Guest: "Thank you very much. And I AM right".
The very humble guest in question is Ms. Dambisa Moyo, talking about her book ‘Dead Aid’ on Australian television.
‘Dead Aid’ is the new development book en vogue, which offers unsophisticated analysis to come up with an unusual conclusion: aid is the cause of everything that’s wrong in Africa. Not ‘associated with’, not ‘exacerbates’: is THE cause.
Her devil is the ‘aid industry’, apparently a cabal of academics, NGOs, governmental and multilateral organisations whose apparent raison d’être is to spend aid money, purposefully or inadvertently harming their recipients to maintain them in poverty.
Let’s dig deeper into her arguments.
Before I comment on the book though, allow me to underscore that I cringe when an author is supposed to be read just because they are African (or Arab, or Muslim, or Faroese). A claim, truth be told, never made by the author, but repeated by her supporters, including even in the foreword to her book.
Especially that she spent her early childhood, and has lived since college freshman year - from 1990 until today - between the US and the UK. (doing the math, she must’ve spent her teens, perhaps 10 or 11 years, in Zambia). A fact that I would never hold against her if she weren’t brazen enough to criticize foreign aid fundraisers for ‘not even living in Africa’ - which she doesn’t either.
When someone is presented as giving the ‘Arab view’ or a ‘Bengladeshi perspective’ or such thing, unless they are indeed the foreign minister of Bangladesh or actually represent a view we have no access to - say, Burmese opposition - they’re just seeking a legitimacy they would never hold under solid academic scrutiny.
And this is what this book seems to me.
Past the first two introductory chapters, I decided to add ‘Dead Aid’ to my pile of toilets readings. This is no insult: it’s just a categorization. Said readings need to have certain characteristics, namely be enjoyable, simply written, light-headed, and not require much mental effort.
It does ask a good, albeit often asked question: why hasn’t aid fulfilled its promises in the past years.
But that’s almost all the book’s worth. Save for a few recommendations straight from an Ec-Dev 101 class, the rest is either useless, flawed, or seriously harmful.
The author begins with her conclusion - that aid is a horrible horrible thing - and works her way backwards, attempting the build her case, but only succeeds in making shady correlations and passing them for straightforward causality. Her counterfactuals simply aren't. (diamond-rich Botswana? Really?)
I lost track of the number of times sentences are introduced by ‘may be explained by’... (the real answer to which is consistently - “no, it isn’t, stop bullshitting’).
Or, since we’re looking at introductory locutions: her “there was a sense in some quarters that...” and builds upon the belief of those unidentified ‘some quarters’ to make her point, reminding me of the joke PhD rules: writing ‘there is agreement that...’ in your thesis means ‘two guys at the bar agreed with me’; ‘widespread agreement’ means ‘the bartender agreed, too’. Ms. Moyo seems to operate on the same principles.
Of course, if any graduate student actually referenced and footnoted their paper like she did, they’d be fired for plagiarism.
I happen to have read Collier’s “the Bottom Billion” shortly before I read ‘Dead Aid’, and while she borrows many of his arguments and research (there’s very little original research in ‘Dead Aid’) she reaches different conclusions than he does; while Collier’s recommendations usually involve highlighting the detailed point that needs reform - reform is the name of the game for the man, a reasonable position indeed - Moyo’s conclusion is invariably that aid is the devil.
It gets frankly ridiculous after a few chapters.
Added to this her inability - rather her unwillingness - to differentiate between types of aid or to acknowledge that aid has been successful when properly targeted. And not just humanitarian aid, which she hints at as being ok at some point before falling back into the 'all aid' mantra.
Aid critics before her generally fell into two categories: either they assumed that aid is yet insufficient (Sachs, UN Millennium Development Goals...) or, such as Bauer and Easterly, whom she references, called for an in-depth reform of the aid system.
Oh, and they all did their own research...
Her recommendations?
