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Tuesday, 7 March 2006
Uncertain future for quake survivors
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Anwar Gul is a food aid monitor for the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
He spends his days in the camps and villages where WFP delivers food to the survivors of the last October's South Asian earthquake.
Here he reports on people's uncertain future.
Naseema has nothing of value in her tent.
The only thing she cherishes is a picture of her son who died in the earthquake last October.
She is still waiting to hear from her husband.
"My husband has been missing since the earthquake. Maybe he will come back," she says.
Naseema lives in the Challa Bandi tent camp in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
She comes from Dhani Mai, a village close to this town.
She left her village after her house collapsed during the earthquake on 8 October.
She used to make a living from a 200-chicken poultry farm. But the farm collapsed as well and all the animals died.
She cannot even go back to her village.
It is only one and a half kilometres from Muzaffarabad, but the bridge was destroyed and it is now impossible to cross the river.
"I don't know what I will do when the camp closes down and the aid stops, I am worried," she says.
She has nowhere to go, no sources of income and no family support.
'Not Safe'
In the neighbouring tents, the stories are similar.
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Muhammad and Sakeena Yousef lost one son in the earthquake.
They want to go back to their village of Panjkot, in the lower Neelum Valley, 60km away, as soon as the roads are cleared and weather eases.
But they are not sure what they will do there.
"We have a small piece of land but it is completely cracked and part of it collapsed. It will take several years to get back to normal," says Muhammad.
He would like to plant maize in April but he has no seeds to do so.
If he cannot plant, he will look for work as a labourer.
It will be difficult as the area is poor and work may not be available.
His neighbour in the next tent, Dilawar Khan, says he does not want to go back to his village.
"I want to go away from Kashmir to look for work in Lahore or Rawalpindi. There will be other earthquakes here, the place is not safe," he explains.
He has a family of 12 relatives to take care of.
One of his daughters was injured during the earthquake and is now in a wheelchair. She needs intensive care.
A woman widowed by the earthquake asks for a sewing machine.
"I dream of having a sewing machine — this is my only way to make some money," she explains.
'Uncertainty'
It is not only the people in the camps who are worried.
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Even in remote villages, what to do next is the common question.
"I need to start my life from zero again," says Irfran, a farmer and father of eight children who lives in Panjkot.
He has a small piece of land, but because of the major cracks due to the earthquake, he has had to pitch his tent on the only cultivable part.
"I don't know where I can cultivate or what I am going to cultivate," he says.
He lost his seeds under the rubble of his house and has no other source of income.
Uncertainty is the best word that describes these people's predicament.
They have no way to generate an income now and have so far relied on the WFP, which has been distributing food to one million people in the earthquake affected areas.
Winter is not completely over yet but people are already worried about what they are going to do when spring arrives.
Many in the camps want to go back to their villages but they have very little to go back to.
Others would rather stay in the valley but they have no houses or work there.
About 2.8m people were left without shelters, assets or livelihoods by the earthquake and hundreds of thousands are living in camps in the valleys.
The government has decided to close down the camps by 31 March to encourage people to return early and start reconstruction.
Many thought the most difficult part would be to make it through winter. But now they face enormous challenges ahead.
Food-for-work schemes
People need to rebuild their houses, clear their fields, find a way to make an income and start living a normal life again in a still devastated area.
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About a quarter of the livestock was destroyed while a third of the standing crops were not harvested last October.
Significant food and seeds supplies were also lost in the earthquake.
The average landholding is small — 1.4 hectares per family. Usually only half of it is cultivated.
Few families can meet their entire food requirements from their own production.
They need to rely on additional labour which will be difficult to find.
The earthquake destroyed many urban and rural markets. Traders lost stocks, access to credit, markets, and transport corridors.
Economic activity may be slow to develop.
Damage from landslides is likely to be exacerbated by mudslides and flash flows during the snowmelt in March and the monsoon in June.
Between 50% -100% of irrigation structures and water system were damaged or buried.
Many natural springs have also dried up as a result of seismic shifts.
Terraces and retaining walls also require significant rehabilitation.
