6 September 2010. World to Win News Service.
The immediate loss of life due to the continuing flooding in Pakistan is tragedy enough, but the long-term impact may cause even greater disaster.
The devastated fields long the Indus and other rivers, some still under water and others waterlogged and filled with mud and stones, constitute Pakistan's agricultural heartland and the foundation of its economy. This season's maize, cotton, rice and wheat, the main crops, as well as mango, banana and citrus fruits, have been lost. Worse, tens of millions of people have lost their future livelihoods, some for at least one or two seasons and others forever.
The Indus Valley stretches along approximately 650 kilometres in Sindh province, where it represents about 85 percent of the land under cultivation. People like Nizam Nathio, who had 10 acres of land and now lives in a refugee camp in Sukkur, lost all their cultivated land in the flood. "All my resources are gone and the next crop will be harvested in six months," he says. "Will my family eat mud till then to survive?" Hakeem Kalhoro, a resident of the Naushero Feroz district, had a farm with 50 buffaloes. Now he has only one left. The floodwater has taken the rest. ''I used to sell 500 litres of milk a day, now I'm living on handouts." (BBC Website, 19 August 2010)
Now Sindh is being hit by fresh flooding. It is raining again, and previously contained flood lakes have broken through.
Pakistani officials say that about 3.6 million hectares of crops have been washed away, much of that in Sindh and Punjab provinces, and 1.2 million livestock killed, including ploughing animals. The World Bank estimates that crops worth $1 billion have been ruined. The UN World Food Programme says that almost ten million people are already short of food. Little clean water is available.
There is fear the number of people facing what these agencies call "food insecurity" will mount and the whole country will face a massive food shortage and inflated prices in the coming years. Shortages of agricultural raw materials may also undermine textile and apparel manufacture, the country's two main export sectors, and the food processing industry. In terms of this broader impact, no region in Pakistan remains untouched by the flood.
Millions of people no longer have a home to live in or land to till. As thousands more take up residence in the already overcrowded camps, hundreds of thousands of displaced people have moved to urban centres in Punjab and Sindh. Many are already making their way towards Karachi and Hyderabad. The people taking refuge in the camps were mostly tenant farmers. Many of them may become wage workers, at best, because they have little or nothing to go back to in their native villages, and some will not be allowed to go back.
At least one in ten of the country's 166 million people have been directly affected, or even one in eight according to other estimates. Further, if there is much reconstruction, with the kind of projects and programme the capitalists of the world's dominant imperialist countries have in mind, rural life and the whole national economy may become more dependent on the needs of world capitalism.
Apart from the devastating damage to crops and the impact of that on the whole economy, there has been extensive damage to the country's infrastructure. It is estimated that nearly one million houses have been washed away or seriously damaged. Hundreds of kilometres of roads and jeep tracks and dozens of bridges have been destroyed in northern parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. The province has also lost a major irrigation dam, and another dam has been damaged.
The authorities immediately worked out the damages in the provinces in terms of money. The KP provincial authorities say that $2 billion is needed for immediate relief and the restoration of essential infrastructure. Meanwhile the government of Punjab province says it will need $1.3 billion for immediate relief and short-term rehabilitation of roads, dykes, the electricity network and the irrigation system. Analysts have said it will take many billions of dollars for Pakistan to recover from the damage caused by the flooding.
Where is all this money going to come from? Pakistan already receives a large amount of aid and loans from the U.S. and other Western imperialist countries. In 2009, the United States spent some $7.5 billion on strategic, military and development projects in Pakistan. Pakistani government officials are used to collecting cash and getting credit from their imperialist sponsors.
When the floods overwhelmed Pakistan, its president Asif Ali Zardari was on a trip to Europe. He saw no point to go back home to lead emergency efforts. Instead, he preferred to continue his tour with the aim of getting foreign aid. Pakistan's foreign minister, finance minister and other officials lost no time in launching similar efforts. The U.S. became the biggest donor, contributing more than $150 million. The UK contributed almost $100 million, Germany $32 million and the EU overall more than $180 million. In total, the United Nations managed to get emergency relief funds from various countries totalling about $525 million.
There have also been various endeavours to provide long term aid for the reconstruction of Pakistan's economy and infrastructure. For example on 2 September, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), announced that "the Fund will provide around U.S. $450 million in immediate emergency financing to Pakistan to help the country manage the aftermath of the massive and devastating floods that have hit the country." (IMF press release)
It was also reported that the World Bank, another international financial institution that coordinates the imperialists' financial policies, raised its contribution to the flood-ravaged country to $1 billion from the originally pledged $900 million.
Some reality about foreign aid
There is a common belief that the donations raised or given by foreign states do not get through to the people who are in desperate need, and will not be spent on reconstruction either, because of a corrupt government. This is true to a large extent. In another words, there is a lot of dishonesty about the so-called aid to the victims of natural disasters.
In Birmingham, UK, a group of people of Pakistani origin decided to form their own charity and directly transfer the donations they raise to those in need, and give a transparent accounting on the Internet. They explained that they had decided on this course of action when they learned that only 25 percent of the donation they collected after the 2005 earthquake disaster in Pakistan actually found its way to that country. The other 75 percent was spent on the international aid bureaucracy and transport. There is no doubt that Mr 10 Percent (as people call President Zardari) and other corrupt elements are waiting to rake off what they consider their share.
But this is only one aspect of what's wrong with the aid donated to this and other ravaged countries. The donor countries, usually the richer imperialist countries, pretend that despite their economic problems – and now the financial crisis – they are ready to generously sacrifice to help out victims of natural disasters. But the lion's share is given with the condition that it be spent on contracts with firms from the donor countries. A significant portion of what remains goes to people on the payrolls of donor country institutions.
This has become such common knowledge that even some mainstream media acknowledge it. "The donors also rarely point out that quite a lot of what they 'give' goes straight into their own citizens' bank accounts in the form of salaries for aid consultants or contract payments to manufacturers of 4x4 vehicles." (BBC Website, 18 August 2010)
However this is not the only or main problem. What is worse is that even if all the money were to go for aid, there are big doubts that these donations would do even a little to help the people get out of hell. In most if not all cases, this aid harms the national interests of the target country and its people.
