A FIFTH of Pakistan, 143,000 square kilometres, remains under filthy brown water and 14 million of its people are directly affected by the floods. At least 1,600 are feared dead. In two weeks, the crisis has built slowly into a catastrophe, to the point where some six million are now in need of emergency humanitarian assistance.
On a map it is like an open wound that a jagged knife has cut north-south through this vast country, lives and livelihoods, land, crops and animals swept south by unprecedented monsoon rains down the swollen 1,600-kilometre Indus river. Low-lying Punjab and Sindh provinces, the teeming economic and agricultural heart of Pakistan, have been crippled; 722,000 homes, damaged, while 700,000 hectares of standing crops, including rice and cotton, are under water or destroyed.
This weekend further flood alerts have been announced in several cities. The prospect of widespread waterborne disease – 36,000 cases of potentially fatal acute diarrhoea have been reported so far – and hunger is growing by the hour. And hundreds of thousands still stranded in cut-off regions must depend on the trickle of helicopter-borne relief.
Yet, in the face of this unfolding tragedy, appeals for international aid unfortunately have yet to be met with anything like an adequate response. And, truth is, the public response is also far less engaged than in other recent disasters.
On Wednesday the UN appealed for €360 million in emergency aid to cover just immediate needs over the next few months. But, disappointingly, governments and the international community have only promised some €117 million to date. In comparison with previous disaster appeals that is strikingly low: 10 days into the crisis, only the equivalent of €8.35 per head has been pledged for the 14 million affected. Yet, after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake left 2.8 million people homeless, €192 million, or €68.60 per head, was committed by the international community in the same timeframe; while 10 days after the Haiti earthquake, €386 had been committed for each person affected. Aid officials have also noted the absence of substantial commitments from the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, which responded generously to past emergencies in Pakistan.
In Ireland, Concern and Trócaire have raised €1 million and €650,000 respectively so far. Both organisations pay tribute to the generosity of the Irish public as they ask them to dig deep again. Yet the reality is that within two weeks of the Haiti disaster in January, Concern alone had raised €5.3 million, and €21 million was raised by NGOs within two months. What makes some disasters worthier of our compassion than others is not clear. Perhaps the slow-motion tragedy unfolding in Pakistan was somehow less shocking than Haiti’s cataclysmic moment. Perhaps it conveyed less immediate urgency to us. But the truth is, as our correspondent Mary Fitzgerald graphically reports today from that drowning country, the people of Pakistan need our help every bit as much.