Flotilla delivers aid to feuding tribes of Himalayan foothills

It took an epic disaster - the 7.6 magnitude earthquake which inflicted an arc of destruction across the Himalayan foothills - before five feuding clans would permit outsiders to enter their ancestral land and distribute tents, blankets, and food. Nearly half of the area's population suffered damage from the 8 October quake, and 35 people are known to have died. Bodies are still being retrieved.

"The Indus boiled and bubbled like water in a teapot, and a big slice of the bank fell away," recalled Mohammed Said, a turbanned septuagenarian. "My grandson was killed when the roof collapsed on his head, and more little ones are getting ill. Our homes are so dangerous, we sleep outside."

Winter is setting in and they are living precariously. Sleet pelts down on them. Boulders teeter on outcroppings overhead, and narrow patches of grass are riddled with sharp stones.

Elders from 97 villages, armed with Kalashnikovs and ancient Enfield rifles, assembled along the steep banks of the Indus to meet the UN health officer, Dr Tamur Mueenuddin, and his 11 boats powered by tractor engines. Out of fear, the government of Pakistan has ignored some 100,000 quake victims, dreading more bloodshed if they tried to enter their territory.

Kala Dhaka, a tribal area adjacent to the North-west Frontier Province, has long been a no-go zone for the army, and the villages used to be a prime recruiting ground for the Taliban. Even if the military were invited in, there is nowhere flat enough for a helipad.

Armed resistance is the usual reception, and Islamabad has categorised this area as "backward and underdeveloped". Tribal enmities were so fierce, engineers designing the Karakoram Highway, the road linking China and Pakistan, took an expensive bypass to avoid it.

The lower valley was dammed 30 years ago, and compensation was never granted for the loss of their fields. More impoverishment resulted.

Dr Mueenuddin's scheme had blended aspects of Dunkirk and Joseph Conrad to get aid upriver. Before he set out from Darband, a river town near Tarbela dam, he said, with trepidation: "It's like the Heart of Darkness." Frontier guards whipped the crowd back with sticks while the boats were loaded and a burka-clad figure tugged at the sleeves of women aid workers and pleaded for an early handout for her two daughters.

The aid armada brought UN tents for 1,000 families, woollen clothes and blankets for 4,000 children; the World Food Programme sent cooking oil, plus 10 tons of flour and split peas.

The arrival was greeted by hundreds of tribespeople and survivors who had trekked in hoping for help.

Many of the farflung hamlets lie half a day's hike from the riverbank, and the soggy tracks now get iced over in the mornings.

"They'll have to pick up supplies and trek back straight uphill for another six hours," said Katey Grusovin, a representative for Unicef, the UN Childrens' Fund.

Schools were built recently in larger villages, but local resistance to the education of girls meant that all but 10 of the 60 buildings were unoccupied when the quake struck, which spared many lives.

When the ferries pulled up at dusk to the final stop, 300 people crowded on the cliffs above Kuner craned their necks to see the cargo. Survivors from hard-hit areas had got word of the delivery and had gathered beside the mosque.

And until the switchback road is cleared, the Indus will be the only link to the outside world for these tribes. They may prefer this.

* India has offered $25m (£14m) of aid to Pakistan for relief and the rebuilding of earthquake-hit areas.