The unglorious truth about rapid economic development

About a month ago, I forwarded to several friends in the development biz this op-ed written by Zack Exley in reply to a controversial op-ed by scion Peter Buffett against charitable "conscience laundering," i.e. the $316 billion annual "business" of philanthropy.

I asked for their reactions.  I got none.

Now I think I know why.  Because it makes development professionals seem inconsequential. For that matter, it makes the World Bank, NGOs, and a lot of economic literature seem inconsequential.

Here's Exley's "secret" to how poor developing countries in the 20th century became rich and developed [emphasis mine]:

How did they pull billions out of poverty so quickly? Unfortunately, the answer is totally unfashionable and will never, ever be discussed at hipster social venture forums. They all had one thing in common: the people in charge -- whether they were social democrats, conservative nationalists, communists or military dictators -- carried out programs of rapid economic development designed to give most people access to means of making a living.

But how did that do that? They built factories, railroads, universities and everything else required to make the things and do the things that go into a decent living (or were valuable enough to trade for them). Communists and dictatorships used various forms of force -- often brutal. Democrats and republicans (small d and small r) used the market and public-private partnerships. By hook or by crook, wherever eliminating poverty was one of the top few national priorities, it was eliminated.

You know, I can't think of a single counter example.  I can't think of a single country that sincerely tried to invest in rapid economic expansion and failed to achieve it. The agent isn't important, it's the action. The action always works.    

In international development, we're always chipping away at the edges, dealing with obstinate or corrupt bureaucrats and elected officials who won't take our advice, donor agencies engaged in external turf battles and internal pissing matches, and apathetic communities who don't believe in us, or believe that their leaders will listen to us.  And yet to effect massive, dramatic economic development, donors don't matter.  It's the "locals" (to use the condescending development vernacular) that must be onboard, from the small towns up to the president or prime minister. And when that happens, so do economic miracles. 

Ideology and political economy seem irrelevant, I hate to say it.  

Go ahead, somebody prove me wrong!  

The Unglamorous Truth About Ending Poverty

By Zack Exley

July 29, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1c6FnK7

'Celebrity saviors' a net negative for Africa

I'm always ready to pile on any criticism of St. Oprah and Lady Madonna!

All in all, despite their perhaps good intentions -- and acknowledging their tendency to self-aggrandizement -- "celebrity saviors" are probably a net negative for international development efforts, really misrepresenting to the public what effective aid is about.

In fact, studies show that "flies in the eyes" imagery of developing nations actually turns Western people off to supporting aid efforts.

Such stereotypical imagery, as African journalist and TED talker Andrew Mwenda notes, also scares away business:

Thus, as a result of these campaigns, our continent tends to attract the most compassionate people of the West who come to give charity. However, its negative side effect is to scare away the most enterprising people of the West who would bring capital to invest and make money. Even when they do try to do something in Africa, like Bill Gates has done through his foundation, they come as merchants of charity, not enterprise.

Madonna and Africa's 'celebrity saviors'

By Andrew M. Mwenda

April 17, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/16/opinion/madonna-charity-africa-mwenda/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

Both sides agree on U.S. foreign aid?

Polls of Americans routinely show that they think anywhere from 10-30 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid programs, when in fact the figure is less than 1 percent.  We get quite a lot in return for that 1 percent, let me tell you.  

But what's the alternative?  Disengagement and withdrawing into our shell; or diplomacy through saber-rattling and threats.  Neither would work.  And our American values won't allow us  (I hope) to engage in flat-out bribery, encouragement of dictators' corruption, and ignorance of human rights like China does.

It's tempting after recent protests in the Mideast and N. Africa for Americans to say, "To hell with 'em."  But if we have no in-country presence besides our embassies and military bases, and nothing to offer but our threats and condemnations, then we won't have a seat at the table, we won't have any direct contact with the people of those countries to demonstrate to them our values and our generosity, and we won't have any soft-power influence over local leaders.  

If America wants to lead the world, it has to do so with many tools in its belt, and foreign assistance must be one of them.

No political football after all?

By Ivy Mungcal

September 12, 2012 | Devex

In the United States, presidential elections are in full swing. The two main political parties have a different tack on foreign aid, according to theirpolitical platforms. Most notably, Democrats hope to increase aid spending while the Republicans want to restrain it.

A top adviser of the Republican standard bearer did tell Devex: Mitt Romney broadly supports development cooperation. So, a doomsday scenario where the foreign aid budget is drastically cut and the U.S. Agency for International Development may not be realistic, after all.

