RIGHTS: Undemocratic Regimes get Billions from US

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 28 1999 (IPS) - The United States provided a record 8.3 billion dollars in military support to undemocratic regimes in 1997 – the latest year for which statistics are available – according to a report released here Wednesday.

The assistance ranged from arms sales to training programmes and joint exercises and constituted almost 40 percent of all US military transfers abroad, and more than 50 percent of transfers made to all developing countries in 1997, the report said.

The report was the fourth in an annual series compiled by the Washington arms-control group, Demilitarization for Democracy (DfD).

“U.S. foreign policy promises a new era of democracy and human rights, but this promise is subjugated to the demands of arms- exporting corporations,” according to an introduction by Oscar Arias and Jan Willem Bertens.

Arias, the former president of Costa Rica, is the author of the Nobel Laureates’ Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers, an international effort to reduce arms sales. Bertens, the Dutch chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Security and Disarmament, played a key role in the adoption last year of a arms- sales code of conduct for the European Union (EU).

That code – politically but not yet legally binding on the 15 EU states – called on governments to forbid arms sales to governments which were likely to use them against other countries, or for internal repression.

DfD and a number of other arms-control and human-rights groups in the United States have backed a similar code, now pending in the US Congress.

The bill, which passed the House of Representatives in 1997 before stalling in the Senate, would ban US arms exports to governments not democratically elected who abused human rights or did not participate in the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms.

A related but substantially weaker bill, approved last month by the House International Relations Committee, called on US President Bill Clinton Clinton to enter negotiations with US allies on an agreement to block arms exports to abusive or undemocratic governments.

“Europe alone cannot deliver the international code for which we are all working,” Bertens said Wednesday.

To become effective, the United States and the EU should coordinate their efforts, according to Michael Butcher of the British-American Security Information Council (BASIC).

He added that the issue should be included on the agenda of the semi-annual summit meetings of US and EU leaders.

From 1991 through 1997, the United States was by far the world’s biggest arms dealer. It was the source of more than one- third of the dollar value of all major weapons transferred worldwide – three times more than its closest competitors: Russia, Britain, and France.

About 68 percent of US exports went to developing countries, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In 1997, the United States provided a total of 21.3 billion dollars in some form of military support to 168 nations worldwide – of which 123 nations were developing countries – according to the report, entitled ‘Arms Un-Control’.

Of these countries, 52 were led by undemocratic regimes, according to DfD’s criteria, which were weighted heavily to whether or not citizens enjoyed the right to change their government.

The judgment had its critics. For example, Zimbabwe was labeled “non-democratic,” while Peru and Turkey – considered by some independent analysts to be undemocratic – were listed in the “democratic” category.

On the other hand, three East Asian countries – Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore which, before the recent financial crisis, had become increasingly important arms buyers – were listed as “non-democratic.”

In 1997, according to the report, five nations – Taiwan (6 billion dollars), Saudi Arabia (4.7 billion dollars), Kuwait (1.4 billion dollars), Turkey (1.3 billion dollars), and Egypt (1.2 billion dollars) – received more than one billion dollars worth of US military support. Of these, the report said only Taiwan and Turkey could be considered “democratic.”

Sixteen more countries received more than 100 million dollars in military support. Of those, four fell into the non-democratic category: Thailand, Pakistan, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. Other important non-democratic recipients included Bahrain, Jordan, Malaysia, Lebanon, Indonesia, and Tunisia.

US Special Operations Forces trained 9,100 foreign soldiers in more than 200 combat exercises under the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) programme whose existence came to light only last year.

Among the biggest beneficiaries of this controversial programme were the “non-democratic” nations of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe.

JCET has become a major target of human-rights groups and received Congressional attention because the Pentagon used it to carry out joint operations with militaries which Congress had banned from participating other US training programmes for human rights reasons.

“It offers prestige value for these armies,” said Paul Alweny, the report’s chief author, who added that four out of five African armies, most of which served non-democratic governments, took part in JCET exercises during 1997. Washington spent more than half a billion dollars on JCET operations that year.

Another 3,454 foreign soldiers were enrolled in the more conventional International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme in 1997. Unlike JCET, IMET ferried officers to the United States mainly for courses in military doctrine.

Of the total of 12,554 troops trained under both programmes, nearly 90 percent came from developing countries and some 35 percent of those served in non-democratic countries.

The administration has argued that training foreign officers increased Washington’s influence that could be used to improve respect for human rights and help resolve conflicts.

But the study pointed out that Washington provided arms and training to a number of countries – including Algeria, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda, and Turkey – experiencing civil conflict and whose governments were accused of serious rights abuses.

It also noted that, of the 11 nations that had intervened in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998, nine received US arms and training in 1997.

Meanwhile, Eritrea and Ethiopia – both recipients of US military support in 1997 – have been fighting a bloody border war since last year.