Steve Hutcheson

For some years I have been frustrated with the vast disconnection in crisis recovery that exists between compelling relief aid on the one hand and long term sustainable development on the other.

Looking for instance at the major economic disaster that occurred in the Pacific and in particular Aceh that wore the brunt of it, the western coastline and large tracts of the eastern coastline of northern Sumatra were devastated as was almost half of the provincial city of Banda Aceh. Relief aid poured into the country from all over the world. So much so that international aid agencies were overwhelmed with the public response attracting hundreds of millions of dollars intended to facilitate a recovery process.

For the aid agencies however, they were operating in the dark, many still are with no viable connection between the need to provide immediate emergency relief and the long term structural recovery of the sustainable economic climate that prevailed prior to the tsunami.

There is no doubt that emergency relief was needed and it was well founded in the clean up programs and planned reconstruction yet for the most part, industrial development within the community at the onset was ignored in favour of the various agencies compelling need to engage projects in order to spend their surfeit of funds.

There were two options open to the international agencies. Firstly they could establish a logistics supply base in Medan or Jakarta neither having sustained any damage and neither actually requiring the overload of economic benefit forthcoming or secondly, challenged the local supply and service companies to procure on behalf of the programs. That would have had several unseen benefits though employment and immediate local economic stimulation for expansion or industrial recovery that otherwise were now stripped of their labour resources and no longer able to fairly compete with the inflow of donor funding.

With the purpose of putting results on the board, most if not all, international agencies took the first option. Aceh had lost half of its supply and service companies either through being totally destroyed with the tsunami or the people involved in them had perished. The number of international agencies engaged in establishing cash for work and other recovery projects became the primary employers of the region soaking up all available labour and professional skills in largely non-sustainable immediate relief programs depleting even those surviving government and private sector industries of skilled and unskilled workers with the attraction of salaries higher than the local economy would normally command.

The largess of the international community through the lack of any planning process had the capacity to skew the normal economic utility of the city without any form of compensation to the industries that had functioned previously, who it might be added also now needed assistance to recover and continue yet were faced with inordinate competition from temporary supply chains set up outside the region.

The capitalist functioning economy although faltering due to the ongoing militant action had overnight turned into a more socialist one where through the influx of capital the idea that individual profit should be made was anathema and the community collective should prevail.

The same can be said of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Each one has a compelling humanitarian engine driving them to climb off the bottom rungs of development. The means of addressing each one however is largely non-sustainable requiring continued unsustainable sponsorship by the developed world through local government interventions that is prone to all manner of misuse in order to maintain them.

Objectively, the best means of recovery is the ability for the community to engage itself by means of long term sustainable employment whereby individuals can ultimately assist themselves to overcome the various MDG targets. Too often it is a bottom up approach by an expanded government service offering individuals small subsistence level cottage industry self employment solutions while too little emphasis is given to developing small to medium industries that can employ 10 to 100 individuals in long term employment.

The challenge of course is how to generate the development of these industries so that they can reach this point. Basically, what is required is the opportunity for them to attract the business in the first place.

In Japan following the World War, Toyota Truck Company was languishing with an annual build rate of some 300 vehicles per year. With the onset of the Korean war in 1951, the US placed an initial order for 3000 vehicles that was followed by subsequent orders. The influx of business enabled the company to eventually become one of the biggest automotive companies in the world. Much can be said for numerous other industries in Japan at that time benefiting though business and not handouts, sufficient that it turned the previously destroyed economy around to where it is today.

In many similar situations around the world where poverty is prevalent bought about by natural and man-made political crisis, assistance that aims itself to the bottom through relief or at the government through inter-country donations are not sustainable development strategies. Increased emphasis has to be given to build local small to medium industry either through preferential procurement strategies that favour local manufacture, through sponsored technological transfers between international industrial partnerships and even access to financial assistance to expand current operations irrespective of the security difficulties. Bankers tend to become security conscious when lending money to individuals yet increase loans to government economies that are in the same throes of recovering from upheaval.

related articles listed under development

In September 2007, the pre-eminent US General in Iraq in conjunction with the US Ambassador to Iraq delivered to the US congress an up to the minute report on the state of events and the implementation of America’s interventionist policy to that country.