But what about Republican and Democratic voters: How do they perceive the U.S. foreign aid program? Do they want to increase or cut U.S. development spending overseas?

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, the foreign policy opinions of Americans in ‘red’ and ‘blue’ districts are remarkably similar,” according to a new study by a U.S.-based think tank, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “In fact, they are remarkably similar: there is an important difference on only four of the eighty-five questions, while Americans’ opinions coalesce in similar ways on all other questions.”

The study is based on the latest in a series of surveys commissioned by the think tank to assess public opinion on U.S. foreign policy.

Economic aid to Africa is one area where the two groups of voters share a similar view. According to the study, the majority of both Democrats (71 percent) and Republicans (65 percent) support increasing or maintaining U.S. economic aid to countries in the region. They tend to agree that the United States should maintain its level of aid for Israel, a long-time ally in the Middle East.

Democrats and Republicans also share views on Afghanistan and Pakistan: Most said U.S. aid should decrease or stop. Support for aid to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt has dropped since 2010, when the survey was conducted last.

More similarities: A majority of both Democrats and Republicans believes U.S. foreign policy should protect jobs at home, reduce the country’s dependence on oil and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Of course, there are divergences: More Democrats support climate change mitigation, efforts to combat hunger, and a stronger United Nations. Also, more Democrats believe the United States should increase or maintain its aid for Egypt.

This is the latest in a series of surveys and reports that appear to dispel the notion – oft-cited by conservative lawmakers – that the U.S. public opposes foreign aid. The United Nations Foundation, for instance, has found strong support for the global body in its twice-yearly surveys. The Brookings Institution, meanwhile, noted in a 2011 policy brief that “political opposition to aid spending does not arise from the American public.”

Politicians from both sides of the aisle – and aid advocates – should take heed.

DOS 'whistleblower': Nation-building FAIL

More than a few State Dept. officers disagree with Van Buren, and personally distrust his motivations (write a provocative book at/near retirement and get rich and famous) instead of blowing the whistle internally and trying to change the system from within.

Myself, I have a problem with his "greedy contractors"/"corrupt bureaucrats" line.  First, contractors don't write the contracts, the government does.  They just bid on the work and then implement it.  Secondly, Van Buren presents no evidence of U.S. government corruption.  

If Van Buren meant corruption within the Iraqi and Afghan governments, then, well, duh.  We never should have expected to funnel $ billions through these nascent institutions and trust all the money to be well-spent or even accounted for.  But in fact, trying to spend a lot of money fast -- and this was a hell of a lot to spend on development, more than any nation had ever tried to spend before in such a short time -- no matter who was managing it, was bound to lead to waste, poor accounting, missed and moving targets, sloppy work, etc.  

Those disagreements aside, Van Buren's central points are true and bear repeating: 1) using development aid as a counter-insurgency tactic almost never works; and 2) in our arrogance and cultural blindness we have failed to understand that they don't want to be like us, they don't even want most of our stuff.  This is especially true in Afghanistan.

How not to reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan - or the US

Why has the US spent so much money and time "so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad"?

By Peter Van Buren

August 28, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282312156520461.html

Senate: Little to show for $19 billion in Afghan aid

It's extremely hard and expensive to get out and do development work in an active conflict zone, much less ensure proper oversight to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse by grantees, contractors and recipients. The State Dept. and USAID certainly have their work cut out for them there.

USAID has already issued two replies to this critical Senate report. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah noted that in the past 18 months USAID has tripled its staff on the ground to manage assistance. And as an example of USAID's new focus on contract oversight and compliance, Shah mentioned AED, a 50-year-old NGO that is now laying dead and on the auction block after USAID smacked it down for corruption in Pakistan, (RIP).

UPDATE: "Sold! To the gentlemen from North Carolina!" I missed the announcement June 8 that FHI bought AED.

Afghan Nation-Building Programs Criticized In Senate Report

By Donna Cassata

June 7, 2011 | AP

Afghanistan is at risk of a deep financial crisis when foreign troops leave in 2014 if the United States is unable to overhaul its multibillion-dollar package of nation-building assistance, according to a congressional report that comes as President Barack Obama weighs the size and scope of the initial phase of a U.S. troop drawdown.

The report, completed over two years by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. stabilization programs in Afghanistan have had limited success despite about $18.8 billion in U.S. foreign aid over 10 years – more than any other country, including Iraq.

Misspent foreign aid can result in corruption, alter markets and undercut the ability of the Kabul government to control its resources, said the report, which was posted Tuesday night on the Senate committee's website. The World Bank found that a whopping 97 percent of the gross domestic product in Afghanistan is linked to spending by the international military and donor community.

