The Pakistani earthquake of Oct 8, incorrectly named as South East Asian earthquake by the western media, was the most horrendous calamity Pakistan has ever encountered in its history. Its extent of devastation was slow to sink in because the entire public and community infrastructure became the first casualty of the quake. All communications, including roads, between the quake-hit areas and rest of the country were demolished making it difficult to get the true picture in the first few hours after the quake.
The Pakistan Army engineers restored the road links within 3 days and telephone links were also re-established to some extent. This enabled the government agencies and the NGOs to reach the quake-ravaged areas with relief goods. The eyewitness accounts told a story of devastation and death beyond anybody’s imagination. Reasonably flourishing towns were turned into ruins in seconds. Thousands of students, boys and girls, were buried alive in the falling concrete. The local and foreign media took the misery message from the quake area to every nook and corner of the world. The rescue teams and relief goods started pouring in. The United Nations and its various agencies lost no time to launch a massive relief operation in coordination with the Government of Pakistan.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan after assessing the grim situation prevailing in the ravaged area made a flash appeal for funds to the world community. When he found that response was not encouraging he convened a conference of UN member states and international NGOs in Geneva so that he could convince the rich countries personally that funds were needed badly otherwise the UN relief operation would come to a grinding halt and thousands of lives would be endangered. Mr Annan has played a crucial role in alerting the international community of the plight of the quake survivors. He has truly helped Pakistan in its hour of tragedy. No country in the world could face such extensive destruction on its own. That was the central point of Mr Annan’s argument for providing speedy help to Pakistani quake victims.
Let us delve briefly in the life of Kofi Annan to find out what makes him act so swiftly and decisively to come rushing to help the distressed people who have lost their belongings, their homes and their families. Which forces turned a UN bureaucrat into a humanitarian? Mr Annan was born in Kumasi, Ghana, on 8 April 1938. He is the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations. He began the first term as Secretary-General on 1 January 1997. He was elected to the second term of office, beginning on 1 January 2002 and ending on 31 December 2006.
Kofi Annan holds a Master of Science degree in management from the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He joined the United Nations in 1962 as an administrative and budget officer with the World Health Organization (WHO). After working in various positions in the UN and its agencies he rose to the highest office of the United Nations and thus became first Secretary-General to be elected from the ranks of the United Nations staff. As Secretary-General, Mr Annan’s first initiative was his plan for reforms, “Renewing the United Nations”, which was presented to the member states in July 1997 and has been pursued ever since with an emphasis on improving coherence and coordination. In April 2000 he issued a Millennium Report, entitled “We the people: The role of the United Nations in the 21st century”, calling upon the member states to commit themselves to an action plan for ending poverty and inequality, improving education, reducing HIV/AIDS, safeguarding the environment and protecting people from deadly conflict and violence. In addition to using his good offices in several political situations, and using his diplomatic skills for resolving complex interstate conflicts, the Secretary-General in April 2001 issued a five-point “Call to Action” to address HIV/AIDS epidemic – which he described as his ‘personal priority’ — and proposed the establishment of a Global AIDS and Health Fund to serve the developing countries that confront the crisis.
Mr Annan describing HIV/AIDS epidemic as his ‘personal priority’ has a background. Ghana, the country he comes from, is one of the highly infected HIV/AIDS countries. According to 2003 estimates, the HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate in Ghana was 31.1 percent; the number of people living with HIV/AIDA was 35,000 and deaths due to HIV/AIDS numbered 30,000. It is this tragedy happening in his home country that has made him sensitive to people in distress. On 10 December 2001 Secretary-General and the United Nations received the Nobel Peace Prize. In conferring the prize, the Nobel Committee said Mr Annan “had been pre-eminent in bringing new life to the United Nations”.
On the third day after the Oct 8 earthquake, Kofi Annan made a flash appeal to the world for funds to supply the survivors with tents, food and medicine. The response was poor but Mr Annan did not give up. He set up a donors’ conference in Geneva for Oct 26 to renew the appeal personally. He urged the conference participants in an impassioned speech to do all they could to prevent a new humanitarian disaster in Pakistan with the onset of winter. The Secretary-General told the meeting, “While no one today could have had the power to prevent the earthquakes from happening, we do have the power to stop the second wave: the death and despair caused by the freezing temperatures and disease, by lack of shelter, food and water”.
