SUKKUR, Pakistan — Tens of millions of
people across swathes of
Pakistan were Monday battling the worst monsoon floods
in a decade, with countless homes washed away, vital farmland destroyed, and
the country’s main river threatening to burst its banks.
اضافة اعلان
Climate Change Minister
Sherry Rehman said a third
of the country was under water, creating a “crisis of unimaginable
proportions”.
Officials say 1,136 people have died since June when
the seasonal rains began, but the final toll could be higher as hundreds of
villages in the mountainous north have been cut off after flood-swollen rivers
washed away roads and bridges.
The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops
and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but it can also
bring destruction.
This year’s flooding has affected more than 33
million people — one in seven Pakistanis — said the National Disaster
Management Authority.
“It’s all one big ocean, there’s no dry land to pump
the water out,” Rehman told AFP, adding the economic cost would also be
devastating.
This year’s floods are comparable to those of 2010 —
the worst on record — when more than 2,000 people died.
Flood victims have taken refuge in makeshift camps
that have sprung up across the country, where desperation is setting in.
“Living here is miserable. Our self-respect is at
stake,” said Fazal e Malik, sheltering in the grounds of a school now home to
around 2,500 people in the town of Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“I stink but there is no place to take a shower.
There are no fans.”
Near Sukkur, millions of hectares of rich farmland
have been flooded by weeks of non-stop rain, but now the Indus is threatening
to burst its banks as torrents of water course downstream from tributaries in
the north.
“Our crop spanned over 2,000 hectares on which the
best quality rice was sown and is eaten by you and us,” rice farmer Khalil
Ahmed, 70, told AFP.
“All that is finished.”
Much of Sindh is now an endless landscape of water,
hampering a massive military-led relief operation.
“There are no landing strips or approaches
available; ... our pilots find it difficult to land,” one senior officer told
AFP.
The army’s helicopters were also struggling to fly
people to safety in the north, where soaring mountains and deep valleys make
for treacherous flying conditions.
Many rivers in
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have
burst their banks.
The government has declared an emergency and
appealed for international help, and on Sunday the first aid flights began arriving
— from Turkey and the UAE.
It could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan,
where the economy is in free fall.
In Washington later Monday, the International
Monetary Fund was scheduled to meet to decide whether to green-light the
resumption of a $6 billion loan program essential for the country to service
its foreign debt, but it is already clear it will take more to repair and
rebuild after this monsoon.
Prices of basic goods are soaring as vendors bemoan
a lack of supplies from the flooded breadbasket provinces of Sindh and Punjab.
The met office said the country as a whole had
received twice the usual monsoon rainfall, but Balochistan and Sindh had more
than four times the average of the last three decades.
Padidan, a small town in Sindh, was drenched by more
than 1.2m of rain since June, making it the wettest place in the country.
More arriving daily
Across Sindh, thousands of
displaced people are camped alongside elevated highways and railway tracks —
often the only dry spots as far as the eye can see.
More are arriving daily at Sukkur’s city ring road,
looking for shelter until the floodwaters recede.
Sukkur Barrage supervisor
Aziz Soomro told AFP the
main headway of water was expected to arrive around September 5, but was
confident the 90-year-old sluice gates would cope.
The barrage diverts water from the Indus into
10,000km of canals that make up one of the world’s biggest irrigation schemes,
but the farms it supplies are now mostly under water.
The only bright spark was the latest weather report,
with the Met office saying there was little chance of rain for the rest of the
week.
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