Floods Could Have Lasting Impact for Pakistan

Floods Could Have Lasting Impact for Pakistan
By ADAM B. ELLICK
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: August 16, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?th&emc=th


KARACHI, Pakistan — Even as the government and international relief workers struggle to get food and clean water to millions of flood-stricken Pakistanis, concerns are growing about the enduring toll of the disaster on the nation’s overall economy, food supply and political stability.

More rain fell on Monday, adding to the worst flooding in memory and confronting Pakistan with a complex array of challenges, government and relief officials warned. Though they range over the immediate, medium and long term, nearly all need to be addressed urgently.

Providing clean water for millions and avoiding the spread of diseases like cholera are the first priorities. But there are also looming food shortages and price spikes, even in cities. There is also the danger that farmers will miss the fall planting season, raising the prospect of a new cycle of shortfalls next year.

“There was a first wave of deaths caused by the floods themselves,” said Maurizio Giuliano, a United Nations spokesman. “But if we don’t act soon enough, there will be a second wave of deaths,” caused by a lack of clean water, food shortages and diseases transmitted by water or animals.

“The picture is a gruesome one,” Mr. Giuliano said.

The prospect of immediate hunger combining with long-term disruptions to food supplies was a chief concern. The situation confronting Maqbool Anjum, 50, a small-scale wheat farmer in the Khanpur area of southern Punjab Province, was typical.

For the time being, he said in an interview by telephone: “We don’t have food rations in our house. There isn’t a single grain of flour with us right now.”

For the last three weeks, he said, he and his family have survived on bread and pickles. There was no dry wood to light a fire in the stove. “What we’re doing is breaking off legs from our wooden bed and using that.”

No one from the government or any relief organization had contacted them. Still, in less than two months, he and his brothers are supposed to reseed the soil on about eight acres they own for next year’s wheat harvest. That may be impossible now.

His seeds are lost, as is the cotton crop on part of that land, along with any income it may have brought. Two of his brothers’ homes were destroyed. For the time being he would try to survive on his wife’s salary of $50 a month as a health worker. But the prospect of mounting debt seemed inevitable.

“It’ll take three to four years before we can grow anything on our land again,” he said.

Of the 4,000 people in his village, half of them also own agricultural land and were similarly wiped out.

His struggle is multiplied by many millions across the country. The floods have submerged about 17 million acres of Pakistan’s most fertile croplands, in a nation where farming is an economic mainstay. The waters have also killed more than 200,000 head of livestock, and washed away large quantities of stored commodities that feed millions throughout the year.

Relief workers warned that if farmers like Mr. Anjum missed the deadline to reseed in the fall planting season, the nation could face long-term shortages.

“If we miss, we’re in real trouble,” said David Doolan, a senior officer of the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization in Pakistan. “We need to ensure livelihoods, so that next year we’re not still saving lives.”

The United Nations has appealed for $460 million in international donations, but only about a third of that has been provided so far. Relief officials were clearly concerned that donations from abroad would fall short of what was needed, especially when compared with those for relief of other recent disasters, like the earthquake in Haiti.

“An earthquake is a much more dramatic, emotional, telegenic event because it happens so quickly,” said John Holmes, the humanitarian aid coordinator at the United Nations. In Pakistan’s case, he said, “What is clear is that we need a lot more, and we need it quickly.”

It seems impossible that the country could absorb the cost of the calamity on its own. Bridges, power plants and communications networks have been lost or severely damaged across the country, a fifth of which is estimated to be under water. Arbab Alamgir Khan, Pakistan’s minister for communications, said damage to roads alone was estimated at $76 million.

The loss of even nonfood crops, like cotton for the nation’s textile industry, could undercut the nation’s ability to recover.

With 20 percent of cotton washed away, Pakistan’s famed textile industry, which accounts for 60 percent of the country’s exports, is certain to stagger. As a result, textile plants are likely to make large-scale layoffs. Plants that do manage to purchase cotton will face electricity shortages, as more than seven major power stations have been demolished.

While dire conditions threaten rural communities, severe inflation and shortages of fresh produce loom for even large urban centers relatively unaffected by the floods, like Karachi.

Karachi relies on Punjab for about 70 percent of its fresh foods and has fed itself on food stored in warehouses since the floods arrived in late July. But even those supplies will be depleted by the end of this week, according to local officials and wholesale food suppliers, and the small quantities of Punjab produce that survived the floods are now held up by disruptions in transportation.

Already, prices of fresh foods have more than doubled in Karachi’s markets, and the city’s food retail association and government officials expect prices to rise by a multiple of six within the next week.

Farid Qureshi, who heads the Karachi Retail and Grocers Group, said that he had not received packaged milk since July, and that his inventory would run out in less than a week. His own company supplies packaged milk to 35 percent of Karachi’s retail market.

“Obviously the government hasn’t told the public the retail situation is this bad,” he said.

Agriculture experts say the government may have to import rice for the first time in more than a decade.

Shoaib Bukhari, a provincial minister in charge of food pricing in Sindh Province, has pleaded with wholesalers and retailers to adhere to prices fixed by the government. But he expected the worst.

“May God bless me, but there will be a catastrophe here in the next five to 10 days,” he said. “There will definitely be a hue and cry here, strikes and large-scale problems. We’ll be hiding somewhere, and people will be beating up the city government.”

Making matters worse, the squeeze comes during Ramadan, the monthlong Muslim fasting season, when families normally hold elaborate evening meals to break the daytime fast.

Adding to Karachi’s worries and potential volatility, many of those displaced by the floods in rural areas have migrated here. Last summer, when monsoon rains paralyzed the city for three days, residents responded by attacking the offices of Karachi’s power supply company.

Economists argue that the only viable solution, as is often the case in Pakistan, will be international loans that allow at least five-year concessions for Pakistan to pay off the debt.

“There are no other alternatives, unless the world wants Pakistan to become an even more unstable state,” said A. B. Shahid, a retired economist who has advised the National Accountability Bureau, the nation’s primary anticorruption organization.

Instability is a worry both for the government and for its foreign allies. The regions suffering most from the crisis are far more likely to breed militancy, according to a study by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, based in Islamabad. It found that the 20 districts with the worst food insecurity were also home to the worst militancy. In many of those places, hard-line Islamic charities have stepped in.

“It’s the mullah-Marxist nexus,” said Abid Suleri, the head of the institute and one of the nation’s leading experts on food insecurity. “It’s a class conflict exploited by mullahs who say, ‘If you are living in misery, it’s better to at least kill the infidels.’ ”


Huma Imtiaz contributed reporting from Karachi; Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.