The global war on terror and U.S. development assistance: USAID allocation by country, 1998-2005

This paper assess whether U.S. development aid has, over the past few years, supported strategic allies in the global war against terror (GWOT) perhaps at the expense of anti-poverty programmes, as it had been predicted after September 11th.

Findings of the study include:

• any major changes in aid allocation due to the GWOT appear to be affecting only a handful of critical countries, namely, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories
• the extra resources to these countries also seem to be coming from overall increases in the bilateral aid envelope, combined with declines in aid to Israel, Egypt, and Bosnia and Herzegovina
• since the aid curtailments to Israel and Egypt were planned well before 2001, and the decline to Bosnia and Herzegovina is the result of the end of the immediate post-conflict reconstruction phase having nothing to do with the GWOT, this increased availability of funds may be a coincidence, but also is clearly an enabling factor to allow aid to be channeled elsewhere
• at this point, concerns that there is a large and systematic diversion of U.S. foreign aid from fighting poverty to fighting the GWOT do not appear to have been realised.

[adapted from author]