It does not behoove any responsible media, especially of neighbour like India, to make an attempt to befool people of other countries of the world in order to grind its own axe. It amounts to fish in troubled waters. And that is considered illogical, illegal, immoral and against norms of civilized behaviour. The exercise has proved futile, rather has boomeranged.
Some elements hostile to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan chose the calamitous situation created by the October 08 earthquake in the region to malign the Pakistan Army. It was just a loud-sounding nothing to rumour through ill-founded news-stories that Pakistani troops were riveted to borders for fear of attack from India.
One has never come across such a canard before in more than 40 years of life in journalism and travel abroad. Many learnt to write and speak the truth from the mosque, from the mandir, from the girja and from the gurdwara. And now they can’t be hoaxed into believing what some persons tried to launch through the Indian press. The exercise is meaningless and shorn of wisdom—and, of course, anti-human.
Never mind. Let one reach the depth of the truth from the height of Himalayas under the sun from the day one. The earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale rocked the country at 08:50 a.m. on October 08 (Saturday) and the aftershocks continued till 09:30 a.m. The strong quake, described as most powerful to hit the region in hundred years, was feared to have killed and injured thousands of people and caused massive destruction in northern Pakistan, mainly in areas situated near its epicentre which reportedly lay about 95 kilometres northeast of Islamabad in Kashmir.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz disclosed after an aerial view of the affected areas that the tremor also killed some 200 Pakistan army troops deployed in Azad Kashmir, including eight officers, and injured another 300. Newspapers on Sunday reported the Kashmir-centred earthquake jolted areas as far away as Kabul in the west and Delhi, some 600 kilometres in the east. Television footage from Muzaffarabad, hit as badly as was Balakot, gave an inkling of the devastation. The Pakistan Television showed buildings, which collapsed, roads which split open and were blocked by landslides, water pipes which were broken and the electricity lines and transformers which were flung down.
President General Pervez Musharraf told the PTV soon after visiting the collapsed multi-storey residential block of Margalla Towers in Islamabad that the catastrophe “is a testing time for me, the prime minister, the government and the nation.” He expressed confidence that the challenge would be met with courage and determination. Major-General Shaukat Sultan, asked by newsmen the other day to speak the truth according to his nature as plainly as he recites the first kalima while performing ablutions, gave an account of the moments after the earthquake and told them how the decisions were taken promptly at the top level to deal with the situation created by the quake and surmount the difficulties, if any. As everybody understands Saturday is usually a holiday in the armed forces.
The Inter Services Public Relations Director General said he was at home at 08:51 when the earthquake delivered the deadly blow and the power broke down. Home lights went off. As soon as the lights came back the soldier switched on the television to find out what the quake had done. He immediately rang up Brigadier Tahir Ashraf, Chief of Staff of 10 Corps, for the latest and at 09:10 placed a call to the Chief of General Staff. The CGS told Major-General Shaukat Sultan that he had already received a call from Bagh (Azad Kashmir) and heard that there had been tremendous damage and many villages may have been wiped out.
It was here—from this point—that things moved at a very fast pace, according to the DG of ISPR who never hides his inborn purity of love with humanity. At 09:20 the same day (October 08, Saturday) MI-17 helicopters of the Army Aviation took off from the Qasim Base in Rawalpindi to Bagh and Muzaffarabad as fresh information was coming from the forward areas. The first wave of helicopters rushed back by 01:00 p.m. with 140 patients from the jolted areas. The real extent of the damage done by the quake was becoming clear.
It was hardly 09:30 when he received a telephone call. The caller was a journalist who said he was standing in front of the collapsed Margalla Towers and the army was needed there urgently in view of the total chaos at the site. Shaukat Sultan responded quickly and rang the Director-General of Military Operations who told him that the Rawalpindi-based 111 Brigade had already been issued warning orders for disaster relief, and that was on the move. It was around 1 p.m. when he got a report that there was a dust cloud over Muzaffarabad and for all practical purposes the city had collapsed. “That’s when I told the media for the first time that the casualties could be in thousands,” said Major-General Shaukat Sultan.
