Author: Saikat Datta
Publication: Outlook
Date: October 24, 2005
URL: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20051024&fname=CoverStory&sid=5
The Indian army's relief efforts has endeared
them to Kashmiris like never before
It finally took an epic tragedy to bring together
two armies divided by generations of mistrust. As the quake wreaked havoc,
Indian army personnel made a quick trip into PoK, across the Aman Setu, to
help their Pakistani counterparts rebuild a bunker. An official Pakistani
denial, though, followed soon after. But there was considerable goodwill on
the ground.
If there was a hero on the morning of October
8, it was the faceless Indian jawan. They had lost 38 men and 267 were wounded,
but local commanders took charge of the situation and sent out relief columns.
What made a crucial difference in relief operations was the speed with which
army engineers, along with teams from the Border Roads Organisation, cleared
the Baramulla-Uri road enabling relief from Srinagar to reach interior villages
devastated by the quake.
Medical teams from local posts moved in while
the army's aviation corps established air bridges to reach villages cut off
by landslides. In a few hours, an army that had forever been criticised as
an "occupation force" became the only face of relief. Twenty tons
of medical supplies and 200 tonnes of rations were despatched overnight while
over a thousand people were taken into the makeshift shelters the army columns
had set up.
The collapsed telecommunications network was
quickly replaced by the army's Signals radio sets. By the third day, over
3,000 troops were deployed in Tanghdar, Uri, Baramulla, Kupwara and Poonch
while the 8 Engineer battalions was deployed to extricate the buried, set
up a makeshift bridge over the Chenab as well as reopen roads. As Operation
Imdad progressed, goodwill was the one thing in abundance.