While preparations were under way to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks on the US, Americans watched with horror and disbelief a catastrophic disaster unfolding on their soil.
A few days ago, Hurricane Katrina struck America’s Gulf Coast ravishing an area larger than Great Britain. The devastation extends from New Orleans to the mouth of the Mississippi. In a twinkle of an eye thousands of lives were lost, thousands of livelihood destroyed, and thousands of men and women made homeless.
Our hearts go out to the victims of Katrina. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they pick up the pieces!
We sympathize and empathize with the innocent victims of the hurricane in America and with the victims of every other disaster. We belong to the Third Word, where dangers and hardships are regular visitors. We have first-hand experience of hunger, thirst, bereavement, misery, poverty, discrimination, injustice, wars, natural and man-made disasters. Sorrow, bereavement, feelings of loss, despair, anger and hopelessness are not strange to us. We know what it means to be without shelter, without food, without clean water, without electricity, without medication, without jobs, without communication, without petrol and above all, without security.
Wars waged on our lands have deprived many parents of their children and many children of their parents. They have claimed the lives of many husbands and many wives, turning many into wailing widows and distraught widowers. Millions are currently trapped in some of our cities, with no security, no water, no electricity, no medication, no transportation and no petrol.
While our world is often the scene of natural disasters, cyclones of injustice and hurricanes of cruelty keep following us like a curse. Bombs and missiles manufactured far from our borders daily kill and injure people close to our hearts and minds.
Katrina has demolished much of New Orleans. Sophisticated war machinery continues to flatten historical sites and historical cities in our world.
Misery is relative.
The unlucky refugees from New Orleans should take some comfort from the knowledge that they are not the most unfortunate people in our global village. They should find some solace in the fact that the lives of people in Iraq, Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Gaza, the Niger, and the West Bank are much harsher and much more difficult than theirs.
In Alabama, Louisiana and the Mississippi helicopters carry food and water to the homeless, the hungry and the thirty. They pluck stranded people from rooftops of houses and transport them to safe places.
In the developing world helicopters carry missiles and mortar shells. They drop bombs on “suspects”, “terrorists “ and “insurgents”, wounding and killing tens, hundreds or thousands of faceless, nameless civilians in the process.
In New Orleans troops go from house to house searching for survivors to escort to safe places, where there is food, water, medicine, shelter and education. In the developing world troops go from house to house to arrest men and women -often innocent— and take them to prisons, where there is abuse, humiliation, physical torture and psychological pain.
A press notorious for pushing painful facts under the carpet and a media expert at hiding from sensitive eyes repulsive, heart-breaking images from the Middle East have brought to our doorsteps horrific images of the devastation in the Gulf Coast of the United States. They showed us shocking images of poverty in the land of freedom, wealth, power and plenty.
Katrina has left behind devastation hard to clear and questions hard to answer. She has unveiled an ugly reality that is hard to believe and victims who are mostly black.
New Orleans’s population is 69 percent black and 31 percent white.
Why are there not many white Americans among the victims in the images we have seen? Where was the white population of New Orleans when Katrina struck? How did the white citizens escape in good time? Why are the few whites people scattered here and there, old, infirm or on wheel chairs?
Did the healthy and wealthy hop into private planes, or jump into private cars to escape to homes they own elsewhere? Did they collect their luggage and baggage, leaving behind the poor and the infirm to fend for themselves?
Is there still racial segregation in the South?
Katrina is not a welcome guest, but she is surely a superb teacher. Has she not proved beyond all doubt that we live in an interdependent world? Has she not shown us, with concrete examples, that strength and power do not necessarily mean perfection? Has she not left us with the awareness that even the rich and the mighty need help and support when the forces of nature strike? Has she not unveiled social ills that must be eliminated? Has she not underscored the importance of cleaning our backyards before urging neighbors to clean theirs?
Poverty, discrimination and segregation are the real weapons of mass destruction, which governments and organizations should work together to eliminate.
