Pakistan floods: "I have never seen a government less bothered."

August 22, 2010:

Floods Force Thousands From Homes in Pakistan

By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times

SUKKUR, Pakistan — Floodwaters continued to surge Sunday into areas of southern Pakistan, forcing thousands more people to abandon their homes in haste and flee to higher ground. Attention has now focused on the province of Sindh as the floods that have torn through the length of the country for three weeks move finally toward the Arabian Sea.

Water reached within half a mile of Shadad Kot, a town of 150,000 people, on Sunday afternoon, and several nearby villages were already cut off when a protective embankment began to give way, Yasin Shar, the district coordination officer of Shadad Kot, said by telephone. Most of the population has been evacuated, and more were still leaving, he said.

“We are trying to save the embankment and keep on repairing wherever it is damaged, but the water is flowing with a lot of pressure,” Mr Shar said. “We hope the embankment won’t break. We are praying.”

Nearly five million people have been displaced from the worst flooding ever recorded in Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands are being housed in orderly tented camps set up in army compounds, schools and other public buildings, but thousands more are living on roadsides and canal embankments, spreading out mats under the trees or making shade over the simple rope beds they brought with them.

The town of Sukkur is overflowing with the influx of displaced people. On the edge of the town, a group of 15 families with scores of children are camped along the Dadu Canal. Their mood is nervous, edgy, and they race in a horde after any vehicle that slows down in the hopes it bears food or assistance. One woman showed her fractured arm, the result of a tussle for food.

“People are looting, people run after trucks snatching things,” said Shad Mohammad, 28, a shopkeeper and father of five, who came here after his town of Ghospur was flooded 15 days ago. “People come, sometimes the government comes, or charities with food. Sometimes you get something, sometimes not.”

The children are often hungry and crying, he said. “We don’t know what will happen to us, we have lost everything. We have nothing here, just the clothes we are wearing,” he said.

He and others spoke of their anxiety that because Sindh is so low-lying, it would take months for the waters to subside, and for them to return home. And they know they will return to nothing. The water was up to their necks so their mud-brick houses will have collapsed, and their animals drowned, they said. Surviving would be difficult without assistance, and few expressed confidence they would receive much.

The older people were more resigned. “We will sit under the sky, and God will provide what he wills,” said Qaim Din, 50, a father of eight, who had to abandon his donkey and a single buffalo to the floods as the family fled the rising waters.

The younger men expressed anger and impatience.

“We are not living here happily,” said another man, also named Qaim Din but not related. A fertilizer dealer, he came here after his village 125 miles away was flooded. “We are angry, and they are treating us like animals,” he said.

“You are talking of anger, we are sometimes thinking of killing this government,” he said. “If you go further along this road, you will see people, you will see their faces, they are hurting.”

“Food is creating a law-and-order situation because there is no proper system to look after these people,” said Jamshaid Khan Dasti, a member of Parliament from a neighboring constituency in Punjab Province. There were already incidents of looting and burglary, and he said he had already requested the government to deploy paramilitary rangers to prevent it deteriorating.

The majority of the displaced were falling outside the humanitarian net, he said. In his district, 800,000 people were displaced, but only 100,000 were being provided for in camps. “The rest are scattered, stuck in different places and they don’t have food or water,” he said. “Their lives are in danger, and their frustration is increasing.”

A former prime minister, Zafarullah Khan Jamali, a member of Parliament whose constituency in neighboring Baluchistan was 90 percent under water, warned that the mood would only worsen.

“These people will be out in the streets, this is what I see,” he said. “I have been through many floods, in ’56, ’73,’76 and 2007, but I have never seen a government less bothered.” He added, “The state is a failure, and the people will come out and naturally nothing can stop the wave of people.”

Asked if he was talking about a revolution, he replied, “Yes. We are heading toward that, very fast.”