Posted by elektratig [ 64.12.116.135 ] on May 19, 2004 at 06:13:52:

In Reply to: Re: Some Good Books . . . posted by manualblock on May 17, 2004 at 20:58:47:

What was interesting to me was that the NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) came off poorly in all three of the books. Theroux, as you say, both detests them personally, portraying them as jerks, and makes a convincing argument that international aid simply fosters corruption and discourages Africans from helping themselves.

Philip Gourevich clearly suggests that the NGOs abetted the Hutu interahamwe after the RPF took Kigale by funneling aid to camps controlled by Hutu Power and then refusing to recognize or deal with the consequences -- that Hutu Power was using that aid to continue to massacre Tutsis in eastern Congo and northwest Rwanda and threaten the new Rwandan government.

NGOs figure less prominently in Samantha Power's book, but she does suggest that the NGOs' suspicion of the US was so great that they would rather permit genocide to continue to occur than to recommend or urge the use of military force to stop it. Only after Srebenica did they hold their noses and do so.

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