Pakistan: Now or Never?

Down the River: A Journey Through Pakistan’s Devastation

Starting tomorrow, members of the Pakistan bureau — including myself, two cameramen and a photographer — will travel down the Indus River valley to document the scope and scale of Pakistan’s devastating floods, approximately one month after they began.

More than 1,600 people have been killed and at least six million made homeless. But the numbers don’t tell the story in themselves, and that’s part of what we’re going to attempt to do. With a disaster so great in scale, no single area can convey what has happened, or what will happen next.

We’ll be blogging from the road, uploading pictures and video and generally trying to provide you with a fresh look at a story that at times seems too big to put in a news article (or even several, for that matter.)

The floods have changed many things in Pakistan. They have destroyed lives and livelihoods, stripped away infrastructure and shaken up the political establishment. Militants and the military seem equally dazed by the catastrophe. It is not an understatement to say things in Pakistan will never be the same.

So that’s partly what this expedition is intended to find out: not only what happened in the last month, but what might happen in the months ahead for this unruly, fascinating and thoroughly vital country. I hope you’ll join us on our journey through Pakistan’s devastation.

from The Great Debate UK:

Why Pakistan deserves generosity

Muhammad Atiq Ur Rehman Tariq is a Ph.D. student at Delft University of Technology and Dr Nick van de Giesen is Professor of Water Resources Management at Delft University of Technology. The opinions expressed are their own.

According to official reports of the Federal Flood Commission of Pakistan, at least 1,556 people have died and more than 568,000 homes have been badly damaged or totally destroyed as a result of the recent floods in Pakistan. Almost 6.5 million people have been affected by this flooding and 3650 sq km of Pakistan's most fertile crop land have been destroyed.

The flooding hit 11,000 villages and cities. The situation is deteriorating in flooded areas, where waterborne diseases may increase the human death toll if measures are not taken in time.

The devastating flooding occurred at a moment at which Pakistan was still confronting the consequences of a severe drought. As such, the flood came as a complete surprise, especially in the province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa where flash flooding occurred.

The country had suffered severe droughts from 1999 to 2001 and had not faced any major flooding since 1995. Historically, most occurrences of severe flooding had been caused by the Indus River, which were largely checked after the construction of the Terbela dam in 1974.

The present floods are atypical and their severity (the worst in at least 80 years) was not anticipated by the inhabitants of the floodplains.

Pakistan-India; a $5 million downpayment on a peace initiative

Historical parallels can be misleading, so I am a little bit wary of reading too much into a comparison between the devastating cyclone which hit then East Pakistan in 1970 and the current floods in Pakistan. But on the surface the similarities are there.

In 1970, the Pakistani government was criticised for not doing enough to help the victims of the Bhola cyclone, exacerbating tensions between the western and eastern wings of the country ahead of a civil war in which East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh. In 2010, the Pakistani government has been criticised for not doing enough to help the victims of the floods; potentially exacerbating tensions between the ruling elite and the poor — usually the first to suffer in a natural disaster. At the same time the country is fighting what is effectively a civil war against Islamist militants, for whom poverty and alienation provide a fertile breeding ground.

At the very least, you can say that big natural disasters have unpredictable consequences. For that reason I’m reluctant to start speculating about the long term consequences of the floods, although the Indian blog, The Acorn, has made a pretty good stab at it here. And you can also say that the response of India will be crucial.

 In 1971, India backed the Bengali separatists, inflicting a humiliating military defeat on Pakistan, forcing its army to surrender at Dhaka and taking 90,000 Pakistani prisoners-of-war. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that war – and there are many – Pakistan’s narrative memory of India exploiting its weakness in a civil war to split the country in two continues to inform its thinking about its much bigger neighbour to this day. So what happens in 2010?

The question — at least as posed to me from a Pakistani perspective – is this. Will India show its sincerity towards peace by helping Pakistan recover from the biggest natural disaster in its history? Or will India take advantage of Pakistan’s current vulnerability to impose its will on Kashmir? It is a question which is at once haunted by the ghosts of 1971, and infused with an optimism that history does not have to repeat itself.

So far the signs are reasonably promising. Pakistan has accepted an offer of $5 million flood aid from India (think America taking aid from Iran or vice versa to understand the significance of this).  India is also pledging to do more to help rebuild Pakistan. India and Pakistan, said Indian ambassador to the United Nations  Hardeep Singh Puri, shared the same history, topography, land mass and river systems.  The South Asian region was prone to natural disasters and, throughout it, the vagaries of nature continued to take a heavy tool of human lives and material losses. “We share the pain and agony and fully understand the trauma and suffering that our Pakistani brethren are living through,” he said.