Nowadays natural disasters have become a kind of new business for the rich countries. They like to put on a show about their good will, while behind the scenes they consider such aid an investment to buy deeper dependency of the dominated countries and increase the exploitation of their resources and people. Those who give a larger amount hope to buy more influence. Unlike what the imperialists claim in public, such aid is not a burden on the dominant countries. On the contrary it is an opportunity to invest under what they consider favourable conditions, to reconstruct that country in the way they want. That is why the U.S., the head of the imperialists, has the power and the right to invest more. After that comes the UK, which has historically had a big influence in Pakistan and South Asia.
There are also international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank that coordinate the competition and cooperation among the main imperialists powers.
There is a long and ugly history behind such aid from the rich countries that became particularly important after the Second World War. And there have been countless articles and research papers on the harmful effects of such aid to the people, although these exposures have been done from different perspectives and even with different goals in mind.
In fact the financial and food aid provided by the rich countries between the 1960s and '80s helped many African countries to fall deeper into poverty. In many African, Asian and Latin American countries, there arose a big bureaucracy, along with other associated strata, that created a social base for this form of dependency, and consequently for imperialist domination in those countries. Pakistan was formed in 1949 and from the beginning was a strategic asset in the Cold War. The formation of a powerful bureaucracy in that country was a clear goal of Western policies during this period.
This imperialist approach towards Pakistan continues today because of the country's strategic role in the region and particularly in the Afghanistan war. However, changes in the world situation since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, certain limitations in the structural form of third world states and the rise of discontent within the poor countries have led the imperialists to modify their form of aid disbursement.
The imperialists still act through direct contract with the governments but they have also given the IMF and World Bank a bigger role, and have created new channels –
NGOs and charity organisations – in order to achieve their interests. The destruction of a part of a country due to natural disaster provides the opportunity for the imperialists to readjust the country's economic and political structure in a way that is consistent with the needs of world capitalism.
The IMF and World Bank, which are brokers for the Western imperialists, always tie their aid and loans to a string of conditions in the interests of the imperialist system. Since they believe that the earth could not exist without world capitalism, they don't always hide this fact. Speaking of recent IMF emergency aid to Pakistan, IMF head Strauss-Kahn said, "Our dialogue with Pakistan on the current Stand-By Arrangement is progressing and the authorities have expressed their intention to implement measures for the completion of the fifth review of the program later this year. We will stay in close contact as these efforts proceed. Completion of the fifth review will allow the Fund to disburse an additional $1.7 billion, bringing total IMF disbursements (including emergency assistance) to $2.2 billion in the second half of 2010." This was confirmed by Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Pakistan′s Finance Minister, who said, "Pakistan remains committed to the reform efforts that will put public finances on a sustainable basis and lay the foundations for growth." (IMF press release, 2 September 2010)
We will not discuss the details of these measures and conditions, but for the IMF "reform" is often a code word for austerity measures that reduce government spending, including subsides for people's most basic needs such as bread and fuel, as well as other measures that facilitate more profitable imperialist investments and intervention in the economy of the country. As for "growth", Pakistan's economy grew at a comparatively high rate for much of the decade, and look where that has brought the country. Some elements of that growth (the forestry industry's stripping of the forests around the upper reaches of the Indus, for example) actually contributed to the catastrophic damage caused by the flooding
For its part, the Pakistani government has no choice but to accept these conditions, because for all of its existence it has been dependent on foreign aid. Its army, the most powerful institution in the county, has been pumped up by billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. The IMF emergency assistance to Pakistan comes "on top of the $7.3 billion provided under the current Stand-By Arrangement, in place since November 2008". (RTT News, 3 September 2010) And such a government has no choice but to increasingly rely on foreign funds in order to be able to function at all.
The result is more dependency, more selling out the country and, for many people, more poverty. So not only did the Pakistani government fail to take measures to protect the people or at least reduce the harm to their lives, but also, after that, more than ever it is feeding the country and the people to the wolves.
- end item-
Correction
An extra zero crept into the figure for the length of Pakistan's Indus River stated in the ATWTNS packet for 30 August 2010. It is almost 3,200 kilometres long.
Flood control and social transformation in revolutionary China – "Teaching water to climb mountains"
6 September 2010. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from an article that appeared in issue 13 (1989) of A World to Win magazine. It was originally published in the Revolutionary Worker (now called Revolution), voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, 10 June 1985.
For hundreds of years, floods and droughts had been the "twin scourges" of China. A major flood or drought hit large parts of the land at a pace of almost once a year, destroying crops or making it impossible to plant and thus leading to terrible famines that took the lives of hundreds of thousands at a time.
With the defeat of the U.S.-backed Koumintang (KMT) reactionaries in October 1949, the revolutionary regime led by Mao and the Communist Party of China faced an immensely difficult situation. U.S. imperialism and its reactionary allies surrounded and blockaded New China in an attempt to smother it to death. The land and the people had been ravaged by the decades of Japanese imperialist invasion and occupation and the rampages of the KMT army, which compounded the devastation from flood, drought and famine.
As a 1974 Peking Review article titled "Harnessing China's Rivers" recalled, "What did the Koumintang reactionaries leave behind 25 years ago when New China was born? With all the waterways, dykes and embankments long out of repair, the peasants were completely at the mercy of nature. Flood and drought were common occurrences, wreaking havoc alternately or concurrently and taking a heavy toll on millions of people, with tens of millions more rendered homeless. Such being the plight of old China, certain imperialist prophets gleefully awaited the collapse of New China in the grip of these twin disasters which all past governments had failed to cope with."
