A Life Half Lived

by Andrew MacLeod

  After these initial experiments we thought that this would be a smallscale project, with 5,000 to 10,000 shelters being built before winter descended. After looking at the idea, Nadeem instructed the Pakistan army to test the concept with the army engineers and the Pakistan Architects Association, with the construction of a test A-frame design at Chakothi.

  Chakothi is a town nestled right up against the Line of Control and Nadeem had been based there in his early days as a Brigadier. When we flew to Chakothi to examine the first A-frame design constructed, Nadeem also took me to the primary school that had been destroyed during the earthquake. Nadeem had personally sponsored that school since the days of his posting there as a Brigadier. We stood on the collapsed walls and looked out over blood-stained school books, still littered through the rubble. Nadeem and I shared a sombre moment and it reminded us why we had to work hard and fast; so no more children would die.

  We looked at the A-frame designs and Nadeem smiled and said, “This will work.”

  For this idea to work we needed helicopters from the Pakistan army, US and UK military as well as the United Nations. A plan we were to call ‘Winter Race’ began to take shape. Nadeem allocated 12 engineering battalions to the task of dispersing throughout the earthquake-affected region, instructing villagers on how to build A-framed emergency shelters. The entire focus of the relief effort then shifted to the production and distribution of corrugated iron sheets, which soon became the most valuable item in our relief arsenal. So important were the corrugated iron sheets to the relief effort that General Musharraf himself authorised the importation of CGI sheeting from India, so long as the ‘Made in India’ stamps had been removed.

  Pakistani steel mills churned out hundreds of thousands of roofing sheets, thousands more were imported. The 12 engineer battalions, 300 Pakistani volunteers and hundreds of international teams were assigned to this monumental task. Instead of 10,000 shelters, nearly 400,000 emergency housing units were built in the immediate relief period. The result was startling. The feared flood of displaced people coming down the valley stopped, indeed some people left displaced persons camps and went home up the hills. The consequential massive overcrowding didn’t happen, no disease outbreaks occurred, and there wasn’t a second wave of deaths. Operation Winter Race worked because problems were worked on together – ideas and concepts, not just information, were shared. The whole concept demonstrates how much can be achieved by coordination.

  By this time the Strategic Oversight Group (SOG) had been put in place within the Federal Relief Commission that oversaw all operations. The core four-person team of the SOG were the Federal Relief Commissioner, Major General Farooq Ahmed Khan, the Humanitarian Coordinator, Jan Vandemoortele, General Nadeem and myself. Subject matter experts were called to SOG meetings to advise on whichever relevant issues we were discussing at any given point. The SOG, important though it was, was downplayed. It didn’t appear in situation reports and many people didn’t know of its existence. It was thought that many players, both military and civilian, would have been uncomfortable if it was known how closely the strategies were linked.

  By the time November came to an end the overall operation was taking shape. The FRC was up and running, the UN cluster system was up and running both in the field hubs and in Islamabad, the SOG was functioning, but things were not easy. The operation may have been ‘working’ but it was only working because people, Pakistani civilians, military and internationals were all working long and arduous hours, and for those in the field, they were doing so in very tough conditions. While the ‘big picture’ was looking good, the details were not always so. Communication flows needed fixing, terms of reference needed writing, administrative details needed tightening, and, as always, the ‘information beast’ of UN headquarters needed feeding.

  Communication flows and information gathering and analysis were two aspects of the operation that never ran well: neither for the government nor for the internationals. Baseline data simply didn’t exist. A comprehensive village list did not exist. Rapid information assessment and coordinated analysis were often not possible. For UN agencies that had to submit extensive data to various headquarters, silence was a difficult message. Headquarter units naturally need detailed information in order to properly advise donors on emergency requirements, yet detailed information gathering is a difficult and time-consuming task – hence field operatives have to constantly balance their time between delivering aid and gathering information required to get the resources for that aid. There is an on-going tension created between the headquarters’ units, whose need for information often seems to be greater, balanced with the field desire to make assumptions and move on to get things done.

  As it turned out, the key assumptions that were made in the first flash appeal meeting in the first 48 hours were good and stayed relevant right through the relief stage: 3.5 million people affected, around half a million houses and 30,000 square km. Two months after the earthquake the relief operation was on track. Aid was being delivered, and a feeling of optimism was starting to creep in. The biggest fear became complacency.

  The media also played a very important role in the operation both locally and internationally. We quickly brought the international media inside our tent. We were acutely aware as the relief operation unfolded that there would be pockets of people that we had missed because we simply didn’t know where they were. In a search for ‘bad news stories’ the media often found missed populations before we did. We told the media that they played a vital role in the information flow and very soon they understood that when they found a population that had been under-delivered in aid, that by telling us we could rectify the problem, so it was best to tell us rather than criticise us.

