Morning Briefing

In this Atlantic opinion piece, Joshua Foust, an author and a fellow at the American Security Project, examines the use of a non-traditional aid model known as the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN) in Pakistan, where "heavy rains and devastating flooding ... displaced upwards of 20 million people" in July 2010. Though USAID "is very good at quickly mobilizing assistance," including medical, shelter, food, and water aid, "to disaster-afflicted communities, it carries a lot of political baggage -- so much so in places like Pakistan that the U.S might be better off in the long run by downsizing USAID's direct activities there and working through alternative programs," he writes. Therefore, "the Pakistan Humanitarian Forum, a consortium of NGOs that work in Pakistan, ... submitted an official request to the U.S. government to re-brand their aid" as a result of political tension, according to Foust, who notes the RSPN, founded by the Agha Khan Network in 1982, "reach[es] millions of the poorest homes across a vast swath of Pakistan."