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RADIO 4
CURRENT AFFAIRS

ANALYSIS
DEVELOPMENT ON THE FRONT LINE
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED
DOCUMENTARY
Presenter: Kirsty Hughes
Producer: Ingrid Hassler
Editor: Nicola Meyrick
BBC
White City
201 Wood Lane
London
W12 7TS
020 8752 6252
Broadcast Date: 27.11.03
2030-2100
Repeat Date:
30.11.03
2130-2200
Tape Number:
PLN345/03VT1047
Duration:
27.34
Taking part in order of appearance:
Justin Forsyth
Policy Director of Oxfam
Hilary Benn
Secretary of State for International Development
Patrick Cronin
Former official US Agency for International Development,
now
Senior Vice President at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, Washington
Robin Baker
Deputy Director General of the British Council
Audrey Gaughran
Coordinator of the Global Security and Development Project
at BOND
Jonathan Stevenson
Senior Fellow for Counter-Terrorism at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies, London
Claudio Cordone

Legal Director at Amnesty International

HUGHES:
The conflict in Iraq is continuing to grab headlines on a daily
basis. But away from the media spotlight, whats happening to other big
international issues such as global poverty and development?
FORSYTH:
In 2000 the international community
got together and made a commitment that their aid would really be focused
on achieving the millennium development goals, which is about halving
global poverty by 2015. And since September the 11th and the war against
terror and the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, what weve seen
increasingly is international priorities turning away from achieving those
goals towards really a very narrow security agenda.
SEGUE
BENN:
I think these things, they fit together. I
dont see a competition or a conflict because they are
Good development, successful development, reduction in
enhance security. Thats why I think theres a better
importance of development and development spending and
policy now frankly than there was before September the

mutually reinforcing.
poverty helps to
understanding of the
development
11th.

HUGHES:
Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for
International Development. And before him Justin Forsyth, Policy Director
at Oxfam. Who is right? Is the war on terror giving a boost to
development policy or is it undermining it? Two years ago, after September
the 11th, there was a lot of rhetoric about the potentially vital link between
these two different but central global questions: terrorism and poverty.
Poverty, injustice, and insecurity must be tackled, so the argument went, or
theyll contribute to an environment in which terror can flourish. But whats
happened since then? Patrick Cronin, until a few weeks ago one of the top
officials at the US Agency for International Development.
CRONIN: There are many uses of foreign aid and
obviously post September 11, 2001, the United States government has been
looking to harness all of its policy tools on a campaign of counter terrorism.
There were endless inner agency discussions inside the US government on
could we now use foreign assistance for education programmes, womens
empowerment for jobs, for public diplomacy, to counter and dampen
enthusiasm, support for terrorism or to deal with the poverty, the lack of
jobs, the dashed expectations that in some at risk communities in parts of
the Muslim world could give further support to terrorists could become a
haven for terrorism, could certainly support extremism and violence and be
breeding grounds that are antithetical to tolerance and certainly Western
values generally. There were very few things that were done, however,
after Afghanistan because the focus thereafter became very much rooted in

what to do with Iraq.

HUGHES: September the 11th, according to
Patrick Cronin, now Senior Vice-President at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, encouraged a whole new debate in
America about how to use development policy in the fight against terror.
While action on this in the US seems blocked by the war in Iraq and its
aftermath, Britain is one step ahead and has already deployed many of its
policy tools. Since September the 11th, the UK has put new money into a
cultural diplomacy programme, called Connecting Futures, and aimed at
tomorrows young leaders in Muslim countries.
BAKER: The Connecting Futures initiative is
the UKs reaction to September the 11th and it is a specific flagship
programme looking at the whole question of how the West and the Islamic
world, the Muslim world relate. Connecting Futures is saying there is a
need for dialogue, but the dialogue has to be two-way. The war in Iraq
came along just as Connecting Futures was picking up steam and, as a result
of that, it disrupted our operations and it also dented the UKs standing in a
lot of the countries in which were working.
HUGHES: Robin Baker, Deputy Director General
of the British Council. In fact, the UKs image was not that good even
before the Iraq war, as the British Council found when they undertook a
detailed opinion poll of the young people they were targeting.
BAKER: What people were saying was we do
not like your politics, we do not like the Anglo-US alignment and
involvement in our countries, but we do recognise that in terms of
opportunity - educational opportunity, wealth creation - the UK has a lot to
offer, and besides that you have the English language which we need in
order to as it were fulfil our own aspiration. We started with ten countries.
There were some countries like Nigeria or Indonesia, which have very large
Muslim populations, so they range from Indonesia and Malaysia through to
Saudi Arabia. Turkey also, which is a secular state. We receive a grant
from government. We will discuss with the Foreign Office what our
priorities are, so clearly it would be not sensible for the British Council to
say were going to make a push on Greenland and Iceland post-September
the 11th, so we have moved resources into the Middle East.
HUGHES: Focusing money and policy onto the
Muslim world, especially the Middle East, appears to be the name of the
game at the moment. Encouraging dialogue and promoting education
programmes must surely be a good thing. And Audrey Gaughran, a
coordinator of a British network of 300 development organisations called
BOND, has no quarrel with that. But its the Wests preoccupation with
September the 11th she sees as problematic.
GAUGHRAN:
Are you going to pay more attention to
education in order to prevent support for terrorism in which case where are
you going to pay this attention and what type of attention are you paying
and how are you paying for it? If theres no terrorist threat in half of the
countries in Africa but theres huge deficits in education, well what does
that mean? Does it mean you start looking for the countries where you feel
you need to educate the youth of that country to prevent them supporting
terrorism, in which case youre immediately taking aid away from one
place, putting it in another and your objective is to counter terrorism, not to
reduce poverty.
HUGHES: And tackling poverty is what the nongovernmental organisations insist development money should be spent on.

