The crisis in Pakistan is getting worse according to the CBC as new flood waters are displacing even more people.
“New flooding in Pakistan sent 150,000 people to higher ground Saturday as aid agencies struggled to help the millions of people already affected by the disaster. The evacuation of homes was carried out in southern Sindh province as the latest surge approached. Already, 600,000 people are in relief camps set up in Sindh province because of flooding over the past month.”
The unspoken question is why is the relief effort have such a low international profile? Admittedly, this state is starting to change, but if we look at the Haiti Earthquake and the magnitude and intensity of the aid response what is different? Conditions in Pakistan are certainly as dire or even more so considering the larger scale of the devastation.
“Howard Arfin, spokesman for the Canadian Red Cross, is in one of the worst affected areas.
“We’re seeing first-hand the massive destruction from a river that is five times its normal size. Homes are washed out all around us. We’re still seeing people up to their chests in water,” he told CBC News. […]
According to Arfin, six million people are already homeless, and there are upwards of 20 million people whose lives have been impacted.”
Six million homeless? That like 1/5 of the population of Canada. The scale of destruction is really hard to imagine.
“About one-fifth of the country — a chunk of land about the size of Italy — has been affected. The floodwaters now covering roughly 6.8 million hectares are blamed for killing about 1,600 people.”
There is some good news though:
“On Friday, the United Nations said it has raised about 70 per cent of the $460 million US it called for in its emergency appeal.”
So, the aid money is slowly being gathered, at least that is something. Distance is a part of the equation of why there has been a lethargic response to the floods in Pakistan the other variables are still clouded. Some of the more pessimistic ideas could be the negative associations Pakistan has with the Taliban and the War on Terror, I would like to think though that we could separate the need for aid out from our misguided imperial policies and prejudices.
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August 26, 2010 at 8:43 am
Vern R. Kaine
The unspoken question is why is the relief effort have such a low international profile? Admittedly, this state is starting to change, but if we look at the Haiti Earthquake and the magnitude and intensity of the aid response what is different?
I think there may be a few theories on that one all working together. Haiti is close, and America has their fingerprints all over the country’s struggles. Haiti was also an “anti-Bush” statement in reference to how Bush handled Katrina, in an attempt to contrast how some believed the response to Katrina was race-related (Kanye West at the telethon – “Bush hates black people”). From a publicity standpoint and in that context, it could be argued that Haiti was a chance for America and celebrities to show the world how they’re “not George Bush”.
These aren’t theories that I necessarily subscribe to, but they are ones that I’ve heard, and when you look at the public response to other disasters (Chile earthquake, or even the “local” Tennessee floods), the intensity of response to Haiti is curious to say the least.
Or, perhaps we could go all conspiracy-theory nut job and say that it was a US-government “weather control machine” that the eugenicists are using to bring down the world’s population through floods and earthquakes and diminish the East’s economic capacity? ;)
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