The heaviest rains in the last sixty years have forced Pakistan to declare a state of emergency, when the death toll during the current monsoon now stands at 937. The material damage is equally high and has prompted Islamabad to request international aid: 220,000 homes have been destroyed, another half a million have been damaged and 150 bridges have been rendered useless, disrupting the lives of thirty-three million people.
The situation is particularly in Balochistan, the country’s largest province, which today has been virtually isolated. The deluge has destroyed several bridges, both on the four highways that connect it with the rest of the country and on its only railway line, which has been suspended. Also, mobile telephony and internet have stopped working in the provincial capital, Quetta.
No less Dantesque is the vision that Sind offers, more typical of Bangladesh, with huge submerged extensions, after suffering rains six times more intense than usual at this time. “I had never seen rain like this in my life,” Rahim Bakhsh Brohi, a farmer from Sindh, told France Presse, where 80,000 hectares have been flooded, with catastrophic effects, for example, on the cotton crop.
However, the most striking images of the day come from the predominantly Pashtun province that takes its name from the Khyber Pass. In the idyllic Swat Valley, specifically, a huge hotel dedicated to honeymooners has been completely swept away by the waters. Fortunately, both guests and staff were evicted on Wednesday and no casualties have been reported.
Although in several areas it had not rained so much since 1961, the global count of victims was even worse in 2010, when monsoon rains hit more populated areas, adding two thousand deaths.
The Minister for Climate Change, Sherry Rehman, has recognized this Friday the catastrophe and has requested international aid. This is coming slowly, due to the situation of maximum political tension that reigns in the country, which aggravates its chronic problems in being accountable.
Pakistan is the eighth most vulnerable country to climate change, according to a German study. The inhabitants of Jacobabab, now with the water up to their necks – or at least, up to their chests – reached a record temperature of 51 degrees at the beginning of the year.
Because of the calamity, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has canceled his official trip to the UK, to fly over some of the affected areas instead. Also his predecessor, Imran Khan, now politically and judicially persecuted, is taking advantage of his days on bail to see with his own eyes the deluge in Khyber Pakhtunkhua.