"Afghanistan could suffer a severe economic depression when foreign troops leave in 2014 unless the proper planning begins now," the report said.

The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development are spending about $320 million a month on foreign aid there, relying on the money to "win hearts and minds." Among the successes has been a sevenfold increase in the number of children attending school and gains in health care.

But the report said the United States must take a closer look at how it spends the money, relying heavily on contractors. The U.S. must do a better job of oversight, especially as it funds more aid through the Afghan government. One recommendation was to standardize Afghan salaries and work with the government on staff limitations.

[Translation: Find another employer for Afghans besides the U.S.-funded Afghan government.]

The panel's Democrats also suggested that Congress implement multiyear aid programs and closer scrutiny of stabilization programs

"Transition planning should find the right balance between avoiding a sudden drop-off in aid, which could trigger a major economic recession, and a long-term phase-out from current levels of donor spending," the report said.

The report came a day before the Foreign Relations Committee's confirmation hearing for Ryan Crocker, Obama's choice to serve as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Crocker is certain to face several skeptical and war-weary lawmakers wondering about the U.S. investment in Afghanistan in the 10th year of the war and after the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Republicans and Democrats are pressing for a robust drawdown of the 100,000 U.S. forces from Afghanistan, expected to begin in July, especially in a time of serious U.S. financial woes. The administration is seeking about $3.2 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan in next year's budget, an amount likely to be closely reviewed.

Another victim of BHO-GOP tax deal: U.S. foreign aid

"I have identified and will propose a number of cuts to the State Department and Foreign Aid budgets. There is much fat in these budgets, which makes some cuts obvious. Others will be more difficult but necessary to improve the efficiency of U.S. efforts and accomplish more with less. We must shift our foreign aid focus from failed strategies rooted in an archaic post-WWII approach that, in some instances, perpetuates corrupt governments, to one that reflects current realities and challenges and empowers grassroots and civil society," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Yep, now we gotta trim the fat to pay for those tax cuts.

Obama is such an amateur. He should have seen this coming: first the Republicans run up the deficit with tax cuts on the rich, then they preach about cutting spending on worthwhile programs to close the budget gap. But they trim the fat oh-so selectively. They tell the rank-and-file they're "starving the beast," but it's just a pretext to cut unwanted programs while leaving others untouched.

Furthermore, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen made her foreign policy priorities clear: shunning, threatening, and sanctioning other nations, including Cuba, Iran, and North Korea:

"My worldview is clear: isolate and hold our enemies accountable, while supporting and strengthening our allies," she said. "I support strong sanctions and other penalties against those who aid violent extremists, brutalize their own people, and have time and time again rejected calls to behave as responsible nations. Rogue regimes never respond to anything less than hardball."


Ros-Lehtinen: My mission is to cut the State and foreign aid budgets
By Josh Rogin
December 8, 2010 The Cable

URL: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/08/ros_lehtinen_my_mission_is_to_cut_the_state_and_foreign_aid_budgets

Good job, Dubya! (Finally!)

I don't say this very often, so get ready: Kudos to George W. Bush for trying to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa!

And shame on the 7 backwards, stone-aged GOP senators who are blocking his legislation.

This kind of generosity is a perfect example of what Obama calls "promoting dignity" around the world, which in turn engenders goodwill toward the United States. It's time we Americans realize that actions like fighting AIDS, eradicating poverty, and promoting the rights and education of women, all lead to a more peaceful world, and smaller breeding grounds for terror. Butter can be a better weapon than guns (and butter is darn cheaper, too!)


7 GOP Senators Block Bush's Bill to Fight AIDS in Africa
By Halimah Abdullah
June 25, 2008 | McClatchy DC

Officials: U.S. failed to manage contractors in Iraq

I've said this before: if you vote for a guy like Bush who believes that government is inherently, inevitably corrupt and incompetent, then it will be. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Case in point: "Heckuva Job" Brownie, Bush's former head of FEMA.

Bush is not your run-of-the-mill anti-government conservative. He's a "Big Government Conservative" who believes that money spent on defense is never money wasted. He and Rumsfeld outsourced the Iraq war to private contractors, and then failed to invest any resources to manage those contractors. The result was predictable: at least $10 billion wasted in Iraq.

The waste, fraud, and abuse perpetrated by U.S. contractors in Iraq was a failure of government oversight. But that failure was not inevitable. It was the product of a negligent anti-government ideology.


