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USAID Information:
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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
WHERE IN THE WORLD...
In this section:
Washington Sends Holiday Gifts To Iraq, Afghan,
Sudan Missions
After 25 Years, Michael Williams Retires
Brad Pitt Visits Sithole Center
Bob Lester Retires, Began Career in Vietnam at
End of War
Sudan: A History of Conflict
Washington Sends Holiday Gifts To Iraq, Afghan, Sudan Missions
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Administrator Andrew S. Natsios adds his greeting to
those of other USAID staff before well wishes are sent
to missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan.
Harry Edwards, USAID |
In an effort to honor and send cheer to USAID staff serving
during the holiday season at frontlines posts in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Sudan, the Agency staff in Washington, D.C., collected
signatures and personal wishes on large greeting cards as
well as nearly $800 in donations to send cookies and other
treats.
The organizers of Operation AID to AID, led by Luigi Crespo
of the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs, stuffed
16 boxes to be delivered by contractor IRG to the missions
in time for the holidays. The boxes contained cookies, chocolates,
sausages, teas, biscuits, candies, pretzels, peanuts, brownie
mix, mints, hot chocolate, coffee, coffee filters, water bottles,
and other goods.
Washington staff also sent more than 500 holiday messages.
“We are all touched that our friends took the time
and made the effort to brighten our holidays,” said Spike
Stephenson, Iraq mission director. Those sentiments were echoed
by Mission Director Patrick Fine in Kabul and Kate Farnsworth
of the Darfur Disaster Assistance Response Team in Khartoum.
After 25 Years, Michael Williams Retires
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Michael J. Williams, who retired as ANE’s assistant
general counsel Dec. 31.
Harry Edwards, USAID |
Michael J. Williams always knew he would return to international
development after his first taste of aid work as a Peace Corps
volunteer in Guatemala after college. He went on to complete
law school, worked on Wall Street and then joined USAID where
he worked for 25 years, until he retired Dec. 31.
Leaving a “satisfying and rewarding career” is
bittersweet, said Williams, who spent the last six years as
assistant general counsel for the Asia Near East Bureau.
He will next join the American Institutes for Research (AIR).
Williams started his USAID career in Washington, and in
1984 converted to the Foreign Service.
He was in Egypt from 1984 to 1987, in Honduras from 1988
to 1992, and in El Salvador from 1992 to 1997.
The last post, Williams said, was one of the highlights
of his career. He assisted with the National Reconstruction
Program as the country emerged from bitter civil war in the
1980s.
In his new job at AIR, a nonprofit group dedicated to behavioral
and social science research, Williams will focus on basic
education.
“I’ve always believed in the importance of basic
education as a means of providing opportunity for the poor
in developing countries,” he said.
Brad Pitt Visits Sithole Center
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Brad Pitt visits orphans in AIDS center in South Africa.
The Salvation Army |
SOWETO, South Africa—Movie star Brad Pitt visited
more than 100 orphans, some of whom are HIV/AIDS positive,
at the Carl Sithole Center near Johannesburg on Nov. 8.
“Brad was great with our Soweto children,” said
Major Keith Conrad of The Salvation Army, which runs the orphanage.
“They knew who he was. The older schoolchildren arrived
with posters and went crazy when they saw Brad in person.”
The Carl Sithole Center, which is also home to some 36 abandoned
HIV/AIDS toddlers, contains a nursery, a school catering to
children grades 1–8, and a community care center. It
also offers support services to about 140 families.
Pitt visited the center under high secrecy, telling his
staff that he was there in his private capacity.
“He embraced the children and was very happy to spend
time at their orphanage center,” said Anita Sampson,
USAID activity manager.
Added Salvation Army Captain Richard Welch: “When his
aides told him it was time to leave, he insisted that he didn’t
want to leave yet. He spent at least 45 minutes just chatting
at the dining table with five HIV-positive children.”
USAID helps fund the establishment of the first voluntary
counseling and testing and antiretroviral therapy clinic on
the premises of the Carl Sithole Center, which will start
treatment for children with AIDS in early 2005. The Agency
previously supported the Carl Sithole project’s operational
costs—including food, clothing, and school-related expenses.
The Salvation Army, associated with 377 South African churches
with some 37,000 members, has run HIV/AIDS programs in South
Africa since 1992.
Bob Lester Retires, Began Career in Vietnam at End of War
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Bob Lester, who retired December 31 as USAID’s
assistant general counsel for legislature and policy..
