An indictment of American development aid

Written as part of a larger indictment of American policy in Afghanistan, first published at TomDispatch, found today reprinted at Salon. Here's an excerpt:

There are other peculiar features of American development aid. Nearly half of it (47 percent) goes to support "technical assistance." Translated, that means overpaid American "experts," often totally unqualified -- somebody's good old college buddies -- are paid handsomely to advise the locals on matters ranging from office procedures to pesticide use, even when the Afghans neither request nor welcome such advice. By contrast, the universally admired aid programs of Sweden and Ireland allocate only 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively, to such technical assistance, and when asked, they send real experts. American technical advisors, like American privateers, are paid by checks -- big ones -- that pass directly from the federal treasury to private accounts in American banks, thus helping to insure that about 86 cents of every dollar designated for U.S. "foreign" aid anywhere in the world never leaves the USA.

American aid that actually makes it abroad arrives with strings attached. At least 70 percent of it is "tied" to the purchase of American products. A food aid program, for example, might require Afghanistan to purchase American agricultural products in preference to their own, thus putting Afghan farmers out of business or driving even more of them into the poppy trade. (The percentage of aid from Sweden, Ireland and the United Kingdom that is similarly tied: zero.)