A month after quake, misery still ahead
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-09 00:47

The news isn't all bleak.

Jan Vandemoortele, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan, said Tuesday that despite enormous challenges, there is a growing sense that the relief effort will ultimately succeed.

"The job is colossal, but there is a feeling that this is a doable job," he said. "It is not mission impossible."

Some 52 nations are involved in the relief effort, including Pakistan's traditional rival India. The two opened the Kashmir frontier to relief supplies Monday, and plan to allow civilian crossings soon amid hope that disaster diplomacy can end a half-century of distrust.

The U.S. sent helicopters from bases in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and an Army field hospital to treat the injured. NATO pledged a thousand troops.

Ordinary Pakistanis flocked to help their countrymen, pulling victims out of the rubble in the early days, and walking for miles to hand out clothes and food to survivors.

But with a light snow already sprinkling some Himalayan villages, many fear what the winter will bring.

"It would be a fool to say that anyone in this sort of situation is confident," Martin Dawes, a spokesman for UNICEF, said Monday. "This is an aid operation that is still trying to catch up."