It is feared that this year's July winter wheat harvest and the October harvest of maize and rice will be significantly reduced by losses of draught animals, terracing, retaining walls, water systems, seed, fertilisers and adult farm labour.
More than ever, the future looks uncertain.
Many people who have no way to generate an income rapidly, say they would be willing to be part of WFP food-for-work schemes.
WFP plans to provide people with food in exchange for working on community infrastructure, focusing on forestry, agriculture and road repair.
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Pakistan's military government will not allow helicopters flown by Indian pilots to assist rescue efforts Thousands of people are now having limbs amputated, many because of a delay in rescue. “Islamabad said it was unacceptable for Indian military personnel to be operating in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.” | Musharraf won't allow Indian pilots to help in rescuing hundreds of thousands still not attended.
Many now who will die.
Many who if they survive will have to have limbs amputated due to the delay. |
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PAKISTAN:
QUAKE SHELTERS VS NEW ARMY HQ
Karachi, 22 Nov. (AKI) — At the recent international donors conference for Pakistan's earthquake survivors, the European Union issued a statement outlining clear guidelines on how Islamabad should allocate rehabilitation and reconstruction funds.
Despite these guidelines and the government's assurances that money will be used appropriately, the Pakistan Army is insisting that its general headquarters have to be rebuilt.
And as many survivors are struggling without adequate shelter the government has recently purchased two special aircraft for use by the prime minister.
Soon after the 8 October earthquake, Pakistan deferred its purchase of F-16 fighter jets from the United States, to focus on relief and reconstruction work. The Pakistani authorities say more than 73,000 people have died and an estimated 3.3 million people remain homeless after the disaster.
The countries of the European Union form a significant component of the international relief that has come into Pakistan for the earthquake victims. The EU has pledged 274 million dollars.
In a brief circulated at the donor’s conference in Islamabad last Saturday, the EU stressed the need for austerity and reprioritisation in Pakistan's budget and welcomed the decision to defer some military expenditure to future years, calling it the right step to take.
Pakistani economists have stated that most of the resources for the rehabilitation operation will have to be generated locally.
"The bulk of the requirement of at least 250-300 billion rupees [about 4-5 billion US dollars] will have to be met from domestic sources. This will require a combination of the reduction of defence expenditure (to begin with the discontinuation of the plans to build a new General Headquarters), expenditure reprioritisation, postponement of some projects and higher budget deficits,” Shahid Kardar, economist and former finance minister of the Punjab province was quoted as saying in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times.
The powerful Pakistani army insists that the money needed for building new headquarters will not be drawn from the national budget, but from the sale of land owned by the army. However many observers feel that whether the money is generated from the sale of land or from the national budget, with the current crisis caused by the earthquake, such funds should be used to help the victims who are struggling now to survive through the Himalayan winter.
The opposition has been critical specifically about the construction of army headquarters.
The purchase of special aircraft for Pakistani premier, Shaukat Aziz, is another issue that has been highlighted by the media since the donors conference. One newspaper reported the planned purchase of two planes and said that such an exorbitant expense was inappropriate at a time when the country needed the funds for reconstruction.
The government insisted that the aircraft used by the prime minister was obsolete and therefore the purchase was necessary and the orders had already been placed. However independent sources point out that during the rule of the former premier Nawaz Sharif, [the prime minister who was deposed in the military coup by current president General Pervez Musharraf] he had set a precedent of using the aircraft of the Pakistan International Airlines whenever he traveled.
(Syed Saleem Shahzad/Aki) Nov-22-05
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Saturday, 29 October 2005
Survivors ponder life without livelihoods
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After the powerful South Asian earthquake, people from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province told the BBC News website how their livelihoods were shattered by the disaster.
When landslides submerged his mountainside orchards, Altaf Mohammed lost the sole source of his family's income.
"My father planted these trees himself decades ago. The day of the earthquake, his entire life's work was demolished in front of his eyes."
Mr Mohammed owned acres of apple, apricot, and walnut trees, which brought in about £35,000 a year. This supported his extended family in Pakistan and financed him through a PhD in the UK where he is studying small business development in emerging economies.
