80 / US aid tied to purchase of arms
Have you ever wondered how this aid thing and the financing of wars functions? Wonder no more, the confluence is explained in this article. It is not hard for a country to get aid from the US, as long as they buy with it American military hardware. Simple, really.
In my (as yet unpublished) book PHOTOART and Related Matters I have written an essay on the subject matter: WEAPONRY.
Below you'll learn that the biggest American aid packages don't go to countries in need of aid, but to countries who then re-invest the money in weaponry - for instance to Israel. And who receives the second biggest tied-to-military aid package from the US? Egypt, Israel's primary foe in the 1967 Six-Day war.
In an aside, it is knows that Pakistan has diverted 70% of its $9b military assistance received since 2001. The same thing is happening in Afghanistan today.
Digest this information and weep.
US aid tied to purchase of arms
By Anne Davies, SMH, 2010 January 2
WASHINGTON: Just before
Christmas, the US President, Barack Obama, signed into law one of his country's
biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many
struggling countries on the World Bank's list. It was a deal for $US2.77 billion ($3 billion)
to go to Israel in 2010 and a total of $US30 billion over the next decade.
Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per
cent of the aid to buy military hardware made in the US: in the crisis-racked
US economy, those military factories are critical to many towns. For the first time the US is also providing
$US500 million to the Palestinian Authority, including $US100 million to train
security forces, under the strict proviso that the authority's leadership
recognises Israel.
For many years Israel has been the largest
recipient of US foreign aid, followed by Egypt ($US1.75 billion), which also
receives most of its assistance in tied military aid. The Congressional Research Service says that the
US spent 17 per cent of its total aid budget - or $US5.1 billion - on military
aid in 2008, of which $US4.7 billion was grants to enable governments to
receive equipment from the US.
The lion's share of political and strategic aid
to Iraq and Afghanistan comes from separate funds and from the defence budget.
Between 2003 and last year $US49 billion was poured into Iraq through the Iraq
Relief and Reconstruction Fund and the defence budget. The Afghanistan program
over the same period consisted of $US11 billion in traditional foreign aid and
another $US15 billion in defence funds. Under the Obama Administration, this year's aid
budget has been increased by 10 per cent to nearly $US50 billion to support his
counter-terrorism strategy.
Assistance to Pakistan was recently tripled,
with an additional $US1.5 billion a year for the next five years.
The author of the bill, Senator John Kerry, said
it would ''build a relationship with the people [of Pakistan] to show that what
we want is a relationship that meets their interests and needs''. But officials at the US embassy in Islamabad
have alleged that Pakistan has diverted elsewhere 70 per cent of the $US9
billion in military assistance paid since 2001.
The Obama Administration is finding that other
expensive fronts are emerging in the fight against terrorism, the latest being
Yemen. In the 2010 fiscal year US development and security assistance to Yemen
is expected to rise 56 per cent to $US63 million. But this does not include so-called 1206
Pentagon counter-terrorism funds. Last year Yemen received $US67 million of
those, up from just $US5 million. After the events of the past week or so, countries
like Yemen are highly likely to receive significantly more this year.