WHY HAS THE WORLD BEEN SLUGGISH TO DONATE TO PAKISTAN?

            

     It is indeed puzzling that the international response to Pakistan's flood emergency has been sluggish and ungenerous compared with relief efforts after previous disasters. In the aftermath of the earth quake that struck Haiti for instance, donors committed $742 million and pledged a further $920 million within the first 10 days! The same can never be said however about Pakistan. Where Donations have been sluggish to the Pakistan floods appeals .In fact the figures over the same period as Haiti stood at $45 million and $91 million. Indeed there is an obvious sense of fatigue among donors especially considering the fact that the devastating effects of the flooding far exceeds that caused by the earth quake in Haiti and the Indian ocean tsunami combined!

       But why has the international community and humanitarian societies sluggishly responded to the present predicament of Pakistan? After taking time to study different reasons for this ‘donor-aid syndrome’, I have identified some of the reasons below as possible explanations to why there has been a rather sluggish response in terms of offering aids to Pakistani floods victims;

                           The NATURE OF THE DISASTER

The Pakistani floods have not been an instant calamity that killed tens of thousands of people in a matter of minutes or hours unlike the earthquakes in Haiti or the tsunami that hit Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and India in 2004.

     A flood is a creeping catastrophe rather than a sudden shock like an earthquake or a tsunami. Thus, the devastating effects of the floods were not quickly noticeable. In Pakistan for instance, the floods started on July 29, nearly a month ago, when unusually heavy monsoon rains caused flash floods and landslides in north-western Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.  So it was not until a few days later, when the waters, constantly bolstered by fresh monsoon rains continued, that the extent of the devastation and threat of further destruction became apparent.
      The slow, gathering and spreading nature of this calamity meant that it was not until Aug. 8 that the UN warned of a human disaster unmatched in recent years, and another three days before it launched its appeal for $500 million. Thus, without doubts sudden events seem to generate more funds.  A flood (and droughts) happen gradually and build. There is no one single day in which news is huge.  Therefore, the nature of the disaster pushes the story away from the media spotlight. But massive and sudden earthquakes or tsunamis on the other hand, tend to draw immediate attention and shock from observers and potential donors.

      Hence for this school of thought, the ponderous progress of the crisis is undoubtedly a major reason why there was a rather sluggish response from the Western donors.

              POOR RESPONSE FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN

     The government’s response itself Within Pakistan was woeful and president Zardari himself was heavily criticised for his actions. The president embarked on a planned trip to Europe despite the need for action at home.

     He demonstrated a rather high level of insensitivity by even taking a trip, by helicopter to visit his chateau in Normandy in northern France. This crass act of insensitivity did nothing other than to remind people both in Pakistan and abroad of the president's reputation for corruption. In fact -he's known as "Mister Ten Per Cent" for his alleged rake-offs from government contracts. The act also highlighted the government's lack of resources such as helicopters to bring aid to people isolated in the floods.

       Only the army in Pakistan, which is the country's sole institution that functions reliably, was able to mount any credible and sustained effort to rescue the stranded and distribute aid.

                                            GEOGRAPHY

         Another factor to be considered so far is the issue of geography or proximity to the western world. American donors for instance are fatigued by the crises on their doorstep like the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in 2005 and the oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico.  Besides, Haiti for instance is relatively close to America and this no doubt might indeed explain the prompt response of America to Haiti’s plight.

       Pakistan on the other hand is a long way away from America and indeed the western world. Thus, the issue of proximity is indeed a possibility if we consider the fact that Many Americans saw Haiti as a neighbour and responded promptly and generously. Pakistan is farther away, both geographically and psychologically and this might explain why it took a while for countries of the west to respond to Pakistan’s plight.

                                                 CORRUPTTION

      Corruption concerns may explain why giving is lower to Pakistan. People in Pakistan are sceptical the government will be transparent. But they are giving to philanthropic organisations. People are always sceptical about their money reaching flood victims, particularly in Pakistan with reputations for corruption. In fact, due to the corruption that has hampered Pakistan's development programs, donors hold back for fear the money donated will be squandered by unscrupulous politicians.