It was a successful meeting as far as pledges were concerned, which amounted to $111 million. However, the donors are taking their time to redeem their pledges. So far the United Nations has not received sufficient amount cash despite warnings that it was running out of funding, hampering the delivery of crucial supplies and care to the area before the winter snow threatens to ground the relief efforts in a few weeks. The next donors’ conference is scheduled for November 19 in Islamabad. The conference in Geneva had focused on short term relief funding while the purpose of Islamabad conference would be to raise funds for longer term reconstruction and rehabilitation. Mr Kofi Annan is expected to chair the conference. Pakistan has invited all the UN member states and international NGOs to the conference. It is expected that the world community would respond positively and encouragingly.

Pakistan’s missile test stuns India
Shahid Saleem Afzal

Pakistan test fired a cruise missile “Babur” on 11 August 2005. The test came as a surprise and stunned India. Pakistan declared that it was not “duty-bound” to inform India about the test-firing. India had earlier declined to accept Pakistan’s proposal that Cruise missiles too should be included in the draft treaty finalized on nuclear and conventional CBMs, where the two countries agreed on pre-notification of only ballistic missiles. India never conceived that Pakistan would be able to develop cruise missiles; therefore the test came as a surprise and stunned India. Development of Pakistan’s cruise missile comes in response to India’s BrahMos. According to defence analysts, an arms race between India and Pakistan was triggered with the peaceful nuclear explosion by India in 1974. Since then Pakistan has been responding to almost every new weapon developed by India. Pakistan’s Babur missile came in response to India’s BrahMos.
India and Russia have jointly developed the BrahMos (for the Brahmaputra River in India and the Moscow River in Russia) a 280 kilometer, 200 kilogram cruise missile capable of being launched from ships, submarines, aircraft, and land. Besides its supersonic speed, which makes its interception difficult, the BrahMos incorporates stealth technology. United States is particularly upset as this is the only supersonic cruise missile in the world and the US and her allies have not yet developed an effective defence against it. Pakistan has now joined the few countries that can design and make cruise missiles. Babur (Hatf-VII) is a Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) with a 500 kilometres range and is nuclear capable. The technology enables the missile to avoid radar detection and penetrate undetected through any hostile defensive system. US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli, commenting on the test said that the test was not provocative.
Cruise missiles are basically pilotless planes and are powered by turbofan engines. Some of them can fly upto 1000 miles depending upon the configuration. They can deliver approximately 500 kg of explosive or payload to a precise location. The missile is destroyed when the bomb explodes. Cruise missiles are dangerous weapons and difficult to detect. They are inexpensive to produce from readily-available aviation technologies and can strike targets both at sea and on land from a distance with precision. There are approximately 130 or so cruise missile types distributed between 75 nations. The United States demonstrated the effectiveness of cruise missiles during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). During the first twelve days of the war, which started on 19 March, 2003 with a barrage of 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched at regime targets in and around Baghdad, about 700 Tomahawks were fired. According to U.S. defense officials, fewer than 10 of these missiles failed to strike their intended targets.
According to Janes Defence Weekly, Babur appears to share several basic similarities with the US BGM-109 Tomahawk land attack cruise missile, with the two being roughly the same size and shape and having a similar wing and engine intake design. According to the magazine, the project began around 1998 and was bolstered by lessons learned from Tomahawk missiles recovered in Pakistan. These US Tomahawks had failed to reach intended targets in an August 1998 strike against a terrorist camp in Afghanistan; Pakistani officials at the time acknowledged that they had recovered at least two missiles. “I’m sure they must have learned from that ... they are quite good in reverse engineering,” the source noted.
Cruise missiles are lethal weapons and their early warning is a complex task. They fly too close to the ground and detection through ground based radar is only possible at very short ranges. Airborne radar has an advantage as it looks down and can detect and track cruise missiles but still in some cases the missile can evade detection due to its small cross section. Even if an incoming missile is detected, the problem would be to destroy it before it reaches its intended target. Besides, an incoming missile may be confused with an incoming friendly aircraft.
