Imperialism,  foreign aid, and the Non-Government Organisations

.           Although a gigantic accumulation of capital had occurred in a very few rich countries as long ago as 1914, ample for provide for everyone, V.I.Lenin argued that this would never solve any social problem, either in these countries or others:
            "As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living in any given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap."  (1)
            This uncompromising analysis has always been unpalatable to all those who benefit from imperialism, however repeatedly it has been vindicated by Twentieth Century history. The most recent challenge to this economic law, discovered by Lenin, has come from the non-government organisations (NGOs for short), who claim that they can bypass it: "Save a child's life for 75 cents a day!"; "Sponsor this little girl!"; "Donate to Africa!" This type of advertising greatly appeals to wealthy elites in the capital-exporting countries. Their conscience troubles them: perhaps their own relative wealth and comfort is somehow connected to the poverty and discomfort of billions of people in the economically backward countries? But "for as little as $30 a month", the NGOs claim to be able to lay both their conscience and Lenin to rest. But an analysis of their record shows that the NGOs' work is not a refutation of the economic laws of imperialism, but yet another illustration of them.
            Capitalism is commodity production at its highest stage of development, when labour-power itself becomes a commodity. The first capitalist country was Britain. It typically exported goods to its colonial possessions under conditions of free competition. But towards the end of the Nineteenth Century finance capital created the epoch of monopolies. Thus began the stage of imperialism, the highest and last stage of capitalism, which is typified by the export of capital. This need to export capital arises from the fact that a field for 'profitable' investment can no longer be found at home, due to the poverty of the masses there. The export of capital influences and greatly accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported. Furthermore it is in the poorest countries that finance capital finds by far its highest rate of return ("superprofits")
            Each imperialist state had its financial oligarchy which claimed the monopoly on exporting capital to its sphere of influence. The resultant clash of interests, which caused the two World Wars, was finally regulated by the 1944 Bretton Woods (U.S.) conference. Here was set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.), institutions which control the flow of  finance capital from the rich to the poor nations, in a way designed to prevent the recurrence of wars which had been destructive enough to threaten the very existence of capitalism itself. Finance capital is most concisely defined as capital that is controlled by banks and employed by industrialists. (2) But these two financial institutions never speak of the "export of finance capital". Instead they speak, most deceptively, in terms of "aid".
            In English, 'aid' is an old word denoting 'help' or 'succour'. But what is termed 'foreign aid' or 'development aid' seldom means disinterested help. The beneficiaries of such aid are the givers rather than the receivers. Although the World Bank is the largest dispenser of aid ('multilateral aid'), every industrialised member country of the UN also provides bilateral aid to countries with which they have historical or military links. The largest provider of such bilateral aid is of course the USA, which set up a special agency for the purpose ("USAID"). There are different forms of aid, but the most usual is still, as Lenin described in 1917, the provision of loans on the condition that part shall be spent on purchases in the creditor country, particularly on orders for war materials. Or cheap loans might be granted with the stipulation that they be spent improving transport and communications, a basic requirement for the capitalist exploitation (i.e. 'development') of a backward country. A classic case of this was the building of colonial railways, but a modern equivalent is road-widening schemes  The IMF provides aid to governments in the form of short term cash loans. The NGOs receive and administer a special type of development aid; their employees and agents are commonly described in the press as "aid workers".
            Since the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, the U.S. and European governments have dramatically increased their funding of NGOs, which began to provide services that had been traditionally the responsibility of national governments. This represents an important change. The UN and large international NGOs, such as CARE, World Vision, Oxfam and Save the Children have stepped in to take much of the multilateral and bilateral aid once received by governments in developing countries. By 1999, more than half of World Bank aid was channelled through NGOs. (3) Even the name 'non-government agency' is relatively new, although a few of them, including the Red Cross, have been around for a long time; previously however, they had been usually known as 'relief agencies' or 'aid agencies'.