The Chief of General Staff, in the meantime, had taken off to see the damage caused by the tremor. He returned at 4 p.m. and briefed President General Pervez Musharraf on Telephone. At 7:30 p.m. the Vice Chief of Army Staff chaired a conference at the Military Operation Directorate at the General Head Quarters, which was participated in, besides others, by the directors-general of Military Operation, Military Intelligence, Frontier Works Organization, Engineers, Logistics, ISPR and the Surgeon General.
Shortly after ten minutes at about 7:40, Major-General Shaukat Sultan said, he realized in the conference that he had to go on television to explain to the whole world the immensity of the damage. It was the live TV show in which he talked about the Margalla Towers, and said that what the people themselves had seen of the residential bloc collapse in Islamabad was only the tip of the iceberg. The damage to life and property in other areas was colossal, certain villages were completely wiped out and Muzaffarabad had been destroyed 60 to 70 per cent.
The Pakistan Army engineers, by this time, had been assigned the task of opening the blocked roads, and the work was in progress. And the authorities concerned had taken the decision that helicopters would carry and deliver relief goods such as tents, food ration and medicines across the quake-affected areas.
This is how the army officers and men rose to the occasion, put in their united effort in rescue and relief operations from the very first day of catastrophe and continue to make their best efforts to provide help to the earthquake victims. The duty is being performed in co-operation with the common people who volunteered the thousands on the appeal of President of Pakistan. This is another example of unity, fraternity and equality, social harmony. Empirically one can say the Pakistani soldier is always alert because he realizes the time for relaxation is not yet there.

Slow relief adds to the peril
Hugh Cortazzi

In the past year the world has suffered a series of natural disasters that have caused the deaths of some 200,000 people, serious injuries to many more, and enormous damage to property and infrastructure. Relief efforts by governments have often been too little and too late. Nongovernment organizations worldwide have done their best to fill the gaps, but they have been hampered by limited funds and their dependence on the availability of volunteers. The tsunami at the end of last year was a particularly terrifying disaster for Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. The worldwide public response was generous, but many practical as well as bureaucratic difficulties hampered relief efforts. Helicopters, ships and aircraft were quickly mobilized, but the logistic problem of procuring and delivering relief supplies meant that aid often arrived late.
Survivors had to exist in primitive conditions without medical attention. Organizations such as Doctors Without Borders did much valuable work, as did local doctors and hospitals; but the demand for help was such that many people suffered pain for prolonged periods while others, who might have been saved if medical assistance had arrived quicker, died or lost limbs. One lesson that seems to have been learned is the need for effective early warning systems in vulnerable areas. Famines in Africa, especially Niger, had been foreseen, but governments responded much too slowly to appeals from the United Nations. Crises that could have been averted if aid had been given earlier elicited only emergency food supplies after the media publicized the plight of women and children in the countries affected and showed pictures of starving families in primitive conditions.
Once again voluntary organizations such as Oxfam and Save the Children did what they could. Their appeals for contributions received a fairly generous response in Britain despite the fear of donor fatigue after the tsunami. Yet news of growing food shortages in Malawi and Zimbabwe were overtaken by accounts of appalling natural disasters elsewhere in the world. Summer floods in India, especially Mumbai, and in Bangladesh, drowned thousands of poor people, but relief was left largely to the authorities in both countries. The hurricanes that later hit the United States, the Caribbean and Central America drew more attention, although the number of deaths from them was probably less than from the monsoon floods in South Asia.
Pictures of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation in New Orleans and surrounding areas, the apparent breakdown of law and order, the extent of poverty in black communities and the inadequate responses of the federal and local administrations had a hugely damaging impact on international perceptions of the U.S. Subsequent hurricanes, especially Wilma, also wreaked colossal damage, but perhaps because they came later and because readers and listeners were becoming inured to scenes of devastation, are likely to be less remembered — except by those directly affected. Then came the devastating earthquake in Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, in India and Afghanistan. The worst affected areas in Kashmir were remote and often inaccessible. The Pakistani Army did not have enough helicopters, tents or other supplies amid huge logistic problems. The international response here has also been inadequate. While some countries promised and delivered food, medicines, tents and blankets, others have failed to fulfill their promises of aid toward the U.N. effort. Some advanced countries in Europe have apparently ignored U.N. pleas.
