The Red Crescent is the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross. I posted in May, here, about Said I. Hakki, its president. I liked him because when an interviewer asked him if the United States owes it to Iraq to take in refugees, he replied: “If we allow Iraqis to go somewhere else, then who is going to build Iraq?” He said the Red Crescent should be taking care of Iraq’s internal refugees, and was doing that as far as it could.
Today comes a report in the Washington Post titled Iraqi Red Crescent Paralyzed by Allegations. It begins:
BAGHDAD — 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.
Then follows the usual complicated tale of corruption, with denials and counter-accusations. It’s impossible to know the truth, except that money has disappeared and the organization has ceased nearly all its humanitarian work. Hakki has been controversial for several years; in 2005 there was an arrest warrant against him for corruption charges, though it was later rescinded. The Red Crescent grew rapidly under his leadership, but other humanitarian organizations claimed there was a lack of transparency with funds.
How sad. Iraq badly needs more humanitarian help for its internally displaced people.