Lapses in crisis management

THE overall response of our nation to the catastrophic tragedy of October 8 was both admirable and heartening. By collecting and donating huge amounts of relief goods and funds and also volunteering participation in the relief and rescue operation, our people showed an overwhelming spirit of solidarity and spontaneous sympathy and concern for the victims of the disaster.

From what we saw on TV screens during the first few days of the tragedy, it appears, however, that our emotional and human response in this hour of supreme national tragedy was not matched by the requisite discipline and coordination that are always needed in managing relief operations of this nature and scale.

Given the magnitude of the disaster and complexity of the geographical terrain involved, no effort without proper governmental coordination and involvement could serve the purpose for which it was being launched. Apparently, the people, after watching the scenes of official helplessness at the site of the collapsed Margalla Towers in Islamabad, had lost faith in the government’s capability to manage the crisis.

In their generous but desperate way they resorted to doing things that they were not equipped to do. The result was total chaos and confusion with very little relief supplies reaching the victims in the seriously affected areas during the early days of the crisis. Difficult road conditions, unruly traffic with all sorts of vehicles blocking the roads, hooliganism, and absence of any systematic direction presented a pathetic scene of total helplessness and disorientation.

The government, on its part, did take some timely steps to gear itself up to meet the challenge of relief operation, the size and scale of which were still not very clear as nobody had any idea about the extent of the damage in areas with which all communications had been disrupted. These steps included the establishment of the president’s earthquake relief fund and a federal relief commission for coordination of rescue and relief operations.

No country is ready for a disaster of this magnitude. It was, therefore, understandable that some aspects of the relief effort, particularly those related to complex rescue and recovery cases and major medical care, could not be addressed expeditiously as proper expertise and equipment were missing. But no government in the world today can justify being without basic infrastructure or elementary systemic orientation for managing and mitigating the main thrust of natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies.

In our own case, every ministry and department of the government has standing instructions and procedures to be followed in cases of emergency, including war or natural calamity, which should have been invoked as a matter of “operational default” within the first few hours of the October 8 tragedy. At least a good part of the ensuing confusion and delay could have been avoided if some basic rules and procedures of crisis management had been followed by the government.

Once the government had some idea about the unfolding nature and locale of the crisis, it should have, without any loss of time, undertaken the basic measures for “rapid damage assessment” through all possible means. Both military and civil machineries should have been mobilized to work out on a priority basis the broad field logistics as well as modalities for countrywide coordination with civil society, non-governmental organizations and the media.

A timely mobilization of civil administrations of the unaffected provinces in coordinating systematic dispatch and an orderly onward transportation of relief goods to the base camps in the affected areas would have averted a lot of unnecessary chaos and disorderliness.

However, it took several days for the concerned governmental agencies just to organize themselves to be able to start mobilizing their resources and strategies. In the process, there was a complete void in terms of any authority or organizational mechanism which could streamline the emotional and human outpouring of our people and take control of the relief operation in an orderly manner.

In the absence of any initiative or direction from the government during those early hours to involve civil administrations at district and provincial levels in coordinating what was becoming an unprecedented relief collection drive in our country’s history, the haphazard relief process became a tragedy of “errors” not only disrupting timely help to the victims but also causing anguish to the donors.

The newly established federal relief commission was mandated to streamline relief efforts in cooperation with provincial governments, relevant ministries, non-governmental organizations, the Red Crescent and other international agencies. Although the government initially did plan to set up five base camps in the worst affected areas to receive relief goods and then to channel their distribution in different areas, apparently no such mechanism seemed to be in place or operational at least during the first week.

In this whole process, any plan or preparation for emergency rescue effort was also missing from the very beginning. The government, handicapped by its limitations of personnel and equipment, consigned this difficult task to the few foreign expert teams. Some people continue to believe that more attention should have been paid to rescuing thousands of victims trapped alive under the debris of collapsed buildings and structures in some of the worst affected areas.

Ironically, the political face of the government was visible nowhere, just as the civil administration in every part of the country and at every level, stood totally paralysed. No member of the cabinet was considered fit enough for any relief-cum-crisis management role. Professionally trained and competent civil servants in district administrations were left with non-consequential “coordinating” roles that their new charter of duties under the “devolution plan” keeps them from attending to beyond pushing papers from one office to another.

The situation has apparently now been retrieved with the deployment of two divisions of the army, which remains the sole “organized and resourceful” entity in the country and which now seems to have installed an elaborate network of its forward bases with nodal points for relief distribution. We hope in the coming days, there will be no more complaints that we have been hearing regularly for the last several days about the “total absence or slow arrival” of help in the remote and inaccessible areas.

At this difficult hour, every one agrees, the government must be allowed to remain focused on the core of the problem, which for the moment is the need of the quake victims for timely help in terms of medical aid and basic supplies. It is not the time for politically motivated blame games or public imagery through high-sounding false promises to the victims of the tragedy.

