in terms of reform. There is a police force. There is a
judiciary. There is a civil service. There are political
parties. There is a legislature. Nothing has to be created by
the United States.
But finding the partners that you will need in the
meantime, and building the capacity, quite obviously, is a
multi-year endeavor, which is why I think this bill is a good
bill--because it is a multi-year investment in Pakistan.
But at the same time, we have to look at different types of
tasks that have to be undertaken. The IDPs--the internally
displaced people--do we wait another few years before we decide
what are their needs, and how do we access them, and how do we
actually make sure that there is a semblance of stability that
returns to what is, actually, a fairly large part of Pakistan--
not just in FATA, but also in Malakand Division.
Should we be working right now with the civil
administration, the ministries and the elected representatives?
I beg to differ. You know, these are not just patron-client
relationships. These are elected representatives. Let us give
them their due here. They do know their constituents. They meet
their constituents.
We can use all the channels that we have right now to
assess, first of all, the urgent needs, and the urgent
programming that needs to be done, and then the middle--the
medium-term and long-term.
Let me also say this: I agree with Dr. Wilder. I think we
are forgetting one thing. There have been long-term programs
that USAID has run in Pakistan in the fields of health and
education and infrastructure-building. But what we have right
now is a crisis. And we have to respond to that as well as talk
in terms of what we should be looking at in terms of a
partnership.
Mr. Tierney. So I understand that you have a sort of a
mixed view. There are things that need to be done right now,
and things that can wait for a more nuanced and planned aspect.
But if I could press you just a little bit--what security risks
would be confronted if, in fact, we did just that--we just took
care of some immediate needs--the crises aspect, and the
humanitarian aspect--and, then, had a more thoughtful approach
in the long run, instead of just putting all the money out
there right now?
Ms. Ahmed. I do think that if the programming is actually
divided into the quick-impact--humanitarian needs, development-
needs based projects--to the medium-term projects, with a
certain degree of consultation which isn't there, and which--
frankly speaking, there is another factor we should be looking
at, which, again, we neglected thus far in this discussion--is
on the survivability of the democratic transition, because if
this political order disintegrates, we are not back to square
one.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Dr. Wilder.
Mr. Wilder. Yes, I also think the situation is urgent and
deteriorating. My only question is whether money is going to
reverse that if it is spent ineffectively. And I think that is
where the real focus needs to be: How do we spend the money
accountably and effectively? Then, I think there can be
positive benefits from it.
And I think that is where, you know, throwing money at the
problem in short timeframes is going to exacerbate matters. And
I think that is what we are seeing in the Afghanistan context.
I absolutely agree with Dr. Ahmed's point that Pakistan and
Afghanistan are very different. And I think the issue of the
civil service is a critical difference there, where you do have
a history of an inherited institution which was very strong.
And it has been weakened over time, overly politicized.
I included this in my written remarks, but I didn't really
have time to comment on it today--but just the importance of
prioritizing civil service reform. And I actually think that
this is an area of opportunity where the United States can
help. It is an area where the U.S. Government has tended not to
take a lead role, and left it up to donors like the British and
the World Bank.
I think it is maybe not a comparative advantage where the
United States has to lead on it, but certainly to support
multilateral efforts for a long-term effort to strengthen the
civil service and public administration reform, in general, in
Pakistan.
In the past, civil service--the problems in civil service
reform are not technical ones. They are political ones. The
main actors who need to push the reform have a vested interest
in maintaining the status quo, which is working quite well.
But the push for reform in the past has come at times when
Pakistan has been in crisis financially. IMF conditionalities
and the consequences are often viewed in terms of downsizing,
and negatively.
I think that now that there are resources, there is an
opportunity to have a politically smart strategy of
incentivizing some of the critically important reforms that
need to take place. I would put this forward as one concrete
way where I think the United States could engage and support a
multilateral initiative to push civil service reform in
Pakistan.
A more general point is, I think when you are the lead
donor, and have lots of money to spend quickly, there is also a
tendency to try to do it alone. I think this is an area where
the United States is not always very good in working with the
other multilateral and bilateral donors in Pakistan. And I
would urge that as a concrete recommendation--that our aid
effort there try to work more closely with the multilateral and
bilateral partners.
And I think, in that--that is one way of trying to ensure
that it will be more effective. Thank you.
Jeff, you have any more questions?
Mr. Tierney. If there are not, let me just close with one
question--if you will indulge me for a second--so I am hearing
very clearly that we need to take immediate care of the
humanitarian urgencies and crises. And I clearly understand
that we also need to--with respect to the rest of the moneys--
not be so anxious to just put it out there somewhere, but to
get together a plan of how we are going to engage local people
and really get their cooperation and input--have them take some
responsibility and accountability for it, and develop your plan
for implementation, oversight, and all that, which is good.
I don't hear anybody saying there is going to be negative
security implications if we take that path. Am I correct?
