HokieMSG, you are right on some points, but still, I dont think that you got my point.
To just speak about the things I know for sure. I know north Africa pretty well. Algeria, Morroco, Tunisia... I know these countries pretty well.
Actually, I have a friend who works in social security services. And guess what he is talking about everytime I ask him about his job? he is talking about "delocalisation" of services from France to Morroco.
There is people here losing their jobs because some kilometres to the south, there is people who speak the same language as us (French) and have the same skills and ask for 10 times less money than our workers.
So everyday, we close our call centers here to transfer them to North African countries. And they are paid like 200€ (250$) a month for 8 hours a day...
And it's not all. We are actually transfering whole factories. Renault is building a factory complex in Tangier in Morroco. We were employing people here to export cars to north Africa, but now, North Africa is building their own cars. And sometimes, I can see cheap cars in Paris with "made in Morroco".
It's fine. Good for them. honestly. But the problem is that we are not used to that. We learned to live extremely confortable lives... And if we have to live with the competition of people who are sleeping in their own factories (Chinese)... We will have a hard time.
So we have to learn to share. And here, to share our comfort.
Anyway, let's go back to the "foreign help". There is many levels of "help". No body will complain if you just send planes to drop food. Even the Taliban will love you if you just send food.
So yeah, you can say that they dont want our help. But there is other ways to help them. And I'm sure that they wouldnt mind.
The first level would be to protect them from our own people. Exemple, dont let the secret services overthrow a democratic government.
Dont let the bussiness groups use and abuse the corruption in their countries.
Just think about the African business men who see foreign contractors take contracts while they were the lowest bidder... Just because the foreign contractors can afford to pay the corrupt authorities.
Just put yourself in their shoes. They ask you to build a water pipes network. You come and ask for 200.000$ to do the job. And they give it to a foreigner for 500.000$, because he is ready to give the local governor 100.000$.
And think about the people who watch the countries ressources going in the pockets of foreigners who are already rich while they are starving to death and cooking under the sun the whole year...
The exemples are plenty... If you really want to help, it's easy. But you need courage and bravery.