A WARNING of the limited commitment of the wealthiest countries to development in the poorest countries comes from the recent decisions of the rich nations over the cancellation of debts run up by Saddam Hussein's regime in
After debate it was agreed that 80 per cent of the ousted tyrant's debts would be written off - although Iraqis are understandably aggrieved that they have been shown no evidence to support the rich countries' debatable claim that the debts with interest add up to a massive £120 billion.
But even this apparent concession to a country whose economy and many of its cities and much of its infrastructure have been demolished by bombardment by US and British air strikes and artillery units, and where two-thirds of the working population is unemployed, comes with brutal strings attached.
Whatever government is eventually elected in the polls at the end of January, the Iraqi economy will remain under the control of the International Monetary Fund for the next ten years.
The IMF is notorious for its dogged commitment to neo-liberal policies of privatisation, face of capitalism was working again less than 48 hours after the tsunami struck the region, and that though the large Arun liquefied natural gas plant on Sumatra was near the epicentre, it did not suffer any damage.
The article continued cheerfully: "In fact, spending on the reconstruction of holiday facilities could provide a fillip to the economies of the areas worst affected, helping them to get over any loss of tourist revenue.
First Choice Holidays rushed out a statement reassuring shareholders that the percentage of its holidays affected by the tsunami was "very small" and it was not expected to affect this year's financial performance. IMF's Iraqi assistant: Iyad Allawi minimal public services, minimal taxation and free market capitalism that have brought a trail of chaos to every developing country where they have been imposed in the form of "structural adjustment programmes".
Control by the Washingtonbased IMF will make a nonsense of any pretence that iraq has a sovereign or representative government capable of taking decisions based on the Interests of Iraqi people: but it will also make it impossibletor the US - or its British hod-carrers - to withdraw troops from Iraq for at least a decade.
Clearly the demand must be for the historic debts in Iraq and throughout the developing coun tries to be cancelled immediately and unconditionally: instead reparations must be paid to those countries that have been shattered by the Bush-Blair war machine.
The insurance industry is equally chipper: investment bank Numis announced that it calculated the total insured loss to the non-life insurance industry would be around $5 billion "roughly equivalent to a single Florida hurricane".
Indeed even the life insurance companies are likely to escape quite lightly, since according to the FT report "most of those who died appear to be from the poorer sections of society who are typically uninsured" ... and just to make sure that companies run little risk, As we go to press the vast scale of the death, devastation and destruction from the tsunami in the Indian Ocean is still unfolding: but it is already clear that it is no exaggeration to say this is likely to be the worst ever tragedy resulting from a natural disaster.
The enormous area that it covered makes the death toll higher, and the fact that many of the areas have little or no infrastructure makes distribution of aid much more difficult. The poverty of most of the inhabitants of the area, compounded in recent years by the neo-liberal policies of the IMF and World Bank, means that people are even more likely to die as a result of disease in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Experts anyway expect the death toll (currently projected as well over 100,000) to at least double as lack of clean drinking water leads to dysentery, cholera and other killer diseases.
While it may well be the case that the disaster itself was unavoidable, there is no doubt that human intervention or lack of it has made "many policies also have tsunami and earthquake exclusion clauses." man-made things worse in a whole number of ways.
There was a US early warning system in the area (see P2), but while the US military base at Diego Garcia was immediately notified, the
Most of these
countries are already crippled by
debt and neoliberal reforms
forced on them by the World Bank and
IMF, which bring
even more
desperate poverty
to workers and the
landless poor civilian authorities were not.
The governments in the area had considered getting an early warning system, but failed to do so.
Virtually all these governments (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India) spend vast sums of money on military equipment - but they weren't prepared to spend small sums protecting the working people and small farmers of their countries.
Two of the areas that have been severely devastated are also highly militarised because of struggles for selfdetermination by the peoples of those areas and consequent repression by the central state apparatuses involved - Aceh in Indonesia and the Tamil areas in north eastern Sri Lanka.
Aceh was the area nearest the epicentre of the original earthquake but it took days for news to get through about what had happened there. Aid took longer begin to reach there despite the scale of the destruction - and as a consequence many more will die through lack of clean drinking water and medical supplies.
The lack of adequate public services
deal with the normal demands of these communities which would at least give some basis to respond
The coverage in the British media has focused heavily on the plight of a relative handful of British holidaymakers.
Of course it is horrendous for anyone to experience the terror of a natural disaster like this, and in some cases to have loved ones killed, but its much worse for those who have seen their whole community destroyed than those who could be whisked back to safety on charter flights within a day or so.
The experiences of previous major disasters in other dependent countries of the South (where anyway a higher proportion of such disasters
occur) is that often The aid promised by western governments is anyway inadequate to deal with the situation. The sums mentioned by politicians may seem generous, but pale into insignificance when compared with the money wasted destroying Iraq as Carolyn Leckie of the Scottish Socialist Party points out on P2. • Some of that aid is merely an advance on monies promised for other projects in the same country/region which will therefore be cut This aid is often conditional, for example on confrom the donor countries being used • Most of these countries are already crippled by debt and the subsequent neo-liberal reforms forced on them by the World Bank and IMP, which bring even more desperate poverty to workers and the landless poor Governments, central and local, often cream off significant sums of We also need money while the to step up the poorest communities campaign for never see the unconditional resources they so desperately need. and complete
For the trade cancellation community of the debt of groups and radical
these left in these councountries tries, solidarity is desperately needed. Some of the meagre resources they have will have been destroyed, and they will need greater resources to organise to respond to this crisis. So we need to respond. Swedish metal workers have already pledged 1 million krone (£78,738) to help the disaster centrally and asked their branches to ensure donations as well. We also need to step up campaigning for unconditional and complete cancellation of the debt of these countries - an issue that we would anyway need a higher priority as Britain moves to take over the presidency of the G8 later this year.