Whiff of politics behind aid pledges
Whiff of politics behind aid pledges
Jason Szep, Reuters/Singapore
The billions in international aid pledged toward the post-tsunami cleanup could polish America's poor image in the world's most populous Muslim nation and overhaul economic ties between big donors and Southeast Asia.
As world leaders met on Thursday in Indonesia to discuss aid for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, political analysts said the more than US$4 billion pledged so far will do more than repair coastal villages crushed by the waves and earthquake.
Some 50 countries and corporations have pledged aid -- including $765 million announced by Australia and $680 million from Germany.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed at an aid summit in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Thursday for $977 million, covering basic humanitarian needs for an estimated 5 million people in the next six months.
The outpouring of aid reflects the collective anguish of a world horrified by the strongest earthquake in 40 years and the ensuing tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people. But it also has diplomatic and economic overtones, the analysts said.
"Overwhelmingly the motivation behind the aid is humanitarian but there are other agendas that both the United States and Australia have, one of which is to improve the image of both countries," said Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia director of the influential International Crisis Group.
Washington's $350 million in aid, a figure that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday would most likely rise, may help the United States regain some moral authority lost in the eyes of Muslims worldwide during its fighting in Iraq and its war on terrorism, the analysts said.
Much of the money will flow to Muslim-dominated Indonesia, a vast and mostly impoverished resource-rich archipelago whose northern Aceh province suffered almost two-thirds of those killed in the Dec. 26 catastrophe.
Australia also desperately needs an image boost in Indonesia, which often sees Canberra as too closely aligned with the United States and objected to Australia's leading of a UN peacekeeping force into Indonesia's former territory East Timor in 1999.
"The U.S. has been seen as a country that is persecuting Muslims in the war on terrorism, while Australia has a legacy to overcome from its East Timor days," said Jones.
Germany, which fears hundreds of its citizens lost their lives in the tsunami while holidaying, made its pledge at a time when Berlin is lobbying Asian governments for a claim to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has denied any link between the campaign and the aid.
"Politicians being politicians will seize opportunities like this which come maybe once in a lifetime -- in the sense of doing good and also appearing to do good," said Song Seng Wun, a Southeast Asian economist at stockbrokers GK Goh.
"So everybody is tripping over each other to donate aid, and they mean well, but being politicians they will not want to let slip an opportunity like this," he said.
There are other economic considerations. Indonesia, a country of 215 million people, and the fast-growing economies of Thailand, India and Sri Lanka play key roles in the well-oiled global supply chain linking low-cost factories in Asia with markets in the United States and Europe.
Wealthy Asian countries such as Singapore and Japan have invested heavily in Indonesia and, more recently, India.
"You do not want any particular part of Indonesian society being so marginalized that they create a further burden on its own country and potentially on its neighbors as well," said one diplomat in Singapore who declined to be identified.