Black Horses in Disguise

Dilrook Kannangara

A new type of business ventures spread the world in the 80s. Today it is a multi-trillion dollar industry mobilizing savings of generous donors on one hand, rewarding their own staff and supporters with massive rewards and intimidating governments across the world on the other.

As a former consultant to a very well known local NGO, I have first hand experience of how surpluses (profits) are made, appropriated to organizers and other ‘connected’ parties. Also they have business plans called ‘current issues’. These include malaria, inter-religious peace meditations, human rights monitoring and funding their organizers’ families and certain bankrupt political parties. Their main concern is the sustenance of devastations.

Just as a funeral director would pray each morning for more deaths, so do the NGOs. Enough money and time is allocated to prolong conflicts, civil disturbances, effects of natural disasters and even create calamities. A recent discovery about a vaccine mishap in Africa is a classic example of this. Millions of defective vaccines were purchased by NGOs for malaria alleviation funded by donors and governments. It was found that the NGOs had struck a deal with the manufacturers of the vaccines to sustain the disease which is a money spinner for both.

This resembles with how a Sri Lankan NGO distributed mosquito nets to selected families to ‘eradicate malaria’. Nothing was done to destroy mosquito breeding grounds, support on-going efforts on malaria control or educate the public. Unfortunately it is the NGO strategy - sustain the problem, amass funds for a stated ‘noble’ objective and do some face-save acts.

Their biggest business opportunity in Sri Lanka is as expected the war/peace. War and peace are just two sides of the same coin for these black horses. They are against sustainable and permanent peace simply because that will dry-up their sympathy income. They will heavily concentrate on effects of war - namely civilian casualties, human rights violations and fighting terrorism - if and only if things are not going well for the revolutionists/terrorists only to try and stop the onset of law and order to society.

If this kind of madness is tolerated by the government, we will soon have few more business ventures in the name of noble purposes. Malaria and terrorism will go hand in hand with these black horses. They will give mosquito nets and let the epidemic continue and will hold ‘peace’ rallies while protecting terrorists. Let us look beyond their fancy names and publicized noble objectives to find the greedy black horses inside.