The Indian Ocean Tsunami Relief Operation Reshapes Global Disaster Response, Iraq Holds Its First Free Election in Half a Century and Lebanon Rises Against Syria

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 April 2005 | Reporting Period: 3 January – 2 April 2005

Quarterly Briefing

• The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, the most powerful in fifty years, has killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries; the international humanitarian response in its first quarter reaches $13 billion in pledges, the largest ever; US, Australian and Indian naval forces coordinate relief operations; the disaster prompts a fundamental reassessment of early warning systems for the Indian Ocean and transforms global disaster response frameworks.
• Iraq holds its first multi-party elections in fifty years on January 30; approximately 8 million voters — 58 per cent of registered voters — brave insurgent threats to cast ballots; the Shia United Iraqi Alliance wins 48 per cent of the vote; the Sunni Arab community largely boycotts the election; the result is a democratic milestone but produces a government that does not represent a third of Iraq’s population.
• Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is assassinated by a massive car bomb in Beirut on February 14; Syria, which occupies Lebanon with 14,000 troops and is widely suspected, denies involvement; the killing triggers the Cedar Revolution — massive popular protests that fill Beirut’s Martyrs Square with hundreds of thousands of Lebanese demanding Syrian withdrawal.
• Pope John Paul II dies in Rome on April 2, on the final day of our reporting period, after a prolonged illness; his papacy of 26 years was the second-longest in modern history; he is credited with helping to end Communist rule in Poland and across Eastern Europe; an estimated four million pilgrims travel to Rome for his funeral; the conclave to elect his successor begins shortly.
• North Korea declares on February 10 that it possesses nuclear weapons; the declaration is the most explicit statement yet of Pyongyang’s nuclear status; Six-Party Talks on its nuclear programme, suspended since June 2004, have not resumed; the Bush administration’s strategy of refusing direct bilateral negotiations is increasingly criticised as producing nuclear escalation without diplomatic progress.
• Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which began in November with protests against a fraudulent presidential election, concludes with Viktor Yushchenko’s inauguration in January after a re-run vote he wins clearly; the revolution is a landmark for democracy in the former Soviet space and a major setback for Russian President Putin’s influence over Ukraine.

Prologue: Democracy and Disaster in a Turbulent Quarter

The first quarter of 2005 brought three experiences of human solidarity under pressure: the global response to the Indian Ocean tsunami, which mobilised international generosity at an unprecedented scale; Iraq’s election, in which eight million people chose to vote under threat of death; and Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution, in which a multi-confessional population mobilised peacefully against a foreign military occupation. Each represented, in different ways, the capacity of human communities to act collectively in the face of extreme adversity. The quarter ended, on April 2, with the death of a man who had spent 26 years insisting on that capacity — John Paul II, whose papacy had been simultaneously a moral witness against totalitarianism and a pastoral presence to the world’s most suffering communities. For the Caribbean, tsunami-scale disaster response pointed directly at the question of what would happen if a comparable event struck the region’s own coastlines; the answer, from Jamaica’s government emergency managers, was that preparation remained significantly inadequate.

The Tsunami and Caribbean Disaster Preparedness

The Indian Ocean tsunami’s most important long-term contribution, beyond its immediate humanitarian dimensions, was to the global conversation about early warning systems and international disaster response. The Pacific had a functioning tsunami warning system; the Indian Ocean did not. The consequence was that the December 26 wave arrived on the coasts of Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Somalia without warning, leaving populations no time to flee. The international community’s commitment, in the tsunami’s aftermath, to establishing an Indian Ocean equivalent would eventually produce a system that saved lives in subsequent events. For Caribbean emergency managers, the tsunami raised questions about the Caribbean’s own seismic and tsunami risk — which exists, particularly along the Puerto Rico Trench and in the volcanic eastern Caribbean — and about whether the region’s warning and evacuation systems were adequate. The answer, in January 2005, was that they were not.

Iraq’s Election and its Ambiguous Promise

The images of ink-stained fingers held aloft by Iraqi voters on January 30 provided the Bush administration with its most powerful vindication of the invasion in nearly two years. The election was real: the ballots were counted honestly, the Electoral Commission operated independently and the results reflected actual vote shares. Its limitations were also real: the Sunni boycott meant that perhaps a third of Iraq’s population was unrepresented in the new Assembly; the transitional government’s mandate to draft a constitution would need to include Sunni voices that the election had excluded; and the insurgency that had threatened voters on election day continued at full intensity the day after. The election was a necessary condition for a political solution; it was far from a sufficient one.

Looking Ahead

Pope John Paul II’s death, occurring as this edition is published, will produce a papal succession whose outcome — a conservative German cardinal or a reforming cardinal from the developing world — will shape the Catholic Church’s engagement with the global South, including the Caribbean’s heavily Catholic populations. Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution is pressing toward Syrian withdrawal; whether the Syrian government will comply with the UN’s demands, backed by unprecedented French-American agreement, will be known in coming weeks. North Korea’s nuclear declaration has intensified the pressure on the Six-Party process to resume; whether the Bush administration will offer the direct bilateral engagement that Pyongyang demands is the central diplomatic question of the spring.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.

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