History Of Pakistan - Project

Group Members

Abdullah Noor (07-0125)

Arslan Khalid (07-0232)
Danish Jawaid (07-0009)
Farjad Iftekhar (07-0257)
Anis Ali Kiani (07-0000)
Muhammad Umer (07-0000)

Submitted to: Sir Ajmal

Introduction
The flash floods hitting the northwestern Pakistan in July-August 2010
have been termed the country’s worst ever humanitarian disaster. An
estimated 14 million people in Pakistan have been affected by the
massive floods caused by torrential monsoon rains that lashed the
entire country in end July.

People in the affected areas have been left homeless as the

catastrophic floods washed away their homes, villages and livelihoods.
Many have been without proper food, shelter and medical aid for
almost two weeks. Survivors in the worst affected areas have camped
out under open skies on the highways and other high, dry grounds.
Access to food and clean drinking water is their biggest worry as
thousands of families fled the rampant water with nothing but the
clothes on their backs.

In the North West region, the entire Swat valley remained cut off from
the rest of the country as roads, bridges and railway tracks were
washed away. Even helicopters were unable to reach many of the
worst-hit areas because of the poor weather. Aid workers are
delivering aid by foot and on donkeys. . Floodwater is still surging
south along the Indus River, forcing more and more people from their
homes.

According to meteorologists, there is a shift in the world’s weather

patterns and weather-related disasters are going to increase in
frequency. This year, the intensity of monsoon rains have brought
devastation to Pakistan on a scale that is difficult to comprehend and
even harder to cope with. UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said that
the disaster is "one of the most challenging that any country has faced
in recent years." The United Nations has also warned that children are
among the most vulnerable victims, with diarrhea the biggest health
threat.

Ripe crops and precious cattle have been washed away as more than
17 million acres of agricultural land became submerged in water. In an
agricultural country where people rely mainly on crops and cattle for
their livelihood, these losses translate into utter misery and financial
ruin. Some villagers were even seen to risk their lives and limbs to
save a goat or a buffalo from the raging waters.

Relief efforts are underway as the Pakistan government with the help
of the army, international community and donors, non government
organizations, philanthropists, Pakistani students and other charitable
organizations struggle to cope with the magnitude of the disaster.
Pakistan Independence Day celebrations for 14th August were
canceled as the entire country attempts to bring relief and
reconstruction efforts to the flood-hit areas.

Natural Calamity

The current flooding in Pakistan is mainly due to climate change

(Report: 9 August). It is the unusual climate-change-led seasonal cycle
of land temperature in Pakistan that has exacerbated the monsoon
rainfall and produced the hugest volume of water in the northern
mountainous region of the country ever recorded in the history,
causing floods in the Indus river basin. Various scientific studies have
already shown that the monsoon regions of the world will be affected
by climate change more than any other regions on Earth.

In an unprecedented move, the Organization of the Islamic Conference

(OIC) has come forward to formally blamed the flooding in Pakistan on
"global warming," angering some denialists (CNSNews.com). "Indeed,
the Islamic world is paying a heavy price resulting from the negative
repercussions of climate change," said OIC Secretary-General
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at an emergency meeting in Saudi Arabia.

However, Without doubt, the main responsibility for this disaster falls
on the lack of preparations made by the Pakistani elites, supported and
facilitated by US policy in the region. Monsoon rains, after all, happen
every year, and there have been more than a dozen major floods in
Pakistan since the 1970s. Still, flood control remains inadequate.

Professor Snehal Shingavi at the University of Texas in Austin writes,

"The massive dam and canal network that threads through Pakistan
was built in the interests of large landowners and big capitalists rather
than the people. This meant that infrastructure repair and emergency
relief have been extremely lopsided, and organized around preserving
the interests of the landed elite rather than around flood prevention”.

So we cannot just say that the disaster spread by these catastrophic

floods is all down to natural reasons. These are not only natural floods,
but the structures that were created were injurious and badly looked
after by the various accountable departments and because of that the
situation and destruction even worsened.
What caused floods in Pakistan? While some hold monsoon patterns
and heavy rainfall responsible for flash floods, others consider climate
change, dams and deforestation as playing the trigger for the floods.
Given below we have discussed few issues.

Timber Mafia

According to a story featured in Al Jazeera English (August 8, 2010),

the provincial head of the National Disaster Management Authority has
been quoted as saying that denudation is one of the main reasons for
aggravating the floods as only 5.2 per cent of land in Pakistan is
covered by forests.

A local organisation, Sarhad Awami Forestry Ittehad (SAFI), has

claimed that in parts of Malakand Agency, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, “more
than 70 percent of forests were illegally cut down between 2007 and
2009, when Pakistani Taliban controlled the region.” Another report in
The Guardian (August 12, 2010) claims that the flooding has been
intense in areas where the timber mafia is active.

It states that the felled trees stacked in ravines for the purpose of
smuggling were dislodged by the force of water, thus sweeping away
bridges, people and weakening the dam walls along its way. In fact,
according to reports, the timber filled the Tarbela dam reservoir, thus
blocking any storage space.