GAUGHRAN:
The war on terror has affected aid
policy in this way by actually introducing a new goal. Counter terrorism is
now being talked about by some donors as an objective for development
aid, and in the case of some donors is already their objective Denmark and
Australia being prime examples. The Australian Prime Minister recently
announced five million Australian dollars in a three-year package of counter
terrorism assistance to the Philippines and that will come out of AusAids
budget. AusAid is the official aid agency. When theyve spent money on
meetings of money laundering groups in the Asian region, when theyve
spent money on airport related security in the Asian region, this has come
out of their development aid budget. There is also aid being directed to
immigration controls, customs controls. Obviously it needs to be done,
obviously its very important, but is it what development aid is for and who
is benefiting? To a large extent, obviously the beneficiaries are intended to
be Australians.
HUGHES: Money for extra security has to come
from somewhere. But paying for this out of budgets earmarked for
developing countries seems unfair and potentially counter-productive. Yet
Denmark too has introduced counter-terrorism as one of the top five aims of
its development strategy. This tough attitude is beginning to seep into
western thinking more widely. Earlier this year, the OECD countries,
including Britain, launched, in a high-level policy statement, a whole host
of ideas on how to use development tools as part of the war on terror. But
for the UK, this is a tricky issue: legally British aid must target poverty. So
will we see Britain going down this new road and adopting measures
similar to Australia and Denmark? Hilary Benn.
BENN:
Thats not something that were doing
because the focus of our work is poverty reduction and that remains the
case. Wed like to see a much greater proportion of EU development
spending going to the poorest countries of the world because we think the
benefits that would flow, would help us to lift more people out of poverty,
and thats the direction very much which the UK is moving towards. By
2005/6 we intend to spend ninety percent of our bilateral aid on the poorest
countries of the world and thats a process thats been developing over a
number of years.
HUGHES: Is it inevitable that, faced with the
costs of reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, that theres going to be
some diversion of development funds away from other spending?
BENN:
Our commitment of resources to low
income countries is not affected by the need to find resources for Iraq. Iraq
is currently, in fact, a low income country thats what the needs
assessment demonstrated and in finding the resources, were making
some reallocation from within our middle income country programme,
although that is a process that weve been doing anyway because of the shift
towards the poorest countries of the world. Some of the money for Iraq,
some is coming out of the contingency, some is coming out of a reallocation
from middle income countries. But Iraq is a crisis. How are you going to
deal with crises as they arise? Thats what you have a contingency for.
HUGHES: Classifying Iraq as a low income
country is rather helpful to the UK given the self-imposed goal of spending
most of its aid on the poorest countries. But even so, it cant hide the fact
that British aid money is being diverted to Iraq, mainly from Latin America.
Oxfams Justin Forsyth and a number of other leading charities recently
wrote to Tony Blair protesting strongly at this diversion.
FORSYTH:
Were very worried about it. I mean
the programmes in those countries are actually for very poor people in

