White House Wants Deep Cut in US Funding for War Crimes Investigations
The White House has recommended terminating US funding for nearly two dozen programs that conduct war crimes and accountability work globally, including in Myanmar, Syria and on alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to three US sources familiar with the matter and internal government documents reviewed by Reuters.
The recommendation from the Office of Management and Budget, which was made on Wednesday and has not been previously reported, is not the final decision to end the programs since it gives the State Department the option to appeal.
But it sets up a potential back-and-forth between the OMB and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his aides, who will reply to OMB with their suggestions on which programs deserve to continue.
The programs also include work in Iraq, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Belarus, Sudan, South Sudan, Afghanistan and the Gambia, according to the sources and a list seen by Reuters.
The State Department declined to comment. OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The expectation that Rubio would argue for many of the programs to be continued is slim, according to three US officials. However, the top US diplomat could make a case to keep crucial programs, such as aiding potential war crimes prosecutions in Ukraine, according to one source familiar with the matter.
Several of the programs earmarked for termination operate war crimes accountability projects in Ukraine, three sources familiar with the matter said, including Global Rights Compliance, which is helping to collect evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity across Ukraine, such as sexual violence and torture.
Another is Legal Action Worldwide, a legal aid group which supports local efforts to bring cases against Russian suspects of war crimes in Ukraine, the sources said.
Requests seeking comment from the groups were not immediately answered.
State Department bureaus that would like to preserve any war crimes and accountability programs should send their justifications by close of business day on July 11, said an internal State Department email seen by Reuters.
CHANGING PRIORITIES
Many of the programs recommended for termination are dedicated to empowering local organizations seeking to advance justice in societies that have faced atrocities, one of the sources said, adding that some programs have been going on for decades across Democratic and Republican administrations.
"Even if Secretary Rubio intervenes to save these programs, many of which he supported as a senator, there will be no one left to manage these programs," the source said.
The administration of President Donald Trump has frozen and then cut back billions of dollars of foreign aid since taking office on January 20 to ensure American-taxpayer money funds programs that are aligned with his "America First" policies.
The unprecedented cutbacks have effectively shut down its premier aid arm US Agency for International Development, jeopardized the delivery of life-saving food and medical aid and thrown global humanitarian relief operations into chaos.
The OMB recommendation is yet another sign that the administration is increasingly de-prioritizing advocacy for human rights and rule of law globally, an objective that previous US administrations have pursued.
While US foreign aid freezes had already started hampering an international effort to hold Russia responsible for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, Wednesday's recommendations raise the risk of US completely abandoning those efforts.
Among the programs that are recommended for termination is a $18 million State Department grant for Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office that is implemented by Georgetown University's International Criminal Justice Initiative, two sources said.
An official at Georgetown declined to comment.
While the programs do not directly impact Ukraine's frontline efforts to fend off Russia's invasion, supporters say they represent the best chance of extensively documenting reported battlefield atrocities in Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two, now grinding toward a fourth year.
Ukraine has opened more than 140,000 war crime cases since Moscow's February 2022 invasion, which has killed tens of thousands, ravaged vast swathes of the country and left behind mental and physical scars from occupation. Russia consistently denies war crimes have been committed by its forces in the conflict.
PATH TO APPEAL
Other programs include one that does accountability work on Myanmar army's atrocities against Rohingya minorities as well as on the persecution of Christians and other minorities by Syria's ousted former president Bashar al-Assad, two sources said.
While the OMB recommendations could face State Department push-back, the criteria to appeal are set very strictly.
In an internal State Department email, the administration cautioned that any effort to preserve programs that were recommended to be terminated should be thoroughly argued and directly aligned with Washington's priorities.
