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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
MAY 2006
In this section:
Sudan Mission Reopens
Afghan PRTs a Success, Says U.S. Military
New Global Epidemic Threatens World Harvests
U.S. Hiked Aid 39 Percent in 2005
Sudan Mission Reopens
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Ethiopians and their camels escape a serious drought.
As of April 11, USAID is providing 34,000 more tons
of grain, peas, and vegetable oil to some 3.5 million
farmers and herders in the drought-stricken Horn of
Africa region. This comes on the heels of the U.S. announcement
of an additional $92 million to the nations in the Horn
to fight famine and address some of the underlying causes
of food insecurity.
USAID/Ethiopia
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Katherine Almquist was sworn in April 20 as Sudan mission
director, assigned to reopen the USAID mission in Khartoum—the
Agency’s largest program in sub-Saharan Africa—14
years after U.S. sanctions suspended development aid to the
African country.
Humanitarian aid continued under sanctions and a small development
program began in 1998, after U.S. policy changed to allow
USAID to provide such assistance in certain areas.
With a budget of $855 million in 2005, USAID in Sudan is
providing food and other humanitarian aid to southern and
eastern Sudan and Darfur. Extensive reconstruction is also
supported in the war-damaged South and in Abyei, Blue Nile,
and Southern Kordofan regions.
USAID/Sudan mission staff will be located in the capital
Khartoum and the southern city of Juba. The Agency also will
maintain a field presence in the western region of Darfur,
where more than 2 million people have been driven from their
homes and 200,000 have died in what the U.S. government has
called “genocide.”
In January 2005, the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement signed a peace agreement officially ending
Africa’s longest civil war, which over more than two
decades killed 2 million people and displaced 4 million. An
interim constitution authorized a new, semi-autonomous government
of Southern Sudan to hold a referendum in 2011 on whether
the South should remain a part of Sudan or become an independent
country.
Today, displaced Southern Sudanese are beginning to return
to their homes and rebuild their communities, and USAID is
supporting various programs to ease that process. Here the
Agency provides humanitarian and reconstruction assistance
to war-affected communities—helping displaced people,
providing basic services and food, and improving food security
through agriculture and economic development.
In Darfur, the Agency has provided extensive food and other
humanitarian aid and worked to ensure humanitarian access
in unstable areas, spending $476 million last year. It has
also supported political negotiations aimed at ending violence,
and is preparing for eventual reconstruction.
In eastern Sudan, where malnutrition and maternal mortality
rates are among the highest in the country, USAID provides
food directly and as payment on work projects. It also provides
food to 80,000 women, children, and the elderly in camps around
Khartoum.
The reopening of the Sudan mission takes place 14 years
after U.S. sanctions halted development aid to the country.
Since then, USAID has aided largely through emergency response
to conflicts, droughts, and floods by providing food, medicine,
water, seeds, tools, and logistical support. The program was
managed from Washington and Kenya. A small humanitarian staff
worked in Khartoum.
To head the Sudan mission, Almquist leaves behind the job
of deputy assistant administrator for the Africa bureau, where
she was responsible for the offices of East African Affairs,
Sudan Programs, and Development Planning.
Almquist will continue to be the U.S. representative to
Sudan’s Assessment and Evaluation Commission, the international
commission mandated to oversee implementation of last year’s
peace agreement.
Before Almquist joined USAID in 2001, she was chief of staff
for both the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and the Executive
Office for Administration and Finance of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts. From 1992 to 1999, she worked for World
Vision.
Afghan PRTs a Success, Says U.S. Military
Twenty-two civilian-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams
(PRTs) carrying out development work in Afghanistan have been
“a huge success,” and they “have a potential
for Iraq reconstruction as well,” said retired Lt. Gen.
David Barno, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2003–05.
In an interview while the first USAID PRT orientation course
took place at National Defense University (NDU) April 13,
Barno said at the school that the civilian-military teams
brought health, power, roads, food, and other assistance despite
threats from hostile groups.
“The PRTs are one of the most innovative techniques
and help us be effective in countering insurgency and providing
development—the two roles fit hand in hand,” said
Barno, now director of the Near East South Asia Center for
Strategic Studies at NDU.
