Shaheen Rafi Khan, Ali Shahrukh Pracha, Reza Abbasy
shaheen@sdpi.org
An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale jolted parts of Azad Kashmir and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on October 8, 2005. Vast areas were devastated, including the major towns of Muzaffarabad, Bagh, Balakot, Mansehra, and Battagram. The untold loss of human life and property touched deep, collective chords of goodwill. The civil society response in particular - although inchoate at times - was spontaneous and heartwarming. Inevitably, however, the fractured nature of this response subsumed it within an institutional context. This is borne out historically; the periodic recurrence of disasters and their potential to cause massive destruction has, over the past century, triggered state-level coping responses, involving both agencies and institutionalized processes.
The Army is a key agency called upon to intervene, primarily due to its rapid response capabilities in undertaking rescue and relief operations. The Army has a comparative advantage in logistics, infrastructure, manpower and organizational efficiency. Recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami have seen the active involvement of the Army. The commander of the US First Army headed the Joint Task Force Katrina. The Pakistan Army has also intervened when natural calamities have occurred. It orchestrated relief operations during the floods in northern Punjab in 2001 and in the aftermath of the 1992 floods in the Indus Basin delta. The October 8, 2005 earthquake was no exception. In fact, the Army’s subsequent role in earthquake operations could be viewed as a natural corollary to its overwhelming presence in AJ&K.
However, this is where an anomaly emerges. An extreme analogy could be that, like fire and water, the army is a good servant but a bad master. In other words, the absence of institutional checks has created space for the Pakistan army to extend its operations well beyond rescue and relief, as well as to determine the manner of their implementation. This has raised concerns about mis-governance and the institutional sustainability of relief and rehabilitation efforts. Rather than civilian institutions defining the army’s role within a constitutional-legislative framework, the Army has arrogated this role to itself and, in the process, has imposed its own internal norms of accountability and transparency. It would surely have had these norms beforehand.
The article looks at relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction. Thematically, it highlights governance, transparency, sustainability, and coordination issues across these activities. An SDPI team of two researchers and two enumerators obtained feedback on these themes from a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including affected communities, community-based organizations (CBO), Non-government Organizations (NGOs), International NGOs, Line Department staff, donor agencies, local government representatives, journalists, teachers and the Earthquake Relief and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA). We also got site-specific feedback from four affected districts: Batagram and Mansehra in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Bagh and Muzaffarabad in (AJ&K).
Pakistan’s Constitution clearly assigns post-disaster relief and rehabilitation functions to the civil administration. Before the Local Government Ordinance (LGO) of 2001, provincial governments could mobilize the state machinery in times of natural crisis. The LGO shifted all disaster-related responsibilities to the local governments, with the District Nazim as the chief coordinator. The civilian administration has the discretion to request the involvement of the military, in which case its mandate is set on a case-by-case basis.
The response to the October 8, 2005 earthquake violated this Constitutional imperative. The Army masquerades as a civilian entity, especially with regard to rehabilitation and reconstruction activities. This civilian aspect is a guise, representing more form than substance: essentially, the Army retains firm control over policy and management functions. Both the Federal Relief Commission (FRC) and the Earthquake Relief and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) were formed extra-constitutionally, with no legislative approval being sought for either, despite pressure to do so. Interestingly, ERRA’s charter provides military personnel impunity from any legal action related to any earthquake related task (Rizvi, 2005).
It did not help that the earthquake destroyed every single government office in the affected areas, in effect crippling what little capacity for local government that had existed. Currently, all Government offices in the affected areas in AJ&K are housed in tents and the local government currently wields little or no authority. When NGOs wish to engage in development projects, they must apply to ERRA for ‘No Objection Certificates’ (NOCs), to which a token signature from a local government official is appended.
As affectees and as recipients of assistance, the communities are best placed to comment on issues of transparency and accountability. |
The army points to the lack of capacity to respond effectively, claiming that it is the only viable institution in the country that can cope with disasters on a large scale. It asserts that there are no comparable civilian institutions which could complement or supplant it. While this is true, it ignores the behavioral context where the army itself has eroded civilian institutions. Ergo, it cannot invoke institutional and administrative lacunae when it created them in the first place. The absence of alternative coping mechanisms has given the army carte blanche and has raised concerns about governance and institutional sustainability. As affectees and as recipients of assistance, the communities are best placed to comment on issues of transparency and accountability. What follows is a distillation of views obtained from focus group discussions with communities and key respondent interviews.
