February 15, 2006	Wednesday	Muharram 16, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 14: A visit to Muzaffarabad today shows the Azad Kashmir capital bustling with life — but on the ruins left by last October’s earthquake.

Survivors living and running businesses in damaged and dangerously leaning buildings spell horror but then children seen swinging merrily on downed power lines inspire the hope that all is not lost.

This hope is sustained by the helicopters constantly flying in or out of the city, the convoys of relief trucks parked on its roads and the thousands of aid workers and military personnel who deliver assistance to the earthquake victims living in tent camps or in condemned buildings.

These aid workers make sure the people the earthquake made homeless have food and clean drinking water, children have warm clothes and health care. The government, the army, national and international NGOs do seem like an unbeatable combination.

Yet the Oct 8 aftermath is unbelievably challenging.

Aftershocks continue to jolt Muzaffarabad every now and then, triggering landslides which block roads and frighten the people.

You dare to walk in the narrow streets in the old part of the devastated city and you walk in the shadow of death as damaged houses lean dangerously over you. One can only marvel at the courage of the people who still live in them.

Authorities have declared such buildings unsafe and so uninhabitable. Still the unfortunate people continue to run small businesses in the ground portions, dismissing the possibility that the structure could collapse anytime.

A shopkeeper told he might be inviting death retorted: “So what, everybody has to die someday.”

Muzaffarabad’s old city, situated up the hill, was the heart of disaster.

Houses there have pancaked. Some have half of their ground floor missing but the first floor intact and suspended in air, some are leaning against the house across the narrow street.

But the local people walk through the street nonchalantly.

“Come this way. Nothing will happen. This building has been leaning since the earthquake hit. It hasn’t fallen yet,” said Saleem, a 5th grader, encouraging this correspondent to dare take the walk.

Not one building in that residential area is inhabitable. Every structure is leaning over sidewalks and narrow streets. Families have pitched tents wherever small open spaces can be found.

Rubble cannot be cleared because the streets are either too narrow or leaning buildings block the way.

“The only way to clear the rubble is to drop a dozer from a helicopter,” suggested a local resident.

Small parties of labours are seen trying to break big concrete blocks with sledge hammers and dumping the rubble on lorries and carried away. Nowhere heavy machinery was seen deployed.

Families in the dense residential areas too were seen clearing rubble with bare hands and shovels. Some have relatives and friends come over from Punjab and other far off cities to assist.

“I have come from Faisalabad,” said a man when asked if he and the friends with him were doing this for money? “These people need help and we’ll stay for as long as possible and help out as much as possible,” he said.

Their courage and solidarity with the quake victims shamed us, the visiting journalists. The four-inch wide cracks in our hotel rooms proved more convincing than the manager’s assurances that his hotel was safe. We were even scared to take showers and slept with shoes and lights on - in case a strong aftershock brought us down with the building.

Consumed by tragedy, more than 90,000 earthquake survivors are living in tent camps in Muzaffarabad and Bagh districts.

Official figures put the population of Muzaffarabad district at 880,000, Mirpur district 379,000, Bagh district 443,000, Punch 469,000 and Sudanhati district 220,000. Lives of more than 1.4 million of them were directly or indirectly affected by the Oct 8 killer earthquake.

In Muzaffarabad city, 10,497 families (66,105 persons) are living in 10,090 tents. In Jhelum valley 2,108 families (13,282 persons) now live in tents.

In Neelum valley true figures are still not known because the road leading to the valley has been washed away and landslides continuously spell danger. But some statistics show that there are some 180 families (709 persons) living in roughly 180 tents in the Neelum valley.

An official at the Camp Management Organization (CMO) expressed the fear that the number of affected persons in Neelum valley could be as high as 10,000 to 12,000.

Estimates show that some 60 per cent of Muzaffarabad citizens shifted to Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad after the natural disaster. They expect to return once weather is clear for rebuilding their damaged homes.

With the winter half way through, some 42,000 to 43,000 earthquake survivors from both Jhelum and Neelum valleys have moved down into Muzaffarabad city where they are living in tent villages. Their fates hang in balance because many do not know where to go and what to do once the winter was over and relief work wrapped up.

A group of the affected living in a Jamaat-i-Islami tent camp was asked if they intended to return to their villages after the winter? Their reply: “If provided necessary supplies to rebuild our homes, sufficient food and warm clothes, we will return.”

But many said that they could not return because they had lost everything.

“Our fields have been buried under landslides and our homes are gone. Living in tents isn’t easy either. The stench is terrible in the camp. I was promised warm clothes for my children but none have come my way,” said a woman who was living in the Jamaat-i-Islami camp.

Another man pointed to one of the enormous landslides and said, “The slippage washed my house down into the river. I have no land left. I have no place to take my family once they close the camp and tell us to leave. The government must provide me with another piece of land to rebuild my house.”

But some among NGOs and the military fear that “dependency syndrome” is setting in. “These people do not rise to the challenge and are living on relief. The dependency is becoming an epidemic,” said an army officer.