The Sumatra Trench Tsunami: Politics, Technologies and Opportunities
Politics and Culture
The earthquake in the Sumatra Trench early on 26.xii.04 triggered a Tsunami which affected a wide variety of countries in respect of their indigenous political situations, their regional political affiliations and their language and written script.
With respect to indigenous political conditions, without providing a comprehensive list, the following examples should suffice:
Burma: This defensive military dictatorship has a very poor rapport with its largely hostile people.
India: Central Government control is chronically contested by state and local centres of power. Relief efforts seemed to proceed effectively in Tamil Nadu around its capital of Chennai (Madras). Significantly, very little news has emerged from neighbouring Orissa which is always vulnerable to coastal flooding. Central Government was extremely slow to provide any assistance for the Andoman and Nicobar chain, partly because some of the islands are sites for military intelligence installations. Some relief missions were assaulted by warriors with stone age weapons.
Indonesia: The worst affected province, Aceh, is in a state of civil and paramilitary insurgence which is seriously complicating the relief effort mounted by the reinforced military (most of the garrison was wiped out).
Somalia: Currently has no de jure unified government but is de facto divided between Somalia and Somaliland.
Sri Lanka: The worst affected area is still controlled by the Tamil Tigers under an uneasy ceasefire with the central Government.
Thailand: Recently gripped by inter-communal violence throughout its Southern Region.
One might have added the Maldives, in the throes of a General election and Madagascar in a political stand off similar to that in the Ukraine. Had the epicentre been slightly different it might have severely affected Iran and the Emirates, mainland Malaysia (which was moderately affected), Mozambique and Bangladesh.
With respect to regional political affiliations, the Tsunami’s impact affected the Africa Union, The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and India; and with a slightly different epicentre it might have affected The Arab League and Bangladesh.
The territories affected by the Tsunami use a wide variety of indigenous languages and scripts including Arabic, Bahasa Malay, Bengali, Roman and Tamil.
The simple and most obvious conclusions from this very basic analysis are that:
- Any plan to implement disaster relief cannot depend on a single economic block (such as the African Union or ASEAN), nor even a United Nations Administrative Region;
- It is impossible to rely entirely on the writ of sovereign, internationally recognised, de jure, governments.
Although we at Microsoft may not be able to say this publicly and explicitly, we need to develop a strategy for emergency warning and relief action which relies on the twin pillars of de jure government on the one hand and de facto governance and civil society on the other.