Thousands of ordinary people desperate to help have made the long, arduous and harrowing trek to what used to be Kashmir. I am just another one of them. Here I am, back in my home. Sitting in my comfortable living room, in my own space, my comfort zone light years away from the flimsy tent where the freezing night nipped ceaselessly at my hands and feet. Layers upon layers of clothing and I was still so very, very cold. The stench of death was overpowering and consumed us by night as the cold air descended from the hills to remind us of the horrors that remained hidden in the inaccessible mountains rising above us. 

Nature in all its fury was manifest in the broken bones, bleeding faces, mangled limbs, and sad eyes of a people destroyed. Six peaks of the mountain range that towers over the Neelam Valley have been crushed taking with them the villages that had nestled in the valleys for generations. A three-storey school building, students, teachers and all was swallowed up by the earth. All that remained was the roof which seemed to have been carefully if incongruously laid out on open land. Rivers of dead cattle, streams of dazed people – proud Kashmiris staring out at the world with empty eyes – too proud and too ashamed of what has become of them to come and ask for food and medicine. Their lives changed beyond recognition or comprehension in a matter of seconds. How do you help a people who have only the dead to remember – their future – their children – snatched from them in a matter of seconds. 

Yet your newspaper has virtually stopped reporting on the disaster unfolding daily in Pakistan. The U.N. is desperately asking for funds and a “massive airlift on the scale of the 1948-49 Berlin airlift to the beleaguered people of Soviet-blockaded West Berlin”. However a NATO spokesman responded by saying "There is no question of the alliance doing that. That was Berlin after World War Two and this is Pakistan now -- there is absolutely no comparison." What exactly does that mean? In terms of human lives, what exactly is the difference? Meanwhile, the U.N. by its own estimates has barely managed to raise 29% of the US$311 million requested as part of its flash appeal. According to the American Red Cross, the charity raised over US$1.2 billion in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and over US$500 million after the Tsunami. They have managed to raise US$1.2 million following the earthquake. Various explanations are being given for this apparent lack of international concern from donor fatigue to wariness about giving money to “this part of the world”. 

While the collapsed Margalla Towers in Islamabad was emblazoned across the center pages of all newspapers in the days following the earthquake, the misery of remote Kashmir today is buried on agency websites, web logs and the emails that are doing their silent rounds. 

How is the world to be moved if there is no one to report that the paradise that was Kashmir has turned into a nightmare from which it may never awaken. Bustling cities, vibrant towns, colorful villages – all have taken on a ghostly air. No one is left and no one seems to want to go back. Here you can only hear the silent screams of the dead. Time has stopped. The void left by the students of Kashmir screams silently. Everywhere you turn, the absence of teenagers is chillingly apparent. There are no words to describe this world. It is just a sea of misery and mayhem. It’s almost as if life itself committed mass suicide in a fit of uncontrollable rage. Every household seems to have lost four out of five people. Not a single structure standing from Muzaffarabad onwards. The injuries left me numb with horror. A 2-month-old baby with no soles. A 9-year-old girl who kept crying “I want my mommy” while her despairing father tried to hold her down as her mangled arm was treated as best as possible. A dazed man who casually walked up to us with his 3-yr old in his arms and said “I’ve lost my wife and nine children; could I please have a tent? The four year old with a smashed leg who wouldn’t cry – his eyes would fill with tears of pain but he wouldn’t cry. Kashmir has lost all emotion and the world has all but forgotten all about it.

It took a few days for the U.N. and international agencies to grasp the enormity of the disaster and the nightmarish implications of the remote region in which it has occurred. By then, the media had moved on to another hurricane, another referendum, another bout of avian flu. While we as Pakistanis are extremely grateful for the aid and assistance coming in via agencies and governments alike, the world needs to understand that it is just not enough. In a mere three weeks the icy Northern Winter will set in and the region will become a virtually inaccessible death-trap, thereby compounding the misery and helplessness that has suddenly become the norm for the people of Northern Pakistan. On the 10th of October, Dominic Nutt, emergencies specialist at Christian Aid, was reported to have said, “When it comes to a relief effort on this scale, time is of the essence. We must act now.” That was 2 weeks ago yet the aid effort has officially gained momentum only since the 23rd of October and remains shamefully inadequate. 

How many soldiers, doctors and volunteers will it take to save the lives of those who have survived Nature’s tantrum? Where will they find the 250,000 tents still needed to give the survivors a chance to live through the winter? The Pakistani Army is providing back breaking relief work as are the countless international relief agencies that have converged upon the region by the hundreds. For how long? What will happen to these people once the volunteers and the aid agencies and the army are done. When everyone else has gone home, where will the people of Kashmir go? 

I am home, yet I am haunted by the smell, the sights and sounds of what I have left behind with little hope that it will all be OK again one day. 

I hope that you will listen to our plea and return the tragedy of the earthquake to the front pages of your newspaper.