The Northern Pakistan earthquake of 2005 was an earthquake that occurred at 08:50:38 Pakistan Standard Time on October 8, 2005 with the epicenter in the Pakistan-administered region of the disputed territory of Kashmir and Northern parts of Pakistan. The government’s official estimates of the death toll (on October 21), was 51,300. Nevertheless, estimates from regional officials placed the country’s death toll at 79,318 and is expected to continue to rise, putting it higher than the massive scale of destruction of the Quetta earthquake of May 31, 1935. Some estimate that the death toll could reach 100,000. An estimated 3.3 million were left homeless in Pakistan. Reports indicate widespread severe damage to Balakot (almost completely wiped out), Garhi Habibullah, Rawalakot, and Muzaffarabad (near the epicenter) where 30,000 are thought to have died. The quake triggered landslides, burying entire villages and roads in many areas of North-West Frontier Province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Hundreds of thousands of buildings are thought to have collapsed or sustained severe damage. One of two residential towers (Margalla Towers), believed to contain up to sixty apartments each, collapsed in the earthquake in Islamabad.
It has been estimated that damages incurred are well over 10 billion US dollars. Although affluent and rich nations were very prompt in the reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, but even small countries have not lagged behind in expressing ‘unconditional positive regard’ with the people of the Pakistan at this juncture of colossal catastrophe. The heads of these countries have expeditiously extended all possible humanitarian assistance and support to the people of Pakistan to overcome the impact of this tragedy. The Tunisian government has sent a C-130 plane with 14 tons of relief supplies, including food, blankets, and medical supplies to Pakistan. The Afghan government sent four rescue helicopters with four tonnes of medicine and pledged USD 500,000 in aid. Cambodian has pledged USD 60,000 dollars in assistance. The Chinese government offered emergency aid worth USD 6.2 million (PKR 370.14 M). The Hong Kong Government has approved a grant of HK$3.5 million. Indonesia is sending a C-130 Hercules aircraft with a medical team, medicine and various emergency materials to Pakistan. Iran has dispatched foodstuff, blankets, tents and medicines through two aircraft. Jordan has pledged a 50-bed mobile hospital to be deployed in Rawalkot. The Kuwait has sent USD 100 million aid to Pakistan. Malaysia has dispatched a search-and-rescue team to quake-ravaged Pakistan and USD 1 million (MYR 3.8 million) to its government. Nepal has offered USD 50,000 dollars in relief to Pakistan. Qatar was also willing to give humanitarian assistance to Pakistan. Saudi Arabia has announced 133 million dollars for Pakistan. Singapore expressed his deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of the victims and dispatched a 44-member team to help Pakistan’s relief and rescue operations. The South Korean sent USD 500,000 dollars along with blankets, relief foods and medical supplies and further announced USD 3 million. Turkey is sending 30 aircraft carrying medical teams to Pakistan, plus a relief package of USD $150 million. United Arab Emirates dispatched humanitarian aid to the region. Belgian allocates EUR 250,000 (PKR 18 million) and Flemish Government EUR 125,000 (PKR 9 million). Czech Republic will provide the victims with CZK 25 million (PKR 61 million). The Danish government has promised DKK 10 million (PKR 97 million) in immediate aid. Finland will allocate EUR 1 million. The Dutch promised EUR 1 million adding EUR 10 million later. Sweden has given 105 million kronor (13.4 million dollars approximately). Switzerland dispatched ten disaster relief experts to Islamabad and pledged CHF 1 million, and another CHF 750,000. Cuba is to send 200 doctors to Pakistan. New Zealand made an initial contribution of NZD 750,000 (PKR 31 million) to the international relief effort and further extended by NZD 750,000 (PKR 31 million), bringing its total contribution to NZD 1.5 million (PKR 62 million). Besides financial support, most importantly is that these small countries firmly stand by Pakistan in this moment of great distress. This has given a tremendous boast and a will to encounter any contingency. Pakistan is highly indebted to the deep concern and sense of sacrifice exhibited by these small nations.
