The message in the catastrophe

BY LYNN Ockersz

SOUTH Asia's quake horror which has snuffed out at least 20,000 lives in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India and injured 42,000 of its more impoverished and vulnerable inhabitants, is a shocking reminder that the region's insecurity does not grow only out of endemic poverty, underdevelopment and chronic, internal political wrangling.

Coming ten months after the destructive tsunami waves the current earthquake tragedy points to increasing natural disasters as a dangerously bourgeoning threat to South Asia's well being and unfractured existence.

Unity and concerted action on their pressing problems has continually eluded the South Asian Seven since the founding of SAARC in 1985 but, hopefully, at least now in this moment of acute anguish, they would get together as never before to act unitedly to lessen their yoke of sorrow.

For, it is now amply clear that "nature's furies" pose a common threat to the SAARC Seven and these natural cataclysms are proliferating in the region.

Close on the heels of the quake disaster, which has affected Pakistan severely and India to a lesser degree, some observers were of the view that it would have the effect of speeding-up the Indo-Pakistani peace process.

Hopefully, this would be the case although nothing should be seen as justifying the killing and maiming of tens of thousands of humans and that too almost instantaneously.

However, it would be in order for those states in the natural disaster prone regions of Asia - and these happen to coincide with those geographical areas where poverty and underdevelopment is rampant - to make a renewed attempt at forging a sense community, now that they have suffered together, as perhaps never before.

This does not amount to calling for a strong sentimental bond in the face of suffering. Rather what is visualised is a sense of co-fraternity and identity among these vulnerable states in the wake of the commonly-experienced devastation, which would act as a spring-board for fresh efforts at self-help, cooperation and collaboration for the achievement of the common good.

In the case of the SAARC Seven, ideally, they need to arrive at the realisation that the task of closing ranks and acting unitedly to achieve SAARC aims cannot be delayed any longer.

Far instance, scientific and technical collaboration could be speeded-up in the investigation and prediction of natural disasters.

Apparently, we cannot only stop with tsunami early warning systems. Natural disaster preparedness and management would need to be cultivated very intensely, region-wide, on a highly cooperative basis.

The challenge before us, then, is to make judicious use of the opportunities, the current disaster has brought in its wake, rather than abandon ourselves to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

SAARC has to also arm itself with the necessary material and non-material resources to face catastrophes of the present kind. For instance, the building of food buffer stocks, medicines and other essentials, needs to be a priority item on the SAARC agenda.

Mechanisms for the delivery of these resources at a time of need, also need to be perfected. In other words, preparations should be made for united, SAARC rescue and relief operations anywhere in the region, if the necessity arises.

Thus far, underdevelopment and poverty have acted as a basis for SAARC identity. To this may have to be added, now, a proneness to natural and environmental disasters. They too need to be defining features of the collective identity of SAARC.

From these latter bases of SAARC identity would flow the acute need for united action among SAARC member states to ensure environmental safety and conservation.

To be sure, these have been SAARC concerns over the years, but they acquire a heightened poignancy with disasters such as the current one.

In the present catastrophe could also be heard alarm bells for concerted and vigorous action by SAARC to campaign in the fora of the world for stepped-up, world-wide environmental conservation efforts and environmental safeguards against the "furies of nature", which, of course, have their origins in the over-exploitation of the earth's resources by mainly the world's powerful.

In other words, rectifying an unjust world order remains a priority task for the world's poor.