            The decrease in the proportion of aid that flows to Third World national governments has been recently evident in the post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan, to which a total of $4.5 billion was pledged at the Tokyo conference in 2003. Of this amount about a third has been allocated to the NGOs, another third to the United Nations, and only a third to the national government of Afghanistan. (Incidentally, this allocation of development aid from the governments of the industrialised nations shows that NGOs are not non-governmental, as does their dependence on government contracts)
            To begin with we start with the professed ideology of the NGOs, what they stand for. They start from the claim to be 'apolitical', one that should always be treated with extreme scepticism. But if we probe a little deeper through the murky jargon of NGO literature, several clear political positions do emerge. One is 'anti-statism', which unfavourably contrasts "state" power to "local" power. State power is, they argue, always distant from its citizens, and develops interests different from and opposed to those of its citizens, whereas local power is necessarily closer and more responsive to the people. Starting from this piece of anarchist dogma, the NGOs go on to use the language of the pseudo-left: "empowerment", "popular power", "gender equity", "sustainable development" and so on. With the rejection of the state's role in running social programs goes the rejection of the concept of the "welfare state". Here is the essential point of connection between the NGOs and the bourgeois national governments. The latter desire to follow the world-wide trend to privatise and alienate state functions and assets. We have learned here in Australia only too well how this process works, and there are very  few countries that have escaped it during the past two decades. The general state withdrawal has included the "contracting out" of social programs to private organisations. Here the NGOs, including churches, have stepped into the breach. They would be more than happy, given the appropriate contract and funding, to take responsibility for social functions formerly carried out by the welfare state.
            In the administrative literature of their social programs, the NGOs discuss "the excluded", the "powerless", "gender or racial discrimination", "extreme poverty" and "marginalised communities", but never the economic system that produces them. "Community development" is for them the only practical and possible way forward, not class struggle.
            This then, is the ideology of the NGOs, and it has attracted thousands of young radicals (including ex-Marxists) into its careerist world of community development professionalism. But we must look closely at how the NGOs act in practice in relation to the antagonistic contradiction between imperialism and anti-imperialism. Hostile criticism of NGOs is rare, due to ruling class control of the hegemonic ideas of our society. But James Petras has examined the NGO record in South America (4), one of the earliest places where they became established. Some aspects of Petras's findings are  reproduced here, because they well illustrate the relationship of NGOs to imperialism.
            The picture emerges of the NGOs playing a complementary role to the economic rationalist, neoliberal pro-imperialist governments that have dominated South America's political power for so long. The three elements act in concert, the World Bank, the national governments, and the NGOs, but it is really the World Bank pulling the strings in the interests of finance capital. Typically the government passes free market laws which flood the country with cheap imports, deregulate the economy, abolish labour legislation, and create a growing mass of low-paid and unemployed workers. The economy becomes designed to meet the needs of the multinational corporations. In order to prevent a social explosion resulting from all this, the World Bank and the western foundations (Rockefeller, Soros, etc) encourage the NGOs to provide social services formerly provided by the national welfare state. But the NGOs cannot provide a real welfare system. Only a state can do that. Moreover the NGOs are only transitory, and move according to their own private priorities. But while they remain they administer the social programs that have been "contracted out" to them by the regime. They are funded to provide "self-help" projects, "popular education" and job training, to temporarily absorb small groups of the poor, to co-opt local leaders, and to undermine popular struggles directed against the system. It is true that the NGOs attacked the human rights violations of the local dictatorships, but they rarely denounced the US and European patrons who financed and advised them.
Bolivia
            The Bolivian government in 1985 froze wages at a time when price inflation stood at 15,000 per cent. All price controls were scrapped and food and fuel subsidies reduced or ended. Simultaneously the privatisation of most state enterprises was commenced, causing mass redundancies. Most public services were eliminated by the massive cutbacks in health and education. These structural adjustment policies (SAP) were designed and dictated by the World Bank and the IMF and approved by the U.S. and European governments and banks.
            The number of poverty stricken Bolivians grew geometrically. Prolonged general strikes and violent confrontations followed. In response the World Bank, European, and U.S. governments provided massive aid to fund a "poverty alleviation program." Most of the money was directed to a Bolivian government agency, the Emergency Social Fund (ESF), which channeled the funds to the NGOs to implement its program.
The funds were not insignificant: in 1990 foreign aid totalled $738 million. The number of NGOs in Bolivia grew rapidly in response to international funding: prior to 1980 there were 100 NGOs; by 1992 there were 530 and growing. Petras sums up: "Almost all the NGOs are directed toward addressing social problems created by the World Bank and the Bolivian government's free market policies, which the dismantled state institutions no longer can deal with. Of the tens of millions allocated to the NGOs, only 15 to 20 percent reached the poor. The rest was siphoned off to pay administrative costs and professional salaries.  "
           What did the NGOs do with their enormous budgets? The Bolivian NGOs functioned as appendages of the state and served to consolidate its power. The absolute levels of poverty stayed the same, but the impact of the government's policies was temporarily cushioned until the political crisis stabilised.
