There is a cool breeze blowing promising to bring a dust-storm to Lahore. If the happens, then I am afraid WAPDA is going to live up to its reputation and the power will disappear. Even a blessing, here, is a curse in disquise.

I am finally starting to hear tidbits of news from people engaged in the relief operations and I am slowly starting to gain an understanding of the full scale of the disaster. A family friend, who is a colonel in the army aviation, informed that the biggest problem in getting the aid up north is logistics. The majority of Pakistani army helicopters were deployed near the Afghan border and re-deploying them will take some time. He also said that the real problem is landing zones in the affected areas. There is so much destruction that there seems to be a dearth of good landing zones. Hence, according to him, the army is planning on air-dropping supplies, but the problem is that there is no infrastructure left standing in the affected areas. Army teams have to be air dropped first to coordinate the air drops from the ground. Secondly, a network of logistical supports needs to be created, which facilitate the distribution of supplies. All of this will take time.

Pakistani army, as of the present moment, has effectively ceased to exist in Pakistani Kashmir near the earthquake zone. All of its infrastructure has been destroyed and the army has to deploy once more in the region. There is nothing left standing in the town near the epicenter, which itself has been rendered and torn into three parts by the earthquake. It is estimated that the army losses are significant in the region. The whole area has been flattened and there is no human settlement worth any significance left untouched.

There are no roads or access means to reach the northern areas, because most of the road have been damaged by the mud-slides. The mountains in the area are mud mountains and are mostly not made out of stone, so when the earthquake happened; they all easily collapsed and since the houses were built into the sides of the mountains, the mountains collapsed on the houses themselves. The work on repairing the roads is progressing hampered by the lack of equipment, as the airlift capacity to ferry such equipments at such high altitudes is limited. Furthermore, the center of any relief operation in the northern areas, which would have been Muzaffarabad, itself has been destoryed. Basically, the army is in a crisis management situation and its first task seems to be to stay at par, with the developing situation. The scale of the disaster is so great that the army has been, simply, overwhelmed. Bad weather is also hindering relief operations and many relief sorties were cancelled. However, as the assets are redeployed and their support bases are created, the scale and duration of the operations will be more sustained in the next few days.

The entire operation in the disaster zone is being coordinated by the GHQ, which has divided the region into districts and it is shuttling supplies and personnel on to the areas needing them systematically, but it will take a few more days for this "relief bridge" to fully establish itself. The primary concern seems to be moving from rescue to recovery operations; meaning that priority seems to be saving those already alive instead of trying to save those, who are already dead or buried under the rubble.

Given the terrain and remembering the nature of the terrain, it is not easy to access some of the remote villages. TV media personalities have no clue how harsh the terrain is up north and sitting in their studio room in Islamabad or Dubai or London, these people have no idea of what they are babbling, when they wonder why the supplies are not reaching the affected areas. It takes, in the best of circumtances, about 48 hours to attain a fully self-sustaining deployment level and another day or so to establish operational viability. The real results start to show up by the 100th hour and that is if the weather cooperates. The operation is still underway and organizing itself and it will be by the end of this week, before it reaches a peak efficiency level.

I have decided to join a private relief effort, because I know the people involved in it and I am not going to send a single red paisa to any government supported or affliated organization. I do not trust the government bureaucrats to be honest, with the money and with so much money entering Pakistan so fast, there is hardly any accountibility of where it is ending up or where is it going. I am afraid that all this money will show up as expensive houses in northern areas, like the ones already destoryed, where the bureaucrats of Islamabad and their provincial minions will have their summer houses and it will never reach the people, who need it the most.

The people are organizing the relief efforts themselves and they are, like some relatives of mine, going north to the earthquake zone themselves, with the relief supplies to make sure they get to the people and are not "misplaced" by corrupt officials of the government of Pakistan. The people have no faith or trust in the government and are doing, what is needed themselves.

The light is blinking and I better rush towards an end to this narrative before the power fails.