World should do more to help Pakistan, says US

[GentlemanObserver]

WASHINGTON: The United States said on Monday that the world’s response to the worst ever flood in Pakistan was not adequate and urged the international community to do more. “I am concerned that people do not see it as yet another catastrophe” that often beset Pakistan, US special representative Richard Holbrooke told a briefing in Washington. “It is a huge catastrophe.”

Also on Monday, the US decided to send more helicopters to Pakistan for relief and rescue operations.

The United States also contacted a number of allied nations, urging them to step forward to help Pakistan deal with this catastrophe.

“It is not just a talk. We are calling some of our allies and asking them to help,” Mr Holbrooke said, noting that the international community’s response to the flood was not adequate.

Six US Army helicopters began humanitarian assistance operations on Aug. 5, but were grounded on Aug. 6 -8 due to weather conditions. On their first day of operations, they evacuated more than 800 people from Kalam to Khwazakhela and transported 66,000 pounds of relief supplies.

The helicopters resumed operations on Monday. They rescued approximately 565 people and delivered 56,000 pounds of relief supplies.

The decision to send more helicopters was taken at a high-level meeting on Monday, Mr Holbrooke said.

In a separate statement that accompanied the briefing, the State Department announced that to date, the US had supplied food sufficient to feed about 158,500 people through its partnership with the World Food Programme and is currently reaching about 35,000 to 49,000 people per day.

To coordinate the US humanitarian aid, USAID’s Disaster Assistance Response Team began work in Pakistan on Aug. 8. The DART is composed of humanitarian relief experts, many of whom worked in Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake, to monitor assistance and quickly fill identified gaps by acquiring relief supplies, locally if possible.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr Holbrooke briefed the media on the death of eight aid workers in Afghanistan but the special envoy also addressed the flood situation in Pakistan.

“This is not yet another disaster. It is a very serious stuff,” he warned. “The rains have continued. The water is rising and a dam in Sindh may collapse.”

If the dam collapsed, it could destroy a large area, he added.

Mr Holbrooke endorsed a UN observation that this was a bigger disaster than the 2005 earthquake, noting that although the death toll was much less, the destruction was far greater.

“The death toll is only one way of looking at a disaster. If all factors are counted in, this is a larger catastrophe,” he said.

DAWN.COM | Front Page | World should do more to help Pakistan, says US

 

[s90]

By Catriona Luke

12 Aug, 2010.

THE last couple of weeks or so have been a bewildering swirl of heavy-handed press coverage, real attempts to grapple with the character of the new British government’s prime minister, David Cameron, and the pain of witnessing Pakistan in crisis with a natural disaster.

There is a problem in the British media. Few if any newspaper editors have visited Pakistan, and British journalists dispatched suddenly to Islamabad to find stories when political or natural disaster news breaks find themselves jet-lagged, adjusting to unfamiliar technical equipment and desperate to produce hard-hitting stories.

And with exceptions the same can be true of television coverage. I watched Channel 4 News last Thursday as a key international reporter described conditions south of the Kalabagh bridge. He spoke authoritatively about how Multan was in for heavy rain and flooding, but did not point out to viewers that Multan was not on the Indus at all but on the Chenab. Next up was a series of interviewers with villagers. “Has the army been here?” he asked. “Have the aid agencies been here?” The elderly villager he spoke to said no.

But the reporter, aiming to make a point, pressed on. “Has anybody been here?” With admirable restraint and not suggesting that the journalist was deaf, the villager simply replied: “I have said, nobody has been here.” Within minutes the report had moved on to the British media’s favoured theme, showing footage, possibly available on the wires, that members of the banned Lashkari-i-Taiba had been in the area providing medicine and water.

This is dismal and misplaced journalism. Pakistan is a vast country and the scale of the flooding means that only a tiny fraction of areas can be reached until the water subsides and journalists, whether covering Katrina in New Orleans or flooding in the northern British town of Carlisle, are not hard-pressed to find stories of citizens who have not been visited, aid vehicles not seen and government solicitude not felt.

