Washed Away: 800,000 Pakistanis Cut Off From Road
Geez.. This is getting worse by the day.. Given the plethora of problems already dogging the country, no one knows how long it will take for Pakistan to be in the clear and in a situation to effectively manage this growing crisis.
With the economy in tatters, it might be a long time before Pakistan could rebuild all the lost infrastructure, especially the roads that connected the tribal areas.. And the darn cross-border insurgency and military-related spending is not going help this situation in anyway.. This could very well become the defining moment in Pakistan’s relatively-short existence (formed in August 1947).
On Tuesday, the United Nations said 800,000 people could be reached only by air, and it called for 40 more helicopters from the international community to help take aid to people isolated by the flooding.
“These unprecedented floods pose unprecedented logistical challenges, and this requires an extraordinary effort by the international community,” John Holmes, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, said in a prepared statement.
Reinforcing its call for more helicopters, the United Nations cited the destruction of access roads and bridges in Pakistan’s north, particularly the Swat Valley in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the Gilgit-Baltistan region and the Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir. The flooding has also isolated people in the country’s Punjab and Sindh Provinces, according to the World Food Program, a United Nations agency that specializes in delivering food aid to areas affected by crises.
