The fall of USAID and Gruevski

Gruevski, who once collaborated with USAID himself, claims they have helped overthrow him, which we can’t confirm, and the evidence for that, at least for now, is weak—mostly coming from semi-obscure figures in the United States, which doesn’t quite suit a former prime minister. Some of these statements do not affect him directly, but generally criticize the agency for international development for alleged wasteful spending and dirty political games. Gruevski recognized himself as a victim of these games, so he presents those statements as a confession that the US was responsible for his overthrow

 

Author: Vangel Bashevski

 

Recent developments in the US

The controversial Elon Musk gained too much control over government agencies, allegedly in an illegal and unconstitutional way. Among them is the international development agency USAID, which he has decided to shut down, over alleged inappropriate spending and dirty political games. Donald Trump agreed with Musk, prompting protests and lawsuits in response. As a result, part of the plan to shut down USAID has been blocked by the courts and remains unresolved.

Trump supporters have launched a smear campaign against USAID, in which Musk has been involved, using weak arguments—tweets from authors labeled as sources of disinformation and conspiracy theorists. The US has long fought against disinformation. However, Musk is now discouraging these efforts, which is a serious setback. As a result, this damaging foreign influence is being passed on to us.

US influence in our country

The campaign also included former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who now points out that, well, the US admits that it played dirty games around the world through USAID, whose victim, allegedly, was Gruevski himself, so the shutdown of the agency seems like a well-deserved punishment.

Gruevski, his supporters, and some others, claim that USAID assisted in his overthrow by funding opposition movements, media outlets, and other efforts. Examples of such posts can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. For that purpose, USAID allegedly collaborated with George Soros, to whom they gave large sums of money, but his Open Society Foundations deny this.

Interestingly, Gruevski himself collaborated with USAID, in the period 2000-2003, when he was an advisor to the Minister of Finance of Serbia through a USAID project (sources: here, here, here and here), and had a meeting with Soros in Prague in June 2011 (here and here). Gruevski says nothing on the matter, but claims the following:

What we already knew has now been published by the Americans themselves following the change in regime in Washington. That the state agency USAID, led by the Democrats, was giving millions of dollars to Soros to bring down the government I was leading.

 

These are serious accusations from Gruevski, and while we cannot assess their accuracy, we can certainly evaluate the way in which he presents his arguments.

 

Gruevski’s weak arguments

Considering the fact that he was prime minister, he should have access to knowledge that is unavailable to ordinary citizens. Instead, he chooses to argue his claims with trivial screenshots from Twitter.

The semi-obscure Merissa Hansen

One of the screenshots Gruevski uses as evidence is from the semi-obscure Twitter user Merissa Hansen. We found no biography of her, only sparse details suggesting she was an “independent journalist” who covered local issues in Texas.

In her tweet, shared by Gruevski, Gruevski himself is not mentioned and there are no revelations there—Soros allegedly conducted “operations” in Macedonia, for which USAID financed him, but Gruevski had also claimed this when he was prime minister almost a decade ago.

Hansen is unclear about her statement, so in a comment under that tweet, she adds that there are unconfirmed allegations suggesting the money from USAID was intended for a change of government in Macedonia between 2015 and 2017. We emphasize, these are unconfirmed allegations.

She also operates a modest website, which offers nothing noteworthy, and she is not considered a relevant or credible source. However, Gruevski quotes her as if she were an authority, a top journalist and analyst, who represents public opinion in the United States. Some of our media outlets have followed this direction, publishing headlines such as “Hansen: USAID gave money to Soros,” as if the public knows who Hansen is.

It is possible that Gruevski may have even been in communication with Hansen. The screenshot posted by Gruevski on the 4th of February shows Hansen’s Twitter profile as unverified (without a blue badge), and after some criticized Gruevski for citing dubious authors, Hansen’s profile was suddenly verified and now displays the verification badge.

Richard Grenell

Gruevski also published screenshots (here and here) of tweets (here and here) by Richard Grenell, former US intelligence director, diplomat and negotiator, who, unlike Hansen, is a relevant person. But Grenell’s tweets have no connection to Gruevski, at least not directly.

It stands to reason, Grenell mentions North Macedonia, but only as one of many countries in the Western Balkans, in which, according to Grenell, the US has spent too much money on the wrong agendas.

He also mentions the amount that was spent, but that is for the period 2020-2024, when Gruevski was not in power at all. Moreover, the figures provided are not from the US government, but from a Kosovo media outlet, and we don’t know how credible it is. This does not suit a serious American politician.

