How U.S. Aid Can Undermine Middle East Democracy Activists

23 August 2007

Efforts by Western governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to bolster local human rights networks and reform-minded organizations are backfiring from Egypt to Malaysia as moderate dissidents see their credibility with local populations rapidly erode or, even worse, find themselves the objects of government persecution.
 
"It's a completely nightmarish situation," says Rakhee Goyal, executive director of the Women's Learning Partnership, a U.S.-based NGO that works to promote women's rights in Muslim majority nations. "The energy that has been developed over a period of 20 or 30 years is now being stopped overnight."
 
Perhaps the most obvious example of a political crackdown in a Muslim nation designed to combat Western-led democratization efforts is the case of Iran. The U.S. State Department announced in February 2006 an earmark of $75 million for a "democracy fund" to promote civil society in Iran.
 
Moderate-leaning political activists in the nation – the very people the fund was designed to assist – quickly warned the plan would end in disaster. Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, an Iranian reformist politician, said in a conference at The Carter Center in May 2006 that such open financial support from the United States automatically put NGOs in danger and that a crackdown on activists was already occurring even though the democracy fund had only been announced a few months before.
 
"The money itself…gives the government much more reason to attack freedom fighters or human rights defenders. After this proposal, many human rights fighters have been arrested, and they are in jail presently," she says.
 
Groups such as Human Rights Watch have collected substantial empirical evidence showing that Iranian groups with any connection to the democracy fund money are being continually harassed, intimidated, and interrogated by government agents. Before the fund was announced, Tehran had few methods to identify dissidents and little reason to bother many low-profile NGOs, but the surge in cash flow has provided the perfect opportunity to lean on them.
 
The result is that longstanding efforts to promote human rights in Iran have shuddered to a halt as activists on the ground are thrown in jail. Prominent scholars such as Kian Tajbakhsh have been arrested on charges of spying, while women's rights leaders and peace activists, including Ali Shakeri, await trial in prison.
 
"These are people who were going about their work very much under the radar, being effective, creating grassroots awareness, creating the kind of conditions that are necessary – and now the West has outed them," says Ms. Goyal. "It's put our entire work in that country in danger."
 
Nor is the problem limited to Iran. Jordan and a number of countries in Central Asia recently have introduced laws specifically designed to curb the activities of NGOs through such steps as making it compulsory to provide lists of names of all those who attend workshops. The Ben Ali government in Tunisia and the Mubarak regime in Egypt have stepped up detentions of groups working to promote human rights and democracy over the last six months. Earlier this year, Egypt also passed a series of constitutional amendments, which analysts say remove civil liberties.
 
Syria is another problematic case as the number of prominent political activists languishing in jail cells increases. Human rights defenders and civil society leaders have been rounded up in an "unprecedented series of exemplary punishments," says one prominent dissident writer who declined to be named for fear of reprisal.
 
Well-known lawyer Anwar al-Binni and political activist Mahmoud Issa have been apprehended in recent months under the harsh Syrian penal code which gives sweeping powers to authorities in dealing with those who criticize the government. Mr. al-Binni faces charges including "attempting to weaken national sentiment" and "inciting sectarian and religious divisions," while Mr. Issa is being tried for the additional crime of "committing acts which expose Syria to the danger of aggression."
 
Many were arrested after publicly calling for Syria to improve relations with Lebanon in what the government sees as a defiant challenge to official policy that hurts its international standing. "The procedures of arrest and referral to court were in themselves a kind of exemplary punishment of Syrian activists who dared to declare their political opinion" on a subject long considered taboo, says the dissident writer. Human rights groups in Syria are usually not officially registered and are thus considered illegal by authorities.
 
Those working to promote human rights and democracy in the Muslim world say that there is a link between the current crackdown on civil liberties groups and U.S. foreign policies.
 
Zainah Anwar, founder of Sisters In Islam – a group that advocates human rights based on revisiting the teachings of the Qur'an – worries about a backlash against her group and others like it based on a perception that their work is connected to policies of Western governments. "We hope for a different policy because it is so easy to discredit groups (in the Muslim world) that have liberal and progressive ideas," she says.
 
Four years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the war for the hearts and minds of Iranians appears to be taking a turn for the worse as a result of U.S. strategy. Reports of a detailed U.S. plan for invading Iran have convinced many Muslims youth who are otherwise critical of the Islamic Republic that it may be better to stick with the devil you know than the devil you don't.
 
Partly as a result of programs like the democracy fund, young Iranian activists see human rights promotion and plans for military action as part of the same package. While civil liberties defenders "clearly reject the military option for regime change in Iran, the alternative approach they are advocating – the human rights argument – still ultimately falls into the same agenda," says one young Iranian journalist. "It serves the same people with the same aim."
 
Many human rights defenders say that rather than publicly announcing the goal of reform and democratization through a dramatic unilateral increase in funding, the United States ought to consult with local groups about their needs and strategies for fostering civil society.
 
"The lead must come from Muslim countries," says Ms. Zainah. "Western support is very important, but it also has to be sensitive to the local situation."
 
Even if open support from the West fails to draw the attention of government authorities, human rights groups also run the risk of having their legitimacy undermined in the media due to the perception that the organization is not truly local. "Sometimes it doesn't help, because those who are against us would love to say that we are pet poodles of the West, that we are all a bunch of Westernized elite who are trying to impose Western values," says Ms. Zainah.
 
Western governments and some NGO groups don't seem to realize that their confrontational actions frequently make conditions for human rights defenders on the ground more difficult. Many human rights activists believe that greater consultation about such policies such as the democracy fund, could help avoid potential backlash.
 
There are a lot of positive contributions that have come from Western initiatives, says Ms. Haghighatjoo. "But the way in which many programs have been implemented and the lack of consultation have had a negative effect," she says.
 
Other experts agree that Western groups ought to be more cautious over the tinderbox of political interests that pervade many of the nations they seek to help. "Many Muslim societies are sharply polarized," and just the whiff of association with Western governments can be a major detraction for locals, says professor Asma Barlas, an expert on international and comparative politics at Ithaca College. "Something could be working fine and then the West touches it, and it is poisoned."
 
Other methods that moderate Muslim groups say they would prefer include the use of conditionality, a method that has worked with some success in South America. Economic and other diplomatic agreements between the West and Arab nations should be tied to measurable goals on human rights, says the Syrian dissident. "The United States should ensure that human rights concerns are at the core of any future talks or negotiations with Syria," he says.
 
But local ownership is the key. Groups such as the Women's Learning Partnership have been struggling with such issues for years and now consult on a daily basis with local groups on even the smallest detail of country strategy. "It has to be grassroots driven; it has to be driven by their priorities and their strategies, not ours; and it has to be done in consultation," says Ms. Goyal. "The Iran situation is a perfect example of what happens when these kinds of consultations don't take place."