places like Bolivia, Peru, the Philippines, so they might be middle income
countries but the programmes are helping poor people and that moneys
going to be diverted away from those countries to help fund this growing
programme that the British and the Americans have in Iraq for
reconstruction. And where we support some of the reconstruction efforts,
we dont want the money to be diverted. And basically the British
government have broken a promise to us. Hilary Benn made the promise in
Parliament, and the Prime Minister in a hand written note actually at the end
of a letter of 25th April also made this promise, this commitment, not to
divert any money.
HUGHES: And the UK is not the only one
diverting money. The European Unions doing it too: in 2002, 15% of its
development funds for Asia and Latin America went to Afghanistan. And
America is spending more on reconstruction in Iraq than on its total annual
aid budget for the whole of the rest of the world. Patrick Cronin.
CRONIN: There is a diversion, there has to be a
diversion because there are at the end of the day trade offs and choices to be
made and unfortunately the policy agenda in capitols around the world,
including Washington, gets fixated on a couple of top agenda items and
those issues take the time and attention and win the resources in the policy
arena. New initiatives are planned for tackling poverty, for establishing a
Millennium Challenge Corporation, for instance. Where President Bush
was thinking about 1.7 billion dollars in this current fiscal year, that got
proposed actually this year as 1.3 billion dollar initial request partly because
on the minds of budgeters was the war on Iraq and the unknown cost. Mind
you, right now were not even at the 1.3 billion. Were still negotiating
with Congress to even get 800 million dollars stood up. So theres an
opportunity cost of Iraq and Afghanistan making people shy away from
initiatives that are already proposed. If President Bush makes good on what
he has promised, which is namely to double essentially development
assistance from the United States between 2001 and 2008, which is what is
proposed in his budget, then he will be not ignoring those issues. But if he
doesnt manage to implement what hes recommended, yes he will be
backing away from that.
HUGHES: The jurys still out on a stronger US
commitment to tackling poverty. And overall its not yet clear if aid money
will go up or not in the next few years. So raiding the development pot for
the war on terror looks tricky, especially when western aid today is only half
the level it was 40 years ago, as a proportion of national income. And, with
exceptionally bad timing, aid reached its all-time low in 2001 just as the
war on terror came along. America and Europe have promised to dig deeper
in their pockets for development in the next few years. But dont hold your
breath waiting for the UNs targets to be hit. And theres another problem.
As Hilary Benn said, some of the money for Iraq comes out of a
contingency pot for emergencies. But does that leave enough for other
sudden crises a big earthquake or famine? Justin Forsyth.
FORSYTH:
Were seeing the international
community paying around seventy-four dollars per person in Iraq in terms
of humanitarian relief where theyre only being able to mobilise in a much
needier country like the Congo in Central Africa around seventeen dollars
per person.
HUGHES: So would you support the statements
for instance weve seen from the International Federation of the Red Cross
in their annual report saying there has been a very big diversion, for
instance, from Africa in the sense that you just cant raise money at the
moment for some of the key appeals there?

FORSYTH:
Yes, I mean what were seeing is very
little money going to places in Africa like the Democratic Republic of
Congo, like Liberia, like some of the big emergencies in the Horn of Africa
and a lot of money going to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think
theres just a huge amount of political will to really prioritise Iraq and
Afghanistan and very little political will to prioritise some of the most
neediest places in the world like the Congo.
HUGHES: Given its geographical location, the
Democratic Republic of Congo is not on the front line of the war on terror.
And that matters, when politics not poverty is determining priorities.
Countries that are on side on the war on terror, as well as geographically
in sensitive locations, may find themselves at the front of the queue for aid
funds and for other rewards such as good trade deals. Hardened realists
might argue thats inevitable in the circumstances. Others would say its
building up problems for the future. Jonathan Stevenson is Senior Fellow
for counter-terrorism at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in
London. What does he think?
STEVENSON:
I certainly think its politically
inevitable. I mean Pakistan of course is the best example once it proved
that it was going to be a reasonably cooperative counter-terrorism partner
all kinds of sanctions were dropped and it essentially received a flood of
aid. Particularly bilateral donors who are on the frontline of the campaign
against terrorism are going to be much better disposed towards giving aid
to those who cooperate and will inevitably, and quite understandably, use it
as a carrot to secure better counter-terrorism cooperation. So, yes, I think
that 9/11, perhaps in the way that the Cold War politicised aid, has repoliticised it but in the context of a war on terror in which the President
said either youre for us or against us.
HUGHES: So aid is once again being used as a
political carrot just as it was in the Cold War. You wont find it stated that
clearly in the official policy statements. But the European Unions new draft
security strategy, put together by its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana,
seems to be heading in that direction. It says that security, trade and aid, and
foreign policy have all got to become much more coherent. Coherent is a
nice, safe word, but does Jonathan Stevenson think this new strategy
implies using precisely the sort of political pre-conditions hes talking
about?

