Even in the best of times, the southern coast of Sri Lanka is a desperate place. Sunday's tsunami, which destroyed thousands of lives and livelihoods, brings the region to the brink of collapse.
Last year, as a graduate student, I went to southern Sri Lanka to research a report on the island nation's peace process. In a decades-long ethnic conflict between the island's Sinhalese majority and its Tamil minority, the mostly Sinhalese south has suffered from serious neglect. The region's political support was taken for granted by nationalist Sinhalese politicians in the country's capital, Colombo, and as a result education and economic development in the south were never top priorities.
While interviewing people in towns along the southern coast, I found that the list of local grievances was long -- and legitimate.
The head of the local chamber of commerce complained that the principal transportation link between his troubled region and thriving Colombo -- a ribbon of asphalt known as the Galle Road -- was inadequate and seriously inhibited trade and development. A group of fishermen's wives told me their husbands were bringing home ever-smaller catches because Tamil rebels had deemed choice fisheries off-limits to non-Tamils. I was assured by a local entrepreneur that tourism would save the region; he spent his savings building a small eco-tourism resort on the coast near the town of Hambantota.
But the 20-foot wall of water that hit these communities Sunday destroyed the Galle Road. The fishing families of Matara -- if they survived at all -- have likely lost everything they had. The hopeful Hambantota businessman's eco-friendly cabins almost certainly were washed away. More than 11,000 Sri Lankans have died so far and a fragile regional economy has been crushed.
To make matters worse, the Sri Lankan garment industry, for years a source of steady employment in the area, will be gutted when its textile quota deal with the United States expires on Saturday. Chances are, the Banana Republic shirt you got for Christmas was assembled in Sri Lanka; next year's sweater probably will come from China.
The governments, aid organizations and citizens of the wealthy world need a swift and substantial disaster response to ensure that hope is not washed away with the receding tides. Beyond that initial response, it is critical that the United States and the other wealthy countries revisit their aid and trade policies with Sri Lanka and other affected areas to ensure that Mother Nature's sucker punch doesn't keep them down.
Thus far the Bush administration has made all the right sounds about its commitment to a strong response in affected areas. Relief groups, such as Northwest-based Mercy Corps (www.mercycorps.org) and WorldVision (www.worldvision.org), have sprung into action and bring decades of experience to this emergency.
There are two actions the rest of us can take.
First, we need to send money to the relief groups doing the work on the ground. Aid groups play an invaluable role in providing food, clean water, medical supplies and temporary shelter for families affected by such disasters.
Second, we need to urge the administration to follow through on its pledge of disaster relief. There is an impending humanitarian crisis that can be averting only through a rapid, well-resourced response. Building on that response, the administration and Congress need to make a special investment in helping the people of southern Sri Lanka lift themselves out of the grinding poverty that made them even more vulnerable to this natural disaster.
That's the least we can do for the hopeful but chronically afflicted people of southern Sri Lanka.
Jeremy Barnicle is a program officer at the Century Foundation, a think tank based in New York City.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 JEREMY BARNICLE © 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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