           While not solving the poverty problem, the NGO-administered 'poverty programs' strengthened the regime and weakened opposition to the SAP. The NGOs exploited vulnerable groups and were able to convince some leaders of the opposition that they could benefit from working with the government. But when the public school teachers of La Paz went on strike in  protest against $50-a-month wages and crowded classrooms, the NGOs ignored it; when cholera and yellow fever epidemics raged in the countryside, the NGO self-help programs were helpless where a comprehensive public health program would have stopped them. The NGOs did absorb many of Bolivia's former leftist intellectuals and turned them into apologists for the neoliberal system. They ran seminars about "globalisation", but on them failed to mention that the SAP was an imperial design to open the country's mineral resources to unregulated pillage.
Chile
            Massive popular struggles between 1982 and 1986 that threatened to overthrow the military dictatorship. To the extent that the NGOs expressed an ideology, it was oriented toward "democracy" and "development with equity." Petras's study found that "of the close to two hundred NGOs, fewer than five provided a clear critical analysis and exposition of the links between U.S. imperialism and the dictatorship, the ties between World Bank funded free market policies and the 47 percent level of poverty"
            After the successful general strike of July 1986, and a near-successful assassination of Pinochet by a guerrilla group, the writing was on the wall for the dictatorship. A classic example of modern USA intervention followed. A special envoy was sent from the Pentagon to broker an electoral transition of power from Pinochet to the more conservative sectors of the opposition. Electoral parties were allowed to re-emerge. An alliance between Christian Democrats and Socialists was forged and eventually won the plebiscite and later the presidency, although Pinochet retained control of the armed forces and secret police.
            The NGOs turned immediately to collaborating with the government. Socialist and Christian Democratic NGO professionals became government ministers. From critics of Pinochet's free market policies they became its celebrants. The NGOs were instructed by their foreign donors to collaborate with the new civilian neoliberal regime. Sur Profesionales, one of the best known research NGOs, carried out research on the "propensity for violence" in the shantytowns—information that was useful to the police and the new regime in repressing independent social movements. Two of its chief researchers (specialty: social movements) became government ministers administering economic policies that created the most lopsided income inequalities in recent Chilean history.
            Petras refers to the "striking impact" that the NGOs in Chile had on the women's movement, publishing "expensive newsletters from well-furnished offices." This importation of western bourgeois feminist ideology into developing countries turns out to be a recurrent feature, common to all NGOs. "Gender equity" is a cause most dear to the hearts of NGO professionals. In practice this introduces social divisions that were not there before.
Brazil
            The same divisive pattern occurred in Brazil, where the most dynamic social movement is the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), committed to class struggle. Here rural-based feminist NGOs attempted to split the MST women's section from their organisations, insisting they drop class struggle and instead adopt a program of strictly feminist reforms such as opposing domestic violence, registering women as heads of families, and encouraging gender equality.
            Petras concludes by placing the NGOs firmly within the comprador class:" They produce no national products; instead they link foreign funders with local labour (self-help micro enterprises) to facilitate the continuation of  the neoliberal regime. The managers of NGOs are fundamentally political actors whose projects and training workshops do not make any significant economic impact in raising workers' and peasants' incomes. But their activities do make an impact in diverting people from the class struggle into forms of collaboration with their oppressors."
A lucrative career
           The NGOs are the new cultural viceroys, bearers of bourgeois western values around the globe. Theirs are none other than the values of the US imperialist hegemony, which they will teach the poverty-stricken millions, as part of the normal imperialist development programme. In carrying out this work, the well-educated NGO professionals must endure the same silent derision and hatred their colonial forebears engendered. In this arduous missionary work, NGO professionals are fortified, not only by their knowledge of the righteousness of their cause, but by a reassuringly high salary.
           Confirmation that NGO professionals are not necessarily doing it all for altruistic reasons came in a recent survey of 1365 development professionals by industry journal Asia-Pacific Development Review. (5) A junior level international consultant working in development earns on average $US54,600, increasing to $78,000 for mid-level consultants and to 103,000 for senior level consultants. This is much higher than the equivalent figures for graduate accountants in the US (28,000 - 37,000 - 76,000) or civil engineers (41,669 - 47,245 - not stated) or management consultants (50,000 -65,000 - 86,800). As for the even higher level positions, the CEO's of NGOs only earn an average of $126,000, rather less than their US-based counterparts. This sacrifice is borne bravely by one Julie Mundy, CEO at Marie Stopes International Australia. Although she believes she would earn more working in another industry, Ms Mundy feels that "in development, you can make a difference, not a profit."
