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NEWS & LETTERS, November-December 2005Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryPakistan earthquake’s contradictionsSo far, the October earthquake in Pakistan has killed more than 70,000 people, with the toll mounting daily. It has displaced an additional three million people, many abandoned in remote mountain villages cut off from the outside. Others are awaiting shelter in rudimentary and inadequately provisioned camps that have been set up by the government and international agencies. There are not nearly enough heavy tents in the entire world to shelter this mass of people, even if the various armies of the world were to donate theirs, something they would of course never do. The quake occurred in one of the most militarized parts of the world. The Pakistan government, a military regime backed by the U.S., has nuclear weapons and jet fighters. Yet nearly 50% of the country’s population remains illiterate, something that affects women disproportionately. Poverty is endemic, with per capita annual income a meager $600 per year. Thus, many of the quake victims were living at the edge of disaster, even before the quake struck. Its epicenter was in Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim area, the eastern (and larger) part of which is occupied by India. Pakistan-backed militants, many of them fundamentalists, have fought a long civil war against the Indian occupation. The Indian military maintains a huge force in Kashmir, and India too possesses nuclear weapons. The nuclear-armed U.S. is deeply involved in the region as well, with aircraft carriers off Pakistan, and ground troops in Afghanistan, whose border with Pakistan is only a few hundred miles to the west of the quake’s epicenter. Al Qaeda and the Taliban maintain bases along the same border, where they are engaged in a low-level guerrilla war against the U.S.-backed Afghan regime. All of these powers, great and small, have called for aid to the earthquake victims, and claim that they are trying to help. But none have called a ceasefire, or lessened their military operations. Many other countries have pledged large sums, or sent aid and rescue teams. Severe obstacles will prevent this aid from getting through in time. Much of the promised international aid has not arrived. Even though it has a large helicopter force in Afghanistan, the U.S. has sent only a token number of helicopters, which are vitally necessary for reaching isolated mountain villages. The corrupt and authoritarian Pakistan government and military have not been able to administer and coordinate the aid in an honest or effective manner. Various Islamic fundamentalist groups are carrying out small-scale aid projects, but also threatening to attack Westerners providing aid. The Indian government’s token offer of aid was turned down for nationalistic reasons by Pakistan’s military, while negotiations to open the border between the Indian and Pakistan sides of Kashmir have proceeded at a snail’s pace. Some traditionalist men are refusing to evacuate their families, for fear they would be unable to keep their wives and daughters in seclusion in a refugee camp. Class, imperialist, military, gender and other contradictions of our capitalist order have made it a certainty that thousands more will die this winter, in what began as a natural disaster, but is now a human-made one. In the past, such situations have destabilized governments and even social orders. |
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