Pakistan Floods: Why Should We Care?
Posted by Ethan Casey on August 13, 2010 · 22 Comments
SEATTLE, AUGUST 13 – Yesterday a non-Pakistani friend here emailed me: “I wanted to ask you which you think would be the best organization to make a donation to for the current crisis in Pakistan. We usually give to MSF, but their website doesn’t seem to offer the opportunity to give specifically for Pakistan. Can you offer advice?”
This friend is British and greatly prefers British media outlets, but I need to believe that there are many Americans who also want to help flood victims in Pakistan – or who would want to, if they knew the scale and severity of the disaster.
Why don’t they know? We can, and I do, blame “the media,” but that’s unhelpful and ultimately a cop-out. Each of us individually has the opportunity and responsibility to be aware of every tragedy in our world, and we should be willing to exert ourselves to redress them. We’re all in this together. But the real problem is that there’s too much tragedy, and it’s happening too fast, and these days Americans are distracted and confused and worried about serious problems close to home, like our own jobs and mortgages.
This is understandable. But you need to know that all indicators are pointing toward an enormous, long-term human tragedy unfolding in Pakistan, and we need to do something about it, for several good reasons. The New York Times acknowledged one of these when – belatedly, in its first significant coverage of the floods that I noticed – it headlined an August 6 article “Hard-Line Islam Fills Void in Flooded Pakistan.”
A related point is that we Americans owe Pakistanis a measure of basic human respect and compassion, as well as gratitude specifically for the sacrifices they’ve made at our behest in several wars in Afghanistan. When we repay this debt, it will also redound to our benefit. “It’s high time we showed Pakistanis the best of America,” disaster relief specialist Todd Shea told me last year. “If you’re a true friend, you don’t run out on somebody when you don’t need them anymore. … Pakistanis don’t trust America anymore. We need to show Pakistanis who we really are.”
Todd Shea runs a charity hospital in the Pakistan-administered portion of the disputed region of Kashmir, where he has been working since the October 2005 earthquake that killed 80,000 people. He also responded urgently and effectively to the World Trade Center attack, the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake this January in Haiti. He’s currently on the ground in Pakistan, running medical camps and providing drinking water, food, and other relief. An August 11 update on his organization’s website suggests the scale of the challenge:
In a recent statement appealing for more aid to Pakistan, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said: “While the death toll may be much lower than in some major disasters, taking together the vast geographical area affected, the numbers of people requiring assistance and the access difficulties currently affecting operations in many parts of the country, it is clear that this disaster is one of the most challenging that any country has faced in recent years.“
Thousands of people are camped out on roads, bridges and railway tracks – any dry ground they could find – often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and perhaps a plastic sheet to keep off the rain. ”I have no utensils. I have no food for my children. I have no money,” said one survivor, sitting on a rain-soaked road in Sukkur along with hundreds of other people. ”We were able to escape the floodwaters, but hunger may kill us.” …
There is a desperate need to send more well-equipped medical teams to the flood-hit areas to prevent the further spread of disease. The victims of the flood have lost everything and cannot cope with potential epidemics on their own.
I’m writing this article because I live and work between two worlds: the mainstream North America that I come from, and the Pakistani immigrant community. My job is to help bridge the gulf in awareness and sympathy between those worlds. What I’m seeing right now is that Pakistani-Americans and their admirable and effective nonprofit groups are jumping once more into the breach, as they always do. And, as always, they’re confined – and confining themselves – to soliciting funds from each other.
The flooding is “well timed” in the sense that the fasting month of Ramadan has just begun, and many Muslims will be directing their annual zakat charity contributions toward flood relief. Pakistani-Americans are generally an affluent community, but there’s a limit to what they can do. Wealthy Pakistanis in Pakistan also need to help, and surely are helping. Just as important, we non-Pakistani Americans and Canadians must help. We also must somehow self-raise our own awareness, given the paucity of decent media coverage. This is important both for obvious-enough political reasons, and simply because it’s the right thing to do.
I see troubling contrasts between the outpouring of generosity and attention that followed the earthquake in Haiti and the averting of eyes from the flooding in Pakistan. I see several reasons for this: Haiti is nearby; the earthquake killed 200,000 or more people all at once. In addition, though, there’s the fact that Haiti is not a Muslim country. The earthquake fit right in with the story we were already telling ourselves about Haiti, which is all about poverty and tragedy. Dr. Paul Farmer sums it up pithily in the title of his book The Uses of Haiti. The uses of Pakistan are different. We need to move beyond the uses of both countries and toward understanding them accurately and respectfully, in their own terms. Our awareness of Haiti should be more political and of Pakistan less so, or differently so.
Anyway, back to my friend’s question. The short answer is that, as always, grassroots groups are more nimble and effective, and your money will be put to better use if you give it to groups that are nearer the ground. This is why the nonprofit groups founded and run by Pakistani-Americans are crucially important. I’m including links to several of these below, and I recommend them all.