Relief efforts in many remote villages are hampered, as roads are buried in rubble and many affected areas remain inaccessible. Heavy equipment is needed to clear the roads and to rescue survivors buried under the earthquake wreckage. Distributing relief supplies to the victims is especially urgent as the victims face the risk of exposure to cold weather due to the region’s high altitude and the approaching winter. Many regions are facing an increasing threat of being cut off from help as snow forces closures of even more roads in the mountainous region. This is difficult for Pakistan to manage. Pakistan needs international help to cope with earthquake relief operations. The magnitude of this disaster is so vast that the Government alone cannot provide relief to the people affected by this earthquake. “...a second, massive wave of death will happen if we do not step up our efforts now”, Kofi Annan said on 20 October with reference to the thousand remote villages in which people are in need of medical attention, food, clean water and shelter and the hundred and twenty thousand survivors that have not yet been reached. In Northern Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the Pakistan Army has been directed to extend all out help to the civilian population in the quake-hit areas. All civilian and military hospitals have been directed to deal with the situation on an emergency basis. he President and the Prime Minister have appealed to the nation to remain calm in the face of the calamity.
A generation is lost in the parts of Northern Pakistan and Azad Kashmir hit by the October 8 earthquake, but it has ignited unprecedented enthusiasm and spirit amongst Pakistanis to help settle the survivors of the earthquake. It is tragic for the nation as a whole which lost its enterprising and budding generation. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly soul stirring to see people from different walks of life, galvanized in making all out efforts to voluntarily help the quake victims with unflinching alacrity of purpose prevailing among the community. Compatriots enthralled with sense of belongingness from various parts of the country have started pouring in the earthquake-hit areas to participate in the rescue operation. The fellow-countrymen showed extraordinary willingness to help those in need of food, blankets, medicines and warm clothing. It is not because they found the army lacking or the government lacking; it is because people really wanted to help. Pakistan needs help, support and sympathy, rather than gratuitous criticism. We need to get those who may be injured out and into some medical treatment. The Nation recognizes the heroes who acted promptly in the face of extreme oddities and saved precious human lives.

India disposing off baby girls
Sobia Nisar

According to a report titled ‘The Promise of Equality’ released by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on 12th October 2005, parents in India are now turning to more modern methods of pre-natal sex selection, to dispose off unwanted girls, resulting in skewed female to male ratio. The report quotes Ranu, from the Northern Indian state of Rajasthan, who married at the age of 18 and strangled her first two babies to death because they were girls. She terminated two other pregnancies because the fetuses were females. Yet she and her husband, Muktar, have no remorse about the fate of their missing daughters. Ranu says, “I will kill other children if they are born girls,” explaining that she is too poor to pay for their weddings. All over Rajasthan and the rest of India, baby girls are being eliminated either through sex-selective abortion or infanticide. “The girl child is killed by putting a sand bag on her face or by throttling her”, the report quoted Ranu as saying. “It is not a rare phenomenon. It happens without hindrance.”
Far from being a practice that occurs only among the poor and illiterate, the practice appears to be most prevalent in Indian regions that boast high levels of educational attainment and relative prosperity. While in developed nations the female-to-male ratios are roughly equal, “in a number of regions in India, ratios have now plummeted to 800 girls born for every 1000 boys.” Francois Farah, head of Population and Development at UNFPA, blamed the phenomenon on what he calls an ‘unholy alliance’ between the modern desire for smaller families, available and affordable pre-natal screening technology and abortion coupled with a strong preference for sons. Evidence indicates sex ratio imbalances that are the result of selective abortion and female infanticide or neglect.
According to analysts, although existing laws ban sex-determination testing in India, about 60 million girls are ‘missing’- falling into a demographic black hole from which there will be no return. As many as two million fetuses are aborted each year for no other reason rather than they happen to be female. Experts say that the two-child policy that promotes the idea that the perfect family involves one girl and one boy is partly to blame for the dwindling number of girls in India. The Indian families are more likely to abort a female fetus if the first child is also a girl. Nobody questions the very norms that make girls so vulnerable in India in the first place. Either girls are married off like a burden or get rid of before birth.
Meanwhile the sex ratio imbalances coupled with the traditional low status of Indian women is also beginning to change traditional concepts of the family. In rural Punjab, where the shortage of women is most pronounced, a desire to keep rural family holdings intact is now driving a trend towards polyandrous unions where one woman, often ‘purchased’ from poorer regions or from lower castes, is forced to be ‘wife’ not only to her husband, but also to brothers and father-in-laws. Such women are subjected to sexual and physical abuse. “The levels of violence in these situations are unimaginable,” said Ena Singh, UNFPA assistant representative for India. If these kinds of practices become widespread it will be very destabilizing for society. While India aspires to be the biggest and strongest democratic power of the region, it is constantly engaged in securing a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. How can India ever justify its claim of being largest democracy and claim a position in the UNSC when the basic human rights factor is jeopardized to such level. It is most important to note that in the social indicators of literacy, poverty, basic health and human rights factor India lags behind even her smallest neighbours in South Asia.

