http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso88.html
Chris Deliso's Web Site:
http://www.balkanalysis.com/
Sam Vaknin article on the pernicious role of NGOs:
http://samvak.tripod.com/ngos.html
Sedatives from the West:
How NGO's Damage Macedonia's Free Market Economy
by Christopher Deliso
October 4, 2003
Over the past decade or so, non-governmental organizations have sprung
up all over the Balkans - and indeed, all over the world. Allied with their
institutional sponsors, NGO's become institutions themselves, adopting a
vital role in political and economic developments. Avers Balkan expert and
economist Dr. Sam Vaknin:
".NGO's serve as long arms of their sponsoring states - gathering
intelligence, burnishing their image, and promoting their interests. There
is a revolving door between the staff of NGO's and government bureaucracies
the world over.
.the encroachment on state sovereignty of international law -
enshrined in numerous treaties and conventions - allows NGO's to get
involved in hitherto strictly domestic affairs like corruption, civil
rights, the composition of the media, the penal and civil codes,
environmental policies, or the allocation of economic resources and of
natural endowments, such as land and water. No field of government activity
is now exempt from the glare of NGO's. They serve as self-appointed
witnesses, judges, jury and executioner rolled into one."
This malevolent form of multi-tasking has reared its head, quite
overtly in little Macedonia.
Political Interference: the Case of Macedonia
US-funded strong-arming in the Balkans has enabled locals swept up in
their own idealism, righteousness and paranoia. On special occasions,
candidates possessing these qualities are wheeled out. Such was the case in
Macedonia, when the International Crisis Group's Edward Joseph sought to
sway the 2002 elections with a thoroughly underwhelming corruption report.
This example of institutional manipulation is more notable for its
motive than for its efficacy. While the chosen parties won, the machinations
of the ICG and Friends had zero effect on the result. A periodic changing of
the guard is a predictable and perhaps healthy feature of Macedonian
politics. But it certainly doesn't require outside prompting. Despite being
Balkan, the people aren't so stupid that they need to be told whom they are
to like and dislike.
Nevertheless, in his last televised address to the Macedonians, Joseph
implored the people not to vote for specific politicians. Now, having
finally gone back to the most perfect country on earth, this captain of
intervention continues to orate on the gripping issue of Macedonia today -
though most people back here have always been just mildly bemused with his
antics. However, there were some, like Dr. Vaknin, who reserved harsher
criticism for the failed interventionist:
".Joseph epitomizes everything that is rotten in American
interventionism. The likes of him - his brutish tactics, open bullying,
score-settling, and deep-set ignorance of local realities - made America
hated throughout the third and fourth worlds."
Macedonia - Land of the Lotus-Eaters
Despite the rhetoric about reforming undemocratic, lawless and corrupt
countries, NGO interventionists actually enable and perpetuate these
characteristics. After all, they don't work with saints. Promoting
"opposition" candidates and political "dissidents" inevitably means helping
longtime antagonists settle old scores. This Western fascination with
Lilliputian squabbles explains why, when elected, the "opposition" never
improves the lives of its citizens.
So why don't the Macedonians cry foul? The answer is simply because it
is not in their interest. Macedonians have learned to live - and even
profit - from NGO's. After almost 4 years of free money, they can't imagine
life without it. Yet this dependence on NGO employment and dividends
constitutes one of the biggest dangers to Macedonia's economy. Addiction to
free money and organizations with no entrepreneurial future are endangering
the very possibility of a free-market economy in Macedonia.
Some Hard Facts: the Kapital Report
A recent article in Kapital, Skopje's economic weekly, supports this
thesis. According to Kapital, statistics show that "at least 30 million
euros flow annually into non-governmental organizations in Macedonia" - of
which there are over 4,000 currently registered.
While up to 10 million euros come from "domestic" organizations, the
rest come from sometimes murky foreign sources. How is the money spent?
Avers Kapital, ".only the people who are spending the money - who have no
responsibility to account for it - know." Indeed, the NGO's have become a
completely unaccountable industry:
"'.Some of the NGOs have no idea why they exist,' says law school
professor Gyorgy Ivanov, who has been studying the development of Macedonian
civic society for 15 years. 'For example, there is an ecological association
whose members attend seminars 250 days a year, yet their offices have litter
all around. Many of them are functioning as
parasites with the sole purpose of spending grants. NGO employees live
the most comfortable lives and jobs in the NGO sector are the most enticing
and most profitable.' This is the rule, not the exception, he adds.'"
Keeping it in the Family
If not directly involved in an NGO, most Macedonians have a friend,
brother, mother or cousin involved with one. Typically, they start such
organizations in order to hire their own people - as with state-owned
companies in the old days of Socialism. And these are not only uneducated
opportunists we're talking about; tragically, distinguished individuals like
doctors, dentists, lawyers and professors often find that their NGO winnings
often trump the compensation available from their own chosen professions.
Indeed, there's little incentive for Macedonians to expose NGO
corruption, because they often profit from it. Even when the (foreign) chief
of one well-known humanitarian organization absconded to Vietnam, allegedly
with a suitcase containing $2 million in cash, there was no public outcry.
His local underlings, of course, had also benefited from this "trickle-down"
economics.
