U.S. Ideals Meet Reality in Yemen

On June 15, when Robin Madrid's six-month program began, it was pretty much the same thing.

Does this mean her program failed? Was a $300,000 program to bring democratic values to such a place a waste of money and time? Did it actually succeed?

The answers, which aren't as simple as yes or no, explain what can happen when the United States tries to use democracy as a way to reform the world. The promotion, packaging and exportation of democracy is now America's foreign policy, more so than at any other time in U.S. history. Its most visible example is Iraq -- but that's the extreme version.

More typical of what is going on every day, in every part of the world, continuously and invisibly, can be found in the details of what happened to an unknown program in Yemen, and to a cast of characters stretching from Washington to one of the world's most troubled and mysterious countries, all with differing definitions of what democracy means.

There was Madrid, who tends toward skepticism in her work, but who very much wanted to believe in some gun-toting, dagger-wearing tribal sheiks who asked her for help.

There were the sheiks themselves -- some rough, others educated, some eager, others inscrutable -- who either genuinely wanted help or just wanted to use Madrid as a way to get money.

There was the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who insists that he wants Yemen to become more democratic, perhaps out of genuine desire or perhaps because one of the world's poorest countries needs to position itself to get whatever help it can from whoever is willing to give it.

And there was President Bush, who wants to give money to people like Saleh, some Yemeni sheiks and Robin Madrid because he has turned democracy into something exportable, much like food aid, as a way to fight terrorism.

This is the importance of Madrid's program. It perfectly represents the momentous, even radical, notion that Bush put forth in January in his second inaugural address that "it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

Democracy as commodity: In such a calculation, Operation Iraqi Freedom is one part of Bush's foreign policy; Yemen: Tribal Conflict Mitigation Program is another, along with hundreds of other programs funded under the Bush administration, such as Promoting Democracy Through Community Radio in Congo, $35,000; Supporting the Electoral Process in Mongolia, $109,725; and Increasing the Transparency and Accountability of Governmental Institutions in Moldova, $36,386.

In total, the United States will spend at least $1 billion this year on these programs. An exact figure is difficult to know because democracy promotion has evolved from a theory into an industry that sprawls all over Washington, encompassing the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy and dozens of for-profits and nonprofits around Washington that live and die on government contracts and grants. USAID, which allocates the most money for democracy promotion by far, says it will spend at least $1.2 billion, which it spent in 2004. A State Department spokesman declined to give a figure, saying, "The problem is, it falls into so many categories it's difficult to tease out."

The one thing that everyone agrees on is that since Sept. 11, 2001, the amount of money the Bush administration is steering to promote democracy in Islamic countries of the Middle East has increased dramatically, even at the expense of other regions of the world. To help in this, there is a new office in the State Department called the Middle East Partnership Initiative, overseen by a deputy assistant secretary of state named J. Scott Carpenter, who candidly acknowledges, "We don't know yet how best to promote democracy in the Arab Middle East. I mean we just don't know. It's the early days." But that's no reason not to try, he says, especially in such urgent times. His approach: "I think there are times when you throw spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks."