Sigrid Kaag

Sigrid Kaag      (politician, diplomat)
Born	1961-11-02 Rijswijk, Netherlands
Nationality	Netherlands
Alma mater	Leiden University, American University in Cairo, St Antony's College Oxford, University of Exeter, Clingendael Institute, École nationale d'administration
Religion	Christian
Children	4
Spouse	Anis al-Qaq
Member of	Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, Global Preparedness Monitoring Board
Party	Democrats 66
Dutch diplomat and politician. Although an outspoken feminist, Kaag vocally opposed a public trial regarding dozen of reports of sexual abuse within her own party. A successful and career-diplomat, named by Geert Wilders as the "namesake of a runway at Schiphol Airport", she has attended two Bilderberg meetings.  Netherlands/Minister of Finance In office 10 January 2022 - 2023 Preceded by Wopke Hoekstra  Netherlands/Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation In office 26 October 2017 - 16 September 2021  Netherlands/Minister of Foreign Affairs In office 13 February 2018 - 7 March 2018 Succeeded by Stef Blok  United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon  In office 17 January 2015 - 25 October 2017  Head of the OPCW-UN Joint Mission in Syria In office 16 October 2013 - 30 September 2014  Netherlands/Deputy Prime Minister  In office 2022 - 2023 Preceded by Hugo de Jonge, Kajsa Ollongren

Sigrid Kaag is a Dutch diplomat and politician. After a long and successful diplomatic career, Kaag was selected by Mark Rutte as Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation in 2017. She resigned after the Afghanistan/2021 withdrawal. Kaag returned to government as Minister of Finance in January 2022. Kaag is co-chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Action Group and member of the Regional Action Group for the Middle East and North America. In 2023, she announced her retirement from Dutch politics.

Education

Kaag studied Arabic at the University of Utrecht and later transferred to the University of Exeter for a class on the economics of the Middle East and the American University in Egypt obtaining two degrees in Middle Eastern Studies in 1985 and a degree in International Relations from St Antony's College in 1987. Kaag also received special classes in foreign relations at Clingendael Institute in The Hague, and other institutes, paving the way for a diplomatic career. Kaag learned Dutch, English, French, Spanish, German and Arabic. Kaag has a husband, Anis al-Qaq, who is a Palestinian who has been a deputy minister under Yasser Arafat in the 1990s and as the Palestinian representative to Switzerland. Kaag lived with him in Jerusalem. Kaag made the following remark as a young diplomat living there on Dutch TV in 1996 regarding the surprise election of Benjamin Netanyahu;

“Happily there were pro-Israeli demonstrators in Tel-Aviv that said the road of Benjamin Netanyahu, that soundbite, with an almost racist demagogue.... about the Palestinian peace-partner that has been isolated. But look at their environments, day in, day out, 1 million people are prisoners.”
Sigrid Kaag (06-10-1996) 

Career

00:02: "If Lebanon would be made even more fragile, by withholding sufficient financial support, just because the weight of it has become to much, Lebanon will reach an unrecoverable state. Not only for Lebanon but also for Europe."

Kaag started at Big Oil-firm Shell as an analyst in the UK in 1988 and started working for Dutch Foreign Minister and deep politician Hans van den Broek in 1990 during the height of the demonstrations surrounding the cold war regime in South Africa, at the division for UN Political Affairs. Kaag switched to the UN in 1994 and served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Sudan. Kaag was subsequently posted in Sudan, Austria, and Lebanon. Kaag's key responsibilities were Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

From 2007 to 2010, Kaag was Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa for UNICEF in Jordan, being promoted to Assistant Secretary-General and Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy of the United Nations Development Programme in New York. In this capacity, she was the deputy to Helen Clark. In 2013, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon chose Kaag to lead the OPCW-UN Joint Mission for "the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, at least before the summer of 2014. In 2014, Ban announced that Kaag would become the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon.

In 2017, Kaag became the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation and temporary Dutch Foreign Minister in 2018, being replaced by Stef Blok in the same year. Kaag was noted to be the only one to swear on the bible at the taking of the oath in the third Rutte cabinet.

She resigned in September 2021 after the disastrous Afghanistan/2021 withdrawal.

War Crimes

Nieuwsuur revealed on the 10th of August 2018 that the Dutch were actively supporting "rebel groups in Syria the Dutch government has declared at least one a terrorist organization" at least since 2015 in the form of outfits (not declared with what purpose) and pick-up trucks in a "counter-terrorism" program for "non-lethal assistance". Nieuwsuur decided to publish their investigation after the Dutch Public Prosecutor was trying to sentence a man that had fought for one of these groups. Nieuwsuur actually put the Dutch narrative of "only supporting moderate opposition groups" into question as every group was entangled with a more violent one. The research found several to this day classified documents with over 100 rebels and at least 6 groups receiving Dutch support including satellite-phones, laptops, mattresses, backpacks and camera's with the help of Turkish company Condor and Washington D.C based company Creative Associates. Dutch Ministers Stef Blok and Sigrid Kaag send a letter to parliament announcing the end of the program, explaining a lack of oversight and the letting go of the idea that Bashar al-Assad would be overthrown. Several other incidents were noted to be part of the decisions including 1000s of food supplies that "got in the hands of Al-Qaida", with Bert Koenders lying again how those "incidents" ended or if weapons were indeed part of the deal as one group was seen filming placing machine guns on their Dutch-funded Toyota fueling questions what the operations actually included.

