The memory of the earthquake that ravaged Azad Kashmir last week will not be erased for a long time to come. Towns have been flattened, hospitals and schools razed, shops and businesses ruined. Tens of thousands are dead, millions uprooted and homeless. This is the biggest national tragedy in memory. It has brought out the best and worst in us. A British reporter writes: “The contrast with New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina could not be more marked. In the US, when government help did not arrive, armed looters roamed the streets and survivors had to huddle together for safety. In Pakistan, people have arrived from all over the country to help in the relief effort. They have simply abandoned their jobs. Some hitched lifts, clinging dangerously on to the sides of trucks and mini buses as they wound around the hairpin curves over a sickening drop to the valley below. Others simply walked for hours across the hills in the blistering sun, denying themselves even water because it is the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.” There can be no more fitting tribute to the great people of Pakistan than this demonstration of inspiring humanity in acute adversity.
Pakistanis have given generously for relief. The political opposition has stopped protesting and offered to shoulder the burden of relief. Notoriously stingy and grubby political parties have coughed up. Even exiled leaders have accepted the common burden of responsibility instead of exploiting the situation and attacking the government. This is a rare moment of national solidarity.
Foreign governments and organizations have responded surely and swiftly. Indeed, as the scale of the tragedy is revealed, more help will follow in every conceivable way – helicopters, hospitals, doctors, medicines food, clothing, shelter. Equally, Pakistanis have appreciated the help. When a British rescue team dragged out the injured from the rubble of Islamabad’s Margalla Towers, it was lauded with full throated shouts of “Allaho Akbar”.
The media has also done a great job. Its reporters have spread out far and wide, covering the plight of remote areas where there is no government or administration to provide succour. The haunting images of loss and deprivation that have floated back have redoubled relief efforts and spurred financial contributions.
But the downslide is equally profound and notable.
It is shocking that a country that boasts nuclear weapons and missiles, spending hundreds of billions of rupees every year on its military prowess, could only muster one crane on the day of the disaster to try and clear the rubble of the collapsed Margalla Towers in Islamabad under which hundreds of people were buried. It is even more remarkable that the Pakistan army, which is supposed to be spread out in force along the Line of Control in Kashmir, was so thin on the ground at the site of every disaster. Indeed, early pictures show army jawans gingerly picking at the rubble with their bare hands or shoveling away in an uncoordinated and relatively unfocussed manner. It is inexplicable that the full extent of the damage is still not clear to the government despite the potential availability of satellite pictures from international sources. It is astounding that the prime minister has announced a relief budget of a few billion only in view of the scale of devastation in which over 5 million people have been rendered homeless and destitute. And it is scandalous that ruling party MNAs MPAs and Nazims are not prepared to divert their “development funds” to help earthquake victims.
The media, political parties and NGOs have also demonstrated an unwarranted degree of introspective thinking at a time for collective and coordinated practical action. Some of the media has unfortunately succumbed to spiritual and religious offerings in the face of a natural disaster. Fatalistic theories of “sin and the wrath of Allah” are being bandied about instead of knowledge based explanations and consequences of the earthquake. Political parties are mounting separate relief efforts as though guarding and developing their turf during an election. Incredibly, the religious parties have chosen this moment to undermine the government by refusing to sit in a meeting of the National Security Council convened for the purposes of extending and coordinating relief to the injured and bereaved survivors of the disaster. Even the NGOs are going it alone so that they can demonstrate their individual utility to donor agencies. The theme of politics and profit over humanity and community has echoed again and again in this hour of national travail. Most notably, it is captured in the agonizing sentiments of Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, the Kashmiri leader, who bewailed the refusal of the Pakistan government to coordinate relief work with the Indian government across the invisible Line of Control that was not recognized by the quake in the region.
Natural disasters and governmental response in alleviating distress are inclined to be etched on the popular imagination. Remember how a cyclone in East Pakistan irrevocably created a hostile Bengali perspective about West Pakistani rulers? Cleary, accountability will figure as a major theme in days to come. Clearly, too, the Musharraf regime will have to work overtime to escape the negative fallout of this particular calamity.