Quake survivors massed in debris-strewn fields to pray and mark a normally joyous Muslim festival in a somber tone on Friday as preachers called South Asia’s devastating earthquake a test of faith and punishment for wrongdoing.
Former United States president Bill Clinton urged Pakistan and India to set aside their rivalry, saying in New York that this would help prompt a world weary of big natural disasters to open purses once more for the more than three million people left homeless in the October 8 quake centred in Pakistani Kashmir.
In the regional hub of Muzaffarabad, the faithful gathered on straw mats in a field surrounded by smashed concrete as the helicopters of aid workers buzzed overhead in efforts to deliver much-needed aid ahead of the Himalayan region’s fierce winter.
”God is testing us, testing our patience, testing our faith,” Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest religious political party, told a crowd of more than 1 000 men. ”One of the main reasons for the earthquake was our wrongdoing.”
For most of Pakistan, Friday was the start of the Eid al-Fitr celebration marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, but President General Pervez Musharraf has asked citizens throughout the country to tone down festivities out of respect for quake victims.
”This is a different Eid. The children have no clothes, no tents,” Ahmed said.
At least 73 000 people died in the quake — 1 350 of them in India’s portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, and the rest across the border in Pakistani territory.
Working together
The disaster has helped bring the nuclear-armed rivals closer, sparking an accord last weekend to open partially their heavily militarised border, or Line of Control, in Kashmir on Monday to allow Pakistani quake victims to seek help at Indian aid camps.
Clinton said in New York that if rapprochement between India and Pakistan continues, and if people see ”the Indians and the Pakistanis working together, crossing the Line of Control, treating each other as human beings … the donor fatigue will wear down”.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri said his country is ready to make the partial opening of the border permanent.
The competing claims by Pakistan and India over Kashmir are at the heart of their tensions and have sparked two of their three wars. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of abetting militants fighting in India’s portion of Kashmir for its independence or merger with Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.
Clinton, who is the United Nations envoy for tsunami relief, said donors have been drained by their huge contributions for Asia’s December 26 tsunami and the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the US in late August.
The UN says it needs $550-million in emergency aid for quake victims, but donors have pledged only $131-million — 23,9% of what is sought. By comparison, a total of $13,5-billion was pledged to victims of the tsunami.
Clinton noted that while the tsunami killed about 131 000 people — more than South Asia’s quake — it left fewer people homeless: a half-million people compared with an estimated 3,3-million in the quake zone. — Sapa-AP