Undoubtedly, 2010 was the year of donor fatigue. It started off with mega-quake in January razing everything from the Haitian presidential palace to shanty towns. The human death toll soared to 0.2 million.
In February, Chilean earthquake did not cause much loss of lives but generated tsunami ringing alarm bells up to sun-kissed Hawaiian beaches.
The century’s worst flooding crippled life in Pakistan, affecting 20 million people. Meanwhile, the planet earth again shook terribly hard, sending deadly tremors to Christchurch in New Zealand.
As if tropical storm Agatha was not enough to devastate Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in one go, the Pacaya Volcano erupted violently near Guatemala City, trigging state of calamity and calls for foreign assistance.
Many critics hesitate branding some of the above sudden geographic abnormalities as natural disasters. Estimated death toll following 8.9 Richter scale Japan earthquake and tsunami compared to the Indonesia’s in December 2004 highlight the human factor in dealing with nature.
With the exception of New Zealand, absence of disaster preparedness, lack of government writ in implantation of municipal laws, and, above all, corrupt ruling elite converted the last year’s natural disasters into man-made. Given such apathetic conditions at the state level, the richer nations have no option but come to the rescue.
Amidst high-pitched criticism against the richer nations for deciding humanitarian assistance on the basis of geo-strategic interests, the critics overlook the contribution every donated penny and timely airdropped each packet of wheat plays in saving lives.
Ironically, predominant recipients of Western aid are Muslim nations, owing to their poor human development ranking, disaster-prone geography and weak political integration. The Muslim nations’ media may not criticize dictators annexing all political powers but perfects the art of discovering conspiracy theories in the West.
While Pakistan’s flood victims were relatively lucky to win attention of rich Gulf nations, their war-torn neighbor, Somalia, bleeds unattended. The Muslim nations’ assistance to Haitian earthquake victims and reconstruction efforts remained negligible on the larger canvass of multi-lateral assistance.
Today’s devastated and desperate Japan has always been on the forefront of relief provision besides official development assistance to nations across the globe. Now it’s the world’s turn to return the favor. Oil rich Gulf nations have neither pledged significant amount of financial nor sent trained rescue teams. They are always eager to finance Sunni Islam to counter Iran-inclined shi’ites. Despite enormous human toll of shia-sunni strife, the Gulf States have yet to act as responsible entities on the planet earth.
Turkey, Malaysia and Iran have so far been the countries to send relief assistance for the Japanese people. Istanbul stands alone in the Muslim world for dispatching aid workers for rescue and relief operations.
The Organization of Islamic Conference and Arab League remain confined to social clubs of respective leaders. To xenophobes, such apathy means that Muslims only care for common faith and its imposition through use of force. Some believe that the rich Muslim nations show generosity only for those sharing faith with them. Others blame lack of global consciousness and lack of vision. Veteran humanitarian workers believe that the Muslim nations neither learn from disasters nor understand the common vulnerability on a shared planet.
Taking lead from Turkish NGO Kimse Yok Mu and the UK’s Islamic Relief, globally pro-active and purely humanitarian international organizations funded with Muslim money can deliver most befitting reply to xenophobes in the West.
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