Blood Money? Financial and Military Aid in Africa

Article by James Lewis. Edited by Amy Calladine. Additional Research by Jack Barnes.

Nobody will argue that relief aid is, certainly from an ethical standpoint, the right thing to do. Ask Bob Geldof and he will happily organize a series of concerts starring Coldplay, Pink Floyd and The Who. With the evolution of the ‘First’ and ‘Third Worlds’, it has become the moral prerogative of the leading global economies to aid those in crisis. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, France, Britain and the United States donated large sums to countries such as Rwanda in an attempt to fix ailing economies. Africa still remains the target of most of this relief effort.

However, during the 21st century, there has been a certain amount of caution exhibited in offering money and humanitarian supplies to African Nations. For example, Britain has much more readily given aid to India, a country with its own space programme and nuclear weapons. This money could have instead gone to Zimbabwe, where, in 2008, inflation rose so greatly that people couldn’t afford bread. So why has the culture of aid relief, so prominent in the 1980s, disappeared?

One of the first signs of decline was Rwanda. In the 1980s and early 90s Rwanda, like many ex-colonial nations, faced major economic crisis. This led to the IMF and World Bank taking major interest in the East African nation, with increasing pressure to implement a package of structural adjustment. With famine in the South, infant mortality rates rising and a re-emerging malaria pandemic, you could be forgiven for thinking that Rwanda had received no international aid at all.

However, the French government had provided emergency financial assistance since 1989. Ultimately, this aid had, instead of paying for food and drug imports, been diverted to arming the future genocide. There was a direct correlation between this financial support and the growth of the Rwandan army – from 7,000 troops in 1989 to more than 30,000 by 1994. Even more astonishingly, prominent journalist Bill Berkeley states that ‘there were reports, denied by the government, that France continued to arm the regime throughout the genocide’ – a severe accusation, but one that seems to be supported by the previous statistics. 

Where was the US investment? After all, the American government had shown an interest in African politics in the 20th century. President Johnson and Nixon had funded the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda, whilst George Washington Snr. sent a large number of troops into Somalia during the Civil War. In these examples lie the answers; both went horribly wrong. Idi Amin had began to purge the Obote, predominantly those from the Acholi and Lango ethnic groups, from Uganda; a crisis that tarnished the reputation of African leaders and their support from the United States. The battle of Mogadishu (1993) in the Somali conflict was arguably even more disastrous being the bloodiest confrontation since the Vietnam War.

These failures dramatically contributed to the decision not to intervene in Rwanda. At the time, President Clinton conceded that Western nations and international governing bodies had failed to prevent the genocide in 1994. However, these words are laced with hypocrisy. Clinton had blocked the United Nations from taking action in 1994, telling the council that they had to learn ‘when to say no’. This was despite CIA reports that suggested half a million people could die (the actual figure, although debated, was much closer to one million people). The State Department was even instructed not to use the phrase ‘genocide’ during the height of the killings.

The example of Rwanda demonstrates the new found fear of US governments to intervene in African Nations. Up until the 1980s, former Presidents had supplied both economic and military aid to ailing African nations. Now the global repercussions of such actions were enough to scare future leaders from further interception. This state of affairs was not limited to Africa. The supporting of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq led to the ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish people in Iraqi Kurdistan and the First Gulf War. After 9/11, America bypassed the use of economic aid to the Afghanistan government, instead choosing invasion.

Ultimately, these are a very worrying set of circumstances. On the one hand, dictators such as Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein cannot be supported. On the other, the use or misuse of economic and military aid has induced a strong fear of international backlash. It has led some countries, such as Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe’s leadership, toward economic collapse. Recent turmoil in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt shows that there is still instability in Africa, so the question of international aid is likely to emerge again. Hopefully, the situation of Rwanda and Somalia will never be repeated again.

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Around 800,000 people were killed during the Rwandan massacre. Other estimates say 500,000 to 1,000,000 (20% of the country’s population) were killed.

The genocide was the culmination of longstanding ethnic competition and tensions between the minority Tutsi, who had controlled power for centuries beforehand, and the majority Hutu peoples, who had gained power in the rebellion of 1959–1962 and overthrown the Tutsi monarchy.

The official figures published by the Rwandan government estimated the number of victims of the genocide to be 1,174,000 in 100 days (10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, 7 every minute).

The division between the Hutu and the Tutsi is based more upon social class differences rather than ethnicity, as there are no significant linguistic, physical, or cultural differences between them.

Idi Amin was President of Uganda between 1971-1979.

Between1977 and 1979, Amin titled himself as “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal, Al Hadji Doctor, Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO,. MC, Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular”.

His regime was thought to have killed between 100,000-500,000 people.

Idi Amin was exiled to Lybia and Saudi Arabia after a failed war with Tanzania in 1979. He died 20th July 2003.

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