Posted on 10/27/2005 11:57:41 AM PDT by Lovingthis
Quake aid shortfall baffles By Robert Birsel 2 hours, 21 minutes ago
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - The United Nations reacted with bafflement and dismay on Thursday at the world's failure to come up with quick cash to help save hundreds of thousands of Pakistani quake survivors before winter sets in.
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Relief workers were only a few days away from grounding the vital helicopter fleet which is the only way to get help quickly to the remote mountain villages flattened by the October 8 quake, which killed more than 54,000 people, one U.N. official said.
"When the money runs out, the choppers stay on the ground and that's what's going to start happening in the next couple of days," Robert Smith told a Geneva news conference a day after a major conference failed to produce significant cash.
The United Nations aimed to raise $550 million at Wednesday's conference. It got a meager $16 million.
Some aid agencies were already out of money and others desperately juggling budgets to try to cope, aid officials said.
"We are still of the view that the international community lacks full comprehension of the catastrophe that is looming large," U.N. chief aid coordinator Rashid Khalikov said in the destroyed town of Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
"We are talking life," he said 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," Khalikov said.
"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.
U.N. officials had hoped for a day-after surge of donations following the conference, but recorded only $2 million in net new pledges on Thursday, taking the total to $113 million.
Because much of the money was earmarked for specific uses, even that left critical aid areas short of funds, a U.N. spokeswoman said.
TOLL COULD DOUBLE
Relief workers fear that as many people will die of hunger and exposure during the bitter winter as in the quake, which also injured more than 75,000 people seriously in Pakistan and killed 1,300 in Indian Kashmir.
Winter will descend in four weeks. By then, around 3 million people will have to have been found shelter and 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 disaster which prompted a torrent of aid.
Yet all but a small amount of the money pledged at the Geneva conference was for reconstructing the flattened villages of Pakistani Kashmir and neighbouring North West Frontier Province.
"It's a little bit frustrating, to tell you the truth," said World Food Programme spokesman Khaled Mansour. "The response of donors has definitely been disappointing."
Starting on reconstruction work is months away. But U.N. officials were asking whether the people the money was supposed to help would still be alive to benefit.
Khalikov said U.N. officials would have to go directly to governments, especially in the Middle East, to plead for cash.
"I am sure we have enough capacity to respond, we just need funding," he said.
Underlining the magnitude of the task, bad weather in the mountains grounded the helicopter fleet at the main airbase near Islamabad on Wednesday and for part of Thursday, leaving only mules and people to carry supplies up into the hills.
The few roads into the mountains have been blocked by landslides or swept away. Some will take weeks to repair, leaving helicopters as the main means of delivering food and shelter.
But the fleet, although growing, cannot reach them all, or deliver enough.
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 before what U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told the Geneva conference would be a "winter without pity."
(Additional reporting by Thomas Atkins in GENEVA, David Brunnstrom in ISLAMABAD and Lindsay Beck in BEIJING)
Let Allah take care of them.
Why would anyone help people who want to see us dead? Let their Allah save them.
It could also have to do with the supplies sitting on the docks in Sri Lanka.
Let Osama bail them out!
I think the "muslim" world and the "arab street" need to take a good hard look at how the world is reacting to this crisis. I think this is sending a message LOUD AND CLEAR that the WORLD is TIRED of the hatred and senseless killing that is promoted within that region of the world.
Some will call it harsh, some will even call it inhumane. Personally, I call it PAYBACK! They are begining to reap what it is they have sewn and now they cry foul?
Maybe a little less USA flag and Israel flag burning and a little less HATE would see more of the world willing to help them in times of such dire need.
Maybe it is time that they give up Osama (if he even lives) and Aiman and mullah omar and and and and and and......
OR
Allah Willing, the heavens will open up and drop food and water in place of choppers doing it.
Personally, I am unwilling to send money to people who have vowed to kill me, and destroy my country.
Why aren't the Arabs taking care of their own people? They think nothing of dropping a million dollars for one night of gambling in Monaco, London, or Las Vegas.
Yeah, no kidding everyone isn't jumping up to help.
Where's all those al-Queda charity organizations Sen. Murray was talking about?
Foe me, I'm tired of giving money to those who hate us and those who are very ungrateful and demanding. NO ruined it for me.
Let the Saudi's handle it.
Is France helping them?
"Is France helping them?"
SURE, helping them blame the USA for not sending enough cash!
But hey they sent COTS!
Actually- I was curious with the head covering ban - how they were helping these days?
Really, I'm surprised anyone is surprised about this! How many natural disasters can we support until there's no more relief money to be had for even our own citizens?
I think it also has something to do with the fact that we're all "Disastered-out". They just had the misfortune to be at the end of the line.
I think you may have hit on something there. They hide Osama and burn our flag, then expect our help.
Yet, all a Western photo-journalist has to do is snap a picture of a weeping mud-caked orphan sitting in a pile of rubble and Uncle Sam is expected to fire off a check?
Go ask someone else for a donation this time.
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