SO MUCH has appeared in the international press and in our own media that it would seem to be an exercise in redundancy to offer a perspective on the tragedy that befell the southern coastal states of the US. A major tragedy it certainly was and, in terms of natural disasters, larger than anything that the United States, has had to cope with on its own soil.

Sitting in the Midwest in the United States, this writer found the TV images horrifyingly explicit and they brought home both the size of the tragedy and the apparent lack of preparedness on the part of the local, state and federal authorities to cope with what should have been an anticipated natural disaster.

Almost inevitably there was frequent reference in the anguished pleas of local officials to the fact that the Iraq war had drawn on resources that if available locally could have helped mitigate the scale of the disaster. The failure of the authorities was emphasized by the equally frequent references, borne out by TV images, to the resemblance New Orleans, a major metropolitan city, bore, in its moment of catastrophic distress, to a Third World city like Port au Prince in Haiti with corpses flowing along the avenues that had been converted into waterways by the flooding of the city.

Most importantly there were frequent charges that the callous disregard for the suffering of the people of New Orleans who had not been able to leave the city was owed to the fact that those affected were overwhelmingly black.

Currently the mood appears to be to move from the mood of black despair that affected almost the entire nation to unstinting support for the rescue operations which after an almost incomprehensible delay appear to be in full swing. The Congress has appropriated $10.5 billion for disaster relief and there is no doubt that further funds will be made available for rehabilitating the displaced persons and for reconstructing the communities that have been devastated.

But this is going to be a long term endeavour and as it proceeds the focus of attention will return to what went wrong and who was responsible; whether or not there was a racial bias that prompted the seeming apathy; whether the Bush administration’s focus on terrorism had deprived the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) of the funding it needed to cope with natural disasters; and whether the resources needed for the Iraq war — particularly the deployment of National Guard units to Iraq — had deprived the local authorities of the tools that they needed to cope with the disaster.

The debate will be ferocious. There will be none of the non-partisan support that Bush could garner after 9/11, no glossing over the obvious failures of intelligence caused by bureaucratic wrangling or even more importantly the ignoring by political leaders of the intelligence information that did exist. There will be those who will want the backdrop of the debate to be the assertion by a columnist of the New York Times that with its handling of this tragic event the US had become the “United States of Shame”.

The impact this debate has on the people of the United States will determine how far the Bush Administration will be able to proceed with its ambitious agenda for the second term. It may well determine not only the course of the midterm Congressional election in 2006 but also the next Presidential election.

What will be the main ingredients of the debate? First and foremost to my mind will be the question of how Iraq has drained both financial and manpower resources away from domestic needs? Second has the focus on fighting terrorism led to the under-funding and downgrading of Fema? Third can the US afford a leader like President Bush who continues his vacation while thousands are marooned without food, water and other essentials for more than two days and an entire region is in dire straits?

Should the tragedy and the lackadaisical response be seen not only as evidence of the growing disparity between the rich and poor but also governmental policies which tolerate and tacitly endorse the growth of this divide? Fourth can the US continue to see itself as the world’s only superpower when it cannot look after its own people?

There is a great deal of ammunition that can be used against the current administration. There was plenty of warning that there were at least 57,000 families or some 125,000 people in New Orleans who did not have cars and who would not therefore be able to leave if evacuation was ordered. No measures were taken either by the local, state or federal governments to provide for these families. There was clearly need for the National Guard to be called out to assist the local authorities in rescuing stranded people and preventing looting. None were called out until four days later. The state authorities maintain that they were repeatedly promised that such help was on its way but it did not arrive.

The record shows that the Bush administration repeatedly cut the funding requested by the Army Corps of Engineers for the maintenance and upgrading of the levees built to keep water out of New Orleans. Administration officials have argued quite rightly that this was not the issue since such repair would have been of little use because Katrina was a category 4 storm and the design of the levees would not allow them to handle any thing beyond a category 3 storm.

The question however will be why this was not anticipated many years ago and why the fabulously large sums of money allotted to the Department of Homeland Security, of which Fema had been made a part, were so badly spent. If the consequences of a natural disaster of which there was plenty of warning could not be guarded against what assurance was there that the department would cope better with a terrorist attack of which there would be no warning at all.

