Pakistan's worst natural disaster in living memory has thrown up an unexpected political opportunity, writes Graham Usher in Islamabad The tremor lasted barely a minute. But in those 60 seconds the showcase Magalla Towers slid from being a ten-story luxury apartment block into a sandwiched mass of flattened concrete, twisted wires and a whimper of human cries. "I saw the people run out to their balconies," said a woman from a neighbouring block, "and then watched as the balconies went down in a cloud of dust, in less than 30 seconds, like the Twin Towers in New York. That's why so many jumped." Two people -- including an Egyptian national, Suleiman Rahat -- died and 32 were injured by leaping from the windows of neighbouring buildings. "They thought what had happened to Magalla would happen to them," said the woman. The Magalla Towers was the hardest hit place in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad when the earthquake struck at 8.53am on Saturday morning. So far its ruin has delivered 21 dead, 96 injured and hundreds homeless. But even as the dust settled around the Towers' wreck people in the capital knew that they had been spared, as news came of the devastation visited on Pakistan-administered Kashmir, 90 miles to the north and the epicentre of the quake. "I've just been on the phone to my brother in Muzaffarabad (the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir)," said Mahhoub Khan Raja, at the site of the Towers. "He says there's barely a building left standing; that whole villages have been wiped out. It's a ghost-town." It was. The first images from the mountainous region showed entire villages washed away by mudslides and hundreds buried beneath the rubble of schools, homes and public buildings. Pakistan's North- West Frontier Province (NWFP) was also mortally hit, with schools and an entire bazaar collapsing under the tremor and then tipping into a ravine. By Monday 10 October, the conservative estimate was that 20,000 people had perished, 11,000 in Pakistan-Kashmir alone. A colossal 2.5 million were without shelter, again overwhelmingly in the Kashmir and NWFP areas. But all these figures are provisional and rising by the day. "It is a testing time for me, the prime minister, the government and the nation," said President General Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf's immediate test is to deliver international aid for an army and emergency service clearly bereft of the resources and strategy to deal with a human crisis of this scale. This was painfully evident at Magalla Towers on the morning of the earthquake. Where there was organisation, it came less from the emergency services than from local people and volunteers, including many students. Some formed a human chain, removing the rubble by hand, brick by fractured brick. "When I got here they didn't even have bandages," said Irene Fernandez, a business development trainer, with some expertise in first-aid. "I had to watch a man die behind a broken window-frame because I didn't have the cutters to get him out." Beyond this Pakistan will need immense international support to tend the 43,000 people injured by the quake as well as aid for the reconstruction that will be required in the aftermath. So far the United States has sent helicopters to deliver food and shelter to regions still inaccessible by road; the World Bank has sent $20 million in money; and other countries and agencies have sent emergency rescue teams. At Magalla Towers a British rapid response outfit used sensors to detect bodies still alive in the debris. Six people were rescued on Sunday, each one to a round of applause and hushed prayers by the thousands of Pakistanis gathered at the site. But there could as many as 150 still trapped inside the building, say officials from Islamabad's Capital Development Agency, and the chances of their survival is diminishing by the hour. For many the main political question posed by the earthquake is the impact it will have on the fledgling peace process between Pakistan and India, begun in 2004. Since the partition of the sub- continent in 1947, Kashmir has been the cause of two of the three Pakistan-India wars (the third was the secession of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, from Pakistan in 1971). The line of control between Kashmir's Pakistan and Indian administered parts remains one of the most militarised on earth and, given that both are nuclear states, one of the most dangerous. But today Kashmir is a graveyard, with thousands dead on the Pakistani side and an estimated 600 on the Indian. On the day of earthquake Musharraf spoke with the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh. Both conveyed condolences and agreed to the principle of assistance. So far this has consisted in the two armies acting to prevent survivors straying across the line of control and India offering Pakistan $200,000 in aid. But many believe the earthquake offers a tragic opportunity for greater cooperation, for "India and Pakistan to rebuild [Kashmir] together," says Indian analyst Raja Mohan. This is certainly the hope of many on the Pakistani side. The earthquake has brutally demonstrated that Kashmir -- as far as nature is concerned -- remains one terrain and one people, and that both need help. Pakistan and India are the only countries, ultimately, which can provide it.
