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2005
A year that moved the Earth
It is again the time of the year when The News looks
back at the events and happenings of the previous year and makes a move
forward to welcoming the New Year. The year 2005 was different from
previous years due to many reasons the major one of all was the natural
calamities which struck the mother Earth with full force leaving behind
innumerable tales of tears and miseries. The year undoubtedly would be
remembered as the earth shattering year in the annals of history, because
of the news of hurricanes, earthquakes, air crashes and the damages done
to the life and property of human being. While taking Oct 8 tragedy in
Azad Kashmir and the NWFP, there is no denying the fact that world in
general and Pakistan in particular worked diligently to bring relief to
the earthquake victims.
However, with all the relief and aid efforts going on
in full swing, the earthquake victims have been bearing the ravages of
winter season after being hard hit by the natural disaster. Almost three
months after the actual tragedy, another tragedy is unfolding in the
mountains where according to a press report, 100 children have died of
cold in the past month in the towns of Muzaffarabad and Bagh alone and the
death toll in more remote regions can be any body's guess.
October 8th earthquake is still fresh in the minds of
many a people and it should remain so because only in this way they will
be able to do something for their brethren in need. Although the
leadership has managed to turn these disastrous tragedies into
opportunities which would bring future benefits for people, but the prime
issue right now is of rehabilitating the people in their home towns. Only
the sincere and concerted efforts of the world at large will help these
tragedy-stricken people to rise from the ashes. Do not let "winter to
be a killer" for these three and a half million homeless earthquake
victims. As Edith Lovejoy Pierce says: "We will open the book. Its
pages are blank.
We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book
is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." Let's
join hands for a better tomorrow and make the most of this opportunity.
- Happy New Year! -- Sheher Bano, Editor Supplements
Earthquake
2005:
Reconstruction & rehabilitation yet to begin
By Kaleem Omar
 Relief,
reconstruction and rehabilitation, which became the new buzzwords in the
wake of the October 8 earthquake, have been pushed off the front pages in
recent weeks by the furor over Kalabagh Dam. For the people of the
affected areas of Azad Kashmir and NWFP, however, reconstruction of the
region's shattered infrastructure and rehabilitation remain as urgent a
need today as they were in the immediate post-earthquake period.
More than 80,000 people were killed in the earthquake
and aftershocks, another 65,000 were injured, and an estimated 3.5 million
people were left homeless. The 7.6 magnitude quake flattened whole towns
and villages, and destroyed or badly damaged much of the region's
infrastructure, including roads, power lines, telecommunication links and
water supply systems.
Thousands of government schools, hundreds of health
clinics and thousands of other government buildings were destroyed or
badly damaged - tragic evidence of just how shoddily built they had been
in the first place. No official inquiry has yet been initiated into who
was responsible for this shoddy construction, nor have any heads rolled so
far on this account.
Donor countries, UN and other international relief
agencies, multilateral financial institutions, and charitable
organisations have pledged a total of $ 6.1 billion in aid to Pakistan for
earthquake relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation.
According to President Pervez Musharraf, $ 1.6 billion
is being spent on relief operations, the amount stipulated for this
purpose by the UN. Addressing a luncheon meeting hosted by the Council of
Pakistan Newspaper Editors in Lahore on December 29, Musharraf said
800,000 tents had reached the affected areas against the existing demand
of 500,000. Thousands of Pakistan army personnel, foreign relief workers
and Pakistani volunteers are working in the affected areas to provide
relief assistance to survivors.
But while relief operations are in full swing, the same
cannot be said for reconstruction and rehabilitation operations. Some
roads have been re-opened and some electricity lines and telecommunication
links have been restored. But work has yet to begin on rebuilding homes,
schools, health clinics and other infrastructure. The advent of winter and
continuing aftershocks in the region have compounded the problem.
Three-and-a-half million earthquake victims are still
homeless, many of them surviving in makeshift tent cities. Relief workers,
who are already speaking of a "lost generation" (a reference to
the tens of thousands of schoolchildren killed in the earthquake), fear
the death toll from the fierce winter - temperatures in some areas dip to
minus 10C at night - could "exceed that of the quake."
While that may be too alarmist a prediction, there is
no denying the fact that the next three winter months pose a grave danger
to the lives of the survivors.
The arrival of the snow has triggered a migration south
by those fit enough to travel. A few feet deep at present, the snow will
soon be drifting up to 20 feet or more in many high-altitude valleys and
villages. Very soon, the mountain roads will be impassable. Major
snowfalls and even colder temperatures are forecast for next week and the
weeks ahead.
