Pakistan's Islamists foster goodwill with flood relief work (Feature)

By Nadeem Sarwar Aug 12, 2010, 11:51 GMT

Nowshera, Pakistan - Marooned on the roof of their house, Zargul Khan, his wife, elderly mother and four children endured hunger for two days as they watched the floodwaters swallow the whole village.

They were nearly at breaking point when aid arrived in the form of three volunteers approaching the village in a small boat with food and water.

'We were so hungry that my wife could not feed our 2-month-old baby. My mother was so weak that we could hardly hear her breaths when these people came,' said Khan, 38, who is from a small village near Nowshera district in the north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

'They did not tell me who they are and where they are from, they just helped us,' Kahn said.

He was eventually airlifted by an army helicopter, but that first critical aid made an unforgettable impression on him.

Once relocated to a relief camp in Nowshera town, Khan met one of his saviours - a member of Falah-e Insaniyat Foundation (Welfare of Humanity Foundation), a charity linked to the Jamaat-ud-Dawa organization (JuD), itself suspected of ties to the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.

The United Nations banned the organization after the attacks in India's financial centre that killed 166 people. Pakistan followed the UN's move, but the JuD re-emerged under the name Falah-e Insaniyat, circumventing the ban.

'I believe it is our enemy India and the West that are giving them a bad name,' Kahn said of the JuD. 'These people save lives; they don't take lives. Everyone in my village is grateful to them for what they did for us.'

Even though the aid from the government and international organizations is flowing to some 14 million affected people, the efforts have been hampered by bad weather, lack of resources, bureaucratic sluggishness, and delays in assessing the extent of the disaster.

Particularly in the early days, this created a vacuum in rescue and relief efforts, one which Islamist groups were quick to fill, thanks to their knowledge of the affected areas and the needs of the victims.

The Falah-e Insaniyat has been distributing rice meals locally. Less nutritious than some of the packaged food distributed by official aid organizations, the food has been enough to keep thousands of people going at dozens of relief camps across the country.

'We have 3,000 volunteers who are working day and night to help the flood victims,' JuD spokesman Yahya Mujahid said. 'We have established 16 medical centres and deployed 70 mobile medical units that travel from village to village to provide health facilities to flood-affected people.'

As the Islamic holy fasting month of Ramadan starts on Thursday, millions of flood victims were unhappy at the prospect of missing the daily fast-breaking meal. They were criticising the government for doing little to help them. But here also the JuD is meeting the people's requirements.

'We are going to change our meals and will add dates, fruits and juices, in addition to rice, for iftari (the traditional fast-breaking meal). But you know we lack resources so we are trying to do our best,' Mujahid said.

The JuD's services reach beyond food and health care. Around 800 kilometers south-east of Nowshera in central Punjab, some 200 JuD workers helped the authorities guide traffic as 700,000 people evacuated Muzaffargarh to the neighboring city of Multan.

'Now they have deployed their volunteers to help police to guard the houses abandoned by the residents,' said an official in Muzaffargarh who asked not to be named.

Other Islamist groups are also following in the JuD's footsteps in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Among them is Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a religious political party with suspected links to the Taliban, and the hard-line group Jamaat Islami.

Not one to pass up the opportunity, Hizb-e-Islami, a militant group led by Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is also joining the relief action. But its focus is several Afghan refugee camps hit by the floods, mainly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

'Our presence is in seven districts and our hundreds of volunteers are helping our brothers and sisters who are already suffering from an unjust war waged by the Western forces,' said an official from the al-Safa Foundation, the charity wing of Hizb-e-Islami.

'The Islamist groups are organized and their workers are very well trained. They know how to carry out such emergency work,' said Talat Masood, a retired army general and analyst.

'They will try to make the most of the situation and win public goodwill. At the end of the day, they will have more recruits joining their folds.'