Unfortunately, NGO corruption is now discussed only when local
adversaries
try to settle scores, curry favor and finish off enemies. By
tantalizing provincial-minded locals with shimmering piles of cash, the West
has merely perpetuated that most unattractive of Balkan qualities -
begrudgery - while keeping the people too focused on illicit profiting to
realize how much they are compromising themselves.
NGO's and Economic Decision-Making
As in the political sector, NGO's are now instrumental to high-level
Macedonian economic decision-making. For example, George Soros' Open Society
Institute has become like a Vice-Ministry for Finance, present at major
meetings, representing large donors, and channeling large amounts of money
throughout Macedonia. Soros country chief Vladimir Milchin is so powerful
that he's treated more like a don than a bureaucrat.
Indeed, the largest NGO's interact informally with all of the key
economic players - the European Union, European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, World Bank and IMF. Economic coercion is the rule, not the
exception. Last summer, politically-active NGO's influenced the IMF's
decision not to reach a standby agreement with the Macedonian government.
Political and economic interests coalesced, and as so often happens, proved
indistinguishable.
Macedonia's Great Loss
Unfortunately, the current situation is ruining Macedonia's tentative
steps towards a free market economy. Small entrepreneurs and investors are
discouraged from risking their assets on a small and unpromising market. The
Kapital report quotes one official who pinpoints how the NGO's continue to
provide an easy way out for fearful would-be businessmen:
".Nafi Saracin of the European Commission said people in Macedonia are
more inclined to start their own NGO rather than invest in a new or
established company for the simple reason that it is the easiest way to make
money.
"At the moment, the NGO sector provides the safest . flow of money and
labor force recruitment," says Saracin. "Moreover, the procedure of
registering an NGO is much simpler than the procedure of registering a
company."
Harming the Economy
While generally timid and a little bit lazy, Macedonians are clever
and creative - especially with "misappropriating" resources. The Kapital
report details a "diverse" range of tactics, including the "manipulation of
remuneration and the double funding of projects" and the submission of fake
invoices.
There's something very sad about this. Such behavior shows that the
people don't aspire to be better than the politicians they claim to despise.
It also shows that they'd rather spend their time and creativity on methods
of self-enrichment that are ultimately mean, petty and unsustainable.
Scheming about how to recover expenses that never existed, to chronicle
conferences that were never held, to hire teachers who never graduated
requires the mental agility of a lab rat. While the immediate cash reward
may seem the perfect justification, such behavior merely shows a lack of
self-respect and lack of interest in the country's long-term economic
future.
Critics might argue that NGO's (corrupt and non-corrupt alike) are
useful, in that they pump money into the consumer economy. There are two
problems with this, however.
First of all, most NGO's don't produce or create anything. Here, the
"conflict resolution" and ethnic harmony types are absolutely the worst.
They offer a wealth of free advice and good intentions, but nothing
sustainable. For all of the simulated seminars, conferences and publications
generated over the past four years, ethnic relations haven't improved. That
was never the point, however; interventionist hacks are happy enough to own
two SUV's, live in the leafy part of Skopje and in rapturous tones sing of
planting trees in the countryside.
Economically speaking, NGO's do not create wealth. Nobody invests in
them. They are alien to the real small entrepreneurs who have traditionally
built free market economies by going out and risking their assets. NGO's do
not promote competition; rather, they promote and perpetuate systems of
patronage. Fundamentally, they are destructive insofar as they prolong the
old scourge of socialism, with all of its stasis and nepotism.
Further, the riches of non-governmental largesse are ephemeral, and
therefore dangerous. In most cases, they have been wasted on creature
comforts and conspicuous consumption. Yet someday the West will turn off the
funding faucet for good. Macedonians surely know this will happen, and
sooner rather than later; however, they prefer to milk the system for as
long as possible and "live for the moment." Someday, the NGO's will become
unsustainable, and only those who were able to illicitly transfer assets
into "private enterprises" beforehand will thrive.
Plenty of Blame for All
Non-governmental organizations are not inherently evil, of course. As
Dr. Vaknin reminds, organizations like Medecins san Frontieres perform some
beneficial services.
However, in Macedonia the NGO sector has had a largely negative
effect. By parking a Trojan horse loaded with free lucre outside the city
gates, the West has retarded the growth of the Macedonian economy and kept
the people mired in a destructive cycle of petty antagonism, vendetta and
nepotism. In short, it has perpetuated all of the worst qualities of the
former socialist system.
Now, the state's latest idea is to resurrect the dream of agrarian
Macedonia - by offering free arable land in the villages to anyone willing
to move from the city and become a peasant serf. Such a bizarre, doomed plan
only reaffirms the utter paucity of creative thought prevailing in the
soporific haze of post-war, civil-society Macedonia.
Of course, the Macedonians weren't coerced. They gladly fought for the
free funds, and devised novel schemes for stealing and cheating their
neighbors - in the process robbing themselves of their pride and the right
to say, "we did this for ourselves." But what does pride matter in an
utterly demoralized, thwarted country like Macedonia, anyway?
It is clear that the rule of the NGO's in Macedonia is waning. With
the death of this lucrative sector, the cash propping up an unhealthy
percentage of the population will also disappear. Outside observers have
long wondered at how a country with a 40 percent (official) unemployment
rate can survive. We're about to find out.