LOCAL INFORMATIONis the stock-in-trade of NGOs

Dr Kamal WICKREMASINGHE

Recent moves to curb NGO activities by many developing countries, and by Russia, is indicative of the fact that these countries have established without doubt that the NGOs play an important, sinister role as foot soldiers of Western foreign policy, particularly that of the US, inimical to their national interests.

The NGOs play their role mainly through gathering and conveying information on the local political climate through local embassies. They also receive foreign funding for the explicitly political and disruptive function of rallying citizens of developing countries to challenge elected governments under the guise of ‘protesting’ against specific policies or initiatives.

The utilisation of NGOs as a foreign policy tool by Western intelligence agencies began in the 1990s during the push for globalisation, gathering momentum following the reform of intelligence culture in the US and Europe following the September 11 affair.

The criticism of the CIA and other US intelligence organisations in the 9/11 Commission Report for adhering to Cold War methodologies of technical intelligence gathering methods such as imagery intelligence and signal intelligence at the expense of human intelligence (HUMINT) directed the US intelligence structures to further expand their joint venture with the NGOs. In combination with criminal networks and Ethnic diasporas, (NGOs) became the new HUMINT infrastructure.

Today NGOs work in association with the CIA, USAID and the US military in target countries, in crisis zones, and following natural disasters the world over to help achieve the neocon generated agenda of geopolitical objectives.

An NGO operative with a satellite phone in hand, and access to other modern communication facilities can instantly provide essential information to Washington these days, replacing months of compilation and analysis that would have been necessary previously.

The ‘outsourcing’ of the intelligence business to NGOs has changed the ‘intelligence culture’ fundamentally: the traditional ‘spy’ has become a handler of NGO staff on the ground, rarely having to leave the safety of embassy precincts; The role of the government ‘analyst’ has become one of integrating NGO source material into the mix of information from the embassies and the military.

The ‘business’ has made NGOs an important economic player on a global scale, currently accounting for over 5 percent of the gross domestic product and over 4 percent of global employment. The rise of the NGO movement since the 1990s can be solely attributed to the variety of tasks they carried out as tools of Western intelligence agencies.

NGOs are a cheap method of intelligence gathering

The NGOs have become a much cheaper and safer option for information gathering in target countries and in conflict and post-conflict situations where most Western governments would have few ‘assets’ on the ground. NGOs on the other hand would have had either long term residence through ‘false flag’ activities such as corruption prevention and capacity building, and in conflict scenarios,‘helping’ displaced people.

Some NGO workers are indeed country experts with useful regional insights acquired by virtue of extended deployments, and others are generalists with geographic expertise. The lack of analytical skills among NGO workers is addressed by the involvement of US government analytic cadres, who are professionals with expertise in the field.

NGOs’ ability to obtain information in the countries they operate in, and convey such information to US authorities has improved with the advance and spread of information technology. The availability of NGO workers conversant in the local language and familiar with the local health medical and environmental conditions obviate the need to train and acclimatise new intelligence officials, reducing the costs considerably.

Most importantly, local populations oblivious to their stealthy intelligence gathering function consider NGO staff politically acceptable, helping overcome the ‘bad press’ the US has had received the world over.

The increasing association of NGOs with intelligence agencies has enabled them to rely less on private donations and to receive more and more funding from USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and other government funding sources. World Vision, the largest US NGO with annual revenues of $700 million — and Oxfam-US, receive nearly half of their revenue from the government. Groups such as the International Medical Corps receive about 80 percent of their funding from government sources.

A well streamlined modus operandi

The processes required to transform the office based government preserve of intelligence gathering and analysis is now complete: the information collection from NGOs happens primarily through the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, through diplomatic exchanges and USAID. The Defence Intelligence Agency directly supports US Armed Forces on the ground with the finished product.

An Internal intelligence community agreement known as the Concepts of Operation (ConOps), designed for the duration of a particular taskorcrisis, sets forth the agreed procedures for joint ventures with NGOs. A lead agency is identified to manage the ConOps including the relationship with NGOs.The coordination of activities of hundreds of NGOs headquartered in the US alone is done through umbrella organisations such as Interaction which serves as the NGO clearing house, through meetings aimed at regular sharing and pooling of information from the field.

NGOs, by necessity, camouflage themselves in the field in numerous ways, and to varying degrees, especially during conflict and post-conflict situations:some, such as Medecins sans Frontieres and the International Red Cross make it a point to remind the public that they serve a completely apolitical set of objectives and do not openly interact with foreign governmental groups in the same area.

Other NGOs such as CARE, World Vision, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children maintain extensive contact with their sponsoring governments while being careful to publicly distinguish their presence from that of their government.

