© 2006 ISN, Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH, Zurich http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=14155

Published: January 3, 2006

ISN SECURITY WATCH (03/01/06) – The year 2006 brought heavy snowfall to Pakistan’s northwest, devastated by the 8 October 2005, hampering land and air relief supplies and renewing fears of a second wave of deaths.

A strong, westerly wave of snow and rain has been lashing the disputed Jammu and Kashmir state and Pakistan’s Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP) since Saturday, dropping at least four feet of snow.

The snow and rain is expected to subside on Wednesday, but will be followed by a severe cold spell for the rest of the week, according to weather reports.

The weather forecasts suggest that the temperatures in the higher elevations may fall to minus 20 degrees Celcius, putting at risk the lives of some 400,000 hard-to-reach survivors living on the 5’000-meter-high mountains.

Another three million survivors are living in non-winterized tent cities dependent on humanitarian assistance from UN agencies and other relief organizations.

“Everything is wet and people are shivering in soaking tents,” the Muzaffarabad field coordinator for the International Organization for Immigration (IOM), Isabelle Giasson, told ISN Security Watch. “Mountaintops that were still bare before Christmas are now covered in snow. It’s worrying, because we won’t be able to reach any rural area until at least Wednesday.”

Various aid agencies have reported that many dozens of children have died of pneumonia, though government officials say it is premature to estimate the number of fresh casualties.

Dr. Sohail Mushtaq told ISN Security Watch from Muzzafarabad: “With temperatures falling in the range of 0 degrees Celcius to minus 30 degrees, casualties are bound to be heavy among children, women, and the elderly.”

He said he feared the toll could be in the hundreds if visibility did not improve and if landslides continued to block relief supplies in coming days.

The head of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Chaudhry Qamar-uz-Zaman, forecasts a deadly winter ahead. “It is the first snowfall of the season in many parts of Kashmir and NWFP, but the worst has yet to come,” he said.

Many UN officials share Dr. Sohail’s fears that the winter death toll could exceed all estimates depending on the weather in the next couple of weeks.

Many vital roads to the most vulnerable and isolated valleys such as Neelum, Kaghan, and Allia remain closed either due to heavy snowfall or avalanches.

Currently, some 89 civilian and military helicopters are deployed with a cargo capacity of nearly 400 tonnes. The relief operation’s helicopter airlift assets include CH-47 Chinooks, Kamov-32s, and one Mi-24.

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake claimed some 90,000 deaths and left some 3.5 million homeless in Pakistan’s northwestern province and the disputed Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir.

On Monday, ISN Security Watch witnessed over two dozen families descending from the high mountain to settle in relief camps in the city of Battagram in the Mansehra region.

Since Saturday, the homeless survivors have been stranded in their snow-covered tents.

In the village of Meira in the Shangla Valley, Gul Zareen, 55, lives with her three grandchildren. Her son and daughter-in-law died on 8 October when their house collapsed. She is taking care of her grandsons, who are all under the age of seven.

Wrapped in a wet shawl and shivering with cold, she says: “Twice our tent collapsed under snow, and my first job in the morning is to beat off the snow from the tents.”

The chairman of the Shangla Development Society (SDS), Iftikhar Hussain, says that less than 25 per cent of the survivors’ urgent needs have been met over the past three months.

He says aid agencies and the government failed to prepare for the worst. “The winter-related deaths have already occurred in large numbers, and the actual toll could be much higher than estimated.”

But Pakistani officials reject such pessimistic projections. Major Farooq Hassan, a military spokesperson based in Muzzafarabad, said: “We have not learnt of any recent snow- or rain-caused deaths across the disaster zone.”

Farooq also claims that enough supplies have been pre-positioned to meet the urgent needs in extreme weather.

Night temperatures are already below freezing, and UN personnel and other aid agency staff have been restricted to their bases of operations because of security concerns and unstable road conditions.

After being grounded for two days, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a few UN helicopters were able to take to the air on Tuesday and re-supply basic health-care units in Cham, Pathika, and Chinari. However, many vulnerable valleys remained no-go regions because of low visibility, according to United Nations Humanitarian Air Services (UNHAS) officials.

The UN’s US$550 million flash appeal for aid is still unfulfilled.

By Naveed Ahmad in Mansehra, Shangla, and Islamabad