The surge cometh — again

Pakistan has once again been overtaken by a natural disaster and floods are sweeping southwards, compounding the damage being done to the economy by the stagnant pool of protesters in Islamabad. A red alert has been issued in South Punjab preparatory for the mass of water that has built up in the river systems that are both life-blood and death-warrant for many. The government has made sure that as many get the message as possible by sending SMS alerts to registered mobile phone numbers in the province. The TV channels are all giving extensive coverage and politics has had to make way for coverage of disaster relief. Although the floods are hopefully not going to be as massive as those of 2010 which covered a fifth of the country and left about seven million homeless and killed about 10 million livestock, it is becoming ever clearer that Pakistan is in a cycle of exceptional weather events that are annual and always going to cause severe damage.

The 2010 monsoon was exceptional in that it occurred further north than was usual and hit areas that normally had relatively low levels of rainfall even in the worst of their monsoon season. Meteorologists have noted a gradual change in our weather systems over the decades, with the monsoon shifting northeast and away from the Punjab watershed where it has historically been located. The mountainous north with its narrow valleys and equally narrow and fast river systems channels the deluge southwards, a deluge that has added weight and volume as higher temperatures in the mountains had led to higher rates of glacial and snow melts annually. The period of the fastest melt occurs at the time the monsoon hits the area, an unhappy confluence.

There are still people in Sindh and Balochistan that are displaced or homeless as a result of the floods in 2010 and 2011. The years since have seen accusations of corruption surrounding the provision of relief and rehabilitation, and of the politicisation of aid to the most needy. As the flood works its way south as it inevitably will they will be hit again, and communities and cities that had previously escaped may find themselves at risk. Massive flooding is going to present what comes close to being an existential threat to Pakistan such is the damage it inflicts with increasing regularity. Questions have to be asked about the viability of some communities given their propensity for flooding, and relocation may be a grim last option.

About 200 people have died thus far, though the figure is disputed — as was the toll from the 2010 floods which was officially pegged at 1,800 — and it may be higher. Most of the deaths have been in Punjab and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Indian Prime Minister Modi, on September 7, went and saw for himself the devastation wrought in his own country as rain and rivers are no respecters of national borders. Civil agencies have been stretched in terms of disaster response, and the army has come to the rescue in innumerable instances. Measures are in place to protect cities such as Multan by breaching dykes and the National Highway at key locations — emergency responses that themselves have long-term damaging effects on both infrastructure and agricultural productivity and standing crops are lost and the flooded land unable to be brought back into productivity for as long as a year. The implications of that in what is in parts a triple-cropping zone are as yet incalculable.

The floods of 2014 are still a ‘work in progress’ and although the rainfall is dying away the land will progressively drain to the south in coming days. Disaster preparedness and timely well-planned relief operations are going to be necessary into the foreseeable future; the flood problem is not going to magically disappear — and the battle to save the country from drowning is infinitely more important than the battle of egos in Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2014.

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