this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
266 points (98.2% liked)
Europe
8324 readers
1 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out [email protected]
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In the interests of informed debate: Europe does not make no-strings welfare payments to Arab despots. What money they have they usually get from resource extraction, oil and so on. To the extent Europe pays anyone off, it is very much conditional - stopping migrants, for example.
While you're right in one way, it's not entirely correct and an oversimplification. Sweden, for instance, pays roughly 1 billion sek (100 million euro, or thereabouts) for assistance programs in Afghanistan, of this about 30 million euro is purely humanitarian aid. However, you can't deny knowing about the widespread corruption within the Arabic countries, where these funds and aids creates a space of available funds that's channeled into the pockets of the rulers. A famous example is Hamid Karzai and his brother Ahmed Wali Karzai. They sure LOVED the assistance from the western world.
To make things worse, the widespread corruption in certain areas puts the assistance programs in a position where they're forced to pay bribes to be given access to the people they're trying to help. This is very common according to transparency.org in their report "mapping the risks of corruption in humanitarian action."
To quote the report:
Aswell as:
But sure, yes, your comment is definitely for the informed debate.