The world's failure to come up with quick cash to help save hundreds of thousands of Pakistani earthquake survivors before winter sets in left relief officials on the ground baffled and upset yesterday.
"We are still of the view that the international community lacks full comprehension of the catastrophe that is looming large," said UN chief aid coordinator Rashid Khalikov.
"We are talking life," he said one day after a UN conference drew US$580 million in aid promises -- but only US$15.8 million in emergency relief, with the harsh Himalayan winter just weeks away and countless people still living in rubble.
"It may sound strange that we are still talking life-saving two weeks after the disaster, when search and rescue operations have largely finished," Khalikov said in the destroyed city of Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
"But communities that live in the affected areas have become so vulnerable that it is absolutely important for us to reach them with help," he said. "And we will stay in this life-saving mode, I'm afraid, for the next six months."
Relief workers fear that as many people will die of hunger and exposure during the bitter winter as in the Oct. 8 quake which killed at least 54,000 people in Pakistan and 1,300 in Indian Kashmir.
Winter will descend in four weeks. By then, around 3 million people will have to have been given shelter with food stockpiled to see them through to spring.
It is an operation experts say is more difficult than that which followed last year's Indian Ocean tsunami, a catastrophe which prompted a torrent of aid.
However, all but a small amount of the money pledged at the UN conference in Geneva on Wednesday was for reconstructing the flattened villages of Pakistani Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province.
"It's a little bit frustrating, to tell you the truth," World Food Program spokesman Khaled Mansour said.
"Compared with other crises of the same magnitude this is more complex in terms of logistics and the response of donors has defin-itely been disappointing," Mansour said.
Starting on reconstruction work is months away.
"It is, in my view, not right to sit with reconstruction money for one year from now if we're not sure whether those people will be alive one year from now," UN aid chief Jan Egeland said in Geneva.
However, China yesterday promised an additional US$13.8 million in unconditional aid that includes cash.
About 450,000 winter tents are needed, nearly 100,000 have been distributed and another 200,000 are in the pipeline, aid officials say.
That leaves them 150,000 short and not knowing where to find them.
Meanwhile, India disclosed yesterday that it had pledged US$25 million in relief assistance to its arch-rival Pakistan for earthquake victims.
"The government of India has offered assistance of US$25 million for relief and the rehabilitation of earthquake victims," Indian foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said in New Delhi.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, however, has spurned an offer by India to send its helicopters to fly relief sorties into the Pakistani part of disputed Kashmir, where the quake struck.
"The world should understand that we cannot allow Indian soldiers to operate in [Pakistani] Kashmir," Musharraf said in an interview published yesterday in the UK's in-fluential Financial Times business daily.
"Our whole defense system is there, our whole military is there," he said.
Iraq said yesterday it plans to send several hundred soldiers from its new army to help relief efforts in Pakistan.
"It is an engineering battalion, well-trained and equipped to relieve the Pakistanis who face a humanitarian disaster which caused the death of thousands of people," Lieutenant General Babkir Zibari told a news conference.
He said that the unit would depart as soon as Pakistan accepts the offer of help.
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