Dear All,

I am back from Balakot. We spent some of last night in ferrying the injured to Abbottabad at the request of the army. A second QAU team went to Muzzafarabad and beyond. Tomorrow 2 other teams will head back to these places. We hope to keep this going, although classes are scheduled to restart on Monday. This is the first time I can recall of ever wanting the university to stay shut longer.

Four days later, they are still not even trying to extricate the dead.

From under the rubble of collapsed buildings, a gut-wrenching smell of decaying corpses now fills the town. The rats have it good; the one I accidentally stepped upon was already fat. If there is indeed a plan to clear the concrete rubble in and around the town, nobody seems to have any clue. But the Balakotis are taking it in their stride - nose masks are everywhere.

There is good news. The Mansehra to Balakot road stretch, finally forced open by huge army bulldozers and earth moving machinery, is now available to relief trucks. Goods donated across the country are piled to the truck roofs. If there ever was a time when the people of Pakistan moved together, this is it. Even the armed bandits who waylay relief supplies - to guard against whom soldiers with automatic weapons stand at alert every few hundred yards - cannot destroy the euphoria of having this solitary moment of unspoiled national unity.

Aid from across the world is making its way, and the United States is here too. Double bladed Chinook helicopters, diverted from fighting Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, weave their way through the mountains. They fly over the heartland of jihad and the militant training camps in Mansehra to drop food and tents a few miles beyond. Temporarily birds of peace instead of war, they do immensely more to soothe the highly Islamic, highly conservative, bearded mountain people than the reams of silly propaganda on glossy paper put out by the US information services in Pakistan.

Visibility makes relief choppers terrific propaganda, for good or for worse. This is undoubtedly why the Pakistani government refused an Indian offer to send in helicopters for relief work in and around Muzzafarabad, the flattened capital of Pakistani administered Kashmir. In spite of a
much celebrated peace process, Pakistan has also not issued visas to Indian peace groups and activists that seek participation in the relief effort. Sandeep Pandey and other Indian activists are very frustrated.

Islamic groups from across the country have arrived in vast numbers. Some bring relief supplies, others simply harangue poor goat herders and simple tillers of the soil to tell them that their misdeeds brought about this catastrophe. None seem to have an explanation for why God's wrath was especially directed to mosques, madrassas, and schools - all of which have collapsed in huge numbers. And none say why thousands of the faithful have been buried alive in this sacred month of fasting.

Bad news: the aid is still too little, often of the wrong kind, and is not

getting to those most affected. Hundreds of destroyed communities lie

scattered deep in the mountains. We saw helicopters attempt aerial drops;

landing is impossible in most places. But people told us that they often

miss and the supplies land up thousands of feet below or in deep forests.

Distribution is haphazard and uncoordinated, done with little thought. In

Balakot we saw relief workers simply throw packets of food and clothes

from the top of trucks, and a subsequent riot. Hustlers thrive, the weak

watch passively. Tons of clothes, lovingly donated and packed by citizens

around Pakistan, but mostly useless because of specific cultural and

climatic conditions, are mixed and scattered with garbage and rubble

throughout the town.

I have mixed feelings about the army role. I did not see enough to

validate a previous observation that they were shirking. But certainly, I

did not see senior officers anywhere. The Edhi Trust gets full credit and

more.

For me personally, there was a sense of dejavu. Nearly 31 years ago, on

25th December 1974, a powerful earthquake had flattened towns along the

Karakorum Highway killing nearly 10,000 people. I had traveled with a

university team into the same mountains for similar relief work. Prime

Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had made a passionate appeal for funds around

the world, taken a token helicopter trip to the destroyed town of Besham,

and made fantastic promises for rehabilitation. But then hundreds of

millions of dollars in relief funds received from abroad mysteriously

disappeared. Some well-informed people believe that those funds were used

to kick off Pakistan's secret nuclear program.

Shall the present government do better? This will only be if citizens, and

international donors, demand transparency and accounts are available for

public audit.

The clock is ticking. In barely two months from now, the mountains will

get their first snowfall and temperatures will plummet below zero. There

are simply not enough tents, blankets, and warm clothes to go around.

Hundreds of tent clusters have come up, but thousands of families remain

out under the skies, facing rain and hail, and with dread in their hearts.