"I was planning to sell a piece of this land to sustain myself and complete research, but now there's nothing to sell.
My future is uncertain.
I don't know how I can fund myself through the rest of this PhD.
I may have to give up everything."
The trauma has reduced Mr Mohammed's family to a continuous grim silence, and he says that the uncertainty of the coming years is never mentioned.
"We are lucky to have our lives but we have to ask if our life is worth it?
What will we do?
It's not like we have a welfare state."
No more livings
The mountains of Pakistan's NWFP hosts some of the most fertile land in the country and local populations were heavily dependent on agriculture, orchards and livestock for income.
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Rab Nawaz works for the World Wildlife Fund on a project to help rural tribal communities in northern NWFP use natural resources to make a living through kitchen gardening, animal husbandry and orchard cultivation.
He said that much of their efforts over the last ten years have been reduced to rubble as the earthquake destroyed farming infrastructure.
"Whole mountainsides have disappeared.
There is just a big gap where the mountain has slipped into the river.
There used to be crops here, farming land is no more."
Irrigation channels have been lost and people haven't been able to harvest their crop.
What has been harvested was lost when grain stores collapsed in the quake.
Many tribal people depended on livestock and these perished in the disaster."
Rebuilding lives
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (UNFAO) has sent teams to the affected areas to assess the damage done to local livelihoods and their initial findings echo these experiences.
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Halka Otto, Operations Officer at UNFAO said, "When the mountain shook entire fields were lost and livestock just slid into rivers, and these are contaminated at the moment. Most livelihoods will need to be completely rebuilt."
The charity Action Aid is involved in livelihood reconstruction but currently aid organisations are battling to cope with the psychological trauma of the losses.
Ancestral land destroyed
Ejaz-Ur-Rehman Khan lost scores of relatives when his ancestral village in the Kaghan valley was demolished.
"I had farming land but the landslides have destroyed that.
It's covered with boulders now.
Nothing was spared and it took only a minute for everything to be destroyed."
But the bulk of Mr Khan's income came from a tourist inn he set up in Abbottabad.
That too collapsed from the force of the quake.
"I don't know where my next meal is coming from.
I have no land, no business anymore.
I'm trying to do what Robinson Crusoe did and salvage what bits I can but there is little left.
After I worked so hard and just started to make returns, it is so sad."
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Mohammed Suleyman, whose family farmed wheat and maize, is contemplating leaving his ancestral land in Balakot, Pakistan.
"We love our land but people are moving away.
Our land was so valuable before but now it has no value.
Balakot is a place of great darkness now."
Many others who have also lost family members, homes and livelihoods feel there is nothing left for them in these mountains and valleys.
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Children die as winter snow sweeps quake valleys
As temperatures plummet in the foothills of the Himalayas, Dan McDougall reports on the misery of Pakistani Kashmir, where cold and disease are multiplying the woes of the disaster's survivors
Sunday December 4, 2005
The Observer Looking down from the snowline at dusk, the glow of thousands of campfires emerges across the valley as the temperature plummets, each flicker signifying another homeless family out in the numbing cold. Along the freezing roads of the Himalayan foothills, 8,000 ft above sea level, haulage trucks heave their way around corners, their lights shining on flimsy canvas tents at every turn, illuminating the shadows inside of families around cooking pots, children stamping their feet in the cold, everyone who has one wrapped in a blanket. |
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Seven weeks after the earthquake on 8 October that devastated this remote region of Pakistan, thousands of victims have still not been reached by the relief effort.
Of an estimated three million homeless, only 100,000 are in official government relief camps and, according to the latest United Nations estimates, 800,000 are still sleeping in the open.
On Friday, UN relief official Darren Boisvert warned that 90 per cent of the 420,000 tents handed out in Pakistani Kashmir were no good for winter use, though some people strengthened them with plastic sheets and blankets.
His superior, Jan Vandemoortele, UN co-ordinator for Pakistan, went further and described the situation as critical.
