Dear Friends,

This is to thank you once again for your extremely generous help and to provide an interim report of relief activities. My initial letter was to 40+ persons, mostly in the US, who passed it on further. The current list is several times the original size and includes many other countries. I would now request that you not forward this onwards because of our limited capacity to handle funds. Ours is an impromptu group of university people  and will self-destruct once the job is done. If you would like to continue to give, I will be happy to provide a list of some of the larger NGOs and relief organizations that seem to be doing a good job.

Although I would like to thank each of you separately, that would take up time which could be put to better use elsewhere.

To date, your donations are around $80,000. These include donations as small as $20. The largest one is $10,000 (this is from an Indian expatriate living in the US, a wonderful example of how caring people don't worry about borders). Zia Mian and Sharon Weiner, who are doing the onerous job of keeping accounts for the Eqbal Ahmad Foundation in the US, tell me that they have had to return 30 cheques because these were incorrectly made out. So, the total may cross $100,000 if all pledges are ultimately fulfilled and cheques are cashed. See the end of this message for the correct instructions.

An unexpected difficulty arose because we were unable to encash cheques made out to "Quaid-e-Azam University and Eqbal Ahmad Foundation Earthquake Relief Fund". I had initially specified this to you after my university had agreed to set it up. However, this turned out to be impossible because the government has ordered all banks not to open any earthquake relief account, and instead demands that all donations must go into the official (prime minister's) relief fund. This is unacceptable. Therefore, we decided to put the received money into the Eqbal Ahmad Memorial Education Foundation account. The accounts of this foundation are audited yearly, but we will ask that the earthquake fund money be separately audited in a few months once all received funds have been disbursed. Those of you who would like to receive a copy should please indicate this to me, with mailing address.

So far the QAU effort has resulted in 15 trucks/wagons delivering relief goods to Muzaffarabad, Rawalakot, Balakot, Batgram, and other locations.

The QAU administration has cooperated by providing transport. Most supplies were received in kind or purchased from local donations. A small portion of your money was spent on immediate relief work (tents, blankets, medicines, rations).

The principal use of your money will, however, be for house reconstruction. There are some complications here that I would like to apprise you of, and then our planned course of action.

1. It is too soon to start building. 3 weeks later, aftershocks are almost a daily occurrence. Dr. Toor and I, having just returned from a relief trip to villages near Batgram, saw that everyone is sleeping outside. Some have tents, others just the sky above them. People are too scared to return indoors even where the structures are still standing. Some who had repaired their houses saw them collapse again after a small quake.

2. Some peaks are already covered with snow and winter is just weeks away. So even if there were no aftershocks, rebuilding would be hard in such weather. The tent towns now seen everywhere will probably disappear once it gets colder. Even now there is large scale migration into the cities (Mansehra, Abbottabad, Mirpur, Rawalpindi, Islamabad,...). There will be serious problems of sanitation, health, and employment. Tens of thousands of the disabled may turn to beggary. Nobody seems to have a clue of how to handle this.

3. Where possible, we shall help people rebuild rightaway. In the warmer areas it may be possible. But in the overwhelming number of cases, this will have to deferred until April. Meanwhile we have begun to identify the poorest of the poor, give them an immediate installment of money so that they can survive the next few weeks, and will later pay them to rebuild. The cost of construction materials is soaring, as you might guess, but hopefully $1K per house is not too far off. The target is: save 100 families and give them a roof over their heads.

4. Although identifying the right recipients may seem an easy task, but in fact it is not. One has to physically visit, interrogate, and make spot decisions. The scent of money draws many sharks. Relief trucks set off riots.

5. I am hoping that some others will join on but, as of the present time, the following friends and colleagues, in whose committment and judgement I have total confidence, have accepted the responsibility of identifying the right people and following the goal through to the end.

(1) Dr. Abdul Hameed Toor, president of the Academic Staff Association.

(2) Dr. Abdul Nayyar, retired from QAU, now with SDPI.

(3) Mr. Vaqar Zakaria, CEO of Hagler Bailly (Pakistan), an environmental consulting firm.

(4) Dr. Faheem Hussain, National Centre for Physics and COMSATS Univ.

They will work with many others but the responsibility for use of funds will be theirs (and mine).

On the general earthquake picture:

(a) The official toll has reached 79,000 but everyone believes that it will be much higher. Perhaps 100,000+. Entire villages have disappeared in AK.

(b) There is still no attempt to clear the rubble in Balakot, or retrieve the thousands of crushed corpses there and elsewhere. One wonders what will eventually happen to the masses of concrete - there is simply no place where to throw it away.

(c) There are long convoys of trucks carrying relief goods. The army, foreign organizations, local NGOs, and hundreds of private groups (like us) - in that order of size. The US Chinooks are still flying missions, and winning public approbation. An RPG was reportedly fired at one, but missed. The Pakistan Army denies the incident occurred, but the US stands by it. There are rescue teams from Cuba, Spain, Turkey, and China doing excellent work. But compared to the scale of the problem, even everything put together is far too small.

(d) International aid has indeed been niggardly. But perhaps one should not be surprised. Pakistan is run by an army obsessed with buying top of the line submarines, missiles, and jets for its nuclear weapons. Relief money will go through the hands of army generals and some will inevitably end up in their pockets. Musharraf has botched up this opportunity to make peace with India. He spurned an Indian offer for desperately needed helicopters. Instead, last week, on official orders, Islamabad was covered with large banners denouncing Indian atrocities in Kashmir. The size of those banners was roughly ten times bigger than of banners asking people to contribute to the earthquake fund. It was obscene.

(e) The mullahs are in full form in the mosques and on every TV channel, telling people that the earthquake was divine retribution. Most buy it. I am angry and appalled, but scarcely surprised, that all but a few of my (physics) students share this view. Islamic parties and jihadist groups are to be seen everywhere and are clearly doing a great job in obtaining and distributing relief supplies. Some are openly flaunting their weapons.

In an environment of ignorance and mullah domination, abject poverty, and exploding population, they will surely be able to get much cannon fodder and swell their ranks.

Sorry for this depressing ending.

With best regards.

Pervez

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Pervez Hoodbhoy

Professor of Physics

Quaid-e-Azam University

Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.

Phone (R): 92-51-2824257

Phone (O): 92-51-2829914