The Flood Relief Blog

ISLAMABAD: The number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan could exceed the combined total in three recent megadisasters – the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake – the United Nations said Monday.

The death toll in each of those three disasters was much higher than the 1,500 people killed so far in the floods that first hit Pakistan two weeks ago. But the Pakistani government estimates that over 13 million people have been affected - two million more than the other disasters combined.

The comparison helps frame the scale of the crisis, which has overwhelmed the Pakistani government and has generated widespread anger from flood victims who have complained that aid is not reaching them quickly enough or at all.

”It looks like the number of people affected in this crisis is higher than the Haiti earthquake, the tsunami or the Pakistan earthquake, and if the toll is as high as the one given by the government, it’s higher than the three of them combined,” Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Associated Press.

The UN has provided a lower number of people who have been affected in Pakistan, about 6 million, but Giuliano said his organization does not dispute the government’s figure. The UN number does not include the southern province of Sindh, which has been hit by floods in recent days, and the two sides have slightly different definitions of what it means to be affected.

The total number of people affected in the three other large disasters that have hit in recent years is about 11 million – 5 million in the tsunami and 3 million in each of the earthquakes – said Giuliano.

Many of the people affected by the floods, which were caused by extremely heavy monsoon rains, were located in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Rescue workers have been unable to reach up to 600,000 people marooned in the province’s Swat Valley, where many residents were still trying to recover from an intense battle between the army and the Taliban last spring, said Giuliano. Bad weather has prevented helicopters from flying to the area, which is inaccessible by ground, he said.

”All these people are in very serious need of assistance, and we are highly concerned about their situation,” said Giuliano.

Hundreds of thousands of people have also had to flee rising floodwaters in recent days in the central and southern provinces of Punjab and Sindh as heavy rains have continued to pound parts of the country.

One affected resident, Manzoor Ahmed, said Monday that although he managed to escape floods that submerged villages and destroyed homes in Sindh, the total lack of government help meant dying may have been a better alternative.

”It would have been better if we had died in the floods as our current miserable life is much more painful,” said Ahmed, who fled with his family from the town of Shikarpur and spent the night shivering in the rain that has continued to lash the country.

”It is very painful to see our people living without food and shelter,” he said.

Thousands of people in the neighboring districts of Shikarpur and Sukkur camped out on roads, bridges and railway tracks – any dry ground they could find – often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and perhaps a plastic sheet to keep off the rain.

”I have no utensils. I have no food for my children. I have no money,” said Hora Mai, 40, sitting on a rain-soaked road in Sukkur along with hundreds of other people. ”We were able to escape the floodwaters, but hunger may kill us.”

A senior government official in Sukkur, Inamullah Dhareejo, said authorities were working to set up relief camps in the district and deliver food to flood victims.

But an Associated Press reporter who traveled widely through the worst-hit areas in Sindh over the past three days saw no sign of relief camps or government assistance.

The worst floods in Pakistan’s history hit the country at a time when the government is already struggling with a faltering economy and a brutal war against Taliban militants that has killed thousands of people.

The US and other international partners have stepped in to support the government by donating tens of millions of dollars and providing relief supplies and assistance.

But the UN special envoy for the disaster, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said Sunday that Pakistan will need billions of dollars more from international donors to recover from the floods, a daunting prospect at a time when the financial crisis has shrunk aid budgets in many countries

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These politicians have no idea how to solve the problems of the

country. Moreover, these secular democrats have no popular

domestic support and are dependent upon the patronage of their

Western masters

By MUHAMMAD ASIM

The current monsoon rains have brought devastation on a massive scale to Pakistan. In this time of crisis the President, Asif Ali Zardari, is nowhere to be found in the country. He is in Europe, bestriding the great capitals of Paris and London supposedly dealing with Pakistan’s foreign affairs. To say that this visit given the natural disaster striking Pakistan right now and with the comments made by the British Prime Minister David Cameron in India recently is contentious is an understatement.

The whole world it would seem is condemning this trip, seeing it as a sign of utter callousness. In the UK, a group of politicians of Pakistani origin have refused to meet with Zardari, saying he should be in Pakistan at a calamitous time as this. Every media outlet is blasting Zardari for leaving the country at such a perilous time. The Sunday Times has condemned Zardari for wearing designer suits, jeans and wandering around Knightsbridge with his daughter as if he is on a shopping trip while the country is facing a huge catastrophe, saying it is clearly a regime that doesn’t know how to look after the people. He has become a laughing stock as people note how he is more concerned about anointing his son at a Birmingham rally and launching his career in politics than looking after the country, where according to UN estimates at least 1,600 people have died and 14 million people have been affected by the devastating monsoon floods, at the enormous expense of the Pakistani government.

If this were not bad enough, Zardari is flying in to a politically humiliating situation after David Cameron’s insulting remarks about Pakistan’s commitment to the ‘War on Terror’. Cameron, by saying Pakistan was “looking both ways” and “exporting terror to the world” whilst standing in front of an audience in New Delhi, could not have been more insulting to the Pakistani people unless he were to use profanities or insult Islam itself. The glee on the faces of the Indian audience was all too apparent as he made those remarks to rapturous applause; with India clearly realising it was the victor in this diplomatic battle. Yet what was the response of the Pakistani government to this? A weak and humiliated response from a humiliated regime.

Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the UK High Commissioner, has spoken of ‘hurt feelings’ and said maybe it is Cameron’s ‘inexperience’ which led him to issue such remarks. Zardari whilst in Paris said, “The war against terrorism must unite us and not oppose us. I will explain face to face that it is my country that is paying the highest price in human life for this war.” David Cameron meanwhile has not backed down from these statements, saying that he wanted to do some ‘plain talking’ and ‘say it as it is’. Why do our politicians not have the backbone to do ‘plain talking’?

Pakistan indeed is looking both ways on the ‘War on Terror’ whilst the UK is looking one way, that is something all the Pakistani people can agree with. However, it is not in the way the British PM may think. It is in fact Britain along with America and her allies that are exporting terrorism globally with the colonial invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and it is Pakistan where the people, despite the successive regime’s of Musharraf and Zardari selling out and acting against he wishes of the people, are opposed to helping kill and occupy the people and land of Afghanistan. It is the Pakistani people, soldiers and civilians, who have been butchered due to this conflict instigated by the likes of David Cameron and have lost their lives for the sake of Western colonial adventures.

This is the thanks Pakistan gets for effectively going to war against its own people in numerous operations in Bajaur, Waziristan and Swat and for giving permission to American drones to kill thousands of civilians in FATA. None of the democratic parties in Pakistan are highlighting these points. At most, people such as Nawaz Sharif were cynically calling for Zardari to cancel his trip to the UK, knowing that the real purpose of the visit was to launch the political career of Zardari Junior. All this is on top of the rampant inflation, power outages and near economic collapse of the country.

It is abundantly clear that the so called democrats of Pakistan are totally clueless as to how to look after the affairs of the people. Whether it is external military aggression, a diplomatic slur, a natural disaster or providing a working infrastructure for the people none of these politicians have a single clue as to how to help the people. When Musharraf was in power these very same people said the problem was dictatorship, and that democracy was needed to solve the problems of the nation. They were deaf, dumb and blind to any other suggestion. Now they have their democracy, yet what have they done?

Is the disregard of Zardari for the plight of the common man due to a lack of democracy in the country? If this were a dictatorship then one could simply blame Zardari and say the man is rotten. However, Pakistan is a democracy and as such it is not just Zardari who is at fault. Where are the other political parties and ‘democratic’ institutions and ‘rights’ groups holding the government to account? Where are the great ‘checks and balances’ of democracy? Is the impotence of the democratic parties in issuing a robust rebuttal to Cameron’s remarks or their inability to effectively contribute to disaster management of the floods due to the fact that they have not had elections or are not able to sit in Parliament? Where is our judiciary in holding these people to account?

Why are Zardari, Gilani, Sharif or any other so called big shot of Pakistani politics unable to articulate a coherent defence of the country or a response to the floods to help the people? Why has this and previous governments, dictatorial and democratic, not invested in early warning systems and strategic stores of medicines, food, water, tents and other supplies in robust warehouses across the country? Why are they not able to build contingency plans as part of disaster management for an event that is not unlikely given that the sub-continent has been famous for its monsoon rains for centuries?

How can our leaders afford lavish overseas trips with visits to 5* hotels and restaurants in Paris and London but are begging for aid from the whole world to feed the common man? Why are the politicians sitting comfortably in their sumptuous mansions whilst the people have lost their homes, their livestock and their property, have no food or clean water and are now being faced with the spectre of cholera and other disease? What is the point of these secular democrats when all they know how to do is beg everyone in the world, be they charities, banks or governments, for money and even then loot whatever is given?

The answer is simple; these people have no idea as to how to solve the problems of the country. Moreover, these secular democrats have no popular domestic support and are dependent upon the patronage of their Western masters. The democratic system, being secular in origin and thus dependent upon the will of the rulers to shape it however they desire, has institutionalised and legitimised the criminal actions, neglect and policies of these rulers via laws such as the NRO and rules that grant sitting rulers immunity from prosecution. The secularists have failed to lead Pakistan to any semblance of progress. Military dictatorship has failed. Democracy has failed. It is time for an alternative. There is only one alternative, and that is Islamic rule.

Umar bin Khattab (ra), the second Khalifa, when faced with a devastating famine in Arabian Peninsula during his rule, mobilised his state machinery and ordered his governors from as far as Egypt and Syria to send supplies. In addition, he personally took part in the relief effort, cooking food for the hungry people who were flooding in to Medina every night and vowed not to eat anything other than bread and oil until items like butter and meat were available for all people to purchase in the market. As the famine lifted, he provided the people with rations to take with them back home and exempted them from paying Zakat for that year and the next.

Only the Khilafat, based upon Shariah derived from the Quran of Allah (swt) and the ahadith of Muhammad (saw), would hold every man rich or poor, ruler or ruled equal. This is in contrast to secular man made principles which protect the corrupt elite and crush the common man. Only the Khilafat can safeguard the honour and dignity of the people from foreign military or diplomatic attacks, as the Khalifa would be obliged by the Shariah to act and not like the dictators and democrats today who live to serve foreign masters at the expense of their own people. It is only the Khalifa, who would derive his authority from Islam and not Western capitals, who would be determined to rush to the aid of the people in their hour of need as he would fear the accountability of Allah (swt) more than visiting Knightsbridge for shopping, buying houses around the world or stashing away the wealth of the people in secret offshore bank accounts.

The author can be reached at mamuhammadasim@gmail.com

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