World view
By MR JosseA tragedy of epic dimensions has engulfed Pakistan. Flooding, triggered by last month’s monsoon rains, has affected one-fifth of the country – or, an area about the size of the United Kingdom – according to UN estimates.
Pakistan’s worst natural calamity has swept away about every physical facility that held the country together: roads, bridges, schools, health centres, electricity and communications. The infrastructure from Khyber-Pakhthunhwa to Sindh stands ruined and it will take years to rebuild.
EPIC SCALE
President Asif Ali Zardari, criticized for travelling abroad as the catastrophe was unfolding, has estimated that his country would take at least three years at the minimum to recover though he added, “I don’t think Pakistan will ever fully recover but we will move on.”
Approximately 20 million people have been displaced making it, as Times of India’s Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar says, Pakistan’s greatest human tragedy since Partition in 1947 when nine million were uprooted from their homes. Though the most damage to infrastructure has been wrought in the highlands of Pakistan’s northwest region, the greatest devastation, in human terms and farmland loss, would seem to be in Sindh where floodwaters of the Indus are an unbelievable 20 miles wide.
As New York Times’ Carlotta Gall reports, the government’s estimates of the damage are exceedingly grim. “More than 8,000 km of roads and railways have been washed away, along with some 7,000 schools and more than 400 health facilities. One estimate put the total cost of the flood damage at US $ 7.1 billion. That is a fifth of Pakistan’s budget and exceeds the total cost of last year’s financial aid package to Pakistan passed by the US Congress.” Over 1,600 lives have been estimated to have been lost.
According to an AP report, the Pakistan government says that about $ 800 million has been committed or pledged so far. Yet there are concerns internationally about how the money will be spent by the government. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the US Agency for International Development in Islamabad, said the US would continue to urge other nations to donate.
“We are going to work on it, but these are tough economic times around the world and it will require a demonstration of real transparency and accountability and that resources spent in Pakistan get results.”
The UN has appealed for 40 more heavy-lift helicopters to ferry aid to around 800,000 stranded people. REALPOLITIK
Not surprisingly, some of the routes from Pakistan along which trucks carrying supplies to US and NATO troops in Afghanistan have also been affected, although it has been claimed that while supplies had been slowed there had not been any impact on operations.
As reported by Gall, great chunks of Karakoram Highway have disappeared as cliffs fell away; the strategic road which connects Islamabad to China’s border may now be impassable for years.
Before the disaster, the US had pledged to spend $ 7.5 billion over the next five years for projects, including schools and hospitals, building dams and helping generate electricity. Shah said much of that package would now be spent on flood rebuilding.
Unfortunately, despite the mind-boggling enormity of Pakistan’s calamity, the virus of regional realpolitik has not been swept away. Though Pakistan initially hesitated to accept $ 5 million from India it yielded a week after the offer was made, apparently due to US pressure. As per a PTI report, aid workers from India and Israel are excluded from the three-month “relief work” visas, at the instance of Pakistan’s interior ministry.
An unsourced news report in TOI thought it proper to highlight an item headlined, “Did Pak fudge flood victims figure to get more aid?” Its lead was: “Is Pakistan exaggerating damages caused by floods to garnet more aid? Discrepancies in figures bandied about by none other than the Pakistani government on the number of people affected suggest that the authorities had initially overestimated the damages with an eye on aid from international agencies.”
Similarly striking was TOI’s Indrani Bagchi’s lifting of a quote from Afghan national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta’s article in the Washington Post charging: “Pakistan continues to provide sanctuary and support to the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar group and al-Qaeda. Yet the focus on this fundamental task has progressively been eroded and has been compounded by another strategic failure: the mistaken embrace of ‘strategic partners’ who have, in fact, been nurturing terrorism.”
In an editorial TOI, while taking an ostensibly humane line, nevertheless saw it fit and proper to suggest that Pakistan must “fund allocation and disbursement directly through the UN. There is no room for trial and error; it cannot afford to dither any longer.”
While suggesting that India needs to “unstintingly offer resources, personnel and its own territory as a geographically contiguous staging area for such efforts”, it noted that “an internal ISI assessment citing homegrown terrorism as a graver security threat than India is a hopeful straw in the wind, though more must be done in this regard.”
Much more disturbing was a Taliban statement hinting that they may launch attacks against foreigners helping Pakistan respond to the worst floods in her history saying their presence was “unacceptable.”
SENSIBLE
Most sensible was Aiyar’s suggestion, “for the Indian Army to unilaterally withdraw from the border in Punjab, Rajastan and Gujarat. This will pose no military risk whatsoever; flood-stricken Pakistan cannot possibly embark on military adventures against India.”
Elaborating, he says, “The withdrawal of Indian troops will mean that the Pakistan army loses all excuses to avoid diverting manpower and financial resources from the border to flood relief and rehabilitation. This will cost India nothing, yet will release very large resources within Pakistan. Its impact will be significant…Unilateral withdrawal will be a flood-relief measure, not a military surrender. “In the bargain, it will oblige Pakistan to withdraw its own troops and redeploy them for flood relief; its public opinion will be outraged otherwise.”