These families have lost everything but the tattered clothes on their

backs. Some even lost the land they had lived upon for generations - the

top soil simply slid away, leaving behind hard rock and rubble. Those

without shelter will die. From a special university fund we have pledged a

dozen families to rebuild their houses. This number can be pushed up to

fifty with the amount you have pledged so far (assuming Rs 50K per house,

where the cost is for wood and stone mostly). But ten thousand or more

will be needed in the Mansehra-Balakot-Kaghan area alone, not to speak of

adjoining Kashmir.

That's all for now.

---------------

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Professor of Physics

Quaid-e-Azam University

Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.

Phone (R): 92-51-2824257

Phone (O): 92-51-2829914

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:09:46 -0400 (EDT)

From: Pervez Hoodbhoy

Subject: Pakistan earthquake relief instructions

Dear All,

This has to be quick.

We finally have a university van which we will take to Balakot in a few

hours from now and, hopefully, a hired truck as well. Subsequent rounds

will have different teams, with one common member for continuity. The road

is now open, from what we hear.

The Azad Kashmir VC in Muzzafarabad called the QAU VC while I was waiting

for the signatures to be done. He was pleading for students from QAU to

come and dig out some 300 university girls still buried under the rubble.

Some of our students have already gone there, but the problem is the

stench of rotting corpses. Nature continues to be needlessly cruel. There

was rain and hail this afternoon in Islamabad, and probably north of here

as well. I hope our 6-hour drive tomorrow will not be too problematic.

I am happy to say that my university students, who I have so often said

are disappointing academically, are nevertheless full of spirit and vigour

in helping in the relief effort. We have repeatedly had to turn down their

offers to help for lack of capacity.

Thank you again for your contributions, which keep increasing. After the

immediate crisis passes, we will use the remainder to rebuild

infrastructure. Several of you are not Pakistanis, and your solidarity in

these desperate moments is appreciated even more. It reinforces hope in

our shared humanity.

With warm regards,

Pervez

---------------

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Professor of Physics

Quaid-e-Azam University

Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.

Phone (R): 92-51-2824257

Phone (O): 92-51-2829914

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:24:54 -0400 (EDT)

From: Pervez Hoodbhoy

Subject: earthquake efforts. help needed. IMPORTANT REVISION.

I am overwhelmed by your generousity. 

.....

As I was typing the above, I received a call from near Rawalakot, about

100 miles away from here. Apparently cell phones have now started working

again but in limited areas only. Bodies under rubble, no supplies, almost

no houses standing. The man (Yunus), an employee of Hajra's school, said

that no aid has reached any village that he knows of although he can see

helicopters flying towards Rawalakot. Hajra, who called from Abbottabad

last night, says that relief trucks are being attacked by desperate

survivors. The army simply watches. She could not return last night.

The question of what to do after the immediate crisis passes will remain.

More later.

Warm regards,

Pervez

---------------

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Professor of Physics

Quaid-e-Azam University

Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.

Phone (R): 92-51-2824257

Phone (O): 92-51-2829914

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 23:37:04 -0400 (EDT)

From: Pervez Hoodbhoy

Subject: earthquake efforts. help needed.

I am writing to a handful of friends in the US. The earthquake situation

is pretty desperate.

Tomorrow a bunch of university students and teachers from QAU plan to go

to Balakot where the devastation is total. Rotting corpses all around, I

am told. If we don't succeed, then Mansehra. If not that, then Abbotabad.

It all depends on the road conditions. Massive landslides all around.

We need to take foodstuff, blankets, medicines. Today I prevailed on the

QAU administration to release a university van. No large bus, because it

would be useless there. We want to fill it up with stuff, then go again

and again.

I think we could use up to 300,000 a trip ($5000/trip). We are limited by

having a single university van only. We have collected enough for one

trip, which is not a bad achievement given that the university is now

closed and there are hardly any people around. The number of trips will

depend on the sum collected.

If you want to contribute, say so now. It will have to be a solid promise,

and the money will have to be transferred into my personal bank account in

the US. I will then give the rupee equivalent to the team. It is not the

ideal way of doing things, but the only one I can think of given the time

constraint.

Hajra is in Abbotabad with senior students of Khadunia High School. They

felt that they really wanted to do something after two of their colleagues

had been killed in the collapse of Margalla Towers. She will return

tonight sometime.

Pervez

---------------

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Professor of Physics

Quaid-e-Azam University

Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.

Phone (R): 92-51-2824257

Phone (O): 92-51-2829914

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