'We are on a knife edge in Pakistani Kashmir,' he said, adding that nobody should be carried away by the figures of large donations to help the people of Pakistan.
'Exuberance about donations from the West is deadly.
We need more money: we just don't have enough aid and shelter packs to hand out.'
At the end of a treacherous mountain pass, four hours' drive north of the destroyed town of Bagh, in the village of Sundan Gali, people are living out these dire warnings.
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More than 300 died here on 8 October, including 50 children whose school collapsed.
Beyond the rubble-strewn settlement there are only mule trails winding down towards the militarised border that divides Pakistani and Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Night temperatures here have reached minus 12 and the fight to survive in the snow has begun.
Smothered in her dead mother's winter chador, six-year-old Samala Jandali sits trembling in the freezing air.
Her lips are blue.
In a collection of bricks on the muddy floor that straddles the entrance to their canvas tent, her grandmother is burning a putrid mixture of sewage waste, plastic bottles and wood, the only fuel she can muster.
Samala rubs the acrid black smoke from her eyes.
The collapsed remains of their home are behind them, covered in snow.
The bodies of Samala's parents and two brothers are still in there, beneath the wooden beams and concrete roof that once sheltered a hard-working family.
A fortnight ago some neighbours tried using borrowed car jacks to lift the heaviest supports to reach the corpses but gave up within an hour after the weight of one pillar snapped the light machinery in two.
At sunset Samala and her 65-year-old grandmother, Abalnour, huddle under donated blankets, relying on each other's body warmth.
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The chill jolts the body as you gasp for breath.
In the past few nights, along with the early snows and freezing rain, the temperature has dipped to dangerous lows.
The heavy shadows under Samala's eyes betray too many nights without sleep.
Like most of the elderly survivors, Abalnour wheezes as she goes about her chores.
She is already suffering from a respiratory illness, most likely bronchitis, which could lead to pneumonia.
With the onset of winter, the World Health Organisation fears that bronchial infections and hypothermia will become commonplace, killing thousands.
Last week pneumonia claimed its first six victims here, including a three-month-old baby.
In more built-up areas, water and sanitation systems have been shattered.
Some four million people are defecating in the open, prompting warnings of disease as dark rumours of cholera and bubonic plague filter back from remote field hospitals.
Dagmar Chocholaclova, a Czech doctor in Ratnoi, a village near Bagh — her clinic has treated hundreds of cases of pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections like bronchitis:
'There is no question that many, many people will die here, and children are most vulnerable.
We are struggling to cope in our own sleeping bags in these temperatures: it's a battle for survival for some of the aid workers,'
'Last year the area was under 10ft of snow by late December.
It can only get worse, it will get worse."
Dr Shazhad Iqbal is holding an X-ray up against the sunlight, examining the outline of a child's leg.
It is broken in three places.
Alongside him a queue of injured Kashmiris stretches in an untidy line straddling the picturesque plateau where he has set up his outdoor office.
Old men lie in the queue on metal beds and rattan cots, surrounded by grumbling relatives who have carried them down the mountain for an official examination.
'It's a difficult process, but a necessary one,' explains Iqbal.
'We are offering the injured compensation but they have to prove their injuries, either under examination or by producing X-rays; many people are faking injuries, so our job is vital.'
Over his shoulder is the line: there are amputees, grandmothers with their heads swathed in crude bandages and dozens of children in plaster casts.
The process is simple enough, he tells me.
'If someone has suffered paralysis or amputation we give them 50,000 rupees (£500), for internal bleeding, fractures and finger amputations, we donate 25,000 rupees (£250), and finally for soft tissue injuries and laceration we offer 15,000 rupees (£150).'
Behind Iqbal is Major Nigel Cribb, the officer commanding the British 59 Commando Engineer Squadron, which has just arrived in Pakistan.
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He is with his reconnaissance team, deep in conversation.
Their green berets stand out against the camouflage whites of the Pakistani army escorting them through the Bagh valley, where the engineers will be based until 18 January, the official pullout date for all non-Pakistani troops.
