From Pakistan's Floods to Afghanistan's Earthquakes: The International Community Shows Nothing But Silence

Flooding caused by monsoon rains in Pakistan, which began in early June, has killed 1,061 people, a new statement released by the National Disaster Management Authority showed.

The authority said 28 people had died in the last 24 hours as authorities were still trying to reach isolated towns in mountainous areas in the north of the country, which could lead to a new spike in the toll.

The floods have affected more than 33 million people, more than 14 percent of the country's population, while completely destroying or damaging about a million homes, according to the government.

The floods have wiped out more than 80,000 hectares of farmland, while 3,400 kilometers of roads and 157 bridges have been washed away, the authority said.

Monsoon rains, which usually last from June to September, are essential for the irrigation of crops and water resources in the Indian subcontinent, but they carry a host of tragedies and destruction annually.

The unprecedented monsoon season has affected all four provinces of the country. Nearly a million homes have been destroyed or badly damaged, numerous roads rendered impassable, and electricity outages have been widespread, affecting at least 33 million people.

 

Weak Aid

The destruction this year, according to Pakistani authorities, is worse than that of 2010, when floods claimed 1,700 lives.

Pakistan's military chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, stated on Sunday that recovery could take years. He urged Pakistanis who were expatriates to give generously to the flood victims.

International aid began to arrive in Islamabad on Sunday with cargo flights from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates carrying tents, food, and other daily necessities. On Tuesday in Islamabad, the UN will make a global appeal on behalf of the flood victims in Pakistan.

But international aid has always been problematic in Pakistan. In his article titled Who Benefits from US Aid to Pakistan? Researcher Akbar Zaidi said that international aid is mostly vague and uncontrolled.

"Given the nature and form of the aid relationship between the US and Pakistan, it is not so obvious what the objectives and purpose of US aid to Pakistan really are," Zaidi said.

"Who the aid actually benefits is unclear, and whether or not, in fact, this aid goes against the interests of both or either country, benefiting neither. US aid to Pakistan may, in effect, have made things far worse for all supposed beneficiaries," he wrote.

The Center for Global Development (CGD) wrote that the USA's annual $500 million of "economic" aid does not bring any leverage to Pakistan.

"Compared to the Pakistani government's own budget of around $30.7 billion annually, $500 million is a pittance," CGD wrote.

"Threatening to withdraw this money, which is designed, for example, to increase access to schooling or provide minimal access to energy in the interests of job creation, is unlikely to persuade the Pakistani government to do a better job of, say, raising taxes on its insider elites or improving its own education systems," it added.

"No doubt the civilian government would like to raise taxes and spend more on schooling; no doubt it has difficulty doing so because of its own internal politics and because the army will take first dibs on any additional domestic revenue. But the United States' ability to influence this through its economic aid is minimal," it concluded.

 

Similar Neglect

The same marginalization of the Pakistani crisis is reminiscent of the Afghanistan earthquake disaster just two months ago.

An earthquake hit Afghanistan on June 22, 2022, with a magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale, which killed more than 1,500 people and injured 2,000 others.

The international community's response was weak, and activists talked about the Arab, Islamic and international disregard for the natural catastrophe that killed hundreds, the acquiescence to Western restrictions and sanctions imposed on dealing with the Taliban government, as well as the media disregard for the event, which they described as a catastrophe and a Nakba.

Besides the ongoing international sanctions since the September 11, 2001 attacks, with the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, Washington froze Kabul's accounts with the US Treasury Department and suspended access to any international support for local development projects.

The image of international collusion with America has been manifested in the widespread disregard for the catastrophe that Afghanistan is going through, the failure to rescue the afflicted by the international community, and the rare lack of attention from all the media.

In this context, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan, Ramiz Alakbarov, stated that the United Nations does not have the necessary equipment for rescue operations and does not have the ability to get people out of the rubble.

This sparked widespread anger among activists on Twitter, prompting them to attack Arab and Muslim countries, especially those that had previously rushed to save other countries from similar natural disasters that did not reach the consequences of Afghanistan.

The most popular and popular sentence among activists on Twitter through their tweets on their personal accounts and their participation in the hashtag #Aghanistan_Earthquake was that "if it were Israel or a European country, we would see billions of Arab oil fly faster than light."

Activists have called the international community and Arab and Muslim countries hypocritical and complicit, questioning their money and criticizing the absence of their pro-Muslim positions.