STEVENSON:
I think it does, I wouldnt disagree at
all, although its presented in such a way that security cooperation doesnt
appear so much to be a hard condition as part of a package or constellation
of considerations that are made in the extension of aid. Its not wrong, but
its important from a public diplomacy point of view to package it in such a
way that it doesnt appear to be coercive, and I think that Solana has
probably successfully done that.
HUGHES: Nice packaging. But behind the soft
wrapping lies a tough if still implicit warning: cooperate on security to get
all your aid money. This could be the thin end of the wedge in putting
security before development goals. Neither Javier Solana nor any of the
European Commissioners responsible for these issues would agree to take
part in this programme. But the EUs leaders will discuss this new security
strategy, at their summit in Rome in two weeks time.
The NGOs are not happy with that. But might they actually be part of the
problem? After all, many aid agencies get a lot of their funds from
government. And if governments put more money into Iraq and

Afghanistan, thats where many of the agencies will end up working.

Would Justin Forsyth agree that NGOs are actually keen to enhance their
profile by operating in high priority countries like Afghanistan and Iraq?
FORSYTH:
Yes, I think weve learnt a lot over the
last few years that we have to really look at how we act in these different
emergencies and that if we dont act properly we can do more harm than
good. And so weve established within our NGO community a set of
standards which is really meant to get everyone up to the same level in
terms of what theyre doing on the ground, in terms of their obligations, in
terms of the way they act, the kind of services that theyre providing, their
impartiality and neutrality. I think for years weve been able to act in the
most difficult situations, in the middle of wars because weve been seen as
neutral and impartial, and one of the real dangers that weve seen with Iraq
and in Afghanistan is the blurring of the lines between the humanitarian
operation where the US military see the humanitarian operation increasingly
as part of the military operation and the space that we need as humanitarian
actors separate from the military to really be able to do our job, and because
if were increasingly seen as part of the war against terror, then increasingly
our workers will be targeted.
HUGHES: Which is exactly what happened in
Iraq recently with the unprecedented attack on the International Committee
of the Red Cross, which has now pulled out of Baghdad. Bringing politics
into aid is making life very tough for the development agencies. One more
thing that worries Audrey Gaughran of the BOND network of development
NGOs.
GAUGHRAN:
Development aid is focused on some
very, very big goals reducing poverty by fifty percent by 2015, tackling
HIV/ AIDS and theres nowhere near enough money to do this and, this is
acknowledged by all donors. I mean fifty billion is the figure thats usually
tossed around when people talk about how much will it take to achieve the
millennium development goals and theres no way we have the fifty billion.
When money goes to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan or to other countries,
the so-called frontline states Tajikistan, countries like that when those
countries get more, somebody is definitely getting less than they would
have done. Whats not a hundred percent clear at the moment is exactly
who the losers are. And the resentment that this is likely to cause on the
ground - our networks concern is that this resentment will actually fuel the
kind of anger that does provide some of the support to terrorism, so that
almost what donors are doing is totally counter productive. If you start
throwing in counter-terrorism, youre taking a very small amount of money
and stretching it even thinner.
HUGHES: So the new trend in security policy
might result in a backlash of more hostility towards western countries. For
developing countries, preconditions for receiving aid are not new. But these
preconditions have normally been about fundamental values: human rights
and moves towards democracy and good governance. In the face of this new
politicisation of aid, are human rights still a priority? Claudio Cordone,
Legal Director at Amnesty International.
CORDONE:
Governments that are engaging in
violations are doing so in a more assertive way than they used to do it
before. Now with the excuse of the war on terror, governments are actually
promoting them in a sense or are less shy to argue for them and,
unfortunately, we also see that public opinion seems to be less keen to resist
these measures. Now some governments have been repressive well before
September 11 and in a sense they are repackaging these repressive measures
in the language of anti-terrorism. We can look at Yemen and Pakistan, for
example, where there has been extensive use of arbitrary detention without