         In the midst of all this controversy, is the infamous trip to Europe embarked upon by president Zardari. This trip was seen by majority as a bad move. As a matter of fact, for a few days, that was the 'story' of the Pakistani floods, which doesn't inspire people to be generous, particularly in this economic climate. To compound this woes are  Claims in the UK press that 360 million Euros in foreign aid for Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake was diverted by its government. Thus, it is believed by some that pouring money into Pakistan will mean pouring money into politicians' pockets, and that might explain why the aid has slowed down.

                          DONOR FATIGUE/ ECONOMIC RECESSION

         It appears there is generally donor fatigue all around. The world is yet to recover from the great lost in cash and kind suffered from the [2004] Indian Ocean tsunami, the Burmese Cyclone [Nargis, 2008], the [2005] Pakistan earthquake, and [this year's] Haiti earthquake. It is indeed getting too much and having its toll on the people. Especially if we consider the fact that the world economy is in a recession and people are short of money.

      It should also be noted that the international humanitarian system is not set up to deal with more than one major crisis a year. USAID, for example, committed one-third of its annual budget to the Haitian earthquake response. And among the general public there may be a feeling of, 'Well, since I donated to the victims of the Haitian earthquake, I don’t really have to donate to Pakistan. Or Haiti is a far needier country than Pakistan.'

        Indeed, the disaster came at a rather wrong time because following the financial crisis and the Haiti earthquake. Many donors made huge commitments to Haiti so may find it hard to fund another major disaster, particularly in the same year. This might explain another reason why aid has been slow to Pakistan.

                                             TERRORISM

      People are less likely to donate to any country seen as a haven for terrorism. And more generally, the fact that so much Western news coverage in recent years about Pakistan has been negative, stressing its links with the conflict in Afghanistan.  This might be a major reason for the slow public response. There may also be a feeling, particularly in the US, that Islamic governments and charities should be stepping up to the occasion to donate.

        Pakistan is indeed a terribly sympathetic country but also on the contrary a crossroads for terrorists, rogue supplier of nuclear weapons, sometime ally of the Taliban, alternating between military dictators and corrupt, ineffectual civilian governments.

       According to Matt Waldman in a paper for the London School of Economics titled, "The Sun in the Sky: The relationship between Pakistan's ISI and Afghan insurgents."  He argues that the ISI provides sanctuary and very substantial financial, military and logistical support to the Taliban insurgency, giving it "strong strategic and operational influence -- reinforced by coercion”.

      Waldman claims he based his conclusions on interviews with nine insurgent field commanders in three regions of Afghanistan, plus former Taliban officials, tribal leaders, politicians, experts and diplomats. The title comes from Taliban commanders' who claims that their relationship with Pakistani intelligence is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky’. Waldman therefore, concluded that Pakistan ‘continues to give extensive support to the insurgency in terms of funding, munitions and supplies’.

        The Taliban members interviewed on the other hand believes that the ISI has a heavy influence on their leadership, which some of them said amounts to control, according to the report.   One of the southern commanders claimed: "If anyone rejects that the ISI backs or controls the Taliban, he has a mental problem ... all our plans and strategy are made in Pakistan and step by step it is brought to us, for military operations or other activities," the report says.  In fact the ISI is widely thought to have played a key role in creating the Afghan Taliban during the 1990s, but Pakistan officially denies supporting them now.

 

   Thus Pakistan is sometimes seen by critics as an unstable and corrupt nuclear-armed state that has been the crucible of many international terrorist plots. This in effect might have greatly hindered the progress as regards giving aids especially in this time of dire need.

                                                   

THE PAKISTANI FLOODS (AN OVERVIEW)

              

   These are never the best of times for the people of Pakistan! Since July 29, 2010, heavy monsoon rains have triggered flooding that has left over 1,500 people dead. The death toll is expected to greatly increase as flooding is fast spreading throughout the country and countless are missing due to flash floods and landslides. To compound this woe, it is expected that more monsoon rains and flooding are on the way till the end of August according to experts.

