I am writing this in response to a rec’d diary posted earlier today saying there is little coverage of the Pakistani floods in the US media. I would have written this sooner, but since I live in Pakistan, I only watch local news and BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN International, so I thought the floods were getting good coverage. It pains me to hear that they are not. Not surprising, of course, but hard to hear nevertheless. Pakistan is a wonderful country in many ways, with friendly people and a vibrant culture, but it is also a land of barely subsistent farmers and many heartbreaking tragedies, the worst of them, as it is for all of us, self-inflicted.
I’ve been in Pakistan since the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, (KEQ) which at the time was the greatest natural disaster of my lifetime. The SE Asian tsunami was a disaster for the dead, but the Kashmir quake was a disaster for the living, with over 3 million homeless in the foothills of the Himalayas in October. It could have been much, much worse. Usually in a situation like that, you can expect to have a second wave of deaths at least as large as the first. That it didn’t happen is due to the hard work and visionary leadership of a small group of UN, NGO and most importantly, Pakistani people, particularly in the army, who pulled together and saved thousands of lives. The KEQ was overtaken by the Haiti EQ in January, but this one could outstrip them all.
The good thing about this disaster, if there can be said to be a good thing in which nearly 1/3 of a million homes are destroyed and millions are homeless, is that many of the people who made a success of the earthquake response are still on the job here, including, most importantly, retired Gen. Nadeem Ahmed, a truly heroic figure, who is running the response. Nadeem is the most popular person in Pakistan due to his high profile during the KEQ and in subsequent natural disasters, including the Baluchistan floods of 2007, the Baluchistan EQ of...sorry, I just had to get up to see the rain. There was a loud thunderclap here in Islamabad, and it has started raining. Hard. Again. This tragedy is not over yet, not by a long way. Anyway, Nadeem says this is worse than the KEQ and with 14 million people affected, it is already bigger than the Tsunami. If true, and I have no reason to dispute him, it is going to take years and billions of dollars to fix. And if Nadeem is successful this time, and like I say, I have no reason to doubt him, he very well may be the next President of Pakistan. They could do worse.
So the floods came up as a real surprise. Pakistan is used to disasters, and contrary to what seems to be on TV, they are actually pretty well prepared for them, but this truly was something “no one predicted”. Not quite right. This was a 100 year flood. It was bound to happen. It’s just too expensive to maintain preparations for that kind of event in such a poor country. So the flood not only took out lots of villages, it took out tons and tons of relief supplies as well. There were World Food Program warehouses, Red Cross/Red Crescent warehouses, Government warehouses, all with pre-positioned stocks of food, tents, plastic sheeting and other non-food items (NFIs, to use the term of art) including tools, jerry cans, hygiene kits, kitchen sets, etc. etc. But keeping this stuff in storage is expensive, even in Pakistan, so they are usually sited on the cheapest land, and a lot of the warehouses were flooded. This delayed the response by days or a week or more, since the first week of supplies in the pipeline were rendered worthless. So we’re having to source them from outside the country, which takes money and time.
So people have had to get by on their own, making their way to high ground and camping out. Hence the pictures of desperation you see here: http://www.cbc.ca/...
A note about the media: I’ve seen several reports on TV with news guys at a location full of stranded folks. This is true, this happens in disasters, (even in the US,) but as I am sure you can understand, it is one thing to get a guy with a notebook and a cameraman to the site of a disaster, it is quite another to get multiple truckloads of tents, NFIs, food, etc. to a location. Where do they come from? What route do you take? Who do you pass by? Who do you help? And where are people going to set these tents up? Where will they poop? How will lthey eat? Where will they get water? And on and on and on. And here we come to the real sticking point: coordination.
You all know the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. Well, in this business, the gold is held by the donors, in particular the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the European Commission Humanitarian Organization (ECHO), (the two 900 pound gorillas in the business) the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), (a 200 pound gorilla, the Brits, in this as in so many other things, punch well above their weight, especially in their former colonies) and various other country aid missions with an entire alphabet soup of acronyms (SIDA, CIDA, JICA, AKF, AusAID, etc. etc.).
Years ago, these donors got sick of getting raked over the coals by the media in their countries for “waste” in assistance. So they now seek accountability and planning in their operations. Like so many other businesses, this led to consolidation of activities. Without going into too much detail, they want a plan and they want numbers and they want to know who is going to do what, where before they start to cut checks.
So next time you see Anderson Cooper whining that aid is not reaching people fast enough, note that he doesn’t say, “We in the media will let a little waste go without screaming that “THEY’RE WASTIN’ YUR MUNNEEE” when we find that a box of food has ended up in a market some place if they will just get the food out to the people who need it. We can’t win with these people. Either we’re featured in the first segment about how we’re not getting aid to the people, or we’re featured in the second “Keeping them honest” segment about how we’re wasting money because we didn’t take the time to plan and coordinate.
So, the donors cut checks to a veritable alphabet soup of acronymically designated agencies charged with implementing the assistance (ARC, IRC, IRD, WVI, DRC, NRC, and on and on). This is where the UN comes in. As a result of the demand for more accountability and better coordination, the UN specialized agencies (more acronyms! UNHCR, WFP, WHO and UNICEF are the biggies) are charged with leading what are called “clusters”, which gather and disseminate information. There are now about 8 websites devoted to this information gathering and dissemination task, with people working full time in the field and in offices creating this information so agencies can plan their response and know where to work. It has taken time, but it as I said, the donors demand it, and if a few people suffer while they wait, at least tax money isn’t wasted too badly.
So, in as short a space as I can, that is the response. Now the effects. This thing is HUGE. Until you’ve seen a really big flood, it is hard to grasp what it means. Everything is gone or ruined but mud, dirt, silt and sand. Water wells are inundated, gas station storage tanks are full of greasy water, crops are destroyed and land is waterlogged, vehicles of every description are immobilized, animals die, houses, often build of mud bricks in this very poor country, literally dissolve. Roads wash away, as do bridges and the bases of electric pylons; government offices, and the unique paper records the contain, are washed away or the records are so dirty that if they are not dried out right away, they can never be retrieved.
There are many thousands of farmers whose working capital, which wasn’t much to start with, has now been washed away or is so waterlogged it is destroyed. Their animals are dead and their houses are gone. They had very little, now they have nothing. These people are going to need food and livelihood assistance for more than a year, they are going to need help to rebuild their houses, roads, schools, shops and communities. Oh, the schools. Schools are either inundated or being used as collective centers for the internally displaced persons (IDPs; a very important acronym!) Schools are not build to handle this sort of use, so they will all need new plaster, paint, furniture, books, plumbing fixtures, etc. etc. etc. I’m talking about EVERY school within 30 miles of the flood zone, which is to say nearly all of them.
OK, I’ve gone on long enough. I keep thinking of things to add, but I'm tired and hungry. It has stopped raining, thank god. I’ll be around to answer questions as I eat my dinner!