Jalalabad Park Affectees Left Homeless, Without Answers

MUZAFFARABAD—I laughed with Saikah Kazmi and her cousins, Saira and Mayra, as we returned home on a rickshaw after shopping for shawls and having dinner. All appeared normal, until I remembered that it was a public park we were entering.

Jalalabad Park used to be a large leisure area for residents of Muzaffarabad, a large hub city in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Now it has become home to 165 families whose homes were destroyed in last year’s earthquake. The fallen trees, uncut grass, and dirtied fountain are eerie reminders of the normality that once was.

Saikah’s family has been living here since their large home in Muzaffarabad city crumbled, killing Saira and Mayra’s mother. The joint family of three brothers share several tents in the camp.

“We cannot rebuild our home because the government says the land is very dangerous,” said Saira Kazmi. “We are waiting to see if they will give us another piece of land to build a home upon.”

For now, Saira is choosing bedroom furniture and sewing cushions for her bed, which will be placed inside a new relief tent the family has received. Their largest tent serves as a living area, kitchen, dining room, and bedroom for her father and his new wife.

Last night, the family gathered to watch a cricket match between Pakistan and England on the small TV set inside the tent. Saira served me dinner and we looked at pictures before going to bed. The children talked of going to school tomorrow morning, and some family members prepared for work. All seemed eerily normal, as if nobody but me noticed that we were under tents and in a park.

The tent village is fairly independent, and there is little NGO presence. A bulldozer regularly lifts rubble out of the area, but there is no other sign that anything will change for the park dwellers in the coming months.

“We have been granted stay in this park until March 2007,” said Saira, reminding me of the harsh winter they will have to endure for another year. “After that we’re not sure where we will go.”

Khubaib Foundation Provides a Home for Orphans, Widows

MANSEHRA—After the earthquake, many children who were left parentless were adopted into their extended families. Widows began living with their parents or other relatives. But not everyone was welcomed with open arms, and many orphans and widows were reduced to poster figures for receiving aid money.

Last fall, the Khubaib Foundation, a Turkey-based relief organization, liaised with the Pakistani government to create temporary shelters for orphans in Mansehra and Muzaffarabad. The plan was to bring the children to Islamabad and either find them homes or build an orphanage. But, through the resistance of the local community, the children were not shifted to Islamabad and still reside in the shelters today.

In Mansehra, a boarding school has been set up for 321 such orphans and 20 widows in April. Mansehra is a commercial trade hub for villagers, who are able to come visit the children when they go to the city. The orphans are currently living and studying in tents inside a large guarded field.

“Our biggest problem is a lack of space,” said Major Fayyaz Akbar, project manager of the Mansehra site. “We are working with the government to find a large plot of land in Mansehra were we can build a permanent shelter and school for the children.”

The children are taught based on a New Century education system, developed by a group of Karachi-based NGOs. The Montessori-style classrooms emphasize writing skills and reading comprehension instead of simple memorization. The widows are also provided reading skills and vocational training.

“In their villages, the children were not educated properly. Their parents, busy with their own work, didn’t pay much attention to the children’s studies,” said Akbar. “Now we have brought them to a point where they can even skip a class and enter the next grade.”

But the more notable accomplishment of the Khubaib Foundation is the cleanliness, order, and respect with which the children and widows are living. Other tent villages are covered with trash, but the orphanage is clean and the children are provided food and medical attention regularly.

The children of the Khubaib foundation are receiving education and attention today that would have been unimaginable for them prior to the earthquake. Among the sadness and frustration of earthquake evacuees, the orphanage provides a much needed glimmer of hope.

Photo Diary: Jabba Tent Camp

Please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/ambreenali/ to see photos I have uploaded from my visit today to Jabba.

This tent camp opened recently to accomodate those earthquake victims who had settled back in their villages and were once again homeless after this month's floods and landslides. 550 families will settle in this area for an indefinite time. Tents have been set up with medical, educational, and food facilities. The NGOs working there include the UN World Foods Program, International Medical Corps, and Haashar.

