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US practises ‘‘telescopic philanthropy’’
Sunday Mail Correspondent
FOLLOWING the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on the United States’’ south-eastern Gulf coast, American citizens and the international community have been appalled by the US government’’s propensity to deal with humanitarian crises in other parts of the world while exhibiting incapacity to deal with disasters on its own doorstep.
Just two weeks after the US government announced a US$52 million food aid package to six Southern African countries including Zimba-bwe, it has emerged that the same regime cannot feed displaced people in the New Orleans Superdome and others stranded in 240 shelters scattered across Mississippi, Texas and Alabama.
After the visit to Zimbabwe two weeks ago by top US official Mr Tony Hall "to assess the food needs of the country", local political analysts say events on the US Gulf Coast have bared the fact that the American government practices "telescopic philanthropy".
This is a scenario whereby the US seeks to render assistance to distressed citizens in faraway countries while it fails to address problems at home.
So inept has been the US government in dealing with the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which saw the entire city of New Orleans becoming uninhabitable, that two of its long-time foes, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Fidel Castro of Cuba, have offered to help.
Mr Chavez, so hated by Americans that a television evangelist with the 700 Club publicly called for his assassination recently, offered cheap oil to the US while Cde Castro reportedly offered food and medical personnel.
Predictably, the US government has chosen to be proud and has so far rejected assistance from the two countries saying "we are still assessing the offers".
All the while, thousands of people, mainly blacks on the former slave coast, are on the brink of starvation, prompting the usually partisan US media to attack the government’’s sluggish relief efforts.
"The situation in New Orleans, which had seemed as bad as it could get, became considerably worse with reports of what seemed like a total breakdown of organised society," said the New York Times.
"The hard lessons of this week must be learned and incorporated into the nation’’s plans for future emergencies, whether these come in the form of natural disasters or terrorist attack," added the paper.
The Washington Post also blamed local government authorities and the Bush administration for failure to effectively deal with the situation.
"The sluggish initial response has embittered and inflamed tens of thousands of people awaiting relief, most of them poor and black and many of them old and sick," said the paper, one of the US leading media houses.
Television images of desperately hungry people, most of them poor blacks, looting shops painted a sorry picture as the US, in spite of its vaunted global "generosity", clearly struggled to cope with the disaster.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, also a black brother, was incensed by the federal government’’s slow response and chided the Bush administration for shelling out billions of dollars to fund the Iraq war while hundreds of hurricane-stricken Americans were dying by the day.
"Everyday that we delay, people are dying and they are dying by the hundreds, I’’m willing to bet you," the BBC quoted Mr Nagin as saying.
Responding to suggestions that delays in releasing federal aid were because of slow action from the Louisiana state governor, Mr Nagin retorted: "We instantly authorised $8 billion to go to Iraq and after 9/11 we gave the president unprecedented powers to take care of New York and other places.
"Now you mean to tell me that you can’’t figure out a way to authorise resources needed for a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique?"
The infuriated mayor told President Bush that simply flying over the blighted areas in Air Force One (the official plane of the US leader), was an insignificant gesture if rescue operations were not improved dramatically.
Because of the slow reaction by the Bush administration, black lobby groups began to throw around conspiracy theories, far-fetched as they might sound, that it was a deliberate attempt to decimate the large black population on the former Slave Coast.
Touched by the plight of the hurricane victims, international media reported that small and poor countries such as Jamaica, Honduras, Sri Lanka and Guatemala have offered their support.
While the truth is that the US needs all the help extended by these countries, it is not willing to accept for pride’’s sake.
"Mr Bush does not want to be remembered as a president who got help from enemies such as Chavez. He would rather have people die than face such humiliation," said one New Orleans resident.
A local political analyst, Mr Augustine Timbe, said while the US was always the first to offer help whenever a humanitarian crisis is reported in any corner of the globe, Hurricane Katrina has showed that these are largely public relations stunts.
"How can the US seek to help people in Niger, Ethiopia and even Zimbabwe and yet it cannot help its own citizens? We are not saying they should not help but we are just noting the irony," said Mr Timbe.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Publicity, Cde George Charamba, said it was surprising that while a senior US official, Mr Hall, recently insisted on giving food aid to Zimbabwe (whose government Washington strongly resents) his country was failing to cope with the effects of a hurricane.
