Power shifts to donors' hands in aid flow - World - theage.com.au

Power shifts to donors' hands in aid flow - World - theage.com.au: "Power shifts to donors' hands in aid flow
By Andrea Elliott
New York
October 15, 2005

A PAIR of trucks rumble along the broken roads of Kashmir, carrying yet another load of food, clothes and makeshift tents into the earthquake zone.

But unlike so many of the anonymous offerings paid for by people thousands of kilometres away, the source of this aid, a mosque, was boldly advertised on banners: 'Masjid Al-Noor, Staten Island, New York.'

'We had great difficulty spelling Staten Island on the phone,' said Suhail Muzaffar, 53, a former professor and Pakistani immigrant who is chairman of the mosque's board of trustees.

Mr Muzaffar's point was not of pride, but of control. He wrote a shopping list based on mobile phone calls from victims trapped in the mountains to relatives who worshipped at his mosque. He rented the trucks and ordered the banners himself, through family connections. And he enlisted a Pakistani charity he knew to carry the order through.

Only this way, he said, could he and other members of his mosque feel sure that their $US12,000 (nearly $A16,000) in donations would reach the people they were trying to help."