He expressed his unhappiness over what he projected as the inadequate international response to the natural disaster in Pakistan, as compared with what he described as the generous response to the tragedy caused by the tsunami across South-East and South Asia last December. He insinuated that this was due to the fact that whereas a large number of Western tourists holidaying in the tsunami-affected countries were killed, the earth-quake in Pakistan has killed hardly any Western tourist. Thus, in his perception, the aftermath of the tsunami received greater attention in the West than the aftermath of the quake.
There were more human fatalities caused by the tsunami (over 100,000 in Aceh in Indonesia, over 20,000 in Sri Lanka, over 10,000 in South India and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India and over 5,000 in Thailand) than by the earth-quake (over 73,000 in Pakistan and about 1,400 in India's Jammu & Kashmir). However, the infrastructure damage caused by the tsunami was much less than the damage caused by the quake in Pakistan. The tsunami struck the coastal areas over a long belt, but the material damage was restricted to the fishing infrastructure, which could be speedily restored. Moreover, the areas affected by the tsunami were easily accessible by road, train, air and sea and remained so even after the tsunami struck. Providing humanitarian relief, therefore, did not pose colossal physical problems.
In Pakistan, the quake struck areas which were relatively inaccessible due to lack of development and the inaccessibility is almost total to many areas nearly a month after the quake. The physical barriers to humanitarian relief, therefore, remain immense. Moreover, whereas the weather did not come in the way of the humanitarian relief in the tsunami-affected areas, it has already come in the way in the mountainous areas in Pakistan and would continue to remain in the way till the winter, which is setting in, is over by March next.
In the tsunami-affected areas, the damage was largely to the social (schools and healh services) infrastructure and to the economy of the affected areas, which were largely dependent on fishing and tourism. Damage to the fishing industry is amenable to quick repair and restoration. There was little damage of a serious or permanet nature to the tourist infrastructure except possibly in the Maldives. The damage caused by the tsunami to tourism was more due to its psychological impact than to any damage to the infrastructure. Once the fears in the minds of the tourists disappeared, they started returning. The tsunami-affected areas did not suffer any damage to their strategic infrastructure.
The damage suffered by Pakistan is multi-dimensional as indicated below:
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Damage to strategic infrastructure: The road network and the military infrastructure in the form of barracks, bunkers, houses for army officers etc are in a shambles. The onset of winter will delay the road repairs and restoration work. Unless the road network is restored early, humanitarian relief cannot reach hundreds of isolated villages. The affected areas are strategically important for the Pakistan military. But, if it gives priority to the restoration of the military infrastructure over the requirements of the civilians, it could add to the anger against Musharraf for his perceived mishandling of the aftermath.
Damage to economic infrastructure: The economy of the affected areas is largely dependent on fruit cultivation and tourism. Fruit orchards over large areas have been wiped out by the quake and hotels and motels meant for tourists have been brought down. After the ground has been cleared, fresh saplings of fruit-bearing trees have to be planted and they will take years to grow up and start bearing fruits again. Until the tourist infrastructure is re-built from scratch, tourism is unlikely to revive. There are no major alternate means of occupation in the affected areas.
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Damage to the social infrastructure: Practically all the schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and establishments providing essential supplies such as electricity and drinking water have been severely damaged, if not wiped out. Nearly 20,000 children and an unestimated number of teachers, doctors and nurses have been killed. The flow of foreign assistance so far has been mainly directed towards life-support humanitarian measures and quick restoration of the social infrastructure.
Damage to Army's image: The Pakistan Army has always projected itself to the people of the country as the saviour of Pakistan and its people and Musharraf as a military leader with rare brilliance and unsurpassed leadership qualities. The image of the Army and Musharraf has taken a beating due to its lethargic response to the quake and its initial inept handling of the aftermath. What kind of an Armyis it which was not aware for hours of the devastation caused by the earthquake? What kind of a modernisation of the Armyis it that Musharraf keeps talking of when for hours there were no communications between the field units and the GHQ in Rawalpindi after the quake had struck? What kind of reflexesdo Musharraf and his officers have when the disruption of communications for hours did not strike them as something odd and worrying and it did not occur to them to send a couple of helicopter sorties over the POK and the NWFP to make an aerial survey and find out what had happened? If this is the state of ineptitude at the highest levels of the military leadership, how can the internationalcommunity trust its words about the safety of its nuclear arsenal?
