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US President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze the funds of the United States Agency for International Development will help in defanging the Left and Islamists at the global level
USAID and similar organisations have been promoting dangerous people and ideas all over the world. (AP Photo)
US President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze the funds of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for 90 days will go a long way toward defanging the Left and Islamists at the global level. USAID and similar organisations have been promoting dangerous people and ideas all over the world. Some such people are in our neighbourhood—Bangladesh Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus and his Islamist cronies who are determined to establish a Taliban regime in Dhaka and reduce the religious minorities to chattels. The decision came a few days after Washington suspended funding to Bangladesh.
The Trump administration has discerned a pattern in the functioning of USAID and other global bodies. Max Primorac, senior research fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at US-based The Heritage Foundation, best summarized the pattern in a report last year: “Good governance practices have been replaced by ideologically driven political agendas, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgenderism, and climate alarmism. Together, these policies have undercut the effectiveness of our economic tools of soft power and enabled China and other malign actors to strengthen their strategic position in the global south.”
Specifically about USAID, Primorac wrote: “An example of the radicalization of our aid is USAID’s $45 million, five-year program to promote ‘human rights, social justice, democracy, and inclusive development around the world’ based on the social movement theories of an Italian Marxist professor.”
Notice how the laudable objectives like human rights and democracy have been mixed with the abomination called social justice (also known as diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI). Also, notice that the supposed promotion of democracy is used to fund and empower Leftists and Islamists all over the world. Hamas was among the beneficiaries, Primorac wrote.
And so were Bangladeshi Islamists. In fact, the entire Left-liberal ecosystem has supported Yanus and his jihadists. One of them is Mahfuz Alam, Yunus’ special assistant. Alam is closely associated with the Islamist outfit Hizb-ut-Tahrir. At a function at the Clinton Foundation in the US last September, Yunus introduced Alam as “the brain behind the movement” against the democratically elected government of Sheikh Hasina. That government has been replaced with an Islamist clique.
The Clintons, the Obamas—indeed large sections of Western political and intellectual elites—have worked hard to infest the ecosystem of international organizations with woke and Islamist mobs. The ecosystem helps anyone who is the enemy of liberty, be it Hamas, Yunus, or China. Remember World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus? Propped up by China, he did exactly what his masters in Beijing wanted him to do; he delayed to acknowledge human-to-human transfer of the novel coronavirus, thus exacerbating the lethality and horrors of Covid.
The functionaries of USAID and other similar outfits were like the freebooters of the American deep state, engineering regime changes (as in Bangladesh). It has been reported in the media that US government agencies like USAID played a key role in bringing down the Hasina government. “The plan to remove Sheikh Hasina as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh was set in motion in early 2019″ which “was executed by government-funded agencies operating from the United States.”
Then there was the PAIRS (Promoting Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency Support) Programme. Firstpost reported that it “was strategically designed to counteract perceived Indian influence in Bangladeshi politics.” The report further said, “The PAIRS programme employed a multifaceted approach similar to other protests organised globally at the insistence of the US, involving collaborations with religious extremist organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami and US-funded “civil society” groups. This dynamic created a situation where violent street protests escalated tensions, while civil society groups served as the public face of dissent, allowing US-backed political parties to manoeuvre amidst the chaos.”
Determined to finish the deep state, Trump is striving to starve these agencies of funds; this has incensed liberals in the US and elsewhere. Trump was not very accurate when he said that USAID was “run by radical lunatics”; they are actually radical fanatics. His close confidante Elon Musk described the agency as a “criminal organisation.”
Typically, liberals of the world have united in vilifying the duo and distorting facts. A news agency, for instance, said that the decision on USAID “has led to chaos in the aid and development field.” The BBC website said, “The turmoil was felt in countries including Afghanistan, where American aid has been funding life-saving services for women and children. One midwife told the BBC that all medical centres funded by USAID had closed and dozens of workers had been told to stay at home.”
As far as India is concerned, USAID disbursements have been declining in the last few years—coming down from $228.18 million in 2022 to $175.72 million in 2023 and then to $151.8 million in 2024. Some projects will suffer, but governments and philanthropic entities can intervene to continue the good work. At any rate, this cost is minuscule, while the demise of the monster called USAID will bring unprecedented rewards for mankind.
The author is a freelance journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