For the infant revolutionary regime, the task of taming the great rivers – the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Huai (flowing in the central coastal plains between the Yangtze and the Yellow), and others – was a crucial aspect of transforming China from a dependent neocolony into an independent socialist country. Without protection from floods and new irrigation systems to fight droughts and open up new farmland, the peasantry – making up the overwhelming majority of the population – would continue to suffer. The worker-peasant alliance would be adversely affected and the ability of China to withstand the attacks of the imperialists and contribute to world revolution would be weakened.
In 1951 and '52, Mao declared that the Huai River and the Yellow River "must be harnessed". These calls were made amidst, and were very much a part of, the fierce two-line struggles within the Communist Party itself over China's direction after liberation.
Under the rubric of "harmony" between capitalism and socialism and "consolidating" new democracy, revisionists like Liu Shao-chi fought to lead China down the road of capitalist development (which in China's context inevitably would have meant neocolonial development). In agriculture, these bourgeois-democrats-turned-capitalist-roaders tried to stifle and sabotage the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production and all the relations of production. They argued that mechanisation and development of heavy industry (which in turn depended on foreign technology and "aid") had to precede collectivisation, and that in the meantime the old social relations should remain intact in the countryside. Exploitation is a "merit", Liu even declared.
The two lines were sharply posed in the question of taking on the job of controlling China's rivers.
According to those like Liu, such large-scale and technically difficult projects were impossible to undertake since China had neither the funds nor the technology, Liu condescendingly preached that people in areas affected by flood or drought should rely on "relief". As one observer noted in the mid-70s when the Huai River projects had been completed and the Yellow River brought largely under control, "had the masses waited for machines to do it, there would still be famines in North China."
Mao sharply criticised and fought against the revisionist and capitulationist line of Liu and others, and declared that, "We must now realise that there will soon be a nationwide high tide of socialist transformation in the countryside."
Indeed a tremendous upsurge swept through the countryside. The millions of peasants, mobilised in unprecedented forms of cooperation in big water projects, were an integral part of this – leading to the basic establishment of socialist ownership in agriculture (as well as industry) by 1956. The struggle further erupted into the momentous upheaval of the Great leap Forward in 1958; it was out of this furnace that the people's communes were born. Water conservation projects played a key role once more in this new and major step in socialist transformation.
People's communes started spontaneously in Honan province out of a project to bring water across the Taihang mountain ranges to irrigate a dry plain area that suffered from drought eight or nine years out of ten. The peasant cooperatives took initiative in merging their labour power on a scale unheard of previously to build the Red Canal, which stretched 1,500 kilometres across the Taihang. When Mao came to visit this merger of peasant associations, the name "people's commune" was chosen. "This is a new creation of the masses", Mao wrote. Others around the country followed the example: by the end of 1958, 26,000 communes had formed (increasing to 72,000 with new formations and subdivisions by 1961).
One of the slogans raised by the peasants during the Great Leap Forward was: "Teach water to climb mountains up to heaven!" The slogan of course referred directly to the carving of waterways across mountain ranges to bring water and life to arid lands. But it also spoke more broadly to the grand struggles of the masses consciously transforming society and nature, and in the process transforming themselves. Under the oppressive order of the old society, who but the most brave and farsighted would have dared dream of teaching "water to climb the mountains up to heaven"?
The scourge of the rivers
Several examples illustrate the remarkable advances made by the Chinese people after liberation to control the forces of nature, in particular the "scourge" of the rivers. In 1952, the Chinese people completed a large-scale flood-diversion programme on Chingkiang River, a harmful tributary on the middle reaches of the Yangtze. The project involved repairing and reinforcing existing dykes, building new dykes of over 200 kilometres in length, putting up numerous sluice gates, and setting up a safety area to accommodate 170,000 people in case of evacuation during an especially big flood. Three hundred thousand soldiers and civilians were mobilised, and the whole project was completed in seventy-five days.
This contrast starkly with the "achievements" during the years of reactionary KMT rule. In order to build a small drainage gate on the Yangtze near the city of Wuhan, the KMT begged for funds from five different countries and then took three years to complete the work.
The Huai River basin used to be one of those areas hit by almost yearly flood and/or drought. The diversion of the Yellow River in 1938 by the KMT caused devastation of even greater dimensions. The change in the course of the Yellow River brought down silt that filled the estuary of the Huai River, buried farmland and heightened the beds of many lakes. All this affected the entire Huai River system, making it even more susceptible to floods and droughts.
Mao's 1951 call – "the Huai River must be harnessed″ – sparked millions of peasants to begin tackling various water-control projects along the Huai. This vast mobilisation shattered the revisionist whining about how it was impossible for the "backward" peasants without machines to take on such immense projects. In fact, except for key state-financed projects, modern machinery – such as bulldozers, excavators, earth removers and heavy-duty trucks – was rarely available, especially in the earlier years.
The rise of revisionists to power in the Soviet Union in 1956, and the subsequent Sino-Soviet split and pull-out of Soviet technicians, funds and equipment from China, posed further difficulties. The "river-tamers" had to rely on simple tools and equipment – hammers chisels, picks, wheel-barrows, home-made machines and explosives. And, most important of all, there was the powerful initiative of the masses, unleashed by the revolutionary line of Mao.
By the early 1970s, one report noted "conspicuous changes" in the worksites of the Huai River projects compared to the initial stages: "China-made dredgers are working alongside other machines. The degree of mechanisation has increased and the contingents of technicians have grown enormously. What merits particular attention is that large numbers of peasant-technicians with rich practical experience have come to the fore."
The passage gives a glimpse of the actual development of productive forces during the years of Mao's leadership (contrary to the lies and distortions of imperialists and revisionists alike), and, most importantly, the big changes in relations of production, especially through the Cultural Revolution –the differences between mental and manual labour, between town and countryside and between industry and agriculture were beginning to be broken down.
The changes in one county in the Huai River basin epitomised the night-and-day difference in conditions between the neocolonial past and socialist China. In one township of 11,000 households, floods in 1931 brought death from hunger to 2,600 peasants and forced 6,700 families to flee to other areas. The same area experienced torrential rains in the summer of 1974 – over twelve inches of rain fell in two days and the water level of the Huai rose over six feet; Yet the dykes and the drainage pumps kept damage to a minimum – peasant homes were not washed away, and paddy fields remained green.
