Disaster Finds India, Pakistan Divided Still

t r u t h o u t - J. Sri Raman: "Disasters are known to bring together divided communities and countries. A shared natural calamity, however, may not suffice to unite nuclear neighbors even in common relief efforts.

It has taken five full days and bitterly cold nights for India to dispatch a mere 25-tonne plane-load of food and medical relief to Pakistan, which has lost at least 40,000 human lives thus far in Saturday's tragedy. And it has sent this measly assistance, despite strenous efforts from Islamabad to stall even such symbolic help from its South Asian adversary, while appealing for worldwide aid all this time. There is no talk, as yet, of even token Pakistani participation in joint relief operations in the India-administered part of disputed Kashmir.

There have been no appeals on the print and audio-visual media for public donations to official agencies for relief efforts, the kind that normally follow any comparable disaster in the country's neighborhood. It is only the Bombay film world, with its huge following in both countries and beyond, that has so far undertaken such efforts.

So much for the efficacy of the India-Pakistan peace process, supposed to have brought the people of the two countries closer together than ever before. And so much for the capacity of the political rigidity on Kashmir, jealously preserved by both sides through the entire process, to prevail over all dictates of the disaster and common sense.

The fact that Kashmir as a whole has borne the brunt of the tragedy has not made the two countries or their governments compete with each other in relief efforts. It has only made them compete in preventing common relief efforts.

Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, with Muzaffarabad as its capital, has suffered the heaviest toll in human lives and property. India-administered Jammu and Kashmir has reported about 1,500 deaths. From both sides are pouring in stories of the uprooted survivors' untold suffering in bleakly cold and utterly inaccessible terrains. (The two governments, which have not batted an eyelid over building up astronomically expensive nuclear arsenals, have not found it financially feasible to access and connect villages through roads.)

Officials of both sides, of course, have talked about the earthquake respecting no border or the line of control (LoC) in Kashmir. The lines on the map, however, have not become any less important for the officials themselves. All-Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference chairman Umar Mirwaiz Farouq struck a chord in tens of thousands of hearts when he stood barefoot on a lawn in front of Kashmir's largest mosque and told the grieving congregation: "The two governments are hesitant in helping each other. Let us not play politics over this."

Analysts attribute Pakistani reservations about joint relief efforts to the fact that these would have entailed the presence of Indian military personnel in Pakistan-administered areas. This would have been inevitable, since disaster relief in India is carried out largely by military and paramilitary forces. The peace process has, obviously, not made the Indian and Pakistani forces on either side of the LoC eye each other any less warily than before.

The earthquake was reported to have killed nearly 40 Indian soldiers when their bunkers collapsed on them. Over 200 Pakistani soldiers have also died in the tragedy. The two armies, however, do not see the disaster as their common enemy.

Indeed, sections among Indian hawks, believe it or not, see the disaster as a definite advance. Unconfirmed reports about the destruction of terrorist camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir have sent these hawks into restrained raptures. But, neither the reportedly consequent decision of cross-border terrorists to suspend their operations nor the olive branch extended by the United Jihadi Council has made them consider a ceasefire inside India-administered Kashmir as demanded by the Hurriyat.

Meanwhile, environmental experts see in the calamity an opportunity for the two countries to recognize and explore the scope for a South Asian disaster management scheme. However, little do they see that, in the present context, the nuclear rivalry of the neighbors will not allow even a first step in that direction.

A mechanism for exchange of seismic data and information is what will constitute such a step. This is something that neither India nor Pakistan has been prepared to consider or even countenance ever since nuclear weapon tests shook the former's Pokharan desert and the latter's Chagai mountain in May 1998.

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A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). "