A FIFTH of Pakistan has been devastated by monsoon floods in the past three weeks. But aid is failing to keep up with the unfolding disaster.
Pakistani author Fatima Bhutto, 28-year-old niece of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, warns that without help West-hating militants will step in and take advantage of the catastrophe.
IN Kambar, villagers live in stagnant, fetid flood-water between five to 8ft deep - an ideal breeding ground for malaria, cholera and dysentery.
Jacobabad is a ghost town. What locals remain can be found living on roadsides, with no shelter over their heads, begging for food and water.
Seventy-year-old Araba Bibi spent four days on top of a tree outside Peshawar as the waters drowned everything in sight.
Nasirabad is virtually cut off from the rest of Pakistan. Transport officials say the swamped town is unreachable.
My country has always paid heavily with the lives of its people - natural disasters, terrorism and political violence.
My father, Murtaza, was killed in a police encounter, his brother, Shahnawaz before him died under mysterious circumstances, their father, Zulfikar Ali, executed by the state and my aunt, Benazir assassinated two years ago.
But Pakistan has never witnessed such horror before.
Tens of thousands of villages are under water - estimated by the United Nations to have surpassed Haiti's recent earthquake in terms of damage.
The floods have affected one in ten Pakistanis.
A fifth of our country is submerged and aid officials are warning of a second wave of deaths by waterborne diseases.
No one knows when the water from the burst Indus river will change course, when the monsoon will end and how long it will take Pakistan to rebuild.
Aid efforts have been stymied, not least because of the incompetence of the government, whose President Zardari has continued with his foreign trips to Dubai, Europe and Russia.
And, there is the impression that any money sent to Pakistan ends up in the hands of extremists.
In fact, the opposite is true - local reports point to politicians saving their own constituencies at the cost of neighbouring towns and villages.
But if the world community turns its back on Pakistan, then relief efforts will fall to militant outfits who are adept at providing basic services quickly, including roving medical vans and tent villages.
The less aid that reaches Pakistan in a transparent manner, through organisations such as Oxfam, the UN and relief charity Merlin, the easier it will be for extremists to fill the gap.
We can't let that happen.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called Pakistan's floods a "slow motion tsunami".
Please don't leave my country to drown.
Source:http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3105475/Fatima-Bhutto-on-Pakistan-fllood.html
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