Since the revisionists took power in 1976 and restored capitalism, many of the advances made during socialist China – especially during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution – have been overturned. The people's communes, for example, have been mostly broken up, with land divided again among individual households, and exploitative relations and class polarisation making their return. While there may be some increases in production in certain areas and for a certain period, the larger picture raises the ominous spectre of possibly disastrous consequences of capitalist restoration in the countryside.
Some observers have noted, for example, that there has been an increase in the frequency of floods and severity of damages caused by them and have linked these developments at least in part to the breaking up of socialised agriculture. Because the peasants are increasingly driven to raise productivity on their private plots and contract businesses, there is mounting reluctance to participate in public works projects – water conservancy works, soil conservation, forestation programs – since they require pooling of labour and resources, and sacrifices on the part of individual units for the bigger whole.
Images of pre-1949 floods, droughts and famines are beginning to cast their shadow.
As the article "Harnessing China’s Rivers" in Peking Review pointed out: "In the dark old days class oppression went hand in hand with drought and flood; the reactionary political rule and the ideological fetters imposed on the people not only deprived them of the necessary objective conditions for combating floods but also made it impossible for them to see their own subjective strength in overcoming them. After each natural disaster, the reactionary rulers, while using the pretext of building water-control projects to fleece the people, spread the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius and forced the people to build temples and offer sacrifices to appease the gods. The storm of socialist revolution since liberation has shattered the political and economic fetters binding the labouring people and swept away the ideological trammels that hampered their initiative and creativity."
To deal with cyclones and other disasters, "natural" and "unnatural", requires making revolution.
Posts mit dem Label Drowning Pakistan werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
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Mittwoch, 8. September 2010
Donnerstag, 2. September 2010
Drowning Pakistan: what it means for the people and who is responsible
30 August 2010. A World to Win News Service. "When the water came, we moved our women and children to high ground. Three of my daughters stayed behind to help the men pack up whatever belongings we could carry with us… within minutes, the current got too strong and the waters rose head high." This is how a villager from Sardaryab, a village in northwest Pakistan, lost two of his daughters aged 16 and 17. He was only able to save his youngest daughter. "Their bodies were found three days later, dumped on the bank by receding waters about 6 kilometres down the river."
Omar, another villager, describes the events in his village this way: "We could see the water rising across the entire area between my village and the river. At first we thought it was rain water, but it continued to rise," he says. Everybody rushed to the nearby railway track which is on high ground. But Omar was slightly late.
"Three of our women were swept off their feet. We saved two of them, but the third, my brother's wife, was lost. We found her body two days later." (BBC, 5 August 2010)
This is the kind of story that Pakistani families who lost their loved ones or their home or what little belongings they had gathered over their entire lifetimes would tell you. Millions had to leave the land they had worked on to go to a supposedly safer place or a refugee camp.
The flood began in late July in mountainous northwest Pakistan when exceptionally heavy monsoon rains caused the upper reaches of the Indus river to burst out of its banks.
It is reported that at least 1,600 people have been killed. An estimated six million are homeless. Some 17-20 million of Pakistan's 166 million people are said to have been directly affected, and 6 million are in urgent need of food. Tens of thousands of villages have been under water for days or even weeks and the process is still continuing. The rivers cutting through the middle of the country from north to south are beginning to recede as the surge empties into the Arabian sea, but it is expected to be another week or two before they return to normal – and even then, in some places floodwater will be trapped and remain for some time. (Map: bbc.co.uk/news/world-southasia-11128511)
These numbers alone are not enough to convey all the dimensions of the human catastrophe. What we have seen and heard is only the beginning for the disaster millions face. Livestock is an important source of income, but countless cattle have perished in the floods. By late August, about 14 percent of the country's arable land was damaged, according to the UN World Food Programme. Even many people whose fields could be replanted have lost their grain stores, and now lack both food and seeds for the next crop after the monsoon. For a large percentage of those who survive the flood, surviving its aftermath will be no less of a challenge. The impact of this loss will be strongly felt by the Pakistani masses for years or even decades to come.
Dr Marie Lall says, "This was not one cataclysmic event, but one which grew over three weeks. The fact that 25 percent of the country was or is under water is not understood. The low numbers of dead, relatively speaking, mask the disaster on the ground. The crisis has destroyed crops, killed livestock and damaged homes and infrastructure. Food prices are through the roof and there won't be a normal harvest. It will get worse. Farmers will starve." (BBC, 21 August 2010)
It is reported that of at least 6 million people left homeless, less than 10 percent are in the camps set up in the provinces. The camps consists of tents for 6 to 7 people, without any sort of sanitation or health facilities. Another aspect of the disaster is waterborne diseases. The UN has said that millions of children in Pakistan are at risk. Sindh Province officials said that out of the millions displaced, a quarter are suffering from some sort of flood-related illness.
The lack of sanitation and the malnutrition that will follow the flood might well increase the number of victims for a some time to come.
Those who no longer have a home are living alongside elevated roads with the few belongings they might have saved. Cities such as Sukkur located on the banks of the Indus have become like large refugee camps as increasing numbers of people seek shelter there.
At the same time, people already living in camps for displaced persons, like the 40,000 Afghans refugees living in Azakhel, on the banks of the Kabul and Swat rivers in north-western Pakistan, have been forced to flee yet again.
Who is responsible?
What made the flood so ruthless and why have 20 million mainly poor Pakistanis had to suffer so much?
Without the annual monsoon rains, agriculture in much of Asia and South Asia would not be so productive. Yet monsoon floods are often deadly and destructive. This year the rains produced particularly dangerous flooding in China, Korea and the South Asian subcontinent.
Monsoons are caused by temperature differences between land and sea. During summer when it is hot, the flat terrain of Tibet warms up the surrounding air and the hot air rises, drawing in moist air from the sea. This moist air also warms up and rises. As it cools in the higher atmosphere, the moisture condenses into rain.
