Links on a Monday Morning. Including, Of Course, Afghan War Rugs

Published June 29, 2009 @ 07:13AM PT

A few links to help your Monday morning procrastination:

- My genocide co-blogger Michelle has a fascinating post on the ecological footprint of genocide. And, bonus, satellite photos.

- An interesting donnybrook over at William Easterly's Aid Watch blog - first Easterly criticized a tour operator offering trips to the Millennium Village Project in Rwanda, with a post somewhat provactively titled: Should starving people be tourist attractiions? (One assumes the implicit answer is no.)

As an example of how the tours "dehumanize" the villagers, he points to a line in the tour brochure which reads "Please do not eat in drink in public. Many people in Bugesera Distract are still suffering from malnutrition…"

Then the tour operator responded with a long, balanced post - pointing out, among other things, that a) the rule noted above was actually developed thru participatory discussions with the community, and b) the profits from the tours were directed back to the same community.

(N.B. - I hate it when reality and nuance make it difficult to feel morally superior.)

- Chris Blattman's recent post NGOs: Please stop training, chronicling Blattman's discovery that 30% of the people in a small, impoverished town in central Liberia had already received peace trainings from various NGOs.

Blattman then sums up the wonderfully obvious: "These people don't have roads. Surely this can't be the best use of scarce aid resources?"

- An interesting post from the blog Our Man in Cameroon about corruption and complicity.

- And finally, from the Strange Maps blog: Afghan War Rugs. (Many thanks to GG for the link)

[Photo from www.strangemaps.wordpress.com]

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Comments (1)

Becausee my sight isn't great when I'm not wearing my glasses, I thought that rug said "Malice in Afghanistan" at the bottom. Whichwould be both awesome and appropriate, and now I want to start a band and call it that.

Also, I have stopped reading Aid Watch during the workday. It's become the National Enquirer of the now incredibly cliquish aid+development blog community.

Easterly isn't always wrong, but he was wrong on the tourism thing and refused to admit it and apologize. Even worse, he stubbornly clung to his debunked accusations and wrote a weaselly follow-up post saying so.

Posted by Transitionl... . on 06/29/2009 @ 10:28AM PT
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Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.