Ten years after coverage of Pakistan took a downturn in the British media, this is not helpful to the understanding of a country. Portraits of Pakistan are at best ignorant and at worst unsympathetic. The country’s leaders — whether civilian or military — are invariably painted as unreliable autocrats working towards their own agendas. Shading and nuancing is lost. Pakistan’s sophisticated infrastructure — roads, bridges, hospitals, universities — as well as its IT capacities, creative industries, intellectual life, humour, arts, music, cinema and culture are completely unknown to British audiences.

The BBC’s South Asia online news is a case in point. While coverage of India is lightened with features and good news stories, the coverage for Pakistan is an unremittingly grim portrait of violence and disaster. The Guardian has an excellent correspondent in Declan Walsh, but his empathetic understanding and good knowledge of Pakistan has been without precedent. The Independent’s Andrew Buncombe, made of the same stuff and with much to offer a British readership, is mainly confined to India.

To be fair to the British press, it is also having to make rapid sense of David Cameron’s prime ministerly character, across a whole range of issues, domestic and foreign. The significance of Cameron’s remarks in Bangalore about Pakistan are still not clear: they had a purpose in acting as an emollient in diplomatic and trade relations, but whether they were designed to shore up or disrupt Pakistan’s civilian government in its relationship with the army and ISI is not clear.The subtleties of diplomatic relations are occasionally picked up — it was reported that Asif Ali Zardari had met British opposition politicians in Britain, notably Gordon Brown and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband. This was a small challenge to Downing Street. But no one had taken the time to find out what had happened on a British governmental visit to Pakistan at the end of June. In a round of slightly tense audiences (the pictures are on the Foreign Office website in Islamabad) Foreign Secretary William Hague met Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Yousuf Raza Gilani. But he also met Nawaz Sharif.

Larger questions simply escape attention completely. It is assumed that India is the pained elder cousin in its relationship with Pakistan, thereby escaping criticism. But if the key is regional stability across the subcontinent from the Iranian to the Burmese border, India could take a more responsible and proactive role in shouldering weight to sort problems out.

Even if the time frames are long and up to mid-century. Even if relations from time to time get strained. Even if it means grasping that the cataclysmic problems facing the subcontinent over the next century will not come, south of the Himalayas, from people but from climate change, movements in the earth’s crust and unpredictable weather systems.




The writer is an editor in London and was a staff member at the Independent and the Evening Standard.


©2010 DAWN Media Group

 

[Trisonics]

David Cameron's attack on Pakistan's approach to tackling terrorism is hampering aid efforts for the flood-stricken country, a senior official claimed last night.

Abdullah Hussein Haroon, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations, said his country had 'suffered' as a result of the row in which the Prime Minister accused his country of 'exporting terror'.

The Disasters Emergency Committee has raised £9.5million from the British public for Pakistan, but experts have warned this is less than was raised for comparable disasters, such as the Haiti earthquake.

Up to six million children are at risk of disease after the floods, aid agencies have warned.




Mr Haroon told Radio 4's World Tonight: 'Yes, Pakistan has suffered because of what David Cameron has said, because the British people will listen to their Prime Minister.'

Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari is due to visit the region today after his government was attacked for its perceived slow response to the disaster.

Mr Cameron's words sparked a diplomatic row.

He later insisted that he stood by his comments, but also stressed the sacrifices made by Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.

It comes after fears that the floods could allow Taliban insurgents to regroup amid the chaos and destruction.

The country's already anaemic economy is expected to weaken, increasing the poverty that is a major factor in the militancy wracking Pakistan.

One of the hardest hit regions is the northwest, the heartland of the Pakistan Taliban and other insurgent groups.
Devastation: Vast areas of Pakistan are still underwater and there are fears the chaos could allow Taliban insurgents to regain a foothold

Devastation: Vast areas of Pakistan are still underwater and there are fears the chaos could allow Taliban insurgents to regain a foothold

Rescue: Villagers escape from Bssera in a tiny boat. The Pakistan army has diverted 60,000 troops to helping the aid effort

Rescue: Villagers escape from Bssera in a tiny boat. The Pakistan army has diverted 60,000 troops to helping the aid effort

Attack: David Cameron attacked said President Zardari's country 'exported terror'

Attack: David Cameron attacked said President Zardari's country 'exported terror'

Over the last two years the Pakistan army has carried out several offensives against militants there.

