Weekly Worker 597 Thursday October 20 2005

Like sending money to George Bush

SWP members in Respect are involved in collecting money for the bourgeois religious charity, Islamic Relief. But socialists should be supporting left and democratic organisations in Pakistan, who are not only struggling in the aftermath of an earthquake, but are also engaged in a battle against general Musharraf’s military dictatorship, says Tina Becker

Respect offers rather confused advice to democrats and socialists on what they can do to support the victims of the Pakistan earthquake. The organisation’s website prominently features a brief report by Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, which welcomes a visit by Tariq Ali to the party’s relief camp in Regal Chouk: “In his speech, he said that most foreign aid is normally eaten up by the corrupt bureaucracy and officials. Not even 10% of such aid reaches the relevant people,” writes comrade Tariq, who ends with the stark warning: “We fear this could happen when foreign aid comes to Pakistan after the recent earthquake.”

Reality provides more than one example to justify such fears. During an earthquake in 1974, nearly 10,000 people died in Pakistan. After a well-publicised appeal by the then prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, millions of dollars were donated towards the relief effort. However, writes Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad on ZNet, “Hundreds of millions of dollars in relief funds received from abroad mysteriously disappeared. Some well-informed people believe that those funds were used to kick off Pakistan’s secret nuclear programme” (www.zmag.org/content/showartic-le.cfm?ItemID=8930).

The aftermath of the Asian tsunami, too, has shown that the vast majority of those left homeless and destitute have yet to receive a single penny of the millions generated by the concerned public.

At the core of the problem is the lack of transparency and accountability involved in the charity sector. Without any kind of democratic control over such donations, they are almost guaranteed to disappear into the coffers of the local elite or corrupt government.

Therefore it is to be welcomed that Respect highlights Tariq Ali’s public support for a secular and non-government organisation like the Labour Party Pakistan. However, no contact details are given, no instructions on how Respect members can actively support the party’s relief camp.

Logical next step

Instructively though, the main item on Respect’s website is an article entitled ‘Respect urges earthquake relief’, which not only calls for donations to the religious charity, Islamic Relief, but reports that Respect and SWP members have been actively involved in raising funds for it.  For good measure the statement ends by giving details of Islamic Relief’s address, telephone number and website, where donations can be made.

Why does the SWP/Respect single out Islamic Relief? If you are set on supporting a bourgeois charity, why not give to one of the bigger ones in Britain, like the Red Cross or Oxfam? Or even more rationally, why not give directly to the Disaster Emergency Committee, which is coordinating the relief efforts of all the main British charities (of which Islamic Relief became a member just a few months ago)?

All rhetorical questions, I admit. Readers of the Weekly Worker, of course, know why: it is the next step on the popular frontist path that the SWP has set for Respect to follow. In its desperate quest to subordinate itself to the politics of the mosque leaders, the SWP leadership quite logically ends up supporting a religious, pro-establishment charity in preference to democratic working class organisations.

It is perhaps understandable that Socialist Worker does not mention what SWP members in Bradford and Preston have been up to. But its coverage is poor and gives no advice at all on how socialists could support the democratic struggle in Pakistan.

According to the SWP weekly, Murtaza Ali, a Pakistani journalist based in London, complains that Nato and the Pakistani army “have failed to give earthquake aid”. Ali says that the Pakistani army “could have moved in swiftly to help. Instead it is nowhere in sight. The response of the Musharraf regime is shambolic and insensitive. Ministers are going on TV telling people to calm down, as if nothing has happened. This is to the shame of the military regime. The Pakistani military have control of all the country’s resources. They have failed us. The US and Nato forces in Afghanistan are only sending four or five helicopters to help. They are in the region to control the resources” (Socialist Worker October 15).

I presume that Socialist Worker wants its readers to conclude from this rather naive description that democrats and socialists should not pin their hopes on corrupt governments and bourgeois institutions to bring about relief. And should we not further conclude that we should have nothing to do with bourgeois charities that work hand in glove with such corrupt governments and bourgeois institutions? Charities like Islamic Relief, for example? Clearly, the SWP is all over the place politically.

What is Islamic Relief?

According to its own description, Islamic Relief “promotes sustainable economic and social development by working with local communities - regardless of race, religion or gender”. However, if we take a closer look at where the money goes, it becomes clear that IR focuses exclusively on countries with a large muslim population. In 2004, the main recipients were projects in Palestine (£1.7 million), Sudan (£1.8 million), Iraq (£1.3 million), Chechnya (£1 million) and Iran (£800,000). IR also finances the Islamic Faculty in Kosova, which is run by the Masha’iqa (Official Muslim Community Office).

It has to be said that, even compared to other bourgeois charities, Islamic Relief spends an awful lot of money simply on sustaining itself. Out of its total income of £22 million in 2004, only “£13 million was spent on charitable activities”, according to its 2004 annual accounts, posted on the website of the charity commission.

