The International Republican Institute (IRI) is one of the core institutional vehicles of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Cold War-era organization created by the Reagan administration to push democratization efforts and roll back Soviet influence around the world. Although officially non-partisan, IRI is closely aligned with the Republican Party. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain serves as IRI chairman, and Lorne Craner, the former assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights and labor in the George W. Bush administration, is IRI president.
In a 2006 brochure about its work, the IRI claims: "When IRI began its work in 1983, advancing democracy was seen as a noble endeavor; today, it is recognized as a defense against terrorism." Underscoring this idea, President George W. Bush said in a 2005 speech at an IRI event in Washington: "I appreciate the work IRI is doing to advance the cause of liberty. For more than two decades, IRI has been at the forefront of democratic change in more than a hundred countries. You've trained the next generation of leaders, you've strengthened political parties, you've monitored elections, and you're helping to build civil societies. You've made an enormous difference in the lives of millions across the world—I hope that makes you feel good." He later added: "If the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and resentment and violence ready for export. The United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East; a strategy that recognizes the best way to defeat the ideology that uses terror as a weapon is to spread freedom and democracy."
The IRI is the indirect product of a democratic globalism effort spearheaded in the late 1970s by neoconservatives and their allies in the AFL-CIO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and in the two main U.S. political parties. This project, which aimed to create a quasi-governmental instrument for U.S. political aid that could replace the CIA's controversial efforts to do the same, came to fruition in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan proposed a new organization to promote free-market democracies around the world, the NED. In 1983 Congress approved the creation of NED, which was funded primarily through the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and secondarily through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Designed as a bipartisan institution, NED channels U.S. government funding through four core grantees: IRI, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), Center for International Private Enterprise, and the Free Trade Union Institute—the AFL-CIO's international operations institute that is currently known as the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. (For an institutional perspective on the origins of the NED and its affiliated organizations, see David Lowe, "Idea to Reality: A Brief History of the National Endowment for Democracy," NED, undated.)
Like NED and the other core grantees, the early focus of IRI was Central America and the Caribbean—a region that in the 1980s was the cutting edge of the Reagan administration's revival of counterinsurgency and counter-revolutionary operations. After the Soviet bloc began to disintegrate in 1989, according to IRI's website, the institute "broadened its reach to support democracy around the globe." The IRI has channeled U.S. political aid to partners—which like itself are often creations of U.S. funding—in some 75 countries, and it currently has operations in 50 countries. Most recently, it has expanded its operations into Central Asia, having opened offices in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. In Latin America, IRI has offices in Guatemala, Peru, and Haiti. In Africa, IRI has offices in Kenya, Nigeria, and Angola. IRI's offices in Asia are found in Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, and Mongolia. In Central and Eastern Europe, IRI has offices in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Turkey. There is also an IRI office in Moscow.
IRI's leadership spans the center right, far right, and neoconservative factions of the Republican Party. Most of its staff and board have links to right-wing think tanks, foundations, and policy institutes, while many also represent major financial, oil, and defense corporations. George A. Folsom, IRI former president and CEO, was a member of the Bush-Cheney Transition Team, serving on the Treasury Department task force. An international investment banker, Folsom was a leading member of the Scowcroft Group, an international advisory firm headed by Brent Scowcroft, President George H.W. Bush's national security adviser and current IRI board member. Also serving on the board are Paul Bremer, former special envoy to post-invasion Iraq; and Randy Scheuneman, a former board member of the Project for the New American Century and founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, two neoconservative-led pressure groups that helped push official and public support for the invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks. IRI's vice president of strategic planning and Latin America expert is Georges Fauriol, the former director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he co-chaired with Otto Reich of the Americas Forum, a hemispheric network of like-minded policy professionals. Among Fauriol's other affiliations are his work with the right-wing Foreign Policy Research Institute and the USIA.
Attempted Coup in Venezuela. After the April 2002 aborted coup against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, many observers accused Washington of having been behind the attempted ouster. The Bush administration denied any U.S. involvement in the affair. However, one relatively clear connection emerged between the U.S. government and the anti-Chávez movement: millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money channeled through the IRI and other U.S. organizations that funded groups opposed to Chávez during the years preceding the April coup. Writer Mike Ceaser reported that in an April 12, 2002, fax sent to news media, IRI President George A. Folsom rejoiced over Chávez's removal from power. "The Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country," he wrote. "Venezuelans were provoked into action as a result of systematic repression by the government of Hugo Chávez." With NED funding, IRI had been sponsoring political party-building workshops and other anti-Chávez activities in Venezuela. "IRI evidently began opposing Chávez even before his 1998 election," wrote Ceaser. "Prior to that year's congressional and presidential elections, the IRI worked with Venezuelan organizations critical of Chávez to run newspaper ads, TV, and radio spots that several observers characterize as anti-Chávez" (Mike Ceaser, "As Turmoil Deepens in Venezuela, Questions Regarding NED Activities Remain Unanswered," Americas Program, December 9, 2002).
Further, according to Ceaser, "The IRI has ... flown groups of Chávez opponents to Washington to meet with U.S. officials. In March 2002, a month before Chávez's brief ouster, one such group of politicians, union leaders, and activists traveled to DC to meet with U.S. officials, including members of Congress and State Department staff. The trip came at the time that several military officers were calling for Chávez' resignation and talk of a possible coup was widespread." One opposition figure to benefit from IRI support said that bringing varied government opponents together in Washington accelerated the unification of the opposition. "The democratic opposition began to become cohesive," he said. "We began to become a team."
