> supported by the US Agency for International Development
Isn’t it more usual for the NED to do such things? I remark upon this because it occurs to me that using USAID to do politics might make recipients suspicious of aid even when it’s both necessary from a humanitarian perspective and unlikely to threaten the ruling dispensation in the recipient country. (This is a separate question from whether the NED/US government as a whole should even involve itself in such matters, to which my answer is ‘maybe’, since the dubious stuff probably happens anyway and lots of these civil society organisations &c. actually do good work [e.g. the The
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma.])
True.. I was slightly inaccurate, This org. had various USG funders, with a large slice of funding from US-AID projects. Washington is full of these 'USAID contractors', some tiny others mega-sized. But this project may have been funded by a division of US Dept of State that is focused on Human Rights - DRL. Not sure where the lines are about which one US-Aid gets and which one is State. For example development of journalism in an emerging country would be US-Aid. But OTOH, a project promoting free elections in the same country could be State. Not sure.
In any case, they span the range from benign to hostile nations, with varying risks attached. The "About" page for many such sensitive orgs would be silent on who the team was, except if it was Americans (like me) who didn't mind being their name out there (or nervously okayed the name being public).
Isn’t it more usual for the NED to do such things? I remark upon this because it occurs to me that using USAID to do politics might make recipients suspicious of aid even when it’s both necessary from a humanitarian perspective and unlikely to threaten the ruling dispensation in the recipient country. (This is a separate question from whether the NED/US government as a whole should even involve itself in such matters, to which my answer is ‘maybe’, since the dubious stuff probably happens anyway and lots of these civil society organisations &c. actually do good work [e.g. the The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma.])