Harry Edwards, USAID |
Bob Lester returned to Washington, D.C, after more than four
years in the foreign service eager to do work that would make
a difference, but joining the General Counsel’s office
did not seem to fit that description.
“I didn’t really want to do this work. I didn’t
see how it was relevant,” said Lester, who made a deal
with his boss that he would look for another position in six
months.
Twenty-five years later, at the end of December, Lester
retired from USAID as the assistant general counsel for legislation
and policy.
He said he could not have designed a better or more satisfying
job.
After graduating from the University of Virginia School
of Law, he saw a sign on a bulletin board recruiting lawyers
for USAID, followed through, and was hired.
His first assignment was in Vietnam at the beginning of
1975. He left the country April 15, a few months after arriving
and 14 days before the fall of Saigon.
From there, he went to Nairobi and spent four years as a
regional legal advisor.
“This was before faxes and before emails,” said
Lester, who was the junior attorney in the mission. “We
did a lot of traveling to make sure the agreements were appropriately
written and appropriately signed.”
Back in Washington, he began sometimes marathon sessions
at USAID’s offices and on the Hill, helping to write
legislation.
At one of those late-night sessions in 1988 with the Senate
Appropriations Committee, his Hill colleagues began reading
from his biography, which they had framed. Lester sent a copy
to his parents, and his mother later told him that it was
the only time his ill father’s tears were not because
of pain.
Lester said that his work was never routine. “Each
year, the people change, the issues change, the procedures
change,” he said. “Once you get involved in something
like this, you become a junkie.”
Sudan: A History of Conflict
Africa’s largest country remains a strategic flashpoint,
commanding world and U.S. attention and assistance. Even as
talks to end the conflict in southern Sudan move forward,
the Darfur conflict deteriorated in December, with a buildup
of military forces and some aid groups preparing to leave.
The conflict in Darfur is the third civil war since Sudan
became independent 48 years ago:
- The first war began soon after independence as Anyanya
southern African fighters, mainly Christian and Animist,
fought for a separate state against the mainly Arab, Muslim
Sudan government based in Khartoum. One million died before
the Addis Ababa Agreement ended the conflict in 1972.
- The second civil war began in 1982, as the North tried
to redraw the North-South boundary to encompass new oil
discoveries and extended sharia Islamic law to the south.
Former Anyanya fighters formed the core of John Garang’s
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and army.
In 2001, USAID persuaded Khartoum to stop the fighting to
allow aid to flow to the Nuba Mountains, leading to a general
ceasefire and the current peace process. By then, the war
had left 2 million dead, 4 million internally displaced,
and 628,000 refugees.
- The third civil war started in 2003 in the western region
of Darfur. Khartoum unleashed Arab militias against civilians
after two African rebel groups—the Sudan Liberation
Movement and Justice and Equality Movement—attacked
government forces. So far, 70,000 have died, 1.6 million
are internally displaced, 200,000 are refugees, and the
Sudan government was accused of committing genocide by the
U.S. Congress and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
Because Sudan, with 30 million people, lies on the dividing
line between the Arab world and Black Africa and has been
a flashpoint for Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, the
United States continues to invest heavily in assistance aimed
at stabilizing the country.
Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden from 1989 until he returned
to Afghanistan to live under Taliban protection in 1996. The
sermons of Sudan’s former Islamist leader, Hassan al-Turabi,
now jailed, have been popular across Arab North Africa, encouraging
fundamentalist movements in Algeria and elsewhere.
Sudan’s conflict spilled over and affected neighboring
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Chad, and Kenya.
Since 1983, the United States spent more than $2 billion
on Sudan—most of it through USAID. The 2004 Agency budget
for Sudan is $464 million, including $200 million for Darfur
and $264 million for north-south programs in support of the
peace settlement.
Much of the money goes for food. The current poor harvest
in Darfur—some 85 percent below normal—combined
with conflict, could lead to famine.
In the south, USAID is supporting the SPLM as it moves to
become the new southern government under the peace accords.
The Office of Transition Initiatives is supporting Sudanese
radio and newspaper efforts to get information out and prepare
for elections in six years on self-determination.
Other programs focus on education, health, water, sanitation,
and roads.
USAID expects to move its Sudan field office from Kenya
into the southern capital of Juba and continue to work in
Khartoum and Darfur.
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