http://www.chronicle-independent.com/section/104/article/41683/
The consequences of using humanitarian aid for geopolitics
Daniel Bendtsen Deseret News
Posted: November 1, 2015 9:29 a.m.
Updated: November 1, 2015 9:29 a.m.
Nonprofits that deliver international aid sometimes face the distrust
of the very people they want to help — a stigma that Western money
comes with ulterior motives.
Even though it suffers from terrible poverty, the African country of
Eritrea banned foreign aid this year because of that suspicion.
President Isaias Afworki said that "aid is meant to cripple people."
The fears of some developing countries will likely be exacerbated by
an investigative report published Monday by The Intercept, which found
that the Pentagon spied on North Korea via a Christian aid group that
was providing basic humanitarian assistance from 2004 to 2013.
The U.S. had long wanted to gather more intelligence on Pyongyang’s
nuclear program, but Washington had no espionage presence inside North
Korea — that is, until it forged a relationship with Kay Hiramine, CEO
of Humanitarian International Services Group, who had his aid workers
unwittingly smuggle in equipment that allowed the U.S. to both measure
nuclear anomalies and disrupt North Korean military devices, according
to The Intercept.
The use of aid work to advance Western interests has happened before,
and remains controversial within the development community.
Sam Worthington, president of the NGO association InterAction, told
The Intercept that the U.S. manipulation of aid workers “violates
international principles” and jeopardizes legitimate aid and
development workers, he said.
In 2011, the CIA hijacked a vaccination program to help gather
intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. It worked,
according to National Geographic, but when the news broke, the
program’s doctor landed in prison, and since bin Laden’s death, the
Taliban has assassinated medical professionals working on polio
eradication.
Along with the risk to aid workers themselves, another concern is that
these actions by the U.S. make it harder to administer aid at all. The
vaccination scheme fostered anti-vaccine sentiment in Pakistan, which
led to a resurgence of polio.
In the last decade, nearly a billion dollars have been disbursed in
Pakistan via U.S.A.I.D., yet The New York Times reported last month
that it has had little impact on the ground, in large part because
this money is often used to advance American business interests.
“Critics accuse the agency of taking on projects with little
consideration for local priorities and being over-reliant on American
contractors with little development experience,” according to The
Times, which added that these problems are exacerbated by
anti-Americanism.
“There is also this deep-seated suspicion that this aid — whatever the
objectives — are kind of subject to the U.S. foreign policy’s
short-term goals,” said Raza Rumi, a fellow of the National Endowment
of Democracy, which does development work in Pakistan.
The Times reported that development work by China, which is much more
politically hands-off in its foreign aid policy, has been much more
effective in Pakistan for this reason.
The debate over politics and foreign aid could ultimately be over
trade-offs between short-term and long-term prosperity. If the aid
community rejected all politics, developing countries could be more
receptive of international help; but if the aid community embraces
politics, it could lead to better government in countries receiving
aid.
In 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales accused U.S.A.I.D. of
conspiring against his government and expelled the organization from
his country. In response, Foreign Policy magazine argued that although
such actions are unfortunate, it’s still natural and necessary for
international aid to play politics. During the middle of the 20th
century, NGOs sought to detach themselves from all geopolitics, but by
the 1990s, donors “accumulated considerable knowledge about how to
make a positive political difference” and naturally “embraced the idea
that governance failures in aid-receiving countries were often at the
core of disappointing socioeconomic results.”
“Building schools and providing textbooks without paying attention to
a government’s willingness and capacity to manage educational finances
cleanly, hold teachers accountable, and ensure equal access to
education is not a recipe for success,” Thomas Carothers and Diane de
Gramont of Foreign Policy argued. “And providing support to a
government without attention to its human rights record or practices
of social inclusion is not likely to win durable friends, as the case
of Egypt under Mubarak so vividly demonstrates."
Received on Wed Nov 04 2015 - 22:55:44 EST