Once their tragic ordeal is over, the survivors would need decent, livable and affordable houses which they hope their government will provide to them as part of their rehabilitation programme. They will expect their villages and cities to be rebuilt or reconstructed with all the necessary civic amenities and also keeping in view the local geological and demographic dynamics.

Right now, besides immediate temporary shelter, medical aid, food and clothing, they need genuine and “unmotivated” solace and comfort from all across the political divide in our country. For them, the promises of converting this tragedy into an opportunity are heartening, indeed. They do not question the sincerity of these promises which they hope, unlike those made in the aftermath of earlier national disasters, will be fulfilled.

The memories are still alive of countless cyclones (before the East Pakistan tragedy), floods and major earthquakes in our history which had evoked lot of international emergency aid to our country on an ad hoc basis but in the long run, no amount of that aid was utilized for any rehabilitation or reconstruction activity in the devastated areas. In December 1974, when a large gravity earthquake struck our northern areas causing extensive but “unassessed” damage, promises were made that the hundreds of millions of dollars that some of the oil-rich friendly Arab countries had given to us as relief assistance would be used for “converting the affected areas into another Switzerland.” Ironically, 30 years later, the fate of the same notional “Switzerland” remains unchanged and most of that region has met a with another devastating calamity.

No one doubts the sincerity of the government of the day in its plans for long-term rehabilitation and reconstruction of the devastated areas. But it will do well for the sake of its own credibility if it refrained from claiming what it is not capable of delivering, given the magnitude of the disaster. Given perceptible aid fatigue at the international level, we need to be realistic in our hopes and plans. Our prime minister should know more than anyone else that once the rubble is cleared and the foreign medical teams have left our soil, we will be left to fend for ourselves.

The October 8 earthquake tragedy in Pakistan will become yet another “item” in the long list of world’s natural disasters and major catastrophes which are no more than an alibi for mostly non-productive “donor” conferences where participants generously “donate” their eloquence while making no pledges that they can honour.

We are familiar with “donor” conferences organized in the 1980s to help us look after the millions of Afghan refugees who ultimately became our own responsibility. In recent years, the pledges made for reconstruction of the war-devastated Afghanistan have yet to show any signs of change in the landscape or skyline of a country which has become the perennial battleground of global proxy wars.

More recently, the tsunami relief mounted with such great international fervour and ‘fanfare’ with the involvement of world’s “intellectuals and celebrities” but without any commitment from the rich and affluent of the world including expansive multinationals, has not gone beyond some non-consequential though glittering gala events and “fun fairs.” No dreamlands, no “model cities” are coming up in the areas destroyed by the ferocious tsunami waves.

Even the US, with its unrivalled economic and technical might, is finding it burdensome to rebuild the cities destroyed in recent hurricane catastrophes. It will manage because it had the infrastructure and a political system that gives it the strength to stand up to such challenges. In a country traumatized by a crises-ridden history and a legacy of systemic failures and external vulnerability, it will not be an easy task to face up to the exceptional challenges emanating from the latest catastrophe.

The government needs political strength to reinforce its credibility in the testing times ahead. It must set aside parochially-rooted attitudes and warped grievances to build bridges with the country’s alienated mainstream political forces to be able to forge a concerted response to the daunting challenges in the aftermath of the worst disaster in our country’s history.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

A Kurdish vision of Iraq

IN recent weeks Iraq has passed three important milestones. The constitutional referendum on October 15 was a powerful demonstration of Iraqis’ desire to establish democracy and save a country still recovering from its disastrous history.

Two days later the remains of 500 of my kinsmen were returned from a mass grave in southern Iraq for reburial in Iraqi Kurdistan. Another 7,500 of my kin are still missing after “disappearing” from a Baathist concentration camp in 1983 in the first phase of the genocidal Anfal campaign, which caused the death of 182,000 Kurdish civilians during the 1980s. Then, on October 19, Saddam Hussein finally went on trial.

None of this would have been possible without the US-led liberation of Iraq, an operation in which Kurds were proud partners. After the US armed forces, our pesh merga was the second-largest member of the coalition. Today the security forces of Iraqi Kurdistan remain highly capable and reliable allies of the United States. By consistently working with the United States and reaching out to our fellow Iraqis, we have been at the heart of a political process based on equality and inclusion, on consensus and compromise. Above all, we have taken the path of engagement because, like the United States, we need Iraq to succeed and avoid a repetition of the horrors of the past. We have therefore been engaged in Iraqi national politics and governance. Kurds have joined the new Iraqi military in large numbers. We have made unprecedented sacrifices. Time and again we have pursued political settlements by encouraging flexibility and consensus. And yet the Kurds have been vilified as separatists and derided for “overreaching.” This stems from a belief that our aim is independence, and from the chauvinism that defines the Middle East as homogenous, that refuses to accept its inherent diversity. What those who carp at the victims in Iraq fail to understand is that Kurds, like other Iraqis, crave security — security for the future and security from the terrors of the past. We suffered more than 80 years of discrimination and disadvantage — suffering that culminated in anti-Kurdish ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Unlike our critics, Kurds are pragmatists and moderates. We know that we have rights, but we also understand that we have responsibilities. We are patriots, not suicidal nationalists. That moderation has translated into a commitment to dialogue. We were pivotal in the establishment of the Iraqi Governing Council in July 2003 without any preconditions. We were under no obligation to reattach Kurdistan to Iraq. After all, the United States is not asking Kosovo to rejoin Serbia.