Apart from the warm inner glow this career provides, the more solid material benefits include extremely low living costs, fringe benefits such as housing and extensive health benefits. Moreover staff have job security, since NGOs, which never pay taxes, never go bankrupt. The statistics given above actually understate the true salaries of development professionals, the survey comments, since they include not only the very high salaries of the expatriate NGO staff, but also the low salaries of the local staff: "in some countries, local staff are paid a tenth of what staff get in a developed country like Australia."
           The deceptive 'not for profit" claim of the NGOs does not prevent them paying very high salaries. The NGOs go to great lengths to conceal the fact that salaries constitute most of their expenditure, since public knowledge of it would damage their image- and their fundraising. The NGOs succeed in this endeavour, for two reasons. The first is their utter unaccountability, they do not have to publicly explain to anyone (except their imperialist financiers and the World Bank) how they spend their money. The second that the NGOs can count on the full support of the ideological state apparatus. They can always get their views and appeals heard on the media, get their books published, receive strong church support, get free advertising money cannot buy (such as at the kickoff of a recent rugby league State of Origin match - the highest rating TV match of the year in NSW- when Ray Warren urged all the viewers to "Give generously to the Red Shield Appeal"!).
           In the industrialised countries, the NGOs are very much part of the ideological hegemony that holds the minds of the masses in its icy grip. Everybody seems to believe the Salvation Army or the Brotherhood of St Laurence do a good honest job. Nobody would ever dream of criticising the Red Cross. Many donate generously to every appeal, responding humanly to sensitive pictures of suffering children shown them by NGO marketing. Even without Centrelink compulsion, thousands of unemployed workers would donate their labour-power to them. People want to trust the NGOs, just as they want to believe in the system. Public criticism of the NGOs is rare. For example no political attention was attracted some years ago when ex-Whitlam Government Minister Clyde Cameron resigned from the board of CARE Australia in protest at the astronomical salary paid to its CEO. The NGOs are powerful enough to engineer such events off the political agenda.
NGOs as camp-followers
           In recent years NGOs have been deployed as role of camp-followers of the aggressive US military machine in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and wherever else it has imposed its New World Order by force. NGOs have in these countries been subjected to some official criticism, but since the relevant national governments are themselves the creatures of international finance capital their criticism has been muted and qualified, and not followed by action against the NGOs. Two recent incidents, from Afghanistan and Russia, illustrate this pattern.
           The planning minister of the US-installed Afghanistan government, Dr Ramazan Bashar Dost, recently levelled  a series of accusations against the NGOs, proposing that 80 per cent of them be wound up as inefficient and corrupt. He imposed a moratorium on registering new NGOs. Immediately he was sacked. Although this news was as usual not covered in the Australian media, CARE Australia (sensitive as it is that any criticism might affect their fundraising) responded that the former Minister's criticism had not been made of them, but of other, illegitimate NGOs. It is true that the planning Minister's criticism had been fairly mild, yet in one respect it was devastating for all charitable non-profit NGOs - including CARE. This was on the question of salaries.
The NGOs in Afghanistan have received billions of US dollars to provide aid and reconstruction. Due to their unaccountable nature, it has been impossible for even the national government to find how this money is spent. But one fact can be inferred from the available statistical evidence: the vast majority of the money must go on salaries. Dr Shaheedi, Deputy Minister for Reconstruction, contrasted his ministerial salary of $50 per month with NGO salaries of $3-4,000 per month. (6) Not unnaturally local experts (those still left alive after twenty years of US-instigated civil war) opt to work for the NGOs rather than the government. This political co-option of the Afghan intelligentsia by the NGOs has helped to divert people from the class struggle into forms of collaboration with their oppressors, just as in South America. Yet the wider Afghan public perceive the NGOs as a self-serving elite. This has recently been made clear by President Hamid Karzai's recent admission (7) that "the Afghan people are discontented" that the NGOs are swallowing up the vast aid funds on inflated salaries and expensive vehicles. The sophisticated NGO publicity machine has reacted by producing accounts which claim their overheads to be low (8), but carefully not revealing the expenditure on salaries. Clare Short, the prominent Blair Labour Government Minister (UK), had indignantly rejected earlier criticism of NGO salaries in Afghanistan:" It is right that international aid workers receive international salaries, but  local employees should also receive fair pay which, at the very least, lifts them out of poverty." (9) Such has always been the natural order of things according to British imperialism.  
