One of the worst natural disasters in recent years struck Kashmir in February 2005, soon after I became the army chief. Two spells of unprecedented heavy snowfall and inclement weather, the first being around 6 February and the second ten days later, brought Jammu and Kashmir to a standstill for almost one month. Nature does not differentiate between man-made boundaries, and hence the Pakistani side of the LoC was equally badly affected. Large areas were cut off, rendering even assessment of the damage and destruction impossible. Heavy accumulation of snow on the hill slopes triggered a series of avalanches and landslides, which buried numerous villages, crippled electricity and water supplies and blocked most roads and airfields. The army, by virtue of its extensive grid deployment in far-flung areas, was able to respond quickly and spearhead the rescue and relief effort. I gave orders to provide assistance without waiting for formal or written requisition from the state government. Rescue columns of the army saved the lives of sixty-nine people. Food and medical assistance was provided to about 1800 people. Besides that, clothing, blankets and tents were made available to hundreds of marooned passengers and destitute villagers who would otherwise have frozen to death. We recovered 208 bodies buried under the snow. As a humanitarian gesture, I ordered the release of 70 per cent of our war reserves of petrol, diesel and rations to provide succour to the people.
The main artery connecting Jammu with Srinagar remained cut off till 1 March 2005, when the border roads and the army finally cleared it. During this period, I accompanied Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee to the state for an aerial survey of the worst-hit areas. It was heart-rending to see entire villages covered by a carpet of snow. The silhouettes of some of the houses were visible under the snow. We tried to look for people but found no signs of life in most places. Unfortunately for the terrorists, many of them perished as their hideouts in the hills and forests got totally snowed in. The people of Kashmir were very grateful and for once, the usually acerbic local media also showered praise on the army and the air force. We suddenly became angels! The central government stepped in and poured a lot of aid. Army relief teams spread out to the remotest corners of the Pir Panjal range and its valleys, which were the worst hit. Kashmir limped back to normalcy.
Later that year, on the morning of 8 October 2005, a severe earthquake caused tremendous loss of life and devastation in PoK and in some adjoining areas on our side of the LoC. This was the second disaster that struck the Kashmir region in the year. It was of an intensity of 7.6 on the Richter scale, enough to flatten out most of the capital town of Muzaffarabad in PoK and practically all the villages around it. It was about the same intensity as the earthquakes in Quetta (1935) or in Gujarat (2001) and this tragedy resulted in over 70,000 deaths and injuries to over one lakh people in PoK. On the Indian side, the worst-hit areas were Uri and Tangdhar along the LoC. There was colossal loss of property in the area, though not so much loss of life. Terrorist training camps in PoK were also hit. ‘When entire villages have been wiped out, it is most likely that these terrorist camps (in Muzaffarabad area) have also been affected,’ was my response to questions by the media.
‘… a majority of the training camps were located near the epicentre of the quake with Lashkar’s office and hospital in Muzaffarabad being completely razed to the ground. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen’s training centre at Balakot and Batrasi, Jaish-e-Mohammed’s camp at Attock, Al Badr’s at Oghi, Lashkar’s at Mansera and Hizbul’s recruitment camp at Jungle-Mangal had been damaged to a great extent.’1 Was it divine retribution in the case of these terrorists?
Once again, without waiting for a formal request for aid from the state government, we reached out to the calamity-struck people of Baramulla and Tangdhar districts of Kashmir. Rescue and relief measures were effected on a war footing under the name Operation Imdaad (Succour). Even though we also suffered casualties along the LoC, and some of our posts were badly hit, my directions were to send out search and rescue mission patrols to the remote areas and give a helping hand to the people in distress. The forward piquet in Tangdhar sector just disappeared from the face of the earth as the fractured edge of the mountain was sliced by nature and tumbled down a few thousand feet.
As a humanitarian gesture, composite relief points were set up by our army for the people of PoK too. These were established at Kaman, Tithwal, Chakan-da-bagh, Roshni and Silkot, so as to facilitate transfer of relief material across the LoC to the Pakistani authorities. ‘Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid M. Kasuri on Tuesday (11 October 2005) spoke to External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh and expressed appreciation for India’s assistance to the quake-hit. India’s 25-tonne relief supplies, including tents, plastic sheets, blankets, mattresses, food items and medicines, will fly out from New Delhi around midnight Tuesday’.2 The total count of relief provided was much more, as shown in the news snippet below. The Indian Air Force and army aviation also made a commendable contribution and effected an air bridge from the affected areas to the hospitals in Srinagar and saved many lives.
Further, the army adopted three villages that had been destroyed by the earthquake and were raised from the rubble as model villages. These were Churunda and Tithwal in the valley and another in Poonch area called Khari Karmara. Along with my wife Rohini, I inaugurated the Tithwal model village on 22 June 2006. This village is within earshot of the LoC, with only the turquoise-blue Kishanganga river flowing between PoK and India. I also inaugurated the Churunda model village on 6 October 2006. In these villages we created community development centres, new buildings for primary health centres, roads, pathways, piped water supply, sports fields and schools. Later, the Indian Air Force also adopted a village called Urusa and helped to reconstruct it. The comparison of the spontaneity of the relief and rescue operations on two sides of the LoC was inevitable, and I am happy to say that our efforts won praise and acclaim on the other side as well, albeit grudgingly at places.