According to the BBC weather centre the existence "of more spiralling air in the upper atmosphere sucks in more moist air, causing larger clouds and more intense rainfall." "This year's kink meant more moist air than usual was sucked up. The effect passed in days, but the extra rain at the start of the season caused severe floods." (BBC, 16 August 2010)
The Indus, almost 32,000 kilometres long, is one of the world's greatest rivers. Its valley is one of the places where human beings first gave up their nomadic ways and began to raise livestock and crops. Today, it is home to 100 million people, who rely on the river for drinking water and irrigation. Flooding is no stranger to those whose families have lived here for centuries, but this year saw torrents unmatched in recent history.
A plundered country on a plundered planet
There is credible evidence that global warming could be responsible for these stronger floods. "Professor Martin Gibling of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, a river expert who has worked in the region, thinks that changes in the strength of the monsoon caused by climate change may be to blame. He explains: 'Monsoon intensity is somewhat sensitive to the surface temperature of the Indian Ocean.' During times of cooler climate, less moisture is picked up from the ocean, the monsoon weakens, and the Indus river flow is reduced." (BBC Science and Environment, 13 August 2010)
Today, sea temperatures are increasing.
Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University in Germany, argues that extreme rainfall events will become more frequent and intense in a warmer climate.
"For each degree Celsius of warming, 7 percent more water is available to rain down from saturated air masses. Drought risk also increases with warming: even where rainfall does not decline, increased evaporation dries out the soils."
He warns that extreme weather-related events are already occurring after a global temperature rise of only 0.8 C. "With weak action, like that promised by governments in Copenhagen last December, we will be on course for 3-4 C of global warming. This is bound to outstrip the ability of many societies and ecosystems to adapt. And, with no action at all, the planet could even heat up by 5-7 C by the end of this century – and more thereafter. Knowingly marching down that road would be insane." (Guardian, 16 August 2010)
But while global warming may be to blame for the worst-ever flood in Pakistan, it alone cannot be held responsible for so much human suffering.
There is also the question of how rivers are managed in order to prevent such disasters. For example, some rich countries reduce the risk of flood by building embankments as barriers along the vulnerable parts of rivers to reduce the chances of their bursting their banks in extreme floods. Such a system might or might not work for the Indus river, but today's authorities in Pakistan (and India), like the British colonialists before independence in 1947, have done nothing serious to prevent such possible disasters. Basic facilities such as a system of dams to capture monsoon rains and glacial runoff are totally lacking. There is no flood warning system.
Lack of a proper drainage system or in most area any at all is another contributing factor. The Pakistani masses, especially in the poor areas, have to deal with water overflows even when there is only a couple of hours of heavy rain. In such cases the death of a dozen people is not unusual. The water often covers the streets and alleys for days or even weeks, providing conditions for the proliferation of insects, including malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
Further, the Indus is choked with sediment eroding off the Himalayas. Little has been done to clear its bed or at least reduce the amount of sediment build-up at critical points to allow its waters a swift route to the sea, so that they don't back up so much.
Another problem that has made the situation worse is deforestation. Tree roots help protect the land around the headwaters from being washed into the streams and rivers. But over the past half century, more sediment has been flushed down the rivers as forests have been cut down.
Deforestation of the north-western part of the country and along the Indus river has been very good business for legal and illegal gangs that have made billions of rupees each year from selling the timber over the last few decades. "One of the most powerful and ruthless organisations within Pakistan, the timber mafia engages in illegal logging... the group's connection to politicians at the local and federal level has been commented on in the media for years. The constant warnings about the timber mafia almost always include mention of the increased susceptibility of de-forested regions to flooding, landslides and soil erosion." (The Guardian, comment by Kamila Shamsie, 5 August 2010)
It is impossible that the extensive deforestation operations in the north-western part of the country could have taken place without the support or at least assent of the Pakistani army, whose forces are concentrated there partly as a consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The army is by far Pakistan's strongest economic institution and the core of its ruling class, as well as the heart of the state..
Class rule and foreign domination
Amidst this disaster, when the authorities did act in the name of flood management, their class interests have led them to make matters worse for the people in many instances. The army, big landowners and local and national authorities are often the same people, or of the same family, and at any rate tied together by common interests.
When the floods began in the northwest (what has been recently renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province), they struck with little forewarning. But it took days and weeks for the full force of the flood to move downriver. This time was not used to warn the people and along with them organize preventative or other measures. Instead, when troops were deployed, it was sometimes secretly because they did not want people to know what they were doing. In Punjab Province, a traditional floodplain crisscrossed by dams, canals and sluices, there have been reports that landlords and the army chose which barrages to blow up and which land to flood based on who owned the fields and the location of army bases. (See The New York Times, 23 August 2010).
The young Pakistani novelist Ali Sethi witnessed an incident in which Sindh Province landowners and the army decided to deliberately dig a hole in a highway embankment. They flooded an adjoining area in neighbouring ethnically-oppressed Baluchistan under three meters of water. The writer was advised not to expose this incident to avoid the wrath of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's most powerful organization. The deliberate inundation of Baluchistan saved the rice fields of a Sindh big landlowner/politician, and a military air base on the Sindh side. That facility is home to a fleet of U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets. Local people also believe that it houses some of the widely-hated American drones responsible for many civilian deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
As Sethi wrote, Pakistan '"is a place where peasants drown in rice fields they don't own, where mud-and-brick villages are submerged to save slightly less expendable towns, and where dying villages stand next to airbases housing the most sophisticated jets in the world." Behind the Pakistani military that rules Pakistan, he points out, stand its "American financiers". (International Herald Tribune, 27 August 2010).
The government's role and people's protests
After this disaster, like after previous ones, the authorities were largely useless in helping flood victims. While millions of people were fleeing their homes and villages, the leaders of Pakistan were running around excitedly using the opportunity to beg for donations from the rich imperialist countries. But this did not and could not do much to help the people. Apart from when journalists and their cameras were present, the people were mainly left on their own to deal with the flood and its consequences. The lack of action only added to the people's anger and frustration.
