THE MONSOON rains, it is feared, have yet to do their worst. Pakistan’s authorities are warning of more to come in the country’s northwest, and regions farther south, downstream in the Indus River valley where most of the country’s 162 million people live, are bracing themselves for floods. The Indus is at its highest level in more than a century, while outside Peshawar a major dam is close to bursting.
To date, according to Unicef, the floods – the country’s worst in 80 years – have affected more than three million people and claimed in excess of 1,400 lives in Pakistan’s northwestern province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Some 1.8 million are in dire need of water, food and shelter; more than 29,500 houses have been damaged and one million children need emergency assistance. As international agencies warn of the dangers of disease, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health minister Syed Zahir Ali Shah has reported that already 100,000 people, mostly children, are suffering from illnesses such as gastroenteritis.
The relief operation is under way but, by many accounts, it is slow and unable to meet needs. Army helicopters have dropped parcels of food and supplies and soldiers have helped some 28,000 of the stranded to safety. But many remain beyond reach and Pakistani television channels have shown survivors protesting at perceived inadequacies of the government operation. The refusal of much-criticised President Asif Ali Zardari to cancel his current state visits to France and Britain has also provoked widespread anger.
The relief effort inevitably is a deeply political issue in these troubled provinces, still reeling from the major government offensive last year in the Swat valley against Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked militants. Criticism of government lack of urgency will be grist to the mill of militant sympathisers and Islamist charities associated with them which have stepped fast into the breach. The latter had worked effectively bringing aid to many of the two million refugees displaced by last year’s fighting, and they played a key role in the relief effort following a 2005 earthquake in Kashmir that killed 75,000 people. Among those distributing flood aid is Jama’at-ud-Da’wah (JuD), a supposedly banned organisation that is said to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008.
For the past year government and military have been working to restore public services, trying to rebuild trust, but the reconstruction efforts have been painfully slow and the public mood has shifted from frustration to anger. Zardari’s administration has been on the defensive also because of a series of crises over the last few weeks, from the country’s worst domestic plane crash, to leaked reports on Islamabad’s alleged support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, to diplomatic rows with Britain. On Monday, the assassination in Karachi of a regional MP from a politically allied party prompted 45 killings in the city overnight. For the government, demonstrating competence and energy in co-ordinating flood relief efforts is no longer just a humanitarian imperative, but a political one. Its own survival is at stake.