The Dominion - CIDA

Foreign Aid to Mining Firms

dawn — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:08:10 +0000

CIDA teams up with NGOs to do development work at mine sites

MONTREAL—As excavators, heavy haulers and chemical treatment plants dig made-in-Canada mines around the world, Ottawa has taken new steps to ease growing criticism of Canada’s extractive sector.

The Harper government recently announced a publicly funded agreement between three of Canada’s mining giants and three of Canada’s leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The agreement, which marks a significant shift in how mining and politics mix, elicited little more than a yawn from the media. But a closer look reveals this partnership is transforming Canada’s aid landscape—with disturbing implications.

“The Canadian government is using aid to support the expansion of Canadian mining...[and] to determine development paths inside countries according to the logic of mining companies,” Yao Graham of Third World Network Africa, a research and advocacy organization based in Ghana, told The Dominion. Graham has seen many communities in Africa ravaged by the exploitative labour practices and lax environmental practices that often accompany mining megaprojects.

In the first phase of this new program, the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) has partnered Rio Tinto Alcan; Plan Canada is paired up with IAMGOLD; and World Vision Canada has joined forces with Barrick Gold. This new funding approach raises some serious ethical and political questions about the role of NGOs, and constitutes a veritable PR coup for a mining industry that has racked up quite the rap sheet of environmental and human rights abuses.

Critics argue that under this new dispensation, industry can counter resistance to its activities by claiming that its presence has brought development to impoverished communities. Cash-strapped NGOs, in an era of shrinking government funding for international development, have found a funding niche. Last but not least, the Canadian government is able to deflect demands for more stringent—and potentially profit-damaging—controls over one of its most lucrative industries.

In the past, while NGOs were bound by financial ties to the state, they still had some nominal autonomy to bear witness to that abuse. Now, they are increasingly tied to government funds earmarked to further Canada’s mining interests, topped up by money from the mining industry itself.

“When a mine goes in, there is a development deficit created immediately because there are impacts that can last literally thousands of years on water, on land, on the air,” said Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada. “And these impacts can be devastating. It can mean that people literally have to leave that area and live somewhere else because they can’t live there anymore.”

Coumans, who has kept a watchful eye on this evolving relationship, argues that whatever project an NGO gets up and running in one of these mining communities cannot even begin to redress the damage caused by the mining company’s presence there. She calls the NGO presence at mining sites “a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.”

Chris Eaton, the Executive Director of WUSC, sees things differently. He argues that this closer working relationship between NGOs and the mining sector will be an opportunity for organizations like WUSC to “nudge along good practice.” He is confident that WUSC’s role in building the capacity of local government to engage with mining companies will reap greater benefits for local people.

Plan Canada, another beneficiary under the new government initiative, could not find anyone to respond to our questions before this story went to print. Plan Canada will receive $5.7 million from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to fund activities relating to IAMGOLD’s mining activities in 13 communities in Burkina Faso.

While Plan Canada’s project is nowhere close to any of IAMGOLD’s operations, it has partnered with a mining company that has been mired in labour strife at at least one of its mines.* Last May, IAMGOLD had to close down operations at its Essakane mine in Burkina Faso due to labour unrest. The company’s CEO, Steve Letwin, warned that he would not tolerate an ‘illegal’ strike ‘and as they will find out, will not tolerate anything that has a negative impact on our stakeholders.’

Given Plan Canada’s stated commitment to ‘work in the best interests of children and the communities in which we work,’ would they be prepared to risk their multi-million dollar funding to speak out against any violations of labour or human rights in the communities in which their partner works?

For the Canadian government, this new troika is simply the latest step in a long process of prying open the door on the planet’s mineral wealth to the benefit of the extractive industry. The last decade saw the Canadian government provide technical and financial support to create industry-friendly mining codes around the world. The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability documented how government initiatives in Colombia and Tanzania have translated into weaker environmental and social safeguards, reduced royalties for the host countries and new tax holidays.

Canadian cash, technocrats and know-how have also been involved in rewriting mining codes in Malawi, Ghana, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo (with, in this last case, civil war as a backdrop). All this has led to rising profits for Canadian companies and dwindling revenues for host countries.

Now that many official hurdles to access to overseas mineral wealth have come down, the government has turned its attention to partnering NGOs with mining firms. At the local level, this kind of agreement is cause for suspicion.

The Canadian government is turning its back on a deeper examination of the structural problems in the relationship between First World mining firms and Third World resources, says Third World Network’s Graham, instead opting for what he calls a “palliative” approach. “It’s a way of sidestepping the need for companies to pay more revenue because they can say, ‘We are doing so much for the community. Why do we have to put more into the central treasury?’”

The mining industry’s dismal reputation is its Achilles heel. Concern about its poor track record overseas is growing—even the mainstream is starting to take note.

Despite the clarion call from Canadians to put guidelines and mechanisms in place to keep the industry in check, the government has opted for optics instead. “The Canadian government is very anxious about the reputation of mining companies and instead of accountability, it is putting money into projects that show that mining leads to development,” said Coumans. In her view, it is now taxpayers that are footing the bill to polish a tarnished corporate image.

“CIDA has always worked government-to-government,” said Coumans. “Now what CIDA is doing is channelling Canadian taxpayer money directly to the mine site and basically paying for corporate social responsibility projects, and that is very bizarre.”

MONEY IN MINING

WUSC-Rio Tinto Alcan project
Total budget: $928,000 over 3 years
CIDA: $500,000
WUSC/Rio Tinto Alcan: $428,000
Rio Tinto net profit in 2010: $726,000,000

Plan Canada-IAMGOLD project
Total budget: $7.6 million over 5.5 years
CIDA: $5.7 million
Plan Canada: $0.9 million
IAMGOLD: $1 million
IAMGOLD gross profit in 2010: $597,000,000

World Vision-Barrick Gold project
Total budget: $1 million over 3.5 years
CIDA: $500,000
World Vision/Barrick Gold: $500,000
Barrick Gold net profit in 2010: $3,279,000,000

Source: Canadian International Development Agency, Sedar.com

Eaton insists that WUSC’s work is about community empowerment, not corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects. “I don’t think the government should be funding NGOs to do the CSR of mining firms, and I don’t see ourselves doing that in the context of this initiative,” he said.

In the swirl of controversy around this corporate shift in government aid policy, one thing is clear: the Canadian mining sector has emerged the big winner.

Last year the Canadian mining sector led a successful lobby effort to defeat Bill C-300, the Bill that would have seen the introduction of minor controls on the unregulated overseas activities of Canada’s mining industry.