The U.S. launched drone strikes of its own on the area because of the threat insurgents pose to Western troops across the border in Afghanistan.

Thousands of Pakistani soldiers are now tasked with flood relief and crucial rebuilding of bridges and roads once the worst floods in Pakistan's history have receded.

Helicopters that once supported troops in the tribal regions may also have to be dispatched for flood relief.

Chief army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said 60,000 troops were engaged in flood relief, including many in places where insurgents were active.

He said the military could handle the floods and the fighting concurrently.
Vulnerable: Twin boys born in a field hospital at a camp for survivors in Nowshera are cared for by their mother

Vulnerable: Twin boys born in a field hospital at a camp for survivors in Nowshera are cared for by their mother

Versatile: A man makes his way across two ladders roped together carrying a trunk of belongings

Versatile: A man makes his way across two ladders roped together carrying a trunk of belongings

Transport: Flood victims use a cable car to cross a swollen river in Matta

Transport: Flood victims use a cable car to cross a swollen river in Matta

Insurgents have kept up attacks during the flooding, which has left 1,500 people dead and affected nearly 14 million people.

A suicide bomber killed the head of a U.S.-backed paramilitary police force, while gunmen wounded the sister of one of the northwest's top political leaders.

On Tuesday, the Pakistani Taliban said the flooding was God's punishment for accepting secular leaders and urged Pakistanis to boycott foreign aid.

The UN and U.S. are urging the international community to step up assistance to Pakistan, which needs hundreds of millions in immediate emergency aid and billions of dollars to rebuild.

In a new appeal yesterday, the United Nations asked for $459million to provide emergency relief, including food, clean water, shelter and medical care, over the next 90 days.
Funding: Rows of tents stand in a college converted into a camp for some of the 14 million people affected by the Pakistan floods

Funding: Rows of tents stand in a college converted into a camp for some of the 14 million people affected by the Pakistan floods

Damage: Monsoon rains are continuing to hit northwestern Pakistan

Damage: Monsoon rains are continuing to hit northwestern Pakistan

Flood survivors already short on food and water began the fasting month of Ramadan this morning.

Doctors have warned that survivors' already weakened health could be further endangered by taking part in the religious month.

Damage to crops, roads and bridges have caused food prices to triple in some parts of the country.

Observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk each day for a month to control their desires and show empathy for the poor.

The month is marked by increased attendance at mosques, a rise in charitable giving and family gatherings.

Read more: Cameron accused of hampering Pakistan flood aid effort with terror criticism | Mail Online

 

[LadyGaga]

Haroon could be right in his grouse.But right now the need of the hour is making sure the aid is reaching the affected people.The consequences of these natural disasters are felt for years to come.India should also help pakistan during this time of distress.I do not see anything forthcoming from Dr.Singh.What have these innocent people done to suffer thus?I hope the world comes together and helps these unfortunate people to restore their lives and homes.Humanity is above everything else.

 

[Gene]

whats new in Mr cameron's speech,every one knows the truth.the difference is Mr cameron only oficially express it.

i think every countries's leaders are very reponsible persons,how can they act on just words of someone specially on issues like giving flood relief to any country.

every country should help other country in disaster like this & there should be no politics over life & death of people.

 

[NWO]

every country should help other country in disaster like this & there should be no politics over life & death of people.

Most people in the West view Pakistan as a terrorist country whose government supports the militants. Because of this, fewer people are donating to Pakistan then they did in the Haiti Earthquake.

Cameroon comment surely didn't help Pakistan image in the West nor is it going to convince people to donate. Not that it would have made a difference anyway. For example, check out the comments made on any articles on CNN or Fox. Plenty of hate for Pakistan.

 

[somebozo]