Korean Job Discussion Forums

[some waygug-in]

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1671


U.S. Money Aids World��s Worst Dictators
February 13, 2006
Benjamin Powell, Matt Ryan



Parade magazine recently ranked the twenty worst dictators currently in power. Many names are familiar—Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi, Kim Jong-Il, Robert Mugabe and others. They are all guilty of human rights violations and in some cases have committed outright genocide. But there��s another trait common to all twenty leaders—every single one has received foreign aid from wealthy Western countries.

Popular Washington, D.C., rhetoric says that development aid should be dispensed to corruption-free countries with laws and policies conducive to supporting sustained economic growth. President Bush created Millennium Challenge Accounts to funnel aid to such countries. However, few countries have qualified for the program and little money has actually been disbursed. Instead, we find that both the U.S. and its partner countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have contributed a great deal of aid to these oppressive regimes.

Parade ranked the Sudan��s Omar al-Bashir as the world��s worst dictator. During his reign OECD countries gave his regime more than $6 billion in non-military aid. The U.S. accounted for more than $1 billion of that aid. Kim Jong-Il was ranked as the second worst dictator and received a little over $1 billion in aid, with more than half of it coming from the U.S. Than Shwe of Myanmar, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan round out the top five dictators on the list. The U.S. contributed $32 million to Myanmar, $1.1 billion to Zimbabwe, and $385 million to Uzbekistan.

Overall, OECD countries contributed aid to every one of Parade��s 20 worst dictators. Combined, these leaders received nearly $55 billion in aid. The U.S. contributed to 19 of the 20 worst dictators; King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia was somehow left off of the U.S. gravy train. In total, the U.S. contributed more than $7 billion in aid to these leaders. In North Korea, Belarus, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan the U.S. contributed more than 20 percent of the total aid these countries received from OECD countries.

[dulouz]

There are problems with this article, its not helpful due to its inflammataory and accusatory nature esp with the N Korean aid accusation but here is some truth to it. The article forgot to mention $25 million to the Taliban gov't of Afghanistan to help fight the war on drugs.

[Pligganease]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If the U.S. gave no aid to these countries, there would be articles posted about how the U.S. allowed the honorable people of the DPRK to starve to death, or that the U.S. turned the other way when the people of Ethiopia were suffering due to lack of medical care...

I think that the title of the thread and the article are both misleading. It should say:

"U.S. Money Aids Struggling Citizens Living Under the World��s Worst Dictators As Much As Possible In This Corrupt World"

[some waygug-in]

Point taken.

I changed the title.

I wonder if there is any information on how much of this aid money gets to where it's supposed to go and how much gets sucked up into some petty dictator's private slush fund.

[Bulsajo]