From the banks of Pakistan’s swollen rivers

Pakistan’s super flood is unparalleled with any other the country has seen in the last 120 years, claiming the lives of nearly 1,500 Pakistanis and destroying over half of the country’s cash crops, wiping out about half a million small farmers financially. The Indus river torrents continue to maroon hundreds of villages in the south of the country, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee from their homes, displacing several million within the last three weeks alone. It is a crisis far greater than the one Pakistan faced last year after its army moved against Taliban militants, which resulted in the displacement of over two million in the Swat region.

Ironically, people here in the north had been praying for extra rains until about three weeks ago. Today, most are praying for an end to rain in the north and a safe passage through the next deluge expected in the coming days.

Before the devastation in southern towns, flood waters were already wreaking havoc in the north along the Indus and Kabul River. The unusually heavy monsoon rains and the westerly winds submerged entire villages in water, affecting the major thorough fairs such as the M1, the expressway that connects the capital Islamabad with Peshawar. Today the median of the highway is home to hundreds, if not thousands, of impoverished families who have set up tents after fleeing from the floods.

The Kabul River delta, once famous for its fertility, is now beset by flooding. The vast swathes of villages in Peshawar’s vicinity are at the mercy of the swollen Kabul River is overflowing with flood waters.

Wherever you go, the stories are the same: People have lost their belongings and their means of livelihood. Occasionally, some are able to visit their homes and shops to see if they can return but the local streets and homes are virtual swamps. The factories are shut down– a terrible loss for their owners and the workers who can no longer collect their daily wages.

“Never ever did we imagine that we shall have to one day swim to safety from our homes,” said Wakeel Shah, a farmer of the Akbarpura village.

A father to a family of seven, Shah told me he barely managed to rescue his 12-year-old son when he was shoulder-deep in water.

“All our goats, cows and chicks are gone, so is the grain stock,” he said, while carrying his youngest near their tent which was perched in the middle of the motorway — the only high ground available to escape from the raging waters.

Bakhtawar Khan, another villager from the same area, was able to escape to safety of the motorway with his family before watching his own mud house melt into the water.

“The motorway saved us,” said Khan, a farmer who had lost a few months’ supply of grain stock, two cows, and four of his goats.

The Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar to Islamabad offers a similarly despairing human landscape. Where once the towns of Akora Khattak, Nowshehra, Izakhel, Pabbi bustled along the River Kabul, there is now an endless row of plastic sheets and pitched tents — the area nothing more than a stinking swamp. Most of the mud houses have either collapsed or been washed away by the deluge of flood waters, and the surviving brick structures stand in knee-deep waters. The air is filled with the stench of dead animals and the old rugs and quilts that survivors managed to retrieve from their homes.

And here, too, thousands of families are camping along the shoulders of the road or in the very middle of it. In total, 600,000 people are cut off from the rest of the country.

Stories of the flood-affected millions in the south aren’t any different. Most are camping on the sides of roads with only the very few belongings that they managed to bring along when leaving their homes.

It is yet another crisis for a nation already in political turmoil and economic crisis.

The international community, initially slow to respond, seems finally to realize the gravity of the situation, with more commitments flowing in after the U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon visited the scene last week, calling the disaster “like few the world has ever seen. It requires a response to match.”

The United States, however, is an exception as far as emergency assistance is concerned. However, the U.S. commitment of $75 million and dozens of helicopters — at first subverted by the incessant rains that hampered deliveries, particularly to the upper mountainous region of Swat and Malakand — are now flying overtime for relief and rescue missions.

Senator John Kerry promised that the U.S. government would be donating an additional several hundred million dollars for rehabilitation. It is not Pakistan’s challenge alone, it is an international challenge, Kerry told a press conference after visiting affected regions this week.

In the meantime, banned militant organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad have tried to fill the gap, collecting and distributing donations for victims of the flood. That role has alarmed many in the West, but local analysts maintain a different view on the donation collection campaign; if people are dying and the governmental machinery is missing, why shouldn’t the starving and destitute people accept help from these outfits?

“This will certainly take a while till the government gets a handle on this particular issue,” argues Talat Masud, an expert on the region. “What counts in this desperate situation is the help and not the legal status of these organizations.”

The coming days and weeks are going to be a challenge for those living on the river banks but the ordeal for those already displaced will not end soon. The water is not likely to recede from the river basin regions for at least three months, meaning farmers will not be able to sow for the next season — putting an even greater strain on an already strained government.

Imtiaz Gul heads the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad and is the author of The Most Dangerous Place.