Jihad al-Bina's Reconstruction Terrorism
Interview
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(page 5 of 6) Do you work with relief or development organizations funded by American sources? We refuse to work with USAID (footnote 6), MEPI (footnote 7) or any institution supported by the American government. This is not unlike an unofficial understanding that says: You don’t work with us and we don’t work with you. However we have no problem working with or administering donations from the American people. There is a big difference here. And we have received donations from (non-Arab) American organizations and sources that have no affiliation with the American government. I can’t release names or amounts for obvious reasons. Where do you get the bulk of your funding as an NGO? What is the role of Iran in financing your operations? We don’t receive funding from the Iranian government. However we do accept and receive funds from private donors and nongovernmental institutions, regardless of their religious orientation. The government of Qatar has adopted four destroyed towns in southern Lebanon. It has set up an engineering office to directly liaise with local municipalities and to implement reconstruction projects. What is JaB’s position on the Qatari initiative? Do you view it as an attempt to undermine your efforts and to prop up the U.S.-backed Siniora government? We think that Qatar’s objectives in this context are purely humanitarian without any hidden political agenda. Similarly, countries of the EU have no quarrel with JaB; their policy decisions in relation to us are independent of American meddling. Which do you think are JaB’s main shortcomings? I think we have shortcomings in almost everything we do. With our humble resources, we are able to provide only a fraction of community needs, whether they are Christian or Muslim. Our experience shows that 35 percent of people across the sectarian divide are below the poverty line. We try to expand our services beyond the Shi’a circle to reach other Muslim and Christian communities, as we have done in the agricultural co-op convention we organized in October 2007. What has been the impact of the terrorist label on the engineers who work with JaB? It strengthened our resolve to continue the work, especially when we realized that the United States continues to pursue policies according to the Israeli agenda in our part of the world. The blatantly false terrorist label proved to us and to our people that we are actually on the right path in confronting the Israeli agenda. We do think that the “terrorist” designation is trivial and purely based on political calculations rather than the nature of our work on the ground. The American Embassy in Lebanon and the U.S. government in Washington are the only parties to take the designation seriously. Have there been any changes in JaB’s strategy or direction since the war? I started my job as general director of JaB in early July 2006, on the eve of the Israeli war on Lebanon. Our organization has the operational agility to tackle emergencies as they arise. And our performance during and after the war is a great testament to our flexibility as a technical team. Looking ahead, we are planning a five-year strategy to address poverty in our communities in the face of impending dangers due to neo-liberal policies, WTO requirements, and deregulation and harsh privatization of critical public-sector services. Such policies concentrate economic wealth and consolidate political power, within a small fraction of the population at the expense of the great majority. They impoverish the poor and enrich the wealthy. Poverty will affect hundreds of thousands of households. Our strategies aim to create new outlets for local production and dignified job opportunities. Our ultimate objective is to safeguard the dignity of the working class. Footnote 6: According to usaid.gov, the United States Agency for International Development “is the government agency providing US economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for more than 40 years.” (return to corresponding paragraph) Footnote 7: According to mepi.state.gov, “The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) is a Presidential initiative founded to support economic, political, and educational reform efforts in the Middle East and North Africa… MEPI is structured in four reform areas: political, economic, education, and women’s empowerment.” (return to corresponding paragraph) |
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