Smart Relief
I'm frustrated in trying to find it online, but the Wall Street Journal had an inside article yesterday on the disaster relief work Singapore is doing. Singapore deserves its place on the "A" list of donor nations; it is providing millions of dollars and essential logistical support for the U.S. and Australia.
But there's more. Singapore is practiced in the role of being capable, but overlooked, in world affairs. It knows what the big muscular superheroes will do, and it knows what they will forget to do. And it adapts itself to what it anticipates.
The "Journal" article shows a good instance of this. When word of the disaster on Sumatra spread, the world responded with an enourmous outpouring of money and materiel. Most of it quickly got to the provincial capitals on the island -- and then stalled. The west coast of Sumatra, hardest-hit by the tsunami, is still largely cut off. Overland routes from the cities are capillary thin.
Singapore anticipated all this, and dispatched its small but efficient military and fleet to concentrate on opening up an access on the west coast, just 30 miles from the quake's epicenter, in the small city of Melulaboh.
Supplies now are moving into Meulaboh at 20 times the rate before the ship arrived, the "Journal" reports.
But there's more. Singapore is practiced in the role of being capable, but overlooked, in world affairs. It knows what the big muscular superheroes will do, and it knows what they will forget to do. And it adapts itself to what it anticipates.
The "Journal" article shows a good instance of this. When word of the disaster on Sumatra spread, the world responded with an enourmous outpouring of money and materiel. Most of it quickly got to the provincial capitals on the island -- and then stalled. The west coast of Sumatra, hardest-hit by the tsunami, is still largely cut off. Overland routes from the cities are capillary thin.
Singapore anticipated all this, and dispatched its small but efficient military and fleet to concentrate on opening up an access on the west coast, just 30 miles from the quake's epicenter, in the small city of Melulaboh.
Exploiting its local knowledge and close contacts with the Indonesian military, Singapore's armed forces concluded that what remained of the flattened coastal towns and villages would be out of reach of most of the food, clothing and medicines pouring in from abroad. The solution: Dispatch a Navy landing ship packed with motor vehicles, earth-moving equipment and its own smaller landing craft to establish an aid beachhead for an area where all infrastructure -- roads, landing strips and harbors -- had been obliterated.
The strategy paid off this week, when Singapore Army engineers and Navy divers secured two landing sites on the still-shifting shoreline to enable the ship to start unloading bulldozers, mechanical shovels and forklifts to begin heavy-duty relief work. That will allow Meulaboh to become a hub for restoration work along Aceh's west coast, where tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed.
Supplies now are moving into Meulaboh at 20 times the rate before the ship arrived, the "Journal" reports.
