Just Ridin' The Surf

The dead came from literally all around the world. As late as January 2, 12,000 holidaymakers were still missing. Most of them had come from Europe and the US in search of the sun. India, at first, seemed to have got off relatively lightly. Estimates spoke of 12,000 dead by December 30. But that was before we got an inkling of what had really happened in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Today we know better. The death toll is now being put at 10,000 in these islands alone, and that does not include the many thousands classified as missing. Car Nicobar, a flat island once deemed ideal for an air force base, proved its nemesis; an estimated 3,000 airmen and their families are either dead or missing.

If there was ever a time, therefore, when the world should have come together to fight a global tragedy on a global scale, it was now. That is what UN secretary-general Kofi Annan had intended when he called a meeting at Jakarta for January 6. It is thus all the more regrettable that the manner in which aid to the bereaved, the battered and the bankrupt has become so thoroughly politicised. The blame for this may lie with the US, although it now seems that it politicised the issue more by accident than by design.

It all began with President Bush’s characteristically slow reaction to catastrophe. Probably informed of the tsunami in the late evening of Saturday, December 25 (US Central Time), he continued his holiday on his ranch, and announced a paltry $15 million by way of financial assistance. Only on Wednesday, by which time the full scale of the catastrophe had become apparent and even private donations by US citizens had substantially exceeded this sum, did the US increase its initial commitment to $35 million. By then, other countries had committed a total of $235 million, (of which Europe and Japan accounted for $150 million) and Congressmen and the media were reminding Bush that the US was spending $35 million every day in Iraq, before breakfast.

That was when Bush decided that his image needed some belated repair. US spokesmen therefore began to stress that the $35 million was only an initial commitment. The US navy and air force moved relief planes, doctors and nurses, and most important of all, seven water desalination and purifying vessels to Indonesia and Thailand.

However, Bush also announced that the US would lead a ‘core group’ of countries to provide relief to the victims of the tsunami. By then, the EU had already announced it would give its assistance under the rubric of the UN and had asked Annan to lead the coordination of the relief effort.

Bush could have welcomed the decision even if he did not spearhead it. But in the days that followed, he decided to swamp the EU-backed UN effort and make both organisations look impotent before US might. He invited other nations to join his ‘coalition of the willing’ and, on December 31, increased aid to $350 million, well over twice what EU had pledged till then.

Had there been no Iraq, no one would have thought twice about the US’ oneupmanship. But in the wake of the Iraq war, this action forced the world to confront, once again, the choice it has been living with ever since March 7, 2003. On that day, the US shattered the UN and announced its intention to rule the world as an American Empire. Ever since then, Bush has seldom missed an opportunity to belittle the UN and set the US up as a vastly more powerful entity, especially in military terms.

Bush had done exactly the same thing in June 2003 at the G-8 summit in Evian. He came to the summit, and snubbed French President Jacques Chirac by announcing a separate American programme to fight hiv-aids to which it would devote $15 billion over five years. This put France’s trebling of its contribution to $180 million a year and other G-8 contributions in the shade.

It is against the background of an unresolved struggle between two concepts of global polity—an American empire versus a rule-based commonwealth of nations—that India’s decision to join the US-led core group arouse extreme uneasiness. New Delhi’s reasons for doing so were entirely pragmatic. It had already deployed 32 warships, over 80 aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and 17,500 members of the army to locate and aid the victims within India. It was supplying considerable aid to Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Thailand. But there was an urgent need to assign responsibility in order to avoid tripping over each other.

Since this was one of the main reasons for forming the core group and since assistance cannot be delayed, New Delhi can’t be blamed for becoming a part of it. But once the entire world community had geared itself up to fight the disaster, and Annan was about to chair a conference to coordinate aid, the core group became redundant. It is heartening thus to see that it has been dissolved. Politics has been sent back into the cupboard and humanity has taken centrestage once again. But how long will the truce last?