Seattle Sequel

By Adam Zagorin

As a farm child in Kenya, Njoki Njehu grew up in a house with no electricity and worked after school with her five brothers and sisters on plots of bananas, sugarcane and maize. From her mother, a champion of women's and environmental causes, Njehu imbibed the importance of social protest--a lesson she learned well enough to emerge as a top leader of the tens of thousands of opponents of global capitalism who are expected to converge in Washington this week on meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The target of their wrath: everything from the treatment of endangered sea turtles to trade with China and a proposal put forward by the most powerful nations on earth to reduce, but hardly eliminate, the debt of the most impoverished countries.

Protesters have dubbed the upcoming 10 days of '60s-style rallies, teach-ins and street theater "Seattle Two: The Sequel," a clear reference to the riotous demonstrations that shook a World Trade Organization meeting in that city late last year. Fifteen hundred of the capital's finest, backed by federal law-enforcement agencies on 24-hour alert, will try to block any reappearance of the black-hooded anarchists who inflicted millions of dollars of damage on downtown Seattle. Njehu, who heads a coalition of more than 200 groups, will be on hand, along with thousands of union members, religious activists and environmentalists. Makeshift kitchens will serve free food, and rock bands will crank out hymns of protest.

"It's going to be a real festival of resistance," says Scott Nova, director of the Citizens Trade Campaign, a prime mover in Seattle. "We want to stop the current model of globalism that helps giant corporations at the expense of virtually everyone else."

Activists are targeting the IMF and World Bank partly because the organizations are creditors for much of the $350 billion owed by the world's impoverished countries (a sum just one-third of the value lost on the NASDAQ over the past three months). Of these, many of the poorest, like Mozambique, Honduras and Myanmar, have little hope of making repayment. Drastic steps to relieve their plight have gained a spectrum of supporters, including Pope John Paul II; Bono, the U2 rock-band singer; and Jubilee 2000, an international faith-based coalition.

Of all the world's poor, the nations of sub-Saharan Africa are the most heavily indebted, owing some $200 billion, equivalent to roughly three times the value of their annual exports. Across a region where per capita GNP is barely $300, external debt per capita clocks in at more than $360. Although their citizens are ravaged by AIDS, African governments spend roughly four times as much on interest payments as on health care. Says Njehu: "Make no mistake, the people hardest hit by austerity programs adopted because of debt problems are the poor--the same people who benefited least from the original loans."

Her demand for a sweeping and unconditional forgiveness of debt pits Njehu and many other protesters against leaders of the world's prosperous countries. To be sure, no one doubts the substantial rewards of debt reduction. A relief program enabled Uganda to save $45 million in debt service in 1999 alone, helping it cut tuition fees and almost double enrollment in primary schools in just two years. "Debt relief for the poorest countries is both a moral and economic imperative," asserts U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

Many industrial powers hardly doubt that. With great fanfare, the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany and France have all announced sweeping debt cancellations within the past year--a policy that recognized that most of the money was uncollectible. At the same time, the U.S. and its major trading partners have created an incentive program for more than 40 HIPCS (heavily indebted poor countries), which could make an additional $50 billion to $90 billion available by 2003.

But there's a catch. Fears that loans forgiven without strings attached will only enrich corrupt governments without helping the poor have led rich countries to impose strict conditions. As a result, the benefits of debt relief have so far been limited to a few desperate countries like Mali, Guyana and Burkina Faso. Many others, including Nigeria and Haiti, may be years away from similar programs.

Moreover, the U.S. Congress and legislators in other wealthy nations have been slow to vote the funds that could substantially lighten loan burdens. And even when money has been forthcoming, the heavily indebted recipients must often submit to grueling belt-tightening regimens to qualify for assistance. "These programs have nothing to do with the real state of social emergency in much of the world," argues Jeffrey Sachs, a Harvard professor and leading proponent of unconditional debt elimination. "They're purely bureaucratic exercises that delay what needs to be done."

Of course, none of this will be resolved in Washington this week. But the protests will surely raise the temperature of debates on global-trade and economic issues. For demonstrators, their appetites whetted by Seattle, the agenda includes the U.S. political conventions this summer. And preparations are also under way for a series of major protests in Prague when the World Bank and IMF meet there in September. Njoki Njehu plans to be there too.