Messages To The Iranian People
December 30, 2003
The Post and Courier
charleston.net
There's nothing like a massive natural disaster for testing the leadership of a nation's government and its ability to render aid to its people. On that score, the massive earthquake in Iran has tested that nation's theocratic leaders and found them sadly wanting. Three entire days passed before supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mohammad Khatami visited the devastated city of Bam, where at least 25,000 people have died in the worst earthquake recorded in the past decade.
While the ayatollahs were deciding whether to make the 600-mile flight to the once fabled but now flattened city on the ancient Silk Road to the East, aid was arriving from all over the world, but most of all from the West and most of that from the United States -- in Iran aka "The Great Satan." In 1990, when 40,000 Iranians lost their lives in an earthquake, all international aid was refused. This time the relatively moderate President Khatami did make a heart-rending appeal for international help, acknowledging that his government simply could not handle a disaster of such huge proportions.
The United States responded immediately. A Charleston-based C-17 cargo jet left Saturday to pick up medicines and rescue equipment, joining seven U.S. Air Force C-130s that landed in Bam and Kerman, the provincial capital, with disaster teams and relief supplies.
A Reuters news agency reporter said that the residents of Bam welcomed help from any quarter, even the United States, quoting one man who lost his family in the quake as saying, "When our own government cannot help, let the Great Satan help us. We pay taxes and yet in cases like this, there is no one to help us."
Survivors complained that the government failed them and contended that bulldozers were used to clear the rubble when search teams could have saved lives. Criticism was so harsh that late on Monday President Khatami called a full Cabinet meeting for today in Kerman to try to demonstrate that the government is doing its utmost to help. Obviously President Khatami has not forgotten that the inadequate response of the shah to the 1978 quake that killed 15,000 people contributed to his downfall a year later.
Even the state-controlled Iran Daily reported that the high death toll was caused by the government's failure to enforce building codes or learn from previous disasters and noted that the Bam earthquake was about the same intensity of the quake that struck California last week, causing only two deaths.
By immediately offering aid and speeding help to the stricken victims, Washington has sent an important message to the Iranian people that the United States puts humanitarian concern above politics. President Bush was describing the rulers of Iran, not the Iranian people, when he included their nation in the "axis of evil," along with Iraq and North Korea. On a more practical level, the rapid response to the earthquake by the United States sent another important message: democracies handle natural disasters far better than repressive authoritarian regimes.
http://www.charleston.net/stories/123003/edi_30edit2.shtml"President Bush was describing the rulers of Iran, not the Iranian people, when he included their nation in the "axis of evil," along with Iraq and North Korea."
I think this message is finally reaching people.
Criticism was so harsh that late on Monday President Khatami called a full Cabinet meeting for today in Kerman to try to demonstrate that the government is doing its utmost to help. Obviously President Khatami has not forgotten that the inadequate response of the shah to the 1978 quake that killed 15,000 people contributed to his downfall a year later. Even the state-controlled Iran Daily reported that the high death toll was caused by the government's failure to enforce building codes or learn from previous disasters and noted that the Bam earthquake was about the same intensity of the quake that struck California last week, causing only two deaths.
Sometimes good comes out of unfortunate circumstances. It sounds like a harsh dose of reality has been administered. It is a shame that the cost in human life has been so very high.