Some analysts have warned that Pakistan's government could face social unrest similar to that after 1971 when "authorities responded slowly to a devastating cyclone. A secessionist movement in East Pakistan capitalised on public anger to successfully fight for independence as Bangladesh… although secession was not solely due to the devastation of Cyclone Bhola. With the flooding, loss and suffering we are currently witnessing in the subcontinent, we must keep in mind that Pakistan is as volatile and precarious now as it was 40 years ago" (Delwar Hussain, the Guardian, 15 August 2010)
What the authorities have been telling the flood victims is that they should just be patient and wait for the water level to go down so that they can go back to their homes. There have been numerous reports of anger and protests by groups of people frustrated by the lack of government action. For example:
"Dozens of men and a few women tried to block five lanes of traffic outside Sukkur, in the southern province of Sindh, today. Villagers set fire to straw and threatened approaching motorists with sticks." One protestor said, "We left our homes with nothing and now we're here with no clothes, no food and our children are living beside the road."
"Last night, hundreds of villagers in the Punjab, the country's most populous and worst-hit province, burned tyres and chanted 'down with the government'. 'We are dying of hunger here. No one has showed up to comfort us,' said Hafiz Shabbir, a protester in Kot Addu." (The Guardian, 16 August 2010)
"On our return trip to the north-west, the two main roads were blocked again. This time it was angry residents protesting against a power cut that was in its third day…. 'We keep calling the government and their line is busy, busy,' shouted one protester, as black plumes of smoke rose from burning tyres."
"A resident from Nowshera, Fazal Karim frustrated by the government inaction said: 'I've been asking people to take off their shirts and hold a [shirtless] protest.' (BBC, 20 August 2010)
Why can't more help come?
A victim told BBC, "We called the government and asked them for help. They said they had no facilities in our area, no helicopters or people who could assist them." A Pakistani lawyer from the flooded town Nowshera put it ironically: "We have an atom bomb, but we have no helicopters and boats for rescue, no machinery to clear the roads and build temporary bridges quickly." (BBC, 5 and 9 August 2010)
Is it true that there were no resources available?
The Pakistani army, the world's seventh biggest, numbers 650,000. Pakistan army spokesman General Athar Abbas told BBC 20 August that it had deployed 60,000 troops for relief operations, and even that relatively small number might be an exaggeration. He also said that the Pakistani military only had 45 helicopters. Yet there is an enormous concentration of U.S. and Nato (specially UK) aircraft a short flight across the border in Afghanistan, including Huey transport helicopters and other planes that would be particularly useful for civilian emergency operations. General Abbas said that the U.S. military had sent 15 helicopters. On 30 August, a month after the flood began, the U.S. Defence Department Web site bragged that this number was going to be upped… to 19.
The problem is not a lack of resources, but that the interests of those who control them and the whole imperialist system are in antagonistic contradiction to the interests of the masses of people everywhere.
The U.S. – and its junior partner in crime, the Pakistani military – might as well just come out and admit that their arms and technology exist to oppress the people and that they don't give a damn what happens to millions of poor and common people in Pakistan – except insofar as "instability" threatens their interests.
What happens when "help" does arrive?
In the cases where some emergency supplies are distributed, if they are not just carelessly and inhumanly tossed down on refugees from the sky, they are often distributed outside a politician's house by their aids or by policemen who arbitrarily decide who should get help and who should not, a scene that could drive the people to extreme anger.
Another flood victim Karm Khan said, "For three days I have waited here from dawn till dusk, but haven't received a single grain of wheat. They only give it to their potential voters." (BBC, 5 August 2010)
In general, the nature of "foreign aid" is that even when it does not actually harm the people by wiping out their livelihoods and in other ways, it can do very little to help the masses. In this case we see yet another example of how the goal of imperialist "aid" is to increase their influence in the affected countries and strengthen their local brokers rather than helping the people. The U.S. provides billions of dollars in foreign aid – to the Pakistani army.
Right now, millions of flood victims in Pakistan, are fighting to survive. They – and everyone – will judge what the rulers of this world do to help save their lives.
Omar, another villager, describes the events in his village this way: "We could see the water rising across the entire area between my village and the river. At first we thought it was rain water, but it continued to rise," he says. Everybody rushed to the nearby railway track which is on high ground. But Omar was slightly late.
"Three of our women were swept off their feet. We saved two of them, but the third, my brother's wife, was lost. We found her body two days later." (BBC, 5 August 2010)
This is the kind of story that Pakistani families who lost their loved ones or their home or what little belongings they had gathered over their entire lifetimes would tell you. Millions had to leave the land they had worked on to go to a supposedly safer place or a refugee camp.
The flood began in late July in mountainous northwest Pakistan when exceptionally heavy monsoon rains caused the upper reaches of the Indus river to burst out of its banks.
It is reported that at least 1,600 people have been killed. An estimated six million are homeless. Some 17-20 million of Pakistan's 166 million people are said to have been directly affected, and 6 million are in urgent need of food. Tens of thousands of villages have been under water for days or even weeks and the process is still continuing. The rivers cutting through the middle of the country from north to south are beginning to recede as the surge empties into the Arabian sea, but it is expected to be another week or two before they return to normal – and even then, in some places floodwater will be trapped and remain for some time. (Map: bbc.co.uk/news/world-southasia-11128511)
These numbers alone are not enough to convey all the dimensions of the human catastrophe. What we have seen and heard is only the beginning for the disaster millions face. Livestock is an important source of income, but countless cattle have perished in the floods. By late August, about 14 percent of the country's arable land was damaged, according to the UN World Food Programme. Even many people whose fields could be replanted have lost their grain stores, and now lack both food and seeds for the next crop after the monsoon. For a large percentage of those who survive the flood, surviving its aftermath will be no less of a challenge. The impact of this loss will be strongly felt by the Pakistani masses for years or even decades to come.
