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For Isolated Villagers, Still No Quake Relief

Posted on: Friday, 14 October 2005, 12:00 CDT

By Somini Sengupta, Hari Kumar and Salman Masood

Somini Sengupta reported from Balakot, Hari Kumar from Uri, in Indian-held Kashmir, and Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Balakot, Joel Brinkley from Islamabad and David Rohde from Chaklala, Pakistan. *

From the valley of death, they pointed to the far reaches of desperation.

Over there in the village of Gunela, said Mushtaq Ahmed, pointing to hills under a mass of clouds, it is very cold, and there is nothing more than a bit of corn to eat. In a village called Khesarash, said Abdul Wahid, who had walked from there, children have died for lack of food.

From across the river came Imdad ul-Haq Mian, bearing on his shoulders a frail old man with a broken arm. With the road still blocked by a landslide, Mian and his kinfolk had trekked six hours through the hills, across loose, slip-sliding rocks, to bring the wounded from Dabriyan to a makeshift clinic here.

Balakot was once a pretty little village on the eastern edge of the North-West Frontier Province, nestled in a green valley next to a gurgling river. Today it is a foul-smelling, enraged, aggrieved place.

All the houses have fallen in on themselves. Tents have arrived, but they are so scarce that one man said his was occupied by five families on Tuesday night. The suffering has made people lose their minds, one man said. The townspeople were fighting among themselves for the meager aid that had arrived, he said.

The military estimates that about 4,000 have died in this province, the majority of them here and in a nearby town called Garhi Habibullah. With no relief going to the villages in the hills nearby, Balakot has become the place where there is at least some hope of getting food, first aid and, for the most seriously injured, an airlift out.

The United Nations relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, headed for Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, on Thursday to assess the aid and relief operation for the hundreds and thousands of people affected by the earthquake.

Aid slowly poured in and clear weather helped rescue helicopters to ferry survivors form far-flung areas: hamlets, villages and towns that were razed by the earthquake last week. Still, many areas remained inaccessible; people desperate and needy for food, medicine and shelter.

About 23,000 people were confirmed dead, Pakistani officials said.

Moderate aftershocks continued to jolt Kashmir and northern Pakistan on Thursday, sending waves of panic among those who were already traumatized.

A tremor, 5.6 in magnitude, was felt in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, on Thursday morning. "Aftershocks will be felt for the next three to four weeks but their intensity will lessen with time," said Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, who heads the Pakistan Meteorological Department in Islamabad. "The positive is that the energy is being dissipated with these aftershocks and chances of a powerful aftershock will be less," Chaudhry said.

But scenes of panic were witnessed in Islamabad as people rushed out of government offices and shopping plazas around noon after a rumor about a strong aftershock rippled through the city.

President Pervez Musharraf, in a televised address on Wednesday, called for coordinated relief efforts and acknowledged that there had been delays in the evacuation of the people trapped under the debris of collapsed buildings and houses, as well as delays in the burial of the dead in Balakot and other cut-off areas. But the tragedy was unprecedented and the task gigantic, Musharraf stressed. He called it "the biggest ever tragedy" for Pakistan.

"All means of communications were disrupted and roads were blocked," Musharraf said. "Now the situation has improved, and the armed forces and people are reaching the quake-hit areas to support the victims."

While aid from various countries made its way to reach the earthquake-stricken areas, Pakistan was still tentative about offers of help from its neighbor and rival, India.

Pakistan has accepted Indian aid offers but has declined Indian helicopters or joint military rescue operations in the valley of Kashmir, parts of which both countries control.

On Thursday, Major General Shaukat Sultan, spokesman for the Pakistani military, denied reports that Indian troops had crossed the Line of Control, which divides Indian- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. "I totally deny these fabricated and baseless reports," Sultan told Geo, a private television channel. "Indian troops have not crossed the LOC. They will not be given any such permission."

He also dismissed speculation that the earthquake had affected Pakistan's nuclear facilities.

"People who are spreading such reports have no understanding of these issues," he said.

The scale of devastation wreaked by the earthquake has led to scenes of desperation on the part of survivors. In Muzaffarabad, hungry and homeless people fought with one another for food and tents. Scuffles and fights marred aid distribution, according to news agency reports from Muzaffarabad.

Caravans of private civilians kept rushing to the affected areas to provide foods, blankets and medicine, but the rush of traffic stalled the aid work. Long lines of vehicles were reported on roads leading to Kashmir and parts of North-West Frontier Province, resulting in traffic jams several hours long.

Amid the grimness of the destruction, rays of hope filtered in for some survivors Thursday as helicopters began arriving at remote villages that were previously inaccessible. Rescue workers hoped to find more survivors as they increased their operations. About 50 helicopters from the United States, Pakistan, Switzerland, Germany and Afghanistan were taking part in the rescue operation. Four Swiss helicopters arrived early Thursday morning, officials said.

Dozens of survivors were ferried to the Chaklala military air base near Islamabad on Thursday morning.

Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani soldier, was on the first helicopter that reached Sawan Guchha, a village 48 kilometers, or 30 miles, from Muzaffarabad. Ali managed to bring back his 60-year-old mother to Chaklala but said his grandmother and grandfather had died. "Many died while waiting to be evacuated," Ali said, adding that 500 people were still stuck in the village.

In the pecking order of misery, Balakot is comparatively lucky. The villages beyond it are not.

"No one has come to us," Mian said. There are still no tents in his village. No food or medicine has been sent. For the first three days, he said, people hardly ate until the dead could be recovered from the rubble. On Wednesday, blankets were air-dropped over Mian's village, but there were not enough for the survivors. Only after burying the dead (22 in his extended family alone) did he and his kinfolk have the time to ferry the wounded here.

A man named Jahanzeb said he had walked for a whole day to reach Balakot from his village, called Sangar; at least 50 people, he said, were badly injured there and unable to travel.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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