The Army deployed over 50,000 troops in the region in a matter of three to four days, made possible by the existing border concentrations. It cleared landslides and re-established communication and road links, facilitating the movement of other organizations, some of which were already present in the affected areas. These included the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), SUNGI Development Foundation and ActionAid. Foreign organizations (including the Turkish Red Crescent Society and official country teams, including that of Cuba) were also able to reach the affected areas in record time. They immediately began coordinating with the Army to recover people from the debris with the help of sophisticated detectors, and providing emergency medical aid and high energy rations. Local organizations, such as Islamic Relief and Al Khidmat Foundation were also active. Army trucks transported the majority of the families back to villages like Alai and Ghari Habibullah, from the relief camps. Even the most vocal detractors agreed that the Army had moved rapidly and efficiently to clear blocked roads. By most accounts, the Abbotabad and Bagh roads were cleared the first day, and the Kohala road by the second day. The more severely damaged routes to the Neelum and Jhehlum valleys, which had been put down to several months of work by foreign organizations, were cleared for use in 45 and 20 days, respectively.
The Army Medical Corp deployed extensively throughout the region to provide medical aid and worked in close coordination with foreign medical teams. Army Aviation immediately began airlifting the injured and bringing in supplies. Divisions from Sindh and the Punjab began reaching the affected areas within three to four days. The Army conducted a damage and emergency needs assessment, providing baseline information which it shared with other relief agencies and organizations. The survey also provided a planning basis for relief operations over a vast area. Once the Army had consolidated its presence in the affected areas, it began hosting ‘cluster meetings’ every evening with all concerned NGOs, CBOs, and donor organizations. The intention was to coordinate efforts, present progress reports, and avoid duplication.
On reaching the affected areas, the Army set up ‘distribution hubs’. These were large supply camps located in easily recognizable and accessible areas, on plain tracts of land and at a reasonable distance from potential rock falls and flood-prone areas. Large numbers of civilians were able to obtain blankets and essential rations such as flour, lentils, rice, ghee, sugar, and tea. However, critics point to an insufficiency of aid to many areas, and to deficiencies in the chit system instituted by the Army. Community members complained that that Army NCOs managing these camps were often rude and abusive. They faulted the system which forced them to stand in long lines all day, turning them away in the evenings and instructing them to return the following day. Army spokesmen defended their stance, stating that civilian families were flocking to the camps and that many among them were hoarders. The only way to control the numbers and prevent hoarding was to employ a ‘tough-love’ strategy.
The larger donors, such as the World Bank and the UNDP, are comfortable with the army’s role. The UNDP, in particular, praised the Army on how it coordinated and facilitated the UNDP efforts. Until June 2006, the local Commanders continued to hold periodic briefing sessions with representatives of international agencies and other non-military actors to inform them of the on-ground situation, a move which raised the level of response efficiency from non-military actors. The major official camps set up camp management organizations, led by either a local military commander or a civilian organization, with decisions being taken consensually, rather than in typically directive fashion. The UN agencies operating in the affected areas were extremely well received by the Army and have commented that they were provided with 24-hour security, lifting machinery for creating flat ground for NGO camps, and trucks, as and when required. The interaction between the two is said to been so positive that the UN is considering redrafting internal policies that prohibit interaction with the armed forces. Foreign NGOs and aid organizations hold similar opinions.
Two acts stood in jarring contrast to the army’s ‘humanitarian’ role, both accentuating the primacy of organizational and strategic imperatives. It is clear now that Army divisions in AJ&K were badly hit. While Army helicopters reached the affected areas within a few hours of the earthquake, they are said to have evacuated only army personnel. Civilians were rescued later, although many village communities claim that army helicopters never reached them; instead, they themselves carried their injured to hospitals or to helipads. Second, the Army rejected India’s generous offer to provide helicopters and pilots for relief operations. There was not even a pretense of negotiations: for instance, the Army could have insisted on the helicopters being flown by Pakistani pilots. As further affirmation, in many areas in AJ&K the Army invoked strategic reasons to block civilian aid trucks and transferred the goods to their own camps for further distribution. This led to criticism from various NGOs that the Army had attempted to divert their aid supplies to its camps with hoarding in mind. Some NGOs submitted to the pressure, while others flatly refused to do so.