"Bureaus must clearly and succinctly identify direct alignment to administration priorities," the email, reviewed by Reuters said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
US envoy leaves Russia as detente faltering
MOSCOW: The US ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, is departing Moscow, leaving Washington without a top envoy in the country as a rapprochement being pushed by US President Donald Trump falters. Moscow earlier this week accused Washington of not being 'ready' to take steps to restore the normal functioning of their embassies, hobbled by years of tit-for-tat restrictions and expulsions of diplomats. Trump has not yet nominated a successor to Tracy, the first woman to hold the post and who was appointed by ex-President Joe Biden and is leaving after two-and-a-half years in the role. Trump has overhauled Biden's policy of isolating Vladimir Putin over his Ukraine offensive, holding several calls with the Kremlin chief and raising the prospect of boosting bilateral ties. 'I am proud to have represented my country in Moscow during such a challenging time,' Tracy said in a message posted by the embassy on social media. She also quoted lines from a poem by Alexander Pushkin, Russia's famed national poet. Diplomats from the two countries have held several rounds of negotiations under Trump on issues ranging from the Ukraine conflict and prisoner exchanges to normalizing embassy operations. But on Wednesday the Kremlin accused Washington of being 'not yet ready' to remove barriers to the work of their respective diplomatic missions. Trump has shown increasing frustration with Putin over his refusal to end Moscow's three-year offensive on Ukraine. Since the Republican returned to the White House, Putin has repeatedly rejected calls for an unconditional ceasefire, demanded Kyiv cede more territory, urged his troops to keep advancing and escalated deadly missile and drone attacks on Ukraine.
Arab News
3 hours ago
- Arab News
From India-Pakistan to Iran and Ukraine, a new era of escalation
WASHINGTON: As India's defense chief attended an international security conference in Singapore in May, soon after India and Pakistan fought what many in South Asia now dub 'the four-day war', he had a simple message: Both sides expect to do it all again. It was a stark and perhaps counterintuitive conclusion: the four-day military exchange, primarily through missiles and drones, appears to have been among the most serious in history between nuclear-armed nations. Indeed, reports from both sides suggest it took a direct intervention from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to halt an escalating exchange of drones and rockets. Speaking to a Reuters colleague in Singapore, however, Indian Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan denied either nation had come close to the 'nuclear threshold', describing a 'lot of messaging' from both sides. 'A new space for conventional operations has been created and I think that is the new norm,' he said, vowing that New Delhi would continue to respond militarily to any militant attacks on India suspected to have originated from Pakistan. How stable that 'space' might be and how great the risk of escalation for now remains unclear. However, there have been several dramatic examples of escalation in several already volatile global stand-offs over the past two months. As well as the 'four-day' war between India and Pakistan last month, recent weeks have witnessed what is now referred to in Israel and Iran as their '12-day war'. It ended this week with a US-brokered ceasefire after Washington joined the fray with massive air strikes on Tehran's underground nuclear sites. Despite years of confrontation, Israel and Iran had not struck each other's territory directly until last year, while successive US administrations have held back from similar steps. As events in Ukraine have shown, conflict between major nations can become normalized at speed – whether that means 'just' an exchange of drones and missiles, or a more existential battle. More concerning still, such conflicts appear to have become more serious throughout the current decade, with plenty of room for further escalation. This month, that included an audacious set of Ukrainian-organized drone strikes on long-range bomber bases deep inside Russian territory, destroying multiple aircraft which, as well as striking Ukraine, have also been responsible for carrying the Kremlin's nuclear deterrent. All of that is a far cry from the original Cold War, in which it was often assumed that any serious military clash – particularly involving nuclear forces or the nations that possessed them – might rapidly escalate beyond the point of no return. But it does bring with it new risks of escalation. Simmering in the background, meanwhile, is the largest and most dangerous confrontation of them all — that between the US and China, with US officials saying Beijing has instructed its military to be prepared to move against Taiwan from 2027, potentially sparking a hugely wider conflict. As US President Donald Trump headed to Europe this week for the annual NATO summit, just after bombing Iran, it was clear his administration hopes such a potent show of force might be enough to deter Beijing in particular from pushing its luck. 