Krakatau, foreign aid and problems ahead [Chicago Tribune]
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01/12/2005 From the Chicago TribuneIn August 1883 the Indonesian island of Krakatau exploded in fiery volcanic chaos, generating huge tsunamis that battered countries throughout the region. That disaster and its aftermath suggest potential political and security implications from the recent South Asian tragedy, which will create great risks as well as new opportunities for affected countries and the U.S. Krakatau's immediate effects were huge and horrible: It killed nearly 40,000 people and left many times that number without food, water and shelter. It also left in tatters social, economic, religious and political institutions. Most ominously, the turbulence propelled simmering anti-Western sentiment into a violent Islamic uprising that culminated in a bloody rebellion five years later. Unrest has continued ever since. Since the 1980s, rebels in Aceh, the area of Sumatra hit hardest by the recent Indian Ocean tsunami, have fought for an independent Islamic state--and with it control of the rich petroleum deposits that lie offshore. Al Qaeda has targeted Indonesia--the largest Muslim country in the world--as a foothold for its global operations. Terrorist bombings in Bali and Jakarta offer stark reminders of Indonesia's centrality in the war on terror. Sri Lanka faces similar political vulnerability from its long civil war. As with Krakatau, the current cataclysm threatens to exacerbate underlying tensions and weaken social and political institutions. Three-quarters of Banda Aceh's police reportedly perished in the disaster. Hospitals and clinics lost many of their staff. Untold numbers of teachers, government officials, and local community leaders were killed. Aid groups want to work with local leaders, but in many cases it is not clear to whom they should turn. How these voids are filled in Sumatra and Sri Lanka, and by whom, could have a profound effect on the region's future. This situation offers risks and potential opportunities for the U.S. If the response is slow, haphazard, or short-lived, insurgents or other radical leaders will build on existing resentment based on the view that we care little about the rest of the world, especially the Islamic world. The rebels will argue that an independent Islamic state in Aceh that controls local oil revenues will be much better equipped to fight poverty and reduce vulnerability to future disasters. The risk is magnified by the tendency of the U.S. to respond well to immediate disasters but then to fade away as crises recede from the headlines and local needs change from humanitarian relief to longer-term development assistance. The opportunity is the flip side: The U.S. has a chance to show that it is serious about using its power to create a more stable and secure world based on freedom, prosperity and democracy. We start from a weak position. Indonesian favorability ratings of the U.S. have plummeted since the invasion of Iraq to only 15 percent today from more than 80 percent in the 1990s. The same is true in many other countries. Rightly or wrongly, people see the U.S. as part of the problem, not the solution, and believe that we use our power only to promote our own self-interest and enlarge our military and economic power. If we are to win the war on terror and the related battle of ideas and vision for the world's future, we need poor countries as well as rich countries to support the values we champion, and to believe that they, too, can climb out of poverty and achieve economic and political freedom. But they can't do it without our help. The disaster sparked a debate about whether the U.S. is stingy with its foreign aid. Most of the discussion missed the point: it is not whether we give a small or large share of our income, but whether we do enough to achieve our own goals of helping countries achieve stability, freedom, prosperity and democracy. From this perspective, our effort is woefully inadequate. In pre-crisis Indonesia the U.S. provided just over $1 in development assistance per year for each Indonesian--hardly the basis to escape poverty. To Sri Lanka we provided zero, since they repaid us more for old loans than we provided in new funding. In sub-Saharan Africa we provide a paltry $3 per African per year. Private giving perhaps doubles this amount. Some of our other policies make the job even more difficult, such as our enormous farm subsidies, which further impoverish poor farmers and make them more vulnerable to famine and other disasters. Development assistance is not the only factor in fighting poverty and winning the hearts and minds of vulnerable countries around the world. Our military, diplomatic, trade, and environmental policies are also critical. But money matters. The Bush administration deserves credit for increasing foreign aid both through the emergency HIV/AIDS program and the multibillion-dollar Millennium Challenge Account for global development. But these initiatives will affect only a few countries. Outside of these programs (and excluding aid for Iraq), development assistance has stagnated and is likely to be cut in the next budget. Meanwhile, 27,000 children die every day from preventable diseases, half the world's population lives on incomes less than $2 per day, the gap between the richest and poorest in the world has increased, and resentment of America continues to grow. This is not the way to create a more stable, secure, and pro-Western world. We may or may not be stingy with our aid, but we are clearly short-sighted. |