Where's the loot?

Finally USAID (US Agency for International Development) has got back to me. Back in April when Honduras decided to pull its troops out of Iraq, I looked for the list of coalition partners and was struck how many of them came from the Third World. I wondered how much the US was giving in aid money to its coalition partners. I suspected promises of more financial aid might be on the cards, because it might 'buy' the presence of other nations to stand alongside the US.

Anyway, USAID have finally sent me details of the agency's financial commitments for the years 2002, 2003 and 2004. Of the 48 countries in the US coalition, 21 are recipients of American aid. By looking through the data, I have managed to compile the table below, showing how much each received in the year before the Iraqi war (2002) and last year, when they were committed to providing military or (mostly) moral support to the US war effort.

At first glance the money given to these 21 countries increased at a much higher rate than the overall agency budget, by 13% compared to 0.1% - confirming my suspicions (call me cynical if you will!). This equates to a rise in the proportion of the budget spent on these 21 countries from 19.8% in 2002 to 23.3% in 2004.

But if you look more closely, more than half the 2004 budget to these 21 countries is taken up by aid to Afghanistan. Indeed, the figure is so high as to distort the rest of the table. But then Afghanistan has been the recent recipient of American bombing and military presence and so therefore may be deemed a special case.

However, if we take Afghanistan out of the equation then we can see that aid to the remaining countries actually fell by more than 40%, with most of the countries in the coalition seeing their aid contributions declining. In fact, apart from Afghanistan, only the Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Honduras saw an increase.

Which begs the question, what do the other members of this coalition really get out of it all? Indeed, Honduras, who decided to leave Iraq, only saw its share of the US aid budget rise by 4% - not nearly enough to take the flak from world opinion.

I don't know whether the countries involved got involved because they were promised much needed money by the Americans. But the reality seems to indicate that there's not much to be gained from joining Bush's 'coalition of the willing'. Can we therefore expect more countries to pull their troops out before the US-British deadline next year as they realise the road to Baghdad is not paved with gold?

US Aid to Iraqi Coalition Partners

Country	2002 ($'000)	2004 ($'000)	Percentage Change 2002-04
Afghanistan	191,423	1,070,558	+459.3%
Albania	35,213	27,835	-21%
Angola	89,182	37,502	-57.9%
Azerbaijan	46,538	40,933	-12%
Bulgaria	33,993	27,835	-18.1%
Dominican Republic	18,282	26,664	+45.8%
El Salvador	86,493	35,755	-58.7%
Eritrea	16,472	18,322	+11.2%
Ethiopia	105,792	132,219	+25%
Georgia	91,310	73,657	-19.3%
Honduras	36,043	37,550	+4.2%
Mongolia	12,000	9941	-17.2%
Nicaragua	43,008	40,673	-5.4%
Panama	8705	8304	-4.6%
Philippines	83,058	69,063	-16.8%
Romania	35,992	27,835	-22.7%
Rwanda	35,500	21,592	-39.2%
Turkey	400,000	99,410	-75.1%
Uganda	87,182	84,222	-3.4%
Ukraine	156,540	94,339	-39.7%
Uzbekistan	104,944	35,688	-66%
Coalition Total	1,717,670	1,950,903	+13.6%
Excluding Afghanistan	1,526,247	880,345	-42.3%
USAID Total	8,673,520	8,682,224	+0.1%

Source: USAID Country Allocation Summary - Appropriated Levels, Tables 4B, 4C and 4D