The mountain tsunami

摘要

When they spoke in the past of the growing irrelevance of international borders, this is not what the leaders of India and Pakistan had in mind. They meant the march of globalisation. But their countries have always been linked by far more primordial forces. The epicentre of the huge earthquake that struck them on the morning of October 8th was near Muzaffa-rabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. But it was also felt across the Indian-held part of the disputed territory, as well as in Afghanistan to the north and as far south as India's capital, Delhi. It was in Kashmir and northern Pakistan, however, that it wrought devastation. It was, said Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's prime minister, "a disaster of unprecedented proportions in Pakistan's history". Islamabad was badly shaken. In Muzaffa-rabad, a substantial city, two-thirds of the buildings were damaged. Balakot, a nearby town in the North-West Frontier Province (nwfp), was utterly flattened. Within five days of the quake, more than 23,000 people had been confirmed dead in Pakistan and 1,300 in Indian Kashmir.