I was jolted the other day when another friend suggested that being asked to donate to the excellent Islamic Medical Association of North America “could possibly turn some people off.” He’s probably right, but we goras need to get over our knee-jerk aversion to the word “Islamic.” Your doctor might be a member of IMANA. As a Haitian woman told Paul Farmer years ago, “Tout moun se moun” – all people are people. We’re all in this together.
Please contribute to flood relief in Pakistan through one of these organizations (listed in alphabetical order):
ETHAN CASEY is the author of the travel books Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010). He is currently writing Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime in Haiti for publication in spring 2011. He can be emailed at ethan@ethancasey.com and his books and articles are available online at www.ethancasey.com/books/ and www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans. Until further notice, he is donating 20% of profits from sales of his Pakistan books to flood relief in Pakistan, and from his Haiti book to the Colorado Haiti Project.
Ethan, once again you come with simple and plain words. You state clearly, “But the real problem is that there’s too much tragedy, and it’s happening too fast.” But probably people also focus on WHERE the tragedy occurs. In last two weeks, I have heard people showing their deepest sympathies for some road accident, landslides etc. and at the same time totally ignoring the main headline of BBC in all these two weeks (Americans follow only American media). And you have analyzed the role of media in this crisis already.
As you also said, I think this is THE time for the world to realize that we are together in tragedies like these. In long run, it affects everyone.
Thank you Ethan, for saying something which is not being said in our national media and dialogue. I have just finished calculating my zakat and assigning the largest portion for the floods. The US response to Haiti was phenomenal. Considering Pakistan’s alliance with the US, so much more could and can be done.
Yes the Quantam of disaster is beyod imagination and people in Pakistan are in dire need of of help by the world as the better of of the people living in Pakistan live below the poverty line and in such a situation are helpless to manage on their own the government of Pakistan nither has the infrastructure nor the resources to cope with such a dreadful flood whih has shaken the very base of the country. must apriciate the efforts of Mr.Ethan Casey to focus on this grave issue. The civic society and few of the liberal politican parties are moblizing and their efforts to help the people in diaster, MQM a political party of Urban Sind is pretty active in helping the needy they have already dispatched medial teams to various parts of the country where water borne diseases have sprag up they have ahundreds of doctors in there medical aid, the workers of MQM in thousands have reached in the flood hit areas for rescue but the magnitude of disaster is immense and want to thank once again to Mr Ethan Casey for drawing attention of others in this hour of need..
Some of you may think that if you send aid it will end up in the wrong hands. The sites mentioned above are all above board, and are known to do well in delivering goods. So please do help, and carry on helping. This like the earthquake is a long term problem, there is no QUICK FIX.
Ethan Casey, thank you so much for doing a service to humanity by highlighting the extent of flood disaster in Pakistan. I wish the Western media would be as forthcoming in highlighting this massive human tragedy as they are in blowing up out of proportion any news of a planned or aborted attempt at terrorism linking to an ethnic Pakistani or a terrorist outfit in Pakistan. I wish they would project that Pakistan is a nation of 170 million ordinary and peaceful human beings, not more than a few thousands of whom are terrorists and extremists, doing a disservice to their own religion, country and humanity at large by their misdeeds.
There are many more talented and educated Pakistanis working as doctors, engineers, business managers and IT professionals in USA, Canada, UK and other Western countries than the number of these misguided extremists. It is more than 20 million of these peaceful and ordinary human beings who are affected by the floods and whose lives are at risk. Any help by international community will only strengthen their faith in the basic goodness of humanity and would help protect them from the evil influence of the extremists.
And incidently, Pakistanis themselves have the reputation of being one of the most charitable people in the world. Many of the local organisations listed in your blog are world renowned, like the Edhi Foundation which is world’s largest one man charity operating a countrywide ambulance service and shelters for homeless and a world wide relief and rescue operation, finding a mention in the Guiness Book of World Records. Similarly the The Citizens Foundation is running more than 600 free schools in the country and are utilising this network to shelter and feed thousands of flood affected people.
I wish things like this could find a place in the western media to restore their countrymen’s trust and faith in Pakistan and the stakes they have in saving it from disappointment in the response of the international community to a human tragedy.
Thank you so much for empathising with our nation. I just took a cab ride today, and the driver was from Haiti. He told me that they still need a lot of help in Haiti. As we all know, Pakistan is affected on a much larger scale.
Please help us spread the message, coz “people are people”. They include innocent children and women who are looking at us desperately. Do not leave Pakistan alone in this time of difficulty.
Ethan Casey: I find a ray of hope after reading this article that future of Pakistanis no doubt is in danger but can be saved with a little effort. I praise that how overseas Pakistanis and other people are helping, but they do have limit. I am from Pakistan, and I know how worried I am about Pakistan, like every Pakistani at this moment. Together, with a little effort, we can get rid of this problem.
“He’s probably right, but we goras need to get over our knee-jerk aversion to the word “Islamic.” “A related point is that we Americans owe Pakistanis a measure of basic human respect and compassion, as well as gratitude specifically for the sacrifices they’ve made at our behest in several wars in Afghanistan.’
I appreciate your concern for Pakistan, especially because a serious vacuum exists in non-Pakistani circles for empathy for Pakistan.
