‘We are all that they have’

The king and the queen of an endangered aboriginal tribe vowed on Wednesday to rebuild their jungle kingdom on an isolated Indian island that was smashed by the Indian Ocean tsunamis.

King Jirake wields absolute power over his 48 Great Andamanese subjects on Strait Island, 250km from Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.

The 62-year-old king and his queen, Surmai, shepherded their subjects to the safety of a hilltop as the giant waves crashed ashore on December 26.

“Everything was swept away; our houses, boats, bows and arrows, spears and our stock of whisky,” said Jirake, near a hospital in Port Blair where he was rushed on December 28 for treatment for stress.

A total of 1 492 people died on the Andaman and Nicobar islands, according to an official count, and more than 5 000 are missing and feared dead.

“We can make new bows and arrows, but we will have to buy our whisky,” the king told a local reporter in a rare interview arranged by tribal supporters.

India doles out cash to the Great Andamanese to buy goods through intermediaries.

“Now we go back to our land and resume our lifestyle,” said the Great Andamanese queen, obliged to wear a modern Indian dress near the state-run hospital in Port Blair.

“We wear knitted leaves, hunt pigs, turtles and fish, and we live on the beaches, and this costume and shoes feel terrible,” the diminutive king said, clad in cotton trousers, a long-sleeved shirt and rubber-soled shoes.

“We feel like prisoners. We are going back to take stock of our people; after all, we are all that they have,” said Jirake, who was “elected” king more than a decade ago after his father died.

He himself lost eight brick-and-mortar shelters provided by the state on his island.

The royal couple, accompanied by their 25-year-old princess, Tango, spoke in broken Hindi that they have picked up from Indian officials in charge of welfare for Negrito aboriginal tribes who survive on the archipelago.

The Great Andamanese numbered 10 000 in 1789. But their friendliness to outsiders who brought measles, syphilis and influenza saw their numbers shrink to 625 in 1901. By 1969, only 19 Andamanese survived, according to Indian government figures.

They were resettled on Strait Island to try to protect their society.

India’s 1971 census shows a population of 24 surviving Great Andamanese, but by 1999 their number had grown to 41 and the population swelled to 49 last year.

Photography of Andaman’s Stone Age tribal people is banned by an order of the Supreme Court and access to their habitats is blocked by the local administration.

The forager Andamanese are among five endangered primitive tribes in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. They are 200 warrior-like Sentinelese, the 98-member Onge, 350 Jarawa and 250 hunter-gatherer Shompens.

All appear to have survived the tsunamis in their reclusive reserves, anthropologists say.

Modernity has, however, touched Princess Tango, a mother of three. She loves to watch a television provided by the Andamanese administration and prefers Bollywood films starring heartthrob actor Shahrukh Khan.

“I also go out with the boys to hunt, but dad does not like it,” said the princess.

The Andamans’ tribal community also includes 30 000 Nicobarese, many of whom have been integrated in mainstream society. Thousands of Nicobarese are, however, missing and feared dead.

Spotlight on UN

Meanwhile, the spotlight fell on Wednesday on the United Nations’s key role in coordinating fractured international relief efforts, after it cajoled and prodded donor nations to pay at least $717-million to help tsunami victims in record time.

The UN’s chief humanitarian coordinator, Jan Egeland, could barely hide his elation late on Tuesday, after the conference with governments and aid agencies largely covered the world body’s five day-old appeal for $977-million for six months.

“We also have the achievement of a united world asking the UN to stay in the lead of international assistance,” Egeland said.

But many of the 80 governments involved and independent aid agencies signalled that the UN, and in particular the outfit that Egeland heads, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), must do its primary task properly.

“I’m acutely aware after this meeting how much the eyes of the international community are on us,” Egeland told journalists.

Since the massive earthquake and ensuing tsunamis on December 26 killed more than 158 000 people, ravaged coastlines and left several million in need of help with shelter, food and health care, the giant aid operation has at times stuttered.

Three days after the disaster, the United States announced that it would join with Australia, Japan and India in a “core group” to lead the effort. But it withdrew the idea last week, leaving the way clear for the UN to play its traditional coordinating role.

“From a political point of view, [UN Secretary General] Kofi Annan needs a success story,” said Ed Schenkenberg, coordinator of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies.

“He needs to show the international community, especially the US, that the UN is out there coordinating the humanitarian aid.”

The head of the US government’s development agency (USAid) underlined this week that the unprecedented effort faces huge logistical challenges, and is still struggling to reach people in remote parts of the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Bottlenecks have also built up at airports on the island of Sumatra, hampering the distribution of supplies from a host of countries and agencies.

“We also have a problem with coordination, which is why we need Ocha and the UN to do what they do typically so well,” USAid administrator Andrew Natsios said.

“They have a convening authority, to get everybody in the same room who is working on this. It’s a very important power: the convening authority,” Natsios added.

Officials also hinted that it took longer than expected in some instances for assessment teams to report back on full needs.

“With such a large-scale disaster, it is very hard to do an assessment. It is chaotic in the beginning,” Schenkenberg said. “Some countries want to be seen as doing something good for the victims of the tsunami, they have pressures from their constituencies, so they send their aid without much coordination.”

The head of emergencies at the aid group Médécins sans Frontières, Laurent Ligozat, said some actors are more interested in public relations.

“Coordination is not always a priority for everyone,” he said.

Ocha was set up in 1998, to bolster the UN’s fragmented and much-criticised humanitarian department.

It is meant to be a platform ensuring communication between countries affected by a disaster, donor nations and aid workers, to ensure the right international relief reaches victims swiftly and efficiently, and avoid duplication between separate aid agencies.

Ocha’s tasks range from political action, such as the conference in Geneva, to localised coordination with meetings in the field.

Schenkenberg underlined the value of local aid workers in disaster zones.

“Local NGOs have the best knowledge of the situation on the ground. Their information is crucial, but often they are not part of the coordination process,” he said. — Sapa-AFP

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