'American deterrence is back,' US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Pentagon press briefing the morning after the air strikes took place. Iran's initial response of drones and missiles fired at a US air base in Qatar – with forewarning to the US that the fusillade was coming – appeared deliberately moderate to avoid further escalation. Addressing senators at their confirmation hearing on Tuesday, America's next top commanders in Europe and the Middle East were unanimous in their comments that the US strikes against Iran would strengthen Washington's hand when it came to handling Moscow and Beijing. Chinese media commentary was more mixed. Han Peng, head of state-run China Media Group's North American operations, said the US had shown weakness to the world by not wanting to get dragged into the Iran conflict due to its 'strategic contraction'. Other social media posts talked of how vulnerable Iran looked, with nationalist commentator Hu Xijn warning: 'If one day we have to get involved in a war, we must be the best at it.' LONG ARM OF AMERICA On that front, the spectacle of multiple US B-2 bombers battering Iran's deepest-buried nuclear bunkers — having flown all the way from the US mainland apparently undetected — will not have gone unnoticed in Moscow or Beijing. Nor will Trump's not so subtle implications that unless Iran backed down, similar weapons might be used to kill its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or other senior figures, wherever they might hide. None of America's adversaries have the ability to strike without warning in that way against hardened, deepened targets, and the B-2 – now being replaced by the more advanced B-21 – has no foreign equal. Both are designed to penetrate highly sophisticated air defenses, although how well they would perform against cutting-edge Russian or Chinese systems would only be revealed in an actual conflict. China's effort at building something similar, the H-2, has been trailed in Chinese media for years – and US officials say Beijing is striving hard to make it work. Both China and Russia have fifth-generation fighters with some stealth abilities, but none have the range or carrying capacity to target the deepest Western leadership or weapon bunkers with conventional munitions. As a result, any Chinese or Russian long-range strikes – whether conventional or nuclear – would have to be launched with missiles that could be detected in advance. Even without launching such weapons, however, nuclear powers have their own tools to deliver threats. An analysis of the India-Pakistan 'four-day war' in May done by the Stimson Center suggested that as Indian strikes became more serious on the third day of the war, Pakistan might have taken similar, deliberately visible steps to ready its nuclear arsenal to grab US attention and help conclude the conflict. Indian newspapers have reported that a desperate Pakistan did indeed put pressure on the US to encourage India to stop, as damage to its forces was becoming increasingly serious, and threatening the government. Pakistan denies that – but one of its most senior officers was keen to stress that any repeat of India's strikes would bring atomic risk. 'Nothing happened this time,' said the chairman of the Pakistani joint chiefs, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, also speaking to Reuters at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore. 'But you can't rule out any strategic miscalculation at any time.' For now, both sides have pulled back troops from the border – while India appears determined to use longer term strategies to undermine its neighbor, including withdrawing from a treaty controlling the water supplies of the Indus River, which Indian Prime Minister Modi said he now intends to dam. Pakistani officials have warned that could be another act of war. DRONES AND DETERRENCE Making sure Iran never obtains the leverage of a working atomic bomb, of course, was a key point of the US and Israeli air strikes. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed that the dangers of a government so hostile to Israel obtaining such a weapon would always be intolerable. For years, government and private sector analysts had predicted Iran might respond to an assault on its nuclear facilities with attacks by its proxies across the Middle East, including on Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, as well as using thousands of missiles, drones and attack craft to block international oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz. In reality, the threat of an overwhelming US military response – and hints of an accompanying switch of US policy to outright regime change or decapitation in Iran, coupled with the Israeli military success against Hezbollah and Hamas, appear to have forced Tehran to largely stand down. What that means in longer term is another question. Flying to the Netherlands on Tuesday for the NATO summit, Trump appeared to be offering Iran under its current Shiite Muslim clerical rulers a future as a 'major trading nation' providing they abandoned their atomic program. The Trump administration is also talking up the success of its Operation ROUGH RIDER against the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen. Vice Admiral Bradley Cooper, selected as the new head of US Central Command, told senators the US military had bombed the Houthis for 50 days before a deal was struck in which the Houthis agreed to stop attacking US and other international shipping in the Red Sea. But Cooper also noted that like other militant groups in the Middle East, the Houthis were becoming increasingly successful in building underground bases out of the reach of smaller US weapons, as well as using unmanned systems to sometimes overwhelm their enemies. 'The nature and character of warfare is changing before our very eyes,' he said. Behind the scenes and sometimes in public, US and allied officials say they are still assessing the implications of the success of Ukraine and Israel in infiltrating large numbers of short-range drones into Russia and Iran respectively for two spectacular attacks in recent weeks. According to Ukrainian officials, the drones were smuggled into Russia hidden inside prefabricated buildings on the back of trucks, with the Russian drivers unaware of what they were carrying until the drones were launched. Israel's use of drones on the first day of its campaign against Iran is even more unsettling for Western nations wondering what such an attack might look like. Its drones were smuggled into Iran and in some cases assembled in secret there to strike multiple senior Iranian leaders and officials in their homes as they slept in the small hours of the morning on the first day of the campaign. As they meet in The Hague this week for their annual summit, NATO officials and commanders will have considered what they must do to build their own defenses to ensure they do not prove vulnerable to a similar attack. Judging by reports in the Chinese press, military officials there are now working on the same.