charge or trial. In Yemen, for example, the Yemen authorities told us last
year that they were aware that they were violating their own laws as well as
their international obligations, but they felt they had to do that one, to
face terrorism, and also to as they put it avoid the risk of US military
intervention in their country.
STEVENSON:
It may be that in the implementation of
various development plans human rights get sidelined operationally, and
thats not something anybody should promote.
HUGHES: Jonathan Stevenson
STEVENSON:
The way I would put it is it may be
something that we need to accept in the short term and perhaps to
reluctantly tolerate while we make sure that security sectors are up to the
task of protecting states against terrorist infiltration. But the notion that
we should in any formal way drop human rights as a standing value of
development promotion would be wrong.
HUGHES: But is it wise to tolerate a
downgrading of human rights, even in the short term? It may not even make
us any safer. Human rights abuses will add to tensions, anger and alienation
in the societies where they occur. And in so-called failed states, such as
Sudan, Somalia or Moldova, where effective government and the rule of
law have broken down, and poverty is rife, neither development nor security
have much chance. Does Justin Forsyth think the war on terror is now
leading to new and stronger attention on failed states?
FORSYTH:
No, not really and I think this is again
one of the consequences of the war against terror; that all the political will
and resources in the world are focused on a very few countries like Iraq,
where we know that other countries where there are failed states or kind of
neglected conflicts which are causing massive suffering arent either getting
the resources that they need so countries like the Democratic Republic of
Congo are getting much less than Iraq but theyre also not necessarily
getting the political attention or, if they are, for very short periods of time.
We had a bit of a focus on Liberia to get rid of Charles Taylor, but then the
focus has moved off and the situation continues to be very fragile. We had
a burst of attention on the Democratic Republic of Congo to help stabilise
and move the situation forward. But if we dont maintain that attention, its
likely to slip backwards.
HUGHES: But there are some conflict-ridden
states like Sierra Leone which have received more sustained attention. And,
according to Hilary Benn, the war on terror will make sure this attention
continues.
BENN:
I would say that there is more interest
in and attention paid to failed states and they take many different forms
because we can see the consequences of allowing that to happen, not least
from a development point of view, in terms of the number of people whose
lives are made much worse by the consequences of state failure. And that,
frankly, was what Kofi Annans message to the UN General Assembly was
all about. He said the UN has got to be more effective multilaterally in
dealing with this problem of failing states.
HUGHES:
Is there a risk that the stable but poor
countries get the least attention in this environment because youve got the
Iraqs, youve got the failed states, youve got all these new concerns. If
youre Tanzania perhaps no ones going to care any more?

BENN:
Well thats simply not the case
because Tanzania is one of the biggest recipients of UK bilateral aid, so that
is not reflected in our policy. The truth is we need to do both. And of
course we are in the position of having, because of the political process, a
rising aid budget. In the next two years, the UKs aid budget will increase
by just under a billion pounds in total. Now that is a very significant
additional commitment and the truth is we need to do both.

HUGHES: But can we really do both? Post-war

reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes both money and political
attention. And so tackling conflict and instability in other failing and
undemocratic states has taken a backseat. But if poverty and conflict in
other parts of the world encourage the emergence of terrorism, that could be
very risky. Jonathan Stevenson.
STEVENSON:
The temptation would be to say that
poor people are more likely to turn towards terrorism. Thats a big over
simplification given that most of the 9/11 hijackers and suicide attackers
were middle class. I do think theres at least an attenuating connection,
however, between political liberalisation and good governance and
terrorism. One can point to a certain alienation that exists even among the
middle classes in many Gulf States in their feeling that theyre not in a
representative country in political terms and that they are somehow
alienated from running their own lives.
HUGHES:
Yes, the causes of terror are complex.
But is the war on terror being tough on any of them? A trend is gathering
pace which gives priority to security. Is there any effective counter
balance?
STEVENSON:
If most of the money is coming from
governments that believe in heavy security conditionality in exchange for
aid, then thats likely to carry the day. But if theyre counter balanced by
governments that disagree or other institutions that disagree, such as the
IMF or the World Bank, then theres going to be a healthy fight thats likely
to result one would hope in a consensus.
HUGHES: Whats your guess about whos going
to win this argument?
STEVENSON:
In the short and medium term
security. Security quid pro quo for aid will likely carry the day, but
ultimately development.

HUGHES: The real danger is that the world will

get stuck in the narrow security phase for a very long time. And creating a
safer world for everyone doesnt only depend on tackling terrorism.
Poverty, inequality and failing states create insecurity, conflict and
instability too, and kill millions of people every year. Diverting
development and other policy tools to support the war on terror is a
risky strategy. Putting security before development may end up
undermining both.
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