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By AYESHA IJAZ KHAN

Four weeks on, the floods that descended on Pakistan¶s north-west, have engulfed the entire
length of the country. All along the increasingly ferocious Indus, large chunks of land in
southern Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan are submerged in water, destroying crops, homes and
livestock, forcing the inhabitants of several villages to migrate to drier land. These internally
displaced persons (³IDPs´), refugees in a sense, are in urgent need of shelter, food, clean water
and medical attention.

This is not the first time that Pakistan has had to provide for large numbers of refugees. During
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, in excess of three million Afghan refugees fled to
Pakistan. More recently, during the Swat offensive last summer, IDPs vacated their homes,
moved in with relatives or took shelter in camps and tent cities while the army battled it out with
the Taliban. Yet Swat was different. The numbers involved were small. The area affected was
geographically containable and the damage to private property bearable.

This time, 20 million people are affected by the floods. One-fifth of the country washed away.
In Swat alone, nearly all the bridges have been destroyed. All roads to Baluchistan, with the
exception of one, are unreachable. And there was no time for preparation. No time to erect tent
cities or camps to which the IDPs could be directed. Many camped on rooftops or levees hoping
the water would be merciful. But there was no such luck. Although major cities are intact,
innumerable villages are inundated, causing the IDPs to make their way to the cities. They camp
wherever they find space.

Doctors from the Pakistan Medical Association are trying to cope with the human tragedy.
Setting out into the field, Dr. Nighat Shah writes in her diary (forwarded to me by email) from
Khairpur, Sindh: ³Khairpur, at this moment, is housing a huge bulk of displaced people from
Larkana, Jacobabad, Shikarpur and many smaller villages«.the registered displaced people are
more than 50,000. Around 120 camps are housing people in small clusters. These range from
250-300 people in smaller schools, to 5000-8000 in bigger schools.´

With tents in very short supply, public schools are being substituted as IDP camps. Their toilet
facilities clogged, furniture falling into disrepair, several educational facilities are indefinitely
closed. If more tent villages can be set up, Dr. Nabil Zafar, another doctor in the field notes, ³at
least not all of the desks will become firewood.´ Yet the children deprived of an education are
not of primary concern. It is the enormous number of children suffering from disease and
malnutrition that is a far greater worry.
Dr. Nighat Shah writes, ³In all camps, by far the majority is of children«.Almost all the children
are sick, ranging from stunted growth, severe malnourishment, diarrhoea and skin problems.
The women are almost all anaemic, weak, malnourished, perpetually pregnant or breast-feeding.
The sad part is there is no milk but the baby is still latched.´

Khairpur, with all its troubles, is still better off than other areas like Dera Ismail Khan, where
800,000 people are displaced and 150 villages affected, not to mention the 400,000 IDPs from
adjacent Waziristan that are still there, having evacuated their homes prior to the recent army
action against insurgents in their area. With infrastructure and hospitals severely damaged, even
NGOs are largely absent from this area.

And in the mountains, places like Gilgit-Baltistan and Kohistan have become completely
inaccessible. As the people of this area tend to be as rugged as their terrain, they have
industriously replaced fallen bridges with make-shift arrangements. But the substitutes are
treacherous and difficult for urban NGO-types to negotiate. In an interview on Aaj TV, the
program director of the only NGO that has ventured there revealed that when his workers
crossed the bridge to deliver food to those unfortunate ones who had been cut off from the world,
they came back drenched in sweat. Their sweat was not from the heat as the mountains remain
cool in summer, but from sheer fear and dread of the flimsy and inadequate improvised bridge on
which they walked. Underneath it, flowed torrential waters, ruthless in their carnage. What if
the bridge gave way? Eventually, it did. The victims: a pregnant woman and her three children.

Although not many lives have been lost, long treks and 13 hours of trudging through waist-deep
water has resulted in separated families. One seven-year old lost girl in Sindh took refuge at a
Sikh temple, a u

, until Dunya TV crews discovered her. Although her information was
broadcast, it is doubtful her family is able to view television in the camp where they may have
sought refuge. Meanwhile, at the u

, multi-religious communities come together to help
each other out of their misery and feed the IDPs that have camped around it. Chanting ³Hindu,
Sikh, Muslim, Essai, bhai bhai,´ (Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians are all brothers) local
people try to aid each other.

But international aid is slow to arrive. For those who have lost their homes and their crops, the
loss of their farm animals is the most difficult to bear. A seventy-year old woman in south
Punjab refuses to vacate her home unless her goat is also evacuated. In another instance, a navy
boat rescuing a group from a severely affected area is made to turn back so that ³their children,´
as the IDPs put it, can also be saved. As it turns out, the children are cattle and sheep and there
is no room for them on the boat.

With transportation and communication links severely disrupted, identity cards washed away,
and resources scarce, relief efforts are overburdened. As Faris Kasim, working in the field with
Save the Children, emailed, ³Collecting data, coordinating and responding to the crisis and even
receiving information has been quite challenging. We have barely slept coordinating with the
government, army, National Disaster Management Authority and UN agencies to organise
relief«I guarantee you, as an eye witness to the disaster, that everyone is working round the
clock to help the affected people«the emergency response has been far better than what we saw
during the earthquake in 2005 or the floods in 2007.´
Yet the scale of the disaster is so large, the number of people affected, according to a report by
the Brookings Institution, is more than three times that of Haiti¶s earthquake and more than ten
times that of Hurricane Katrina. A catastrophe of this magnitude is impossible to manage
without a lot more help from the international community.

M ÊÊ is a lawyer and political analyst. She can be reached through her website:
www.ayeshaijazkhan.com