The Immediate and Broader Consequences of the Flood in Pakistan

Almost every news outlet is engaged with Pakistan’s flood and the dire needs of her people.  The different ways in which terrible fortunes await those who have just narrowly missed losing their lives is mind-boggling.  Disease is germinating in viral dark, wet corners.

Given this attention, it is heart-breaking that the private and public donations that in other places have hit peoples needs like sniper shots, has yet to register broadly.  Moreover, the money pledged is getting to the people in trickles and drips.  There is desperation here and no quiet to soothe it.

Infrastructure and economic capacity has been dialed back a decade and more. There can be no immediate resolution to the destruction of the capacities and capabilities of communities and individuals in the flood devastated areas of Pakistan, a breach that now threatens to swallow the country, whole.

Indeed, the New York Times recently reported that as many as 800,000 people are reachable only by air.  The public mood might not swing to this awe-striking number: consider if even 10% of those people should peris; consider if they should perish due to complications of a waterborne disease.

Besides these scenarios, security policy wonks are already beside themselves thinking about the strategic and security consequences of these facts.  800,000 unreachable!?  Does this imply that the Islamists cannot reach them either.  This might prove to not be the case.  The relief groups that have been founded as social service oriented, chameleon-like agencies of Islamist groups (some banned, some sanctioned) have been on the ground providing food and services to many of the distraught victims of the flood.  The fact that nearly every stripe and dot of infrastructure has gone down implies that some of these groups now have a natural laboratory to test out their recruitment strategies and design propaganda to suit the demands of the ever-shifting, darkening disdain for the PPP led government in Islamabad.

The people of the Khyber-Pakhtankhwa region are now saddled with what the U.S might term, the enemy–the savior now of many.  Analysts are even now scratching their heads: how to think through this problem to a feasible solution not engineered through guns and rockets?

When the fields are visible to the naked eye again, the water drains away, the land dries, the government and its international allies will have to reckon against a growing tumult amongst the people.  So far, the broader explanations of government inefficiency is easily available, though, to the victims of the flood, hardly excusable.