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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Mission Spotlight: Pakistan
In this section:
World’s Biggest Chopper Lift Brought U.S.
Relief to Survivors
After Relief Comes Reconstruction
New Homes Rise Amid Tents and Rubble
World’s Biggest Chopper Lift Brought U.S. Relief to
Survivors
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SLING LOAD—A U.S. Army Chinook helicopter lifts
4.5 tons of wheat flour from the Muzaffarabad airfield
in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. U.S. Marines stand by after
clipping the loads to the hovering helicopter. After
a 20-minute flight to deliver the food to remote villages
damaged by the earthquake, the chopper will return for
fresh sling loads. In the background, a UN white Mi-8
Russian-built helicopter is slowly loaded by hand with
two tons of food for the airlift.
Ben Barber, USAID |
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—It was not yet dawn when
the first blades of the relief helicopters began to slowly
turn out at Qasim military airfield outside this sleeping
capital city.
A long row of 22 U.S. military Chinook helicopters stood
in a straight row ready to take off. Beyond, four Australian
military Blackhawks stood ready.
A pair of the Chinooks rose and clattered low over the flat
city, circling wide around the parliament building, then heading
straight north towards a cut in the hills.
Half an hour later, as thousands of tents began to appear
on the hills and in the valleys, the helicopters descended
to an airfield in Muzaffarabad where an elephantine procession
of heavy trucks have hauled thousands of tons of food—mainly
U.S. flour and oil donated through the UN World Food Program.
The helicopters descend to the tarmac but do not land. Hovering
about six feet above the ground, they slowly advance over
nets loaded with food sacks. U.S. Marines crouching around
the nets reach up through the wind, sand, and sound thrown
up by the helicopter blades and clip two nets to hooks on
the chopper’s belly.
As soon as the troops scramble away from the nets, the helicopters
rise. Slinging below each is 4.5 tons of food.
Up and over the airfield the helicopters head deeper into
the mountains where some of the 2.3 million people made homeless
by the Oct. 8 quake need food to get through the winter.
Within half an hour, the choppers are back for another load.
The process repeats throughout the day, only pausing so the
helicopters can refuel. Aside from the U.S. Chinooks, the
United Nations has rented Russian-built Mi-8 helicopters from
Ukraine and other countries, capable of hauling about half
the weight of the Chinooks.
From Oct. 10, two days after the quake, until Feb. 4, over
4,000 Chinook flights delivered over 11,000 tons of relief
supplies. The U.S. military airlift is due to end March 31.
“We send 100 tons of food out every day—flour,
split peas, steel sheets, vegetable oil,” said an official
with the UN Humanitarian Air Service. “It’s a seamless
operation. The locals and the Marines all work together.”
Marine Cpl. James Green, 20, shouting over the roar of the
helicopter, said “I feel great about this mission. We’ve
been sent here to help and we are making a difference in the
world. We’re changing hearts and minds of Pakistanis.”
Muhammad Khalid Mughal, 26, taking a break from hauling
sacks of U.S. flour from the Pakistani trucks to helicopters,
said he appreciated the aid.
“America is very good,” he said. “It helps
all Muslims in the right way.”
He gets 300 rupees per day—about $6—and like the
two dozen other loaders seems eager to work.
“I was in a field when the earthquake hit,” Mughal
recalled. “My house was damaged. My uncle and my daughter
are dead. People need food, tents, and shelter—everything
for a normal life.”
The narrow corridors between the peaks of the region mean
that it is only possible to safely operate around 45 helicopters
at one time. About half the aircraft have been American. But
because they have twice the lifting power and are able to
pick up and haul slings without landing and loading by hand,
the U.S. military has delivered the lion’s share of the
aid.
“This is an excellent operation that gives this region
an opportunity to see what we are like instead of seeing us
on TV or hearing from other people,” said Victor Robinson-Yarber,
32, a former Marine in charge of all U.S. sling load operations
in Pakistan since Nov. 2 when the British, who ran initial
relief flights, left.
“We have not lost one bag of food. You know you are
helping. Once you see people waving, it’s very invigorating.”
FrontLines Editorial Director Ben Barber visited Pakistan
recently and wrote this collection of articles.
After Relief Comes Reconstruction
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PLANNING TO REBUILD—Noor Badsha stands in front
of the ruins of his shop in the city of Bagh, in the
Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir known as Azad
Jammu and Kashmir. On Feb. 8, four months after the
earthquake, he said he was planning to begin rebuilding
the following day.
Ben Barber, USAID
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—In March, the U.S. emergency
relief effort shifts into a $200 million long-term, reconstruction
plan, rebuilding schools, clinics, roads, and other structures
destroyed in the quake.
USAID’s strategy in Pakistan focuses on health, education,
and livelihoods. Earthquake-affected populations were expected
to begin moving back to rural areas as soon as late February,
to prepare for spring planting in March or April.