Groups such as International Medical Corps and the new evangelical, faith-based NGOs portray themselves without hesitation as implementers of ‘people-to-people’ policies and programmes decided and funded by the wealthy nations for the relieving suffering in developing countries in crisis.

NGOs themselves are now becoming experts in the intelligence business

The NGOs have been showing signs of ‘warming up’ to the function of intelligence gathering over the last decade or so, mostly in the area of generating information useful for US military deployments in the developing world.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), founded in 1995 by a group including Fred Cuny, an 'international disaster relief specialist' who disappeared in Chechnya in 1995, to 'prevent and resolve deadly crisis' now has over 100 staff members on five continents carrying out field-based political analyses. ICG analytical reports have become sought after by governments considering troop deployments in crisis zones.

The American group Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation(VVAF) developed iMMAP (Information Management and Mine Action Programmes), an information hub for data relating to the locations of landmines, with a view to protect US Forces from ‘surprises’ in foreign lands.

Collaboration between NGOs at headquarters level and in the field has been another development in the direction of dealing with governments as ‘equals’ in the intelligence business. Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), with offices in countries like the Ivory Coast, South Africa, Pakistan, and New York, provides universal, real-time access to strategic information from humanitarian operations in remote regions.

Relief Web is another such USAID funded operation, an electronic gateway to documents and maps from government, academic, and NGO sources, on humanitarian emergencies and disasters. It boasts a database with over 500,000 maps and documents dating back to 1981.

Humanitarian Information Centres(HIC) that focuses on maps and other “actionable data”, that began in 1999 in Kosovo was adapted later for use in Eritrea, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and Liberia. It provides Geographic Information Systems and 'internet café' services for humanitarian workers. There are numerous other Web-based information provider services run by NGOs with funding from the UN, USAID, and other Western governments.

The relationship has had its ups and downs

The fast expanding intelligence-based relationship between NGOs and the CIA, USAID, and the Department of State has not been without ructions: some in the NGO community have questioned the moral and ethical dilemmas of cooperating with US troops in 'wars of choice' such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Others have complained that the intelligence flow is one-way, with the US government sharing only information that has already been in the news but get the NGOs to do the risky work.

The disagreements peaked during the Iraqi invasion in 2003, and as a payback, the Bush administration’s director of USAID demanded that NGOs identify their activities in Afghanistan as funded by the US government and a Web site designed to monitor NGOs for their alleged liberal bias and unwillingness to adhere to current policy preferences was launched. Afghanistan also gave rise to other grounds of NGO complaints due to US analysts not sharing information on military plans or presence with NGOs, due to fears that the information could be misused by local civilian staff of NGOs.

The introduction of the Partner Vetting System (PVS) that required NGOs receiving funding from the State Department or USAID to collect information on their host country employees and partners for screening against secret terrorist databases was another bone of contention, due to the potential for local employees turning hostile against their NGO masters.

The 2004 Tsunami relief work, a purely humanitarian crisis not fraught with the political dimensions that many post-conflict situations entail, restored the relationship. In recent years, the National Intelligence Council has begun providing NGOs directly with information such as estimates of anticipated complex humanitarian needs.

Boundaries between the US government and NGOs are fast erasing

The trend of close links between NGOs and US and European government organisations in target countries is on the rise. Essentially, NGOs and government groups are partners in these operations.

The disappearance of boundaries between the NGOs and the US government is reflected in the increasing numbers of former military officers, former ambassadors, and retired government officials moving into the NGO sector. The appointment in January 2012 of Suzanne Nossel as Executive Director of Amnesty International (AA), always a key tool in the imperial toolbox, was a glaring example of this phenomenon.

Prior to the AA job, Nossel, known for coining the phrase ‘smart power’ which she defined as “the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than using the carrots and sticks of payment or coercion” was Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organisations at the US Department of State: a case of the NGO ‘game keeper’ choosing to join the ranks herself!

It is revealed in ‘The Command: ‘Deep Inside the President’s Secret Army’ by D.B Grady and Marc Ambinder, that members of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) counter-terrorism units credited with capturing or killing many of the most wanted terrorists, including Osama bin Laden,entered into Pakistan posing as aid workers following the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, escaping the requisite background checks from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. What the foregoing account shows is that the mushrooming and growth of NGOs has been the direct result of Western governments funding with a view to ‘exploit’ them to perform services and tasks previously implemented by soldiers and civil servants.

The interdependence of the dark neocon world of rule-by-intelligence and the NGOs is growing. The need for vigilance by targeted developing country governments such as Sri Lanka is greater than ever.