More on the South Asian Earthquake

Looks like the Velvet Bulldog is back in town from her tour of India (see her comment associated with Old Fogey's post on donor fatigue), and she has a short note about how politics are playing into the recovery and aid equation in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Pakistan and India. Here's an article from The Economist that brings the recent Dehli terrorist bombings into the equation:

The hugely destructive natural disaster, in which at least 74,000 people died, has made human conflict seem petty. As the harsh Himalayan winter looms, there is a desperate humanitarian crisis, putting pressure on both governments to “soften” the line of control. The meeting that agreed the breakthrough on this, in Islamabad, may have provided one motive for the terrorist attacks in Delhi. Militants may be anxious to disrupt a peace process they fear (with good reason) is likely to end in a perpetuation of the status quo in Kashmir. Similarly, in April this year, on the eve of the opening of a fortnightly bus service across the line of control, militants staged a vicious attack on the passengers in Srinagar.

The militants may also want to disprove reports that the earthquake, having destroyed some of their training camps in Pakistani Kashmir, has severely dented their strength. Or perhaps they wanted to mark the sentencing, on October 31st, in the trial of militants accused of an earlier attack in Delhi, in 2000. Of the seven convicted, the alleged mastermind of that attack, a Pakistani, was sentenced to death.

If the terrorists’ aim was to derail the peace process, they have failed in the short term, and Pakistan itself was swift to condemn the outrage. In the long run, however, India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, may find it harder to make rapid progress. On October 31st, he told General Musharraf by telephone that India had “indications” of the bombers’ “external linkages”—ie, India suspects Pakistan is involved. Already, India's main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has blamed the bomb blasts on the government’s “going soft” on terrorism.

Both opposition and government will concentrate on General Musharraf’s failure to crack down definitively on the Pakistan-based militant groups. He has banned the most notorious. But their members have simply regrouped under other names. To the horror of some liberals in Pakistan as well as Indian observers, they have played a prominent role in relief work after the earthquake, sometimes with logistical support from the Pakistan army.

Indian hawks have long argued that parts of Pakistan's army and intelligence services have an institutional interest in prolonging the conflict in Kashmir. That is why, they say, General Musharraf proves so perversely unwilling—or unable—to put the militants out of business altogether. So the atrocity in Delhi is bound to have an impact on India’s willingness to pursue the peace process. It may even dent one of its central pillars: the mutual trust between Mr Singh and General Musharraf.

NPR's Michele Norris also had a very good interview tonight on All Things Considered with Jan Egeland, coordinator of U.N. relief efforts, that covers the facts as well as responds to the dread donor fatigue. Here's a speedy transcription :

Egeland: It is much worse than we first thought. 15,000 villages have been hit. And on average 70 percent to 100 percent of all houses and all structures have either been destroyed or damaged [garble]. The 3.3 million people that are homeless will have a Himalyan winter coming upon them. This is like Montana. It's not temperate, it's going to be very cold. And if you don't have a house, you will freeze.
[...]
Egeland: What is really my main worry now is that the United Nations appeal is only 24 percent funded. And some of our agencies do not have enough money to run their operations through November at this pace even.

Norris: Mr. Egeland, you've been very critical of the international community for not doing enough to help the people of Pakistan. Why has the relief been so slow in coming?

Egeland: I think it's late in a terrible year there. And that has influence the level of generosity. We started this year afresh with the terrible tsunami, and we all gave. We end this year much more tired, it seems, of the many hurricanes and the many other emergencies, disasters, and wars. And we're not responding to the same effect. We cannot allow ourselves, neither donor fatigue nor agency fatigue, because those who are hungry and shelterless and freezing and have wounded among them in the Himalayan mountains, for them it's no relief to know the world performed well with the tsunami in the beginning of the year.

Norris: Could you characterize your effort right now, is this a case where you're calling on governments and agencies, and they're just telling you, listen, our pockets are empty.

Egeland: [...] So then I have to tell them, this is a bigger emergency, a bigger disaster than any of us think. The media is not there, either, as you were in the tsunami, for example. We don't have the media as we're making our big progress. We are reaching, today, many thousands of new people, we are evacuating new wounded. I wish we could be able to tell people that it's working. It's a question of money.

Norris: If you could put a dollar figure on this, how much do you think you'll need?

Egeland: Well, we did ask for $550 million after doing a lot of assessment, and we have gotten $135 million, so we have a quarter of what we need. We need three-quarter more. $550 million seems to be a lot, but I think it's 5 percent of what Europeans consume of ice cream in the normal year. It's a fraction of what we use on our pets in two months' time. So, we could give more privately and publicly.

I just gave to Oxfam America. And thanks to Old Fogey for the reminder--that Microsoft page is a very good, complete list.