IN ALL colossal disasters, what stands out is the resilience of people who have lost everything but their lives: their loves, their livelihoods, and the most basic tools of survival right down to the humble but indispensable bucket. Even so, five days of utter destitution is a lifetime — may literally be all that was left of life for many of the elderly, wounded and vulnerable. Hundreds of thousands have now gone that long without food, water and/or water purifiers and basic medicines, let alone shelter. The survivors poke through sharp-edged, putrid rubble or huddle in makeshift refuges; and they wait and wait for help.

So much, it seems, for the global village. Anguish is sharpened by anger, and not only among the victims. How, people ask, can it be that help should have been so slow to reach the tsunami victims? A second catastrophe now threatens to engulf thousands who survived the killer waves.

This second, slower-moving tragedy cannot entirely be averted. Even if relief operations pick up speed, thousands more will die. Geography is partly responsible. Although the devastation is coastal, leaving hinterlands theoretically able to muster relief, island chains such as the Andaman and Maldives have no hinterland and in Sumatra, the devastated Aceh coast backs upon a war zone closed to outsiders and most non-local Indonesians. So total is the destruction of roads, railways, ports, airstrips, power supplies and telephone connections, clinics and hospitals, that local services are paralysed.

National reactions vary, with India’s administrators coping efficiently while others are gripped by near panic. Civil wars in Sri Lanka and Sumatra, two of the areas worst affected, create extra problems — in Sri Lanka, minefield markers were destroyed and landmines scattered. And the needs are colossal; where, for Sri Lanka alone, do you find overnight more than a million cooking pots and water containers?

Almost never has so much external help been needed so fast, or with so little advance warning. The number of countries involved also complicates the task. For example, American, Japanese and Australian naval vessels, with onboard hospitals and water desalination plants as well as food, medicines and military sappers, are heading to the disaster areas; but they cannot go into action until their governments secure host-country clearance. In Aceh, that is no mere formality. But neither the scale nor the suddenness excuses the present chaos, chaos that will mount this weekend as emergency supplies stack up at airstrips from which they cannot be moved.

The “international community” is theoretically well prepared; yet in faraway New York, bureaucracy’s wheels are spinning. At the grandly titled Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jan Egeland — the man who four days ago was righteously lecturing the rich world for its tight-fistedness — seems more intent on counting beans than on delivering them. There is, he concedes, more than enough cash to cover immediate needs — $280 million from governments plus donated emergency supplies worth at least as much and extraordinary levels of private giving. But because most of this is pledged to the Red Cross and other charities, or direct to governments, the UN insists on mounting its own appeal, for $130 million now and vastly more when it convenes a formal donor conference next week.

Hundreds of laden cargo aircraft are awaiting landing clearance; flotillas of ships, military and civilian, have been mobilised. Yet Mr Egeland says: “We are doing very little at the moment,” and “it will take maybe 48 to 72 hours more to be able to respond.” If that is the best OCHA’s 700 staff can do, the outfit might as well shut up shop.

This is a far-flung and abrupt emergency, but if OCHA’s contingency plans were worth a cent, they ought to be operative by now. To avoid the wrong goods, in the wrong quantities, clogging scarce ports and runways, co-ordination is important. But so is an early burst of speed. When people have nothing, slowness kills.

The head of the World Health Organisation’s crisis team — which to be fair is a lot less flat-footed — says that it is urgent for the UN to come up fast with “a reasonably clear strategy and a budget”. His reason: donor governments, he fears, “will not wait much longer before they start sending their planes and their money”.

Perish the thought that they might just get on with the job! This institutional mindset, prevalent in the UN, is a disaster in itself. So is its administrative havoc. Since the Bangladesh famine in 1971, a dozen UN disaster units have been created, each with mandates as planners, fundraisers and co-ordinators far beyond their capacities. OCHA cannot even organise disaster relief within the UN, so fierce are the rivalries between its multiple little empires.

Duplication abounds. In addition to OCHA, there is UNDAC for Disaster Assessment and Co-ordination; and nearly all UN agencies have their own disasters unit. This week the UNDP, whose remit is development not emergencies, zealously dispatched “disaster reduction” specialists from its Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. Galaxies of other UN “experts”, even from the UNFPA (family planning), are packing flights to Asia. India has explicitly declined help and has capacity to spare to aid neighbouring Sri Lanka and the Maldives, but that has not spared it unsolicited UN advice.

Thus, it is worse than mindless piety for Oxfam to insist on the UN’s leading role. It is dangerous twaddle because manifestly this massively complex disaster is beyond it. What matters is what works, and because situations differ, flexible and pragmatic combinations will achieve results fastest. Flexibility and pragmatism are not UN hallmarks. In 1971, a report issued by the UN Secretary-General stated bluntly that the bodies best equipped for emergency relief were governments, the Red Cross and voluntary bodies, and that “the United Nations system is not geared for action of this kind, nor is it realistic to suppose that, given its structure, it could become so”. Thirty-three years later, that truth should at last be acknowledged. But the post mortem can wait. The need now is to cut corners and get results.

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