You seem to think there will be negative security in
place--no? OK.
So my last question to each of you is: Can you give me
examples of the types of incentives that could be used to
facilitate the civilian government moving forward on reform,
and to the extent necessary--of course, having the military not
impede that--what types of incentives might be put in place to
make that happen?
Because I think one of the problems is their will. Is there
a will within the current structure, who is, I think,
benefiting quite a bit from the chaos and the way we are
distributing money right now, and the inherent corruption.
So if we could just go once over, we will let you go.
Thanks.
Ms. Fair. Well, FATA, for example--that aid should have
been conditional upon the Pakistan government having a plan for
political integration. The FATA Development Plan, which they
marketed as integration, had nothing to do with political
integration. Something as simple as extending the Political
Parties Act so that FATA has genuine representative of the kind
that Dr. Ahmed talked about, would have been incredibly
valuable.
I think that whatever ministry we engage--they need to come
up with a plan.
Now, so often, when I have read these plans, it looks as if
an international contractor wrote them, because of the
particular idiomatic English that has been employed. The
Pakistanis themselves should come up with outcome measures, and
we should agree upon the data that will be used to monitor
success along those outcomes. And there needs to be a pretty
serious plan for remediation if those outcome measures aren't
met.
So what I am basically saying is that we need to
incentivize the Pakistani government to be partners, rather
than merely, you know, recipients.
Mr. Tierney. And I am only just now imagining what the
reaction will be when we do that. We had a visit of about 30
military people at one point in time. They came in with their
hair on fire. And I had an opportunity to speak up in
Cambridge, MA, on another occasion, and when I finished
speaking in defense of the conditions, because we had been
involved in putting them on, one half of the room stood up to
berate us for treating them like children, and the other half
of the room stood up to tell us, ``You should have had stronger
conditions on there. You can't trust us.'' So it goes on.
Dr. Wilder.
Mr. Wilder. Yes, again, just to reiterate, don't ignore the
civil service. I think that is an opportunity.
I would also say that there is a tendency often, of the
U.S. Government, to prefer to work with executive authority and
the military. And I think we should not ignore the parliament
in Pakistan. And I think USAID is supporting a parliamentary-
strengthening program.
But I think that this is an area--it is linked also to the
issue of center-periphery relations, or the relationship
between the Federal Government and the provincial government in
Pakistan, where there has been a tendency, I think, to overly
centralize powers at the Federal level.
And I think working through parliament and trying to
strengthen parliament could be a positive--it is something I
think the USAID should continue doing.
And finally, just to also--to end on a positive note--is
that----
Mr. Tierney. Ah, the silver bullet arrives.
Mr. Wilder. USAID has provided valuable support to the
electoral process in Pakistan. And as someone who did my Ph.D.
research on electoral politics in Pakistan, and has been
present at virtually every election since 1970--I was
monitoring the last one, and it was, you know, a considerable
improvement over previous ones. And I think that there was
valuable support from donors, in general, and the United
States, in particular, for strengthening that process.
But just to end, I think it is important that we, again,
try to move away from this feast-and-famine approach. Because
of the urgency of the moment--the tendency to, in some ways,
often spend too much money in the short term. I mentioned in my
written testimony, a Pakistani friend, last week, told me,
``Try to convince them to view their support to Pakistan as a
marathon, rather than a series of unsustainable sprints.''
And I think, if I could just end on that note--let us take
that long-term approach to our aid program for Pakistan. Thank
you.
Mr. Tierney. And, Doctor, you came the longest distance.
The final word goes to you.
Ms. Ahmed. [Off mic.]
Mr. Tierney. How do you envision that support?
Is your mic on, by the way? OK? And how do you envision
that support? We hear a lot of times they need support--the
civilian government needs support. Do they have the will to
accept the support and do something with it? What exactly would
that support look like to be effective?
Ms. Ahmed. This is a public program that was announced from
a public platform. This is not behind-closed-doors discussions.
The reform package also came as the result of consultations
with FATA representatives.
Mr. Tierney. But I think you said that the military push-
back has stopped it from being implemented.
Ms. Ahmed. Absolutely.
Mr. Tierney. So how do we get beyond that?
Ms. Ahmed. All you need right now is the president's
directive to be--it is called a notification, sent to the
Governor--and it is law. And that is where, I think, the
president does need support.
As you know, that is not the only front on which the
president is being attacked by the military and other
opposition power circles. That is one issue.
The second, in terms of the legislature--and I have said
this in our report. We have said it in the written testimony,
and we have said it in our reports, and repeatedly--that in
delivering assistance, make sure that there is a legislative
connection to the monitoring aspects and the planning and the
implementation aspects.
Now, through the public account committees of the
provincial and the Federal parliaments--and let me say this:
These are very good committees, and they are functioning well.
