Archive for the ‘plane crash’ tag
Pakistan is Drowning
AP: Vilagers near Nowshera, in northwest Pakistan
As if this week wasn’t bad enough for Pakistan.
In the last three days, floods caused by monsoon rains have reportedly killed at least 430 people in the country, the worst to have hit the region since 1929. According to the Associated Press, “The rising toll from the monsoon rains underscore the poor infrastructure in impoverished Pakistan, where under-equipped rescue workers were struggling to reach people stranded in far-flung villages.” More than a million people have been affected by the disaster, and many have been displaced from their homes as the floods submerge villages and bridges, bloat rivers, and trigger landslides throughout the northwest of the country. A state of emergency has reportedly been declared in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and authorities have told people to evacuate the banks of theKabul and Swat rivers. Residents in Muzafarabad also told the BBC there was no electricity or drinking water in parts of the city.
As the Pakistani Army transfers people to safety by helicopters and boats, the United Nations announced they will be launching rescue efforts in 29 affected districts in K-P (The UN agency has already launched similar efforts inBalochistan).
But after the rains subside, what will be the long-term impact of these floods? And, given Pakistan’s recent spate of militant attacks, political instability, natural disasters and plane crashes, how much more can our country take? Fahad Desmukh echoed my sentiments exactly when he tweeted, “God is giving the terrorists tough competition.”
(Ahsan at Five Rupees also has a great post on the issue of class in the coverage of national tragedies, looking at both the Airblue plane crash and the floods, see here).
Azaab-e-Ilaahi
Recent events have made me stop in my tracks and think again and prioritize again what is most important in my life! Whatever that is you see around you, you feel as if the fitna (trial and afflictions) that have been foretold in the Ahadeeth are actually happening around us! Death, suffering, calamities, lies, deceit, zulm,etc. everything as they’ve been explained more than 1430 years ago.
The plane crash, the floods, and then famine, diseases, and then people in other cities killing one another as if there isn’t enough suffering and death all around the country without the gunpowder! Plus LIES! I mean there has to be a limit for how much you can lie shamelessly! I remember writing an article few months back that media should confirm and then say something on any news that’s been brought to them. Why was there a need to say that six people are taken out alive and are injured in the plane crash?! Why is there a pack of lies on tv all the time. Then you see all those tv men going in the places of calamities and plane crashes and they just go there for reporting and not bringing about any relief to the people living there who have suffered so much! I remember tv people reaching earthquake hit areas in helicopters and were not there to provide relief but just for reporting purposes!
Anyway, forget that. Imagine a minister on tv saying that for rehabilitation of all those flood struck people, we should provide them with LOANS! hadd hai! Later they’d ask those poor people to return it with 13% interest rate? And they would sit in their air conditioned rooms and eat away all our tax money and become fat! Where are those stupid NGOs who have been funded by US to work in Pakistan, maybe they are just entertaining blackwater army in here.
Time and again Quran says that “yahood-o-nasara” can never be your friends, but the leaders of this country would go on licking their boots and bowing to them for funds and loans and then eat away all that money and put the pressure of more tax on the poor people of this country!
These natural calamities, these sufferings, these deaths that we experience everyday, they are not a test! The test we have failed! This is the harvest of what we’ve sowed for so many years! It’s time that we stop in our tracks and we prioritize our aims in life! Because we don’t have time now… These are the times that we should stick to the “Rope of Allah” or else we’ll be washed away by the trials and afflictions that have hit us so hard!
