Pakistan's darkest hour

It is a catastrophe of mammoth proportions and the challenge faced by a centrally weak government is how to get food aid to the some 6 million in need of help and provide relief facilities to the 20 million people impacted by the disaster.

In July, the international and Pakistan news media began reporting that heavy rains were effecting parts of northern Pakistan. The flooding, isolated at first, quickly spread as major rivers such as the Indus and Chenab became swollen and overflowed, in a matter of just days the situation went from serious to catastrophic with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab Province and Sindh the most badly effected.

Initially, the government of Pakistan warned that 500,000 had been effected and would require food aid. This was increased to over 1 million just a few hours later and by the following day an astronomical 4 million people were reported to be in need of food aid. The government initially reported to Pakistan news media that this would cost around $100 million, but this figure has since climbed to over $400 million and the number of people directly effected stands at 20 million, with over 6 million in need of aid and medical supplies as disease begins to spread.

Vast swathes of the country are underwater, 17 million acres of fertile crop lands have been flooded and many thousands of tons of grain destroyed by the floods. In terms of the country’s lost farmlands, the area in square kilometers is massive, 68,000 square kilometers, an area larger than England and Wales combined. However, the total extent of the flooding is even worse, 160,000 square kilometers are underwater, one fifth of the entire country. The flooded area then is larger than the whole of the United Kingdom or the State of New York in the US.

It is a catastrophe of the worst dimensions in terms of its potential long-term effects. The initial death toll from the flooding was around 2000, according to the United Nations, although the government puts the figures closer to 1,500, but of much greater concern are the 6 million living amongst stagnant waters that will now breed disease in the hot and humid conditions typical of the season.

Surrounded by sudden lakes, millions are without safe drinking water as the region’s infrastructure and facilities for water and electricity have been destroyed entirely. Cholera is just one of the many potential epidemics that may ravage already battered populations, though it is the most serious as the government has already told Pakistan news media that, in all likelihood, a further 1,500 people may die from the disease.

This due in large part to the fact that those displaced by the floods don’t have clean drinking water but must drink, they will therefore drink the nearby flood waters. This is one of the means by which water-borne diseases will be transmitted into the population. The worst case scenario is staggering, 20 million people are now trying to survive on those small patches of land that have not been flooded, over-crowding has therefore increased exponentially, increasing the risk of epidemics sweeping through concentrated populations of survivors.

The death toll from disease could reach tens or even hundreds of thousands, but it will happen over a comparatively long space of time and so will not seem to the international community as devastating as the 2004 tsunami or the 2010 Haiti earthquake. But it will be every bit as devastating. In the first few days after the flooding, the U.N. was already reporting 36,000 cases of water-related diarrhea.

Even if disease does not virulently attack the surviving populations in flooded regions, the long-term effects to the region’s agricultural sector are severe. Apart from the 17 million acres of crops under water, a further 500,000 tons of stored grain have been washed away, 200,000 livestock were killed in the flooding and now, with no signs of the flood waters abating, the government has said farmers may not be able to plant their seeds in time to begin growing next year’s harvest, carrying critical food shortages now into next year and vastly increasing the cost of food aid, perhaps beyond what the government can afford.

The cost to the agricultural sector alone is $2.9 billion dollars while the wider costs to infrastructure and homes is estimated by the government to be $15 billion. The cost of the lost livestock is harder to asses, but has a greater ramification for not only have families lost their livestock, they have also lost the 300,000 acres of land they used to grow fodder for the animals.

The international response has been global in its scope, but woefully inadequate in comparison to the efforts made for Haiti or Indonesia flowing the earthquake and tsunami respectively. In fact, Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister of the UK recently told international and Pakistan news media that the international response was “absolutely pitiful”.

The United Nations has called for $450 million in initial aid to supply food and water to those displaced.

“Clean water is an urgent need,” U.N. spokesperson Maurizio Giuliano. “There was a first wave of deaths caused by the floods themselves. But if we don't act soon enough, there will be a second wave of deaths caused by a combination of lack of clean water, food shortages and water-borne and vector-borne diseases.”

The United Nations pledged around $27 million in aid after the floods with the US initially pledging $5 million and then increasing their contribution to $87 million, much of which includes the provision of recue helicopters, transport aircraft for emergency food and drinking water drops and transport of stranded individuals.

In all, about 24 countries have provided or pledged aid in some form, amounting to around $225 million, just half of what the United Nations estimated would be needed in immediate relief aid alone.