Little oversight of post-Sept. 11 military aid

Aided by Washington lobbyists, foreign countries regarded as strategic allies in the "war on terror" have received billions of dollars in new military and security assistance since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, much of it with little Congressional or civilian oversight, according to the findings of a major investigative project by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). Total US military aid increased some 50 percent in the three years that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the project, 'Collateral Damage.' It found that much of the additional aid has gone to governments with poor human rights records and that have resisted the kinds of political and economic reforms that Washington sought to encourage before Sept. 11. While the aid may have enhanced those governments' cooperation in US counter-terrorism efforts in the short term, it may also have helped consolidate unpopular, corrupt or repressive regimes that could prove costly to Washington's global image and long-term interests, the project, which was based on a year's research of CPI's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), concluded. ''Billions in new military aid dollars have flowed to countries whose record of grim human rights practices had led to pre-Sept. 11 decisions by the US to cut off or curtail aid,'' according one of a series of reports that are being posted on the project's website, http://www.publicintegrity.org/MilitaryAid/, this week and the next. ''Neither the Defense Department nor Congress has done as much as it could to make sure the money was spent as intended, providing what one seasoned congressional aide described as 'a blank check.''' The interactive site, which includes detailed information on military aid to a dozen country-recipients, their lobbying activities in Washington, and original reporting by ten ICIJs, comes amid growing Congressional and public concern that the Bush administration has over emphasized military power in the pursuit of its ''global war on terror'' and at the expense of diplomacy and other, less coercive means of conducting foreign policy. With an annual budget that currently exceeds that of all of the world's other militaries combined and is more than 20 times greater than the State Department's, the Pentagon has in many key countries become a far more-influential actor than the State Department, even, in some cases, in the disbursement of US development assistance, more than 20 percent of which is now channeled through the military. A recent Senate staff report, for example, cited a US ambassador who ''lamented that his effectiveness in representing the US to foreign officials was beginning to wane, as more resources are directed to [military] special operations forces and intelligence. Foreign officials are 'following the money' in terms of determining which relationships to emphasize.''' Until Sept. 11, eligibility for receiving virtually all US foreign, economic, development, and military assistance, including military training, was determined by the State Department and the US Agency for International Development under the terms of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (FAA), which has been amended over the years to include human rights and other conditions to prevent aid from going to particularly abusive or repressive governments. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, however, the administration wanted to rally foreign governments -- including those that could not necessarily meet the FAA's conditions for military aid -- behind its counter-terrorism campaign. It thus authorized the Pentagon to create new aid programs for financing, training, and equipping foreign military and security forces and intelligence services for countries that would otherwise be denied such assistance, according to 'Collateral Damage,' and another report, 'Below the Radar,' on military aid to Latin America released last month by the Washington Office on Latin America and two other Washington-based groups. The result has been the outflow of billions of dollars in military and security assistance to repressive governments, such as Pakistan, Djibouti, and Uzbekistan that, before Sept. 11, previously received little or none at all or, as in the case of Ethiopia, have become increasingly repressive in the name of fighting terror, according to the project. ''We've found massive transfers of funds from our country that have taken place with very little Congressional oversight or public discussion,'' said Bill Buzenberg, CPI's executive director. Thus, Pakistan, which received a mere nine million dollars in military and security aid in the three years before Sept. 11, received 4.2 billion dollars in military aid in the three years after Sept. 11, making it the world's third biggest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt. Military aid to tiny Djibouti, which turned over a former French military base to US forces after Sept. 11, skyrocketed from less than two million dollars to more than 53 million dollars over the same two three-year periods, while aid to Bahrain and Oman jumped from $700,000 to $145 million and from $2.5 million to $138 million, respectively. Jordan, Georgia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Azerbaijan, Yemen, and other key countries in the war on terror stretching from Central Europe and East Africa to the Pacific gained tens of millions of dollars in military and security assistance from these new programs, often with the help of high-priced Washington lobbyists, including former lawmakers and senior administration officials, according to the project. Collateral Damage includes detailed reports on aid to Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Romania, Poland, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Uzbekistan. Much of the new funding, according to the project, has been channeled through a program called Coalition Support Funds (CSF), which was created after Sept. 11 to reimburse countries for providing assistance -- including access to bases or the costs governments allegedly incurred in counter-terrorist operations -- to US forces. Some $3.5 billion was disbursed under the CSF as of the end of 2006, and the administration has requested another $1.7 billion for next year. The New York Times reported just last week that the Pentagon has continued to pay Pakistan $80 million a month under the CSF for carrying out counter-terrorist operations along its border with Afghanistan despite the fact that Islamabad largely ceased such efforts eight months ago. Under yet another new program, the Pentagon's 'Section 1206' authority, several hundred million dollars have been appropriated since 2005 to help foreign military and security forces "combat terrorism and enhance stability'' in more than a dozen Middle Eastern, African and Asian countries. Although Section 1206 disbursements require the "concurrence of the Secretary of State,'' they are not subject to FAA conditions. The Pentagon has asked Congress to increase that fund to $750 million a year.