PRTs generally consist of about 100 well-armed troops supported
by helicopters from nearby bases. The civilian side typically
includes one official from USAID and one each from the State
and Agriculture departments. There is also an Afghan Interior
Ministry officer.
Up until now, civilian and military officials sent to staff
the PRTs have gone there without formal training in the new
system. But on April 10–14, USAID and other officials
who have served in the PRTs conducted a training session for
about 20 new appointees heading out to staff the Afghan teams.
Among the topics taught were Afghan politics and culture,
carrying out programs in Afghanistan, dealing with NGOs, principles
of counter-insurgency, conflict and stability, and local Afghan
structures and systems.
John Schweiger, deputy field program manager for PRT logistics
and personnel, helped arrange the training course and taught
several sessions, as did Philip Gary, chief of staff for the
Kabul USAID mission.
Barno commanded over 20,000 U.S. and other troops in Combined
Forces Command Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom
and oversaw the PRTs during that time.
PRTs helped the fight against Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar,
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and their terrorist networks, Barno told
a meeting at USAID headquarters in December.
The PRTs also helped fight “against those internal
forces that were always struggling to pull Afghanistan apart—that
went back thousands of years—narcotics, corruption, crime,
poverty, lack of education, lack of medical care,” Barno
said.
“All those internal things, capped off by warlords
and their militias, were constantly pulling at the fabric
of the country to make it not be an effective whole.
“We saw extending the reach of the central government
as being a critical node there. And the PRTs played perhaps
the most central component of that part of our strategy.”
He called it part of “a war for the minds of the people
of Afghanistan.”
The Afghan people were tired of more than 20 years of constant
war and “broadly were very supportive of that international
aid that was coming in there,” he said.
His goal was to use the presence of 20,000 troops for more
than carrying guns: “it’s a lot of movement capacity,
it’s a lot of ability to get around and talk to people,”
he said.
“We could impact a lot of things across the country.
And the PRTs are a key way we did that.”
When he arrived in Afghanistan in 2003, three of the four
PRTs in the country at the time were in the north. But most
of the insecurity from Taliban and Al Qaida supporters was
in the south.
“So we made a major effort over the winter of ‘03–04
to push out, and get ready to push out, lots of PRTs into
that zone of conflict to help seed that area with these islands
or these pools of growing security and influence,” he
said.
“That was a big success. So by the summer of ‘04,
we had upwards of 15 PRTs almost all across the southern half
of the country going into the elections in the fall. It had
a dramatic impact on our ability to reach out and touch different
areas of the country to help extend the reach of the central
government and to help establish those pools of security that
rippled out around them in many different directions.”
Today there are 23 PRTs with about two thirds of them American
and the rest run by German, Canadian, Czech, British, New
Zealand, Spanish, Italian, Baltic and other troops.
The PRT mission is to extend the reach of the democratically
elected central government of Afghanistan, Barno said. In
fact, the PRTs were important in enabling elections to take
place.
The teams provided support to local governments, driving
out to meet with local officials and provide them with new
or refurbished local government buildings, schools, clinics,
paved roads, generators, fans, medicine, irrigation canals,
women’s centers, and other aid.
Barno said that the PRT “encouraged other people to
have confidence in the growth of the international community
operating in their province.”
“The USAID reps had a tremendous role in different
parts of the country,” Barno added.
“Wherever we had USAID reps, we were very much nested
into what was going on, centrally directed from Kabul for
the overall development plan on the country. It gave us the
windows and the eyes into the broad national priority programs,
which was the Afghan program to develop aid and to develop
reconstruction of their own country.”
New Global Epidemic Threatens World Harvests
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Researchers at CIMMYT, the international wheat and
maize research center outside Mexico City, sort through
plant seeds.
Cutberto Garcia Ramos, USAID/Mexico
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A virulent virus known as stem rust is attacking wheat in
Africa and threatens to spread to Asia’s breadbasket
in India as well as to America’s wheat fields, warned
Norman Borlaug, the scientist who developed the high-yielding
Green Revolution wheat in the 1960s.
“We face a crisis in cereal production” said Borlaug
in a symposium at USAID headquarters April 7. “The new
global rust epidemic is a wakeup call against hunger.”