At the same time, two of the big issues (Kashmir and water) which India and Pakistan traditionally blame on each other have been shown to be caused - at least partially – by problems within.  In Kashmir, a fresh wave of protests led by Kashmiri youths throwing stones has displaced the standard Indian view of the Kashmir revolt as one fuelled almost entirely by Pakistan-backed gunmen and bombers.  For the first time in years, the talk is of a need for a settlement on Kashmir which acknowledges that Kashmiri separatism has indigenous roots. In Pakistan, its problems with water management have been shown to go far beyond the much talked about threat of India manipulating the rivers which flow from its side of the border.  Both countries have had their assumptions challenged; both therefore have the potential for a change in mindset which might make talks easier.

Guest contribution-Pakistan’s response to the floods

(The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The writer is Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK)

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

The international media has been asking why there has been a lukewarm response to the massive floods in Pakistan. Various explanations have been offered ranging from a ‘trust deficit’ to a ‘negative perception’ about Pakistan. Such commentaries are not only alarmist but portray Pakistan in bad light.

There is a need to put the record straight that there is no lukewarm response to appeals made domestically or internationally. It is natural that in a calamity of monumental proportions damage assessment takes some time before a comprehensive response is made. The Government of Pakistan has taken measures in accordance with the challenges posed by the floods. Simultaneously, the international response has been quick and robust and it is gathering pace. The panic button on a slow response pushed by some international NGOs was understandable as they must have been overwhelmed by the enormity of the crisis.

Let us look at how the flood situation unfolded in Pakistan. The massive rains which inundated Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province had such a ferocious intensity that it took a while for the government and NGOs to realise how big was the challenge. Subsequently, the remaining parts of the country received abnormal rains which swelled the rivers to dangerous levels. The images on TV screens have not only been scary but have shaken everyone to gear up for action.

Naturally, the immediate concern was to save lives. This was effectively done by the government which is why the casualty rate has been minimal (approximately 1,600) if compared to the Asian Tsunami of 2004 when 230,000 people died while in the 2008 Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar 146,000 people lost their lives. UN officials have admitted that the floods in Pakistan have been worse than the Asian Tsunami. Having learnt lessons in the 2005 earthquake, the armed forces and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) immediately moved to save lives for which the government should be given credit.

The international media is rightly pointing out that the magnitude of Pakistan’s current tragedy is almost more than the mind can take in. As for the damages, a fifth of the country (135000 Sq km) is flooded by torrential monsoon rains; 20 million people have been driven from their homes or otherwise affected; six million children need emergency assistance, such as food and clean water; millions of acres of the country’s best cropland are underwater; thousands of livestock have drowned; medical clinics have been destroyed while cholera and other water-borne diseases are threatening the survivors. These are the immediate challenges which the government has to grapple with. The United Nations has launched an appeal for $460 million for immediate relief.

Helping Pakistan; not if, but how

Outside President Asif Ali Zardari’s political rally in Birmingham last weekend, I chatted to a middle-aged woman passing by about the floods in Pakistan. “I have every sympathy for Pakistan and the Pakistanis, but he is not helping them much, is he?” she said. Another woman asked me to explain why it was that the  protesters were not focused on the floods but demonstrating “about all sorts”.  Inside the rally, a young British Pakistani who had recently returned from a visit to his family home in Kashmir complained about negative stereotyping in the media of Pakistan that had reduced a country of some 170 million people to “a terrorist threat”.

If there is a common thread to the relatively slow western response to one of the worst catastrophes in Pakistan’s history, it is a sense of confusion, not about whether to help, but how to help. That, and the dehumanising impact of stereotypes - corrupt politicians, angry bearded protesters, suicide bombers to name but a few – that obscure the impact of the floods on the very real people – 14 million of them - affected by the disaster.

In the short term, the weak civilian government has been slammed for failing to come up with a clear plan to address the immediate needs of those hit by the floods. Nor has it provided the leadership that might rally all institutions and people behind it. The result has been that the Pakistan Army, long the country’s most efficient and effective national institution, has stepped in to fill the void, leading efforts to rescue flood victims.  Meanwhile, as Pakistani politicians squabbled amongst themselves and flew into disaster-hit areas with an eye for photo-ops, and as Zardari travelled abroad to France and Britain, the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa – the humanitarian wing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group - quietly moved in to help, as it did in the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. 

The United States, along with other countries, has been ratcheting up its aid efforts, offering financial assistance totallling $76 million and sending military helicopters for relief and rescue operations. However, I can’t help but feel a bit uneasy when this is presented in terms of vying for influence with Islamist charities like the Jamaat ud-Dawa. This may be partially true, but it is also part of the same dehumanising process, as though the flood victims are no more than “hearts and minds” to be won over, rather than people facing death from hunger and disease.  International and Pakistani NGOs are doing what they can – although for those who want to help, it can be hard for outsiders to work out which charity best deserves donations (inside Pakistan, the Edhi Foundation is widely respected.)

