Bureacratic Disaster

We moved away from Islamabad/Rawalpindi where nothing seemed to go our way, and yet nothing went terribly wrong either. Islamabad itself is a reminder of how spread out everything is in the West.... in most of these cities 5 million people live on top of one another and with cattle in the streets. In modern Islamabad not nearly so many people occupy much more space. We did have delicious kababs a la afghani while there, though. And saw Good to Great in a bookstore, which is bizarre.

We moved up to Muzaffarabad, which is in the heart of the earthquake area in Azad ("free") Jammu and Kashmir. A completely different world than Kashmir on the other side, due to more than just earthquake destruction, which is magnificent. There are, for instance, no military bunkers and I've yet to see an armed soldier or a section of razor wire. Also, no snow on the ground though it can be seen on the peaks in the distance.

We wandered into the UN HQ today to see if anything at all was needed, and found only a schmorgasborg of terrible organization. For all the colorful maps, there seems to be no real coherence to what every NGO, Government, and UN operation is doing. Moreover, Mohammad indicated that many NGO's are reluctant to share because, well, who knows... In the meantime, he insists that each family has been given AMPLE funds (25000 Rs for tent/shelter construction and 2 Lakh or 200,000 Rs for each deceased family member - which is a TON), and yet many people either misused the money or hoarded it and now claim they have still received nothing. We were handed a list of maybe 50 organizations here, and told that the best route is to contact them all directly - a daunting task to say the least. In the meantime, we were shown where the UN Internet Tent is for our use and advised on how to get a humanitarian relief workers flight out when we are ready to leave - seems like both of these things should have been saved until we actually DO something, but hey. I don't make the rules.

Turns out the HIC (acronyms galore around here USAID UNHCR UNICEF NCR blah blah - this one the UN Humanitarian Information Center) was the most optimistic about our chance to help, indicating that the NCR (Norweigan something or other) is looking for people to be Camp Managers, which is to say, people to oversee camps of 50 tents or more so that when the next storm comes the fiasco that insued due to lack of tent care in the last storm doesn't repeat itself. The bureaucratic fiasco continued, though, as the UNHCR director (?) implied that they don't hire volunteers normally, and that he couldn't so much as direct us to an NGO that does despite his confidence that some are indeed looking for people. He did agree that we should perhaps contact the NCR to ascertain their volunteer situation which he did not know, despite the fact that they are both working on Camp Management. Not exactly a well-run operation (or rather, conglomerate of operations) - exemplified best, perhaps, in the fact that some people have enough blankets to provide for their goats as well as their families, while others lack any. Most people, it seems, have become unnecessarily dependent on the aid - but then I'm just a schmo who rolled into town this afternoon. What do I know?

In the meantime, the utter destruction is astounding though wholly expected. Canvas Boy Scout style tents line the city sporadically - where a house fell, a tent has been erected on the rubble. Whole sections of road have fallen into the river and mountainsides sport newly acquired gaping holes, with the earth poured down to the valley floor. We rode the bus with a man whose wife and children were killed, and whose house is destroyed (ALL of the houses are destroyed - in fact, many look exactly as one would expect a house built of walls made of rock piles would; a tin roof laying on a heap of small boulders. Crushed in seconds and with ease. Others tumbled down the mountainsides, leaving trails of debris.). We drank tea in a cement house that is cracked, though still standing (a stark contrast to the slumping buildings in its vicinity) and where four people lived before October 8th, and where "many many" people live now.
Yet as we walk past the throngs of white SUV's branded UN, we feel the money and support in the region pouring from them. The helicopters overhead buzzing supplies to neighboring villages provide the exclamation points. The supplies and personnel are here (NATO's first major contingent even left the region a few days ago) - the problem here as in Thailand is organization all over again - and our own lack of definite time commitment combined with the bureaucratic nightmare and a feeling that all is essentially cared for that should be cared for will probably lead us out of Kashmir as quickly as I left Khao Lak; and for similar reasons. After all, Bush Sr. has it all in the bag already, right? Uh huh...


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PS It would seem that my fears of the road from Srinagar to Jammu were not sheer unfounded paranoia - a bus careened off of it into a 400 foot ravine killing 53 people, with 15 more critically injured a few days ago. I wish it were just paranoia.