Six months after one of the largest earthquakes on record sent walls of water crashing through villages around the rim of the Indian Ocean, thousands of people who lost families, homes and livelihoods are still trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. In some countries, such as India, local initiative and an experienced response to catastrophe have meant that fishermen have already been able to put to sea in new boats while temporary homes have sprung up along the coast. In others, such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia, where the destruction was far worse, victims still wait in despair and destitution while bickering and bureaucracy trap essential aid in customs warehouses or at military roadblocks.
All those who saw the scale of destruction from the tsunami predicted that recovery would be slow and difficult. It was not only the vast areas affected in five countries, but the remoteness of many villages, the continuing civil wars in Sri Lanka and Indonesia and the ever present danger of corruption and embezzlement of the world’s generosity. For the world was indeed generous: an unprecedented $11 billion was pledged by 90 donor nations, and individuals gave money on a scale that overwhelmed humanitarian agencies. The challenge was not to find the means to pay for food, aid and reconstruction but to ensure that this help actually reached those in need.
That challenge remains. The UN Emergency Co-ordinator said yesterday it would take up to ten years to rebuild all that was lost. But two things this past week have given some hope that the effort will not become bogged down in indifference and corruption. The first was the outcry that followed the shooting in Aceh of a Hong Kong aid worker by separatist rebels. The Indonesian Army and the rebels have blamed each other for the incident and both are desperate to prevent a general pullout of groups from areas that lost 168,000 people and left 500,000 homeless. A resumption of full-scale fighting looks, for now, unlikely.
The second hopeful development was the signing of an accord yesterday between the Sri Lankan Government and the Tamil Tiger rebels to share the aid pledged to the island and appoint an international lender as the custodian of the relief. The move, though bitterly condemned by Sri Lanka’s Marxists and Buddhist nationalists, could be the breakthrough needed by Norwegian mediators to get the stalled peace talks going again.
Publicity can be effective in countering natural disaster. Not only did the pictures of the disaster prompt the outpouring of global concern; but the justified questions about how the money is being used and the many warnings that the sums would attract the unscrupulous and the corrupt have served to keep the focus on the tsunami’s aftermath. Governments of the affected nations know they are being watched. The long-term effects — the salting of wells, destruction of paddy fields and pollution of farming land by chemicals — remain; but there is real hope that the world’s relief will, eventually, be properly spent.