Gone are the days of focusing on the search Weapons of Mass Destruction that was the primary reason to intervene, the present search is for peace and the imposition of democratic processes and benchmarks that confirm them albeit in an American way.

Petraeus and Crocker managed to entice the US Congress for additional six months time to gauge the success of the “surge” and the level of progress in the Iraqi government. That report is due this week at which point, based on the preliminary information currently being fed to the media, that report should in fact once more stall for additional time while reporting that some progress is being achieved.

The recent violent incursion into Basra where more than 600 civilians are reportedly killed, the government is posturing success of the campaign ignoring that important statistic yet it was only that Sadr called a ceasefire that the campaign ended. With again a reported 1000 government soldiers deserting their posts from the government side it hardly augers a success.

The difficulty for Petraeus and Crocker is that they have to take a side in what is largely a battle between two local power brokers from the major ethnic group while the other ethnic groups sit out the skirmish looking to pick up any of the available remaining pieces. A further difficulty for Petraeus also is that the purpose of the surge was not intended to negate the power of al Sadr’s Sh’ia militias in Basra. They had for some time been subdued through their own holding of fire before it commenced. The surge was primarily to account for the activities of the Sunni militias, the remnants of loyalist to Saddam and also where al Qaeda has been operating from their midst in the area of Anbar province and Baghdad.

With the passage of time, a peace has been bought to order with the Awakening Councils, a process that has involved a significant transfer of funding from the US government to purchase these groups loyalty. Will it last, that is a moot point. Critics argue that is will survive as long as the US continue the payments and perhaps not much longer.

But now Petraeus and to a lesser extent, Crocker have to deliver a report on progress on all fronts of peace and security and the corresponding development in this country that has been at war for twenty years. It begs the question; will his report be a factual and objective account that is high on the success of the military strategy and less able to determine the political stability of the various factions or will it be to consolidate in the eyes of the American public the nebulous vision for Iraq that is proposed by the US Administration.

Petraeus has political ambitions. In a report in the British newspaper, the Independent in September last year, it was reported that Sabah Khadim, a senior Advisor with the Iraqi government had discussed this very issue with the General as far back as 2004.

In Khadim’s words “I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, ‘No, that would be too soon’,” The political path for the General however is not to be overlooked.

Coming to the current Presidential campaign, Democratic frontrunner, Barack Obama has declared a policy of withdrawal of US forces from Iraq should he win government. That is possible however the implications for Iraq are not so straightforward.

A recent report compiled by a US think tank that is funded by the US congress, the US Institute of Peace argues that the surge is not working in the way it was intended. The political framework of Iraq is fragile, dominated by self-interested factions and is incapable of bringing together a cohesive government as none of the political benchmarks set by the US as a purpose for the surge have been reached and primary focus has been on those legislative benchmarks that primarily satisfy the US demands.

An immediate withdrawal of US forces should Obama win however, with the inability of the government force to maintain order is likely to draw the country into a much more unstable civil war than presently exists. Obama will be held responsible for the carnage and genocide that ensues leaving open the possibility of Petraeus to run a Republican Presidential campaign on  the basis of “I told you so” in 2012 is ever more plausible. Americans have long since seen military Generals gather political credibility on the basis of successful campaigns. In his case he needs to hold on to marginal successes until a new administration shifts the goalposts, at which point he can argue that he tried his best.

There may well be other options for peace at a regional level. Significant political influence can be held over the Iraqi Sunnis by Saudi Arabia as can great influence by Iran over the Sh’ia factions. The Kurds are not at war on an internal level other than expressing their desire for autonomy from both. It needs however a reckoning of the independence of both these nations from the US, an understanding of their own level of influence and a desire to move towards a regional peace process.

In the event that Petraeus does have a political ambition, the likelihood of him reporting a failure at this point in time in Iraq is less likely than ever, what has to be asked of him is, can the people of Iraq and the gulf region contend with instability of the order that is possible for another several years? It also has to do with his possible political aspirations in four years time.