The Evil of Good? Thinking About Unintended Consequences
The Chief Diplomad is sitting in an airport. Tired. Glad to be returning to my usual corner of the Far Abroad. I ran across this NY Times article titled "For Honduras and Iran, World's Aid Evaporated" by Ginger Thompson and Nazila Fathi. In many ways it's a usual NYT product: lots of cutesy, lazy, historically inaccurate statements casually tossed out such as,
Central America, as a battlefield of the cold war, has long been accustomed to foreign occupation. But the people of Honduras had never seen anything like the military operations that arrived to bring aid after Hurricane Mitch.
What does that mean, "accustomed to foreign occupation?" When during the Cold War was Central America occupied? But my friends, for a moment disregard the liberal weirdness and read the whole thing. Here are bits and pieces,
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - The people of San Miguel Arcángel know all too well what it is like to be struck by disaster, and they have watched the world rush to Asia's rescue with sober eyes.
Elder Nahum Cáceres said his entire community was swept off a hillside six years ago by Hurricane Mitch. In his wallet he keeps a handwritten list of the dozen international aid organizations that have come and gone since then. "I don't know how much they sent, but they tell me this is a million-dollar project," Mr. Cáceres said, looking down over an unsightly patch of flat gray houses in different stages of completion. "I would like them to see what has happened with all their money." Eric Moscoso, a neighbor of Mr. Cáceres, was more succinct: "We are abandoned." <...>
[A]ll too often when disaster strikes - from here in Honduras to Iran, where the ancient city of Bam was shattered by an earthquake a year ago, to Mozambique, which endured floods in 2000 - that mission seems to last only as long as the media attention. After the last bodies are counted and public focus shifts, governments stop sending money, pledges are withdrawn, many private relief organizations pack their bags and the poor are left to finish reconstruction projects in the face of the same entrenched systems of corruption and neglect. <...>
Half of the sturdy, concrete houses have not been properly wired for electricity. A water and sanitation system was installed four months ago, but the main pump broke down over Christmas. There is a school, but mothers say the teachers have worse attendance records than their children. There is a clinic but no doctor, a police post with no officers, and a community meeting hall, but no one in the community has the keys. "We have new houses, but all the rest is the same," Mr. Cáceres said. <...>
As aid officials plan how to deal with the challenges facing the battered coasts of Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia, some have cautioned that they must do things differently this time. "There is still this feeling that we want to do the right thing, right now, but we don't want to stay in it for the long term," said Eric Schwartz, a former Clinton administration official. As a senior National Security Council official, he helped organize the United States response to Hurricane Mitch. "Maybe the tsunami crisis could be used as a vehicle to educate ourselves about the importance of staying the course," he said. <...>
Mr. Cáceres said they finally got electricity six months ago. The United States Army Corps of Engineers installed a water system four months ago; it promptly broke down. Today, people in San Miguel Arcángel say the houses built by the international community are better than anything they could have ever dreamed of buying on their own. But many are unemployed, and costs have risen. "Just as fast as we built this community, it will disappear, because people do not have what they need to live," Mr. Cáceres said.
I know I asked you to ignore the liberal weirdness, but I didn't say I would. No need to do a formal fisking, however, let me offer just a few observations. What exactly is the complaint? Is it that donors did not honor their initial pledges? Or is it that the aid they did offer in the wake of Mitch was pointless because of the nature of the societies to which it went? Or in true liberal fashion, should donors have continued to throw money at a problem that couldn't be solved by donor money? By staying in "for the long term" does that mean we should occupy those countries because when we leave everything returns as it was -- something akin to Bolivar's famous statement about "plowing the ocean?"
Anyhow, whatever it was that the authors intended, what comes across is how often even effective relief aid is wasted in the sense that once the initial crisis passes, lives of misery return to being lives of misery. Serving in Central America, I was always "amused" -- bad word -- struck (more p.c.) when villagers living on the side of active volcanoes would rebuild their homes on precisely the spot that the lava had poured through the year before. (Please note, some Americans are not immune from this odd behavior: why do they live in mobile homes in "tornado ally?") Habit, culture, nostalgia, pride, defiance, pig headedness . . . I don't know. Something to ponder, however, as we hear calls for billions to rebuild remote villages in Sumatra -- could not the money be better used?
Perhaps these villagers in Honduras should have moved to another area of the country where -- with start-up donor money -- they could have built better lives for themselves? I think of the British comedian (can't remember his name) I saw a couple of years ago who had a funny routine about watching pleas on the tube from a charity, asking him to donate to "little Maria who must walk three miles every morning to get water." His reaction? "Why doesn't she move closer to the well?"
These phrases in the NYT's story cited above sum it up well:
1) "We are abandoned."
2) "[A] community meeting hall, but no one in the community has the keys . . .."
3) "Mr. Cáceres said they finally got electricity six months ago. The United States Army Corps of Engineers installed a water system four months ago; it promptly broke down."
4) "We have new houses, but all the rest is the same"
This sounds like a "waiting for the lottery" society. Nobody in that whole town has any manual or mechanical skill of any sort? Nobody knows how to change a lock, or maintain or repair a pump or run wires into a house? "We are abandoned," the motto of the cargo cult: sit around and wait for something to happen or somebody to show up and give you things. "We have new houses, but all the rest is the same." So change it.
Last thought. Perhaps in the long run, it was a shame that America's extraordinarily generous Marshall Plan was so successful. It set a model we have tried to replicate throughout the world. The crisis facing Europe immediately after WWII was genuinely one of money; Europe needed cash to buy tools, clear the rubble and rebuild. In many other parts of the world, that's not the problem. Europeans, although living in squalor, had the technology to recover -- the technology was the software in their heads and would have eventually recovered (assuming the Soviets didn't invade) even without our cash. I wonder if that software has yet to be copied in many parts of the world.
Where's our ride home? "We are abandoned." |