"The US has just experienced its own tsunami and we have seen the ineptitude of their relief agencies in dealing with the situation.
"Despite strained relations, the US was clamouring to help Zimbabwe to gain cheap political mileage outside its frontiers.
"Because of its self-proclaimed position as the number one donor nation and its claim to absolute benevolence, the US is now embarrassed to accept aid from nations it perceives as too poor and is even prepared to let people die," said Cde Charamba.
As efforts to help the stricken US citizens in the Gulf Coast gathered momentum yesterday, Washington continued to have a somewhat arrogant attitude towards offers for help, saying "all offers are being examined".
With the US government admitting that it will take months before normalcy is restored in New Orleans and other affected areas, domestic pressure is mounting on Bush to swallow his pride and accept help from whatever source.
Meanwhile, AFP reports that, with US army engineers warning it may take months to drain floodwaters, the US authorities stepped up efforts to evacuate the remaining residents of this ruined city.
As the first airplanes joined buses in ferrying tens of thousands of people out of New Orleans, armed members of the National Guard brought food and water to the city and a semblance of order after days of chaos and lawlessness in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
But death and despair still stalked stranded hurricane survivors after five days of appalling suffering and there was growing uncertainty about the future of the jazz capital.
The Army Corps of Engineers said on Friday it may need up to 80 days just to drain the floodwaters from the city. "It will be 36 to 80 days to be done with the de-watering," said Brigadier-General Robert Crear.
The sign that some progress was finally being made on the relief front came with the arrival in New Orleans on Friday of thousands of National Guard troopers and a large military convoy bearing urgently needed food, water and medicines.
Sick, exhausted and traumatised refugees welcomed the convoy with relief and anger that the promised supplies and National Guard reinforcements had taken so long to arrive.
"We thought they would let us die here," said Karen Marks (25), who spoke of sleepless nights spent huddled in fear as the city slipped into anarchy, with armed gangs roaming shelters and flooded streets, looting, mugging and raping with impunity.
"We have been crying a lot for the past few days," Marks said.
In the absence of any comprehensive body count, estimates of the number of dead since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the US Gulf Coast on Monday ran into the thousands. One senator said the toll would top 10 000 in Louisiana alone.
Under fire for his handling of the catastrophe, Bush promised that more help was on the way.
"I’’m not going to forget what I’’ve seen," said Bush, who later signed off on a US$10,5 billion emergency spending package approved by Congress. "I understand the devastation requires more than one day’’s attention. It’’s going to require the attention of this country for a long period of time."
Earlier in the day, Nagin —— one of Bush’’s staunchest critics —— launched into a tirade against official promises of help to come.
"It’’s too doggone late!" Nagin said in an angry radio interview. "Now get off your asses and let’’s do something and fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country."
The criticism had intensified with the harrowing testimony of hurricane survivors and local law-enforcement officers, recounting scenes of bodies piling up, gunbattles, fistfights, carjackings and widespread looting.
Refugees who had sheltered for days in squalid conditions in the New Orleans Convention Centre spoke of at least 14 deaths, including that of a young girl, whose throat was slit after being raped in the cavernous, unlighted building.
"That is one of the most frightening situations I’’ve ever been in my whole life," said Linda Jeffers (55), who was evacuated to Houston, Texas.
Even some of the battle-hardened troopers recently returned from service in Iraq were stunned at the scenes of devastation in New Orleans —— swathed in smoke from out-of-control fires and with bloated corpses floating in the submerged streets.
"If you see it in downtown Baghdad, it has no connection to us," said Major Glenn Bergeron. "This is different . . . it is beyond anything I would have thought."
The local Times Picayune daily handed out copies of a special edition devoted entirely to the storm —— the first newspaper anyone had seen for days. Its banner headline screamed: "Help us, please".
The sense of shock extended overseas as the world watched the richest and most powerful nation in the world struggle to cope with the sort of natural catastrophe and civil chaos more common to the developing world.
The consulting firm Risk Manage-ment Solutions (RMS) estimated economic losses would likely top US$100 billion. And as fingers were pointed in blame, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who led a bus convoy into New Orleans on Friday, raised the sensitive issue of race by noting the predominance of low-income families and African-Americans among the stranded refugees.
"There is a historical indifference to the pain of poor people, and black people. We seem to adjust more easily to black pain," Jackson said.
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