Why Pakistan ‘super floods’ are a warning for South Asia and the rest of the world
- Monsoon misery exposes climate change threat as millions face acute starvation
- Army and volunteers step up aid relief operations, but analysts warn Pakistan must quickly learn from lessons of previous disasters
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” asked Falaknaz Asfandyar, a princess of the erstwhile royal family of Swat, a mountainous valley in northern Pakistan.
“Our last relief convoy was mobbed by people demanding that we hand over the goods we were taking to people further up the valley,” she said last Saturday, as workmen at her home in Saidu Sharif loaded sacks of wheat flour and other dry rations onto three trucks for delivery to areas devastated by monsoon-fed flash floods on August 25.
This was the third of four humanitarian aid shipments she had scheduled after raising about US$28,000 in donations for the flood victims of Swat.
Falaknaz said she had been involved in raising funds for Swat natives since a massive earthquake struck northern Pakistan in 2005, killing more than 70,000 people.
As Falaknaz and her daughter waited for the trucks to catch up with their SUV at the town of Madyan, their presence drew a crowd of men from adjacent valleys searching for food for their families.
A man tried in vain to persuade Falaknaz’s secretary to distribute the relief goods there and then, rather than further up the Swat valley at Bahrain, the last town still reachable by road.
“Our families are starving,” he said, as he showed photographs on his mobile phone depicting the severe damage wrought by the floods. “Our food stocks are exhausted and I have no money because I haven’t been able to work for the last two weeks.”
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Pakistan floods are ‘climate carnage’, says UN chief Guterres