    The negative impact of the floods has been great and devastating. Presently, it is estimated that over 20 Million people have been affected by this present disaster. These estimates represent more than the 2004 Indonesia Tsunami, 2005 Pakistan Earthquake, and 2010 Haiti Earthquake combined and the destruction is increasing each day. As Millions of homes in thousands of villages and towns are constantly being destroyed and people are being displaced.

     According to the Pakistan government, it is believed that more than 248,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged and 1.38 million acres of crop land flooded across Pakistan. Livestock’s are no exemption to this disaster. In fact, At least 10,000 cows have drowned over the past eight days of the floods!

    The floods have also taken its destructive tolls over infrastructures such as dams, power stations, roads, bridges, schools, agricultural wells and drinking water hand pumps. Thus, for Pakistan and its inhabitant, this represents perhaps the worst and deadliest natural calamity the nation has ever witnessed!

    To make matters worse and according to the united nations, the flooding,  has now affected about one-fifth of the country — nearly 62,000 square miles — or an area larger than England. This makes it quite difficult for relief for the majority of the affected people. At present, the number of affected people needing relief has greatly increased to about six million! Their greatest needs are; Clean water, shelter and food. It is saddening though, that of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water, only just 500,000 have received help according to the UN.

    In the aftermath of this weather related disaster of 2010 that is continuing to unfold in Pakistan since July 29, 2010, so many questions have been raised such as; how will Pakistan cope and survive this present disaster? What will be the long term effect of the disaster? How and when will Pakistan’s economy recover from the extensive damage to infrastructure and crops which is estimated to exceed 4 billion USD? In fact, how will they recover from the total economic impact which is estimated to be as much as 43 billion USD? How will the citizens cope with the psychological effects of the disaster? And more importantly, how and why has the international community and humanitarian societies sluggishly responded to the present predicament of Pakistan?

THE EFFECTS OF THE FLOODS IN BRIEF!

                         

ON INFRASTRUCTURE: The floods apparently affected the power infrastructure of Pakistan.  It was reported that 10,000 transmission lines, transformers, feeders and power houses in different flood hit areas got damaged. At the moment, the damage has caused a power shortfall of 3.135 gigawatts. The Floods have also damaged an estimated 2,433 miles of highway and 3,508 miles of railway. It is estimated that the present Cost for highway damages stands at approximately 158 million USD and railway damages stands at 131 million USD. Public building damages are estimated at 1 billion USD.

 ON HEALTH: Just like with any catastrophic plagued region, Health and Aid agencies have warned that outbreaks of diseases, such as: gastroenteritis, diarrhoea and skin diseases due to lack of clean drinking water and sanitation can pose a serious new risk to victims of the flood. Thus, it was no surprise when On 14 August, there emerged the first documented case of cholera in the town of Mingora, as fear ran through millions of stranded victims of flood, who are already suffering from gastroenteritis and diarrhoea. To corroborate this fact, the World Health Organization reported that ten million people were forced to drink unsafe water further exposing them to more health risks. In fact, it is presently estimated that over two thousand people have died from the impacts of the floods!

ON AGRICULTURE, LANDSCAPE AND FOOD: It is reported that the Floods have submerged 17 million acres of Pakistan's most fertile crop land. It is also estimated that the floods have also killed 200,000 livestock and has washed away massive amounts of grain. In fact it is believed that farmers will be unable to meet the fall deadline for planting new seeds in 2010, meaning a massive loss of food production in 2011, and of course leading to long term food shortages.  In monetary terms, The agricultural damages is estimated to be  more than 2.9 billion dollars, and include over 700,000 acres of lost cotton crops, 200,000 acres of sugar cane and 200,000 acres of rice, in addition to the loss of over 500,000 tonnes of stocked wheat, 300,000 acres of animal fodder and the stored grain losses.

ON THE ECONOMY: The Structural damages caused by the floods are estimated to exceed 4 billion and the total economic impact is estimated to be as much as 43 billion USD!