The author advocates the recourse to world market bonds, with such convoluted mechanisms - including pooled credit ratings, which the better rated countries will never agree to anyway - that simply won’t happen.
Ditching cheap World Bank loans in favour of more expensive bond markets - because they entail ‘credibility’, and, quote "more credibility equals more money, equals more credibility, equals more money and so on".
Imagine you’re a graduate student: following her logic, you should refuse a scholarship and get a commercial bank loan instead, because it would push you to work harder.
Which it might, sure. But this expensive money will have to repaid: Hmm. That’s not a concern for her, it seems.
And, apart from that - foreign direct investment, and trade.
Hallelujah.
We’ve been hammering the same two topics for the past two decade, if not longer. We know that this should be the path out of poverty for the developing world. Ms. Moyo is twenty years late.
And while she candidly blames the fall of export revenues on Western protectionism - which is harmful, I agree - she is euphoric about China’s investment in minerals and primary goods - the price of which are unstable and generally decreasing, making her key solution a very temporary one.
She celebrates AGOA and EBA (preferential trade concessions by the US and the EU, respectively, aimed at the poorest countries) while we’re already thinking about the phasing out of least developed countries’ preferences under WTO.
Oh. And microfinance. Sure. I think Muhammad Yunus is a god, but Grameen Bank loans won’t pay for civil servants salaries. Nor for physical infrastructure.
‘Okay, you 12 million people, you’re a nice lending group now and are all in charge of monitoring one another or you’re not getting the second half of your bridge!’
And to convince, or scare her ‘Western’ readers into following her ‘Dead Aid proposals’, she uses, in the same breath - I kid you not - global terrorism AND “the Chinese are coming”!
Why the hype, then?
Normally a book like that would fall into oblivion very rapidly: it hasn’t (yet). Why is that?
Well, looking around the development arena it is true that Africans, and women, are underrepresented, and an articulate African woman makes a great talk-show guest. Great for ‘Young Global Leaders’ listings, for Time Magazine to profile. It's silly but it's true.
Compare her, for instance, to aid-skeptic Bill Easterly, a remarkable scholar but a much less televised persona.
More importantly, Moyo’s recommendation will be very appealing to many aid-fatigued observers: ‘cut all aid to Africa within 5 years’, she says. Fantastic election material for wannabe politicians: “we will save all the money we send to Africa - and save them in the process” sounds like a great sound bite in a speech! In these times, particularly, when aid programmes are expected to be curtailed with the current world economic crisis, this plan is music to many ears.
I’ll add to that some great marketing, and embarrassing mistakes on the part of those who disagreed - chiefly the One campaign, whose internal emails were leaked and allowed for a mini-scandal to be exploited by the ‘Dead Aid’ publishers.
Ms. Moyo must be challenged - in an academic arena, not on Oprah. That should easily put her arguments down once and for all. It is sad that it has come to that, and I am confident she could’ve contributed positively to the aid debate, rather than hammer her damaging one-point plan. Because anyone who has worked in foreign relief knows that, very often - aid saves lives.
Less than we want, less than it should; but we’re working on improving it. ‘Dead Aid’ isn’t.
*UPDATE - Jeffrey Sachs has a word to say about Moyo's 'ideas' - and he is pissed. A short and good read.
‘Dead Aid’ is the new development book en vogue, which offers unsophisticated analysis to come up with an unusual conclusion: aid is the cause of everything that’s wrong in Africa. Not ‘associated with’, not ‘exacerbates’: is THE cause.
Her devil is the ‘aid industry’, apparently a cabal of academics, NGOs, governmental and multilateral organisations whose apparent raison d’être is to spend aid money, purposefully or inadvertently harming their recipients to maintain them in poverty.Let’s dig deeper into her arguments.
Before I comment on the book though, allow me to underscore that I cringe when an author is supposed to be read just because they are African (or Arab, or Muslim, or Faroese). A claim, truth be told, never made by the author, but repeated by her supporters, including even in the foreword to her book.
