View the USAID controversy with an open mind - EDITORIAL

The US President Donald Trump’s announcement on a 90-day pause on foreign aid channeled through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in various countries under his “America First” foreign policy has sent shockwaves across the world, especially the developing countries which received funding from the US agencies for various projects in those countries. 

Apart from the deprivation of funding, political issues have also cropped up in countries such as Sri Lanka due to the US President’s remarks that such findings have been used to create political upheavals. 

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), an account link to Trump alleged, “George Soros received $260,000,000.00 from USAID and used this money to spread chaos, change governments and for personal gain in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, India, UK, and the US.” 

Apologists of the deposed Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s administration who had been accusing foreign powers for the 2022 regime change in the country amidst an unprecedented economic crisis and a resultant political crisis with millions of people demonstrating against the government have been encouraged by Trump’s X post. National Freedom Front (NFF) leader Wimal Weerawansa who wrote a book titled “Nine” symbolizing the dates of important events in several months during the anti-Rajapaksa protests has come out with a scathing attack on USAID, its beneficiaries and the US Embassy in Colombo, based on Trump’s remarks.

Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has sent a letter to the Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne calling for the appointment of a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on the reports of USAID funding in Sri Lanka for which the latter has assured relevant action. Later the US Ambassador Julie Chung had visited the SLPP headquarters in Battaramulla and discussed the matter with the leaders of the party. 

Weerawansa alleged without any evidence that (USAID) had spent $7.9 million ‘to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid ‘binary-gendered language’ citing a project named “Media Empowerment for a Democratic Sri Lanka” (MEND) implemented by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) with USAID funding. 

The funds from USAID and other foreign sources are being channeled into various countries including Sri Lanka either through government institutions or through local as well as international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs and INGOs). Today’s adults in Sri Lanka still fondly remember the smell and the taste of biscuits that were distributed to them in their school days as a donation by the USAID since 1960s. However, the image that has been instilled in the minds of people about the NGOs and INGOs over the decades has been negative and repulsive. It is against that backdrop that Trump has commented on USAID money being used to “spread chaos, change governments.”

Yet, all NGOs are not always sinister, nor are all projects of each NGO harmful or dangerous, despite the fact that their donor countries might have long term political objectives - from maintaining friendship between the relevant two countries to impacting the political stability of the country that receives the funding through NGOs. Famine-like situations could have been arisen in Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern Provinces during the separatist war and the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, had there not been NGOs and INGOs functioning in those areas. 

The role played by the NGOs as well as INGOs and the funding states as well as agencies such as the USAID, UNDP, ICRC, UNHCR in protecting and enhancing environment, media freedom, human rights, women’s rights and ensuring free and fair elections in many countries has to be commended. 

The US is no saint when it comes to international politics. It has been a fact that the US funds have been used to topple many governments in elections as well as bloody coups over the decades. The governments of Sukarno of Indonesia and Salvador Allende of Chile were famous cases in point for negatively achieving that purpose. It is the US that allegedly supplied all wherewithal for the genocide in Gaza.  Also, various American projects in many countries have been suspected of being part of covert political agendas. 

Nevertheless, not all US projects could be identified or suspected as political pitfalls. The “Aragalaya” in Sri Lanka in 2022 was more of a spontaneous response to the economic crisis than any local or external political agenda. Therefore, the current controversy involving the USAID activities in Sri Lanka has to be viewed objectively with an open mind.