Pakistan navy boats travel to reach flood victims

A man wades through flood waters towards a naval boat while evacuating his children in Sukkur, located in Pakistan's Sindh province August 8, 2010

Pakistani navy boats sped across miles of flood waters Sunday as the military took a lead role in rescuing survivors from a devastating disaster that has killed 1,600 people and left two million homeless.

The Pakistani military has maintained a dominant role in foreign and security policy even during civilian rule, and has come to the fore during natural disasters, such as in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake.

The civilian government has meanwhile appeared overwhelmed and President Asif Ali Zardari has been singled out for criticism for not remaining on an official visit to Europe as the country suffered its worst floods in 80 years.





But analysts do not expect the government’s heavily criticized handling of the crisis to encourage the military, which has ruled for more than half of Pakistan’s history, to try to seize power.

Heavy rain is forecast to further lash the country in the next 36 hours.

Rubber and wooden navy boats set out from areas in Sindh province, where flood waters burst from the Indus River across vast distances, to help Pakistanis who have watched safe ground shrink by the hour and waters swallow up their livestock.

“We have been doing this for several days,” said navy officer Akhter Mahmood after his boat travelled through about 20km of flood water.

Women, chest-deep in water, carried chickens and clothes on their heads before entering navy boats. “I thought the waters would go away,” said Sakina. “I want to come back.”

Zardari drew fire for leaving the country for official visits in Europe during the crisis. He said the prime minister was handling the catastrophe and informing him of developments.

GETTING WORSE

Floods wiped out Mohammad Saleem’s home and grocery store in the village of Kot Addu. “We have not received any help from the government so far and I am sure any foreign help that will come will never reach us,” he said.

Even though relief efforts may have improved the military’s standing, and widened the perception that Pakistani civilian governments are too weak and inefficient to cope with disasters, analysts do not see any threat to the current administration.

The army is busy fighting Taliban insurgents and does not want to be strapped with Pakistan’s enormous problems; from costly rebuilding after the floods, to the struggle to attract foreign investment in a troubled economy, to widespread poverty.

“I don’t think they are willing to dump Zardari,” said Kamran Bokhari, Regional Director, Middle East and South Asia at global intelligence firm STRATFOR.

“The current army leadership ... is very clear that there is a war that needs to be waged.”

Foreign aid organisations, also playing a much bigger role than the government, say weather has hampered relief efforts.

Floodwaters have roared down from the northwest to the agricultural heartland of Punjab and on to southern Sindh along a trail more than 1,000 km (600 miles) long.

The flooding, brought on by unusually strong monsoon rains, has destroyed 360,000 houses, aid groups say.

“We are very concerned because the situation is getting worse and worse,” said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian relief will be needed in the coming months alone, he said. Billions may be needed to rebuild infrastructure in the long term.

In Punjab alone, 1.4 million acres of land was destroyed. The economy, which depends heavily on agriculture and foreign aid, has taken a major hit.

In some areas, only the tops of trees and telephone poles are visible. Pakistanis fighting to hold on to anything they can walked waist-deep in water carrying logs from their shattered homes.

Even before the floods, Pakistan was struggling to tame inflation that averaged 11.7 percent for the last fiscal year. In Swat Valley, one of the hardest hit areas, tomato prices have more than tripled since the floods hit.

“Our country has gone back several years,” Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters on a visit to Sindh province.

In Punjab, hundreds of people were evacuated from drenched areas to a railway track on higher ground.

“What we are wearing is all that we have, the rest is all gone — our house, animals, wheat we had stored, everything has been destroyed,” university student Fiza Batool said as she fed her 10-year-old sister biscuits.