‘Monster Monsoon’ ravages Pakistan, killing over a thousand

The government of Pakistan has asked for international assistance as the disaster is beyond the country’s capacity. The United States, the United Kingdom, Iran and the United Emirates have already provided aid, but it is still nowhere near enough.

The country had nothing of its own because its economy was already in free fall before the flood. According to a Home Ministry official, Salman Sufi, Pakistan was “recovering only when the monsoons hit.”

Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif has offered 45 million euros to the worst-hit areas, but that is only a fraction of what is actually needed. According to the Prime Minister, 33 million people have already been affected, 15 percent of the total population. It is said that one million houses were destroyed, 150 bridges were washed away, roads were badly damaged and an unknown amount of crops were destroyed.

For many residents, the warnings come too late. Or too early: Many warnings went off in the middle of the night, resulting in people still surprised by rapidly rising waters in the morning, prompting rescues by helicopters and boats. The water coming from the snowy mountains is freezing, making rescue operations very difficult.

A recurring event

Sharif compares the current disaster to 2010 and 2011, which are considered to be the worst floods in the country’s history so far, where floods were an almost annual occurrence.

Senator Sherry Rehman warns that the current ‘monstrous monsoon’ is not an isolated one. Pakistan is also struggling with heat waves and forest fires and is at the forefront of climate change. Rehman calls what is happening now an ‘extreme climate catastrophe’, which in Pakistan’s case is being triggered by melting glaciers in the mountains to the north.

“Pakistan has more glaciers than any country outside the Arctic.” Rehman says global warming is causing the more than 7,200 glaciers to melt faster and faster and overflow the high-altitude snow lakes, collecting all the rainwater and amplifying the monsoon disaster. Rehman told Turkish DRT: “By the time the rains subside, a quarter or a third of Pakistan will be under water.”

A cargo of water from the mountains in the north now slowly moves south through the Indus River, where Sindh province is also badly affected. In Pakistan on Sunday alone, 119 people died due to flash floods, mostly in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated from the northern Swat river basin.