Overnight, some attention is being given to the breaking story that the Obama Administration granted aid funds to the terror-listed Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA). ISRA has quite a history.
By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.
Lovely. But what I find most troubling about this story has not yet been given much attention – World Vision’s role in pressuring the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to make the grant to ISRA:
Despite this well-documented history, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2014 awarded $723,405 to World Vision Inc., an international evangelical charity, to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.” Of these funds, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA.
Responding to a Middle East Forum (MEF) inquiry, a USAID official explains that World Vision had alerted it in November 2014 to the likelihood of ISRA being on the terror list. USAID instructed World Vision to “suspend all activities with ISRA” and informed the State Department, OFAC, and USAID’s Office of the Inspector General. USAID and World Vision then waited for OFAC to confirm whether ISRA was designated or not.
USAID emails obtained by the Middle East Forum reveal that in January 2015, World Vision was growing unhappy while waiting for OFAC’s assessment. Mark Smith, World Vision’s senior director of humanitarian and emergency affairs, wrote to USAID, stating that the Islamic Relief Agency “had performed excellent work” for World Vision in the past, and that “putting contractual relationships in limbo for such a long period is putting a significant strain” on World Vision’s relationship with the Sudanese regime. Smith also revealed that World Vision had submitted a notice to OFAC indicating its “intention to restart work with [ISRA] and to transact with [ISRA]” if OFAC did not respond within a week.
World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior “doesn’t make sense.”
But the grant was eventually made anyway.
Then, incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”
An unnamed World Vision official described the decision as a “great relief as ISRA had become restive and had threatened legal action, which would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.”
I don’t want to jump to conclusions. Perhaps ISRA somehow reformed, and World Vision knew that better than bureaucrats up the line? But World Vision has been at the very least careless about partnerships before, even (apparently without their knowledge) funding Hamas. This ISRA story, too, is troubling and bears watching.
If I see a response from World Vision, I will post it.
Wannabe, it is shocking to me how virtue signalling has totally overtaken what I call the NeverTrump Evangelicals. They seem to be so desperate to avoid being labelled as members of the Religious Right that they will even give money to terrorist groups. World Vision needs to be audited. We can no longer assume that because they are Evangelical that they always do the right thing.
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