Sat 19 Nov 2005
I just read two most beautiful and yet heart-felt letters from two beautiful girls Maham and Mahnoor from Jeddah.
Read Mahnoor’s letter
Read Maham’s letter
You have to signup/sign in to read them in All Sizes at Flickr.
They do help in letting your heart cry with freedom. They also yearn for so much action… They do, whether you accept it or shut your eyes.
Fri 18 Nov 2005
“We have only weeks to save the survivors of Pakistan’s earthquake from our indifference.” Maggie O’Kane writes at Guardian Unlimited. It’s a resounding heart felt article everyone must read and act. Maggie constantly highlights and gives a lot better perspective on earthquake hit areas than all the tv channels combined without an exception. She further elaborates: “Larry Hollingsworth, of the UNHCR, has spent his life buried in human tragedy. In Bosnia he led convoys of refugees out of siege cities, bartering cheerily with the captors as he went. He didn’t do panic. But now he was pleading, begging, beseeching. The message: in weeks the snows come and “we will be digging the bodies of children from the mountainside”. Their deaths, this time, would have nothing to do with a lack of lifting equipment but everything to do with weary indifference.”
Each passing hour, the mountains are becoming playground of human spirits, agony, triumph and sense of dedication. Those who can still walk, trek and reach to hundreds of earthquake affectees with relief aid do not feel proud of the glorified journey they had taken on because there are thousands of children and women stuck up in the 2m snow and -10 degree celsius.
This is a tragedy on such a scale that, of course, it has to be grasped by governments. The British and the Americans have, as Hilary Benn keeps reminding us, given more money than anyone else. But surely Britain could have found more than three Chinook helicopters. President Musharraf says Pakistan’s Muslims don’t count in the same way as westerners caught in the tsunami. He’s right. But the big picture is that in a few weeks the mountains will be covered in snow.
I have already stated the no. of helicopters who participated in Tsunami relief operations were around 1000. And I am not talking about 1971. Where have they all gone?
Watch this
Thu 17 Nov 2005
Now that the winter is in town and snow and rainfall would just be norm in Nothern areas of Pakistan, people living on mountain-tops have finally realized if the aid couldn’t reach them in a month, they better move down themselves or else they’d die of hunger, disease and winter. And only now those massive tent-cities and camps which got stationed in the dead cities of Bagh, Balakot and Muzaffarabad will be useful as they have long-term relief programs and funding and can withstand larger community of affectees arriving at their doors.
212th Mobile Army Hospital of US Army has setup their flickr account which they would be updating from Muzaffarabad through their satellite connectivity. Check out their Flickr Images. Bill Mill, a hi-tech programmer with a heart from Hartford, Connecticut, USA has also hosted his flickr images tents, patients and other relief activities live from Balakot.
You can also see some of my images of earthquake some of them contain pre-earthquake pictures of Balakot, Kaghan and Naran (which my friends took only two months before the earthquake hit these areas). In next few days I would be done with compiling 5 hours long video clips and pictures of Balakot, Bagh, Batle, Muzaffarabad and some parts of Kashmir. I may actually send some of their copies to those interested, so do drop your notes/emails if you wish.