             No account of NGO activities under the New World Order is complete without reference to their covert interference. This takes place on at least two levels. The first is the often-proved employment of western military intelligence operatives on the staff of NGOs. One famous example of this was the arrest for spying of three CARE Australia aid workers in Yugoslavia, one of whom, Major Steve Pratt, was released in a goodwill gesture by Slobodan Milosevic which was completely unrequited by Australia. The second level is that of engineering 'velvet' or 'orange' revolutions against the revisionist Communist Party-led republics of the former USSR. Only two months ago, Russian counter-intelligence chief Nikolai Patrushev formally informed the Russian Duma that NGOs are operating on both these levels against the former Soviet Republics bordering Russia. (10) He said that foreign secret services rely on NGOs to collect information and promote the interests of their countries. Patrushev's counter-intelligence outfit monitored and exposed intelligence gathering activities carried out by four NGOs: the U.S. Peace Corps, the British-based Merlin medical relief charity, Kuwait’s Society of Social Reforms and the highly-prestigious Saudi Red Crescent Society.  State officials had previously asserted that foreign NGOs collect sensitive information on Russia and are used as a cover by career spies. In addition, a 'regime change' plan for Belarus was uncovered that involves the same Western organisations and Ukrainian activists who played a key role in that country's Orange Revolution last year. Patrushev advised the Duma of a meeting of the directors one US NGO held recently in Bratislava which decided to allocate $5 million to support the Belarussian opposition.
Patrushev said the threat of uprisings looms in other former Soviet republics as well. While he did not say what countries apart from Belarus might see uprisings like those in Ukraine, in Georgia in 2003 and in Kyrgyzstan this year, he said those three uprisings show that “certain forces in the West are trying to weaken Russia’s influence” with its neighbours.
           So the Russian government cannot say it hasn't been properly informed. Yet it has taken no strong action against the NGOs. It is true that President Putin did raise questions about the NGOs in May 2004, but there it stopped. Putin is no more capable of defending his country's national interests against the NGOs than are the puppet governments of US-occupied Afghanistan or Iraq. The problem is that they are all dancing to the same tune, that played by their master - international finance capital.
NGO tsunami disaster relief
            The bread and butter business of NGOs has always been provided by some natural calamity, such as famine, flood or earthquake striking some poor country. So when the worst natural disaster on recent historical record struck South Asia, the millions once again started rolling into NGO coffers. In Australia alone, 31 NGOs raised $280 million in three months from public donations. The NGOs are currently using this money, plus that flowing from their governmental and institutional sources, to hold to ransom national governments which lack the cash needed to meet the disaster. Only India among the affected governments was strong enough to resist the conditional offers NGOs can make from their swollen hard-currency resources. Mostly the NGOs have just moved in with official acquiescence and just taken over as usual. But in one of the worst affected countries, Sri Lanka, the NGOs have for once not had everything their own way.
            The enraged tsunami waves which permanently smashed  the shores of Sri Lanka on December 26 2004, killing and destroying all in their path, proved an immediate bonanza for the NGOs; inevitably they soon descended upon the ruined areas. But there they will have to face one of the most principled and disciplined revolutionary parties anywhere in the world: the Marxist-Leninist JVP - the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front). In the resultant clash of opposites in Sri Lanka we may clearly observe the dialectical contradiction of imperialism with anti-imperialism.
            The JVP had for years been defending Sri Lanka's national sovereignty against a separatist terror movement, which they maintain has been covertly backed by a combination of foreign imperialists and their domestic supporters, who utilise this movement to further imperialism's wider strategic interests in the region. Tens of thousands of JVP martyrs have lost their lives in this anti-imperialist resistance, a historical fact which remains virtually unknown outside Sri Lanka. Finance capital decided to bankroll the creation of Tamil Elam, just as it has already bankrolled many such statelets in the past, from Kuwait to Kosovo. These new nation-states can have no effective economic independence, and so always will be far more accommodating to the dictates of finance capital than will real nation states such as the historically non-aligned Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.
Much of the tsunami damage was in the disputed LTTE-claimed territory in the east and north of the island. The World Bank, nominally under the control of the UN but in reality an organ of international finance capital, saw their opportunity and offered billions of dollars of development aid money, but only on the condition (amongst others) that they deal with the LTTE as the responsible civil authority in the east and north. The established ruling class in Sri Lanka is divided on whether accept this condition. The JVP and its patriotic allies still doggedly resist the devolution and effective break-up of Sri Lanka, and recently walked out of the Popular Front government rather than be party to such an agreement.
