A planned decrease by the Obama administration in funding for democracy promotion and election support in the Middle East is prompting alarm among activists. They say cuts are likely to be more severe than first realized and that the White House appears to be giving up on democracy in the region and downgrading its advancement as a policy priority. In the run-up to Christmas, State Department officials briefed American non-profits funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) about cuts in funding. They were told no money was being earmarked for democracy and governance assistance programs in Iraq and that, for Egypt, the administration was adopting a wait-and-see approach until after a January 15 referendum on a newly-drafted constitution. No extra funding for democracy promotion is being earmarked for Libya, whose transition from autocracy following the toppling of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi has been plagued by lawlessness. USAID democracy programs there were cut by about half last year, following the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that led to the deaths of ambassador Christopher Sevens and three other Americans. The total amount of foreign assistance requested by the Obama administration for the Middle East and North Africa for fiscal year 2014 is $7.36 billion, a nine percent decrease from FY2013. Of that, $298.3 million has been requested to support democracy and governance programming across the region, a cut of $160.9 million from FY 2013. But those briefed last month by State Department officials say the decrease in funding is likely in effect to be harsher and that it may be masked when the administration goes through with plans to re-categorize so-called D&G funding by combining it with development programs. That will make it difficult to follow what actually has been spent on democracy promotion. “We had expected big cuts in D&G to the region soon,” says Cole Bockenfeld, director of Advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington DC-based non-profit. “In many ways, there was already a widespread perception that this administration was giving up on promoting democracy in the Middle East, and major cuts to democracy funding will further confirm those fears.” Overall, he says, “there is clearly a diminished focus on democracy best illustrated by Obama’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly.”
