Above ground

OPINION: Hope, for Haiti, must now turn from what lies beneath the rubble to what lies atop it, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

That is not an easy thing, as case after case of extraordinary rescue emerges to captivate attention.

These are, in themselves, wonderful stories of survival. Heaven knows that the international audience, watching as unflinchingly as it can bear, is in the market for some uplift from this horrow show.

The rescues make for more vivid reports than the tedious heartbreak of the much less reported, but so much more commonplace, series of false alarms; case after case in which despairing loved ones have insisted they heard someone – and maybe they did – only to have exhausted searchers finally back off, suck up their own emotions and fatigue, and move to the next cry.

Now the official priority has changed; as it must. This is not to deny that in cases where hope might somehow flicker, and an insistent whistleblower can make himself or herself believed, searchers will come running. Human nature demands no less. But such rescues will be, for the most part, unofficial. The sorrowful call had to be made to turn greater practical attention to Haiti's above-ground torments. Maybe 200,000 people have been killed, but more than that have been injured an need help, and perhaps 2 million are homeless.

There may yet be a temptation for international sympathy to retreat, without the instant emotional payoff that can be shown each time a rescued child raises arms in joy; or a woman on a stretcher erupts into exultant song. It falls to governments and to their citizens to resist this.

United States President Barack Obama promised the people of Haiti: "You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten ... much, much more help is on the way." That bespeaks of a practical compassion that has not only stamina but also smarts – the sort to confront awful infrastructural problems throughout the ravaged land. The extreme difficulties putting aid into the hands of those most needing it make for frustrating and upsetting reading and viewing, it's true, but none of this excuses any inclination to turn away from the ugliness of it all.

In any case, it's not all ugly. Former US president Bill Clinton's insistence that Haiti could emerge from these trials a better place than before is perhaps less a shimmering goal than it sounds; so hellish was the daily struggle for so many Haitians beforehand.

At the other end of the predictive spectrum can be found those who grimly raise the possibility that what emerges from the ruins is something less than a functioning country, given how weak the government was to begin with; how environmentally shredded the land is; how rampant the social corruption and how ineffectual so much of the infrastructure was, how juvenile (in age terms) the population – all of which made this, by so many standards, the most unenviable western hemisphere country before the nightmare of the quake and its aftermath.

Countering this view we have the reminders, not only from the rhetoric of the stellar fundraisers in events such as the Hope for Haiti telethon marshalled by George Clooney and others, but also from a raft of reporters, of the staggering resilience that the people of Haiti have shown, throughout their hard history, in recent years, and even in recent days.

Medicine, food and water, shelter and security are desperately needed and can be provided if the international will is there. But the aching need will stretch beyond the next few weeks and months, into perhaps five or 10 years. This is achievable, if societies instruct their governments to make it so, and monitor progress closely. Haiti needs no more tears shed on its behalf. It needs help of a steely, sustained and purposeful sort.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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