World speaks in one voice: 'We had to give'

World speaks in one voice: 'We had to give'

Kathleen Carroll, Associated Press, Banda Aceh, Aceh

It's not much to look at: a dented old DC-10 that joined the global airlift of aid and relief personnel.

But the name on the side is what's notable. Ariana Afghan Airlines. Downtrodden Afghanistan -- with nearly limitless troubles of its own -- had pulled together a consignment of blankets, clothes and other humanitarian supplies for the wasteland left by nature's blitzkrieg from the Indian Ocean one month ago.

"We cried with the rest of the world," said the Afghan aid coordinator, Jamil Parwani. "We had to give."

And so have many others: governments, companies, congregations, labor unions, students. Muslims about to head off on the annual haj to Mecca. Christian families jolted from their familiar post-Christmas tableau of leftovers and shiny new gifts.

The global outpouring has been so huge and so fast, in fact, that it has come to mirror the tsunami itself. Both have made everything before seem puny. More than 60 nations have pledged US$4 billion and many aid groups have reported donations coming in at record pace.

"I think this will be the first humanitarian effort ever which has been fully funded in the emergency phase," Jan Egeland, the UN emergency coordinator, told The Associated Press.

But why this one?

There are the usual suspects: theories that worldwide telecommunications bring every disaster into every living room -- and the horrors on Dec. 26 were just too boggling to ignore.

Some guess that the victims and timing had something to do with the worldwide groundswell. Tens of thousands of children were taken by the waves across 11 nations. Also among the dead where hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of Western vacationers on Christmas holiday, spreading the anguish to the richest nations.

Politics, too, gets into the mix. Muslims account for the majority of the dead. The West -- especially Washington -- was keen to show its generosity to the Islamic world, many analysts said.

An Indonesian social commentator, however, coined an elegant phrase that could come close to the mark. He calls it "humanitarian patriotism."

Ulil Abshar Abdalat explains it like this: The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks unleashed a dormant patriotism among many Americans. Now, the tsunami has done the same to emphasize a kind of global citizenship.

"It's an even more universal kind of patriotism," he said.

"It's a new form of patriotism -- humanitarian patriotism."

There are at least two sides in wars and political struggles. But all feel equally helpless next to nature's power. It's constant and humbling. Four hurricanes lashed Florida in a space of two months last year. A 6.5-magnitude earthquake in Iran's ancient city of Bam -- exactly one year before the quake- triggered tsunami -- took more than 26,000 lives.

"Natural disasters often elicit more free giving than conflicts, possibly because they're seen as a more neutral form of disaster," said Patrick Webb, chief of nutrition for the UN World Food Program. "They're victims of mother nature. They're blameless. There's no bad guy."

Gene Tempel, executive director of the Indiana University Center for Philanthropy, tallied up nature's power another way. Nearly 60,000 U.S. troops were killed in Vietnam. "Here, three times that many were wiped out in just a few hours."

The Pentagon sent the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to help ferry aid into Indonesia. More than a few journalists remarked about the Vietnam-era imagery: choppers swooping low over palms and rice fields.

German soldiers helped clean the muck-clogged streets. The French military moved the Afghan aid from an airstrip in Medan to Banda Aceh. Australia, Japan and other nations also sent forces.

Almost no corner of the world stood by. In Japan, corporate pledges to the Red Cross were arriving at an average of one each hour during the peak times. Mexican supermarkets put up tsunami help bins that quickly filled with pesos.

In remote Greenland, the Red Cross raised US$270,000. Relief agencies everywhere set up special Web sites for credit card giving. Others took a new route to charity: text message pledges via mobile phone.

"Just amazing," said Jessica Walker, a spokeswoman for CARE Australia, which took in more than US$6.8 million in the first three days after the disaster.

Private and corporate donors offer a boost. The real long-term clout, however, is with the government pledges. Aid leaders have already started pressure to make the promises stick -- and try to use the tsunami to raise the bar for other crises.

"My hope is that it can be good for Congo where we have a tsunami of deaths every six months year after year after year," said the UN's Egeland.

Europeans, in some ways, felt the stab of tragedy more than others outside the stricken coasts. Tens of thousands of vacationers were dodging the Christmas chill in the Asian tropics. In places such as Sweden -- with 52 dead and 786 missing -- it was the single worst national disaster. Donations from Swedish companies poured in.

"I believe that many companies felt directly affected by the catastrophe because many of their employees were vacationing in the area," said Eric Zachrison, head of a group that assists in corporate charity efforts. "And then there might have been commercial considerations. They wanted to stand out as 'the good company.'"

The tsunami offers a lesson for a shrinking world, added Jean- Marie Destree, director of development for Secours Catholique, a French aid agency. No tragedy is purely local anymore.

"Globalization," Destree said, "also globalizes risks." In a wedge of land by the sea in Banda Aceh, survivors trickle back each day to search for any personal relics spared by the sea.

Just a month after the tragedy, some are calling it the "old days." They say the neighborhood was a pleasant place where beach vendors sold spicy snacks wrapped in palm leaves. Now, it's wiped clean.

On a stub of concrete, someone planted an Indonesian flag with a message written in black marker.

"Thank you, world," it says. "We will rebuild."