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Kathmandu. The US government’s largest humanitarian agency, USAID, has begun recalling staff.
On Tuesday, it announced that it would place its employees in the US and around the world on administrative leave as it recalls staff from its overseas postings. The agency said in a statement on its website that the staff leave will begin before midnight on February 7.
The agency’s website was back up on Tuesday after being down over the weekend. The administrative leave will affect “all USAID directly employed employees except for mission-critical functions, key leadership, and designated personnel responsible for specifically designated programs.”
“Thank you for your service,” the statement said. The move is part of a sweeping campaign by Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk to shrink the US government. It has shocked Washington and sparked angry protests from Democrats and the human rights community.
USAID, the aid arm of US foreign policy, funds health and emergency programs in about 120 countries, including some of the world’s poorest regions. It is seen as a crucial source of soft power for the United States in its struggle for influence with rivals including China, where Musk has extensive business interests.
Musk has called USAID a “nest of snakes for far-left Marxists who hate America” and has vowed to shut it down. Among other criticisms, which Musk has not substantiated, he has claimed that USAID does “evil CIA work” and even “funds biological weapons research, including COVID-19, which has killed millions.”
Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said he personally approved the unprecedented move with the president. Musk has a major contract with the US government and is the biggest financial backer of Trump’s campaign. The attack on USAID comes in the context of a long-running narrative in the hard-line conservative and libertarian wings of the Republican Party that the United States wastes money on foreigners while neglecting Americans.
USAID describes itself as an organization that works to “end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our security and prosperity.” The top three countries receiving assistance from USAID as of 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, were Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Jordan, according to the Congressional Research Service. Other top recipients of aid include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Syria.
The amount of USAID funding for Ukraine is significant. According to US government figures, the war-torn European country of Ukraine has received more than $16 billion in overall economic assistance. The agency, established in 1961, has a budget of more than $40 billion, which is only a small fraction of the US government’s total annual spending of about $7 trillion.
The United States is the world’s largest provider of official development assistance, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
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