Aid agencies predicted winter disaster - now it is reality for Kashmir

High in the snow-covered foothills of the Himalayas, Perveen Anwar is waiting with her sister for help.

Three-year-old Madia has a bronchial infection that, according to a neighbour, is pneumonia. Other sick people from the village, 9,000ft above sea level, are also waiting for the bus to take them to the nearest hospital, a hellish four-hour drive down the valley to Bagh.

Around them, in the remote neighbouring villages, people are beginning to die from the cold. Young children and babies are particularly vulnerable. Almost three months after the earthquake that killed 73,000 people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, half of them children, a second tragedy is unfolding in the mountains. The winter disaster that the relief agencies had feared is now a reality.

According to Ishfaq Ahmed of the Kashmir International Relief Fund, 100 children have died of the cold in the past month in the towns of Muzaffarabad and Bagh alone, and the death toll in more remote regions must be higher.

Three and a half million earthquake victims are still homeless, many of them surviving in makeshift tent cities. Relief workers, who are already speaking of a lost generation, fear the death toll from the winter - temperatures dip to minus 10C at night - could exceed that of the quake. "The winter will be a bigger killer," said Mr Ahmed.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article335615.ece

Oh, wait. We need them back here for our own disasters.
Let's see. The NG and the NG equipment are needed on the Gulf Coast and in all states, and the Reg Army could be used in Kashmir, but where are they? They are in Iraq.