A lesson unlearnt

Eight fifty two a.m. The serene hills of Kashmir and the N.W.F.P hovered in tranquility under a bed of clouds. Before the clock struck eight fifty three, more than half a million people were rendered homeless. The sound of rumbling rocks and landslides reverberated across the ageless Himalayas, followed by a sickly, deafening silence. Life simply ceased to exist; the entire region was brought to its knees by the sudden savagery of nature. Some survivors, hopelessly trying to cope with the devastation, were consoled only by the belief that all this was, indeed could only be, the will of God.

Time seemed stuck on eight fifty two that day. News of casualties, collapsed buildings, land slides and an increasing death toll buzzed cell phones in every nook of Pakistan. Cellular links soon choked under the immense burden of phone calls. People rushed to switch on their TVs. The scope of the earthquake and gruesome images of its aftermath trickled into our lives. A fresh tragedy erupted from every crevasse uncovered. The entire nation dashed to the closest TV set and witnessed the horror of it all in anguish.

Last year, on the eighth of October, the ground cracked beneath our feet and left in its wake a void that remains empty to date. On the first anniversary of the earthquake we must ask ourselves a few things. After an entire year, are we now better equipped to handle the potential damages of a natural disaster? And can we spark the enthusiasm that once possessed us, however briefly, in the aftermath of the earthquake?

Even though the answers to these questions are subconsciously known to us all, we tend to throw old issues onto the backburner and focus on things that seem more imminent to us. Indeed, we are shortsighted – to a large extent, we have simply forgotten or pushed away what transpired in those dark days, and therefore it is imperative that we now revisit them, however briefly, if only to recall a time when all Pakistanis were united.

Our cook, Dilbur Shah, a local from Balakot, survived the earthquake. But his home was swallowed by the ground and his wife was buried alive with it. Once the ground stood still, Shah collected himself and embarked upon the horrific task of rejoining the shattered, strewn limbs of his young son, in the hope that he might just bring him back to life. “Everything will be fine,” he reassured himself as he went about his self-assigned task for the next few days. This is the story of only one family from the thousands of families displaced in and around the Balakot district.

In the earthquake affected areas there was a mass exodus, somewhat akin to panicked ants fleeing their hills: survivors swarmed down and secured refuge in the nearest valleys, while others climbed onto neighboring hill tops. Amidst the exodus were also the few anomalies; people like Shah who couldn’t think beyond the loss of their family. So they sat by their broken homes and loved ones until help arrived.

It is said that a tragedy on a massive scale can bring out the best and worst in man. Regrettably, as the bard said, “the evil that men do lives after them, whereas the good is oft interred with their bones”. Such has been the case with us. Stories of courage soon lost potency against the backdrop of profiteers, opportunists and petty criminals. Coffin cloth prices and truck rentals roared to unimaginable prices until the government intervened and imposed price ceilings. Personal belongings, including the clothes of the dead, were looted. Old scores and family feuds were settled with heinous murders and relief goods were stacked by a cunning few and then sold to earthquake survivors.

After the earthquake, as relief workers embarked upon their crucial tasks, drawing rooms, newspapers, magazines and electronic media, all echoed fear of mismanagement. Despite immense public scrutiny, the rehabilitation process was punctuated with critical organizational hiccups. Even though an overwhelming amount of help and donations poured in from all quarters of society, a large number of earthquake survivors received help at a point when it was too late. In the absence of a disaster management system, the charity offered did not reach a large proportion of its beneficiaries in due proportion or time.

Today, we must not let bygones be bygones. Having refreshed the woeful memory of the earthquake it is important now to address Pakistan’s primary concern on the earthquake’s first anniversary: Pakistan’s vulnerability to disasters. Are we safer and better prepared from disasters today?

Even though the government had taken steps, prior to the October 8 earthquake, to strengthen disaster preparedness and mitigation, none of these steps worked as planned for Pakistan last year. Besides the Emergency Relief Cell and the Federal Flood Commission (Pakistan’s leading organizations conducting disaster rescue and relief) the National Disaster Management Agency was inaugurated to bring major reform. Its function and role – “to enhance and incorporate more efficient management mechanisms” – was devised by the UNDP.

Why did these organizations fail to deliver the goods they had conceived? The world conference on disaster management puts things in perspective for us: First, among other disasters, floods are most common in Pakistan and so other management techniques and knowledge on the damages of other disasters, such as earthquakes, have received less attention; Second, Pakistan’s policies lack foresight in that disaster management is focused more on rescue, relief and rehabilitation, instead of research and planning on long-term solutions. The Emergency Relief Cell, for instance, is mandated to deal only with post-disaster scenarios. And third, there is no integration whatsoever between NGOs and disaster management organizations that conduct relief operations in a post-disaster scenario.

The lesson learnt from the conference is simple: decisions made on paper are as useful as scrap until they materialize into something tangible. The message to the government is even simpler: facta non verba (deeds not words).

Another lesson that demands our attention is one that regards the people, not the government. In most dogmatic societies, ‘God’s vicious wrath’ serves easy rationale as opposed to logical scientific explanations for natural disasters. And that is exactly what happened in Pakistan; the former belief prevailed and prompted us to question our very own disposition. Some people made the October 8 earthquake sound like a divine witch hunt!

For their own good, these people should have asked themselves a few things before racing to such radical conclusions: were the children in Kashmir, those crushed under bare rock and rubble, all sinners? Could God’s vicious wrath befall upon children, asleep in their beds? The answer lies in the questions.

In the end, the real tragedy is not the earthquake itself, but the scenario that followed it. There have been many occasions in our history when there has been a genuine surge of nationalistic fervor, of sincere belief in the notion that we are all united as one country. The closest historical parallel lies, perhaps, with the war of 1965. Six years after that, having failed to harness those powerful currents of unity, we were torn apart. A year after 8/8, we are watching a similar struggle unfold in our largest province. Pakistan is disintegrating while its leader is making the rounds of US talk shows for his own personal motives.

H.G. Bohn once said, “wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own.”

Under that premise, what do you call a nation that doesn’t learn at all?