Gamal Nkrumah reviews a testing year for the South and the North's poor and disfranchised Natural disasters and the war on terror were the defining characteristics of 2005. The year started with a damper -- the dreadful ramifications of the tsunami that devastated the Indian Ocean rim countries of Asia and eastern Africa on 26 December 2004. More natural disasters followed in 2005: the devastating earthquake that laid waste much of northern Pakistan and Kashmir, and hurricanes that swept through the southern United States and neighbouring Caribbean islands leaving a sorry trail of death and destruction in their wake. The catastrophic consequences also opened up a can of worms -- the politics of disaster relief. The disastrous tsunami in particular provided an opportunity to assess emergency response readiness of the countries concerned, as well as international humanitarian aid groups. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission and a host of world leaders flew to Indonesia to attend a conference on how to assist tsunami devastated areas. The unprecedented response to the appeals of governments, charities and aid agencies was heart-warming. The generosity and outpouring of funds, food, clothes and medicine was overwhelming. The tsunami disaster also shifted attention to the political turmoil of Indian Ocean rim countries -- separatist wars in Aceh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and southern Thailand. Throughout the year links were drawn between conditions of exclusion (in part poverty, but principally the undemocratic nature of certain regimes) and terrorism, the most ominous development in this being Paul Wolfowitz's appointment by President Bush as head of the World Bank. After nations gathered to help tsunami victims, the next big international gathering was the G8 summit, in Gleneagles, Scotland. Originally aimed at African development, G8 leaders decided to write off $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries. Africa was supposed to take centre stage at this meeting of world's wealthiest nations. Yet, by the closing sessions it was clear that the issue of terror had stolen the spotlight amid horrific bombings in London. Indeed, the war on terror -- both real and fictitious -- featured prominently in 2005. The US Congress adjourned for the year after approving a $453 billion Defense Department budget for fiscal year 2006. Alarming -- but there was worse. Under pretext of searching for a terrorist nuclear bomb, news leaked in late 2005 of a far- reaching top-secret programme to monitor radiation levels of Muslim households and businesses in the US. Investigators were dispatched to inspect properties under surveillance without search warrants. Indeed, the year saw a disturbing curtailment of civil liberties in the West in general, and in the US in particular. Tagging behind British Prime Minister Tony Blair back in July, the paparazzi hurriedly left Gleneagles to rush to the scene of the terrorist attacks that brought the heart of the British capital to a standstill. The bombings may well have been planned to coincide with the Gleneagles summit: whether or not this was the case the results were the same -- hopes of dealing honestly with the root causes of poverty were rudely dashed as the fight against terror once again topped the G8 agenda. Many greeted as too little, too late a pledge of a $25 billion increase in aid to Africa by 2010. External debt owed by developing countries reached some $3 trillion in 2005. There are 1.2 billion people around the world who live on less than one dollar a day. Increase that figure to two dollars a day, and there are more than three billion people in the developing countries of the South just scraping by. Meanwhile, much money was squandered on pork-barrel projects in both the rich, industrially advanced North and the poor, developing South. And riots erupted in France based principally on poverty and the bankruptcy of French claims to national class unity. The world's wealthiest countries have been talking about increasing aid to 0.7 per cent of their total gross national product (GNP) for the last 30 years, and have systematically failed to reach the target. Development assistance currently provided by wealthy countries stands at 0.2 per cent of their total GNP. Then disaster struck again. The Gulf coast of the US was subject to a tragic blow -- quite literally a bolt from the blue. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma between them destroyed 40 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and 150 offshore platforms, as well as more than two million buildings -- mainly residential. The storms caused some $80 billion in losses. The greater frequency and rising severity of hurricanes in 2005 measured against previous decades smacked of the ravages of global warming. The US response to the disaster fell far short of what was expected of the world's leading superpower. President George W Bush was caught abandoning the African Americans of the Mississippi Delta. The contempt in which the Bush administration appeared to hold human life, at home and abroad, came as no great surprise to America's long-suffering underdogs. Much was written about how yesteryear they were lynched, and today they were being washed away in cities that metamorphosed into corpse-clogged cesspools. African Americans were angry. The cynical governmental response to the catastrophe was not only slow and inadequate, but appeared to deliberately exclude blacks and the poor from the rescue and humanitarian relief effort. The response of authorities to the natural disaster that hit the Deep South was reminiscent of that of an impoverished Third World country -- it was shocking beyond belief. Scenes of havoc hit international headlines, and people the world over concluded that the Bush administration doesn't care for poor or non-white Americans. It highlighted, as never before, the defining characteristics of what was increasingly being referred to as America's callous, so-called democracy -- racism, militarism and elitism. These were the worst aspects of America's current socio-political and economic modus operandi. If until Katrina this message had been on the lips of anti-war, pro- environment and anti-globalisation groups abroad, it now came home. Katrina's ill winds swept up not only the poor and blacks of the Deep South, but unveiled for the world to witness what is so deeply wrong with Bush and his cronies. Astonishingly, it was poor countries that lined up to offer help. Countries like Sri Lanka, devastated by the tsunami barely nine months before, and Cuba, a traditional foe of the US, were more than willing to give -- and give liberally, too. The Cubans were prepared to dispatch 1,000 doctors to relieve the suffering of poor and homeless Americans. This year also witnessed the left in the ascendant in South America. The landslide presidential sweep of Bolivia's leftist leader of coca- workers, Evo Morales -- the first Native American to be president -- and the equally impressive re-election triumph of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, set the tone for South American politics. It was a notable year for women. Angela Merkel emerged as Germany's first woman chancellor. And Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson triumphantly swept polls to become Africa's first elected woman president. Her victory is not, however, expected to change much on Liberia's political landscape. In Europe, the no vote by France and the Netherlands on the European Constitution cast a long shadow of doubt over the future of the European Union. Meanwhile, the rise of Islamophobia throughout Europe continued unabated -- fuelled by the war on terror, racism and xenophobia, and waves of illegal immigration with thousands of Africans and Arabs trying to cross the Mediterranean, often dying at sea. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December 2005 provided a golden opportunity -- missed, argue some analysts -- for decision-makers in Africa to press ahead with their goal of making international trade a vehicle for economic development. The Doha Development Agenda (DDA), supposedly providing differential treatment for developing countries and preventing restrictions and distortions in international agricultural markets, failed to assuage fears on the part of poor countries that the real problems (such as farm subsidies in rich countries) were being papered over, and that the West was plotting Machiavellian divide and rule development packages. Hopes were dashed, also, for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Washington seemed to be in no hurry to change its tack. And Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO, had a hard task at hand in trying to convince developing countries that he has their best interests in mind. Similar problems dogged the Kyoto Protocol on international environmental issues, which topped the agenda at a two-week conference in Montreal. A change of heart by China, the world's second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States, and its newfound enthusiasm about the Kyoto process, was heartening. But diplomatic language could not mask the fact that without Washington, which is pushing for its proposed Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development as an alternative to the UN- brokered Kyoto Treaty, global warming and environmental degradation might yield catastrophic results. In Montreal, delegates from more than 180 countries made final adjustments to an agreement on additional reductions in carbon dioxide and other harmful gases after 2012, when the Kyoto accord expires. In Montreal, it was clear that the proponents of Kyoto -- African, Asian and European -- will not give up their struggle against global warming and environmental catastrophe. The world worried in 2005 as oil prices went up, fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions multiplied, and Washington threw its weight about and posed as a bully in the international arena and in international forums. It is an image from which the US must distance itself, if it has an ounce of sense.
