THE KASHMIR EARTHQUAKE

ERASER OF THE LINE OF CONTROL BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Shazia, the three and half year old girl, is the “little grandma” of our Home Basera-e-Tabassum (the rehabilitation project launched by BWF for orphan girls) in the frontier district of Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir. The October 8 earthquake has shaken her completely. Any little sound in the Home makes her cry frantically and she refuses to sleep at night. The aftershocks continue to terrify her and she cries “zalzala ho raha hain..mujhe bahut dar lag raha hain...hum mar jayenge…!” (The earth is shaking again..i am very scared…we will die..! 

Life has changed for the people esp. children in Jammu & Kashmir on the either side of the Line of Control of India and Pakistan after the devastating quake of death and destruction. As all of us know the earth shook at around 9.25 am in the Indian side of Kashmir and at about 8.52 am in POK(Pakistan Occupied Kasshmir) and Northern Areas measuring at 7.6 on the Richter scale; the epicenter was close to Muzaffarabad in POK which is less than 34 Kms from the Indian Kashmir. The irrelevance of the Line of Control was evident for both the countries to see as the earthquake has erased the LOC by its deadly and devastating convulsions on both the sides of Kashmir. Our friends from Pakistan kept us briefed regularly about the magnitude of the disaster that has befallen POK and the Northern areas. With the death toll having crossed the one lac mark, they kept saying, “Does the death toll have to be so high? Even Japan has witnessed quakes at 7.6 on the Richter.”

All we could rationalize was that Kashmir’s greatest setback is its inaccessibility. Firstly, there are no proper motor able roads and the quake has resulted in massive landslides which blocked these roads to rush in rescue and relief teams. In Indian Kashmir, the Army acted quickly and carried out rescue operations on war footing. The state civil administration took its own time to shake off its state of paralysis and get into some action. While the death toll on our side has been estimated as 1,250, it is expected to rise as about 4000 injured people are admitted in the various hospitals across Kashmir. In POK, our friends say, the death toll has risen up to 1.10 lac owing to the failure of the government to get its act together. Children and youngsters, who were attending classes in about 600 schools and colleges and about 600 young men and women in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir University, have been buried. An entire generation has been snatched away by destiny. And the mourners didn’t come to mourn because they were also gone 

We were invited by our group in Pakistan to visit POK between October 3^rd and 12^th, but as we were already scheduled for Kashmir, we went to Kupwara where our Home is running. And we had planned to visit Uri sector on October 8^th as we have plans to start a Home there. But on the 5^th I was very uneasy about going there and felt something is going to go wrong. So wrapped up our visit and returned to Pune on the 7^th. October 8^th; all that is now history. 

We left for Kashmir after on the 11^th as there was very little we could do sitting over here in Pune. Before leaving we sent out SOS to all our friends, members and well wishers to support us to carry out relief and rehabilitation work in the Tangdhar and Uri sectors (districts Kupwara and Baramulla respectively). Help started coming the same day and it was heart warming to see the quick response.  

We decided to go to the quake affected areas and assess the situation and the needs of the people who have been affected. Rains, low temperatures and snowfall at the Sadhana or Nasta chun pass had doubled the enormous problems being faced by the people. And with the winter approaching, people are desperate for the help to arrive. It was heart rending to see towns and villages devastated and depopulated which were once happily nestled in the sky reaching hills and mountains.

Villages on the hilltop were completely wiped out with the people and animals buried under the debris. Fresh tremors were and are still being felt which has forced the survivors to live with a perpetual sense of déjà vu: of a revisiting quake. Studies are showing that the big one is yet to come! Estimates suggest that 42,000 houses have been destroyed and double the number have been damaged, rendering 75,000 people homeless. Houses in these hilly areas are basically made of stones and mud which was the main reason for the damage. We saw thousands of houses which have crumbled completely like a pack of cards.  

Villages which have been completely wiped out in the Tangdhar sector are Seemari (the last village on the Indian side of Kashmir and is still inaccessible, we were forced to return half way due to constant landslides),Teetwal, Gundi shat, Gundi gujran, Ibkote, Bhadrkote, Gundi sayden, Taad, Dhanni, Amrohi, Hajitra, Jabri, Sudpura, Dringla, Karahanu, Hajinar etc. and in Uri sector, Kamal kote, Bandi, Dulanja, Sultan Daki, Dacchi, Jabla, Salamabad etc. They were inaccessible until the Army and the Border roads organization cleared the roads. We have actually gone and visited all these and many other adjoining villages to take stock of the situation.

 Relief to these areas was initially provided by the Army and the BSF. After a point of time, the Army had to remind the local administration that they also have had loss of their men and the strategic structures like bunkers and pickets were destroyed and they have to get back to their duty. The local administration has been exceptionally slow in handling the situation.