  Many aspects of the Pakistan earthquake response were experimental. In seeking to bridge the military world and the NGO world, a new model was tried based on the cluster approach. Nadeem and I eventually called the model ‘Non-interfering Coordination’. We formalised the theory in a number of published documents after the event, but could summarise it as follows:

  The military should share an open and honest assessment of needs between the military and the NGO and humanitarian world, including the United Nations. The military should allow humanitarian actors to choose what operations they will undertake, rather than dictate activities. The military should ask NGOs to inform central commanders of the choices made. Central commanders can then identify unmet gaps in humanitarian delivery, which can then be filled with the Army and other government agencies. This sounds simple, and in theory it is, but in practice consolidating that information, and tracking and monitoring the promised ‘delivery’ is extremely hard and challenging both for the military and for NGOs – both have to fight institutional reflexes that prevent them from sharing with each other. On the positive side though, this mechanism means that independence of NGOs can be respected, while their activities can be coordinated with the back-filling efforts of the military forces.

  Collating, consolidating and sharing information within the humanitarian community is difficult in itself, even when removed from a need to coordinate with the military. In Pakistan the military adapted to the cluster system. Indeed, for the military ‘clustered’ thinking is the norm. The military already had a logistics corps, a medical corps, and the like, so intellectually understood clustered coordination. Ironically, the military found it easier to adapt to the new cluster mechanism than did the humanitarian world. By marrying up the military ‘clusters’ with the humanitarian ‘clusters’, a mechanism for identifying and filling gaps was created. In essence, the clusters would form the backbone of ‘non-interfering coordination” by being the hubs through which information was shared.

  As Pakistan had no designated National Disaster Agency at the time of the earthquake, the ad hoc structure created to deal with the aftermath (the Federal Relief Commission) decided to structure itself using the cluster approach as well. What resulted was a rare if not unique series of key pers
onal contacts between the national and international coordinators, and between civil and military actors in the clusters. It was these personal contacts within the cluster framework that allowed for the ironing out of some ‘perspective problems’.

  The Pakistan military often focused on ‘what has been done?’ while the humanitarian world brought with it a perspective on ‘what is left to be done?” While the difference in perspectives could cause problems, the ability to talk through issues and raise concerns within the context of cluster meetings allowed for solutions to be found. Once senior commanders understood the logic of cluster coordination and passed command orders down the chain, mid-level officers simply accepted the mechanism as the ‘way things would be done’ as that is what they were ordered to do.

  Within the world of the multiplicity of humanitarian organisations things were more difficult. As the cluster system was tried for the first time in Pakistan no pre-existing terms of reference, guidance notes or pool of experience existed. Additionally, as the cluster system was rolled out earlier than planned because of the unexpected nature of the earthquake, many NGOs had not received ‘guidance’ let alone ‘orders’ to implement the system.

  The clusters thereby became not only the method of internal humanitarian coordination, but by virtue of a military presence in the cluster meetings, the system also became the heart of the civil-military coordination structure.

  Beyond Relief: Recovery The Pakistan government decided to close the Federal Relief Commission by late March 2006, and introduce another new body known as the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA), late in 2005. The question was how would we move the entire operation from a ‘relief’ focus to a ‘recovery’ focus, and how would we move the bureaucratic responsibility without losing the service delivery efficiency?

  At the end of relief operations, a lull often occurs before the recovery and reconstruction phase begins. Aid workers leave an emergency zone, contacts and momentum are lost, and the humanitarian impetus to coordinate is replaced by dysfunctional planning.

  As early as late November 2005 Nadeem and I were confident that we had the structures in place to successfully undertake the relief operations. We needed to look beyond the relief effort towards the post-relief phase.

  By December Nadeem and I shared our concerns that the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority didn’t seem to be making adequate headway in preparing the ground for recovery on the domestic side, nor did the OCHA/UNDP seem to be doing the same on the international side, to maintain the best of the system that had worked so well.

  We were particularly concerned because by the end of 2005 Nadeem was due to return full-time to the military, be promoted to Lieutenant-General and become one of Pakistan’s key corps commanders. Under the rule of Musharraf Pakistan was effectively controlled by the ‘Corps Commanders Conference’ so to become a Corps Commander was to become part of the most important group of people in Pakistan. This was an enormous compliment to Nadeem.

  On my side, I was due to return to Geneva at the end of 2005. The strong relationship that had developed with Nadeem was seen as a threat rather than an asset to many within the United Nations system. Despite Jan’s protestations, OCHA had made it clear that my contract would not be extended by the end of the year. From late November I had moved out of the OCHA office and had been effectively taken on secondment into Nadeem’s office and acted as a bridge between him and Jan. This close relationship to two key people made others uncomfortable.

  This was a shame as the concept of transitioning from relief to recovery was very new. What do you do when the emergency finishes, but normality has not yet been restored? How do you plan that transition from relief to recovery? How do you transition from the emergency personnel leading back to development personnel leading? This had never been done effectively before.

