Light at the end of the tunnel?
Praful Bidwai
The News International, 7 November 2005
At long last, India and Pakistan have agreed to open five points on the Line of Control (LoC) to enable people on both sides to participate in earthquake relief and reconstruction work. Although the agreement will only become operational on November 7, a month after the Muzaffarabad earthquake devastated large swathes of Jammu and Kashmir, and its hedged in with conditions such as "prior information and acceptance" and "depending on feasibility", it nevertheless marks progress. It will help unite thousands of divided families and facilitate the transfer of relief material at a time when the situation on both sides of the Pir Panjal mountains has reached a critical point and the survival of millions is at stake.
It took 15 hours of talks and a great deal of high-level reference and approval before the agreement could be finalised. The deal marks an important advance over past proposals from Islamabad that the two-way movement of people across the LoC should only be open to the Kashmiri people. The text of the agreement does not impose this limitation. It merely says: "It was agreed that because of non-availability of or damage to infrastructure on these points, crossings across the LoC would be permitted on foot".
This is in keeping with the gradual opening of the Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus service to include non-Kashmiris and non-Muslims. Just two days before the earthquake, Pakistan permitted a batch of Hindus and Sikhs to ride the bus.
One can only hope that the duration of the agreement is not truncated by bureaucratic and political suspicion and distrust. If its rationale is to cover all phases of relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction, it must last a few years, not months. It is ludicrously unrealistic to expect that the reconstruction of the affected areas, comprising thousands of square kilometres can be completed in a short period of time.
It is tempting to read the agreement as a triumph of humanitarian principles, or of respect and compassion for the Kashmiri people, over political rivalry and competition involving "national" pride and prestige. That, alas, would be incorrect. Neither India nor Pakistan has diluted, leave alone, surrendered, what they claim as their sovereign territorial rights. That would have meant acknowledging the right to offer and revive humanitarian assistance in a situation of dire crisis—over and above all considerations apart from the needs of the victims.
The two states still reserve the right to refuse aid to their citizens from the "other side". All they have agreed to do is to end some of the more jarring aspects of their mutual quibbling and point-scoring.
This quibbling was evident right since the disaster struck. President Pervez Musharraf’s conditional acceptance of India’s early offer of aid while keeping in mind domestic "sensitivities" and "realities" was only one determinant of the calculus of "national" gains and losses employed by both states, based on their notions of "prestige" and power projection. Another was India’s past conduct as a state that has sought to take the high ground in the neighbourhood through its relief assistance after the tsunami of last year.
Just three days after the earthquake, Pakistan told India it was ready to provide any assistance to the quake-affected on the other side of LoC. Musharraf added a note of sobriety on October 18 by promising to open up the LoC for relief supplies. But the very next day, this was qualified: the opening would only facilitate the movement of Kashmiris across the LoC. Indian defence minister Pranab Mukherjee was quick to emphasise that there is no room for "romanticism" in such matters; India would only give assistance keeping in view its security needs and its army’s preferences.
India didn’t help matters by unilaterally announcing that it was setting up relief facilities at three points on its side of the LoC to which the people of Azad Kashmir would be welcome. This was not quite workable proposal.
As Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik recently pointed out from Rawalpindi, most of the victims on the Pakistani side are so badly injured and disabled that hardly any would be able to reach the border. Meanwhile, sections of the Indian media had declared India’s "three-point" victory over Pakistan!
Both India and Pakistan turned relief into an instrument of partisan diplomacy, rather than humanitarian assistance in which governments reach out to those in desperate need. This diplomacy was, and continues to be, driven by entrenched mindsets of mutual rivalry and elite perceptions which are insulated from the public’s urge for overcoming political barriers. All we can hope for is a certain relaxation of these mindsets for some time.
Yet, this relaxation offers tremendous opportunities. In the short term, these lie in cooperation between civil society organisations (CSOs) in India and Pakistan, directed at planning relief and rehabilitation, as well as greater state-to-state coordination. As argued in this Column (October 15 & 22), Pakistani CSOs should waste no time in contacting their Indian counterparts. And Indian CSOs should volunteer generous assistance. A good deal can be done through e-mail networks and telephone lines. But nothing would be as useful as personal visits.
It’s the long-term opportunities that both governments must pay the most attention to. These arise from the unfortunate geological reality of India and Pakistan. The subcontinent lies in a huge seismic belt that stretches from the Alps to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Himalayan range, extending from India, Pakistan and Nepal, is among the most seismically active parts of that belt. It is the world’s youngest mountain range, lying over a gigantic geological fault enhanced by collision between the Indian tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate.
As the Indian plate thrusts under the Eurasian one, it causes enormous stress to be built in the rocks. These are periodically released through giant earthquakes of Magnitude 8 or greater on the Richter scale, like Assam (1897), Kangra (1905), Bihar (1934) and Assam (1950).
Geophysicists forecast that such an earthquake will occur in the Central Himalaya in the next 50 to 100 years. This earthquake would be potentially 30 times more destructive than the October 8 event and wreak unparalleled devastation, much greater than during the Assam or Kangra quakes.
It is absolutely imperative that India, Pakistan (and Nepal) join hands in well-planned measures to mitigate the consequences of a huge earthquake. These measures primarily involve evolving and enforcing a scientifically founded building code for all new constructions, and more important, refurbishing existing buildings so they become earthquake-resistant.
The methods for doing so are well-understood and relatively simple, as well as inexpensive, adding 10 to 15 percent to construction costs. In essence, they involve securing foundations and tying together inner and outer walls.
As of now, most buildings in the seismically highly active zones in the Himalayan hills are patently unsafe and vulnerable. To redesign and retrofit them will be a humongous task beyond the capacity of a single state. This demands a coordinated cross-border effort involving people’s participation. There could be no better way of expressing solidarity and concern for the Kashmiri people, in whose name both India and Pakistan speak, than launch this effort jointly.
Copyright 2005 The News International
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