Pakistan’s future journey brings mounting challenges

As Pakistan faces growing destruction in large parts of the country due to excessive rainfall and heavy floods, the future promises to bring larger challenges than the past.

Already the flow of flood water through large parts of Khyber Pakthunkhwa (KP) and increasingly the Punjab has shattered records from previous years of destruction. And now, Pakistan’s disaster management officials are desperately preparing for the likely flood related losses, to hit the southern Sindh province. Together, the targeted areas across Pakistan represent large parts of the country.

In this race against time, government officials have been forced to destroy safety embankments to save large cities from being inundated with flood water. Consequently, scores of villages across Pakistan have been destroyed, while the already weak agriculture sector has been hit exceptionally hard.

As terrible images across Pakistan’s TV channels have well illustrated for many days, helpless villagers are widely seen to be struggling only to survive. For the relatively fortunate, rescue boats came to save them alongside their most precious belongings – usually their under nourished livestock. But the less fortunate could not be saved. Around 800 people have died so far in flood related disasters while scores were injured.

In this unfolding disaster, large scale health related challenges and huge setbacks to educational prospects along the grass roots, are inevitable. These outcomes are set to emerge as monumental challenges adding to Pakistan’s present day woes, once the floods are gone. 

While today’s disastrous challenge for Pakistan is the consequence of climate change, the country’s case for a robust international response to the tragedy is surrounded by major questions. In the past too, donors have not come with a 100 per cent favorable response after previous disasters.

But the lethargy among donors is set to rise compared to the past. Indications have increasingly emerged this year of a reversal of the gains in international development of the past 80 years, dating back to the creation of the United Nations and its affiliated bodies after the second world war. The cutbacks to the cause of global development has been led by US president Donald Trump, on the grounds that America’s contribution to global development in the past, overlooked America’s own internal needs.

Earlier this year, president Trump ordered the closure of the USAID or United States Agency for International Development, once on the front lines of America’s contributions to international crises. Trump has also ordered the withdrawal of America’s commitments to many of the UN’s bodies that were central to international development work.

On Thursday (28th August) as flood water increasingly threatened Pakistan, President Trump ordered the cancellation of another U$4.9 billion spending for development assistance, peacekeeping and international organizations worldwide. The funds were already approved by the US congress.

To add to president Trump’s actions, European countries are bound to focus mainly on the reconstruction of Ukraine, if Russia’s war on that country leads to a ceasefire.

For Pakistan, the writing on the wall in this very grim situation is very clear. Going forward, instead of relying on foreign assistance to meet its emergency needs, Pakistan will have to rely on reforming itself internally to meet its needs, as its population struggles in the face of an ever growing disaster.