Asharq Al-Awsat
4 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
From India-Pakistan to Iran and Ukraine, a New Era of Escalation
By Peter Apps As India's defense chief attended an international security conference in Singapore in May, soon after India and Pakistan fought what many in South Asia now dub 'the four-day war', he had a simple message: Both sides expect to do it all again. It was a stark and perhaps counterintuitive conclusion: the four-day military exchange, primarily through missiles and drones, appears to have been among the most serious in history between nuclear-armed nations. Indeed, reports from both sides suggest it took a direct intervention from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to halt an escalating exchange of drones and rockets. Speaking to a Reuters colleague in Singapore, however, Indian Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan denied either nation had come close to the 'nuclear threshold', describing a 'lot of messaging' from both sides. 'A new space for conventional operations has been created and I think that is the new norm,' he said, vowing that New Delhi would continue to respond militarily to any militant attacks on India suspected to have originated from Pakistan. How stable that "space" might be and how great the risk of escalation for now remains unclear. However, there have been several dramatic examples of escalation in several already volatile global stand-offs over the past two months. As well as the 'four-day' war between India and Pakistan last month, recent weeks have witnessed what is now referred to in Israel and Iran as their '12-day war'. It ended this week with a US-brokered ceasefire after Washington joined the fray with massive air strikes on Tehran's underground nuclear sites. Despite years of confrontation, Israel and Iran had not struck each other's territory directly until last year, while successive US administrations have held back from similar steps. As events in Ukraine have shown, conflict between major nations can become normalized at speed – whether that means 'just' an exchange of drones and missiles, or a more existential battle. More concerning still, such conflicts appear to have become more serious throughout the current decade, with plenty of room for further escalation. This month, that included an audacious set of Ukrainian-organized drone strikes on long-range bomber bases deep inside Russian territory, destroying multiple aircraft which, as well as striking Ukraine, have also been responsible for carrying the Kremlin's nuclear deterrent. All of that is a far cry from the original Cold War, in which it was often assumed that any serious military clash – particularly involving nuclear forces or the nations that possessed them – might rapidly escalate beyond the point of no return. But it does bring with it new risks of escalation. Simmering in the background, meanwhile, is the largest and most dangerous confrontation of them all - that between the US and China, with US officials saying Beijing has instructed its military to be prepared to move against Taiwan from 2027, potentially sparking a hugely wider conflict. As US President Donald Trump headed to Europe this week for the annual NATO summit, just after bombing Iran, it was clear his administration hopes such a potent show of force might be enough to deter Beijing in particular from pushing its luck. 'American deterrence is back,' US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Pentagon press briefing the morning after the air strikes took place. Iran's initial response of drones and missiles fired at a US air base in Qatar – with forewarning to the US that the fusillade was coming – appeared deliberately moderate to avoid further escalation. Addressing senators at their confirmation hearing on Tuesday, America's next top commanders in Europe and the Middle East were unanimous in their comments that the US strikes against Iran would strengthen Washington's hand when it came to handling Moscow and Beijing. Chinese media commentary was more mixed. Han Peng, head of state-run China Media Group's North American operations, said the US had shown weakness to the world by not wanting to get dragged into the Iran conflict due to its 'strategic contraction'. Other social media posts talked of how vulnerable Iran looked, with nationalist commentator Hu Xijn warning: "If one day we have to get involved in a war, we must be the best at it." LONG ARM OF AMERICA On that front, the spectacle of multiple US B-2 bombers battering Iran's deepest-buried nuclear bunkers - having flown all the way from the US mainland apparently undetected - will not have gone unnoticed in Moscow or Beijing. Nor will Trump's not so subtle implications that unless Iran backed down, similar weapons might be used to kill its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or other senior figures, wherever they might hide. None of America's adversaries have the ability to strike without warning in that way against hardened, deepened targets, and the B-2 – now being replaced by the more advanced B-21 – has no foreign equal. Both are designed to penetrate highly sophisticated air defenses, although how well they would perform against cutting-edge