Sixty years after the emergence of aid as a strategic tool, its geo-political importance is undiminished. While there has been a renewal of more overt forms of capital accumulation in the post-9/11 dispensation, aid continues to stand out as the primary means of asserting imperialist control over entire regions of the world. Fully 50 years on from the historic Bandung Conference, some third world leaders may still be waxing lyrical about the unity of the oppressed peoples of the world but many of these leaders, major beneficiaries of strategic aid, are actually reinforcing neo-colonial dependency.
General Pervez Musharraf is one such example. While the general was in Bandung in April attending the African-Asian Unity Conference, a meeting of the Pakistan Development Forum (PDF) was being held in Islamabad. The PDF is an annual ritual where bilateral and multilateral donors meet with the country's economic managers to 'consult' on economic policy and to outline the parameters of future cooperation. For two years after the Musharraf coup in October 1999, there was no PDF or any other such gathering, a gentle hint that the general was in disfavour with the international financial elite. The situation changed after 9/11.
In April 2002, the PDF was held in Paris. Amidst the gala surroundings, the then finance minister (now prime minister) Shaukat Aziz committed to the donors that "democracy will not impede our economic reform process". The 'reform' process Aziz referred to was a typically orthodox set of neo-liberal policies based on further reducing the state's already meagre welfare responsibilities, selling off state assets, unbridled liberalisation of trade and financial markets, and initiating obsolete mega development projects. In Paris, the donors in turn welcomed Gen Musharraf's expected assumption of the presidency in the interest of 'continuity of reforms'. Only a few weeks after this consensus, Gen Musharraf 'managed' a successful presidential referendum for himself, securing 99 percent of all votes cast.
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