U.S. Cannot Manage Contractors in Wars, Officials Testify on Hill
Problem Is Linked to Lack of Trained Service Personnel

By Walter Pincus
January 25, 2008 | Washington Post

With even more U.S. contractors now in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military personnel, government officials told Congress yesterday that the Bush administration is not prepared to manage the contractors' critical involvement in the American war effort.

At the end of last September, there were "over 196,000 contractor personnel working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Jack Bell, deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness.

Contractors "have become part of our total force, a concept that DoD [the Defense Department] must manage on an integrated basis with our military forces," he also said in prepared testimony for a hearing yesterday of the Senate homeland security subcommittee. "Frankly," he continued, "we were not adequately prepared to address" what he termed "this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors."

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, and William M. Solis, director of defense capabilities and management for the Government Accountability Office, testified that not enough trained service personnel are available to handle outsourcing to contractors in the wars.

Solis said a military officer with a Stryker brigade deployed in Iraq had told the GAO about a contractor that had mishandled security screenings of Iraqis and foreigners. In the end, Solis said, the officer used his own personnel to accomplish the task, diverting staff from "their primary intelligence gathering responsibilities."

Retired Army Gen. David M. Maddox, who has studied the contracting effort in Iraq as a member of an Army-appointed commission, said in his statement that it "has not fully recognized the impact of a large number of contractors" and "their potential impact to mission success."

Maddox said the Army had five general officer positions for career contracting professionals in 1990 but has none today. The two-star general who runs the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq/Afghanistan, Maddox said, is an Air Force officer.

Maddox added that 3 percent of Army contracting personnel are active-duty and that the acquisition workforce shrunk by 25 percent from 1990 to the end of fiscal 2000. [See the difference between Clinton and Bush? -- J] While the contracting workload has increased sevenfold since 2000, he said, about half of the military officers and Army civilians in the contracting field "are certified for their current positions."

[These stats are outrageous. Think about it: While the Pentagon's outsourcing has increased 700% since 2000, the Bush Administration has not invested any resources in managing those contracts. This is an abdication of government responsibility! Bush has religious faith in the private sector to always 'do the right thing.' Moron! -- J]

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) , the subcommittee's chairman, noted that the Defense Contract Audit Agency has reported that $10 billion of about $57 billion in contracts for services and reconstruction in Iraq "is either questionable or cannot be supported because of a lack of contractor information needed to assess costs." He added that more than 80 separate criminal investigations are underway involving contracts of more than $5 billion.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member who has investigated the contract issue during her trips to Iraq and Kuwait, stressed that "if people are not fired or demoted or if there is not a failure to promote in the military because of massive failure of appropriate oversight and management, things will not change."

But when she asked Bowen and Solis if they knew of anyone who had been fired or denied promotion because of contracting mistakes disclosed in more than 300 reports over five years, they said they knew of none.

Iraq: $2 Trillion. Peace, love & understanding? Priceless

Think the cost comparison below is silly, impractical? What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding, especially when it's affordable?

It's all a matter of priorities. What do you really value?


How the Iraq War's $2 Trillion Cost Could Have Been Spent

Craig and Marc Kielburger
January 21, 2008 | The Toronto Star

In war, things are rarely what they seem.

Back in 2003, in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon adamantly insisted that the war would be a relatively cheap one. Roughly $50 billion is all it would take to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, it said.

We now know this turned out to be the first of many miscalculations. Approaching its fifth year, the war in Iraq has cost American taxpayers nearly $500 billion, according to the non-partisan U.S.-based research group National Priorities Project. That number is growing every day.

But it's still not even close to the true cost of the war. As the invasion's price tag balloons, economists and analysts are examining the entire financial burden of the Iraq campaign, including indirect expenses that Americans will be paying long after the troops come home. What they've come up with is staggering. Calculations by Harvard's Linda Bilmes and Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remain most prominent. They determined that, once you factor in things like medical costs for injured troops, higher oil prices and replenishing the military, the war will cost America upwards of $2 trillion. That doesn't include any of the costs incurred by Iraq, or America's coalition partners.

"Would the American people have had a different attitude toward going to war had they known the total cost?" Bilmes and Stiglitz ask in their report. "We might have conducted the war in a manner different from the way we did."

It's hard to comprehend just how much money $2 trillion is. Even Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, would marvel at this amount. But, once you begin to look at what that money could buy, the worldwide impact of fighting this largely unpopular war becomes clear.

Consider that, according to sources like Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs, the Worldwatch Institute, and the United Nations, with that same money the world could:

Eliminate extreme poverty around the world (cost $135 billion in the first year, rising to $195 billion by 2015.)

Achieve universal literacy (cost $5 billion a year.)