 By this time relief from various agencies, NGOs and the government started to trickle in which has led to large scale chaos and indiscipline. Material like tents, quilts, bedding, sleeping bags, blankets, clothes did start coming in but as there was no such thing as discipline, responsibility of the authorities, planning and coordination among the various agencies in the distribution, the situation got out of control. Hundreds of trucks carrying the material were crossing the passes and distributing the material erratically in the villages along the road and just leaving. Most of them had never been to this part of the country before and when they found themselves in such a difficult terrain and intolerable weather, they just left the areas by dumping the material wherever they could. This has led in mass looting and infighting among the survivors. To our dismay we found that the relief was being distributed in the focus of TV cameras and the agencies were more interested in publicity.

The most unfortunate part was that the people of the hard hit areas which are difficult to reach, were left unattended and nobody cared if they had eaten or had clean water to drink from the time they were homeless. As no proper appeals were carried out by the media or the government as to what was required by the survivors, we saw truckloads of sarees and blouses and even lipsticks and other cosmetics being sent as relief from different parts of the country!! Sarees are unknown to these people and lipstick is a luxury.As a result the whole area is now littered with the unwanted clothes and other material. It has also happened that some well known distributing agencies have replaced their old and inferior tents, blankets, sleeping bags for the new ones that have arrived from different parts of the country and abroad. And as far as the survivors are concerned, well the rich or the well off who still have an alternative shelter say that they are embarrassed to stretch their hands to take relief and the poor say that they have not received anything till date, and oh never mind the huge sacks of material they carry on their heads and shoulders when they say this!! If this is the case, where and to who was and is all the relief going to? Amidst all this chaos, from the 4^th day of the quake, unlimited relief has been poured into these areas but still has not reached the genuine sufferers.

We distributed  truckloads of rice, flour for the ‘langars’(community cooking) we had helped to set up through some of the people whom we know, but discontinued the same once we saw the same bags of rice and flour in the shops of the village!!

Seeing and experiencing all this, what we have decided to put our energy and focus on is the much needed rehabilitation work and our main concern would be the children who have been orphaned due to the quake. We have discussed with our local committee in Kashmir and they have suggested that we bring the children out of these far flung areas and accommodate them in the present Home Basrea-e-Tabassum in Kupwara town. It will take us a couple of months to begin this initiative. Also, the committee has suggested that we should take up a project of rebuilding of a couple of villages with plans identical to the model village scheme of the central government.  

The most significant activity we witnessed was on the Line of Control in the Tangdhar sector’s Teetwal village. The Army was preparing for the construction of transit points or bridges on the Kishenganga (or the Neelam river as Pakistanis call it) for the kith and kin of the survivors on the either side of the Line of Control to meet each other and share grief, and also for the relief and medical camps to be set up for the people in POK. The environment was upbeat and vibrating with sentiments of the people on both sides of the Line of Control while they eagerly sat and watched the bulldozer on the Indian side clearing the boulders and the soldiers preparing to ferry the boats across to the other side braving the powerful currents. While everyone were happy to see the stage being set up for history to unfold which was the construction of the bridges after almost 60 years, Pakistani choppers started hovering above us in the sky to assess the activities on the Indian side. Finally it happened; one of their Colonels started on the loud speaker, “Am I audible, am I audible? Please respond.” A little later he came down and told the Indian counterpart to stop the work as he had not received any such intimation from the higher authorities!  It was surprising! Even at this hour of an epic tragedy, when they have not been able to scale up the heights and come and rescue their people, politics took precedence over humanity.  

When their children are still being pulled out of the debris and no one to claim or mourn for them, when they are being forced to abandon villages after announcing them as graveyards with the dead still under the debris, when they have lost a generation, when they are laying recovered bodies in endless mass graves, President Musharraf’s response to the Indian offer was that he needed to look into the ‘sensitivites’ involved as the affected people were Kashmiris!! We are well aware of the fact that massive relief material has been poured into Pakstan by countries all over the world.

My personal distress is that across is that Pakistan should have approcahed India to assist in the rescue operations, to save those thousands trapped under the rubble in the areas which are easily accessible from the Indian side. How can they just keep looking at things from a political or security related angle, even at this hour? Why can’t there be a humane face or side to the existing relationship between the two nations? Why this insecurity?  

We would soon be writing to President Musharraf to allow us to work for children who have lost their parents in this tragedy, no matter which ‘side’ they are considered from. And we will continue to write to him till he agrees to let us work. We request you dear friend, to be a part of this Humane Cause by supporting us, which we will need when we will look back, because our friends from Pakistan say the journey is going to be a long and challenging one! 

 Chairperson, BWF