Since his belated return from vacation and in deference to the national outrage President Bush has been in the affected area twice. He has promised to fix those things that have not been done right and to ensure that all “brothers and sisters” are looked after. Whether this will be enough to undo the damage done to his image by his absence from the scene for the crucial first five days is an open question. Many believe that if the salvage operation now proceeds smoothly and the federal authorities provide the resources for reconstruction this neglect will be forgotten.

Others believe that it will not be so easily forgotten no matter how well the reconstruction proceeds since it was reflective of a deeper malaise — a commitment on the part of the Bush administration to the welfare of the rich and privileged as against the larger public interest. The Americans have prided themselves in the past for looking after their own and lending a generous helping hand even to those outside their borders. Now they saw as one commentator put it, “Everything just broke down for the folks who needed help the most. And when government cannot provide for those who need help the most, it makes everybody else feel less secure.” What was true for the black poor in New Orleans could become true also for the middle class white unless the policies were changed.

“Where was the President in his country’s hour of need? And why has it taken him five days to go to New Orleans?” was the question posed by the British newspaper the Independent, which went on to add, “How can the US take Iraq, a country of 25 million people, in three weeks but fail to rescue 25,000 of its own citizens from a sports arena in a big American city?” Other comments talked of the fact that “New Orleans looks like Haiti, or Baghdad, or Sudan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. The images of all the rubble and corpses and empty-eyed survivors remind people of those places, not the United States.”

The damage done to the image of American people is immense. The State Department has done its best to minimize this damage by highlighting the fact that numerous countries around the world have offered help and that this was inspired, in large measure by the generous assistance that the United States has offered to other countries that have had to cope with natural disasters, but America is not geared to receive external assistance and as a result other countries have had to offer their assistance through such agencies as the American Red Cross.

Along side this has been the realization that in part nature’s fury may have been accentuated by the global warming that President Bush has chosen to ignore despite appeals from the rest of the world. This issue too is likely to rise in the debate.

Judging by the furore in the media one would be justified in drawing the conclusion that President Bush has been much weakened politically and would find it impossible to push ahead at least in the immediate future his plan for further tax cuts for the rich and for a reform of the Social Security System. After all many billions of dollars will be needed for the reconstruction of the infrastructure in the affected region and a decline in tax revenues is the last thing that the economy can afford.

And yet this is not at all certain. A Washington Post-ABC nation wide poll found that that slightly less than half — 46 per cent — approve of the way Bush has handled relief efforts while 47 per cent disapprove. Even on the early response, so vehemently criticized in the media, 48 per cent rated the federal effort as excellent or good and 51 per cent said it was not so good or poor.

The poll results were highly partisan with 68 per cent of the Democrats terming the government actions as poor while 66 per cent of the Republicans termed it excellent or good. It would seem that the polarization of the country so clearly visible in the last presidential elections has taken such deep root that even as cataclysmic an event as the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina cannot bring the country together to agree on a common perception of the shortcomings of government or of the remedial measures needed.

A last word on the looting that started in New Orleans just one day after the flooding of the city. A Sri Lankan termed it “disgusting” while recalling that not a single tourist was mugged when the tsunami disaster struck in Sri Lanka. He went on to assert that this goes to show where the civilized part of the world’s population is.

Perhaps this is too sweeping a conclusion but what it does show is that in circumstances of despair created not by a single event but by a lifetime of deprivation the thin veneer of civilization cracks easily to be replaced by a primeval survival instinct. Even for a country as rich and powerful as the United States there is a need to heed the lesson that perpetuating discrimination and inequalities can lead to the creation of disruptive forces that can become impossible to control. This is the lesson of New Orleans as much as it is the lesson of Iraq.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

LAST week the international oil price, which has been rising for some years now, touched a high of $70 a barrel. Seven years ago it was $10. What it will be next week one cannot say for Hurricane Katrina has forced the closure of five big refineries and halted nearly a quarter of the United States’ oil production located in the Gulf of Mexico region.

With oil experts saying that the price will rise further, the prophets of doom are now active predicting an “economic shock” that is a global recession as has happened before when oil prices shot up. In Pakistan, the petrol price was pushed up to an unprecedented Rs52.61 per litre and one wonders how this will affect the economy and the future projections of economic growth made by the policymakers.

Two key questions to be asked are: what is the cause of this oil price rise? And how has the world economy continued to grow in spite of this spiralling rise in oil price? The obvious answer to the first question lies in the economic law of supply and demand. With China and India enjoying an economic boom, their demand for oil has been growing — China’s oil consumption in 2004 increased by 15 per cent. America, which is the world’s biggest oil consumer — 20 million barrels a day today with the projection for 2015 being 25 million barrels — has also fuelled this demand in a big way.

