Up before dawn to travel the seven hour road trip to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, I wasn’t quite prepared for the hair-raising rollercoaster ride this would turn out to be. Twisting through an impressive mountain landscape, the primary driving technique is to gun the accelerator when approaching a blind turn, at the blindest point pulling alongside whichever vehicle happens to get in your road and, horn-blaring-knuckles-white, roll the dice and overtake, praying to whatever you believe in that you don’t slam into an oncoming truck before freefalling a thousand feet or so to become another messy statistic. Like many situations here, after the initial “oh really, your actually going to do that?!” wide-eyed surprise, its best to adopt a fatalistic mindset – like getting on a plane; whatever happens next, its out of your hands – and with time this cavalier, no-seatbelt attitude to life starts to appeal, dangerous bit by dangerous bit.
The first stop on this journey is the town of Bagh lying to the north east of Islamabad, close to the 16km exclusion zone called the Line of Control that provides a buffer between Indian Kashmir and the part of this area administered by Pakistan. Long before arriving in the town it becomes clear that, along with the local driving skills, there is another peril awaiting the visitor to these forested valleys of the Lesser Himalaya. Landslides are commonplace and were responsible for much of the devastation after the earthquake struck. They killed thousands of people, burying homes and leaving no trace of the communities that once stood in their path. Construction of retaining walls, planting trees along suspect slopes and choosing appropriate sites for new houses are attempts to reduce the impact of the slides but there is little you can do when half a valley side ruptures as happened often with the quake.
One such rupture has had an unintended consequence that might yet prove beneficial to the surrounding villages and towns. In a valley in the Bagh district a slide blocked a water course which, over the preceding two years, has filled to create a lake of dulled blue water blur-reflecting the surrounding landscape. Pausing to take this in, we were told the Pakistani government is now intending to dam the valley to take advantage of this terrible natural phenomenon, generating electricity and providing infrastructure and investment in the area. With luck this will not come at too heavy a price for the people who live there.
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To drive the road from Balakot to Jared up the narrow Kaghan Valley in The North West Frontier Province is to journey through a landscape in perpetual collapse; a place beautiful and dangerous in equal measure. It wasn't always this bad, I’m told, but then the earthquake came and shattered steep valley slopes sending pink-brown shale and huge splinters of rock cascading onto villages and blocking the road for such a length of time that injured survivors were lost through lack of proper medical care or starved before relief supplies of food could arrive. Today the road, boulder strewn, narrow-twisting and treacherous at the best of times remains at the mercy of the frequent landslides, rock falls and the often heavy winter snows.
The villages in the valley spread from this artery to climb sporadically toward bare mountain ridges; houses nestled high amongst terraces cut into the rock for the cultivation of corn. A clear, fast flowing mountain river runs the length of the valley bottom, straddled at points by bridges of simple steel trusswork or smaller, cable suspended structures that bounce precariously when crossed. At this time of year the summer crowds that flock here are long departed and the place has the feel of shutting down for the long, cold and difficult months ahead. But the days are still warm and the nights not too cold and trekking from site to site to see the work already undertaken is very far from being an unpleasant experience.
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Traveling throughout Kashmir and the NWFP this last week, meeting staff from Muslim Aid and the local beneficiaries who are to receive houses, I am increasingly aware of the heavy toll paid when the earthquake struck. In towns and villages across the region entire school buildings collapsed, sometimes taking the lives of all pupils and teachers within as they began their morning lessons. Skilled tradesmen were lost too and, as a result, these communities have been left bereft of the means to educate their children or rebuild the infrastructure and houses that are so important to their ongoing survival. Twice I visited house sites to be introduced to the owner of the building and had to stoop to shake the hand of a boy in his early teens. Orphaned two years ago, now head of a family, these boys had become child-householders and been burdened with responsibilities far beyond their years.
In places like Jared It’s clear that life is hard and must have always been so. People seem to be getting on, day by day, as best they can. The influx of NGO’s since October 2005 has brought medical centres, new schools, water and sanitation projects and rebuilt peoples homes but this process must be ongoing and there is still much work to be done.
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