Iraqi Red Crescent Paralyzed by Allegations

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Source: Washington Post

The Iraqi Red Crescent, the country's leading humanitarian organization, has been crippled by allegations of embezzlement and mismanagement, including what Iraqi officials call the inappropriate expenditure of more than $1 million on Washington lobbying firms in an unsuccessful effort to win U.S. funding.

The group's former president, Said I. Hakki, an Iraqi American urologist recruited by Bush administration officials to resuscitate Iraq's health-care system, left the country this summer after the issuance of arrest warrants for him and his deputies. He and his aides deny the allegations and call them politically motivated.

The Red Crescent oversees the largest humanitarian operation in the country, with thousands of employees and an annual budget of $60 million funded in large part by the Iraqi government. The group has ceased nearly all its humanitarian work in recent months after the government froze its assets. The agency, which distributed more than 35,000 emergency food packages in June, handed out just 2,000 in July.

The crisis at the Red Crescent -- detailed in interviews, internal agency documents and investigative reports -- illustrates many of the challenges Iraq faces as its leaders seek to assert more control over security, reconstruction and humanitarian work. Iraqi officials point to Hakki and other former exiles brought to Iraq by the U.S. government as one reason that key institutions remain inefficient and corrupt.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403938.html?hpid=topnews