Shorouk Express
In my many overseas assignments for USAID, some in dangerous places for U.S. diplomats, I saw first-hand the good our foreign aid can do.
In 2002, I was the head of USAID in Pakistan when the War on Terror began. The goal of our aid was to help convince Pakistani leaders that joining the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was the right decision. And with this in mind, I proposed restarting an old USAID program, which had sent future Pakistani leaders to the U.S. for their higher education. They had brought home good memories of the U.S. and, over the years, helped keep Pakistan’s leaders pro-America.
During our meeting, the country’s new finance minister balked at my suggestions, saying none of the students would come back once they’d graduated. So, I took a gamble and asked the dozen or so advisors in the room how many of them had studied in the U.S. under the old program. They all raised their hands. The minister said: “You win.”
A few years after that, I was the head of USAID for Asia when a terrible earthquake and tsunami hit Indonesia and spread across the Indian Ocean. The Pentagon sent an aircraft carrier, as the nearby airports and roads were wrecked, and helicopters were the only way to reach many villages with life-saving food and water.
I was there, on deck, with then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. It was crowded with choppers coming and going, and palettes of supplies, all branded “From the American People.” USAID officers and the humanitarian agencies they funded knew what was needed and where. They were out on the deck, directing the whole operation.
Later, toward the end of my career, I led a team of U.S. government officers on the Turkish-Syrian border, managing aid that was going into Syria from 2012 to 2016. We were trying to sustain communities the Syrian government was trying to starve for supporting the rebels who stood up to the barbaric regime.