ON SECURITY: The floods have done little to help the security of Pakistan especially due to the presence of the Taliban. Pakistani and US military forces have been diverted from fighting the Pakistani Taliban insurgents (TTP) in the Northwest so as to help in the relief effort. It is strongly feared that this will allow Taliban fighters to regroup.

The Pakistani Taliban have also engaged in relief efforts and made inroads where the government is absent or seen as corrupt.  It is feared that governmental delay and corruption will give an advantage to the Taliban to settle and regroup. In fact a Taliban spokesperson has asked the Pakistani government to reject Western help from "Christians and Jews" claiming that, instead, the Taliban can raise $20 million in relief for the flood victims.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAKISTAN AND THE TALIBAN

             

       In other to understand the puzzling and complex relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, a credible source to turn is to the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who has been warning for years that the problem of the complex relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban militants was being overlooked.

        In his book, Descent into Chaos he provides a shocking analysis of the crisis looming in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and Central Asia that will, if not addressed, impact deeply on the West. He also describes how the United States has ignored consolidating South and Central Asia, the homeland of global terrorism, in favour of invading Iraq.
       According to Rashid, Pakistan supported the Taliban when they were in power, so as to keep Afghanistan in Pakistan's corner against India. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the country's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, better known as ISI, has been duplicitous. It continues to provide sanctuary and military support for the Taliban, even to this day, while arresting some Arabs among their fighters to appease the Americans.

        According to Rashid, Iraq is however not a global international threat. But rather the threat is coming from what is happening in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. Rashid claims the Taliban leadership were given sanctuary at the very highest level by the Pakistani army in Quetta and they are still living in Quetta. This marked the very key to the Taliban insurgency. The other allies of the Taliban, who have settled up in northern Pakistan, were also given sanctuary.     

       Indeed, and according to Rashid it appears that almost every single important extremist leader is now living on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, the various Chechyan groups, Kashmiris, Chinese extremists. In fact, anyone in Asia, who is interested in global jihad and al-Qaeda philosophy, is sitting there on the border, receiving training, money, and everything else.

      Rashid is of the opinion that from 2001 to about 2004 there was a holding policy in Afghanistan. The American administration was not interested in rebuilding or reconstructing the nation, empowering the government or empowering the people. Afghanistan was left to the CIA and to the Defence Department. They were given $1 billion and they were told to "Make peace, empower the warlords, and let them run the country while we do Iraq. And if they can help us find bin Laden and al-Qaeda that would be useful."

       However, the problem was that half the warlords were in bed with al-Qaeda at the time. So they were receiving money both from al-Qaeda and from the Americans. And they obviously didn't help the Americans find anyone.

       To corroborate the fact that a mutual relationship thus exist between Pakistan and the Taliban, the then president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil."  While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, a declassified U.S. document released in August 14, 2007 clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself. (Even though Pakistani officials up till this day reject allegations that their country's powerful intelligence agency still supports the Taliban and other Afghan insurgents).

        The released documents reflect U.S. apprehension about Islamabad's longstanding provision of direct aid and military support to the Taliban, including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan. The records released also represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan's aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad's firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.

      Islamabad however denies that it ever provided military support to the Taliban, but the newly-released documents report that in the weeks following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996, Pakistan's intelligence agency was "supplying the Taliban forces with munitions, fuel, and food." Pakistan's Inter service Intelligence Directorate was "using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces."  Other documents also conclude that there has been an extensive and consistent history of "both military and financial assistance to the Taliban."

     Thus, the objective or the aim of the international community or the U.S.-led intervention in 2001 was how to end the safe havens of terrorists in the region and how to make the government of Afghanistan not to be a threat to others and to be able to defend its country. Unfortunately, none of these objectives have been achieved yet.  This according to observers was because the bush administration was more concerned about the threat of Iraq and al-Qaeda. And also because Pakistan has greatly supported the current Taliban insurgencies experience in Pakistan to this day!