Cameron's comments hit Pakistan flood aid

[Nahraf]

Cameron`s comments hit Pak flood aid: Envoy
Updated on Thursday, August 12, 2010, 13:33

London: British Prime Minister David Cameron's warning to Pakistan that it should stop "export of terror" to India and Afghanistan has adversely affected efforts to raise funds for flood relief, a senior Pakistani diplomat has said.

Pakistan's Ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, told BBC's Radio 4 that Cameron's comments had allegedly added to Pakistan's suffering amidst unprecedented floods in the country.

The comments on Pakistan by Cameron during his recent visit to India sparked a diplomatic furore between the two countries.

The row was sought to be settled during Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's recent visit to the UK, when both leaders said ties between the two countries were 'unbreakable'.

Asked if disputes such as the one sparked by Cameron's comments had caused Pakistan to suffer, Haroon said: "Yes, indeed Pakistan has suffered because of what Mr Cameron has said, because the British people will listen to their Prime Minister."

According to him, a negative perception of Pakistan could be preventing the public from giving more aid. Haroon said: "The world has been slow. It could be because of donor fatigue in terms of what's happening around the world, but also I don't think the international press, until now, has portrayed what is happening."

Warning of a risk that the Taliban could flourish in areas where they had previously been defeated by the Pakistani Army, he said: "The Taliban has been flushed out and are now running back to these areas and trying to reinvest themselves into them."

"There is going to be a fight over who helps who at this grievous time, and if the international community does not take this as its responsibility, I'm afraid there will be repercussions much beyond what is happening just now," he told the BBC.

PTI

 

[Nahraf]

What explains the tight-fisted response to the Pakistan floods | Catriona Luke | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

What explains the tight-fisted response to the Pakistan floods

The steady drip of negative 'terror'-obsessed media coverage has done Pakistanis a great disservice

Compare and contrast: within days of the 2004 tsunami, £100m had poured into Oxfam, the Red Cross and other charities, and by February 2005 when the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) closed its appeal, the total stood at £300m. The Haiti earthquake appeal closed with donations of £101m. The DEC total for the Pakistan floods appeal has just reached £10m. .

The reasons for this disparity aren't complex. There has been a slow steady drip of negative media coverage of Pakistan since the 1980s, and if it lessened a little in the 90s as civilian governments went in and out of administration, it became inevitably tougher with the return of a military government, 9/11, the "growth" of Islamic extremist organisations in Pakistan, and the ins and outs of apparent ISI-sponsored terrorism in both Mumbai and Afghanistan. At home, Pakistan's image has been affected by debates about burqas, the bombings in London in 2005 and the country's perennial linguistic association with "terror".

British readers and viewers know little of Pakistan and – with the exception of writers such as the Guardian's Declan Walsh and Saeed Shah, as well as Aleem Maqbool, who has given sensitive coverage for the BBC in Islamabad, and exemplary analysis and comment on the BBC World Service by Owen Bennett-Jones and Lyse Doucet – reporting of the country is poor and superficial.

BBC News online is not exempt from criticism. In its old format, the BBC online South Asia site had always run features and good news stories about India, but Pakistan coverage was pretty much limited to bombings, violence and hardship. This is despite the fact that "India Shining" has a huge population of citizens living in poverty – see Chris Morris's shocking report in May for the BBC – and that hunger and neglect by government is the daily lot of 35% of the population – or 450 million people.

India also has its own homegrown insurgency. The Naxalite/Maoist "terrorists" in the north-east are a dangerous challenge to Indian stability, but this extremism – and its causes, which lie in poverty – escapes international censure. In July the UN index showed that there are more people in poverty in eight states of India than in the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. There are finally suggestions in the press that the responsibility for lack of resolution of conflict in Kashmir over 60 years at present lies more firmly with India.

Back in the UK, the communities of Pakistan descent, a large proportion of Mirpuri origin, have behaved in an exemplary fashion over the last decade. When David Miliband commented in the Guardian, at the time of the incoming Obama administration, that the "war on terror" had been a mistake, I wrote to him to say that as he well knew, the "war on terror" had been a gross and disingenuous overstatement and that British citizens were tens of thousands of times more likely to die from car accidents, alcohol, obesity and heart disease than from terror attacks.

Young Britons of Pakistani origin do not in general compound NHS hospital bills with alcohol abuse, knife crime (with a starting cost of £8,000 per patient to the NHS), nor go in for epidemics of petty crime, nor swallow the state's funds in out-of-work benefits and housing benefits. The majority live in remarkably settled and productive communities. Family life is taken very seriously and the success of efforts within communities to help young people through difficult pressures of the culture and politics of faith both external and internal to their communities are frankly miraculous.