Russian or Chinese systems would only be revealed in an actual conflict. China's effort at building something similar, the H-2, has been trailed in Chinese media for years – and US officials say Beijing is striving hard to make it work. Both China and Russia have fifth-generation fighters with some stealth abilities, but none have the range or carrying capacity to target the deepest Western leadership or weapons bunkers with conventional munitions. As a result, any Chinese or Russian long-range strikes – whether conventional or nuclear – would have to be launched with missiles that could be detected in advance. Even without launching such weapons, however, nuclear powers have their own tools to deliver threats. An analysis of the India-Pakistan 'four-day war' in May done by the Stimson Center suggested that as Indian strikes became more serious on the third day of the war, Pakistan might have taken similar, deliberately visible steps to ready its nuclear arsenal to grab US attention and help conclude the conflict. Indian newspapers have reported that a desperate Pakistan did indeed put pressure on the US to encourage India to stop, as damage to its forces was becoming increasingly serious, and threatening the government. Pakistan denies that – but one of its most senior officers was keen to stress that any repeat of India's strikes would bring atomic risk. "Nothing happened this time," said the chairman of the Pakistani joint chiefs, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, also speaking to Reuters at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore. "But you can't rule out any strategic miscalculation at any time." For now, both sides have pulled back troops from the border – while India appears determined to use longer term strategies to undermine its neighbor, including withdrawing from a treaty controlling the water supplies of the Indus River, which Indian Prime Minister Modi said he now intends to dam. Pakistani officials have warned that could be another act of war. DRONES AND DETERRENCE Making sure Iran never obtains the leverage of a working atomic bomb, of course, was a key point of the US and Israeli air strikes. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed that the dangers of a government so hostile to Israel obtaining such a weapon would always be intolerable. For years, government and private sector analysts had predicted Iran might respond to an assault on its nuclear facilities with attacks by its proxies across the Middle East, including on Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, as well as using thousands of missiles, drones and attack craft to block international oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz. In reality, the threat of an overwhelming US military response – and hints of an accompanying switch of US policy to outright regime change or decapitation in Iran, coupled with the Israeli military success against Hezbollah and Hamas, appear to have forced Tehran to largely stand down. What that means longer term is another question. Flying to the Netherlands on Tuesday for the NATO summit, Trump appeared to be offering Iran under its current Shi'ite Muslim clerical rulers a future as a 'major trading nation' providing they abandoned their atomic program. The Trump administration is also talking up the success of its Operation ROUGH RIDER against the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen. Vice Admiral Bradley Cooper, selected as the new head of US Central Command, told senators the US military had bombed the Houthis for 50 days before a deal was struck in which the Houthis agreed to stop attacking US and other international shipping in the Red Sea. But Cooper also noted that like other militant groups in the Middle East, the Houthis were becoming increasingly successful in building underground bases out of the reach of smaller US weapons, as well as using unmanned systems to sometimes overwhelm their enemies. 'The nature and character of warfare is changing before our very eyes,' he said. Behind the scenes and sometimes in public, US and allied officials say they are still assessing the implications of the success of Ukraine and Israel in infiltrating large numbers of short-range drones into Russia and Iran respectively for two spectacular attacks in recent weeks. According to Ukrainian officials, the drones were smuggled into Russia hidden inside prefabricated buildings on the back of trucks, with the Russian drivers unaware of what they were carrying until the drones were launched. Israel's use of drones on the first day of its campaign against Iran is even more unsettling for Western nations wondering what such an attack might look like. Its drones were smuggled into Iran and in some cases assembled in secret there to strike multiple senior Iranian leaders and officials in their homes as they slept in the small hours of the morning on the first day of the campaign. As they met in The Hague this week for their annual summit, NATO officials and commanders will have considered what they must do to build their own defenses to ensure they do not prove vulnerable to a similar attack. Judging by reports in the Chinese press, military officials there are now working on the same.
