FOREIGN AID THE TRUTH?

Britain to help relieve humanitarian catastrophes. But the common complaint is that much of this foreign aid doesn't go to the poor at all, but ends up instead in the pockets of tyrants and kleptocrats.
In addition, it is said that it does nothing to tackle the root causes of third world poverty, because it fosters dependency and corruption without requiring the political or economic change necessary to enable such countries to thrive.
Government is clearly highly sensitive to such concerns. Accordingly, the International-Development Secretary-Andrew Mitchell, has trumpeted a review of the way this foreign aid is distributed, pledging that, in future, it will be a transparent system guaranteed to go to the poorest of the poor. But this is a worthless promise. For the problem is far deeper than just transparency. The horrifying truth is that, far from such assistance going to alleviate starvation, disease and the suffering that follows conflict, much of it actually serves to perpetuate war and tyranny, persecution and mass murder. How can this have happened? The key error is that famine, drought or disease are regarded as suffering to be alleviated regardless of its context. But such need is often manipulated or even created by tyrants or warlords - in order to obtain the aid that then enables them to kill and enslave even more people and prop up their own corrupt and brutal regimes.

Workers unload a truck of wheat, at a warehouse on the outskirts of Quetta near the Pakistani-Afghan border. More often than not these supplies get into the wrong hands. This means that the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which administer this aid become the unwitting tools of repression and mass murder - as do the governments and well-meaning, but naive people who have stumped up the aid in the first place. On top of this fundamental error, there is another fiction - that aid and the agencies which deliver it are neutral players in world events. Humanitarianism is conceived as the duty to alleviate human suffering unconditionally - which means a blind eye must be turned whenever it is abused. However gross this abuse, the aid must continue to be provided on the grounds that, wherever there is suffering, there must be humanitarian relief. And so the aid itself becomes the key means by which war and terrorism, tyranny and genocide are actually perpetrated. The results of this profoundly misguided approach are set out in stark and horrifying detail in War Games, a brilliant new book by the Dutch journalist Linda Polman. What she conclusively demonstrates is that David Cameron's belief that relieving global poverty will diminish the threat of terrorism or war is the precise opposite of the truth. To warring parties in many conflicts, money and supplies provided by the aid agencies represent a business opportunity and an essential element in their military strategy.

Aid turns to warfare: A Rwandan Patriotic Front soldier poses following the massacre of the Tutsis by the Hutu tribe in the nineties. For example, in Rwanda, where the Hutu tribe massacred millions of Tutsis in the Nineties, a record $1.5 billion for immediate relief alone poured in from Western governments and NGOs to deal with what was presented as an epidemic of cholera among the refugees. What the aid organisations failed to report was that some of the refugees who poured across the border into Goma in neighbouring Zaire were not dying of disease, but were being murdered by Hutu militias. The Hutus stole the aid - by some accounts, as much as 60 per cent - and levied tax on food rations to pay their militias and thus continue murdering Tutsis back in Rwanda. Without international aid, the Hutus' war of extermination would have ground to a halt. And this pattern has been repeated over and over again in pretty well every conflict zone, where aid is given in the tragically false belief that a dist inct ion can be made between conflict and humanitarian assistance. In Somalia, warlords extracted from the aid agencies as much as 80 per cent of what the aid supplies were worth. After the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, which left 40,000 dead and displaced 2.5 million people, Dutch relief workers were forced to pay a levy of up to 25 per cent of the aid to the terrorist Tamil Tigers. In Sudan in the Eighties and Nineties, where two million were slaughtered, the government army that committed these atrocities fed itself on food aid that it stole. The truth is that this aid kept the genocide going. As Polman observes, warlords, rebel leaders, terrorists, militias and others wreaking death and destruction impose on aid agencies heavy import duties on supplies, fees for visas and work permits, harbour and airport taxes, and road permits for cars and trucks.
Some also levy taxes for the 'use' of children for vaccination or rehabilitation. And even more devastating than this mafia-style aid protection racket, refugee camps all over the world turn into paramilitary or terrorist strongholds. Withdrawing into these camps allows those bent on violence to regroup, rearm and train undisturbed, often using civilian refugees as human shields against any outside attack.
All this courtesy of international aid organisations, which provide food, clean drinking water, medical care, shelter, education and welfare on the spurious grounds that this is merely ' humanitarian' relief and so is nothing at all to do with the conflict in question. 'Yet such aid is the key factor that enables the violence and terror to continue.'