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that 80 million trees had been

cut down in the so-called protected Khebrani and Rais Mureed Forest in
the three years leading up to this summer's floods. During that 36-
month period, the forest had been reduced from nearly 20 square
miles to barely 3 square miles.

"The government is promoting 'Green Pakistan' even as trees continue

to be slaughtered across the country in the name of development. The
timber mafia is denuding the country's woodlands. The situation is
desperate and is deteriorating by the day," a Dawn editorial said.
Pakistani government figures show that about 4.1 percent of the
country's land mass is forest. At the current 2 to 2.4 percent rate of
deforestation, Pakistan's forest cover would be reduced to half of its
1995 extent by 2019-24, says the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The riverine forests had been the first line of defense against floods
that have deluged the plains annually for thousands of years.As
rainwater gets trapped in leaves, branches and roots, forests serve to
slow he flow of floodwater. Deforested areas, on the contrary, become
more prone to flooding and landslides.
Kalabagh Dam

Many people including the former chief of WAPDA claimed on the issue
of Kalabagh dam, saying that had the dam been built, it would have
mitigated the affects of floods. Same was claimed by the president
senator of PML Q saying that, Kalabagh dam would have averted the
devastation of the floods in the country.

The party president actually said, “Had the kalabagh dam been built
earlier through consensus, the current flood waters would have
brought prosperity instead of wreaking havoc to the country”.

Another point that was notified on this issue was the stubbornness and
differences among the Sindhi, Balochi, Pathan and Punjabis. Because of
these differences the Kalabagh dam is still stuck where it was and that
has actually resulted in millions of people left homeless, and brought
the economy of the country on the verge of collapse.

If the Kalabagh dam had been built much of the flooding in Sindh and
Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa would have been prevented. The excess water
which is flowing into the Arabian Sea could be stored and much of the
water going into people’s homes could be routed into canals and
directed into other reservoirs that have seen parched land during the
summer.

Pakistan gets most of its rainfall during the rainy monsoon “barsat”
season. This water should be accumulated and then disbursed
throughout the year. Kalabadh, Basha and a hundred other small dams
is the answer to prevent flood and dryness in all provinces of Pakistan.
Much of the monsoon water is wasted and has to be saved. Of course
the dams would also produce electricity and enable the farmers to pull
up the ground water through tube wells.

This issue still remains unsolved despite the disaster spread

throughout the whole country by the devastating floods

Rivers Overflowing – India

It had been weeks since the rains stopped but the Indus and Chenab
rivers continue to rise. Further, there was no flooding in India or in
Afghanistan. Never before have rivers in all the provinces of Pakistan
flooded at the same time without a similar act affecting sources
upstream. The speed and quantity of the gushing water, and the short
span of time in which it picked up momentum, precludes the possibility
that melting glaciers are solely responsible for the floods.

There was no evidence to suggest that the glaciers decided to melt at

a faster speed just in time for the heavy monsoon rains. There is no
doubt that for the first time, what we are seeing today is that the
Indians regime in Kabul is using water as a weapon to deluge Pakistan.
All major rivers flowing into Pakistan, including the Indus, are blocked
by Indian-built dams.

After the first wave of floods, most rivers were flowing normally and no
extraordinary rains followed. But suddenly, the Chenab and Indus
Rivers overflowed and the flow picked up speed, turning into a flood.
India’s Baghliar Dam in occupied Kashmir opened its flood gates to
cause a tragedy on the plains of Pakistan [Sindh and Punjab]. The
Sarobi Dam – the Indian-maintained dam near Kabul – controls the flow
of the Kabul River entering Pakistan.

The same thing happened there. Monsoons didn’t lash Afghanistan and
there was no flooding there of any magnitude. But again, strangely,
water flowing from the Kabul River into Pakistan dramatically picked up
speed as water levels increased, turning into a flood. The speed with
which this transformation occurred could only have happened due to
one of two reasons: massive rains in Afghanistan or the release over a
sustained period of large amounts of water by the Sarobi Dam.

Conclusion

The calamity has reached such epic proportions that to rescue the
economy an immediate strategic plan has to be chalked out and
pursued with resilience. Political parties’ blame game and point scoring
should cease in such heart-wrenching circumstances and the entire
nation must unite to face this dilemma. A transparent and independent
fund raising mechanism is the critical need of the hour.

On an individual basis, it is the moral duty of every citizen to donate

cash or provide relief goods as much as they possibly can. The IMF,
instead of giving more financial loans could wave off all the previous
loans to the country. The federal and provincial governments need to
exercise tight fiscal discipline to prevent the wastage of finances and
control their non-development expenditures. These are some of the
doable solutions to save the inundated economy.

The disaster in Pakistan is the product of years of neglect. Monsoons

are an annual event and floods occur regularly, yet successive
governments have failed to develop proper flood warning systems and
flood control measures. Infrastructure has not been planned to deal
with natural disasters, whether the current flooding or the devastating
2005 earthquake in Kashmir. Those worst affected are inevitably the
poorest layers of society.