Report: U.S. Africa Aid Is Increasingly Military

Report: U.S. Africa Aid Is Increasingly Military

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NAIROBI, July 17 -- U.S. aid to Africa is becoming increasingly militarized, resulting in skewed priorities and less attention to longer-term development projects that could lead to greater stability across the continent, according to a report released Thursday by the advocacy group Refugees International.

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"The Pentagon, which controlled about 3 percent of official aid money a decade ago, now controls 22 percent, while the U.S. Agency for International Development's share has declined from 65 percent to 40 percent, according to the 56-page report...
...For example, the United States has dedicated nearly $50 million to hire contractors to train 2,000 soldiers in post-civil war Liberia, a West African country of 4 million people. Meanwhile, $5.5 million has been dedicated to boosting a weak and unprofessional army of 164,000 soldiers in Congo, a country of 65 million where a decade-long conflict and humanitarian crisis have left an estimated 5 million people dead."

Keep selling the guns that kind of "aid" helps the bottom line!!



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It's embarassing.....people hear aid here aid there, but they never tell you how it will be spent. The West really doesn't care about the rest of the world and should therefore withdraw completely and stop interfering. Dismantle the UN, WTO, IMF and the world bank and retire for good.

I think what most people picture when they hear of aid from our governments or world Bank is money for development, hospitals, schools etc, not military hardware.
These aid packages always have strings attached too, after all, there's no such thing as a free lunch, especially if the nation receiving the aid has natural resources we want. The usual trick is to provide a development package, with the caveat being that western corporations get the exploitation rights. Most, if not all profits go back to the big corporations while the people of that country get saddled with the loan repayments and interest, so nothing changes for them.
Helping to generate internal strife and civil war also helps in enriching the arms industry and covering what we are really doing in these places. The public are sold the story that we are trying to help, with all the film and photos of starvation and death, whilst behind the scenes we have groups stirring things up and causing more mayhem.

I stopped giving money to aid groups a long time ago when I realised the futility of it all. We cannot change things whilst our own governments are up to their necks in dirty little schemes to rape the 3rd world.