Yet, you list the threat of hard-line Islam as the topmost concern, highlighted in the only NYTimes article on the flooding to make it to their front page (the hard-line Islam angle was no doubt the pertinent factor in that decision), and the basic human respect and compassion for Pakistanis is a “related point”.
Respectfully, it should be exactly opposite. Respect and human compassion should be the topmost priority, and the spectre of hard-line Islamists taking over a nation of 170 million people (I note the population to emphasize that this situation is highly unlikely) should be a related concern.
Media outlets are shamefully to blame, including the NYTimes, for failing to cover the worst human tragedy in a century. The people of the UK are the largest donors to Pakistan, something to applaud, and this is probably because the BBC has a front-page story on the tragedy every day. The appalling lack of empathy in America is directly related to the shameful peddling of only one image of Pakistan by the American media: hard-line Islamic terrorists bent on destroying America. The humanity of Pakistanis has been lost here.
Your friend was right when he said “It’s high time we showed Pakistanis the best of America,” but I would add that it’s also high time we showed America the best of Pakistan.
We need to stop raising the spectre of hard-line Islam every time Pakistan is mentioned, and highlight the need for compassion, empathy and understanding for the tragedy-stricken people of Pakistan.
Dear Ethan,
Thank you for writing such a nice article. It is great to see people like you caring about a country that is not yours by birth. Let us know anything we can do to spread your words. And keep writing about Pakistan.
Junaid
Thanks for this article.
For immigrants, I’d like to recommend a few more organizations for your list: WHO, UNHCR, MercyCorps. In addition, Hillary Clinton’s campaign with UNHCR is also simple: Text “SWAT” to 50555.
Here’s an interesting post from Dawn about Hollywood opening its heart out to Pakistan’s flood by lending a hand on twitter: http://blog.dawn.com/2010/08/28/tweeting-for-pakistan/
I don’t get distaster fatigue. I live in Pakistan and life is hard all the time for local people living in poverty ……and yet they find joy in small things. The best memory of some of our staff in last years flood was carrying out Eid celebrations with people who had been mired in misery for months and upon joining the eid celebrations – remembered even in such misery they had much to be grateful for. The staff paid for the eid celbrations from their own pockets and brought their own families to help out with the henna painting, childrens games and distributions. People from differnt faiths helped each other regardless of faith, ethnicity and politics.
Today I found a small boy maybe aged six – begging all alone. I asked him in my half URDU where was his family and his suprising answer was that he was begging with his even younger brother- who somehow was locked up by a security guard and he now had to get 250 Rupees to get him released . Whether it was true or not this boy was already in a bad situation six years old and alone and vulnerable in the market of a capital . I tried to engage some others in seeing if his brothers story was true – but sadly there is fatigue for the masses of urchin children and a gift of ten rupees and empathy is all that people can manage. I did little better with three cakes of soap some food and 100 Rupees (in case the story was true) and a plea that he never works alone and that he stay with his mum or dad or a bigger kid and adult -any other that he can trust. But I also work long hours designing projects to really effect change for these children and ways to inspire the donor community to give, give generously and give again and again and again ….regardless of faith, regardless of politics and terror ….for humanity. I am in the fortunate position to be paid to assist people in need and my donation is hours and hours of overtime at no cost to other donors and I am yet to find a INGO worker who is not wired the same- so please do give to credible charities and their partners too. They never count the free time that all their workers give without thought in their calculations regarding – the reach of donations to beneficiairies.
I know from just one report in the last flood we shifted the practice of hand washing after toilet from 26% practicing to 96% ….. Imagine if each of those 7000 households’ 42000 population are severely sick six less times per annum due to the improved hygieneic practices .Estimate that each time they save 5 USD in transport DR fees and medicines and only spend 3 USD per month per household per month extra on soap – The people who gave for this WASH project are now saving these households above a million dollars per annum in self paid medical costs even after paying for the soap. These donations will keep giving for the rest of the lives of these communities due to the changed practices. Given that the flood areas are already in critical nutrition emergency _ water and sanitation projects will save lives now and into the future.
I am a little shocked sometimes that conflicts of interest prevents government from requesting humanitartian aid, that donors might strip funding from development to fund emergencies, that the media and charities can prioritize one emergency over another- when policy dictates that you should not , that donors might acuse the victims ” shouldn’t they have learned” when the factors that affect resilience are complex and people are already vulnerable. I am gobsmacked when the donor is more concerned with the branding then the impact, I am horrified by a focus on democracy at all costs regardless of corruption and economic development over good development. I am also horrified that government often prioritises their corrupt profit margins over the Nations well being and prefer loans than grants to charities which they cannot skim from. The focus on economic development lets corrupt politicians and the World Bank sell millions of children into international debt slavery.
Please keep donating to international and National non goverment organisations ( charities including faith based, rights based ) who advocate for change and also help communities make it change. Do it especially now when the politics is clearly not working to make the world a humane place. Peace for Pakistan and the world, food in every belly, good health and nutrition, access to education, protection for children, a decent living and interfaith peace and harmony is done helping one person at a time and changing the situation for millions in the process.