Especially that she spent her early childhood, and has lived since college freshman year - from 1990 until today - between the US and the UK. (doing the math, she must’ve spent her teens, perhaps 10 or 11 years, in Zambia). A fact that I would never hold against her if she weren’t brazen enough to criticize foreign aid fundraisers for ‘not even living in Africa’ - which she doesn’t either.
When someone is presented as giving the ‘Arab view’ or a ‘Bengladeshi perspective’ or such thing, unless they are indeed the foreign minister of Bangladesh or actually represent a view we have no access to - say, Burmese opposition - they’re just seeking a legitimacy they would never hold under solid academic scrutiny.
And this is what this book seems to me.
Past the first two introductory chapters, I decided to add ‘Dead Aid’ to my pile of toilets readings. This is no insult: it’s just a categorization. Said readings need to have certain characteristics, namely be enjoyable, simply written, light-headed, and not require much mental effort.
It does ask a good, albeit often asked question: why hasn’t aid fulfilled its promises in the past years.
But that’s almost all the book’s worth. Save for a few recommendations straight from an Ec-Dev 101 class, the rest is either useless, flawed, or seriously harmful.
The author begins with her conclusion - that aid is a horrible horrible thing - and works her way backwards, attempting the build her case, but only succeeds in making shady correlations and passing them for straightforward causality. Her counterfactuals simply aren't. (diamond-rich Botswana? Really?)
I lost track of the number of times sentences are introduced by ‘may be explained by’... (the real answer to which is consistently - “no, it isn’t, stop bullshitting’).
Or, since we’re looking at introductory locutions: her “there was a sense in some quarters that...” and builds upon the belief of those unidentified ‘some quarters’ to make her point, reminding me of the joke PhD rules: writing ‘there is agreement that...’ in your thesis means ‘two guys at the bar agreed with me’; ‘widespread agreement’ means ‘the bartender agreed, too’. Ms. Moyo seems to operate on the same principles.
Of course, if any graduate student actually referenced and footnoted their paper like she did, they’d be fired for plagiarism.
I happen to have read Collier’s “the Bottom Billion” shortly before I read ‘Dead Aid’, and while she borrows many of his arguments and research (there’s very little original research in ‘Dead Aid’) she reaches different conclusions than he does; while Collier’s recommendations usually involve highlighting the detailed point that needs reform - reform is the name of the game for the man, a reasonable position indeed - Moyo’s conclusion is invariably that aid is the devil.
It gets frankly ridiculous after a few chapters.
Added to this her inability - rather her unwillingness - to differentiate between types of aid or to acknowledge that aid has been successful when properly targeted. And not just humanitarian aid, which she hints at as being ok at some point before falling back into the 'all aid' mantra.
Aid critics before her generally fell into two categories: either they assumed that aid is yet insufficient (Sachs, UN Millennium Development Goals...) or, such as Bauer and Easterly, whom she references, called for an in-depth reform of the aid system.
Oh, and they all did their own research...
Her recommendations?
The author advocates the recourse to world market bonds, with such convoluted mechanisms - including pooled credit ratings, which the better rated countries will never agree to anyway - that simply won’t happen.
Ditching cheap World Bank loans in favour of more expensive bond markets - because they entail ‘credibility’, and, quote "more credibility equals more money, equals more credibility, equals more money and so on".
Imagine you’re a graduate student: following her logic, you should refuse a scholarship and get a commercial bank loan instead, because it would push you to work harder.
Which it might, sure. But this expensive money will have to repaid: Hmm. That’s not a concern for her, it seems.
And, apart from that - foreign direct investment, and trade.
Hallelujah.
We’ve been hammering the same two topics for the past two decade, if not longer. We know that this should be the path out of poverty for the developing world. Ms. Moyo is twenty years late.
