Landslides triggered by the worst floods in Pakistan in 80 years are hampering already troubled relief efforts, with aid workers using donkeys or traveling on foot to reach millions in desperate need of help.
Poor weather has made it difficult for helicopters to deliver food to some parts of the Swat Valley, northwest of the capital Islamabad and among the areas first hit by the deluge.
Many roads have been destroyed and landslides have added to the isolation of many areas.
PHOTO: AFP
The catastrophe, which has put unpopular Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on the defensive and raised the profile of the military, which is spearheading relief efforts, has killed more than 1,600 people and left 2 million homeless.
“It’s hard to get supplies there. I would like to emphasize we are moving by foot or donkey. We are making all kinds of possible efforts. We are unable to get in to most places of Swat Valley,” said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Ten days after the floods hit, Pakistanis are still stranded along a path of destruction more than 1,000km long from the northwest to southern Sindh Province.
In Punjab, army helicopters rescued people and their livestock from rooftops in Mehmood Kot village, a scene being played out in many parts of the country.
One family survived by placing planks on a huge date tree almost 7.5m above ground and staying there.
Some soldiers are getting frustrated by some Pakistanis’ reluctance to leave their homes.
“When we try to take them, they say they don’t want to leave and instead they demand food. We have to fly again to bring food. This is a major problem for us,” Lieutenant Colonel Salman Rafiq told reporters.
US officials, while declining to discuss this publicly, are also concerned about the damage caused by the weak government response floods and mounting hostility toward Zardari.
Pakistan is a key US ally whose help Washington needs to end a nine-year insurgency by Taliban militants in Afghanistan.
Charities with links to militants have taken advantage of the vacuum left by the government and delivered aid to thousands stranded by the floods, possibly boosting their own standing among Pakistanis as Taliban militants press on with their war.
US concerns are also growing over the disaster’s impact on Pakistan’s fragile economy and how Washington’s robust development plan may be slowed down to deal with the crisis.
Pakistan’s troubled economy will need huge injections of foreign aid. Hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian relief will be needed over the next few months alone.
Pakistan turned to the IMF in 2008 to avert a balance of payments crisis and has been struggling to meet the conditions of that US$10.66 billion emergency loan.
Pakistani stocks fell more than 2.6 percent in early trade as investors became cautious on realization of the extent of the flood damage, dealers said.
TSUNAMI-LIKE
The sheer number of people affected by the floods make the scale of the disaster worse than the devastating 2004 tsunami, Giuliano said yesterday.
“So far 13.8 million people have been affected by recent floods in Pakistan,” he said. “This disaster is worse than the tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the Haiti earthquake.”
“It is bigger because in the 2005 Pakistan earthquake more than 3 million were affected, while in the tsunami some 5 million people were affected and the Haiti earthquake affected some 3 million,” he said.
However, about 220,000 people perished in the 2004 tsunami across Asia, while the UN has estimated the death toll from the Pakistan floods at 1,600.
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