Government statements form neither of the stories. According to OCHA figures around 200,000 people living in the Neelum, Jhelum, Allai Valley and Kaghan Valley are vulnerable. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees who said in Balakot that he hadn’t "seen a disaster of these proportions" maintained that their primary task was to ensure that "the people get through winter without tragedy." He asked the international community to keep intact the recovery the momentum and told them it was "payback time" for a country that hosted 3.2 million Afghan refugees.

The Nato Air commander in Pakistan also warned that in Bagh alone 35,000 people were still unprepared for the harsh winter. On Thursday the Nato Air Commander Andrew Walton, who is heading Nato’s relief effort in Pakistan, underlined that providing food and medicine was "a race in all senses of the word" before winter snow sets in and cuts off communication links. Reports from the Balakot area also suggest that over 100,000 people still remain inaccessible to relief workers.

They have no way of protecting themselves against the freezing winter. Their "hope is dying." The Nato Commander, who is in Pakistan with about a 1000-strong contingent of engineers, doctors and paramedics for relief, termed the response of Pakistani authorities and the Inter-agency coordination "exemplary". UN agencies have praised the government’s efforts. The Nato forces have been more complimentary. Their task is to provide urgently makeshift relief camps for people in Valleys at high altitudes — at 5,000 feet. This is the population that the army has not been able to cover adequately.

Steve Coll in The New Yorker this week writes about the use the mule contingent but the New York medics group working in high altitude areas talks of how there is minimal relief work conducted in the high terrain. Clearly, in the earthquake zones, the urgency of the task multiplies as the race between what reaches the despairing people first — deadly cold or the shelter and food-is already underway. Significantly, practical engagement in relief work by the government, western armies, civilians and the various Pakistani relief organisations provides these otherwise, mutually contentious groups, an opportunity to find common ground. Today, yesterday’s partners of the anti-Soviet jihad stand violently opposed to each other.

However, this violent opposition stands somewhat diluted in the earthquake hit zones. Paths of many from among these various contending groups have crossed as they carry on the relief work. In the November 21 issue of the New Yorker the American writer Steve Coll documents this in his article. Coll noticed that within a mile radius the Jamaatud Dawa, the US army relief contingent, the Al-Rashid Trust and other NGOs are sharing a work zone. There is a kind of normalcy about the interaction between yesterday’s antagonists in these highly trying times. Grief is often a humanising emotion. It is more so when the destruction is so complete and the suffering so over- whelming. Grief sharing among antagonistic groups in the earth-quake hit nightmarish zones of Azad Kashmir and NWFP has been an intensely personal and emotive experience. The humane task of helping the despairing survivors, has for now united these people of different colour, culture and religion. The tutored and even internalised mutual antagonism is now in suspension.

Musharraf resisted being drawn into the Western and Indian media debate on the involvement of "extremist organisations" in the relief work. In one of the earlier BBC interviews he simply said "no one would be kept away from helping the earthquake victims" but at the same time he said activities of the politic-religious organisations would be closely monitored. Reflecting Musharraf’s views on the ground the army says, "we’re helping everyone not stopping any one."

On the ground, the army is providing support to all the private groups ranging from doctors’ associations to NRSP, SRSC, local relief organisations including the politic-religious groups. This is an opportunity to draw these religious organisations into the mainstream. When the Dawa spokesman was asked by an American journalist if he was bothered by the American government’s branding his and the predecessor organisation as a terrorist organisation he responded in the negative.

There is also coordination going on. Many European workers in the Neelum areas are using the ferry service run by the Dawa group for crossing the river. Infact working in close geographical proximity to the religio-political organisations last week the commando of Nato forces in Pakistan said that Nato faced no danger from Islamic organisations in the affected areas. Clearly the motives that have brought relief and rescue teams from thirty different countries may vary but collectively they all have built an admirable chain of humanity.

And it overrides all other strategic, military, ideological underpinnings to this relief work. And in this it provides a unique opportunity for creating a shared calm space between the two most violently divided people — the westerners and politico-religious groups — of the late twentieth and the twenty-first century. Nothing but a practical experience of another kind will alter the perceptions, change the thinking and influence attitudes. The interaction needs reframing. Not in words alone. But in action too for now ‘walking the talk’ is required.

That alone will change the hearts and minds of an angry, violated and now even violent groups. Interestingly the very country where, a ‘deadly cross-cultural, cross-continental and cross-religious pairing took place to launch an international anti-Soviet jihad, a pairing of another kind is underway. It is one that has forced many to lay aside guns and dynamite and pick up medical tools and construction kits. Yet for how long this can last depends, among other factors, on both policy changes in Washington and a heart change among many of these groups.

Nasim Zehra is a fellow of Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass. She can be reached at nasimzehra@hotmail.com