AID pushes Bosnian bank to collapse

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Wed Aug 18 12:11:42 PDT 1999


In message <3.0.6.32.19990818125123.00bc4140 at jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu>, Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> writes


>That sounds like scapegoating. the probloem is much more complicated and
>ceratinly not limited to Bosnia - it is prevalent in the entire Eastern
>Europe and was further exacerbated by the clumsiness of Western (especially
>American) aid policies; see Janine Wedel, _Collision and Collusion: The
>Starnge Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989-1998_, New York, St.
>Martin's Press, 1998, which provides more details.

I tend to agree with Wojtek. Aid corrupts. Michael Maren has described this very well in Africa The Road to Hell, and Rehman Sobhan in Bangladesh. It is in the nature of aid programmes that they tend to substitute for development rather than assisting it. Large bureaucracies are generated in the distribution of aid, with little incentive to invest productively, even if the world market permitted such growth.

Scapegoating the 'corrupt' Bosnians is particularly sordid, since any possibility of social reconstruction has been hampered by the UN division of the region. It is the West that has sustained and created entrenched ethnic polities in Bosnia, by ordering all resources along ethnic lines. If Bosnians had an ethnicity problem before, the UN protectorate has made it into and institution. -- Jim heartfield



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