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Behind To Starve
A
Humanitarian Disaster is Engulfing Africa as Cash is Poured into the War with
Iraq and its Aftermath
by
George Monbiot
Dissident Voice
March
19, 2003
There
is surely no more obvious symptom of the corruption of western politics than
the disproportion between the money available for sustaining life and the money
available for terminating it. We could, I think, expect that, if they were
asked to vote on the matter, most of the citizens of the rich world would
demand that their governments spend as much on humanitarian aid as they spend
on developing new means of killing people. But the military-industrial complex
is a beast which becomes both fiercer and greedier the more it is fed.
As
the United States prepares to spend some $12 billion a month on bombing the
Iraqis, it has so far offered only $65 million to provide them with food,
water, sanitation, shelter and treatment for the injuries they are likely to
receive (1). A confidential UN contingency plan for Iraq,
which was leaked in January, suggests that the war could expose around one
million children to "risk of death from malnutrition." It warns that
"the collapse of essential services in Iraq could lead to a humanitarian
emergency of proportions well beyond the capacity of UN agencies and other aid
organizations." (2) Around 60 per cent of the
population is entirely dependent on the oil for food programme, administered by
the Iraqi government. This scheme was suspended by the UN yesterday, leaving
the Iraqis reliant on foreign aid. The money pledged so far is enough to
sustain the Iraqis for less than a fortnight. (3)
It
is hard to believe, however, that the US government will leave them to starve
once it has captured their country. For the weeks or months during which Iraq
dominates the news, the US will be obliged to defend them from the most
immediate impacts of the institutional collapse its war will cause. Afterwards,
like the people of Afghanistan, the Iraqis will be first forgotten by the media
and then deserted by those who promised to support them.
But
even before the first troops cross the border, the impending war has caused a
global humanitarian crisis. As donor countries set aside their aid budgets to
save both themselves and the United States from embarrassment under the camera
lights in Baghdad, they have all but ceased to provide money to other nations.
The world, as a result, could soon be confronted by a humanitarian funding
crisis graver than any since the end of the Second World War.
Every
year, in November, the UN agencies which deal with disasters launch what they
call a "consolidated appeal" for each of the countries suffering a
"complex emergency". They expect to receive the money they request by
May of the following year. The payments and promises they have extracted so far
chart the collapse of international concern for the people of almost every
nation except Iraq.
In
Eritrea, for example, the drought is so severe that the water table has fallen
by ten metres. Most of the nation's crops have failed and grain prices have
doubled. Seventy per cent of its 3.3 million people are now classified as
vulnerable to famine. (4) The United Nations has asked the
rich countries for $163m to help them. It has received $4m, or 2.5% of the money
it requested. (5)
Burundi,
where almost one sixth of the inhabitants have been forced out of their homes
by conflict and natural disasters, and which is now officially listed as the
third poorest nation on earth, has received 3% of its UN request. Liberia,
where rebels have rendered much of the western part of the country
uninhabitable, forcing some 500,000 people out of their homes, has been given
1.2%; Sierra Leone, where lassa fever is now rampaging through the refugee
camps, has received 1%; and Guinea, which has recently taken 82,000 refugees
from Cote d'Ivoire, 0.4%. Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo
have all received less than 6%.
Much
of the money for these invisible countries has come from donor nations with
relatively small economies, such as Sweden, Norway, Canada and Ireland.
"The state of Africa", Tony Blair told his party conference in
October 2001, "is a scar on the conscience of the world, but if the world
focused on it, we could heal it". (6) Well, let it
now be a scar on the conscience of Tony Blair.
As
a result of this unprecedented failure by the rich nations to cough up, the
people of the forgotten countries will, very soon, begin to starve to death.
The UN has warned that "a break in supplies" to Eritrea "is now
inevitable". (7) The World Food Programme has started
feeding fewer people there, but will run out of food within two months. In
Burundi it can, it says, continue feeding people "for another four weeks."
(8) Beans will run out in Liberia this month; cereals in
May. (9) One hundred thousand refugees in Guinea could
find themselves without food by August. (10) Yet neither
of the two governments which are about to launch a "humanitarian war"
appear to be concerned by the impending humanitarian catastrophes in the world's
poorest nations.
The
aid crisis is now so serious that it is restricting disaster relief even in
nations which are considered by the major powers to be geopolitically
important. The UN agencies have so far received just 2.9% of their request for
Palestine, and 8.4% of the money they need in Afghanistan.
The
latter figure is, in light of the repeated promises made by the nations
prosecuting the war there, extraordinary. "To the Afghan people we make
this commitment," Blair pledged during the same speech in October 2001.
"The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside
world has done so many times before." (11) Three
months later, the UN estimated that Afghanistan would need at least $10bn for
reconstruction over the following five years. The US, which had just spent
$4.5bn on bombing the country, offered $300m for the first year and refused to
make any commitment for subsequent years. This year, George Bush
"forgot" to produce an aid budget for Afghanistan, until he was
forced to provide another $300m by Congress. (12)
The
government, which has an annual budget of just $460 million - or around half of
what the US still spends every month on chasing the remnants of Al Qaeda
through the mountains - is effectively bankrupt. At the beginning of this month
the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, flew to Washington to beg George Bush for
more money. He was given $50m, $35m of which the US insists is spent on the
construction of a five-star hotel in Kabul. (13) Karzai,
in other words, has discovered what the people of Iraq will soon find out:
generosity dries up when you are yesterday's news.
If,
somehow, you are still suffering from the delusion that this war is to be
fought for the sake of the Iraqi people, I would invite you to consider the
record of the prosecuting nations. We may believe that George Bush and Tony
Blair have the interests of foreigners at heart only when they spend more on
feeding them than they spend on killing them.
George Monbiot is Honorary
Professor at the Department of Politics in Keele and Visiting Professor at the
Department of Environmental Science at the University of East London. He writes
a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper of London. His articles and contact
info can be found at his website: www.monbiot.com
References:
1.
The Center for Economic & Social Rights, 7 Mar 2003. The Human Costs of War
in Iraq. New York.
2.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, January 7,
2003. "Integrated Humanitarian Contingency Plan for Iraq and Neighboring
Countries," Confidential Draft. Cited in The Center for Economic &
Social Rights, ibid.
3.
The oil for food programme was to have supplied the Iraqis with over $1bn in
humanitarian supplies between December 2002 and June 2003, a rate of over $40m
a week, which would have provided basic subsistence. So far official pledges
amount to $80m ($65 m from the US and $15 m from the UK). Humanitarian costs
rise during war time.
4.
UN OCHA Integrated Regional Information Network, 11 March 2003. Eritrea: Funding crisis as food situation
becomes critical.
5.
All the statistics on Consolidated Appeal requests come from: http://www.reliefweb.int/fts/reports/reports.asp?section=CE&year=2003.
Viewed on 16 March 2003.
6.
Tony Blair, 2 October 2001. Speech to the Labour Party conference, Brighton.
7.
World Food Programme, 14 Mar 2003 WFP Emergency Report No. 11 of 2003
8.
ibid.
9.
ibid.
10.
ibid.
11.
Tony Blair, ibid.
12.
eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2759789.stm
13.
US Department of State, 7 March 2003. OPIC pledges additional $50 million for
U.S. investment in Afghanistan.