To add to the problem, many inhabitants are reluctant
to leave their devastated villages - partly due to the inherent reluctance
of mountain people to move to other places and partly due to their fear
that if they leave, people from other villages might come in and occupy
their land.
The government, for its part, says that, of the $ 6.1
billion in aid pledged by donors, it plans to spend $ 4 billion on
reconstruction and, in President Musharraf's words, "turn the
challenge into an opportunity."
To house the estimated 3.5 million homeless people will
require the construction of about 350,000 houses, based on an average
occupancy of 10 family members per house. The new houses cannot be built
like shacks. They have to be solidly-built structures to ensure that they
have a better chance of withstanding any future quakes in the
earthquake-prone region.
Given this fact, the estimated average cost per house,
at current prices, is likely to be of the order of about Rs 1 million. So
the house rebuilding programme alone could cost an estimated Rs 350
billion. Another estimated Rs 250 to Rs 300 billion is likely to be needed
to rebuild the region's schools, hospitals, shops, office buildings and
infrastructure. Thus, the total cost of reconstruction could be well over
Rs 600 billion.
Rehabilitating the region's economy will be a more
long-term affair involving a complex mix of factors including creating job
opportunities, giving people easy access to low-cost loans to help them to
restart their businesses, and initiating development schemes aimed at
uplifting the region out of the poverty in which it has been mired for
decades.
When natural disasters strike, some people are more
vulnerable than others. When the powerful Hurricane Ivan, packing
ferocious winds, slammed into the south-eastern United States in September
2004, 25 people were killed. A few days later, a far weaker tropical storm
hit the Caribbean island nation of Haiti, killing some 2,500 people and
displacing thousands more. Hurricane Katrina, the most powerful hurricane
to hit the United States in the last hundred years, killed 1,200 people.
The cyclone that hit East Pakistan in December 1970 - a storm of much less
intensity than Katrina ñ killed more than 200,000 people.
What determines different communities' susceptibility
to the impact of hazards? Why did Americans get off relatively lightly
when Hurricane Ivan hit, while Tropical Storm Jeanne proved catastrophic
for people in Haiti? A cocktail of factors made Haitians more vulnerable,
including a lack of early warning systems and extensive deforestation that
causes floods and landslides.
At the root of it all is poverty. People in rich
countries like the United States have better access to the kinds of
resources that help to prevent disasters becoming crises in the first
place, and to cope with them when they do. As Hurricane Katrina showed,
however, even in the United States the more well-off residents of New
Orleans - most of them white - were able to get out of harm's way by
leaving the city in their cars and driving to safer locations inland
before the hurricane hit. But tens of thousands of blacks (who make up 67
per cent of New Orleans' population) were too poor to own cars and
remained stuck in the city. As a result, nearly all the people killed by
the hurricane and the storm surge that inundated the city were blacks.
Hazards happen. But it's mainly in poor countries, or
in poor communities in rich countries, that they turn into humanitarian
disasters by claiming lives and robbing survivors of their livelihoods.
It's no coincidence that 98 per cent of people killed or affected by
natural disasters live in developing countries. The Asian tsunami of
December 2004, which killed close to 300,000 people in nine developing
countries across the Indian Ocean region, was a case in point; the October
8 earthquake that hit northern Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, killing more
than 80,000 people, is another.
Itís not hard to see why poverty and vulnerability are
intertwined. And things are getting worse. The International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies projects that by 2025, more than 50
per cent of people in developing countries will be vulnerable to
extreme-weather hazards like floods and storms.
Disaster experts explain vulnerability in terms of
physical, social, economic and environmental factors. In developing
countries, poverty tends to bring out the worst in all four areas. A
recent report entitled ìBefore Disaster Strikesî by the non-governmental
relief agency Tearfund highlights some of the ways this happens. According
to Tearefund, up to half the people living in the largest cities in the
developing world - or about a billion people - now live in unplanned
squatter settlements. "Many squatter settlements lack even the most
basic infrastructure -- health and fire services, dykes and drains,
telecommunications, piped water and sanitation - and are therefore
ill-equipped to cope when disaster strikes," the report says.
The same thing can be said about many parts of northern
Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, which include some of the poorest communities
in the country. Nothing highlights this fact in starker or more tragic
terms than what happened when the October 8 earthquake struck.
The quake struck at 8.52 a.m., when children were in
school. Many poorly constructed school buildings were flattened, burying
thousands of children alive. Because the affected communities did not have
heavy lifting equipment to remove the rubble and still lack it, very few
children or teachers could be rescued. Most of them died.