From this, we understand that Grenell is focused on the more recent past, specifically how much the administration of the former President Joe Biden spent, as Republicans like Grenell are particularly targeting him. He is not interested in the fall of Gruevski, which is a more distant past.

Grenell generally complains that the US has spent a lot of money promoting so-called woke agendas (LGBT, etc.) throughout the Balkans, to the detriment of conservative politicians, and although Gruevski may have recognized himself in them, we have no evidence that Grenell was referring to Gruevski.

USAID, according to Grenell, funded some “radicals”, in whom Gruevski may have recognized the “Color Revolutionaries”, but, again, we have no evidence that Grenell was referring to them.

The only politician from the Balkans that Grenell mentions is Romanian Prime Minister and recent presidential candidate Marcel Ciolacu, in the sense that USAID allegedly worked against conservative politicians in the Romanian elections. We don’t know if Grenell is right about that, but for us now it’s more important that Gruevski is not mentioned.

 

Arguments of other Macedonian authors

Other authors have also joined the campaign against USAID, sharing a clip (or excerpts from it) of Catharine O’Neill Gillihan, an official at both the State Department and USAID during Trump’s first term (2017-2021), in which she discusses alleged dirty tricks by these institutions around the world, including here. This is more convincing than Gruevski’s argument, but it is also weak.

According to Gillihan, her office was visited by Vladimir Gjorchev, who complained about alleged US subversion of the Macedonian government. Gjorchev has so far neither confirmed nor denied Gillihan’s statement (see: here and here). It is also unclear when exactly this took place.

Trump won the elections on November 8, 2016, after which Gillihan was part of his so-called transition team, and the inauguration was on January 20, 2017, so Gjorchev’s visit was in 2016-2017. However, it is more likely that it was in 2017. The Prime Minister at that time was Emil Dimitriev, a party colleague of Gjorchev and Gruevski. Gruevski won the elections on December 11, 2016, but failed to form a government. Perhaps Gjorchev wanted to say that the United States had something to do with that.

Gillihan’s testimony is limited and lacks solid evidence to support the validity of Gjorchev’s complaints. She accuses the US of playing dirty games around the world in general, but doesn’t say much specifically about Macedonia—there are no other names, events, etc. mentioned. Furthermore, the meeting with Gjorchev was at the State Department, not at USAID, which Gillihan joined in 2020, so this case has nothing to do with that agency, at least not directly. It’s not clear how this proves that USAID played dirty games.

Additionally, if the American system is so rotten, why did Gillihan continue working within it? According to her, Trump supposedly wanted to cut ties with those negativities, but he was sabotaged, while his associates were incompetent and so on. So why didn’t she get out of there and alert the public?

Gillihan is only doing this now, after almost a decade, probably because of Musk and Trump’s smear campaign against USAID, so the question remains on how credible Gillihan’s claims are. She did not share those claims with reputable world media outlets, but with a podcaster, Tim Pool.

We couldn’t even find detailed biographical information about Gillihan, so it seems she was never a major player in American politics, and she’s only now gaining publicity.

Sloboden Pechat published a clip with an analysis of this case, but there is no analysis here, precisely because Gillihan’s testimony is sparse, so journalist Srdjan Ivanovic assesses that it is not evidence in itself, but it could be an incentive for future research. When and if this will happen and whether Gillihan has anything to add remains a question. For now, this is weak.

 

USAID and North Macedonia

To criticize USAID is a legitimate democratic right, but in our country, such criticism has crossed all boundaries. It is forgotten that the first USAID assistance provided overseas was for the Skopje earthquake in 1963. USAID also helped us with: the restoration of the Ohrid Church of the Holy Mother of God Peribleptos, the archaeological site of Stobi, the renovation of schools, computers for children with disabilities,  equipment for customs and hospitals, the establishment of the Crisis Center, the development of municipalities (Gradsko , Kratovo, Pehchevo ,etc.), water supply , electrification , the expansion of the internet , assistance to small businesses, etc.

However, some accuse USAID of overthrowing Gruevski, allegedly to make it easier to change our constitutional name, while others point out that he was authoritarian and corrupt, so no USAID was needed to incite protests against him.

Some believe that even if USAID were involved, it would be positive, because under Gruevski we were a “captured state.” Another example of this, but more extreme, is Slobodan Milosevic, who was notorious for authoritarianism, wars and chauvinism, so his overthrow, although helped from outside, is considered positive by many.

There are different opinions, but we will only conclude that Gruevski’s arguments are weak.He governed for 10 years with our taxes, so we are entitled to demand more substantial evidence from him. He makes serious accusations, and as a former prime minister, he should possess the experience, resources, and connections to present a more credible argument—rather than relying on screenshots from questionable sources.

 

 

 

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