Dr Marie Lall says, "This was not one cataclysmic event, but one which grew over three weeks. The fact that 25 percent of the country was or is under water is not understood. The low numbers of dead, relatively speaking, mask the disaster on the ground. The crisis has destroyed crops, killed livestock and damaged homes and infrastructure. Food prices are through the roof and there won't be a normal harvest. It will get worse. Farmers will starve." (BBC, 21 August 2010)
It is reported that of at least 6 million people left homeless, less than 10 percent are in the camps set up in the provinces. The camps consists of tents for 6 to 7 people, without any sort of sanitation or health facilities. Another aspect of the disaster is waterborne diseases. The UN has said that millions of children in Pakistan are at risk. Sindh Province officials said that out of the millions displaced, a quarter are suffering from some sort of flood-related illness.
The lack of sanitation and the malnutrition that will follow the flood might well increase the number of victims for a some time to come.
Those who no longer have a home are living alongside elevated roads with the few belongings they might have saved. Cities such as Sukkur located on the banks of the Indus have become like large refugee camps as increasing numbers of people seek shelter there.
At the same time, people already living in camps for displaced persons, like the 40,000 Afghans refugees living in Azakhel, on the banks of the Kabul and Swat rivers in north-western Pakistan, have been forced to flee yet again.
Who is responsible?
What made the flood so ruthless and why have 20 million mainly poor Pakistanis had to suffer so much?
Without the annual monsoon rains, agriculture in much of Asia and South Asia would not be so productive. Yet monsoon floods are often deadly and destructive. This year the rains produced particularly dangerous flooding in China, Korea and the South Asian subcontinent.
Monsoons are caused by temperature differences between land and sea. During summer when it is hot, the flat terrain of Tibet warms up the surrounding air and the hot air rises, drawing in moist air from the sea. This moist air also warms up and rises. As it cools in the higher atmosphere, the moisture condenses into rain.
According to the BBC weather centre the existence "of more spiralling air in the upper atmosphere sucks in more moist air, causing larger clouds and more intense rainfall." "This year's kink meant more moist air than usual was sucked up. The effect passed in days, but the extra rain at the start of the season caused severe floods." (BBC, 16 August 2010)
The Indus, almost 32,000 kilometres long, is one of the world's greatest rivers. Its valley is one of the places where human beings first gave up their nomadic ways and began to raise livestock and crops. Today, it is home to 100 million people, who rely on the river for drinking water and irrigation. Flooding is no stranger to those whose families have lived here for centuries, but this year saw torrents unmatched in recent history.
A plundered country on a plundered planet
There is credible evidence that global warming could be responsible for these stronger floods. "Professor Martin Gibling of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, a river expert who has worked in the region, thinks that changes in the strength of the monsoon caused by climate change may be to blame. He explains: 'Monsoon intensity is somewhat sensitive to the surface temperature of the Indian Ocean.' During times of cooler climate, less moisture is picked up from the ocean, the monsoon weakens, and the Indus river flow is reduced." (BBC Science and Environment, 13 August 2010)
Today, sea temperatures are increasing.
Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University in Germany, argues that extreme rainfall events will become more frequent and intense in a warmer climate.
"For each degree Celsius of warming, 7 percent more water is available to rain down from saturated air masses. Drought risk also increases with warming: even where rainfall does not decline, increased evaporation dries out the soils."
He warns that extreme weather-related events are already occurring after a global temperature rise of only 0.8 C. "With weak action, like that promised by governments in Copenhagen last December, we will be on course for 3-4 C of global warming. This is bound to outstrip the ability of many societies and ecosystems to adapt. And, with no action at all, the planet could even heat up by 5-7 C by the end of this century – and more thereafter. Knowingly marching down that road would be insane." (Guardian, 16 August 2010)
But while global warming may be to blame for the worst-ever flood in Pakistan, it alone cannot be held responsible for so much human suffering.
There is also the question of how rivers are managed in order to prevent such disasters. For example, some rich countries reduce the risk of flood by building embankments as barriers along the vulnerable parts of rivers to reduce the chances of their bursting their banks in extreme floods. Such a system might or might not work for the Indus river, but today's authorities in Pakistan (and India), like the British colonialists before independence in 1947, have done nothing serious to prevent such possible disasters. Basic facilities such as a system of dams to capture monsoon rains and glacial runoff are totally lacking. There is no flood warning system.
Lack of a proper drainage system or in most area any at all is another contributing factor. The Pakistani masses, especially in the poor areas, have to deal with water overflows even when there is only a couple of hours of heavy rain. In such cases the death of a dozen people is not unusual. The water often covers the streets and alleys for days or even weeks, providing conditions for the proliferation of insects, including malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
Further, the Indus is choked with sediment eroding off the Himalayas. Little has been done to clear its bed or at least reduce the amount of sediment build-up at critical points to allow its waters a swift route to the sea, so that they don't back up so much.
Another problem that has made the situation worse is deforestation. Tree roots help protect the land around the headwaters from being washed into the streams and rivers. But over the past half century, more sediment has been flushed down the rivers as forests have been cut down.
Deforestation of the north-western part of the country and along the Indus river has been very good business for legal and illegal gangs that have made billions of rupees each year from selling the timber over the last few decades. "One of the most powerful and ruthless organisations within Pakistan, the timber mafia engages in illegal logging... the group's connection to politicians at the local and federal level has been commented on in the media for years. The constant warnings about the timber mafia almost always include mention of the increased susceptibility of de-forested regions to flooding, landslides and soil erosion." (The Guardian, comment by Kamila Shamsie, 5 August 2010)
It is impossible that the extensive deforestation operations in the north-western part of the country could have taken place without the support or at least assent of the Pakistani army, whose forces are concentrated there partly as a consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The army is by far Pakistan's strongest economic institution and the core of its ruling class, as well as the heart of the state..
Class rule and foreign domination
Amidst this disaster, when the authorities did act in the name of flood management, their class interests have led them to make matters worse for the people in many instances. The army, big landowners and local and national authorities are often the same people, or of the same family, and at any rate tied together by common interests.