Yet such aid is the key factor that enables the violence and terror to continue - a fact carefully concealed by the NGOs in case this bitter truth dries up the funds. As Polman writes, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) camps that sprang up in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza developed into 'fully-fledged city states from which the ''freedom struggle'' against Israel - and against each other - continues to this day'. Indeed, in Gaza - to which the Cameron government has just committed a £19 million first instalment of a five- year £100 million aid package - UNRWA admitted last year that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas had stolen 3,500 blankets and more than 400 food packages, including 200 tons of rice and flour, that were supposed to be distributed to Gaza residents. In this calamitous situation, the key is the collusive and deeply questionable role played by the NGOs and aid agencies. These form a vast, powerful and unaccountable industry. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that every major disaster attracts on average 1,000 aid organisations. Directly after World War II, the supply of aid was tightly controlled by the U.S. and Russia. With the fall of Communism, however, the nature of global conflict changed from war between states to terrorist or rebel insurgencies. The superpowers withdrew from the scene, and local warlords were left to decide the conditions under which aid organisations would be granted access to the suffering needy. In this combustible arena, many aid agencies have become highly politicised advocacy groups - and they have a symbiotic relationship with the media, which is so keen to tug public heart-strings that it often censors the ugly manipulation behind the images of human suffering. The aid organisations then move in with their begging bowls on the back of these harrowing, but highly manipulative dispatches. So much so that former UN Secretary- General , Boutros Boutros-Ghali, referred to the U.S. TV news channel CNN as 'the 16th member of the Security Council'. Of course the UN itself has been accused of being heavily complicit in this collusion between aid and violence. There have been allegations for more than six decades that it has run the Palestinian terror camps in the Middle East; that in the Eighties it helped nurture the Taliban in its refugee camps in Pakistan; and that in the Nineties, Liberian refugees in its camps turned into rebels after only a few months. Interestingly, one of the first people to recognise the trap into which humanitarian aid would lead was Florence Nightingale. Having seen at first hand the appalling conditions in British military hospitals during the 19th century Crimean War, she concluded that the only people who could remedy such a situation were those whose incompetence and heartlessness had caused it in the first place - in that case, the British government. When the International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in 1863, on the principle that voluntary organisations should deliver humanitarian assistance regardless of why it had become needed and what was actually done with it, Nightingale observed: 'I need hardly say I think its views most absurd, just such as would originate in a little state like Geneva which can never see war.'
Today, this Geneva- based organisation has developed a self-aggrandising moral blindness that pervades the West's whole approach to aid. Ultimately, international aid is not about rescuing the starving of the world. Instead, it is all about burnishing the self-image of the person, organisation or government doing the giving. That's why blind eyes are so resolutely turned to the way aid is used as the life-support system for tyrants and mass murderers. There is surely a case for saying that, rather than being ring-fenced as Cameron's government vows to do, the entire international aid programme should be axed - along with the department that administers it. Failing that, it should be renamed the Department for the Perpetuation of War, Tyranny and Terror. Now that would be transparency. As for the generous-minded members of the public who want to dip into their pockets to relieve distress, they would be well advised to give the international aid racket a miss and donate to charities caring for the poor, old or disabled in this country instead.

In September 2009 a report was published that revealed for the first time where local authority 'Preventing Violent Extremism' (PVE) grants were going. TPA argued then that the grants were a well-intentioned but costly social experiment and disliked by all community groups. We called for them to be abolished and the Government has now decided to adopt our position. However, Prevent is cross-departmental and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have also been giving out these grants.

TPA released more research showing how the FCO distributed these funds in 2007-08 and 2008-09. A huge £10.5 million was distributed in grants in 2008-09 alone, for schemes like a “mobile cinema for justice”. Already well funded public bodies like the BBC and the British Council received yet more taxpayers’ money for other dubious projects and the results show a marked shift of focus away from the other strands of Contest to Prevent. The Government should scrap the entire Prevent Strategy and focus on sound policing and intelligence to stop violent extremism.

