Observations on disaster

It is, by all accounts, the worst disaster in Pakistan's history. Measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, the earthquake has wiped out scores of towns and villages in the country's most underdeveloped region. The ancient city of Muzaffarabad lies in ruins. The death toll is expected to exceed 40,000. And, as is usual now after a natural disaster, charities have leapt into action. Islamabad has been overwhelmed by pledges of aid and support from Europe and America.

The truth is that ordinary people seldom fail the compassion test. In the immediate aftermath of any disaster, charities can raise huge amounts of money, while individuals and communities, often stirred by events in faraway places and a compassion for people they do not even know, can seize the initiative and act decisively. In Pakistan the quickest response to the tragedy came not from the army, as is widely thought, but from charities such as the Karachi-based Edhi Foundation.

But disasters reveal more about our politics, in particular the political geography of our world, than about our compassion. Today it is Pakistan. A few days ago it was Hurricane Stan in central America. Last week it was the coming famine in southern Africa, the week before that the lingering hunger in Niger, and before that Hurricane Katrina. All were natural disasters that claimed many lives, but our response to each has been different.

We can measure this in airtime and column inches, but it is not just a question of the vagaries of the media; it is a reflection of the map of power. To the powerful goes the most attention, the fascination of being the object of interest. So Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had exhaustive coverage while Stan, which merely destroyed a little-covered fringe of the map of power - remote parts of central America - was neglected. The famine in Niger passed with hardly any notice. Pakistan, by contrast, may be thankful it is a region of political concern. It is on the front line in the war on terror and it is the ancestral home of a segment of Britain's population. Yet still, in terms of column inches and airtime, the earthquake is a poor relation of Katrina.

What makes a disaster coverable is not suffering. The world is awash with that. In the case of the 2004 tsunami, the presence of western tourists in Thailand secured the coverage that ensured the scale of the international response in the immediate aftermath. And the fact it happened on Boxing Day, when most of the western world was watching television, was a special grace note. Pakistan has its share of grace, too. It is Ramadan, and the fasting month is a special time for giving. Across Britain Muslims would have been preparing to send money to their relatives and ancestral areas. Now we all have the opportunity to join in.

Responding to disaster has become a science. It needs to be, because it is easy to get things wrong and waste effort and compassion. Pakistan has struggled in tragically difficult circumstances. In its recent encounter with disaster the US provided an extreme and less excusable example of the hamstrung and inept.

Disaster strips people of everything, including dignity. Responses that acknowledge cultural specifics, that demonstrate awareness of who people are, actually help them to rebuild their lives. That is why the bodies left rotting in the sun in New Orleans were such an affront in the aftermath of Katrina's ravages. They were a reeking spectre of faulty sensibilities that pointed to the questions we should ask over the long haul of rebuilding.

Rebuilding, the transition from immediate response to long-term reconstruction, is also a function of global political economy. In the heat of news hype, western governments open a kind of book of condolence in the form of pledges of immediate and long-term aid. Britain has pledged £10m, the US $50m and the World Bank $20m to help Pakistan's earthquake victims. But this is virtual money. As Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, has often said, our governments are great at pledging - and even better at reneging. Collecting the money, goods and actual aid is the follow-up story never followed.

If realpolitik has its way, Pakistan may indeed benefit in the medium term. It is, after all, in the interest of the US and Britain to help Pakistan so Pakistan can keep terrorism at bay. Nations are different from people. People see suffering and want compassion to work. Nations worry only if their strategic interests are in play.

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