 Aid efforts for thousands of earthquake and flood victims in Pakistan have been affected by violence sparked by the recent siege of the Red Mosque. UN and relief agencies have suspended operations in part of North-West Frontier Province following a spate of attacks last week. A mob ransacked stores and torched offices belonging to Care International, the Red Thingy Cross and four other organisations in Batagram, an area badly affected by the October 2005 quake that killed more than 73,000 people.
Foreign staff have been evacuated to Islamabad and local staff advised to lie low. Work continues in nearby Mansehra, a big aid hub, but staff movements are restricted. "We're not expecting more trouble but we'll wait and see what happens on Friday. That's usually the hot day," said a UN security official.
| Right after services led by the usual spittle-spewing holy men. |
| Islamic Rage Boy is having his beard specially oiled and his eyes extra-bulging for the occasion. |
Tensions are high in pockets of the quake zone where many mosque students, some of whom are still missing, came from. The UK-based charity Plan said it had imposed a curfew on female employees and suspended work on 10 schools it is building in the Siran Valley. "Field work has stopped," said Natasha Kamal, Plan's communications officer, who said there were 85 madrasas in Batagram. "The danger is not from the communities we work with, which have always welcomed us. It's the fundamentalists that are the real problem."
| Who come from .. somewhere else. |
Dorothy Blane, country director for Concern, another charity, said relief operations were continuing but the surge in suicide attacks was "of particular concern".
The fallout from the siege was also felt hundreds of miles to the southwest in Baluchistan and Sindh provinces, where 30,000 people have been displaced by catastrophic floods earlier this month. British aid agency Shelterbox was forced to evacuate its personnel to the UK last weekend after security warnings from Pakistani and British authorities. "It's a quite toned-down Islamic area but you don't know how the situation will go," said Mark Pearson, who had been working in the coastal town of Turbat in Baluchistan, but is now in the UK. "But we're hoping to get back out there within a week. We've got to get back on top of the situation." |