Aiding And Abetting

Not that US aid has ever been dependent on a country not committing human rights abuses. As part of the USA’s war on drugs, aid has been increasing to many countries in South and Central America. In Columbia the military is responsible for may human rights abuses and is involved with the para-militaries, private armies that fit the description of a terrorist organisation. In spite of protests from groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, aid to Colombia has been increasing. In a particularly disturbing trend, military aid is growing while humanitarian and economic aid is shrinking. The end result is that small farmers who are supposed to be planting crops other than coca receive little or no help to do so. When they return to planting coca as the only profitable crop available to them, they run an increased risk of being attacked by military or paramilitary groups. A percentage of US aid to Colombia is due to Occidental Petroleum’s wishes to have their pipeline protected. What’s that got to do with aid to support the war on drugs? Nothing. It does point to why the aid is really there though...to further the interests of US corporations in the region. There’s also the tendency to cut off aid to countries that will not bend to the will of the US. When the Bush Administration decided that it did not want Americans to be held responsible for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, it needed a lever to force countries into bi-lateral agreements with it. Aid was one such lever and approximately fifty countries that would not give in to American demands were cut off. Presumably those countries that were cut off made the decision that they could afford to lose the aid. Brazil certainly did, saying in a press release, “The Brazilian government have taken cognizance of the US decision to cut off military aid to Brazil and some fifty other countries that are not prepared to sign a bilateral agreement exempting United States citizens from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) established under the Rome Statute. The aim of the ICC is to put and end to impunity for the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It is the view of the Brazilian government that such an agreement runs counter to the letter and the spirit of the Rome Statute and constitutes a threat to the judicial equality of States. Furthermore, from a strictly legal standpoint, Brazil, as signatory to the Statute, cannot bilaterally fail to comply with an obligation assumed at a multilateral level. In view of the foregoing reasons, Brazil does not intend to sign the bilateral agreement proposed by the USA. The military aid currently afforded by the USA to Brazil is not significant. The Brazilian government reiterate their interest in maintaining the traditional ties and the co-operation that exist between the armed forces of our two countries.” In other words the US wanted Brazil to enter into an agreement that would have placed Brazil in contravention of a previous agreement. Brazil was able to say, “No thanks, we don’t need your aid.” How many countries could not make that choice? How many could not say that they could do without US military aid? How many countries entered into bi-lateral agreements with the US to preserve their aid packages or to gain more aid? Since many meetings about aid are held behind closed doors, we may never know. What of other aid? The World Bank and IMF are widely considered, under the dominance of the US, to place requirements on the money they provide that forces countries to adopt policies that are in the best interests of the US and other developed nations, but not necessarily in the best interest of the country receiving the aid. Policies required by the IMF and the World Bank, such as pegging currencies to the US dollar and liberalising trade rules, actually take away tools that developed countries were able to use during their development. Aid gets used in all kinds of political ways. When the US sent food aid to Africa, they sent genetically modified corn. Zimbabwe and Zambia refused the aid, some of which was comprised of Starlink Maize which is not certified for human consumption anywhere on earth and is banned in the US. Malawi spent $20 million milling grain into flour so that genetically modified seed couldn’t find its way into local crops. The US sent that aid knowing full well that if it was accepted it would help American corporations gain a foothold in their battle to get African countries to accept GM crops. It also allows the US to dump surplus crops that they can find no market for because so much of the world will not accept genetically modified food. The US is, of course, not the only country to use aid as a tool toward broadening their global influence. The EU has done it, as have all G-8 countries. The US, due to its massive size and the foreign policies dictated by its corporations, is the biggest offender in recent years and gets most of the attention as a result. That doesn’t make the rest of us innocent, not even in Canada. Aid is tool we use to promote our interests. Trade deals are tied to it, sometimes loosely, sometimes with strings attached . We support the World Bank and the IMF. We back other nations when they use their aid packages to promote their interests. We stand silently by and watch smaller nations accede to deals that are not in their best interests even while arguing that similar deals are not in the interests of other countries. We drag our feet when it comes to forgiving loans that never should have be given to regimes that we wrongly supported. We continue to give aid to regimes that commit human rights abuses without making an end to those abuses a condition of that aid. The biggest problem is that the way we and others use aid leads to bigger problems. Aiding brutal foreign regimes doesn’t go unseen. Pushing one-sided trade deals by tying them to aid does not go unnoticed. Silently supporting nations and international agencies that dictate unsound monetary policies does not go unobserved. Actions like these eat away at Canada’s reputation on the world stage. They lead to more countries requiring more aid. They lead to civil strife in the countries who receive the aid. They lead to terrorism and war. Canada is uniquely placed on the world stage to begin change to how aid is given and what strings are attached. We are the USA’s largest trading partner. We are part of the G-8. We give aid instead of receiving it. We have a voice that many aid-receiving nations lack. At the same time we are a country that depends on exports of raw materials. We are a small nation. We are adversely affected by many of the same strings that are tied to aid developing nations receive. Instead of standing silently by, making token statements or remaining silent, it is time we stood up and used our unique position to change things. --- Blair was raised in Saskatchewan and currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He comes from a long line of social activists and cried on Tommy Douglas before his first birthday. His column appears biweekly on Vive le Canada.