After the quake, they fear man-made disaster

BALAKOT, Pakistan -- The Oct. 8 earthquake decimated the town of Balakot, buckling streets, cracking bridges, and sending houses crashing to the ground. But not even the awesome forces of nature could manage the fatal stroke that Pakistan government officials are now planning-- to wipe the town off the map entirely.

Foreign seismologists warn that Balakot, where an estimated 2,500 people died, sits on three volatile fault lines making it to too dangerous for human habitation. So on April 4, President Pervez Musharraf approved a radical solution: to move the entire town to a safer location.

Authorities have declared a ''red zone" around the town, frozen all construction work, and chosen a new site at Bakrial, a 600-acre site of rocky, hilly land 15 miles away. Officials hope to move 25,000 people there over the next two years.

''This is the first time in the history of Pakistan that we are relocating a city. I'm sure it won't be smooth sailing," said Shakeel Qadir Khan, the top government officer in Mansehra, a district that includes Balakot.

The move raises complex logistical and legal issues in this picturesque town at the mouth of the steep-walled Kaghan Valley. But the most immediate challenge is human.

Six months after the quake, which measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, residents are still struggling to get back on their feet, some with raw emotional scars. It is too early for another wrenching upheaval, some say.

''We could die here, we could die there -- wherever you go there is death," said Amjad Awan, a 40-year-old English and Urdu teacher, shaking his head in despair. He spoke near a mass grave at the main secondary school, where 125 teenage boys are buried beside the basketball court. ''I lost nine relatives here -- how can I leave their graves behind? We believe in just one thing -- that only God has control over all this."

Shifting Balakot is just one element of the $6.5 billion reconstruction effort that has just started across the quake following six months of intensive relief efforts. As elsewhere in a region where 2.5 million people are homeless, there is little evidence of serious rebuilding thus far.

Most residents still live in tents and rough shelters among the piles of rubble. The police station is in a tent; the court is short-staffed because one of three judges was killed when his house collapsed. Some schools have reopened, but at reduced capacity and in temporary buildings. Private groups ranging from mobile phone companies to Islamic charities -- some with jihadi links -- are running makeshift hospitals.

The new site at Bakrial has several advantages, said Khan, the district official. Its hilly land facilitates gravity-based water and sewage systems, it is close to the main Karakoram Highway, and 80 percent of the land is already owned by the government. Thousands of new homes will be built over a three-year transition period. Traders will also be assisted with new premises. ''It will be a shop for a shop, a petrol station for a petrol station," he said.

Fears of residents being forced to move were misplaced, said Khan. ''This is entirely voluntary," he said. But the relocation of key government services such as schools, police, and local administation, and the enforcement of a strict construction code, would give many residents little choice but to leave, he said.

Townspeople on Balakot's rutted main street admitted to knowing little about the proposed move. Those with frayed nerves from frequent aftershocks welcomed the idea of a new life elsewhere. ''There are tremors every second day. My children are frightened, I can see it in their eyes," said Aurungzeb, a 55-year-old refugee with one name.

On a nearby hillside Gulshan Bibi, a 40-year-old mother of four, sat outside on a tattered sofa she had salvaged from the rubble of her house. ''If they send us, we will go. What else do we have left here?" she shrugged.

But businessmen and landlords are digging in their heels.

''We have invested millions of rupees here. We can't just leave it behind," said Abdul Rauf, secretary general of the Balakot Traders Association. If the government offered generous compensation ''we can talk about it," he added.

Others have a more sentimental attachment to the town.

Balakot was the scene of a major battle between Muslim and Sikh armies in 1831, and there is still a shrine to the martyr Sayed Ahmed Shaheed. Before the October earthquake, it was a gateway for tourists wending their way to the Kaghan Valley. Less famously, it was a clandestine training hub for jihadi militants fighting Indian forces in nearby Kashmir. On April 12, a family gathered around the grave of Sayeed Aftab Shah, a 25-year-old fighter with the banned Harkat ul-Mujahideen group.

''He went for jihad several times, in Afghanistan, Kargil, and Kashmir," said his brother Sayeed Mehtab, 20, after offering prayers. ''He died when a madrassa collapsed on top of him," referring to a religious school.

Balakot's equivalent of mayor, Junaid Qasim, said many residents wanted the government to build a new earthquake-proof town on the present site. But that would be too expensive, countered the district officer Khan.

Time was running out, he added: ''There might not be another earthquake for another 100 years. Or it could be in the next hour."