Immunize every child in the world against deadly diseases (cost $1.3 billion a year.)

Ensure developing countries have enough money to fight the AIDS epidemic (cost $15 billion per year.)

In other words, for a cost of $156.3 billion this year alone – less than a tenth of the total Iraq war budget – we could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, while making huge leaps in the battle against AIDS, saving millions of lives.

Then the remaining money could be put toward the $40 billion to $60 billion annually that the World Bank says is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, established by world leaders in 2000, to tackle everything from gender inequality to environmental sustainability.

The implications of this cannot be underestimated. It means that a better and more just world is far from within reach, if we are willing to shift our priorities.

If America and other nations were to spend as much on peace as they do on war, that would help root out the poverty, hopelessness and anti-Western sentiment that can fuel terrorism – exactly what the Iraq war was supposed to do.

So as candidates spend much of this year vying to be the next U.S. president, what better way to repair its image abroad, tarnished by years of war, than by becoming a leader in global development? It may be too late to turn back the clock to the past and rethink going to war, but it's not too late for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest in the future.

Craig and Marc Kielburger are children's rights activists and co-founded Free The Children, which is active in the developing world.

Two damning reports: Whither Afghanistan?

Don't forget about our other overseas adventure-turned-horror flick: Afghanistan. Dems have a point is arguing we've taken our eye off the ball there, where the Taliban is resurgent, attacks are increasing, and aid is being wasted.

Over Half of Afghanistan under Taliban Control

November 22, 2007 | SPIEGEL ONLINE

In war-torn Afghanistan, the Taliban is gaining ground again as it continues its insurgency. A report released Wednesday by the Senlis Council, an international security and development policy think tank, concludes that more than half the entire country is now under Taliban control.

"The Taliban's ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt," the report says, adding that "54 percent of Afghanistan's landmass hosts a permanent Taliban presence, primarily in southern Afghanistan, and is subject to frequent hostile activity by the insurgency."

The report, entitled "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the Brink," is not merely a litany of depressing statistics. It also offers ideas to halt the spread of Taliban influence including a troop "surge." NATO forces, for example, should be doubled from 40,000 to 80,000 "as soon as logistically possible." It also recommends that all present caveats constraining troop deployment be removed and that Muslim countries should supply an additional 9,000 troops to supplement Western forces. And military efforts against the Taliban should extend their reach into Pakistan, with that country's permission.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence in 2007 as NATO forces continue to battle against the Taliban, particularly in the volatile south. On Thursday Secretary General Japp de Hoop Scheffer, in Kabul for talks with the Afghan government, admitted that the alliance needed to provide more troops for Afghanistan and more trainers for Afghan forces.

Some members of NATO's coalition forces disagree with the assessment set forth by the Senlis Council. Canada's Defense Minister Peter Mackay told reporters on Wednesday that the report was simply "not credible."

The report was released on the same day as an Oxfam assessment critical of the spending efforts inside Afghanistan by Western powers. "As in Iraq," the report claims, "too much aid is absorbed by profits of companies and subcontractors, on non-Afghan resources and on high expatriate salaries and living costs."

Both reports are grim. Oxfam notes that "the absence of community participation, or association with the military, has led to projects which are unsuitable, unused or targeted by militants." And the Senlis report concludes that "it is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen and in what form."

Meanwhile on Thursday Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that Taliban leaders were increasingly contacting him to try to find ways of making peace. "We are willing to talk," he told reporters in Kabul. "Those of the Taliban who are not part of al-Qaida or the terrorist networks, who do not want to be violent against the Afghan people ... are welcome."

Too Much Aid to Afghanistan Wasted, Oxfam Says

by Jon Hemming
November 20, 2007 | Reuters

KABUL - Too much aid to Afghanistan is wasted — soaked up in contractors' profits, spent on expensive expatriate consultants or squandered on small-scale, quick-fix projects, a leading British charity said on Tuesday.

Despite more than $15 billion of aid pumped into Afghanistan since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, many Afghans still suffer levels of poverty rarely seen outside sub-Saharan Africa.

"The development process has to date been too centralised, top-heavy and insufficient," said a report by Oxfam.

By far the biggest donor, the United States approved a further $6.4 billion in Afghan aid this year, but the funds are spent in ways that are "ineffective or inefficient", Oxfam said.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) allocates close to half its funds to the five largest U.S. contractors in Afghanistan.

"Too much aid is absorbed by profits of companies and sub-contractors, on non-Afghan resources and on high expatriate salaries and living costs," the report said.

A full-time expatriate consultant can cost up to $500,000 a year, Oxfam said.

