In a culture where mourning the dead is vehement and long, Pakistan's earthquake-hit towns and cities are frighteningly silent. There is no gathering of shattered parents around school buildings where hundreds of children are buried; no anxiety-ridden relatives looking for their missing loved ones; no usual gathering of crowds at places where dead bodies are still piled up. That is because the mourners are all dead. Or in hospitals. Or busy fighting cold weather, hunger and disease.

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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Left) A military relief camp; Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz inspect the damage in Islamabad

In Balakot, a hilly town 200 km from Islamabad, there is not enough space left to dig graves for those who were killed in the country's worst ever earthquake that rocked its northern parts on October 8 at 8.52 a.m. (Pakistan time). Akmal Khan, once a prosperous shopkeeper who had three sons aged one, three and five, is now content that at least his progeny have been returned to the soil rather than rot in the open. "My heart is now light. I have done my duty," he says as he nurses an eight-year-old daughter with a broken spine. It took him three days to find a place to bury his sons.

Bagh district, gateway to what Pakistan refers to as "Azad Kashmir", can easily be mistaken for Hiroshima after the atomic attack. Not a single structure is standing. Hospitals, schools, colleges, jails, offices, homes, roads, everything has been flattened. A large percentage of its 5,00,000 population has been either killed or injured. An equally large number has been crippled. One of the most hospitable towns of the Pakistan-controlled territory that boasted of tasty confectionary and bakery products is now a deadly stranger to incomers. Gun toting crowds roam the streets or lie in wait to loot relief goods when they arrive. An argument to allow these goods to pass to the more needy in the villages up on the mountains has already cost three relief goods suppliers their lives. Compassion is in short supply, second only to water, food and shelter.

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BALAKOT, Pakistan Residents wait for relief in the open amid the rubble of their houses

The adjoining district of Muzaffarabad, capital of "Azad Kashmir", has fared slightly better: some 20 per cent of its buildings are still standing. Yet the trail of death and destruction is endless. Till three days after the earthquake the commodity in the greatest demand was coffins. Now it is simply food and anything that would make the survivors of the calamity pull through the next desperate hour. Parts of the town are impossible to visit. Decaying human flesh lets out the foulest of smells. The homeless, the injured and the dead often cohabit in playgrounds and open fields, also used as helipads to bring in relief supplies and pull out the injured. Epidemics are spreading fast.

"We have lost a generation," said Major-General Shaukat Sultan, director-general of ISPR, the military's pr department, in a press conference as journalists taking notes wiped off their tears. The numbers of this tragedy are staggering: over 20,000 have died in Pakistan alone. Twice as many are injured, many of them critically. Nearly five million have been rendered homeless. The earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale with its epicentre 170 km from Islamabad was among the most powerful felt in recent times in the geologically unstable Himalayan belt. Though it had a comparatively shallow depth-seismographs put it at 10 km below the surface-the tremors were very powerful and the devastation extensive. Its impact was felt even in Islamabad where a 19-storey apartment complex, the Margalla Towers, collapsed like a pack of cards killing 40 people. In hilly areas, concrete structures were severely impacted. Many helpless residents were killed as their homes collapsed on them.

"Many more will die soon because winter has set in and the survivors have already braved thrashing rains in the open. It is only a matter of time before the children and the elderly will break down and pass away. I have never felt so useless as a doctor," said Muhammad Murad, a volunteer from Karachi who left his clinic to do his duty towards society, only to discover that 90 per cent of his patients have minimal chances of survival. All this is happening despite the fact that appeals of President General Pervez Musharraf's Government for aid and assistance have received a healthy response. Money, technical assistance and relief supplies have come in quickly. "The problem right now is not of supplies but of their distribution. The worst damage has occurred in areas that are hilly and even aerial drops are not an option there. We are sitting on piles of medicines, tents and food, but we have not been able to get these across to the needy in time. It is getting late as far as these people are concerned," said a high ranking official dealing with the preparation of lists of domestic and international goods arriving at Islamabad's Chaklala airport.

Surely, he has spent more time in his office than out in the fields and valleys of death where these goods are supposed to reach. Out there, the feeling has spread fast that it is already too late for help to make any difference. Four days is a long time to be discussing the timeliness of aid. Most of those whose lives could have been saved are now beyond the point where they need it; others have taken to the roads in search of food. "These areas are getting de-populated because there is no hope here now. People cannot live on expectation only," says Majeed Khan, a local NGO worker who was one of the first ones to arrive in Balakot.

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MUZAFFARABAD, PoK Victims in a US army chopper; (right) Indian aid for Pakistan

Social dislocation and material loss is just one side of the tragic story that continues to unfold as the injured stream down from the mountains on makeshift stretchers. Thousands of children have been orphaned. "I have registered 200 children aged between three months and eight years whose parents cannot be found. There are already requests for adoption but I have no legal authority to hand over even one of them," says Shahnaz Gillani who is managing a local philanthropic centre in Islamabad. She also has at least 400 cases of parents looking for their missing children. "I cannot sleep at night and have started taking nerve soothing pills. I never thought that something like this is possible," says Gillani. Her husband, a schoolteacher, says she gets up in the middle of the night screaming like mad.

The totality of the tragedy is such that the good news of survivors being pulled out of the rubble of a posh residential skyscraper simply does not have any value. If anything, the use of modern machines and equipment to search for survivors and the heroism of rescue workers is a red rag to the distant victims of the earthquake. The name "Margalla Towers" has become a cruel reference to the apathy of a government that should have done better to reach out to those who died after days of crying for help from beneath fallen buildings in remote areas. If not that then at least shown a quick presence in these areas rather than a delayed response. For a change, the Government has no answer to this charge. In the days ahead, the crisis would shift from rescue and relief to the mammoth task of rehabilitation. All that President Musharraf's aides have to say is that at least they have done better than US President George W. Bush's team in New Orleans, not knowing that that is not exactly the standard they should measure the efficacy of their response with.

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