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PAKISTAN: Of Nukes and Quakes

Analysis by M B Naqvi

KARACHI, Oct 28 2005 (IPS) - India’s Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran could not have chosen a worse moment than this week to demand that the ‘Father of the Pakistani Bomb’ A.Q. Khan be grilled by external investigators – just when Pakistan is fighting to cope with its worst earthquake and in need of international aid.

India’s Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran could not have chosen a worse moment to demand that the ‘Father of the Pakistani Bomb’ A.Q. Khan be grilled by external investigators, for proliferating nuclear technology to Iran, than this week- when Pakistan was fighting to cope with its worst earthquake and in need of international aid.

Saran was speaking in the context of India’s tough new stand against Iran’s alleged violations of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but his statements have caused embarrassment to Islamabad and raised fears that the ongoing peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbours would be affected.

Saran told newspersons in New Delhi on Monday that India saw no reason why the IAEA has demanded personal interviews with Iranian nuclear scientists while exceptions were granted to ”a man (Khan) who has been accused of running a nuclear WalMart”. So far, India has remained silent on Khan.

While the peace process has been crawlingly slow, considerable progress has been made since the November 2003 ceasefire- including the opening up of a bus route across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the Pakistan and Indian parts of disputed Kashmir and, in August, an agreement on nuclear risk reduction.

The foreign secretaries of the two countries have also agreed to holding talks once a monthover a new hotline and the first time it was actually used was immediately after the Oct. 8 earthquake when India made an offer of helicopters for rescue and relief missions across the LoC.

But rather than push the peace process forward, the Indian offer seems to have exacerbated mutual suspicions with Pakistan refusing to accept help because of ”local sensitivities” drawing considerable flak from civil society groups and international organizations involved in relief.

The real death toll in the earthquake is still unknown and may easily exceed 100,000 while 80 percent of building and infrastructure in Pakistan’s mountainous north has been damaged, leaving some 400,000 people homeless- presenting a unique opportunity for the two countries to work together in a time of urgent humanitarian need.

In the event, both sides have actually subordinated relief work to maintain the sanctity of the LoC in Kashmir and were determined to exercise of national sovereignty. Hundreds of Indians – doctors, civil society activists, philanthropists and artists – were prepared to come to Pakistan to help with relief work but were refused visas by Pakistan’s High Commission in New Delhi.

Indian authorities were equally rigid in enforcing paranoid rules and regulations. A delegation led by Nirmala Deshpande, a noted Gandhian activist, was not allowed to take along relief supplies when it crossed the border, the supplies were detained overnight for a thorough check of contents.

The two countries have still not completed ‘negotiations’ on modalities of allowing affected people from the Pakistani side to cross over the heavily fortified LoC and avail of relief.

According to Mairaj Mohammed Khan, a former minister, the need was to ”deploy well-trained and equipped Indian and Pakistan soldiers facing each other on the Siachen Glacier, to reach the remote villages and hamlets which are soon going to be snow-bound”.

Mairaj said there could have been close cooperation between Pakistani and Indian social workers, supported by the armies on either side of the LoC which are well equipped and thick on the ground.

”The urgent need is for adequate medical care, prevention of outbreaks of various diseases by emergency sanitary measures and to arrange for enough medical supplies, especially artificial limbs. India is known to have given these in large numbers for Afghan patients whose limbs had to be amputated. Pakistan should ask for these from India and, if necessary, import them,” Mairaj said.

He also thought that ”if Indian and Pakistani social activists could jointly do relief and rehabilitation work, it would create so much goodwill on both sides that governments can actually be prevented from regressing into their respective legal cocoons”.

”This is no time or occasion to be overly rigid on visa rules or preventing people from giving whatever aid they can to the stricken country,” he said. ”If only the top Indian and Pakistani leaders had met soon after the killer quake, a larger measure of cooperation in relief and rehabilitation matters would have resulted,” he told IPS.

It will now depend on civil society in both countries to ensure better cooperation in earthquake relief and also keep the momentum for peace going . ”The peace process has evoked such a popular response that reversing it will be difficult as well as impolitic,” said Birjis Hasan Khan, a former diplomat.

Khan said the fact that ” both countries run the risk of a nuclear exchange, which neither can win, gives them no option but to go on talking”.

”But, neither side is ready to budge from long-held positions and each is buoyed up by the notion that its nuclear deterrent has made it impregnable. Hence, India finds no pressing reason to accommodate Pakistan,” said Khan.

Pakistan, for its part, has the disadvantage of ”policy-making by a narrow cabal”, Khan said. ”Absence of a working democracy is a debilitating circumstance and also one more reason why Pakistan is at a disadvantage in international dealings.”

Certainly, the international community has been niggardly in coming to Pakistan’s assistance in its hour of need.

A donor conference in Geneva, on Wednesday, managed to raise pledges of 580 million dollars but the United Nations, which is spearheading international relief efforts, said only 16 million dollars is earmarked against the U.N. appeal for emergency funding.

”Donors needed to provide hundreds of millions of dollars for emergency relief yesterday, instead they could only scrape together 16 million dollars,” Jo Leadbeater, Oxfam’s head of advocacy, told IPS in Geneva on Thursday. ”This is loose change for donor governments. We needed 30 times more than they pledged.”

India has pledged 25 million dollars with no stipulation on how it should be spent and this is seen as a good beginning for better cooperation in the days to come.

After the killer quake struck, Pakistan badly needed helicopters for reaching and retrieving the survivors and injured people and, of course, to provide some essential supplies to the stricken survivors.

India offered eight helicopters to be flown in, but Pakistan refused to allow Indian pilots to fly them in, though, it said it was ready to accept Indian choppers minus the pilots. Naturally, India declined.

Civil society in Pakistan is now urging on their government not to go on nurturing the ”sensitivities”, especially, since the helicopters are still needed to reach hundreds of villages and hamlets on inaccessible mountain sides where aid has not been reached even after three weeks.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has expressed grave concern at the lack of shelter, including tents and blankets, for the affected population of around four million.

”Cold exposure reduces defence against respiratory infections and hypothermia is deadly for infants and the elderly,” Sacha Bootsma, WHO communications officer, said in the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday.

Mobile medical teams operating in remote areas around Muzaffarabad, close to the epicentre of the quake, have reported a sharp increase in acute respiratory tract infections (ARI).

According to official estimates, the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the shattered health system in quake-affected areas will require an estimated 651 million dollars.

This figure includes the reconstruction of medical facilities, provision of medical equipment and ambulances, restoring laboratory systems, blood banks, nursing schools and the manufacture of artificial limbs, all of which can readily supplied from India.