Stability hinges on who gets kudos for aid

A Kashmiri earthquake survivor and her children sit under a makeshift tent during a snowfall in Kashmir. Picture / Reuters

Looking down from the snowline at dusk, the glow of thousands of campfires emerges as the temperature plummets, each flicker signifying another homeless family out in the numbing cold.

This month UN relief official Darren Boisvert warned that 90 per cent of the 420,000 tents handed out in Pakistani Kashmir were no good for winter use.

His superior, Jan Vandemoortele, UN co-ordinator for Pakistan, went further and described the situation as critical. "We are on a knife edge in Pakistani Kashmir," he said, adding that nobody should be carried away by the figures of large donations to help the people of Pakistan.

"Exuberance about donations from the West is deadly. We need more money. We just don't have enough aid and shelter packs to hand out."

With the onset of winter, the World Health Organisation fears bronchial infections and hypothermia will become common, killing thousands.

In more built-up areas, water and sanitation systems have been shattered. Four million people are defecating in the open, prompting warnings of disease, with dark rumours of cholera and bubonic plague from remote field hospitals.

"There is no question that many, many people will die here, and children are most vulnerable," says Dagmar Chocholaclova, a Czech doctor in Ratnoi, a village near the destroyed town of Bagh.

"We are struggling to cope in our own sleeping bags in these temperatures. It's a battle for survival for some of the aid workers."

Her clinic has treated hundreds of cases of pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections like bronchitis.

Major Nigel Cribb, the officer commanding the British 59 Commando Engineer Squadron, has just arrived in Pakistan. His reconnaissance team's green berets stand out against the camouflage whites of the Pakistani Army escorting them through the Bagh valley, where the engineers will be based until January 18, the official pullout date for all non-Pakistani troops.

Having marine and Army commandos in such a politically sensitive area of Pakistan has led to criticism from hardline Islamists who claim the presence of British and US forces represents an extension of their activities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A number of high-profile Pakistani politicians accused President Pervez Musharraf of "betraying national interest" by letting more foreign forces into the country. "The presence of such a large number of Nato troops threatens our national security," said Munawar Hussain, a deputy leader of the hardline Jamaat i-Islami party.

According to Major Cribb, his men's official role in Pakistan is simply to rebuild schools and patrol remote mountain areas to reach the quake survivors worst affected by the weather. The only weapons they carry are their commando daggers, used for tearing the covers off field rations.

The response of groups like Jamaat i-Islami to the British military presence is of little surprise to many within the military who know that more than xenophobia and anti-Americanism are at work. Militant groups in the area know they have gained immeasurable kudos for their response; it was their vast networks of disciplined cadres that quickly spread out across the devastation to provided food and shelter.

US Government officials in Islamabad maintain they want to see the Pakistani military take control of relief, squeezing out all the groups that promote radical brands of Islam. In the battle for hearts and minds, according to one US official in the Pakistani capital, a nation's stability is at stake.

Yet with the crisis entering its deadliest phase since the earthquake struck, the Pakistani Government is still not able to be choosy about who offers relief assistance.

The militants in the mountains had a big head start over other relief efforts, deepening the concern that Islamic groups will funnel new followers won by relief efforts into militant activities.

- OBSERVER