Floods and Failure in Pakistan
By Salma M Siddiqui for ISN
On 15 August, in Sialkot, a town near Lahore, two brothers were beaten to death, their bodies dragged and then hung from a pole as dozens of people including policemen watched. The gruesome scene was filmed and posted on youtube.
Reports claim that the mob had mistaken the brothers for robbers. Even if that was the case, the incident is too reminiscent of Taliban practices to be discarded as an anomaly. According to IDPs from the offensive against the Taliban in May 2009, the Taliban were feared in Swat valley for beheading men in public squares after charging them with numerous crimes, none of which were substantiated as required by Sharia law.
Even if examined in a simplified context, laymen arbitrarily implementing ‘justice’ is not a terribly positive development. The dire reality is that this incident is a reflection of the public sentiment: frustration, dereliction and hopelessness.
Murder isn’t the only thing Pakistanis are taking into their own hands. There is complete loss of faith in the government, while local media is bombarded with images of the flood victims complaining about the lack of assistance. According to the UN, 800,000 victims are still completely cut off from aid. With locals using stones and sandbags to try to levy riverbanks , valid questions are being raised as to why the floods are wreaking havoc in the first place: After all, monsoons are a yearly occurrence in Pakistan, and one would think such provisions would have been made in advance.
Most citizens are not donating via government agencies, and they aren’t the only ones. There is a glaring trust deficit that has seen international donors scrambling to find ways to avoid investing aid money through the government. According to Dawn news, the Asian Development bank actually created a special trust fund for “attracting donors to use its ‘fiduciary capabilities’ for reconstruction and rehabilitation.”
On the field, the most visible assistance is being provided by the armed forces, and given historical precedent, there is a strong chance that mismanagement of the flood disaster by the civilian government will pave the way for martial law (again).
However, that’s hardly the worst-case scenario: With troops already deployed across the country in the war on terror, the army is able to do only so much and the Taliban are stepping in only too happily to fill the void. That said, it must be noted (with relief?) that extremist organizations are not the only ones ‘recruiting’; the US government is also using this opportunity to assert its strategic interests. US aid helicopters are visible across the flood-hit areas, and the announcement of additional aid by Senator John Kerry, although welcome, comes with a redefined magnitude of the most important dimension in the war on terror; the battle for hearts and minds.
Some analysts are going beyond the terror terrain and likening the fallout of the floods to the separation of East Pakistan. After cyclone Bhola devastated what is now Bangladesh, Mujeeb ur Rahman’s party (the architect of Bangladeshi nationalism) won a landslide election victory due to its assistance and reconstruction efforts in lieu of the failure of then-Pakistani president Yahya Khan .
President Asif Ali Zardari will find the situation even more difficult. Due to the absolute fertility of the breeding ground - severe poverty, illiteracy, desperation and a predisposed ideological leaning toward fellow ‘Muslims’ - the winners are more likely to be the Taliban than the Americans, and the consequences much worse than the creation of a new state.