Poor donor response

In his recent interview with the BBC, President General Pervez Musharraf termed the international aid response to the October 8 earthquake "totally inadequate." Pakistan, he said, needs about $5 billion in disaster aid but the international community, so far has pledged only around $620 million.
As a matter of fact, notwithstanding the initial rescue and relief operations mounted by Western government and private organisations, rich nations' response to the quake, described by different UN officials as the worst calamity of our times, has been far from adequate.
While asking for more help the other day, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan alluded to an interesting contrast in the international community's response to the UN appeal for the victims of last December's Asian Tsunami and the earthquake in Pakistan. While donor countries, he said, had made firm commitments of only 12 percent of the UN flash appeal of $312 million for the quake victims, the appeal for the Tsunami had been funded more than 80 percent within ten days of the disaster.
As to the question why there was such a big and urgent reaction to the Asian Tsunami and not the South Asian earthquake, the answer may be found in the fact that a large number of those who died in the former disaster were western holiday-makers whereas all the victims in the latter tragedy happened to be Asians. That point has been further underlined by the Western reaction to the appeal for help that the UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, made to Nato countries on Thursday.
Egeland, who had seen the devastation first hand and declared it worse than the Tsunami, urged the Nato to launch a "second Berlin airlift" to save the lives of tens of thousands of people who could die if help did not get to them in time. Nato issued a statement on Friday, telling the UN to forget the Berlin airlift. Said the world's most powerful military alliance, "there is no question of the alliance doing that. That was Berlin after World War II and this is Pakistan today.
There is absolutely no comparison." Of course, not. That US led 16-month-long airlift, which started in June 1948, was aimed at supplying food and heating oil and coal to some 2 million West Berliners affected by a Soviet imposed blockade. It was a political emergency that had to be addressed at all costs. What is at stake in the present situation are only the lives of men, women and children of an Asian people, no matter if in hundreds of thousands. According to UN predictions, 120,000 quake survivors have still not been reached and 10,000 children could die if help is not rushed in time.
Certainly for Nato nations politics is a lot more important than a colossal humanitarian emergency. The least the donor countries can do now is to pay heed to Kofi Annan's request that they should attend the donors' conference, to be held in Geneva in a few days' time, at the highest level and donate generously. As he aptly put it, "There are no excuses, if we are to show ourselves worthy of calling ourselves members of humankind, we must rise to this challenge." These nations should take some inspiration from the example of Turkey that is not a rich country and yet has come up with the biggest single donation worth $150 million, of which 100 million is in cash and the rest in kind.
The country's Prime Minister, who has made a personal visit to Pakistan to offer sympathy and support, also said that Turkey would extend help in the construction of safer infrastructure that can cope with disasters, including earthquakes. Closer home, although Pakistan has welcomed the relief supplies sent by India, some in that country are trying to play politics by criticising Pakistan for rejecting its offer of providing helicopters unless they are flown by Pakistani pilots.
The issue clearly involves military sensitivities on both sides of the border, which is why General Musharraf averred in his BBC interview that if Pakistan were to send manned helicopters across the LoC, "I'm 200 percent sure" they would not accept it. He also renewed his earlier offer to allow people on both sides of the LoC to help each other in the reconstruction effort, saying it may lead towards the resolution of the Kashmir problem. India has not formally responded to that offer, but its Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said on Friday that his country would not allow free movement of people across the LoC. Some places, he said, could be identified from where relief goods could be sent across freely.
General Musharraf's proposal, it should be noted, is not very different from the position that New Delhi publicly took a while ago, saying the borders cannot be changed but they can be made 'irrelevant'. That is practically General Musharraf's suggestion ie, the LoC be made irrelevant for the people who wish to come to this side to help their brethren in need. India, therefore, must not hesitate to take the first difficult step towards that end at a time the force of circumstances has thrown that possibility its way.