These are difficult times for my nation. Over the last several weeks, most of our country has been pounded by an unprecedented amount of monsoon rains. As a result, floods that initially devastated mainly northeastern districts have swept through vast swathes of central and southern provinces. No amount of preparation could be enough to deal with a calamity of this scale and magnitude.
While the disaster may be compared with Hurricane Katrina in terms of loss of lives — more than 1,500 dead in Pakistan’s floods compared to more than 1,800 casualties in Katrina — the size of the area and population affected is 10 times greater than the tragedy that descended on Louisiana in 2005. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has described flood-hit Pakistan as going through an experience that was far worse than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Another observer has called this tragedy “an earthquake and tsunami rolled into one.” Pakistan’s own prime minister has termed the loss of human life and infrastructure as “colossal.”
Within weeks, the floods have washed away hundreds of villages located on the banks of the rivers and even further afield. The loss has been overwhelming, and statistics do not fully capture the strength of psychological blow and the long-term cost of recovery.
According to a preliminary damage report of Provincial Disaster Management Authority in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, the floods destroyed about 200,000 houses in that province alone. The initial estimates of the government of central province of Punjab say that as many as 3,000 villages, 8.2 million people, 5.23 million acres and crops over 3.5 million acres have been severely affected by the floods.
Across Pakistan, our vital agriculture sector has lost billions of dollars worth of crops. As a sampling, more than half a million tons each of wheat and sugar have been destroyed. More importantly, millions of farmers who have completely lost their seasonal crop and their vitally important cattle will need government support for months to come.
The international response to this tragedy has picked up pace as an increasing number of countries and organizations start to understand the magnitude of the disaster. The United States has led the international relief effort from the front as other friends of Pakistan have chipped in with invaluable assistance. The Pakistan Army alone has established more than 100 relief camps for flood-affected people and distributed thousands of tons of dry rations and cooked meals in affected areas. Community response within Pakistan and from expatriate Pakistanis has also been phenomenal.