Not surprisingly, the Army’s dominant presence has defined the command and control mode of relief operations. In contrast, democratic governance would have been more likely to have ensured participatory and community-based needs assessment, coupled with internal social checks on predatory behavior. In terms of the need to respect community pride and sensitivities, both the Army and civil society resorted to practices that demeaned local communities, diminished their self-respect, and reduced them to looting and hoarding. The record points to cases of relief goods being flung out of helicopters indiscriminately; of the army’s inability/reluctance to distribute relief goods among widows and the elderly who could not travel to the relief distribution centers; of private trucks dumping second hand clothes on the roads in their haste to get back to the plains, which remained where they were strewn and of mounds of mineral water bottles accumulating on the roads around Bagh where they were not needed.
The Army has a tangible, albeit covert, presence in reconstruction activities. The ERRA, which oversees these activities, claims to be a civilian body reporting to the Prime Minister. Ostensibly, the Army’s active role within ERRA is limited to road and rubble clearing and conducting structural (housing) damage surveys in coordination with civilian members of the survey teams. In addition, however, ERRA calls on military personnel deployed in the affected areas to conduct one-off (special) tasks, such as closing mobile radio stations which broadcast inflammatory messages.
In reality, the army retains a firm grip on ERRA’s policy, management and technical functions. As a token concession it has inducted a former Minister, Saleem Altaf, as the ERRA chief, but he remains a figurehead, with General Nadeem Ahmed, the Deputy Chief making the decisions. An examination of ERRA’s organization chart reveals the extent of Army dominance. The ‘command and control’ stamp is evident in all of ERRA’s operations as well.
The organization’s own telephone directory and organizational chart show the extent to which the army is involved in the ostensibly ‘civilian’ outfit, ERRA. ERRA is not dominated by the Army in terms of sheer numbers, but the Army officials that are involved are fairly senior within the army, and hold reasonably senior positions in the organization. Below is a list of departments within ERRA, of which only the last two contain no Army personnel. As Table 1 shows, senior Army officers head three major departments within ERRA, not counting the Chairman office.
| Table 1: Army involvement at ERRA Headquarters | |||||||||
Designations within ERRA HQ |
|||||||||
E
|
Director Chairman Office | Deputy chairman | Section Officer to Deputy Chairman | Director General | Deputy Director Genera | Director | Deputy Director | Structural Engineer | |
| Chairman office | Lieutenant Colonel | ||||||||
| Deputy chairman office | Lieutenant General | Major | |||||||
| Executive wing | Brigadier | Colonel | Lieutenant Colonel | Major | Lieutenant Colonel | ||||
| Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) wing | Brigadier | Colonel | Two Majors | ||||||
| Planning wing | Major | ||||||||
| Transitional recovery cell (TRC) | Major General | One Brigadier and one Lieutenant Colonel | One Lieutenant Colonel, and four Majors | ||||||
| Legal and procurement wing | |||||||||
| Finance wing | |||||||||
| Source: ERRA, 2006 | |||||||||
The local governments have been stripped off their Constitutional role to manage post-disaster events, and all their functions are being conducted under military oversight. Where Nazims have been allowed to call stakeholder consultative meetings, the local military Commanders have maintained a check on the activities and ended up dictating them. In particular, the AJK government has acted as little more than a puppet for the military establishment, echoing its subservience in other areas as well. All non-military actors working in the earthquake areas are required to present project proposals and funding sources to ERRA, which then registers them and allows the project to be executed.
ERRA hired the services of the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET), Nepal, to design earthquake resistant homes. The standardized design was approved by the World Bank and linked with the monetary compensation that is supposed to be provided to each family. Neither affordable nor culturally appropriate, the design is a testament to donor insensitivity – to common sense deferring to turf concerns. The UN-Habitat did not hesitate to point out the design flaws, which have now been rectified. But, this is a classic case of too little too late. As an OXFAM survey1 pointed out, only 17% of the affectees have rebuilt their homes, as another harsh winter settles in, forcing large numbers of people to be displaced again.
