As yesterday dawned, Faisal Islam sat on a highway median in northwestern Pakistan — the only dry ground he could find — and railed against the government for its failure to provide aid nearly a week after the country’s worst-ever floods first hit.
The government has deployed thousands of soldiers and civilian rescue workers to save people trapped by the floodwaters, distribute food and collect the bodies of the 1,100 dead. However, the scale of the disaster is so vast that many residents say that it seems like officials are doing nothing.
“This is the only shirt I have. Everything else is buried,” said Islam, surrounded by hundreds of people in makeshift shelters constructed from dirty sheets and plastic tarps.
Like many other residents of Pakistan’s northwest Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa Province, the people camped out by the highway in Kamp Koroona village in Nowshera District — one of the areas hit hardest by the floods — waded through the water to their damaged houses to salvage their remaining possessions: usually just a few mud-covered plates and chairs.
The army has given them some cooking oil and sugar, but Islam complained that they needed much more.
“We need tents. Just look around,” Islam said.
The disastrous flooding comes at a time when the weak and unpopular Pakistani government is already struggling to cope with a faltering economy and a brutal war against Taliban militants that has killed thousands of people in the past few years.
Pakistan’s international partners have tried to bolster the government’s response by offering millions of dollars in emergency aid.
The UN and the US both announced on Saturday that they would provide US$10 million in emergency assistance.
The US also provided rescue boats, water filtration units, prefabricated steel bridges and thousands of packaged meals that Pakistani soldiers tossed from helicopters as flood victims scrambled to catch them.
The high-profile US gesture of support comes at a time when the administration of US President Barack Obama is trying to dampen anti-US sentiment in Pakistan and enlist the country’s support to turn around the Afghan war.
“This is much needed stuff in the flood-affected areas and we need more of it from the international community,” said Latifur Rehman, a disaster management official in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa.
The US provided similar emergency assistance after Pakistan experienced a catastrophic earthquake in 2005 that killed nearly 80,000 people. The aid briefly increased support for the US in a country where anti-US sentiment is pervasive.
But feelings have since shifted, and only 17 percent of Pakistanis now have a favorable view of the US, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center.
The US could be hoping to get a similar popularity boost from the emergency flood assistance but like the earthquake relief effort, the US must compete with aid groups run by Islamist militants.
Representatives from a charity allegedly linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group distributed food and offered medical services on Sunday to victims in the town of Charsada.
“We are reaching people at their doorsteps and in the streets, especially women and children who are stuck in their homes,” said an activist with the Falah-e-Insaniat charity who would identify himself only by his first name, Saqib.
With suspected ties to al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people, and the US military has said the group has stepped up activity in Afghanistan as well.
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