Now, this same powerful sector has access to even more government funds as well as NGO know-how to help revamp its public image. Little wonder the Mining Association of Canada recently issued a press release encouraging the federal government to continue its support for Canada’s CSR Strategy. It knows a good thing when it sees it.

*The original version of this article incorrectly implied that the joint project by Plan Canada and IAMGOLD would be taking place in a mining community. In fact, Plan Canada’s work will not be carried out at any of IAMGOLD's mine sites. The version above has been changed to correct the error.

Roberto Nieto is a Montreal-based independent journalist and activist who has worked for unions, and as an organizer in support of migrant workers. He is a regular contributor to Amandla!, Canada’s longest running African current affairs radio show. Gwendolyn Schulman is co-founder and co-host of Amandla! Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca..

Foreign Aid to Mining Firms.Image

The ongoing outsourcing in Afghanistan

Amy Miller — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:54:23 +0000

outsourcing.jpg

The ongoing outsourcing in Afghanistan

Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Kandahar, Afghanistan will not be put in harms way, despite the oft-repeated political promise that all of Canada’s ground troops will be withdrawn by 2011. The responsibility of the security of these specialists-contractors themselves- will instead be provided by private companies, who will need to go through a selection process, according to Canada’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Ron Hoffmann who spoke to journalists via video-conference, earlier this week.

This is not the first time that the Canadian government has decided to hire private security companies in Afghanistan. The British based firm, Saladin Security , has been protecting the Canadian Embassy in Kabul for many years, while many Afghan contractors including warlords, have been hired to protects convoys of Canadian personnel or provide a "security cordon" for high risk situations, such as roadside bombs going off.

Myths for Profit: Canada's Role in Industries of War and Peace

Amy Miller — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:22:02 +0000

Barrick Gold blocks booklaunch: Noir Canada

dawn — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:32:46 +0000

t117.jpg

The book launch for Noir Canada: Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique, edited by Alain Denault and the Collectif Ressources d'Afrique out of Montréal, was a cancelled yesterday when the authors and publishers (Édition Écosociété) received letters from a law firm representing Barrick Gold.

The letters alledgedly refer to apparent inaccuracies in the book, more particularly around the representation of Barrick's role at Bulyanhulu, in Tanzania, where more than 50 small scale miners were buried alive in 1996.

Barrick has also sued The Guardian and The Observer over articles that they published about the Bulyanhulu massacre.

Noir Canada is about the role of Canadian companies in Africa, which operate with the "unfailing help of the Canadian government."

The list of corporate abuses is long: advantageous mining contracts in the DRC, partnerships with arms dealers and mercenaries in the Great Lakes region, miners buried alive in Tanzania, an "involuntary genocide" by poisoning in Mali, brutal expropriations in Ghana, using people from the Ivory Coast for pharmaceutical testing, devastating hydroelectric projects in Senegal, the savage privatization of the railway system in West Africa...

I sure hope that Écosociété goes ahead and releases the book...

Yves Engler on Canada in Haiti: New Podcast

darren ell — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:16:50 +0000

Yves Engler is the co-author with Anthony Fenton of the most significant book on Canada's involvement in the 2004 overthrow of democracy in Haiti: Canada in Haiti: Waging War On the Poor Majority. The full audio interview with Yves Engler regarding Canada's involvement in the crisis in Haiti since 2004 is now online with the NFB website Citizenshift. The interview develops further ideas not presented in the video interviews published in Darren Ell's Citizenshift dossier about Haiti and Canada. In particular, Yves addresses the role of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Canadian Embassy in blocking meaningful progress in Haiti.

Growing Insurgencies, Irregular Warfare

dru — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 05:41:39 +0000

Counterinsurgency Manual Shows Military's New Face

TORONTO, Mar 22 (IPS) - Following closely behind their counterparts in the United States and Britain, Canada's Department of National Defence is preparing a comprehensive counterinsurgency field manual for its soldiers and officers.

The manual will guide Canadian Forces doctrine and training well into the future, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.

A 250-page publication, the field manual outlines the principles and practices of fighting the kind of insurgencies that have come to define warfare for the Western powers in the 21st century, in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The manual has been two years in development and is scheduled for release later this year. In it, insurgent wars are characterised by their tendency to be local and often popular movements, rather than the traditional military conflicts between states. This type of irregular warfare has confounded US and NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, where growing insurgencies have taken a bloody toll on local populations, as well as Western troops, and signs of success are few and far between.

The increased prominence of the doctrine was recently on display when Gen. David Petraeus, author of the United States Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, took command of US forces in Iraq in early 2007.

While perhaps as relevant as ever, counterinsurgency is not a new phenomenon, as the Canadian manual notes up-front. Indigenous forces battled the Roman Empire in present-day Germany, Scotland and the Middle East two millennia ago. The British Empire fought insurgencies in 19th-century Afghanistan, as did the French in Algeria after the Second World War. The US withdrew from Vietnam in 1975 after a vicious, decade-long counterinsurgency war against Vietnamese guerrillas.

Maj. D.J. Lambert, the Canadian director of army doctrine and lead author of the manual, has cited several examples of historic Canadian counterinsurgencies, including battles with George Washington's US forces and the Northwest Rebellion led by Louis Riel and the Metis in 1885.

Presently, while Canada's Afghanistan mission dominates the attention and resources of the military, according to the manual, Canadian Forces are actively engaged in various levels of confrontation with at least three ongoing insurgencies -- in Afghanistan, in Haiti and with domestic, indigenous organisations in Canada, such as the Mohawk Warrior Society.

Despite its "specific and limited aims," the First Nations rebellions in Canada are nevertheless insurgencies because they are animated by the goal of altering political relationships both with the Canadian government and at the local level -- within indigenous Reservations themselves -- "through the threat of, or use of, violence," the manual states.

In recent years, Canadian Forces have been used by the federal government in high-profile land confrontations with indigenous communities and protestors, including lethal standoffs with the Mohawk community of Kanehsatake in the 1990 Oka Crisis and with the Ojibway community at Ipperwash in 1995.

Canadian Forces have been present in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, since before the ouster of popularly-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a military coup in February 2004. According to the draft manual, Canadian Forces have been "conducting COIN [counterinsurgency] operations against the criminally-based insurgency in Haiti since early 2004."

Since the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, Canadian Forces have played a key combat role in Afghanistan, both in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and the recent NATO mission to quell the growing uprising against the Western-backed government of Hamid Karzai.

Today in Afghanistan, Canadian Forces from the Royal Canadian Regiment in Gagetown, New Brunswick are engaged in NATO's first major offensive of the season against what are broadly labelled as Taliban insurgents. Codenamed Operation Achilles, the mission is characterised by NATO and Canadian officials as a pre-emptive attack on Taliban forces in Helmand Province who are reportedly preparing to launch a "spring offensive" against the presence of foreign troops.