Our desire for security and our principles of moderation and dialogue were key factors in the proposal of all the major Iraqi political parties to create a federal, pluralistic and democratic Iraq in which power is decentralized and so less open to abuse. Iraqis of all communities recognize that only such a formula can keep Iraq intact.

In Iraqi Kurdistan we have, for the past 14 years, accepted the idea that we are a diverse society. Ethnic and religious minorities — Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, Yazidis and Turkomans — all serve in the Kurdistan regional government and all have the right to educate their children in their mother tongues and to broadcast in their own languages.

We firmly believe that the Middle East must accommodate all of its peoples and all of their languages and religions. Nor is Kurdistan alone in this regard. In the new Iraq, the Kurds see their role as bridge builders, as a community that has every interest in an inclusive political process that gives Iraq a better future while addressing the injustices of the past.

Just as Kurds have not taken revenge on the Arab settlers who took over their land, so the moderate Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs of Iraq have shown similar forbearance in the face of a wave of suicide bombings that has claimed many thousands of lives.

All democratic Iraqis have shown they realize that the wrongs of the past can be redressed only through agreed-on legal mechanisms and that justice cannot be selective. It is as important for Kurds to be allowed to return to Kirkuk and for Marsh Arabs to be restored to their homes as it is for Saddam Hussein to be put on trial.

The restraint of the victims, the defiance of the millions who vote — refusing to be drawn into the civil war fantasies of the terrorists — vindicate the courage and vision of the United States and its coalition partners. Backing this fundamentally sound vision has been President Bush’s moral understanding of the healing and dignity that democracy confers upon all men and women, an understanding that the Kurds share.

The United States has never wavered in its quest to help Iraqis build a democracy that rewards compromise and consensus. The ever-generous American people have paid a tragic price, the lives of their finest men and women, to advance the banner of freedom and democracy, a sacrifice for which we are profoundly grateful. We all know that democracy is the only solution to political problems, the only method by which grievances can be addressed. In this war and for these principles, the Kurds are true friends of the United States. — Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer is president of the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Quake devastation: then and now

EARTHQUAKES can’t be stopped, but buildings can be built to withstand them. Nearly all the deaths of the October 8 earthquake were caused by tumbling buildings. Deaths are a consequence of sub-standard buildings that did not incorporate earthquake resistant features. This is reminiscent of an earlier earthquake.

On May 31, 1935, an earthquake struck Quetta flattening the city and surrounding areas. To avert any future tragedy, the Quetta Municipal Earthquake-Proof Building Code, 1937, was formulated. Henceforth buildings in Quetta could only be built in compliance with the Code “designated to give sufficient variety in cost and quakeproofness to suit the pockets of all classes”.

“The test came six years after the earthquake when a shock of great intensity struck the city at breakfast time. Those who had lived through the first earthquake said it was nearly as severe. Looking from her window, Mrs. Hill, wife of the police superintendent, saw her flowers dipping from side to side, yet all the buildings stood, though some developed cracks. All, that is, except two. Both houses had been built without complying with regulations and were scheduled for demolition. The earthquake tumbled both to bits” (“Thirty Seconds at Quetta, the Story of an Earthquake” by Robert Jackson).

The lessons of 1935 were forgotten, necessitating the filing of a constitutional petition in the High Court of Balochistan seeking the Building Code’s strict enforcement. The Divisional Bench of the High Court delivered the judgment, reported as Begum Saida Qazi Isa versus Quetta Municipal Corporation, PLD 1997.

In the words of the judgment: “The petitioners are residents of Quetta and as citizens of this country they are interested to bring to the notice of the court the fact that Quetta town is situated on a highly sensitive seismic zone and one of the most devastating earthquake jolted Quetta in 1935 killing about 60,000 persons. In order to avoid any future disaster of earthquake after 1935 the then authorities decided to put a ban on multistorey buildings. They, after taking into consideration the expert opinion promulgated Quetta Building Code, ... as far back as in 1937 with a view to prevent future destruction of buildings and population and for safety of the citizens.”