• In 2004, Islamic Relief spent almost £5 million on “administration and generating funds”: ie, well over 22% of its total income. An additional £1.7 million was spent on “managing and administering the charity” and “support costs”. Most charities are trying to keep their admin costs at around the 5% mark and the website, charityfacts.org, comments that “we would normally have concerns about a charity spending more than 15% of its income on administration. Such charities we would ask to justify their level of expense” (www.charityfacts.org/charity_facts/charity_costs/what_is_an.html).
• Islamic Relief has 134 employees in Britain, with “emoluments for one employee in the band of £50,000 to £60,000”.
• It also owns properties worth over £5 million, motor vehicles worth £40,000, has a “general reserve fund” of over £5 million and has £1.28 million invested in “endowment funds” (all information from www.charity-commission.gov.uk).

Most of IR’s 2004 income of just under £22 million stems from donations from the British and European public. A large section of this will be zakat contributions. All muslims have to pay their zakat - a 2.5% ‘tax’ on any cash savings, gold or silver they might own - to charity on a specific day every year.

Just over £7 million was collected in Britain and another £11.2 million in other European countries, particularly France, where IR runs a subsidiary. But IR also received the not insignificant amount of £1.7 million from various state and official institutions, including:

• almost £500,000 from the islamic government of Qatar (which also sponsors the TV channel, Al-Jazeera);
• £460,000 from the European Commission;
• £205,000 from the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development;
• £170,000 from various United Nations programmes;
• £123,000 from the Arab Medical Union;
• almost £60,000 from the British government’s department for international development and another £28,000 from the foreign office.

Needless to say, donations from governments and intergovernmental institutions do not come without strings. Often, support for the ‘home economy’ is an integral condition of aid: money is given as a ‘restricted donation’: ie, there are clear rules about which company’s equipment must be used to dig a well or which firm will get the contract to train local people to become nurses or teachers.

There is no democratic control over charities like Islamic Relief. Neither do donors have any say over how their money is spent - and, of course, it goes without saying that democratic forces in the receiving countries have no control whatsoever over where it goes. The charity sector is just as unaccountable as private companies and governments.

Existing structures

IR chairman Dr Hany El Banna with King Hussein of Jordan

As we have pointed out previously, particularly in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, bourgeois charities are obliged to work with governments, military commanders and local elites. They need to maintain good relations with such bodies in order to gain access to the affected areas. In most cases, they have to rely on existing power structures in order to distribute aid, as they are often unable to go directly to the people most affected.

IR’s website reports that “the UK government has donated 10,000 tarpaulins, 1,000 winter tents and 700 blankets to Islamic Relief for distribution to survivors. Another aid donation [by the UK government] of 19,000 blankets has been received by IR staff in Pakistan and has been despatched to Bagh and Muzaffarabad” - where they will undoubtedly be distributed with the help of Musharraf’s military regime.

In this way, Islamic Relief (like any other charity) helps to reinforce existing power structures. Structures that often play a crucial part in transforming a natural occurrence like an earthquake into a human and social disaster. It was not the earth tremors that killed over 40,000 people in Pakistan. Most of them were killed by poorly constructed buildings. While the disaster had a natural cause, the outcome was purely man-made and a result of poverty. A similarly strong earthquake in California a few years ago killed no more than two people.

IR chairman Dr Hany El Banna with James D Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank

Even a quick glance at IR’s website shows how closely it is working with the ruling elites across the world. There are dozens of pictures that show the proudly grinning IR chairman, Dr Hany El Banna, posing with the Indonesian minister for housing, the former prime minister of Malaysia and James D Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank.

King Abdullah II of Jordan is reported to have “praised Islamic Relief’s humanitarian work around the world” at a meeting with El Banna, agreeing to “give his full support”. Our own prince Charles met with IR officials in Sri Lanka in February 2005, commenting that “Islamic Relief is a tremendous organisation, doing very important work” (www.islamic-relief.com/submenu/partnership/Partnership_28web.pdf). No wonder the SWP wants us to back it.

Support democratic struggles

By supporting a thoroughly bourgeois charity like Islamic Relief, the SWP and Respect are also indirectly supporting the governments and local elites responsible for those shoddy buildings, together with the desperately bad infrastructure, systemic inequality and grinding poverty in many ‘third world’ countries. Just like other bourgeois charities, Islamic Relief makes no effort to bypass official structures. It sends social workers into small communities to “help people to organise their own water supplies” and distributes emergency supplies after natural disasters. But it sees the best way of promoting “sustainable economic and social development” as handing out grants and loans to start up local businesses.

Obviously none of this will do anything to bring about an end to the dire situation in less developed countries that are regularly laid bare by earthquakes, tsunamis and floods. Islamic Relief certainly does not specifically support any trade union, democratic or women’s organisations struggling from below - organisations that have not only been hit by an earthquake, but are also fighting their own ruling class.

Particularly when it comes to the aid effort in a military dictatorship, socialists have a duty to channel any funds to their sisters and brothers in working class organisations like the Labour Party Pakistan. Members of Respect and the SWP should rebel now against their leadership’s unprincipled support for a bourgeois religious charity.

Giving money to Islamic Relief is like sending money to George W Bush after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

• Click here for a list of democratic and working class organisations in Pakistan that need your support now

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