More money needed to be channelled through the Afghan government, strengthening its influence and institutions.

Aid also needed to be better coordinated to avoid duplication, it said.

Only 10 percent of technical assistance to Afghanistan is coordinated either with the government or among donors.

SECURITY DETERIORATES

Spending on development is dwarfed by that spent on fighting the Taliban. The U.S. military is spending $65,000 a minute in Afghanistan, Oxfam said.

The report called for the 25 provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) run by the armies of 13 different nations across the country to withdraw where the security situation is stable enough and carry out relief work only where there is a critical need.

The PRTs, Oxfam said, "being nation-led are often driven more by available funding or the political interests of the nation involved rather than development considerations". The result was "a large number of small-scale, short-term projects".

"Given the historic suspicion of foreign intervention, such efforts to win 'hearts and minds' are naive. It is unsurprising that the huge expansion of PRT activities has not prevented the deterioration of security."

Violent incidents are up at least 20 percent since last year, according to U.N. estimates, and have spread northwards to many areas previously considered safe.

More than 200 civilians have been killed in at least 130 Taliban suicide bombs and at least 1,200 civilians have been killed overall this year — about half of them in operations by Afghan and international troops.

Oxfam called on the 50,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan to take greater care not to hurt civilians, particularly in air strikes. The lower number of troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq — less than a third as many in a much bigger country with a larger population — leads to a greater reliance on air power.

There are four times as many air strikes in Afghanistan as in Iraq, Oxfam said.

The NATO-led force in Afghanistan says it takes every effort to avoid civilian casualties and has already modified procedures for launching air strikes resulting in fewer civilian deaths.

Review of: 'The Bottom Billion'

Help Beyond Aid
In his new book, Paul Collier pushes development economists to broaden their approach.

By Sam Boyd

July 31, 2007 | Prospect.org

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier (Oxford University Press, 222 Pages)

The last several years have witnessed the sudden growth of a nonfiction genre: the big development book. Each entry typically starts with a discussion of just how poor much of the world is, and then goes on to explain why and what is to be done. Joe Stiglitz, Jagdish Bhagwati, and many other leading economists have contributed, in one way or another, to the massive popular literature on development. Indeed, I can think of no other academic field where top researchers write so many books aimed at the general public.

Most notably, Jeff Sachs argued for vastly expanded aid in The End of Poverty, while William Easterly mocked this approach in his The White Man's Burden. Sachs believes that poor countries are stuck in a "poverty trap" in which the very fact they are poor keeps them from developing further. Under this theory, all the poorest countries need is a large one-time infusion of wealth that will allow them to grow on their own from there. Easterly points out that this notion has scant theoretical support and that no-one has been able to demonstrate that aid beyond 16 percent of GDP does anything to increase growth.

Most development economists are far more sympathetic to Easterly than Sachs. Tellingly, development luminary Abhijit Banerjee recently edited a book called Making Aid Work -- a title which reflects a general consensus that aid, in fact, currently does not work. This pessimistic consensus has left many people yearning for a broader and more hopeful take on the possibilities for development. In his new book, The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier seeks to address that desire and expand those possibilities by looking beyond aid as such.

Collier, former director of development research at the World Bank and now Director of Oxford's Center for the Study of African Economies, states explicitly in the book that he falls somewhere between Sachs's optimism and Easterly's pessimism, but that claim is a bit disingenuous -- Collier actually embraces Easterly's argument about the limitations of aid. But instead of resigning himself to advocating only marginal steps and hoping for limited improvements as Easterly does, he argues for an expansive approach that involves far more than direct monetary aid from the developed world.

Collier begins by pointing out that most of the world is in fact growing. Even many deeply poor countries will, without any direct aid from the developed world, be reasonably wealthy in a few decades time. The Indonesias and Brazils of the world have real problems, but ultimately they are doing fairly well. The most important question in development economics is what to do with the countries that are not. As his title implies, Collier considers the billion or so people who live in these stagnant and primarily African countries and seeks to explain why they remain poor and what can be done about it.

Collier is emphatic that "the central problem of the bottom billion is that they do not have growth." This runs somewhat contrary to the recent fashion in development literature, where any discussion of growth must emphasize how its benefits are distributed, and how its consequences can be made to be entirely benign and just. Collier argues that, as we have enough trouble creating growth at all, trying to manage how exactly its benefits are distributed is bound to end in failure.

