2010 Complete Election Coverage: USAID official: Pakistan plan flawed

A senior USAID economist has written a formal dissent memo, obtained by POLITICO, that tells senior State Department officials that Special Representative Richard Holbrooke’s Pakistani aid demands are causing turmoil in the agency’s mission in that nation and contradict near-term U.S. counterinsurgency goals.

The tensions within the State Department come amid a political firestorm in Pakistan over a $7.5 billion Pakistan aid bill passed by Congress earlier this month and championed by Holbrooke. Pakistani military leaders have railed against conditions in the bill that they say infringe on Pakistan’s sovereignty — criticism that could bolster anti-American forces seeking to portray Pakistan’s civilian leaders as beholden to Washington.

Pakistan’s U.S. ambassador, Hussain Haqqani, was reported by the Pakistani daily Dawn to be on the way out Monday, in part as a consequence of the furor that has erupted in Pakistan over the bill. Haqqani’s status could not be immediately confirmed.

Insiders are also questioning Holbrooke’s idea for abruptly scaling back the use of United States Agency for International Development contractors in delivering the Pakistani aid. Titled “Dissent memo: Contradictory objectives for USAID/Pakistan program,” the three-page sensitive but unclassified memo, written by USAID economist C. Stuart Callison, is dated Oct. 2 and addressed to Anne-Marie Slaughter, the director of the State Department Policy Planning Office. The memo was first published by USA TODAY.

Callison’s memo says the USAID mission in Pakistan is “receiving contradictory objectives” from Holbrooke, the special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose demands for sign-off authority for all aid requests have created turmoil.

“On the one hand, [the mission] is expected to achieve high-impact counterinsurgency and broad-based economic development objectives as quickly as possible, especially in those areas more susceptible to radical Taliban recruitment,” Callison’s memo says. “On the other hand, it is asked to do this by working through national and local government channels and host country contractors and [nongovernmental organizations], and not through U.S. contractors and NGOs, to avoid the overhead charges of the latter and to improve the institutional capacity and legitimacy of government agencies and local institutions.”

“These are all worthy goals,” Callison continues, “and USAID can achieve them all. However, they are contradictory objectives without a reasonable period for the latter.”

Funding actions “now require Ambassador Holbrooke’s personal approval,” the memo continues. “This approval process has been difficult, time-consuming and extremely frustrating for an already overburdened mission staff, and the disapprovals already received are shockingly counterproductive to priority [U.S. government] counterinsurgency and economic development objectives.”

Neither Callison nor other U.S. officials responded to requests by POLITICO for comment or guidance on the memo.

One U.S. official, on condition of anonymity, said USAID could have made the transition easier. “The dissent channel cable fails to note that USAID has had since May to come up with a plan, which could include [U.S. government] contractors as long as it was clear about the reasons and plans for building local capacity over time,” the official said.

The dissent memo comes as several USAID contractors who have been working in Pakistan say they have been put on notice that their contracts will be renewed for 45-day or 90-day periods only and that they may have to discontinue their programs because of new regulations on the use of U.S. contractors.

One USAID contractor says he employs three expatriates and 200 Pakistanis to administer a program in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area under a five-year USAID contract. But since June, he said, his program has been thrown into doubt by Washington plans to bypass U.S. firms to hire the Pakistani subcontractors directly.