Pakistan is in the eye of a storm. As an adverse impact of climate change, the country is in the grip of rains and flash floods that were poorly forecasted. Torrential rains took the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa by surprise leaving behind at least 30 dead and hundreds of injured. Likewise, scores of houses in low-lying areas and huts on mountainous zones were devastated. The casualty-ridden areas were identified as Karak, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat districts. Potential winds and rain-thunderstorms are likely in the entire battered region of K-P and former tribal areas for many more days to come, leaving the people at the mercy of inclement weather and a fractured rescue process.
Meanwhile, resilience will once again be up for test for the Karachiites as cyclone Biparjoy nears its coastal belt. The Arabian Sea-borne windstorm is likely to hit Sindh’s backwaters and Karachi, and is estimated to be too strong in impact. Balochistan’s Ormara port and other shorelines of the desolated province will once again be exposed to natural disaster, hardly having limped back from last monsoon’s death and destruction. As is the kind convention of sea-stirred winds in the south of Pakistan, until and unless Biparjoy opts to move away from Karachi and gravitate its synergies towards Oman, the mega-city of 25 million must keep its fingers crossed.
The impact of blustery and raging rains across the length and breadth of Pakistan, coupled with landslides and floods, has become a common phenomenon. As global weather dynamics change and glaciers melt at a rapid speed, some serious thinking is needed by those at the helm of affairs. For seven decades, the state has left its populace at the mercy of nature, only to supplement it with piecemeal relief measures. Moreover, the help that is promised in the form of rebuilding is often up for a political toss. This warrants an astute infrastructure buffering, especially in the mountainous landslide areas, and building dams on a war-footing basis. Only then can the turn and tide of nature, as we sit at the belly of Himalayas, can be weathered in toto.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 12th, 2023.
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