India is procuring the Phalcon radar from Israel. The radar will be integrated on the Russian IL-76 transport aircraft. India has for years tried to develop an Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) of her own. Many lives were lost in an air crash due to faulty design of the radar dome. Therefore, India decided to abandon the project and acquire a finished product from Israel. The Phalcon is an “over the horizon system”. It is designed to scan from ground level to about 40,000 feet and all moving objects in this envelope of airspace are detectable except for objects of small radar cross section. A low flying cruise missile for example has a radar cross section of about 0.005 metre at a range of 200 km. Many weather conditions also degrade the radar performance. Hence, it is very much possible that a cruise missile may evade detection by the Phalcon radar. The Indian fleet of AWACS would be overstretched in times of tension, as the Indian Airforce will have to maintain uninterrupted vigilance by keeping her AWACS fleet airborne for extended periods. This may not be possible at all times due to various operational and technical reasons. A Babur missile would be able to sneak in with ease once the Indian AWACS is at the end of her patrol away from the Babur firing site. Hence doubt will always remain in detection of Babur by AWACS, therefore Babur will continue to haunt Indian defence planners.

Can Pakistan turn quake tragedy into opportunity?
A. Masroor
 
THE colossal tragedy of October 8 among other things has also served as an improbable leveller of sorts. A number of bitter adversaries, historic opponents and ideological enemies were seen gathering at ground zero in the devastated regions. At times, they were even seen working together and joining hands in providing succor to the victims. Indeed, some of the unusual happenings that occurred in the wake of the earthquake catastrophe would have been unthinkable under any circumstance. Take for instance the story about the US relief workers helping unload the relief goods brought by a team from Iran, one of the three members of President Bush’s ‘axis of evil’.
While the US President went all the way to Pakistan embassy in Washington to express his support for Pakistan in its hour of need and promised generous assistance, his bitterest enemy, Al Qaeda was calling for help to Pakistan’s earthquake victims. And for the first time in its history Nato has set up a major strategic airlift operation of relief supplies to Pakistan. It has also established for the purpose mobile relief headquarters in Islamabad-another unprecedented first in Nato’s history. From a force known so far only for its militaristic prowess and skills, Nato has overnight transformed into an international humanitarian organisation.
And what was more unbelievable was the fact that out of the largest relief cargo that Nato airlifted to date last Wednesday, 200 tents went to a relief camp being run by an NGO, Al-Khidmat belonging to Jamaat-e-Islami, the religio-political party which is opposed to Nato’s presence in Pakistan. Not only the JI but even Jamaat-e-Dawa, the sponsors of the banned Laskhar-e-Toiba and the Al-Rashid Trust, are doing a sterling job of relief and rehabilitation in the affected regions. Even President Musharraf has praised the relief efforts of these organisations. In fact, on many occasions and places, Musharraf’s soldiers who are fighting extremists in North Waziristan were seen seeking medical assistance and relief from the camps being run by the (suspected) sponsors of these very extremists.
The unprecedented induction of a 1000-man strong Nato force comprising a battalion of engineers to rescue the 800,000 or so roofless people trapped in their mountain top abodes from being swamped to death by the on-rushing snowfall, on the one hand, reflects the enormity of the catastrophe and on the other it exposes as never before the disturbing limitations of Pakistan’s Army, the seventh largest in the world.
Another unusual and perhaps even more inconceivable development flowing out of the destructive earthquake was the contribution of $25 million to UN’s world-wide earthquake relief and rehabilitation fund by India, a country regarded for over half a century by Pakistanis as their enemy number 1. New Delhi has already sent three plane-loads of relief goods. And thankfully the point scoring match between the two rivals which, started with India’s exaggerated claim of helping Pakistani soldiers in reconstructing their bunkers across the LoC and Pakistan’s refusal to accept Indian helicopters with Indian pilots on the insensitive excuse of strategic sensitivities came to a very quick end with the two sides agreeing to reopen the LoC at a number of points for the Kashmiris to cross over using official papers to meet their relatives and join hands in relief and rehabilitation work.