Friday the 13th of August, 2010: Pakistan receives the wrath of "Phet"

Image above is from the UK's The Metro online issue dated today, 18 August, 2010, four days after Pakistan was hit by typhoon "Phet" which has caused massive flooding and displacement "turning Pakistan into a sea of blue."

My email alert also today from Avaaz.org, an online civic organization, described the aftermath as

"A humanitarian catastrophe of terrifying proportions [is] unfolding in Pakistan, with a fifth of the country under water, and millions of people homeless and desperately needing assistance..."

The figures coming out of Pakistan are huge:

• estimated 20 million people are affected¹
• about one-fifth of the country (is) underwater, almost 900,000 homes have been damaged ²
• destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and an estimated 1.7 million acres (nearly 700,000 hectares) of farmlands;³ (floods have inundated) an area roughly the size of Italy. ⁴

Even more heart-wrenching is the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appealing like never before, for world aid and action when he personally saw the conditions on 15 August, 2010 and said, almost near-tears,

"I have visited many natural disasters, but I have never seen anything like this."

and that the disaster is worse than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 Pakistani earthquake combined.⁵

Yet global response has so far been much less generous than to other recent natural disasters — despite the soaring numbers of people affected and the prospect of more economic ruin in a country key to the fight against Islamist extremists ⁶ which has been attributed to several reasons:

• the relatively low death toll of 1,500, the slow onset of the flooding compared with more immediate and dramatic earthquakes or tsunamis, and a global "donor fatigue" — or at least a Pakistan fatigue.⁷
• The Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardani was in Europe when the typhoon struck, making time to visit a family-owned chateau in France⁸
• charities said Pakistan was suffering from an "image deficit" partly because of perceived links to terror.⁹

Ironic and sad as it may seem, the bottom line seems to be that the marginalized sector is always sacrificed, in love, war and calamities.

As humans, we will never be able to beat nature's wrath, nor scurry over unbeaten paths while trampling on others in one's haste, as in the case of those in power for legitimate reasons or those who are set to lunge at power for the wrong reasons.

It is unfortunate that in Pakistan's state of hardship, the perceived presence of terrorists, for instance, has petrified the its own government and the world's efforts towards reaching in to their pockets to reach out.

I pray that Pakistan will overcome this tragedy, just as we had ours.

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Ways to help

Donations to the Pakistan Floods Appeal will help the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement provide desperately needed relief items to thousands of people: http://www.redcross.org.uk/pakistanfloods

via Avaaz.org: To send a personal message to key donor governments: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/pakistan_needs_relief/?vl

To donate to the relief effort:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/pakistan_relief_fund/?cl=709083224&v=6971

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¹, ⁶, ⁷, ^{8 http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100816/FOREIGN/708159834/1103
2}, <sup>5 http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/08/16/pakistan.floods/index.html?hpt=T2

3 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jX_KetVCMo64AOZxSMudPWArFrJgD9HIRUJ00
4 http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100816/FOREIGN/708159834/1103
9 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hGvEC2O_u5bTL3OpwF1TpPG8YCPg</sup>