Meet Dr. Rajiv Shah, Nominee for USAID Administrator

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone. Last night we learned that after an unusually long gap, the Obama Administration is strongly hinting at the nomination of Rajiv Shah, a health administrator, former Gore adviser, and US Department of Agriculture official, for head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Since USAID is one of the largest donors to global development as well as humanitarian aid, conflict mitigation, and civil society around the world, global peace-seekers are wise to understand the role.

WHAT IS USAID? The agency's first forty years were spent funding overseas support to agriculture and hunger prevention, public health and disease control, education and leadership development, and democracy and civil society, as well as humanitarian aid. The last decade with Bush appointee Andrew Natsios witnessed new attention to aid as incentive for democratization, aid as part of global conflict mitigation, and - most controversially among progressives - aid as part of counter-terrorism and military strategy. In fiscal year 2008, USAID's net cost of operations was $8.9 billion with $1.4 billion toward governance and justice, $845 million toward peace and security (including civilian support to civil-military and counter-terror operations), and $582 million toward humanitarian assistance.

Acting head Henrietta Fore held the ship together until the Obama Administration came on board. Secretary Clinton and others first nominated Paul Farmer, a superhero among progressives who have followed his work fighting both disease and stigma for survivors of infection in the Caribbean, but the nomination dissolved. Now the Obama Administration has put its money on Rajiv Shah, a young health professional and former political adviser.

WHO IS RAJIV SHAH? Shah is a 36-year-old doctor who managed huge foundation operations for the Gates Foundation, then served as health policy advisor to the Gore Campaign before landing a post as Chief Scientist at the US Department of Agriculture. Before he can take the post as USAID Administrator he will have to be confirmed by congressional hearings in the coming weeks. Chances are the Administration was willing to sacrifice progressive heroism (a la Paul Farmer, who Clinton apparently wanted but couldn't get through) and experience for moderate political expertise and public health professionalism. His toughest task is to consider whether and how to improve the agency in terms of how aid interfaces with partnership-building in areas affected by war.

WHAT DO PEACE-SEEKERS NEED TO KNOW? Shah, if confirmed, will arguably wield more power over how US tax-payer dollars are applied to the prevention of war, hunger, epidemics, and poverty than any other administrator outside President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and the congressional foreign relations committee chairs. Most progressives I know tend to agree that although national security is vital, the Bush Administration may have gone too far in blending aid with security. The Obama Administration and perhaps Shah would likely be willing to listen to constituents who recommend increasing donor priority for civilian peacebuilding, humanitarian aid, public health, and anti-poverty while the specifics within counter-terror and civil military efforts USAID are opened back up for debate. For example, huge USAID contracts in Iraq went to corporate, for-profit entities when many believe the work could have been much more efficiently and with more successful adverence to the local context if a some simple changes were made in the way contracts were awarded.

While the Iraq generation of aid workers seems to believe strongly in civil-military aid as a means of winning wars and therefore peace, the previous generations as well as human rights activists tend to argue that USAID should focus exclusively on civilian aid while military-related aid be run by a different agency. This is because in the past few years fighting groups like the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Mahdi Army and others have assumed that if a local office of aid workers had a USAID label on their folders that they were part of the war effort and therefore prime targets for assassination. Many aid workers - and millions of dollars in programs and program outcomes - were lost because of this blurring of the lines. Again, this is a debate Shah, if confirmed, will be at the center of. For more on his confirmation, see this very thorough story on Politico.

[Photo: USAID at the Reagan Building in Washington, Cliff.]