Pakistan: Crisis Worsens As Anger Grows Over Flood Relief

These days when it rains in South Asia, it doesn't just pour — it floods. A month of monsoon squalls has deluged hundreds of towns and villages in northwest India and Pakistan. The latter has seen the most acute flooding, and, on all evidence, has been the least prepared for it.

At least 233 people have already died and 300,000 are now stranded or in makeshift camps — a figure that will surely grow. Officials in Pakistan claim some 5.5 million people so far have been affected by rising waters. That's still only a fraction of the 20 million hit by last year's catastrophic rains, but the forecast looks ominous.

Neva Khan, Oxfam's Pakistan country director, spelled out the dimensions of the crisis on the relief agency's website:

‘There is an urgent need to provide immediate and life saving relief to the millions affected. It hasn't stopped raining in Sindh for the last 10 days. Large swathes of land are underwater and people are desperately awaiting relief. They have lost their crops, homes and livestock for the second time – and been pushed from last year's disaster to this one.’

While the government has been criticised for its slow response to the crisis, the military said it rescued thousands of people in Sindh province on Wednesday.
"In the Badin district, we have rescued more than 3,000 people from the Shadi Laj area, and more than 10,000 people from the Pingrio region," Major Waheed Bukhari, from the army rescue operation in Badin, said.

Soldiers used inflatable boats to rescue residents stranded in remote villages.
According to a military statement, apart from the rescue and relief operations in Badin and Mirpur Kas regions, 60 tonnes of rations were dropped by helicopters in 30 trapped villages in Sanghar district on Wednesday.

Entire villages have been destroyed, with only the roofs of houses or the tops of trees visible in several areas.

"We have lost everything," a woman in Jamal Shah in rural Sindh province told Al Jazeera. "Our houses, our valuables. All our fields are under water and the government hasn't given us anything. No one has come here to help us".

"I am taking my people to Thar. Our houses and crops have been totally destroyed," said Laro, a 45-year-old farmer. "I am taking my children to Thar because that is a raised area and my family will be safer there."




The Ahmadiyya Post, Pakistan. By Zubair Ahmed. Sept 15, 2011