As an idea, it is beyond reproach. An end to child labour, education for all and free school books for every Indian primary school pupil. It is called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan — Education For All — and the logo for the project is a jaunty cartoon of two tiny Indian children sitting astride a giant pencil, happily learning to read. The reality, however, leaves a lot to be desired. This Indian development programme has been tragically pillaged by officials, who have robbed impoverished children of their hopes.

Indian school children

Auditors have discovered that around £70 million of aid money has gone missing from the gigantic scheme, which was designed to fund schools for India’s 350 million children. A report by India’s Auditor General,reveals widespread ‘diversions and mis-utilisations’, showing that almost £14 million has been spent on items that have nothing to do with schools. Instead, corrupt officials bought cars and other luxuries. In one instance, aid money was used to buy four luxury beds, at a cost of £17,754.

In the state of Andhra Pradesh, money was wasted on 7,531 colour televisions — despite the fact that many of the classrooms have no electricity. Computers were bought and now lie idle in stockrooms. Tens of thousands of pounds were allocated to 2,369 schools in the district of Jharkhand that do not even exist, and £150,000 was paid into a mystery bank account with no reason given. I will repeat myself. As long as you keep paying taxes, the State will continue to spend them. I've had a brisk look through the truly depressing list of despots that can count on £14.7 Billion of taxpayers money, taken under threat of violence. Mugabe to receive £353M, Pakistan to receive £1.4 Billion, India's Space Program (even they tried to refuse the aid) £1.1 Billion. Somalia, which doesn't even HAVE a government is to receive £250 Million, whilst those trustworthy fellows we meet everyday in our junk mail folders, the Nigerians, wallowing in $100 a barrel oil and diamond encrusted Learjets are to receive £1 Billion.

FOREIGN aid has helped fund a multi-million-pound Paris property portfolio for African ­dictators, it emerged yesterday.

Scores of the most luxurious houses and flats in the French capital are now owned by men who regularly receive vast handouts – including British cash via European funding.

They include Ali Bongo, President of Gabon, with at least 39 properties, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, President of the Republic of the Congo, who has 16.

The portfolio of Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea, includes a six-floor period building on the prestigious Avenue Foch worth at least £15million.

It is used by his family on shopping trips in France, while Obiang Nguema – who came to power in a bloody 1979 coup – prefers to occupy a £2,000-plus-a-night suite at the Plaza ­Athenee Hotel, off the chic Champs Elysee. The astonishing details are in a report handed to Paris prosecutors by anti-corruption groups Transparency International and Sherpa. They are also investigating claims that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt – both deposed in the Arab Spring – retain numerous homes in France. Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi is also thought to be a Gallic property owner, as is Bashar Al-Assad, accused of killing his own subjects in Syria.

The dossier’s main accusation is that foreign aid flooding into blighted African states was used to fund the extravagant lifestyles of unelected leaders. French authorities have been accused of turning a blind eye to the scandal. Liberation newspaper highlighted President Sarkozy’s apparent inability to his give up his support for despots.

Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money could be ending up in the pockets of Taliban insurgents and corrupt Afghan officials, a damning report has revealed.The International Crisis Group warned that up to 10 per cent of overseas aid was being paid in bribes and protection money to the Taliban and officials in Kabul. Over the next four years, the Prime Minister has pledged to give £710million to Afghanistan alone. That could mean up to £70million of British money going to the very people we are fighting. The Department for International Development spent £102million on aid  to Afghanistan in the last financial year, but this will rise to £178million this year. Of these totals, 16 per cent goes to Helmand province, where British troops operate.

Ministers are in secret talks to enshrine in law the Government’s promise to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid. International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell is demanding Parliamentary time to introduce the controversial legislation. Officials from his department are in talks with Tory whips and Leader of the House Sir George Young to ensure the Bill is passed.

British taxpayers provided Zimbabwe’s leader Robert Mugabe with £8million in aid to buy police vehicles that were used to crush his own people, a report found yesterday.
The tyrant’s regime was also supplied with loan guarantees worth £21million to help him import more than 1,000 Land Rovers.