For this they have to put up with an unending diet of "terror", "extremist" and anti-burqa rants from the press, while seeing their grandparents' and parents' home country torn often apart in foreign policy analysis. The most unnecessary headline the Evening Standard has run (quite a competitive field) was "What Londoners think of Muslims" (14 November 2007). It was beyond reason and beyond taste and had it been phrased differently – what Londoners think of Jews, or perhaps even what they think of Catholics, it would have been referred straight to the Press Complaints Commission.

In April I went to hear Ali Sethi, Kamila Shamsie and Moni Mohsin, writers well known in Pakistan, speak at the National Portrait Gallery. If they were dismayed at the coverage and levels of ignorance about their country, such dismay was expressed with humour and warmth. Moni Mohsin, particularly, told how on a recent visit to Lahore in February, while at the hairdressers and with some bombing recently in the city, her two stylists were chattering away above her head about the real worry, that it was Valentine's Day and you could not find little gold hearts anywhere but anywhere, as they had sold out in all the shops and bazaars.

Pakistanis are subcontinental people, and are in many ways similar to their neighbours in India. They share cultural ties, history and – a personal view here – a great warmth of character that is unique to this part of the world. We are spectators to the difficulties that the subcontinent and particularly Pakistan is going through, but we could perhaps wonder at the wretched and unfounded image of Pakistan when viewed through the lens of the British media. And perhaps not be so surprised that having swallowed this over many years, the public find it hard to overcome their misgivings and to give.

 

[mehru]

We have to help our Pakistani brothers and sisters ourselves. Stop looking towards the world for help. Many people have started this on their own. Every Pakistani on this forum should think of a way to help the flood affectees.

Strangers step in where government fails

NOWSHERA, Pakistan: Nowshera is more like a war zone than a flood zone. Houses and shops have been reduced to rubble and brick walls have gaping holes that could have been blasted by artillery shells. But water, not weapons, shattered this northern Pakistan town.

It's more than a fortnight since flooding first hit but swathes of land in and around Nowshera remain swamped by brown water and the seething Kabul River threatens to engulf the whole town again should the monsoon deliver another sustained downpour.

''This is like the Titanic movie - but here there is no hero and heroine,'' says Mian Burhan, a local Red Crescent volunteer. ''It feels like Nowshera has been put back 50 years.''

Impromptu tent cities have appeared on roadsides to accommodate the thousands of flood victims. Some desperate families have even pitched tarpaulins on a highway median strip.

''There was no warning. When the water came we just had to run,'' said Inzar Gul, one of those camped in the middle of the road. ''It came so fast I was up to my neck. I was almost completely submerged.''

But there were stories of hope amid the gloom.

Mr Burhan says residents of Armour Colony, a Nowshera neighbourhood unaffected by the floods, have taken in about 3000 families who have been left homeless.

''Some households here have three families living with them,'' he says. ''Many people have opened their hearts.''

Mr Burhan, 25, hosts a mobile Red Crescent health clinic at his home and the local community has helped set up a registration centre to facilitate food distribution by the World Food Program.

Mr Burhan estimates about 40 per cent of Nowshera's flood victims have been taken in by host families. A similar proportion of the homeless are being hosted by locals at nearby Charsadda, aid workers have been told.

It is reminiscent of the response to the refugee crisis in the region in May last year when about 2 million people fled the fighting between government troops and Taliban insurgents in the nearby Swat Valley. While many ended up in refugee camps, most are believed to have been hosted by households in surrounding districts.

This generosity highlights an aspect of Islam overshadowed by the publicity gained by violent extremists and those promoting a hardline interpretation of Sharia law in Pakistan. An important teaching of Islam is to show hospitality to strangers and those in need. This kind of behaviour is deeply entrenched in the region's traditions.

The Pakistan government has been criticised for its ham-fisted reaction to the crisis, and the international response has been sluggish. But many locals have shown great generosity.

Even so, most of flood victims are living rough.

Tilawat Shah's small house is filled with stagnant water and stinking mud. At night his extended family retreats to a tent on higher ground in case the water returns. By day they do what they can to clean up.

Sodden documents, cosmetics, toys and a calculator were scattered on a rope bed to dry out.

''I'm a daily labourer and I haven't had work since the flood,'' he says. ''I don't know what I'm going to do.''

A neighbour, Sabir Hussain, says six people from his street were swept away by the torrent, which rose above the roofs of many buildings in the town. Local authorities estimate more than 700 people died in Nowshera and the adjacent districts of Peshawar and Charsadda - around half the total flood deaths recorded so far.

The town is tense. At the sodden Mohallah Nawan market area a hungry crowd jostled for rotis - the flat circular bread popular in Pakistan - being distributed by a local man from the back of his car. Stifling heat seemed to accentuate the stench of the putrid sludge and debris strewn across the town located in the unstable province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the North-West Frontier Province) bordering Afghanistan.

