mordant wit

Crunching the numbers on human despair is an undignified exercise. But here it is.

The death toll from the Oct. 8 earthquake stands at just over 73,000, concentrated in two of Pakistan's northern provinces. A month into the disaster, donor nations had pledged slightly more than a fourth of the $550 million that the United Nations says it needs to deliver emergency relief.

By contrast, the Indian Ocean tsunami less than a year ago left a trail of 200,000 dead. A month into that disaster, the world had pledged 99 percent of the United Nations' emergency appeal.

Private donations by Americans totaled $13.1 million for earthquake victims, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. In comparison, Americans doled out $1.3 billion for the tsunami victims and roughly $2 billion for their own after Hurricane Katrina.

The response to the South Asian earthquake has raised a troubling question: In the face of such calamity, why is the world not doing more?

George Rupp, president of the International Rescue Committee, rejects the easiest theory, donor fatigue. 'I think Westerners identified with the first photos that came in,' he said, referring to images from the tsunami. 'I don't think it is donor fatigue. I think it is donor identification.'

As evidence, he pointed to far graver relief crises - the war in Congo, for instance, which has killed 3.8 million people since 1998 - that were underfinanced long before the recent disasters.

The South Asian earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6, struck a patch of earth as stunning as it is bloodstained, and it shook the mountains that divide the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir. With a series of aftershocks and hundreds of landslides, it cracked mountains, washed away roads, broke bridges and marooned villagers who live close to the clouds.

The earthquake left three million people homeless, three times the numbers displaced by the tsunami. The estimate of injured, as doctors painstakingly reach them, stands around 128,000.

Delivering aid there is particularly expensive. In parts of the earthquake zone, food, blankets and doctors must be ferried by helicopters. The four Bell/Agusta AB139's donated by the Aga Khan Foundation cost $2,000 an hour to operate. As of last week, they had flown 438 hours, evacuated 1,036 wounded and conveyed 436.2 metric tons of supplies.