Aiding and Abetting War

David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, has declared that more of the Aid budget needs to be siphoned off to provide ‘security’ in foreign parts.
Apparently there already is a ‘conflict pool’ of monies donated by the Department of International Development, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of War.
This ‘conflict pool’ has already been used to support our Al Qaeda allies in Libya and Syria in their aim to trash those countries, murder thousands of people and enable Western and Gulf government/private corporations walk away with some very good deals indeed.
Now we have Mali and, even with War Office resources stretched, it is still very important that gold and uranium is protected to the best humanitarian standards.
It will certainly encourage the Algerians, whose oil company, Sonatrach, is the largest company on the African continent. They will be hoping that humanitarian intervention is not required to encourage them to give away Algerian resources at knock down prices, as happened in Iraq and Libya.
I am glad that David Cameron has come clean.
I realize that government Aid and the charity industry do some good work in places where people are poor and unhealthy.
All the same it is clear that there has always been a down side to the Aid industry.
There is the business of Tied Aid, where projects have the not-so-side effect of helping foreign business. A lot of Chinese Aid appears to be of this sort.
But Aid has often found its way into the pockets of tyrants, ‘our’ tyrants protecting ‘our’ business.
Much Aid money, and charity money too, is only loosely accounted for.
The African continent is awash with corruption.
Aid fuels corruption. Siphoning off Aid is one of the most profitable businesses in town.
For instance, until last year the  Kagame regime in Rwanda was receiving £21million a year for 'general budget support'. One can only guess what that means or where the money went.
The energy and guile of Africans, which could be used in creating wealth, is siphoned off too.
Like in the UK, working the system pays the highest dividends.
David Cameron regards the clothing and provisioning soldiers a legitimate use of the development Aid budget.
Arming the soldiers is only a step away.
But at least we must thank Dave for his frankness