Once again the voluntary organizations have been left to try to fill in the gaps. Because of the inadequate international and national responses, many of those injured and left homeless in remote areas will die before relief supplies reach them. The U.N. urgently needs a well-endowed and adequately equipped and staffed organization to mount speedy relief operations. Governments must ensure that priority is given to this. Even if this is realized, there will still be a need for voluntary and charitable organizations to supplement national and international relief operations. The British government (and the U.S. government) try to encourage charitable giving through favorable tax treatment of gifts to charities. One organization that helps to channel such gifts to aid organizations in Britain is the Charities Aid Foundation. It collects tax refunds on behalf of donors who can then make use of various methods to help fund British charities that supplement social security and health safety nets and provide additional funds for medical research. There is also an increasing emphasis in Britain on helping organizations respond to international emergencies.
The Japanese government has helped Pakistan meet the crisis caused by the earthquake and provided valuable assistance after the tsunami. But we don’t hear enough about Japanese charitable organizations working overseas, although growing numbers of Japanese volunteers are helping with development projects. Does the Japanese tax system do enough to encourage charitable giving? It is difficult to prove that the number of floods and hurricanes this year is a result of man-made climate change, but it is equally impossible to prove no connection. Common sense and prudence thus suggest that we should redouble our efforts to reduce global warming. President George W. Bush and various rightwing industrial lobbies in the U.S. may continue to argue against the limited measures prescribed in the Kyoto Protocol — which is only a first and inadequate step to delay global warming — so other signatories to the accord must do all they can to ensure that it is enforced and followed up by further measures.
Earthquakes and tsunami cannot be ascribed to climate change, but they are a salutary reminder that we live on the edge of disaster. Governments as well as individuals need to increase their readiness for the next blow to our lives on Earth. This could take the form of an avian flu pandemic. It may be that avian flu will not mutate into a virus that spreads easily from person to person, but scientists have told us that they think such mutation probable. If that happens, creating an effective vaccine could take months. In the meantime, the number of deaths from such a virus could well exceed those caused by natural disasters this year.

Azerbaijan’s election not likely to bring a revolution
Simon Ostrovsky
 
As voters cast ballots in a landmark parliamentary election here Sunday, speculation was rife over whether Azerbaijan would become the fourth former Soviet republic in two years to see a popular revolt. After huge crowds of Ukrainians overturned the result of a rigged presidential poll by camping in the streets in 2004, Azerbaijan’s opposition hopes similar tactics here will force out President Ilham Aliyev. But observers say the election lacks some of the key ingredients needed to spark a popular revolt, including live television coverage of protests and international support. For Azerbaijan’s under-funded and poorly organized opposition Azadliq (Freedom) bloc, putting up strong resistance to Aliyev’s clannish ruling structure is an uphill battle.
Unlike anti-government forces that won in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the opposition in Azerbaijan faces a regime with few qualms about using force to keep power. Revolutions in other republics once part of Moscow’s domain “were facilitated by a split within the ruling elite. In Azerbaijan most of the opposition is in the streets, not the corridors of power,” said Zavdush Alizade, an independent analyst. The country also lacks an independent television outlet, while the ability of Western broadcasters to air live coverage has been hampered by an apparent government ban on foreign transmission equipment. Live international television coverage, which brought protests in Ukraine to living rooms around the world and galvanized opposition support, will be complicated by the restrictions, a Western broadcasting source told newsmen.
Azerbaijan’s eight million people have never seen an election meet international standards and Western powers have urged a free vote. But there has been little evidence of the international support for the opposition that was visible in Ukraine because of concerns over stability in this energy-rich and strategic country, analysts say. The police’s willingness to injure and arrest scores of demonstrators attending unsanctioned rallies in the lead-up to the vote has elicited fears that larger postelection demonstrations could also be subject to a crackdown. Azadliq’s efforts have been hampered by the bloc’s inability to raise funds from a business elite loyal to the ruling regime. A loose coalition of three opposition parties, Azadliq is also weakened by internal divisions, which have resulted in the group’s inability to select a single leader. Nonetheless, this is the first election in which major opposition groups “have demonstrated any ability to come together,” said an experienced Western observer of Azerbaijani polls.