A Break from Reality

ABBOTTABAD—Children of First Step School, based in the Jalalabad Park tent camp in Muzaffarabad, Kashmir, enjoy rides during a field trip.

School Teaches Vocational Skills to Earthquake Evacuees

ABBOTTABAD—“There were no men in the villages when the earthquake hit,” Saima Pervez recalled. “My aunt went back to find her children in the house and was crushed under a door.” Two children of the family survived, sandwiched between the corpses of their siblings.

The women in Imtiaz Bibi’s class come from remote villages surrounding the Mansehra area. After their homes were destroyed, they moved to Jhanghi, on the outskirts of Abbottabad, where some live with their husbands, who are drivers and laborers, and some share flats with other girls.

Every day, the girls walk one hour to the Disaster Management Center (DMC), operated by the Abbottonian Medical Association and American Pakistani Physicians of North America, where they learn sewing, embroidery, and beadwork for free. In 10 months, they will know the basics of making and selling handicrafts. DMC will sell their products and give them the profits to take, along with their new skills, back to the villages.

Imtiaz Bibi (left) began teaching such skills to girls in Mansehra last year, where she rented a house and created Sahara Vocational Center. She too is an affectee; her family lives in Balakot, where they have used their initial ERRA* check to build two mud and stone rooms for temporary shelter.

Before joining DMC, she lived inside her vocational center and paid rent with the fees she collected, a great feat for a woman who at the age of 13 had never been inside a school. Now, the Disaster Management Center is providing her a salary to run the class.

“I had an interest in embroidery and sewing since I was a little child,” she said. “I picked up the work wherever I could learn it. I had to beg my mother to let me out of the house I the beginning.”

For the girls in the class, there is no choice but to leave their homes and find work. They pay high rents in Jhanghi, as house prices have quadrupled with the influx of international NGOs and relief offices in the region. They are learning these skills in the hope of gaining a job and helping their families pay the bills until they can rebuild their village homes.

“When I return to my village, I will teach the girls there how to make these crafts,” said Shamaila (right), a 20-year-old student in the class. “We were never taught how to read and write, but now I want us to be able to do something for ourselves.”

*The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority is a government agency providing earthquake affectees with Rs. 175,000 to rebuild their homes. Initial checks of Rs. 25,000, about $400, have been provided to some affectees.

No Place to Call Home

BALAKOT—When it rained today, I remembered Nargis (above). I remembered sitting in her tent and touching its thin cloth. When it rains, the water falls inside, she had said with a resigned smile. Now I watch the heavy rain and imagine her sitting in her dripping home, hoping that it will stop.

Rain has a strange role in South Asian society. Water is good for crops, and it is a comforting relief from the blistering summer heat. But water causes rivers to overflow and mountains to slide. This year, rain is causing the millions of tent dwellers hell.

In Balakot, the rain has left a river of rocks running in between the tent cities. The landsliding (right) that occurred last week has ruined people’s tents, and along with it the few belongings they had salvaged from their destroyed homes. Some who had returned to their villages came once again to the valley, homeless for a second time.

The towns of Balakot and Gurlat have been declared a “red zone” by the Pakistani government. Its proximity to the fault line and its vulnerability to further disasters make rebuilding there unsafe. Residents will shift, over the course of several years, to Bakryal, some 10 km from where they currently live. Where they will shift, how much land they will receive, what jobs they will have, and what money they’ll be given to make the move is all unclear.

“We will stay here. We don’t need Bakryal,” said Nadeem Sahib, a Balakot resident, during a press conference (below) held by local landowners at which over 70 men were present. “Our brothers across the world sent money for us. The government used Balakot to raise funds that it is now using for fancy homes and cars. Where is our money?

When pressed about whether they will move to the new location, most of the villagers present said their first priority is to stay in Balakot. They fear commercial use of their land for tourism and business upon their departure. But they are willing to move, they say, if the government will answer how land will be distributed in Bakryal.