Natural
disasters cost world $US 60b in 2005:
Compiled by Schezee Zaidi
 Disasters
can devastate any one of us at any given moment. Whether manmade, or
nature's fury, there are conditions surrounding us which will inevitably
sculpt our future. The past year has been a wretched one for millions of
disaster victims. It dawned with the Indian Ocean tsunami, saw a hurricane
season unrivalled in living memory strike the Americas, and included South
Asiaís devastating earthquake. Through it all, other tragic crises
persisted in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Like never before, the year
stretched and tested the capabilities of aid agencies, and the will of
survivors.
Natural disasters this year have cost the global
economy more than $US60 billion (48.4 billion euros), the world's largest
reinsurer Munich Re has estimated. In its report, the German group said
tornadoes, heat waves, forest fires and floods were the biggest causes of
loss of life and economic damage. Comparative figures for last year were
$US55 billion and 11,000 lives lost.
Munich Re said the number of weather-related disasters
was a further proof of climate change that increased the risk and
potential costs to insurers. Broken down, Munich Re counted 70 earthquakes
in total during the year that caused damage amounting to six billion
dollars, although that figure does not appear to take the latest Iran
temblor into account.
 They
included an earthquake in Algeria measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale which
left at least 2,200 people dead, another in February in northwest China
measuring 6.4 which damaged or destroyed 70,000 homes, and another in
California which, although it caused relatively little damage, highlighted
the risk of a far more devastating quake. Munich Re also warned of the
risks of more quakes in Iran and neighbouring countries because of the
seismic volatility of the entire region.
Storms made up one third of the estimated 700 natural
disasters counted by the reinsurance giant but accounted for 75 per cent
of the costs. Tornadoes in May in the Midwest of the United States cost
more than $US3 billion alone, while Hurricane Isabel ravaged the US east
coast in the second half of September.
Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Hurricanes:
 This
year has been a year like no other for humanitarian action, bracketed by
devastating disasters - the Indian Ocean tsunami in the final days of 2004
and the South Asia earthquake of 8th October 2005, on top of the worst
hurricane season in living memory - and stretching all humanitarian
agencies to their maximum capacity and beyond.
With about 160,000 deaths (UN estimate, ongoing) in at
least a dozen Indian Ocean nations, 2004, from earthquake and tsunamis, it
is clear the 12/26/04 devastations do not rank even among the dozen worst
natural disasters, they represent certainly the deadliest tsunami-related
tragedy within recorded history. The nearest two, in numbers of people
killed by other tsunamis, are: first, in 1755, when 100,000 died in
Portugal and Morocco from earthquake, tsunamis, and fire calamities; and,
second, in 1883, when 36,000 died after the stupefying eruption of
Krakatoa, in Indonesia, followed by tsunamis that affected that region
much as did the most recent events.
But while the 160,000 or so deaths in the current
catastrophe are a quite exceptional absolute number of tsunami-related
victims, as a proportion of the existing world population, they stand only
2nd among the three major tsunami-related disasters of fairly modern
times.
 Such
statistics are irrelevant, of course, to the overwhelming and horrendous
nature of the disasters for those directly affected and for the national
economies of the many nations where this latest earthquake and/or the
subsequent tsunamis struck.
Funding, led by private donations for the tsunami,
reached unprecedented worldwide totals - but because the majority of funds
were earmarked for the tsunami, most agencies and non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) still lacked sufficient funding to assist millions of
people struck by other crises.
Deaths from earthquakes in 2005
Total Deaths: 89344 (estimated)
March'28, Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, 8.7 M
At least 1000 people killed, 300 injured and 300
buildings destroyed on Nias; 100 people killed, many injured and several
buildings damaged on Simeulue; 200 people killed in Kepulauan Banyak; 3
people killed, 40 injured and some damage in the Meulaboh area, Sumatra.
The quake was also felt in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India and in
Sri Lanka.
February 22, Central Iran, 6.4 M: At least 612 people
killed and 1,411 injured in Kerman Province. An estimated 8,000 homes
damaged or destroyed in the Zarand area.
October'08, Pakistan, 7.6M:
At least 86,000 people are estimated killed and more
than 69,000 injured and extensive damage in northern Pakistan. The
heaviest damage occurred in the Muzaffarabad area, Kashmir where entire
villages were destroyed. At Uri 80 percent of the town was destroyed. At
least 32,335 buildings collapsed in Anantnag, Baramula, Jammu and Srinagar,
Kashmir. Buildings collapsed in Abbottabad, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Islamabad,
Lahore and Rawalpindi, At least 1,350 people killed and 6,266 injured in
India. at Chandigarh and New Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh,
Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh, India.
