NEW DELHI: The shared tragedy of last week’s earthquake opened new channels between South Asian rivals Pakistan and India, analysts say, as New Delhi delivered aid to Islamabad in the first such airlift in decades.

Kashmir, the source of a bitter ownership dispute since 1947 that led to two wars, suddenly became the focus of cooperation with tens of thousands dead after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck the region on Saturday.

Analysts said that along with a peace process in place since January 2004, the shipment of 26 tonnes of medical and food supplies that arrived in Islamabad from New Delhi on Wednesday is proof that the two nations can put aside the past.

“Now the people will physically see with their own eyes that in the time of calamity, the governments are coming together and the people are coming together,” said S.D. Muni, a professor at the centre for regional studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

The head of the Indian air force relief mission affirmed that many people would view the aid in humanitarian rather than political terms.

“It is a matter of privilege for the Indian air force to come to the help of our brothers in this hour of crisis,” spokesman Squadron Leader Mahesh Upasani told AFP.

The magnitude of the disaster shocked even hard-line militants who ordered a unilateral ceasefire in Indian Kashmir on Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed and a sea of weary people need medical and relief supplies in remote Himalayan villages, many of which remain inaccessible because roads are blocked.

To be sure, the two sides had a few rough edges to the cooperation as Pakistan was slow to take India’s relief offer and the one-hour flight to Islamabad took a day to be cleared to land.

India also made it a point to get some political mileage out of the aid by marking all the relief boxes: “From the people of India to the people of Pakistan”.

Some political commentators were cautious on the significance of the aid delivery.

“This is a humanitarian mission and the Indians are trying to help. Apart from that it doesn’t have any political ramifications,” cautioned Brahma Chellaney, professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research.

“In fact Pakistan has actually been hesitant to take Indian help.”

Pakistani professor Muni also said he did not “think it will soften positions on core issues.”

But early on Wednesday, an Illyushin-76 flew seven truck loads of army medicines, 15,000 blankets and 50 tents to Pakistan and returned to New Delhi at 9:15 am (0345 GMT), making history as the first relief supplies from India to be sent in decades of disasters such as floods.

Analysts said the flight would have been unimaginable a few years ago as the two sides massed a million troops on the borders in response to a December 2001 attack on India’s parliament by suspected Pakistan-backed militants.

India blamed Pakistan for the attack, though Islamabad denied the charge.

“It is indicative of the changed diplomatic climate between the two countries,” said Hassan Askari, former head of the political science department at Lahore’s Punjab University.

An Indian strategic analyst agreed.

Uday Bhaksar, deputy head of the New Delhi-based Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, called it a “symbolically important” development.

“This will have a positive effect on the peace process and the perception of one about the other,” he said.

The flight may be just a first instalment after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India had offered to send Pakistan whatever aid it needs.

“We are willing to supply to Pakistan whatever is on their priority list,” Singh said on Tuesday in Srinagar.

Massive amounts of international aid are being flown in following Saturday’s quake which may have killed as many as 40,000 people in Pakistan. Another 1,300 died in India.

—AFP