Musharraf's criticism of what he projects as the inadequate response of the international community is not justified. The Pakistan Government has estimated the total expected cost of relief and reconstruction at about US $ five billion. Presuming that this estimate is reasonable and not inflated, what has been the response of the international community? The prestigiousFriday Times of Lahore (October 27, 2005) has quoted an official of the Finance Ministry as saying that a sum of US $ 650 million in foreign currency and Rs.five billion in local currency had reached the Government of Pakistan's account by October18,2005 -- that is, within 10 days of the quake.
According to Jan Egeland, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator, the UN has received $130m in donations. In addition, at a meeting of donor-countries held at Geneva on October 26, 2005, the participating countries pledged to contribute another US $ 605 million. This included a pledge of US $ 25 million by India. The largest pledge of $250 million came from the Islamic Development Bank. The US pledged US $156 million, but this reportedly includes the cost of the helicopter services provided by the US, which has sent 20 helicopters manned by the US Air Force.
Thus, Pakistan has already been assured of US $ 1.25 billion bilaterally and multilaterally, of which it has already received US $ 650 million. The rest are pledges, which are yet to materialise.It has already received in the form of actuals and pledges a little more than one-fifth of its requirements as estimated by it. It is unreasonable for Musharraf to expect that the international community would meet the entire cost of relief and reconstruction.
The international assistance received or pledged so far is only for repairing the damage to the social and economic infrastructure. Gen. Musharraf apparently wants the international community to meet the cost of the repairs to the strategic infrastructure too, which it is reluctant to do. Faced with a difficult situation, he has decided to postpone the purchase of 75 F-16 fighter aircraft from the US, each of which would have cost around US $ 25 million.
Despite the apparent generous response from the international community, his criticism of the donors for their alleged poor response is meant to divert public anger away from him and the Army because of their inept handling of the aftermath of the quake. If Musharraf feels that the international community has not been as warm to him as he would have desired at this hour of Pakistan's greatest natural disaster since its birth in 1947, the reasons should be obvious to him. Two reasons in particular need to be cited.
The first is the role of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment in training and arming thousands of jihadi terrorists belonging to the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other jihadi terrorist organisations, who have been spreading havoc across the world and have killed nearly 48,000 innocent civilians in different countries of the world since the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988. There is an under-current of lack of sympathy for Pakistan in the non-Muslim countries, which is reflected in what Musharraf projects as the poor response to the tragedy in Pakistan.
The second is the memory of the way in which, under the late Gen.Zia ul-Haq, many senior officers of the Pakistan Army misappropriated millions of dollars in humanitarian relief received from abroad for looking after the nearly four million Afghan refugees. In the absence of the participation of the political parties and leaders in the governance and relief and reconstruction work, which is dominated by the Army, there is a natural reluctance to give too much money to a military-controlled Government.
This distrust of the honesty of the Army officers administering the relief and reconstruction programme is also reflected in large sections of public opinion. TheFriday Times of October 27, 2005, wrote: "Millions of dollars were pumped into Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war," said an analyst. "It was only after the war was over that it was revealed that the money was actually deposited in offshore accounts of some top military Generals instead of being spent on the welfare of the people of Pakistan, who were the real victims of the Afghan war."
It added: "Once the hysteria created by the national and international media about the earthquake dies down, we cannot rule out the possibility of the diversion of these funds to other areas in the name of national interests," said a retired Government official."
The international community should, therefore, make its assistance to Pakistan conditional upon Musharraf relinquishing his charge as the Chief of the Army Staff and appointing an all-party political committee to monitor the implementation of the relief and reconstruction projects and the spending of the money received from foreign governments.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow, International Terrorism Watch Programme (ITWP), Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Convenor of its Chennai Chapter.
