Stark choices face Sultan Rehman, a farmer stranded high in a valley devastated by the earthquake, and time is running out.
One month ago the 7,6 magnitude earthquake violently upended his peaceful world in Sosal, a small hamlet perched on a mountain ledge about 130km north of Islamabad. His house was crushed, his brother was killed, and his family was left clinging to life in perilous conditions.
Now the icy Himalayan winter is closing in fast, with the first snows predicted within a week. By January the temperature will have plunged to 15°C and the snow could be almost three metres deep. So the sensible option for Rehman seems obvious: to gather his family, pack his belongings, and trek down to the valleys below the snowline where aid agencies and the Pakistani army are pitching vast tented camps.
But it is not so simple. For the conservative farmer, leaving means abandoning his food stocks, exposing his wife and daughters to unwelcome outside attention, and allowing his most valuable assets — three buffalo and one cow — to die. Or eating them first.
”We are really in two minds,” said Rehman, standing outside a rough tent near the rubble of his old house. ”If we leave now, we lose everything. If we stay, we could die. I just don’t know.”
The aid effort in northern Pakistan is now focused on about 350 000 homeless survivors living in the craggy mountainous areas above the snowline. A narrow window of opportunity to save them is closing fast. Doctors have reported several hundred cases of pneumonia and, as temperatures plummet, they fear many more. Anxious talk of a ”second wave of death” is gaining currency.
Yet wealthy Western countries and other donors remain hesitant. An emergency United Nations appeal seeking $550-million has received just $133-million; non-UN agencies have received about $232-million. In contrast, one month after the tsunami in South-East Asia last December, $4-billion had come in. The President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, accuses the West of double standards. ”I know that the contributions to Katrina were much more,” he told the BBC. ”Did the United States need more aid than Pakistan?”
Despite the delays and indifference, much aid is finally getting through. About 370 000 tents have been delivered, according to the UN, and 300 000 more are on their way. A fleet of 78 helicopters from around the world is patrolling the mountain skies. In the valleys below military engineers are clearing landslides and opening roads into the worst-hit areas.
The question is whether the aid effort will be fast enough or big enough to save everyone. The UN estimates that of the 350 000 survivors living above the snowline, 150 000 will descend into tented camps and the rest will stay put. In places like Sosal, deep inside the Alai valley, desperate villagers are having to make life-and-death decisions.
Rehman said that before October 8 his family was among Sosal’s better off. Then the earthquake struck. Car-sized rocks tumbled off the mountain that overshadows Sosal, crushing everything in their path, including his brother and four sons.
But he does have options. If they decide to stay, at least his wife and daughters can sleep in a canvas tent dropped by an American helicopter a week ago. And if they decide to go, it is only a three-hour walk to the nearest major tented camp, one of 18 springing up across the earthquake zone.
The crowded camps bring their own problems. Oxfam warns that poor sanitary conditions could cause disease to spread ”like wildfire”. Medics are already dealing with an outbreak of acute diarrhoea at a settlement in Muzaffarabad.
But they are unattractive to conservative villagers like Rehman for other reasons. For one, he would have to abandon his livestock or sell them for almost nothing. For another, it would embarrass his wife. Women in Sosal do not wear the burka but they avoid the gaze of all non-family members.
Before allowing The Guardian to visit, Rehman shooed the women into another tent and pulled the flap shut. The idea of having them in a congested tented camp, exposed to strange men made him very uncomfortable, he said.
The mountain villagers are not used to being given orders. Rehman, like every man in Sosal, keeps a gun at home. Up to 100 men and their families are reluctant to leave because of murder charges relating to old land disputes, said Khavagul Swati, a former district mayor. But the dangers of staying remain. Aftershocks rock the area, often several times a day.
Many villagers doubt the tents will last the winter. But they are the lucky ones — half of Sosal is still living rough. Mehmoud and his family live under a precarious shelter cobbled together from old roof beams, plastic sheeting, palm fronds and tin sheeting. He initially thought he could tough out the winter. For now the rickety lean-to keeps out the rain. But when the unforgiving winter really starts to bite, it will be a freezing death trap. He said he had had enough. ”If the road doesn’t open soon, we will walk. To stay here like this is madness. My family will die.”
Others will join him, especially when the valley road opens next week. On the stony trail behind Rehman’s tent, Muhammad Rehman was walking down the slope with about $120 in his pocket. He had sold his last bull and was heading for Karachi, 1 400km south, where he has relatives, he said.
But the man buying the bull, Ashraf Ali, was heading back up. ”I’m going to stay as long as I can survive,” he said. ”We have a shelter and some wood. If I can get some tin sheeting before the snows come, it will be OK.”
And if not? He smiled. ”Then we will slaughter the animals, eat them and go.” — Â