Maj. Gen. Ton van Loon, NATO's commander in Southern Afghanistan, said in a statement this week that Operation Achilles is the largest combined NATO-Afghan mission to date, involving 4,500 NATO troops and upwards of 1,000 Afghan National Army forces at its peak.

Meanwhile, an Afghanistan-focused policy group, the Senlis Council, released the "alarming" results of a survey this week which polled 17,000 people in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The survey showed that one-half of respondents believed the Western-led war will fail to defeat the Taliban, and 87 per cent of respondents believed that the tactics used by the Western forces in dealing with the insurgency were "not right."

"The results from the survey are extremely alarming because they indicate that the international community is in serious trouble in Afghanistan," Senlis Council President Norine MacDonald said in a statement Monday. "A return of the Taliban into power would have grave consequences for both the people of Afghanistan and for global security."

The counterinsurgency manual is one part of a significant modernising and restructuring of the Canadian Forces that the DND is billing as an effort to create a more effective force in fighting for Canada's "national interests" in the post-Cold War global order. But the changes are not only doctrinal; the intensity of the combat in Afghanistan is something Canadians haven't seen since at least the 1950s, when Canadian Forces fought in Korea.

"It is a fascinating time to be a Canadian soldier," Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, head of the army, told journalists at a recent policy briefing at the Fraser Institute, a conservative research institute in Vancouver.

"We are no longer a blunt instrument relegated solely to watching from the sidelines or inter-positioning ourselves between two formerly warring factions," Leslie said.

Canadian generals such as Leslie, Chief of Staff Rick Hillier and retired Maj. Gen. Louis MacKenzie have been outspoken critics of the accuracy and utility of the long-fostered national self-image of the Canadian military as a neutral middle-power and "blue-helmeted" peacekeeper.

While the Canadian Forces’ commitment in Afghanistan is currently slated to end in February 2009, "Let's not kid ourselves," Gen. Leslie said. The enormous resources invested by the government in the transformation of Canada's armed forces are clearly not for Afghanistan alone, he said, adding: "It is logical to expect that we will go somewhere fairly similar to Afghanistan and do much the same sort of activity."

This story is part one of a two-part series on the transformation of Canada's military and humanitarian missions. With additional reporting by Anthony Fenton in Vancouver.

Provincial Reconstruction Team, Kandahar

Training Facility

Digging Up Canadian Dirt in Colombia

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:34:02 +0000

Canadian corporations and aid agencies facing controversy and resistance in Colombia

Children play in Barrio near the mine. photo: Chris Arsenault

Up a flight of stairs, behind double-enforced bulletproof glass and a large, silent bodyguard, sits the office of Francisco Ramirez, a mining-policy researcher and President of a small Colombian trade union.

Mining policy really isn't sexy stuff and researching it usually isn't a dangerous occupation, but some of Mr. Ramirez's conclusions can mean life or death, literally and figuratively. "Once they tried to kill me right here in this office," said the researcher, who has survived seven assassination attempts.

In Colombia's mineral-rich underworld, often demarcated by the full-scale destruction of towns near mining sites, environmental contamination, paramilitary attacks and assassinations of those who stand up to mining interests, Canadian hands are dirtier than those of a coal miner coming up from the pit.

"We had a five-year, $11-million project in Colombia, which ran from 1997 to 2002," said a senior official with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Basically, it was to help Colombia strengthen its institutional capacity in both the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the Ministry of the Environment and the regulatory agencies these agencies worked with," said the CIDA official in a phone interview.

Many Canadians believe CIDA's role is building schools, providing food aid and doing other touchy-feely 'development' in poor countries. But with a $3.74-billion international assistance budget in 2004-05, CIDA spearheaded some controversial meddling in Colombia's domestic mining legislation. According to Ramirez, this 'development assistance' did not improve the lives of ordinary Colombians, but in fact helped to "further under-develop Colombia, creating more poverty and decreasing tax revenue for public investment."

In 2001 and 2002, CIDA's Colombia branch teamed up with the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), a think tank funded by the mining industry and various government departments, based at the University of Calgary. The two organizations worked together to "streamline the country's mining and petroleum regulations," reported the Calgary Herald.

According to Ramirez, this "streamlining" had some nasty effects on average Colombians. "Environmental regulations were 'flexibilized.' Labour guarantees for workers were diminished and the property of indigenous and Afro-Colombian people was opened to exploitation," said the researcher during an evening interview in Bogota.

One of the most controversial changes to mining regulation concerns the amount of royalties paid to the Colombian government by foreign companies extracting non-renewable resources. After reviewing the new code with a lawyer in Bogotá, Ramirez's allegations of a Canadian royalty robbery glistened like elicit gold.

How CIDA Works to Trim Royalties

Prior to August 2001, royalties were set at a minimum of 10 per cent for coal exports above three million tons per year, and a minimum of five per cent for exports below three million tons. After the code was "streamlined," with the help of CIDA, CERI and their Colombian legal team, the royalty tax for private owners of Colombian subsoil was reduced to 0.4 per cent, regardless of the amount of material extracted.

Refugees displaced by the Cerrejon mine in La Guarija. photo: Chris Arsenault

It's difficult to determine exactly how much money the Colombian people lost because of these changes to royalty rates. One thing is clear: In a country where an estimated 80 children die per day from hunger and curable diseases and where 64 per cent of the population lives in poverty (earning less than $3 per day), the extra royalties pocketed by mining companies could be doing more than increasing stock dividends.

The new code also increased the length of mining concessions from 25 years to 30 years, with the possibility that concessions can be tripled to 90 years.

In 2001, the final year of new code's development and the beginning of its implementation, 1,667 homicides were committed in Colombia's mining regions, twice the average rate of previous years, according to Mr. Ramirez's calculations.

The process by which CIDA helped alter Colombia's mining code has been called 'Canadianization,' but that isn't quite accurate. "Do as we say, not as we do," would be more appropriate. "Canadian royalty rates vary, but they tend to be more like three to four per cent," said Jamie Kneen, Communications Co-ordinator for MiningWatchCanada, a union-funded research and advocacy group. Moreover, payroll taxes and provincial taxes are generally higher in Canada, bringing increased revenue to support programs like decent public health care, necessities not granted to average Colombians.

It's worth noting that, under Colombia's post-CIDA mining code, the 0.4-per-cent royalty tax is not ubiquitous. "This notion of 0.4 per cent as the royalty rate is absurd, you should check your sources better," said Edgar Sarmineto, Director of land acquisition for Cerrejon, the world's largest open-pit mine, which supplies coal to power plants in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States.

