Message-ID: <35AB02E7.67A6@open.org> Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 07:05:10 +0000 From: John Rude <mailto:johnrude@open.org> Subject: CASE-STUDY OF AID To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
At the beginning of the debate on aid, Nicole Richards posted an example of one nation -- Eritrea -- resisting the temptations, exploitation and influence purchased by rich donor nations. Further details on the relationship between the US and Eritrea are provided in the following letter from Dan Connell, founder of Grassroots International. This letter is in response to an earlier article written by Glenn Anders, USAID Director in Eritrea. The full exchange can be viewed at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/vol2/prog2n3.html(John Rude) ...........
U.S./AID representative Glenn Anders’ response (October 4) to the publication of my paper on U.S. policy in Eritrea (September 20) in Eritrea Profile was on the mark in some areas, off in others. Let’s set the record straight.
Mr. Anders is correct to suggest that current U.S. aid policy in Eritrea is a type of ‘investment partnership’ that has a number of positive aspects, relative to programs elsewhere in the third world. However, there remains room for improvement. And the key word throughout his righteous riposte is “current.”
The U.S./AID mission in Eritrea has been unusually effective in convincing the Washington office to grant more program flexibility in Eritrea than in most other programs in Africa. Today, most U.S. assistance is indeed channeled through the Asmara government, rather than through private U.S. agencies, including support for Eritrea’s food security strategy, and the overall package is at a relatively high level in per capita terms (if we exclude Israel and Egypt from our calculations). U.S./AID’s main funding is targeted at primary health care, rural enterprise, and democratic governance, priorities set by the Eritrean government. I would add that U.S./AID has been remarkably responsive to the regional peace and development initiatives of the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD)—another point I urged in my paper that Mr. Anders did not bring up but for which he and other U.S./AID staff in the region deserve much credit.
However, none of these things came easily. Initial U.S./AID missions involved efforts to dictate to Eritrea what steps to take to “liberalize” their postwar economy. The first staffperson posted to Asmara was withdrawn after failing utterly to grasp local conditions. Nor did Washington respond favorably to Eritrea’s food security strategy when it was first announced at the beginning of 1995, and no grain shipments arrived in Eritrea for months, though the U.S. was later the first major international donor to support the program. Likewise, much of U.S./AID’s assistance in the early 1990s was channeled through private agencies, such as Catholic Relief Service, before Eritrean insistence on direct bilateral relations won out.
That U.S./AID has learned from its experience is to be commended. But neither I nor most Eritreans have short memories. We are all aware that changes in Washington—or even in the U.S./AID missions in the Horn—could alter these arrangements in a minute. And does anyone doubt that Eritrea is receiving special dispensation from Washington because of its “current” strategic importance in the confrontation with Sudan? What happens if and when this changes?
The hard reality is that U.S. economic and military assistance has always been tied to short-term policy goals, which until quite recently were not to the advantage of Eritrea. Substantial funds were available to Ethiopia in the 1950s, `60s, and ‘70s to strengthen what was then a strategic relationship, with much of it going to prosecute the war in Eritrea. Hundreds of millions more went to Sudan in the 1980s, when that relationship took regional precedence, largely to offset the Soviet presence in Ethiopia. Precious little aid went to Eritrea in this period, except briefly in the mid-1980s when famine relief was used as leverage to strengthen Washington’s position in Addis Ababa.
Throughout that decade, U.S. policy remained fixated on restoring influence in Ethiopia, with U.S./AID frequently used as an instrument of this policy. In March 1984, Vice President George Bush visited refugee camps in Sudan and put the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia on notice that the U.S. was prepared to commit major resources. An agreement between the U.S. and Ethiopia was hammered out in Geneva that gave Catholic Relief Service and World Vision responsibility for distributing high-profile, U.S.-donated food aid in Eritrea and Tigray from within government-held enclaves. However, the Reagan administration went strangely silent on Eritrea. A U.S./AID plan to channel food into EPLF-held areas through CARE was dropped, and a large cross-border program using another U.S. NGO, Mercy Corps International, was sharply curtailed.
Today, $10 million per year in development assistance (using figures provided by the Washington office) or $18 million (using Mr. Anders numbers) may sound like a lot when compared to the rest of Africa, but this only underlines how tight-fisted the U.S. has become in the post-cold war era. The U.S., among the richest nations in the world, ranks 29th among industrial states in its per capita aid to “developing” countries, while Eritrea is, by the World Bank’s calculations, one of the poorest countries in the world with an annual per capita income of approximately $150 (less than half the average for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole).
What should be asked is how much the U.S. should pay as compensation for its past support for Ethiopian annexation of Eritrea, for its use of the territory as a cold war battleground, and for its failure to support Eritrea's legitimate struggle for independence until 1991, when an impending EPLF victory rendered the altered U.S. position largely irrelevant.
I’m sorry, but history didn’t start in 1997.
Yours sincerely, Dan Connell Gloucester, MA, USA
Sources for More Information on Eritrea
Africa Policy Information Center, Washington Office on Africa Email: mailto:apic@igc.apc.org and woa@igc.apc.org
African Rights Email: mailto:afrights@gn.apc.org
Grassroots International Email: mailto:grassroots@igc.apc.org
Human Rights Watch/Africa Email: mailto:hrwnyc@hrw.org
Africa News On-Line Website: http://www.africanews.org
Africa Policy Information Center Website: http://www.africapolicy.org
Eritrea on the Net Website: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/dmulholl/eritrea/eritrea.html