Shinkiari, NWFP - Demonstrators came out in force this morning raising slogans against Musharraf and the Pakistani government’s grossly insufficient response to Saturday’s Earthquake. The town, straddling the Karakorum Highway north of Mansehra, sustained moderate damage in the 7.6 earthquake that left much of the surrounding area in utter devastation.

The death toll in this scenic mountain valley area is in the thousands. Some villages remain standing with moderate damage. Others have ceased to exist.

The area, which includes the hard hit townships of Balakot, Batal, Battgram, Khanpur and Tanda, is yet to receive any substantive assistance from the Pakistan Army or governmental agencies. Unretrieved bodies have begun to rot, while diarrhoea and pneumonia from exposure are growing. Indicative of intense neglect, the injured are dying from lack of water and medicines on the lawns of hospitals and surgeries in surrounding towns. In a glaring indictment on the army’s ineffectiveness, a BBC camera crew asked a loitering group of soldiers why they weren’t actively helping retrieve a living man entrapped under debris less than a hundred metres away. The soldiers responded that they were waiting orders. Ironically, Shinkiari is home to an Army JCO training facility.

The anger of locals is focused. The fact that Pakistan Army’s meagre aviation assets are committed in operations in Waziristan against suspected Al-Qaeda militants has meant that many in the mountainous surrounds of Shinkiari will not receive any assistance whatsoever.

Many amongst the demonstrators in Shinkiari this morning are under no illusion. The experience of Autumn 2001 is fresh in their minds. That year, soon after the initiation of hostilities in Afghanistan, tribal militiamen seized a Pakistan army convoy heading north along the KKH just north of Shinkiari. The militia held the soldiers hostage and blocked the KKH to military operations for over a week. Following negotiations with senior army personnel, the soldiers were released and the highway unblocked, conditional on the agreement of the Pakistan Army not to move forces along the highway in support of US led anti-Taliban operations.

Today, four years on, the KKH is relatively free of obstruction resulting from the earthquake, from Rawalpindi up into the northern reaches of the Mansehra division. Poignantly, aid of any description is yet to arrive by road.

Given that this town along the KKH is a logical point from where to distribute relief supplies to the surrounding badly hit areas, many feel the army’s indifference is borne more of the politics of retribution than of the paucity of resources.

What started out as Pakistan’s Katrina, has quickly escalated into a mass human tragedy on the scale of the largest earthquake catastrophes. It is the most daunting challenge Musharraf has faced.

America’s offer to supply eight helicopters to assist in aid distribution may prove to be a double edged sword. Although desperation has a tendency to moderate ideological compulsions, the revulsion towards America widely felt in this hotbed of Islamist radicalism cannot be underestimated. Victims on the ground observe that while Chinese rescuers have managed to reach Balakot, and CNN is reporting from there, the Pakistan army has been unable to get any significant personnel or equipment to the area.

The regime in Islamabad is growing increasingly distant from the victims of its grossly inadequate response to this tragedy. In the midst of the devastation and suffering, political expression usually tends to be mute until the initial shock has subsided. The desperation in Shinkiari has accelerated the cycle. Over bottled water, instead of the usual green tea, the conversation switches to how the Caliphate would deal with such an emergency. This disaster has exposed Musharraf as much as it boosted the ambitions and sensations of those who would reconstruct the Caliphal system, a task now felt less daunting that the reconstruction of lives now lying in utter ruin and abandoned.