For quake-hit Pakistan the donor pledges were a positive development but right now the task and troubles remain on the relief front. In a single day on Nov. 25 three press reports appeared to underscore the need to move into high gear if a second wave of deaths is to be averted. According to OCHA figures, around 200,000 people living in the Neelum, Jhelum, Allai Valley and Kaghan Valley are vulnerable. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees who said in Balakot that he “hadn’t seen a disaster of these proportions” maintained that their primary task was to ensure that “the people get through winter without tragedy.” He asked the international community to keep intact the momentum of recovery and told them it was “payback time” for a country that hosted 3.2 million Afghan refugees.
The NATO air commander in Pakistan also warned that in Bagh alone 35,000 people were still unprepared for the harsh winter. On Thursday the NATO Air Commander Andrew Walton, who heads the Atlantic organization’s relief team in Pakistan, underlined that providing food and medicine was “a race in all senses of the word” before winter snow set in and cut off communications links. Reports from the Balakot area also suggest that over 100,000 people still remain inaccessible for relief workers. They have no way to protect themselves against the freezing winter. Their “hope is dying.”
The NATO commander, who has a 1000-strong contingent of engineers, doctors and paramedics for relief, termed the response of Pakistani authorities and the inter-agency coordination “exemplary”. Earlier UN agencies have praised the government’s efforts.
The NATO forces’ task is to provide urgently needed makeshift relief camps for people in the valleys at high altitudes at 5000 feet. This is the people that the army has not been able to cover adequately. Steve Coll in The New Yorker article writes about the use of the mule contingent but the New York medics group working in high altitude areas talks of how there is minimal relief work conducted in the high terrain.
Clearly in the earthquake-hit zones the urgency of the task multiplies as the race between what reaches the despairing people first — deadly cold or the shelter and food — is already under way. Significantly practical engagement in relief work by the government, Western troops, civilians and the various Pakistani relief organizations provides these otherwise, mutually contentious groups, an opportunity to find a common ground. Yesterday’s partners in the anti-Soviet jihad stand violently opposed to each other. However, this violent opposition stands somewhat diluted in the earthquake-hit zones. Paths of many from among these various contending groups have crossed as they carry on the relief work. In the Nov. 21 issue of the New Yorker, the American writer Steve Coll mentions that within a mile radius the Jamaatud Dawa, the US Army relief contingent, the Al-Rashid Trust and other NGOs are sharing a work zone.
There is a kind of normalcy about the interaction between yesterday’s antagonists in these highly trying times. Grief is often a humanizing emotion. It is more so when the destruction is so complete and the suffering so overwhelming.
Grief sharing among antagonistic groups in the earthquake-hit zones of Azad Kashmir and NWFP has been an intensely personal and emotive experience. The humane task of helping the despairing survivors has for now united these people of different color, culture and religion. The tutored and even internalized mutual antagonism is now in suspension.
President Musharraf resisted being drawn into the Indian and Western media debate on the involvement of “terrorist” and “extremist” organizations in the relief work. In one of the earlier BBC interviews he simply said “no one would be kept away from helping the earthquake victims” but at the same time he said activities of the politico-religious organizations would be closely monitored. Reflecting Musharraf’s views on the ground the army says, “we’re helping everyone; not stopping any one.” On the ground the army is providing support to all the private groups ranging from doctors’ associations to NRSP, SRSC, local relief organizations including the politico-religious groups. This is an opportunity to draw these religious organizations into the mainstream.
When the Dawa spokesman was asked by an American journalist if he was bothered by the Bush administration’s branding his and the predecessor organization as terrorist, he responded in the negative. “If you accuse someone, that doesn’t mean it’s true. I would invite the American doctors and medical staff to come and join us. Our doors are open.... Any American kid or boy can come work with us. They are most welcome,” explained the spokesman. There is also coordination going on. Many European workers in the Neelum areas are using the ferry service run by the Dawa group for crossing the river. In fact, working in close geographical proximity to the religious-political organizations last week, the commander of NATO forces in Pakistan said that his people faced no danger from Islamic organizations in the affected areas.
Clearly the motives that have brought relief and rescue teams from thirty different countries may vary but collectively they all have built an admirable chain of humanity. And it overrides all other strategic, military, ideological considerations. And in this it provides a unique opportunity for creating a shared space between the two most violently divided people — the Westerners and politico-religious Muslim groups — of the late twentieth and the twenty-first century.
Nothing but a practical experience of another kind alone will alter the perceptions, change the thinking and influence attitudes. The interaction needs reframing. Not in words alone, but in action too, for now “walking the talk” is required. That alone will affect the hearts and minds of an angry, violated and even violent groups. Interestingly the very country where a “deadly cross-cultural, cross-continental and cross-religious pairing took place to launch an international anti-Soviet jihad, a pairing of another kind is under way. It is one that has forced many to lay aside guns and dynamite and pick up medical tools and construction kits. How long can this last depends, among other factors, on policy changes in Washington and a change of heart among many of these groups.