"Our mine has paid more in royalty taxes every year for the last five years. Today, in royalty taxes alone, we're paying around $300 million a year," said the senior mine official as he brought up pie charts on his computer screen.

The aberration in Cerrejon's royalty rates stems from Colombia's earliest mining code proclaimed in 1886. It was based on a French/Spanish model where subsoil resources are the property of the state, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon model of full private ownership. Cerrejon is a useful example because of its size and political importance; Hernan Martinez Torres, recently appointed Minister of Mines and Energy by Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, worked at the Cerrejon mine for 17 years.

Cerrejon is divided into three main zones: north, central and south. The pre-CIDA royalties are in place for the north and south zones because the subsoil is still owned by the state. Thus, as high oil prices push up demand for coal and extraction increases rapidly, the mine ends up paying more royalties. The centre zone, operated by the Swiss company Glencore (but still owned by Cerrejon) is private property, and thus the 0.4-per-cent royalty rate is in full effect.

Mining trucks carrying coal and kicking up dust. photo: Chris Arsenault

The focus on royalty rates is misplaced, however, according to a mid-level official from Colombia's Mining and Energy Planning Ministry (UPME), the bureaucracy responsible for administering the new code, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The real issue here isn't the royalty tax, but the regular taxes that all businesses pay. That's where most government money in the mining sector comes from."

But article 229 of the post-2001 code states: "The obligation to pay royalties on the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources is incompatible with the establishment of national, departmental and municipal taxes on the same activity, of whatever denomination, method and characteristics." Legalese aside, this means that if a company is paying royalties, it no longer has to pay other taxes to state or municipal taxes.

If the UPME source is correct in his claim that regular taxes are the key component for government mining earnings, then Article 229 essentially decapitates the state's ability to garner public good from the exploitation of non-renewable resources.

Technicalities aside, it's clear to people likeFrancisco Ramirez and institutions like MiningWatch and the North-South Institute that mining companies have benefited more than the people of Colombia from the changing Colombia's mining and energy legislation, . And thanks to vast public-education initiatives, senior CIDA officials seem to realize they now have some explaining to do.

Half an hour and a couple of tough questions into the interview with the senior CIDA official, the UPME source was getting irritated. "The mining code in Colombia was developed by Colombian government officials. We had almost negligible involvement in developing the code. They asked us to make one or two comments on specific areas," he said.

While discussions of royalty rates weren't appreciated by CIDA sources, they were happy to discuss peace-building initiatives and conflict-resolution schemes in Colombia with which the organization is currently involved. "With the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the Ministry of the Environment, we provided training and information on how to conduct community consultations and conflict resolution," said the senior CIDA official.

Company Bulldozers Move In

These 'consultations' ring hollow for 700 former residents of Tabaco, a farming town in Colombia's northwestern La Guarija Peninsula, which was reduced to rubble by Cerrejon mine company bulldozers in 2001.

"There were 300 soldiers and police in anti-riot gear. There were also representatives from the mine, the mayor and a priest. They smashed the houses with large machines. They took our farms," said Jose Julio Perez, the former Tabaco residents' elected leader, when discussing the 'community consultations' Cerrejon mine conducted before displacing the farmers.

"Mistakes have been made in the past. We are working to be better community partners," said Edgar Sarmineto, the senior Cerrejon mine official. Apparently, CIDA's information on how to conduct community consultations wasn't properly communicated.

Tabaco was one of several villages destroyed by this particular mine, and three more-- Chancleta, Pantilla and Roche-- are on the chopping block.

"People from the mine have been threatening me to leave and they're stealing my cattle," said Tomas Ustatie, a farmer in Roche who milked his cows as we spoke.

Two menon horseback who don't live in the community watch are conversation closely. Ustatie says the mine is paying goons to eavesdrop on community members and create problems.

Sarmineto admits the mine hires private citizens, i.e. vigilantes, to watch property and garner information. "This is a very large site and there is a lot going on here with the guerrillas and other problems. We need to keep informed," says Mr. Sarmineto.

Along with irregular forces and paramilitaries who often guard mine sites, gather information and sometimes harass local residents, the military also works closely with Cerrejon and other mines.

Peace Without Justice

Most residents in towns near the mine site are indigenous or Afro-Colombian. According to international law-- International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169, ratified in Colombia in 1991-- indigenous persons must be consulted on issues that affect their land and any agreements affecting them must come through negotiation.

By the admissions of Edgar Sarmineto at the Cerrejon mine, the company never conducted serious negotiations with the people of Tabaco before smashing their village.

Workers at Cerrejon beside a company dump truck. photo: Chris Arsenault

To circumvent pesky international protocols and domestic legislation, the Cerrejon mine hired an anthropologist who claimed there was only one Afro-Colombian in Tabaco. "It's not enough to deny them land. Now the company is denying who they are as a people," countered one international observer.

In fact, any indigenous groups on the Guarija Peninsula and beyond say they were never consulted when the mining code was altered in 2001. Thus the CIDA-backed legislation likely violates ILO 169.

The trajectory of dispossession, privatization and government impotence that CIDA's code helped spawn is being accelerated by Colombia's right-wing, Harvard-educated President, Alvro Uribe. On July 25, the Colombian government announced it was privatizing 20 per cent of Ecopetrol, the state oil company -- a ludicrous move considering the profitable firm puts large amounts of money into the public purse and will only continue doing so as oil prices rise.

President Uribe was re-elected over the summer with a strong mandate. Questing for peace in Colombia, Uribe made a deal with the devil, providing amnesty to some 30,000 members of right-wing paramilitary groups, many of whom have been implicated in massacres and other crimes. Thus far, the devil has delivered.

While tenuous peace may become part of Mr. Uribe's legacy, critics argue that justice will not. The country's vast natural wealth has been siphoned off by well-connected government functionaries and sold away to foreigners at bargain-basement prices.

Ramirez says he has lasted this long, "because I believe in God and run very fast." Solidarity activists say Colombians need more than crucifixes and cross-trainers to deal with the current theft of resources. They need our support not because we're nice people, but because we caused many of their problems.

Chris Arsenault travels to Colombia to investigate the impacts Canadian aid agencies and corporations are having there.

Warfighters, Not Missionaries

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:30:57 +0000

The origins of the three-block war

Canadian soldiers guarding prisoners in Aghanistan. illustration by sylvia nickerson

Based on an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The Afghanistan Adventure: Canada's foreign policy for the 21st century by Jon Elmer and Anthony Fenton

Notwithstanding the massive historical record of brutal colonial interventions justified as "for the good of the natives," Canada's politicians and pundits wax daily about Canada's unique effort to liberate the schoolgirls of Afghanistan. This missionary rhetoric stands in stark contrast to the jargon that pervades the pronouncements of Canada's foreign policy establishment – including not only the military, but also Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency.