But if understanding how to alleviate the short-term crisis is hard enough, the question of how to help Pakistan in the long term is even more perplexing.  The damage to its fragile economy is likely to be felt not just this year – the World Bank says $1 billion in crops have been lost - but in grain sowings for food supplies in the future.  The impact on society in a country already struggling to find its feet in a battle against Islamist militancy is yet to be fully understood, although popular anger against the government over its response to the floods does not bode well. Add to that  the disorientating impact of climate change – and scientists are still arguing about how much the floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia are due to global warming – and the need to bolster Pakistan’s defences in the future against water crises (both shortage and excess) and you have a reconstruction challenge which would defy even the strongest of governments.

At a crude level, Pakistan needs better water management, better irrigation and a reversal of the deforestation which has been widely blamed for exacerbating the flooding.  Deforestation has a double impact. Firstly there is nothing to slow flood waters and mudslides. Secondly,  it contributes to soil erosion, silting up river waters so that dams and levees downstream are even less able to contain the impact of unusually heavy monsoon rains. Pakistan’s forests have been ravaged by an illegal timber mafia, often working in league with corrupt local politicians. Reversing that process is both an obvious need and - as with so many obvious needs in Pakistan - a political nightmare.

The economy itself might actually tick up slightly. Natural disasters are often followed by a reconstruction boom. But reconstruction which does not take account of the need for sustainable development would leave Pakistan exposed to more natural disasters in the future, particularly if uneven monsoons combine with faster melting of the Himalayan glaciers which feed its rivers. Reconstruction which exacerbates income disparities and feeds corruption will tug even harder at the country’s fragile social fabric.

A Pakistani Abroad: Zardari’s ill-fated trip to England

President Asif Ali Zardari’s trip to Britain was particularly ill-fated. When he first planned a visit which should have culminated in him bringing his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, out into the political arena, no one could have predicted such a bewildering series of crises. A row with Britain over remarks made in India by  British Prime Minister David Cameron that Pakistan must not “look both ways” in its approach to Islamist militants. Pakistan’s worst floods in 80 years.  A  plane crash, and then riots in Karachi.

So it was perhaps par for the course that his final event in Britain, a political rally in the city of Birmingham for British Pakistani supporters of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), should be dogged by controversy.  Zardari faced a firestorm of criticism for going ahead with the visit while his country faced so many problems, and the combination of protesters outside the rally and a shoe-thrower inside appeared to mark the culmination of a disastrously ill-judged overseas tour.

Having been to the Birmingham event, I have to say it was not quite as chaotic and ill-tempered as some media coverage suggested.  The protesters outside were a microcosm of Pakistan’s disunited politics, each separate group of demonstators  operating independently and shouting for their own competing agendas – from the restoration of the Caliphate to independence for Kashmir. They were vastly outnumbered by the PPP supporters who packed Birmingham’s International Convention Centre - many of them staid, respectable middle-aged Pakistani men and women who had emigrated to Britain decades ago, worked hard and kept close family links back home. 

And Zardari certainly was not “pelted with shoes”. The man who said he tried to throw his shoes in protest over Zardari’s response to the floods was standing well back in what was a very large conference hall and had little chance of getting anywhere near the president before he was hustled away by security guards.  Zardari did not interrupt his speech, most of the audience continued to listen to him politely, and it is conceivable that those sitting at the front did not even notice at the time what had  happened.  That in any case is how it looked from where I was sitting – it would be easier to judge the event if the video replay had not been edited out – but my impression was that it was not such a big incident to justify the reaction, or counter-reaction in Pakistan. 

That said, the event did not achieve its purpose. Bilawal Bhutto, son of the late Benazir Bhutto, on Thursday cancelled plans to attend the rally and said he would stay in London instead to collect donations for Pakistan’s flood victims.  That he had been expected was clear from the big photo of him given equal prominence to Zardari’s own photo on a poster at the back of the stage.  The event relied heavily on imagery of the Bhutto dynasty – videos of Benazir and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were played before the event; Zardari made frequent references to them in his speech, and wore a rosette with his late wife’s photo pinned to his chest.  (For an interesting take on dynastic politics, do read this column in the Daily Times by Shahzad Chaudhry, who argues that Zardari is primarily interested in shoring up the family’s control of the PPP.)  For all the appeal to the popularity of the two slain former prime ministers, the mood in the conference hall — at least from where I was sitting – seemed subdued, polite rather than enthusiastic; although again it would have looked different at the front where groups of youths had been organised as cheerleaders.

With the visit over, a few are beginning to ask questions about whether quite so much energy and attention should have been focused on attacking Zardari’s trip to Britain, when so many flood victims were in need of attention at home.

