Regional upheaval to follow
earthquake By Syed
Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI -
The humanitarian dimensions of the earthquake that
rocked South Asia at the weekend are staggering,
with an estimated 40,000 people believed to have
died, and the figure rising by the hour.
And
there will be massive economic and political
fallout from the tragedy, which has the potential
to turn the whole dynamics of the region upside
down.
Already there is anger in Pakistan,
the worst-hit country, over the
slow official response
to the crisis. Indeed, it took a
day before officials even acknowledged there
was
a
crisis.
During the initial few hours after
the earthquake on Saturday, the focus of much of
the country's media - and government - was on a
single portion of a building, Margala Towers, in
the capital, Islamabad, in which about 25 people
were reported dead.
Meanwhile, whole towns
and villages had been flattened in the north of
the country, and the authorities only admitted, or
became aware of, the magnitude of the tragedy the
next day.
On Saturday evening,
even as reports were filtering in from outlying
areas, the Corps Commander Peshawar lambasted the
national press for "exaggerating" the issue and
the number of fatalities.
This is the situation of a state
apparatus that only a day before
the earthquake performed a nation-wide "miracle" in which the
ruling parties swept the second and final phase of
local-body elections.
The
opposition parties, including the six-party
religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, were
wiped out in North West Frontier Province
and Balochistan; former premier Benazir
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians
was washed out from its traditional stronghold
of Sindh; the Jamaat-i-Islami completely lost
its hold on Karachi; and the same happened in
Punjab, where the ruling party won.
Despite having the capabilities
to engineer such a political upheaval, the
military regime of President General Pervez Musharraf
was still in the dark about the depth of a
national crisis, even when a prominent social worker,
Abdul Sattar Edhi, who operates the country's
biggest nation-wide relief operation team, was trying
to get the message across about the extent of the
tragedy.
Changing dynamics The
calamity happened at a time when Pakistan and US
officials were about to chalk out a significant
new strategy in the "war on terror" as there are
extremely worrisome signs for the US in
Afghanistan, where the Taliban-led resistance is
reorganizing along the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border, equipped with the latest weapons and a lot
of money. At the same time, the resistance has
positioned itself inside the Afghan National Army
and the police.
Information coming from
across the border also suggests that foreign
fighters have pitched themselves in new bases deep
in the country, and there is a renewed threat that
the global network of al-Qaeda will once again
operate from Afghanistan.
Initial
estimates suggest that about 2.5 million people
have been displaced by the earthquake, and that it
will take about six months for rehabilitation
efforts to be completed.
In the meantime,
the Pakistani army will have no moral grounds for
continuing military operations in the South and
North Waziristan tribal areas, where it has been
trying to track down foreign fighters, militants
and members of the Afghan resistance, much to the
ire of the local tribespeople.
Already,
sections of the press are crying with banner
headlines that the army has sent helicopters to
attack South Waziristan, but not to help in relief
operations: Pakistan has had to ask the US and
other countries to provide cargo helicopters to
dispatch relief teams to ravaged areas.
The presence of the army in places such as
Pakistan-administered Kashmir was both a blessing
and a curse. About 70% of the buildings in
Muzaffarabad, the region's capital, were damaged
or had collapsed, police said. The city is about
six kilometers from the epicenter of the
earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.6 on the
Richter scale.
On one hand the army
was there to help with some immediate relief
operations, but on the other it was woefully
ill-equipped to deal with the devastation.
For equipment and human resources,
Pakistan has had to rely on countries such as
Britain, Japan, China and Turkey, which were quick
to send expert teams, in many places leaving the
army as silent spectators, much to the anger of
local people.
One can expect outbursts
against the perceived mishandling of the disaster
to gain momentum, especially as the death toll
rises. This could have far-reaching implications
for the country's political future.
And
meanwhile, in the months to come as Pakistan
rebuilds, the Afghan resistance will certainly
welcome the lack of attention from Pakistan.
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau
Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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