Waiting for Winter in the Wake of Disaster

by Haley Duschinski and Alex Keefe

Three weeks have passed since the Kashmir Earthquake of October 8. As the death toll continues to rise, the mainstream media has turned its attention elsewhere, cloaking the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of people in silence. Winter is descending on the survivors who remain in the high mountains of Kashmir. Now is the time to act.

The earthquake had devastating consequences throughout region. The estimates are staggering: at least 79,000 dead, many more injured, and three million displaced, with all of these figures expected to rise. Multitudes of people lost family members, homes, and livelihoods. The disaster destroyed essential infrastructure, including hundreds of hospitals, road networks, water supplies, school buildings, and government offices. These problems have complicated the relief effort, as aid workers have been unable to reach more than 3 million people living in remote mountain villages. UN officials have called it the worst disaster that they have seen.

Tragically, the world community has been slow to respond. The UN has been operating for more than three weeks without adequate financial support from many of the world’s largest and wealthiest nations. Relief workers are facing a race against time to provide shelter and food to people in Kashmir before the onset of the winter in the high Himalayas. Their current concern is that the number of deaths taking place after the earthquake will exceed those that took place during the actual tremor itself.

Concerned students and faculty of Ohio University are committed to the idea of raising funds and channeling them to two existing non-partisan humanitarian organizations operating on the ground in Kashmir: The Edhi Foundation (http://www.paks.net/edhi-foundation), and The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (www.jkccs.org).

Both groups have established strong distribution networks in the region through their prior development and assistance work at the community level. They are responding in ways that have real consequences for people’s lives, and they desperately need money.

Please consider making a donation in support of this cause. We are processing donations through People to People Aid in Support of Nurani Dunia, a registered 501(c) organization, based at OU. All contributions made through this organization are tax deductible. Checks or money orders should be made payable to “P2P Aid in Support of Nurani Dunia” and sent to: Haley Duschinski, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bentley Annex 131, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701. For more information on how to donate, please contact Alex Keefe (keefea@ohio.edu) or Haley Duschinski (duschins@ohio.edu).

The earthquake was a natural disaster with immense destructive power. We may not be able to control this force of nature, but we are able to shape the form of our humanitarian response. In this globalized world, we are all interested parties with a stake in the future of Kashmir. Humanitarian responses and political processes are delicately intertwined. Our donations, channeled through grassroots agencies that operate across international boundaries, will have critical consequences for the future of Kashmir.