Landowners are concerned about getting an amount of land proportional to what they had in Balakot; so far the government has announced that all residents of Bakryal will be given the same amount of land.

Inside Nargis’s tent, however, the women had a different concern. Shamaila, another tent dweller, said, “We want to move to a place where our children are safe. Our husbands are concerned with money, but we say if we are going to die what good is that money? Another earthquake can happen anytime and if this land is unsafe, we should move.”

For Nargis, the wife of a tenant who was living on his landowner’s land, there are other problems. The government is only allowing tenants to rebuild if their landowners sign a NOC, No Objection Certificate. Her landowner refuses to sign the NOC. Currently her tent is pitched on another owner’s land, and he threatens her family regularly to move.

“We would move but we have nowhere to go,” she said. She’s right. If the NOC is not signed, the government has yet to explain where Nargis can build a home for her family.

For now, she sits in the rain and watches her home flood. The winter is returning and she expects to bear another grueling season of snow without shelter.

"For God's Sake, Don't Exploit Our Suffering"

BALAKOT—One year later, the tents are still in use. The city is no more; there are merely hundreds of tents clustered throughout the mountain valley.

NGOs Continue Work Amid Confusion

MANSEHRA—“Some victims have gotten used to receiving aid from multiple sources. When a new NGO comes, they ask them for supplies, even if they’ve already received them. But there are still people in remote areas who have yet to see one ounce of aid,” said Uzma Gul, Zonal Coordinator of the Sungi Development Foundation, Mansehra District (below).

Despite the creation of a governmental regulatory body, the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA), the rehabilitation process has not been streamlined. Some affectees are receiving tremendous amounts of aid while others are not receiving any. NGOs are duplicating efforts and using their funds up inefficiently, according to Gul.

The Pakistani government declared the relief phase of the October 8th earthquake complete on March 31. Army camps were then closed, as were other temporary relief sites, and over 3 million affectees were instructed to return to their villages. They have only been allowed to rebuild where their original homes existed, creating some issues.

For one, those whose land suffered from landslides cannot create their houses on slopes. Tenants and landlords are also battling over where tenants can now rebuild their houses since they never owned the land they lived upon. And while some extended families lived in five homes covered by one roof, they are now entitled only as much money as a single household.

“There is a lack of coordination, and even the various governmental bodies are unsure who is in charge,” said Sadiq Akbar Siddiqui, chief executive of Haashar, a development NGO that began in 2000. The District Commisioner Officer (DCO) has yet to answer the questions raised, and ERRA hasn’t commented on how to resolve the disputes.

ERRA is mostly run by military personnel, and they determine where NGOs can and cannot work. It was created with the purpose of streamlining the rehabilitation process so that duplication of work is minimized and all affected areas are covered.

“ERRA should not be run by the Army. Those who are experienced in these areas and understand rehabilitation should be making the decisions,” said Gul. Her organization, Sungi, has been working in this region since 1989 in governance, education, health and social mobilization.

After the earthquake, Sungi was one of the few local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that already had survey information on all the villages in the region. The organization focuses on participatory development, undertaking only projects that are initiated from within the communities.

“We knew where the most remote villages were because we had been working there,” Gul explained. “From the beginning we were interested in capacity building. We are training carpenters, laborers and teachers.”

Sungi’s understanding of the local culture gave them an advantage over international NGOs, some of which now fund Sungi’s initiatives. When relief camps were set up, Sungi was careful to allow victims to live within their own communities. The region’s culture is very private, Gul explained, and families felt more comfortable surrounded by others from their own area.

Sungi also took special care to register widows as heads of households even if they were now living with relatives. In this way, widows were able to claim their portion of aid.

Haashar has also focused on the region prior to the earthquake. They are providing affectees who have lost livestock with replacements so that the villagers can continue their way of life.

“There is a cycle to how they sustain themselves. If you take one bull out of the equation, then the cycle no longer functions,” Siddiqui said. Haashar is also concerned about the increasing deforestation of the area as a result of reconstruction; the local environment is changing at an alarming rate.

