ISLAMABAD, Nov 22: The grim task of recovering childrens’ bodies is far from over for Nato engineers helping the relief effort in northern Pakistan more than six weeks after the earthquake struck. Air Commodore Andrew Walton, British commander of the Nato relief team, recounted on Tuesday how young Spanish and Polish engineers were being confronted with death and misery on a scale they have never encountered.
“If you could see the anguish that is on the faces of young soldiers, engineers, Spanish, Polish, 19 to 20 years old, who are engaged in the gruesome business of recovering bodies from the wreckage,” said Walton, who is based in Lisbon, one of the three joint headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
This week the Nato team is clearing the ground at a school in Bagh, where Nato also runs a field hospital.
About 90 schoolgirls were killed when their classrooms caved in and the thick concrete roof came crashing down.
“We’re clearing that in order that a school tent can be put up. But more than that, it’s important for the families to be able to recover the bodies of their daughters.”
The scene is being replayed in many other stricken towns and villages in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP.
EMPATHISING: At ground level, Air Commodore Walton says Pakistanis can see Nato soldiers’ empathy with their despair.
When a body is found work stops, soldiers step back, heads bowed, and a bereaved family claims their daughter’s corpse.
“I think the emotion they show and the respect they show is very much appreciated by the local people,” says Mr Walton.
After Nato was requested to help Pakistan, religious parties objected, even though the Western alliance sent teams of medics, engineers and helicopters vital for the relief effort.
Walton doesn’t anticipate Nato being asked to stay much beyond the winter relief phase.—Reuters
