Quake villagers brave snow to stay put

Ismat Bibi, 44, expertly packs twigs and straw around the cracks in the windows of her shelter to keep out the cold. The warped tin sheet, laid over the rough walls of the one-room shack, had gone up only a day before, just as a steady drizzle began to fall around the house, near the small village of Choon, about 24 km north of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Many villages further north in the isolated Neelum Valley, where the rocky, makeshift road stares down into deep ravines, have received snowfall, and even in Choon, the drizzle has brought with it icy sleet. The weather conditions put a halt to helicopter flights and other relief in the earthquake zone on Sunday. There are fears that further bad weather ahead will leave villagers in the still isolated mountains of the Neelum Valley without food, shelter or other aid. While estimates vary, 80,000 people are still believed to be located in the Neelum Valley, one of the areas of greatest concern. While some quake survivors have been walking down to tent settlements in Muzaffarabad over the past two weeks, others plan to stay on their own lands. Ismat Bibi, who is now preparing her shack for the winter she plans to endure with her daughter, Zulema, 23, and two grandchildren, explained to IRIN why the villagers were unwilling to travel down. "I went to Muzaffarabad about 10 days after the quake and planned to move into a camp there, but the conditions were appalling. The camps were filthy: there is still a stench of death everywhere and I feel safer at my own home with the community to protect me," she said. Both she and her daughter were widowed by the 8 October quake, and Ismat is also worried about another married daughter, Kulsoom, 19, who lives with her husband in Punjgara village, also in the Neelum Valley area. Ismat fears that moving away from her land could lead to it being seized by other villagers, or relatives, especially as she has no son. "People here are good people, but they are desperate. My land has a shack, which I built from the rubble of our house. My neighbours helped me. If we leave, other relatives could occupy it – and I may find myself at their mercy, as they may not vacate it," she explains. There are no written titles to property in the area, and with ownership by women still not widely accepted across the region, the risk of property being stolen is considerable. Ismat believes the brothers of her late husband may attempt to reclaim the land, as happens in tradition when there are no male offspring, but says, determinedly: "This is land that I have lived on and farmed, along with my husband. I will keep it safe for my daughters and their children." At least 102 people out of a population of 1,000 were killed by the quake in the Choon area. Local people, many of whom now live in tents, say no relief reached them for 22 days after the calamity. Tents and food were delivered only after some locals walked down to Muzaffarabad and contacted local politicians. The destruction of the Neelum Valley road had meant aid to almost all areas located along it was slow to come in, and now, the foul weather means it has been interrupted again. While most people have tents, few are sturdy enough to provide much protection in the days ahead, with up to 3 metres of snow expected in many communities scattered across the area. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and other relief agencies, believe it is important to persuade people to come down to safer areas. But, since this does not seem to be happening - mainly because people are concerned about losing property and valuables still buried under the rubble of thousands of homes - efforts are being made to deliver aid as swiftly as possible, before the snows entirely cut off access. Whenever the weather is clear, helicopters can be seen in the Neelum Valley skies, one sortie following the other. This is one of the few affected areas where the delivery of food aid is still almost entirely dependent on the giant Chinooks whose enormous rotors whirr noisily as their pass overhead every few minutes, desperately getting in as much aid as possible in the few days that remain. In the Neelum Valley, and indeed in most accessible affected areas, the aid delivery process is now operating as smoothly as conditions allow, seven weeks after the quake. The Pakistani army medical camp at Devilian, a few kilometres north of Choon, hands out medicines and attends daily to the injured and the ill. The military plans to keep the camp going into the winter, for "as long as it is needed," according to the officers present there. However, despite the enormous, well-coordinated effort, the situation on the ground for millions of survivors remains critical. Camps across the area are quite literally sinking in the squelchy mud created by the torrential rain. Sanitary conditions are worse than ever and in areas like Choon, small children, still without socks or adequate clothing, jostle to find space around a small fire lit outside the tent-school, warming their hands at least for a few minutes. Ismat Bibi has few doubts they will survive. "We have what we need now," she says as she stacks a few sacks of potatoes, some corn and a small pile of walnuts in a corner of her shack. "I will bring up whatever else we need from Muzaffrabad before the heavy snows and next spring we will build a new house here," she says at the door of her shack, a grandchild clinging to her leg as she waves to a team of relief workers, who soon may be prevented from reaching areas like Choon as the snows arrive.