India and Pakistan are reported to have locked horns, true to form, over the terms under which the Indian aircraft offered for rescue and relief operations should operate in the quake hit areas. India wants its crews to fly them and Pakistan has, while accepting its neighbour's offer of the aircraft, raised objections to the Indian crews flying them. It wants the Pakistani pilots to do the job. This dispute is likely to go on until another quake rocks Kashmir.

With the Indian offer of helicopters, according to BBC, the size of the chopper fleet engaged in relief and evacuation operations could be doubled, though it will still be insufficient. About 20 per cent of the quake-stricken areas have not yet been reached even after ten days in spite of relentless efforts by the Pakistani pilots, who are risking their life and limb to help the victims. They have come to be appropriately dubbed 'helicopter heroes' because of their daring flights in the face of harsh weather conditions. And the victims are said to be calling helicopters 'angels.'

The two nuclear rivals, of course, have their security concerns in respect of reconnaissance etc. and mutual suspicions, which have been the bane of their relations. But given the magnitude of the disaster, which is considered the worst ever quake to have hit the region – 54,000 dead and over one hundred thousand injured and two million homeless – it is unfortunate that the two countries cannot reach a consensus for the sake of the victims and get the flying machines going. Thousands of people who need emergency surgical care have been left to their fate due to lack of helicopters and according to news agencies most of them have wounds pouring pus and their limbs are becoming gangrenous. No water, no food, no shelter and they are living in hell on earth.

What is urgently called for is a concerted effort by the world to race against time, which is fast running out with the killer Kashmir winter waiting in the wings like a vulture drawn to human misery. A Senior UN official has said the emergency is 'so vast'`85 that it is outside the scope of any government to handle.' All the warm tents in the world put together won't be sufficient to house the displaced, he has warned. Should there be another disaster elsewhere, he says, there won't be any tents left. Ironically, Pakistan is one of the biggest suppliers of tents to the world.

Trapped in treacherous mountainous terrains on empty stomachs with infected wounds, the victims are dying by their hundreds each day, while Pakistan and India are quarrelling over the question of pilots.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, when attempts were being made to paper over the geopolitical fault lines, some expressed optimism that the quake would help the two countries to bury the hatchet. They simply didn't know India and Pakistan and their enmity. Today, they stand disillusioned. No amount of natural disasters is going to help resolve man made crises, be it in Kashmir or in any other part on this planet. The tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka, as we pointed out the other day, is a case in point. It couldn't bring at least the two main southern political parties together, let alone the government and the LTTE. So, how can an earthquake reconcile two countries?