Millions of Pakistanis — are being stalked by disease and malnutrition.
- 1.2m houses damaged
- 1.3m people rescued
- 1,645 deaths
- 72,000 children severely malnourished
- $200m US aid
- $100m UK government aid
When the floods swept away the house, animals and arable land a month ago Badar Munir thought that all was lost. He was wrong.
In the weeks that followed his two daughters, Zeeba, 6, and Seema, 4, became sick. Suffering from acute diarrhoea and stranded miles from a doctor or medical supplies, they died.
Unless we get help now people will die. And we will need help for years.
“There was no way for help to come,” Mr Munir, his sunken eyes dark pockets of shadow, told The Times. “The flood destroyed the only road. We were entirely cut off.”
Mr Munir, who thinks that he is about 40, had ground out a living as a farmer in the Kandia Valley in Pakistan’s mountainous North West Frontier Province, one of the regions hit earliest and hardest by the worst floods witnessed in the country.
In the first three days many in Kandia were convinced that they faced death. Marooned on steep, exposed terrain and surrounded by the churning waters of the swollen Indus river, which had surged more than 30ft (10m), they said their final prayers.
Whether they were answered is open to question: the freakishly strong monsoon rains abated and the panic and waters receded, but the people of Kandia — like millions of other Pakistanis — are being stalked by disease and malnutrition.
Across the country an estimated 800,000 victims remain unreachable after monsoon waters swamped an area the size of England, affecting 20 million people. More than a million people have abandoned their homes in recent days after the floods reached southern Pakistan. Yesterday 250,000 people fled the southern city of Sujawal after yet another levee broke.
The UN says that 72,000 children affected by severe malnutrition are at high risk of death. Unicef estimates that 3.5 million infants need medicine and clean water urgently. Their fate, aid workers say, rests with the international community.
The Times reached Mr Munir on a US Marine C46 helicopter in Dasu, the small, ramshackle capital of Kohistan, a district whose Persian name means “Land of Mountains”. It had taken him three days to walk there.
The US military, which has been in Pakistan for a fortnight, has been flying to Dasu only for the past few days, partly because of the need to provide security for temporary forward refuelling bases close to the Swat Valley, an area held recently by the Taleban.
The American pilots said that their skills and aircraft — the C46 is a little sister to the giant dual-rotor Chinook — were being tested to the limit. In Kohistan, where the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountain ranges meet, the valleys are beautiful but tight and treacherous and the Marines fly at high altitudes in scorching weather.
“That means you need more power but your engines give you less,” said Captain Andrew Krawczel, 28, a pilot with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. “In these conditions you can get into trouble real quick.”
At the Ghazi airbase near Islamabad, where the C46s are stationed, American officers are quick to play down talk of a mission to win hearts and minds. The US is interested only in “doing the right thing ... helping people in need at the request of the Pakistani Government”, one said.
Most analysts agree that a high-visibility US response could help to reduce militant support. The Pentagon, whose Predator drones have been criticised for killing civilians while hunting for militants, seems to be following such a policy. It announced on Saturday that 18 more helicopters would be sent to Ghazi from Alaska, more than doubling the current number.
Whether that will be enough is uncertain. In the town of Pattan in Kohistan, boys whoop and shout when a Marine C46, its engines thunderously loud, twists through a neighbouring valley to land. It brings desperately needed basic supplies: cooking oil, water and flour. However, the men who have walked for hours and days to find food for their families are silent. They say that they are yet to benefit from the US presence.
“People know the helicopters are from America but we are still hungry,” said Ziaur Rehman, a deputy ranger for the wildlife department, who had left his family in Kandia to try to fetch supplies from Dasu. “We need basic things to survive: food, water, medicine. But we still don’t have them.”
Even if their stomachs are filled the job of replacing farms and roads that have been obliterated will remain.
“You must realise that in Kandia everything has been destroyed,” Mr Rehman said. “Agriculture is gone, infrastructure is gone, communications are gone. Nothing is there. Unless we get help now people will die. And we will need help for years.”
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