Pakistan’s Federal Relief Commission anticipates 40
to 60 percent of people in camps will be cautious about returning
home, most likely waiting until basic housing is in place
and livelihoods, including livestock, are restored.
Since many areas of the earthquake zone are easily reached
by roads and have ample access to aid from Pakistan’s
government and other aid groups, USAID will focus on three
remote regions where relief programs have been successful
and are likely to bear fruit:
• In Kagan Valley and Siran Valley in Mansehra District,
90 percent of health facilities and 46 percent of schools
were destroyed. USAID will rebuild these buildings and train
teachers and other officials to run them over the next four
years.
• Bagh District was also heavily damaged, and its government
has supported continuing USAID reconstruction efforts in conjunction
with aid from Europe and the Asian Development Bank.
• Allai Valley was also selected for intense reconstruction
aid, in part because of the success of USAID programs in the
largest earthquake-survivor camp, Mehra, where 20,000 people
have sheltered during the winter—about 10 percent of
the region’s population. Many of the camp’s 11,000
children have been attending USAID-sponsored schools for the
first time in their lives, and their parents said in interviews
they want them to continue learning. USAID intends to provide
education even after they return to the upper mountains.
USAID was already building dozens of schools in the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border
before the earthquake and will now apply that experience to
the earthquake zone.
New Homes Rise Amid Tents and Rubble
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LEARNING TO SEW—A woman learns to sew on a hand-powered
sewing machine in Mehra Camp for displaced Pakistanis.
The community tents and sewing machines were provided
by USAID so that women could meet and learn—many
of them for the first time in their lives—without
violating traditions that keep women sheltered from
contact with men outside their family.
Ben Barber, USAID
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LANGLA, Pakistan—On the steep hillside overlooking
the Jhelum River, dozens of men are beginning to build their
new houses next to the tents where they have spent the winter
since the earthquake in October.
With corrugated galvanized iron sheets, insulation, wire,
nails, shovels, and other tools and material provided by USAID,
through Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the houses are sprouting
everywhere amid the ruins of the houses destroyed by the quake.
Using a bandsaw powered by a small gasoline engine, carpenters
are slicing up the massive roof beams from the old houses—the
kind of beams that killed many of the village’s 1,500
residents when they collapsed in the quake. Traditional houses
have flat roofs formed of heavy beams topped with mud and
straw.
The beams are now being converted, in a steady whine of
the saw and flurry of sawdust, into 2-by-4-inch studs used
to support corrugated galvanized iron roofing sheets. In case
another powerful quake should hit, these roofs would be less
likely to harm the people inside.
While two young men use the pick and shovel provided in
the building kits to flatten the ground for their new home,
the rest of the family gathered around the $1,000 building
supply kit provided by CRS.
It includes 12 sheets of metal for the roof and sides; a
sheet-metal woodstove with stove pipe for heating and cooking;
plastic tarps and mats for the floor or internal partitions;
wire mesh to hold foundation stones in case of quakes; foam
insulation for the ceiling to retain heat in winter and block
the sun’s heat in summer; and tools such as a hacksaw,
chisel, tin cutters, hammer, steel wire, and rope.
Each family also gets 2,000 rupees—about $40—to
clear rubble, transport kits from distribution centers, and
slice up the old beams.
Ten thousand of the 18-by-14-foot homes have been completed
elsewhere in the quake region, and another 7,000 were being
built in February in Langla and other villages, said CRS program
manager Khalid Javed.
Mohamed Maskeen, 55, had already built his own small, new
home with his own savings and was ready to add on a second
room with the kit. “I’m satisfied with the new roof—it
can bear the weight of snow,” he said. However, he noted
that his former home—the outlines of its ruined walls
still sticking above the ground—was four times as big
as his new house, where 10 people are sleeping each night.
Most families expect to upgrade to the new houses this spring.
Then many hope to expand and build on as resources permit.
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FIRST LESSONS—One of seven young women teachers
brought to Mehra Camp from a nearby city teaches girls
in a tent school set up with U.S. assistance. Most of
the girls said they had never been to school before,
but after four months of education, they already were
reading English and Urdu and filling their notebooks
with vocabulary, math, and drawings.
Ben Barber, USAID
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TRAUMATIC SHOCK—A doctor with the American Refugee
Committee examines an earthquake survivor in a tent
clinic above the city of Bagh. The USAID-supported medical
team said many people have problems such as pain, insomnia,
and indigestion due to depression and post-traumatic
shock. However, through quick treatment of contagious
diseases and vaccination campaigns, the death rate this
winter has been lower than in most previous years, the
World Health Organization said.
Ben Barber, USAID
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NEW LATRINE—Workers deliver a new latrine to its
site in the Mehra Camp for 20,000 Pakistanis displaced
following the October 2005 earthquake. The latrines
provide privacy, especially important for women in the
Muslim society, as well as sanitation, which has prevented
outbreaks of cholera and other diseases. USAID provides
materials and funds NGOs that build latrines.
Ben Barber, USAID
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