           The NGOs were very slow off the mark in Sri Lanka. Only in mid-May, five months after the tsunami struck, had CARE Australia got around to advertising in the Sri Lankan press for the myriad of development professionals it will recruit. The advertisements themselves bear instructive witness to the extraordinary number of managerial positions each big NGO will create, and to the fact that none of these bureaucrats will ever get their hands dirty. The real work will, as always, be left to the natives. Although 59 NGOs signed agreements with the Sri Lankan government's RADA (Reconstruction and Development Agency) organization to build 65782 houses for the Tsunami victims, it has now been proved in 2 years they have only built 3270 houses! (see "NGOs meddling with the sovereignty of Sri Lanka " elsewhere on this site.)
           But CARE Australia will provide each province of Sri Lanka, whether they want it or not, with a team of development professionals armed with big budgets. For example Killinochi province alone will be blessed with twelve CARE managers and co-ordinators, Vaddaramachchi East with ten. (11) The functions of these positions are mostly unclear and framed in jargon that only an experienced NGO bureaucrat could decipher- 'Livlihoods Adviser', 'Manager Quality and Learning', 'Psychosocial Co-ordinator', etc. But about the qualifications for these positions, the CARE advertisements are no longer vague: "all positions would require 1 to 3 years of relevant experience and appropriate academic/professional qualification". This rigorously excludes all except a internationally-experienced clique of development professionals. Nevertheless the advertisements claim in large capitals that "CARE is an equal opportunity employer"! There is no requirement to be able to speak any Sri Lankan language, and of course the salaries are not stated. But Sri Lankan employees of the NGOs are on a different pay scale than the foreign employees. They are paid at only Sri Lankan rates, the foreigners at Western rates.
            NGO salaries have already come under notice in Sri Lanka. Secretary to the President W.J.S. Karunaratne has written to the External Resources Department's Director saying that "large amounts" of foreign aid are spent on expatriate consultants when such expertise is available in Sri Lanka. (12) In his strongly worded letter, Mr. Karunaratne also said that (NGO) volunteers "use this opportunity (the tsunami relief operations) to achieve other objectives", without specifying what these "other objectives" are. Meanwhile a centre has been set up within the Ministry of Finance to monitor the NGOs and their use of aid funds. The head of this unit revealed that some NGOs pay their foreign personnel as much as 700,000 rupees a month (US $7000). A Finance Ministry source who spoke on grounds of anonymity told the Sunday Times that some of the NGOs were paying as much as 60 per cent of the foreign financial assistance they received as salaries and administrative costs. The JVP believes the true proportion may be even higher, more like 80-90 per cent. (13).
           Five major Australian NGOs have accounted for 95% of tsunami donations in Australia: Australian Red Cross, Care Australia, Caritas Australia, Oxfam Australia, World Vision Australia. (Caritas is incidentally the same Vatican-controlled organisation which was notoriously successful in saving and evacuating thousands of wanted Fascists and Nazi war-criminals who were on the run from justice in 1945.) These 5 plus 26 others have recently formed a peak body (ACFID) and issued a "NGO Tsunami accountability report". (14) Since this document fails to mention salary expenditure, it really has little to do with accountability, but much to do with marketing. It lists the thousands of tents, water tanks, tarpaulins etc distributed in Sri Lanka by the Red Cross. Every one of these is covered by a huge Red Cross, together with the words "Provided by the Australian Red Cross". Visitors to Sri Lanka today are confronted by an never-ending barrage of large signs in English put up by the NGOs to advertise themselves. Doing 'good works' is not enough for these Christians: they want everyone (or at least English speakers) to know about it. But are the NGOs doing 'good works' at all? The ACFID report wants to convince us that they are, and so each of the biggest 5 NGOs gives an example of their achievements. Two of these come from Sri Lanka.
           Oxfam Australia set up (January 2005) in Batticaloa district (a place unlucky enough to be badly affected by both LTTE terrorists and the tsunami) a Women's Coalition for Disaster Management (WCDM). The report explains proudly how this group responded to the tsunami:
"The WCDM initially lobbied for a women’s committee to be set up in every
camp. The committees then identified the basic needs of women, such as private space,
appropriate facilities (such as private bathing and toilet facilities) and access to relief supplies. The committees also enable women to report domestic violence, sexual harassment and discrimination through a ‘Gender Watch’ initiative. The long-term Oxfam Australia approach of targeting women and the poorest of the poor has provided it with a unique niche amongst NGOs."
