ReliefSource

Every single person I spoke to in Pakistan said the same thing: that the Pakistani military had done an amazing job on the earthquake relief. So it’s good to see some acknowledgement of their capacity, and also an interesting analysis of the problems they face, in a BBC article. The earthquake zone is the most sensitive area in South Asia, on the disputed border with India, placing the army in a difficult situation:

The problem, it seems, rests with the character and training of the Pakistan army - an institution which the global relief regime now recognises as the best informed outfit on local conditions in all the quake-hit areas. The army’s issue with disseminating accurate information on the ground situation arises primarily from its dual role - being a governmental army and being directly responsible for providing relief to the victims.

Meanwhile… field commanders kept themselves quite accessible to aid workers as well as the media - though only for what they called background briefings. Relief workers, in particular those from international agencies, were astounded at the frankness of the field commanders at such meetings…. it was primarily on the basis of information provided by the field commanders that the food crisis in the more remote areas was brought under control.

This supports the findings of my assessment, which is that information sharing with the military - in both directions - was excellent, and the military were genuinely engaged with humanitarian issues. This alone turns the usual civil-military dynamic on its head, away from the usual antagonistic approach. But here’s where it gets really interesting:

The army’s maps of the quake-hit zone are the most detailed available anywhere. Field commanders say if these maps are digitised in relevant detail and put on the web, the entire world can follow the state of the relief efforts as they happen. “It will create a consolidated database of the affected areas, informing the entire world of what is needed and exactly where,” says one senior commander. “It would also avoid duplication of effort and ensure transparency in relief operations. But to do that, we will perhaps have to stop being the army that we are,” he laughs.

Particularly in light of the initial problems over remote sensing imagery for the earthquake response (more detail here), this is really interesting. It’s probably a little naive to expect that just by making the army maps available, co-ordination would improve - actually, from personal experience, it’s entirely unlikely that co-ordination would improve, but that’s another story. However it would be a tremendous resource, and Pakistan would be an example to the entire world if it was prepared to start tearing down the military monopoly on mapping that still holds in many developing countries.

The full story is here.