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WASHINGTON – When the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division arrived in Mahmoudiya, in 2007, a large al-Qaida presence and conflicts between tribal leaders resulted in a dangerous and often bloody time for U.S. soldiers.
Into that quagmire stepped flak-jacket wearing mediators from the U.S. Institute of Peace, at the request of the Army and State Department, says Tara Sonenshine, the institute’s executive vice president.The result of three days of negotiations was a truce between tribal sheiks and an agreement to let U.S. forces operate more freely and peacefully in the region – and a dramatic drop in the number of attacks on American soldiers, according to institute and Army figures.
The institute continues to operate in Iraq, Afghanistan and other strife-torn countries and regions, working on a mission it describes as trying to prevent armed conflict from taking place, attempting to manage and stop violence once it occurs and aiding in efforts to keep conflict from breaking out again during rebuilding periods.
Sonenshine notes that President Reagan signed into law the bipartisan legislation creating the institute, which opened for business in 1986.
“We work wherever conflict is brewing or has boiled up or has boiled over,” she said.
But now the institute also is in a war for its own survival on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of House lawmakers, including Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, want to strip the institute of its $42.6 million in annual federal funding. Among the main proponents is Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York. The fight over the overall budget bill that eliminates the institute was at an impasse last week in the Senate. A bill authored by Senate Democrats that included money for the institute, though cutting its annual allocation to $39.5 million, didn’t muster enough votes to move forward. The House GOP spending bill approved last month that includes the elimination of the institute also failed to receive enough support to move to a final vote in the Senate. The critics say that in tough budget times the institute is a duplicative and wasteful luxury, and the amendment that was approved by the House last month directs institute funding be used reducing the deficit. Barletta prefers to use the institute’s funding to at least partly offset proposed cuts to domestic programs such as low-income heating assistance.
Barletta says the institute’s missions can be carried out by the departments of State and Defense.
“This is a time when our government is cutting back, just like families across the country are doing,” Barletta said. “The Institute of Peace is duplicating services being done by other departments. At a time when we have to cut programs, I would rather cut a program that the Department of State could do and probably is doing, as well as the Department of Defense, rather than cut a program for the needy.”
Barletta also criticized the institute’s new building, which just officially opened its doors Friday, as an overly lavish expense that features “a contemplation room with a beautiful waterfall and a peace well.”
The institute’s Sonenshine said that the institute was allocated $114 million in taxpayer funds from Congress for the building – which sits on land transferred from the Defense Department – but that institute officials raised an additional $50 million from private sources. It features classrooms for high school students and teachers and space for lobby exhibits.
Noting that the structure is located at the National Mall, Sonenshine said, “You don’t put an ugly building at 23rd (Street) and Constitution (Avenue) at the National Mall. It may have called attention to us, but we are not apologizing for the beauty of it. It was a parking lot and now what is standing there is a working institute that will be open to public.”
Critics of the House GOP spending bill slashing more than $60 billion in total spending through the final months of the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 say the measure does cut too deeply across an array of government services, from heating assistance to road and bridge building to community development block grants. But defenders of the peace institute, who include top military leaders, say taking money from the institute as a way of restoring a fraction of those cuts is wrongheaded.
Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine general who was commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, said last week in an op-ed column in the New York Times that “Congress would be hard-pressed to find an agency that does more with less.” He noted that the institute’s budget is a tiny fraction of the state and defense department budgets, and asserted that the institute’s work is an “important adjunct to convention defense spending and diplomacy.”
Zinni called the idea of eliminating the institute to save money “extremely shortsighted and ill informed.”
Peace institute officials say they have a quasi-independent role in foreign countries that often puts their negotiators in a better position to deal with local authorities than official U.S. military leaders and diplomats. Army Lt. General Robert L. Caslen, who commanded a division in Iraq, agreed with that assessment in a letter he wrote to the president of the institute, Richard H. Solomon, last month praising the institute’s work.
“Your ability to move among the population and work with civil society, local and national leaders, and across borders makes your contribution critically important to the U.S. government,” Caslen wrote in his Feb. 16 letter, one of a number of defenses of the institute posted by the institute on its website.