Although enough oil is being explored, production level and, more so, refining capacity have not kept pace with the demand. Hence the acute shortfall. According to one source, oil production has grown by 8.3 per cent since November 2001 when oil cost $17.50 per barrel but demand has increased by 8.6 per cent in the same period.

Add to this the “fear premium” and the financial speculation factor and it would explain this phenomenal rise in oil price. Fear is something new to have entered the oil market. With political volatility, terrorism, civil strife and wars (such as the American invasion of Iraq) affecting oil production in a big way, the producers have increased prices to cover up for future losses and they have not invested in increasing the refining capacity proportionately to the rising trend of consumption. According to one estimate, the fear premium may have added as much as $15 per barrel to the cost of oil.

Given the fact that Opec operates as a cartel — it accounts for 60 per cent of the world oil production — it is not surprising to find it speculating and manipulating the prices to its own advantage. It has been observed that whenever the oil stocks in the OECD countries has started to rise, Opec has lowered the oil quotas to reduce supply and thus prevent the price from falling.

But the moot question is how has this high price level been sustained without affecting the world economy? Normally in such a situation either a market corrective mechanism comes into play much before the price hits the roof, or recession and inflation set in. Neither of this has happened this time.

A number of explanations are offered by economists. One is that the price increase has been gradual as a result of which companies and individuals have managed to adjust to it. It is also said that many industrialized economies are not so oil- dependent now.

One estimate says that European countries use half as much oil per dollar of GDP as they did in the 1970s. The Economist of London attributes this to “improved energy efficiency, a switch to other sources of energy and a shift from manufacturing to services”. The paper adds another factor. The low rate of inflation (thanks to the competition from China) has allowed central banks to hold interest rates low.

The industrialized economies will turn this situation to their advantage. In 1973 when the price of oil rose sharply after the Suez war, offshore drilling in increasing water depths and challenging environmental conditions became economically feasible and many independent oil producers emerged to break Opec’s strangulating hold over the oil market.

Even today innovative and sophisticated technology is enabling oil companies to reach the oil residue in the reservoirs that was previously abandoned as being uneconomical. It is believed that the recovery rate is no more than 33 per cent of the oil in place in a reservoir. Tomorrow better technology might push up this rate.

There are other sources of energy which are being actively explored as the rising oil prices make them more economical now. For instance, biofuels are receiving a lot of attention. The production of ethanol is rising as new plants are mushrooming in different countries. China has built the world’s biggest ethanol plant and is planning another one.

The problem is that the smaller Third World countries are the ones at the greatest risk. They may fail to keep pace with new technology and not be able to absorb the high price of oil as comfortably as the rich countries have managed to do. Here comes the crunch. Already many countries have felt the “oil shock”. In Indonesia there have been lay-offs from factories. The Philippines is considering a four-day work week and petrol rationing. South Korea faces an economic slump in the offing. What has Pakistan’s response been? It has shown an equanimity that is amazing. The government has been periodically raising the price of petrol, diesel, kerosene and furnace oil trying to keep pace with the international oil price. Thus the price of petrol has shot up by 65 per cent in the last two years. The motorists swallow every raise with unheard of patience. It is the bus owners who create a rumpus but the idea of that is to obtain permission to raise the bus fare.

They recover the higher rates of petrol from the commuter. It is the common man who ultimately has to bear the brunt of what is happening in areas far from home. Oil price rise is reflected not just in the higher cost of travel: it affects the price of everything that has to be transported. It boosts up inflation which is already high in Pakistan.

So far we have not heard much of a conservation policy which seeks to lower consumption so that we have to import smaller quantities of oil. Petrol rationing could be considered even though it would be difficult to enforce it, given our nonchalance towards discipline and self-restraint. The government should reduce its revenues on petrol and pass on the benefits to the common man until the oil prices drop and stabilize again.

Footnote: It is time the Karachi administration conducted an exercise to determine the rate by which petrol consumption has gone up since the authorities decided to dig up the whole city on the pretext of modernizing our road networks. Has any automobile engineer calculated how much fuel consumption of Karachiites has increased in view of the massive traffic jams and the movement of vehicles on roads full of potholes and huge mounds of earth?