The presence of marine and army commandos in such a politically sensitive area of Pakistan has led to criticism from hardline Islamists who claim the presence of the British and US forces here represents nothing more than an extension of their activities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Last week a number of high-profile Pakistani politicians accused President Pervez Musharraf of 'betraying national interest' by letting more foreign forces into the country.
'The presence of such a large number of Nato troops threatens our national security,' said Munawar Hussain, a deputy leader of the hardline Jamaat i-Islami party.
According to Cribb, his men's official role in Pakistan is simply to rebuild schools and patrol remote mountain areas to reach the quake survivors worst affected by the weather.
The only weapons they carry are their commando daggers, used for little more than tearing the covers off field rations.
'Criticism of our presence here is not our problem: we are here to do a job.' says Cribb.
'I first came out here three weeks ago on a reconnaissance mission with the Department for International Development, who are funding our secondment here through Nato.
In such a cold climate this role naturally fell to us. An integral part of 3 Commando Royal Marines training is Arctic survival.'
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The response of groups like Jamaat i-Islami to the British military presence in the heart of Bagh province is of little surprise to many in the military, who know that more than xenophobia and anti-Americanism are at work.
Militant groups operating in the area know they have gained immeasurable kudos for their response; it was their vast networks of disciplined cadres that quickly spread out across the devastation to provide food and shelter.
Dawa, which is linked to a militant Islamic organisation, has erected a cluster of tents to provide shelter, along with a mobile hospital.
A few kilometres along the road north from Bagh town, where the British engineers are now based, the radical Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-dawa has a camp for about two dozen refugees.
US government officials in Islamabad maintain they want to see the Pakistani military take control of relief, squeezing out all the groups that promote radical brands of Islam.
In the battle for hearts and minds, according to one US official in the Pakistani capital, a nation's stability is at stake.
'If militant organisations are seen to be delivering the goods, and the government isn't, it is going to be in trouble — it's not complicated,' he told me.
This belief is reflected in the large boxes of Stars and Stripes branded toys and scarves regularly delivered by US helicopters with aid packages.
Yet with the crisis entering its deadliest phase since the earthquake struck, the Pakistani government is still not able to be choosy about who offers relief assistance.
The militants embedded in the mountains here had a big head start over other relief efforts, deepening the concern that Islamic groups will funnel new followers won by relief efforts into militant activities.
It is perhaps no surprise that it is Nato spearheading the construction of secondary schools amid fears that teenage boys are most at risk from fundamentalists looking to attract recruits.
Jamaat-ud-dawa, for example, has taken to posting huge banners in towns and villages here, advertising the group's successes at the height of the relief operation.
As a result of the under-lying tensions, the com-mandos are playing down their tough reputation.
Said one officer.
'We have been discouraged from mentioning our role as commandos so the Pakistani army don't get the jitters about our role here, and we will continue to take that stance, but the men are proud of their presence and the commando dagger patches on their uniforms, so that will be difficult.
We need to toe a very thin line.'
British marine and army commandos deserve their tough reputation and are trained in extreme survival techniques, spending months above the Arctic Circle.
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The men here expect to be working in temperatures of minus 20 by the end of the month.
Some are frustrated by the Pakistani-imposed cut-off point for all foreign troops.
'They want us out in six weeks but our reconnaissance missions show there is a great deal of work to be done... The question is, should we leave when the job is only half done?'
With the arrival of the snows in the upper Bagh valley, non-government agencies like the UK-funded Kashmiri International Relief Fund (KIRF) are now beckoning the region's people to desert their ruined homes and move to tent communities at lower altitudes, where the temperatures will be less harsh and assistance easier to come by.
But, according to KIRF, most families remain reluctant to leave their home ground because they fear they will lose their land.
'I'm not leaving this place,' says Azaz, camped outside his destroyed home in Sundan Gali.
'How long can I live down there in those tents - one year, maybe two?
Then I will only have to come back and start again.'
From the cargo hold of a Pakistani army helicopter, high above Bagh, one can see the valley floors littered with debris from vast landslides, and the collapsed roofs of hundreds of homes, many with bodies still buried inside.