And while she candidly blames the fall of export revenues on Western protectionism - which is harmful, I agree - she is euphoric about China’s investment in minerals and primary goods - the price of which are unstable and generally decreasing, making her key solution a very temporary one.
She celebrates AGOA and EBA (preferential trade concessions by the US and the EU, respectively, aimed at the poorest countries) while we’re already thinking about the phasing out of least developed countries’ preferences under WTO.
Oh. And microfinance. Sure. I think Muhammad Yunus is a god, but Grameen Bank loans won’t pay for civil servants salaries. Nor for physical infrastructure.
‘Okay, you 12 million people, you’re a nice lending group now and are all in charge of monitoring one another or you’re not getting the second half of your bridge!’
And to convince, or scare her ‘Western’ readers into following her ‘Dead Aid proposals’, she uses, in the same breath - I kid you not - global terrorism AND “the Chinese are coming”!
Why the hype, then?
Normally a book like that would fall into oblivion very rapidly: it hasn’t (yet). Why is that?
Well, looking around the development arena it is true that Africans, and women, are underrepresented, and an articulate African woman makes a great talk-show guest. Great for ‘Young Global Leaders’ listings, for Time Magazine to profile. It's silly but it's true.
Compare her, for instance, to aid-skeptic Bill Easterly, a remarkable scholar but a much less televised persona.
More importantly, Moyo’s recommendation will be very appealing to many aid-fatigued observers: ‘cut all aid to Africa within 5 years’, she says. Fantastic election material for wannabe politicians: “we will save all the money we send to Africa - and save them in the process” sounds like a great sound bite in a speech! In these times, particularly, when aid programmes are expected to be curtailed with the current world economic crisis, this plan is music to many ears.
I’ll add to that some great marketing, and embarrassing mistakes on the part of those who disagreed - chiefly the One campaign, whose internal emails were leaked and allowed for a mini-scandal to be exploited by the ‘Dead Aid’ publishers.
Ms. Moyo must be challenged - in an academic arena, not on Oprah. That should easily put her arguments down once and for all. It is sad that it has come to that, and I am confident she could’ve contributed positively to the aid debate, rather than hammer her damaging one-point plan. Because anyone who has worked in foreign relief knows that, very often - aid saves lives.
Less than we want, less than it should; but we’re working on improving it. ‘Dead Aid’ isn’t.
*UPDATE - Jeffrey Sachs has a word to say about Moyo's 'ideas' - and he is pissed. A short and good read.
19 comments:
I saw her on The Colbert Report, and saw that she couldn't make a single solid argument, but thought that this was maybe the fault of the program's comic and brief format. Then saw bits and pieces of her on MSNBC: idem... Nothing that she said encouraged me to read her book. Thanks anyway!
Mo-Ha-Med;
Thanks for a very interesting post. I admit I am too ignorant on what goes on in Africa, nor have I read the mentioned book.
Most of what I know about aid and its effect on ongoing conflicts and local economy is derived from (take a wild guess), our own romance with the Palestinians.
But what is the response of aid supporters, such as yourself, to the (in my opinion well founded) notion that aid does have a 'perpetuating' effect on conflict status-quos?
To make my point clear: On the Israeli-Palestinian arena in Ghaza, for example, both sides could not have kept the conflict so "stable" without the massive Aid continuing unabated: Israel could never have maintained its embargo/isolation policy and Hamas could not have kept avoided taking responsibility for Ghazans and the consequences of its 'all-or-nothing' policy. Of course, the short term suffering would have been greatly increased - even so, this effect should not be ignored.
We can all talk about aid coming hand-in-hand with reforms until we grow hoarse, but these changes always have to come from within. And the (sad) fact of the matter is it seems foreign aid relives the pressure on change instead of supporting it.
G
Mohamed, do I know you socially? Bill Easterly
G,I'm more positive towards aid, but I've also been thinking that aid to both Israel and the PA have, in fact, prolonged the conflict. You have a point when you say change must come from within.