“The government should bring timber from other areas to minimize the massive depletion of this resource,” he said. So far, nothing of the sort has been done.

Even Among Disaster, Corruption Ensues in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD—Immediately following the October 8th earthquake in Northern Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, the government of Pakistan created the President’s Earthquake Relief Fund. As the money is distributed to affectees, the National Accountability Board (NAB) has discovered a 50 percent corruption rate in at least one district.

“The highest standards of transparency and accountability would be maintained,” Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf promised last November. The fund was set up to provide relief to earthquake victims and to mobilize resources for relief efforts.

U.S. organizations and Pakistani expatriates donated over $6.2 million to the fund through the Pakistan Embassy in Washington D.C. Despite the skepticism of some who have experience with the corruption Pakistani governments, most Pakistanis felt confident in donating to the fund.

It’s hard to blame them. The Pakistani Army was on the ground and helping facilitate relief efforts immediately, and their presence was recognized by both the U.S. government and international non-governmental organizations. Ethnic tensions were erased as students and workers from Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad rushed to the affected areas to provide relief. In a rare scene, the country’s citizens and government seemed to be working harmoniously to help the 3 million plus victims.

10 months have passed since the earthquake, and the money is being used to assist affectees in building earthquake-resistant homes. An initial 25,000 rupees ($417) check is issued per family to begin rebuilding, and upon inspection more money is to follow to complete the work.

The system has already been criticized for its shortcomings. Those who are not approved for the second round of money are left homeless. In addition, the cost of material goods has surged, partly because of keen businessmen who recognize that demand exceeds supply and partly because of the international NGO presence. The money, therefore, may not be enough to rebuild homes.

Now, according to Pakistan’s The News, the NAB has reported that 50 percent of the checks issued in the Oghi district of Mansehra are fake. Oghi is one small area of the region affected.

The corruption can be traced to the elected representatives, revenue department officers and military personnel who have been issuing checks. Ahmad Shahryar, the son of the district nazim has been issued 8 checks, and 31 total checks were issued to members of his family. The officers involved have been pocketing a portion of the compensation.

Doctors have also been linked with the corruption in the area; they have issued fake certificates of injuries to allow patients to collect the government money.

The NAB is continuing its investigation in Oghi and plans to do similar probes in other areas. However, they will likely avoid badly hit areas, such as Balakot, so as not to agitate and add to the woes of those affectees.

While the corruption causes valid alarm, donors to the Pakistan Relief Fund can find some comfort in the NAB’s efforts to investigate the problem. One must wait to see how the government will prevent further abuse of the relief funds.

Gearing Up

WASHINGTON—Two weeks from now, I will be stationed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, hours from the epicenter of last October’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake. As the anniversary nears, millions of people whose villages have been ruined continue to live in temporary relief sites. The winterized tents designed to weather the harsh winter are now their only refuge from blistering heat. Lack of proper sanitation, health, education, and food have led some to describe the 70,000+ who perished last fall as the lucky ones.

Of course, this was one of many tragedies to recently affect our world. Less than a month ago, Indonesia was hit with an earthquake, and as I write this, rescue workers are looking for survivors of a flood in Ethiopia last weekend. The amount of disasters, conflicts, and bad news is overwhelming to say the least. But for the millions who continue to struggle, whether it’s in the Gulf Coast, Southeast Asia, or Kashmir, that reality is something they cannot escape by turning off the TV.

As an American who has lived in Pakistan and traveled through the affected regions, I have decided to lend my eyes and fingers to this story. For three weeks I will report to those who are interested, in the U.S. and elsewhere, the real stories I witness at ground zero of Pakistan’s reconstruction operations. I expect stories that give hope, as well as those that depress and frustrate us, and stories that remind us of the never-ending resilience of the human spirit against great odds.

I encourage you to join me on this adventure by checking my postings frequently at www.ambreen.net/blog or by subscribing to my site feed.