In 2020 Nieuwsuur reported Mark Rutte had stopped the internal investigation - and urged all coalition partners to support him - with most declassified documents all "blacked out". Stef Blok urgently called to halt any investigation as "a lot of classified information would be uncovered." Nieuwsuur didn't ask the MPs who did receive the classified information along with an NDA why this operation was hit with so much secrecy just now although the instigation started in 2018. After being confronted with a family member of a group targeted by a Syrian "opposition group" and Kaag being questioned why she also - in the relatively short term - as Foreign Minister signed off on new programs and groups, Kaag blamed time constraints and not knowing the history of the program along with "need-to-know" language ("These were cases that needed to be discussed internally"), seemingly not explaining why such a large and important program so important that Mark Rutte has tried to cover and block any investigation into it for 2 years now . Not completely surprising as Kaag and her D66 party blocked the request for parliamentary investigations at first on the request on Rutte.

Kaag has kept denying to be able to halt the program any earlier on and remarking - just like Ank Bijleveld in the 2015 Hawija bombing - that the Dutch just have no leads themselves, "always needing to rely on second or third-hand info", something disproved by former Chief Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals Carla Del Ponte.

“All parties involved in the conflict are committing crimes. The Netherlands knows that the opposition is committing war crimes. We already wrote that starting in 2013. In fact Karel van Oostrom knew precisely what was written in the reports. He even knew all the details. The Dutch have enough people and info from intelligence agencies. And especially the Dutch and all the other EU countries, because they share all that info. They knew exactly what was happening. (...) Throughout investigation is needed. Not only the Dutch but other nation states supported the Syrian war. Therefore they could be complicit in committing war crimes.”
Carla Del Ponte (12-09-2018) 

IGOs

When Kaag was called to politics in 2017 she joined dozens of IGO and board members including the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Inter-American Investment Corporation, Joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group and the World Bank, and the OECD and UNDP. Kaag was also special coordinator of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and became a member of the World Economic Forum High-Level Group on Humanitarian Investing.

Sexual Abuse

Kaag denied in 2021 in Nieuwsuur that there was a structural problem regarding sexual abuse of young female employees in her political party after an investigation by an external agency, new Dutch Minister of State Winnie Sorgdrager & the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security revealed there was a culture of a dozen of women having reported indecent exposure, unwanted sexual advances, sexting and even blackmailing and forced sex. With Kaag refusing to call for prosecuting these employees, senators, and representatives as an internal report (that failed to hear one of the first women to come forward) has recommended. Kaag stressed that the secure environment on an internal investigation (that found nothing wrong) was better than a public trial as her party "does not have the proper training to deal with these cases", seemingly an interesting remark for an outspoken feminist.

Political Culture

Regarding the allegation of Nieuwsuur that multiple representatives and European Parliament members were discriminated against and being secretly outed by other MPs for alleged discriminatory reasons, Kaag noted "no knowledge" up until then of some allegations. Some of these victims were part of the same investigation regarding a paper on threats to female MPs in the Dutch House of Representatives, that paper even made public by newspaper De Groene Amsterdammer.

Deep Environments

Sigrid Kaag attended two Bildersbergs after entering politics: in 2018 and 2019.

“Soros is a known philanthropist, that has committed himself through his Open Society Foundations for a democratic playground and the power of the civil society. Luckily you don't have to call it "left-wing" or "right-wing" but about the human rights and organizations that operate in countries where those are suppressed and where his support has been of vital importance and really relevant and I regret the framing of him.”
Sigrid Kaag (22-09-2020) 

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/2018	7 June 2018	10 June 2018	Italy Turin Hotel Torino Lingotto Congress	The 66th Bilderberg Meeting, in Turin, Italy, known for months in advance after an unprecedented leak by the Serbian government.
Bilderberg/2019	30 May 2019	2 June 2019	Switzerland Montreux	The 67th Bilderberg Meeting
Bilderberg/2023	18 May 2023	21 May 2023	Portugal Lisbon Pestana Palace Hotel	The 69th Bilderberg Meeting, held in Lisbon, with 128 guests on the official list. The earliest in the year since 2009.
Bilderberg/2024	30 May 2024	2 June 2024	Spain Madrid	The 70th Bilderberg Meeting
WEF/Annual Meeting/2019	22 January 2019	25 January 2019	World Economic Forum Switzerland	"The reality is that we are in a Cold War [against China] that threatens to turn into a hot one."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2020	21 January 2020	24 January 2020	World Economic Forum Switzerland	This mega-summit of the world's ruling class and their political and media appendages happens every year, but 2020 was special, as the continuous corporate media coverage of COVID-19 started more or less from one day to the next on 20/21 January 2020, coinciding with the start of the meeting.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2023	16 January 2023	20 January 2023	World Economic Forum Switzerland	The theme of the meeting was "Cooperation in a Fragmented World"

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