IRAQ: Interview with head of new NGO ministry

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

BAGHDAD, 13 Dec 2004 (IRIN) - Dawood Pasha is Director-General of Iraq's new ministry of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), created to build aid agencies and civil society groups in Iraq. He spoke to IRIN in Baghdad about plans to regulate NGOs, the need for training of local staff and the image of NGOs in Iraq, where a deteriorating security situation has forced many international agencies out of the country.

QUESTION: What is the role of the newly created NGO ministry in Iraq?

ANSWER: We make sure that NGOs in the country coordinate with the government. We are also the ministry that deals with civil society. We don’t support any individual organisations, but we are licensing them so we don’t have any fake ones running around.

Q: If there are fake aid agencies, how will you regulate them?

A: We have a proposal to make a committee with members from our ministry and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to make laws about the aid agencies. Once we decide the conditions for the laws, we will tell the MoJ what we need.

Under the Coalition Provisional Authority [former US administrators], there were rules for registration. But they had different conditions than we have in Iraqi society. They gave permission to some aid agencies that we would not approve, so many fake ones could now be operating.

Q: What can you do to help foreign aid agencies feel comfortable to return to Iraq?

A: Under this [security] situation it’s impossible for them to be here. They will keep asking us about security and when it is safe to return. But at the same time, we are encouraging aid agencies [abroad] to help us. The minister travels to many countries to ask them for help. We can’t promise them safety, however, because there is no safety, even for us.

Q: How can you support civil society organisations in a place where there hasn’t been anything like that operating openly for so long?

A: When we reach this stage, if we can build a true civil society here, then people who work in [NGOs] can work as deputies for all of the international organisations in Iraq.

Some embassies say it is dangerous for them to deal with some of these [local non-governmental] organisations because they suspect some of being terrorist organisations. So we work to select people who we believe are trustworthy.

It’s easy [for organisations] to have representatives here to work with. But it’s hard to find people you can trust. We are trying to help organisations outside Iraq find people inside the country who they can train, especially one German aid agency [he declined to name the agency].

Q: What kind of training can people in Iraq receive?

A: During the past week we sent two employees to training. They are now ready to train our staff in the ministry. We ask aid agencies from all over Iraq to learn this training. We will select the ones we think are good and send their names to the German organisation that is helping us. The Japanese embassy and many other international organisations also are ready to help us.

If the democracy experiment fails in Iraq, people outside know refugees will try to go to the West and terrorism will rule the Middle East, so all aid agencies are trying to support us now.

Q: Do you work with the United Nations now?

A: If the United Nations would come back to Iraq, it would be a very good thing. During the training, we tried to get involved with the United Nations. We will help bring observers for the elections, for example. We met with Carlos Valenzuela from the Electoral Commission to figure out how to do this, so now we have a green light to coordinate with aid agencies to learn how to be observers for the elections.

Since the United Nations is the technical adviser for the elections, we’re trying to get help for them. Observers will be volunteers. One of the conditions for this programme is to be a volunteer because aid agencies should be based on the idea of volunteerism.

Q: How will you find people to be election observers?

A: We put an advertisement in the newspaper and we asked organisations to select people they thought would like to do it. The observers should have college graduates, they should know English and they should have a passport. We now have a list with hundreds of names on it and we’re going through it to make sure they meet the qualifications. The German organisation will take 60 of the people to start. Later, we hope to train more people.

Q: Since aid agencies and NGOs are relatively new in Iraq, how are they perceived?

A: At the beginning, people hoped for good things from these organisations. Now, many people have no confidence in these organisations because there are many of them that do no work. There may be thousands where there is no work, no projects - if each organisation that we knew about did only one project, we would have a good situation.

We hope these organisations will participate to make the security situation better as well, because nothing good can happen with the unstable security situation. Who wants to build a civil society when it is too dangerous for them now?

Q: Have any Iraqi aid agencies been threatened?

A: In some cities, like Mosul, they were threatened because people thought they had contacts with international companies.

In general, the view of any aid agency in Iraq is that it must be working with Mosad (the Israeli intelligence service) or the CIA (the US intelligence service). When I say these groups are just here to help the Iraqi people, many people think it’s a lie. The fundamentalist religious groups say this. And no one has seen foreigners for many years, so they are suspicious.

Q: So do you think things will be better for aid agencies if the election on 30 January goes ahead as scheduled?

A: Educated people who want to rebuild Iraq will support these organisations. But other groups will try to push them backwards. Insurgents and others are trying to make things fall backwards. Believe me, there is no way to go backward. We have to move forward.

Iraq is like a chess board right now, with the black pieces and the white pieces fighting each other. There is no middle ground.

[ENDS]