            With a cultural arrogance worthy of their British colonialist forebears, Oxfam Australia is so convinced of the moral superiority of its own values that it fails to notice that it is striking directly at the tight-knit Sri Lankan family, with all its traditions. Oxfam fervently believes that Batticaloa needs a 'Gender Watch' initiative, but who says they are right? What if the long-term Oxfam Australia approach of "targeting women" is certain to cause far more harm than good? Are these matters really a high priority need for the district anyway? The answer of course, is that Oxfam doesn't have to account for their actions to anyone. But perhaps beleaguered people of Batticaloa might yet have something to say about that. It is almost beside the point to recall that it is these very same policies which already applied in Australia are breaking down of the family there. The point is that Oxfam really has no moral right to intrude at all. But the Sri Lankans know all about foreigners telling them what to do, what to think, how to live. They have already been subjected to five hundred years of it, from the time of the Portuguese.
            The second ACFID example of their achievements in Sri Lanka also refers to Australian-style bourgeois feminism being imposed on rural Sri Lanka:
            "On the day after the tsunami, the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) worked closely with its Sri Lankan partner agencies (in Southern Hambanthota and Matara) to identify their greatest emergency relief needs. They discovered that psychosocial and emotional support was the highest priority so that women could overcome their family loss and start planning to rebuild their lives and the lives of the people they support. IWDA and its partner trained grief and trauma counselors, have already reached 600 women, and expect to reach 1000 women."
            Here we have, on the day after the greatest disaster that had ever struck the district, an NGO that is only able to think about women. "They discovered.." should read "They already knew.." But these complacent feminist missionaries may be in for a surprise. For the JVP are the local authority in that district, a symbolically important stronghold for them. Matara was the birthplace of their great founder, Comrade Rohana Wijeweera, and Hambantota was the first district in Sri Lanka to elect the JVP to power in a district council. This particular NGO may find the going hard in Hambantota, and soon be compelled to transfer their zealous endeavours elsewhere to find converts.
            Before we can lay aside this ACFID report which conceals more than it reveals, attention should be drawn to one deliberate attempt to mislead that it contains:
            "A major achievement in the first weeks after the tsunami was to avert an epidemic. The World Health Organization warned that 150,000 survivors, especially children, could perish if they were unable to access clean drinking water and basic health care. UNICEF and the USA government gave similar warnings. The effective coordination between Australian government agencies and NGOs, together with other donors, was a feature of this success."
            The deception is contained in the last sentence. Neither the Australian government agencies nor the NGOs have any right to claim credit for the fact that in Sri Lanka, alone among the badly affected countries, an epidemic was avoided. If that were true, it would have been a real achievement for the NGOs to crow about. But in fact it had been the work of others, who had been there before them, when it really counted. To explain, we must go back a step and look more closely at what actually happened in Sri Lanka during the critical first few days and weeks after the tidal waves struck (apart from NGOs convincing themselves that women were top priority).
An example of true humanitarian disaster relief
            One Sunday morning, after a few short minutes of unimaginable violence, nearly 40,000 Sri Lankans lay dead or dying, and a million more displaced from 117,000 damaged houses. Damage to public property ran into billions of rupees. Government functionaries who were still alive found their government offices washed away and all land communications permanently cut. For several weeks, the civil authority was unable to function at all. The army could function, but tied down as it is in a civil war, wasn't able to spare many soldiers. This situation of complete breakdown of civil authority was what confronted the grief stricken Sri Lankans. In their hour of grave need there was one, and only one organisation which had the necessary discipline to be able to function from the very first moment, and so come to their rescue. The JVP had many years earlier set up its Relief Services Force, later renamed Red Star, to deal with previous natural disasters. Its motto is " All for one and one for all". Immediately thousands of young men and women threw on their red caps and swung into action, heading for the disaster areas carrying whatever tools they could find. With them, the Sri Lankan people rose to the challenge, showing their national genius at its best.
            There can be few more unpleasant jobs than searching for dead bodies and burying them in the tropical heat. Yet this was only the start of the labours of Red Star. (15) Within the first week it manned a large number of relief camps, it shouldered the burden of clearing mountains of debris. Before the end of December it had built a series of temporary dwellings for refugees at Tissamaharamaya - the "City of Determination". These timber houses were extremely solidly built in spite of their temporary purpose. No wind will blow these buildings down, unlike the tents the NGOs are still erecting on the wind-swept broken coastline, in which families still huddle forlornly. The highly-dedicated Red Star Sri Lanka Medical Team attended to the injured  in makeshift clinics, and carried out the innoculation campaign that was the real reason there was no epidemic. Sri Lanka achieved this without overseas aid, with the honourable exception once again of India, which straight away flew in a big medical team from Madras - a genuine example of humanitarian foreign aid quite unlike any of those hitherto discussed. These fine Indian doctors were volunteers, motivated by simple compassion for the sufferings of others, even though  tsunami waves had struck their own country too. This is a first class example of the generous spirit in which all foreign aid should be given.
