Floods chasing us, fleeing Pakistani survivors say (Feature)

By Nadeem Sarwar and Sohail Memon Aug 16, 2010, 13:19 GMT

Pir Jo Goth, Pakistan - As the rain starts, women run to hurry children into the makeshift camp of bamboo and wild grass. Men try to strengthen the vulnerable structures, but they can find few materials around Faridur embankment because water is everywhere.

Wading a long stretch of waist-deep water, carrying possessions and children, some 25,000 people reached the embankment from Kacha, where the Indus River submerged thousands of villages and farms in the southern province of Sindh.

But they are still not safe.

The water level is rising constantly, with less than a metre to go before the embankment will be washed away. The saturated land cannot absorb more water but the rain continues. The victims have nowhere else to go for the moment.

'Where can we go now? We left our homes, our fields, the graves of our ancestors. But water is everywhere, on the ground and in the sky. It's chasing us like a beast. Where should we go?' said Murad Ali, 35, huddled with an extended family of 23.

Tens of thousands of people are on the move in Sindh, where floods that ravaged north-western and central Pakistan pour into the Indus River.

Manzoor Hussain, a 42-year-old farmer, moved his family from the Thal area of Kashmor district to Jacobabad last week when his place was swallowed by the water. Days later, authorities issued a flood warning and ordered the city of 400,000 people to be evacuated.

'We are now here,' Hussain said at a relief shelter in the building of a state-run school in Sukkur, 78 kilometers south-west of Jacobabad. 'We paid three times the normal fare to hire a Hiace (mini van) to reach here.

'The government should inform us clearly which places are at the risk of floods and which are safe so we can move in the right direction,' Hussain complained.

Sindh Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza said the provincial government was planning to move some people to Hyderabad and the port city of Karachi because 'there are no rivers and canals near those cities.'

A special train running through the province would transport the refugees. A few kilometers from the camp where Hussain was staying, hundreds of flood victims blocked a road in Sukkur to protest the lack of food.

'This is a government-run relief camp but I get food only once a while. We get one or two packets of rice for 16 family members. We are starving but no one cares about us,' Hussain said.

The central government has struggled to assist the victims but the extent of the disaster is so huge that it also overwhelmed UN chief Ban Ki-moon when he visited the area.

'I have visited many natural disasters around the world but nothing like this,' Ban said Sunday, adding that one-fifth of the country was under water and 10 per cent of the 160 million Pakistanis were affected.

Ban urged the world community to speed up its assistance to contribute 460 million dollars urgently needed for the victims.

But pledges of international aid were slow in coming, and it was not clear if donors would heed Ban's plea for 'unprecedented response to unprecedented disaster.'

Anger over slow emergency efforts has begun to boil up in the affected zones, posing a threat to the civilian government.

Dozens of refugees ransacked vehicles carrying relief items in Muzaffargarh district in Punjab last week. On Monday, an enraged crowd pelted stones at another relief convoy in Rahimyar Khan district of the province, injuring three people.

But not everyone is moving. Some people were resolved to stay put and brave the threat.

About 10 kilometres from Faridpur embankment, Ishhaq Kalhooro said he could not leave his inundated village of Panjal Kalhoro. Five mud houses with courtyards on higher ground were safe for now.

'We cannot leave,' he told a reporter from the German Press Agency dpa who reached the area in a Navy boat.

'We have years long enmity with Mangneja tribe and they will occupy our lands if we leave,' said Kalhoro, as a naval officer tried to convince 250 women and children to evacuate the village.

'I know they will kidnap us and our children if we move to some other place without our men,' said Bachal, a 50-year old woman. 'We will not leave this place. We will rather die here.'