Saberi released earlier this week

This is tremendously good news, but before one gets too ecstatic, Glenn Greenwald pens a sobering reminder of how the US treats journalists who aren’t working for access to the Pentagon. Check it out here.

Sunday Items

On a lighter note, the Berlin Wall (what’s left of it) will be repainted. More here.
A piece on Moldova’s failed “Twitter Revolution” in Foreign Policy.
US missile strikes in Pakistan? From the Telegraph.

Iranian-American journalist sentenced to 8 years

From the NYT:

The sentencing of Ms. Saberi, 31, could complicate political maneuvering between Iranian and American leaders over Iran’s nuclear program, an issue that kept relations icy during much of the Bush administration. President Obama recently made overtures to Tehran about starting a dialogue over the nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran responded positively.

Ms. Saberi’s sentencing appears to set the case apart from other recent detentions of people with dual citizenship. Two Iranian-American scholars, Haleh Esfandiariand Kian Tajbakhsh, were arrested in 2007 on accusations that they tried to overthrow the government, but they were released on bail before their trials began. Ms. Esfandiari was allowed to return to the United States, and Mr. Tajbakhsh is allowed to leave Iran when he wants.

More here.

Obama’s approach to Iran

The New York Times has a piece elaborating on the Obama Administration’s decision to allow Iran to continue with its nuclear program as the US enters negotiations. Granted, the story’s two days old at this point, but seeing as how it’s continuing policy, it’s one to be aware of:

The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection. But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks. That would be a sharp break from the approach taken by the Bush administration, which had demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities, at least briefly to initiate negotiations.

The proposals under consideration would go somewhat beyond President Obama’s promise, during the presidential campaign, to open negotiations with Iran “without preconditions.” Officials involved in the discussion said they were being fashioned to draw Iran into nuclear talks that it had so far shunned.

Sunday Items

Bird flu, less virulent, perhaps more contagious. From The Independent.
The intersection of politics and technology in Moldova via Foreign Policy Journal.
Death of an Iranian blogger from Haaretz.

Somali pirates hijack ship with American crew

A few grafs:

Somali pirates are trained fighters who frequently dress in military fatigues and use speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment. They are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers and various types of grenades. Far out to sea, their speedboats operate from larger mother ships.

Most hijackings end with million-dollar payouts. Piracy is considered the biggest moneymaker in Somalia, a country that has had no stable government for decades. Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at the London-based think-tank Chatham House, said pirates took up to $80 million in ransoms last year.

The whole piece.

Q&A: Dambisa Moyo on aid damaging Africa

Two weeks ago, I posted on an article in The Wall Street Journal about the crippling effects of aid to Africa. I came across an interview of the author of that column, Dambisa Moyo, who just released a book on the subject: Dead Aid:Why Aid is not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa.

Here’s Moyo in an exchange on celebrity aid:

Guernica: In your book, you discuss the different eras of aid. The money started flowing in the post-war years to keep African countries friendly to the U.S. You go on to describe the 2000s as the decade of “Glamour Aid,” and you’re critical of Bono and Bob Geldoff, in particular. Do you feel these celebrities who are beating the drum for increased aid—and in doing so, drawing attention to themselves as well as the cause—are acting out of paternalism and perhaps egoism rather than true altruism?

Dambisa Moyo: First of all, I talk very little about the celebrities [in Dead Aid]. To focus on them is to miss the point. There are three things I want to say about celebrities and “Glamour Aid.” First, I don’t think they’re right. I may have been more sympathetic if they were pushing an agenda for more trade or more foreign direct investment, but the fact that they’re pushing for an additional fifty billion dollars [in aid] illustrates to me that they don’t understand economics and perhaps do not add value to the debate. It certainly worries me that they’re getting more airtime than they should. The second point is that in the aid model, you disenfranchise Africans because the governments are not held accountable. The fact that there was a vacuum big enough for these celebrities to step in and speak, ostensibly, on behalf of the African continent is worrying. Africans stand in the hot African sun to elect their leaders, not celebrities.

Here’s the whole interview in Guernica.

News of jailed Iranian-American journalist

In the Washington Post we find the government of Iran has agreed to allow Roxana Saberi’s parents to visit her. Apparently the State Department has already made some slight, but significant, inroads. From the Post:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week that the United States had given a letter to Iranian officials during a meeting in the Netherlands, seeking Iran’s help in resolving Saberi’s case, as well as those of Robert Levinson and Esha Momeni, two other Americans missing or detained in Iran.

Levinson, a private detective probing cigarette smuggling, went missing in 2007 during a visit to Iran’s Kish island. Iranian officials have repeatedly denied that Levinson is in their country. Momeni, an Iranian American student at California State University at Northridge, was detained in Iran in October for supporting a campaign for women’s rights. Momeni was later released, but she has not been allowed to leave the country.

More here.

Sunday Items

North Korea went ahead with its “satellite” test. But accounts differ on whether it was a success.
A quick and dirty guide to Pakistan’s labyrinthine political groups.
NATO offers troops for Afghanistan. A puzzling headline from The New York Times though.

How crippling is foreign aid to Africa?

In last week’s Wall Street Journal, there’s a provoking essay by Dambisa Moyo, a former Goldman Sachs economist, on whether aid to sub-Saharan countries is productive in the long run. At first the piece’s assertion seems counterintuitive, but the argument—that aid enables autocratic regimes to maintain their hold on power and provides little incentive for economic initiative—isn’t entirely new.

One thing about the article I found lacking was the absence of details on the extent to which aid is tied to loans, or even what percentage of aid is in fact not aid at all, but loans under a different name. Moyo takes a stab at it with this:

Whatever its strengths and weaknesses, such charity-based aid is relatively small beer when compared to the sea of money that floods Africa each year in government-to-government aid or aid from large development institutions such as the World Bank.

Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population — over 350 million people — live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades.

Even after the very aggressive debt-relief campaigns in the 1990s, African countries still pay close to $20 billion in debt repayments per annum, a stark reminder that aid is not free. In order to keep the system going, debt is repaid at the expense of African education and health care. Well-meaning calls to cancel debt mean little when the cancellation is met with the fresh infusion of aid, and the vicious cycle starts up once again.

It would be intellectually lazy to assess Moyo’s ideas with a shoot-the-messenger approach. Some governmental improvements Moyo touts as integral to reform are issuing bonds, participating more actively in capital markets, and attracting foreign investment by altering tax structures and streamlining bureaucracy.  

Whether this is the most effective route to weaning African governments off their dependence on aid is debatable, but doesn’t detract from the overall argument that by perpetuating never-ending monetary infusions, Western governments, NGOs, and their advocates become complicit in limiting the potential of much of sub-Saharan Africa and its peoples.