KASHMIR: Villagers who survived the Kashmir earthquake now fear they are caught in a death-trap, writes Ramita Navai
The village elders had walked for miles, over mountains and across rivers from hamlets and villages scattered across the remote Lipa Valley in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, to make an appeal to a visiting UN delegation.
"We are part of humanity. We are part of the civilised world. We are not animals. We need help," said Sayeed in perfect English, clutching a scrap of paper on which he had noted their requests. It was a short list, but one that means the difference between life and death: tents, food, medical aid.
Behind him a crowd of cross-legged elders nodded.
More than 86,000 people were killed in the earthquake that razed much of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In the Lipa Valley, some 15,000 people are homeless and with perilous roads blocked by landslides, aid has not yet reached most of the population.
This is an isolated land. Impenetrable green mountain passes thick with pine trees stretch for miles, cut by gaping ravines and carved by rivers that gush down from the Himalayas.
The devastation here is littered across the vast landscape. Logs have rolled down from mountain tops where traditional timber houses once perched, their iron roofs having slid down the sides of valleys, ripping up trees and vegetation in their path, leaving behind bald white patches of rocky earth.
It may be a simple life, but poverty punctuates every part of it. The inhabitants tread a fine line between survival and extinction, a fragile balance that has been dangerously disrupted by the earthquake.
Living conditions are brutal. Malnutrition and dysentery are a part of life and food is scarce. The wheat and maize crops the villagers farm are not enough to nourish them through the bitter winter when for three months the Lipa Valley is cut off from the outside world, with up to 40 feet of snow clogging mountain paths.
There are strategically placed food storage points across the valley where Pakistani military dump essential food supplies, but the military's resources were poured into earthquake relief and most of the storehouses remain empty. Unable to farm during winter and to supplement their paltry food stocks, most of the males in the region travel to cities across Pakistan to work as cheap labourers, but this is another source of income that has been cut.
"It's been over a month now and the men have still not gone to work as they are coping with finding shelter and food for their families, so they haven't even got the income they should have had," said Mohammad Musa Khan, a field officer with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The villagers have been monitoring the encroaching snow with trepidation.
The weather has already started to turn and the looming peaks that encircle the valley have been glistening white for a month now. Every day the snow edges nearer and nearer.
"The road from this valley will be blocked soon, maybe in a few days. The only access will be through Titwal," Sayeed said.
And this is where the problem lies. The Line of Control, dividing Pakistan and India, slices through the Lipa Valley with barbed wire and military installations. Although there has been a ceasefire for a year and a half, relations between the two countries are tense and this region is the most politically sensitive. Few others apart from the Pakistani military have been able to provide relief.
"Due to the status of this region access to international organizations has been extremely limited so far," said Christine Neveau, UNHCR's team leader in Muzaffarabad. "This has added to their isolation," she said.
Four border crossings have been opened between India and Pakistan. But the villagers want access to the Neelum Valley through Titwal, which is in Indian-controlled Kashmir from where they can cross back into Pakistan via the Nauseri crossing, which has already been opened.
From here they have road access to Muzaffarabad, the economic hub and capital of Pakistani Kashmir. If the Indian authorities decline their request, there is no other way out for the villagers as they are locked on all other sides by soaring mountain ranges.
The village of Moji is hard enough to reach in normal conditions. A helicopter ride, a 20-minute hike along a river bed and then a narrow, steep mountain track, with a sheer drop to the valley below, that can only be negotiated with an army jeep.
Moji was flattened by the earthquake and all that remains are piles of rubble and wood. Children wearing filthy rags play in the ruins of the collapsed market.
None of the villagers has a tent and the weather here has already turned. Despite the sun, the air is frosty.
"We're cold and we don't have proper clothing," said 16-year-old Farrat Iqbal, swathed in a thin yellow cotton shawl, holding her small baby sister in her arms.
"And we're hungry. We've got no food, only rotis and milk," she said.
The villagers say that if the border crossing is not opened, they are caught in a death trap.
"We have only got a week or two at most," Sayeed said.
"We want to migrate, to leave here, but we can't. We have no way out."