WFP Caves on N.K. Food Aid Demands; Condi Clarifies That U.S. Won’t Use Food as a Weapon
This is depressing, mostly because many people will die as a result:
(Kyodo) _ The World Food Program is asking donor countries to support the U.N. agency’s plan to shift its assistance to North Korea from emergency relief to longer-term development aid, the head of the WFP’s Pyongyang office said Friday.
Richard Ragan, the WFP’s director for North Korea, told Kyodo News in an interview in Beijing that the initial response from major donors, which include Japan and the United States, has been positive.
Hold that last thought for a moment.
But donor countries have expressed reluctance toward shifting the character of their assistance, mainly because development assistance would require political considerations, unlike humanitarian aid.
Allow me to translate that into something that has a meaning: foreign nations don’t want to give the North dual-use equipment and fuel. They don’t want to give up the last remnant of independent control over food distribution. They don’t want their aid consolidated into the regime’s hands as another method of control.
OK, this is the part I hinted at above:
On the response from the United States toward the WFP’s plan, Ragan said, “I think initially they’re supportive of the idea that the WFP continues its presence, but again we haven’t really gone through discussions with them yet.”
Ragan said that a transition from humanitarian to development aid would mean that the WFP would be continuing projects such as the management of food production factories in North Korea, but ending such projects as the general food distribution program.
In other words, a blank check for the regime: no WFP distribution, no WFP monitoring, just help for North Korea to build up its old agro-industrial base so that it can process and distribute food itself–to its military officers and party faithful.
Recent history suggests that people will die as a result. We know from The Great North Korean Famine that in 1996, North Korea decided to “triage” its three northeastern provinces, a decision that by itself caused an estimated 300,000 people to starve to death. Some reports suggest that we’re in for a very bad harvest this fall, and that people are starving even now. Ragan’s own organization recently said that 6.5 million North Koreans depend on those WFP handouts (the last link is from August). What will become of them without the WFP’s influence over where the food goes? I wonder if the WFP has read Marcus Noland’s report on how North Korea reacts to food aid–by using it as a weapon, and by shifting its buying power to commercial and military items.
And of course, we now know that the regime is trying to rebuild its Public Distribution System, which will further consolidate food under the regime’s control. The WFP has no apparent qualms about abetting this.
Meanwhile, AFP continues to suggest that it’s actually Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights, who is trying to use food as a weapon. Secretary Rice is having none of that, and I’m glad she clarified the point:
“Our policy is that we don’t use food as a weapon,” Rice told a State Department news conference.
Her comments came a day after Jay Lefkowitz, newly appointed US envoy on human rights for North Korea, spoke from the same podium Thursday and refused to rule out a link between food aid and an improvement in Pyongyang’s record.
The chief US diplomat denied any political component to decisions on humanitarian assistance and said the United States was for many years the largest food aid donor to North Korea.
But she added, “There have been concerns about the ability to monitor the uses of that food aid because we want it to go to the neediest of the North Korean people and not to the North Korean elite.”
“Those are the considerations that go into our decisions about how to make food aid donations and when, but not to try and use it politically,” Rice said.
Looking on reporting this reckless with a mixture of pity and contempt, I’m thankful for the knowledge that Aaron and Oranckay would vivisect me if I ever wrote anything that dishonest. I’m also regretful that Agence France-Presse lacks that same sense of restraint.