Here and there, beneath the snowline, painted white stones spell out 'H's, where villagers improvised helipads.
The helicopters never came.
As they always suspected, they will have to rely on their own wits to survive.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 |
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Mother welcomes son after being pulled alive from Islamabad apartment
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SOUTH ASIAN QUAKE
FOCUS — WHO'S REALLY RUNNING THE RELIEF?
Pakistan Kashmir & Northern Pakistan, 2nd November 2005
AKI — by Syed Saleem Shahzad — As the death toll from Pakistan's earthquake rises to 73,000, the authorities believe that the final number of casualties could go even higher if emergency aid does not reach the survivors in time. Officially the relief operation is being coordinated by the Pakistani government and the military, but the situation on the ground reveals that everything is in the hands of Islamic groups, including the coordination between the international relief organisations. A recent four-day trip through Northern Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir shows the quake-devastated zones are either in the hands of the international relief organisations or of Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Pakistan's main religious political party. JI has taken over the administration of the area with its organised teams of doctors, dedicated aid workers and vast resources. The Islamic party has mobilised groups of doctors, such as those within the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association, and has rallied support internationally with doctors and paramedics called in from the Asia Pacific region. With a strong local presence in the affected areas they have managed to organise their own logistical support in the aid operation and secure ample funds to carry it out. At the same time, the international nature of the relief operation is also evident, with the exceptional sight of nearly 500 US troops seen travelling in convoys through Pakistan Kashmir and US helicopters on aid missions through the mountainous valleys. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has also sent about 1000 soldiers; they come from several NATO member countries but not Turkey, the alliance's only Muslim member. On its own, Turkey has pledged 150 million US dollars in aid and also sent specialist rescue teams to help in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The NATO and US troops will soon be supplemented with more troops under United Nations command. Coordinating the entire operation however has been the Jamaat-i-Islami; its presence has become so widespread and important in the past three weeks that the international support and the operations of the Pakistan Army have become mere off-shoots. Some of the other groups involved in smaller operations all over northern Pakistan include the Al-Rasheed Trust, Jaish Mohammed (working under Al-Barkat trust) Laskhar-i-Taiba (working as Jamaatut Dawa), Al-Badr (Al-Safa Trust). All of these groups have been termed 'terrorist organisations' by the US State Department which considers Pakistan a frontline ally in the 'war against terror'. The contribution of these groups is a guarantee of further legitimacy and support in the region, something Western governments would rather avoid. However if any attempt is made to stop their activities, the entire relief operation would simply collapse. The help provided by these groups has even been acknowledged by the Pakistan president, General Pervez Musharraf. In an interview with London's Financial Times last month, he admitted that hardline Islamic groups had stepped into an administrative vacuum in the days after the quake, providing relief and humanitarian assistance in Kashmir, a development that analysts say will bolster their legitimacy. However he also defended his handling of the country's worst natural disaster, saying the government "had done a good, if not a very good, job". After the earthquake destroyed the administration in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, it was up to the Pakistani army to bring emergency aid to the thousands in desperate need. However, sources working in the relief effort say that the army has been more concerned with restoring its security posts along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir and preserving large scale weapons, besides dealing with dead and wounded army personnel and their families. As a result , there was an immense gap in the coordination of the relief efforts. When thousands of Pakistani NGOs sent trucks loaded with aid on a daily basis and international donors supplied relief goods, there was no infrastructure left to receive the aid or distribute it effectively. These goods have remained in storage in government warehouses, waiting for distribution to the homeless and the hungry. JI became the only substitute available to coordinate, collect and distribute the goods and manpower that came from various organisations such as the Iranian Red Cresent, Malaysian and Singaporean NGOs and even the Canadian armed forces (DART). The federal government seems to have limited its relief and rehabilitation operation to handing out ration cards and conducting surveys to assess the damage. And even here, JI has taken on the task of filling in survey forms and distributing food coupons. | |||||||||||||||||
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Kashmir Earthquake — Part II
Survivors ponder life without livelihoods Five days after earthquake U.S. released 8 helicopters |
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For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.cc website.The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. |
