Pakistan floods: military steps up rescue effort
Updated on 08 August 2010
Pakistani naval boats have been deployed to the flooded countryside to rescue those stranded by the disaster that has claimed the lives of 1,600 people. UNHCR official Peter Kessler tells Channel 4 News the situation is "catastrophic".
The move ramps up Pakistan's military response to the crisis that has left two million homeless, washed away crops and farm animals and overwhelmed President Asif Ali Zardari's government. Flood victims have been throwing themselves at army helicopters as heavy rainfall continues.
With heavy rain forecast to continue over the next 24 to 36 hours, relief workers are anticipating further devastation.
Rubber and wooden navy boats have set out from areas in Sindh province, where flood waters burst from the Indus River across vast distances, to help Pakistanis who have watched safe ground shrink by the hour and waters swallow up their livestock.
Women, chest-deep in water, carried chickens and clothes on their heads before entering navy boats.
Zardari has been heavily criticised for leaving the country for official visits in Europe during the crisis. He said the prime minister was handling the catastrophe and informing him of developments. Zardari's son has also spoken out in his defence.
Analysts do not expect the government's handling of the crisis to encourage the military, which has ruled for more than half of Pakistan's history, to try to seize power.
That said, relief efforts have only boosted the military's standing, and widened the perception that Pakistani civilian governments are too weak and inefficient to cope with disasters.
The army is busy fighting Taliban insurgents and does not want to be strapped with Pakistan's enormous problems - from costly rebuilding after the floods to the struggle to attract foreign investment in a troubled economy to widespread poverty.
"I don't think they are willing to dump Zardari," said Kamran Bokhari, Regional Director, Middle East and South Asia at global intelligence firm STRATFOR.
"The current army leadership ... is very clear that there is a war that needs to be waged."
Foreign aid organisations, also playing a much bigger role than the government, say weather has hampered relief efforts.
Floodwaters have roared down from the northwest to the agriculture heartland of Punjab and on to southern Sindh along a trail more than 1,000 km (600 miles) long.
The flooding, brought on by unusually strong monsoon rains, has destroyed 360,000 houses, aid groups say.
"I would say shelter is the biggest concern at the moment. It is the most urgent," said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "People do need something on top their heads as soon as possible."
In some areas, only the tops of trees and telephone poles are visible. Pakistanis are stuck on the rooftops of their homes. Some fighting to hold on to anything they can, walk waist-deep in muddy water carrying logs from their shattered homes.
Peter Kessler, a UNHCR official in Pakistan told Channel 4 News that the situation in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province was "catastrophic" after water levels rose by three metres.
"These are not wealthy people. They've lost everything, including food stocks," he said.
"Many people are finding dry land a huge challenge."
Even before the floods, Pakistan was struggling to tame inflation that averaged 11.7 percent for the last fiscal year. In Swat Valley, one of the hardest hit areas, tomato prices have jumped from 40 rupees a kg to 140 since the floods hit.
"Our country has gone back several years," Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters on a visit to Sindh province.
In Punjab, hundreds of people were evacuated from drenched areas to a railway track on higher ground.
"What we are wearing is all that we have, the rest is all gone -- our house, animals, wheat we had stored, everything has been destroyed," university student Fiza Batool said as she fed her 10-year-old sister biscuits.
