The New York Times: It took them more than five years and required the star power of Hollywood names like Brad Pitt and leading evangelicals like Pat Robertson. But the potent campaign built by Granola Belt charities, flamboyant rock musicians and movie celebrities, number-crunching economists, conservative and liberal religious groups - not to mention the Dalai Lama - finally helped persuade the world's wealthiest nations to forgive the debt of some of the world's poorest.
Half a dozen commissions and reports have already called for the elimination of the more than $40 billion in debt that has hobbled the world's poorest countries for decades. Experts agreed that the money would never be paid back and that simply keeping up with interest payments was forcing countries to charge fees for elementary schools and health care at the most rudimentary clinics.
But policy makers from Washington to Berlin hesitated, torn between memories of corrupt governments that misspent and pocketed much of the aid themselves and contemporary fears that debt relief was just the opening salvo in a campaign that would require far more money than some wanted to spend.
They were right. But in the end it did not matter. The dam broke as the campaign grew in numbers - about 150 million people at the last count - and in sophistication. Led by Bono, the Irish rock star, the African debt-relief campaign made enough strategic alliances, especially with conservative groups and within the Bush White House, that some success proved inevitable.
