ACT Alliance

By Chris Herlinger/CWS

BALAKOT, PAKISTAN – You needn't go far to discover how long-standing problems and immediate and long-term challenges are converging in northern Pakistan.

Not many weeks ago, the prospect of approaching winter was already on people's minds in the mountainous northwest region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province. This is an area that faced the challenges and difficulties of winter after the calamitous 2005 earthquake. Now it must do the same after the recent disastrous floods.

One struggling institution is Balakot's hospital, which has long received support from Church World Service.

With about three-quarters of the hospital's equipment now lost and the hospital building effectively uninhabitable because of heavy flood damage, medical personnel were scrambling. Medical technician Basharat Ahmed said the hospital's maternal unit had been set up at a temporary locale, while personnel look for another location.

The need to rebuild is crucial, Ahmed and others emphasized, because the hospital was the primary health facility for a surrounding region of some 300,000 persons. “All the valley depended on this hospital," said hospital director Zia Ulhaq. "We need a hospital immediately.”

This is a story being repeated thousands of times over as Pakistan continues to find its bearings three months after the start of the devastating floods -– and at a time when the emergency is fading from international view and concern.

"If you don't intervene, it will be devastating," said CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan Associate Director Dennis Joseph, noting specifically the importance of providing tents as part of the CWS response. "A lot of people will die."

While Dr. Ulhaq, Joseph and other Pakistan humanitarian workers continue their work to assist those affected and uprooted by the floods, there are real worries that considerably more remains to be done as winter approaches in Pakistan.

On Friday (Oct. 29), United Nations officials in Pakistan warned that additional humanitarian resources are needed as the country, with winter approaching, faces a serious threat of having insufficient food, clothing and temporary shelter for flood survivors.

Unless new international assistance is forthcoming, Martin Mogwanja, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan, warned that emergency food supplies will run out in December, the UN News Service reported.

Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said seven million Pakistanis still do not have adequate or sufficient blankets, clothing or shelter as winter approaches. OCHA also reported that the UN's $2 billion appeal for assistance for Pakistani flood survivors, the largest-ever appeal for a natural disaster in UN history, has only been funded at 39 percent, the news service reported.

CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan Director Marvin Parvez has warned since the floods began that sustained international focus on the disaster would be difficult given the realities of Pakistan's current geopolitical position. Compounding that concern is the current international crisis-driven media, which tend to drop news coverage of a disaster when the immediate crisis is over.

Parvez said the approaching months are among the most critical for responding to the floods, given the overlapping problems of the approaching winter and the gaps in the overall international response.

"The international community has to act fast and act now generously or it will be too late for millions of Pakistanis," Parvez said on Nov. 1.

Even without these problems, the response in Pakistan has always had substantial challenges.

During a recent food distribution near Dubair -- something of a cross-roads community in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa -- Imran Munir, a CWS senior project officer, reiterated the numerous problems workers faced. These included problems of access due to destroyed bridges and roads; the geographic isolation of affected villages; the understandable demands of tired and frustrated communities that are, in some cases, receiving humanitarian assistance for the first time ever.

"That has made it worse -- the region is an example of neglect as far as overall development," Munir said.

Agencies such as CWS are doing their best in distributing food and other assistance, he said, but there are obvious limits to what humanitarian groups can do given the considerable overall needs. "We do have limitations," Munir said. 

Munir paused to point out rubble where once stood Dubair's market, which only weeks before had hosted some 200 merchants and their stalls. Munir marveled sadly at the destruction he saw before him. "It's all gone."

CWS staffer Chris Herlinger was recently on assignment in Pakistan.