“Our electronic media’s reaction – really obsession – with this trip has itself been embarrassing, as indeed has been the reactions of too many of us,” writes Adil Najam on the blog All Things Pakistan.  “But even more than an embarrassment, Mr Zardari’s trip and our obsessive reactions to it has proved to be an all-too-costly distraction from the far more real disaster at home.” (To be fair, the British media got pretty caught up in the visit as well.)

from Global News Journal:

U.N. plays down “guidance” on Kashmir

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon's spokesman says "guidance" on Kashmir was not an official statement from Ban

(Updated August 6, 2010 at 5:05 p.m. EDT with new remarks from U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.)

The United Nations is playing down a statement on Kashmir a U.N. spokesman sent to a small group of reporters last week. After India made clear that it was very unhappy with the language on Kashmir issued by the U.N. press office, the world body explained that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had  never uttered the offending words -- at least not in an official statement.

This is the full text of what U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky has described as "media guidance" on Kashmir, as provided to Reuters by one of the reporters who received it by email on July 28:

"In relation to recent developments in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Secretary-General is concerned over the prevailing security situation there over the past month. He calls on all concerned to exercise utmost restraint and address problems peacefully.

"The Secretary-General welcomes the recent resumption of Foreign Minister-level talks between India and Pakistan. He encourages both sides to rekindle the spirit of the composite dialogue, which was initiated in 2004 and had made encouraging progress on some important confidence building measures, and to make renewed efforts to address outstanding issues, including on Jammu and Kashmir. He underlines the need for patience, perseverance and compromise on all sides."

Dreams from my father: South Asia’s political dynasties

“Whatever the result, this meeting will be a turning point in Pakistan’s history,” Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told his daughter Benazir as he prepared for a summit meeting with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1972 in the Indian hill resort of Simla after his country’s defeat by India in the 1971 war. “I want you to witness it first hand.”

If there is a slightly surreal quality to President Asif Ali Zardari’s controversial state visit to Britain - where he is expected to launch the political career of Oxford graduate Bilawal Bhutto at a rally for British Pakistanis in Birmingham on Saturday - it is perhaps no more surreal than taking your daughter, herself then a student at Harvard, to witness negotiations with India after a crushing military defeat.

Family dynasties are a tradition in South Asia. Indira Gandhi, the victor of the 1971 war which led to the creation of Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, had learned about international relations from her father, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Now her grandson, Rahul Gandhi, is being groomed as a future prime minister while his mother Sonia Gandhi keeps a tight grip from behind-the-scenes on the Congress Party government led by her appointed prime minister Manmohan Singh.

In both countries, the argument has been that the family name is strong enough to win votes, particularly among the millions of rural poor, strong enough to offer a promise of stability, and strong enough to be worth fighting to preserve across generations even in the face of domestic criticism.

Zardari has run into a great deal of criticism for pressing ahead with his visit to Britain while Pakistan struggled to cope with its worst floods in 80 years. He also faced calls to cancel the trip after British Prime Minister David Cameron said during a visit to India that “we cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country (Pakistan) is allowed to look both ways and is able in any way to promote the export of terror”. 

With a war going badly in neighbouring Afghanistan, a spate of allegations against the role played there by its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, and a wave of bombings at home which Islamabad/Rawalpindi see as blowback from the Afghan war, Pakistan is having to navigate through very choppy diplomatic waters.  On top of that, it has had the floods, a plane crash, and then riots in Karachi.

Assuming Zardari goes ahead with Saturday’s rally, he will be bringing the 21-year-old Bilawal – who is co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) but has not yet taken an active part in politics – out into the political arena at a time when his country faces its biggest challenge since its defeat in 1971.  But then again, as Benazir’s own recollections of the Simla summit testify, there is a history to that.  And so far, in the decades since Pakistan and India won independence from Britain in 1947, it has been the family dynasties which have endured.

from India Insight:

U.N. concerned over Kashmir unrest

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has expressed concern over the weeks of violent anti-government protests in Kashmir which have killed more than 30 people, dragged in more troops and locked down the disputed Himalayan region.

A separatist strike and security lockdown has dragged on for nearly a month-and-a-half in Muslim-majority Kashmir, a region at the core of a dispute between India and Pakistan.

"In relation to recent developments in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Secretary-General is concerned over the prevailing security situation there over the past month," Farhan Haq, Ban Ki-Moon's spokesperson said in a statement.

The Secretary-General has called on all concerned to exercise utmost restraint and address problems peacefully.

But security forces, to quell the daily street protests, have launched a major crackdown across Kashmir and detained at least 1,400 people. The arrests are fuelling more anger.

Most separatist leaders have been arrested or placed under house arrest.

The government has ordered a judicial probe into the deaths of 17 people, mostly protesters, in an attempt to end the crisis amid the biggest demonstrations against Indian rule in two years across the Valley.