Get the Military Out of Development - Part 2

by Brooks Keene

category: Humanitarian Relief

Published December 16, 2008 @ 09:46AM PT

This follows on my previous post about getting the military out of development.

The best way to build peace?

Photo from the NY Times.

The New York Times ran an article this week discussing how the U.S. military is using both training of security forces and development assistance to combat terrorism in the Sahel (the article is about Mali).  I saw a model of the development assistance type in Niger.  There are (at least) two questions that have not been satisfactorily answered as to why this is a good expenditure of U.S. taxpayer money:

1. Why are we supporting who we're supporting? It's been clear from the get-go that, from the military training perspective, the U.S. is siding with national governments.  While this might be a decent strategy when dealing with Germany or China, the situation gets murkier when dealing with some governments in the developing world.  Both Mali and Niger, where similar work is happening, have been dealing with challenges to their stability and legitimacy from Tuareg tribes in the north who feel left out of the social compact.  In Niger, this is a lot more serious as the north holds uranium deposits that account for the majority of the country's export earnings (see NY Times article).  These are the kinds of things that can lead to government overthrows or coups (both Niger and Mali had coups in the 1990s).  The New York Times article on the counter-terrorism work in Mali says that one of the Malian commanders was trained at Fort Benning in Georgia.  For a picture of how well this type of training has worked out in the past, check out School of the Americas Watch, an organization that has done extensive research on what Fort Benning graduates have sometimes been up to in the past.  Hint: It's sometimes called the "School of Assassins."
2. Is any of this actually the best way to curb terrorism? Like I said in my last post, development done for selfish reasons can be problematic.  Good development requires trust, and--in my experience--such programs are not necessarily completely forthright about why they do what they do.  It's difficult to work with people as partners in their own future when your starting point is, "You're at risk of becoming a terrorist, so we're going to help you reform the curriculum in your Koranic school and get a job while you're at it."  Don't get me wrong, some of these programs can have great positive impact, but they carry an in-built booby trap should the reality become clear.

An alternative method?  Well, we already have several U.S. government agencies whose specialty is foreign assistance.  Why not strengthen them and then let them do their job?