            Red Star Sri Lanka rebuilt the huge Galle bus stand, the largest in the Southern hemisphere, in only four days after the Government had estimated its cost at R40 million. With the backing of their allied railwaymen's trade union, the all-important Colombo-Galle line was repaired in only 57 days, after the government had said it would take 18 months. But it was during that first month that Red Star played perhaps its most crucial role, when it was the only relief force which could function from the very first. After one month, the Government came with the NGOs in tow. Red Star formally withdrew from their camps and handed over everything to the government. But Red Star Sri Lanka had much other work to do, building houses for refugees, including Muslims, even bridges. They were able to function at maximum effectiveness due to the state co-operation secured by active JVP government representatives and Ministers. They had confounded their enemies by providing immediate effective help to the tsunami-affected Tamils of the east.
            In carrying out these heroic tasks, motivated as they were by simple human compassion for others, Red Star Sri Lanka was also setting an example by showing how it should be done. It was a blow for the NGOs, the first serious challenge to them anywhere in the world. For if a country's people can themselves organise disaster relief  to their fellow citizens, on a completely unpaid basis, then who needs the NGOs and their money? Red Star Sri Lanka proved it could do anything any NGO could do, and far more. Furthermore it could look after the shattered families and children with a simple yet sublime love of humanity. This is something no NGO can ever match, since for their staff, suffering people are cases to be dealt with professionally. For them, disasters provide a lucrative and interesting career.
Can we learn from the Sri Lankans?
           The NGO juggernaut will unfortunately roll on regardless, distributing their idea of tsunami aid throughout South Asia (except to India, which correctly refused it). The pro-imperialist governments of the other countries are not expected to resist. Only in Sri Lanka will the NGOs encounter stiff opposition to their attempt to substitute their bourgeois western dogmas for the genuine national culture.
            Nevertheless the NGOs have already suffered a serious reverse at the hands of Red Star in Sri Lanka. There it has already been conclusively demonstrated that they are both unnecessary and irrelevant. Red Star Sri Lanka is a humanitarian relief organisation of a new type, or at least one not seen in the world since International Red Aid during the 1930s. Inspired by the achievements in Sri Lanka, similar Red Star organisations are being created in other countries, of which Red Star Australia is one. These will employ no bureaucrat or pay no high salaries, in fact they will pay no salaries at all. Instead, natural socialist principles will be transferred into deeds, and so get the job done. Uniting all these Red Stars, a new International Red Star could be created to rival the International Red Cross.
            The overthrow of the USSR in the 1980s opened the floodgates wide to new waves of imperialist expansion around the globe. The demands of finance capital dictate this process in exactly the same way Lenin described nearly a century ago. The NGOs are a necessary part of this process. Their job is to distract attention from anti-imperialist struggle, confuse, divide and disorganise the popular masses. This is a big job, but finance capital is happy to provide the NGOs with huge sums of money with which to achieve it. This essay has attempted to look behind the benign NGO appearance to the reality of NGO practice. Their divisive record in South America, as camp-followers of the US Army, and their exploitation of the tsunami disaster reveals the NGOs for what they are. Nearly everything about the NGOs is fraudulent - their claims of altruism, their alleged independence, their claimed achievements. Only their sense of self-righteousness and moral complacency is genuine, and it sustains them in their crusade to spread western imperialist culture across the globe.

 Footnotes

(1) V.I.Lenin: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism In Selected Works Vol 1 p679
(2)  Lenin: ibid  p667.
(3)  Student BMJ, Vol 12 2004
(4)  James Petras: Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America, Monthly Review, December 1997
(5)  ADR/Asia Pacific Development Review, No 24
(6)  Select Committee on International Development First Report, House of Commons, London 2003)
(7) Declan Walsh: "Afghan government accuses aid organisations of wasting cash", The Guardian (UK): April 4 2005.
(8) see ACFID report, discussed below
(9)  House of Commons Select Committee on International Development: loc. cit.
(10) "NGOs a cover for spying in Russia", Moscow Times, May 13 2005
(11)  The Island, May 22 2005
(12) Tyron Devotta: "Abuse of tsunami funds by NGOs: Centre to  monitor misuse of aid" in Sunday Times (SL) April10 2005
(13) as Petras says of Bolivia, see above
(14) ACFID: NGO Tsunami Accountability Report (26 Dec 04- 31 March 05
(15) Red Star Sri Lanka,  (with English text), Colombo 2005.