At least one person killed and some buildings collapsed in Afghanistan. An
estimated 4 million people in the area left homeless. Landslides and
rockfalls damaged or destroyed the major infrastructure. Landslides
occurred farther north near the towns of Gilgit and Skardu, Kashmir.
Liquefaction and sandblows occurred in the western part of Vale of Kashmir
and near Jammu. Landslides and rockfalls also occurred in parts of
Himachal Pradesh, India. Seiches were observed in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh
and West Bengal, India and many places in Bangladesh.
United States Earthquakes in 2005:
Largest in Alaska:
June 14-Rat Islands, Aleutian Islands, Alaska-6.8 M
Largest in the 48 States:
June 15-Off the coast of Northern California-7.2M
June 17-Off the coast of Northern California-6.7M
July 26, Western Montana-5.6M
Largest in Hawaii:
July 15-Hawaii Region-5.3 M
Earthquake facts and statistics:
People continue to ask throughout the world if
earthquakes are on the increase. Although it may seem that we are having
more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained
fairly constant. A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the
last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of
earthquakes we have been able to locate each year.
This is because of the tremendous increase in the
number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in
global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in
the world; today, there are more that 8,000 stations and the data now
comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and
satellite.
The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year
or approximately 50 per day. According to long-term records (since about
1900), about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 - 7.9) and one great earthquake
(8.0 or above) is expected in any given year. Following the record of
major earthquakes in the world since 1900, nine of the deadliest
earthquakes took place from December 2004 to December 2005 alone.
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Foreign policy 2005:
Pakistan moving with confidence
By Ammara Durrani
 By
all accounts, year 2005 proved to be an exceptionally eventful year for
Pakistan's foreign policy interests. Kashmiris from both sides of the Line
of Control (LoC) crossed it on foot and bus wheels for the first time in
60 years; Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmod Kasuri shook hands
with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom in Istanbul amidst full media
glare; the country survived Iran's nuclear face-off with the West without
losing friends on either side; and against all cynical bets--General
Musharraf managed to secure almost $6bn of aid for Kashmir quake relief.
That the Foreign Office waltzed through such a wide
range of diverse interests in a scope of one year is remarkable.
Notwithstanding criticism at home, fruits of Pakistan's carefully crafted
post-Nine Eleven policies are ripening, and then some more. But how and to
what extent policymakers will go about picking them while fending off
serious challenges, will depend on how some peculiar patterns play
themselves out.
Managing 'K'
 India's
rigid stance on Kashmir did not prevent Pakistan from proposing some
'ideas' for resolution of the conflict that has ridden both countries
since their inception. The resumption of the historic
Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service in April, followed by October's decision
to open the LoC at five points indicate two important realities: 1) there
are several ways to move things on the disputed ground, but force will no
longer be one of them; 2) both governments have finally conceded
"through factors and actors" to place the Kashmiri people and
their betterment at the center of any decision they take with respect to
the region.
A critical component of last year's Kashmir diplomacy
was the high-level re-engagement of the territory's political leadership
by Islamabad and New Delhi at the same time. APHC's Mir Waiz Umar Farooq
and his delegation's September meeting with Indian PM Manmohan Singh in
New Delhi, preceded by their high-profile visit to Pakistan in June
indicated development of their understanding with the two capitals. It
also showed the shifting sands of political power inside Kashmir with the
hardliner leadership of Syed Ali Shah Gillani opting for the sidelines.
Without doubt, these developments will have an
important impact on the armed resistance in the valley. Militants' threat
to blow up the bus-service neither deterred ordinary Kashmiris from
traveling, nor did they materialize. Post-quake relief competition between
governments, political parties and jihadi outfits points to a hopeful
future, where the conflict will become more political and less violent.
Both governments have showed keen interest in keeping
APHC engaged. In spite of India's persistent use of the 'cross-border
terrorism' rhetoric, Islamabad suggested de-militarization and
self-governance for Kashmir. New Delhi's lukewarm response
notwithstanding, Pakistani government is now willing to propose ideas for
conflict resolution that were once only dreams for peace activists of the
two countries. It is a telling sign then that after embracing the idea of
conflict resolution in theory, Islamabad is trying to practice it with
techniques of conflict management.
Friends for Profit?
Pakistan is putting aside political emotionalism and
giving a lead to pragmatic business sense in its relations with
problematic neighbors like India and Afghanistan.
Helping to hold phased elections in Afghanistan last
year, continuation of cooperation and coordination with the Afghan
government on the terror war, and smoothing out thorny trade issues
through the Afghan Transit Treaty earlier in the year showed that
Islamabad's relations with Kabul are becoming need-based and moving
towards an equal keel.