Realpolitik must be shunned and Pakistan redeemed.
Pakistan’s worst natural calamity has swept away about every physical facility that held the country together: roads, bridges, schools, health centres, electricity and communications. The infrastructure from Khyber-Pakhthunhwa to Sindh stands ruined and it will take years to rebuild.
EPIC SCALE
President Asif Ali Zardari, criticized for travelling abroad as the catastrophe was unfolding, has estimated that his country would take at least three years at the minimum to recover though he added, “I don’t think Pakistan will ever fully recover but we will move on.”
Approximately 20 million people have been displaced making it, as Times of India’s Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar says, Pakistan’s greatest human tragedy since Partition in 1947 when nine million were uprooted from their homes. Though the most damage to infrastructure has been wrought in the highlands of Pakistan’s northwest region, the greatest devastation, in human terms and farmland loss, would seem to be in Sindh where floodwaters of the Indus are an unbelievable 20 miles wide.
As New York Times’ Carlotta Gall reports, the government’s estimates of the damage are exceedingly grim. “More than 8,000 km of roads and railways have been washed away, along with some 7,000 schools and more than 400 health facilities. One estimate put the total cost of the flood damage at US $ 7.1 billion. That is a fifth of Pakistan’s budget and exceeds the total cost of last year’s financial aid package to Pakistan passed by the US Congress.” Over 1,600 lives have been estimated to have been lost.
According to an AP report, the Pakistan government says that about $ 800 million has been committed or pledged so far. Yet there are concerns internationally about how the money will be spent by the government. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the US Agency for International Development in Islamabad, said the US would continue to urge other nations to donate.
“We are going to work on it, but these are tough economic times around the world and it will require a demonstration of real transparency and accountability and that resources spent in Pakistan get results.”
The UN has appealed for 40 more heavy-lift helicopters to ferry aid to around 800,000 stranded people. REALPOLITIK
Not surprisingly, some of the routes from Pakistan along which trucks carrying supplies to US and NATO troops in Afghanistan have also been affected, although it has been claimed that while supplies had been slowed there had not been any impact on operations.
As reported by Gall, great chunks of Karakoram Highway have disappeared as cliffs fell away; the strategic road which connects Islamabad to China’s border may now be impassable for years.
Before the disaster, the US had pledged to spend $ 7.5 billion over the next five years for projects, including schools and hospitals, building dams and helping generate electricity. Shah said much of that package would now be spent on flood rebuilding.
Unfortunately, despite the mind-boggling enormity of Pakistan’s calamity, the virus of regional realpolitik has not been swept away. Though Pakistan initially hesitated to accept $ 5 million from India it yielded a week after the offer was made, apparently due to US pressure. As per a PTI report, aid workers from India and Israel are excluded from the three-month “relief work” visas, at the instance of Pakistan’s interior ministry.
An unsourced news report in TOI thought it proper to highlight an item headlined, “Did Pak fudge flood victims figure to get more aid?” Its lead was: “Is Pakistan exaggerating damages caused by floods to garnet more aid? Discrepancies in figures bandied about by none other than the Pakistani government on the number of people affected suggest that the authorities had initially overestimated the damages with an eye on aid from international agencies.”
Similarly striking was TOI’s Indrani Bagchi’s lifting of a quote from Afghan national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta’s article in the Washington Post charging: “Pakistan continues to provide sanctuary and support to the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar group and al-Qaeda. Yet the focus on this fundamental task has progressively been eroded and has been compounded by another strategic failure: the mistaken embrace of ‘strategic partners’ who have, in fact, been nurturing terrorism.”
In an editorial TOI, while taking an ostensibly humane line, nevertheless saw it fit and proper to suggest that Pakistan must “fund allocation and disbursement directly through the UN. There is no room for trial and error; it cannot afford to dither any longer.”
While suggesting that India needs to “unstintingly offer resources, personnel and its own territory as a geographically contiguous staging area for such efforts”, it noted that “an internal ISI assessment citing homegrown terrorism as a graver security threat than India is a hopeful straw in the wind, though more must be done in this regard.”
Much more disturbing was a Taliban statement hinting that they may launch attacks against foreigners helping Pakistan respond to the worst floods in her history saying their presence was “unacceptable.”
SENSIBLE
Most sensible was Aiyar’s suggestion, “for the Indian Army to unilaterally withdraw from the border in Punjab, Rajastan and Gujarat. This will pose no military risk whatsoever; flood-stricken Pakistan cannot possibly embark on military adventures against India.”
Elaborating, he says, “The withdrawal of Indian troops will mean that the Pakistan army loses all excuses to avoid diverting manpower and financial resources from the border to flood relief and rehabilitation. This will cost India nothing, yet will release very large resources within Pakistan. Its impact will be significant…Unilateral withdrawal will be a flood-relief measure, not a military surrender. “In the bargain, it will oblige Pakistan to withdraw its own troops and redeploy them for flood relief; its public opinion will be outraged otherwise.”
Realpolitik must be shunned and Pakistan redeemed.
by mr josse
By M.R. Josse
BY MR JOSSE
BY MR JOSSE 
by mr josse
by mr josse;
