EDIFYING TRAGEDY...

On the eve of the new millennium, the media quite seriously predicted "doomsday". Scientists smiled condescendingly: the millennium arrived only according to one of the many calendars in use around the world while, according to other calendars, the date is not "round", and humanity had already experienced one millennium.

Nevertheless, the beginning of the new century and the new millennium was marked by a series of major natural disasters. First, the world was literally and figuratively shaken by a catastrophe in South Asia: the earthquake near the Andaman Islands and the ensuing tsunami killed 250,000 people, including about 5,000 Europeans spending their Christmas holidays on the beaches of Thailand. Now there is another disaster at the centre of attention: the earthquake on the island of Haiti.

Haiti's information minister gave fresh information on the number of earthquake victims - she said that 150,000 people had been killed in Port-au-Prince alone. Specifically, this number of bodies had been buried in mass graves.

But this number does not include the victims in other cities, or those buried by their relatives. "Nobody knows how many more bodies are still buried under the rubble - two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand? Who knows the total number of victims?" said the minister.

During their work on the island, rescuers extracted more than 130 people who had been able to survive under the rubble. The rescuers were in seventh heaven when they found people alive under the rubble nine and even 14 days after the earthquake.

It is hard to say that the tragedy of Haiti has been neglected. Everyone is helping the poor country and Azerbaijan is no exception. In connection with the disaster, an international conference of foreign minister, the Friends of Haiti, opened in Montreal, Canada. Before the conference, the media announced that the meeting would be chaired by Canada's Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon and would be attended by foreign ministers and delegations from Canada, Argentina, the USA, Uruguay, France, Japan and several other countries, as well as representatives of the UN, the European Union, the Organization of American States, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions and major non-governmental organizations. Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive arrived in Canada to participate in the conference.

The EU allocated 420 million euros to the Haitians. US President Barack Obama donated $15,000 from his personal funds. Large donations were made by the British government and Queen Elizabeth II. Canada collected more than 100 million Canadian dollars for Haiti. Of these, 67 million were donated by ordinary Canadians and 50 million by the federal government, which, according to a statement made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on 23 January, will allocate another 17 million to match the amount collected by citizens.

Japan was severely criticized for donating too little money - $5 million. After that, Tokyo stated its intention to send some 200 military builders to Haiti for the reconstruction of damaged social infrastructure. Hollywood stars are holding charity telethons and donating their own money. In short, it is hard to say that the tragedy in Haiti has been forgotten. However, this disaster made us think about whether the world community is really ready to cope with major humanitarian crises in the third millennium. What proportions of such situations have purely natural causes and what proportion social and political ones?

Alas, experts acknowledge that the death toll is truly comparable with the effects of the "Christmas tsunami". But the "natural" scale of the disaster, unfortunately, makes us think that the tragedy in Haiti has not only, and perhaps not so many, natural roots as social ones. Seismologists say with one voice: according to all norms and calculations, the tremor in Haiti should not have caused a disaster of this magnitude. That is to say, the positions of rich and poor countries are far from equal when confronted by the subterranean elements.

Russian rescuers returning from Haiti gave reporters details which clearly go beyond the concept of "natural disaster". "We picked up cement, and it crumbled in our hands like sand. It is amazing that homes on an island in a seismic zone were built from such material," Kirill Borodin, head of the Tsentrospas search and rescue squad, told Moskovskiy Komsomolets in an interview. "While clearing the rubble, we did not have to use heavy equipment and we worked with sledge hammers and crowbars. We made a manhole in the walls in 5-7 minutes with a simple hammer."

Experts have been saying this from the very outset: construction work in Haiti was carried out without any respect for rules and regulations and with the highest level of theft at all stages. Most buildings in Port-au-Prince are not safe even without an earthquake, and a tremor of seven points destroyed both poor neighbourhoods, the presidential palace and the UN office.

But this is only part of the tragedy. Haiti is faced with an unprecedented upsurge of looting. According to the Russian television programme "Vesti", the city crushed by the earthquake is simply being pulled apart piece by piece. Every day sees local battles in the shopping streets of Port-au-Prince, where all are against all. Human life on this island has never been greatly valued, but now the looters are ready to kill each other for just a pack of cereals or a bottle of water. The police are unable to control the situation.

Port-au-Prince airport, controlled by US marines, is regarded as an island of stability. In fact, the "Green Berets" are the only viable force on the island.

But the most annoying thing is that even when people in Haiti are literally building barricades of corpses, a political smear campaign is flaring around this country which has not had a normal government for several years. Thus Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban revolution, has urged the UN and the US to explain the growing American military presence in Haiti. "In conditions of a humanitarian tragedy in Haiti, thousands of US marines, the 82nd Airborne Division and other military forces have occupied Haitian territory," said Castro, adding that "neither the UN nor the US government have presented world public opinion with an explanation" as to why military units have been sent to the Caribbean republic. The high level of looting, in their opinion, is not a reason for intervention. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, accused the USA of occupation. Against this backdrop, the United States reacted with natural suspicion to the arrival from Venezuela of a Russian transport plane allegedly carrying humanitarian aid. Apparently, the US remembers the lessons of the 1988 earthquake in Armenia, when the cargo on planes which, on paper, carried humanitarian aid, was not inspected and various Armenian "federations" and "assemblies", which were closely related to Armenian terrorist organizations, imported an astronomical number of weapons into Armenia. Some of them were used for the occupation of Karabakh and the rest were placed on the illicit arms market. Washington is right today: the poor Republic of Haiti, torn apart by rivalry between criminal gangs, occupies a very important strategic position and there are plenty of forces in the world ready to turn it into their own launch pad.

"No-one is coordinating the actions of the rescuers working in Haiti, which is why the aid allocated to victims is not being used efficiently. The work involves reputable organizations, a huge amount of work has yet to be done, but the situation in Haiti is sad. Everything could be organized much better," said the head of the Italian Civil Defence Service, Guido Bertolaso.

Bertolaso believes that "too often, upon arriving at the scene of a disaster, people immediately put up a large poster with the name of their organization: they think of looking good in front of TV cameras rather than helping those who need aid."

In the meantime, specialists are asking other tough questions: what if a "humanitarian crisis" happens in two places at once? Does the world have a good "response procedure " to such disasters, a clear pattern of action and, finally, a good procedure for interaction? Is there an international service meant to respond to such situations, or is all hope based on "help from good people", regardless of whether it is international aid or help from charitable organizations?

But most importantly, the disaster in Haiti revealed what the world simply preferred not to think about. Countries of the world can be divided by many labels: monarchies and republics, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist countries, democratic and dictatorial ones. But the clearest and frankest label is the gap between rich and the poor. As it turns out, this determines almost everything, even the chances of survival in a natural disaster. Because in the first crucial hours, you are face to face with the local authorities and the consequences of their policies - from the creation of civil defence services to compliance with construction regulations. For example, in the Indian Ocean there was no tsunami warning system and in Haiti they literally built from sand rather than cement.