The first section of the book lays out four traps developing countries fall into that prevent growth. First, conflict and poverty generate more conflict, which in turn further impoverishes a country. Second, being landlocked makes many kinds of economic activity difficult and dependent on the good will of neighbors. (Africa has by far the most landlocked countries in the world). Third, the existence of valuable natural resources make controlling the government attractive, which encourages bad conduct and makes exports uncompetitive by raising the price of foreign exchange. Finally, bad governance is destructive and self-perpetuating.

This is as lucid and concise an explanation of the problems of the developing world as anyone could want, though it does omit some important factors -- public health first among them. Nonetheless, it is an excellent introduction to the problems that bedevil the poorest countries.

If that were all The Bottom Billion had to offer, it would not be especially new. Fortunately, the second half of the book is concerned with how to break these traps, and this is where things get really interesting. Some of Collier's ideas are relatively moderate -- shifting from direct foreign aid to more technical assistance (that is, expert help given to developing countries with various difficult administrative tasks), establishing independent authorities outside national governments to spend aid monies, and more -- while others are much more radical.

Collier's most controversial proposal is his call for more military interventions by developed countries. Unsurprisingly, this was trumpeted in Niall "Empire" Ferguson's recent New York Times review as if it were the central message of the book. It isn't. Collier views military intervention as one tool among many to break countries out of a cycle of conflict. He points out that, judging by pretty much any metric, the British intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 was remarkably successful. He also argues that a more public commitment to preventing conflict in developing countries will reduce the likelihood of such conflict occurring at all.

Unfortunately, he doesn't take into account the difficulty of predicting ahead of time the cost or practicality of a military intervention. How confident can Western powers be that a given intervention will turn out like Sierra Leone in 2000 rather than, say, Somalia in 1993? Nonetheless, Collier is correct and courageous to point out that it often is within the power of Western governments to stop untold bloodshed with little effort.

Thankfully, Collier is on more solid empirical ground in his discussion of other potential solutions. His suggested approach to addressing the traps he discusses in the first section is to develop a set of international standards or charters that would make clear what role governments and aid agencies should play in various situations. He points to the Kimberly Process, which has already succeeded in dramatically lowering the price of conflict diamonds, though not at eliminating their trade altogether, as an example.

Most radically for an economist, Collier suggests giving bottom billion countries protection against competition from Asia and India. Those countries have become relatively wealthy by providing extremely cheap labor to the developed world, but it will be difficult for other countries to follow in their footsteps, as Asian and Indian labor costs have not yet risen enough to make moving to bottom billion countries worthwhile for Western companies.

Collier is not overly optimistic -- even if everything he suggests were to be enacted and be as effective as he hopes, it would be a long time before the bottom billion reached the level China is at today -- but he does bring a much needed spirit of optimism to the debate. The feud between Sachs and Easterly has dominated public discussion over development aid for the last several years, but, The Bottom Billion has the potential to break that cycle by broadening the debate. This is the best popular book on development I know of. It is not perfect by any means, but if it gets half as much attention as Sachs and Easterly's offerings, it will move the development discussion forward immensely.

Oxfam: 1/3 of Iraqis 'need urgent aid'

By any quality of life metric, Iraqis are worse off thanks to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. How anybody can continue to sincerely justify the occupation is beyond my understanding. It's bad for America's interests, and it's definitely bad for Iraqis.


Like they say , if you're not part of the solution, you must be part of the problem. Withdrawal is a no-brainer.

One-Third of Iraqis 'need urgent aid'
30 July 2007 | BBCNews.com

Nearly a third of the population of Iraq is in need of immediate emergency aid, according to a new report from Oxfam and a coalition of Iraqi NGOs.

The report said the government was failing to provide basics such as food and shelter for eight million people.

It warned of a humanitarian crisis that had escalated since the 2003 invasion.

Meanwhile, the US agency overseeing reconstruction in Iraq said economic mismanagement and corruption were equivalent to "a second insurgency".

Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction Stuart Bowen was appointed by the US Congress to audit how billions of dollars of US money is being and has been spent.

In a BBC interview, he described corruption as "an enemy of democracy" and said that it could not be allowed to continue at current levels.

"We have performed 95 audits that have found instances of programmatic weakness and waste, and we've got 57 ongoing cases right now, criminal cases, looking at fraud."

Last year, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government only spent 22% of its budget on vital rebuilding projects, while spending 99% of the allocation for salaries, he said.

The inspector general also described a process of transferring control of projects to the Iraqi government as troubling, and found cancellations, delays and costs that outstripped budgets.

He said "a pathway towards potential prosperity" could be found only if oil production was brought up to optimal levels, and security and corruption effectively managed.

'Ruined by war'

The Iraqi parliament is about to take the whole of August off as a holiday despite the problems and the Oxfam report highlighting the plight of many Iraqis.

