Home » Archives » April 2006 » Bought With Western Cash: Independent voices can be heard in Pakistan but NGOs are stifling genuine social movements
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04/08/2006:
"Bought With Western Cash: Independent voices can be heard in Pakistan but NGOs are stifling genuine social movements"
by Tariq Ali...The NGOs are no substitute for genuine social and political movements. In Africa, Palestine and elsewhere, NGOs have swallowed the neoliberal status quo. They operate like charities, trying to alleviate the worst excesses, but rarely question the systemic basis of the fact that 5 billion citizens of our globe live in poverty. They may be NGOs in Pakistan, but on the global scale they are western governmental organisations (WGOs), their cash flow conditioned by enforced agendas: Colin Powell once referred to them as "our fifth column".
A few of them are doing good work, but the overall effect of NGO-isation has been to atomise the tiny layer of progressives and liberals in the country. Most of these men and women struggle for their individual NGOs to keep the money coming. Petty rivalries assume exaggerated proportions; politics in the sense of grassroots organisation becomes virtually nonexistent. The salaries, in most cases, elevate WGO executives to the status of the local elites, creating the material basis for accepting the boundaries of the existing system.
guardian.co.uk