The communities view building payments as compensation and, evidently, have complained that they are not enough to meet their needs. The ERRA has countered that these are aid payments to help people begin rebuilding their homes according to international standards for seismic resistance. However, the debate becomes moot in view of the complications in the actual manner of payment. Almost every family received ERRA’s first payment of Pak Rupees (PKR) 25,000/-. The procedure, however, was flawed inasmuch as some households received the money on a per-family basis, while other received it on a per-roof (i.e. extended family) basis. The second and third payments of PKR 75,000/- and PKR 50,000/-, respectively, are contingent upon completing the plinth (foundation) and the walls. This both restricts the size of the house and does not reflect the differentials in transport and material costs. ERRA has established distribution hubs for subsidized building materials (steel and cement) in the affected Districts but the communities complain there are not enough of them, nor are they accessible to the more remote areas. As noted earlier, communities are frustrated with the compensation process which has delayed reconstruction; in particular, the process disenfranchises the landless and those who have lost their land records. Army officers in charge of distribution hubs reportedly were unwilling to meet with communities to hear their complaints, providing such access only to those with Army connections.
The Army used local patwaris to identify damaged houses. OXFAM states2 that these patwaris charge inflated fees for issuing essential documents that survivors need to claim their compensation. Evidently, some of them have demanded up to 50% of the compensation payments before agreeing to sign the documents. Not surprisingly, the FGDs and interviews revealed low payments of the final installment. Against ERRA’s claimed disbursement of 70-80%, these were stated to be as low as 30%. ERRA maintains that the reasons for the delays in the ‘small’ number of undecided cases is rooted in unclear data entry on forms, duplicate form numbers, and duplicate identity card numbers.
ERRA has established progress-monitoring teams (PMTs) to oversee building progress and compliance. While the PMTs are required to include civil society members, by the army’s own admission, they tend to be dominated by its own personnel. This has caused friction at times between the PMTs and NGO technical staff, over building assessments.
The ban on reconstruction in devastated towns, particularly in Balakot and Bagh, is resented. The residents of Bagh have become dismissive about the long-promised Master Plan and have started rebuilding and repair work, in defiance of the construction ban. |
The ban on reconstruction in devastated towns, particularly in Balakot and Bagh, is resented. The residents of Bagh have become dismissive about the long-promised Master Plan and have started rebuilding and repair work, in defiance of the construction ban. Balakot residents, with ancestral and community ties, have refused to relocate to Bakrial and have begun to rebuild, ignoring the building codes. Muzaffarabad residents, too, became impatient and agitated against the ban on temporary shelters, with the result that the Administration had to back down.
The problem seems to lie in the failure to bridge the gap between community expectations, which represent real time, and the master/relocation plans, which reflect virtual time, thanks to their elaborate nature, the rigid building codes embedded in them, as well as the extended time horizons. It is also the case that relocation, as and when it does occur, will likely be in a ‘command and control’ mode, rather than being incentive based, in recognition of the underlying socio-cultural realities. The upshot is that the reconstruction process is inverting on itself and moving at a snail’s pace, despite the large infusions of funds. This is worrisome: in the sort term, communities have to brace themselves against another harsh winter; over a longer period shelter is pivotal to re-establishing livelihoods.
In general, ERRA policies reflect an unwillingness to share authority or take decisions consultatively, as is reflected by its interaction with NGOs and Partner Organisations. Its protocol is guided by the bureaucratic Army tradition, requiring detailed MoUs, and NOCs. Smaller donors, some INGOs and most local NGOs have criticised the army and ERRA policies publicly. Others have resigned themselves to complying with ERRA regulations so as to stay involved in relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction efforts.
Many civil society organizations claim that ERRA refuses to share data; however, others are equally vocal that the Army has provided detailed maps and shared lists of widows and orphans in villages. There is also criticism that ERRA excludes from compensation those houses which have not been damaged but are vulnerable to further tremors. However, ERRA appears to have responded to this criticism by bringing such houses into the fold.
In our assessment of the Army’s role in humanitarian operations, we have tried to move away from ideological biases and present a synthesis of views from the field. At the outset, the army arrogated Constitutional authority, helped in no small measure by the fact that there were no institutions in place with the means or the reach to supplant it. The field reactions with regard to relief operations which, traditionally, the Army does best, were positive. However, when push came to shove, humanitarian concerns did give way to organizational and strategic imperatives. The Army’s role in reconstruction is less overt to the extent that it conceals its authority behind the civilian façade of ERRA. However, the façade is quickly exposed when it comes to decision-making and implementation, and bears all the classic Army hallmarks of rigidity and central control. As reconstruction is delayed and affectees are forced to relocate, perhaps civil society, donors and legislators will mobilize in search of more sustainable institutional solutions.
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