Humanitarian Aid as Soft Power: The Role of International Donors and the Politics of Influence in Pakistan

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the phenomenon of humanitarian aid as an emerging tool of soft-power in Pakistan, a state found at the juncture of both South and Central Asia. These findings contradict the traditional perception of aid where it is seen as a humanitarian act that seeks to help people in need; rather this study demonstrates that major donors such as the US, UK, China, Saudi Arabia and UAE use aid to achieve different political, economic and ideological interests. Thus, employing the method of a qualitative comparative case study based on secondary data, the paper investigates the nature of the individual donor’s approach, aid delivery mechanisms, conditions, and governance effects especially in the KPK/FATA and Balochistan provinces. The research shows that western donors tie accompanying governance and democratization conditions to their aid while China has an infrastructure-friendly approach which creates longer term economic entrapment with less political oversight. Religiously granted aid serves in the Gulf States a way of exerting ideological control. The study explores how these approaches of assistance impact on the local governance, exacerbate the inequality between the regions and, somehow, guide the internal and the foreign policy in Pakistan. The paper argues that humanitarian aid is not all that it is painted to be and that instead it is a political tool used within the context of soft power interdependence, especially for Pakistan and therefore their aid management should be reconsidered to protect their sovereignty and policy orientations.