The Coup in Haiti. In the first year of the George W. Bush administration, IRI received USAID funding for a new "Party Building Project" in Haiti, a country in which it had been involved since 1987. The IRI's recent USAID-funded party-building activities have focused on working with the political opposition living outside Haiti.
According to Robert Maguire, director of the Haiti Program at Trinity College in Washington, DC: "NED and USAID are important, but actually the main actor is the International Republican Institute (IRI), which has been very active in Haiti for many years but particularly in the past three years. IRI has been working with the opposition groups. IRI insisted, through the administration, that USAID give it funding for its work in Haiti. And USAID has done so but kicking and screaming all the way. IRI has worked exclusively with the Democratic Convergence groups in its party-building exercises and support. The IRI point person is Stanley Lucas who historically has had close ties with the Haitian military. All of the IRI sponsored meetings with the opposition have occurred outside Haiti, either in the DR or in the United States. The IRI ran afoul with Aristide right from the beginning since it has only worked with opposition groups that have challenged legitimacy of the Aristide government. Mr. Lucas is a lightning rod of the IRI in Haiti. The United States could not have chosen a more problematic character through which to channel its aid" (Tom Barry, "Aristide's Fall: The Undemocratic U.S. Policy in Haiti," IRC America's Program, February 27, 2004).
Similarly, the blog Raw Story (June 9, 2006) recounted how many press outlets described IRI's role in the Haiti coup, reporting: "IRI has also been accused of being a major factor in the violent coup which removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in Haiti in February 2004, leaving that country in a state of chaos. According to both the New York Times and Salon, IRI had spent years undermining the reconciliation process after disputed elections, counseling and funding opposition groups, and training coup leaders. The secretive aspect to some of IRI's activities, combined with its repeated involvement in subverting left-leaning politicians and parties, creates the appearance that it may be acting as one more tool in the Bush administration's arsenal for regime change by any means available. The recent increase in IRI's federal funding—which almost tripled, from $26 million to $75 million, between 2003 and 2005—adds grounds to this suspicion."
War on Terror. IRI has actively supported administration objectives in the war on terror, with programs in 10 countries in the Greater Middle East region. In particular, the institute has been accused repeatedly of using potentially misleading polling data to push the Bush agenda, both at home and abroad. Reported Raw Story (June 9, 2006): "During the Afghan presidential election of October 2004, IRI's pre-election poll showed Hamid Karzai with a strong lead, and its exit poll, released immediately after the vote and well before the ballots were counted, also gave him over 50% of the vote. The British Helsinki Human Rights Group subsequently suggested that these polls might have helped head off scrutiny of an election that had initially been met with well-founded suspicions of fraud. IRI's polls also serve to influence public opinion in the United States. A year ago, MediaMatters pointed out that the Washington Post had cited an IRI poll showing that '60% of Iraqis believed the country is headed in the right direction' without indicating the partisan nature of its source. In September 2004, President Bush had cited a similar IRI poll at a press conference, saying, 'I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. It's pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future.'"
IRI's website paints a rosier picture of its work: "Although advocates of democracy in the Middle East and North Africa face entrenched interests that feel threatened by reform, notable progress accompanied the challenges witnessed in 2005. Women now have the right to vote in Kuwait, domestic observers can monitor multiparty elections in Egypt, popular protests in Lebanon led to the end of Syrian occupation, and the first elected parliament in more than three decades took office in Afghanistan. The International Republican Institute (IRI) provides support to these advocates of reform in the fields of elections, civil society, and governance programs."
The positive spin aside, there is evidence that efforts to fund democracy activities in the Middle East are backfiring. In a June 2007 article for the New York Times Magazine, Negar Azimi recounted how efforts to funnel money to Iranian groups through the Office of Iranian Affairs, an outfit established in 2006 within the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, were facing criticism "not only from Iranian officials but also from some of the very people whose causes it aims to advance."
Reported Azimi: "For the Iranian government, the democracy fund is just one more element in an elaborate Bush administration regime-change stratagem. ('Is there even a perception that the American government has democracy in mind?' Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, asked me recently in New York. 'Except among a few dreamers in Eastern Europe?') In recent months, Tehran has upped the pressure on any citizens who might conceivably be linked to the democracy fund and, by extension, on civil society at large, making the mere prospect of American support counterproductive, even reckless. ... It is particularly telling, perhaps, that some of the most outspoken critics of the Iranian government have been among the most outspoken critics of the democracy fund. Activists from the journalist Emadeddin Baghi to the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi to the former political prisoner Akbar Ganji have all said thanks but no thanks. Ganji has refused three personal invitations to meet with Bush. A member of a U.S.-based institution that has received State Department financing and who works with Iranians told me that the Iranians had expressly asked not to have their cause mentioned in presidential speeches. 'The propaganda campaign surrounding the launch of this campaign has meant that many of our partners are simply too afraid to work with us anymore,' she told me on condition of anonymity. 'It's had a chilling effect.'"
Head of the Office of Iranian Affairs is David Denehy, who according to Azimi is "a veteran of democracy promotion programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia with the International Republican Institute and a close associate of [former] Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. During the Iraq War, he served in Baghdad from June to October 2003, where his focus was on civil-society development."
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Contact Information
International Republican Institute (IRI)
1225 Eye Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202.408.9450
Fax: 202.408.9462
E-mail: info@iri.org
Web: www.iri.org
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