Mohamed, I read a review in the Economist, and they had basically the same conclusion as you, she's late. Me, I'm usually positive towards aid. However, sometimes it does seem to make things worse, like Zimbawe. But free trade is extremely important. If European politicians decide to take away aid to Africa, they'd better stop subsidize farmers... Imagine the outcry!
Can you name some improvements? How do you give aid without prolonging conflicts or supporting corrupt regimes?
Helen
Soha I also saw the Colbert report thing. I wasn't impressed, honestly. If she's going to convince us of her rather extreme plan, she needs, well, better arguments!
Prof. EasterlyNow that I have your attention, can you be my PhD supervisor?
Eh. Worth a try.
I have met you in an academic and social context, yes. You - thankfully! - wouldn't remember me, for sure.
In any event - sincere apologies, pardon the bad choice of words.
One tends to forget that the people they reference in papers are real (and read blogs)...
Text edited, I hope that's better.
GGood points indeed.
I'm not sure Gaza and Israel are good examples though. Israel is a developed country, and aid doesn't go to, well, pay government salaries. And in Gaza - no money has gone in since the Hamas takeover (except for the bags of money sneaking through the border).
Yes, there is a problem of dependency; the bigger the share of aid to the total domestic income, the bigger the problem.
As for aid relieving pressure: sometimes. Depends on the kind of pressure though - because in a dictatorship, the chief may be scooping money like mad and might just up the repression against the people that's going increasingly hungry. (I'm exaggerating of course, but you get the idea).
Plus there's something rather unethical about cutting aid to put pressure on the people that would put pressure on the government...
Alright, allow me to be a little long here:
There are kinds of aid though, roughly:
- Budget support: that goes to the black hole that is national budgets. Pays for pretty much whatever the government sees fit.
- Humanitarian aid: self explanatory. Of an urgent nature, usually; but it can extend for years and years.. (UNRWA expenses fall under that, I believe).
- Development assistance: which is, in my opinion, the most complex. Supposed to be allocated by project (say, build a bridge, pay for agricultural machinery, buy an X-Ray machine, pretty much anything you can think of).
type (b) shouldn't even be discussed. Emergency means emergency, and we're not going to put political conditions in such extreme conditions.
(a) is often very political, because the money is spent usually at the discretion of the government, and as such the donor is usually quite set on supporting this government if they'll trust them with the money (case in point: donors give money to Fatah govs, but when Hamas won the elections, the EU decided to make direct transfers into the bank accounts of government employees, bypassing the Hamas government).
(c) is where, I think, most of the hope for improvement lies.
The obvious mechanism for ensuring 'good behaviour' is to impose 'conditionality' -- 'you'll get the money when (promise to) do this'.
Of course, the problem is that they'll promise to do those reforms - and then won't. Time after time after time.
The next thing that was tried - is being tried! - is to induce countries to make reforms by setting some sort of minimum requirements for getting aid: the US has been doing that with its 'millennium challenge account'. Problem is, the countries that are reforming may not be the most needy of aid...
So it's complex.
Now what can be done to end underdevelopment? Huh. Wish I knew.
But do 'changes' always come from within? Yes, in a perfect world. Donors can generally influence things though...
HelenI can't remember where I read that, but someone was responding to the claim that with aid, the typical Sub-saharan African country had an average growth rate of 0 to 1% between 1960 to 2000. His/her response was that - if it weren't for aid, the average growth would've been negative.
Of course aid has often been successful. Think of, say, all the campaigns for eradicating diseases (polio, etc.) Hmm.. think of the Marshall Plan! Liberia is doing good since the war. Banda Aceh was rebuilt after the tsunami (and the civil war ended). Etc...
As I said, I'm rooting for trade, self-reliance, more foreign investments, more local savings and investments, etc.
And indeed, EU/US subsidies and protectionism (like, not importing oranges in the months when the Spanish production hits the market..) are making the lives of poor countries' producers harder.