The posture of the establishment's policymakers and planners betrays an aggressive, military-borne doctrine rooted in advancing Canadian "interests" on a global scale. The implementation of the "three-block war" doctrine is an illustrative example of Canada's intentions. Simply put, the three-block war is an urban warfare doctrine that identifies three separate but often simultaneous spheres of enforcing military control in a city–warfighting, policing and facilitating aid.

Canada's top soldier, General Rick Hillier, has stated that, "We have to be experts on what is called in general terms the three-block war in order to have an effect across the world." As he explained to a Senate Committee, the entire structure of the Canadian Forces (CF) is training in the three-block war "every hour of every day."

While Hillier is surely the loudest, he is not the only one discussing it. Throughout policy documents, reports and speeches, the three-block war names the operational thrust that the CF–indeed, the whole of the foreign policy establishment–are implementing for the 21st century.

The doctrine did not begin in Afghanistan (see Haiti); but, as Michael Ignatieff acknowledged during the parliamentary debate on the extension of the mission in the spring of 2006, the significance of the Afghanistan operation is that it is a test of the "paradigm shift" from "peacekeeping" to "peace enforcement."

What is the "three-block war"?

The term 'three-block war' was coined by then-head of the US Marine Corps, General Charles C. Krulak, in a revealing and instructive speech at the National Press Club in Washington in the fall of 1997. In setting the stage for the introduction of the new doctrine, Krulak drew on a lesson from imperial Rome: adapt or be defeated.

Krulak's speech was crafted around a tale of woe suffered by the mighty Roman infantry under the commander of Caesar Augustus's expeditionary forces, Publius Quintilius Varus, in 9 AD. After being roundly defeated by the under-armed militias of the indigenous Germanic tribes, Varus was said to have retreated while despondently muttering "ne cras, ne cras"–not like yesterday, not like yesterday.

"[O]ur enemies will not allow us to fight the son of Desert Storm," said Krulak, "but they will try to draw us into the stepchild of Chechnya." With this phrase, Krulak ushered in the 'fourth generation' of warfare, bidding adieu to the 'manoeuvre' warfare doctrine that defined WWII and the Cold War posture, ie. formal state militaries fighting in enormous mechanized battalions.

The Russian wars on Chechnya, particularly in the capital, Grozny, were among the bloodiest urban fights since WWII, characterized by almost total destruction of the human and physical landscape. The fighting is house to house. Gone are the frontlines and the uniforms; the battlefield is the city. The enemy is ostensibly the entire population.

And, as Krulak said to Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline in 1999: "There is absolutely no environment more lethal than fighting building to building."

Said Krulak: "Throughout modern history, we have consciously skirted fighting in urban areas. It is a very difficult and dangerous place to fight. It is one that we want to avoid. But by 2010, over 70 per cent of the world's population will live in urban slums and in cities, most of them within 300 miles of a coastline. It is here where our enemies will challenge us. The urban areas will become the centre of gravity of our foes, and cities, as I'm sure you realize, have the potential to negate much of our technological advantage."

This, however, is the landscape of the 21st century battlefield. Barely halfway into the first decade of the century, there have already been two major wars unleashed by the US centred on the three-block model, and when Israel's wars in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the month-long war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 are added to the mix, the "stepchild" of Chechnya is Gaza, Jenin, Kandahar and Fallujah.

"The three-block war in microcosm"

Iraq's Fallujah is "the three-block war in microcosm," Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne told the Marine Corps Times. Byrne led Marines into Fallujah in the landmark aggression in 2004, only days after four mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm were killed there, their charred bodies notoriously hung from a bridge.

In large swathes of Fallujah, a city of 300,000, the fighting was essentially block-by-block, backed by a massive aerial bombardment from jet fighters and helicopter gunships. Thousands were killed, more than 150,000 displaced and 50 per cent of the city's buildings, including more than 39,000 homes, were damaged or destroyed according to US officials. "Fallujah has been a return to full-up Marine Corps smash-mouth combat," Byrne said.

In a story published during the second major invasion of Fallujah in November 2004, the Times of London told a remarkable tale of the operative doctrine in stark relief. It is therefore worth quoting at length:

Between burnt-out apartments and minarets shot through by tank shells, a lone Iraqi man marched resolutely down Fallujah's deserted main street, a pair of white long johns held aloft on a stick instead of a white flag. Under his arm he bore a rare treasure: a boxed TV dinner with the alluring brand name in English: My Kind of Chicken. Kemal Muhammad Saleh, an unexpectedly cheerful 44-year-old man... [who] relies on handouts by the US and Iraqi forces to survive in his devastated city... In the distance the occasional cloud of smoke rises from an incoming US artillery shell. This is what US military doctrine terms a three-block war–troops can be fighting a deadly foe in one part of town, patrolling another and rebuilding the safer areas. Colonel Mike Olivier, of the Marines civil affairs team, put the US strategy in more blunt terms. 'This is the way the Americans work: first we blow the f*** out of your house, then we pay you to rebuild it. Look at World War II, look at Najaf [Iraq]. We'll give them money, we'll give them jobs and we'll make capitalists of all of them,' he grinned.

Despite multiple massive offensives into Fallujah, the US has not been–by any measure–able to control Fallujah, or indeed, almost anywhere in the whole of Iraq. The same is true for large parts of Afghanistan. Both wars–for which victory has already been claimed–are continuing to worsen. In light of these failures, the US armed forces set about writing a counterinsurgency manual for its soldiers in order to bring the war doctrine up to speed with the operational realities in Iraq and Afghanistan. So strong was the military's avoidance of fighting insurgents or guerrillas in urban settings, that this is the first field manual on urban counterinsurgency in a generation. A final draft of the field manual–FM 3-24–was leaked in June of 2006

Marine Corp commander James Mattis–with leadership experience in southern Afghanistan and Iraq, including leading the Fallujah assault–was tapped to oversee the penning of the manual, along with army general David Petraeus. Mattis, known as "Mad Dog," is an architect of the three-block war strategy. Mattis made headlines in February 2005 when he told a public audience during a recruiting speech: "It's a lot of fun to fight 'em, it's a hell of a hoot, it's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawlin', and one thing we have to do is make certain we're advertising, recruiting, selecting the right kind of people to go into this fight so you're not out there with people who have any misunderstanding what this is all about. You go into Afghanistan, you've got guys who slapped women around for five years 'cause they didn't wear a veil. Guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway, so it's a helluva lot of fun to shoot 'em. It's a good fight. But as much emotional satisfaction–for all the emotional satisfaction you get from really whacking somebody like that, the main effort, ladies and gentlemen, is to diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies."

