SLOWTO REACT, MUSHARRAF ADMITS
S O U T H A S I A N E A RTHQUAKE Relief efforts marked by chaos, anger and desperation
BALAKOT, PAKISTAN •
Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, acknowledged yesterday his government had been slow to respond to the earthquake, but told his critics that “no country” was ready for a catastrophe on such a scale.
General Musharraf said the relief operation was now in full swing and thanked other nations, including Pakistan’s nuclear rival India, for their aid. “No country is ready for such a disaster. That was the case with Pakistan,” he said in a televised address.
“It took eight to 12 hours to collect information. We did not have an exact estimate of what had happened.”
International pledges topped US$450-million yesterday as the relief effort in Pakistan began to take effect 100 hours after Saturday’s earthquake, in which at least 23,000 people were killed.
In a brief visit, Condoleezza Rice, the U. S. Secretary of State, promised longterm assistance to the Islamabad government, an ally in the war against terrorism.
Despite a dozen American Chinook heavy-lift helicopters joining the rescue operation, there remained fierce criticism of the response from the Pakistani authorities.
“The government effort has been nonexistent,” said Imran Khan, the cricket star turned opposition politician who toured Balakot, close to Kashmir, yesterday. “ There is no direction to the effort. Ordinary citizens are stuffing their cars and coming here but the government is nowhere.”
Privately, several foreign aid agencies complained of a lack of co-ordination. But Pakistani officials rejected complaints.
“Our resources are very stretched — every time we rush to one place we hear of another place that is worse,” said army Colonel Y. P. Sayyaj in the mountain town of Bata Mora in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.
“I know people are suffering but we have to prioritize. Everyone will get help in the end.”
At the entrance to every small town and village in the Bata Mora region, entire populations waited in the hope of aid. In the town of Bata Mora itself, about 250 kilometres from the capital, Islamabad, there was a big crowd but no supplies had arrived.
Shaukat Aziz, the Pakistani Prime Minister, said relief efforts were gaining steam as areas cut off by landslides opened up.
“ The relief efforts are improving by the day,” he said in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir and the city worst hit.
But the situation on the ground in both India and Pakistan appeared to be mostly marked by chaos, anger, desperation and undiluted grief. Quake victims and international relief officials alike expressed frustration at the slow pace of relief.
“ The world has forgotten we exist. You are the first people here asking about us besides some soldiers who pulled out bodies on the first day,” said a villager in the Indian hamlet of Pingla Haridal.
People have complained that even when supplies do arrive, looters steal them before they reach the proper communities.
Outside Muzaffarabad, a crowd of men battled each other to grab boxes of bottled water, blankets and cookies from a truck.
“ We only see things coming and going. We need food, we need water,” one man said.
Amanullah Khan, leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which seeks an independent state of Kashmir, said inadequate relief was breeding resentment against the Pakistani government.
“Definitely people here feel a sense of alienation when they hear that residents of Margala Tower were rescued within 36 hours,” he said referring to an apartment collapse in Islamabad that was the only significant damage in the Pakistan capital.
“But in Kashmir, where deaths and destruction are massive, the Pakistani and local governments are unable to reach people even after four days.”
Saturday morning’s 7.6 magnitude earthquake has severely stretched the resources of the Pakistani army.
A federal relief commissioner has been appointed to oversee the relief operation, reporting directly to the Prime Minister, and 55,000 troops have been deployed in the region.
Authorities are now most concerned about the weather and the onset of winter, which usually comes in mid- to lateOctober.
Nighttime temperatures are already falling to as low as 6C and will drop even more by the end of the week, one official said.
The news is a nightmare to the many hundreds of thousands who are sleeping out in the open because their homes are gone or because they fear the aftershocks that continue to rock the region.
The United Nations says as many as one million people have been made homeless by the disaster.
“Because of rain and the onset of cold weather, provision of shelter is our first priority,” said a senior military official involved in relief operations.
“ We are in short supply of blankets and plastic sheets. We also badly need shrouds to bury the dead.”