But why are we relying on just exporting raw bauxite, oranges, untreated cotton? Why not aluminum (or even products of), and shirts? The prices of raw commodities is both fluctuating and decreasing over the long term. We need to try to diversify into more sophisticated - a little more sophisticated! - goods.
As for aid without supporting corrupt regimes: I'm guessing you mean 'without adding money to the dictator's bank account'...
Aaah, tough one. Since aid normally goes through the gov. of the host country.
However there are various possibilities of management of aid where the donor is more involved in the project. Or the money goes through a common pool - a 'multi-donor trust fund', as it's commonly referred to - that will be managed by one of the donors, say the world bank in Aceh (north indonesia) or UNDP (for post 2006-lebanon aid) who will follow the money closely.
'conditionality', as i explained above, could've been a good idea but there's no guarantee to conditions will be followed; especially that it's easy to label the donor country as the bad guy in the story (since he's 'interfering in the country's internal affairs'!). So that needs to be better thought.
One thing i've seen and was impressive: involve the end recipient in the management. So when aid money was going to be spent in villages in deep Sumatra, elected village councils actually determined how the money was spent, and followed that closely: the local (government appointed) governor was unable to steal the money.
Something else that was an experiment in Chad was about money going to school, 90% of which usually was stolen along the way (between the donor--> various government agencies and ministries --> local authorities --> education board --> etc... --> all the way down to the school);
they decided to publish, in the newspaper, how much each local school was supposed to receive.
The result: less than 10% of the money was stolen, the rest was delivered.
There's no one definite answer, but there are ways to make it happen.
As for aid not prolonging conflict:
Well, you're assuming that aid does prolong conflict. Some researchers agree with you - aid is a resource that warlords would want to take control of, just like a diamond mine.
I don't fully agree. We, as the rest of the world, need to be pretty fu**ing dumb if we're going to keep sending the checks regardless of who's in the castle. We do sometimes (Kabila!), but not always. (again - Hamas? Taliban?)
Damn, that was long...
Long, but revealing--good! Why can't the Sumatra/Chad model be employed world-wide?
I'm not buying her book--she doesn't have a clue, and sounds suspiciously close to the paranoid clique that believes ALL aid is a form of imperialism. Nice sentiment to hold if you're living in the UK or US but if you're a Chad villager or a tsunami victim, aid may be the difference between life and death.
One of my favorite aid organizations is Heifer International. http://www.heifer.org/ They're not big but they're effective and work one-on-one with their communities. I've encouraged my family and friends to give chickens and goats for holiday and birthday presents [grin]. Better a goat to Sierra Leone for Mother's Day than a sweater or scarf, thank you.
Mo-
Again we are thinking in parallel (or perhaps its anti-parallel) lines.
The kind of Aid I was talking about is exactly the type you don't even want to discuss - your type B, the emergency aid to the people. Yes, that aid which feeds old women and babies. This aid doesn't just 'prolong' conflicts, it perpetuates them, and prevents them from running their due course. Before you all get out the torches and pitchforks, just try and hear me out:
All the things you said about aid supporting corrupt regimes and how to sidestep that is good and fine, but I am talking about what drives nations through significant change in state-of mind : deep misery.
Take the French revolution for example, that huge change from monarchy do republic. If the poor people of Paris would have UNRWA they would have never have revolted they way they did. Perhaps the French republic would have been born anyway, only later, but I don't think so.
The Ghaza example is a relevant case, Hamas derives room to maneuver not from the direct aid which Europe gives only through Abbas, but the humanitarian aid which relieves them of answering to their people's needs. It saves lives, yes, but it also serves to grow generations of people hopelessly dependant on welfare.
And No, I am not some monster who relishes the thought of children dying of hunger and disease, I am just saying that you have a blind spot for the dire consequences of this type of aid.