In his more refined pronouncements, Mattis has been a leading figure in the transformation of the Marines, from boot camp to doctrine. His model is the three-block war; it is the urban battlefield. As Mattis said in an influential paper published in the journal of the US Naval Institute: "Look at combat in the 'contested zones' of urban and other complex terrain. We need to create the same sort of dominance we currently hold in the Global Commons to our ground forces in these contested zones."

In short, Mattis argues that if the US is to maintain its dominance in the coming era, it will have to micromanage hostile urban environments. This is reflected throughout the counterinsurgency manual, which is clear in its repeated references to the doctrine as proactive, management warfare; warfare of choice. The three-block war doctrine is a model for domination, first and foremost; it is a warfighting doctrine with the express purpose of cementing US dominance in the world for the next generation and beyond.

The counterinsurgency Field Manual is thorough and serious, and stands in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric of the War on Terror. The two hundred fifty page manual makes very little use of the term or the concept of 'terrorism', noting in the first sentence that rather than random violence, the uprisings that forces will face are "political in nature" and deeply rooted in the social fabric of what the military would euphemistically term the 'contested zone', namely: the community.

The objective is not to deal with individual threats; it is to construct doctrine to deal with wars of imposition and conquest in the new environment.

Canadian planners tend to focus attention on the two other blocks of the three-block war in order to cement the political message that they are trying to advance within the peacekeeper mythology. The goal, according to the doctrine, is to set the 'development' aspects to the tune of the combat element. A Maclean's embed last year described a pre-battle pep-talk in which Lt Col Ian Hope sent CF into battle by calling them Canada's "developmental warriors."

The political messaging of the Afghanistan mission centres around a "hearts and minds" campaign. Rhetorically, the three-block war doctrine is well-suited to Canada's aggressive shift. It maintains the "peacekeeping" and "clothing refugees" missionary elements that have been so deeply entrenched in the national consciousness. Emerging as it is from the era of the peacekeeper mythology, Canadian opinion-makers would prefer this to be the face of the Canadian Forces until it can be determined that the Canadian populace is behind the warfighting component.

The corporate press has been happy to oblige. In the spring of 2006, as the fighting in Afghanistan reached the fiercest levels since 2001, Maclean's ran a feature under the title "Canada's Kandahar balancing act," and illustrated the piece with "the other side of Canada's rather menacing military firepower." The magazine chose a picture of Master Corporal Elizabeth Churchill cradling an Afghan baby.

The generals put more clarity to the issue. As Major-General Stuart Beare said during Senate committee testimony, Canadian Forces are "not necessarily trying to win hearts and minds here. That's a pretty tall order. You're trying to create tolerance of the international forces."

In short, says Hillier, CF must "be combat-ready and be able to conduct operations to survive. If you want to deter people from threatening your mission, you have to be seen as capable and seen as too big a bully to take on. If all those things fail and you cannot deter violence, you have to be able to fight and win. That is fundamental to everything we do."

It was precisely in articulating the three-block war doctrine during a cross-country speaking tour with Bill Graham that Rick Hillier ripped a page from General Mattis's playbook and made Canadian headlines with his comment that Canadian Forces were fighting "detestable murderers and scumbags" in Afghanistan, in defence of Canada's interests. "We're not the public service of Canada," he said. "We're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people."

Afghanistan is not a random act of Canadian policy; it is the entire foreign policy apparatus acting on a well-articulated plan. Despite the well-crafted mythology of the peacekeeper, Canada's intervention in Afghanistan is important not because it is a departure from the past but because it is, in the words of the country's top soldier, a "glimpse of the future."

Jon Elmer determines that Afghanistan is not a random act of Canadian policy, but an entire foreign policy apparatus acting on a well-articulated plan.

Canadian Aid or Corporate Raid?

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:52:41 +0000

Canada's development agency in South Asia

Police officers beat up demonstrators on February 1 2006, the first anniversary of King Gyanendra's coup on Nepal after suspending democarcay in the country. King Gyanendra's government programs benefit from CIDA funding. photo: shshrestha

Though not largely discussed, South Asia is a major hub of global economic interests with a massive concentration of Canadian finance capital, foreign aid and development agencies.

"The most significant Canadian interests in South Asia are financial capital through investment, banking, and development aid," says Dr. Hari Sharma, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University's department of sociology and anthropology, and author of the seminal book "Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia."

"Development aid through CIDA has been known to be a form of economic raid, particularly because it operates through a politically ideological framework," continues Sharma. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is Canada's lead development agency.

Much of Canadian foreign development aid has been termed "phantom aid"-- aid that does not improve the lives it is intended to-- and includes spending on overpriced technical assistance and tied aid. Canadian corporate lobbies advocate tied aid because it is foreign aid that must be spent in the donor country, therefore providing an indirect subsidy to domestic corporations. According to Action Aid, phantom aid accounts for over 50 per cent of Canada's aid spending and 47 per cent of Canadian phantom aid is tied to spending in Canada. Critics argue that tied aid is part of the larger objective of neoliberalization and private sector development. In fact, one of CIDA's top five priorities states that, "Poverty reduction requires strong efforts to address the needs of the private sector in developing countries."

Bangladesh has been one of Canada's largest aid recipients over the last three decades. According to CIDA's Country Development Programming Framework 2003-2008 for Bangladesh, private sector development is a major program objective. As part of a multilateral global effort, Canada pushed for Bangladesh to set up Export Processing Zones in 1978, which are regulated by the Bangladesh Export Processing Zone Authority. This allows sweatshops to operate outside the realm of national labour laws. A CIDA-funded Local Enterprise Investment Centre facilitates local private enterprise by partnerships with foreign business, giving corporations from other countries access to the growing garment industry, exporting $5 billion worth of goods annually.

According to a New Age report in June 2006, Bangladesh's apparel sector employs 2.5 million, 80 per cent of whom are women, in more than 5,000 factories. Amirul Haq Amir, co-ordinator of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Unity Council, says that garment workers are paid "between US$14 to US$16 per month, the lowest salary in the world."

From May-July 2006, around 4,000 garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh, went on strike, resulting in major unrest and the death of at least one person by police gunfire. Since 2003, the Maquila Solidarity Network has been pressuring the Retail Council of Canada to ensure that the factories they use in Bangladesh are safe and healthy workplaces.

In others parts of the world, CIDA has come under fire for supporting governments who align with Western government and business interests. For example a July 2006 MacClean's Business report outlines CIDA's involvement in creating Colombian mining laws beneficial to Canadian companies, while in Haiti, CIDA has been criticized for political destabilization by funding agencies opposed to Aristide.