The BBC's Nicholas Witchell in Baghdad says the report by the UK-based charity and the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI) makes alarming reading.

The survey recognises that armed conflict is the greatest problem facing Iraqis, but finds a population "increasingly threatened by disease and malnutrition".

It suggests that 70% of Iraq's 26.5m population are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50% prior to the invasion. Only 20% have access to effective sanitation.

Nearly 30% of children are malnourished, a sharp increase on the situation four years ago. Some 15% of Iraqis regularly cannot afford to eat.

The report also said 92% of Iraq's children suffered from learning problems.

It found that more than two million people have been displaced inside the country, while a further two million have fled to neighbouring countries. Many are living in dire poverty.

"Basic services, ruined by years of war and sanctions, cannot meet the needs of the Iraqi people," the director of Oxfam International, Jeremy Hobbs, said.

Mr Hobbs said that despite the violence, the Iraqi government and the international community could do more to meet people's needs.

On Thursday, an international conference in Jordan pledged to help the refugees with their difficulties. Oxfam has not operated in Iraq since 2003 for security reasons.

Afghanistan: Less is best

When less is best

By Rory Stewart
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 | International Herald Tribune

Why are we Westerners in Afghanistan? Vice President Cheney talks terror, Britain focuses on narcotics. The European Union talks "state-building," others gender. On a different day, the positions seem interchangeable. Five years ago, we had a clear goal. Now we seem to be pursuing a bundle of objectives, from counterinsurgency to democratization and development, which are presented as uniform but which are in fact logically distinct and sometimes contradictory.

Finance officers in Kabul and shepherds in Kandahar want to know what we did with the $10 billion we spent in the last four years. So do any number of commentators on Afghan TV and radio. And when Helmand villagers see soldiers from countries thousands of miles away carrying guns and claiming to be only building schools, they don't believe them.

I have noticed that many Afghans now simply assume we are engaged in a grand conspiracy. Nothing else in their minds can explain the surreal gap between our language and performance. The United States needs to be honest about what it wants from Afghanistan and what it can achieve.

We should remember that we came first to protect ourselves against terrorist attack. Afghans can understand this and help. But counterterrorism is not the same as counterinsurgency. Counterterrorism requires good intelligence and Special Forces operations, of the sort the United States was doing in 2002 and 2003. Recently, however, NATO has become involved in a much wider counterinsurgency campaign, involving tens of thousands of troops. The objective now is to wrest rural areas from Taliban forces.

But many of the people we are fighting have no fixed political manifesto. Almost none have links to Al Qaeda or an interest in attacking U.S. soil. We will never have the troop numbers to hold these areas, and we are creating unnecessary enemies. A more considered approach to tribal communities would give us better intelligence on our real enemies. It is clear that we do not have the resources, the stomach, or the long- term commitment for a 20-year counterinsurgency campaign. And the Afghan Army is not going to take over this mission.

Our second priority should be to not lose the support of the disillusioned population in the central and western part of the country. We have spent billions on programs that have alleviated extreme poverty and supported governance but have not caught the imagination of Afghans. Afghans are bored with foreign consultants and conferences and are saying, "Bring back the Russians: At least they built dams and roads." To win them over we should focus on large, highly visible infrastructure to which Afghans will be able to point in 50 years — just as they point to the great dam built by the United States in the 1960s. The garbage is still 7 feet deep and buildings are collapsing in Kabul. We can deal with these things and leave a permanent symbol of generosity.

Once we are clear about our own interests, we can think more clearly about the third priority, which is to improve Afghan lives through development projects. There are excellent models, from UN Habitat to the Aga Khan network, which has restored historic buildings, run rural health projects, and established a five- star hotel and Afghanistan's mobile telephone network. The soap business that the American Sarah Chayes has developed with Afghan women has been more successful than larger and wealthier business associations. Such projects should be separated from our defense and political objectives.

Sometimes it is better for us to do less. Dutch forces in the province of Uruzgan have found that, when left alone, the Taliban alienate communities by living parasitically, lecturing puritanically and failing to deliver. But when the British tried to aggressively dominate the South last summer, they alienated a dangerous proportion of the local population and had to withdraw. Pacifying the tribal areas is a task for Afghans, working with Pakistan and Iran. It will involve moving from the overcentralized state and developing formal but flexible relationships with councils in all their varied village forms.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that we squandered an opportunity in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, being distracted by Iraq and not bringing enough troops or resources. But my experience in Afghanistan has led me to believe that the original strategy of limiting our role was correct.