by Stephanie Strom and Lydia Polgreen
06/02/2007

To read the whole article click here.

Below is an excerpt from the NYT:

Even as advocacy groups attained the seeming triumph of President Bush's new sanctions against Sudan, the organization that helped bring the conflict in Darfur to the world's attention is in upheaval, firing its executive director, reorganizing its board and rethinking its strategies. At the heart of the shake-up are questions of whether the former executive director of the organization, the Save Darfur Coalition, wisely used a sudden influx of money from a few anonymous donors in an advertising blitz to push for action.

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Aid groups also complain that Save Darfur, whose budget last year was $15 million, does not spend that money on aid for the long-suffering citizens of the region.

The tension between aid and advocacy is not unique to the Darfur conflict, though it is almost always papered over by the code of silence that governs relations among nonprofit groups.

''I think these agencies probably agree on many more questions than they disagree on, but clearly there is a different perspective between people who are on the ground and having to deal with local security and harassment, and advocacy groups,'' said Ken Bacon, president of Refugees International, an advocacy group and member of the Save Darfur Coalition. ''We travel into areas like Darfur for a month or so, then leave, and therefore we face different pressures.''

At the same time, the relationship is also symbiotic: brazen advocacy groups help put pressure on governments and raise awareness among donors, thus supporting the work done on the ground by more diplomatic counterparts.

The Sudanese government is adroit at exploiting that tension. It deploys a variety of tactics to impede aid workers, including delaying approval for visas, refusing to allow shipments of necessary supplies and prohibiting the workers from boarding planes, and it blames advocacy for its actions.

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''The Sudanese are very astute, and they following what's going on in the U.S. press,'' Mr. Bacon said. ''When I met with President Bashir, he mentioned Save Darfur specifically and said it was treating his government unfairly and preventing the U.S. from dealing with him or granting him concessions for what he is trying to do to improve things.''

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Mr. Bacon said similar tension had flared publicly during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo, when relief groups had staff members in the Balkans at the same time advocacy groups were calling for bombing and more aggressive military action.

''Not only were there concerns among relief agencies that their workers would be hit if there were bombing, but they were also fearful that more aggressive action could provoke a counterattack against aid workers, who might be seen as representative of the Western powers doing the bombing,'' Mr. Bacon said.

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