When the floods began in the northwest (what has been recently renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province), they struck with little forewarning. But it took days and weeks for the full force of the flood to move downriver. This time was not used to warn the people and along with them organize preventative or other measures. Instead, when troops were deployed, it was sometimes secretly because they did not want people to know what they were doing. In Punjab Province, a traditional floodplain crisscrossed by dams, canals and sluices, there have been reports that landlords and the army chose which barrages to blow up and which land to flood based on who owned the fields and the location of army bases. (See The New York Times, 23 August 2010).
The young Pakistani novelist Ali Sethi witnessed an incident in which Sindh Province landowners and the army decided to deliberately dig a hole in a highway embankment. They flooded an adjoining area in neighbouring ethnically-oppressed Baluchistan under three meters of water. The writer was advised not to expose this incident to avoid the wrath of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's most powerful organization. The deliberate inundation of Baluchistan saved the rice fields of a Sindh big landlowner/politician, and a military air base on the Sindh side. That facility is home to a fleet of U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets. Local people also believe that it houses some of the widely-hated American drones responsible for many civilian deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
As Sethi wrote, Pakistan '"is a place where peasants drown in rice fields they don't own, where mud-and-brick villages are submerged to save slightly less expendable towns, and where dying villages stand next to airbases housing the most sophisticated jets in the world." Behind the Pakistani military that rules Pakistan, he points out, stand its "American financiers". (International Herald Tribune, 27 August 2010).
The government's role and people's protests
After this disaster, like after previous ones, the authorities were largely useless in helping flood victims. While millions of people were fleeing their homes and villages, the leaders of Pakistan were running around excitedly using the opportunity to beg for donations from the rich imperialist countries. But this did not and could not do much to help the people. Apart from when journalists and their cameras were present, the people were mainly left on their own to deal with the flood and its consequences. The lack of action only added to the people's anger and frustration.
Some analysts have warned that Pakistan's government could face social unrest similar to that after 1971 when "authorities responded slowly to a devastating cyclone. A secessionist movement in East Pakistan capitalised on public anger to successfully fight for independence as Bangladesh… although secession was not solely due to the devastation of Cyclone Bhola. With the flooding, loss and suffering we are currently witnessing in the subcontinent, we must keep in mind that Pakistan is as volatile and precarious now as it was 40 years ago" (Delwar Hussain, the Guardian, 15 August 2010)
What the authorities have been telling the flood victims is that they should just be patient and wait for the water level to go down so that they can go back to their homes. There have been numerous reports of anger and protests by groups of people frustrated by the lack of government action. For example:
"Dozens of men and a few women tried to block five lanes of traffic outside Sukkur, in the southern province of Sindh, today. Villagers set fire to straw and threatened approaching motorists with sticks." One protestor said, "We left our homes with nothing and now we're here with no clothes, no food and our children are living beside the road."
"Last night, hundreds of villagers in the Punjab, the country's most populous and worst-hit province, burned tyres and chanted 'down with the government'. 'We are dying of hunger here. No one has showed up to comfort us,' said Hafiz Shabbir, a protester in Kot Addu." (The Guardian, 16 August 2010)
"On our return trip to the north-west, the two main roads were blocked again. This time it was angry residents protesting against a power cut that was in its third day…. 'We keep calling the government and their line is busy, busy,' shouted one protester, as black plumes of smoke rose from burning tyres."
"A resident from Nowshera, Fazal Karim frustrated by the government inaction said: 'I've been asking people to take off their shirts and hold a [shirtless] protest.' (BBC, 20 August 2010)
Why can't more help come?
A victim told BBC, "We called the government and asked them for help. They said they had no facilities in our area, no helicopters or people who could assist them." A Pakistani lawyer from the flooded town Nowshera put it ironically: "We have an atom bomb, but we have no helicopters and boats for rescue, no machinery to clear the roads and build temporary bridges quickly." (BBC, 5 and 9 August 2010)
Is it true that there were no resources available?
The Pakistani army, the world's seventh biggest, numbers 650,000. Pakistan army spokesman General Athar Abbas told BBC 20 August that it had deployed 60,000 troops for relief operations, and even that relatively small number might be an exaggeration. He also said that the Pakistani military only had 45 helicopters. Yet there is an enormous concentration of U.S. and Nato (specially UK) aircraft a short flight across the border in Afghanistan, including Huey transport helicopters and other planes that would be particularly useful for civilian emergency operations. General Abbas said that the U.S. military had sent 15 helicopters. On 30 August, a month after the flood began, the U.S. Defence Department Web site bragged that this number was going to be upped… to 19.
The problem is not a lack of resources, but that the interests of those who control them and the whole imperialist system are in antagonistic contradiction to the interests of the masses of people everywhere.
The U.S. – and its junior partner in crime, the Pakistani military – might as well just come out and admit that their arms and technology exist to oppress the people and that they don't give a damn what happens to millions of poor and common people in Pakistan – except insofar as "instability" threatens their interests.
What happens when "help" does arrive?
In the cases where some emergency supplies are distributed, if they are not just carelessly and inhumanly tossed down on refugees from the sky, they are often distributed outside a politician's house by their aids or by policemen who arbitrarily decide who should get help and who should not, a scene that could drive the people to extreme anger.
Another flood victim Karm Khan said, "For three days I have waited here from dawn till dusk, but haven't received a single grain of wheat. They only give it to their potential voters." (BBC, 5 August 2010)
In general, the nature of "foreign aid" is that even when it does not actually harm the people by wiping out their livelihoods and in other ways, it can do very little to help the masses. In this case we see yet another example of how the goal of imperialist "aid" is to increase their influence in the affected countries and strengthen their local brokers rather than helping the people. The U.S. provides billions of dollars in foreign aid – to the Pakistani army.
Right now, millions of flood victims in Pakistan, are fighting to survive. They – and everyone – will judge what the rulers of this world do to help save their lives.
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