There’s an old mantra in the humanitarian aid world — and many still live by it: Whatever you do, don’t let the aid get near the men with guns. Humanitarian assistance, they say, should never be entrusted to armies.
Well, a few days ago I was in the jump seat of a Pakistan Army MI-17 helicopter, flying low over the crushed ruins of Balakot, a thriving market town and tourist centre that was reduced to rubble in only a few seconds by the earthquake on October 8.
We wheeled away up the narrow Kaghan valley, its pine forests scarred by scores of landslides that blocked the road. We were carrying food — pulses from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and wheat flour from the Pakistan government — for the inhabitants of the upper valley.
They were the lucky ones — their food stocks had only just run out when we reached them, and Kaghan has a helipad. Further up the valley, towards the snowy peaks that mark the start of the Himalayas, there are tens of thousands of people who have received nothing. And the only way to reach them is by foot or mule.
It was clear from the outset that with so many roads destroyed by the quake, helicopters were the only means of delivering aid to survivors. We’re not just talking about food; the WFP took on the responsibility of providing air support for the entire UN response. That meant airlifting tents, blankets, warm clothing and medical supplies — and ferrying the injured.
So the WFP issued a worldwide appeal for funding for helicopters. They are expensive beasts — just keeping an MI-8 in the air for an hour costs about $8 000. We said we needed $100-million for six months, but pointed out that most of this would be needed to supply people in the first few weeks before winter descended — when we still had a chance to keep them alive.
Clearly, we failed to convince the donors. Three weeks into the operation we had raised less than 10% of what we needed. We only had 13 MI-8s flying, each of them capable of carrying just two tons a sortie at these altitudes. And with the funds running out, we faced grounding these in less than two weeks.
And that was when we turned to the army. At that stage, it had deployed 45 helicopters, many of them MI-17s, with payloads three times greater than those of the MI-8s — and pilots familiar with the terrain and conditions. What it lacked was a coordinated supply line of appropriate aid materials. That was where the WFP could help.
So that was why I was sitting behind helicopter pilot Lieutenant-Colonel Safdar. “You know, we couldn’t possibly do this alone,” he told me. “This always had to be an international effort. We need you. You need us.”
Damn right. And it’s not just the helicopters. When the WFP couldn’t find NGOs or volunteers to distribute the food we delivered by road, Pakistani soldiers put down their guns and hefted the sacks of food over their shoulders to get it to the people who needed it. Also, the helicopters have been supplemented by Chinooks from the Royal Air Force and CH-53s from Nato. As a result, we can now shift upwards of 100 tons of supplies a day to areas inaccessible by road.
The lesson to be learned is that we should not agonise over petty points of principle. When it comes to humanitarian aid, all forces should combine efforts wherever possible. We need to examine new ways to work with responsible armed forces in emergencies such as the earthquake in Kashmir. That would give us a far better chance of providing an effective, joint response from day one.
Robin Lodge was in Pakistan for the World Food Programme