A similar situation has evolved in Nepal. Since 1964, Canada has contributed more than $213 million in development assistance to Nepal, including $10.4 million in 2004-05. Although the CIDA website boasts of "neutrality" in the civil war, it lays blame for poverty and underdevelopment on the "Maoist insurgency." CIDA's 2004 Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment acknowledges, "CIDA will need to monitor whether its projects become Maoist targets because of linkages with government programs." The "government" of Nepal is King Gyanendra who first dismissed the elected government in 2002 and then proceeded to seize complete control after a royal coup in 2005.

Afghanistan has been the single largest recipient of Canadian bilateral aid, with almost $1 billion allocated from 2001-2011. At the same time, one of the most visible manifestations of the Canadian presence in South Asia is Canada's increased military involvement in Afghanistan. There are those who see this as a contradiction and others as a convenient coincidence. As written by J.W. Smith in The World's Wasted Wealth, "Politics is the control of the economy… It is the military power of the more developed countries that permits them to dictate the terms of trade and maintain unequal relationships." Former US President Woodrow Wilson recognized this: "Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down."

Canadian exports to Afghanistan have increased over 100-fold in the past five years, growing from $167,000 to over $19,000,000, according to Industry Canada statistics. Canadian corporations such as Bell Helicopters and CAE (one of Canada's largest defence contractors) have profited immensely: Bell won a $1 billion contract with the US military to supply helicopters, while CAE won a $20 million contract to supply combat simulation technology.

In May 2006, CIDA launched the "Confidence in Government" initiative in the Shah Wali Kot district of Afghanistan. In a May 22 Globe and Mail article, Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Doucette, commander of Canada's provincial reconstruction team, stated that this initiative "is a useful counterinsurgency tool."

Much of the rhetoric surrounding Canada's military presence in Afghanistan has been focused on the need to 'liberate' Afghan women. However, Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, recently wrote that "despite the best efforts of the Bush and Blair administrations to convince the world that the 2001 war 'liberated' women in Afghanistan and that they continue to work in the interests of Afghan women, grassroots women activists reveal a very different picture. With the Taliban regime ousted, Afghan women have not experienced better times."

The CIDA-funded Women's Rights in Afghanistan Fund, established by Rights and Democracy (created by the Canadian Parliament in 1988) provides grants to grassroots women's organizations in Afghanistan. A "non-partisan" Afghanistan backgrounder on the website of the Fund highlights only the historic abuse of women by the Taliban and characterizes the current period as one of "ongoing conflict" without any mention of foreign forces in the country.

Gender governance programs are also funded by CIDA in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Leila Ahmed's "Women and Gender in Islam" documents the co-optation of feminism by imperial and colonizing forces, revealing the contradictions of humanitarian interventions. "Whether in the hands of patriarchal men or feminists," she writes, "the ideas of western feminism essentially functioned to morally justify the attack on native societies and to support the notion of comprehensive superiority of Europe."

Vijay Prashad, an associate professor at Trinity College, has characterized one of the dominant manifestations of imperialism as the manufacturing of strategically placed NGOs. "The NGO", he writes, "becomes an arm of the international bureaucracy that ends up, consciously or unconsciously, doing the work of imperialism." Other CIDA funded NGOs in South Asia include South Asia Partnership, Sri Lanka Canada Development Fund, Aga Khan Foundation, World Vision, Oxfam and Shastri Institute.

"Canadians need to realize what Canadian companies and Canadian development agencies and NGOs are doing in South Asia," says Sharma. "CIDA-funded agencies and NGOs, as a whole, uphold corporate interests and serve the overall objective of pacification within an institutionalized neoliberal framework. This is an issue that all Canadians should be gravely concerned with and deal with."

Harsha Walia examines the work of Canada's development agency in South Asia.

Minerals, Gas and Spin-offs

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:07:49 +0000

CIDA's resource regulation projects in Bolivia

Tin miner from Siglo XX, Department of Potosi, Bolivia. photo: Dawn Paley

With the election of Evo Morales and his party to parliament in late 2005, the political landscape in Bolivia shifted drastically. The move to nationalize hydrocarbon resources on May 1, 2006, took many by surprise, representing a clean break from the way politics had traditionally been done in the Andean country.

Bolivia is part of a new trend in Latin America today, where governments are making links with each other and trying to make the exploitation of their resources work for their citizens rather than for large corporations. This new context is vital for those wishing to understand the Canadian government's role in Bolivia, particularly through the work of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Bolivia is one of nine "countries of focus" identified by CIDA, and a recipient of one of their largest bilateral country programs. CIDA's Programming Framework for Bolivia (FCP) includes a minimum bilateral budget of $50 million, plus an additional $14 million to be shared between counterpart funds and multilateral partners including the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

From the bilateral budget, 50 per cent is shared between healthcare, gender, environment, project management, and water and sanitation. The remaining $25 million is devoted to "the modernization of the state," which is further divided into three branches: civil service and public sector reform, funding of the human rights Ombudsman's office, and "the third and most established component… the formulation and effective enforcement of regulatory frameworks in the energy and mineral resources sectors."

Looking through the lens of regulation in the mineral and energy sectors is one way (albeit limited) of analyzing CIDA's work in Bolivia, a lens that is crucial to understanding an important element of Canada's taxpayer-funded 'development' happening in Bolivia.

Mining and Development

From the outset, CIDA's development assistance to Bolivia has been closely linked with resource extraction. The very first Canadian aid to Bolivia was in 1967, when the government granted $1,620,000 in loans to the Bolivian government for the purchase of mining equipment.

It is difficult to know exactly how CIDA funds aimed towards the mining sector have affected policy in Bolivia. Not only would it be nearly impossible to trace the outcome of CIDA donations to multilateral partners involved in mining regulation, but accessing information from Bolivia is also difficult. As doctoral candidate Alejandra Roncallo noted at a 2002 conference sponsored by York University, because of Bolivia's secrecy laws, which were adopted in 1996, no information regarding the role of the Canadian government in designing Bolivia's new mining regulations is available.

What is clear, however, is that the policy changes that brought COMIBOL (formerly the state-owned mining corporation) to its knees in 1985 ushered in waves of foreign investment that have often had severe economic and social repercussions for Bolivians.

One example of this is the "Christmas Massacre." Seven Bolivians were killed and 30 wounded in 1996 when 800 to 900 members of Bolivian police and military forces intervened in a conflict between Canadian-owned Da Capo Resources/ Vista Gold Corporation and community members in Amayapampa, Bolivia.