The Herald visited Nowshera with a team of aid workers from the International Federations of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and crowds of flood victims asking for food or money surrounded us at most stops.

As I interviewed people outside a school building packed with flood victims, scores pressed against me pleading for help.

The stories from Nowshera are a snapshot of the misery being caused by the floods, now rated by the United Nations as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern times.

Downstream in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh, villages are still being engulfed. The Indus River is reported to be 20 kilometres wide at some points.

People from every social class are being affected, but those hardest hit are poverty-stricken rural families who struggle to survive at the best of times. Having lost their homes and livelihood some may never return. It is possible the disaster will trigger a surge of urban migration and put pressure on Pakistan's big cities, such as Karachi and Lahore.

''We just don't know yet how much this disaster will affect the social fabric of this country,'' says Patrick Fuller, a spokesman for the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

An Afghan refugee camp on the outskirts of Nowshera that housed thousands was completely flattened in the deluge. There is an estimated 1.8 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and many have been affected by the floods. Having lost homes and livelihoods in Pakistan, and facing war and possible persecution at home, could the floods push more Afghans to make an asylum bid to a third country such as Australia?

For a country already traumatised by insurgency and frequent terrorist attacks, the flood has introduced a dangerous new political dynamic.

If the basic needs of flood victims are not quickly met, it could cause widespread unrest and further destabilise Pakistan.

Few of the flood victims interviewed by the Herald in Nowshera expressed anger at the government's response. They had little expectation that politicians would do anything to help.

''The local people will give us food,'' said Bhaktia, a homeless man, when asked if he expected more from the government.

Another said he knew nothing about politics: ''We are flood victims, we are not sitting around watching the politics on TV.''

But the deep shortcomings of the Pakistan state have been exposed by the floods. There are fears that faith in Pakistan's democracy, only restored in 2008, could be further damaged by the government's lacklustre response to the disaster.

The decision of the unpopular President, Asif Ali Zardari, to go ahead with a foreign tour despite the floods has fuelled discontent.

Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, a political analyst and executive director of the Islamabad think-tank, Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, warns that the mishandling of natural disasters by Pakistan in the past has had huge political consequences.

He says anger at the government response to the 1970 cyclone and floods in what was then East Pakistan - now the independent country of Bangladesh - played a ''big role'' in alienating people from Islamabad and diminishing support for a united Pakistan. ''We have a history of such calamities having major political fallout,'' he said.

Strangers step in where government fails

 

[somebozo]

Shame on Camoron. We should learn diplomacy lessons from Iran. Time to host a photo gallery exhibition about British colonial brutality in South Asia.

 

[Renegade]

Shame on Camoron. We should learn diplomacy lessons from Iran. Time to host a photo gallery exhibition about British colonial brutality in South Asia.

How will that help? unless you want to take Pakistan the Iran way & make it an international pariah state.

or you could dismantle the terror infrastructure!!

 

[BATMAN]

Will this cameron dude apologize to the nation as first thing tomorrow morning?

 

[DelhiDareDevil]

Im from England, the main reason why English people didnt give enough aid as Pakistanis may have expected, is the worry that aid might fall in the wrong hand and go to Pakistani terrorists instead.

 

[Jungibaaz]

Im from England, the main reason why English people didnt give enough aid as Pakistanis may have expected, is the worry that aid might fall in the wrong hand and go to Pakistani terrorists instead.

Nope.... Torries are in charge, that's why!

D Cam would sell his own mother for a quick quid

 

[Mech]

Nope.... Torries are in charge, that's why!

D Cam would sell his own mother for a quick quid

So, in effect...those who lash out against your country are those shameless enough to sell their mother?

 

[Mutee]

It's mr Cameron who looks both ways not pakistan

 

[Jackdaws]

Don't blame the world for not giving you enough aid. Poor UK is hardly rolling in cash.

 

[Tigershark]

Politics shouldn't get in the way of international aid.

 

[Jackdaws]

Politics shouldn't get in the way of international aid.

I agree. But it ALWAYS does. Sad, but true.

 

[DelhiDareDevil]

But David Cameroon is still giving same amount of aid to India compared to when India wasnt as developed as before.

So David Cameroon is a cool guy, and I like him as a PM, he is reducing benefits to his own people by billions, so I dont blame Cameroon, as what he said is true, if you go by statistics.

 

[Thorough Pro]

How will that help? unless you want to take Pakistan the Iran way & make it an international pariah state.

or you could dismantle the terror infrastructure!!

But all Indian members take great pride in being a close friend of the same "Pariah State".