The highly virulent new race of stem rust known as Ug99 first
appeared in Uganda in 1999, and it is “a serious and
imminent threat to world wheat and barley production,”
according to a research study by the North American Millers
Association and U.S. wheat and barley producers. “It
is only a matter of time before it reaches the U.S.”
Long-lived spores of the rust are spread by winds and carried
on the clothing of people traveling between countries. Kenya
and Ethiopia are already infected with the disease, which
should take about a decade to spread from the Horn of Africa
to Yemen, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and India.
“It’s almost inevitable it will follow this track,”
said Dr. John Dobbs, director of research at CIMMYT, the USAID-supported
international wheat and maize research center outside Mexico
City, where Borlaug launched the Green Revolution. “Almost
100 percent [of the wheat seeds in Asia] are susceptible to
rust,” said Dobbs.
Chemical treatments can contain or destroy some wheat rust
outbreaks in developed countries, or among commercial farmers
in developing countries, but are prohibitively expensive for
poor farmers, experts at the symposium said.
The main strategy to fight the disease is to breed rust
resistance into new varieties of seed. However, it can take
years to develop these new varieties, and farmers in developing
countries may be unwilling to switch from their current seeds.
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A highly virulent new race of stem rust known as Ug99
first appeared in Africa in 1999 and has become “a
serious and imminent threat to world wheat and barely
production,” according to a research study by the
North American Millers Association and U.S. wheat and
barley producers.
Global Rust Initiative
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Wheat breeding and testing centers have been set up in Ethiopia
and Kenya, which are already infected. U.S. and other wheat
farmers and researchers are sending seeds there to be tested
in hope of finding resistance to the new virus.
A Global Rust Initiative, which USAID supports, has been
started to combat stem rust (see www.globalrust.org).
“There is no time to lose—the virus has not moved
out of East Africa yet,” said Matt MacMahon of the World
Bank.
He recalled a barley rust epidemic in the 1970s that spread
around Bogota, starting near the airport, likely carried in
by travelers.
It eradicated all the barley in the Andes as far as Bolivia,
driving thousands of families into urban slums.
Borlaug recalled an earlier attack by a rust virus in the
1950s in the American great plains that killed up to 100 percent
of crops, especially those receiving abundant irrigation and
fertilizer.
Now more than 90 years old, the U.S. scientist and Nobel
laureate still works on plant breeding.
CIMMTY, which is working with the research centers in Ethiopia
and Kenya to breed rust resistance into wheat seeds, is one
of 15 research centers belonging to the Consultative Group
on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). CGIAR operates
with about $450 million donated by 63 members, including the
United States, other countries, international organizations,
the private sector, and foundations such as the Rockefeller
Foundation.
USAID gave about $50 million to CGIAR in the past year.
U.S. Hiked Aid 39 Percent in 2005
The United States increased development assistance 39 percent
last year over 2004, helping boost the overall flow of aid
from rich to poor countries to $106.5 billion, a record high.
U.S. overseas development assistance (ODA) has nearly tripled
from the 2000 level, marking the largest American aid increase
since the Marshall Plan, preliminary figures show.
Total U.S. foreign assistance was at $27.5 billion in 2005,
a $7.8 billion increase from the year before. USAID carried
out 42 percent of the assistance, which aims to
• improve the ability of governments to serve their
people
• improve healthcare and education
• boost economic growth
• provide humanitarian relief and reconstruction after
conflicts and natural disasters
The Agency also gives out development aid in conjunction
with other government agencies such as the departments of
State, Defense, Treasury, and Agriculture.
U.S. aid to Asia last year more than doubled to $14.4 billion,
led by grants for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and disaster assistance to Pakistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka,
and other countries. For sub-Saharan Africa, U.S. aid rose
by 17 percent to $4.1 billion.
The largest foreign aid donor last year was the United States,
followed by Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Japan’s net development aid rose to $13 billion.
The ODA report was released at the High Level Meeting of
the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),
Development Assistance Committee, held in Paris in early April,
attended by USAID Acting Administrator Frederick Schieck and
Millennium Challenge Corporation CEO John Danilovich.
Topics discussed at the meeting included scaling up of aid
and greater aid effectiveness based on developing country
performance; the political imperatives and risks of engaging
effectively with fragile states; and promoting growth, private
sector, agriculture, and infrastructure as part of effective
strategies to reduce poverty.
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