Slow but steady continuation of the India-Pakistan
Composite Dialogue through the past year is another case in point.
Re-opening of consulates in Karachi and Mumbai and the Khokrapar-Munabao
border and rail track shows keen interest of the two governments to bind
themselves in long-term trade ties that could prevent conflict in future.
2005 saw formidable face-off between Iran and the US on
the former's nuclear program. This tension has had a peculiar impact on
South Asia in the sense that Iran has been courting both India and
Pakistan "and vice versa" to strike strategic economic deals
such as the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Following rising
tensions, India and Pakistan faced pressure from Washington to withdraw
from any economic engagement with their Persian neighbour.
The US is an ally none could afford to alienate. Yet,
both India and Pakistan reacted to the crisis in different ways, according
to their capabilities and political mileage with the arch-foes.
Constitution of an India-Pakistan committee last year to look at the
various issues involved with the project and its three subsequent
meetings, as well as the trilateral meeting between the three governments
scheduled for early this year shows that parallel to global tensions, they
are not prepared to lose sight of mutual economic gains. Pakistan, in
particular, is highly keen on pitching itself forward as the future's
energy corridor for South, West, Central, and East Asian countries.
From Pakistan's perspective, the decision to put
archaic ideologies and politics behind is ultimately symbolised by its
engagement with Israel. Year 2005 will particularly be remembered for the
build-up to the Istanbul meeting in August and its exciting fallout. The
reassurance not to establish formal diplomatic ties until the resolution
of the Palestine-Israel conflict was a successful balancing act vis-a-vis
the Arab world. Nevertheless, Islamabad's move seems intelligently
calculated to attain maximum political and economic benefits from any
future relationship with Tel Aviv.
Armed For Peace
Making peace with old foes topped Pakistan's foreign
policy agenda last year, but so did arms procurement. The confidence is
evident from the fact that the government did not shy away from
negotiating a Saab fighter plane deal with the Swiss government soon after
the October 8 earthquake, even though it faced massive criticism at home.
In March, Pakistan got confirmation of the coveted F-16
deal from the US, signaling that country's eagerness to do business with
Islamabad beyond the war on terror. Washington's move coupled with its aid
for and interest in disaster-struck Kashmir was a clear signal for the
Pakistani government and people that this time round the US will not be in
a hurry to pack up and leave this region once the scourge of al Qeada is
dealt with. India's July agreement with the US for cooperation on civil
nuclear technology came as something of a shakeup for Islamabad, however.
Some analysts saw it as a setback for Pakistan's strategic interests.
Though Washington later followed it up by proposing to extend energy
cooperation to Pakistan, Islamabad now knows that the US is de-hyphenating
the Pakistan-India equation as far as its own interests are concern.
Pakistan will now have to think twice before it can rely on any particular
ally for all its problems.
If Islamabad is currently out of the exclusive nuclear
energy cooperation club, it has also managed to keep everyone
"Washington included" out and away from Dr A Q Khan and access
to information and knowledge about the country's nuclear program.
Pakistan's successful management of the Khan affair and its withstanding
of intense international pressure against Iran's nuclear stand-off shows a
confidence to hold on its own, even if it can't get everything on its
terms.
The October agreement between India and Pakistan to
notify each other before ballistic missile test firing clearly pointed to
the reality that Pakistan intends not only to maintain its current
military profile "nuclear and conventional" but also upgrade it,
even as it makes friends.
The Development Agenda
2005 also saw Islamabad delving deep to understand and
face the challenging international language and politics of democracy,
poverty, human rights and gender by governments and institutions that
wield pressure on Islamabad to get its act together on all these fronts.
General Musharraf's handling of the Mukhtaran Mai and Shazia Khalid cases
became a public relations disaster for the government.
It also pointed to an interesting shift: domestic
issues are fast becoming a concern for the Foreign Office also, as it
finds itself drafting responses for a critical and well-informed
international community ready to question everything the government does
at home. To appoint the suave Tasneem Aslam, Pakistan's first female FO
spokesperson, as the face and brains for public diplomacy was an
intelligent move designed to create a 'soft' international image for the
country.
The hectic quake diplomacy following the October 8
disaster was a new front for Pakistan which it established for itself
successfully. Apart from receiving massive aid, the interest of
governments and IFIs (international financial institutions) to reconstruct
the quake-hit region carries tremendous scope for economic development and
political re-structuring of Kashmir. For Pakistan, it will be an
opportunity to correct past wrongs and make new beginnings in a most
important region.
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