Referencing the Christmas Massacre, Pedro Gomez Rocabado, a former miner now working with mining communities, noted in 2002 that the Bolivian government had "an unwillingness to uphold the law or enforce agreements that might infringe on investors' interests, thereby maintaining a development model that prioritizes corporate accumulation of wealth while abandoning Bolivians to their continuing impoverishment."

Hydrocarbons and Development

According to the 1996 Report of the Auditor General of Canada, Canada has been affecting hydrocarbon policy in Bolivia since 1989, when CIDA, Petro-Canada and the Bolivian government began working together to "modernize [Bolivia's] public oil and gas industry through the Bolivia Oil and Gas Project." The same report goes on to explain benefits of the project that included the following: "22 Canadian firms received spin-off benefits from the Bolivian Oil and Gas Project; [and] approximately $20 million in related commercial spin-offs in South America for Canadian firms since April 1995."

In their recent book Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony And Popular Resistance, authors Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl explain that, "an increasingly important component of development assistance includes 'institutional capacity building' -- creating the environment needed for markets to operate." One concrete example of 'institutional capacity building' sponsored by CIDA is the ongoing $8.25 million Hydrocarbon Regulatory Assistance Project, initially granted to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and recently reassigned to IBM.

Referencing the Hydrocarbon Regulatory Assistance Project, Farthing and Kohl state that, "rather than working for the interests of Bolivia, 'assistance' was designed by the international agency (in this case bilateral) to serve the interests of either international corporations or those based in their own countries." They go on to quote a now-unavailable CIDA report from 2004 that "clearly demonstrates that the generosity of the Canadian government provided about an 800 per cent return to Canadian businesses."

As the Bolivian government moves forward with a new energy agenda, breaking with the privatization-centred energy policies of the last 20 years, CIDA continues to finance energy sector projects that many argue have questionable value to most Bolivians.

Dawn Paley investigates how CIDA's 'development work' is influencing resource extraction in Bolivia.

CIDA spending in Afghanistan is private information

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:58:29 +0000

Canadians curious to know how development money is being spent in Afghanistan are out of luck, according to the CBC.

Amir Attaran, a professor at the University of Ottawa, filed an access to information request as part of his research on the Canadian International Development Agency's (CIDA) spending in Afghanistan. CIDA has spent almost $300 million in the country.

He was told by CIDA, however, that they could not release the information because the money is being funneled through third party agencies such as the World Bank and United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Foreign agencies running the projects must now okay any information before it is released to the Canadian public.

Alasdair Roberts, an expert on government secrecy at Syracuse University, told the CBC that Canada could demand greater transparency from the World Bank and UNDP.

"There's nothing blocking the Canadian government from saying that we want audits for programs that are being funded with Canadian money and that we intend to release those audits under Canadian access law," he said.

Canada's Phantom Menace In Afghanistan

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:01:14 +0000

Who is receiving Canada's "Phantom Aid?"

How much of Canada's funding in Afghanistan is going to clean water and how much to the military? photo: CIDA

Afghanistan became Canada's largest recipient of foreign aid in 2002, but critics say that this money may be aiding Canada more than Afghanistan. According to the Canadian International Development Agency's (CIDA) website, Canada has given $100 million to Afghanistan since March 2005, up from $10 million in 2001. In an interview with CBC in February, senior CIDA official Bob Johnson predicted that between 2001 and 2009, Canada will spend $616 million in Afghanistan. Recent claims by a former minister in Afghanistan, however, have called into question the effectiveness of that aid. Ramazan Bashardost, a former planning minister, said that the billions of dollars Afghanistan has received in aid from donor countries, including Canada, has not resulted in "the least improvement" in Afghani people's lives. Responding to questions about Canadian aid in Afghanistan, New-Democratic Party's (NDP) Foreign Policy critic Alexa McDonough said that it is difficult to determine how much of the aid sent to Afghanistan is going to development assistance (education, transport infrastructure, health clinics) and how much is going to indirect military assistance. A January op/ed piece from mediamonitors.net pegged current direct Canadian military costs in Afghanistan at $600 million a year. How is it that a Member of Parliament and foreign affairs critic on the foreign affairs committee does not know how millions of Canadian dollars are being used? "All of this is happening in the never-never land of no committees in the PMO [Prime Minister's Office]," said McDonough, referring to the government's lack of transparency.

A 2005 report by Action Aid suggests that even the aid that is earmarked for beneficial infrastructure may not be reaching its nominal destination. Action Aid found that many countries are donating "phantom aid": aid that does not help the people it is intended for in the donor country. Phantom aid includes spending on overpriced technical assistance, aid tied to spending in the donor country, double-counted debt relief, and other aid that never materializes for poor countries.

Canada's habit of tying aid to spending in Canada, effectively transforming aid into subsidies for Canadian corporations, has given us "a black eye in the international community" said McDonough.

A September 2005 article in Reuters reported that during last year's famine in Niger, 90% of the food money given by Canada had to be spent on food from Canada. A report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that this kind of policy can result in food taking four to five months longer to arrive and, when it does, can drive down prices for local farmers if the famine has already passed.

Most OECD countries, including Canada, signed onto the UN's 1070 mandate to have overseas aid reach 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI); however, very few, save Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Luxemburg, have managed to come even close to that goal. In 2003 Canada donated 0.22% of its GNI to aid but spent 1.1% of its GNI on the military. In addition, research by Action Aid shows that when phantom aid is taken into account, the percentage of real aid given is even lower.

Phantom aid accounts for over half of Canada's aid spending. 17% of Canadian phantom aid is spent on technical assistance that could be spent in the donor country and therefore cost less, be more effective and better coordinated. In addition, the Action Aid report states that 47% of Canadian phantom aid is tied to spending in Canada.

McDonough hopes that the new Conservative government will improve Canada's reputation in aid spending. She points out that in February 2005, all of the then opposition parties, including the Conservatives, committed to an increase in aid and a restructuring of how aid is used. In a recent letter to Prime Minister Harper, NDP Leader Jack Layton reminded Conservatives of their election promise to increase aid by over $400 million over the next five years. This would bring Canada's aid up to 0.42% of its GNI by 2010.

When asked if she felt the Prime Minister would rescind on these commitments McDonough responded, "You don't speculate on the odds of whether or not [the Prime Minister] will live up to [his commitments], you use every tool you can to push them through."

After last year's famines in Niger and Mauritania, the Canadian government changed its aid policy, requiring 50% of food aid be purchased from Canada, down from 90%. This may be a sign that Canada's aid programs may be on the verge of reducing other tied aid, which is good news for countries like Afghanistan, which is scheduled to receive hundreds of millions of aid dollars from Canada over the next four years.

Geordie Gwalgen Dent investigates where Canada's aid money goes and considers what that might mean for Afghanistan.