Archives for January 2005

Excerpt from:
Chrenkoff
Wednesday tsunami update
The death toll: In this table.

The big picture: “The United Nations says ‘extraordinary progress’ is being made. The UN says the total amount of aid pledged had risen to between $US2 billion and $US3 billion ($A2.55 to $A3.99 billion).”

This is a handy list of who’s giving what. As the report notes, the aid is coming even “from the world’s poorest: Russian town of Beslan – scene of a bloody school siege last year – pledged 1m roubles ($36,000) from the fund set up after the mass hostage-taking; Mozambique – one of the world’s poorest nations – has donated $100,000; [and] Nepal and East Timor have also pledged donations.”

From Down Under:

“Australia is prepared to spend whatever it takes to help rebuild countries ravaged by the tsunami, Prime Minister John Howard will tell a relief summit in Jakarta today.”

Most of Australia’s effort is directed at Indonesia, which in addition to being the world’s largest Muslim country (and the world’s largest Muslim democracy), is our nearest neighbor, with a see-saw history of relations. It makes a moral sense, it makes a strategic sense, and it’s also an investment in the stability of Indonesia. Hence:

“Australia’s response to Indonesia’s tsunami tragedy has heralded a new era of close relations between the two countries, the Indonesian ambassador to Australia said yesterday, and would be remembered for ‘years to come’. The praise came as the [Sydney Morning] Herald learned that the Prime Minister, John Howard, was the first foreign leader Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, contacted after the disaster.”

It’s not just Australia:

“Rear Admiral Doug Crowder of the US Navy was having trouble making out the words of his Indonesian counterpart, Major-General Bambang Dharmono, over the roar of the two US Seahawk helicopters parked behind them on the military airstrip.

“The silvery haired admiral moved closer, his hands still on his hips but his face now within 30 centimetres of the camouflage-clad Indonesian. They were comparing notes on the relief airlifted into Aceh for victims of the tsunami. Admiral Crowder could still not hear.

“So he bowed his head slightly, putting his ear up to General Dharmono’s mouth. Then he placed his left hand on the Indonesian’s shoulder.

“The image would have been unthinkable two weeks ago.”

As the report notes, “military officers on both sides acknowledged they could not have imagined such close cooperation, especially in such a politically sensitive province [Aceh]. Admiral Crowder said later that he expected the joint efforts would improve the prospects for resuming full military ties between the countries.”

Excerpt from:
Telegraph | Opinion | American stinginess is saving lives
But the waters recede and the familiar contours of the political landscape re-emerge – in this case, the need to fit everything to the Great Universal Theory of the age, that whatever happens, the real issue is the rottenness of America. Jan Egeland, the Norwegian bureaucrat who’s the big humanitarian honcho at the UN, got the ball rolling with some remarks about the “stinginess” of certain wealthy nations. And Clare Short piled in, and then Polly Toynbee threw in her three-ha’porth, reminding us that ” ‘Charity begins at home’ is the mean-minded dictum of the Right”. But even Telegraph readers subscribe to the Great Universal Theory. On our Letters Page, Robert Eddison dismissed the “paltry $15 million from Washington” as “worse than stingy. The offer – since shamefacedly upped to $35 million – equates to what? Three oil tycoons’ combined annual salary?”

Mr Eddison concluded with a stirring plea to the wicked Americans to mend their ways: “If Washington is to lay any claim to the moral, as distinct from the military, high ground, let it emulate Ireland and Norway’s prompt and proportionate attempts to plug South-East Asia’s gaping gap of need and help avert a further 80,000 deaths from infection and untreated wounds.”

If America were to emulate Ireland and Norway, there’d be a lot more dead Indonesians and Sri Lankans. Mr Eddison may not have noticed, but the actual relief effort going on right now is being done by the Yanks: it’s the USAF and a couple of diverted naval groups shuttling in food and medicine, with solid help from the Aussies, Singapore and a couple of others. The Irish can’t fly in relief supplies, because they don’t have any C-130s. All they can do is wait for the UN to swing by and pick up their cheque.

The Americans send the UN the occasional postal order, too. In fact, 40 per cent of Egeland’s budget comes from Washington, which suggests the Europeans aren’t being quite as “proportionate” as Mr Eddison thinks. But, when disaster strikes, what matters is not whether your cheque is “prompt”, but whether you are. For all the money lavished on them, the UN is hard to rouse to action. Egeland’s full-time round-the-clock 24/7 Big Humanitarians are conspicuous by their all but total absence on the ground. In fact, they’re doing exactly what our reader accused Washington of doing – Colin Powell, wrote Mr Eddison, “is like a surgeon saying he must do a bandage count before he will be in a position to staunch the blood flow of a haemorrhaging patient”. That’s the sclerotic UN bureaucracy. They’ve flown in (or nearby, or overhead) a couple of experts to assess the situation and they’ve issued press releases boasting about the assessments. In Sri Lanka, Egeland’s staff informs us, “UNFPA is carrying out reproductive health assessments”.

Which, translated out of UN-speak, means the Sri Lankans can go screw themselves.