Will earthquake victims go home?

By Mark Doyle BBC world affairs correspondent, Muzaffarabad

Helicopters are still lifelines for the sick and homeless

Shortly after arriving in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, I had a strange sense that I'd seen all this before.

It was my first visit to Pakistan, so this odd feeling bothered me for several days.

Then, as I was wandering through the rubble of concrete buildings tossed about by the earthquake, listening to the near constant sound of humanitarian relief helicopters overhead, it suddenly hit me.

I was remembering the war zones of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in the early 1990s.

The rubble in Mogadishu was caused by artillery, and the helicopters overhead were American gunships - a completely different scenario from Muzaffarabad.

But the widespread destruction and the rumbling of the choppers were the same - the earthquake had transformed this city into something resembling a war zone.

Torn down

Four months after the 8 October earthquake which killed more than 70,000 people and made hundreds of thousands homeless, the Pakistani government is planning to move from the emergency relief phase to a rebuilding phase.

The remains of a mosque in Muzaffarabad

It wants people, as far as possible, to return to their homes after the worst of the harsh Kashmiri winter is over.

The earthquake destroyed great swathes of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, tearing down concrete houses and causing landsides which sent fields and roads into the bottom of valleys.

The landslips are still occurring and many roads are still impassable. According to the UN, as many as 400,000 houses need rebuilding.

Many of these families are still living in tented camps - others have pitched canvas outside their broken and dangerous concrete homes.

Dependency fears

The process of encouraging people back to their homes will start after 31 March, the official end of winter, the top civil servant in Muzaffarabad, Chief Secretary Kashif Murtaza says.

I personally feel that they have stopped working for their livelihood and we would like them to go back to their normal lives Kashif Murtaza Pakistan-administered Kashmir authority

The local administration is keen not to allow dependency on outside aid to develop, he says.

"This is the worst part of this relief effort. Especially in the urban areas, the relief goods have been overstocked," Mr Murtaza says.

The homeless "have had the food and the shelter - and I personally feel that they have stopped working for their livelihood and we would like them to go back to their normal lives."

In the tent camps along the river valley on which Muzaffarabad lies, most people I spoke to were extremely wary of returning home.

"Look up there", said one man, gesturing to a great gash in the mountain where a landslip had occurred.

"My farm was there. How can I return? My house and my land have gone."

The government has begun a process of compensation for affected families, with aid given in tranches. Kashif Murtaza said it would be enough, especially in rural areas, for many families to rebuild.

But one man in Muzaffarabad complained that this aid was being given per house, not per family. Standing beside the tent which had become his home, he pointed to a large building broken almost beyond recognition by the earthquake.

"We used to live in there", he said, "there were three families altogether. But only one of the families got compensation because there was only one house to account for. It's not fair."

Military role

The emergency aid effort has been run by a variety of bodies - principally the agencies of the United Nations and the Pakistan army.

Many roads are still impassable

Some political controversy surrounds that effort. This is not surprising given that Pakistan has a military-led government which came to power in a coup in 1999.

Samina Ahmed, the South Asia director of the think tank The International Crisis Group is critical of the role the Pakistan army has played:

"If the military takes upon itself the task of everything during the reconstruction phase it will certainly not be done as well as it would have been done by civilians. The military doesn't have the necessary professional skills."

But many people had told me the army had been doing a good job saving lives. Samina Ahmed argued that this was because a military "face" had been put on everything:

"The last thing that is needed is that whatever is left of civilian capacity in this country should be replaced by the military usurping what is rightly civilian space."

The soldiers I spoke to in Pakistan responded to this criticism by saying they were doing what they had been ordered to do. And most civilians said they were happy with the practical help the army had given them.