I mean, 60 years of humanitarian aid on a large scale and the Palestinians are still in the same place, dependant more than ever, poorer than ever, and the worse of it: in the same state-of mind as they were sixty years ago. Sure, there's Israel and other factors and so on, but I think without that aid - the revolution would have been here already. Vive La Revolution!
G
Well, I don't have a blind spot about ways in which humanitarian aid can prolong conficts, BUT....that's the moral equation you can't ignore. Is ending any conflict by withholding humanitarian aid (and its concommitant results such as starvation/disease) ok?
No. Period.
Punishing the recipients (in the sense of everyday folks) for the manipulation and/or theft of aid by the local thugocracy which was meant to assist the general population would probably work. But I'm not willing to win at that price.
There isn't any easy answer to this, and in our neighborhood, Hamas knows it--it's win-win for them (now that they're importing Grads they don't need our metal pipes to make Kassams anymore), and while that's aggravating, and we can interdict some materials used for war, we can't stop aid totally without hurting the wrong people. You don't think HAMASNIKIM are going to go hungry, do you? Heck no--the first shipments of food by the UN after Cast Lead was stolen to feed their own fighters.
This game is played by thugs everywhere--look at the Sudan, or Somalia for examples of the same.
The French Revolution was followed by The Terror. In the end, the People put The Terroristas under the guillotine. We can only hope that Hamas steps over that line and the Palestinians decide they've had enough of defenestrations, roof-top tossings, murder-in-the-name-of-morality and/or patriotism, etc. and turn the tables on their REAL oppressors in Gaza.
Well, it's a pretty pointless argument given the speed with which the leading Western economies are piling up debts and deficits. In the US the first babyboomers will start retiring in the next three four years and the Europeans are heading for their own pensions crisis. Add to this that Africa may soon become the world's most populous continent while some Western countries are already shrinking.
The aid may be effective, or it may be not, but unless China or Saudi Arabia are ready to step in, Africa should start getting used to the idea that in the future it will be increasingly on its own.
Aliyah06 -No, not worth buying the book. There are far more interesting books about development going around.
I vaguely heard about Heifer, but the way you describe it sounds like they're doing a good job!
As for 'what to give' -- the best kinds of assistance is what people demand, not what we choose to give them... and that applies for goats, as well as for bridges.
GYou're thinking in a very narrow vision: you're looking at aid in conflict situations, and I suspect you're only thinking about the Palestinian case - and you're quite biased against them, too.
Aliyah06 gave several good points. (though, 'the REAL oppressors' are not the same in her story).
Humanitarian aid goes beyond politics. It's the absolute first rule. Sick people are treated; hungry people are fed. Regardless of their political affiliation.
In the words of a community organiser in Aceh - "when someone hungry comes to your door, you don't ask them what's in their heads. You just feed them".
"Changing nations' state of mind through inducing deep misery", to borrow your terms, is only okay in extremist Israeli political discourse. Sorry, but that's true.
Now more on the Gaza issue, which you raise.
Right now Hamas has no way of answering people's needs in Gaza. Any government, under those conditions, would not be able to.
Blaming humanitarian aid for the survival of Hamas is a bit of a chicken and egg thing.
Hamas was voted in; Israel blockaded the Gaza Strip, creating a dire humanitarian situation; international aid; then you blame aid for Hamas' existence; then harsher blockade; etc...
As for 60 years of aid; hmm, well, I will meet you halfway. This continued situation is ludicrous. Is UNRWA to blame? I don't know. Maybe. But it is also incredibly important for millions of people.
And the state of mind is surely not the same. 60 years have passed, my friend. Despite the rhetoric, people have acquainted themselves with the idea of Israel, and that they won't regain their land back. Past questions of land, there's a lot of issues of principles, and recognition, that need to be worked out.
NobodyWestern countries will nevertheless remain lightyears ahead of Africa, won't they.
And in any event, China and Saudi have already stepped in. Chinese aid and investment in Africa is normally 'no strings attached'. Saudi Arabia was the biggest donor in post-2006 Lebanon (and in second place came Kuwait, for that matter).