  In one cluster-coordination meeting in December, Tim Pitt, who had been running the OCHA in Islamabad after I moved into Nadeem’s office, went so far as to say, “Andrew, there is no such thing as a transition and when the relief period ends the clusters will end because OCHA has a copyright on the clusters.” Such a view remains ridiculous. If the coordination framework could work well in a relief period, it could work equally as well in the reconstruction and recovery period and act as a bridge in the transition between the two. It was a strange position for me to be in as it was almost as if the stronger my relationship became with the Pakistanis, the weaker my relationship became with those in authority in the United Nations. The one exception to this was always Jan who at every time gave me full support, backing and encouragement.

  Regardless of where our career paths were going to take us after December 2005, for Nadeem and I it seemed pointless to do all the good work in the relief effort and not get the transition to recovery right. If we did what was done in previous natural disasters in most countries in the world then a lot of the good work of the relief would be undone in the period between relief and recovery.

  The Pakistan government had already planned to close the FRC under General Farooq in early 2006 and have ERRA, commanded by another general, Lieutenant-General Zubair, takeover. The government had not yet planned the transition. We went to see Zubair, who as a Lieutenant-General was the senior officer. Over a series of dinners Nadeem and I came to the conclusion that Zubair did not get the point of a transition and there was a serious risk that things could go awry.

  After the last of our dinners with Zubair Nadeem asked, “Andrew, have you ever had Kashmiri tea?” I hadn’t. We got into Nadeem’s staff car and drove down the backstreets of Rawalpindi until we found a little street-side vendor selling Kashmiri tea. You have to picture this. Pakistan can be a dangerous country and at times the military can be a target for Al Qaeda or other terrorist organisations. Nadeem was in full military uniform and we were in a military staff car with only a driver who also acted as bodyguard.

  We pulled up to Nadeem’s favourite Kashmiri tea vendor, ordered two cups of the pink, milky, sweet tea and sat by the side of the road to drink it. There could have been nothing more unusual in the backstreets of Rawalpindi than a general in full uniform and a foreign aid worker sitting in a gutter drinking Kashmiri tea from foam cups. While we enjoyed each other’s company, we were so pissed off and disillusioned about poor recovery planning that we paid no attention at all to our security.

  “I am going to have to tell Musharraf,” said Nadeem. I received a call from Nadeem the next Sunday afternoon. “Andrew, I’m coming to see you” he said. By that time I had a temporary office in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and an office in the United Nations building and would choose which office to go to each day, based on whether most of my work was with the Pakistani or international community. That Sunday I was in the United Nations building.

  “Sir, you’re the general, I will come to you.” Something was up. He insisted on visiting my office. Pakistan was a military state so it was highly unusual for an army general in uniform to turn up on a Sunday afternoon in the United Nations office. Nadeem and I sat and chewed the fat.

  Nadeem told me how he raised the issue of transition with Musharraf and expressed his view that Zubair was not up to the job. Nadeem started to talk to me about the options of leaving the army to take up the role to coordinate ERRA or to stay in the army and take the role of Corps Commander. He took me through all the options including the impact on his pension and his entitlements on retirement at different levels. In the end Nadeem made a deal with Musharraf. He would stay in the army, would be promoted to three-star General, serve two years in ERRA and then become a Corps Commander.

  “So, Andrew,” he said, “you cannot leave. If I am going to stay in this operation, so are you.”

  “But sir, the money runs out for my position at the end of December.”

  Nadeem called up the British High Commissioner and asked for one more year’s funding for my position. He called the American ambassador and asked for the same. He got an a
ffirmative from both.

  “I have got the money, now you are staying two more years,” he said with a smile. There was still one problem. We might have had the money, but I had no contract.

  Nadeem and Jan met to discuss this problem. Jan agreed that he would transition my contract from one overseen by OCHA to one overseen by UNDP. He also promoted me to a specially created position in his office as Senior Relief to Recovery Transition Advisor. This was a position that had not been created in the UN before. After making it very clear to UNDP headquarters that the government of Pakistan (read Lieutenant-General Nadeem) had an expectation that role should be filled by only me, reluctantly the human resources system agreed. I now had a two-year contract to remain in Pakistan to help with the transition from relief to recovery, but we’d pissed off an enormous number of people in both OCHA and UNDP because we had circumvented almost every rule and regulation that there was. Planning for post-relief continued with Nadeem in ERRA and me seconded into his office and remaining as the relief to recovery transition advisor to Jan.

  Given that the relief effort in Pakistan was experimental in its development of the ‘cluster approach’, the transition from relief to reconstruction would also be ‘experimental’. While no detailed guidance existed on how one transforms relief clusters to the post-relief phase, the InterAgency Standing Committee had sent guidance in early December on the modification of relief clusters to early recovery clusters. Clusters such as ‘camp management’ would be phased out, whereas new clusters such as ‘livelihoods’ and ‘housing’ would be phased in.