The world’s failure to come up with quick cash to help save hundreds of thousands of Pakistani quake survivors before winter sets in left relief officials on the ground baffled and upset on Thursday.
“We are still of the view that the international community lacks full comprehension of the catastrophe that is looming large,” said United Nations chief aid coordinator Rashid Khalikov.
“We are talking life,” he said one day after a U.N. conference drew $580 million in aid promises -- but only $15.8 million in emergency relief with the harsh Himalayan winter just weeks away and countless people still living in rubble.
“It may sound strange that we are still talking life-saving two weeks after the disaster, when search and rescue operations have largely finished,” Khalikov said in the destroyed city of Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
“But communities that live in the affected areas have become so vulnerable that it is absolutely important for us to reach them with help,” he said. “And we will stay in this life-saving mode, I’m afraid, for the next six months.”
Relief workers fear that as many people will die of hunger and exposure during the bitter winter as in the Oct. 8 quake which killed at least 54,000 people in Pakistan and 1,300 in Indian Kashmir.
Winter will descend in four weeks. By then, around 3 million people will have to have been found shelter with food stockpiled to see them through to spring.
Donor response 'disappointing'
It is an operation experts say is more difficult than that which followed last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami, a catastrophe which prompted a torrent of aid.
However, all but a small amount of the money pledged at the U.N. conference in Geneva on Wednesday was for reconstructing the flattened villages of Pakistani Kashmir and neighboring North West Frontier Province.
“It’s a little bit frustrating, to tell you the truth,” said World Food Program spokesman Khaled Mansour.
“Compared with other crises of the same magnitude this is more complex in terms of logistics and the response of donors has definitely been disappointing.”
Starting on reconstruction work is months away.
“It is, in my view, not right to sit with reconstruction money for one year from now if we’re not sure whether those people will be alive one year from now,” U.N. aid chief Jan Egeland said in Geneva.
U.N. aid chief: 'Delays cost lives'
Some U.N. agencies had run out of cash, Egeland said after a conference preceded by a clamor of complaints that the world was not helping enough.
Earlier this week, Egeland wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “The way we currently finance humanitarian aid is anything but speedy. Delays cost lives. We can, and must, do better.”
Khalikov said U.N. officials would now have to go directly to governments, especially Muslim countries in the Middle East, to plead for cash.
“I am sure we have enough capacity to respond, we just need funding,” he said.
India, China boost offers
On Thursday, India offered $25 million in aid to Pakistan, an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said of the latest gesture between the two countries since the disputed Kashmir region was devastated by an earthquake.
"Pakistan is free to use the money for rebuilding homes, rehabilitating people and reconstructing infrastructure," spokesman Navtej Sarna said.
More than 1,300 people died in India's portion of the Himalayan region.
China also promised an additional $13.8 million in unconditional aid, including cash.
“The Chinese government and people will make further efforts to help Pakistan to overcome the disaster brought by the earthquake,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.
Underlining the magnitude of the task, bad weather in the mountains grounded the vital helicopter fleet at the main airbase near Islamabad on Wednesday and for part of Thursday, leaving only mules and people to carry supplies up into the hills.
The few roads into the mountains have been blocked by landslides or swept away. Some will take weeks to repair, leaving helicopters as the main means of delivering food and shelter.
But the fleet, although growing, cannot reach them all, or deliver enough.
About 450,000 winter tents are needed, nearly 100,000 have been distributed and another 200,000 are in the pipeline, aid officia ls say.
That leaves them 150,000 short and not knowing where to find them before what U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told the Geneva conference would be a “winter without pity”.