“The code contains, in addition of designing the buildings, certain other instructions to minimize the chances of complete destructions. A specific method for obtaining building permits was formulated and there were plans and specifications of different types of buildings. There was specially a system of inspection of the buildings, and ... also a provision that every building shall have its parts tied together in such a manner that the structure will act as a unit. In short, it was a complete code which has been devised keeping in view the fact that this town is built on a highly seismic zone.”

“The petitioners argued that in recent past the builders have altogether ignored this Code and have successfully manipulated to erect multistorey buildings in the town having no regard to the safety of passersby or occupants of the buildings. Some of the multistorey buildings are nothing more than standing graves or cages to trap human lives in case there is any earthquake because there are no open spaces left in the design of buildings where citizens could take shelter if the need arose.

“The petitioners explained that certain officers, out of sheer greed raised no objection to any design or form of building. The Chairman of the Board formed for inspection of buildings himself got a multistorey building constructed disregarding the Building Code.” “It was argued that personal and individual benefits of builders must be subservient to the safety of lives of millions of citizens.”

The Quetta Building Code required constant checking during construction. “Construction of each sort of building must be watched at every stage and worked out a checking system involving coloured cards which builders had to produce at each of seven stages of building. ‘We must make it clear’, said Wylie, ‘that anyone who is foolish enough to build without paying attention to the regulations will have their buildings pulled down’.

Supervision was necessary, for the Indian contractor did not change his ways merely because 30,000 people [in Quetta city] had been wiped out in thirty seconds. None knew better than engineers and builders the importance of cement in building in an earthquake area. Cement that should have held the bricks steady had powdered because it was either poor or short in quantity. It was no exaggeration to say that better cement could have saved hundreds in the earthquake.” (Thirty Seconds at Quetta).

Seventy years separate the two most devastating earthquakes to hit Pakistan. The 1935 one served as a warning. But lives are again being exposed to danger. A bus driven dangerously at high speed on a curving road is going to crash; the fault being neither of the road nor of the bus, but entirely of those whose hand is on the steering wheel.

Karachi was slightly jolted on October 12; yet another unheeded warning. Organizations such as Citizens for a Better Environment (Shehri) have raised awareness of illegal buildings. Buildings are likely to buckle under a stronger jolt and cause untold devastation in Pakistan’s largest metropolis of 14 million souls. ‘Shehri’ begs, pleads, cajoles and goes to court seeking enforcement of the law, but the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) had the law changed by enacting an ordinance, providing for a “one time” opportunity for builders to regularize illegal construction.

The issue landed up in the Sindh High Court which restricted the application of the “regularization” law only to “buildings completed in all respects”. But in utter disregard of the High Court the KBCA assumed powers to condone and “regularize” illegal construction without the sanction of the law. Total anarchy now prevails. On a foundation built to hold a two-storey building many floors are raised and “regularized” by the KBCA.

The book ‘Thirty Seconds at Quetta, the Story of an Earthquake’ noted that an earthquake shock that came six years after 1935, “was nearly as severe” but caused not a single death or injury as no building collapsed. The book concluded in the following words: “Thus men, British and Indian alike, had joined forces to slay the dragon in the earth which had turned in its sleep, in turning, had taken so many human lives.”

But we have raised and fed dragons for a long time now. One dragon awoke and brought down Northern-Pakistan. The one under Karachi has been nurtured by the KBCA and corrupt builders; its belly all set to explode. Escape seems unavailable. If the government is so utterly contemptuous of the peoples welfare it should enact a law mandating that every citizen carry a death-shroud, as it has demonstrated its utter failure to either save us or bury us.

Cheney for torture

US Vice-President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans.

“Cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it.

Now Mr Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture. His position is not just some abstract defence of presidential power.

The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centres abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have “disappeared,” like the victims of some dictatorships.

The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication.

CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency’s performance.

It’s not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration’s decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the US military.

These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr Cheney’s counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defence spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any US personnel.

The senators ignored Mr Cheney’s threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen John McCain, passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of US policy. The Senate’s earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

— The Washington Post

A small step forward

THE Iraqi constitution is probably unique among such documents in that it became shorter and shorter in the process of being written.

The reason was that, with the Americans relentlessly pressing both for its swift completion and for at least the appearance of consensus between Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds, it could only go forward if much that was contentious was stripped away.

Many of the provisions giving specific details of the state’s key institutions or laying down the procedures for implementing the principles the constitution proclaims were either never formulated or, if formulated, were absent from the final version. Even then, the approval of the Sunni members of the drafting committee could not be obtained.

It was unclear until the results of the referendum were announced yesterday whether the constitution would be approved, given that a two thirds majority against it in three Sunni provinces would have been sufficient to derail it. That outcome has been narrowly avoided, and Iraqis will now go to the polls in December to elect a new parliament. — The Guardian, London