Chinese are coming: Sudan’s oil fuels Beijing’s ambitions
Declan Walsh

A TANGLE of pipes and metallic towers rises over the shimmering, rock-strewn desert north of the Sudanese capital Khartoum. The gleaming oil refinery is the jewel of Sudan’s oil boom, the mid-point of a 900-mile pipeline from the southern oilfields to the Red Sea that is projected to pump 500,000 barrels a day by the end of this year. But if the oil is African, the money and management are Chinese. Inside the refinery gates, Chinese engineers man the distillation towers, Chinese cooks serve rice and noodles in the canteen, and workers pedal between the giant oil drums on bicycles imported from Beijing. “We like Sudan very much,” said Zhao Yujun, 35, a manager with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which built the sprawling plant five years ago. ...China needs energy for economic growth. There is oil in Africa. That is why we have come here.”
China is prowling the globe in search of energy sources. Oil executives and diplomats have signed a flurry of deals, from Canada to Kazakhstan. The scramble has triggered unease in Washington, where American conservatives worry about China’s growing economic muscle, but has sparked an unprecedented engagement with Africa. Chinese business is blazing a trail across the continent. Trade with China has almost tripled in five years. Railways in Angola, roads in Rwanda, a port in Gabon and a dam in Sudan have all been paid for with Chinese loans and built by Chinese contractors. Business with Nigeria and South Africa is booming. And this year China is expected to overtake the UK as Africa’s third largest trading partner. The driving ingredient is oil. China’s flagship African project is in Sudan. Isolation from the west meant that Khartoum barely pumped a barrel of crude a decade ago. Now, after intensive Chinese investment, it has the third largest oil business in sub-Saharan Africa.
China shipped in thousands of workers to build the Heglig pipeline in record time, and a second pipeline is under construction. The Khartoum refinery — CNPC’s first outside China - opened in late 1999, just in time for the 10th anniversary of the coup that brought military leader Omar Al Bashir to power. The gamble has paid off handsomely. Sudan is expected to earn more than USD1bn in oil revenues this year and its economy is one of the fastest growing in Africa. Meanwhile, China has won a new ally to fuel its thirsty factories and exploding rate of car ownership. ‘CNPC — your close friend and faithful partner’ reads a dust- smeared billboard outside the Khartoum refinery showing grinning Chinese workers in hard hats. “Our agreement is an example to others,” said Mohamed Atif, the Sudanese deputy general manager. “The Chinese say they are communists and socialists but they are deeply involved in the capitalist system,” he said.
Where western companies shy away because of corruption, conflict or the risk of losing their shirt, Chinese firms are plunging in. President Hu Jintao has dispatched diplomats to dangle large, low- interest loans before impoverished countries with the sole stipulation that work is done by Chinese contractors. African governments also appreciate China’s tendency to keep its nose out of domestic affairs. In contrast with the demands for transparency that accompany loans from international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, Chinese help comes on a strictly ‘no questions asked’ basis. But human rights campaigners warn that this one-track expansionism offers succour to rogue leaders and undermines efforts to foster transparency in some of Africa’s most notorious governments. Earlier this year, Angola’s president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who presides over a famously oil-rich but poverty-stricken country, received a GBP1.1bn line of credit from Beijing.
Beijing also came to the rescue of Zimbabwe’s embattled president, Robert Mugabe, presenting him with ornamental tiles for the roof of his palace and an honorary degree in recognition of his ‘remarkable contribution in the work of diplomacy and international relations’. “If you’re a corrupt government that wants loans with no conditions, you will like the Chinese. But it’s not good for the people of the country,” said Sarah Wykes of Global Witness, a UK- based lobby group. Western hostility towards Sudan’s military regime paved the way for one of China’s sweetest deals in Africa. In 1996, when the regime was an international pariah for sheltering Osama bin Laden and human rights abuses, CNPC bought shares in a government oil venture on highly favourable terms.
At the Khartoum refinery, Sudanese and Chinese co-workers communicate in a mix of Arabic, Chinese and English. In offices Chinese officials play with their mobile phones beside Muslim managers kneeling on prayer mats. But in the city Sudanese businessmen grumble that Chinese projects give little and take much. “They bring everything from China — labour, materials, the lot,” said one prominent trader who asked not to be named. South Africans worry that cheap imports are swamping their textile industry. Others say that China is stingy with humanitarian aid and that its secretive culture fuels bribery and corruption.