HATTIAN: Orphaned by an earthquake almost eight weeks ago, Abdul Waheed watches other boys in a government-run refuge play cricket as he waits for his turn to bat. The 13-year-old Pakistani boy feels safer than at any time since the disaster killed his widower father, and left him and his six younger brothers and sisters homeless.

“It is our luck that we came here and got the chance to study,” says Waheed, who dreams of one day becoming a fighter pilot in the Pakistan Air Force.

“If you want to take us from here we will not go,” he says, revealing the insecurity that still plagues his mind.

Soon after the quake struck, the Pakistan government blocked adoption of quake survivors, knowing all too well that human traffickers would come sneaking round bereft families.

Every year thousands of women and children are trafficked from Pakistan to work as prostitutes or domestic servants.

It is not a problem unique to Pakistan. International aid workers say some survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami fell into the hands of traffickers.

Called Ashiana, the sanctuary in Hattian in the Punjab province where Waheed and his siblings are staying is a refuge for close to 250 others, most of them fellow orphans.

Eventually the project will provide a home for about 2,000 survivors who no longer have any menfolk left in their family who are capable of protecting them.

“If they are left out in the open alone anything can happen,” said Minister of Social Welfare Zubaida Jalal. Her ministry is responsible for running the camp.

There are plans to set up similar facilities in Kashmir and North West Frontier Province so displaced people can be moved closer to their old homes in the stricken areas, so that they can benefit from a familiar environment and culture, she said.

But the site in Hattian was ready made — an abandoned complex of living quarters for workers on a hydro-electric power project that was abandoned three years ago.

“It looked like a jungle when we came,” said Mohammad Nasir, Ashiana’s project director. “The grass was six feet high, there was mud all over and washrooms were blocked.”

Now, the compound is a virtual village, with a hospital, school, common dining hall, mosque, general store and play grounds.

A smell of fresh paint hangs in the air and signboards direct visitors to the different sections for women, boys and girls.

Some rooms come with attached bathrooms, others have shared washrooms nearby.

It is also very quiet. The residential area is surrounded by fields and far from the road. The entrance is protected by security men and there are no male members of staff.

Young children play on swings as boys play cricket and girls chatter.

“This is paradise for the children,” Nasir said, comparing their new circumstances to the poverty many of them grew up in.

But that in no way makes up for losing loving parents. As the eldest of his family, Waheed regularly has to comfort his little brothers and sisters when they cry over their father’s death.

“There is a lot of trauma,” said Nasir. “We have special social workers for rehabilitation and psychologists, but we still need female volunteers to help them deal with their trauma.”

The Oct 8 earthquake killed more than 73,000 people, with nearly half the victims children. Close to 2.5 million people lost their homes.

Nasir said a study estimated about 5,000 children were orphaned. In many cases relatives have taken over the dead parents’ role, but Nasir expects some will be forced by their own dire circumstances to hand over the children eventually.

“With the passage of time they will. It will be very difficult for them to maintain the children,” he said.

The children who enter the project will be schooled up to college level, and thereafter the plan is that they will be assured jobs, probably with the government.

Nahida Bibi never went to school and thinks she is too old to start now.

She came with her injured mother and two brothers and two sisters from the Kashmiri village of Chinari, a tiny market town in the Jhelum valley that was completely flattened.

“It is our duty to recite the holy Quran,” the 15-year-old says, as she unwraps her new Quran for the daily Islamic education in a dining room that serves as a classroom.

Rafia Bibi, 25, arrived from Muzaffarabad with her three young children. Her husband died at his military post.

Sitting in a wheelchair with a broken leg, Bibi stares disconsolately at the children’s playground.

“I cannot get over it yet,” she sobs, as she buries her face in her shawl.

—Reuters

GANDHINAGAR/AHMEDABAD: Gujarat’s Chief minister Narendra Modi is seriously mulling to adopt a move taken by President Pervez Musharraf! Like President Musharraf ‘s step of modernising madressahs, the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) is doing some “loud thinking” on what to do with the nearly 2,000 Islamic schools operating in Gujarat. A senior government official said: “We are studying what the Musharraf government is planning to do to modernise madrasas, so that we can follow suit.”

Insiders said, the CMO has prepared a note for internal circulation on madressas. “The note mentions what Pakistan has contemplated,” a top source stated. The source said: “If the madressahs here also start following the state syllabus, they would also get modernised. In that case, they can also apply for government aid. So far, they have only religious teachers, who get a mere Rs1,500 a month. The need is to teach modern education alongside religious teachings.”

Also under scrutiny is the Pakistan move to ban seminars, publications and teachings that lead to sectarianism, militancy or religious hatred. But Gujarat has not finalised which state department should handle the madressah affairs. Education minister Anandiben Patel refused to comment, saying: “There are a lot of misgivings about the whole thing. Hence, I do not want to comment.”

The clergy running madressahs in Ahmedabad are ready for the idea of registration and supervision, provided schools run by trusts of other religions are also brought under purview. “There are more than 500 Dar-ul-ulooms in Gujarat and all of them submit audit reports to the charity commissioner or the Wakf committee every year,” says Maulana Habib, of Faizan-ul-Quran, a Dar-ul-uloom in Saraspur run by the India Education Public Trust.

The clergy feels that there would have to be a liaison between national Muslim bodies and the state. “We preach Quranic verses. I wonder what the state will do in terms of supervision of these. The government ought to first talk to organisations like the Jamiatul-ulemae-Hind,” says Yunus Patel, who runs Jamiakashiful-uloom in Shahpur.

—Dawn/The Times of India News Service