The Piper PA-31 Navajo took off into the sultry Miami morning and streaked southward toward the Caribbean. High over Haiti, the cameras inside began to snap. Behind this reconnaissance mission was, of all things, a financial institution: the World Bank, symbol of globalisation and, to many, the hubris of wealthy nations.
But this was hardly some clandestine operation. On the contrary, the aerial photographs taken that January morning in 2010, shortly after a powerful earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, were soon uploaded to the Web for all to see, along with an invitation to help World Bank specialists assess the damage and figure out how to aid Haiti.
The appeal marked a radical departure for the often close-to-the-vest World Bank, which, like its brother, the IMF, has been called everything from arrogant to inept. The World Bank, you see, wants the world to know that it is finally opening up, albeit slowly and, at times, a bit painfully.
The IMF has grabbed the hot headlines lately, having become a tabloid fixture after its leader, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was accused of sexually assaulting a housekeeper in a Midtown Manhattan hotel. That allegation began unraveling on Friday, when prosecutors themselves questioned the victim?s credibility.
But while the IMF is busy with scandal and the debt crisis now shaking Europe, officials at the World Bank?s headquarters here are confronting some existential questions, including the big one: What exactly are we doing here?
It might come as a surprise that the president of the World Bank, Robert B Zoellick , a career diplomat and member of the Republican foreign-policy elite, argues that the most valuable currency of the World Bank isn?t its money ? it is its information.
Created in 1944 and, by custom, headed by an American, the World Bank initially helped finance the reconstruction of war-torn Europe. Since then, it has extended many trillions in loans for a wide variety of projects, be they institutions like schools and hospitals, infrastructure like roads or, controversially, environmentally unfriendly projects like coal-fired power plants and hydroelectric dams.
Along the way the World Bank, like the IMF, has tinkered with entire economies, sometimes with disastrous results. Yet the Haiti flights ? which cost about the same as a World Bank report ? were the harbinger of a quiet revolution now gripping this aloof institution.
More than 600 engineers in 21 countries analysed the data collected over Haiti, and their conclusions ? essentially what to rebuild and where ? have since been used by the Haitian government, relief organizations, companies and myriad others.