NobodyWestern countries will nevertheless remain lightyears ahead of Africa, won't they.
Yes. Let alone that Africa is also known to occasionally move backward.
And in any event, China and Saudi have already stepped in. Chinese aid and investment in Africa is normally 'no strings attached'.
This is correct. Though China does not really need your studies on how to use its aid more efficiently. Its activities are driven by very different considerations. I won't be surprised, however, if China eventually happens to be more successful since in my humble view the second most destructive thing in nature after hurricane Catarina is a bunch of well intentioned individuals who set out to make the world a better place.
Saudi Arabia was the biggest donor in post-2006 Lebanon (and in second place came Kuwait, for that matter).
Lebanon is not exactly Africa and given its status of the official resort of KSA and some other factors, I would dismiss this as an example of development aid.
Mo-
When I said that it takes misery to drive a nation though a metamorphosis I was simply stating a fact. It has nothing to do with mine, or anyone’s, wishes. From post war Germany to the Iranian Revolution, that's the way it is.
As for Israeli right wing, you’ve got it wrong. Right wing Israel hopes for UNRWA to keep doing what its doing and aid keep flowing - that’s what keeps the lid from blowing off the barrel’s top, and Israel is sitting on top of that lid…
There’s no point going into another endless debate about who started what in Gaza, I am sure we won’t convince each other. My personal bet is, though, if the blockage would stop tomorrow, nothing would change in terms of Hamas’s governance. In their mind, their only responsibility to their people is keeping up the resistance, period.
G
We're not disagreeing, G. I actually wrote a post about that - I called it the Poverty-Politics curve, where i said that people have to be poor enough, or rich enough, to be implicated in politics.
Oh, ending the blockade surely won't end Hamas' governance, as you say. Quite on the contrary, they'll pass it as a victory.
However:
- ending the blockage will end human suffering, and allow those caged people to breathe
- maintaining the blockade won't kill Hamas either. Only sick people.
NobodyCorrect: there are years where some African countries had negative growth. Over 40 years - roughly, 1960-2000, the average growth rate for sub-saharan africa has been 0%.
As for China's considerations - eh, all donors have their own considerations...
As for Lebanon: interesting point.
Though since most of the post-2006 reconstruction was in the Dahyeh and in the South, where Saudis don't go...
And the aid was mainly budget support, btw.
As for Lebanon: interesting point.
Though since most of the post-2006 reconstruction was in the Dahyeh and in the South, where Saudis don't go...
And the aid was mainly budget support, btw.
And who was financing reconstruction in Dahyeh? I doubt it was the Saudis. I bet these were the Persians. Hardly a better example of development aid.
Correct: Iran did put a lot of money in the Dahyeh after the war. Of course it was political. Most aid is.
And you know who else put plenty of money? the Hariri family. Yep. The personal funds of Mr. Hariri's sister paid for the reconstruction of about a dozen bridges.
Isn't everything about politics in Lebanon?
Lebanon is all about politics. But this is not that relevant to the topic. What I am saying is that while too many Western countries have decided to spend today and pay tomorrow as a way to pull themselves out of this crisis, the working age population is shrinking all across Europe while dependency ratios are deteriorating. I have no doubt that in Eastern Europe some countries will fail to restart themselves after this crisis. I would even put a cautious bet on Japan failing to start itself again. They spent close to a decade stagnating after the previous crisis and this one is literally doing them away. I am also very skeptical about Obama's feel good spend away projects.
All this is happening while Africa is exploding demographically and is widely exapected to be decimated by global warming in the next two decades. The debate about aid being efficient or not is pretty much meaningless in such situation. The train has already left the station.
Nothing intelligent to add. Just a real appreciation of your insightful blog and the terrific comments, and your response to the comments. What a breath of fresh air.
Shari
Thank you, Shari!
Post a Comment