I think you can--you will have stakeholders, then, in a process
that will also provide that missing link not just in terms of
monitoring, but also in terms of community consultation.
So let us go beyond--and I think it is great that USAID is
helping build the capacity of the Pakistani legislature. But
let us involve the legislators, the parliamentarians, in the
kind of process that we are involved in, in Pakistan.
You know, their collective history, if you look at how may
parliaments they have served, it would be quite a couple of
hundred years. So these are not novices. It is just that
because there was no opportunity at constructive intervention,
they were left out of the policy loop. And I think we can
engage them now.
Mr. Tierney. At the risk of being painfully obvious on
this, but for the record, you talked about President Zardari
needing only to issue a directive for that to become law. And,
then, you talk about our support. Are we talking about the need
for the U.S. Government, through the secretary of state or the
president to make some public declaratory statement, or to work
through our Department of Defense with the military to get them
to back off?
What types of support are you thinking of there?
Ms. Ahmed. I do think publicly welcoming the reform effort
would be a useful way to go--so at a high level, coming from
the U.S. Government.
Mr. Tierney. Well, I am going to have to ask for the
panel's forbearance, here, for a second.
Mr. Lynch, would you like to make an opening and a closing,
and your questions?
Mr. Lynch. I am sorry. There is a lot going on here at the
same time. But I have been following the testimony in the
anteroom.
The question I had is: The problems that we have seen on
both sides of the border, along the Pakistan and Afghanistan
borders--at least what we have seen visiting the federally
administered tribal areas and the Northwest Province area--
Frontier Province--are similar to what we are seeing on the
Afghan side--and that is very weak government institutions that
don't get out into those areas.
And we seem to have seized upon a model where we pair USAID
or some other NGO with a military-support group in order to get
that done--a PRT model. And that is the model we have been
pursuing here. And from what we have been hearing and seeing in
Pakistan--is this the right model? Is this the right model that
we are using here, because it doesn't seem to be the case from
this end.
And I worry about squandering the resources that we are
dedicating toward this effort. And if we have to come up with
another model that allows us the accountability and the
transparency that we need to make sure the money is going to
the people that we want to help, and that it has been used
effectively.
Then we have to come up with the right idea before we pump
more money into their system, because, otherwise, it will just
be wasted. And I wouldn't blame the American people one bit if
they grew frustrated with, you know, just continually pumping
money in here. We have to show some progress.
You know, Dr. Wilder, you mentioned some of the areas that
received the greatest amount of resources have shown very
little progress. I am wondering, is it the model that we are
trying to use--is it the wrong tool for this job?
Mr. Wilder. Well, there is a serious problem between the
need for quick results, when we are not going to get quick
results. State-building can't be done on the quick. It is a
generational thing. It is a long-term process. And that is the
critical----
Mr. Lynch. Just to distinguish--some of the PRT models are
very long term. And so it is not an idea that we are going to
go in there with a PRT and turn things around in a matter of
months, or even a couple of years. It is capacity-building.
I am more concerned that framework--the pairing of a
military unit with the capacity to allow some of the
development work to go forward--is that the wrong model here,
or should we be trying something different?
Mr. Wilder. Sorry--are you talking about Afghanistan?
Because, in Pakistan, I think the PRT model would certainly not
be a good option.
I mean, I think part of my problem with the PRT model in
Afghanistan is that Afghanistan has never had much in the way
of government, and the same in FATA, in these areas.
So I am not sure that it is actually the weak government in
some of these areas which is also fueling the insecurity. My
concern with the PRT model is the more we end up doing with
this civil military teams, the more we end up, in a way,
setting up the Afghan government to fail, because they don't
have the capacity to come in and take over.
The more we end up doing with our PRTs, the more it
complicates an exit strategy, because who is going to step in
and do this eventually?
I mean, I think we do need a long-term process of trying to
buildup government institutions and capacity. But that is not
going to happen in the timeframes within which--even the 5-year
or 10-year timeframes we are talking about, in terms of our
troop presence in places like Afghanistan.
I think this is where the problem is. There isn't a quick
fix. And the military--civil military--the PRT model is a stop-
gap measure. It is not a long-term solution.
Mr. Lynch. OK. I do want to say thank you for your
willingness to come before the committee and help us with our
work. This is a very complicated situation. And your insight
and your astute observations are very helpful to us. So thank
you.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.
Again, I thank all of you very much. Your work has helped
inform what we will be discussing with the administration's
witnesses when they come.
And Mr. Flake and I were discussing the need for us to try
and make sure that some of what you shared with us gets
reflected in our work going forward. So you have been
tremendously helpful.
We thank you for coming to Washington, and thank you for
coming all the way from Pakistan, as well; and for the written
testimony, as well as your verbal testimony. And I know that we
can take the liberties of coming back to you again, as we do so
often. But your help is important. And thank you very, very
much for it. Meeting adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:01 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]