Inside the circle of fear
By KAMRAN REHMAT, Assistant Editor, The News*, Islamabad, Pakistan. OCTOBER 8, 2005, New Delhi. I'm going through a presentation on Bridging the Abyss: Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, which I have to make at a Conflict Transformation conference, when a friend calls out for me from the adjoining room of my accommodation at India Habitat Center. I rush to see the pictures of a live programme on state-run Pakistan Television, where the guests have fled a violently shaking studio and the anchor true to his mien is left to hold the fort (obviously, not out of any desire for a `boy-on-the-burning-deck' feat but because he is wired and can only break free by breaking the equipment). Before I can actually make sense of the situation, less than a minute after I first cast my eyes on the idiot box, the ground beneath my own feet provides an encore to the footage. In panic, we rush out of the room and down the stairs. But it lasts no more than a minute. Delhi has had its share of the earth dance. But the images preceding our canter are enough to raise concern. Most of us Pakistani delegates based in Islamabad and Peshawar check out back home to see if our loved ones have been spared the wrath of Nature. Most are lucky to get an early confirmation but I have to wait until late afternoon to get through because of a communication breakdown. A welcome sigh of relief, nonetheless. More than a fortnight has elapsed since my return home but it is doubtful if one can even make a fair attempt to describe the scale of the tragedy, which one had clearly underestimated from the picturesque habitat in Delhi. Cataclysmic shift Suffice it to say, it is mind-boggling and the experience at times, numbing. A whole generation has been wiped out and many areas simply swallowed by the earth. The mountains have been shaken from roots in what once were heavenly locales, their upper crusts breaking open as if assuming a life of their own. So cataclysmic has been the calamity that even chilly Hollywood offerings like The Day After Tomorrow appear trite in comparison. As if we haven't had enough of a trauma already, the unending run of aftershocks since October 8 won't let us out of the circle of fear. Until last Wednesday, 880 aftershocks had been recorded, some of which carried the intensity of actual earthquakes! The latest shock, on which the government tried in vain to keep a tab, probably out of concern for an already panicked citizenry, was that the epicenter of one such quake was near Islamabad. There is just no window on what the next moment holds. Unsurprisingly, only a few days into the tragedy and many are already exhausted from the turmoil to the extent that a certain saturation point is setting in. The fear that some kind of immunity to the crisis will set in looks very real. >From the standpoint of a media person, there are dozens of angles to the gravest calamity to have hit Pakistan in its 58-year history, the quake itself being the worst to hit the region in a century. It is a statement in itself, when the UN declares the scale of devastation even worse than last year's tsunami in terms of the displaced and threat to life and limb of the survivors, not to mention the onset of disease and disability. In the wake of the apocalyptic turnaround, many lamented the initial indifference some say callousness of the government and army in dealing with the situation. Indeed, this has been the sticking point of the criticism but to give the devil its due, it is not down to any opposition of the government. Perception chasm Even though the situation is improving in terms of logistical support, for those who have access to information, any censure for the government is now, in fact, turning into some empathy although this should not be mistaken for the public perception, which is one of acute anger and likely to rise in the days to come. There is an increasing realization that not even the most powerful state apparatus and this includes the world's only superpower could have overcome the complex after effects of the disaster, the very scale and dimension of which has left the world agape, with a degree of certainty. One would like to share a brief story of a colleague, Rashid Khattak, here, whose brother lost his wife and two daughters to the tragedy even as his brother and three other children survived to draw on the human strain that the disaster has caused. "Hearing the cries of children buried alive under the rubble of school buildings was, perhaps, the bitterest experience of my life. To our shame, I, and my two friends, couldn't lift a finger to rescue them as we had no means to lift the tons of concrete slabs under which their life was ebbing away. The deafening cries of dying children, begging to be saved, had such a profound shock that a friend passed out. "Passing through the collapsed building of a school at Gari Habibullah was our first encounter with the tragedy of October 8, which buried thousands of people under the debris of their own houses, on the one hand, and led to the total collapse of government, on the other. "Administrative impotency was laid bare when we entered a police station in the hope of finding some help because the road to Muzaffarabad (capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir) was blocked owing to landsliding but the police personnel themselves were in need of help as the structure had collapsed like numerous other government constructions. "The station house officer after narrating his ordeal took us to the centre of Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) but here the soldiers of the so-called most disciplined institution were of no use anymore. "Personnel of FWO, who consider themselves experts in constructing, widening and cleaning of roads in normal situation confessed that it was impossible for them to open the road. "My own boys cannot travel on this road now, even on foot, because of the landsliding how will I be able to drive your car at this late hour. It will be better for you to go back and wait for tomorrow," incharge of the centre, a colonel, told us. "After fruitless imploring with those officials we headed to Muzaffarabad amid rain, hailstorm and landsliding, which stood out as a potent threat to our lives. In the end, we were fortunate to only lose the windscreen of our car. End is nigh "We entered Muzaffarabad after walking more than two hours in the morning. Here, we stood like mute witnesses to a virtual graveyard with scores of corpses lying amidst barely alive people, who in some cases, appeared to have a fate worse than the dead staring at a slow, painful death. They seemed to have lost their senses, their eyes bereft of any signs of life. "Horrific as it sounds, by now, we were immune to the cries of people buried under the rubble. The sight of bodies and precariously injured could not move us anymore as we had become numb ourselves. "I may be back from the dead, but don't know how long will it be before I regain life." Indeed. ENDS *The News is Pakistan's largest circulated English language daily. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/uTGrlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -- This is ZESTGlobal. Post articles on international affairs to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTGlobal by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/join/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
